Well, I guess just the one birthday (mine) and the one ukulele (also mine!).
And both were AWESOME. Wanna see?
There’s been a decent amount of Stuff Going On since my most recent abandonment of putting things here.
Such as:
1. GOT ENGAGED!
B's grandma's ring. I am nauseatingly giddy. (And I do actually have a thumb)
WOO! Not to be too schmoopy about it, but I am the happiest girl ever knowing that I get to be part of a lifetime superteam with my favorite person in the world. He is the best, and I am the luckiest. [All together now: Awww]
ANYWHO, as outrageously happy as I am to get to marry my man, I’ve discovered that the actual planning of this whole crazy shindig after which we get to be married is a whole other kettle of fish. And by fish I mean stress, frustration, stress, tears, screaming matches with my mother, more stress, more tears and stress. Have I mentioned this is stressful? THIS IS STRESSFUL. It’s gotten to the point where I sometimes have to avoid looking at wedding blogs that feature actual weddings because it ends up just making me angry and wanting to punch all of those smug, beautiful, DIY brides with their perfect weddings in their smug, beautiful, DIY faces. Sigh. Also, HELP.
2. STARTED WEIGHTLIFTING
Me, basically. (Click for The Daily Squee source)
Yeah, you heard me right. Weightlifting. Not Pilates or yoga or Zumba but honest-to-blog pumping iron. With weights that usually weigh quite a bit more than 5 lbs. If that isn’t the most outrageous thing you’ve heard in quite a while, you probably don’t know how tall I am. (Hint: Not Tall. Above photo is a somewhat-accurate representation of how I look at the gym.)
Basically, the Future Husband (eee! still gets me every time) talked me into it a while ago when I started accompanying him and our roommate to the gym to use the treadmill or what-have-you. Turns out? I EFFING HATE RUNNING. Really, it’s the worst. (Sorry, Former Cross-Country and Track Star big brother) So they convinced me to start doing what they were doing with the weights. And…it was actually pretty fun.
Verdict: I feel kind of awesome, and have been going relatively consistently a few times a week for the past 9 months or so. I still can’t bench all *that* much (I think my PR is 85 lbs), but I can squat MORE than my bodyweight. BOOYAH.
Ok ok, so it’s only a few lbs over my bodyweight but still! I feel like a winner.
3. SEWING TAKE 2
Sewing can be hazardous
Or, trying to sew at least! I’m still not very good at all, but I now have a friend here in CA who actually knows what she is doing with a sewing machine so I’m hoping she can teach me.
I’ve been starting to mess with clothes I already have to give them a little upgrade and wrote about it on that other blog I abandoned (the one with my favorite long-distance friend, Nicola). Check ‘er out: ImpandArn
4. STILL READING
Surprise! I love books. Most recently I’ve discovered how much of an author-crush (and probably real-life crush, too) I have on Neil Gaiman. “Just now?” you ask? YES. I know! Where has he been all my life? I’m obsessed.
I got to see him when he came to Berkeley touring for the 10th Anniversary of his (fantastic) novel American Gods and then again just a few weeks ago in San Francisco during the tour he did with his (fantastic) wife, Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls).
Blurry cell phone pic of Neil reading "American Gods"
They’re both incredibly awesome and brilliant, and amazingly good at using Twitter for good instead of evil. Amanda has really awesome ideas about art and media and expression and creativity and Twitter and writes really awesome blog posts about it, in between being an incredible musician. Neil blogs, too and it is obviously lovely, what with him being a writer and all. And he posts photos of his dogs! So cute.
Equally blurry cell phone pic of Neil and Amanda before their amazing show
Basically, I’ve turned into a huge fangirl of both of them and should probably shut up about it now.
I can’t really think of anything else at the moment, but I’m sure in the future I’ll be whining about wedding planning mayhem and trying really hard not to brag about my iron-pumping prowess. In the meantime, want to see a nauseatingly cute gif?
[Photos by the lovely and talented Nancy]
Awwwwwwww.
And I am still in it.
Big Sur, Castle Rock, and Laguna Mountain
- Que hermoso!
I know it’s been over a month, but… know what I got for Christmas?
THIS:
SEWING MACHINE!
Yes! Bask in the sweet sweet 1980′s tan clunky glory that is this Kenmore sewing machine! (I’m pretty sure that sewing book that I got with it starts out “Dear Homemaker…”)
Ok, so maybe your average 25-year-old wouldn’t find an old sewing machine to be the “coolest” or most “exciting” present. But I am wannabe crafty! I HAVE DREAMS. OF MAKING STUFF.
