MOOP!

There's that long tumblr post about Star Trek food replicators and all the ways in which replicating food is incredibly hard and all the many MANY variables that go into "I can tell the difference between replicator and handmade even if assured they are the same". The important part boils down to "unless the replicator has an impractically staggering number of settings to adjust, you're never going to get exactly grandma's chili".

And it occurs to me that something the post misses is _variability_. That sometimes, the same food tastes different and that's part of the appeal! Specifically, I'm thinking about my beloved lunchables extra-cheesy-pizza kits, which I have one of probably once every 2-3 weeks because they are an extremely easy lunch at work and almost always a safe food¹. I have every confidence that a replicator could produce for me "three little dough rounds, a bag of red sauce, piles of shredded white and orange cheese". I have very little confidence that the replicator could produce "three pizzas, assembled from the kit" in a way that actually tastes familiar to the way I make them myself.

Because I am not perfectly consistent at how I make them. I can eyeball thirds of the sauce and cheese pretty alright, but I'm definitely not perfect at it, and that means every single individual little pizza I eat is going to be on a spectrum of sauce:cheese ratios. And that variability is good! It's a thing I like! It makes for pleasant surprises! Sometimes I even do it on purpose, undersauce and undercheese the first two so I can have a really excessive third one.

Anyways, I think that human inconsistency is good and neat, actually.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I am lucky in that I only very rarely have to worry about safe foods, I'm usually good with a pretty wide variety, but I do get stuck sometimes and find myself feeling pretty food-averse². I'm almost always willing to consume lunchables though.

2: This is tied to general anxiety in a big way, and it's a sign that I Am Anxious About Something, which is important to have because I am not always good at otherwise noticing when I have an anxiety, because I normally don't. It was _fascinating_ watching the entire day before my first time MCing at Pinewoods, where I was forcing myself through every bite I ate and pretty much just gave up for dinner and ate like ten carrot sticks because that was the only thing registering as remotely food-like. I did great and it was fine.

Today was a good day!

I still played a lot of video games, but like...a few hours total and not like ten. I was really quite ready to ~accomplish stuff~ after several days of accomplishing basically nil, and it was pretty joyous to actually do so!

The biggest thing to accomplish was to finally unpack from Pinewoods, and to do all the post-woods laundry. Ezri had very kindly done a little bit of it for me, but that wanted putting away, and there were still two loads of everything else to wash from the PW + CA adventuretimes I've been having for the past two weeks. So now that's all clean and put away, and I even _hung up_ the closet stuff and folded and put away the sheets. I am terrifying, as long as you ignore the fact that I've been home for five days and ESCape ended like...two and a half weeks ago.

I sorta fucked up with meals --I didn't wake up until about noon (although one bonus point to me for actually getting out of bed then) and so didn't eat breakfast until then, and then basically...forgot...about eating lunch. So I had some leftovers at like six, and then dinner at like...nine? It's fine, I'm fine. Note to self: Eat more tomorrow :P

Because it is Monday night, Austin came over which was lovely. We ate dinner and walked to the pull-up bar for pull-ups and ate ice cream and watched an episode and a half of Leverage and then went outside to see the ISS pass overhead. It continues to be magical, and I encourage y'all to sign up for Spot the Station alerts and maybe set an occasional alarm for yourself when you think it's a time and height you'll be able to see.

Then we finished the Leverage, which means we have finally finished season two! I forgot that season two finishes at basically the nadir (although at least most of the team is deffo together right now). I'm really happy that we've been working on this for the last year or so, and I am hopeful that we will make it the rest of the way through eventually (I've still technically never finished season five of Leverage, shh, no spoilers!)

I will have earned a die today for the first time in a _long_ time. This is not even "oh I've been traveling" long time, it looks like the last time was before the school year let out. Hahahah noooo you get horribly burned out every year at work and need months of brain reset time in which you do nothing. (I love my job. These things are both true.)

I hope you are having a nice night and a nice day and getting to see things you enjoy, like spaceships and good television!

~Sor
MOOP!

Today was a very good day spent with my girlfriend!

Okay yeah, fine, I also went to work and stuff. That part was boring, whatever. But then I left work right as soon as I was allowed to (this almost never happens, usually I am hanging out and kinda working for hours after last-bell) and read my book on the bus home, and came home to my Tuesday-love!

