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Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in
Seiber's InsaneJournal:
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | |
| 10:29 am | I hate traveling. Last night was gorgeous, but given the events of the last 24 hours I'm starting to think Cambridge intended it as some sort of bribe to make me stay. Today, it got a bit more forceful. First off, apparently my flight left at 3:45 and not 4:25 as was stated on the website. This wouldn't have been a huge deal if the bus hadn't gotten stuck in traffic for ten minutes on the way there. As it was, I missed the checkin for a flight I didn't know I was late for. Through some mad luck, they decided to book me onto the actual 4:25 flight, which was going to JFK rather than Newark (the geographic equivalent of going to Cambridge rather than London, as far as I can tell). For a non-modest fee, I'll add, but my parents didn't sound too pissed about it. By the time that mess got finished, I was right on the cusp of the checkin deadline and paranoid as all fuck. I have a habit of gently biting my fingers or hands when I get really upset--I think today was the first time I've actually broken the skin. Even after all that I barely got to the flight on time. The gate was right down at the very end of the concourse and I had to do a lot of running with a very heavy backpack, and I think I made it in with about ten minutes to spare. Not nearly enough time to get a sandwich, so I was starving between wheaties for breakfast and the airplane dinner an hour and a half in. Not that the horrific self-loathing/nerves issue didn't twist my stomach even after I'd eaten. So I get in to JFK, get through customs with no problems. The handle on my suitcase is even more broken and one of the pockets on the outside tore, so now there's textbook hanging out of it, but I soldier through and drag both suitcases upstairs again. Then it's one bus ride to Manhattan, then a swap and another bus ride to Newark Airport, where I should have been in the first place, and then it's an airtrain + hotel shuttle to get to the damn hotel already. All that because of a twenty minute delay and some personal idiocy. And in a disgusting insult added to injury, the fedora I bought on my first trip to England got left on the bus from JFK. Pfeh. I swear, when I get home I'm just going to go hide in my room for the rest of the week. |
| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | |
| 3:40 am | *melts* England. ENGLAND. What the heck. I'm freezing half the year, and now it's so damn hot that I can't sleep because I'm melting at every point of contact between myself and the bed. I leave the window open with shade up and the cold gets through along with the noise and the light so I still can't sleep. What must I do to appease you, oh fickle gods of British weather? |
| Friday, June 26th, 2009 | |
| 8:35 pm | *comes in purring from the rain* And that is how you do a proper storm. Marks off for the light thunder and lightning, but high marks for intensity and length and bonus for that soft, warm sogginess afterwards. |
| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | |
| 4:00 pm | *presses button* That was easy. I like Dr. Constable, he is made of nice. I went in and talked to him, and he had me bring up another copy of the assignment (which led to another moment of panic, as the USB piece with the paper on it had somehow lost itself behind the minifridge and it took me a while to find it). For some reason not only did he not get the paper, he didn't even get the script which said "put Seibergrade here". Very odd. He's going to grade it proper and put that in as the regular grade, so it should be fine unless Helmore explodes or something. |
| Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | |
| 11:11 pm | AAGH. I looked up my grade results online, and the only one that's come back is my Researching Social Issues grade. Deferred. Failed. A complete zero on my assignment because for some reason the records are showing that I didn't turn the assignment in at all. And I know that's wrong because I totally did and I could prove it if I could provide the receipt from my turning it in at the iCentre which I can't find. I emailed the teacher, maybe they'll grant me a bit of leniency (especially considering that it doesn't even show up that I did the in-class exam, which I do know I was there for), but what the fuck. Way to ruin my weekend there, guys. EDIT: Receipt has been found behind my bed. *flopdsded* That'll keep my credibility, at least. |
| Friday, June 19th, 2009 | |
| 3:05 pm | Fair, part 2 And here is the fun part of the fair, the metal-clad people beating each other about the head and torso with long hard objects. In the interest of giving credit where credit is due, the group's apparently known as Swords of Chivalry and they do a lot of reenactment type things. ( Cut for a serious load of pics. ) I got toasty as all get out afterwards, but the sunburn was worth it. I wish we had stuff this cool back home. |
| 10:09 am | Fair, part 1 The things I see in this city. An hour ago I woke up to find a window washing brush tapping on my window like it wanted money. Sorry I'm late again, but here are the pictures from the fair last weekend. I'm putting up the non-combat pictures from last week's fair first, because there's a lot of pictures and this is simpler. ( Cut for the obvious. ) Next time: Swords, shiny things, and people who won't stop falling over. |
| Saturday, June 13th, 2009 | |
