Savage Chickens

Today is the 3rd anniversary of Savage Chickens! Doug is a funny, funny man.

Foiled Knitting Supply Donation

It's kind of tough to find places looking for supplies rather than knitted goods. Giving away my knitted stuff isn't really a problem - but I'd love to de-stash some of the yarn and needles I'm never going to use and give them to someone who would.

Have sent email off to 3 different groups. All the emails bounced.

I've heard of a place in New York that needs them, but surely there's something closer?

I Got There First, G- Dammit

I have another handle that I use sometimes, for non-JessaJune related stuff (computer game sites, mostly). When Gmail first betaed and I had invites to spare, I grabbed myself an account under that name, as well as this one. I don't check the actual mail very often, because I don't use it for any real correspondence - just for account creation and as a spam repository.

Well, the web teeneyboppers are catching up to me. In the last week, I've had THREE attempts of people trying to sign up for things like MySpace with MY EMAIL ADDRESS. (In the case of MySpace, I also saw 2 follow up emails of the aforementioned person trying to then change the email on their account. Which they can't because the confirmations go to ME.)

I was there first, bitches. Add some freakin' numbers or something and leave my email alone.

I do have to say, that is the beauty of the JessaJune handle, and why I will keep it forever. It's clearly me, and for whatever reason, no one else seems to think of it. Yay! Viva la JessaJune!

Top of My Head

Loki is laying on my lap, leg dangling over the edge, as always, purring and kneading the air. It's about the cutest thing ever, especially considering that he was driving me NUTS this morning with pulling things out of the trash.

I've been forcing myself to get ready for the upcoming semester - which is good because it starts next week. I've been thinking about it for the whole of January but not DOING anything. Having a life without much imposed external structure is nice, but damn if I can't get ANYTHING done without more in-your-face deadlines. This self motivation thing is tough.

Especially when there are other things being impressed upon me from other areas. I'm not complaining about it (well, ok, I'm complaining about the whole land use issue, but I think that's reasonable), but when the motivation for everything else I need to do has to come internally I have a hard time prioritizing. It will be easier once things start and I have clear deadlines to work towards.

I'm also way behind in my budget - went on something of a post-holiday spending binge it seems... I think what really happened is that the holiday spending (which I did have a separate budget for) broke my new habit of frugality and I just sort of forgot that I can't just buy things the way I did when I was employed. I mean, I KNOW that but until I sat down and tallied things up I didn't realize how much I was just spending without thinking about it.

I've also been in a panic about the Large Project (tm) - I knew it was going to take a long time, but when a single pattern repeat takes an hour and a half and is only an inch high... getting to 6 feet by a very firm deadline is something of a problem. Particularly as much of my impulse spending was on yarn, and I have several projects I want to work on for myself. With one large exception (photo upcoming, I hope) I am not allowing myself to start them... which makes the knitting, which I am supposed to love, into something of a chore.

None of this is earth shattering, it's just what's in my head. Maybe releasing it into the wild will help me buckle down and get things done. You never know.

*stabs self*

So I was going to wipe my mother's computer, which is a virus-ridden piece of crap, so slow as to be almost unusable.

I can't get the files off it. Seriously. It refuses to recognize either of my memory sticks ("the location cannot be found"), crashes when trying to upload to internet sources, and I couldn't even get Ad Aware to run without hanging (98 infections found). I've been working on it off and on for days, and today have spent almost 3 hours pounding at it.

At this point, rather than divest more of my time and anguish into the thing, I think we should BUY A NEW ONE. This machine was a piece of crap to begin with - now it's an old, virus-infested, glacially moving piece of crap. With my parents pictures and TurboTax data on it.

Contemplating driving to Fry's right now.

Kristin Loves Me

Look what she gave me for Xmas!


















(you may recall I mentioned a certain hankering for this very object a few weeks ago)

Crockpot Deliciousness

I actually just posted this in Crazy Aunt Purl's comments, but I figured I'd pop it up here too. I'm about to have some of this for lunch as we speak, since I made it yesterday. Thank goodness I can run a crockpot and still do other things like heat water and use the computer, on my little 15 amps of power. Woot!

This Beef Chili has no beans - I like beans but not everyone does. It's nice to have options, and this stuff is TASTY. I halve the recipe that I was given, because apparently it was designed for a Crockpot of Enormousness, and I only have a modest little slowcooker. So here's what I do.

2 - 2.5 lbs stew meat
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup beer (I usually do a bit more than that)
1 can chopped chili peppers (hot, mild, whatev)
3 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt

Brown the meat (This step is skippable, but the texture is better if you brown), put in crockpot. Saute onions and bell peppers, put in crockpot. Dump all other ingredients in crockpot. Cook on low 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours. Makes 6-8 servings.

Eat, and sigh with happiness over how tasty it is.

Bobcat!

While I was sitting here at my desk, I swear, a bobcat walked by. I was kind of glancing out my window over the top of my laptop screen, and I thought, "hey, there's that neighbor cat again... he seems bigger than I remembered... and his tail is not as short as I thought... and omg, he is too big to be a housecat.

By then, he had passed the window, so I went to the front door, which is half glass, and there he was, standing on my doorstep, looking off towards the chicken coop. (Don't worry, that thing is STURDY. Dad builds stuff to last.) So I'm standing on one side of the door, and he's standing on the other, pretending that I do not exist. Seriously, not even an ear flicker. He pondered the birds for a moment, then sauntered off down the lawn towards the front.

My cats didn't bat an eyelash - I'm guessing they've seen him before. I rushed off to Wikipedia to confirm that he was indeed a bobcat. The pictures and description confirm it. He was about the size of a small dog (not a toy-sized one, obviously), not large but clearly not cat-sized either. He seemed to be in good health - well groomed, confident.

It was really exciting and made my day!

New Year Covered in Cat Hair

My new year cleaning project was going really well this morning until I got to unpacking my Christmas presents. Which involved handling Laurie's book. Which accidentally led to my opening it. Which sort of led to me taking a break for "breakfast" and reading half of it.

Back to work!