Can I Get a Witness?

Well it's a week. A full week. A horrible nasty full week after two wonderfully short ones with weekends that just plain weren't long enough. It's been fairly busy, that's the good and bad as usual.

Along with the fishes and such, one of the things we picked up was a couple of (truly) squirrel proof bird feeders, which we've stationed outside our office window. It's wonderful and since without the "meat that grows on trees" (as the original American settlers called squirrels), they stay full and available and are attracting far more birds.

Yesterday it got almost kind of warm. Didn't last long. But it made me start pining for my scooter, which is safely stowed in Janna's parent's garage. Unfortunately, no sign of a break from the snow. It's supposed to snow again friday.

Unfortunately, that snow is supposed to last until saturday morning which totally stinks because we have tickets for Tony Bourdain's lecture in Lowell, which is I dunno 3 hours away? I really don't want that to turn into some kind of snow filled hell ride. It's only supposed to be an inch, but that's what they said last week. I am looking forward to the lecture, even if the ludicrously commercial tweets and facebook postings written by some travel network marketing weasel and supposedly from Bourdain, have gotten very tiresome.

Frozen dead sea monkeys thawed in a nice steaming cup of hot water. Yummo! The breakfast of champions. Or at least of tropical fish.

Well New Years came and went. New Years Eve was very nice, Janna made some incredible chicken kiev. We watched Sushi get dropped at New Years. New Year's day I made a southern style meal of good luck foods. Didn't help and win us the lottery though. But it was tasty.

We mostly hid. It snowed both Saturday and Sunday and in the midst of it on Saturday afternoon and evening, something in our neigborhood blew up, and I mean blew up we heard a huge boom, and we lost power for a couple of hours. That was sort of miserable. Our house is really not well insulated and the temp starts to drop right away. As soon as I realized it was not going to come right back, I put two burners on the stove on and started some water boiling. It was something just on our side of the neighborhood, which made me kind of cringe as I had visions of them moving on to something more important. They eventually called at said we'd have power at 5. Five came and went and so did the trucks and still now power. That was when I gave up and went to transfer the computer's UPS to the fish tank to keep the fish, well, alive. Right in the middle of monkeying with that the power came back thank goodness.

What else? The fish are settling in nicely. I tried to get some pictures on my blackberry, but they didn't come out very well. I need to use our real camera. But two of the multis have created little nests around shells and the whole group is hovering around that side of the tank while the pair of julies has very clearly established Territory with a capital T inside the rocks. I am absolutely in love with my little fishies.

In the meantime I played lots of LOTRO. I'm now 42nd level with my minstrel, which I think is as high as I got with my first. I also am a Supreme Master cook or whatever, but I'm making a fortune selling blackberry tarts. I'm still enjoying the game. I even contemplated going lifetime, but I'm going to see where I am at 65 and whether or not I'm getting groups and raids and all that. While I've enjoyed things so far, all solo all the time gets a bit boring after a while. I will say that while occasionally very frustrating, I'm finding the soloquestgrind and the skirmishes to be a lot more challenging than PVE in other games.

I'll go back to WoW for raids if I get invites, but honestly, I have almost no desire to play otherwise.

This New Year's Eve makes sense, since most of my friends are creative in so many ways, and all have the potential to be. As for me, after reading so many sweet and wonderful New Year's wishes, my wish for all my loved ones is that you all put yourself first. I tell this to everyone who runs into troubled times in thei...r lives. Be happy, and don't be afraid or ashamed of being happy, even if some people deem you selfish. Sometimes, though, you have to evict the bad roommates. Find and nurture the tools to make and keep yourselves physically, emotionally, and mentally happy and fit and strong. Learn to love yourself. I believe the old adage, that you have to love yourself before anyone else, or before anyone else can love you. Commit to your priorities so that the person who's meant to love you knows what they're getting in the long run, and so you know if you can commit to that person and their priorities in turn. I believe that if we each strive to help ourselves, then we can better help each other, in concentric expanding rings. Give yourselves the best you have to give first, then you'll have more of that goodness, top quality if not quantity, to give when it's needed, or to get yourselves through your own worst times when you have to face them. In doing these things, I believe that you truly will have surprised yourself by the end of this New Year. Cheers!

