LolaGeek

I am shipping my GYS package for Karen in Malaysia today..! Also, a special something for another GYS’er…

The lady who sits on the other side of my cube at work, who we call The Troll, who is totally crazy, always grumbles and complains whenever anyone in our area says a word, work-related or not. Yet she is able to chatter all day long about all kinds of nonsense. So we’ve taken to sighing and grumbling ourselves whenever she starts up one of her conversations. (And if there’s no one over there for her to talk to, she’ll just talk to herself. Seriously.) She’s been here for less than an hour this morning and so far has told everyone about some kind of bread she likes, and then her favorite German cherries she gets at Trader Joe’s, and steaks, and I don’t even know what else; complaining that she feels like she’s 99 years old and about to die when she turns 100 (I know that she will be 65 in January, though), and then wandering past our desks when we start talking to cover up her yammering, giving us dirty looks as she goes by! Don’t even get me started on some of the craziest stuff we’ve heard her say, though – let’s just say, she thinks her neighbors are breeding prehistoric turtles and communicating with each other by flushing toilets. (And she has complained to her landlord about this.)

So I’m thinking about getting a new phone. I’ve had my current one since probably April of 2005. It’s a Nokia 3220, which is very cool and I spent a long time picking it out. I’ve been keeping an eye on the phones T-Mobile is offering, and just yesterday I got a little flyer about their newest phones and two caught my eye. One is the Motorola W490, which is a flip phone and I kind of don’t like flip phones, but this one looks nice. Both Heather and my boss have the W385, which is Verizon’s version of this phone, and they really like it. The other phone was the T-Mobile Shadow, which is a smartphone that’s less buisinessy than a Blackberry. It’s probably a little more than I need, though, and I’d probably have to change plans to add a data plan (and I really like the plan I’ve got now, it’s just right), so that’s probably not the direction I’ll go. But it does look pretty cool, and it’d be fun to be able to check e-mail and look up directions and stuff. Any thoughts/suggestions?

Mag My Pic: Upload a photo to put yourself or your friends on the cover of Vogue, Time, Playboy, Fortune, or other magazines. They actually turn out pretty nice, unlike some similar sites.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr: If you are feeling stressed at work, visit this site for the soothing purr of an orange kitten!

The Video Game Name Generator: I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these as actual games, really.

2+1: If you like Tetris, and you’re short on space, you’ll probably enjoy this table and chair set/sofa/bed.

I wrote way more than usual in tonight’s Heroes Twitter liveblog event because I had my laptop with me, instead of just getting up during the commerical breaks.

• Oh I hope Sylar turns up tonight!
• Ah ha! Victoria Pratt!
• So did we ever decide why Adam Monroe is not in the photo of the original 12?
• Oooh, Elle and Bob have trust issues, too!
• Mohinder, do NOT blame “this path” on Noah – it takes two to tango.
• Hey, good thing Saint Joan’s costume is just a black hoodie. Easy to recreate.
• “Mom, you came back!” “Yes, and I’m dying of an incurable disease!
• How does Niki know she can’t make anyone else sick? Looks like it spread pretty easily in the future…
• Ohhhh Sylar taught Maya a lesson. Now let’s send Alejandro away and make babies.
• Yeah I want to see some more Revolutionary War Kensei.
• Haha, her gardening gun!
• Victoria Pratt is pretty awesome! (Hope they don’t kill her off like all the other cool ones.)
• 1977 Kaito Nakamura looks WAY young.
• Peter, you’d better not screw up on this..!
• Gabriel didn’t mean to kill his mother! It was a freak scissor accident!
• So… how does Alejandro plan to get back home, then?
• Ohhh tick tocks!
• Victoria, you’d better use your power, whatever it is…
• Oh come ON! Why do they kill the cool FEMALE characters?
• Do it Monica! Be the one female character to survive and be awesome!
• Yeahhhh Maya’s not going to like seeing that…
• Oh Sylar, you suck so much, why must you have such amazing eyebrows?
• Poor Claire, the only thing she can’t heal from is a broken heart.
• If healing ability restores Haitian-stolen memories, then isn’t it impossible for Claire to have memories of her dad erased anyway?
• Micah + Monica = awesome team!!
• Hope Monica’s got a video about breaking out of a kidnapping van in that iPod…
• Hahah stupid Elle!
• How’s Mohinder going to get on the plane with those liquids? I guess they’re less than 3oz.
• Sylar is with Molly? Where’s Maya? Where’s Matt??
• I have to see how Peter vs Hiro ends!!
• Next week is the Volume 2 finale already? But there are so many loose ends..!