| 11:02 pm | If you can't have any brains, at least have some consideration. Either the pub next door has started serving really bad beer or really, really good beer. Usually I hear loud drunken laughter or singing, sometimes even some guitar music if I get lucky, but now everyone's just wearily stumbling around the streets. It's actually a bit depressing, like they're not even alive anymore. Someone break out the Red Bulls and Elvis and perk these guys up a bit, they should be whistling and trying to hump the fenceposts at this point in the evening. Not that I couldn't do with a bit of a drink myself, at the moment. The French guy who lives across the hall came stumbling in an hour ago with some friend of his holding him up and he looked like absolute shit, I think he might have been throwing up. His eyes were all red, like he had pinkeye or something, it was really freakish to look at. I felt sorry for him until he perked up again. And I know he was perky because I could hear this loud "oh god!" and then thudding and screaming like a murder was going on rather than the only scream-worthy activity that occurs in student housing that isn't related to videogames or sports. Goddamnit, French guy. I live here too, you could try to keep it down while you're going at it. Even after they quieted down enough for me to go do the dishes without permanent mental scarring (gag, maybe? Bit late to think of that, guys) they kept making these horrific squealching noises, like someone chewing very messily. I don't even want to know what they were doing to make that kind of noise. Some kink that only they and the internet know of. Now he's just playing his music again, or at least I think so. All I can hear is the bass and he's got it so high that it's just this slow, dull thudding noise again and again like someone's beating against the door trying to get out. Jerk. Current Mood: hungry Current Music: Monsters Keep Me Company - Lordi |
| 6:33 pm | Pirates of the Cursed Seas: My newest bit of awesome. I have ships! Itty bitty punch-out cardboard ships with masts and sails and flavor text that contains awesome. ...why yes, I have another bit of 'verse to play around with now. *goes to make chompy-chompy motions with the Salient's claws again* |
| Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | |
| 11:34 pm | Update on the alien egg sac: I went back to the doctor, who basically told me the same thing as last time--multinodular goiter, not malignant, no real point in doing anything about it unless it gets bigger and becomes bothersome. My mom thinks I ought to have it out when I go to the states, which won't be the worst thing in the world and it's probably better than me fussing with it all the gods-be-damned time. When I signed up for this trip, I didn't think my most common field trip would be to the inside of Addenbrookes. Between this and the therapy, I'm really starting to hate the bus ride. <_< (And Mom? STOP TALKING. I can handle this. Stop giving me random advice on stuff that I don't need and don't care about, it's not like you can do anything from the states anyway. Stfu.) |
| Monday, June 8th, 2009 | |
| 5:33 pm | Whoo! An attractive man just knocked on my door and gave me a bottle of white wine and a box of Belgian chocolates. Our kitchen needs to win contests more often. |
| Thursday, June 4th, 2009 | |
| 2:49 pm | So beautiful... Assassin's Creed II gameplay demo. No words can express the awesome. I...I may have to get an XBox360 at some point. Just for this. |
| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | |
| 11:10 pm | My cultural background is not your playtoy. So while wandering the comments of the most recent Slacktivist post, I came up with this particular nugget of idiocy that required a bit of Jew rage. Delivered with very little context. Along the lines of prohibited foods, in the 9th LB book, Desecration, Nicky defiles the Temple in Jerusalem by riding atop an enormous pig. One of the thousands of onlookers wonders why. "I don't get it," a man in front of Buck said, his accent German. "What's he doing?" "Putting all previous religions in their places, Freidrich!" his wife said, her eyes glued to the scene. "Even Christianity. Especially Christianity." "But what's with the pig?" "Christianity has Jewish roots," she said, still not looking at him. "What's more offensive to a Jew than an animal he's not allowed to eat?" As a Jew who observes the prohibition against eating pork, I don't find pigs or any other traif animals to be offensive. And I don't know any Jews who do. Among the things that I do find offensive false stereotypes of Jews -- especially by Christian religious leaders who think they have the slightest clue about what Jews actually think and believe. In addition to the above, let me tally up what is wrong with this idiocy. 1. The Antichrist is riding on a pig. There is no way Mr. Carpathia making that look dignified. I'm not sure anyone can make riding on a pig dignified, I don't care what kind of magic mind control powers they have. 2. We don't find pigs offensive because we can't eat them. In fact, we don't find the concept of 'pig' offensive at all, any more than most people would find the concept of 'cockroach' or 'rattlesnake' offensive just because they find eating them distasteful. We're forbidden from eating them or having much to do with them in general because they're unclean, much like shrimp, carrion birds, menstruating women, and people with skin diseases. Legion aside, pigs are not demonic entities. 