Because some people were wondering:

No, not using LJ anymore. I'm currently at: http://herbstsonne.blogspot.com

Kelly and I have started a vegan blog at http://sistersvegan.blogspot.com

Come by and say hey. :)

Well what with the recent news from 6Apart/SUP/the Russkies, I think I'm going to be switching over to blogspot. I'll still read my friends page obviously and y'all can RSS the new space.

http://herbstsonne.blogspot.com/

See you around.

I love Christmas. And Christmas LJ layouts. And participating in a vegan bakeswap (I am sending banana bread, thin chocolate chip cookies, and scones!) and a vegan giftie exchange. And Christmas cookies. Oh I can't wait to bake cupcakes for Charles' party and make cookies for people and dance in the kitchen and then go home for a WHOLE MONTH!!! and bring Johnny-poo with me for the first week!

La la la la la la la la. Running errands today, selling some old clothes (hopefully if fucking Buffalo Exchange deems them worthy), selling some old manga and some textbooks, and buying some christmas lights. Yay! Oh and working on final papers, boo.

Also: hippies are mean-spirited. How does that work?

It's still fantastic.

I had totally forgotten on the 26th due to projects and presentations.

Anyway it's amazing and I'm just as happy with my health/just as pissed about the constant abuse of animals and the ignorance about animal rights.

So, business as usual.

Happy food things: Sunday John (who is officially moved in with me) and I are making banana-walnut pancakes, then next week I am making Erica some baked goods (have not decided yet) for her birthday as well as vegan pumpkin doggie treats for her new pal Cedar (who is an adorable black lab), and then I am making chocolate peppermint cupcakes with mint icing and chocolate ganache and candy cane pieces on top for a friend's Chrismakauh party. Grand!

Now back to studying for my geology test tomorrow. :/ And wrapping John's christmas present!

Newsflash: I hate my job.

Peter Young is an American animal rights activist and former political prisoner jailed for two years for his role in releasing and conspiracy to release thousands of mink from fur farms in the midwest. He was released earlier this year and has been speaking at numerous events around the country. He will be speaking about his experiences, going underground for 7 years, being jailed for freeing animals, and on animal rights.

There will also be a presentation of "Behind the Mask," a documentary about the Animal Liberation Front, and a free vegan dinner will be provided by Food Not Bombs!

Admission is free! Please invite friends and community members!

Where: PLC 180, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, 97403
When: Dec 6th @ 6pm
Why: Peter Young is an amazing speaker. With the government broadening the definition of what an 'ecoterrorist' is, it's important that we realize who can be targeted by such legislation. Hell, I could technically be considered a threat because I endorse 'radical social change' and 'support animal rights.'

Please invite anyone you think might be interested to this event! Talk, movie + free food = <3!!!

28 hours, and I'll be done with this shite anthropology project that's had me stressed out for weeks. 6 hours, and I'll be done with my stupid pilates presentation (I know, wtf, right).

*looks at her pile of work and weeps*

3 presentations, 1 paper, 1 test, on top of normal homework.

Please excuse me while I weep and gibber uncontrollably.

Here's how to help the hungry: quit selling dead bird carcasses that come from factory farms. No, free range is not better. No, organic is not better. Waaaah, but then I have to eat fermented bean curd. It tastes better and is more environmentally friendly, as well as healthier, cheaper, more compassionate and doesn't take 2-4 days to thaw or monopolize the oven. Quit eating dead bird. Make demand go down. Use the tons and tons of grain fed to livestock and birds to feed hungry people, or use that land to grow vegetables and legumes. Read about turkeys and learn about how smart they are. Read this Bill Maher article about the horrific turkey slaughterhouses and watch this PETA investigation of the Butterball turkey slaughterhouse: workers stomped to death, punched, and even sexually assaulted the birds. This is what you are paying for and eating. This Butterball factory apparently slaughters 50,000 such birds a DAY.

Here's how to have a happy thanksgiving: don't make anything die for you, just because you think it tastes good. Because that's the only reason anyone eats meat. You don't need it. It's not necessary. It's for people's tastebuds.

Thanksgiving should be about spending time with people who make you happy and being thankful for the good things in life, not killing and eating a large bird. Me, I'm thankful for my family, my friends, my Johnny-poo, organic satsuma oranges, Yumm sauce, the bus system, Kelly Comics, and fuzzy socks.

Oh, and the fact that I've been vegan for nearly 5 months (and not had any meat in 7), and that I will continue to lead an animal-friendly life and encourage others to do so as well.

Happy Don't Eat Turkey Day, everyone.

The IT Crowd: Aunt Irma Visits (pt 1 of 3)

Meggie-poo is grumpy

Peaceful Prarie Sanctuary: Coming Home

This is part of why I'm vegan.

Yay for skipping class and getting homework done and going on a ~12 mile bikeride with the boy (it's been 4 months, btw) instead.


( Fern Ridge Trail )


And then my camera battery ran out. :P

Finally finished watching Nightwatch! I agree with Michelle that some of the changes they made in the film totally changed Anton's motivation...I felt like it was a beautiful movie but it kind of butchered the book. :/ Now I just have to read Day Watch and Twilight Watch.

John made me dinner tonight! Broccoli, couscous, and salad. With wine. It was delicious and my tummy is very happy. Things that I don't cook always taste AWESOME.

And lastly...

( Vegan/cooking meme (fun even for non-vegans) )

Ha HA, I say to you, fools and naysayers! I donated blood yesterday and got my iron levels checked...and I have 'very good' iron according to the chickie-poo who was testing my blood! SEE? SEE? You CAN be vegan (for almost five months now!) AND get everything you need...and I look forward to further proving this point when I have a checkup in December.

