User:	elke_tanzer
	Date:	2008-12-01 19:19
	Subject:	Hello, Mile High City of Broncos...
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	sleepy

I'm in Denver. So far, the hotel is absolutely charming.

It was snowing this morning in Indianapolis. Winter wonderland and all of that... I am in such a holiday mood now!

*yawn*

But first, I sense an impending long winter's nap... well, at least until morning.

G'night, lovelies!

	User:	elke_tanzer
	Date:	2008-11-30 20:52
	Subject:	Speaking of time zones...
	Security:	Public

I leave Indiana ungodly early tomorrow morning to fly to Denver for a week of project management training class.

*glares at 4am alarm setting*

*stares at ceiling*

Grar.

	User:	pouncer
	Date:	2008-11-29 20:23
	Subject:	Meme
	Security:	Public

Photo Mosaic, because I like the way the results look. ( Read more... )

I have accomplished nothing today, still laid low by post-Thanksgiving stomach nastiness (not the fault of my cousin, given that my sister brought this back from the Bahamas).

	User:	elke_tanzer
	Date:	2008-11-27 21:39
	Subject:	a new tradition in seven easy steps
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	happy
	Music:	it's after midnight here, so I've started my Yule music

1. Notice a vaguely-interesting recipe in Coastal Living magazine because the accompanying article included photos of bicycles decorated with garlands and sparkly beads. Oooh, shiny sparkly.
2. Email recipe to parents.
3. Survive intervening week or two of chaos.
4. Visit parents, who have survived their intervening week or two of chaos.
5. Encourage parents to try the new recipe even if we don't have all of the ingredients because we all only just barely survived the intervening weeks of chaos... Mom goes for it, substituting pomegranate-tangerine juice for tangerine juice, doubling the dried cranberries for the dried cherries, and using flour in place of corn starch. She skips the rind-grating and the sectioning of the tangerine since we have no actual tangerines in the house. Oh, and she omits the salt and uses low-sodium chicken broth, because this is an Extremely Extremely Low Sodium household.
6. Discover that this is The Best Interesting Gravy Ever.
7. Watch in pleased amusement, and chime in wholeheartedly, as the entire table agrees that we're doing this recipe again next year. It's awesome on turkey, and I'll bet it'll be equally amazing on chicken.

:-9

The original recipe is available online at http://www.coastalliving.com/ by searching the recipes for "Tangerine Gravy" or by going directly to this link (theoretically, anyway).

( Here's a copy of the recipe for posterity in case the Coastal Living site goes down... )

Enjoy!

	User:	elke_tanzer
	Date:	2008-11-26 21:31
	Subject:	What time zone is this, again?
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	tired

*yawn*

I'm back in Indiana for the holiday weekend, helping my parents some more with the house and related paperwork. And on Monday I fly to An Unfamiliar Cold Wintery City for a week of professional development training. I'm really looking forward to it but frankly, I'd prefer to hibernate for a week.

*yaaaaaawn*

	User:	the_lj_refuge (posted by yavannauk)
	Date:	2008-11-26 07:42
	Subject:	What's with LJ this time?
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	annoyed

Is it just me or is LJ not loading/loading glacially slow yet again? The status page didn't have anything up, but this is driving me crazy!

	User:	pouncer
	Date:	2008-11-25 09:59
	Subject:	Better Be Good To Me
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	sick
	Music:	iron and wine, kissed her palm and placed it on your dreaming head

My sister took me to see Tina Turner at the Verizon Center last night, part of my birthday present. Our tickets were nosebleeds, way up in the arena to the left of the stage, but it didn't matter. Remember how I said I want to be M when I grow up, after watching Quantum of Solace? Being Tina Turner would be just as amazing. She turns 69 tomorrow (we almost share a birthday!), and she danced around stage, sang her songs with her incredible, husky voice, and looked fabulous all the while (Review here).

