Good/Bad

[curgoth]

Good/Bad:

Good: Shipment from ThinkGeek; I now have a samurai umbrella, 3 monitor mounted mirrors for work, a coffe cup power inverter that gives me 1 usb power socket and 2 standard power plugs for the car, two power squids, and laser scissors.

Bad: My lungs hate me today.

Good: Managed three good solid workouts this week. In bodycombat, the instructor took my request and worked one of my favourite song/exercise combos in. Also, next time the schedule shifts, she's also taking my suggestion to have a thursday night class, which a) works perfectly with my schedule, and b) means it'll be a full hour class instead of the truncated 45 minute classes we have at lunch.

Bad: Due to excessive caffeine, my guts also hate me today. (The caffeine usually helps with the lungs).

Good: Contact Dance is coming along well. I think by the end of this course, I might actually feel comfortable enough to try a Jam. Though the timing sucks for me.

Bad: The appartment is reaching terrifying levels of messy. We have a moth infestation, though I think (hope!) that they're the sort that eat our food instead of our clothes.

Good: My Indigo shipment also came in - a book on electronics, Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, and a couple non-fictions on superheroes.

Bad: Still having periodic issues with the jaw. Hopefully the dentist on Tuesday will help.

Good: Cafeteria food this week has included meatloaf wrapped in thick slices of bacon with mashed potato and veggies, and veal saltimbocca (sp? basically veal cutlets with fancy ham on top) with a baked potato and veggies. This is why 52 weeks of music and lunch will be hard - the cafeteria food here is *good*.

Good: Despite the good food, I seem to have lost a little bit of weight.

Bad: Despite having just moved into this cube on Monday, I am moving again March 5th, and probably again two weeks after that. I found out about the second move after I'd unpacked everything. The new cube has two walls instead of the three I am used to.

Good: The number of moves is to ensure that we don't end up in "tripods", where they cut the current cubes to 2/3 of their original size, so you can't back up without smacking into the person behind you (where the third wall ought to be). Move 2 has our current cubes tripodded, while move 3 has us move over a couple desks to cube that will not get the tripod treatment.

Comments

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

We seem to have somewhat similar tastes in reading - Boneshaker is highly placed on my to-read list at the moment.

Also, I recently got around to reading China Miéville's King Rat and Perdido Street Station (and just picked up the The Scar from the library this week), and very much agree with the comment you made about him some while back - really, really good writer but really, really depressing.

It occurred to me while reading PSS that you could make a drinking game out of Miéville's writing style - one drink for every metaphorical reference to death, rot, disease or bodily wastes, two for every literal, non-metaphorical reference. If you are still conscious after a chapter or two, you weren't paying close enough attention to the text.

On the moth thing - I hate food moths almost as much as clothing moths. But they are at least slightly less of a headache to get rid of. You just need to get a bunch of mason jars and other similar containers (which can be found in bulk at Canadian Tire etc.), and stick all your grains, flours, cereals and anything else similar into them (in the process, dumping anything you find that's already infested). Once all their food sources are sealed away in airtight containers, they starve.

Best thing about it: you only ever have to do it once (the go-through-all-your-cupboards part, anyway), and then just get in the habit of keeping stuff that way, saving any jars you come across that seem like a useful size for putting future stuff in. I still keep pretty much everything in my kitchen cupboards in jars, after having a moth infestation in the kitchen several years ago. It's also good for deterring other forms of kitchen wildlife, like cockroaches, and keeps stuff a little fresher.

And really, once you've spent a day sorting through bulk bags full of rice and flour and what not that are crawling with larva, the site of anything like that NOT in a bugproof jar will probably squick you for years to come, which makes the habit easier to maintain. Sometimes mental trauma is actually useful.

[curgoth]

The really frustrating thing is that the moths came along about a month after we'd finally gotten rid of flour beetles. We purged most of our grains, put new stuff in sealed jars, etc. We've gotten sloppy since, though, and I think the moths are eating different things than the beetles did.

What we really need to do is pull everything off all the shelves, wash everything, inspect all food products, and put everything in airtight jars. And do our dishes more promptly.

The trouble is, we're badly enough off that that is a job that'll take more than a weekend.

[rdi.livejournal.com]

I love China Miéville. And his writing's OK too. :-) Just finished re-reading...pretty much everything, I think, except UnLunDun (which I just read) and The City and The City (which I'm about to read.)

The drinking game is an interesting idea but I don't think my liver would ever forgive me.

[curgoth]

Every time the proletariat is oppressed, do a shot?
Every time a new power, magic or technology is subverted by the powerful to further oppress the proletariat, do a shot?

[rdi.livejournal.com]

Every time the proletariat win a pyrrhic victory against the powerful, drain the bottle.

[mylostmarbles.livejournal.com]

I might be insanely jealous of your umbrella. I might mug you for it if I see you carrying it... Maybe.

[curgoth]

Epic umbrella fight!

[audreyovisual.livejournal.com]

More about the moth thing - we had them plaguing us last fall and spent hours going through everything in the cupboards. I discovered that they really like nuts (almonds, sunflower seeds, etc. were FREAKING CIVILIZATIONS IN A JAR because they CAN get into screw-tops and packaged foods if they are left alone long enough). We put all that stuff in the fridge now. The squick is a mighty teacher indeed, my friend.

Good luck.