brightly_lit

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 )

s_c and I have a longstanding tradition of making up songs to the tune of other songs. Vegas might not have been much fun for us, but I DID come up with this ode to spaghetti, to the tune of "Sound of Silence." (This is not in fact my first ode to spaghetti, nor, I'm sure, will it be my last.)

Hello pasta my old friend
I've come to chow on you again
with the noodles softly glistening
and the meat gently sizzling.
And the sweet of the pasta is a counterpoint to the beef
and basil leaf ...
Amid the sounds of slurping.

Well, we'd have made pretty decent time through the canyon if we hadn't gotten stuck IN TOWN RIGHT AFTER WE LEFT in a traffic jam that delayed us nearly an hour. O__O It was all right--we just had fun listening to an MCR CD and singing, but it did delay us by quite a bit. We drove up to this place in pitch darkness. It's in a tiny remote Utah town. I said to P as we turned off the highway, "Well, if worse comes to very worst, there's camping here!" ... only to find the camping sign referred to the very place we're staying! ! The handpainted sign looked pretty sketchy, as did the dirt lot, and at first we couldn't reach the manager ... though then a neighbor saw us trying to call him and came out of his place, the nicest guy ever, telling us where to find the manager, then the manager called, also very nice, and we got in the place, and it's SO NICE. We'll try to take pictures tomorrow morning so you can see (which will be the first we ourselves have seen of the outside!). The most adorable cowboy decor!!

As for the canyon, it was reeealllly slow going for about 40 minutes. We wondered if we'd be able to see what the rockslide did to the road. We were on the eastbound section at that part, one lane each way, with the damaged westbound part of the road some twenty feet above us, but still, there were parts of road and railings that had just gotten plumb knocked off the upper highway there. It was pretty intense.

You ladies are all so wonderful with your sweet messages this morning and last night--they helped me feel way better about my anxiety on the trip. <3 <3 <3 I look forward to responding and catching up on lj when I have more time and can focus on doing it properly. :-)

Okay, I wrote all that last night. Con starts tomorrow! Still as ever anxious, but better now we're here. I should really be trying to sleep instead of doing this, but I'm a little too anxious to still, and I thought you might like to see the video we made today. We forgot the connector with which to upload still pictures, but my video camera has an attached USB, so I was able to upload video! I decided to film a few things today so you could see the cowboy VRBO and some of the scenery around here, and I ended up catching today's adventure on tape. I hope you enjoy. It'll probably be more amusing to watch than it was to live, but hey, life's always gotta throw a few surprises atcha ...

This quilt I'm making continually defies the laws of physics. I measured every part multiple times, yet no part matches up to any of the others, top, bottom, or batting. I washed it and dried it on high heat for over three hours, and it came out of the dryer nice and dry, only a couple of small wet spots! ... and is now uniformly wet again, somehow. I washed it while safety-pinned (before actually sewing and quilting it) in hopes the cotton batting, which is supposed to shrink significantly and was confusingly much larger than the package indicated, would shrink. It didn't--but the rest of it did! Though I've washed and dried those fabrics individually before, and none of them are supposed to shrink, regardless.

I really thought after I pieced the thing (which went surprisingly quickly and easily for such a large task) I was through the hard part, but no, the hard part is evidently just starting. I tell ya, every quilt and item of clothing is equally trying as every other item of like kind. If it doesn't come early, it'll come later.

In other news, I had a remarkably bewildering day on the internet, some amusing, some horrifying, but with a similar surreal vibe as the quilt re: physics. I'm still reeling.

The happiest of birthdays to the gal who's a big part of what keeps us going and having fun around here.

We've been talking a lot about music lately, specifically (early) '80s music and our shared love for it. I was there for it, she wasn't.

So I made this playlist for you, Milly. Imagine you and I and septembers_coda are all hanging around together sometime circa 1985 and it's a really, REALLY good day on MTV. This is what we would watch:



Or, if you'd rather watch it on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0iv-zWyvE9iM-nnQQiafdUr93bjGeJke

( A few notes. )

I could literally talk for posts upon posts about each of these songs and everything they meant to me, then and now. So if anyone wants to start up a conversation in the comments on such subjects, by all means, do so! I'd love to hear anyone's memories of MTV or their favorite songs of the era or their favorite videos; anything.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MILLY_GAL! I hope you enjoy your gift.

