38 posts from January 2008

Without the recent comments on the homepage I've felt sort of lost lately.  The more comments option via Vox Watch has only worked TWICE for me this week after endless reloading every day.  Even if I do go and post a comment for a neighbor, unless I'm willing to sit on their page and reload every two minutes, it's impossible to keep up with a discussion.  The discussion threads here on Vox are my number 1 reason for being here.  I feel like we all live on the same street but we're stuck inside with an early curfew.

I sent my feedback to Vox early on Monday and received the following response this afternoon:

We appreciate you checking on this. We have reported the issue to the team as something that needs to be optimized.

For right now, people with high volume threads they're following or commenting on may have difficulties loading the Recent Activity page. We're hoping to improve the usage of this page in the future.

I could start an eating blog based on my Thai restaurant alone.  I have a printed menu at home and I'm crossing stuff off as I try it.  Sometimes it's impossible to resist some of my favorites when I go in there (Ginger Beef and Red Curry!), but I am still trying new things.  Today I realized that I've only tried Pad Thai once and never actually got it for myself.  So today I present another Thai-Ku.

Capital Thai is awesome. It's the best Thai in the area.  The restaurant is clean, the people who run the place are super nice and the food is to die for.  Today was the busiest I've seen, but then again, I tend to swing in around 4 o'clock when it's dead.  For a while, I thought it might just be my little secret, but the crowd in there today tells me that it's not - and that's good!!  I want them to stick around for a good long while.

I have to say that even though I wasn't thrilled with my father going to Thailand to find a submissive wife (or as IG would say, "a shy Asian beauty"), I'm so happy he introduced me to the cuisine and even some of the culture.  :-)

Saltsucker

3 comments

Last night, before my hair appointment at 7, I managed to roast a chicken, mash potatoes and have time to eat it all.  I've found a way to cook the perfect whole chicken in less than an hour.  Would have been better, though, if I had remembered to SALT the fucking chicken.  My doctor told me I could eat all of the salt and butter that I want (my good cholesterol could set records! go me!), so I'm going to.  I remembered to coat the inside and outside of the chicken skin with butter - but as per Christopher Kimball, I use unsalted butter so I can control the amount of salt.  Which helps when I remember it.  Who doesn't season chicken?  And it just doesn't taste the same if you salt it after you cook it.  Anyway, the meat was still really good, but I was pissed that my perfectly golden crust tasted like nothing.

My hair appointment went well.  My hair feels so much lighter today and looks 100% healthier.  My guy and I figured it had probably been 2 1/2 years since I'd been in.  I've trimmed it myself a few times and I do my own bangs regularly, but it's a  pain in the ass and never looks very good.  I went with layers and he fringied my bangs.  My hair guy is awesome, he's nerdy like me.  One time he gave me a free haircut because I got him a signed photo of Jonathan Harris at a convention.  :-)  Like many people, he's had to take on a second job just for the health insurance.  He hates it.  I can't blame him.  He works all day, then he cuts hair at night and on the weekends and basically has no life.  Living like that will take years off your life - and all for health insurance no less.  Universal health care should be a RIGHT not a PRIVILEGE.

In other news, the sky is a creepy shade of, I don't know, dark.  It almost looks like night out, it's really eerie.  We're in store for really gusty winds and heavy rains.  What's even worse is that it's getting blacker out as I write this sentence.  I can barely see out my window.  Lovely.

Oh, go away. Repress someone else.

How much worse could it be

I'd prefer a G'Kar-Londo ticket, but hey, Londo would probably be assassinated anyway, right?

In other Babylon 5 news, Lois Nettleton, the actress who played Londo's wife, Daggair, has passed beyond the rim. She was 80 years old.

During the summer of 1998 I spent two months with my father in Southern Arizona.  One night, my father, sister and I were traveling south on I-19 between Tucson and Green Valley.  The interstate is surrounded by flat desert with mountains miles off in the distance.  I was staring out the window at the bright stars hanging over the impossibly dark desert (there are light restrictions because of Kitt Peak observatory, so Southern AZ is especially dark) when I saw something.  It started as a hovering light in the sky.  I thought at first that perhaps it was a helicopter but it was steady.  Across the sky, streaks of light appeared but not in straight lines like the white ones left by a plane (and I've never seen those emit light!).  The original, steady light began to grow and spread like a spotlight toward the ground.  It was massive, bigger than light from a helicopter, and again, much more still than a helicopter.  People were pulling off the shoulder to watch.  My father, being my father, drove us home.  We watched the news, of course it was blamed on aircraft from Edwards Air Force Base, but they didn't offer any details in their explanation as to what we really saw.