2a. I've seen the word 'offensive' misused before in Christian propaganda before, usually in the context of nonChristian/atheist calling some tenet of the Christian religion (or in one case, some weird guy being a vampire until he was redeemed by Jesus) offensive. I don't think they quite understand that being offended is a far different thing than disagreeing or finding the idea completely idiotic. But since the word brings up images of people's delicate sensibilities being injured for no good reason, they keep using it. 3. Once again, although I shouldn't find it surprising in either this series or this section of the religion, everything comes back to Christianity. Defiling the Temple Antiochus-style? Totally a jab against the people who have no religious prohibition against pork or doctrinal tie to the Temple in Jerusalem. In these things, the Jews are never there just to be Jews. We're there to be the chosen people, to be the people God originally touched and therefore put on a pedestal or used to get themselves closer to God. It's like going to your boyfriend's ex for sex tips. 4. Ugh. I admit to not having the closest of emotional connections to Judaism, but I absolutely hate when people appropriate it for their own purposes, even in the most positive of senses. Yes, go ahead and support Israel all you like, but don't do it because enough Jews there will cast 'Summon Jesus' or because you have some kind of Jew fetish that means its existance is a universal positive no matter the consequences. The same goes for the Jews for Jesus dickwads who go around proclaiming themselves as Jews (but better!) despite the entirety of the actual Jewish race knowing that they're bloody posers. *pauses for breath* Peh. So it's a hot button for me, I'm sorry. But it was a necessary rant. Here, have some entertainment. A bit of education: (Useless trivia of the day: The rabbis have already ruled on this subject. If the amount of traif is less than 1/60th of the total amount of food, then it's still considered kosher.) And lulz: One of my favorite podcasts is Best of the Left (http://www.bestoftheleftpodcast.com/) |
| 11:27 am | *flop* London Expo, whoo! So very, very glad I went with ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} oxbridgefemme, it was the most awesome thing in the history of fanstuff ever and we need to have it more. With shiny costumes and everything.( Pictures, pictures, everywhere. May need some IDs, I don't know some of these characters. ) |
| Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | |
| 7:32 pm | Injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. So, after waiting an hour and a half, getting an ultrasound on my neck (kinda sticky from the gel, but okay), having anesthetic shot up into my nose, having an endoscope stuck up said nose and down into my throat (a very singular experience and one I don't care to repeat), getting a needle stuck in my neck to draw out some cells to send to the labs (which I dealt with very stoically by means of lying back and thinking of Blackout), the doctor finally told me that he believes the swelling is... ( Drumroll please. ) |
| Monday, May 18th, 2009 | |
| 12:23 pm | Picpost If only in the interest of cow and punting related ridiculousness, the photographic results of Kira and her friend coming down to visit me. ( Splash! ) Punting is kinda awesome. The main problem, besides crashing into things, is resisting the urge to go for a swim. |
| Friday, May 15th, 2009 | |
| 12:12 pm | Lol. From navigatorsghost:1. Reply to this post, and I will pick five of your icons. 2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose. 3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts. 4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee. This is...basically the All Your Base sequence translated into Latin. It's a very silly thing made very dramatic by putting it in a foreign language and giving it a formal, serious backdrop, which is something that applies to most of history. I like the quirky bits of history and I was learning Latin at the time, so I toted this one along. They've found Roman graffiti that translates to "weep, ladies, for now my penis penetrates men's behinds. Goodbye, femininity!", people took their own settings about as seriously as we take ours. Exactly what it says on the tin, this is Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat: Conquest. The particular expression in the cap seems to be "you cannot be serious", which is an expression I have far too much some days, but he wears it far better than I do. ...yes, I have a bit of a thing for him, he's a very attractive sorcerer/warrior and he spends a lot of his time without a shirt on and snarking at his underlings. Also he's my human!icon for Scourge at damned, because he fits the basic structure and has an appropriate beard without looking like Fu Manchu.Speaking of damned, that's where this icon came from. I can't find the exact thread in the OOC comm where the discussion took place, but someone referred to the recent influx of 'con players as "Decepticons rising". I replied with the quote you see there and alanahikarichan turned it into an icon. It seems to fit the absurdity inherent in his life--his cover to hide from the madness the world has thrown at him that day is not only a sofa, but a pink flowered one. My icon names are horribly unoriginal. This is the icon I use when I commit cultural fail--you know, forgetting to turn the wall socket, referring to chips as french fries or not getting that things work differently on Sundays. Since I commit cultural fail so often, it needed an icon of its own. I'm not even sure what the scorpion's doing on there. But it's fair enough, pretty much all my "romantic" experience comes from fiction and I prefer it when it's not the usual romance novel glop. Manly men/women with manly love is my thing. |
| Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | |
| 9:53 am | State of the neck. Update on the lumpy thing on my throat: We still don't know what the fuck it is. Any vampires about may wish to find other neck-biting venues for the time being, lest they get a rather awkward surprise when they pierce mine because Alien Egg Sac hasn't been ruled out yet. I went in to the A-R doctor, and she poked and prodded and deduced that it was in fact a lump of about 4cm by 3cm, made a few worried noises, then decided I needed to get a blood test in case it was hypothyroidism. Or hyperthyroidism. It might have been both, I couldn't hear the difference. She's going to call me this afternoon and see if I can get an appointment at the "Red House", which is apparently a surgery nearby, but she wants to see me quick in case it's something seriously (read: throat cancer). I've been reassured that surgery to remove part of my thyroid will not harm my vocal cords as they aren't hanging out in the same location. Very happy about this, although I'd prefer a lack of surgery to a wicked scar down my neck. Probably time to mention this to my parents. Minus the last three sentences of this post, because...yeah. Current Music: Dr. Sin Is In -- Lordi |
| Friday, May 8th, 2009 | |
| 5:49 pm | Gonna learn me a book. If you're not familiar with the Left Behind series, it's a book written by (and probably for) a specific Christian sect about the Rapture and what comes after it. If you're not familiar with this particular flavor of Christian weirdity, it's basically the Jesus-based equivalent of a doomsday cult, with the faithful waiting for their god to come swoop them up in a twinkling of an eye and leave all us poor bastards behind to suffer. The Slacktivist, who is both a Christian of the slightly saner variety and if not an actual Biblical scholar a guy who knows what he's talking about, has done an excellent chapter-by-chapter dissection of this apocalyptically nonsensical series. A full index can be found here, although I just started at the back of the Left Behind tag and worked my way forward. He goes into the religious aspects of the books and how they seem to have mucked up everything ever relating to a certain middle eatern crucifixion cult, but also discusses the plot, characters, writing style, and strange obsession with telephone conversations that make the book into a bad piece of writing as well as a dangerous piece of theology. I'd highly recommend it. Current Mood: nom Current Music: Original Sin--Taylor Dayne |
| Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | |
| 1:24 am | Ess, ess. My auntie Jenifer's mother passed away from a stroke a few days ago. Her mind was going downhill in the last few years and everyone considered this to be more of a blessed release than anything else. She was a wonderful woman when I knew her. When I visited her at the retirement home she'd always lament "I haven't got a thing to offer you" because she was so used to giving out mandelbrot or other little treats. Eventually she'd mention it every ten minutes, because her memory was going, but the fact that she thought of it was sweet Jenifer's daughter in law, Shoshana posted this up on her blog and Jenifer sent it around. I got permission from her to repost it here. I think it's pretty wonderful. A Tribute to Rose  My husband's grandmother Rose passed away last week and we spent the week in Tennessee with his family. I wanted to do something to honor the memory of this wonderful woman who welcomed me into the family and treated me like her own granddaughter from the moment we met, so I decided to feature her famous mandelbrot (or mandel bread as she called them). Rose invited people into her apartment by offering them a cup of tea, served in one of the china teacups with roses from her collection. Tea couldn't be served without a "nibble" as she put it, so she always kept these mandelbrot on hand, especially if she knew we were going to be visiting. Mandelbrot are similar to Italian biscotti in that they are baked, sliced and then baked again, but these are softer than biscotti. They keep incredibly well, but will become a bit softer over time. When Rose moved to Tennessee to live with family the movers packed up a box of her mandelbrot with the kitchen things. Several months later we found them unpacking. They looked fine, so we decided to try them, and sure enough they were as delicious as ever. Rose's mandel bread have an alluring flavor that is hard to pin point, but makes you want to reach in the box and try just one more. I had never made them until this week and when I looked at the recipe I was surprised to find that it calls for fairly large amounts of almond, orange, lemon and vanilla extracts. The extracts all combine in such a way that no one flavor dominates, and the end result is absolutely delicious. I might just have to start making these to have on hand when guests stop by. Rose's mandel bread 3 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 cup vegetable oil 1 teaspoon almond extract 1 teaspoon orange extract 1 teaspoon lemon extract 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 3 1/2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 cup slivered almonds Note: I made the recipe exactly like Rose did, because I wanted to be true to her recipe. However, I think they might be even better with a pinch of salt, so will probably add that next time. If someone tries it that way, let me know. Mix together the first seven ingredients. Add the flour and baking powder and mix until combined. Mix in the slivered almonds. Chill dough in the refrigerator for at least 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Divide to dough into two and make a rope, approximately 2 1/2 inches wide on each side of the cookie sheet. Using lightly moistened hands will help keep the dough from sticking as you shape it. Bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Transfer the two loaves/ropes onto a cutting board and slice into 1/2 -3/4 inch pieces. Return pieces to the cookie sheet, cut side up. Return to the oven and toast for 7 minutes on each side. Posted by Shoshana at 11:11 PM Current Music: Orinoco Flow - Celtic Woman |