Something next to normal, that's the thing I'd like to try

Hiya, folks. I took a week off from work and my mom treated me to a lovely and relaxing vacation in Williamsburg for my birthday, which is why I've been MIA lately.

Pre-emptive thank yous for the birthday wishes! I know I saw a few, but I have a zillion tabs open so it may be a while before I get around to them individually. (I'm considering it a stress test for Firefox. How many tabs can I open before it crashes? And how many of those tabs can be gif-laden FMM posts before my computer curls up and dies?)

(Speaking of which, I am SO SAD that I was away for FMM. I did manage to get online a few times and voting was one of my top priorities, lol, but I am now trolling through comments and snagging ALL THE GIFS. Also, LESLIE KNOPE FTW. MAKE IT HAPPEN, YOU GUYS.)

SO. Tell me what you've been up to! Oh, but no spoilers! I have not seen any TV since last week (including tonight's TVD), so shhhhh.

Hiya, folks. Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or, outside the U.S., a totally normal Thursday). Mine was... action-packed. Which is perhaps why it's been a week since I last posted. I needed time to recover.

( and I've got the bruises to show for it )

And now for the rest of my holiday adventures, which are so numerous and awesome that they required TWO whole posts (my therapist would be so proud)!

(Icon especially for Kelly, who immediately craves cupcakes every time I say the word.*g*)

( This one is slightly picspammy )

Hi hi! I am still at my parents' house, and by tomorrow will potentially be snowed in, if the weathermen can be believed. Though, considering how often they are wrong under normal circumstances, you know it's bad when even they admit they have no idea what's going on. (FYI, "The computer models may be flawed" is meteorologist for "We don't know what the hell is going on, but we're stocking up on canned goods.")

Anyway, Christmas was, overall, pretty good. Took me almost 5 hours to get home, and my mom and I actually went out shopping the morning of Christmas Eve because I was too lazy to go out and get gift cards for my cousins. :) We also stopped in PetSmart to buy cat toys (Patches, naturally, is way more interested in the plastic bag it came in than the toy itself) and to torture ourselves with how cute and sad the kitties there are.

My mom had been complaining about having to go to my aunt and uncle's for Christmas Eve this year, because they live an hour away and my parents have been going out there almost every weekend for Sunday dinners for over 20 years, and yet they act like it is SUCH a hardship to come to our house ONCE A YEAR for Christmas. My aunt is always asking to have it at their house, so this year, my mother reluctantly gave in, but sometime in the early afternoon, she realized how nice it was not to have to cook anything. :) Plus, my cousin got engaged last week, and so the future in-laws were also in attendance. It was our first time meeting them, and I actually really like them, even if our combined dietary requirements make meal planning into a bit of an obstacle (there's me with the Crohn's, my cousin doesn't eat cheese or red meat, my uncle doesn't eat fish, and the new fiancee and her father both have Celiac's).

My Christmas gifts went over pretty well, which always makes me happy. I'm one of those people who loves to get the perfect gift for everyone, which is why I spend so much time agonizing over it and hate to fall back on gift cards (even though I always end up getting them for a few people anyway). Object lesson in why I try to avoid such things: this year, my one aunt and I got each other Barnes and Noble gift cards for the exact same amount. It just seems kinda silly, you know?

As for me, I got mostly money and gift cards, clothes (from my fashion-conscious aunt who loves to buy me clothes because she wanted a girl to dress up but only had boys), and a box of groceries from my parents, lol.

For Christmas Day dinner, we went to my OTHER aunt's house, which was a much smaller gathering (my mom's side of the family is pathetically small), so most of the excitement came from my cousin's new dog (a little yippy thing that is cuter than the last one, but still kinda looks like a rat), who is violently opposed to sharing a house with Maude the Devil Cat (you can't really blame him, though, you know? No one wants to live with Maude) and makes his displeasure widely known.

We managed to get rid of my grandmother a full day early, because the weather reports scared her (she's afraid of snow, even though she doesn't have to drive in it), which made things much more peaceful around here, lol. My mother still went on at length about how self-centered and kind of crazy she is, but that's to be expected. Latest evidence: her response to finding out after the fact that I drove home instead of taking the bus was, "Oh, thank God you didn't tell me, otherwise I'd have been worried sick!" BECAUSE I DROVE MY CAR. Which, incidentally, I do pretty often, and have been since the age of 17. And yet, a year and a half later, she is STILL oblivious to the fact that I have a chronic illness, even though I don't even bother to hide it anymore. Still no progress on getting her to declutter her house, despite several pointed remarks about how she needs to clean that shit out.

I expect there to be snow shoveling in my future, as well as hopefully seeing Megan. Tuesday I drive back to DC, with my parents in tow, even though I am kicking them out on Wednesday because Kelly is coming to visit. IDK, I don't think it's worth it to come down for 24 hours, especially since I've just seen them for the last five days and the traffic will be terrible. But hey, maybe I can get them to vacuum the inevitable mess Chelsea will have left for me?

Back from my weekend in New York. Because I was away, I finally broke my posting streak, after 112 days of posting. I did take my laptop with me, but was having too much fun that I couldn't be bothered to update LJ. Ah, well. Guess I can start counting up to another hundred from today. I also missed a milestone this weekend - Saturday, August 28th was my three-year anniversary with LJ.

Lots of talking about my trip under the cut!

( Read more... )

I've been pretending I'm still on vacation, and wanted to eat something that reminded me of places more tropical, so yesterday I cracked open the Key West Bahama Village Jerk Sauce that I bought and marinated some chicken.

