Purslane

Jul. 7th, 2017 03:53 am
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Not a banner day at the CSA, as it included TWO kinds of kale, and, well, weeds--the kind of weed I always hated seeing in the garden the most, in fact: purslane. It doesn't taste too bad, actually. But still ... almost everything was a leaf, only one root (not one kind of root but one root, a kohlrabi bulb--which is great, I just wish there was more of it). I'm missing the beets and turnips. Today included even my least favorite kind of lettuce (romaine), which was uncommonly dirty.

Ah, well; this is the first disappointing week yet, and I expect things are about to really start picking up, with soon tomatoes and corn and peppers, oh my! And the fruit share is finally starting up. This week it was apricots! Yeee! Plus peas!!

While working on my pinch hit for Summergen, I was reminded of a fic I wrote about a year ago that I guess I forgot to put on AO3. So I uploaded it, and got two comments on it (!! Uncommon for me to get comments on AO3), both of which really seemed to connect to my fic. Feeling like anyone connects to me at all in this world, or to anything I say or do, is incredibly rare for me. I starve for it pretty much all day every day. So thanks to these comments, I'm actually feeling good about life at the moment.

And Summergen is here! And gishwhes on its way! YASS.

Cherries

Jul. 5th, 2017 10:00 pm
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We bought a cherry pitter and had a blast yesterday pitting cherries so I could dry them and utilize the bags of cherries I'd already bought from the grocery store that I no longer wanted to eat, because .... We finally got some fruit from our CSA--cherries--and holy shit. Is it just me, or has fruit degraded in quality since we were kids (for me the '70s)? I haven't tasted cherries this good since I was little, but they DID used to taste that good. I guess it's all the importing/exporting of produce, which I read they do because stores get produce cheaper that way, which ... ??? ???? How can EVERYONE be getting it cheaper?? The numbers, they do not add up. Regardless, I'm perfectly happy to pay a little more for produce that ACTUALLY TASTES GOOD that was grown nearby. Like, way more than happy.

Anyway ... not sure how long these delicious cherries will hold up, but the pitter is there if/when there comes a day when I need to dry/freeze them, too!

Meanwhile, I've also been drying the greens we don't like (there haven't been a lot we don't like, but mustard greens are nasty, and fuck kale), crushing up the dried leaves, and then putting some in whatever--smoothies, or today, meatballs. You can't taste them at all (EVEN THE KALE), but they add some nutrition and get used, huzzah!

Please, please, if you have any better ideas for mustard greens, let me know!
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We got a mushroom share with our CSA, and received a very cool e-mail from them with some information on their small company and some of their plans for the rest of the summer ... which included letting us know they'll be going to the Burning Man "arts festival" and thus we won't be getting mushrooms that particular week.

Now, I've known a lot of people who've gone to Burning Man, and "arts festival" is not the descriptor that first comes to mind. I guess they figure anyone who's hip to what it really is is cool with it, and everyone else can enjoy some mental images of paintings and fine pottery professionally displayed in a lush and natural setting, with well-to-do art aficionadoes looking them over and nodding appreciatively.

THAT'S OKAY DUDES, YOU CAN GO GET NAKED AND HIGH IN THE DESERT FOR A WEEK. THE MUSHROOMS WILL WAIT.

Does kinda give you an inkling, perhaps, into what may have first inspired their interest in growing their own mushrooms ....
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Thank you ladies for helping me figure out pesto, especially since I practically lived on the stuff earlier this week. PESTO. I've so far made it with pecans (DELICIOUS), although today I used mostly almonds, because I have a buttload of whole almonds in my freezer that have been there quite a while and probably the only way I would end up using them is in a blender, since they're a pain to chop, and not a lot of recipes call for whole almonds. I did add some pecans later on, though, because I find they're more flavorful than the almonds.

This is spinach, rapini, and garlic scape pesto:


(I added a little extra salt, pepper, and lemon juice to it; that's what's on the top there ....)

