So. Snow of doom. Glad I don't live up north anymore, hur hur. Nebraska had more snow this year than they have since the winter before I was born. For those of you who do live in death snow, please refrain from the death part and try to be extra careful so that you stay safe while operating heavy machinery. Or in general. I've known most of you for a heckofa long time so surely one or more of you have fragile hip bones by now. (Just kidding! Please don't hurt me!)

Nothing much going on here. I'm cold, but that's not new. We have, like, 50s-60s weather, and my feet still manage to be ice blocks. Not sure what that's about, but whatever. Monday, daltontrix and I are going to look at houses. Hopefully I won't be so drained from work that I seem totally displeased with life in general, but I seem to be pretty good at hiding that. Do not relish waking up before 10 am on my first day off, but what can you do? When we have a house and furniture enough to allow it, anyone wanna come visit? ^~ I promise we don't bite. Or at least won't murder you, whichever is more extreme.

One of my best friends had a kidney transplant not too long ago and now her white blood cells are being produced but are vanishing mysteriously somewhere so she can't have contact with the outside world. She is trapped in her sterilized home with her two dogs, unofficial fiancee, and baby girl. I feel bad, but there's not much I can do since she can't really take visitors with her horrible immune system of current, and I'm not even in the same state, anyway. I got her a bonsai, though, because ... I guess I'm weird and thought it was better than "glad you survived surgery" flowers. I know that I got some flowers with my own surgery, but I don't really remember any of them too well. Or at all. I remember the balloons better since I taped them to my walls when they deflated. Having a living plant is just a more lasting display of those things typically conveyed with quick-to-wilt flowers, so it suits my style more, anyway.

... I had a point with that needless telling of someone else's life, but I don't remember what it was. Maybe it's just one of the more poignant of the many cases of me missing people. It's almost like being lonely except I'm not lonely so much as ... specifically lonely, like concentrated nostalgia almost. If that makes sense.

I got Frank to read the first Percy Jackson book. He read the whole thing today making him a far quicker reader than I am. Never did get the concept of speed reading down. Anyway, he is now properly prepared for the movie which comes out next Friday that we shall be seeing Sunday night. I am pretty excited. Everyone else should quick read the book if they haven't yet and then go to the movie. Seriously, awesomeness awaits behind closed covers.

I have the winter blues. ( In which I whine and rant here as I have no one to do it with personally, at the moment. )

Happy Holiday Season, all people! For those of you that celebrate it, Happy Present Day, today! daltontrix and I are hanging out with his family today after he gets off work, so I've been spending my day wrapping gifts. With ribbon! I am pleased about my ribbon skill, and as I get older, I tend to suck a bit less at wrapping. Not so much with the weird-shaped gifts, though. But that's what the bows are for! Hiding the ugly wrapping job!

I have been celebrating Winter Solstice by playing Demon's Souls with the Pure White Tendency event going on right now. I ... had meant to do the same with Guild Wars, but I completely forgot and now I'm out of time since I have to work tomorrow and my non-work time shall be devoured by family gatherings, anyway. It's a shame, but I'm kind of at the point where I really just want Guild Wars 2 to be out already. Ho hum.

If I ever get off my lazy bum, pictures shall be forthcoming, soon. Some of our gifts to family were photo!stuff so we had a lark trying to take a few decent photos. And then we found the funkerizing lens functions and got silly. I'll probably put them on Facebook, first, though, so those of you who are friends with me there shall have the dubious pleasure of being able to see them first. They're not there just yet because of gift-receivers being on there and that would just ruin the surprise, now wouldn't it?

Now I should probably go brush my hair and teeth and drink some water and otherwise doll up for Present Day dinner! Yay!

OW period of PAIN girlhood SUCKS whine WHINE.

It's bad when you make yourself tea and don't even want to get up to dispense it into your mug. Why can't my awesome tea making thingy have robotic arms and legs, too?

I do not approve of Cat-Free Internet Day. So there.

My birthdays are always either uneventful or totally awful. I think of 25 of them over the course of my life, I can cite three as actually being happy. Yesterday was uneventful except for the part where I was full of epic failure my second day at work.

Jeez, I mean, at least normally I can blame the crappiness of my birthday on other people. Now I'm sabotaging them myself. My lame excuses include: birthday, moon phase, pseudo-first day of period. Heck, I couldn't even manage proper, full-on girly bleeding. I suck.

So a few days ago, daltontrix announced that he had gotten me a present so that I wouldn't be quite so stressed out after going through a whole bunch of annoying running around for the new job. (Seriously, 30+ minute drives two days in a row for the same thing and I got lost both times. Stupid MapQuest.) Then he presented me with the new Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box game.

Thaaaat's right, he got me a DS puzzle game to de-stress.

.... he knows me too well.

Found the demo on the PS Store while looking for Metal Gear: Portable OPs on there (doesn't exist on the store, btw). Trying it out, now. It is awesome! I sense it will produce headaches for me since I suck at these kind of games, but we both wanted it enough that I preordered it from Amazon. If you preorder on Amazon, you get a bonus 10 track soundtrack. If you preorder from GameStop, you get ... collectable cover arts. Seriously. Lame. Plus, I got it for $31.99 where at GameStop it would have been $39.99, so I'm winning all around on this one.

So far, Terra and Onion Knight are my favorites to play.

On the other hand, the PS Store is retarded. daltontrix originally downloaded it on his PS3 account but when we went to move it to my PSP it was all, "Oh, it's not registered with this account. Want to TOTALLY DESTROY the registration?" So we went over to my account to try to do it that way. But NO, you must be logged into the account that downloaded it to move it to a PSP. ... what. Seriously? We're on the same system and can switch back and forth without password or anything. The heck, man, why would you make it work that way?

