icepixie: (Hmph lion)
Huh. Something came and stole the goldfish in the middle of the night. Mom emptied the pond, and he(/she)'s nowhere to be found. I'm guessing a racoon or possum is the culprit.

As Phileas Fogg, or any number of other Victorian aristocrats, would say, "the damned cheek!" Hmph.

*

So during my last visit to YouTube, I discovered that back in the early '90s, a Japanese animation company made a 40-episode series based on the Von Trapp story, calling it Trapp Ikka Monogatari. The first twelve episodes are on YouTube, and in a more-coherent format here.

Despite the fact that it's anime (I'm not a fan of anime, partially because everyone is so damned cheerful and cute, and also because the creepy eyes on all the characters scare me in the same way Kewpie dolls do) and also the fact that the theme song has highly suspect lyrics such as, "We're all lonely angelic cry-babies inside/flying up the stairs of our dreams two at a time" (for my sanity, I'm assuming something was lost in translation there), it's actually not bad.

It's an odd experience watching it because it's obviously based very closely on the book by the original Maria Trapp*, but at the same time, the teleplay was obviously written by Japanese people. The commotion over bowing as a sign of respect, calling the Reverend Mother the "Director," etc. etc....very odd. And they seem to have added an extensive Upstairs Downstairsesque subplot involving the maids, not to mention various events that are never mentioned in the book, which makes it a bit agonizingly long in places. (It takes Maria three episodes just to get out of the frickin' abbey!) But it's still kind of addictive nonetheless.

Anyway. There's your odd TV of the day. Enjoy.


* Why, yes, I do in fact have a tattered old paperback copy of said memoir, and have probably read it six or seven times since I bought it at around fourteen years old. If you haven't read it, you should; it's really quite good.
icepixie: (Hmph lion)
I've had it. I think it's time to retire the word "literally" from the English language, seeing as how nobody--not journalists, not novelists, not message board posters--can use it correctly anymore. 99% of the time I see it, the writer either means "figuratively," or else is using the term to add wholly-unnecessary emphasis (i.e., "The car was literally red"). It's time to give up and move on.

*

In happier news, I finally got my hair cut today. I usually get it cut every three or four months, getting around two inches cut off each time. It's been about six weeks since it needed to be cut, so I had the lady chop off three and a half inches. Ahhhh, freedom. I hate it when my hair touches my shoulders; it feels like it's eating my neck, and the longer it gets, the more I fidget with it, and that drives me up a wall, which makes me play with it even more, and it's a vicious cycle.
icepixie: (Rebecca Bond)
For those of you who wanted to see the new car: Browser-stretching picture under here )
icepixie: (Carnivale Catch)
Ahem. I now appear to be the owner of a 2005 Toyota Camry. (Rather, I am the owner of the car and the car payments. Heh.) It is dark gray. In all aspects, it is pretty awesome. I am very excited. :)

(So when did this "adult" thing happen, anyway?)
icepixie: (Tulips)
I finally managed to get my Knoxville pictures from last month up. Wahoo!

I also put up an album of flower pictures from this month, including the picture I made into the icon you see here. It's mostly tulips, actually, along with some trees.

Yay spring!
icepixie: (Rebecca kill me now)
So, seeing as I'm going to be moving to Knoxville in less than four months, I need to get a car sharpish. (Yes, there's public transportation, but I've done the relying-on-a-bus-to-get-groceries thing, and unless you're somewhere like NYC or Chicago, IT DON'T WORK. Plus, driving home for vacations, etc., and, depending on my luck with finding nearby housing, to campus...yeah.)

I...would pretty much be okay if all we had was the modern equivalent of the Model T. No, seriously. This sucks. I have no idea what to buy, I have a relatively small budget, and seriously, all I want is four wheels, an engine that won't break down all the time, and enough steel around me to keep me from being crushed in an accident. All the different brands and models have such minute and arcane differences that do incomprehensible things to the price, and I can't even begin to wrap my mind around it. The only reason I'm not giving up and investing in a bicycle is because my dad is helping me shop, and at this point has probably done more looking than I have. (Also, biking back to Nashville would be a bit difficult.)

I'm looking solely at used cars, because my budget would allow me to get, um...a new tricycle, I think. (Well, okay, if I plunked down the entirety of my savings account, I could actually get something rather nice, but I also, you know, want to eat next year.)

