a hurricane of yuck

Okay, so after all of those posts about my music listening and purging, I figure I should write something a bit more substantive and give an update. Mostly I'm writing about this weekend, but I'll probably also wander into other assorted updates.

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I didn't get to work on my grad school application at all this weekend, but it's almost done so I should be able to finish up in the next couple of days. Kathy heard back from CSUMB finally through email. She's been listed as an alternative. They said they had a really tough time choosing candidates for the program this year and so the placed her on as an alternate in case someone doesn't show up. They also encouraged her to apply again for next year if an opening doesn't appear and they would gladly give her tips to improve her portfolio submission.

So far once again the weekend has been absolutely splendid! Friday night ciliandis slept over and we listened to music, played Totally Renamed Spy Game and shared tea, biscuits and a carrot cake cheesecake ball. Yesterday we watched some Doctor Who, The Avengers and Torchwood (first episode of season two!) and went shopping. ciliandis cooked us an amazing dinner of chicken in a creamy coconut sauce on a bed of saffron yellow rice and served on garlic naan. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm! Thanks ciliandis! ^_^

And on the subject of Torchwood season two...
John Barrowman + James Marsters = yummy :)

I'll have to see how James Marsters character works out. It almost seems to me like they're trying to reproduce the relationship between the Doctor and the Master but it's not the same. I find it funny though that in Buffy, James Marsters as Spike had the Billy Idol look. Now in Torchwood his Captain John character has a sort-of Adam Ant look. lol

I have today and tomorrow off and we aren't going anywhere, so I'm going to do some cooking and cleaning. We really need to get caught up on laundry. I pulled the turkey out of the freezer a couple of nights ago so I'm going to cook that up. We also have some turkey stock and ham stock in the freezer from the holidays, so I'm going to boil down the frozen ham bone with the ham stock and the carcass from the turkey I'm cooking with the other turkey stock and make a couple of soups. I actually might use the turkey stuffs to make turkey a la king since shivakat was so kind to share her delicious recipe for it!

Other than that, most likely there will be a lot of chilling out at home for the next couple of days and watching/listening to/reading stuff.

And I may finally make that Emma Peel mix CD. Oh! And I should probably put together the old computer with the TV card so I can demonstrate it for the church adult education thing I'm teaching next month.

It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend! The weather was very much like a nice autumn day and to be honest I would be happy if it were like this weekend all year long.

Saturday I had to go do some work, but not much. It was mostly bringing old furniture to the recycling center and doing little bits of tweaking to the new non-liner editing PC. After that Kathy and I headed home and just relaxed. We visited with Lonewolf and Seeker's brother Danny for a while that night, which was nice.

Sunday we made a run to the recycling center to bring our own refuse in. Afterward we decided to stay outside and just lounge around enjoying the beautiful, cool weather. The sky was blue and all the leaves were green. My heart was indeed as warm as a baked potato. After a while we went in and then later joined Lonewolf, Seeker and Danny to watch a couple movie. First we watched the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie and it was hilarious! I won't spoil it but I really enjoyed it and was amused by Frylock's big revelation. Then we watched Doctor Strange and, while I didn't really find it to be a terribly interesting movie, I amused myself by remembering that this is the character whom Dr. Orpheus of The Venture Brothers fame is spoofing.

I also had a nice little phone conversation with my Mom. It's wonderful to know her surgery went well and she's feeling much better. She also quit smoking again, which is great!

"The only thing bull semen has ever done for me is activate my gag reflex." - Oglethorpe

There really wasn't much to say about the weekend except... ahhhhh! It was very relaxed and mostly spent at home. Saturday we ventured out of town to go grocery shopping and Sunday I had to run into work to swap out a couple of programs for Monday morning, but otherwise we stayed home and just enjoyed the downtime.

Yesterday was awesome. After work ciliandis came up and told us she wanted to treat us to dinner. She wanted to celebrate a year of being friends and helping her keep her sanity, which was very nice of her. We went out in search of pyrbennu after trying to call and getting no response. After a failed attempt to find her, we ran into her by chance and dragged her along with us, though she was very confused at first. It was such a nice day and ciliandis was feeling like driving so we took off for Meredith.

But first, I must interrupt to speak of this uncanny knack ciliandis and I have for saying the same words at the same time with the same inflection. Yesterday as we were leaving my office we ended up doing just this sort of thing twice. It ended up happening a couple more times during the evening. It's maddening! But it's the awesome fun type of maddening.

Along the way to Meredith we had to decide where we were going to eat. The new Cactus Jack's came up so we decided instead to head for Laconia. It's one of two of these "southwest" style restaurants linked to the T-Bones chain. The food was very tasty! We all got taquitos to share before our meal. painted_wolf and I ordered the Mango Tango Enchiladas. They had crab meat and were topped with mango salsa. Mmmmmm! pyrbennu ordered Haddock Tacos and a Psychadelic Margarita. As she got a bit silly from the booze, painted_wolf had fun with innuendos about her dinner. I don't remember what ciliandis ordered except that it had chicken in it. It looked very yummy, though! For dessert we all ended up sharing fried ice cream. Thank you again so much Ang!