I have six* oranges, both large and small, lined up on my desk.

I spent a great deal of time doing research today on everything ranging from trigger spray nozzles to an imitation-leather book cover. It was super fun research, too ... but I ended up coming to the conclusion I always seem to have to when it comes to design, which is that I'm gonna have to fuckin break down and buy Photoshop.

I also learned that it's really hard to find good free fonts you can use however you want.

Misha posted a couple of shirtless (shoulders only) pics on twitter! A good day for all us Cas girls. YES. Meanwhile, my current favorite musician was in rare form on twitter the other night, which involved a poll about best juices (apple juice won, because YAS, APPLE JUICE), and as is par for the course with his twitter, an extraordinary amount of discussion about pooping. Make of that what you will, but one of the things I admire about him is that he tends to be completely open and honest about all things to do with being human, including (or especially) the embarrassing or "not for polite company." Also, he has a child, and I think toddlers really put all that kind of stuff on the brain, even if his kid is now older than that.

I was going to write a fic last night or today, inspired by an episode of Orphan Black, but then it got all government-conspiracy-ish and convoluted and that's just not stuff I really want to write about, but on the other hand it involved a lot of guns and being on the run, which is right up SPN fic's alley, and just ... I dunno. I wanted to write it, but I didn't want the hassle for a necessarily quite long fic I probably wouldn't end up being that glad I wrote in the end. But, re: SPN, it was so great to see Pellegrino back!!! And he was AWESOME!

Anyway, that's what going on with me. I'd love to hear about whatever's going on with you.


*five now

The traffic must have been GREAT in y'all's towns today, because it was ALL HERE. AND we had to go to the store twice! Every single time we go to the grocery store near our house, I swear I'll never go back there again (generally we go way out of our way to an area of town we quite enjoy and just have fun listening to music during the drive). Then months pass and I start to think, Aww, how bad could it really be? I was probably just in a sensitive mood that day. I'll give it another shot--it's so close to home! And then I come out of there swearing yet again never to return. CURSE YOU, STORE, TO THE DEPTHS OF HELL! Oh, wait, you ARE the depths of hell; never mind.

So the reason we had to go to the store twice was because that evil store under the incompetent management of Crowley sucks so much we couldn't even find half of what we came for!

But we did FINALLY manage to run our three minor errands--it only took THREE HOURS.

Ahem.

Anyway, how are y'all's days going?

I loved the anti-sexism of the wedding I attended last night: The bride's dad gave her away ... and the groom's mom gave him away. He's tiny--barely taller than the bride, and many pounds thinner, and the non-gender-typical differences in weight and height have never been mentioned. The bride made it through her wedding vows okay, but then the groom choked up there at the end of his.

The guy who married them was the groom's brother, and he told their life stories in brief in a beautifully honest way, not glossing over the groom's struggles with PTSD (he's an Iraq war vet) and addiction, and how much their relationship means in this context. The bride and groom really did kind of save each other--probably the most romantic love story I've ever watched blossom; they really are perfect for each other. You know you're at a good wedding when the groom starts his wedding vows by saying, "You know why I want to marry you? Because to this day, when I fart, I get that laugh." Best wedding I've ever been to.
( In which I start a religion. )

Title: Canvas and Clay
Author: brightly_lit
World: tricycleman
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,500
Genre: gen, slice of life, character study
Characters: AJ, Lisa, the White Man, phone guy, Peaki
Warnings: None
Summary: AJ was an artist, regardless of medium.

This is my second Christmas gift, a tricycleman story for AJ (since nobody else is writing any, ahem!), aka alexisjane. I know you're going through tough times, honey. Hope this helps. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

AJ has given me many wonderful things, some of which can't be quantified, but for something that can, go have a look at this beautiful painting she made for my story "A Real Angel."

( Read more... )