Anyone have any tips? Brands you like? Bad experiences? I'm leaning towards something from Honda or Toyota because the idea of being stranded on the roadside periodically does not appeal (nor does shopping for another car for AT LEAST ten years), but of course that increased reliability and longevity comes with a corresponding increase in price. Sigh.
icepixie: (Aunt Lily red umbrella)
Mmmm. I'm all full of cake. :)

(I was going to do a work rant, and may still tomorrow, but cake has zenned me out.)
icepixie: (Maggie/Joel mite kiss)
Well, well. As usual, our Christmas was green, but nature seems determined to give us a green-and-white speckled new year. Flurries abound (although they're melting everywhere but on rooftops and car hoods), there's a fire in the woodstove, I have new books and new-old fanfic to read, and the only thing that isn't perfect is those last, niggling changes I have to make to one of my statements of purpose before I can be done with this whole grad school application process. (Well, aside from the FAFSA. But I can hardly do anything about that until I get my W-2s--ugh, I'm finally making enough money to need to fill out tax forms this year--so I'm off the hook for a while.)

Anyway. Goodbye, 2007, and welcome, 2008. I hope it's very good to all of you.

My one goal for the new year at the moment is...well, finishing the apps will be a start, but once that's over, I really need to brush up on my Spanish for the translation exams that will be coming my way over the next couple of years. At the moment, the plan is just to start checking Spanish-language novels out from the library (...okay, maybe I'll have to start with YA fiction) and read several pages a day with the help of my old Spanish-English dictionary and my 501 Spanish Verbs, but if anyone happens to have a suggestion for a textbook of some kind--say, third-year or so; I think that's where I've fallen to--I'll gladly take it.

List

Nov. 21st, 2007 05:14 pm
icepixie: (Let there be light)
Things to accomplish over the four-day weekend:

1. REALLY SERIOUSLY WRITE STATEMENTS OF PURPOSE OMG.

2. Work on Cupid/dS crossover. I've needed to finish the ending for some time now, and this week I had three scenes in the middle show up out of nowhere and become integral to the plot. And of course they're impossible to finish, because I'm not MacGuyver but Fraser is, and I so don't have the technical knowledge necessary for him to solve the problems he needs to solve. Bah. I must find a better way to obfuscate...

3. Read, yay!

4. Watch the BSG TV movie! I had no idea it was airing this Saturday. Woot!

5. Decorate Christmas trees.

6. Work on Art Project for Cubical Holiday Decorating Madness. Coming up with this idea has taken away a bit of my current existential holiday apathy, which is of the good.
icepixie: (Let there be light)
Hello, fall. I see you have come in with a bang and not a whimper. First, it seemed that the time change brought the seasonal change along with it--I got out of work at nearly sunset (alas, 4:30 is sunset now), and noticed that most of the trees had finally started to change as I was driving home. It feels like summer has been endless, but I think this was the deathknell. It's...a pretty deathknell, though?

We then had a thunderstorm this evening that went on for ages and was worthy of epic poetry. It also knocked out the power for about three hours. I had the option of using the battery power remaining on my laptop to work on my statement of purpose or to read. I chose the reading. I had a pretty decent setup, all things considered--we have this candle-holder shaped like a reindeer, and its antlers can hold up to five taper-style candles. It was actually quite bright with all of them going. And it set the mood for Hard Times, that's for sure. I even managed to take a shower by candlelight, because my mother has approximately 8.6 million of the things (hey, I'm grateful), and we could have several in pretty much every room of the house. The house smells very floral at the moment.

All the dark made me veeeeeeery sleepy, though. I may have to go to bed early. Hmmm...
icepixie: (Mrmph ostrich)
*sigh*

My dog fell in the pond this evening.

That is all.

Dog days

Sep. 29th, 2007 10:34 pm
icepixie: (Romana and K-9 at the beach)
I'm not sure I've ever lost this much of my voice before. It's about 75% gone; has been since yesterday evening. The 25% that remains is firmly in tenor-land. I should hire myself out to a choir that needs a quarter of a tenor, and perhaps that is doing a piece which calls for hacking coughs at irregular intervals.