It gets thicker every time I make it. (And this was the first time the blender worked the way I anticipated it would! With the almonds and garlic scapes knocking together to help get each other blended; last time, it was really hard to get the garlic scapes to blend. GARLIC SCAPES.)

And then this is what the below-mentioned fruit did to my plate! SUFFICE TO SAY THEY WERE VERY JUICY.



(Hahaa, you should have seen how big those pictures were before I resized them! But actually, not having built-in photo-uploading on this site is proving to be a lot less trouble than I expected, FORTUNATELY. :-D)

Pesto

Jun. 7th, 2017 05:56 pm
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I have never liked pesto. I have never understood pesto. Like, what do you do with a sauce that's really just ... leaves suspended in olive oil?

However, I got a CSA this year (for the first time ever--it's something I've wanted to do for so long! You can't imagine how freakin' excited I was to get our first pickup last week--and it was so much food!), and in it came all sorts of leafy greens I didn't know much about and never (thought I) liked, including arugula. I was looking for something to do with all the arugula (A FULL POUND. THAT'S A LOT OF ARUGULA), came across mention of arugula pesto, made some today, and ... wow, that's some really good shit! Like, really good! I still can't quite believe it.

So, wise readers, any suggestions on how to eat pesto, other than on pasta? I'm just trying it on a bagel and that's great, but any ideas about it would be most welcome ....

(And if you've ever had a CSA, I'd love to hear about your experiences.)
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I guess I'm finally feeling like it's the right time and place to 'come out' as an author of original fiction! I've done a lot less writing of fic the last few years. It's because I was writing my original fiction instead! If you would like to check it out, I publish under the name December Nolan on Amazon.

The stories range from political (a whole series I published, called Less) to fantasy (A Course in Magic is about a total loser who finds a magic book and finds himself) to angsty, sexual stuff you miiiiight recognize from my fic. ;-> Restraint is a nice, angsty story about a teen male prostitute, and as for The Book of Jonah, somehow angsty sex got all mixed up with religion and spirituality. That one pushes a lot of buttons, so if religious stuff might bother you, it's not for you, but of course, SPN pushes a lot of buttons about religion, and SPN fic mixes that up with angsty sex, so it probably wouldn't offend any of you wonderful ladies. But I thought I should include that warning, just in case. And Flight is more of a combination of fantasy and spiritual explorations.

All my e-books are 99 cents, because I'm more eager for people to read them than to make money (not like it's really possible to make money as an author, unless you're really good at self-promotion, which, uhmmm, you might have gathered I'm not :-]). I've lately formatted them for print, too! And those I priced at the nearest dollar above the amount it costs to print it. I'd love it if y'all felt like checking them out and talking to me about them, here, there, anywhere. NO pressure at all to leave a review, but I'd be grateful if you did.

So there you have it, I'm an author! :-)
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We're watching an awesome anime at anime night with s_c's brother lately called Dear Brother that takes being a high-school freshman in a "sorority" and makes it the! most! dramatic! thing! that ever! happened!!! Which I love. As long as a show is good, then by god, make it as dramatic as you possibly can. Aaaaand, since I was a high-school freshman once, I can attest (as I'd wager most/all of you could, too!) that being a high-school freshman girl really DOES feel that dramatic, so it's kind of ... extra realistic, in that way.

I voted today. Man, voting is so cool. I was disappointed recently to see that my favorite rock star said, or at least used to say, that voting doesn't matter, but damn, if fandom hasn't shown me how much it does. I may not be able to make our show win an online poll or the cover of a magazine ... but I know my fandom can do it, which is all of us doing our part, all of us together, voting. (And I know some of you have individually had a significant impact on certain voting situations where one is allowed to vote as often as one wants!) I say, if you think voting doesn't matter, look at all these people in the highest current and former positions in government, carefully deciding and then announcing their choice. They believe their vote matters. And their vote has exactly the same weight as yours. I fucking love voting, doing my part, learning what's going on in my community and being part of deciding how we go forward. All these people who take democracy for granted. It's not for granted, dammit! It's a precious right. Exercise it.