(sidebar: it has taken quite a lot of time and the weather actually getting somewhat better, but I have finally figured out that while biking is _faster_, the advantages of walking/taking the bus *far* outweigh it, specifically that I can ~do things~ while on my transit instead of just suffering on The Worst Road In The Entire City (which is basically my entire commute))

I have been reading my way through the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, and I have _finally_ made it to a Harriet Vane one --Strong Poison, not Gaudy Nights, no spoilers please, also this one is _so good_. I kept reading bits of the descriptions of artists aloud to Ezri and Tuesday and generally reveling in the prose *so much*. It is delicious! Some of these mysteries I've felt rather indifferent to, like I never need to bother reading again, but others are *quite* of the variety of "yes please, do re-consume" and unless Sayers flubs the landing, this will be _solidly_ in the second category.

Anyways, I did quite a bunch of further reading once I was home, only instead of a bus with dubious students scattered about, this was on a comfy couch pulled up alongside my ladylove while she played the new Zelda game. Heaven! Parallel play at its absolute finest, reading a book but also snuggling? So good!!!

Eventually, Ezri and Rey got very busy with An Elaborate Dinner Plan, which sucked Tuesday in to help. I know better than to try and hang out in the busy kitchen (I will get massive-stressed and then I will snap at people like an ass) so I stayed out of the way¹. Dinner was...pad thai!!! Homemade and _utterly_ delicious, thank you Ezri! And there was mango lassi for dessert (thank you Tuesday!). We all ate until we were round and merry, and that was delightful.

Near the end of it all, somehow Tuesday and I got to talking about the game Blink, which she'd also played at some point in the past. I pulled out my deck and solidly trounced her five rounds in a row² (sorry babe). As we were putting it away, she glanced at the game shelf and asked "what's One Deck Galaxy?".

I managed to entirely not answer her question by instead whipping out my unopened copy of One Deck Dungeon, pausing long enough to show her my name in the playtest credits, and then we sat down and played a really satisfying game of ODD! Sure it was just the dragon, but we beat it together, despite me rolling almost entirely shit the entire game! It was really fun to get to do this little cooperative dungeon crawl together.

Now it is approaching bedtime. I get to come in late tomorrow (I arranged it with my boss since first block is the rotating x-block but it's on the rotation I don't have a class, and then second block is just...not a class I ever have) so I'm quite looking forward to having a slightly later-than-usual wakeup time and the opportunity for bonus cuddles with my girl.

I hope you are well and happy and have people in your life who make you happy!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: In an effort to make myself sound slightly less assholish, I did all the dishes afterwards. It is to everyone's benefit for me to not cook though, it's not fun for me, and it's frequently even less fun when someone else is in charge.

2: I'm good at speed games, and explicitly, I'm good at the _speed_ part of speed games. There are definitely people who can match-or-beat me at Blink (Veronica first among them), but I must be solidly 90th or 95th percentile on it.

It Saturday!

It a _really good day!_

Today started with scrambling out of bed as subtly as possible in order to not wake up Austin, then going to the online photography class I'm taking. (Photo class is honestly mostly just an impetus to take more pictures, since that is a thing I actually like in my life, but frequently forget about. But I also get to see lots of pretty photos taken by other people, and I get to see some of my faraway friends, and I do get to listen to someone who is an expert talk about stuff (which is _always_ a good thing!))

After photo class, I went and jumped on Austin so he'd be awake, We had a nice leisurely morning, with lots of Steven Universe and eating breakfast, and doing a yoga. Finally around three we got ourselves together and left the house, to go on a bike-and-hike adventure!

Masks safely on, we went waaaaaay down Trapelo road, basically into nearly Waltham, and did some wandering around a green space that had _shockingly_ few people for how nice the day was. I took a huge number of photos (some of which might even be good for photoclass next week, yay!!!!) and it was a very nice time for the legs.

Also we saw these wildlifes: red-winged blackbird, dark-purple-headed-bird-that-is-otherwise-black, robin, geese, GOSLING!, duckduckduckducks!, duckfuck¹, bumblebee, firefly (unlit), fireflyfuck, chipmunks, squirrel, really big seagulls, AND A MUSKRAT!!!!

Also a small mummified mammal of some sort, on the steps to the possibly-haunted-but-definitely-full-of-asbestos abandoned hospital. It's pretty clear that some weird ass-teenagers left it there in a fake satan ritual. It was cool as shit and no I did not touch it.