Dear Megan-hobbit:

Apollo is so cool.

XD

So my front two teeth that had to be capped a few years ago as a result of being smacked in the face with a flag pole my last year of high school are causing me more problems. The right one chipped last summer, I got it patched, and now, almost a year later, the other side chipped as well and I need to go get it replaced. Note the word 'go' there. Yup, I'm flying back up to Nebraska to get it done. I thought that perhaps for the first time ever I'd manage to not visit my parents' home for a full year, but oh well. This is still the longest I've made it.

( Pros and cons in a not-very-list-like form. )

In other news: Frank decided he wanted Oblivion and picked it up. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the last Elder Scrolls game I'd played, Daggerfall, until I started up my character. I am not disappointed in the new installment. I made a cat person because I like to sneak around and (most of all) for night vision. I cannot stress how awesome night vision is. As always, though, my character is frail and I must be careful when fighting, especially since she's best at bows and magic and close-range can be such a pain. I keep trying to make sure she's well-balanced, but that's never really wise, so I'm sure it'll bite me in the butt soon.

Anyway, time to check the weather to see if we can go on a picnic today~ If so, sandwich making time~

I should stop pouring boiling water on the inside of my wrist.

WOE. ALACK. ONE OF MY FAVORITEST AUTHORS IS DEAD.

( Longwinded and probably boooooring recap of Thursday detailing way more than the situation required. )

Then Friday happened! We went to UP and it was awesome. Also really really really sad. Also awesome. But very sad. Everyone should see it, but don't go in and get blindsided by SAD like we did. Sheesh. Frankie also bought himself inFamous and has been playing as a good guy. I'm considering playing and being Blatantly Evil. We shall see.

After Friday happened, Saturday happened and we picked up 7 pounds of fish fillets that I ordered for $36. We really like fish and I know three ways to make it, now. Poached with dill, in the foil with hot sauce, and lightly battered and fried. Just in case anyone was going "ZOMG THERE IS NO VARIETY IN YOUR LIFE". Also, it is frozen and there are three types. So nyah.

Finally, yesterday was Sunday. We went to Frankie's family's and they made him pizza on request. I got weird pizza made of egg roll filling that didn't have chicken stuff in it and thus was safe for me (as they used imitation crab instead of actual crab) and it turned out surprisingly nummy. Even though it had a thick crust, I actually really liked it! The cake decorating cousin asked me for a secret design idea and the one she ended up going with was Waluigi. It turned out awesome. All kinds of awesome. If she does as she said she would and sends us a picture of the awesome cake, I shall try to remember to stick it up here. From the sounds of it, it was kind of chaotic to make, but she also was super excited because she had a blast problem solving and being creative, so everyone was happy!

.... and now we have a GIANT FREAKING DOUBLE LAYER CHOCOLATE CAKE with WAY MORE FROSTING THAN IS HOLY that looks awesome as Waluigi still has most of his face and hat, but might actually kill us with its sugary excess.

I was also a genius and suggested cookies baked from pre-made dough for Frankie's snack that he takes with his lunch sandwiches to work. We played lots of Lego Batman last night, so they didn't get made until this morning, and I kinda rushed through it, but they turned out better than expected for store brand dough (as my only screening of his choice was to make sure he didn't pick something made with LARD). I've had better premade-ish stuff, but I've also had far, far, far worse. I even still got a sense of accomplishment from it since I managed to bake them, make Frank's breakfast of fried eggs with veggie bacon and toast, and do up the sandwiches, all with time to spare even though I only had an hour to work with from the moment of rising.

It's a shame no one lives near enough to us to come eat some of the Waluigi cake, though. Seriously. It's a huge freaking cake.

Edit: ( BUT IT IS SO FREAKING AWESOME. Also: ask and you shall receive, I guess! )

Edit part 2: ( For scale, here is Frankie with his cake. They may both be tall kinda-Italians, but luckily there is not much resemblance beyond that. )

( Also, Frankie blows out his candles and I sit there looking stupid at his family's request. )

For you World of Warcraft players on the list, you should read this Two Lumps strip.

Star Trek is a good movie. Go see it. Go go go. I even came out not hating Captain Kirk which is ... super impressive. Also: Sulu is awesome. So is Spock. And Scotty-who-does-not-yet-have-his-nickname.

Other than that ... not much is new. I'm still alive, though, so that might be worth noting.

This made me happy in a bittersweet kind of way:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5it2KIwDQvEvaTMiZH9GJvaj5WDXAD97HL1R80

( In which I ramble about Pokemon of all things. )

And, like any thing I get really into at any given time, the crazy little critters have started invading my dreams. Last night's was about how they were actually in this world, too, only posing as normal looking pets. It was my job to figure out which animals were animals and which were not. The night before that, someone wanted Frank and me to learn how to dance from a Cleffa. I'm not sure why.

What happened to me? When did I become such a huge lame-o? Was it always like this? Don't answer that!

For those of you who don't want to be pinched by a bunch of jerks, don't forget to wear green tomorrow. For those of you who don't want to get kicked by slightly more knowledgeable jerks, don't wear orange tomorrow.

Besides that, enjoy your day. Don't get too drunk if you have things to do on Wednesday. Beware of drunks on the road.

That is all.

( Adventure of the day! )

Just so that no one thinks Franky's holding me here against my will. ^~ SAVE ME!

Sleep deprivation makes me hate myself. I'd nap, but I'm too cold.