Diary of an adult runaway

The Great Blog Restart!

Hi there. Yes, I've missed you, too! The thing is, I want to blog but I can't think about what, so until my mojo kicks back in, I'm taking the easy way out and use a journaling idea I saw on Pinterest, from whence everything good comes.

Here goes.

1. Listening: to Secrets of the Bestselling Sisterhood, from the RWA 2011 Conference CDs. As usual, JAK & SEP (now known as JAXEP) tell it like it is.

2. Eating: not crab, which is making me cranky--oh wait, crabby (sorry)--because I reaaaalllyyyyy want crab. Crab cakes, crab dip, crab linguine. I can see a trip to Costco in my near future.

3. Drinking: Limeade

4. Wearing: jackets, still! But tomorrow's promising to be warmer. All I'm askin' for is 26C. Enough to bring out the dragonflies and heat up the lavender.

5. Feeling: melancholy over Steve Jobs's death. My first ever computer was an LCII and it--and every other Mac I've had since--helped bring my writing to life, it was so much fun, so easy to use. I loved turning it on and hear a woman's dulcet voice say "Welcome to Macintosh." The creations Jobs helped bring to the world not only sparked my imagination and worked painlessly, they're beautiful pieces of design. I'm going to miss him.

6. Wanting: this poster:

Needing: some kind of contraption that fits around my front door frame and sucks every bit of cat hair off my clothing before I appear in public.

Thinking: of course, now I can't think.

Watching: Season 2 of Mad Men and thinking (a-ha!) there's not one character I really like. Except maybe Sterling.

Enjoying: Mel Scott's debut novel, Shadow Kin:

What about you?

It's like 1997 all over again!

So. There is no doubt I love my iMac. I mean, looooooooove my iMac. Love OS X, am amazed by all the fantastic little--and not so little--ways it makes my life easy and interesting.But something's been missing for a while now.

Personalized sounds.

Remember that happy feeling you got way back in 1991 when you turned on your LC II, and a female voice said "Welcome to Macintosh." I do! And I miss those days! I especially miss the demise of Clixsounds, who, back in '97, rocked out OS 7.5 with glorious 16-bit alerts and other sounds. Being someone who loves a Mac that talks to me (which sometimes results in a visitor whipping around in shock when my mail program curses after checking for mail and coming up empty), I've felt this loss deeply.

But this past December, as part of my annual Christmasfying of the desktop, I decided to see if I could somehow bring back 1997 and its Christmas start-up/shut-down sounds. Even though I could no longer play the sounds, I'd kept them, just in case. Wishing. Hoping.

And booyah! Clixsounds is still defunct but while I wasn't looking, someone went ahead and sorted things out for me. SystemSound (free, open source, yay!) converts System 7 sound files for use in OS X, and lets you specify start-up and shut-down sounds. If you need the sound files, you'll find some here and some more here. Ohhh, you're welcome!

Now if only the guys behind LiSA would get the OS X bugs sorted out, because I miss that chica who used to announce exactly who was sending me mail :-)

Christmas-fy your Mac!

Come the first weekend of December, my entire place gets Christmas-fied. That includes the bathroom and, yes, the Mac. Tragic, I know, but it has to be done and so it was:

In case you're as much a Christmas freak lover as I am, here's where you get the goods:

MacLampsX (freebie)
X-Mas Tree 1.4 (freebie)
Snow 1.2 (US$10; 10-day trial)
Desktop from Webshots (some are free, others require membership)
Christmas icons found here

I was just going to leave it at that, not have a Christmas tree this year because I won't be here for Christmas Day. But then when I was wandering around Abbesses, they had lots and lots of trees and Pumpkin really likes them (seriously! I had to put a cushion beneath the tree) and I just couldn't resist:

It's a 6-foot spruce from Denmark, and I dragged that baby back up the hill myself, apart from twice when people came along and grabbed the end, until they reached where they were going. Bless 'em. The Christmas cheer was definitely being passed along, because the baristas gave me a little pressie the next day:

Bless them!

Been wet and windy around here the past week, with snow (snow!!) forecast for Thursday. But the lights have been keeping me happy:

A bistro near work all lit up for the holidays.

The biggest light of all~a shot as I leave work.

And another view as I get home.

The former water tower across from my building~now headquarters for the Montmartre wine crop and occasional exhibition center. This expo's on boots. The tree (on the right) is decorated with big red boots.

The people just up from me apparently love Christmas, too.

A better shot of the new Place du Tertre lights, in the shape of a palette to pay homage to all the artists who've called Montmartre home. You can see Sacré Coeur in the background.

And now I have to call my landlord. The hot water tap in the bathtub that tended to get a little stuck last night decided not to turn off at all, so I've had to turn off all the water in the apartment until we can get a plumber out. The joys of living in a "charming" apartment!

Oh, wait, let's do the TV thing before I go:

Brothers and Sisters: so, this guy who turned up looking for Holly (what was his name, Dave? Alls I know is it was Ken Olin~Michael Steadman!!) is most obviously Rebecca's father, meaning she's not a Walker, meaning she and Justin are going to get it on. Betcha.

Dexter: eagerly looking forward to the finalé, which I hope to watch tonight. They keep getting him deeper and deeper into it. Seriously excellent writing. (Come on, you Hollywood moguls--time to pay up!)

