So this is the part where I say goodbye forever to my 20s. Yee-haw. For my birthday, I would like an income and a drivers side rear brake light, please. Oh, and sushi. Mmm sushi.

I've recently discovered the joys of a magical manga series about cooking called Oishinbo. I don't generally get into manga for some reason, but this one is particularly exciting. Probably because it makes me really hungry, the food in it is drawn particularly well. Apparently they made it into an anime back in the 80s, but it was never translated into English. The manga started being published again this year, so maybe enough American types will get into the manga to make it financially viable to translate the anime into English (I'd be happy with either dub or sub).

Watched the Passion of Joan of Arc, which was made back in the late 20's, complete with intertitles and orchestra for sound. It was really good, and caused me to sit and read the entire Joan of Arc wikipedia entry afterwards. It also caused me to look up the history of breastfeeding. See, I found it interesting that, in the film at one point, there is a closeup of a baby being breastfed, nipple and all. And I'm not too knowledgeable about older movies, but as far as I knew, they didn't go in for nudity and such back then. So after a cursory glance on the internet, it seems that breastfeeding in public was pretty normal up through the 1940s or so, and then at some point after that it became seen as scandalous or something. It's generally considered legal to do now, but you can still get harassed by random people and asked to cover up and such. My brief poking encountered a case where someone was asked to leave a theme park for doing it in public, and another commented on the fact that she was breastfeeding in an area where children are present. Which is weird, since as children and all, it wasn't that long since they themselves were probably breastfed. And if you're gonna have your kids exposed to nudity, wouldn't that be a good way to do it? Since the kids are more likely then not already learning via semi-nudity from advertising and media and such that breasts are sexual, it seems good to also include opportunities for your kids to learn that they're functional?

And speaking of breasts, I've been having a fabulous last several months, in that the vast majority of my bras fit. As long as I don't get glued to the front of this computer for the duration of the winter, I will hopefully continue that trend. It's kinda useful to be really new to a place and not know much of anyone, well, useful in the lack of Christmas junk food being slogged at me, which I am generally more then happy to eat because it is delicious.

And on a final note, Nanowrimo is going more or less ok. Am at 13126 words right now, need to get to 15,000 by tomorrow night.

It snowed here this morning. Super magical! Not too much, and it didn't stick all well, but it was still exciting. Look, I took pictures:

Poor flowers!


Yay mountains!


In other news, I no longer have any of my text messages. My phone randomly decided to display a message stating that I had no more room for text messages. So I deleted several, a few with pictures attached. This message still displayed. Forgot about it for a bit, then made googoo eyes at Drew until he called AT&T for me to see what was wrong. It's fixed now, and I can receive text messages, but in the process of fixing it all of my old messages were erased. Which is ok I guess, as it's not like I go back and look at them on a regular basis or anything, but still.

So for the past while now, I've done most of my grocery shopping at either Kroger or Walmart, with the occasional side trip to Ukrops. Now, all of these places have the same lid coloring on their milk. 2% milk is always dark blue, and skim milk is light blue. I am now in a situation where I'll be going to Safeway for the majority of my food needs. The problem is with Safeway's milk lids. Their 2% milk is light blue and their skim milk is dark blue. This is a cruel joke to play on those of us who grab the carton based almost entirely on the lid color. Skim milk is a sad, sad substitute for 2% milk. This has happened multiple times now, too. Maybe one of these grocery trips I'll learn. I even considered returning the most recent gallon of milk, but being lazy, I decided to postpone the trip until later in the day. At some point before that time, I impulse ate some cookies, looked in the fridge, and decided that watered down milk was better then no milk. D'oh!

Drew got me to watch the video for Genesis: Land of Confusion, and I now have creepy puppet people hanging out in my head.

I will make bacon sushi soon, and it shall indeed be glorious.

So I decided that Writaur.com needed a pm system. It's actually pretty easy to put together a messaging system when you have a good tutorial to work off of. Albeit, I could have figured one out without the tutorial, but it probably would have taken at least twice as long. Now I've got to figure how to go about sending messages to a set of users without the server deciding that I'm trying to spam people.

On a sad note, I seem to have left my sewing machine in Richmond. Problem is, my parents can't seem to locate said sewing machine either. I'm going to assume that there's some Heisenberg Uncertainty mischief going on here.

I am downloading some Learn Hindi stuff. Once I have some spare time and spare brain space, I think it would be neat/useful to pick up some Hindi. That, and to get back into picking up the Spanish again. And maybe try to revive the dregs of my forgotten high school French. I would like to be able to plug things into the back of my neck and upload them, for greater efficiency. Then I could also learn Kung Fu.

Job hunt is still going as it has been. I am desperately trying to cram as much Cakephp as possible into my head, which is super fun. I also like cramming as much regular cake as possible into my head. If only I could combine the two.

