pebblerocker

We had hot atheist buns this year. I put them straight into the oven without remembering to decorate them. Most years I do one tray with crosses, because crosses are easy to mass-produce (you can pipe a whole tray in four moves), and get creative on the other tray with spirals and squiggles and other symbols. There's always a noughts and crosses bun or two.

Eep. Social occasion with fancy-dress theme of 1920s and 30s and gangsters. Am researching.

Straight away I had the image of that fancy-dress-hire flapper costume, the short shapeless dress with all the fringes. Do not want. May go for 1930s instead. Have no concept of what the 30s looked like at all but it must be an improvement.

But have been informed that I'm one of the few people the right shape for 20s gear; this is not necessarily a compliment but may be worth considering. So far am much preferring the 1928 floaty asymmetrical hems to the boxy 1924 outfits.

This telegram brought to you by urgent need to go grocery shopping.

(Need cigarette holder.)

Really every time I get into an argument I should just admit that I'm wrong straight off, in order to save time.

I had everything planned, I had it all set up, I was going to watch the Discovery shuttle launch. I'd already been through it all and hurried home only to find that the shuttle had a leak and the launch had been delayed. But today everything was going according to schedule. I was refreshing the website often to check for updates or delays. Launch is scheduled for 7:43pm and my special world time Firefox add-on says it's 6:50pm in America. I refresh the page one more time and there's an update saying Discovery has cleared the tower.

A pox on FoxClocks. A pox on everyone. What's the point of downloading a special thing to tell me what time it is everywhere in the world, if it doesn't bother about minor details like daylight savings? Am I supposed to download it and install it again every time there's a time zone change anywhere in the world? It worked brilliantly for the first few months. It was so much more convenient than the world time zone website - I had to think of the name of a city in the zone I wanted to know about instead of just looking it up by country or on a map. FoxClocks should come with a warning on it. Pox, pox, pox.

The most reliable method is still to have someone from America on MSN who is online often and doesn't mind being pestered about the time. I've been late to a few gaming sessions from stupid daylight savings as well.

I can't imagine how my pyjamas and sheets get so many pen marks on them. I do write in bed a lot, but this is just silly.

My sister hates and fears spiders. She's not keen on most types of insects either (she calls them all "bugs", which offends my entomological sensibilities). Her two-year-old daughter has learnt by example that spiders are worthy of attention and must be dealt with as soon as they're spotted, but unlike her mother she's very keen on picking them up. She likes the way their legs feel running over her hands.

One of the duties of an auntie is to assist in the picking up of spiders and earwigs to take them outside.

Around the end of January I always realise that I haven't drawn anything this year, and in fact I haven't drawn anything much for at least four months. And by this time my feeling about naarmamo has gone from relief that it's over to a sort of wistfulness. Next time is still six months away, and it would be awful if I never drew anything until then.

Every February (the last two Februaries at least) I decide to draw a picture every day for a month. Even if it takes only half a minute. Even if I don't show them to anyone. At the very least I might get something worthy of putting up for glarmaco. Sort of an in-between NaArMaMo. Halfamo, if you like.

So far I've drawn some vegetables and coloured in a fantasy map, and put my name on the first page of a new sketchbook. It's a start.

I've been using the same plain old Microsoft optical mouse for five or six years, when I got this computer. It has finally begun to lose its click, so I'm in the market for a replacement.
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My sister lent me a stack of Georgette Heyer novels to read and I'm working through them with a surprising amount of enjoyment. Recently jekesta talked about how having low expectations of media portrayals of women makes watching films a bit more enjoyable, because of the chance of being pleasantly surprised. These books were published between 1926 and 1940 and are set a couple of hundred years earlier, so I wasn't expecting much... but some of the characters are actually somewhat cool. The heroines are always getting kidnapped and rescued again, and end up redeeming the man (who isn't always old enough to be her father) by warming his cynical heart and becoming the first person he's ever cared about apart from himself. But they do say what they think and take actions which are important to the plot from time to time... and I enjoy reading about them. I've almost given up on trying to find new books to read or giving a new author a go because there have been so many disappointments, so many stories I can't be bothered finishing because I don't care what happens to any of the stupid people in them. Genuinely likeable characters are a wonderful thing to have in a story and more authors should try them out.

My partner is currently reading a book a friend lent him and it was so exciting he had to tell me about it: "There's a canister of antimatter hidden under the Vatican and they have to find it before the battery goes flat and it explodes!" And he's only a third of the way into the book. What's the climax going to be? How is the author going to top that? I'm not going to find out because I'm not going to read it. Blowing up the Pope just isn't enough to hold my interest; I need something in a story that makes me want to find out what happens next and care about how the situation is solved. Good writing and good characters do that for me; an escalating series of meaningless explosions doesn't.

My sister and her daughter came to visit for Christmas; the little girl recently turned two, and she's past the stage when a new word is a big event. I tell her the name of something and she can say it straight back. She's picking up words other places too - the latest one is "STERMNATE!", so I think I know what TV show she's been watching.

She also learnt a word of Klingon, but I haven't figured out what it means yet. It sounds like "Kaplaa!" and she thinks it's hilarious.