So apparently it's been a while since I last posted. Witness as I remedy this, only to realize I haven't got much to say! I've been watching Due South and reading even more Due South fic when I haven't been out looking for a job, which hasn't been productive at all so far since the only places I can get to that are hiring are ESA (where I'm not planning on working again EVER, especially since apparently the Night Laundry dryer caught fire recently) or places where I'm decidedly unqualified for whatever position they need filled. Hopefully "helping my chronically ill dad" will be a good excuse for my long period of unemployment. *siiighs*

( Cover yourself! Music ahoy. )

LJ and GJ both seem to be having their share of connection problems today, so let's hope this actually goes through!

As mentioned in my last entry, I've already set up shop at GreatestJournal. It's not necessarily a perfect answer, since they seem to have less server capability than LJ and there aren't nearly as many people over there, but you get a ton of icons, a PMing service, the ability to make polls for free, and no recent history of betrayal of their userbase. As of today, however, I also have a proper mostly-independent blog at wyrd-engel.net, the website owned by my friend dizzycadence. She just got the blog system up and running, so I probably won't be putting much of substance up until we've stabilized and I've come up with things to talk about.

If you're sticking around LJ, don't worry: I won't be completely gone. I'll just be dividing my blog attentions a little more.

I'm only getting more annoyed with LJ as the duration of their silence increases and I learn more about the whole suspension situation (which you guys have probably already heard plenty about, but in case you haven't there's a post in the new related GJ community here that has links to most if not all of the major relevant posts), but all I have to add is that if you're considering locking your journal and don't have a paid account, an older version of Semagic is great for locking everything at once. At least one of the posts fandomtossed links to has a bunch of different journal archivers listed, too, including several that are Mac- and/or Linux-friendly.

If any of you are setting up journals on alternate hosts as a result of LJ's shenanigans, let me know. I'm on GreatestJournal already as ramenaddict, but it's mostly been for keeping up with people and crossposting LJ stuff so far. Final relocation (whether and where it will happen) has yet to be determined.

ETA: I mentioned this in comments shortly after hearing about it on GJ, but there's an article on CNET now talking about the situation.

So yesterday afternoon at some point Zoomtown service crapped out in the Sharonville and Fairfield areas, so I was internetless and iiiisolated. Today Mom found out that Time Warner withdrew their monthly payment from her account yesterday instead of on the 28^th as usual (which, granted, is a holiday this month) or waiting until Tuesday, so Mom's overdrawn and can't afford to go to West Virginia for the holiday weekend. Laaame.

Today we went walking in Sharon Woods. Wildlife included many standard birds and squirrels, a big ol' frog, a snake, a bunch of mallards and those ducks that are mostly black with a big white patch on the chest, and some of the ducks had ducklings (some were pure mallard, but there were at least two mixed families and one hybrid adult), and one of the dark ducks was sitting far away from any other ducks and clearly in a bad way, between the hard breathing and the circling flies, and also a dead baby turtle on the path at one point.

( that ten things meme )

In other news: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DIZZ! For real this time. XD;

All that took way too long. Dinner time!

DAMMIT. I had to be home by six tonight since Mom left me her key to the apartment and Jenn still has the other, but my watch isn't running at all anymore and my internal clock sucks, so now I can't go walk around looking for work unless Jenn suddenly decides to give her key back or Mom leaves me her cell so I have something to keep track of the time with.

...or I could get Mom to wake me up before she leaves. That's actually probably the better idea. *facepalm*

Dad's all set on getting out to K-Mart today since he saw they had tabletop gas grills on sale for $20 in the ad that came in the mail recently. The only reason I can think of for this is that he hasn't really looked at the tabletop charcoal grill he's already got outside in a long time, because I just did and other than needing the old coals removed and a scrub it's completely fine. I'm going to try to convince him that he doesn't need a new grill, but who knows how well that'll actually go?

Hopefully I'll get to go home tonight since I came over a day early. I want to partake of all the delicious sweets we have at home and try to watch Supernatural and comfort my molty little bird boy. T_T

ETA: Operation No New Grill was a success!

I got my copy of She Wants Revenge today! I can't listen to it just yet because I'm only having a dinner break before doing dishes (what fun), but yay music! Hopefully I'll even have time to watch the Supernatural season finale tonight, but if I can't nobody better spoil me or I'm going to be really damn annoyed.

This afternoon a couple of small planes crashed nearby. Really nearby: everything came down less than a mile north of the section of Kemper Road that intersects with the Reed Hartman Highway. It even made it onto CNN's webpage, but I swear I had no idea anything happened until Mom called to ask if I'd heard anything and I realized why I'd been hearing helicopters nearby. It was... weird. I feel like I should have a little more to say for an accident that killed all three people in the two planes than that it was weird and I'm sorry for what their families and friends have to go through as a result, but I got nothin.

According to Variety via the sidebar at Sci Fi Wire, Tim Roth is going to be playing the Abomination in The Incredible Hulk, with Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. I like the sound of this Hulk movie a lot better than the first one already just for those two being in it.

