I like systems.  They make things easy.  But food (grocery shopping, cooking, augh) typically defies systems, partially because the human appetite demands variety.  Ideally I’d like to have a master inventory list of items that I always have in stock, and I’d like to have a fairly predictable rotation of things I can cook with those items that will use them all up before they spoil.  Therefore, I avoid recipes calling for items that I couldn’t use in other recipes, or wouldn’t want to eat often.  This usually means I just avoid recipes and put some cereal in a bowl and garnish it with some milk and call it dinner.

In an effort to make grocery shopping bearable, I’ve made a Google spreadsheet to keep track of things, because any task that requires filtering and sorting in a spreadsheet is pretty cool.  One tab is the master inventory sorted by where the item is kept in the kitchen so I can easily run down the list and visualize if I still have any of that item left or not.  (The drawback to this is that it’s highly dependent on memory if I’m not standing in the kitchen at the time, which I’d rather not trust.  But, it might be most efficient.)  There’s a column to record whether or not I need that item, the section it’s located in at the store, and which store I buy it at.

Then I have a tab for each store which only lists items that a) I need to buy and b) I buy at that store.  So it’s an automatic shopping list, and it’s sorted by where it is in that store (so I grab all the cheeses at once, all the pastas, etc.).  And I can just bookmark the spreadsheet on my phone so I can access it at the store.

That said, today is grocery shopping day, and this is how I’m procrastinating. Maybe I’ll go to Target instead first.

I’ve always been relatively antisocial, but it just dawned on me why I immediately think poorly of any man who ever tries to talk to me (specifically, in locations that don’t imply anything about who I am, like the bus).

It’s because striking up a conversation with me implies they’re only doing so based on my appearance, because that’s all the info they have about me. They might want to know more about me, but it’s all with biological intent. Beyond the physical they wouldn’t give a shit.

Good to know.

Maybe I’m not as antisocial as I thought.

During my four-year stint at a Catholic high school, after 9 previous years of Catholic schooling, I finally developed enough of a personality that I was able to make and keep friends.  And, given that my personality was yet (and remains) unrefined, those friends were rather encouraging of my bizarre ideas and creative ploys for attention.

Like most teenagers, I was trying to find myself, and like a percentage of those, I battled with the added confusion of religious doctrine not making any damn sense.  So, dabbling in a newfound appetite for creating Webpages, I founded a quaint Geocities Webpage called Kristianity.  For the sake of religious parody, I presented myself as the center of this so-called religion, made my own commandments, and tried to find my personal limits of blasphemy.

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OH MAN.

So I’ve been lazy in writing this, but I did take notes, so I’m hoping I remember it all.  You can check out crazyloststar’s post for cross-referencing XD  Also, this is probably too much detail for most people, but I want to remember it!

About a month before the con, crazyloststar and I came up with the idea to do Greed!Ling and Briggs!Ed for a convention in January, but then decided we needed to do it for Yaoi-con as a surprise to sky_dark, on top of the FAKE cosplay we’d already planned on doing.  Yaoi-con is three days, so we’d have a cosplay for each day, but only a month to make four cosplays, two for each of us.  And what was worse, we had to keep one of them a big secret.  SO DIFFICULT.  But we managed!

Many thanks to rattmice, sky_dark, psycholullaby, inugrlrayn, and militsa for the photos.  You can find out whose pictures are whose by checking out the image name.

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Narnia 2: Now with Extra Jesus

So I went with my parents to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian today (Caspian x Peter wut), and overall I really enjoyed it!  But while I recognize that the story has its firm foundation in Christian allegory, this time around the “message” is more of a punch in the face.

Commercials that feature DRINKING SPIT FROM SOMEONE’S MOUTH do not encourage me in any way to buy the product.

So I’ve been using foobar2000 as my music player for about two weeks now. After months of agonizing–yes, agonizing–over what to do about my regrettable dependence on iTunes, I finally mapped out what I’d need to do to break myself out of it and still be listening to my music collection the same day. I detailed the steps and predicted difficulties out on paper while I was supposed to be studying for the GRE, of course. (Does anybody else avoid stress this way?)

I was originally using this foobear skin, which was really the skin that enticed me into foobar to begin with, but I didn’t like that it didn’t have a lyrics panel. (For anyone unfamiliar with foobar, the base player offers customization up the @$$, and of course, offers a lyrics panel if you install that plugin. When you start installing certain all-controlling skins, though, you lose some of that customization, and are restricted to what the skin is built to show you.) So I moved on to this one (but with the “compact” option), and I’ve been pretty pleased so far.

I think I’ve got it to the point now where anything I got from iTunes, I get from foobar, and, of course, much more. Here’s a rundown of everything I have installed on it and what it does. It’s as much a list for me as for–well, for just me, unless you too are interested in foobar, but need assurance about leaving the other players behind. (more…)

This y-con I got to hang with crazyloststar, cryogenia, edchii, wiccat, and mikke!

Hard to say what went on this y-con–I have such a hard time keeping up with a timeline XD But I arrived around 5pm at LAX–that’s L-A-X, not lax–and miracle of miracles, crazyloststar found me at the airport after I got my luggage! Then we hung out at her parents’ for a bit, got food, and took off around 10pm for the drive up to San Mateo with her awesome sister, Itch.

We made it into San Mateo around 4:30 despite our exit being completely closed, and because crazyloststar had requested early check-in, we were able to get into the room. The prospect of having a bed at that point almost obscured the fact that they got some kind of half-suite room of awesome. But I would be headed to a full suite the next night, so I had it good all around.

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(I had this written pretty shortly after I got back, I just couldn’t do anything with it. >O)

The best thing about any con is the people! So I’ll start there.

Notice that according to the chart, there were 12 people at Sky’s house, including me. XD It worked out well though; it’s a big place.

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(If you’re arriving here via the Hemingway WordPress comment I left, I ended up switching to Lightbox, so it’s no longer relevant.  Thanks for taking a look, though. :) )

Just uploaded some kitteh pictures to my Photobucket, d’aw. See ‘em under the cut.

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