It only rained one morning, on our last day in Key West, so we occupied ourselves by going to a shop called Peppers of Key West, where you could sample lots of their products. Between my parents and me, we managed to come home with the jerk sauce, Key Lime Mustard Sauce, Raspberry Wasabi Mustard, and this Key Lime powder stuff that you mix with cream cheese to make a dip. I swear to God, it's like key lime pie on a bagel. Soooo good. I also liked the Pineapple Coconut Mango Tequila Sauce and I think one of the chutneys, but we tried to restrain ourselves.

Definitely check out their website, but be warned - a lot of this stuff is crazy hot! After we'd gone through about a dozen samples, the lady asked us if we'd like to try some of their hotter sauces. My mother said, mouth burning, "You mean... this wasn't the hot stuff?"

You know, when I was a kid, my mom and I used to sing "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" every time we went on vacation, even if we were driving. :) (We also used to sing "Carolina on My Mind" when we did our annual trips to North Carolina, but that's neither here nor there.)

Anyway, I'm leaving for a week in Key West (woo woo Spring Break!), and I'm not taking the laptop, so try not to be too interesting or exciting while I'm gone, okay? I have great faith in you, fandom. Don't let me down. Be boring.

And yes, I'll be gone for my birthday, so please don't think I'm ignoring any birthday wishes. I'll see them when I get back. :)

Oh, and Chuck fans, head on over to flake_sake's post. Best thing I've seen all day.

Also-also, thank you to angearia for the squirrels in love. I can only hope this is the precursor to squirrel!Spuffy.

Just letting you all know I haven't forgotten that I owe a bunch of people posts. I'm just very easily distracted, and so lots of other stuff has gotten posted instead. (Also, I've been doing a fair amount of fic-editing - yay feedback group!) But they're still in the back of my mind, and I'll get to them eventually, I promise.

According to my foolproof record-keeping system (i.e. my brain), I owe gabrielleabelle a post about Obama and urania_calliope a post about spiders from that blogging meme. The truth is, I started the Obama post, but I kind of digressed into a coming-of-age story about hope and cynicism and the influence of politics (what did I say? Easily distracted!!), so I think maybe it needs some editing.

I also owe urania_calliope (again? Oh geez, she's gonna think I'm a slacker) a drabble/ficlet from the timestamp meme forever and a day ago. I kind of want to be disappointed that more people didn't participate in that one, but given that I still haven't written the one request I got, maybe y'all just know me too well.

Anyway, I hope all the other Americans had a nice Memorial Day. I had a pretty busy weekend. Left work early on Friday so I could drive to my parents' house to join a barbecue already in progress. Spent Saturday at a car show, where my dad won a trophy and I got one of those freaky sunburns that's only on one arm and I have a weird shirt line.

The highlight of the weekend was Sunday, when my parents and I went to another barbecue, where it was really, really windy. My mom had a paper plate with tartar sauce on it (they had the BEST crabcakes there), and along came a gust of wind and splat! Plate hit my dad square in the chest. Huge tartar sauce stain on his shirt.

Dad: The only way it would've been better is if it had hit me in the face.
Mom: You know, I'm finally feeling closure after that wedding cake incident.
Dad: What wedding cake incident?
Mom: OUR wedding. You smooshed the cake in my face.
Dad: You really need to let that go.

Fortunately, when we got home, my mother managed to work her magic with Shout spray cleaner, which prompted her to say, "We should reenact the whole thing and film it, and send it to Shout to use as a commercial. This stuff really works!"

We also did some trip planning - we're going to San Francisco and the Napa Valley in July, if anyone has travel tips.

Funny how your flist can become completely overwhelming and totally unmanageable when left unattended for two weeks. I don't think I'll ever recover.

I did have a fabulous trip, though. I am, of course, now completely smitten with an Irish musician named Owen. Other than that, I think the highlight of the trip was the castle ruins (particularly Rock of Cashel and Cahir). I like those kinds of castles much better than the renovated, redecorated ones... it became a running joke with my travel companions, "Oh, this place has furniture. Sorry, you won't like it." We also saw the Cliffs of Moher, Dingle, Dungarvan, Kinsale, Waterford crystal factory, Kilkenney, and a bunch of stuff in Dublin that I'd already seen the first time I went there, but it was new for everyone else.

I also enjoyed the cows and sheep, of which we saw many. In fact, our next door neighbors were cows. It's kinda weird how they all stare at you when you walk past. It's like the Borg or something.

The house we stayed in was beautiful, in An Rinn, outside of Dungarvan, right on a cliff overlooking the sea, surrounded by fields and pastures. The driving was... well, never a dull moment. We rented a Jaguar totally by accident (we reserved a Toyota, but our 50 bamillion suitcases couldn't fit in those midget cars Europeans drive, so we needed a bigger one), and my mom loved driving it. My aunt... not so much, lol. Fortunately, we hardly hit any pedestrians, and the car was returned not too worse for wear. Plus, we had Irish men offering to pump our gas for us in exchange for the chance to sit in the Jag, lol.

It took about a week to really get into the Irish pub scene, but once we did, we had a lot of fun. Spent two nights at a bar in Dungarvan, which is where I met the aforementioned Owen, as well as a couple pubs in Dublin with good Irish music. We managed to make friends and the Irish were all too willing to buy us drinks (yet I still managed to escape without drinking any Guinness).

There were a few minor bumps (we lost our camera, some stress over incompatible travel companions), but overall, we had a brilliant time, and I'd so totally go back.

Anyway, once I've got all the post-vacation RL things sorted out, I'll start slowly but surely plowing through the "Closure" reviews (which, again, holy crap) and post up the last couple chapters. I think I might have won some awards? I have to check my email...