development corrupts

So uh my sister bought a roast turkey for dinner and had it carved in the kitchen. After we are the oddly dry meat, we found out there was all this stuffing thing left nthe kitchen? And it wasnt dry? I don't even know /o\

Cranberry sauce was great though :)

I'm tempted to dye my hair either a stark black, blue-ish to get a nice halo effect in the sun, or a dark warm auburn thing for, well, warmth. Sadly, I don't think all three will work at the same time!

I love tea, and I have a couple containers of loose-leaf lying around somewhere, but I generally forget to drink it because we don't have a teapot, so it's very fussy to boil water in a pot and then pour it into a glass to steep, and then do that again once the single mug is gone.

But uh. Apparently we have a tea ball, which I found in box of post-its, and it is so much easier to use, frankly it makes me happy to a ridiculous level :)

(It just occurred to me that I could have used the hot water dispenser with the loose-leaf, but!)


SO ANYWAY. I have a stomach full of warm tea, a list of things to do, and a calm, relaxed sense of well being. Tea is awesome.



My grandpa wanted to spend some time out of the city, so we (grandpa, me, cousin, aunt) went to Subic over the weekend. Sadly it rained, which meant we had to forego a lot of the things we wanted to do, so the weekend was boring, but it was boring in a stress-free chill kind of way. That's okay. (In fact, that's very okay)

Also okay: we found a restaurant that serves an excellent fried shrimp dish with salt and pepper. Excellent I say :)

Ummmm. I did get to drape my arm over a tiger, though, so uh yay? It was two years old and kinda big but mostly it ignored us. So I wasn't terrified, but there was no way I was going to move my hand off of where the trainer put it.


Oh! And I borrowed my brother's camera, which beats my crappy phone camera, so theoretically should have been able to get decent shots. Unfortunately, I didn't really know how to compensate for blurring under low light conditions. I had to immediately throw away two-thirds of my shots because they were blurry; that leaves me some 250-odd to go through for quality. Still better than my old record which is taking two shots early in the day, then forgetting to get any later on.


Cameras are fun! Having been able to take photos on this trip makes me want to splurge on a phone with a better camera. I mean it won't be any kind of DSLR, but it should get me to near enough point-and-shoot that I'll be able to take photos on a whim (currently, whims are broken by the fact that the camera on my phone takes forever to load and doesn't really take good pics besides). Bonus: with the right app, I can just upload and share the pics as I take them, rather than having to remember to sync from the camera and organize and etc (...currently Flickr crashes on my phone when I try to upload. Another point for getting a new phone)

Currently my options are the iPhone 4S, and, well, the iPhone 4S. I've thought about trying out Android, but honestly I can't be bothered to wade into the ios-vs-android religious wars long enough to find a review that'll influence my decision either way.


Also, speaking of DSLRs, it turns out that if you turn the zoom level way up, that can aggravate blurriness in low-light, especially if you accidentally turn off image stabilization. Even the very best technology can't help a person who's determined to shoot themselves in the foot /o\



Also, also, I am tempted to tweak the default Tags module location so it's the first thing that comes after the entry, rather than the icon, but maybe that's too big a change now. Hm.

aaa

Nice things that have been happening lately:

• I've discovered liquid eyeliner.
  
  I've learned to put on just a thin line along my upper lashline (it just takes a few seconds whoa), and the definition makes my eyes stand pop, but in a very subtle way that doesn't make it obvious I have makeup on. I love the way it looks. And so, for the first time, I own eyeliner ;) I even own two: one basic black and one sort of dark iridescent gray.
  
  So awesoooooome.
  
  Still haven't figured out eyeshadow :)


• I recently realized that makeup is a way to hack my physical appearance, and that's turned it from an annoying thing that I couldn't understand to being a fun puzzle. Combination! colors! non-obvious but effective hacks!


• I lost my USB but my mom had a spare 32GB which was way more capacity than my old one (also 32gb usb? and 4gb USBs are now cheap? technology is weird and also awesome)


• I really love our users ;_; Damn, but I could just cry.


• I also really love our sysads <3 They make me do the opposite of cry :)


• I fell in love with the idea of a second monitor when I tried my brother's setup (had guests, long story short). Now that I've moved back into my room, I've been missing the ease of use -- code / logs on one screen, browser on the other, I'm just...
  
  incoherent. I'm incoherent. okay.
  
  So anyway, I made myself get over my stinginess and buy a secondary monitor because it'd be worth it and okay I just steeled myself for a massive wave of buyer's remorse, but you know what? the monitor is awesome, and the setup is fantastic and I can afford it and while it's a bit of a luxury, it's really helpful in my line of work. And so, it's worth what I spent, yay.
  


• internet is stable! and my ISP finally upgraded wiring in our area, so it's even fast now :)


• I've been knitting socks of my own design
  
  I feel a bit weird saying I designed it, when it's just a stitch pattern I chose out of a book, super-imposed upon a basic sock template, and surely design must be more than that? but it feels like mine, and I did choose which pattern would go with the self-striping socks, and I am making decisions for how the pattern will shift when I get to the leg, and I've had to undo it thrice already because I decided to do something differently from before, so I guess that it is turning out to be my design after all ♥


• And I had a hot stone massage the other day with a friend who I haven't talked to in ages and \o/


• my aunt visited from the US, and it was a nice visit (she's a fantastic person, really generous and warm. And she knits!). She's gone home now, and it's also nice to have some space and privacy back. So all good


• I finished knitting a sweater! My first thing with sleeves. I'm excited to try it on post-blocking, just haven't had the time, but oh it's there calling to me :)

(And then there's a bunch that's not so nice but the good is overwhelming the bad at this point in my life. That is good)

Updated to iOS5, and I've basically lost all data from apps that aren't official Apple apps.

That just takes all the fun out of it :-(

(I meant to signal boost this earlier, but it got buried in my tabs. Luckily the deadline has been extended from September 30 to October 3 <3)

ephemere, is taking pre-orders for a calligraphy poembook:

Kandila will be a little book rendered completely, from the title page to the very last leaf, in calligraphy. It will feature three of my (rather long!) bilingual love poems to my country, the Philippines, rendered in different calligraphic styles, as well as a few pages of baybayin calligraphy and "Mia playing around with letters" calligraphy art. I estimate the approximate length at fifty to sixty calligraphed pages. Each book will be signed.

A .pdf of the entire book will be available for free online. Please note that there will be parts of this book rendered in Filipino, but the translation will not be calligraphed; instead it will be available as a printed sheet accompanying the book, and will also be freely viewable online.

Kandila will be sent out by mid-November. All funds raised will go toward supporting me in the wake of my being terminated from my job, which I lost due to my unwillingness to remain silent about my marginalized identity and beliefs.Details here.

Please support her & signal boost if you can!


In case you don't know her, ephemere is smart, eloquent, writes painfully insightful essays, right now is having a lot of things thrown at her, and she does gorgeous calligraphy, no seriously, absolutely gorgeous :) There are more samples up in her journal.

I love the way her mind works -- hangang-hanga ako sa kaniya (I admire her a great deal).

I'm usually a bit too literal-minded to appreciate art, but these just make me sit down and appreciate. ♥

Hi everyone! Meet Flammable Mickey:



He has nothing to do with this entry, but a warning is always appropriate when you're dealing with flammable things.


( the entry is actually about food and cooking )

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