stupid weather

i have numerous cuts and bruises, including what will probably turn out to be a fairly impressive one on my face that coincides with a nearly broken nose.
i have dirt caked into my hands and arms.
i have two broken drill bits and several stripped screws.
what i don't have is a complete planter.
while i'm saving decent amounts of money (i'm making 3 6'x2'x18" planters for less than $100; one half the size costs close to $150), once again, my total lack of skill is compensating for the saving of money in blood and sweat. yes, ok, fine, occasional tears, too.
i stopped because i ran out of screws. i probably should have stopped when a board slipped out of my grip and hit me in the face. it would've been less embarrassing.
hopefully by the end of.. let's say the month, be generous.. we'll have all of the plants and herbs happily planted in the various assemblies i'm making.
right now, i need sympathy and recuperation.

the evening, such as it was, was spent, at least by me, attaching wood to the stump in the backyard to frame the herb garden. it looks like crap, but it should hold up.
i also laid out the leftover stones from the patio to make a flower bed in the front yard, and drilled in the holes for the clothesline.
looking at the patio, and the flower bed, and the herb garden, and the various minor pieces of my anatomy i've removed in the process of doing all of these things, the realization is obvious: with the home improvement skills i posess, i make one hell of a librarian.

i also beat twilight princess. the ending needed much more making out.

playing zelda: twilight princess (the GC version; motion controls are all well and good, but link is left-handed, and the map was designed to be reminiscent of Ocarina), i got up to a point where link made cheese soup, and that sounded really good.
now, admittedly, he made fish-pumpkin-goat cheese soup, and i want nothing to do with that, so i looked for a recipe that was more suited to my palate. i came upon Alton Brown's recipe, and it follows, with some modifications.
( after the cut )
lazysun pointed out that AB, masterful though he is, doesn't seem to really like cheese, as his cheese recipes never really seem to show off the named ingredient as the principal one; i started with only 8 oz. of cheese and it wasn't nearly enough. i ended up adding 8 oz. more, plus more sauces, and a little more garlic.
The biggest problem with this recipe, after the changes that i made, was that it was served at the beginning of summer rather than the middle of fall. It was delicious, but colder weather would be more appropriate.

for reader's advisory homework, i was made to listen to an audiobook. i ended up listening to two and part of one: neil gaiman reading his own "neverwhere" (totally worth it, if slow); jim dale reading jk rowling's "harry potter and the compliant redheadthe sorcerer's stone" (not really worth it); and the playaway of some british guy reading cs lewis' "the lion, the witch, his wife, and her loverand the wardrobe" (couldn't get through it; sounded like an AM broadcast of a old BBC program)
but i was thinking that i could use my commute to work on a language. i like going new places (i hate travelling there, though), and i don't like going places where i don't speak the language. plus if i ever do go back for that ph.d in linguistics, a lot of them want you to know three or four languages over and above the one you grew up speaking.
it's a short commute, but the a/v librarian assures me that even that time can be beneficial. so i thought about a few languages:
( cut for lengthy discussion and poll )
i can't guarantee i'll go with the majority, but i'd like to see what youse think.

in other news, the cat is sleeping on my underwears.

at mocca, i had several famous and not-quite-famous webcomics (and regular comics) artists contribute to a "librarian jam", asking for their interpretations on "things found at a library".
the contributing artists:

Sal Cipriano
Charles Schneeflock Snow
Kristin Hogan
Spike
Abby Denson
Chris Brimacombe
Cathy Leamy
Jeff Rowland
Brendan McGinley
Ryan Dunlavey
Molly Crabapple
Evan Palmer
Jeph Jacques (who started it)
Brian Lee O'Malley
R. Stevens

the picture itself is linked 'cause it's about 2 MB in size. the original is 10x14 and hanging at my desk at work (i had it laminated first)

i also made sketchbooks for a few people; the only really outstanding one was one i made for rstevens: front back

i had to make up the back design myself, he was impressed.

ALSO BRIAN LEE O"MALLEY TOOK A PICTURE OF MY SKETCHBOOK LOOK LOOK LOOK

i bitch about how much i hate trees every year about this time, so i'll keep it short.
this year, even the weather human is mocking me, pointing out how we've gone a while without rain, so the pollen can't be washed out of the air, so if you're allergic to trees, man, it must suck to be you, huh?

i want to come up with something witty about digging up my backyard, something like
"fucking pirates and their lying maps"
or
"the kind of sod i prefer ends in 'omy' and is a great deal less work"
or
"if you think this is bad, you should see the clods i have to deal with at work"
but honestly i'm just too tired. i dug for an hour and all i have to show for it is an inability to stand up and maybe a total of a quarter of the yard done.
i don't know if this is the actual etymology of the political term -- in fact, i rather doubt it -- but grass roots are really strong and very resistant to being torn apart.
i'd go collapse now but collapsing is all the way over there.

for some reason, i put in to work every day this week, sunday to saturday, defraying my comp time until the end of the month. i don't know what the fuck i was thinking.
friday i didn't spend at the library, but at the comic con. (it was for work, so i got paid for the day.) however, that doesn't mean it was any sort of relaxing; i was out of the house before i'm normally even awake, and spent the day walking around with gloinson, much more than i walk in a normal day. add to this the tree sex making breathing less automatic, and you have a very tired me on sunday afternoon.
but i'm not here to fish for sympathy, i'm here to fish for compliments.
last year i made mollycrabapple a book in the image of a stockinged-and-gartered leg. i figured this year i would make a companion piece of a corseted book. "how hard could it really be", i thought?
a month later, i found out exactly how hard.
( pictures follow the cut )
i don't think i'll be doing that again -- i mean, sure it'll be easier next time, but still -- at least not without serious compensation.
the rest of the con was good. i got my sketchbook finished (pictures to come much, much later) and got to vaguely meet some legends in the field, including mr. the man himself, stan lee (who didn't sign any autographs, but stuck around to pose for pictures and shake a few hands); and lou ferrigno, who has surprisingly soft hands; and orson scott card, who was a genuinely nice guy and had me take a picture of him signing the table for flabbergasting who couldn't make it and for whom i didn't have anything else signable. i missed sid meier, though, who was there yesterday while i was at work.
now to do as little as possible on my one day off before another five days of work!

i managed to semi-successfully make pastrami today.
i say "semi" because, while it's tasty, it doesn't taste quite like pastrami.
i started with a store-bought corned beef, rubbed it down with a spice mixture, and started smoking it.
a couple hours into the smoking process, i remembered "oh fuck, i needed to soak it, and for a couple of days at that, lest it become yet another inedible salt brick!" so off of the smoker and into a bag full of water it went for two days, changing the water twice.
friday morning, i took it out of the soak and rubbed it down, and then left it in the fridge. friday afternoon, i smoked it until the night came, and then cooked it in the oven.
today, i steamed it for a few hours, and now i have pastrami! sort of!
i'm mostly impressed, but i would like to try corning it myself again, and maybe figure out what the spices should be (i used coriander, allspice, pepper, paprika, and garlic).
but it wasn't an inedible salt brick! it's tasty, even if it's not quite pastrami!

let me tell you something, folks.
balls?
more trouble than they're worth.

today i:

• installed a rod in the wasted space upstairs to turn it into a usable closet
  
• repaired a very broken drawer
  
• cooked (with help):
  • chicken cutlets
    
  • meatballs
    
  • garlic mashed potatoes
    
  • poached chicken
    
  • roast beef
    
  • the beginnings of potato soup

and while this doesn't seem like much, especially all outlined like this, i am completely the fuck wiped out.

lazysun said something about "cupcakes". i thought "fuck that.. we should have cup _pies_."
i'm still not sure how to make this work, but i have every intention of trying.
i also plan on trying to make sauerkraut with brussels sprouts, but i had to make sure that that was my idea and not rosefox's. (it was; hers was "brussels sprouts coleslaw")

now that i am home from work i can safely say
happy birthday lazysun!

i'm already not a morning person. even less so on mondays. my usual monday schedule has me working 1-9, but i was nice and traded with a coworker and took his 9 am shift.
lazysun and mcmiller came to visit me for lunch today.
halfway through lunch,