Nevertheless, I actually don't feel that bad, so I went down to Franklin today to see part of a dog agility competition. One of my co-workers was competing, it was free, and it sounded nifty, so off I went. I didn't see the co-worker, but it was pretty cool anyway. Some of those dogs looked like they were having a blast; there was a definite air of "Ooooh, I get to RUN! And JUMP! WOOO!" from some of them, particularly those who went through the obstacles more times than they actually had to. Heh. (You could totally see the thought process there. Dog: "Oooh, ooh, a tunnel! I know this one! Yay!" Handler: "No, stop, you already--argh.")

Of course, there were some, particularly the bigger dogs, who were sort of like, "I am le tired. Enough of this," particularly on the second half of those slalom-like poles. There was a fair amount of "I'm just going to go around this jump rather than over it, thanks. No, really. *flop*."

It looked like the border collies dominated everything, to the point where I wondered if it might not be fairer to give them their own class and let some of the other breeds have a fighting chance. Although some of the labs and Shelties did quite well too.

People were selling stuff, of course, and I got the best dog toy ever. Sammie has an unholy love of fetching tennis balls. I truly hate dog slobber. This is perfect.
icepixie: (Follow the sun)
I bring you Hexiom and Honey Trouble. Honey Trouble is basically an easier version of Zuma. It kept me up until 3 AM last night, despite avowals of going to bed, because the bear is just so happy when you win and he gets his honey that I couldn't deny him the next level.

Hexiom, on the other hand, is maddening and I hate it. Er...I'm stuck on level 19. Tips?

*

I have tulip bulbs! I bought twelve while at the hardware store yesterday. They had ones with black petals, but I decided I wanted pretty more than novel, so I went with multicolored. (I like tulips. I like them enough to dig in the dirt in order to have them in April. This is huge.)

I also have a shirt, although not really the one I needed to go with a skirt I have. I say booooo to the current trend for empire-waisted babydoll-type shirts (example). They look flattering on the mannequins, but get them on anyone more endowed than your average stick insect, and they promptly become comedy pieces. The waistline, which on the models goes under the boobs, sits about halfway up them on me. Maybe a third of the way up on patterns with a more generous fabric allowance above the waistline. HATE. I mean, there's a reason I gave up on the juniors' section several years ago. I am irked at shirts made for that body type infesting the sizes I actually can wear.

I also have no love for the current trend of long, long shirts. If I wanted the hem at my knees, I would've bought a dress, kthx. [/clothes ranting]

*

Went for a walk and took pictures yesterday as well. Will post soonish.
icepixie: (Spinster)
It has been something approaching decent weather for the past four days. (High on Saturday was only 75F, woot!) In pursuit of said Saturday nice weather, we accidentally discovered the dog park by Centennial (...I didn't even know Metro had a dog park), and also discovered that our dogs believe they are people. Total, utter lack of interest in the other dogs. Major interest in the other people.

Eh, crazy doggehs.

*

Zap2it.com lied to me about Corner Gas. Good thing about this: it's on five days a week, not just one. Bad thing: It's on at 11 PM Central. I try to get to bed around 10:30. Helloooooo, VCR...

*

Why do my poems, even when I try to write them about people, always end up being about plants? I do not get this.
icepixie: (Sam and Jack hands promo)
Urk. Have plague.

Actually, I don't know what I have. It's even money that it's a virus or some complication of the last sinus infection. I got bigger better antibiotics yesterday morning "just in case," and showed marked improvement by this afternoon, so...maybe it is bacterial? I have no idea. I just know I had the sorest throat ever (and the pain tended to radiate up to my right ear when I swallowed) and a fever for four days, and now have moved on to the beginnings of a great keep-the-roomate-up-all-night cough. Good thing I don't have a roommate at the moment. Unless you count the dogs.

*

Am in a continuing quandry re: grad school. Have added the University of Maryland and possibly GWU to my list o' schools (which also includes UVA and UC Santa Barbara, for those who haven't kept up). GWU sounds quite frankly awesome, except for the bit where it's in the middle of DC. I don't really have a problem with being in the middle of the city, except that it sounds like housing nearby is hard to come by, and if I wanted to commute, I could do that from home, you know? Hmmm. Will investigage more.

Really, really need to look further into Schools I Actually Might Get Into. Am not sure which those might be.

