* Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile"
* I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
* Update your journal with the answers to the questions
* Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions

These questions are from jezebeljade !

1) Will Kevin (and I) really get away with calling your first-born "Rogoth"?
Not over my dead body. Neither will jkray , for that matter.

2) Describe an Epic movie-going experience.
Snakes on a Plane at the Alamo Drafthouse was awesome! They gave out fake snakes, had professional snake handlers with snakes as a demo, and had the film contests entries for "Blanks on a Blank" that were shown before the movie started. The BoaB were AWESOME - giraffe in a popemobile, eagles on a chariot...

3) Tell me about your first forays into the French language. When did you begin learning it and why?
When I was younger, I really looked up to my older brother. I took French initially because he took French, and everyone else was taking Spanish and I wanted to be different. I started in the 7th grade.

4) What book has had the most influence on your life, and how?
It really depends on what point in my life I was at. I remember being really moved/inspired/disturbed (not all applicable to each title) by Conversations with God, Where the Red Fern Grows, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, among many others. I can't really think of any one particular book that was the singular most influential, you know?

5) What is your favorite logic fallacy?
I don't have one, actually! I enjoy reading them...but I've never really thought much about them. :-(

From my twitter

• 01:41 View of fire from an airplane flic.kr/p/7ft82H #
• 01:46 I embroidered this sweet metallic boombox patch for Radio on the airplane flic.kr/p/7ft9NV #
• 01:55 Philadelphia CRAFT flic.kr/p/7ftd4k #

http://feepingcreatures.blogspot.com/2009/11/tropical-bird-dragon.html

As you may know, most feeps don't take super-long to make. The idea here is to keep them simple so I can keep them relatively inexpensive. (And also because simplicity is often underrated.) (And also because I have something of a short attention span and prefer projects I'll actually get around to finishing.)

But I do occasionally like to see what happens when I take some time for a bigger, more detailed project, and that's how this dragon came about. For a couple of years it was my showoff piece at conventions.

Slept in a little: Check
3 mile easy run with strides: Check
Packed bag: Check
Gotten head in game: Well, we're still working on that one.

The Team and I are hitting the road to go do the San Antonio half marathon tomorrow (and two folks doing the full). I just keep telling myself this is not my goal race, and I don't need to worry about it. I'll do what I can do and use it to practice mental strength when things get tough. It'll be my first Rock and Roll event, and I'm prepared to be overwhelmed by the size of it.

And no matter how it goes, by this time tomorrow, I'll be done. (Unless it goes really, really, really, really badly.)

Aaaaand I'm off!

After shadow73's comments, I thought, heck, let's cheat the box cake with some extra large eggs instead of just large. Ok, everything went as planned for cake #1. Pictures will be posted some day, when everything is complete.

Then cake two, the good cake, the chocolate cake... I managed to make it without actually adding the eggs the the batter. At all. I can only claim senility. Needless to say, it was not a success. I have to make one more try tomorrow morning before anyone is up.

On the bright side, I think I've got the process down to an hour or two after the cake is cooled. On the down side, I also forgot to chop the veggies. Ah well, I have uhm... 6 hours tomorrow morning to finish prepping the game and the cakes and the decorations and the-

Good golly, someone just wake me up when the party is done.

*snore*

Every time I doubt my cycling ability, I'm just going to remember this picture. And think, "Well.. at least I've come a long way from there!"

And my bike has gotten a bit sexier.



Old bike picture is courtesy of a flurry of scanning of some pictures I recently found. To see the whole set, click here. Be warned, there's

Jazz Hands!

I've played a few games lately that have made me want to make a film_stills post about them, only they weren't eligible because they weren't films. So I've created game_stills in order to have a place to put them.

The first post is about Fallout 3. Come add your own!

