carrots

I could sleep forever

violetice — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 03:48:53 GMT

I don't think I have been so consistently exhausted in my life as I have been lately. I started my new position at work. Moved out of support (woop woop) and am now in tech pubs doing technical documentation for the firewall product I used to support. So far so good, but I start 1/2 hour earlier and I don't think my body has figured that out yet. Strange how 1/2 can make so much difference. I am just tired all the time. On top of that I've had way too many random things going on-- parents came down to take down the dying tree in front yard, parents came down again to collect the brush and swap out my broken clothes dryer for a working one, a wedding, various parties and gatherings, karate, cleaning house/chores, and I decided to enter a coloring on DA and I just made the deadline by a couple hours.

I feel like I need a week off just to catch up personal stuff. I'm so far behind on a lot of things.

Oh no I just remembered I am doing nano this year and it starts in an hour and ten minutes. I have two characters, a setting, some side stuff but no major cohesive plot oh dear what do I do. this year will be make things up as I go I guess.

now I'm going to go to bed early

violetice — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 01:16:35 GMT

Things have been pretty hectic around here so I'm behind on the friend's list again. Gotta get caught up. Mostly I am posting to say

I GOT A NEW JOB

omg I'm really excited. It's for a technical writing position in my company. It's highly possible I'll be writing the documentation for one of the products I already support. I don't have a start date yet, probably in two weeks. I am SO excited to never have to work rotation ever again and to not have to answer phones and to not have to be in a customer service type position. eeeeeeeee.

black belt

violetice — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 03:19:27 GMT

I am now a black belt! hooray! another life goal down. Not that I'm really keeping track. My last life goal that I met was bowling over 100 with my left hand. I don't even have a concrete list of life goals. Something like "become fluent in another language" (slowly chipping away at that) and "publish a novel" (oh dear).

Someone stuffed my garbage can full of undelivered newspapers. Like, rolled up, rubber banded and inside plastic baggies. My garbage is full of them, there must be a hundred in there. So now I get to call the city and the newspaper company tomorrow, ugh. My mom suspects some paper boy got sick of his job and quit mid route and decided to hide the evidence in my garbage. What an annoyance.

lj are you stable now or what?

violetice — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 02:16:24 GMT

well LJ was flaking out so here are 2 entries I had typed:

I applied for an open position at my company. For product manager of one of the products that I support. I don't know if I have a chance in hell as one of the requirements is to have 7+ years of experience in product management (which I totally do not have) but whatever, I applied anyway.

PS: I want to read my usual comms and catch up on my friends page but LJ is being a butt and not loading anything

---

Hello LJ, are you there? Are you doing anything?
seriously one of the rare times I actually want to update LJ and LJ is being a gigantic piece of crap and doesn't want to load anything. Oh well. It's not like I actually pay for the service or anything. Oh wait, actually I do.

If this goes through, well, I already posted, but who knows if that post made it. It was a long day at work. Lately I have been making Mohitos using mint and lemon balm for my garden. Yes I cook with them, but otherwise the herbs go towards booze. lulz.

My mohito recipe:

Get a big glass and put in:

-something like 5 medium mint leaves
-something like 2 medium to large lemon balm leaves
-sprinkle some sugar on it
-add a few small to medium ice cubes
-get a 1/4 lime wedge and squeeze some lime juice in

smash leaves with something. I only had a spoon. Maybe there is an herb masher out there for mohitos, who knows.

-add in rum and vodka (I used some smirnoff lime flavored vodka and bacardi rum). Including the ice this should come to 1/4 the glass, more or less depending on how tipsy you want to be
-add a splash of gin

Then fill the glass with 1/2 club soda/mineral water and the other half with 7-up

Then enjoy.

ahh what a great beverage.

it's over

violetice — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:25:22 GMT

Dan and I saw the last Harry Potter movie yesterday. I'm rather sad that I don't have any more of the movies to look forward to. They did a really good job with the movie I thought. Saw it in 3D, I was afraid I'd get motion sickness but the 3Dness wasn't over the top or distracting. Very nice visuals. Very nice. Half the theater cheered with Molly killed Bellatrix. I really wanted to laugh when the two sides make their final stand, and Draco goes over to Voldemort's side and Voldy gives Draco this super awkward hug. ahahaha. And I had totally forgotten how badass McGonagall is. I think I need to re-read the books again

Writer's Block: Stomach pains

violetice — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:10:22 GMT

pizza. I can eat ridiculous amounts of pizza if I'm hungry enough.

violetice — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:43:45 GMT

At work, stuck on rotation. Boo. Lately it's practically been on a month, off a month, which is really starting to get to me. I have to work all these odd hours which really messes up my sleep schedule. and it pretty much eats up three weekends in a row. We've hired a few people to hopefully lessen the load.

