jinian

Saturday afternoon: Went to a little mall full of Japanese stores. Ate donburi, bought adzuki cream buns, then went to get sewing stuff to repair some evil jeans.

Came home from that and crashed for a bit. Then there was godlike French toast. (Note that I got to eat rushthatspeaks' cooking multiple times, while you likely did not.)

After dark it was still unmanageably hot in the house, so we went out to a re-created fort to experience wind and coolness, which were very nice, and a view of Boston, which was pretty but didn't alleviate my geographic confusion.

Sunday: Breakfast of adzuki cream bun! Delicious. Sitting around sewing and reading can be assumed for all morning times.

Lunch at Mu Lan (Taiwanese) with very good crispy salted chicken and the most gorgeous basil eggplant. The fried basil with the chicken was done using sufficiently advanced technology. A birthday present was acquired and the kitchen is now much more comfortable.

When we were getting ready to go see Moonrise Kingdom, a cat carrier was needed for the outdoors cat to go to the hospital, which was worrisome; he remained poorly the last I heard. The movie was absolutely wonderful, though.

I'm sure I am not the first houseguest to be doing the mending, though it certainly doesn't seem very modern of me. I will fix my sweetie's jeans when I get home, too; it's only fair.

Also from today: Gotye getting the last word.

Monday: We were extras in a movie! There was ice cream (blackberry-lime and vanilla in my case), and new people to meet, and a bizarre MIT dorm, and much walking in the heat (so that I had to be a heroic drink-getter at the Whole Foods, which was strangely Trader-Joe's-like). We also saw an amazing hearse.



(It's a little hard to see, but those are purple velvet drapes with leopard-print bands, and there's a white coffin in there.)

Also gaudior got back, yay.

Tuesday: Grocery shopping, should have taken a nap but streamed some live Yaz and R.E.M. instead, then stayed up until 3am making bao and birthday cake. Also cramps, ugh.

And then Wednesday I had to come home. Such a good trip!

Final installment of reading list:
- Finder: Voice (among the best)
- Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind (holy shit Raccoona Sheldon was hard core)
- Wigwam Bam (reading all of these eventually piecemeal)
- Drops of God v3-4 (Oishinbo-style wine-geeking meets Yakitate!! Japan for insane reactions though thank god less punny; m-pig, I trust your friend E reads this already?)
- Japan As Seen By 17 Creators (highlights: Aurelia Aurita, Fabrice Neaud, Etienne Davodeau, Kan Takahama, really just about all of them)

Your name is Germander Rabbledeen

Congratulations! You had the honor of being a District 9 tribute in the 35th Hunger Games!

You were killed by romantic drama.

http://hungernames.com/

(Honestly, I am mostly excited about the nail polish collection for this movie, but the above cracked me up, so here you go. A little heavy on the herbal names, but fun.)

Between the library and the skate park in Ballard lies a fountain full of marine shells made of cement. (Sea urchin, moon snail, exaggerated limpet, a snail I think they made up.) There are sprays of water that go directly up in between them, and a short wall kids can walk on to get sprayed a little if they don't want to go right in.

I was sitting in the sun, taking a break from reading some Jacky Faber to paint my nails with great concentration. Suddenly I heard a loud baroo? and looked up to find two big, short-haired dogs staring at me. "I don't know," said the person holding their leashes.

"They... like nail polish?"

"I don't know!"

Then she took them over to the fountain, which they feared. Acetone sniffing: ask your pet about it before it gets brain damage.

The "May in Seattle" bit is that, as I was leaving, some kids went in the fountain. Now, other kids had done this in normal clothes, including one who critically examined her sister after they traversed the area and announced that she wasn't wet enough and should go back in, but these kids were different. They were wearing not only their shoes, but also little hats, and... thick quilted jackets. However, they seemed quite happy to be in the water despite it not touching them. (I really wanted to take their picture, but it would've been rude without asking and asking would've been a production, so I describe instead.)

Also we saw Thor and it was really, really pretty: totally worth the big screen for the shots of Asgard via Hubble Telescope alone. Thor was played by a pretty blond man with pretty mascara, but the real badass was Heimdall, who was far more interesting than any other good guy. We found the jotuns a little phoned-in, too much Voldemort and too little fur in my opinion. Also, noted once again, movie scientists make about as much sense as movie anything else. But overall that was one shiny movie. Stay for the credits.

Last Friday: Willy Wonka (1971) in Smell-o-vision at SIFF Cinema with grad friends, subtitled for singing along. The enhancement consisted of some candies and fabric swatches, and the subtitles said when to use which ones: "Chew the gum/ With your mouth open." The best part (and okay, I was a little high, but it was amazing) was in the bubble room part, when the entire audience was also blowing bubbles. So surrounded by wonder, way better than 3D movies. Afterward most of us got some food and I managed to blow someone's mind completely, so that was pretty great too.

Last Saturday: grad Christmas party, complete with someone in a Santa suit, someone afraid of the Santa suit, Kinect dancing game, Ultimate Fighting (did not watch), the Grinch (totally watched), and lots of eggnog. My lemon meringue pie was a hit, though I meant to balance it slightly sweeter; the sugar we have is coarse and fell out of the meringue more than it melted in.

Last Sunday: brunch at Salish Lodge, next to an overwhelmingly full Snoqualmie Falls. The gauge for water flow was at 80-85% of its capacity, and the falls was enormous. ( Largish photos )

And then dinner out for marzipan_pig's birthday, with PIG HATS.

Last Wednesday: did a little work and hung out with my dad.

Yesterday: Tron Legacy in 3D at the Cinerama: geeky and mythic and pretty, and the 3D is mostly good rather than super-gimmicky. Total Bechdel fail, of course. And while "Laser Lebowski" on the Neptune marquee cracked me up, "Return to DOS" incensed me, as "whoami" is clearly UNIX.

Last night: dinner with m-pig; intention to go to an SF reading was foiled by its having been on Wednesday (crap!); instead going to Elliott Bay, reading the Virgin Project comics, and meeting people we knew of old. Figured out what to give my mom for Xmas, thank god. Met a girl with my name, spelled the same!

Tonight: Labyrinth! with grad friends and m-pig. Considering wearing a ballgown.

Saw the Seattle Women's Chorus featuring lithera (and her lovely hair!) this afternoon. The first half was a bit sedate for me, but I really enjoyed the more upeat numbers in the second half. Songs were interspersed with clips from a Rosie O'Donnell docmentary about different types of families; this one's the one that made me laugh out loud.

I was going to go to the pottery studio to practice afterward -- I do not appear to have an aptitude for pottery! -- but I was hungrier and more emotionally drained than I'd expected, so I went to Zak's instead. Still the best milkshakes in town. Now no need to eat for several days.

Currently there is frustration on the home front as I try to have cathartic Studio Ghibli movie-watching alone time: the "new" PS3 has decided it can neither continue playing the DVD nor eject it. Guess I'm glad I got the extended warranty. I want my DVD back, though! It's not readily replaceable. Wouldn't mind finishing FFXIII either, annoyingly linear though it be. [ETA: woooo fixed it! hold down eject while turning on main power, try multiple times if necessary.]

[ETA: Oh also I read A Woman of the Iron People, which is always a wonderful experience. We are so lucky to have Eleanor Arnason.]

Wim is gone and so are the upstairs neighbors, so it's just me in a house that normally holds four humans. As the upstairs cats do not appear to have gone mental yet like last time their people were away, this is awesome. It's been all chilly and rainy here for days now, though. My wrists hurt, stupid weather. It is meant to be August.

Progress:

• Bed pieces are all 100% painted.


• Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo: Pretty cool. A documentary without much narration or overt interviewing, mostly just looking at insect fans in Japan, from commercial collectors to little kids keeping stag beetles as pets, with a few voice-over segments trying to tie love of insects to mono no aware and similar declared elements of the Japanese character. I am happy to know what the "konchu saishu" from the Shonen Knife song means.


• Glee s1: Too many of these people are stupid, but there's singing (even if it's heavy on the Autotune). Cannot stop watching.


• Helvetica: Many people are bigger type geeks than I am, and I just bought a zip sweatshirt that says KERN across the gap and think it's hilarious. Good movie. Thrilled to see Hermann Zapf himself! He made Optima and Palatino! And some of the other interviewees were awesome; I think is was Michael Bierut who killed us dead every time he came on.


• The Invincible Pole Fighter and The Mystery of Chess Boxing: Tremendous fun. Both pretty serious for kung fu movies (though Ghostface Killer was clearly high at all times), both quite well done. I think it's the only time I've seen the Grand Illusion completely sell out; there were chairs in the aisles, and normal occupancy is 70. (The Stranger Suggests listed it, so we knew to get there early.) As usual for the Illusion's special features, there were stories about where the movies came from -- stashed under a stage in a dedicated Shaw Brothers theater in Vancouver Chinatown, and dumpster-dived, in these cases.


• Electronic ARC of Cryoburn: No in-person Ekaterin, alas. I think it's a little better than Diplomatic Immunity. Worth the money!


• Currently have picked all the ripe evilberries from the yard, where they are trying to overrun the plum trees, and am stewing them up with last year's blueberries for something that might be pie filling or just go on ice cream, we'll have to see.


• Cat pee state is improved. We don't think they're doing it actively any more -- a couple days' surveillance (the Urinary Panopticon) showed nothing worse than sock theft from the hamper in progress (burning with cuteness). But good lord the smell just keeps coming up from under. Am seriously considering replacing the carpet-padding.

Unrelated to my life, there have been some really good anti-rape campaigns lately:
http://bitterbuffalo.tumblr.com/post/910431591/whats-this-an-anti-rape-campaign-that-focuses-on
http://thecurvature.com/2010/06/29/scotland-anti-rape-ad-tackles-she-was-asking-for-it-myth/

Lately my head and joints are feeling worse, and I'm starting to have allergy issues enough that I woke up with a nasty sinus headache today. But my foot might possibly be feeling a little better, I'm not sure yet. If I can get that bit fixed so my stride becomes reasonable again, my leg joints and muscles will be much happier. Not walking is frustrating, though.

After days of rain and then days of unpredictable fun weather, it's sunny and utterly clear today, 75F with a delicious breeze. I suspect that cool breezes are the leading cause of sunburn in this world; I was rather counting on the automatic control mechanism of "it is TOO HOT weeding the traffic circle, so I will go inside BEFORE two and a half hours have passed." This is not what happened. Aloe has been applied.

The traffic circle is looking good, though. The little nigellas that reseeded from last year are spindly and many are not surviving even with the unusual amount of rain we've had, but some are taking off now that they're not completely overshadowed by enormous grasses. Definitely putting some salpiglossis out there soon. I've weeded about 2/3 of the way around, and then I have to deal with the middle somehow.

I do not have my replacement Zipcard yet, which is making my plans for today much more annoying. I have to go to my littlest cousin's college graduation party, but I can't get there and back within a reasonable time without a car, and I want to see the "Battle of the Sexes" and "Stag Films" anthologies at the Grand Illusion tonight. Hopefully Wim will get home soon and I can steal his.