I think I'm the only person I've seen who liked 12.2 as much as they liked 12.1? I thought it was great. YASSS, Rick Springfield--sexy AND such impressive acting! More of him, please! Sexy sexy Jared in the sexy sexy sex scene. Of course the consent issue is cruel, but I am a bit surprised that a fandom that so loves their dubcon and noncon in fic is so bothered by it in show. Toni is over-the-top evil, which is kind of tiresome (I preferred her now-dead cohort in 12.1--a more interesting character by far), and yeah, Dean could've been happier to see Sam, but I suppose the number of times he's been dragged into a room to see his brother tied up and bloody has worn down his sense of surprise, maybe, and he kind of already had a lot going on what with mom being back in the picture and all. I LOVE LOVE LOVE how they're dealing with both boys so desperately needing a mother, Sam's adorable eagerness just to begin to get to know her in that scene at the end, arrrrghhh. THERE'S SO MUCH FIC THERE, in mother and children getting to know each other as adults, having missed all the time in between, but I haven't been able to find a fic in it to write just yet. I want to see where show goes with it first, I guess, hoping they'll do it right and get out of it all that can be got. Mary really is the only thing that could heal either of those boys now, and god, how I want to see that happen! YAY SHOW!!
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I MAY have made last night's series of posts in a state of manic giddiness that has now been followed by a crash of ongoing wakefulness and threatening illness, but hey, you take whatever leads to productivity when life's been sitting on your neck punching you in the head ... or at least dramatically demonstrating doing so, WWE-style.

So I really like watermelon. There's this thing they sometimes do at the store that they call a "premium cut," which I call a "watermelon filet" because it looks and is packaged exactly like a steak, in the styrofoam tray, with even the absorbent pad at the bottom. So after I ate it, it looked like I left a rotting tray of blood sitting around in my room. CLASSY.

Another thing we bought during our epic outing last night was lipstick, something I haven't bought in approximately 1.87 billion years. Not because I don't like lipstick--there was a time when I put some on every time I went out, particularly this one color I had that seemed like it shouldn't work and was really sparkly but also subtle and somehow worked really well. I got that lipstick from my mom, who loved buying Clinique stuff (one lotion in particular), which is so ^&*($# expensive that they pretty much always gave you a free gift when you bought something, which she often passed along to me. This lipstick was one of those freebies. I just wore it 'cos I had it and it wasn't hard to wear like so many of them are, requiring lots of blending or whatever (I'm lookin at you, Wet 'n' Wild); just put it on and go.

And I tell you what, this lipstick lives on. Though I haven't laid eyes on such a color in decades, it inspired then, and continues to inspire. Multiple people, after regarding it a while, would finally conclude they really liked it (that seemed-like-it-shouldn't-work thing), that indeed, it had some sort of mysterious, intriguing appeal. My sister, who had never been a lipstick or even a makeup wearer, started experimenting at that point. More pertinently, P never particularly liked lipstick until recently, and she's now a good-lipstick fiend, and when I brought up that lipstick that was the main lipstick I wore, she said it's the whole reason she's into lipstick now! Which is finally coming full circle, as she's getting me back into lipstick again after all these years.

So never let anyone tell you you amounted to nothing, because maybe you wore a free lipstick or something that had consequences that are still manifesting in multiple variations twenty years later. I AND MY LIPSTICK, WE STAND TALL.
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I'm currently trying some "snacking chocolate."

barkthins.jpg

You know, as opposed to "eating chocolate," "licking chocolate," and "decorative chocolate." It's okay. The thing I like best about it so far is that it's salty; I love salt in sweet things.

But it resembles the choc-kale-late we saw on our trip to Oregon and makes me wish all over again that we'd bought it! Yes, I know it would have been terrible! But it would have been an experience we'd never have forgotten.