Peter Segal, who's apparently the director of the Shazam! movie, has approached the Rock Dwayne Johnson the Rock about being in the movie as Captain Marvel. I think it's as much because we already know he's not afraid of running around in tights as because he's got something approaching the right look.

Those of you who care but might have missed it will be pleased to learn that the third season of Ghost Hunters starts June 6^th and they've already been renewed for a fourth season. To get the audience warmed up for the premiere, every Wednesday in May has a different themed Ghost Hunters mini-marathon. Sci Fi's also going to start running the third season of the new Doctor Who July 6^th and has a new version of Flash Gordon starting August 10^th, among their other summer debuts.

And that's all the time for distraction I have. Back to (trying to be) productive. :\

In case I forgot to mention it and you couldn't figure it out, I've been at Dad's this weekend. As usual we started out by going grocery shopping, because when I'm not here the only things he seems to consistently buy are bread and milk and maybe some soup. Yesterday he actually did his homework for once, so I was stuck reading, watching TV when I started to get antsy from that, and doing laundry. Fun times. Today I attempted to alleviate the twitchy boredom by going up to my old room to see if any of the notebooks I'd left behind were in easy-to-access places, but I got distracted by finding the brown shoes I got four years ago. They're some sort of Voldemart earth shoe and really comfy, but the soles are hollow and the right one developed a crack in one side within a year of my owning them, so I stopped wearing them all the time.

But back to today. I brought them downstairs in hopes of finding a way to repair them, but Dad said electrical tape probably wouldn't work and to use superglue. Only problem with that was the only superglue he had dried out ages ago, so we went to K-mart and got a new tube and I patched up my shoe on the way home. It seems to have worked so far, so I think I'll take them home with me.

Other recent but still-less-important developments include dead gay wizards in the footnotes of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, being up to the second main boss in Legend of Zelda: the Minish Cap, and working on getting my pokemon that are strong against water-types to levels where they can actually survive when I try to get the Cerulean Badge. My Pikachu is going to kick so much ass.

As promised, here's a cleaned-up version of the bread recipe Mom brought home last week. Let me know if anything's unclear or completely wrong or... well, anything else I should know about.

( Starter )

( Fermentation )

( Baking Day: Sharing Edition )

( Baking Day: Selfish Edition )

( Notes )

Fairly recently Mom brought home a starter of that Amish friendship bread batter stuff. Because it seems like it's going to taste really good and I'm just that nice, I'm going to edit the recipe so it doesn't sound like a chain letter and post it... as soon as I've had a chance to find out whether I screwed anything up.

Well, I would've preferred to spend Earth Day working in my might-someday-pass-for-a-garden rather than helping Dad put down grass seed in his front yard, but there you go. We borrowed this garden weasel thing from one of the neighbors to till the dirt, and I think I like it better than my hoe, but I'm not sure. I'm hoping all the topsoil Dad bought to fill in the uneven spots in the yard will be more than he needs, too, because if there's some left over I might be able to bum it off him and use it to deepen the area I wanted to plant bulbs in last year but couldn't due to unexpected clay just a couple of inches down. If not... well, my list of stuff to buy when I have a steady income will include that much more garden-related stuff.

I apparently forgot how much good a little meditation can do. I'd been in something of a funk the better part of this week, not wanting to do anything but sit and read. It started out the same today, but the weather's been divine all day and finally I decided that not feeling grungy was more important than sitting around and got a shower. I meditated for a little while and then had fun of the "ew, vivid imagination" variety by visualizing I was scooping out and sloughing off all the dirt and nastiness in and on me until I was nothing but bones and brains. (There was some really gross stuff, too, you guys, but it all washed down the drain easy as you please.) After that I rebuilt myself with nice clean parts and finished my shower and since then I've been feeling way more energetic, so I took out all the trash and loaded up the dishwasher and gave Max's cage and playground a much better cleaning than either've had in a while.

It's too bad I'm going to Dad's tonight, or I might've actually got stuff done this weekend that I want and/or need to do.

Good things: I've made it all the way through the fourth Dresden Files book. Next stop, Death Masks! Also, I loved last night's Supernatural. Dean the movie dork, in-jokes all over the place... good times.

I decided for the hell of it to record the season premiere of the Henry Rollins Show and his latest show in Israel *points at music field* last night. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect other than "interesting", especially since it was the lead singer of Black Flag interviewing Marilyn Manson, but it was interesting, and in a good way, so now I've got a series recording set up for it and a short list of terms to look up that will hopefully be added to as I check items off.

For those of you who have IFC and might be interested, next week's guests are Ben Stiller and Ryan Adams. The week after that will be John Waters and The Mars Volta, and the week after that Iggy Pop and The Stooges.

adfgaf this TURKEY just went walking by out back. A real-live wild turkey, not semi-tame like they have at the zoo and not way off in the distance like I sometimes see off in the grass during roadtrips. I would've taken a picture to show y'all, but Jenn took her digital camera so no dice. Ahhhahaha, weird.