darththalia

On the off-chance that anyone is still reading this.... [g] I've got my plane tickets for ConStrict! See a bunch of you in a few weeks!

I finally got a good photo of Maggie and Duncan together. It would have been nice if Duncan had been looking at me, but as soon as I got his attention Maggie got up and moved. Sigh.



I didn't post at all during last year's baseball season, but many of you probably know that I'm a huge Cubs fan, and, yes, the World Series was amazing. I cried like a baby when the Cubs when the NLCS. After game 7 of the series, I was so numb that I just kind of sat there smiling, then I kept randomly bursting into tears for the next few days. What an incredible relief.

Things aren't going as well this year, unfortunately, but that's OK. Hopefully it won't be another 108 years before next time.

I keep saying I'm going to post, so, well, here we go. I know, it's been ages.

News:

- I no longer have the destinysgarden.net domain, and therefore the email address. You can reach me at darththalia@gmail.com, or message me through DW or LJ or Twitter (@darththalia there too). This also means that Minx's website is gone, which makes me very sad, but I haven't heard from her in something like ten years. It just didn't seem worth paying the money for something that got so little use. Sigh.

- We have two dogs! They're extremely adorable. Photos will be forthcoming, once I remember how to deal with images over here. As horrible as Facebook can be, it does make sharing photos easy.

- Matt's and my 25th wedding anniversary is coming up in two weeks, and we're going to Hawaii at the end of the month to celebrate. I'm so looking forward to the trip, I can't even say. We haven't had a proper vacation since last June (2016, that is), and it'll be nice to get away. Beaches! Ocean! Drinks with umbrellas! Getting up at some godawful hour to bicycle down Haleakala!

- I didn't go to a con this year, and I really felt the lack. Next year there will be Con.Txt, at least. But I'm also not feeling very fannish these days--something needs to grab me soon.

That'll do for now. I'll try to make this a semi-regular thing. Really. But don't hold your breath. [g]

ETA: Here's the only photo of the dogs on my computer. Duncan is the ligher one, Maggie is the darker. They're very sweet.
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Home from muskratjamboree. It was a blast, as usual, and I wish this weren't the last one. (Of course, it would have been even better with meri_oddities, ellen_fremedon, and sanj, but nothing's perfect.)

Unfortunately, it's now snowing. Like, really snowing. Isn't winter over by now?

At any rate, treewishes, gnomad and I got to talking about travel in the UK, a subject which, as they now know, I can go on about at length. So I thought I'd write up some of my thoughts here. inyadreems, jadesfire, clara_posts, meredyth, if you have anything to add or correct, feel free.

( First, a note about credit cardsCollapse )

( LondonCollapse )

( YorkCollapse )

( ScotlandCollapse )

( other things that I can't actually vouch forCollapse )

*waves* So I haven't posted in, like, forever. I almost did in December, just so I didn't let all of 2014 go by, but, well, that felt too fake.

Anyway, here I am, at muskratjamboree. Yay! And I'm not going to recap the last year and a half, but I am going to try to post more often. Really. And maybe now that this one is here, the rest won't have to feel so momentous.

[ETA: I forgot to say, thanks for all the phone advice, and I'll reply later.]

I've been trying to break this up into two posts, but it's not working, so. Here goes.

I think I mentioned that I switched to a vegan(ish) diet after we got back from vacation in early July. It's working out great, and it's been much, much easier than I was expecting. ( diet and weight loss stuff behind cutCollapse )

My other recent news is that Matt and I signed up for a sea kayaking class in Chicago. It meets for three Saturdays, four hours each, and it started on August 31. It's been interesting. ( long story is longCollapse )

Which all leads to my latest dilemma: WTF to do about exercise. ( still long, but I'd love some opinionsCollapse )

On top of all this, I really do need to get serious about job-hunting. I keep saying that but not actually doing anything about it, and I'm hoping if I nag myself to death I'll actually get started. But, yuck.

Well, I missed August entirely, but I actually have things to talk about now, so I might be posting for the next few days. We'll see.

Today's topic: cell phones. I'm ready to replace my iPhone 4S, and I was waiting for yesterday's announcement from Apple to make a decision, and nothing they said made it any easier. The thing is, I'm generally pleased with my iPhone. I'm happy with how it syncs with Outlook, and I'm one of the five people in the world who doesn't hate iTunes, and, on the whole, it does what I want it to. I haven't even seen the need to jailbreak it. Plus, I'm grandfathered into an unlimited data plan on AT&T, and I'm not sure I want to mess with that. (Yeah, I know, I don't hate AT&T either. I'm a freak.)