I always see all of these cute tutorials for fun/awesome stuff you can sew or upcycle from old clothes and in my head I say, “I could so do that if I had a sewing machine! …and if I knew how to sew.”
At any rate, I am really short and every pair of pants I have ever owned has been in desperate need of hemming. I always wanted to be able to at least do that, so I can quit walking around looking like a hobo from the ankles down – what with the ragged edges and holes from where I just walk on the parts of my pants that don’t stay rolled up (really fashionably). What I’m trying to say is, clothes and I don’t get along and I’ve always wished I knew how to fix that.
And, lo, when my good friend from Back East was home for Christmas, his mom mentioned that she was trying to get rid of her old sewing machine. He, being the awesome friend that he is, remembered that I wanted one, packed it up and sent it to me. And I promptly squeed all over the place.
However. Problem: I haven’t used a sewing machine since, oh, 7th Grade Home Ec. Even then, I’m pretty sure I was only able to eke out a serviceable pillow, some really wonky boxer shorts, and a little stuffed alligator that I only managed to finish by making the boy next to me help.
As I sat there with my shiny new toy on the hastily cleared kitchen table, I was starting to remember why I had never bought a sewing machine for myself. I have NO idea what I’m doing. It took me a good half hour just to try and decipher the ridiculous 80′s manual that went with it – just to get the thread on. Oof.
(“‘Make sure that thread is as shown in Fig. 5.’ Ok, Fig. 5, Fig.5…oh here it is. What the…what is that? Is that even a drawing of a sewing machine? It looks more like a horse head. A horse with a nose hair problem. Yep, I’m pretty sure it’s a horse.”)
ohGodwhathaveIdoneHOLDME
I ended up spending a lot of time messing with it, and Googling things like “what is a bobbin and how do I thread it” or “why is the bottom thread all loose now” or “what do I do if the needle gets stuck down in the bottom thingy with both of the thread thingies in there and the fabric too oh God did I break it I think I broke it”.
Good news! I didn’t break it. But almost.
Anywho, through multiple trials and errors I have (sort of) successfully made 2 things!
Thing 1: A bag! (Beginnings of which pictured above)
Specifically, a bag made using this lovely and very beginner-friendly tutorial from here: http://www.simplymodernmom.com/2010/09/hobo-dance-bag-tutorial/ (Thanks!)
I was so excited to get the sewing machine that I didn’t want to wait to find a real fabric store, so I just got some essentials and cheap plain t-shirts from Michael’s. So, one of the many reasons that my bag does not look as nice as the tutorial one is that – it’s made out of t-shirts.
TADAAAAAAAAA!
[Please disregard the awful blurriness of my cell phone pictures. I was a) too lazy to go get my real camera and b) didn't want the picture to be good enough that you can see how I can't sew in a straight line yet.]
I really liked the little scrunchie-on-the-handle idea. It looks cute, let me use the contrasting fabric, and, most importantly, covers up the outrageous knotted mess of where I tried to hand-sew the handle ends into the bag itself. Other than that, this was actually really easy and helped me boost my ego start to understand how patterns come together.
Thing 2: Kindle case/sleeve/pocket/thingy!
I couldn’t really find a singular tutorial for a Kindle case that was easy/dummied down enough for me so I sort of put together a couple. It is essentially this case (but mine is obviously not as nice): http://www.polkadotchair.com/2010/09/kindle-keeper-tutorial.html. I also consulted this more general tutorial for extra beginner-friendly information: http://thecottagehome.blogspot.com/2010/10/laptop-kindle-i-pad-sleeve-tutorial.html (Thanks also!)
B wanted to have something to protect his Kindle for his trip to France (grumblejealousygrumble) so I thought it would be a good opportunity to keep practicing. I also found that there is an AWESOME local fabric store in town where I picked up some real fabric, so I didn’t have to mutilate more t-shirts. (If anyone thinks the fabric is not manly enough, blame me – he wasn’t there to help me pick it out so he had to live with what I got.)
At any rate, I felt pretty fancy with my real fabric and my real sewing machine. And my laptop that I am pretending was just for musical entertainment purposes but was really for me to frantically look at the tutorials every 5 seconds to make sure I wasn’t totally effing it up. (I didn’t. Well, not totally.)