In other news: YAY getting swamped by schoolwork...but really YAY leaving a week from today with Shannon to go to California for Thanksgiving!!! XD

So John and I went on a really long bike ride today. All the way along the Fern Ridge trail, back down it to Terry, up Terry to Tony's house, back down Terry to the bike path, back to the main Fern Ridge path, and back down the path to my house. A conservative estimate is that we biked about 16 miles, we may have done closer to 18 or 19, especially since we had to doubleback at one point because I am shite with directions. :3

It was pretty intense. We saw lots of ducks and herons and Canadian geese, also known as the Canadian Poop Goose. We visited Tony and John met Sorsha.

I need a shower really badly.

I am going to sleep really well tonight.

Funny. John's harddrive dies (and spectacularly, with lots of pathetic whirring sounds that slowed to a tired 'mehhhhh...'), and then I'm pretty sure the one in my desktop died yesterday/today. Today it won't even start up using an Ubuntu boot disk. I had hooked the thing back up so John could use it.

Ah well...5 years is a long time for a computer. Here's hoping my laptop doesn't kick the bucket anytime soon. *knocks on wood*

Drat. Oh well, I recently reformatted it so there's nothing of value on there anyway. Just, bugger.

I made amazing (vegan of course) breakfast today, as you can see: french toast with homemade strawberry syrup and bananas, tempeh bacon, and hash browns (hidden under ketchup, MMMM). It was delicious. And well-deserved after working out all five days this week and getting buttloads of schoolwork done.

One interesting thing that happened: there were signs near the intersection near my house that said 'Estate Sale.' I'd never been to one, I remembered that it was when somebody died and all their stuff got sold off. It seemed a bit morbid, even before I went, but after I went in the house (on the other side of the block from me), it really started affecting me.

It was an older woman, who must have been a painter, a cook, someone who did a lot of crafts. The house was a bit musty, with orange carpet and weak lighting. The weirdest thing was looking at her bookcase and seeing a bunch of the LIFE science books that we have, and a book called Splendors of the Past about ancient cities that my dad has that I used to look through a LOT when I was a kid. That is what connects me to this person whose house I am now in: books, and the fact that I live near her house.

In the end I only bought a recipe box that has a LOT of recipes for breads. It made me sad when I saw it. Recipes that she must have been saving for a while, now in my grubby little hands for a mere dollar? What's going to happen to my recipe book when I die? I almost burst into tears, which was creepy, and it was just awful to see this person's (whose name was Grace, I later heard) things sitting around, waiting for homes.

I think if anything, and this sounds stupid but it makes me feel happy, as someone who loves cooking and baking, that if anyone should get those recipes, at least they went to someone who appreciates them, as opposed to being thrown away or having the box donated and the recipes tossed out. I've already found lots I can't wait to veganize (sage bread and cranberry sour cream muffins, among other things). I feel like this person is still kind of having a part of her remembered.

Okay enough of this. Back to volcanoes homework.

I don't like vegan drama. Apparently some shit went down over the weekend. One blogger/cookbook author that I really like had irreconcilable differences with her publisher, a well-known vegan magazine, and decided not to publish with them. A couple other vegan bloggers/cookbook authors have posted rather snarky entries sort of roundabout criticizing this person's actions, saying it's all about the money and that it shafted the publisher. I personally have no idea what happened, and I don't really want to know because it's none of my business. I can see both sides of it.

This whole snark thing bothers me. A lot. Yes, we should all support vegan businesses/enterprises/authors...that includes bloggers and business owners ALIKE. I don't like the factions that pop up. I understand that everyone's supporting their friends but I feel like Lolo's getting shafted by some people in the community simply because she made a business decision. As one commenter said, "This isn't the third-grade playground, we don't need to like only one or the other." I considered posting something about this in the forums that I frequent but I wouldn't want to be perceived as taking sides since I don't know any of the parties personally.

I think it wouldn't bother me if people weren't so passive aggressive about it and would just come out and say, "Yes I think this is bullshit." But instead it's ambiguous barbed comments.

Snark = not <3

I'm sad because I didn't take a picture of it, but I just had THE MOST amazing tofu I've ever had in my life. In fact the whole dinner so far has been decidedly delicious. I made the horseradish-coriander crusted tofu from Vegan with a Vengeance (served with vegan tartar sauce), mashed potatoes with kale and garlic (basically Colcannon), and currently there is a pear and cranberry tart in the oven.

John raved about the colcannon but the tofu was AH-MAY-ZANG. I had two pieces and John had three, we have very happy tummies. I know that the words 'tofu' and 'amazing' are rarely in the same sentence but let me tell you...they were yummy and had a LURVELY un-tofu-like texture (dare I say, meaty?), and had lovely baked crusty goodness on top. They will make the perfect lunch for tomorrow's day o' studying.

EVERY RECIPE that I've tried from Vegan with a Vengeance has been amazing, a winner, in fact. I made the lemon-corn waffles with blueberry sauce from VwaV again this morning for John and I, and I tried for the first time making hash browns from Vegan Yum Yum - the waffles were not bad even though I burnt one all to shit, and the hash browns were excellent - I LOVE reeeeeally crispy hash browns and these delivered.

I cannot WAIT to get Veganomicon. It's going to be amazing. There are reports of excellent chickpea cutlets that knock your socks off. John and I already tried one of the preview recipes (the chickpea noodle soup) that was the only thing I could eat while I was sick last month, and it was so good. Isa's recipes just are so simple, and so tasty, they make ME look like a good cook. :P

I ate a lot of potatoes today! \o/

What it says. :3 Go vegan!

5 hours until paper of doom is due. I have about a third of it left.

X( Mrrrf. Tired. Going out to 80s night at John Henry's tonight afterwards to dull the pain.