DT, GG, and I went to see TMBG at the TLA tonight (well, it was yesterday by now). How many more acronyms will I use? None! Pictures from the show – I took like a million photos and a whole bunch of video clips, too!

As promised by some random person on LiveJournal, it was a horn show! There were two sets, and the first set was just regular. So I was like, “Oh well, guess there’s no horns, but at least it’s a two-set show.” And then, in the second set – out walked the horns! A trumpet player who looked like Jim Florentine, a trombone player who looked like this guy we know called Dungeon Master, and a sax player who looked like Steven Spielburg. So it was totally totally awesome, and we were about two people away from the front, and everything was great except for some people being weird, I guess.

Here’s the set list, as noted in my cell phone:

First set:

• The Cap’m
• Damn Good Times
• Why Does the Sun Shine?
• Take Out the Trash
• Alphabet of Nations
• Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head
• I’m Impressed
• Cyclops Rock
• Meet James Ensor
• It’s Not My Birthday
• Particle Man (with “Elusive Butterfly of Love”)
• Famous Polka (instrumental only)
• Ana Ng
• XTC vs. Adam Ant
• Older
• Mesopotamians

Second Set:

• TLA
• Mr. Me
• With the Dark
• Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul
• The Guitar
• Withered Hope
• In the Middle, In the Middle, In the Middle
• Purple Toupee
• Spy
• Whistling in the Dark
• Museum of Idiots
• [Introducing the Band]
• Dr. Worm

Encore:

• Maybe I Know
• Istanbul

Also, before the show we ate at Jon’s Bar & Grille on South Street, where we’d never been before, but it was really good so I think we’ll probably be back the next time we need to get dinner down there. The waiter turned out to be a guy DT had gone to middle school with, and he gave us our drinks for free. (We gave him a really good tip, though.)

Okay, I’ll probably come back and edit this later, but I wanted to get this out to the Internets ASAP.

[Edit - 11/26, 9:17 AM] There are some great recaps of the show by Vovat and johnnygoodtimes. Also, I put my videos (well, the ones worth posting) up on YouTube, the links are below. [/Edit]
Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Thanksgiving! The holiday will not stop me from delivering interesting links for you to check out – just space them out over your four-day weekend:

The 25 Most Baffling Toys From Around the World: Warning – don’t read this while drinking liquid. Also, not really appropriate for children at all. But seriously, read these, the captions will crack you up.

Holiday Fancy: Cupcake Wrappers from Paper Orchid: These are so pretty! The Ivy Vine one seems so delicate, and the silver Snowflake design is perfect for holiday goodies..! Problem: they cost $1 each.

Sweeping the Clouds Away: Volumes 1 and 2 of Sesame Street are available on DVD – with a warning that they “are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Whaaa?? Yes, 1969 Sesame Street is a much harsher place than Elmo’s World.

Pore Cleaning Strips Recipe: If you’re a fan of the Biore strips but don’t want to shell out $7 for a box or however much they are nowadays… all you need is gelatin and milk (huh?).

Since it’s such a slow day at work today (last day before a holiday break), we decided to go out to lunch. This place called California Tortilla just opened not too far from here, but I keep calling it Taco Town. Anyway, some of our other coworkers went there a week or two ago and said it was good. So we’ll see. Sounds a lot like Qdoba. (I eat a lot of Mexican food, did you notice?)

GG and I are planning what to do the week of Dec. 24-28, which we both have off work. We definitely want to go somewhere, probably for a night or two. We were thinking Columbus, OH, but that’s a lot of driving for not much actual vacation time. (Sorry D.) So maybe Baltimore? NYC? Suggestions?

• Opening V.O. from Noah tonight, nice!
• Um, I thought white was the Japanese funeral color?
• Hiro, haven’t you learned you can’t change history? Matt, don’t turn into your dad with that newfound power. Elle, you suck.
• Matt, you’re using it for evil! Hiro = Ghost of Kaito’s Past! Don’t West’s teachers notice that he’s often flying off campus?
• Oh, and I loved Bob’s exasperated look when Elle asked to keep Mohinder.
• Haha, awesome, please destroy Elle!
• Every scene with Hiro was so sad! How has he not yet learned his lesson about messing with time? You break history, history kills your dad.
• Noah’s not dead. People have survived far worse shots to the face. Besides, with Adam and Claire’s blood floating around out there…
• YES! AWESOME final scene!

I’m so confused about Bob now. What are his intentions for Noah? He obviously knew that Isaac’s painting would come true, and that’s why he wanted Claire’s blood ahead of time, because he knew he’d have to save him. Seems like Noah has planted the seed of doubt in Elle, maybe she’ll turn against Bob and the Company now.