( It reminded me how huge Tina was in the 80s )

So today marks my one-year anniversary in bandom, at least as I count it. I'd read some stories that showed up on my Delicious network, but 25 November was the day I gave in and started saving everything I could find to my palmpilot. I copy stories into Word documents until I hit a hundred pages, then save them with an oh-so-creative file structure consisting of a two-or-three letter fandom abbreviation (SGA, HP, etc), then the date saved, and then a, b, c, and onward, depending on how many stories were around to be included in that week's batch. I still have BND 25 nov a through o saved, plus many more.

( thinkiness )

To make this a ridiculously long post, here are thoughts on recent television too. ( Pushing Daisies. Gossip Girl. Criminal Minds. True Blood. Entourage. )

I still have last night's shows to watch. And the back half of Greek's first season.

My cold is turning into laryngitis. Typical.

	User:	the_lj_refuge (posted by spoonishly)
	Date:	2008-11-25 08:23
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

Wow, LJ, my notifications FINALLY start working and you go down AGAIN. This is getting tiring. Your Montana servers are not robust.

No update from the status page as of yet.

ETA: Of course, I post this and it comes back. SIGH.

ETA II: And, of course, it goes down and, once again, my notifications have stopped coming.

	User:	elke_tanzer
	Date:	2008-11-23 08:10
	Subject:	Random links of happy-making
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	awake
	Music:	Don't Stop Believin'

Here are a few links that have come to me from various sources over the past couple weeks:

InsaneJournal is having a holiday sale

Bay Area Accordion Babes pin-up calendar and CD

morgandawn is linking to charities to consider in your holiday giving; the first of her series of posts is here.

Via Youtube: Austrian hexapod robotics competition highlights: Dancing Division

Also via Youtube: Wiimote+Roomba=Wiimba !

Johnny Chung Lee is my new hero... Johnny Chung Lee > Projects > Wii

	User:	pouncer
	Date:	2008-11-22 23:09
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

Remember how last winter everyone who went to see Cobra Starship caught the Cab Death Flu?

/o\

Exhaustion is more than exhaustion. Have begun choking cough from back of throat, as well as miserable levels of congestion.

Starting strict Zicam and echinacea regimen in hopes of conquering illness before Thanksgiving.

	User:	the_lj_refuge (posted by aurora_84)
	Date:	2008-11-22 21:55
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

Boo downtime!!

Status reports no issues so far. (But we know better.)


ETA1: LiveJournal is experiencing some unexpected downtime. We're currently working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.
9:01 pm GMT (Saturday, November 22) -- status

ETA2: We're back!!

	User:	pouncer
	Date:	2008-11-20 20:21
	Subject:	Make You Dance Tonight
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	content

So, yesterday was kind of horrible in some ways: I forgot my cell phone on the charger at home, had a migraine, was trapped in an interminable meeting at work listening to the most tedious discussion, suffered multiple computer crashes, and generally felt massively stressed. The cell phone and computer woes were of importance because I had no other way to get in touch with kinetikatrue and ciaan. In a last minute congruence, they needed a ride up to Baltimore to attend the Cobra Starship concert, and I didn't want to go alone. We had to finalize details, little things like time, exact location, and how to recognize each other, and there was, in Kat's words, massive communications fail before we finally were able to talk.

( Cobra Starship at Sonar, with pictures and links to video )

There's a bunch of fandom stuff I need to read once I have time. It seems like bandom has been beset by highs and lows over the past few days. I want to concentrate on the good, but I feel terrible for the bandfleshers who saw their community history destroyed. That nonsense is not on. In the spirit of cheer, I offer up Yogi the Dachshund, who is adorable.

Also, I have discovered the wonder of send@webtomail.co.cc You email that address with a website URL as the subject, and they mail you back with the page's content in a few minutes. Awesome for those times the evil overlords block access, especially when you always use the secured version of Gmail, say.

Shockingly, I made it into work only 15 minutes late this morning. I slept with a heating pad on my neck and it isn't even that sore. The three-day workshop of horror finished yesterday afternoon, so I was able to have a mostly relaxing day at the office.

