Lazarus Rat — LiveJournal

06:34 pm - Give your ID card to the border guard

This post will contain mild spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It's about some things from the Star Wars movies in general, so it's nothing that is really unique to the new movie, and I won't give specific instances from the new movie. I'd call this roughly the level of saying "There are blasters." But fair warning.

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10:15 am - Thoughts on FFXIV 2.0

( Cleeck.Collapse )

09:31 am

Captain Dan & the Scurvy Crew are pretty much my favorite thing ever right now.

That is all.

01:13 pm - This was going to be short.

( Dream log. Maybe a little gross?Collapse )

For several months now, Mike and I have basically been zoning out in front of the TV when we have time together. And really, when we've been doing this, I've been zoning out and exercising and/or fucking around on my cell phone and occasionally my netbook. Relationship on auto-pilot for the lose. So we had a talk about that the other day. One thing we're doing is trimming the list of TV shows we follow. There seem to be a few too many to me, but it's something. And I'm going to try to be more "present" with whatever we're doing, paying attention to that. We also went for a very long walk at the celery bog park (multiple miles, though I couldn't say just how many), and we're talking about playing games and stuff more.

Mike wants to walk and exercise more often, and his timing on this decision kind of sucks, given the approaching season. So we also got some exercise games for the Wii. Wii Fit never really worked so great for him; just the wrong kind of motivation. So we got Just Dance 2 and Active Life Explorer, and Walk It Out is on order whenever Amazon gets it in stock. Active Life Explorer I'm kind of on the fence about. The floor mat it comes with seems kind of fiddly, and I ended up with lots of "Oh come on, I totally jumped!" moments. And the load times in between games is a bit much, but we only played one mode (five competitive mini games), so it might be better in other modes. Just Dance 2 is a fucking blast, though; the track list is a bit meager (it does cover a broad spectrum), but whatever. But the main thing is that both games are fun. With any Wii game that's supposed to get you moving, you get out what you put in, and these make you want to put in some pretty good cardio.

Hooray!

Part of this discussion was also my own exercise habits. What I've been doing is push-ups and pull-ups three days a week, squats and crunches three days a week, and 15 minutes of cardio every day. I could argue that doing push-ups doesn't really interfere with my ability to watch TV, but it'd be a technicality, and he's right anyway; I was exercising, not really there with him. And it's kind of not how I wanted things to go. While I was losing weight, I was looking forward to cutting back on the exercise. I want to keep it to a certain level and not creep up so much. So now I'm going to do 15 minutes of something every night, and that's it. Some nights that'll be the exercise bike, some nights that'll be push-ups, pull-ups, etc. I also have a little time weekday mornings to do a bit.

We found several soup recipes yesterday, and decided to start with split pea soup, because I've never had it. That is currently crock potting. Still have left-over lasagna for most of the week, and homemade pizza. I've gotten much better at making pancakes now.

12:46 pm - Soup season cometh

We bought an electric griddle a few weeks ago, 'cause it was cheap, and making a big batch of pancakes with just a skillet is kind of annoying. (Also, I always forget to let the skillet heat up first, so the first couple pancakes fail.) So now it's pancakes and eggs every Sunday. I am committed to this. :9

My goal for this winter is to make soup. Like, not out of a package. I've made canned soup before, of course, or those packets of mix you just add water to. But I haven't yet made soup or stew from scratch. And with the way we do dinners now (big batch on the weekend, reheat during the week), it'd work out really well, and winter is fucking soup season, dagnabbit. So now I gotta find some soup recipes we can both agree on.

That's about all I got to say about that.

07:59 am - I know no one cares, but...

Holy crap! Western media manages to write an article about FFXIV that isn't grossly uninformed!

10:54 pm - Cheesy Apple Cinnamon Maple Raspberry Bacon Chicken... Stuff

I don't really know what to call this stuff. It's a dish I made in the crockpot today. Had the idea a while ago and finally got around to it. I think it turned out pretty well, though there are some changes I'd make if I made it again. Mike's initial reaction was really positive, but I can't tell if his enthusiasm waned after I added the last of the ingredients (he tasted it before the sauce was done and the cheese was on), or if he was just tired of stroking my ego. :D

seamusyote

Current Mood: accomplished

12:43 pm - Successeses!