Which brings me to the fact that gishwhes this year has banned kale and all mention of kale, and ... I'm relieved, because kale is disgusting. There, I said it! It's got all the solidity of lettuce and none of the humidity, beauty, charm, or flavorlessness.

gishwhes this year also has porcupines. I don't know, don't ask. Still, the commandments are always a hilarious read--check them out, if you dare. (You'll find out all I know about the porcupines, too.) SpringLea was our commandment maven; she kept us straight, alas. I tell ya, if my team's annual new team members would just read the damn commandments instead of asking the group about basic stuff that's fully covered there (duration of videos, etc.), we'd all have so much more time for completing items! They make the rules hilarious to hold your interest; it's not like they're a chore to read, but people just as a general rule eschew the reading of instructions. My eventual dream for my gish team is to have a team of fifteen people as awesome as my core team members who've returned every year. We'd have the best team ever. Someday, maybe.

What's going on in y'all's lives?
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My favorite musician hasn't posted on Twitter for weeks, and damn, I really miss him. I've never figured out how to use Twitter properly myself--the best I've ever figured out to do with it is (respond to some of the guys we love and) make the occasional pithy comment/joke, but somehow in just a few tweets this musician has managed to say things--deep, important things--that stay with me indefinitely. Gerard, I miss you. Come back.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to like Fallout Boy. (Why yes, I do like emo music, not that you could tell from my fic.) Great music, if a bit heavily produced, very impressive lead singer. Guys, I'm trying to like you, so why ya gotta have so many douchey lyrics?? "You are the drought and I am the holy water you have been without"? REALLY? "I wish I'd known how much you loved me. I wish I'd cared enough to know." Very nice, a true gentleman. And yet it's still so much more tolerable than Panic! At the Disco's out-and-out misogyny. SIGH ....

Summergen is the coolest thing. I'm beginning to realize other fandoms' fanfic pretty much exists, so far as I can tell, only for the sake of slash, but SPN has such a healthy flourishing gen aspect, too, and summergen brings it to us EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR THE ENTIRETY OF HELLATUS. GO SPN FANDOM!

The Quilt

Jun. 16th, 2016 06:48 pm
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A few people have asked me to post a photo of the quilt--here it is! Despite all the trouble it gave me, I really love the final product. I made it because (I had a lot of fabric scraps I needed to use up and) I needed a light summer quilt, and it really fits the bill. If I recall correctly, the batting is cotton, so it's just the right temperature for summer. I even kind of have an affection for the gathered part at both ends--it's a design element! Or that's what I'll claim. ;-) The only thing that isn't quite done is the quilting proper, but it's done enough to use; I'll just have to finish the quilting before I wash it again.

Cut for picture. )

Prinzy

Jun. 5th, 2016 02:20 pm
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Last night, I dreamt that Prince was running against Trump for president. (Prince was completely destroying him--YASSS.)

Prince and I were becoming buddies. I confessed that there was a name I wanted to be called. I had an explanation all lined up for how it wasn't just a silly version of his name, but when I told him--Prinzy (lolol)--he said, "Oh, I'm dying to call you Prinzy!" hee ...

He started telling me about how he just couldn't stand it when people talked about marriage or parents, that it triggered him because of his own issues with his parents. As he told me a detailed story about a promising friendship with a couple that was ruined because they had the bad form to bring up parenting or their relationship or something, I was sitting there knowing there was no way I was going to be able to talk to my new buddy without stumbling across the subject someday, alas.

Meanwhile, Prince was making some sort of Asian Fusion dish with green beans in it. Trump thought it looked good because he was dumb enough to notice only the green beans and think it was going to be good all-American eats. Trump tried it before all the ingredients had been added and pronounced it "Uck."

I couldn't get back to sleep, remembering all this ridiculousness and giggling ....

Sundries

Jun. 4th, 2016 12:22 am
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Finally going back and replying to some old comments in my inbox! Getting it down to a manageable size again. The Vegas trip, followed by the root canals, combined with a stage of great transition, really threw me off my lj game, I guess. And all my games.

That quilt, which spent some months in time-out in the closet, is now almost finished! One of the many things that went wrong with it (the gap in the middle on both ends due to size differences in the top and bottom) turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I somehow managed to leave several safety pins INSIDE the quilt, which I would never have gotten out again were it not for those gaps. I'm usually really careful about that stuff! But it's one of the potential problems of working on a project over a long period. And oddly, now that I'm doing the quilting proper (for me, generally the most challenging part), it's going really smoothly! I guess it got all its difficult-ness out in that one middle stage ....