Dan is moving in this weekend. I haven't had a roommate in over a year so this will be interesting. A couple weeks ago I had the garage door replaced, this week hopefully the front steps are getting replaced, and next week the block glass window in the spare room downstairs will get turned into an egress window. Yay for owning a house. The steps are the worst. I need to take before and after pictures. Seriously, the concrete is just shot to hell. It's probably technically a safety hazard at this point. I hope the neighbors and the mailman don't think too ill of me lol.

trying to beat Ninja Gaiden

violetice — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:33:35 GMT

Did any of you ever play Ninja Gaiden for NES? Well, me either! Until tonight. Dan came over and we went through the games Matt sold to me and we randomly picked out Ninja Gaiden. This game is really, really hard. But the mine music was pretty sweet.

Dan says: "Make sure you talk about douchey Mike Tyson"
One of the reocurring enemies is a black man with punching gloves that we have been referring to as Mike Tyson.

The boss for this level is supposedly named "Bloody Malth" but I misread it as "Bloody Math" so that's what we've been calling him.

Dan says:
Message of the day: "stock up on spirit fuckin' shit"

The Book of Armaments (aka gamefaqs) says we need spirit power to defeat Bloody Math. Or as Dan says, "get as much spirit fuck as possible".

Wish us luck. We need it.

PS: as usual I'm behind on my friends list. I promise to get caught up soon >__>;;

violetice — Sat, 07 May 2011 06:58:42 GMT

I am overdue for drunken lj

so we* were at the Cherry Pit (the local bar, three blocks from my house)

we = Rachel Kramer, my coworker Sam, and Sam's 2 friends.

well it's geting close to the end of the night and sam's 2 friends leave so it's just me, sam and rachel k. And we are outside on the patio.

Then this guy tries to jump the fence into the patio. Tries. He kinda half jumps, half falls. then he talks with a (fake) irish accent. And I dont' know what his goal is, but after Rachel K leaves he tries to hit on me, but implies that sam is my boyfrined so I sort went with it. then I decided to speak with a southern US drawl to offset his irish accent. Eventually I went to the bathroom and then he wasn't there anymore

I'm sorry you guys, this is one of those stories where you sort had to "be there", but my drunken self felt like it was worht livejournalling.

thank you for this installment

ps: sam is trying to purr to my cats and is failing. that is all

PPS: I had typed a whole lot more but lj ate it

fuck you lj

booya

violetice — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 02:34:01 GMT

I get to start screening for my black belt next week! I am pretty excited. Granted the screening process takes a better part of the year and I still have to pass the exam.

today was kinda sucky though, the corporate network in our office was up and down all day (mostly down) so it took forever to get anything done, and the day dragged on and on and then I was crabby at karate class. And then I got promoted a belt (brown with 2 black stripes) and I felt bad for feeling so crabby lol

I might have a roommate again by the end of the summer. My younger brother Dan will be graduating from college and he is considering going to grad school at the U of M so he says he wants to mooch off of me. I charged Rachel and Rachelle dirt cheap rent and I didn't charge Steph at all so I think I can work something out with Dan.
Speaking of family, my mom is retiring in August. Good for her.

Ummm well I've had a bit to drink now and I think I am going to play TALES OF SYMPHONIA. I am in love with this game. IN LOVE.

Writer's Block: Beep, Bop, Boop

violetice — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:33:47 GMT

My family owned an Atari 2600 since I was very young, probably before I was born, so I can't remember the exact game I played. Probably something like Pac Man, Space Invaders or Megamania. I loved it and have been playing games regularly since.

I still have the Atari and play it every once in a while

violetice — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 04:09:55 GMT

wtf it's snowing

at least I didn't plant anything in the garden yet. The plants are currently hiding in the garage, the poor things.

Today was the last rotation shift. Until next time at least (I go back on in June). And Mirza's leaving! Nooo!

violetice — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:45:02 GMT

There's something wonky going on with my avast antivirus. It keeps flipping out when I go to websites like livejournal or certain google sites. No avast, I'm pretty sure google maps does not have malware on it.

I am really tired of working rotation. My sleep schedule gets so messed up and saturday after karate class I got a horrible aura migraine. Yesterday I scrambled to get the things done I meant to do the day before, then early afternoon I headed out to Bloomington for a karate tournament. I got there early so my partner and I could practice (really really early), and then the events were running late so we sat at our ring and our event started over 45 minutes late I think. Oh well, we took first in form in our ring (7 teams) and for tag team sparring only one other team showed up and we beat them. So that was pretty awesome. I had a lot of fun. But then I had to hop in the car and drive straight to work (and stop at jimmy john's to get a sandwich). For the first time ever I found and used the showers at work because I didn't have time to go home and shower. I was still late logging in, oh well I don't care.