So long walk around and looking at aforementioned abandoned hospital and also the water tower _covered_ in graffiti, and then we got on our bikes and biked way into Waltham proper so we could go look at train infrastructure. Look, Austin was patient with me while I photographed all the bright coloured graffiti and pointed out every single bumblebee I saw, I was patient with him while we wandered on bits of gravel road and behind buildings because it used to be a train tracks. He and I are pretty good at the buddy system and I am very happy for it.

We biked home along the Charles bike path, and it was only marred by me having weird PrivateSchool feels (we were very close to parts of my commute from a long time ago), and also by it having been _four and a half hours_ since we left and we were starting to flag.

Luckily when we got home, Austin was willing to take point on dinner --I washed dishes and helped sous chef and stuff, but it was really nice to have him in charge of the mental load for that one-- and we made Ash's really wonderful Ethiopian lentil recipe, with added potatoes. Putting the whole thing over rice was an Excellent Decision as well! Gosh that's good. It turns out spices are awesome ;)

And then post dinner we had a really nice time on the couch where I played some Animal Crossing (mom came over! Yay mom!!) and he worked on his secret train project and both of us just...rested together. It was _really_ lovely.

One of the nice things about him coming to visit on weekends is that it really does make them feel like _weekends_, like a chance to get away from the rest of my life and rest and do some things different. Tomorrow we might make a cake (we've been meaning to for ages) and we will probably go outside again for a while. Definitely do yoga, they lied. (actually, we're pretty good when we're both in person and reminding each other to do it, it's just really hard to keep track when we're apart.)

I love you, and I hope your days have had something nice in them, despite...everything else.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Maybe? It appeared to be one duck humping another duck while they were in the water, but it also appeared to be two male mallards. I am not judging?

Wayyyy back in 2000, I played in my first LARP.

I mean, okay, I was a prop and a game baby in multiple LARPs in the '89-92ish range, and I remember being at Oscars '96 and Arabian Nights '99 (the latter of which dad scrawled me a little handmade unofficial badge about halfway through the weekend because I kept participating and stuff). But Oscars 2000 was my Very First LARP in terms of being given a character ahead of time and playing the whole weekend and being old enough to actually for realsies participate.

I played actress Mallory Tyrone, who was your standard bratty coming-of-age child actress. Somewhere I have all my notes and everything --I'm pretty sure I never got rid of them. My character packet for the weekend included a list of contacts and some out-of-game mechanics stuff, and a list of goals --things to strive for! I achieved very nearly all of them, because I'm a perfectionist damnit (and also because I was eleven and my daddy was one of the game masters and I probably wasn't given anything too arduous to achieve.)

One of those goals was to get signed with an agent! Now, I-as-person already had an agent (my mom's friend Butler is the agent to all three of us kids, as declared at Oscars '96). But Mallory Tyrone had no such thing! With all the brashness and confidence I could muster, I set forth to finding such a beast! I met a very nice woman (who in real life had a couple of kids within a few years age of me and my sibs) and she agreed to represent me, and by the end of the weekend, we had hashed out a contract and everything.

In my contract, I specified a very important stipulation: While on set, I was to have pasta every night for dinner. By which I pretty much meant "some kind of pasta, possibly filled, with tomato sauce, and ideally shake-cheese on top." The dreams of eleven year olds, amIrite? Forget important things like how much money I'd make or whether I have to do topless scenes, I just wanted to make sure I had access to my favourite dinner every night.

I am now 28 years old. I have very little Mallory Tyrone left in me¹. But you know what? I've eaten chicken tortellini with tomato sauce for lunch every day this week. I am not sick of it. I do not feel like I'm missing out. There's a very good chance I'll make another batch for lunches next week.

I've long since lost track of that agent, but you know what? That's okay. Katarina Whimsy can make their own dreams come true.

And it's awesome.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Although I still collect autographs whenever remotely possible or reasonable. And I'm still willing to be the one to ask people out --one of the goals was to have a date to the Oscars event on Saturday night, and by god if I didn't find the only boy remotely my age and stumble through the most delightfully awkward eleven year old "SO THIS IS TOTALLY JUST IN GAME, BUT WANNA BE MY DATE IN GAME?!" My brain wants to say he gave me a flower, or a kiss on the cheek, or something equally twee when we met up, but that may just be the storyteller in me.

Things I should be doing: Cleaning my room. Organizing stuff. Dealing with Adult Things.

What I am doing: Essentially, rolling around on the floor being useless.

BUT! I did finally convert hard boiled eggs into egg salad (which Genni and I both deemed amazing) and now I am eating dinner and I texted some people and okay, really it's just that Genni came home and it stopped being EMPTY HOUSE ALL AROUND AND NO MOTIVATION and I have this sneaking suspicion that I am actually an extrovert and don't really know what to do with that information.

