McKay Viam Invenient

I love sga_storyfinders.

And cheesecake.

And look, I have both.

In fact, every sentence ends better if you add "... with cheesecake."

So yeah, because my sleep schedule's been so fucked up, I haven't been taking my Wellbutrin. I really really need to remember that it's not optional.

Dinner tonight, which should have been dinner last night, was good, but it was only half of what I meant to serve and the meat was just a little too pink even though my meat thermometer said it was a lot more done that it turned out to be.* I really didn't feel the cooking vibe so we had the caramelized butternut squash/sweet potato dish (which was very good) and lamb, which was very good even if it was a little pink. We'll have greens and mashed potatoes tomorrow.

Things would have been a lot smoother if I'd been taking my meds, as it was I stressed this one waaaaaay too much.



*Um, hi...I'm really not in the mood for recommendations or helpful hints or solutions or whatever here.

Right now I'm mostly thankful that I no longer have a migraine.

There's food in the oven and I'll do a much longer post about it all later.

Hope those of you who celebrate (and those how don't) had a great day!

Thanksgiving.

I was just informed that mom and her roommate were expecting me to do the Thanksgiving turkey. Along with pumpkin pie (crust from scratch) and my cheesecake.

Whut-?

This is going to be one of those weeks, isn't it?

Good thing it's 9am.

Here's a fanfiction heart attack.

Midway through my sga_santa fic, the borrowed laptop suddenly freezes.

Take a bagel, slice it, toast it and put a generous amount of cream cheese on both slices. Then take a couple artichoke hearts and chop them up fine* and use them as sammich filling. Serve with Kalamata olives on the side.

Speaking of food, we got our box yesterday; I was just too wiped to report it.

Persimmons, tangerines, apples, kale, chard, lettuce, some other green and sweet potatoes.

( rambly stuff about greens and T-Day dinner )

Due to a bit of stupidity on my part, I spent the day without internets. And you know...I missed people, but not the internets themselves. Lemme know if anything interesting happened.

Actually, you all should be glad I spent the day offline; I'm grumpy and crampy and apparently someone, probably Og, slept in just the wrong spot on the bed, forcing me to sleep in a certain position, so my knees and back hurt. It's not that I wouldn't happily kick him off the bed, it's that he does it in the middle of the night and I automatically adjust without waking up.

For those not on my NaNo filter, I'm declaring it a half win. I wrote 20,500 words and I'll probably manage another 5,000 before the end of the month. Or who knows, maybe I won't. Still that's 20K of fic I didn't have on October 31, so there you have it.

I have to go to our local upscale grocery store to pick up the lamb tomorrow. That's gonna be fun. I also have to go to Coco's to pick up the pie so at least I'll have French Toast for lunch or something.

OMG you guys!!! I'm in the spoiler pics for AWZ's new year's episode!!!!!



Oh, also, this clip showed up on RTL today, one of the most gorgeous skating scenes AWZ's ever filmed. Biased, yeah, shup. But seriously, guys, I'm just blown away. Especially since this was the actors themselves, not skating doubles! I can't believe how good these two have gotten, especially DG -- he may hate skating, but of late he's shown a comfort on the ice that just leaves me gobsmacked. Go, look at the pretty!!

I'm just not in the mood for much of anything. I'm having my period and I think I'm coming down with a cold and I'm all with the grumpy.

I might be scarce for a day or two.

My mom has been talking about this for weeks:

500,000 animals to be ritually slaughtered?

On Tuesday, November 24th the Gadimai animal sacrifice festival will take place in southern Nepal. It is said that 500,000 animals including buffaloes, chickens, goats, pigs, rats, and birds will be tortured and slaughtered during this Hindu festival.

Write to the Nepalese Embassy: info@nepalembassyusa.org

In India, the ritual slaughter of animals in such rites as the Agnicayana has long been replaced with effigies. There is no religious reason for this throwback. Despite the detailed instructions in Leviticus, Judaism no longer sacrifices the fatted calf. Like that.

I'm tutoring high school students, prepping them for the SAT.

I think what they need as much as good SAT scores are some good college strategies. Share yours here.

So here it is:

What no one will tell you about college (until you get there).

1 - Want to increase your scores 5% without doing anything?

( Sit in the same seat every day )

2 - Talk to your professor outside of class.

( Disagree with your prof? Good! Take it to her/him at the end of class. )

3 - Bored? Ask a question.

( Every time I found myself zoning out during a class I would raise my hand )

4 - Avoid clock-watching.

( Avoid the clock-watching tick by sitting where you can't see the clock. )

5 - High school is for taking the classes you hate. College is for taking the classes you love.

( Don't be a masochist -- if you can avoid that hated math class by taking a much more interesting astronomy class, do it.  )

6 - Know thyself. Work with your habits rather than against them.

( If you suck at mornings, don't take that 8:30am Japanese class. )

7 - Avoid schizophrenia and be efficient: Take related classes at the same time.