This morning Jen and I went shopping for garden stuff. I have to fertilize the soil in before I can plant anything, but I bought a few strawberry plants, a few raspberry plants, a small pot of thai basil, a small pot of some sort of lemon smelling herb and two medium pots of CILANTRO I FUCKING LOVE CILANTRO. but ugghhh there's so much to gardening, I hope I don't kill all my plants. Luckily Jen knows what she's doing so I'll just do what she tells me lol

Sadly I have to work tonight at 6 until like 2 in the morning. And I have to work tues, wed, thurs and fri from 2:30 pm to 11 pm, yuk. I might take next monday off cause I'm gonna be super wiped out.

Thanks to Nara I discovered there is a Big Bowl express in the byerly's in roseville. This makes me super happy. The food isn't as fresh as normal big bowl but you get way more food for less money and it's still delicious. OH MAN if only I could get big bowl express and put some of my own cilantro on top. NO BECKY you must plant the cilantro first and make sure it survives before you can eat it. must practice restraint.

Writer's Block: It's cold outside

violetice — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:22:54 GMT

I live in Minnesota and I love winter. Skiing on a day that's around 20 or 25 fahrenheit is one of my favorite things to do.
There have been a few times when I've had to walk outside when the windchill is -40 (same in C or F) and that was Not Fun. The wind was so cold against my face that I was getting a headache. My eyes kept watering and my tears would freeze on my eyelashes and if I wasn't careful, my eyes would freeze shut.

Vendetta

violetice — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:51:53 GMT

One of the security guards for my building knows that I like to read a lot, so she lent me a book called "Vendetta" by Fern Michaels. It's part of a series, and the premise is that a group of women called The Sisterhood occasionally get together and plot to get revenge on people (usually men) that have wronged them in the past. Violently, if need be.

If you had me describe this book in two words, I would pick "hilariously bad". But don't take my word for it. I'll let the book speak for itself.

---
The women crowded around to stare at the plant Julia had left behind when she went to Switzerland, hoping to find a cure for her deadly disease. Myra looked stricken, as though she had somehow personally failed their missing sister.
Yoko picked up the plant, stuck her finger in the soil and then touched the leaves. "Some light, a little warmer area and it will be fine," she said.
It was finally decided to place the little plant on a small folding table directly under the kitchen skylight. Everyone sighed with relief.

---

Kathryn, always the most vocal of the group, squawked her displeasure at what Myra was saying. "Myra, Myra you're forgetting something. We're women! That alone gives us an edge! I rest my case." Everyone cheered, including Charles. Myra grinned from ear to ear.

---

"Tell me about it," Yoko grumbled. "I wouldn't buy something that said 'made in China' for all the tea in China." She giggled at her own witticism.

---

Five miles away, even though the house was totally dark, the war room was alight not only with wattage, but also with smiles and hope.

---

Alexis sighed. "Don't rain on my parade, Yoko. As you can see, I don't have an umbrella."
Yoko tittered behind her hand. "So funny. No umbrella. So funny."

---

"That's good enough for us," Nikki said. "We all agreed that the three of us will give Chai the come-on and then back off. We're going to make him chase us. He's not used to that, so we're going to make him work for the privilege of our company. Is it true, Yoko, that Chinese men have little...?"
Yoko flushed a rosy pink. "The aunts who raised me say it is so."
"Uh-huh," Alexis said with a straight face. "A Napoleon complex and a shortage where it counts the most."
Nikki laughed, an evil sound.

---

Yoko looked down at Quon and flashed a smile. She bent low, looked into his vacant eyes, and whispered in his ear. "I'm a virgin! You wanna dance?"

violetice — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:27:10 GMT

I had the day off so I decided to take a walk in a part of town I wasn't really familiar with.

I had no idea that there were indian burial mounds on the bluffs on the Mississippi and that's how Mounds Blvd got its name (I drive under the Mounds blvd bridge every day to/from work but never gave the name any thought).

I took my camera with me and got a lot of nifty photos of the downtown skylines and random buildings I came across. I should do things like this more often.

violetice — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 04:35:09 GMT

The snow's almost all melted. No more skiing this season D: Next winter I'd really like to ski on a proper mountain for once. Or at least make it back up to Lutsen. I did go to Spirit Mountain up in Duluth a week ago and that was pretty fun. (Despite the name, Spirit Mountian is not a mountain but an exaggerated hill. Although you do get a real nice view of Duluth from the summit)

I have to start working rotation this weekend. ugg. I just got off like a month ago. At least there's talk of moving support during off hours overseas. I'll do a friggen dance if that happens. It's not even that I mind working the occasional weekend so much, it's more that the odd hours screw up my sleep schedule.