Maybe I've been watching too many X-Files episodes, but this memory has been resurfacing more over the past couple of days so I thought I'd share.

Have you ever seen anything unexplained or unidentified hanging in the sky?

• 

  Unbrushed, unwashed

  5 comments
  What do I want to do with my hair?  Right now it's long and straight with bangs.  Think Barbara Hershey in Beaches.  I really like the length, but I'd like to add some shape (octagonal?).  Does anyone have any suggestions?
• Why is it that my second post has 3 comments but it says "post a comment" as if there are no comments?  Right now, my photo to the right says 3 comments, but there are five. Also, I can't change the name of the picture within writing this post or on the page of the picture.  It acts like it changes but then goes back to "mypicture". What's with the flakiness vox?
  
• Why can't I get the "more comments" thing to load anymore?  It's blank page city. It was working at home on my mac, but has since stopped.  I have to reload the page a dozen times before it loads (IF it loads).  I sent feedback to Vox on this issue last year but never got anywhere.  Back then, I eventually gave up and just started using the Home page with the handful of recent comments listed there.  Obviously that's gone now, so I've had to rely on that beast of a comments page.  I sent feedback again this morning. We'll see what happens.

I really don't feel like getting off of my ass and taking my shower...how is the weekend over???  Maybe I should find a vein and inject my Earl Grey (hot!) this morning.  Hey look at that, I'm barely awake and making references to Star Trek.  Maybe it won't be a shitty day after all.

I'm sure this breaks a secretive survey agreement somewhere, but I just had to share this.  Mr. Val took a survey yesterday and had to choose from the following list of occupations.  Enjoy:

Accounting - Finance
 Acrobatics
 Adult Entertainment
 Wardrobe Stylist
 Advertising
 Agriculture
 Airline-Aviation
 Alligator Wrestler Stand-In
 Architecture - Building
 Art-Photography
 Journalism
 Automotive-Motor
 Vehicles - Parts
 Bag-Boy/Bag-Girl
 Banking - Financial Services
 Barista
 Beer Consultant
 Biotechnology
 Broadcasting - Radio - TV
 Building Materials
 Chemical
 Construction
 Computer Hardware
 Computer Software
 Consulting
 Consumer Products
 Credit - Loan - Collections
 Defense - Aerospace
 Education - Teaching - Administration
 Electronics
 Employment - Recruiting - Staffing
 Energy - Utilities - Gas - Electric
 Entertainment
 Environmental
 Exercise - Fitness
 Fasion - Apparel - Textile
 Fishmonger
 Fluffer
 Food
 Funeral - Cemetary
 Government - Civil Service
 Gene Simmons Look-Alike
 Greek God/Goddess
 Groupie
 Healthcare - Health Services
 Hobo
 Homebuilding
 Hospitality
 Hotel - Resort
 HVAC
 Import-Export
 Industrial
 Insurance
 Internet - Ecommerce
 Journalist
 Landscaping
 Law Enforcement
 Legal
 Library Science
 Managed Care
 Marketing
 Manufacturing
 Medical Equipment
 Merchandising
 Military
 Mortgage
 Nail Artist
 Newspaper
 Not for Profit - Charitable
 Nuclear Fallout Cleaning
 Crew Member
 Office Supplies - Equipment
 Oil Refining - Petroleum - Drilling
 Other Great Industries
 Packaging
 Pharmaceutical
 Printing - Publishing
 Public Relations
 Real Estate - Property Management
 Restaurant
 Retail
 Recreation
 Roller Derby
 RUSH tribute Band Member
 Sales - Marketing
 Security
 Securities
 Semiconductor
 Serving Wench
 Shoe Shine Technician
 Social Services
 Student 1 - 5 Year
 Student 6+ Years
 Telecommunications
 Training
 Transportation
 Travel
 TV Critic
 Wireless
 Other 

Looking nothing like Gene Simmons, Mr. Val failed to qualify for this survey.

YouTube is down, sites are taking forever to load, many just won't load.  I've noticed this problem today from two different locations/Internet connections.  What the hell?

Why is this even grosser than when I thought it was real poop?

-Mr. Val on Brandon Hardesty's latest reenactment.

If you haven't seen him before, Brandon is a funny guy on youtube who reenacts movie scenes.