this one has kinky and pictures
Hey LJ,
I Have a Lot to Talk About
This month has been a month of road trips. I found my old moleskine journal and it's been very helpful for keeping track of the things I've been up to.
Gruene Wine Festival
The downtown portion of Gruene is a cool little space. fractallia and I had mondo allergies and went through the hazy world sniffing and hacking. The wines were delicious. We did a whirlwind sampler, each letting the others sip and sample out of our glasses. To be honest, I'm not that big a wine buff, but I really did enjoy many of the sweeter offerings they had available. I was also quite surprised at how easy it is to get drunk at these things. I guess 10 or 20 sips here or there eventually adds up, but damn. The rest of the day wasn't too eventful. We ate at a fancy kind of restaurant and learned that legally, a restaurant owner can get into serious trouble if one brings their own alcohol in from outside. The more you know.
Also, and this may be worth noting, I hate the taste of coffee. I can't stand it - it's way too bitter and will often hit me the way I imagine mace feels. But the restaurant we ate at actually had coffee that I was able to drink. It wasn't bitter or anything and it tasted awesome! Why can't more coffee be that way? It might have a chance of redeeming itself.
Fredericksburg Mesquite Festival
Hung over and happy, we drove to Fredericksburg the morning after, eschewing a side trip to the Alamosa Winery when we figured out that it would add approximately three hours to our entire day. We didn't go straight to Fredericksburg, though; there was a stop-over at some place called Wildseed Farms. I'm aware that it isn't the only place of its kind, but I was still very impressed by the sheer beauty and size of the place. It looked like a Garden Ridge turned inside out and packed with cute little stone sculptures of dragonflies and turtles and birds and indigenous wind chimes. There was a gorgeous pavilion in the middle of the farm which itself was the size of a medium-sized nightclub and had an innate quality of tranquillity and chillness. I loved hanging out there. fractallia bought some plants to raise and love and I bought a jar of the spiced pickles they called Wickles which were amazingly super awesome and I'm almost out of them and it makes me sad.
Then, we went to Fredericksburg. It was my first time and I quite enjoyed it. I don't really think many of us were into tasting more wine; instead we dropped in to the numerous and well-decorated tchotchke shops that lined the streets of the downtown area. There was one that you've probably all seen with this beautiful yellow stone cut and formed into candle holders and wine coolers and things like that. Eerie. The Mesquite Festival itself was really neat. There were all kinds of beautiful furniture items and boxes and decorations made of the stuff. All incredibly expensive, but the smell was enthralling and they were pretty to look at.
Wild Berry Farms
Yet another road trip out to a farm. It was pretty cool and much more crowded than I had expected. There were tykes along and I had a bit of fun holding their plastic cups while they snipped wildflowers. We went through an enormous maize maze which was evidently in the shape of Texas, not that it was really possible to tell from inside. It was pretty damn fatiguing, all in all. I think I probably would have been able to get through it on my own rather than being a group, but I think everyone says that. The kids took turns choosing our direction and frequently ended up leading us in circles. At the end of it, we got some good pictures on top of a giant pumpkin and a refreshing drink.
Cannibal Party
kulilinei and knighthorse's Halloween party this year was so much fun. fractallia and I came dressed as cannibals just like everyone else. We spent the earlier part of the day making our awesome little duct tape spears with shiny skulls on them and creating small little bone-and-wood necklaces. 100% pimps, us. I was bad and totally went off my diet that night but it's okay. There's this totally cute girl I keep seeing, but I'm always so damn nervous around her. I'm writing this big-ass Livejournal entry but somehow I can never think of anything to say around her. Sigh whine whine.
I was totally laplaxing and it felt awesome. Thanks to all my friends for being so loving and comfortable.
Red Fez Birthday Party
fractallia and I went to Red Fez to celebrate a cherished sexyman's birthday party, and they had this band there. The music was pretty awesome, I thought, but they hadn't yet mastered control of the volume slider on their mixer, it seemed. It was much, much too loud to say a few words to your neighbour much less hold a conversation with them.