I got a dental crown put in this morning and on Saturday I got nailed pretty good in the thigh at sparring class so I'm randomly sore.

I'm trying to edit one of my past nano stories (that's no where near finished) and good lord is it a nightmare. How to pro authors do it. gonna pull my hair out.

more snow

violetice — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 05:17:32 GMT

I seriously think I need to invest in a snowblower. I spent 2 hours just now shoveling the walkways/alley and helping to different people get their cars unstuck. I also went skiing this morning so I am completely wiped out @__@

Crisis averted!

violetice — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:04:17 GMT

Dad to the rescue! He came down and used one of those roof rake thingers to shovel off some of the snow on the roof, then went up on the roof and broke up a good portion of the ice in the gutters and on the roof with a plastic hammer/mallet. Then he threw water softener salt all over.
This morning there wasn't any moisture by the window, so I'm guessing the leak has stopped. hooray! I guess this is a common problem locally right now. With the amount of snow and alternating freezing/above freezing weather, gutters are overflowing with ice so the water has no place to go but seep through the roof.

just what I always wanted

violetice — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:12:03 GMT

My house is leaking! D:<

It's not a bad leak but still, wtf house. There's water seeping through the wood on the upper sill of one of the living room windows. I took off the cellular shades and the dripping seems to have stopped but that's probably because without the added weight of the shades, the water is probably just pooling above the wood or something. I have no idea. Now I have a bed sheet draped over the window in place of the shades and oh boy does it look tacky.

I guess I'll have to get someone over to take a look at fix it. Who knows what fixing it will entail. ugh what a pain in the ass

violetice — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:26:33 GMT

I guess it's time for an update. I'm at work on rotation and I'm bored.

I've been out downhill skiing a bit - 3 times in the past 3 weeks I think. That's probably the most exciting thing in my life right now. I love skiing.

I've been trying to get back into studying Japanese. It's hard when you don't have a class and you're only accountable to yourself, but so far I've been doing okay.

I got a new belt at karate - brown with a black stripe. After that it's brown with two black stripes, then I get to start screening for black belt. so that's pretty awesome.

nothing else to report I think

snow everywhere

violetice — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:35:40 GMT

I'm kinda bummed out, I was supposed to have a few people over to play some rock band tonight, and I was really looking forward to it. Then the weather dumped like 10 inches and it's still going, so I guess I'll stay in and maybe start up a new video game instead. I'm thinking Fable.

It took me nearly THREE HOURS to shovel the walkways and my portion of the alleyway. Although that is counting the maybe 15 minutes that my neighbor and I (and a few other people I didn't know) pushed/shoveled out someone's car that was stuck in the street.

I will probably have to shovel again tomorrow. wait. did I say probably, oh I mean definitely. the radar shows the storm just sort of hovering over the area.

at least when I finally have a day to go skiing, there will be plenty of coverage on the slopes

success

violetice — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 04:53:44 GMT

I finally beat a Zelda game other than the very first one for the NES. Twilight Princess was sometimes fun, but sometimes really damn annoying. ah well, it is over.

I have these xbox games I've never played. I mean xbox xbox, not the 360. So next I'll play either fable or knights of the old republic.

violetice — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 17:37:45 GMT

you guys I am super serious right now

what a pain in the ass

seriously, let's not go through this again any time soon.

I ended up reinstalling Windows three times. Three times!! The first time I tried the non-destructive restore, where it backs up your files to some directory in C:\ but reinstalls the rest of the OS. After booting back up, I got the same pop up errors that I did before. So I reinstalled again, selecting the full reformat/destructive restore. Well no pop-ups that time, so that was good, then I went to configure the ip address for my ethernet adapter, and it's not showing up! No mac address or anything listed in ipconfig /all. For the hell of it I reinstalled a third time. Same thing. Virus is gone, but the computer does not realize that I do, in fact, have a ethernet port. I had to fire up my old computer, get online and download the motherboard driver, transfer it over and then install the driver.

Now the computer is back in action. It appears stable and i have teh internets. hooray! I have not yet moved any of my files over or reinstalled any of my programs, so as I type this up I am using crapmokey* internet explorer.

The nice thing about wiping the computer clean? DAYUM does it boot up fast.

*this was supposed to say crapmonkey but I guess crapmokey works

violetice — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 02:17:26 GMT

good news: I passed the 50k mark for nano! wooeee

bad news: going to reinstall Windows when I'm done typing this. The virus/trojan/whatever has won, I admit defeat. It is beyond my capability to get rid of. The computer seems to start out fine after a reboot, but right now the computer is only partially responsive. I can't click on minimized windows in the task bar; I have to alt+tab to them. And switching between windows takes forever. I can't even bring up the start menu, even with hitting the windows key. I hope to god I have everything backed up that I need.