( You can use your readings from Indian history as sources for your Indian lit class and vice versa. )

8 - If the class you want is booked, show up anyway, books in hand, and participate vigorously.

( The professor would rather have you as an extra student than the disinterested slackers in the back. )

9 - Give yourself flexibility: Plan, plan, plan.

( When you're not sure of your major, take classes that apply to all three of your most likely majors first. )

10 - The one I learned too late: Build a relationship with professors who are top in their field by taking more than one class with them.

( If they're a bit of a name, their opinion carries weight. )

Reason number 211 why I love my high school tutoring students:

A student wrote his SAT essay. He detailed how, scientifically speaking, the planet doesn't need humans.

<3

GERMAN HACKER KIDS RULE!!!!!!



That is all.

The music awards:

Shakira has women ninjas!

Good news on the work front: My tutoring job is going to give me 16 hours a week as of Dec. 1, which is great. It's an improvement.

The pay rate is good, and it gives me the required experience I need for teaching. (90 hours is the magic number. I'll have it by the end of December. Then I need a year of school for the teaching certificate.)

Unfortunately, it's not quite enough to live off of.

I don't have a car in car-dependent Maryland, so I'm having to ask "mommy" for rides to work, to interviews. I have all the time in the world to write -- yet can't find the space because I have to write around other people's schedules.

It's been four months and I'm getting the feeling she's burned out. As am I.

I want my life back.



Quantifying a life.

( When I drove across country to Seattle in 1996, I had a car. )

Aside from the degrees, how did I end up with less than when I started?

Mousie report.

Some of you may recall this post wherein a family of mouse babies took up residence in one of my fleece jackets (in a box that happens to be outdoors). I discovered this when I pulled my jacket out of the box, scattering mouse infants everywhere. I removed my other jackets, packed the box with newspaper, and used newsprint to scoop the littles back in the box.

A week later I discovered I'd missed four mouse babies, who'd fallen into a box I took inside. Noooo....

Then the temperature dropped and I thought the outdoor mousies were history.

Three weeks later ...

I'm happy to report that the mouse babies survived, and have moved on. But the nest is clearly there, and there are no apparent corpses.

Proof of life: the fleece jacket was not so lucky, sacrificed to the cause. The Mousies chewed a few holes.

Unless Rainy Pass can fix it.

People always ask me about Buddhism ... and I'm caught flat-footed. You should ask a good Buddhist!

Well we're in luck. And online, too.

Tulku Orgyen has offered to help anyone with any questions about Buddhism: http://twitter.com/TulkuOgyen

Retweet, tweeters.

And thank you, Tulku Orgyen, for letting me pass the buck.

The Olympics are coming! The Olympics are coming!

If you're like me (in years past) you probably tune in to these winter sports, oh, once every four years. You get a general sense of who the favorites are from the announcers and interviews, roll your eyes at the inspirational life story clips, and root for the home team.

Now you don't have to be in the dark. You can be knowledgeable long before the Olympics hit.

At least about figure skating. (Everyone, feel free to correct me. I'm not an expert, I've just been following skating to the best of my ability for a couple years.)

Right now the horse race is on. It's the Grand Prix. As we speak, world class skaters are competing in a series of competitions Russia, France, Canada, the U.S., Japan, and er, I think elsewhere. Right now they're trying to earn points to get to the Grand Prix final -- and prove themselves worthy of the Olympic teams.

You see, last March at the World Championships each country won the number of slots they'd have at the Olympics based on how their skaters did. (The max is three.) China was very disappointed to not win any for men's figure skating. In a real shocker, the U.S. women's figure skating only scored two slots as our current National champ fell apart.

But our men are doing fab. Evan Lysacek won the gold at Worlds and we have a "deep field," namely, many guys running neck and neck for the same titles.

Let's have a look at our boys.

The Americans.


The ever-hot gentleman, Evan Lysacek. (The belt buckle is Batman, with cable and bat-grappling hook.)

( Evan has the quad. He has the fire. He's a skater who starts pouring it out in the last 30 seconds of his performance.... )

Finally, there's Mabanoozerabadahblbrghf. Graceful, fluid, fun to watch. I don't know if he'll keep moving up, he's still inconsistent. But he has a musical sense that makes him figure skating eye candy.



Only three will make it to the Olympics.

Which three? We'll know at Nationals in Spokane, January 2010.


Tomorrow: those other guys, yeah, them foreigners.

I think you might have noticed my passing fondness (which, yes, was rapidly fanned into a full-blown obsession) for a certain German soap opera. Today is our birthday! Eskimo Kiss Project is one year old today!

I was going to gush about what an incredible, intense experience this has been (and I still might after I have my coffee), but right now I want to share my squeee! We're getting so much love there, including THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER EVER EVER!!!



Wish you all could see me beaming right now!!! (Or maybe not, it's probably kinda scary...)