The beginnings of my valiant, if imperfect, effort
My main problem I think is the spacial reasoning involved. Because DAMN. My brain is really not used to having to visualize how to put things together so that I can sew the right parts to each other, while making sure that those parts will physically fit in the sewing machine, and then how I can flip it or whatever so that it actually looks like what it is supposed to be in the end. Oh yeah, and to do it all in the right order. Yeesh. Also? Sewing fleece is kind of hard.
But I did it! I sort of jury-rigged a loop out of hemp cord I had lying around and hand-sewed a little toggle to the middle so the flap would stay closed. (I am purposefully not showing the inside of the flap because, like I say, I CANNOT hand-sew. The part where the loop is attached looks like…I don’t even know what. An abomination. It’s bad, trust me.)
Slightly ghetto Kindle case and B's sweet flame-y Kindle
Woo!
Even though the stuff I have made so far has been rather shoddy, I am still super proud of myself. I am the kind of person who loves to give up the moment something isn’t easy right away, so I’m kind of impressed that I actually had enough patience to do each little step required. Ok, so I mostly did all of the steps (I hate ironing!) and both of these projects could be done in a night. Still! Pride! Onward to glory*!
*Hemmed pants, hopefully.
- I think that the kindle case is awesome! Of course I can't see the hand sewn part, but to me ...
Sitting in the sunshine reading with a kitty in my lap. (On one of the rare occasions he is not being a jerk.)
Books are probably my favorite thing ever. This isn’t a secret at all, so gift-giving occasions tend to turn out really well for me since people who would give me gifts know that I will always want a book of some sort.
So, since my birthday is in December, as well as Hanukkah usually (with the boyfriend) and Christmas (with the family) December is my favorite month EVER.
See?
HOORAY BOOKS
Those are the actual physical books I got this year. SO HAPPY. Our roommate got me “Two Gentlemen of Lebowski” for my birthday, which is The Big Lebowski written as if it were a Shakespeare play. HILARIOUS. I haven’t read all of it yet, but even just reading Walter’s “I don’t roll on shabbos” speech was so funny. The cool little movie theater downtown here just did a midnight showing of the movie last night, so I’m going to try to read it while it’s fresh in my head and I can recognize all of the scenes.
My family got me the new-ish David Sedaris book “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk” which is basically cute little allegories about how we are all a-holes. He’s still amazingly funny, dry and sarcastic and if I actually had a writing style I think I would want to write like him.
At one time in my life (ok, like a year or two ago) I sort of spoke Spanish, but the most I use it nowadays is to ask the ladies who run the taco truck that stops by where I work for a quesadilla. My family also got me a trilogy of “young adult” books by one of my favorite Spanish authors, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. (If you haven’t read “The Shadow of the Wind” yet, do it NOW. So good.) I’ve read the first one so far, and am starting on the second. The stories are cool and mysterious and his young characters seem to be smart, believable and as multi-dimensional as his adult characters. At least, as far as I can tell, assuming I am understanding the majority of the Spanish.
Boyfriend got me “Just a Couple of Days”, one of his favorite books that he actually lent me years ago when we were first dating but he wanted to get me my own copy. I’m definitely going to re-read it. It’s a really cool story about society and language and communication – what would happen if we lost language? Really cool, and not as pretentious or boring as it sounds.
Aaaaaand then there was this:
This is the end of my life and wallet as I know them.
This is how I know my boyfriend loves me.
The silly story that goes with that glorious piece of pretentiousness up there is this: B just left for Paris on Friday to hang out and work on some things with his PhD advisor who is there for the quarter on sabbatical. (Sidenote: boooo I am lonely and jealous about that) Much before he left, he was talking about how nice it would be to have a Kindle for the very very long trip from California to France, and also just to have one place for all of his academic paper PDFs. Thinking I was clever, I ordered him one for Christmas. The problem however was this: my birthday is before Christmas, and he had already been bragging to me that he had gotten me something really cool for my birthday to tease me because he wouldn’t tell me what it was. And then the package for the Kindle I ordered him came, and he was the one who was home to get it. By the time I got home, he was standing there with the package next to him and a huge sort-of-guilty grin on his face.
I give him a suspicious look and he hugs me. “You know!” He nodded and said, “Only because of this!” and pulls out an identical package from behind his back. Stupid Amazon sends the Kindle in a distinct box that looks exactly the same, so he knew that I had gotten him a Kindle because it looked just like the box that the Kindle he had gotten me came in.