I have a Nexus tablet that runs Android, and I'm generally happy with it, but I don't do much with it except browse the web, check e-mail and Twitter, and play games. The thing that drove me nuts setting it up was that it seemed like Google wanted to control everything--I had a terrible time getting my Outlook contacts onto it without putting them into Gmail first.

But I know that a lot of people say Android phones are tons better than iPhones. So I've been looking at the Galaxy S4, and I'll admit it looks like an amazing phone, and the larger size would be very nice.

So, questions:

• Why should I get an Android phone? I know they're supposed to be better than iPhones, but I honestly don't know why. What would I be able to do on an Android that I can't do on my iPhone. Pretend I know nothing at all about Android, because I really don't.


• Can Android sync my Outlook calendar, contacts, and tasks without going through Gmail? This is a deal-breaker if it can't--I absolutely refuse to move all my contacts into Gmail. (And while I'm at it, is it possible to set up two Gmail accounts on an Android phone? I couldn't figure out how to do it on my tablet, but I didn't work too hard at it, because it's not that important.)


• How much effort will I have to put into setting up an Android phone? I've heard that a lot of them come with a lot of bloatware that can be removed, but I'd rather not go to the bother. And apparently Samsung's phones have a lot of stuff eating memory that can't be removed--is that still true? Once I'm happy with how it's working, will I be able to pretty much leave it alone, or will it take some effort to keep it up?


• Anything else? Seriously, if you have an Android phone you're happy with, I'd love to hear from you. And if you have both an Android phone and an iPhone, I'd really love to hear from you. *looks at treewishes*

Thanks for the input!

We got home from vacation two weeks ago today, and, naturally, I woke up the next day with the worst sore throat ever. Bad enough that I dragged myself to urgent care the next day; they didn't do a strep test, but they gave me antibiotics in case it wasn't just a virus. At this point it's pretty much settled into a cold, but, man, it's been two weeks already. I'm ready to be done with it.

On the plus side, it's given me a good excuse not to do too much this week, since it's been ridiculously hot and humid. I can't wait for the thunderstorms tomorrow.

The big news, though, is that I decided back in June that when we got home from Canada I was going to go vegan (mostly) for a while. ( cut for diet, health, weight talkCollapse )

Meanwhile, work is not good, for a variety of reasons, and I'm not any closer to job hunting than I was a month ago. Have *got* to do something about that, but yuck. Matt wants me to drive to South Carolina and back with him, since he promised to drive some furniture down to his brother down there, and I'm completely lacking enthusiasm. His other brother and that brother's wife are visiting this week; it's always great to see them, but they've been here for five days, and I'll be happy when they leave tomorrow. (Then I'll start missing them again in a week or so.)

Oh, and we saw an interesting production of Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" at an outdoor theater last weekend. It was set in West Virginia during the Civil War, and it was really well done. I need to go back and read the original to figure out what changed and what didn't. The name of the actor who played Iachimo was James Earl Jones II, and I've spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out if he's the son of the James Earl Jones we've all heard of. I don't think he is, but if anyone knows for sure, please holler. He was very good--possibly the best actor in the bunch.

And that's it for now. Hope y'all are having a good summer--or winter, if you're down under.

So last post Matt and I were on the ferry from the Magdalen Islands to Souris, PE. I didn't die of boredom, but it was close.

We stayed at an inn near Souris that night, mostly as an excuse not to drive to Halifax right away. Also, they were supposed to have a really good restaurant, and they did--we had dinner on the veranda, and it was gorgeous. Prince Edward Island is beautiful, it turns out, but I don't know how much there is to do there.

Also, their lobster season had just ended, so we saw many more piles of lobster traps. I didn't know there were that many lobster traps in existence.

The next day we drove down to Halifax, including taking yet another ferry. This one was only 75 minutes, so it wasn't quite as soul-destroyingly boring, thank heavens. We got to the hotel in Halifax around 3:00, and, what do you know, it was raining. After checking in we walked to the Citadel, which was across the street, and took a really interesting tour. It was finished in the mid-1800s and was never actually used to defend the city, so it seemed like a massive waste of money, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. And it really was interesting.