The guitarist had a mondo beard. The entire night seemed like Rasputin had travelled forward in time, pulled an all-night bender after popping 4 Benadryl, discovered power chords and then started a band.
It occurred to me that loud music is a lot like alcohol. There is a very uncomfortable ringing in one's ears after it ends, but as long as it continues, my ears can stay adjusted. It's a sort of "hair of the dog that bit you" thing.
Weird Dreams
These might bear another entry, but I decided at least describe them in some detail here. I've had two odd and memorable dreams over the past month (wow, so few?). One is about crabs and the other is about electric razors.
The crab dream took place in a post apocalyptic world where a few other survivors and I were living in a mansion in the middle of a wasteland. In the backyard pool, there was a family of tiny black crabs. We slowly consumed the food and provisions we found in the home as the crabs increased in size. There were a few gentlemen there and two women, one of whom was highly kinky. At one point, I tied her up on the bed, but she did not want to have sex. Then, one of the men who seemed to be acting as a father figure started yelling at me for not having cleaned up the nuclear waste in the kitchen thoroughly enough. At the end of the dream, a few of the people in the house tried to escape and got clobbered by the car-sized crabs. I escaped out the back window and ventured into the wastes on my own.
In the second dream I was living in an underwater city. Being short of breath wasn't as big a deal as one might think, but it seemed like locomotion in the water was a challenge that people had not yet mastered. Long story short, I invented this brilliant mechanism to move around in the water, an action that I named "swimming." They came in a pair and looked like electric razors. Simply turning them on would generate yellow and orange sparks (yet another amazing mid-water feat), but if you held them facing one another and moved the top one in large circles and the bottom one in small circles, you could cause your body to rise in the water. I so wanted to see where that was going.
Advent Calendars!
fractallia has been working hard. She's doing two 7-day-in-a-row work weeks and that's hard work. So, I made her some presents!
They are filled with delicious candies she can have every night when she gets home.
Random Thoughts
If "husbandly duties" mean penetrative sex, are "boyfriendly duties" oral sex?
It seems weird that cell phones were getting smaller and smaller for a long time and now they seem to be getting bigger and bigger.
Is "cultlery" cutlery for cults?
Has anyone ever thought about gluing wings to the sides of cars to increase gas mileage? Would that really work?
Maybe an odd thought... Back before you could remove money from their butts, kids used to have to break their piggy banks to get the money out of them. Do you think that doing so might have been a symbolic act back then? After all, after you worked so hard to save money up, you ultimately end up shattering the vessel you kept it in - sort of like you were going back on all that hard work. Well, just a thought.
If there's a wooden chair, does that mean that lumber is being used for lumbar support?
Panopoly - the game where everyone gets to be the thimble. Well, that makes no sense, but it sounded better in my head.
Has anyone noticed that almost all of the girls on Snuggie boxes are blondes?
U2 is making a comeback. All hail Zombono.
If you meet someone who was raised Catholic and they turn out to be kind of messed up, can we call that a Catholiclism?
I'm half def. I rap half the time and sing showtunes the other half.
I want to return to college so I can be a fine ass major.
I'm still playing Fallout 3 and having a damn good time with my evil character. At one point, there is a couple of people living in a town. The girl is totally into the guy but it's not reciprocated for a number of reasons, one of which being he's a priest and probably wants to remain celibate and stuff. Anyway, you can get a special kind of chemical and give it to the girl at which point she'll sneak it into the boy's food and he'll fall madly in love with her. At some later point, after they've consummated their relationship, he feels guilty and agrees to marry her. Then, they get married and you can watch the entire ceremony. Why am I telling this long and boring story? Well, you're character's development in Fallout 3 uses something called "karma" to indicate how bad or good you are, and after the wedding ceremony, you end up seeing a message saying your karma has improved. Isn't that weird? It's a wedding and everything, but it's entirely predicated on the usage of an odd pheromone to bring the happy couple together. The dude was practically entranced into the whole thing. That doesn't seem right to me.