If you have not seen Up, you should go see it immediately, as it is excellent and will make you cry.

I wish August was not ending, as I have a slight dread of the impending fall/winter. Part of this is because a large number of my warmer clothing is still in Richmond. Part of this is because of the shorter days, and how I desperately crave Vitamin D to be happy. My fear of the cold is balanced by my excitement at actually getting some decent snow for a change out here.

I've started using my netbook as a pseudo-kindle. I've got bunches of .pdf files on there, and it's super useful for reading in a car at night. I keep a text file to remember which pages I'm on in which books. It is also super useful for those lonely nights when I desperately want to play 92372034823 versions of scrabble or assorted games involving Tux the Penguin. Good times.

Or rather, the best way is to fail at job-hunting. I've got quite a long list of things I desperately wish I had time to learn, all things that various recruiters or employers were looking for that I had a little of, but not quite enough. And while this is definitely a motivating factor in learning things (my javascript library knowledge is liberally expanding due to job hunt influence), it can be a demotivating factor in terms of becoming overwhelmed by all of the things you do not yet know. That, and you start to feel that no matter how much you learn, you'll always just be a little bit short of the amount of knowledge other people want you to have before they'll hire you. The economic climate only helps this (or hurts this, rather), being that for every job available out there, there exist approximately 892374892374 applicants, many of them who would be overqualified for the job in saner economic times. I do feel bad for those who have recently graduated college, and lack experience, as it must be particularly hard on them. In any case, I am trying to be positive about things, and view the 28372837448923 things I do not know as exciting opportunities to learn.

In other news, I've downloaded some CakePHP action. I'm not really sure what I'm getting into yet, but if it is to php what jquery has been to javascript for me, maybe it will help me more efficiently do some things on writaur.com that I've been meaning to get done.

On a final note, I would really like to go swimming with some stingrays. And they would like to go swimming with me as well. No really, they do, just ask them!

First off, I would like to announce that my underarms smell like pina colada. I got a "tropical island" scented deodorant, and it makes me want to drink whenever I smell it.

So I drive a Kia Rio, and it has a 96 hp and a 28.1 LB / HP ratio. While I am not fully sure what these figures mean, I know for a fact that my car was much happier driving around Richmond then it is driving around in the foothills of the Rockies It struggles up hills and it's often really hard to make it to the speed limit (albeit, the speed limit out here is often 75, but still). I'm thinking that for my next car, I'll probably want to get something with a better engine. And then Drew and I were trying to figure out fuel efficiency for such things, and Google proved no help. So here's a question for anyone that knows about cars: would having a car with a higher horsepower give me better fuel efficiency for driving on hills? I'm sure that, if nothing else, it would make going up the hills more pleasant. However, I'm not really sure of the connection between higher horsepower (or a higher ratio, for that matter) and if you use less gas because of that (or more gas, for that matter). Or if the change in gas usage would be negligible. Any advice is appreciated!

I am so itching for a new camera right now. Mine's stuck at 5.0 mp, and does not zoom worth crap. It was super awesome three years ago though. Too bad a new camera is completely not justifiable when one has no steady income. Especially considering the camera that's got me the most excited right now is about $250. D'oh!

Job hunt is going kinda eh. Heard back from the recruiter about the job I didn't get, the company decided they were looking for more of a senior role. I'm currently waiting to hear back from a recruiter about a position working on an intranet. It requires strong UI stuff, which hopefully I have enough of. We'll see, I suppose.

I am learning that there is such a thing as too much beef. Drew's aunt gets a side of beef on a regular basis, and as a result it is being fed into my system on a regular basis. I try to combat it with fishes, but sometimes resistance is futile when it comes to the Cow Gods.

It finally stopped raining here today. So much for super-dry out here. Hail two days ago! Apparently by this time of year, it's usually really brown. Lush and green right now!

Hope everyone is having a super August so far!

So Drew is currently on a plane back to Richmond. He's got his final exam to take, and then he's all done with school and has his political science degree. Then both of us can be busy not being able to find jobs, yay!

I actually had an interview last Thursday, a nice long phone interview with two different people in the company. I felt confidant about the interview - I had practically all of the skills they were seeking, and even made a point of dabbling in one thing they were looking for that I didn't have. Everything seemed peachy with Interviewer #2, but Interviewer #1 flung questions at me about things that weren't mentioned at all in the job description or by the recruiter. Based on the description, the position was pretty straight up web design stuff (html/css/js), but then I'm getting asked about things like weblogic and struts, neither of which I am familiar with at all. So I'm still fuzzy on what happened, if the job description simply was not as complete as it could be, or if they decided that it would be in their best interest to get someone that had a wider range of skill then what they were initially looking for, or if there was simply some miscommunication. In any case I did not get the job, which is too bad as I had rather enjoyed Interview #2 (it went more like a conversation, and I'd thought I'd gotten a good feeling from the interviewer), and the job (based on the description at least) had sounded interesting and right up my alley. Alas. Someone called me today about another position, don't know all the details yet so we'll see.

