You can laugh at me all you want

I have been known to watch some bad movies in my time - Biker Boyz, Torque, Rollerball - wait, I loved Rollerball!

Anyway, dork of dorks that I am I will definitely be seeing the new Fast and the Furious movie. Yes, I know. I did see one and two, skipped three but you can bet when it comes on TBS I'll watch. Nope, this new one has all the same crew as number one so I'm pretty psyched.

In other Vin Diesel hotness news, we'll see if Babylon AD will be playing at a theater near me this weekend. Anyone who wants to join is welcome!

Currently reading : 14 By J. T. Ellison

7:26 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

People are strange

In spite of my current mood, I will not post a bitchy blog yet again. Instead, I merely wanted to comment on the fact that my neighbor is strangely kitted out in duds appropriate for swamp work. Not really sure what's up with that. He's got waders and a full jacket on and carrying a long pole into his backyard. We live in the epitome of suburbia. Backyards here do not flood to mushy swampy goo. Nope, we have about 100 feet across of yard that is about 30 feet deep around the fence (give or take). Add to that the fact that it's at least 95 outside and the guy has to be sweating his balls off. Maybe he's chopping up a body Burbs style and buring it back there. Maybe he's started a baby alligator pond and has dug a marsh. I dunno.

Currently reading : Stuff Dreams Are Made Of By Don Bruns

9:22 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Hm, methinks some "intelligent" people could use a dictionary

I'm all for people making up words. You can do it. No big deal, as long as you realize that your made up word is not a word in anybody's reality other than your own.

It's kind of like fact checking. If you're trying to make a point, get your facts straight. If you can't be bothered, then you're the one who looks like an idiot.

Case in point, I read a post recently where a person who claims to be a K-12 teacher says that she believes that audio books are contributing to the dummying down of America. Hm. Could you possibly mean dumbing down Miss schoolteacher, ma'am?

I have a problem with the whole post, but that's besides the point. If you're hoping to impress upon me the fact that you think that you are smarter than those people who choose to "read" their books on audio, go learn some grammar first. I personally don't care how anyone reads. You can get just as much out of an unabridged audio book as you can out of physically reading a book. Sure I prefer to hold the actual book in my hands and read, but many others enjoy audio books just as much - oh, and I don't think that they would be "reading" nearly as much if they didn't have the opportunity to listen to the books while they're carting kids around or doing housework or commuting to work.

How can that possibly be considered "dummying" down?

Now before you get all defensive on my grumpy sleepy ass, I have to point out that this was not a mistake. This particular person continued to use the word in subsequent responses in spite of the fact that commenters had used "dumbing" in their own various responses to the post. A mistake I can forgive, trying to prove you're smarter than everyone else and continuing to use an "unexisting" word, I can't.

Currently reading : 14 By J. T. Ellison

7:13 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

He must be freaking deaf!

Why is it that my roommate seems to think the entire house will be just as happy to LISTEN to his tv all freaking day as he is to zombie out in front of the damn thing? This is one thing that has always bothered me in this house. In fact, it's bothered me just about my whole damn life. I don't expect anyone to have to turn their tv ridiculously low or anything, I just don't understand how anyone can think that unless everyone in the household is sitting in front of the tv it's ok to turn it up as loud as they freaking please without any consideration as to what anyone else might be doing.

I'm sitting up here on the computer and all of the sudden I hear what sounds like a freaking muppet screeching from downstairs. I don't know what he's watching, I don't care, but hearing the equivalent of fingernails scraping on a chalkboard at that volume is not my idea of fun at all!

Grow the fuck up and have some consideration for others people! Ok, I'm done.

Currently reading : Promenade of the Gods By Koji Suzuki Release date: 2008-08-26

11:00 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Damn you, Fay!

I am at the mercy of hurricane season here and it totally sucks! I still need at least 40 inns to make a decent sized book and now there's a tropical storm over Cuba that's headed straight for Florida! Agh!

Currently reading : Brides of the Impaler (Leisure Fiction) By Edward Lee

3:05 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Stupid Becky!

So I think I knocked something loose on the undercarriage of my car. I can't tell what, though, because I can't actually get under the damn thing to see. It resulted in my driving home in the rain with my hazard lights running on the interstate. Yeah, fun! Whenever I hit a speed over 35, whatever it is starts flopping around and making this terrible noise, almost like a really flat tire - no my tire's not flat.

Anyway, dumbass me hopes that it's not something that will cost an arm and a leg to fix. In fact, it would be totally great if it's something Mike can take care of 'cause even though I do have to bring my car in for maintenance next week, I still don't want to be without a car and every damn thing I bring it in for seems to be something that requires the car to stay in overnight. It's not even 3 years old! I shouldn't be dealing with those kinds of repairs! That was the point in getting the new car in the first place. I think it's all a conspiracy to ruin my life. Kidding, but it does bug me that even something as expensive as a car can't be counted on to have been put together and running properly these days.

Currently watching : Rogue

7:27 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Yet another reason living at sea level is so much better
Current mood: Cupcake Crazy

Yep, it's true. I have yet another reason to wish that I was back home and that is the fact that it is apparently impossible to bake cupcakes in Colorado.