Accidental flamethrower!
Does it seem like every single alternative-lifestyle get together is named "church night"? Am I just crazy?
There's something magical about tupperware. No matter how much you acquire, it always seems like you have just enough.
What are white crayons used for, anyway?
Someone told me that she was in touch with someone who had come to poly dinner a while back and had remained there for about 15 minutes or so. Evidently, I met this person and introduced myself as mrhuggles, and in that short span of time I made a strong impression. Specifically, "With a name like mrhuggles, I can't respect him as a man." I'm really curious to know who in particular it was. I think it's sort of funny, but surprising at how quickly someone can form an impression of another person. What's more, did I form an impression of our entire community during my short interaction with this gentleman / lady?
You know how people tie cherry stems with their mouths to demonstrate quote oral proficiencies unquote? What if people really gave blowjobs that way?
I went to Dragon's Lair a while back and there were all these comics based on politicians. What's the deal with that all of a sudden? They're people just like us.
I've been doing the "rub my tummy" gesture completely wrong ever since I learned where my stomach actually was.
Ten Things to Know About Dating Programmers
orangetango posted a list of tips for dating writers a while ago and it was so helpful that I felt it was my duty to create a corresponding guide for those of you lucky enough to be going out with programmers. I hope that someone finds this helpful.
1. Although some of us might not like to admit it, we all understand that the real action happens on the backend.
2. We might bore you. Anything worth doing once is worth doing 1 to N times.
3. Please don't take offense if we stare too hard at you. Real life has some amazing texture maps.
4. Forgive us when we try to solve your problems with mathematical formulas. We can't help it; it's instinct.
5. We don't really "tan". We simply sit at varying distances from the screen.
6. "Sub routine" means something completely different to us than it does to you.
7. Just because we're "object oriented" doesn't mean we're kinky.
8. Just because we like "regular expressions" doesn't mean we're not.
9. Inside every coder is an artist struggling to be free. With less twitchy fingers, we might even be good at it.
10. We really do love you for your mind.
I Have a Lot to Talk About
This month has been a month of road trips. I found my old moleskine journal and it's been very helpful for keeping track of the things I've been up to.
Gruene Wine Festival
The downtown portion of Gruene is a cool little space. fractallia and I had mondo allergies and went through the hazy world sniffing and hacking. The wines were delicious. We did a whirlwind sampler, each letting the others sip and sample out of our glasses. To be honest, I'm not that big a wine buff, but I really did enjoy many of the sweeter offerings they had available. I was also quite surprised at how easy it is to get drunk at these things. I guess 10 or 20 sips here or there eventually adds up, but damn. The rest of the day wasn't too eventful. We ate at a fancy kind of restaurant and learned that legally, a restaurant owner can get into serious trouble if one brings their own alcohol in from outside. The more you know.
Also, and this may be worth noting, I hate the taste of coffee. I can't stand it - it's way too bitter and will often hit me the way I imagine mace feels. But the restaurant we ate at actually had coffee that I was able to drink. It wasn't bitter or anything and it tasted awesome! Why can't more coffee be that way? It might have a chance of redeeming itself.
Fredericksburg Mesquite Festival
Hung over and happy, we drove to Fredericksburg the morning after, eschewing a side trip to the Alamosa Winery when we figured out that it would add approximately three hours to our entire day. We didn't go straight to Fredericksburg, though; there was a stop-over at some place called Wildseed Farms. I'm aware that it isn't the only place of its kind, but I was still very impressed by the sheer beauty and size of the place. It looked like a Garden Ridge turned inside out and packed with cute little stone sculptures of dragonflies and turtles and birds and indigenous wind chimes. There was a gorgeous pavilion in the middle of the farm which itself was the size of a medium-sized nightclub and had an innate quality of tranquillity and chillness. I loved hanging out there. fractallia bought some plants to raise and love and I bought a jar of the spiced pickles they called Wickles which were amazingly super awesome and I'm almost out of them and it makes me sad.