Friday Night Lights: Love this. I love how cranky Coach Taylor can be, and how cool his wife can be. I'm also really impressed by the level of drama with the teen characters~Landry, Tim Riggins and Antonio can break your heart.

ER: speaking of drama, thank fuck Luka is back and we finally got some in this show. I was about ready to give up, and back comes Luka with his soulfulness and his looks that can break your heart and bang, I'm hooked again. I love Clooney, no doubt about that, and Doug Ross was an excellent character, but the moments I remember most are courtesy of Luka (oh, and Goran Visnjic's quiet, dramatic timing): how he lost his virginity, the time he's talking about his life and you think he's talking to a therapist but it's a hooker, when he was on his knees praying for his life in the Congo and you feel for sure he's dead, the episode before last when he told Abby his father had died. Rock on with your good self, Luka.

Journeyman: more good drama. What I really like is how whatever's happening to Dan doesn't just happen in isolation, as is the case with a lot of shows like this. Slowly more and more people are being pulled into it and there are more repercussions to deal with. Katie's quite the cool wife, and now that Jack's seen Livia, well, things just get more and more interesting.

Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares: I'm loving both the US and UK version, but wanted to point something out. If you happen to see the (UK) episode when he's in Paris helping some totally undeserving Scottish woman turn her resto around and he makes a flippant comment about the fastfood café up the street, well, that was L'as du Falafel, and no, it's not much to look at, but it has the best falafel in Paris, which is why there's always a line outside.   

Ok, I'm really done this time!

I'm in an SF state of mind

Maybe it's because tomorrow is Michael Tolliver Day in San Francisco, or maybe because Ms. Feisty just posted about her trip or Tomate posted about the Haight Street Fair, but I got me a real hankerin' to head to the city by the bay. I want to sit on a corner outside a café and wait for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to roll by. I want to climb around Telegraph Hill and meet all the local cats and get glimpses of the Bay Bridge through the windows of houses along Napier Lane. I want to sit on the BART from downtown to Berkeley with Tamara and laugh until I cry as two drag queens trash talk.

But it's going to have to wait until next year. Until then, I'll read MTL (where's my copy, Amazon?!?!) (I'm going to have to do with this excerpt but what the hell, BRIAN IS 61??? BRIAN??? How can that BE???) and try to decide whether I should ask the tattoo artist Ms. Feisty found for us to do Elvis as I'd originally planned, or maybe a dragonfly on my ankle, if Elvis is going to take too long.

Why Rescue Me is the best show on TV:

Hot diggity dog, I truly love these guys. Only 2 more days until Tommy's back. Looks like he escaped the fire unscathed. Huzzah! Of course, it'll only be 10 seconds until he gets himself into more trouble. How this guy makes it out of anything alive is beyond me.

From the "Kids, don't try this at home" department: was feeling a little under the weather Friday, cold kinda thing. Meeting room perked me up because, with the big-ass crystal chandelier and gold cherubs on the ceiling, I could forget I was in a meeting. Long day, and on the way home I had a real fang for Vanilla Coke, first time I'd wanted it in about a year, so I stopped at the supermarket. No Vanilla, so I went for Cherry. Long meeting, too tired to cook, I grabbed something quick and starchy. Mistake #1. As the Hashimoto's has progressed, so has my intolerance to carbs--manifests itself in lethargy and joint pain the next day. Saturday morning, I could barely move. Didn't get out of bed until 12 and my shoulders/biceps were so painful that I climbed back under the covers and watched more West Wing. (Question to the writers: why the hell is Will always in the WW when he works for the VP? And why is he such a PITA? I've gone from being "eh" about this character to actively cursing whenever he turns up. Enough!)

About 3, I was feeling better. So what did I do? Yep, polished off the Cherry Coke. There went Sunday. Seriously. I can't do sugar anymore. The good thing is that pants that were once capris are now down to my ankles. The bad thing is I hate all the chemicals in Diet Coke, so that's out, too. Of course, I could just do a little Cherry or Vanilla, not a whole bottle, but no, that's not my way. Guess I'll just have to get lime Perrier. Somehow not the same!

What else? I know there was something. Oh yeah. This is funny:

And this (by Susan Branch) is sweet:

She forgot "Get an iPhone,"  but that's okay, I already had that one figured out. Can't wait to get mine, though I'll probably do just that and go for a second generation--unless the excitement gets too much for me, as it always does with Apple. I paid an extra $50 for my first iMac because my local place didn't have lime, I'd have to wait a week and I COULDN'T, so I went to the other side of town where I could get one and took a taxi home. $50 well spent, I did love that little green machine. Had a "discussion" with someone today still under the mistaken impression that Mac to PC file transfer is difficult. Couldn't convince them that I'd been doing it since 1992, the only hassles were on the PC side, Mac could read and recognize everything because Word for Mac had been around for years even then (since '85) although I used MacWritePro back then, a sweet, sweet little program that made MS pick up their act. Oh well, their loss!

Gotta go 1. transcribe today's writing; 2. watch some more West Wing; 3. stop Kody from trashing the bathroom. Losing battle, I tell ya. He's in the bathtub (no water, though I'm often tempted) playing with a straw and I have the feeling he's just about to attack the shower curtain.

My thrilling life.