Sara

I got a lot more accomplished today than I had otherwise planned. My plan had been to go to the mall to scope out Waldenbooks and then to drop off a box at a
UPS drop off to send back to Zappos. In case you guys don't know Waldenbooks/Borders is closing so everything is crazy on sale. Monday I got $200 worth of graphic novels and some regular books for $100. Today I got $120 worth of books for $50.

That wasn't all I got done.

• Mall
  
• UPS drop off
  
• new tires
  
• alignment
  
• walked all over the place while car work was being done
  
• bought clearance yarn
  
• installed new RAM on desktop
  
• backed up Vincent
  
• reformatted Vincent
  

Installing the RAM was quite an adventure. I originally had 4 GBs in two slots at 2GBs a stick. There were two empty slots. I had bought 8GB on two sticks so 4GBs a stick. Originally I just installed the two sticks in the empty slots, which didn't work so well. I had to crawl around on the floor hooking and unhooking wires and popping RAM in and out for about an hour before I finally found the sweet alignment that got the computer to boot and recognize all 12GBs of RAM. Thankfully I have not had to go into the BIOS yet to try and figure out timing and crap because, well, I am not that saavy. If it works, it works. I'm down with that.

Tomorrow I need to do housework. Saturday I have plans with a friend to sit around, btich about work and drink some wine.

I have a story about work, but I'm not sure I want to get into it now. I would also need to flock it.

It's been a busy last two weeks.

Last week I was working OT on both Thursday and Friday for various meetings and projects I've been working on.

Yesterday I was also working more OT for one of the aforementioned projects.

I've barely been on the internet and when I am it's mostly to RP, which I am so glad I picked up again. So if I owe anyone emails, messages, posts, etc. this is my public apology. Most nights when I get home, I eat something, watch an episode of Fringe (I'm almost caught up!), get ready for bed, read and then go to sleep. It's a pretty boring life.

Today I'm heading out shortly to spend some time with my mom.

Once all this OT goes away, I can make time for RL friends again. The only people getting to talk to me now are my RP buddies because they don't mind if I'm crashed out on the couch and exhausted as long as AIM is open.

Got my tax returns, which means I have to deposit them and then pay Indiana before I can buy myself anything. The current wishlist:

• stand mixer (Viking or Bosch are high on the list but I've not decided yet)
  
• glasses
  
• tires
  
• mattress

Obviously not all those things are going to happen but between the tax refund and all my OT money it just might. Here's to hoping.

wanderlustlover, I saw a license plate while driving to work yesterday that remind me of you. It said, "Be Love".

I think both wanderlustlover and calliopes_pen should check outthe RP game I'm in. It's here for the OOC and here for IC. Still lots of characters open. (Obviously everyone else can feel free to check it. Those were just the two that automatically came to mind.)

I'm going up to my dad's tomorrow to give him his birthday gifts and visit for a bit. I have a habit of always bringing baked goods to him when I go. It's just a thing I do. I decided to make a cake. It's a cake I'm made before with great success but today everything went wrong with it. It wouldn't come out of the pans and then I couldn't make a decent crumb coat. The frosting isn't dark chocolate enough and it's just been glomped on there. In short it's an ugly cake, and I'm devastated. It probably tastes okay, but it's the sort of thing that pushes my buttons and just makes me want to scream. Factor in the fact that my friend from work has not shown up to get this desk from me, and I'm sort of super pissed.

I've had what I'm going to consider a busy weekend so far.

On Thursday I ran errands and got the car's tires fixed. Finally. It took two trips for them to notice what was wrong and fix it. It's only a $20ish fix, though, so it never bothers me too much. When I was there two weeks ago, I paid $10 for a tire rotation so I don't think they're ripping me off. It was just that the hole or issue or whatever wasn't big enough to find last time and this time it was. When I get new tires, I'm going there. I trust them.

I also started getting some apps together for a new RP game that mizzmarvel pointed me at. I think it'll be a lot of fun. I seriously miss RPing.

Friday was getting the taxes done, cleaning the oven (it was terrible and needs its own post), making the first king cake of the season and then, yep, doing two more apps for the RP game mentioned above.

Taxes are a major argh, though. My work keeps withholding money for Kentucky instead of Indiana, which ends up screwing me over because I owe Indiana enough that they penalize me for it. I basically have to file Kentucky, Indiana and Federal. Kentucky and Federal give me money back and then I have to turn around and pay a whole year to Indiana at once. It bites. I have to go yell at work about getting it fixed on Monday again. I did it last year, too. Hopefully this year it will stick because I hate pay $177 to get my taxes prepared when they're actually simply enough I can do them myself other than the whole multiple state thing.

Today I have already been to the post to mail Kentucky taxes (no online return for them, wtf) and mizzmarvel's Christmas/birthday box since the item I was waiting for finally arrived. Then I need to make this week;s lunches, do dishes and get RP stuff going.