Happy New Year! Don't miss the midnight drag queen dropping in her ruby slipper at might in key west! cnn!

We finished cleaning out the old apartment and turned in the keys. I was a bit sad as it was a nice, albeit too expensive, apartment. Hopefully life as a homeowner will be manageable.

Unfortunately, I have to work this week. I'm feeling incredibly lazy, perhaps because the four day weekend was just so wonderful. We are taking thursday off, so we'll have a second four day.

So what's going on? Not much. We are enjoying a huge run of the original The French Chef show that ran on Channels 2 and 44 over the weekend. Marvelous stuff. I'm contemplating putting together a mashup video of the idiots from Next Food Network Dupe telling her that she can't use French words and that she needs to be more friendly to the home cook.

The fish are settling in and developing some really beautiful color. I haven't seen our bonus fish at all. The little shellies are starting to develop a territory. They're just incredibly cute dodging in and out of their little shell homes. The tank is also quite beautiful with the live plants. If they do well, I'll probably get more of the java fern and a few other plants. They are just so much better than plastic.

We are sort of burned out on our normal foods so we're doing a bit of different stuff. Last night I made a tofu coconut curry and put it over clear noodles. Tonight I'm planning on trying a penne with sauteed chard. It looks good at least. We're going to do the southern "luck" food for New Years and with some luck Janna's going to make us proper Chicken Kiev for New Year's Eve. I finally gave in and got a subscription to Cooks Illustrated. I understand they're evil or something for vehemently going after people reprinting their recipes, but their recipes work and I like the scientific cookery angle they're taking.

Current Mood: bored

I've had an absolutely wonderful Yuletide. I can't imagine why. Usually I'm under a dark cloud and it's a struggle to survive, much less wish it would never end. But we've seen a wonderful movie, gotten an amazingly beautiful fish tank together, laughed together at some truly horrendous film (God help us, we rolled dice and came up with The Man with the Golden Gun--plus the horrible Star Wars prequels on Spike), had some incredible food, been able to cook some incredible food. It's just been great.

Three days back to the slave mines of kessel, then we get four days off for New Years. I think we're going to the New England Aquarium and then to Chinatown for dinner. But that will depend on weather and such.

On the way home from Avatar, we stopped in at Ned's Fish Factory and picked up the remaining fish for our tank. So it's now complete. We have 8 multifasciatus and 2 julidochromis. I also picked up a couple of bunches of Java Fern which is supposed to grow well in pretty much any condition.

And that's how we got the bonus fish. I was taking the plants out of the bag and at the bottom in 1" of water or less, laying on its side, is this little brown fish. The poor little thing flipped a little so I tossed him in the tank hoping he might make it. He found a shell and hid in it, and as of today his color is coming back and he looks ok. Given his color I'm thinking maybe brevis, but I left a note for the store asking what else was in the tank with the ferns.

The short bit of this is go see this movie now and don't skimp on the money. See it in full 3d imax. We drove 2 hours each way to do so and it was not only well worth it to make the trip once, but I'm considering doing it again. It's that good.

The plot has been criticized for being shallow, but I would say more that it's archetypical. It's another of the hero with a thousand faces. What it is mostly is a completely immmersive, well acted, diverse and fast paced film of the type one would expect from Mr. Cameron, but honestly I think better than any of his other films.

Mostly finished moving. We still have to clean out the old place, and the long process of unpacking. But at least I have working broadband again and finished setting up the bed.

It was very confusing, the internet moved a couple of days before the rest of my stuff, so I couldn't tell where home was... Was it where my IP was or was it where my bed was?