So, Friday night, I installed FreeBSD onto an SD card for my netbook. I couldn't get it to work following some of the manual, manly guides I was reading, to get ZFS. So I just went largely-default, except everything's one big slice (swap = bad in this case). The wireless is working and connects to our network, and I have xorg and awesome installed. So now it will just be a matter of configuring them (currently, I can start awesome, but I can't actually DO anything because the default keybindings are all wrong and my trackpad isn't working).

Yesterday, I made orange chicken in the crockpot that turned out pretty dang gewd (from a recipe in a book my mom gave me):
6 oz. thawed orange juice concentrate
2 Tbsp. dried marjoram
6 chicken breast halves
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp. corn starch
Mix the OJ and marjoram together, put it with the chicken in the crockpot, cook on low for 7-9 hours (we went with 8). Take the chicken out, mix the water and starch together, then mix that with the sauce that's left in the pot, boil it until it's thick and awesome.

What I like about this, since it's not something Mike has had as a comfort food, is that we both agree we can fuck with the recipe a lot. Try other spices, other juices, toss it into other recipes, etc. I already got ideas for next time. Mwahaha.

Yesterday I also got a gym mat thingy for my exercise bike, finally, to help keep the carpet under it in better shape. And to catch the sweat, 'cause damn. It's a bit bigger than I'd like, but that's better than smaller. Today, I put together a cheap little bookcase thing and rearranged my room a little. Hopefully I can keep it less jumbled now!

Mike and I are watching the original Star Trek series. I think I've mentioned this. There's so much that I missed when I used to just catch it now and then as a kid. There's some really good shit in there (and some really, really corny shit). And I didn't know there were so many recurring characters outside the, y'know, movie dudes. Yeoman Rand is the shit. She's always there in the background with these facial expressions in reaction to everything that are just... priceless. :D

I got FFXIII yesterday. Originally, I wasn't that interested, but then everyone I know who's played it started saying how good it was, so what the hell. Not bad so far (I'm not very far). I'm not a fan of the character design, but that's standard with mainstream FFs these days. And the camera pisses me off. Otherwise, it's groovy thus far.

Current Mood: accomplished

07:48 am - *Dork*

Hey, if anybody buys Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 and isn't going to use the little bonus code thingy for XIV that's included, I'll happily take it off your hands. :)

10:53 am - The weekend thus far

Friday was Mike's birthday, and we went to Five Guys for dinner with three of his friends, and then they came back to our place for a while. Goldie actually came out into the living room, though she didn't let them get near. This is still better than her usual reaction to guests, which is to hide in the bedroom the entire time.

Saturday, as I woke up, I rolled over in bed energetically enough to surprise myself. Which made me think, "Oh no! I've gone feral! Someone better tranquilize me." It took a few seconds to realize that was not the case.

That's the day we went out to pre-spend our tax returns (we know how much we'll get so we put stuff on Discover and will pay it in a couple weeks). First came new tires for the car, and since it was stupid cold and Best Buy wasn't open yet, we walked around the (also mostly not open) mall for an hour and a half while they were installed. Picked up a few things at a new kitchen store that's in there since the last time I was there (an omelete pan, some of those little circle things you use to make perfectly shaped egg thingies for sandwiches, and a potato masher).

Once the tires were on, we went to Best Buy. Mike got a new PC, monitor, and speakers (and donated his old one to Pride), and I got a Sony ebook reader. Then we went back to Sears, since they forgot to give us the rebate form for our tires. Then home, to wipe Mike's old PC and set up his new one, and for me to play with my reader.

For about 15 minutes before returning it to Best Buy. I'd gotten confused while researching them, and thought that the Sony Pocket Edition took SD cards, but that is not the case. Its buttons were also in a bad place for me to use the thing while I'm on my exercise bike. So I ordered one from Astak instead, which is what I wanted to begin with (the convenience of getting the Sony immediately was alluring). More features, lighter, better layout, less money even with shipping. Huzzah!

Then it was just dinner and TV; there's a place that just started doing business recently that takes take-out orders online and delivers, for restaurants that don't do delivery. Mike's wanted to try them, and it was his birthday, so we got Spaggedies. The service was good and all, and it was actually the owner that delivered our food. There was a service like this locally back in the late 90s, too, right when the intertubes really started to take off, but it flopped. I'm curious how this one will do; personally, I wouldn't think this would be a good market for a place like that, but the cities have expanded quite a bit and the landscape is significantly different since the last time, so who knows?

We'll just be taking it easy today, apart from grocery shopping (and possibly me cooking the meals for the week).

Today is cecoy's birthday, so if you see him on Taps or some such, spank him and/or give him candy.