Of course my monthly helper is doing its best to sap all my energy and making me hate sitting in my desk chair so grrrr.

It's another weekend full of baking for me. So far I've made Casatiello bread, which takes about 6 hours and thusly should never, ever be started at 9pm. Next time I make it I'll endeavor to remember that. I am currently baking a New York style cheesecake, which is hugely tall and has to be left in the oven for five hours after its cooking time of one hour ends. Tomorrow or tonight I have plans to make gumbo as lunch for the upcoming work week.

I need to figure out plans for this week's breakfasts, but I might just eat the Special K meal bars I bought. I meant to get more of the protein shakes, but I forgot them each time I went to the store.

I've been trying to get my ebooks in order. It's a much larger endeavor than I ever would have imagined, but it really needs to be done so I can easily locate things and stop adding the same files to Calibre over and over again. That gets annoying because then I have to go through and update the book information anyway. Grrrr.

Nothing much happening. I'm ready for winter to be over any minute now because the threat of snow and ice is getting totally old. I should move somewhere warmer. I just hate moving.

Glarmoukin of the Day: She Dreams of a Softer World

Things I need to do today:

• finish chocolate chip sweet rolls
  
• take car to the shop so they can look and hopefully fix slowly deflating tire(s --The good: They couldn't find anything wrong with my tires so I only had to pay $10 for rotation. The bad: They couldn't find anything to explain the deflating but asked me to bring it back if it continues.
  
• make meatballs - IP
  
• laundry
  
• make steak and potatoes
  
• finally get some frames for all the posters/prints I have lying around. It would be really nice to get the old skool New Mutants one up.

It'll be time for me to start the running soon. I'm supposed to have the car over by 11:30am, but I might take it over earlier and walk to the nearby shops to kill time. I prefer going places in the morning because there is typically less traffic out and about. I have zero patience for dumb drivers and there are, inevitably, always dumb drivers.

Here comes the snow. When I woke up I was a little disappointed with the news forecasters because there was just a light dusting over things. Now, though, the flakes they are a-coming. I am glad that this storm didn't occur until I was off. Woo! I won't have to call in or stress myself out over driving in it.

Things I'm planning to cook this weekend:

• chocolate chip sweet rolls
  
• eggnog
  
• queso
  
• Asian chicken and steamed veg

That's the plan anyway. I may end up making some bread, too. We'll see. I tend to make bread and then not really eat it. Add to that the fat that I'm been eating Special K cereal for dinners when I get home after work and Special K protein drinks for breakfast during the work week and then likely ruin the good strides over my weekend when I want to play and try new things. The thing I'm most looking forward to? Using my dutch oven for the first time. The sweet roll recipe calls to make the dough in the dutch oven. Yay!

I need a cooking/baking icon stat! Or if I can't find a good one, I might need something from Pushing Daisies.

GotD: Within her, a skyful of light

In other news, does anyone know if there's a mash-up of Janis Joplin's "Take Another Little Piece of My Heart" and Heart's "What About Love"? I started stringing the two together while I was blow drying my hair, and it works pretty damn well. Of course I don't have the skills necessary to create a mask-up, but if you know of one please point me to it. Otherwise I might just have to do a text only version with the lyrics and let you guys figure the rest out for yourselves.

I'm off to my mother's for a while today. Thursday was her birthday, but we're going things for it today since, well, she's not off on Thursdays even though I am.

I might change my mood theme when I get home. I love Sandman, but I'm getting just a wee bit tired of it. Maybe I'll see if I can find a 5th season Doctor Who theme or something. Or maybe a Torchwood. Anywho expect a BBC centric theme unless I'm in a really weird mood when I return.

I wanted to write an entry about work and weather and the state of my apartment's parking lot, but I don't feel like bothering now. My work week is over. The terrible winter nightmare weather has broken for the moment. And the apartment parking lot is thawing out and no longer a treacherous no man's land of ice and impending misery. My cold has almost completely gone away so I've sort of forgiven it for being here for about two weeks or something now.

Today I've been taking it easy a little more. I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. (Again. I keep watching it. At this rate I'll have to buy it rather than just keep watching the burned copy.) I've found that I like the movie better than the graphic novels.

Now I'm watching Juno.

Later this weekend I'm planning to make calzones and Oreo cheesecake.

My head feels like it's in a vise due to this stupid cold.

However, I have written 17,062 words for my NaNo project and am almost done with the third chapter so that's not too shabby. Seeing as how I met my personal goal of writing over 5,000 words in one day, I am now going to make some tea, take some more cold medicine and veg out on my couch until the aforementioned cold medicine makes me drowsy and I go to sleep.

I have a concert tomorrow night so I doubt I'll get as much writing done, but the good news is that almost all my other chores are completed so I can spend the hours before the concert working some more on the novel. My goal for tomorrow is to get chapter three done and then get about halfway into chapter four.