He thought it was hilarious and adorable that we got each other the same present, but I was like “YOU RUINED CHRISTMAS”. I mean, it was really funny and kind of sickly cute, but I was bummed that his big present surprise was ruined so far before Christmas. Oh, well. 
I will always stand by my opinion that physical books are the best: the smell, the feel, the pages, the covers; I definitely am in love with the sensory experience of reading. However, I am also now totally in love with my Kindle and the ease with which you can get new books and take ALL of them with you. SWOON.
So, what I’m trying to say is – will anyone out there in the interwebs help fuel my addiction and tell me what books I should be getting on the Kindle? I have a challenge to deal with…
- I actually went to college with Adam Bertocci--the guy who wrote the Lebowski book. He was kind of a nerd ...
Ok, yes, I know I am in California so this counts as being super whiny, but it has been COLD here. Comparatively. After a year and a half here (holycrap) I’m pretty sure my Pennsylvania tolerance for cold is totally bye-bye now.
Our furnace has not been exactly “working” lately so we have been using the cute fireplace in our little apartment. It’s pretty cozy, if a tad smoky at times in our rather small space, and makes me happy because fire is both pretty and produces heat. Warm Liz = Happy Liz.
See? Pretty
[My photos, made with Gickr.com]
Not even the people who actually like me in real life found my thoughts on Tron to be funny. Oh, well.
In other news, I experienced my first real California earthquake today! EEP. It was just a baby one (4.1) but it totally made our office shake all around and felt extra weird. Sort of like a giant truck driving by, but for a good 30 seconds at least.
I also had no idea it was Friday today until I got to work this morning. And I can’t seem to get warm, even though I am in freaking California and not back in Pennsylvania where everyone I know has been battling the Second Coming of the Snowpocalypse.
Seriously – at work today I had on a sweater, a furry hoodie, a scarf, a hat and these sweet USB-heated gloves the boyfriend got me for my birthday:
And I was *still* cold.
What I’m trying to say here is, somebody is really not winning at life. And it’s me.
So I figure I’ll just stick to posting another picture of my cat:
I reeeeaaaaallly need to look into donating these GrumpyPants to the Salvation Army or something. Yeesh.
I’m sure I’m super late on this (tardy to the party, if you will) since I waited a while to see it, but I would just like to share my musings on the silliness that was Tron: Legacy.
**Alert: I am really bad at discerning what people would consider “spoilers” or not, so if you haven’t seen it and are very adamant about going into it untainted, feel free to stop reading and just come on back later and tell me what you think**
(In other disclaimer-type news, I am in no way a student of film, so please feel free to take this with many grains of salt. There are probably plot points that I found amusing that fans or people who have actually seen the original would disagree with, so please forgive me those. While you’re at it, also forgive me the silly list format I so adore. Onward!)
Now, I like bad movies. Especially when they are bad action movies, or bad movies about video games, or any such silly nerdery or something that a 13-year-old boy would like. But I think what I need to learn is that when it comes to this type of movie, poor Disney just can’t quite get there for me to see it as one of those good-bad movies I hold so dear.
I was SO excited for this movie. Video games! Pretty lights! Pretty Garrett Hedlund! Daft Punk! JEFF EFFING BRIDGES. My brain added those elements together and went: TOTAL AWESOMESAUCE. How could it not be?
But, woe, total awesomesauce it was not. There was more just a side of awesomesauce. A dollop, if you will.
This is not to say that Tron: Legacy was necessarily bad, or not entertaining. The visual effects were super fun to watch, and the lights were very pretty. It was just overall kind of silly and kind of disappointing for me, since I had such high hopes going into it.
Why Tron: Legacy was SUPER SILLY and unsatisfying:
- OPEN SOURCE GOOD: Almost immediately the movie starts spouting propaganda about how software should be FREE and for the PEOPLE. Not that I don’t agree with that idea – the boyfriend and my man harem composed of other Computer Science Ph.D. students would disown me otherwise – but they reeeeaaaallly beat you over the head with it, in very cliched and overt terms. The first thing we see Grown-Up Sam (Pretty Garrett Hedlund) do is break into his own company to steal and then distribute freely via the internet their Brand New Top Secret Operating System That No One Else Can Have Because They Are Evil Capitalist Stereotypes. YES, we get it. Open source = good. Moving on.