*

I redesigned my fanfic archive this weekend, and because of that, despite not having read fic for or even thought about the show since...sometime in 2004, I believe, I have a sudden hankering for SG-1 fic. Daniel/Janet fic in particular, although I see that there seems to have been rather a lot of Daniel/Vala fic produced in the past two years, to which I say, "Hooray!" (I can ship Daniel with anyone--Janet, Vala, Sam (as long as it's really early in the series, before the whole Sam/Jack thing really takes off), Jonas, Jack, Teal'c... I shipped him with Weir when Weir was still Jessica Steen. Although I believe Dan/Jan is the only one where the actors admitted to deliberately trying to create subtext...)

Re: Sam/Jack, see new icon from old picture. Aren't they adorable? Awwwwwwww.
icepixie: (Nerdy Doctor)
Amusingly, the doctor at the little one-off injury/infection clinic I went to today saw fit to give me a morphine derivative for (yet another @#$%ing) sinus infection.

Every time I get one of these I seem to get more drugs along with the antibiotics. He gave me a decongestant as well, which seems standard over here. (It's not in England, where I first started getting them.) All of that seems like overkill, since the antibiotics tend to clear things up in about three days. Although then again, if this headache gets any worse, I may well resort to the super-duper pain meds. I'm back at the "wanting to self-trepan to get the evil demon in the right half of my forehead and behind my right eye out" stage.

...How's everyone else's Labor Day Weekend going?
icepixie: (The Singing Butler)
I got a pretty skirt today. (I went for the black one. Liked the white a whole lot, but ultimately decided that black would be easier to find a top for, and lo and behold, the black blouse I bought yesterday goes very nicely with it.)

I'm in the process of getting together a week or so's worth of clothes I can wear to my job. The dress code is essentially no jeans/no t-shirts/don't be sloppy, except on Fridays, when jeans are allowed, so I have a lot of leeway, but...yeah, most of my clothing consists of, well, jeans and t-shirts. (And all my existing business-casual stuff is heavy and long-sleeved, because I got it for my internship at the Parthenon last January.) There's been some controversy over whether capri-style pants are allowed, so I'm going the skirt route until further notice. It is warm in that building, and in the print room, it can get up to 80F in the afternoons, so I'm trying to get clothing that's as lightweight as possible.

*

Nearly 3,000 words so far on my Fraser and Thatcher go to the Yukon fic. I'm trying to do 300-400 words a day, minimum, again after falling off the bandwagon early this winter. Fell off the bandwagon on a lot of things this winter, actually; for a number of reasons, it was something of a winter of discontent. (Almost no writing, no interest in photography, lots of rejections from jobs I applied for...I got into a watching-lots-of-TV-and-sleeping rut. You might have noticed from the content of my LJ entries.) Spring has been good to me. I took pictures yesterday, for the first time since December. I'll upload them soon, so those of you still covered by snow can have a few flowers and budding trees to look at. *g*

I also have a new stuffed panda, which my mom got for free when she ordered something from this art store. They also gave her a really nice Chinese calligraphy set, again for free. It's really pretty, and has lots of little pieces to it. Neither of us really know what to do with it, but it's...nice to look at?
icepixie: (Cake)
*shakes hand around* My fingers are all numb and tingly after hemming a pair of jeans. Getting a tiny needle through denim is hard work. (And constant work, at least for me. Would it kill people to sell "short" lengths of any kind of pants? Would it? I could totally keep them in business!)

On a similar home ec. topic, I always forget exactly how much I hate baking cookies until I do it again, at roughly six-months-to-one-year intervals. They sound like such a good idea, but very few things are worth that amount of effort and frustration. But at least I have a box full of chocolate chip cookies now. That's nice. (...Even if store-bought ones actually taste better. Sigh.)

Eeeek!

Mar. 9th, 2007 05:07 pm
icepixie: (Rise and shine)
GAH! Another spider just dropped down onto my computer!

Right. This calls for action. I'm not sure what kind of action, but this will not keep happening. Time to Google spider removal methods... (Or possibly rearrange my room. I'm not sure yet.)
icepixie: (Eep)
It is going to be 77F today. Yay for the South.

From the file of Things That Are Uncool to Have Happen While Sitting at One's Computer: So, the entrance to the attic is in my bedroom. More specifically, the trapdoor in the ceiling that opens to it is directly over my desk. This morning, when I was still half-asleep, a little spider came tooling down from the attic on some spider silk, landing right on my computer keyboard, and started to creep around over the keys.

Yes, I freaked out. No, it wasn't poisonous.

*sigh* Spider's dead now. My heartrate is back to normal. Gah.

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