Then, we went to Fredericksburg. It was my first time and I quite enjoyed it. I don't really think many of us were into tasting more wine; instead we dropped in to the numerous and well-decorated tchotchke shops that lined the streets of the downtown area. There was one that you've probably all seen with this beautiful yellow stone cut and formed into candle holders and wine coolers and things like that. Eerie. The Mesquite Festival itself was really neat. There were all kinds of beautiful furniture items and boxes and decorations made of the stuff. All incredibly expensive, but the smell was enthralling and they were pretty to look at.
Wild Berry Farms
Yet another road trip out to a farm. It was pretty cool and much more crowded than I had expected. There were tykes along and I had a bit of fun holding their plastic cups while they snipped wildflowers. We went through an enormous maize maze which was evidently in the shape of Texas, not that it was really possible to tell from inside. It was pretty damn fatiguing, all in all. I think I probably would have been able to get through it on my own rather than being a group, but I think everyone says that. The kids took turns choosing our direction and frequently ended up leading us in circles. At the end of it, we got some good pictures on top of a giant pumpkin and a refreshing drink.
Cannibal Party
kulilinei and knighthorse's Halloween party this year was so much fun. fractallia and I came dressed as cannibals just like everyone else. We spent the earlier part of the day making our awesome little duct tape spears with shiny skulls on them and creating small little bone-and-wood necklaces. 100% pimps, us. I was bad and totally went off my diet that night but it's okay. There's this totally cute girl I keep seeing, but I'm always so damn nervous around her. I'm writing this big-ass Livejournal entry but somehow I can never think of anything to say around her. Sigh whine whine.
I was totally laplaxing and it felt awesome. Thanks to all my friends for being so loving and comfortable.
Red Fez Birthday Party
fractallia and I went to Red Fez to celebrate a cherished sexyman's birthday party, and they had this band there. The music was pretty awesome, I thought, but they hadn't yet mastered control of the volume slider on their mixer, it seemed. It was much, much too loud to say a few words to your neighbour much less hold a conversation with them.
The guitarist had a mondo beard. The entire night seemed like Rasputin had travelled forward in time, pulled an all-night bender after popping 4 Benadryl, discovered power chords and then started a band.
It occurred to me that loud music is a lot like alcohol. There is a very uncomfortable ringing in one's ears after it ends, but as long as it continues, my ears can stay adjusted. It's a sort of "hair of the dog that bit you" thing.
Weird Dreams
These might bear another entry, but I decided at least describe them in some detail here. I've had two odd and memorable dreams over the past month (wow, so few?). One is about crabs and the other is about electric razors.
The crab dream took place in a post apocalyptic world where a few other survivors and I were living in a mansion in the middle of a wasteland. In the backyard pool, there was a family of tiny black crabs. We slowly consumed the food and provisions we found in the home as the crabs increased in size. There were a few gentlemen there and two women, one of whom was highly kinky. At one point, I tied her up on the bed, but she did not want to have sex. Then, one of the men who seemed to be acting as a father figure started yelling at me for not having cleaned up the nuclear waste in the kitchen thoroughly enough. At the end of the dream, a few of the people in the house tried to escape and got clobbered by the car-sized crabs. I escaped out the back window and ventured into the wastes on my own.
In the second dream I was living in an underwater city. Being short of breath wasn't as big a deal as one might think, but it seemed like locomotion in the water was a challenge that people had not yet mastered. Long story short, I invented this brilliant mechanism to move around in the water, an action that I named "swimming." They came in a pair and looked like electric razors. Simply turning them on would generate yellow and orange sparks (yet another amazing mid-water feat), but if you held them facing one another and moved the top one in large circles and the bottom one in small circles, you could cause your body to rise in the water. I so wanted to see where that was going.
Advent Calendars!
fractallia has been working hard. She's doing two 7-day-in-a-row work weeks and that's hard work. So, I made her some presents!
They are filled with delicious candies she can have every night when she gets home.
Random Thoughts
If "husbandly duties" mean penetrative sex, are "boyfriendly duties" oral sex?