It's true. I have a brand spanking new cupcake cookbook that Mike bought me for my birthday and it will soon belong to my little sister so that I can save my sanity. I don't think that having a damn cupcake should be this much trouble. So, I'll tell you all about my cupcake fiasco and you'll see why.

Let me first say that I have never had any trouble until now with high altitude affecting my cooking. I made some Black Forest Cake Cupcakes around my birthday and the damn things rose so fast that they baked an entire layer of cupcake to the top of the pan and each actual cup-cake had a sunken center. Ok, high altitude. To fix this, I pulled out the handy dandy high altitude baking book and found the table of adjustments (there were no adjustments in the cupcake book itself). Well, too late to save that batch, but I vowed to be prepared next time.

Today I was all set to make Salted Caramel Cupcakes. I made my batter with the adjustment, I filled my cupcake cups 3/4 of the way and I set the timer for half-time. When I checked them they had already overflowed around the edges of each cupcake (still runny batter, too). I took the pan out and scraped all the overflow off and tossed it, then placed the pan back in the oven. You would think that the adjustment would have helped. Furthermore, I assumed that in scooping out a good portion of the batter that the cupcakes might still turn out ok. Nope. Next time I checked, my raw cupcakes (minus a portion of the batter they started off with) had overflowed yet again and raw batter was now dripping onto the bottom of the oven.

Ok, WTF man!!?? I fail to see how decreasing the baking soda and scooping out batter resulted in a worse cupcake catastrophe than the un-adjusted previous recipe. I am just destined to never have a damn cupcake in this godforsaken place!

Ugh!

Currently reading : Blood Eagle By Craig Russell

1:58 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Becky had a pissy fit

Ok, Becky had her own little pity party today. She's still coming to grips with the fact that she's spending an awful lot of time at home alone doing nothing (well, she is reading and that's a good thing), but she really has no regular human contact since she works from home. She's also still upset that everyone is always busy, but she's sorry that she bitched so much this morning.

She's still not calling anyone anymore, though. Phones do work both ways.

4:41 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

very superstitious

I am a strange person. I am well aware of this and even if I weren't plenty of people point it out on a regular basis.

I am highly superstitious. I think that I've mentioned this before, but it's not the type of superstition that leads to me avoid black cats or hold my breath past a graveyard. It's mostly a jinxing superstition. Like if I want something to happen, then I shouldn't talk about it too much or I might jinx it. Of course I knock on wood. No point tempting fate, right?

I also believe in luck. When working on these books, I tend to think that moons are not in the proper alignment or my chi is out of whack or I've got some bad mojo working when I start to get a string of no's or no answers all in a short amount of time. Thanks to this, I kind of have to stop for the day when this happens or I am convinced that I will just get a whole string of like 50 no's.

Not good! I only have about 50 left to contact and I have only received entries from about 40. I'm going to have to do some serious begging. Not cool! With almost 200 inns contacted, you would think the damn thing would be good to go, but no. Over half of the people I called expressed interest and never sent anything back. Every single stinking one of them is going to get yet another contact from me explaining that I have extended the deadline yet again, yada, yada, yada, please send me something or mob bosses are going to bust my kneecaps - or something!

I'm not kidding. This is the frustrating part of the whole project. Actually working on the book itself is quite fun. I get to go through all of the recipes and try to find little filler factoids and stuff. I even try out a lot of the recipes on my own. It's just dragging them in to begin with that's the hard part.

It's also frustrating because this is the first book that I've started from scratch. CA was fine, we had tons of response on that one. GA was a little harder, but I did have a decent base to begin with. FL is just maddening. Ah, well. Back to work. Cross your fingers, light a candle, wave some sage or something and hope that my luck in this matter will improve!

Currently reading : I'm Watching You By Mary Burton

10:48 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Breakingdawnbreakingdawnbreakingdawn!

Ok, just just over 3 hours to go until the midnight release of Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, the final book in the Twilight Saga, well except for Edward's version of Twilight, that is.

I have been reading New Moon off and on today - hey, I'm catching up on Bones as well, and I have normal life stuff to do. I wish I were a kid again so I would just have the summer off. Oh well, then I wouldn't have any money to buy all my fantastic books with!

Anyway, I found out that one of my sisters will be attending the midnight release. My dad volunteered to take her (strange if you know my dad) super cool for her! Seeing as how I haven't finished New Moon, I really don't see a point in my heading out to buy a book at midnight that I can't start when I get home. I'm thinking I can go buy it tomorrow and start it then (finishing 2 and 3 before tomorrow night is definitely doable).

Ah well, back to my book! Oh, and I am amazed at how many people are able to keep things about these books under wraps for those of us who have yet to read them. Granted my immediate group of peers has not read them, but all three of my sisters have and they haven't told me anything about them. I have my suspicions about certain things, but every one of them has come as a surprise thanks to the fact that my sisters for once in their short lives have kept it all a secret! Makes me leery of reviewing them at all. I like to share the joy and surprise by doing my part not telling.

7:23 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment