She's actual size.

Garden Plans

atara — Sun, 12 Jan 2020 01:27:53 GMT

Hello, yes, yes, I'm still alive.

I need to jot down what's been in my garden before I 100% forget. XD

In 2018, I built some raised beds in our newly renovated backyard. I ordered a bunch of seeds in a hurry. I also grabbed a few things from the garden centre, and here's what all I planted:

Super Sugar Snap peas

Provider beans (bush variety)

A collection of four squash varieties: Endeavor (green zucchini), Golden Delight (yellow zucchini), Sunburst (patty pan), and Magda (cousa-type summer squash)

Neptune carrots

Black cherry tomatoes

Tiny yellow cherry tomatoes (don't remember variety)

Sweet Millions cherry tomatoes

Random cucumber

I meant to plant pole beans and got all confused when they didn't climb the poles. XD Oops. Also I overloaded the beds a bit and everything went wild. The carrots were buried and never even came up.

In 2019 I scaled things back a bit:

Super Sugar Snap peas

Random pole bean (purchased from garden centre)

Endeavor zucchini

Sunburst patty pans

Black cherry tomato

Sweet millions cherry tomato

Random cucumber

Neptune carrots

Everything had a bit more room, but the tomatoes still went everywhere. The carrots were planted after the peas were taken out, and ever really got going. The pole beans were very slow to start; I don't think that variety was ideal for our climate. I replanted the squash varieties that did well in 2018 and they did well again in 2019.

The plan for 2020 is to scale back to ONE tomato plant (I might even start something from seed to get an interesting variety), plant the same squash, plant the rest of the bush beans I have left since they did pretty well, and stick another cucumber in.

This entry was originally posted at https://atara.dreamwidth.org/624147.html. Please leave any comments there.

RIP Phone

atara — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 02:12:04 GMT

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I've gotten this far in life without having a serious portable technology issue that wasn't self-inflicted.

I've got an S6, and it's been great. We are about 6 months out from the end of our contract, and we're waffling about what we're going to do. MTS was bought by Bell, which basically means our ISP was purchased by the Steaming Asshole of Satan.

Anyway, the battery on my phone has slowly started to go downhill as it aged. Nothing drastic, just what you'd expect from an aging device that gets charged and recharged every day. Well, on (?) Friday I noticed that the battery life took a shit. Like, I would unplug it from the charger, and within 10 minutes the battery would drop from 100% to 80%. If the screen was on you could sit there and just watch the battery percentage tick down.

Normally when this happened I'd just restart the phone, and whatever application had gone rogue would reset and it would be fine. I did that a few times, though, and it didn't seem to help.

Yesterday (Saturday) it got even worse. I used my phone just to play music for about one hour while we were running errands, and it dropped to below 50%. The screen wasn't even on. It got even WORSE in the evening, to the point where I didn't think I could get too far from a charger.

This morning I did some tests: rebooting into safe mode to see if the battery drain was the fault of any 3rd party app (no), and then did a full factory reset. When the reset did nothing and I was still having the same battery issues, we decided it was hardware and that the battery had given up.

The S6 is still a fairly popular phone, even though it's kinda old, so a few places in town still had them in stock. I grabbed a new one from Staples, and spent the rest of the day (and evening) updating it and reinstalling my life onto it.

We'll get my old S6 fixed (it probably just needs a new battery) and then we'll use it as a backup phone. Still... That's $500 I wasn't planning on spending this weekend. :(

This entry was originally posted at https://atara.dreamwidth.org/623987.html. Please leave any comments there.

One Plain Bagel

atara — Tue, 22 May 2018 21:25:39 GMT

This conversation took place last week between me and a staff member at one of Canada's hot brown beverage purveyors.

I order the same thing every day: a large steeped tea with half a milk, and a plain bagel, toasted with butter. Every day. I am boring.

Occasionally they are out of plain bagels, so I'll sub in something else: either another bagel that I like (of which there are few) or a muffin.

While waiting in line, I noticed that the basket for plain bagels in the display case was empty. When I got up to the till, I asked, "Do you have plain bagels today?"

Without hesitating, the employee said, "Yes."

So I ordered my usual breakfast, paid, and stepped to the side.

Not a moment later, she came up to me and said, "Err, we don't have any plain bagels."

Figures. I said, "All right, do you have four cheese bagels?"

"Oh, yes," she said.

"I'll get one of those."

She disappeared, then immedately returned. "We do not have any four cheese bagels either." She then listed off what they did have... None of which I liked.

I ended up getting a muffin instead. But I've learned my lesson. Don't assume that they know why you're asking the question. I wasn't asking out of curiosity, "Do you guys sell plain bagels?" I wanted to know if they had them now, today, for me to order and eat immedately.

So going forward, if I notice the bagel basket is empty, I'll say, "I noticed you do not have plain bagels in the basket. Do you have any more?" and go from there.

Maybe that will be more clear.

This entry was originally posted at https://atara.dreamwidth.org/623750.html. Please leave any comments there.

Backyard - Done!

atara — Mon, 21 May 2018 01:40:41 GMT

For ages we've been trying to get the backyard landscaped.

I resisted for several years. The previous owner did some really insane things involving rebar and sheet metal and concrete, and undoing that was going to be a chore. We knew that we were going to need someone with heavy equipment to do all of the work required to fix it up, and that was going to cost money.

What we hadn't anticipated was the difficulty in just getting someone to come out and look at our yard. Landscapers seem to like big projects, and our yard just didn't qualify. It's an older section of town with smaller lots than the big McMansion burbs, and we had to try several times before finally getting someone to agree to give us an estimate.

Anyway, last summer we finally got someone out to do the work needed. He ended up coming far later in the year than we anticipated, but it was finally done relatively late in the summer. So this summer, we're determined to make the most of our new yard.

Before and after photos, and some explanations, after the cut.

Here is the backyard before we had the work done. As you can see, I'd totally given up on the garden, and the whole thing was consumed by quack grass and bindweed. It was sort of horrible to garden in anyway, since the soil had lots of clay, and the weeds were awful. The landscapers ripped out that bush (it was a haskap bush) but I kept a cutting from it that I will be planting in the yard (I think.)

Here is the yard right after the work was done. What a huge difference! We have a patio, and chips where I wanted to place raised beds. The fence was also a huge improvement, since now we had plenty of privacy from the alley. It's very surprising how much traffic there is up a residential alley at any time of the day.

Anyway, we mostly just left the patio as is last summer. I dragged our loungers out so we had someplace to sit, but other than that we waited until this summer to bother getting anything else for the patio.

A few weeks ago I had a week off work as part of my purchased vacation time, and I used part of that time to put in raised beds and fill them with soil. It was a several-day job, but I got it all done all by myself! (*preen*) I bought corner kits from Lee Valley tools, wood from Home Depot, and soil from a local soil service. So I now have two 4' x 6' beds that are a foot deep. We'll see if that's enough room... I think it will be for now.

We also got a new table and chairs, and an umbrella. I want to hang some old Christmas lights we have along the edge of the garage, and then I think we'll be set. It is so nice sitting out there for dinner. :D

Plonq has already planted his herbs in pots, and tomorrow I'll finish planting the rest of my stuff in the raised beds. This year I'm growing sugar snap peas, carrots, four kinds of summer squash, a cucumber, three cherry tomato plants, and pole beans. Overall it's all come together really well. It feels like a miraculous transformation compared to what we had. :)

This entry was originally posted at https://atara.dreamwidth.org/623446.html. Please leave any comments there.

Still here

atara — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 20:27:34 GMT

*taps mic*

Does this thing still work?

Plonq said it best. There've been all sorts of things I've been meaning to post about here, but by the time I get home and/or otherwise have time to do a post about it, I've run out of steam. I'm trying to do a little better about that. I'm moving away from posting things on Facebook because it's gotten too creepy. I have Twitter, which isn't good for long-form stuff, and Tumblr, which is mostly me fangirling, but otherwise my social media use has dropped off a bit.

Fortunately Plonq has been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with where things are at with us. We went to Furry Migration, visited Ohio, had a quiet Christmas with just the two of us, visited Victoria for New Year's (and had a hell of an adventure along the way), and Plonq is giving some serious thought to retiring this year.

I'm also still on about the giant robots. Plonq gave me permission to buy toys that I wanted, so I've started accumulating a lot of "collector" toys... To the point where we bought some new furniture from IKEA to put these things in. The first ones I grabbed were a new Masterpiece of Sunstreaker, and a reissue of Sideswipe. On their heels I bought a 3rd-party IDW-style Prowl which is very comic-accurate.

They're lots of fun. I'm especially amused that most of the collector toys have an age rating of 16+. I'm not surprised... a lot of them are sort of delicate. I'm also thinking of getting some kind of lightbox so that I can take better photos of them. I'm sure Plonq wouldn't mind that, since he'd also get to use it.

Things have been ticking along ok for me as well. Work is work, with both good days and bad. I detest being a supervisor, but other than that things are good. Several of the people who need to retire are retiring this year (yay!) which should make things easier for us.

This past week we took Merry in to the vet to have her teeth cleaned, and also to check her thyroid levels. We'd suspected she had hyperthyroidism, so we weren't surprised when her levels were off the charts. So she also had her thyroid removed. She's on the mend now. I'm still a bit concerned about her, but she's acting a lot better today than she was yesterday.

Anyway, that's what we've been up to. In theory I have a week off near the end of April, but I might reschedule that by a week or more. I'd planned to use that time to put in raised beds, but with the weather the way it's been I don't think I'll be able to do that yet.

This entry was originally posted at https://atara.dreamwidth.org/623185.html. Please leave any comments there.

Insanely stupid TF Music Videos

atara — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:04:59 GMT

Ok, I need to save these videos someplace because they completely crack me up. As I said elsewhere, this is the type of excellent content that the internet was created for.

Pro-tip: there are HUNDREDS of these videos out there. These are the ones that made me wheeze.

Megatron, Starscream and Soundwave singing Backstreet Boys (I think the animator actually used motion capture on this, because the "freeze" poses near the end are very realistic.)

Shockwave, Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker dance to Poker Face

Soundwave and Megatron recreate that great trumpet dad meme. (Starscream has a bit part as the oven door.)

And ~~two~~ four bonus ones that I didn't share elsewhere:

Blaster and Soundwave dance to Shake it Off.

Soundwave dances to Tik Tok. (Err, and I also found one with Starscream.)

Pretty much all of the Decepticons (from several continuities) dance to Bad Romance.

Thunderstruck. Yeah. :D The best part of this one is Thundercracker duck-walking across the stage at 0:40.

Ok, I had to get that out of my system before I forgot about it. XD

If I learned anything from these videos it's that Soundwave has some freaking MOVES (regardless which continuity he's from).

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/622863.html. Please leave any comments there.

I Can Haz Time Off?

atara — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 02:57:36 GMT

So, my $employer is desperately looking to unload some payroll before the fiscal year is over.

They've already let a whole bunch of managers go, and were supposed to eliminate the executive director layer of management (which didn't actually happen - they just retitled those positions), and there are pay freezes in place for non-unionized staff... But it apparently wasn't enough.

Enter the unionized staff.

They already have a (heavily-managed and limited in scope) program letting us buy days off. However, they've put so many limits on the program that most departments only allow five days off a year. (Which is still great!) You apply in October or so, and then they start deducting the days off you were approved for from your paycheck in January. So, if you get approved for five days off, they divide your pay for five days across all the pay periods for the upcoming year, and deduct it from your paycheck.

It's not a bad deal if you can afford it. It doesn't count against your pensionable earnings, and the days off you buy still count as "in service" days for your seniority. But, like I said, they limit it a lot. The last few years, they basically said that you can only buy days if you have a "once-in-a-lifetime trip or some other life event like a wedding" coming up. So, poop on that.

However, our managers intervened for this year. We're a support department, so we don't really need a specific number of staff members on hand at any given day. We were allowed to buy five days off this year if we wanted. So I did.

That gave me five weeks of time off this year: four vacation plus one purchased. That's allowed us to do things like make it down for Takaza's memorial, and go to Arizona for spring training. We still have three more weeks allocated this year: one coming up in August for Furry Migration, and two weeks we're taking in October to go to Ohio.

But last week we got a memo saying that for a Very Limited Time Only (tm) they were extended the time off purchase. We could buy unlimited days off, for deduction from our payroll between next pay period (late August) and the end of February. Then, whatever days we purchased could be used any time between now and the end of 2018. Act now!

Plonq and I mathed it out. We could afford it to be a bit short for six months, so I applied for fifteen days.

I was immediately approved.

So! Three weeks, plus my four weeks of vacation for 2018, gives me seven weeks off next year... Plus an additional week if the same rules for the time off buy apply next year the same as they did this year. (Not a given.)

We were tossing around the idea of joining some friends on a cruise after Plonq retires in September. Having some extra time to play with might make sense.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/622715.html. Please leave any comments there.

Hosting the Husky

atara — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 00:23:26 GMT

Two weeks ago, we flew down to Chicago for Takaza's memorial party/celebration of life. It was a bit strange knowing that, even though we hadn't seen duncandahusky in several years, we would see him twice within the span of about two weeks.

As part of his Great Western Road Trip, Duncan came to visit! *flail* People come to visit us so rarely that we were simply over the moon to host him. While we aren't set up to actually put anyone up for the night (unless they're related and don't mind sub-optimal sleeping conditions), we can certainly show them around and hopefully give them a good time.

I don't think he realized it when he was booking his trip, but Duncan arrived in Winnipeg on Canada Day, in the 150th birthday of the country. The city was awash in festivals, but we gave most of them a pass on Canada Day itself in favour of feeding him at our place and then going down to the Forks for a fireworks show. We made a minor miscalculation when we did not pick up steaks to barbeque on Friday, and all the good butcher stores were closed on Canada Day. (Oops.) We made do, and he seemed to enjoy the food anyway.

We just missed the friendly annual Canada Day stabbing at the Forks by about an hour, and the fireworks show might have been better if we'd been in the Forks proper. However, I am pretty averse to crowds, so we watched the show from across the river in St. Boniface.

On Sunday, we gave him the whirlwind tour of the city. Unfortunately, as he was only in town for a holiday Sunday, a lot of the really good restaurants were closed. (Duncan will just have to come back some time to try out Deer + Almond.) We took him for brunch at the pavilion in Kildonan Park near our place, and then hit up the most common tourist destinations: Lockport (to see the dam), Assiniboine Park, the Forks, the Ledg, and BDI. We capped off the evening in his hotel room, relaxing (since we'd done a ton of walking) and chatting.

It was so good to see him, and I'm glad that the weather cooperated.

Good driving, Duncan! Looking forward to see what other adventures you get up to on your trip!

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/622545.html. Please leave any comments there.

That Movie Thing...

atara — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 02:18:07 GMT

So, since I started fangirling about the IDW Transformers almost two months ago, I've had at least two people ask me whether I'm excited about the new movie opening this weekend.

In a word: no.

This really goes back to my comments about aesthetics. I don't care how many polygons your cinematic creation is, or how real it looks as it's careening around those trademark Bay explosions... If I don't like how something looks, I'm going to have a really hard time with it.

I saw the first movie, and I may eventually use some of my saved-up Google Play Store credits to rent the later movies, but I simply cannot "dig" the design of the movie Transformers - especially when compared with their comic counterparts.

For example, these two are supposed to be the same character:

I suppose if you squint you can sort of see the resemblance, in that they've both got red on them...? But the facial design of the movie version of the character just says "sex doll" to me. Now, the one on the left is Rodimus, impulsive manchild captain who is slowly learning some Big Lessons about being a leader, while the one of the right is still Hot Rod (before he assumed the mantle of leadership), but they are supposed to be the same person.

Similarly, these two are also supposed to be the same character:

Both of these are Starscream. The one of the left looks like all the other Transformers I know (that is, a robot that can turn into a car or plane or etc), while the one on the right looks like a roll of aluminum foil got into a fight with some garden shears. If I didn't know anything about this franchise, I don't think I would have any idea that these two are supposed to be related, let alone the same person!

So yeah. Bleah. Not really interested in the movies.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/621608.html. Please leave any comments there.

When the Story Isn't Working

atara — Mon, 29 May 2017 02:18:14 GMT

Several months ago I saw that Werewolves Versus were doing a charity zine to support The Southern Povery Law Center.

My immediate reaction was "I could write something!" My second reaction was "Well, what?"

I immediately had a few ideas, most of that were based on stories in the news at the time. I saw several ways that I could tack a werewolf into that situation, and away the brain went.

I've heard other writers say "The problem isn't coming up with ideas. It's getting the idea onto the paper." That's exactly the problem that I was having with this story. I knew what story I wanted to tell, and I was convinced that the first narrator I'd thought of was the best way to tell the story.

I conceived it as a story-within-a-story: an older lady, telling her story to her grandchildren. The initial setting would present the narrator as a (probably) reliable one, as well as make her non-threatening.It felt like it should work...

...except it didn't. No matter how hard I tried, I simply could not get the story to... go. I fought it and wrestled it and argued with it, but it simply did not want to go that way.

It wasn't until I was sitting on an airplane over Nebraska that I had a breakthrough. As I looked out the window, I thought, "Maybe someone else could tell the story." ...and suddenly the whole story fell into place.

I opened my laptop and pounded out almost half the story before we started circling the airport to land.

All I needed was to give myself permission to tell the story in a different way. Instead of forcing my (apparently unwilling) chosen narrator to tell the story, I handed it off to someone else completely. Every story has six sides, right? As soon as I let another narrator have a crack at it, I found that he was willing - eager, even - to tell everyone what had happened.

Of course, I didn't get the story written in time to submit it. In fact, it's still sitting unfinished on my laptop. I gave it a read-through last weekend and thought it was OK* - but I don't think that I'll put the effort into it to clean it up completely. I might finish it up roughly and post it here as a locked post, just so I don't lose the work to a forgotten draft folder someplace. (*OK as in - not bad, but not something I'd want to submit someplace.)

But even though I had the breakthrough and got most of it written out, I still don't think it's a great story. Werewolves... they aren't my thing. So I was writing in characters and a genre that I am not comfortable in. It's like trying to wear someone else's shoes if you need to run out into the rain for something; they work but they don't feel right.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/621510.html. Please leave any comments there.

More Than Meets the Eye

atara — Wed, 10 May 2017 01:35:54 GMT

Ok, finally getting to the point?!

~~A week ago~~ Two and a half weeks ago, I fell down an internet hole.

Ok, ok FINE I was reading fan fiction. Transformer fan fiction. It was snowing and I felt blah and had tea and I was browsing around the internet and - hey, fan fiction! Stuff that was pretty good even! I spent a big chunk of the day avoiding looking outside and reading. After (quite) awhile I realized that I had no idea who any of these characters were that I was reading about. I kept picturing your basic stack of cardboard boxes generic Transformer, even though some of them had descriptive terms tossed in (like door wings). So I looked up the characters and fell down another internet hole, this time on character backgrounds and histories and shows/comics that they appeared in.

While reading, I found references to a comic series that had apparently just wrapped up called More Than Meets the Eye. Reviews on this comic series were overwhelmingly positive, verging into the hysterical. It even won Comics Alliance awards in 2015 and 2016, beating out Saga both times. (I love Saga!!) Finally, the sincerity of the reviews convinced me to pick up the first couple of collections to give them a read on my lunch break at work.

Holy crap. I was immediately sucked in. The robots got me interested, but the characters and story convinced me to stay. I had some trouble in the first few issues keeping afloat, mostly because I didn't know who any of these characters were (and therefore got them all confused). But after I started recognizing certain bots (ooh, Drift has a chevron sort of like Ratchet , but Ratchet's is red, etc) and - even better - recognizing them via the fantastic dialogue, I could not put these stupid comics down.

Like lots of reviews have said, this is the ultimate road-trip comic. It's not all fun and games - someone called it Guardians of the Galaxy meets Game of Thrones. (That is, don't get attached to a particular character. The writer, James Roberts, could kill off anyone you like in the next issue.) But the characters are just people who happen to be robots. They live, fight, love, and die. (Yes, love, I'll get to that later when I talk about specific characters. Don't look at me like that.)

But seriously, a warning: if you're feeling at all fragile, this might not be a good series for you. Because of the reviews I read I was badly spoiled as to what happened in the series, but even then - even when I knew what specific issues things happened in! - some of the really tragic/sad parts felt like a punch in the gut.

I blew through "Season 1" in short order, stumbled my way through the crossover intermission serial (which has convinced me that maybe I'll just stick to this title and its sequel), and then immediately started "Season 2." I finished the series on Friday. I finished reading up to the current issue in the new series (The Lost Light) tonight. I WANT MORE but now I have to wait for the next issue. :(

Fortunately, there are tons of fans out there that have me covered with some amazing fan-made works. One artist did up video trailers for both seasons of MTMTE that are great. ...Look, just watch them, ok? The scenes depicted and the dialogue - no matter how silly or un-Transformers it may seem, came right out of the comics verbatim.

Season 1 trailer:

Season 2 trailer</a>:

I love love love this series. I already bought the hardcover for a prequel spin-off co-written by the same author that got similar exemplary reviews: Last Stand of the Wreckers, and Sins of the Wreckers. The reviews have said that these books are similarly not for the faint-of-heart.

I'm looking forward to reading them.

(The next couple of entries will probably be about my favourite characters in the series so far, so you still have a while longer to listen to me blather on about giant robots...)

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/621079.html. Please leave any comments there.

Transformers!

atara — Sun, 07 May 2017 17:30:48 GMT

Ok, I promise I am finally starting to get to the point.

So, in my last post I mentioned that I really liked robots*. One particular set of pop-culture robot icons that I never really got into, though, were Transformers.

I was 10 when the first Transformers shows aired, and I remember watching them off and on over the years. Some of my friends' brothers had the toys. They were ok - the storylines of the show didn't really grab me, but the toys intrigued me. Transforming them from robot to vehicle mode was like solving a puzzle, and I enjoyed seeing how all the wheels and wings and whatnot from their vehicle mode tucked away when they became a robot. But as for the characters - meh. I knew the names Optimus Prime (good guy), Megatron (bad guy), Starscream (bad guy at first, then it got murky), but they all seemed to be rather homogenous. The good guys were GOOD and the bad guys were EVIL and there was no room for shades of grey. Not unexpected for a kids' cartoon in the 80s, but it just didn't grab me. (I realize now that this was not exactly true later on in the comics, but I never picked one up.)

In university, right around the time I discovered the furry fandom, I started watching Beast Wars. Someone on AFF recommended the show, and I realized it was on right before or after Gargoyles, a show that I was already watching. I was immediately sucked in. The show had a full story arc (instead of the episodic stories that I remembered from the earlier versions of the show) and the characters had personality. Better: there were shades of grey in how characters reacted to things. Characters switched sides, motives were shrouded in mystery, and they had actual relationships instead of just being comrades on one side of a fight or another. I even picked up a couple of the toys: Cheetor, Rattrap and Megatron. (Hey, he turned into a dragon!)

After the series' story arc ended and it became Beast Machines, I continued to watch, but it quickly lost my interest. The animation hadn't improved, and the stories quickly fell back into the good guys/bad guys tropes.

I was still vaguely interested in the Transformers, but mostly just for the aesthetics. I loved the Citroen ads, especially the transformation sequences. (And to place my interest in this ad in a timeline, the first of these ads that I saw is the one at 1:30 in that linked video. That was also not too long after plonq and I started talking online. He's the one who told me that the commercial was filmed (well, the background anyway) in Vancouver.) I loved seeing "real" transformations that people made (like this one). And, of course, I've told the story before of when we were car shopping for a replacement for Plonq's Probe... After seeing a video of the roof retraction on the VW Eos, I exclaimed "It's a Transformer!" ...and we ended up buying one.

One recent addition to the Transformers franchise that I do not like, however, are the Michael Bay Transformers. We went to see the first movie (and I think we've seen the second? I can't recall), and - meh. The stories are ok, if a bit basic, but I detest the design of the characters. They're too busy - too many parts and bits make up their features. (I mean, ugh.) It's like when they redid the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and gave them lips. UGH! Plus, once you've got five different robots that are all various shades of grey or black or silver throwing punches at each other, filmed in Bay's "shaky cam" vision, I basically had to wait until the fight scenes were over to figure out wtf just happened, and who survived.

Anyway, as you can probably guess, I've been working up to talking about a new (to me) part of the Transformer franchise that I've recently discovered and oh my gosh I need to tell people about it because I think Plonq is tired of hearing me blither on about it.

Next entry!

*I totally forgot to mention some robots that I've been particularly fond of lately: the denizens of the Robot Kingdom from Saga. I love them; among my favourite panels from the series are the ones where Prince Robot IV has his mental breakdown, which is displayed on his monitor for all to see. I've also trawled cosplay forums and saw some amazing Saga robot costumes people have done. I've poked at the idea of doing a Princess Robot costume.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/620877.html. Please leave any comments there.

Obsession Qualities

atara — Thu, 04 May 2017 01:00:57 GMT

(I swear this was supposed to be only one entry, maybe two, but once I started writing, I wanted to explain everything. Ah well, what's the point of a journal if you can't engage in pointless and endless navel-gazing, hmm?)

So, now that I've covered specific titles that I obsessed over pre-internet and post-internet, I think I can delve a bit into what I think my brain likes to obsess about.

Err - maybe? I started pondering exactly what makes me go "I want to watch this 100 times," and considered some of my all-time replay list items, and there wasn't any one that stood out as "This is what makes my brain go OOOH." So I jotted down some ideas, mulled it over for a while, and came up a few possibilities. I can't think of any particular title that hit all of these items, but these things seemed to crop up more often than others.

Epic battles. This is totally a thing for me. Serenity vs the Reapers. The Battle of Helm's Deep. Every dogfight in Top Gun. I'm not a huge fan of mano-a-mano fights, like you get in the superhero movies - I usually find those confusing and hard to follow. But big epic battles, especially with big machines, are great.

Giant monsters. Godzilla. King Ghidorah. Destoroyah. The Cloverfield monster. Cthulu. Ents. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. If it's big, I love it. (Hoo boy, please don't take that out of context.) I think this is part of where my love for dragons comes from. I'm quite picky about my dragons, though. Draco from Dragonheart is good. Toothless is good. Falkor from The Neverending Story is a little too fluffy. Maleficent was great. Daenerys' dragons on Game of Thrones are a bit too pointy (and they're wyverns, not dragons).

Robots and mechs. Here we go. Robots! I love robots. But not all robots. Like the dragons, some robots are cool, while others are meh. Robots like this that look like they fell out of an Apple ad just don't interest me. On the other hand, the Major from Ghost in the Shell is awesome, so go figure. (I suspect it's because of the inhuman aspects of her personality, though). The jaegers from Pacific Rim pushed both my "big thing" and "robot" buttons. Patlabor was also great; I think I rented the series from my local video store a hundred times back in the 90s. Mechwarrior 2 was the game that got me to buy my first soundcard for my first computer, and I played the shit out of that game. (I was also shitty AT it, but that's a different story.) HAL, Terminator, Johnny Five, R2D2, the Cylons, Andromeda (from Andromeda), Dog from Half Life 2... If it's an artificial life form or otherwise mechanical, chances are I'm interested in it and might form an obsession... at least for a little while.

As a bit of an aside - I once had a coworker (here, after I moved to Canada) who called me a robot. We got along, and it wasn't a mean thing, just gentle teasing... I didn't mind. I don't even remember why he started calling me that, but it seems funny now.

Most important, though are aesthetics. If I don't like the design of a critter, even if I like the story/character that goes with it, it won't hold my attention. And as plonq can attest, I can be picky.

Next entry: I actually start getting to the point!! (gasp)

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/620686.html. Please leave any comments there.

Past Obsessions: Post-internet

atara — Tue, 02 May 2017 01:33:43 GMT

Continued from my previous entry...

Once the internet came along, I was no longer confined to stuff created canon or "officially." (That is, if I wanted MOAR, I wasn't limited to just picking up the comic adaption and leaving it at that.) Instead, fan-created content because a huge source of entertainment for me, along with the ability to go on video sites and watch favourite clips over and over and over*.

On particular note, not long after I got on the internet in the first place, was Gargoyles. The show was on Disney Afternoon around the time I got my first apartment near campus. I was able to pop home after classes, eat, and change into my work uniform, and Gargoyles just happened to be on right around that time. I loved the show. I loved the stories. I loved the animation. But I was particularly interested in one character: Brooklyn. His character design appealed to me (more than that of the other characters') and he was given a definite character arc throughout the series. He grew as a character, and I loved that, too.

Gargoyles is notable because of where it led. As part of my obsession with the show, I searched using Alta Vista (hah) and Yahoo (hah!) for Gargoyles images. I found a huge treasure-rove of screengrabs of the show and fan-made art on the Gargoyles Image Archive, which was housed on the now-defunct rat.org. That site was also the home of the Squeeky Clean Furry Archive (which later became Yerf), and that site led me to alt.fan.furry and to the fandom in general... In which I met my future husband.

So - thank you, Gargoyles! :)

More recent obsessions include Firefly and the movie Serenity. I must have watched the trailer for Serenity about a million times before we saw the movie, and then we ended up seeing the movie in the theatre twice (or was it three times?) In this case I tended to stick to the canon media, watching key epic scenes over and over.

And then there was Pacific Rim. So dumb. So awesome! OMG! We saw the movie twice (once in standard and again in IMAX 3D), and then I devoured fan-made content, mostly on Tumblr. For example, I was delighted by the ret-con comic in which Cherno Alpha's crew survived and saved everyone else who we thought died in the movie. (And Comrade Squid!) Then once the movie was released on DVD I watched scenes that grabbed me over and over.

I could sit and watch certain clips for hours. ...in fact, getting all of the links together for this post makes me go all skwee for this stuff again. :3 (I had a really hard time picking ONE SCENE from Pacific Rim to use as my "cool!" scene. Keep in mind that the whole movie is ridiculously stupid and it's all like the scene I posted.)

*I am trying to draw the line between shows/movies/books that I obsessed over, vs ones that I simply just liked. For example! I really like Game of Thrones, but I don't consider myself obsessed with it. In fact, I haven't even bothered reading the books, although I've read summaries of the differences between the books and the show.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/620462.html. Please leave any comments there.

Past Obsessions: Pre-internet

atara — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 05:20:49 GMT

So, last week I started reading --

No, wait. I need to go back a bit. Waaay back.

As plonq can likely attest, when I come across some kind of media that I really, really enjoy, I get extremely obsessive about it for a time. Now, this goes beyond "really likes" a show or movie - I'm talking about obsessively rewatching or rereading things just to re-experience them, or consuming every other piece of media associated with the show/book*.

How I went about this obviously changed once the internet came along, so I've split this up into pre-internet and post-internet.

I think the first TV series that I really got into was Wildfire. It was on at some ungodly hour Saturday morning, but I tried to make sure I got up on time to watch it. I've come across a few episodes on the internet over the years and - sheesh, it was really godawful. But the main character had my name, and it had horses and I was in the middle of my big horse phase. Then I remember really getting into The Real Ghostbusters. (Not that abomination with the gorilla. Ugh. No, the good one.) I lost interest once it switched over to become the Slimer show, but the first few seasons were great. This show wasn't on at such a ridiculous hour, but I know I got grumpy if I missed it.

Then came Chip n' Dale: Rescue Rangers. Fantastic show, even if you watch it today, and I collected as many toys and colouring books of the show as I could afford. But that show mostly ended up being a gateway into Tale Spin. Tale Spin was GREAT. I'd started getting into planes and stuff, and this show came along at just the right time. The characters were fun, the writing was fantastic, and there was enough merchandise to get me into just the right amount of trouble with the paper route money. I remember having to eat my way through three or five boxes of Corn Pops to get these little Tale Spin figures; to this day I cannot eat Corn Pops. Bleah.

There was one more TV show that stands out as one that I simply obsessed over: Quantum Leap. I know that if I watched this show today I would strain something rolling my eyes, but when I was in high school I thought it was the Best. Thing. Ever. Science fiction! Jumping into other people's lives and messing with them/making them better! Occasional romance! I didn't miss a single episode, and rewatched them over and over. I even made audio tapes of episodes that I really liked and listened to them in my room when my parents wanted to use the TV.

In terms of movies, there were a few that I taped off of TV and watched over and over and over, to the point of wearing out the tape. First there was Top Gun: planes! hot guys! romance! It was everything my teenaged heart desired. Along the same lines was Always. I don't think it was a huge hit, but it had planes (water bombers), and romance, and paranormal stuff (the main character becomes a ghost). I think the paranormal stuff really intrigued me. Then there was The Abyss. I don't know why this one pushed my buttons, but it certainly did. Aliens! Odd environment! Romance! (Are you seeing a pattern?) I had all three of these movies on tape, and wore out the tapes when I rewound them to rewatch specific scenes that I really enjoyed... Over and over and over.

Also in high school, I read the first few books of Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. The later books lost my interest, but the first few in the series grabbed me. I think I read my copy of Interview with the Vampire to shreds. There were a few other books around that same time that got their claws into me, but one series stands out above the rest: The Dragonriders of Pern.

One summer, around 7th or 8th grade or so, I got sick. (Or something. I don't remember. I don't think it was for very long.) My new best friend loaned me her copy of The White Dragon. She really liked the book, and if I liked that she had more books to loan me. I more than liked it - I loved it. I read the whole trilogy, read The Harper Hall trilogy, read Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern until it was falling into little pieces (I still have that copy, by the way), and as each new book came out I grabbed it and devoured it. My friend was just as obsessed, but she managed to also get her hands on The Atlas of Pern, The People of Pern (which I still consider to be a lovely art book), and The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern. We both read it all and wanted more. But there wasn't any more - we read it all!

So without knowing that it would later be called "fan fiction," we started writing our own stories... Starring our high-school selves as the main characters, of course. We (cue burning embarrassment) incorporated the guys we had crushes on into our stories, and wandered well off the canon's path in terms of plot. It was great fun for us at the time, good writing practice, and gave me the opportunity to think constantly about the books that I loved so much.

Anyway, the next titles that are starting to come up in my mind now are ones that were around after I'd gotten on the internet. It definitely changed my focus on what I concentrated on and how I went about it. Next entry!

*I am trying to draw the line between shows/movies/books that I obsessed over, vs ones that I simply just liked. For example! I really like the Discworld books, but I don't consider myself obsessive over them. In fact, there are a few that I haven't read yet, and I know there's a whole world of Discworld fan fiction that I've never even dipped my toe into: I just don't care enough to.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/620142.html. Please leave any comments there.

Ghost in the Shell: Movie

atara — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 03:12:08 GMT

I've been a fan of the Ghost in the Shell franchise for a long time. I mean, I bought a GitS t-shirt from freaking Columbia House. (I still have it, by the way.) I had the movie on video, and recently bought it on DVD after we started purging our video collection. About five years ago I really got into the Stand Alone Complex series, and eventually also roped plonq into watching it as well. Together we burned through all those episodes and related movies, and have just recently moved onto the Arise series. (Not as good, but still interesting.)

So I was super excited when I first heard that they were coming out with a live action GitS movie. Excitement tempered with caution, of course, but how bad could it be??

...

The first teaser trailers were great, but after watching the full trailers I really started to have some doubts. And it didn't even have anything to do with the "whitewashing" of the cast. As far as the Major is concerned, she could have been played by someone who was blue for all I cared. The Major is a cyborg, and could look however she wanted to look. In canon she sometimes shifts to other bodies when she's undercover. So I didn't have any problems with that part.

No, my problem was that the whole point of the original GitS movies was looking forward to what humanity could become with cyberization. In the original movie (and later, the series), the Major didn't dwell (much) on where she came from. She knew where she came from and how she got to where she was in the story. She was very much more interested in the here and now, and how she could move forward to reach her goals.

But the trailers quickly made it clear that it was going to be a standard "mystery origin story" Hollywood story (TV Tropes link warning). "Where did I come from? What did they do to me? Why am I here?" etc

Ugh.

However, I still wanted to see it. So last week we went out to see if before it disappeared from theatres.

And - well, I'll give it this much. It was goddamned pretty. Some of the scenes that were almost shot-for-shot remakes of the original movie were epic. Two exceptions: the spider-tank scene at the end is one of my favourite scenes from the original movie, and the live-action movie just didn't hit the right notes for me. And she was too mad in the scene in the water - in the original she is almost clinically emotionless while beating the crap out of the hacked guy.

The story, though.... Yawn.

I think it was at about the halfway point in the movie when I realized what they were doing. They were grabbing little bits of plot and characters from not just the original movie, but the series as well, and cobbled it together into a new story. It's almost as if someone with very few original ideas decided to write a fan fiction of the show. But instead of coming up with something original, they took their favourite part of the movie, and this episode, and that other episode, and sewed everything together into a new narrative. I spent the rest of the movie playing "spot the reference," picking out bits of various shows and movies.

In an interview, Scarlett Johansson called the movie a "love song to the original." I think I'd rather call it a really expensive piece of fanfiction.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/619947.html. Please leave any comments there.

Arizona

atara — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 03:06:13 GMT

Trying to get caught up on some stuff, here. Did I mention we went to Arizona?

After Cleveland's defeat in the World Series, I thought it would be neat to get down to spring training this year. I've never been, but my parents and uncle have gone a few times - both while they were in Florida and after they moved to Arizona. Additionally, our department was finally given permission to "buy" extra time off again (up to five days, with the cost spread between all your paychecks from January to December - it's a good deal if you like extra time off). So while we were doing our Christmas video conference with my family, I decided to see if there was any interest in going again this year.

"So, we're just throwing this idea around," I said. "But would you guys be interested in doing spring training this year?"

My dad demurred. "It's gotten really expensive," he said. "They realized they can make a lot of money, and more people are going, so you end up paying more for tickets and hotels and everything else now."

"Ok," I said. "No biggie. With plonq's schedule still undecided, we're not really sure we're even in a position to go. And I haven't even spoken to my manager about time off yet."

Then my dad turned to my uncle. "Well, would you be interested in going?"

"Of course," my uncle said.

"We'll think about it and let you know," my dad said, and we moved on to other topics.

Literally four days later, my dad leaves a message on our answering machine: "I booked a hotel room for you from March 23-March 29. Would that work for you? Let me know if it's not, right away, please."

I was not sure what part of "we're just tossing this idea around" means "please book us a room," but there you are.

Anyway, it worked out. I got the time off, Plonq was not sent off to the wilds of Canada for more training or deployment, and we got someone to watch our cats for us.

The trip itself was nice. We spent a few days in Tuscon sightseeing, and managed to meet up with a couple who used to live next door to us when I was growing up. I hadn't seen them in 20ish years, so it was nice catching up. Then we went back up to Phoenix to catch some baseball games. Of course, it was while we were at the first of those games that we got the awful news about Takaza, so the rest of that game is a bit of a fog.

The second game was a World Series rematch, and Cleveland came out on top, 4-3. I took a picture of the scoreboard so that I could pretend it was game seven.

BUT there was one thing that I really want to record for memory's sake: our run in with the US Border Patrol.

Papers Please

With the US administration getting crazier and crazier by the day, I was starting to feel very nervous about flying into the US. I didn't want to be put in the position of having to give my social media passwords to the immigration officals, and I also didn't want them going through my phone. I gave some thought to reactivating my old S3 to use as a "burner phone," or buying a cheapo Andoid tablet to take in place of my Surface, but ran out of time to do any of that.

Anyway, we were basically waved through customs on our way into the US. I'm not sure if we had an easier time because we do customs in Canada (since we do pre-clearance at Canadian airports), but we had no problems.

But a few days into our trip, while we were on our way to Kitt's Peak, we passed a US Border Patrol checkpoint on the highway. There's only one road running between Tuscon and the observatory, and it's a little two-lane highway. They were focused on the traffic heading the other way, so we just cruised through and went up to the peak. (It's a neat place to visit, by the way - recommended in you're in the area.) On our way back, though, we were forced to stop at the checkpoint.

Now, we travel to the states a lot, to visit family, do some shopping, and to attend events. As soon as we get to our hotel, we stash our passports in our hotel room and leave them there. Carrying around a passport everyplace is just asking to lose it. We've never needed it after we've left the border area... Until now.

I was driving, and I pulled up to the checkpoint. We both rolled down our windows, since there was another guy standing at Plonq's window. There was a third officer standing behind the guy at my window. There was also a guy with a dog.

"So," said the officer, looking first into the back seat and then at us. "Is everyone in the vehicle an American citizen?"

"I am a dual US/Canadian citizen, and he -" I gestured at Plonq - "is Canadian."

"Canadian, huh," he said. "Passport, please."

"I don't have it on me," said Plonq. "I have my driver's licence, though."

"You don't have it? Where is your passport?" asked the officer. The guy at Plonq's window leaned down to peer in more closely.

"It's in our hotel room," I said. Plonq mentioned again that he had his driver's licence.

"See," said the officer, his tone becoming remarkably snotty. "Your foreign driver's licence doesn't prove anything to me. I need to see your passport."

"Well, I don't have it," said Plonq, shrugging. "Like I said, it's in our hotel room. I didn't think I'd need it since we weren't crossing a border."

"Well, you really should carry your passport with you," said the officer. "Because without it, we could - you know - bring you in, roll you, and detain you until you were able to prove to our satisfaction that you are permitted to be in the country."

Roll you. He actually said roll you.

"So what are you doing here?" he continued.

"We're just visiting," I said.

"Who are you visiting?"

"Well - no one," I said. "We're visiting here. Arizona. We're tourists." Fuck it all, I suck at talking to people in uniforms, especially when they're being nasty. "We're visting with my parents. They're in the car behind us."

The border guard rolled his eyes and sighed. "Are they Canadians too?"

"No. They're American..."

By this time Plonq had dug his driver's licence out of his pocket and handed it over. "Well, this is all I have."

The officer took the licence and read out Plonq's full name as if it was the most distasteful thing he'd ever had to read. Then he handed it back and said, "Well, Mister Plonq, this doesn't prove anything to me. I'm going to let you go this time, but in the future, make sure to carry your passport with you. The next guy you run across might not be as nice."

Oh fuck you, you condescending asshole. No, I didn't say that.

I said thanks, and rolled forward. They questioned my parents and uncle briefly and we were all on our way. I found out later that the first thing out of the guard's mouth was "So apparently there's a car full of Canadians in front of you."

"Thank god we're white," Plonq said once we were well clear of the checkpoint.

So do we really have to carry our passports with us when we're in the States? I discussed this with a lot with coworkers after I got back. No one had heard this rule, except for one lady whose son goes on cycling trips to the exact area where we were. She said that they either need to carry their passports with them in their support van while they're cycling, or carry a photocopy of their passport.

After some more research, it sounds like this is a phenomenon that mostly occurs in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. So, I guess we know where to avoid.

Stasi drama aside, Arizona was a nice place to visit. But we decided that we wouldn't want to live there. There are very few trees, and once you get away from the mountains, the landscapes feel really bleak. I'll stick with my snow for now.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/619567.html. Please leave any comments there.

It's Not Sand in My Eyes

atara — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 02:36:57 GMT

(Copying from Facebook, because I think it belongs here just as much as it belongs there.)

On Sunday, while we were in Arizona, we lost a dear friend, suddenly and very unexpectedly.Takaza passed away from a heart attack; he was two years younger than I am. And while I am bereft at the loss of a great friend, I am simply devastated for his husband duncandahusky. When we brought them up in conversation, it was always “Takaza and Duncan” or “Duncan and Takaza.” Speaking of one without the other is like trying to talk about a single sciss instead of a pair of scissors.

Takaza and Duncan helped run many of the conventions we attended in the Chicago area. They were the driving force between those two amazing cruises we took to Alaska. The two of them also graciously opened their home to plonq and I whenever we passed through the area on our way to or from Ohio, giving us a chance to spend a day or two to visit. The last time we saw Takaza was in 2015, when he played solo host to his wayward Canadian friends because Duncan was out of the country on business. And while we hadn’t seen them in over two years, through the magic of social media we were in almost constant contact.

Takaza, you were mischievous rascal with a heart of gold, and you were so loved. And Duncan, all of our love and hugs. We’re here for you.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/619515.html. Please leave any comments there.

Democracy is Hard

atara — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 03:53:42 GMT

I hate calling people I don't know. Hate it. Haaaaaaaaaaate. It. Which is why I love sites like Skip the Dishes, where I can order food AND pay for it AND have it delivered - all without having to call a anyone. It's great.

And herein lies reason #629 to dislike the Head Cheeto: all of the goddamn phone calls I'm now expected to make.

Prior to tonight, I'd yet to call anyone. I had wanted to, but I was concerned that they would see my area code and assume that I'm some random yutz calling from Canada to interfere in US politics. I mean, I am a random yutz, but I'm also a US citizen. But I didn't call because I hate explaining shit.

But for fucks sake, every time I look at Twitter or pull up the news there's some new "OMFG WHAT NOW" thing happening and it's starting to get to me. My coworkers have stopped asking me "wtf" and now just incline their heads towards me sympathetically.

So tonight, I called. Reportedly, one of Ohio's senators is on the fence about confirming DeVos for Secretary of Education. And yes, after Tillerson, with all his Russian and corporate baggage, got confirmed for Secretary of State, quibbling over the education portfolio seems petty.But holy shit, I have to do something. I called. It's late, so there was no one there, but the machine said to leave a message, so I did. I said, "Hi, my name is [name] and I am a constituent from [hometown]. I am a US citizen currently residing outside the US. I am calling to express my opposition to the confirmation of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. Thanks for your time."

And then I hung up.

It took 30 seconds, but god, I hated every moment of it. I really needed to read that "Shy Person's Guide to Calling Representatives" that rustitobuck posted. Afterwards I took a deep breath and relaxed... and I realized that I should probably call again tomorrow night on a different issue, because fuck this administration.

But if this whole debacle has done anything, it's gotten me politically-minded now. Last night we attended an open house in our neighbourhood for a planned "active transportation" upgrade to infrastructure in our area. We dutifully read all of the boards, chatted with the project guys, and I just took the survey to indicate that we are looking foward to seeing this project completed. In all it took about twenty minutes of our time, and I feel better for having expressed my opinion.

And now, today I see that I have another federal government whose case I need to get on. The Liberals campaigned on electoral reform, and now they are reneging on their platform promise.

...COME ON. UGHGH. Now I need to write/call my MP to tell her what I think about her party pulling a fast one.

Democracy is hard. :(

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/619027.html. Please leave any comments there.

Weekend Recap and Nostalgia

atara — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 02:48:25 GMT

On Friday, plonq had a dentist appointment, so he rode into town with me and caught the bus home. While crossing our street, he slipped on the frictionless sheen the plows have left and came down hard on his elbow and hip. Fortunately, his jacket protected his elbow from being shattered.

On Saturday, we got a fair amount done despite his soreness. The main thing was that we took the tree down. (Yes, it was still up. Shut up.) The living room is now just about back to where it was before Christmas, except that there's still a huge pile of miscellaneous stuff on the love seat. I plan to rectify that eventually.

On Sunday, we went for a walk on the River Trail. They only have about 2km open right now, but the weather was balmy (compared to the -50 windchill horrorshow we'd seen earlier in the week) and by the time we left the place was just packed. I'm glad we decided to go there right after brunch; if we'd gone in the afternoon (like apparently half the city did) I think we'd have turned around and gone home instead. Plonq was still sore but I think it help his hip to get moving rather than sitting around like a bump.

Last night, I read this post on McMansion Hell on kit homes. I started wondering about the house I grew up in back in Ohio, so I followed the instructions to see whether it might have been a purchased kit home.

On first glance, though, the house I grew up in was far older than most of the catalogues available online to look up old kit homes, so I would have had to do more digging to get the information and, frankly, I ran out of steam. What did interest me, though, were the real estate photos from the most recent listing of the house about six years ago.

Something of note: many times when I'm reading a book and they start describing a situation in a house, this is the house I picture in my brain. The layout of the living room/dining room/kitchen along with the bathroom and bedrooms upstairs feature in many books I've read.

The higher resolution photos mostly just showed the exterior of the house, along with a sunroom they'd added and the living room. It felt weird to see other people's furniture in a room that I remembered so well. It also took me a little while to realize that the reason there seemed to be a "new" huge oak tree in the back yard was because they'd replaced the single-car garage with a double-car garage, so the tree was much closer to the garage than I remembered.

But then I found the house on another site, with lower-resolution photos, but many more of them... Include all of the upstairs bedrooms, the kitchen and dining room.

I puzzled over some of the photos, trying to place them. Oh, I see, they knocked out a wall in the dining room to add french doors onto a sunroom, and added a pass-thru from the dining room to the kitchen. Oh! The kitchen looks strange because they removed the back door - that makes sense, since they added another huge door in the dining room to the same sunroom.

A plain bedroom with two windows - where was this? Oh, wow, this was the first room I shared with my sister. My mom's sewing room, that was mostly unchanged, and my parents' bedroom was now a spare room. I boggled at how small all of the bedrooms looked. The bathroom had been redone with new fixtures, but it still featured a door onto nothing (or the roof of the sunroom, depending on how far down you wanted to step.)

Then there was a shot of a staircase with a huge arched window. I could not place it at all. Where was this? It wasn't until I looked at the exterior shot of the house again that I realized they'd added a huge dormer in the attic staircase, going up to what was the attic bedroom that I shared with my sister after my parents had finished it. Now it looked like it served as a master bedoom.

Finally, I paged back to the living room shots, amused. A modern flat-screen TV sat exactly where our TV had stood for years. Some things just don't change, I guess.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/618993.html. Please leave any comments there.

On Being Indispensible

atara — Mon, 09 Jan 2017 03:34:00 GMT

Last week was a week of looking for tables to flip over at work. We are back to the whims and whimsies of management who treat their (fairly well-paid, knowledgeable and professional) communications staff like ghost writers, and don't take advice on messaging, timing or audience research.

Deep breath, remind myself that even if they disregard every goddamn thing I say I still get paid, and move on. (And try to forget that when they disregard our advice, we are the ones who end up cleaning up the mess and public embarrassment caused by someone's ego.)

Anyway, today we decided to attend church for the first time in a while. We'd gone on Christmas Eve, of course, but it's awkward attending while plonq is on call. Plus, many of the recent services were lay-led. These are hit-or-miss, and we usually only attend if the topic looks especially interesting. Since we hadn't gone in a while and the topic looked vague interesting, we decided to go today.

While we were cruising down Broadway Avenue, I heard my phone bloop in the backseat, indicating that someone had texted me. I was planning to Skype with my sister later in the day so that I could order Girl Scout cookies from my niece, so I didn't give it much though. As I pulled into the parking lot, though, my phone started ringing. The car's Bluetooth kicked in and I picked up the call as I backed into a spot.

"Hello, atara," a male voice said.

I had no idea who it was. "Hello... who is this?"

It was a manager at work. (We have two managers in our area. Mine is on vacation, and the other one was calling me.) He was extremely apologetic about calling me, but they'd had a Major Disaster at work and needed me to call into the conference call in 10 minutes. "Are you someplace where you can call?" he asked.

"I'm at church," I said.

"You're at church, PERFECT." I am still super amused by his reaction, since he was already feeling bad about getting me involved. I am hourly, and am not on call. The fact that he called me while I was at church made him feel even more uncomfortable.

Why did they need me? Because no one else on their level knew how to get a communication out using our usual channels. Getting information to internal staff is pretty straightforward, but getting info out to our business partners is not that intuitive.

I am guessing that in the next week or so I will be showing our managers the details instructions we already have on creating and posting communications... And they will then immediately forget that they know how to do this. Again.

Meanwhile, I get to go in early tomorrow to deal with the aftermath of whatever the hell happened. At least I get to leave early.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/618732.html. Please leave any comments there.

Auld Lang Dumpster Fire

atara — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 05:06:29 GMT

So, last year I obviously didn't think much about 2015. Oh, sweet summer child. Little did I know..

Enough has been said about the ongoing disasters in the world outside our little bubble inside of it, things were not awesome either. Mostly that revolved around some health issues and work issues for plonq. Because of his job, our lives have been turned upside down with him being alternately sent to Calgary for long stretches and being placed on call while he's at home, which limits what we can do after work hours.

We did manage to get away a few times, though. We did a two-week trek to the west coast, spending some time just outside of Jasper, and then bopping over to Vancouver Island and Vancouver before heading home. As part of that trip, we realized we needed to find some alternate arrangements for the cats while we were away. So we booked them into a ritzy cat hotel that I think they hated. They were very happy to be home again.

In August I surprised Plonq with a trip to Hecla Island. It's not too far away from Winnipeg, and I think we'd like to do it again sometime. Going someplace so close that didn't involve a border did not kick my anxiety into high gear, so I think places around us for quick getaways would be nice this coming summer... If we can.

In September, we went to Furry Migration for the first time. That was fun, and if we aren't doing Midwest Furfest again this year (which seems likely given the unpredictability of Plonq's schedule), FM is on our list for a do-again. It's small, with the pros and cons that that involves, but it's also within a fairly easy driving distance... Just down to Minneapolis. On our way back we stopped and stocked up on some of the usual things from Fargo: Morningstar Farms soysage and Raisin Nut Bran. Mmm.

We did not manage to get the backyard hardscaped like we'd planned. I am really, really hoping to get that done this year, if only so that I can finally have a garden again. Once they are done fixing all the craziness back there, I want to put in some raised beds so that I can grow my own veggies again.

And, of course, I hardly mentioned anything on LJ about how things were going, with the exception of our trips and other large things. I want to fix that for next year.

But, a housekeeping note... As you can see by the footer on this entry, I am now cross-posting between LJ and Dreamwidth. With the recent move of the LJ servers to Russia, I thought it was best to start hedging my bets. I don't blog much (if any!) about US/Russian relationships or anything having to do with Ukraine or Crimea, but it would be a shame if 13 years of entries went up in smoke because SUP decided that the English version of the site wasn't worth doing.

So, my entries will appear on both sites, but comments will only be permitted on DW from here out. (All of my previous entries - I think - have been ported over. I'm sure I'll find a hole someplace, though.)

Onward to 2017. May it not be as sucktastic as its predecessor.

This entry was originally posted at http://atara.dreamwidth.org/618477.html. Please leave any comments there.

Failidailies

atara — Sat, 31 Dec 2016 05:53:41 GMT

So that was December, huh? I'm not sure what happened to it.

We prepped for Christmas, Christmas came, and Christmas is still hanging around a bit. We're doing the annual video conference with my family tomorrow, since it didn't work out to do it over the actual holiday, so there will be more Christmas and presents for us on New Years Eve.

Aside from that, we had a routine but quiet Christmas. I made a vast quantity of cookies the week before Christmas: lemon squares, reverse chocolate chip, oatmeal cranberry, peppermint shortbread, chocolate cayenne, and peanut butter. Crazier, I made them all in one night. That took forever, but it was so satisfying when I was done.

We also worked our way through this year's Craft Beer Advent Calendar, which was a wondrous thing. This was the first year we'd managed to get our hands on one, since usually they sold out before we even knew they were available. They upped the quantity produced again this year, so we managed to snag one. It was a really nice mix of beers, and only a few we considered swill. I want to pull all of the bottles back out of the case once more and line them up to get a shot of the variety of bottles and labels.

While we both had a full four days off over Christmas, plonq was on call for work. This limited what we could actually do. But we did make it out to the Christmas Eve service at church, and then we listened to The Shepherd while munching on an improvised charcutiere board. We also watched A Christmas Story for the first time in several years.

On Christmas we rolled out of bed leisurely and opened our gifts to each other. In the afternoon we had dronon over for Christmas dinner of ham, roasted root veggies, kale salad, homemade buns, and company. We hadn't gotten a chance to catch up with him in a while so it was good to be able to spend some time with him.

It started snowing Christmas night and into Boxing Day. All told we got over a foot of snow, on top of the snow we'd already received. The city just finished its plowing operations today (five days later!) so of course an Alberta Clipper came through this afternoon and dropped a few more centimeters on us.

Also over the holiday weekend, I made our 2016 Christmas ornament. I am inordinately proud of it.

One more day in this year of serious infamy.

Happy Holidailies!

Snow

atara — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 03:46:05 GMT

So, it snowed.

And snowed. And snowed.

This was a pretty good snow for Winnipeg. Usually the snow we get is dry and pebbly. It snows some, and then you spend the next week shoveling the same snow over and over again as it blows around like sand. So while you might only get two or three inches, it feels like more because it drifts easily.

Today, though, we got (essentially) wet, lake-effect snow. A weird front stalled just south of us, drawn moisture off the lakes to the north down over the city. It was heavy and sticky, and will make excellent snowmen. It was also heavy, so plonq got the snowblower going so that we didn't have to spend all night shoveling.

All told, we got 8 or 9 inches today. More is expected overnight, and the winds are supposed to pick up. I suspect the drive in tomorrow morning will be just as hairy as my drive home this evening.

Aah, the joys of living in a northern clime.

Happy Holidailies!

Holi-kinda-dailies

atara — Sun, 04 Dec 2016 05:17:44 GMT

Well, I'm off to a GREAT start on Holidailies. First entry! (Oops.)

plonq and I have both been remarkably busy at work this week. He's been busy because he's been away for so long and because he's on call. So he's stuck trying to catch up while still handling all the on call stuff. As for me, we're just busy. Everyone is trying to get their stuff done/approved/out the door before the end of the year, so there is a lot of running around right now.

We had a half-assed To Do list today, and we knocked off most of it. We needed batteries for the kitchen and bathroom scales, and I needed shampoo. The cats needed their special prescription food and a refill on their arthritis medicine, and the car needed gas. We managed to get all of that done, and fed us and managed a trip to the Forks just to wander around.

I think I would have liked to walk around outside a bit more, but the wind had turned bitter (even though it technically wasn't all that cold outside), and it was crazy dark. We're into that time of year when I always think it's later than it actually is, because it's very dark very early.

I also declared that it's officially the Christmas season by putting the flannel Christmas sheets on the bed. ^.^

Happy Holidailies!