Saph

Hey, brain? The middle of the workday is not the ideal time to have the overwhelming urge to practice the ukulele. Narfi* is not here. It's waiting on the couch in my living room. Wanting to try and figure out the chords for that song I have stuck in my head does not help me do my work. Get it together, brain.


*Yes, I did name my ukulele after a lesser-known child of Loki. Deal with it. :P

Another six miles on the road to Rivendell. FINALLY finished the second day of the hobbits' travels to Rivendell. The sleep on a green floor in the wood, roofed by boughs of trees. To the east a steep shoulder falls, where they can overlook the river valley. The lights of the village of Woodhall can seen below.

They say that they'll get a late start the next day, but that apparently won't slow them down at all. Whew!

Total: 46 of 458 miles to Rivendell (YAY I'M OVER A TENTH OF THE WAY THERE!)

Whew! I feel triumphant. I added seven miles of walking this afternoon, so I'm now 32 miles on my way to Rivendell. Currently, the Hobbits are being menaced by a Black Rider and I'm being menaced by blisters. Ow, my feet.

32/458! Wheeeeeee!

Damn those hobbits move fast. I got two more miles in, tonight, putting me at a total of 22 miles in my Walk to Rivendell, or four miles into the hobbits' second day. HOW ARE THEY SO FAST?

But I should be able to get two more miles in tomorrow. It's supposed to be sunny and 60 degrees. :D

Started the Walk to Rivendell Challenge a few weeks ago. Added two miles today while hiking the Lost Valley up to Eden Falls, which puts me twenty miles into the Hobbits' journey, two miles into their second day (damn those swift hobbits!), into the "Road rolls up and down" section.

Hope I don't get caught by nazgûl.

Wow. It's... been a really long time since I've updated this LJ. I take full responsibility (as I should, because it's my LJ).

Anyway! Meme.

Comment to this post, and I will list five things I associate with you, They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your LJ (or just add a reply back to me). Other people (including me) can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

My words, via skidmo

Kittens: I have always loved cats, and more often than not, they love me back. Fuzzy, warm, adorable, affectionate when they want to be, full of personality, and much less needy than dogs. Ironically, I am also horribly allergic to them. I can take all the antihistamines and decongestants in the world, and still, at some point, I will reach the point where I can no longer sleep because I will simply stop breathing if I don't keep concentrating on doing so. I know this from experience.

Twice in my life, a roommate and I have taken in a kitten, and twice in my life I've gotten to the point where I had to choose between sleeping and breathing. Once in college, where it turned out that the kitten really preferred my company to my roommate's, though my roommate is the one who found/adopted without asking me/wanted to keep the kitten in the first place. Irony. I named the little calico Edelweiss as a kind of in-joke, before my roommate finally took her home to Texas and let me get back to sleeping/breathing. The second time was in grad school, where my roommate and I both agreed to take in the little tortie that had been abandoned near our apartment. She was adorable and affectionate and a delight to have around. We called her Meimei, but after a while it got again to the point where I could not breathe, so we had to take her to the humane society.

Tesla: TESLAAAAAA! *throws bloomers* I've been a fan for years of this RL mad scientist. I read stuff about him, and wonder how he could've been real.He was just so cool. The Tesla character on Sanctuary just solidified my love of him, even though I know the portrayal on the show is nearly completely different than how the man was in RL. It doesn't hurt that J-Yo steals every scene he's in by sheer presence alone (and is really hot. There, I said it.).

Cooking: I am fond of cooking, but I haven't always been. I think it's just since I got out of college that I've taken an interest in experimenting with food. I have a large collection of bookmarked recipes, both online and in cook books I own. My favorite cook books are Cooking for Geeks (though there are relatively few recipes in there for a book of its size. It's mainly a geek's guide to the science behind cooking. It shows you on a molecular level why you can't beat egg whites into a meringue in a plastic bowl, and talks about the temperatures at which specific proteins in steak denature, making a steak "medium" or "well-done") and my 3-ring binder of the 1950 Betty Crocker Cook Book. It's kind of hilarious, full of recipes that no one these days would ever make (Ring of Plenty, I'm looking at you!) and information such as "what is tea?" and tips on how to be a good housewife (lol).

Librarian: It was only in my last year of college that I came to the conclusion that Library Science was the right fuzzy science for me. I was an English major, History minor, who didn't know what she wanted to do after college. I knew I loved learning things, but I loved learning things about theoretical physics just as much as I loved cellular biology, gender politics, literature, technology... anything. I couldn't decide on any one subject or find anything I wanted to do with any one subject. So I realized that the best way to learn things about those subjects might be to put myself in a field where I could also help others learn about them. Librarianship just fit. I've always loved helping others learn, and my altruistic streak was made happy by the feeling that librarianship brought, that by offering information to those who are seeking it, I'm somehow making the world a better, less ignorant place.

I've since taken a job in my state's archives, which has more of a historical bent than most research or public libraries, but has much the same feeling. I work with people who are writing books on historical topics, as well as people who are trying to find out where their families came from, and piece together their genealogy. It's great.

RP: Milliways is my first-ever experience RPing. I've played console RPGs, and some MUDs in the past, but I'd never participated in anything like an LJ-based RPG. It was 2004. I was seventeen, and had just graduated from high school. I'd finished this book series a couple of days before, the Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix, and had loved them. Though to be honest, I'd been annoyed that my favorite character of the series, one of the lesser main-characters whose snark was everpresent, whose aims were unclear and whose loyalties were questionable (my favorites tend to be this. See Tesla, above.) had been made so interesting, but hadn't been developed at all. Too much was left unexplained. I mean, his one major speech about his reasons for what he's doing gets interrupted by the main character attacking the person he's talking to, and we never get to hear the rest of it. I was kind of annoyed.

Then, while reading though Harry Potter fic reccs at copperbadge's LJ, I saw an advertisement for this new, pan-fandom role-playing game. I checked it out. It was awesome. I got in trouble with my parents nearly every day for two weeks for staying on the computer so much, just reading threads and hitting refresh. I snuck out of my room at night after my parents went to bed, to check for new posts. After two weeks of watching, I finally summoned up my courage and created a journal for the character whose story I felt was incomplete, and applied. Haven't looked back since. ^_^

1. Not to die.
2. To be gainfully employed by June.
3. To be a better and more mature person.
4. To finally finish that lace shawl for my mother I started two years ago.
5. To work to be healthier and happier.
6. Not to take people and things I cherish for granted.
7. To be more emotionally aware of those around me.
8. To be more financially responsible.
9. Not to let my sense of snarky humor be easily misconstrued as cruelty.
10. To be more accepting of myself and others.

Happy New Year, world. Let's make it a better one than the last, shall we?

Love to you all.