March marched by...

Sheesh, March 26th already? And only 55 minutes of it left... Been a busy month. First I went to Iceland. But only for three and a half days. Then I came back. My summary: "Imagine Hawaii. Then take a butter knife and scrape off all the dirt and plants and stuff. Then cover it with snow. That's what I felt Iceland looked like."

I switched teams at work. I am now officially on the API team at Rdio. My brain already feels happier. Am still learning what this new position means for me overall, but at least I'm getting the chance to learn iOS and Android. And writing in so many different languages that are NOT JavaScript. My brain! My brain, it rejoices!

Then I went to Lumi Island for a weekend with Adam (and Adam's friend & his girlfriend). It's always sad visiting Seattle when there's good weather because I get all sad about having left... No Internet access while out there so I brought some yarn.

Now I'm hanging out at home while Adam is in Seattle for a bit. Realized that I, an oh-shit-how-is-this-possible 30 year old, am still scared of the dark and monsters in the dark at times... There was a possum outside last night upsetting the cat who upset me and everything was horrible. And I was scared of the dark. Luckily I have a machete so I could take some comfort in that... Duck does not have a machete and expressed his upset by vomiting. A lot. A little bit on my craft supplies in the TV room that are strewn about. There are few joys when the boyfriend is absent, but craft supplies EVERYWHERE is definitely one of them. (until cat vomit) On a whim, I bought an Oculus Rift dev kit what will ship "some time around July". Am excited.

Another Academie of Magic session took place- in particular my character Olivia's finale. Tears, destruction, guilt, regret, wrath. Just how I like my character arcs to end. Really wish I had a sketch ready to post from that session... Spent this evening cleaning up my basement craft-room & finishing up new green monster instead... So many interest, so little time!

Soon I will fly to Illinois for a long weekend to represent Rdio at HackIllinois.

Clearly I need to post more frequently to avoid these types of long list-y posts.... I apologize.

My Beautiful Bird

BOOM! LOOK AT THAT! Amazing, isn't it? I just got back from my first taxidermy class today and I'm still giddy. SO HAPPY. I'm not saying I reconstructed the best bird ever-- in fact, I think the girl next to me did the best hen ever. I'm just over the moon at how well run and awesome the class was. I learned a lot and feel like if I ever did want to taxidermy another chicken on my own (which I don't believe I will do) I totally could. I love that my bird is tailor posed for the space designated for it. I love my bird more than any number of cooler taxidermy pieces because I constructed it. Me. My hands.

Of course, the smell of chicken haunts me. Am so happy I didn't have a poopy-butt chicken like some of the other girls did... and girls it was. The instructor was a dude but he said that of all the classes he's been teaching through Paxton's Gate, he's only had 5 dudes. Class size is limited to 6 I believe, but we only had 5. The instructor was Geoff Vassallo and the class was run by Paxton's Gate. Pricey, and LONG (6+ hrs) but I would highly recommend it if you've any interest. I don't know if I'd do another bird class (maybe if I could request something smaller?) but there's a squirrel class that I'm rather on the fence about... if anyone else wanted to do it, I believe I'd be interested.

For someone who hasn't handled raw meat much/at all, I think I did remarkably well. I think I was pretty good at, and enjoyed, the basic skinning stuff. Cutting through the muscle & mean wasn't that bad either. The head though... ugh, I was defeated. The instructor did all things involving the head interior for me, which was very nice of him. I'd say that was the best thing about the class-- he'd help as much or as little as you wanted and had a really great attitude the entire time.

I was definitely the most n00b there-- one of the girls had already skinned 2 ducks before (but failed to mount them), one of them had worked for Paxton's Gate before and had a number of dead animals in her freezer, one worked with mounting bones a lot (but never skins), and one was ridiculously gothy and absolutely cool with all the blood & guts & dead-ness. I think the above mounting by the girl who had already skinned 2 animals (and had 3 more in her freezer at home to work with after this class) did a stunning job-- and this after she had come in late and gotten the last bird that no one wanted. This cute little peeking through the wing feathers, head tilt, wide eyes, a lowered tail. So good!

Anyway, my bird is pinned in place with feathers taped up for some quality posing. Will probably take some better pictures later once the rigging can come down. I'm quite fond of my extra touches-- miss-matched eye colors and a number of feathers tucked under her toes, as if she were standing in a barnyard.

I've a number of in-progress posts that are a bit too gorey to post willy-nilly on the Net. Let me know in person if you're interested and I can flip through them/tell you more!

Two fictional stories about not nice people.

I recently went to go see The Wolf of Wall Street and read American Psycho. The first was about a horrible person doing horrible things and getting away from it. So was the second one. American Psycho's horrible acts were far more horrible, but for some reason I found the story much more worth while.

DiCaprio's Belfort was an obvious asshole that I in no way could relate to. Everyone around him was an asshole. There was no fall from grace, no real victims other then the faceless folks on the other side of all those telephone lines, who we only vaguely understand are being hurt.

Ellis's Bateman is an asshole that is a tangled mess of things at his core. His friends are assholes, but in a way that I can almost draw parallels to myself and people around me. There are victims, some are assholes but none deserve what Bateman does to them, described in horribly clear detail.

It's unfair to compare a book to a film given the difference in length (though the movie is 3 hours long!!) and the fact that we can glimps into Bateman's inner narrative (though Belfort does speak directly to the audience a number of times). I can't really recommend either to anyone... though will probably recommend American Psycho. Just... brace yourself. After I saw Pan's Labyrinth there was a Q&A with Guillermo del Toro. When asked about the degree of violence used in the film and the need for it, del Toro responded with something along the lines of "It's like doing a deep tissue massage to the soul, to try and reach the point where you will react to the violence" (a quote lifted from some other Q&A by him). That's American Psycho.

I'm a fan of zombie films for a number of reasons and I feel like if you disassembled a good zombie film, specifically Dawn of the Dead (1978), riffle shuffled bits of it together like a deck of cards, and dealt a new hand you could end up with something like this book.

Rather then mutter on too abstractly or incoherantly, I'll just add a couple quotes from the book that I liked for some reason or another. Also, I'd like to recomment Clippings Converter as a service to manage any Kindle notes or highlights one might make.

“Hey Price,” Preston says. “Do you have one?”
“Yeah,” Price sighs. “If all of your friends are morons is it a felony, a misdemeanor or an act of God if you blow their fucking heads off with a thirty-eight magnum?”
“Not GQ material,” McDermott says. “Try Soldier of Fortune.”
“Or Vanity Fair.” Van Patten.

I’m on the verge of tears by the time we arrive at Pastels since I’m positive we won’t get seated but the table is good, and relief that is almost tidal in scope washes over me in an awesome wave.

For dinner I order the shad-roe ravioli with apple compote as an appetizer and the meat loaf with chèvre and quail-stock sauce for an entrée. She orders the red snapper with violets and pine nuts and for an appetizer a peanut butter soup with smoked duck and mashed squash which sounds strange but is actually quite good.

I was both in awe and horrified with the food described in the book. It was detailed just another faucet of the casts' souless consumerism but... but... but... it's exactly how Adam and I have behave :( All the food so carefully catalogued with ridiculous detail sounded so exciting and good....

J&B I am thinking. Glass of J&B in my right hand I am thinking. Hand I am thinking. Charivari. Shirt from Charivari. Fusilli I am thinking. Jami Gertz I am thinking. I would like to fuck Jami Gertz I am thinking. Porsche 911. A sharpei I am thinking. I would like to own a sharpei. I am twenty-six years old I am thinking. I will be twenty-seven next year. A Valium. I would like a Valium. No, two Valium I am thinking. Cellular phone I am thinking.

“The client had the boudin blanc, the roasted chicken and the cheesecake,” he says.
“Cheesecake?” I say, confused by this plain, alien-sounding list. “What sauce or fruits were on the roasted chicken? What shapes was it cut into?”
“None, Patrick,” he says, also confused. “It was … roasted.”
“And the cheesecake, what flavor? Was it heated?” I say. “Ricotta cheesecake? Goat cheese? Were there flowers or cilantro in it?”
“It was just … regular,” he says, and then, “Patrick, you’re sweating.”
“What did she have?” I ask, ignoring him. “The client’s bimbo.”
“Well, she had the country salad, the scallops and the lemon tart,” Luis says.
“The scallops were grilled? Were they sashimi scallops? In a ceviche of sorts?” I’m asking. “Or were they gratinized?”
“No, Patrick,” Luis says. “They were … broiled.”
It’s silent in the boardroom as I contemplate this, thinking it through before asking, finally, “What’s ‘broiled,’ Luis?”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “I think it involves … a pan.”

and it struck me that I was infinitely better-looking, more successful and richer than this poor bastard would ever be and so with a passing rush of sympathy I smiled and nodded a curt though not impolite good morning

“Doin’ the crossword?” dropping the g in “doing”—a pathetic gesture of intimacy, an irritating stab at forced friendliness.

“It’s okay,” I stress. Something snaps. “You shouldn’t fawn over him.…” I pause before correcting myself. “I mean … me. Okay?”

My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have, countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing.…

The book started off so well and then spiraled so wildly out of control into horror that I'm still left somewhat stunned and confused. Hand waving. I start to ponder whether events were real or all in his head- it's really not conclusive- but then I remind myself that it's all fiction and it doesn't matter. I dwell on Bateman and his self reflection. He loathes those around him but never proves to be anything different then they are. I imagine this inner narrative that is the novel could have been running through all the characters' heads simultaneously.

In conclusion and entirely unrelated, here's some skull sketches I did today during the football game, referenced from my delightful book Skulls .

Christmas Cookies 2013

My friend Suko has a Christmas cookie swap that she has kindly invited me to twice now. Here's the write up of last year's cookie. This year I didn't have a solid game plan until the very last minute. I know I wanted a more savory and perhaps tart/sour cookie. In the end I settled on "Christmas Grinchies", which were a lard based cookie shell and a kiwi paste interior... Sadly, the idea didn't translate into reality as well as I had hoped.

The basic recipe as I half scrawled on on the back of an envelope:

• 1/2 cup white sugar = 100g => 80g
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cup flour = 156g => 175g
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 100g lard (not melted)
• Green food coloring & black poppy seeds to resemble a kiwi
• Spices and stuff... cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla, etc...

This, I believe, was lifted from some basic sugar recipe I found online and then modified. Sadly, it wasn't great. The day before I did a test run where I used my usual lard-cookie recipe ( online recipe found here and involving melting the lard first) and it turned out stellar. But handling the goopie dough had been a real bitch. I should have stuck with what I knew.

The second part was the kiwi paste interior. I gutted a handful of kiwis... 5? 7? (they were lifted from my office) and pureed them with a immersion blender. Poored them in a small pot, added some (but not enough!) agar agar powder and brought to a boil. Then I poured them out into two dishes and let cool/set. In my case I did not weigh the puree nor measure out the agar agar and this was a BAD idea because they did not set firmly enough. My test batch the day before was smaller and had way more agar agar in comparison and they set solid. REALLY solid. So solid that they didn't budge while cooking the cookie. The larger batch I worked with was mushy and barely held its form.

Anyway, to assemble the cookie I rolled the dough into a long log then squared it & chilled it for an hour. Then I cut slices off the log and assembled them around the paste center. Then I cooked them at... 370°? for... 15 min? and it went all to hell. The paste center was not strong enough so each and every carefully assembled square went PHFFFHHFFHffhfhf... and fell over in the oven. Lame.

While that was going on I was compelled to try and add some make some meringue santa hats to gently rest upon the Grinchies. I followed this meringue mushroom recipe directly and was greatly assisted by Adam, who actually wound up doing all the initial whipping by hand. Turns out meringue is suuuuper awesome to make and work with, but really isn't my type of thing. In a futile attempt to cut the sweetness and error back towards tart I added some malic acid to the "red" parts of the santa hats... but I don't think it was really noticeable.

After the required number of cubes were made I had all these leftovers so I made little tiny cookies-- lard cookie base, kiwi paste middle, topped with a puff of meringue.

In the end it wasn't a horrible, horrible, vomit-in-your-mouth failure. But it certainly wasn't a success. I shouldn't have been so stingy with the agar agar and I shouldn't have worked with lard in a style I've no experience with (un-melted). Also, while the cookies were great if you knew what was in them, I found out from my mother's horrified expression that if you're not expecting the paste center, they're not fun to bite into. Makes you think it has a massive uncooked center.

Oh well, there's always next year... and 12 months in the mean time to expand my skill set.

Finding Time

The year is almost over. I appreciate the time I've had recently to spend with my family, friends, crafts, and by myself.

It seems like nearly every day this month had some scheduled activity. Hopefully I'll feel like writing more about it later.

Just wanted to share a fun shot from this afternoon. Sitting in a sunny front room, listening to some great music* and sewing whatever the heck I felt like sewing.

My two current [active] projects are Elodie from the game Long Live The Queen and the scrap fabric quilt planned since Thanksgiving. Turns out my mother made me an amazing quilt for Christmas out of most of the fabric I was scrapping!

I spent all Monday sipping tea, sniffling due to a cold, and cutting 2.5" x 2.5" squares. It was fabulously calming after such a hectic month. When my mother got home from work both eyebrows rose rather dramatically and she asked if I "saw anything I liked". This is amusing because I knew she had made aprons for both my sisters and my sister's roommate. I assumed perhaps I might have been getting an apron too. HA! I love that when the youngest sister arrived home she bee-lined to the fabric pile I was working with. "Wow! Am I getting something? This looks like my kind of fabric!" she exclaimed right away, picking out the crumpled backing fabric for her apron. It was this horrid print of off-white/vaguely yellow cotton with light blue stripes on it. Very prairie kitchen-esque. It's amusing to know what you love and to find out that others know it too. For the record, the quilt's colors are spot on for me. Muted browns and blues, rusty reds, a pinch of gold, and a dash of black.