Why didn't anyone tell me that once you have children, your days are often punctuated by dreadful thoughts of losing them? Every news story, book, movie, television show involving a child hurt or dying becomes a possible nightmare. Jeez, people, you gotta keep me clued in on stuff like this.

http://feepingcreatures.blogspot.com/2009/11/magenta-dragon-heron.html

I realize I haven't been concentrating on figurines as much lately, what with all the prep work for the art show last month and the mugs and shirts and things this month, but that will change in the next couple of weeks. New feeps shall be a-baking soon.

My sister can't eat sugar. My mother-in-law can't eat it. And anything that causes me to crave it must have some inherent evilness (only partly kidding there), so that's a big enough tap on the shoulder for me.

Yesterday was Day One, and I ingested probably about 4 grams total thanks to prepackaged foods that were the least of many bad choices in our pantry. Reminder to self: go food shopping. The hardest time seems to be breakfast.

Things that I require in the morning:

--ease of use (that's my user experience jargon...I can handle only about 2-3 steps prep in the morning before I reach my "screw this" threshold)

--protein (or else I will upchuck my vitamins)

If you have any food suggestions that qualify, feel free to let me know. Keep in mind that I'm non-dairy, so no cheese or milk.

I've heard steel-cut oats are good (right, Karen S.?).
Other possibilities...turkey sausage and tortillas.
Maybe I can make and freeze my own breakfast burritos with eggs.

Cheers! (But not Cheerios.)

Okay, NaBloPoMo.. I don't like you, and you don't like me. I'm struggling this year. Posts are forced and uninteresting. So since you're being a pain, I might as well try to use you to my advantage somehow.

We have this room in our house. The room that's not the bedroom and not the office. It's the Other room. It's part sewing room, part workout-stuff room, part.. miscellaneous Other stuff. On the best of days, it's a bit of a disorganized mess. But I've allowed it to really get bad lately. So I'm going to post pictures of it, even though I find them horribly embarrassing. And I'm going to post pictures again at the end of the month. And hopefully that fact will inspire me to clean up sometime between the two postings. I have high hopes! As a bonus, that gets me a post for today, AND a post for sometime at the end of the month. Yay!

So here's the current state. It's not normally this bad, and I could have made it better before taking the pictures, but I thought it'd look more impressive if I showed it at its absolute worst. I may have even thrown some extra crap in there that isn't normally there, for effect.

Sewing stuff. Vacuum cleaner. Clothes that need to be given away. Clothes that need to be put away. A billion bags.


Dress dummy, chewbacca backpack, old yearbooks and D&D manuals and photo albums. Filing cabinet. Giant jar of pennies buried under purses.


Old, very defunct pet gate. Many costumes. A currently-too-small wetsuit. More sewing stuff. Wrapping paper. More bags. Empty shoeboxes. An aerohelmet.


Workout clothes. Shoes. Goggles. More bags. Even more bags. Sunscreen. Swimcaps. A rubber chicken.


Wish me luck!

From my twitter

• 10:37 Went to a super sweet @sublimestitchin book party at Ginger's last night. Those gals are great. Bought the lovely Tara Mcpherson patterns! #
• 10:40 All packed up and about to fly to Philadelphia for the national flat track rollerderby championship! First time to Philly. #

http://feepingcreatures.blogspot.com/2009/11/daily-monster-mug.html

You may recall a couple of months ago I posted the prototype for a feep coffee mug. Well, yesterday I submitted to the printer the final designs for all the new mug, shirts, and shot glasses (yes, I said shot glasses!). If all goes well, I shall have these items in my clutches in a couple of weeks, just in time for Wheatsville.

For obvious reasons, the Daily Monster needed to be on a coffee mug, but the drawing didn't quite fit the template. So I added a bit of feepish heraldry, for is not coffee a bit of a ritualistic indulgence?

I'm not sure how I got so lucky, but my family is just fantastic.

My parents still live in the house I grew up in, Matt and I live about 2 miles away, and in between us, about a mile from each, are my sister and John. We all get along great, we see each other often, and it's just kinda sickeningly wonderful. In a really snarky, sarcastic, obnoxious kinda way. My whole family is very similar to me, so if you don't like my sense of humor, maybe don't come to our family gatherings.