My birthday is in one week, and it will suck, because it's on Thanksgiving this year. My sister, currently sunning herself at Club Med Bahamas with her beach social circle, is deserting us for Rehobeth, doubtless to be fêted on Friday (her birthday is on the 28th). Other friends will be out of town. Is there anyone who'll be around and like to get together over the long weekend to do something fun (for values of fun to be defined later)?

	User:	elke_tanzer
	Date:	2008-11-18 21:04
	Subject:	Wherein Elke helps her RL self with her wardrobe
	Security:	Public
	Mood:	amused

So sometime between my first Escapade con and now, I figured out that dressing up can be really fun. This is something that I never understood much growing up, and being a girly girl just does not come naturally to me, and appearance-frivolity always strikes me as an inefficient way of living a life, and... well, frankly, feeling like I was looking attractive and/or dressing attractively (for many many values of those terms) usually got me unwanted attention that I was rather incapable of dealing with... or made no difference in how I was avoided completely, because brains in women must have been such an overriding turnoff as to overwhelm anything else I did or looked like (insert snarky glare at childhood hometown here).

Put it this way: Nowadays I live in Burbank, a very fashion-conscious area of Los Angeles (town of plastic people!) and I can make my beautician-stylist-colorist-person actually recoil in horror by telling her that I routinely use my car's vents to dry my hair on my commute to work. I am regularly baffled by skin care products, and I don't wear makeup most days at all.

And lately, it is not in my nature to buy dresses or skirts for myself unless they are part of a Renfaire or fannish costume. This is a step closer to girly girl than when I could have said that it was not in my nature to buy dresses or skirts at all.

That said? I suspect that I'm kind of turning into a clotheshorse, and I can probably safely blame fandom. :-)

( cut for happy babble )

When I feel like I look like a million bucks, I'm more outgoing, more confident, and people react differently to me. It's startling and odd and wonderful mostly.

NEW SHOES YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

User:	the_lj_refuge (posted by bwinter)
Date:	2008-11-18 20:06
Subject:	End of November maintenance
Security:	Public

And it's back :) That was fast.

Servers are slow still, mind you. For people with Paid and Permanent accounts, try to view the source of LJ pages:

LiveJournal ExpressLane: You received this page before 612 free users, saving approximately 9 seconds!

	User:	amireal
	Date:	2008-11-18 14:06
	Subject:	Holy crap.
	Security:	Public

THEY DID IT IN UNDER FOUR HOURS.

LJ is slow, but she is loading. Oh baby I've missed you.

	User:	trobadora
	Date:	2008-11-18 18:59
	Subject:	I hab a cod ...
	Security:	Public

... and maybe that's why (as my brain rather feels like it consists of cotton wool), but srsly, LJ's been down for two hours and I'm already reduced to playing Spider Solitaire.

THIS CANNOT CONTINUE OMG.

	User:	amireal
	Date:	2008-11-18 11:32
	Subject:	Did we have a plan C?
	Security:	Public

So twitter is down for database maintence.

IJ is having trouble loading. (They have been LJ'd, think slashdotted but funnier.)

I fear for all of our sanities.

Also, just when I wanted to post about how we broke IJ, there was NO PLACE TO GO. Several of us feel there is some deep comment in there somewhere.

AND IJ is not emailing me comments. I KNOW I fixed that.

	User:	the_lj_refuge (posted by trobadora)
	Date:	2008-11-18 17:29
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

I would like to state for the record:

• Twitter also went down just now. (Twitter is currently down for database maintenance. We expect to be back in about an hour. Thanks for your patience.)


• The LJ status page is only loading intermittently


• And IJ seems to be having trouble loading as well.

	User:	trobadora
	Date:	2008-11-18 17:08
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

LJ is actually down now! (amireal, I think you were the last commenter. *g*)

Anyway, come on over to the_lj_refuge, and let's see if we can keep ourselves entertained for a bit. *g*

	User:	the_lj_refuge (posted by trobadora)
	Date:	2008-11-18 17:07
	Subject:	The Great LJ Downtime Write-Off! (or not)
	Security:	Public

telesilla

There should be a write-off. Everyone can sit down and work on whatever project they're working on for four hours and then see what kind of progress people make.