Other things to cover soon: Christmas cookie swap! Top books & music from this year. Recently watched movie reviews. Shareable code from my last work hackday.

* Apparently everything Lorde does is amazing.

Also listened to: http://asoftmurmur.com/?v=051500000503

The Season

While I frequently get quite depressed before Spring comes around again, I love Fall and early Winter. Which is where we're at right now. Halloween, my birthday, and Thanksgiving always come around in a wave of goodness. Eating, costumes, celebrations with friends and family. I also am quite fond of American Christmas and "The Holidays". While I've no tolerance of any of that religious nonsense, I enjoy the decorations, special color schemes, beautiful gift wrapping, cut trees, and emphasis on lights that "The Holidays" bring.

Had a lovely Thanksgiving this year. PURPLE POTATOES! SO GOOD! (visually that is-- taste wise they were exactly the same as the white potatoes... aka DELICIOUS!) Am wondering how I can work purple potatoes in to some cookies some time soon... It was the first time Adam's mother met my parents, so there was that. I'm looking forward to Christmas, where the whole family (sadly without significant others) will be together again before being blown our separate ways for the rest of the year.

Through casual conversation I have now secured myself access to carve up my mother's fabric collection into tiny squares for quilting purposes (something that I'm not willing to do to *my* precious fabric collection) and I'm quite excited! Just three weeks, three holiday parties, two birthdays, two soccer games, two gingerbread bouts, one table top game, one cookie exchange, and one crab feast to go!

November

A lot has gone on this month. Some of it really good, some of it not great, and some of it just kinda' stressful without being good or bad. I don't think I want to dwell on this month. The good things are worth highlighting though:

I turned 30. It wasn't as horrible as I expected. Adam was super nice to me all weekend long. His breakfast making skills are superior to most restaurants. His gift selection skills are quite expertly honed as well. This year I received a machete and a Cintiq. Both things make me ridiculously pleased. Then we went out to a crazy nice dinner at Sons & Daughters.

_{(a picture of me all dolled up for dinner w/ my awesome new machete)}

Friends and games! Adam and I have picked up Race For The Galaxy again and it's still fanastic. Have been playing D&D with our South Bay friends and it has been great fun! I painted my first miniature! Have been playing The Academie of Magic with other friends- an excellent custom game with fantastic game mechanics. Played Trains with coworkers twice-- it's good to find something not beer or food related to socialize with.

Poked at D3 some through work. It remains awesome. Much like Knockout, I found every question/want I had was easily answered/solved with the library. Sadly I haven't spun apart any of the code to make it share-able since it's rather tightly tied to confidential information at the moment....

A really awesome market has opened around the corner! They have fresh local food of good quality that is relatively novel/is not available at the other local markets. We are now getting Straus milk and it is tasty!

Adam and I saw 12 Years a Slave. It's a good reminder of what a great film is like. Beautiful, well acted, great music... extremely depressing subject matter though. Still, I suggest you see it.

Drawing with my Cintiq is... fantastic. It just feels good. "Fun" doesn't really capture the feeling. It feels good, like I imagine how people who enjoy running feel when they run. It's hard- I'm so badly out of practice doodling I don't even remember how to idly doodle any more... but it feels good to hold the pen and sit at the screen and draw. My joy comes not from the fact that it makes things easier/better but because it just feels right... odd. I look forward to many years with it.

I've been making food things at work with much success! I've started making progress on the free-style cookie! (screw you 1/2/3 ratio! It's 1/1/1.2 sugar/fat/flour I say!) I recently made bacon/banana/oat/black sesame/molasses cookies that were tasty! Also oat/goat ricotta/molasses cookies! They didn't suck!

| My work soccer team finally won a game! First one since I joined!







In less awesome news: _{I've been working too much and letting work follow me home. This has interfered with my ability to fully embrace my Cintiq. There were layoffs at work- I still have a job however. The overall issue of women & engineering has been getting me really down recently. There are no good answers and there are actual problems. Similarly, women & the whole damn word. I lost a really great jacket sometime during the summer and wish I had it now. I couldn't find a skirt I wanted to wear the other morning and started crying. I failed to lose any weight these last couple months and now the holidays approach. I can't find anything I want to read. I will never be able to buy a house (where I want) in San Francisco. I got < 2k words into NaNoWriMo. I continue to feel like I'm on the verge of getting sick (damn tickle in the back of the throat!). I attended 2 great Dr. Sketchy's and still haven't scanned & posted the pictures}

Things.