Tonight we went out to dinner for my dad's birthday. My mom had declared a general ban on having our phones out during dinner (Matt and I are still showing off our shiny toys, and my dad is still in the honeymoon phase with his iphone, and Laura generally has hers out). However, someone found some excuse to bring out their phone after the meal, and before we knew it, everyone had theirs out. And mom couldn't object, because she was playing with Laura's phone. Mom is.. very new to smart phones. Like, tonight was the first time she'd played with one. And she has zero text messaging experience. And she's actually a really good typist, but.. maybe needs some practice on the iphone keypad. Here's the conversation we had via text message while sitting at the same table.

Me: Hi, mom!

Mom:
Jo amy

Mom: Go Amit

Mom: J
J

J
J
J
Hi amuy

Mom: Jo amy

Me: Jo mama!

Mom: How you be

Me: I be good

Mom: Ooi love u

Me: Oooooi love u 2

--

Needs a little work, but she'll get there!

Happy birthday, dad!

So, I really dug the original V series.  Just the right amount of campy story, fun writing, budding new actors that now have an embarrissing story and gimicky special effects.  Oh, and Michael Ironside.

The new series, well it is ok so far.  Still too early to tell.  However, I have one big problem.  Visitors have the technology to travel great distances but their best photography technology captures low rez heat blobs.  What, did they not have a Japanese race?  No wonder they are so hostile, a race of Germans that can make high performance vehicles, hell bent on wiping out entire species.

Ok, who did I not offend?  Damn lazy mexicans.

I think that is everyone.

From my twitter

• 12:39 I have spent the last few days playing with batik / wax relief dying. Lots of fun, except for the boiling out the wax part. Huge mess. #

http://feepingcreatures.blogspot.com/2009/11/curly-horned-monster-necklace.html

Oh, sure, ball moss wants you to think it's not carnivorous.

http://feepingcreatures.blogspot.com/2009/11/wheatsville-is-on-let-panic-commence.html

Just got my notification of acceptance for the Wheatsville Arts Festival for this year. Evidently there was a delay in getting notifications out as securing space this year was fairly complicated (the Wheatsville Co-op expanded last year, which means art festival space turned into store space). But they got it worked out and are collaborating with other local businesses along Guadalupe to share their parking lot space. So this year I will apparently be outside I Love Video. More deets as the date approaches (it's Dec. 5-6, by the way).

One of the major things that I changed in my life to lose weight was to eat out less. I started making dinner most nights, making breakfast every day, and taking my lunch to work. So I was fairly surprised when I added it up, and realized I still eat out, on average, 4-5 times a week. On Tuesday night, both Matt and I have evening workouts, so he'll pick up dinner from Chipotle on his way home (mmm, burrito bowl). A few times a month, I'll go out to lunch during the week with my mom and sister. And then the weekend is where I grant myself a little more freedom.. Matt and I will usually meet up for post-workout brunch both Saturday and Sunday, and we'll typically eat out or get take-out Saturday nights.

Adds up quickly.

According to this 2002 article, the average American eats 4.2 meals outside the home, so I guess I'm right on average, and was way above average before. I think I assumed, based on how often I see others going out to lunch (often every day) and going through drive-throughs and getting coffee and a muffin from Starbucks, that people ate out more often.

So how many times a week, honestly, do you eat out/get take out/order in?

When Matt and I met, neither of us was in any way physically active. We both liked hiking, though rarely did it, and that was about it.

Did we both have buried in us the Ironman potential, even if, at the time, we didn't know exactly what an Ironman was? Or what all exactly a triathlon entailed? Did we both have that unconscious desire, and we could sense that in each other so we were drawn together? Or is it just completely random that we both became interested in it after we met?

It's not a huge percentage of people that do an Ironman, and even less that do more than one. What're the odds that two of them would end up as a couple, when they were both computer-gaming slackers* when they met?

*Note: We're still computer-gaming slackers. We just have less time for it now.