I've been enjoying the anime Death Note lately quite a bit (one of those oh-so-rare animes that actually get enough attention in the States that Hollywood is making a live-action version of it!), or I was, but then after my precious, favorite character L died, I just didn't have the heart for it anymore. It was a beautiful death, even, and I guess I'm glad he didn't go evil before he died like I thought he probably would, but still ... it broke my heart. :-( Every night when I was watching it, I went to bed with this happy feeling that someone like him was in the world (even if only fictitiously), and now ... he isn't anymore. :-( Oh, well.

Also really enjoying The 100, when I have the stomach for it. And I thought SPN was depressing! I was pretty upset when they killed the one kid character I could stand in the very first episode, Jasper, but then he somehow survived being run through, so it was okay. ;-) The rest of the kids have grown on me, though, especially Bellamy, and of course, the ever-awesome Raven.

What's up in y'all's worlds and lives?

Cat fic

Apr. 26th, 2016 07:03 pm
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SUMMERGEN IS BACK. YAAAY!!!

My favorite book for a time as a kid was The House of Thirty Cats. Well, [livejournal.com profile] septembers_coda found it for us at the library and we're reading it aloud right now. It's really quite good, and almost distressingly me. Like, was I already like that and that's why I was so attracted to that book? Or did it significantly form me? It's a bit disturbing.

Anyway, typical of me, it's extremely obscure. I somehow managed to convince my teacher to read it aloud to the class, and everyone was so bored and not into it that she stopped after only a few pages, no matter how much I lobbied the whole class to keep it going and insisted it got much better after the first chapter (which it does, adult-me can confirm!). Those plebeians in my elementary-school class didn't know great literature when they heard it! But s_c is lovin' it. :-) I'm always delighted when I find something I loved in my youth holds up later on, because Bill and Ted ... not so much.

Today I thought, maybe I will be the person who writes the first House of Thirty Cats fanfic and puts it on the internet. And then maybe someone who likes my other fic will see it and give it a try and it'll bring a little more attention to this strange, brutal, vivid, wonderful novel.

... And then I see that my favorite musician is tweeting about the notorious "milk fic" and encouraging his fans to write the most horrifying fic about him they want, that he dgaf.

I got my second (hopefully last) root canal this morning, and learned that these abcesses have been weighing on my immune system a very long time. When you walk out of the endodontist's office feeling better--like, all over--and then you run an errand you meant to run eight months ago and you get to drive around in a different car from usual hearing new music and it's all rainy and your favorite musician is tweeting about obscene fanfic featuring himself ... it's a good day.
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I had a really good b-day. I and another friend whose birthday is close to mine decided to combine our birthdays. The plan was dinner and room-rental karaoke, but it snowed a lot (for the second year in a row on my b-day!) and we had to cancel. BUT, s_c and I live all of five minutes away from both places (they're in the same parking lot), and I was so in the mood to spend the evening doing exactly those things, so s_c and I went and did it ourselves! And it was SO fun!! We found a bunch of great new songs to sing, YAY.

On the way out, I saw that the blossom-bedecked trees were heavy with snow and breaking, and I just couldn't let such beautiful trees die on my birthday, so we got out and shook the snow off the trees.

When I got home, I discovered I had a little souvenir!

Cut for photo )
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First of two (maybe more) root canals today, ugh. Also, this one needs more attention in a few weeks. Evidently I'll be seeing quite a bit more of that doctor. (Fortunately he's cute!) Fucking life. When I can function again, I'll be responding to all y'all's wonderful comments on my latest fic. They sure made this week better than it would otherwise have been. <3
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I've been thrown off from the time I usually devote to lj due to hardcore doctor appointments every week since we returned from the trip, bleh, about most of which I've been profoundly anxious. (Part of it is that I tend to be anxious in general, part of it is that some of it is stuff I've never had to do before.) Another appointment next week. :-( But hopefully soon I'll be able to find my rhythm again. Lj is no smaller in my mind for not being able to be around as much, and I'm still loving your posts and all your comments as much as always. <3 <3
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I put together a couple of little videos for you, each a bit over 3 minutes. I didn't take any video at the con proper, since I saw a million people with their phones out, filming every second of the thing, so I figured other people had that covered. (I actually only have an hour of recording time on my video camera, anyway.) So this is just [livejournal.com profile] septembers_coda and me sightseeing in and near Vegas.