That was Canada Day, so we ended up walking down to the harbourfront to watch the fireworks, which didn't start until 10:00, and which turned out to be cancelled. We didn't realize that until it was 10:15 with no sign of fireworks. Apparently the city's twitter feed had said they were cancelled, but there weren't any signs or anything, so there were still a decent number of people down there. It was a little annoying, but we'd spent the previous two hours talking hockey in a bar, so we weren't complaining too much.

The next day was when vacation annoyance hit--there's always one day where Matt and I just can't stand the sight of each other any longer. We went to the maritime museum after breakfast, then we split up for the afternoon. I ended up sitting in the hotel room reading for a few hours, and it was a nice break.

That evening we had tickets for the Tattoo, which was why we had decided to go to Halifax. It was amazing. Parts of it were kind of cheesy, but mostly it was really entertaining. We both thoroughly enjoyed it, and now we want to see the one in Edinburgh even more. Two big thumbs up.

The next day, yesterday, we checked out of the hotel and drove to St. Margaret's Bay for another sea kayak excursion. It was fantastic--the weather was warmer than last time, and there was hardly any wind, so the whole bay was very calm. We had single kayaks this time, which was a good learning experience. I'm completely hooked on kayaking at this point.

After that we ended up driving up to Pictou. When we arranged things, we were supposed to be flying out of Moncton, so we figured getting to Pictou would save us a couple of hours driving this morning. Since we ended up flying out of Halifax it no longer made any sense at all, but we pre-paid the hotel room, so we went anyway. And it turns out they have a really nice harbor--the restaurant we had dinner at wasn't all that terrific, but we sat outside looking at the water, and it was wonderful anyway.

This morning we got up and walked to the harbor one last time, then drove down to the Halifax airport. No flight problems today, and I'm sitting in the Toronto airport waiting for our flight to Chicago. We went through US Customs here--very strange--so when we get to Chicago we can go straight home, yay.

It's been a wonderful trip. The weather was awful--today was the only really nice day since we arrived--but we've had a great time anyway, even if we weren't able to do as much outdoorsy stuff as we'd planned. I'd happily go back to the Magdalen Islands for a longer visit, and I'd love to spend more time in Nova Scotia.

I'm really going to miss the ocean.

We're on the Iles de la Madeleine ferry. It left right on time at 8:00 this morning. We had to be there by 7, which meant leaving the B&B at 6:30, which meant getting up at 6:00, which wasn't much fun. But we're here. And the innkeeper packed us a breakfast so we could eat in the car while we waited to board, so that helped.

(Two adorable pomeranians just walked by on the outside deck. If you're bringing pets, you have to either leave them in the car for five hours or stay outside the whole time.)

Yesterday was a little warmer than it's been, but very windy, and it drizzled occasionally. After breakfast we visited a fromagerie that makes wonderful cheeses from their own herd of cows. We'd run into their cheeses in several restaurants and though it was worth visiting, and we ended up buying a hunk of cheese for lunch on the ferry. (Getting bread turned out to be an adventure--we thought we'd stop at the supermarket on the way to dinner, but it was already closed at 18:30. We ended up at an epicerie, i.e. convenience store. And just like in US convenience stores, everyone else was buying lottery tickets.)

After the fromagerie we found a smokehouse and picked up a couple things there. When we were at the brewpub on Friday they gave us some smoked clam and haddock to try, and Matt really liked the smoked clam, so he wanted to get some of that. It's too bad we can't bring meat products back to the US, because they had things that we'd never find at home. (Their smoked scallops were to die for--Matt wants to try making those. We'll see.) At any rate, we're set for lunch.

It's a good thing we're having a cheap lunch, too, because we had a nice dinner at the inn, and we need to be on an austerity program for the next few days. All the food on les Iles was marvelous--not a bad meal in the bunch.

So now we're on the way to Souris, PEI. We'll do some sightseeing this afternoon and stay there tonight, then drive to Halifax tomorrow. We're thinking about taking the PEI->NS ferry instead of the bridge, just for variety. PEI doesn't charge a toll to enter, but it makes you pay to leave, whichever route you take. I just hope the rest of the trip is as good as the last few days have been. I'd go back to Les Iles in a heartbeat, but hopefully in better weather.

It will be nice to be back in Anglophone country, though. I've been coping with the French, but my brain is getting tired of having to work so hard.