Also, doesn’t Sandra Bennett realize by now that her husband never sold paper? When Bob showed up and she was like, “Oh, it’s the Regional Manager for Primatech Paper,” didn’t she realize there was never really any paper?

Hiro going back to see his dad, and then taking him back to his mother’s funeral, and then talking to Little Hiro – so sweet and sad! Is he finally starting to accept that he can’t go back and change the past? (But he can use what he learns there – e.g. who pushed his dad off the building – to influence the future!)

We’re starting to see more duplicate powers now. First Nathan and West being able to fly, and now it turns out that Matt and Maury have the same ability, as do Claire and Adam. (And one other guy from the Revolutionary War, apparently. This week’s online comic is pretty awesome! When Adam’s face is in shadows, it looks like a skull!) Matt is really disappointing me – he’d better not become Nightmare Man 2!

Julie and I went to check out those new outlets today. The weather was really gross, rainy and occasionally snowy(!), so that probably cut down on the crowd size a lot. We ended up spending like five hours walking around and shopping, and we only saw one small corner of the whole mall! The shops are broken up into six “plazas”: Writers Plaza, Bakers Plaza, Blacksmiths Plaza, Printers Plaza, Milliners Plaza, and Quilters Plaza. We saw, I think, most of the Bakers and the Printers Plazas, and a little bit of Blacksmiths and Milliners. Then we got dinner at the Ruby Tuesday’s there before heading home. I’m still not used to it getting dark so early – it felt like I was getting home really late, but it was only 6:30.

Anyway, I guess it’s a nice shopping center, but it’s not really this amazing thing that everyone’s making it out to be. I mean, people took the day off work when it opened last Thursday to go there and shop! It’s got all the same stores as any other outlet mall. It is pretty huge though, and there’s still more being built that’s opening this spring! And there were a lot of good deals and sales today. Julie did a lot of shopping :o) I restrained myself, though, since I’m pretty well set on clothes and stuff right now. What I really need to do is work on getting Christmas presents! I’ve started, but I have a lot more to do!

I had this weird dream last night that I was watching the next episode of Heroes. I saw the beginning of the show, then I got up and baked some biscuits or something, and then when I got back to the TV the show was just ending and I was so mad at myself for missing the whole thing! Then it turned out that I was staying in a hotel somewhere in the south with GG, but while I was baking, he made friends with some local guy and was going to spend the night at that guy’s house, while I stayed in the hotel by myself. So then I was mad at him, too!

GG called me at work this morning to tell me about a weird nightmare he had! I was away, and he had to take care of the cats. For some reason, there was no litter box in our house. The kitties were very polite and were holding it in until he was able to get them a box, but he knew they would get sick if they did that too long, so he scrambled around to find a cardboard box or something that he could use. Then he went outside and scraped gravel and stuff off the street to use for litter. When he presented it to the cats, Ivan put his paw on it and chirped with disapproval. I think in the end he did go out somewhere and buy some cat litter.

Weird.

The Bathroom Diaries: Contains information on public bathroom facilities around the world. I looked up a few local bathrooms, and it wasn’t very interesting, but I imagine if you’re traveling around China and want to find a toilet you won’t have to squat over, this would be a good resource.

Creative ways to curb cat clutter: Article from Unclutterer with tips on, well, curbing cat clutter. I like the tip about using a sisal rug instead of a scratching post, though our cats enjoy scratching carpet over sisal. (We actually replaced the sisal post with a carpet one.) I think we do a pretty good job with the kitties. They only have a few toys (aren’t really that interested!), which are pretty much confined to the living room, and can be gathered up quickly if needed. We keep a couple spare toys and their brushes in a basket under the coffee table. Their food, snacks, and additional stock of toys are in a basket in the kitchen. They have a litter box in our bedroom (with a cover), and one in the corner of the laundry room, under the ironing board. The only thing is that they get their fur everywhere!

Haramaki! A Granny Item Made Fashionable: I didn’t even know these existed until recently but now I need to have one! Hard to find even in their home country of Japan, these “belly warmers” not only look cute, they improve circulation and health! Of course, I could also try my hand at making one, but I never really do well when I’m sewing stretchy fabric…

Top Ten Items Surgically Removed from Pets: Very common items on this list, so watch what you leave laying around! My old boss’ cat ate a hair tie and had to have it removed, prompting my boss to refer to the rubber band as her “thousand dollar hair tie” when all was said and done. (The cat is fine, luckily!)

Santas Warned “Ho Ho Ho” Offensive to Women: If this were April Fools’ Day, I’d say this was a ho-ho-hoax, but unfortunately it seems like yet another case of people overreacting to a nonexistant situation.