It seems weird that cell phones were getting smaller and smaller for a long time and now they seem to be getting bigger and bigger.
Is "cultlery" cutlery for cults?
Has anyone ever thought about gluing wings to the sides of cars to increase gas mileage? Would that really work?
Maybe an odd thought... Back before you could remove money from their butts, kids used to have to break their piggy banks to get the money out of them. Do you think that doing so might have been a symbolic act back then? After all, after you worked so hard to save money up, you ultimately end up shattering the vessel you kept it in - sort of like you were going back on all that hard work. Well, just a thought.
If there's a wooden chair, does that mean that lumber is being used for lumbar support?
Panopoly - the game where everyone gets to be the thimble. Well, that makes no sense, but it sounded better in my head.
Has anyone noticed that almost all of the girls on Snuggie boxes are blondes?
U2 is making a comeback. All hail Zombono.
If you meet someone who was raised Catholic and they turn out to be kind of messed up, can we call that a Catholiclism?
I'm half def. I rap half the time and sing showtunes the other half.
I want to return to college so I can be a fine ass major.
I'm still playing Fallout 3 and having a damn good time with my evil character. At one point, there is a couple of people living in a town. The girl is totally into the guy but it's not reciprocated for a number of reasons, one of which being he's a priest and probably wants to remain celibate and stuff. Anyway, you can get a special kind of chemical and give it to the girl at which point she'll sneak it into the boy's food and he'll fall madly in love with her. At some later point, after they've consummated their relationship, he feels guilty and agrees to marry her. Then, they get married and you can watch the entire ceremony. Why am I telling this long and boring story? Well, you're character's development in Fallout 3 uses something called "karma" to indicate how bad or good you are, and after the wedding ceremony, you end up seeing a message saying your karma has improved. Isn't that weird? It's a wedding and everything, but it's entirely predicated on the usage of an odd pheromone to bring the happy couple together. The dude was practically entranced into the whole thing. That doesn't seem right to me.
Accidental flamethrower!
Does it seem like every single alternative-lifestyle get together is named "church night"? Am I just crazy?
There's something magical about tupperware. No matter how much you acquire, it always seems like you have just enough.
What are white crayons used for, anyway?
Someone told me that she was in touch with someone who had come to poly dinner a while back and had remained there for about 15 minutes or so. Evidently, I met this person and introduced myself as mrhuggles, and in that short span of time I made a strong impression. Specifically, "With a name like mrhuggles, I can't respect him as a man." I'm really curious to know who in particular it was. I think it's sort of funny, but surprising at how quickly someone can form an impression of another person. What's more, did I form an impression of our entire community during my short interaction with this gentleman / lady?
You know how people tie cherry stems with their mouths to demonstrate quote oral proficiencies unquote? What if people really gave blowjobs that way?
I went to Dragon's Lair a while back and there were all these comics based on politicians. What's the deal with that all of a sudden? They're people just like us.
I've been doing the "rub my tummy" gesture completely wrong ever since I learned where my stomach actually was.
Ten Things to Know About Dating Programmers
orangetango posted a list of tips for dating writers a while ago and it was so helpful that I felt it was my duty to create a corresponding guide for those of you lucky enough to be going out with programmers. I hope that someone finds this helpful.
1. Although some of us might not like to admit it, we all understand that the real action happens on the backend.
2. We might bore you. Anything worth doing once is worth doing 1 to N times.
3. Please don't take offense if we stare too hard at you. Real life has some amazing texture maps.
4. Forgive us when we try to solve your problems with mathematical formulas. We can't help it; it's instinct.
5. We don't really "tan". We simply sit at varying distances from the screen.
6. "Sub routine" means something completely different to us than it does to you.
7. Just because we're "object oriented" doesn't mean we're kinky.
8. Just because we like "regular expressions" doesn't mean we're not.
9. Inside every coder is an artist struggling to be free. With less twitchy fingers, we might even be good at it.
10. We really do love you for your mind.