The first video picks up where the last one left off and shows a bit of our travel to Vegas and then some fun stuff we saw while there. Probably my very favorite part of travel was always the weird little things you see, so there's some of that in here, and the majority of it is a trip we took to a chocolate factory/cactus garden--where we saw the Oscar Mayer Weiner-mobile! Don't know why it happened to pull up there while we were having a car picnic before going into the cactus garden, but I got it on film!


MNY2BRN!!

The second video is of Vegas itself, some other random things we saw there, and the strip, for anyone who's interested. Maybe you've been and want to see what someone else noticed about it, or maybe you never plan to go but want to know where the con is held and what it looks like while you're there (I know I was quite interested in this before I went), but anyway, feel free to come along with us on our adventures:



I'll save the trip-home video for a little later. And now I'm going to try to catch up on alllll the posts I missed while we were gone! Hope you have fun watching. :-)
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Well ... that sucked stupendous amounts of ass. I had no inkling when I made my last post that the worst was yet to come.

We left Vegas early yesterday morning, with the intention of getting home within the day--a long trip, but we were prepared. We made amazing time, too ... until we ran into snow in the Rockies. We didn't expect this, I guess because we'd been in the desert all week, after a month of temps in the 60s-70s in Colorado. Anyway, we've been driving in Colorado snow all our lives, including in the mountains, where it does snow quite a bit more and harder than on the plains, but even if it's slow going, we've always made it before.

Then they closed the first of two mountain passes between us and home. The very nice sheriff (who stood in the middle of the highway talking to every single car individually, to give them advice on how to get where they're going--I've never seen that before) advised us and everyone else also headed to Denver to take 24 to 91 and meet back up with the highway farther along. It was slow, dangerous going, but at least everyone was headed the same way on 24 ... then we got to 91, and I really don't want to talk much about that now, but many times during that endless horrendous drive in extremely poor visibility in driving snow while the windshield wipers caked with ice until I had only a tiny clear spot to peer through to try to see where I was going, I wondered if I'd live to see another day.

Somehow we made it back to the interstate having taken the roads he suggested, which landed us between the two passes ... only to discover they'd closed the other pass, too. There was no way home at that point. After consulting with a couple of hotels in these ski resort towns along the interstate (to give you an idea of the prices they were charging, they offered a room with "a murphy bed and a pull-out couch" for a low-low $400. !!! !! !!!!!), I ACTUALLY MANAGED TO FIND THE KEY my sister gave me for the cabin she owns up there several miles off the interstate, we actually managed to find said cabin, the key actually worked (I've never tried it until last night), and at last we were safe in a warm, comfortable place after having spent the previous FIVE FULL HOURS white-knuckle driving, this after ten hours of normal driving. It was horrible. I have a little of the drive on video, which I will try to put together for you.

I have more to tell about what I was referring to in my previous post, but I had to get all that out first. So much to decompress from from that trip. Before we left, both of us had the feeling we'd return as different people, and that came to pass. As we came into town, we couldn't bring ourselves to feel sure we'd really make it home any time soon until we were actually in the door. In normal driving, the place where we were stranded is only about an hour and a half away, so close and yet so far. We're home now. It seems like a miracle that we actually made it.

Alas

Mar. 14th, 2016 01:03 am
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Soo ... after that auspicious beginning, it was actually a pretty sucktastic time. :-( More about that and hopefully more video for you after we're home and have put ourselves and our lives back together, but anyway ... miss you all, miss my regular life, can't wait to be back to our regularly scheduled programming. <3

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