Drew and I went to Boulder last weekend and there was a random art festival going on, which was interesting and entirely too expensive. The downtown area fell into a similar category. Manitou Springs seems like hippies + tourists, and Boulder is definitely hippies + yuppies. There was a large stream with some decent rapids which we walked along, along with 8237982374 people and their inflated tubes. The rapids looked really fun, and I'd like to go back and go tubing there sometime. We also meandered outside the town on some random path or another into a canyon-type area, and I climbed a giant rock. My thighs were all in a way after that, but in a good way. I like climbing giant rocks. There are random mesas/buttes nearby, and I want to pack a picnic and climb to the top of one and eat it.

Here are more random photos for your eyeballs' enjoyment.

This is from a nearby construction site, dusk was a good time for pictures there!




Andrew poses beside a mighty cannon.




I'm a cowboy...on a steel horse I ride...and I'm wanted....dead or alive!

So I'm wasting time, as I am want to do when I sit down in front of this computer, and I end up reading some article regarding 90's fashion making a comeback. It mentions scrunchies, and how they're totally coming back. And here I am thinking, "They went away at some point?" See, my hair is massive. It officially reaches my waist now, and is thick in an obnoxious way. I cannot wear many hair accessories as much more then accessories, as they're either too cheap (I've broken many a crappy plastic hairstick in my day) or too insufficient (I've about given up on most clips to do anything major on my head). The same is true for elastic hair bands - not only do they not hold my hair particularly well, but they tend to pull in rather uncomfortable ways. Scrunchies, on the other hand, are stretchy and soft and supportive and super comfortable on my hair. Their elastic is thick and is up to the task of restraining any size mane, as it were.

In any case, I have scrunchies in all sorts of colors, to match whatever outfit I happen to be wearing, and I look forward to wearing them for the next 50-60 years or so.


And now for something completely different: Turbo Heather!



I wish I had one when I was a kid!

So some domains of mine got transferred over to a new server, and the stuff didn't transfer properly, and then my ip got blocked, and so I couldn't access many of the fine junks that I (and hopefully others) enjoy accessing on a regular basis. So sad. It's all back and up and running though, which is good. You see, there's a deal with createspace.com whereupon I can get a free copy of the book I wrote through Nanowrimo.org last November. And I haven't touched the book at all since November. I did go through it with Drew to find typos and stuff that didn't work, I just haven't actually bothered to fix it until now. Which I need to do in the next 36 hours or thereabouts, as the free book deal expires on the beginning of June. Maybe it's anxiety, being perfectly aware of the mediocrity of said book and the enormous effort of rewriting something mediocre into something good. So now I have only enough time to make it a more legible mediocre book, rather then a good book. However, a mediocre book is better then no book, and it does bode well in terms of the fact that, in theory at least, the next book (and hopefully there shall be one at some point) should be a bit less mediocre. In any case, the book lives on one of my websites, and I can finally access said website to edit said book. And I need to make cover art. D'oh! It will likely be something simple, slapped out in Illustrator if I can muster the gumption. Basic and clean often works better then gaudy and overwrought, anyhow.

Last night, Greek festival! Tonight, Greek festival! Saw Morgan and Dee there last night, and will see them again tonight. Saw Melvin for 2 seconds, and then he disappeared, never to be seen again. Saw random LJ friend, and in the time it took me to try to remember how her name was pronounced so I could say 'hi', she'd wandered off. D'oh! Food was good, especially custard whose name I've forgotten. I'm normally not too hot on yellow custards, but this was absolutely delightful and I even liked it more then the baklava. Last night I did the "meat on a stick + green beans" thing, tonight I'll do the "meat + veggies plus tziki in a pita" thing, and it shall be magical. I'll be getting there at 6 or thereabouts if anyone else wants to hop onto that magic carpet ride as well!

Oh yeah, this is a sweet amount of sea sponges. Oooh yeah!

And speaking of which, I tweet now. Or rather, I got a twitter account about a year ago, and recently got bored and have tried actually using it. I'm still wary of the actual utility of it, as it's another way to post in AIM away message or a Facebook status update, but as, given my chosen profession, I have a need to stay on top of all these newfangled Internets, I gotta give it a whirl.

Thusly, add me on Twitter and I'll add you back! I am @ptocheia.

I am currently drinking one of a dying breed. Caffeinated Sparks, how I love you so. We might be down to just a 4-pack now. And when that 4 pack is gone, I shall forever mourn the loss of the delicacy of caffeine +alcohol in one convenient delicious beverage.