Anywho, there is creepypasta and sammiches and someone should get on IM and get my attention and then get on Skype with me and encourage me to clean my room while chatting with them. And...also protect me from the creepypasta because I am seriously going to go do this, and I get spooked _so easily_ and this is _such a bad decision_ and I know before I make this decision that it will leave me jumping at shadows and carefully checking everywhere in the bathroom before I pee¹ and other nonsense.

But I'm gonna do it anyways, because I will never become a horror buff if I don't, and you have no idea how much I love creepy stories, and there's this super long list of "bestof" that someone on Tumblr put together months ago and I've only gotten through like twenty of them so far.

So yeah. If you happen to be up at two AM, I could probably use talkdowns. Hoping to convince the boyf to come over after his partything, but being as he is a social butterfly, he will probably be doing that instead. It's okay. I'm not bitter or anything.

WHEE FOR RANDOM WEIRD LIVEJOURNAL POSTS!

(no seriously, I used to make this sort of post all the time and I really kinda miss it. Livejournal remains my social media baby. Someday I should unpack my urge to call everything I care about my babies. Especially when it comes to the people taking my GED class, who are on the whole much older than me, and sometimes have kids who are not much younger than I am.)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: The best part of this instinct is the fact that I have utterly no idea what I'd do if I pulled back the shower curtain and there was some evil dude standing there. Just...close the shower curtain again? Scream scream scream, then run away?² Politely apologize for intruding and back away? I do not even know.

2: *drones, in her best dude-what-does-Magnetic-Fields-voice*³ "The count has an eye on his ankle / and lives in a horrible place. He's not very funny / he wants all your money / he wants to remove your face"

3: Okay, technically it's a Gothic Archies song, but they're the same guy, alright? Also, did you know that the Gothic Archies did an entire album of music inspired by and about A Series of Unfortunate Events. So awesome.

So, I've spent this week going to the grocery store and idly pricing out ingredients. 'Cause I've got a need for something _delicious_. And because I keep trying desserty type-stuff, I think I probably ought to try my hand at something more closely resembling an actual meal.

And oh, would you look at that. It so happens that there's a blog called Cooking Comically. And it so happens that they have a recipe for something savory that sounds totally delicious.

(Normally in these adventures, I post the recipe at the end. You're going to get more out of this post if you read it first, however.)

So! Let's make some muthafuckin' 2 AM Chili, with this guy. ( And cat ears. )


And here is my verdict. In two words?

Fuck.
YES!

This chili will knock you on your ass with how spicy it is (my throat feels so deliciously burny right now), but it's really good, especially with the cornmuffins and the sour cream. I am devouring it like a monster.

Thank you, Tyler Capps! 2 AM chili is a hell of a food!

...now to figure out how to deal with the pot I still have of it. Hey friends...!

~Sor
MOOP!

0: Crying because of onions reminds me of Horrible Turn, which you should all watch as soon as you've seen Dr. Horrible. It's _excellent_.

1: Primary goal: To entertain myself/get some interesting writing done.
Secondary goal: I am hungry
Tertiary goal: I actively want people to consume the things I create, in this case, I refer to both the food (which I share) and the entries (which I might put into a separate blog and crosspost).
Quadinary goal: I don't know how to cook, and people think I ought to fix that.

2: Well, I have to bring some for the Scottish Dancers to enjoy. And a secret other reason. Actually, two secret other reasons.

Hey beasts. It's cooking time. I am going to make some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that, if they turn out a third as good as Ria usually makes them, will knock you off their feet with how goddamn delicious they are.

I've got music, fuzzy socks, a recipe, and cat ears. Let's rock the hell out of this adventure!

( It gets long and there are pictures, so cut! )

Oh whoops, forgot to take a picture of all of them. Here instead is a picture of all the ones we have left:



They are delicious. They were gone halfway through Squares, and I brought sixty of them. I'm pretty much gonna go ahead and call this Cooking Adventure a success!

And now I eat dinner and write some WriMoNo².

And yeah. I can officially make cookies like a boss!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: OF COURSE it's from Homestuck. And I feel no guilt or shame in this fact whatsoever. And I am going to listen to other stuff.

2: I don't call it "NaNo", because that doesn't make any sense if you unabbreviate it. So I typically call the month "WriMo" for short. Obviously my WriMoNo is my Writing Month Novel! It has 1270 words so far. YAYYYY!

Pee-dot-ess-dot. Because the recipe just *happened* to have been lying around in Ria's tumblr...

So, here's what my life has been the last n weeks.

*I graduated. This was apparently a big deal or something.

*I took, and as of two days ago, passed my MTELs. Now I can get my teacher's license and get a job or something.

*I am currently in Atlanta. Two days of rest and relaxation with Sparr and the various folks around his living space, and then he and I go up to Columbus, OH on Wednesday for Origins.

*I helped my family move from Columbia MD to Park Ridge (just north of Chicago) IL. This involved driving for about six hours on Tuesday (mom drove the other half.)

*I drove my little sister to and from her college orientation at Hiram college. This involved driving for about six hours on Thursday and Saturday. No mom to help. On the plus side, I own a lot of music, and some of it she likes.

*I spent last weekend in Layfayette Georgia in order to go to my very first burn. Burns are hippie festivals; Burning Man is the best-known example. It was really quite fun, and I enjoyed running around the woods surrounded by hippies, and watching various people perform various arts, and learning things, and posing for photographs and jumping on the trampoline and etc. Also, there was fire, and it was fantastic. Alsoalso, I got to see in passing Amber, who is bright and sunny and really likes me and seems to want me to move to Atlanta almost as badly as Sparr does. She makes me smile a lot.

*I might make a real post about that one.

*Oh, also I went to Balticon a couple weeks ago. I slept in a car, and hung out with old friends and new friends, and again played less werewolf than usual, and broke my JungleSpeed totem (okay, technically Braffy broke it...) and wound up giving kisses to a gorgeous woman with fantastic pink hair, and flirted with the pervy artist, and in general it was all quite good. And like last year, it was a completely significant-other-free con. Which is a little strange, but mostly very freeing --the first time I went to Balticon, I went without my partner, and I kinda really like not being responsible for anyone else's happiness at the con. Not that I don't love being with my partners at cons, you understand --I do love it, very much-- but once a year...I'll gladly take the vacation from feeling responsible for other people's happiness. Because I am responsible, some, no matter how hard I try not to be. At least for my boys.

*Alys graduated high school. Go her!

*This is the first 750words entry I've made in twelve days, and the third this month. Please whine at me to do this. I won't be able to during Origins, but I should at least get my act together the week after, and once I'm back in Boston.

*Looking to get back in Boston somewhere around the fourth. Hoping to spend a night in NYC with...someone. Need to talk to relevant someones and see who has a couch and wants me to sleep on it. (I mean, I also have friends in the city who have couches that I can sleep on, but if I have people who actively want me as houseguest, I'll strive for that first.)

*Week after Origins is Girl Scout Day Camp. This might be my last year, but if you volunteer as an adult for five years, you get a pretty volunteer pin. And next year would be year five. So yeah, MD peeps, I might be looking for crash-space a random week in July or June 2012.

*I dodged the sunburn from camping in the middle of fuckyou Georgia all weekend (I hate the weather here, does it show), but the trade off is that I think I might have some poison ivy on my arm, and I certainly have bugbites everywhere. Still, that doesn't cause cancer, so I'm okay with this. I did my best to keep Sparr and Sarena sunscreened (two of my three campmates --Joe is a redhead and so did a very good job of keeping his pasty self covered) too, and I think it mostly worked.

*Made foodstuff with Sparr earlier --potatos and eggs such to put into breakfast burritos. Was good! Also, I made the mistake of asking Bethany how many people I should cook for (since she is the normal cook hereabouts) and she answered "sixteen".

I did not cook for sixteen people, because Christ, how would I?

That's all for now.

~Sor
MOOP!

(Okay, so, for a very long time now, I've known that MOOP is a burner term meaning Matter Out Of Place --probably learned it less than two years after I coined the term as my own personal word. Holy shit though, people actually use it, like all the time. It's how the burner community refers to trash, or to the action of leaving trash "Yeah, I was MOOPing all over the place last night, I should clean up" or "Jeeze, who left all this MOOP at our campsite."

The weekend was _so weird_ for that alone.)

Finally got around to uploading the last two months worth of photos. Which means it is time to make photoposts, yayyyyyy.

First photopost is about food, because ( yay food! )

~Sor
MOOP!


1: Because I get different things out of different relationships, is a lot of it.
2: And if Magus is reading this, you _still_ owe me pancakes that win friends and influence people. Dinosaur shaped or not.