- Ridiculous dialogue: That is, when there was any. How old is this kid supposed to be? 27? Apparently, growing up without a father had more effect on his development than just turning him into an irresponsible brat who sabotages his own source of income. While he is obviously a super hacker or whatever, at least some of his intellectual development was stunted: The best scathing comeback he could come up with when arguing with his newly rediscovered father who basically neglected/abandoned him to live in a video game is (wait for it), “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” Dude. You might as well have said, “I’m rubber and you’re glue.”
"Oh I am so emo and a bitter freeloader, but I can quickly become a righteous superhero in videogameland!"
- Name fails: That chick that you saw in the trailer? The creepy one who’s all in white and has the robot voice and lasers off his clothes?
"Hey there, big boy. I'm not a cliche at all."
Yeah, her name is Jem. Yes, Jem. Like, JEM. Also, wtf kind of name is “Quorra”? (Which I had no idea was not the normal name “Cora” until I checked on IMDB.) *sigh* Oh, well.
Truly outrageous!
- Jeff Bridges is apparently Obi-Wan Kenobi: Not that I dislike either Jeff Bridges or Obi-Wan, but really guys? There was no need for the flowy cloak and hood and all of the Zen master stuff. Maybe it’s just me, but if I were living in a video game I feel like I could come up with a little more bad-ass of a persona than Lite-Brite Psuedo-Jedi. Especially since he doesn’t really seem to have too many Jedi-like powers, other than meditating and suggesting paths of pacifism instead of fighting the bad guy. Come on, Jeff, man up and fight the evil clone you created. Or at least tell him, “These aren’t the video game constructs you’re looking for” or something. Conclusion: I will always love The Dude, but he could have been infinitely cooler in this movie.
- The Crotch Pillow: Yes, there was such a thing. And it was apparently rather central to the character development of Jeff Bridges as the movie featured multiple close-ups of it. It’s ostensibly a major tool for his Jedi Meditation, but I don’t see why a normal pillow wouldn’t have done the trick. I guess the weird support bar makes for better meditation? The first view we even see of Actual Jeff Bridges and not Creepy Animated Jeff Bridges starts with one of the aforementioned close-ups and a veeeery slow pan out from the central point of the Crotch Pillow. There is at least one more of these shots, including Jeff Bridges’ crotch on said Crotch Pillow. Awkward. Then when his video game clone comes looking for him, the clone really creepily and menacingly caresses the crotch-support part of the Crotch Pillow. SUPER AWKWARD.
- Creep Factor: We find out that the character Quorra (Cheekbones McChickFromHouse) is basically this odd creation/spontaneous video game being of Jeff Bridges. She also seems to be some sort of adopted daughter/ward/weird pet. She’s all, “Omg hero worship,” and “What’s Stockholm Syndrome, lol?” and “I like Jules Verne!” Yeeeaaahhhh.
- Creep Factor Part II: Subsection and also **MAJOR SPOILER** (this I can identify) of the above: So the whole thing is that Quorra (Cheekbones McChickFromHouse) is a construct of the video game. She sort of dissolves into 8-bit when she gets injured. j\Just like the rest of the video game constructs, even though she is “special”. Likewise, when Sammy Emopants (Blondie McBradPittsCousinInTroy) is sliced by the Flying Light-Frisbee of Death, he bleeds real blood rather than pixels, even though he is in the video game world. Ergo, when *AGAIN, I SAY TO YOU: SPOILER* Blondie takes Cheekbones back with him to the real world, I can only assume that even though she is in the real world she is still all made of pixels and code and whatnot. So…EW. She’s still a ROBOT. Disney, what are you teaching our children?
- OPEN SOURCE = REALLY GOOD: **Also Spoiler** The original “good guy” in the video game world is the eponymous Tron, who fights Jeff Bridges’ Evil Cyber-Twin once he turns Evil. Presumed dead, Tron is later revealed to actually have been turned to the Dark Side as the head gladiator-type guy in Evil Cyber-Twin’s Evil Games. With basically no explanation. And then miraculously out of nowhere at the end – deus ex video game machina – Tron comes back to the good side at the last minute to help save the day. His only line – then, and in the beginning – is (again, wait for it) “I fight for the user!” GET IT. LIKE THE USER OF AN OPEN SOURCE OPERATING SYSTEM. HAVE WE MENTIONED THAT OPEN SOURCE IS GOOD? SHOULD WE SAY IT AGAIN? No, Disney. I got it.
- Whew! So glad I'm not the only one :) I reeeeally want to see the King's Speech, glad to hear ...
- My friend didn't like Tron either. He said it started out great and quickly petered out. I just got back ...