After that we headed to Joann's Fabric to browse the fabrics and craft supplies. They have so many really cool fabrics! painted_wolf of course found the seed beads and was stuck there for a bit. pyrbennu ended up looking through patterns while the rest of us browsed about. We finally joined her and had a lot of fun just looking through patterns and sharing our favorites. We noticed they were closing up so we went for the door. Apparently the woman working didn't realize we were still there and was startled to see four people suddenly get up and walk out. We had some fun imagining what it would be like to be stuck in a craft store all night. We figured we'd just pull out the sewing machines, grab some cloth and patterns and start making stuff. Why not?

After that we returned to Plymouth, dropped pyrbennu off so she could pester and swoon over lordpagus (her boyfriend) and we went to WalMart. We had some fun just wandering about there, too, and then decided to go around closing time. We went back to the laundry, watch The Colbert Report and then parted company for the evening.

It was wonderful hanging out with Ang and celebrating a year of friendship. Just so you know, Ang, we may have helped you keep your sanity, but you have also helped me keep mine. One of the best happenstances to come from Geeks & Gamers was the opportunity to meet you and I am truly grateful. Thanks for a wonderful time!

Also, she and Al are celebrating three years together today, so Happy Anniversary!

"Friendship is rare. Do you know what I'm saying to you? Friendship is rare." - Tenacious D

Almost all of this weekend was good. Just a slightly soured ending, but in the context of the whole weekend it was minor. Just really, really frustrating-to-tears work stuff.

Saturday
Kathy and I decided to have a day for ourselves since our plans for mini-golf fell through.I really didn't want to leave home since we're almost never there, but Kathy wanted to go out and do stuff. I had to go into town to do a couple quick things for work and we needed groceries, too, so we went out anyway. Not until we slept in late, that is. This means I slept until around 10am and Kathy slept until about noon. Then we did some stuff around home and we got all proper for going into town. Mostly this meant bathing and getting dressed. We first stopped into Chesley's for brunch. We both had the chicken fingers dinner (they make excellent barely-breaded chicken fingers!) and we ended up seeing Karen and the two girls, Katy and Alli. The girls were adorable and were running around in the grass. Oh, to be that full of energy again! :P We had some nice conversation and then we all parted company.

Kathy and I went to my office for a couple minutes and then decided we wanted ice cream. We went to the new place run by high school students (a youth in enterprise program started by a local non-profit and local chain of restaurants). The ice cream was all homemade by the local restaurant chain and we decided on a rather unique flavor called Monkey in the Middle. It is peanut butter ice cream with swirls of chocolate and chunks of banana. The texture was a bit odd but the flavor was very yummy! Kathy had a sundae and I had a waffle cone with two scoops. Mmmmmmm. We also stopped into the new shoe store and much to Kathy's disappointment they didn't carry shoes in her size. She has short feet that are very wide. She usually has to get mens' wide sizes that are too long for her.

Then we bought our groceries for the week and finally stopped in at the farmstand on the way home. Their prices were actually not much higher than the local supermarket and grown without pesticides or chemicals and, most importantly, locally grown and not shippped across country using up fossil fuels. There was a decent variety of vegetables and a little fruit so we hope to stop in some time later this week and buy our produce there.

The rest of the night was very relaxing. I finished The Wide Window, Book the Third in "A Series of Unfortunate Events." Also I noticed at that time that the series of thirteen books has each book written in thirteen chapters. Very clever. I am really, really enjoying these books and it's nice to finally be interested in reading regularly again!

Sunday
We woke up just in time for me to cook breakfast, for us to bathe and then we were off to play games with Ray, Randy and Sarah. We had a great time! The first game was a three-player game of Phoenicia with Randy, Ray and me. It's an excellent game of resource and hand management with a fair amount of bidding, bluffing and trying to guess your opponents' next moves. I didn't do so well, mostly because I became to fixated with Public Works about halfway through the game and overexpended my resources.

Next Randy, Ray, Kathy and I played Prophecy, which is very much like Talisman only far better. It was better in that it had much simpler rules and mechanics and shorter play time. It played very smooth and I managed to find a great strategy right away that led to my victory without having to fight others over artifacts (the components needed to win). Kathy got really frustrated because she was having horrible luck, which was ironic since she had the one item in the game that is useless and merely a "good luck token" (it had no actual game function). Having played both Talisman and Runebound, I would say this is by far my favorite fantasy board game. The rules are simple and mechanics are easily grasped but the game play can be as heavy as one might like. It fits that nice balance between system and play that I really enjoy. This definitely made it to the wishlist.

To end the day of games, Kathy, Sarah, Randy, Ray and I played a couple really hilarious games of Unspeakable Words. We all had a great time and wackiness ensued. Ray even got down to one sanity point left and started doing a fabulous rendition of Renfield. Well played my friend! :D

After games, Kathy and I went for some dinner and headed to WalMart for ice cream and a journal (my therapist asked me to start keeping a written journal). Then we came home and hit a bit of a sour patch with work stuff, but we've resolved it. We're both really frustrated and aren't going through that again, but it hasn't ruined my weekend. I still had a lot of fun.

"Games are a compromise between intimacy and keeping intimacy away." - Eric Berne