The Elf's Journal

The end of the blog

2009-08-01T15:54:01Z

UserID apathychild, we need to have a talk. I think we should start seeing other people. It's not you, it's me. I know we've been together since high school, but I just feel like our lives have taken us in different directions, you know? I want a blog that won't embarrass me in front of coworkers or professional contacts, and you've got some stuff in you that I don't want everybody to see. And besides, your name? It was a cute userID back in the day, but it just seems a little... childish now. Please don't take this personally! I still have a deep affection for you, but it's just time to move on.

What? Someone else? No, I... well, yeah. I can't lie to you. I have been flirting with http://lasrina.livejournal.com/. She and I just have so much in common, you know? My usernames on Facebook, Flickr, AIM chat, all those online games where lasrina was the name of my avatar... You understand, don't you? Can we still be friends? Wait, apathychild, don't go! And please don't slam the--

*slam*

...Yeah, all joking aside, I'm changing over to a new blog, y'all. Please follow me there. :)

--A.

apathychild @ 2009-07-30T17:26:00

2009-07-30T21:31:07Z

So, it would seem I haven't put up a blog in a million years. This is mainly because I was trying to decide what to do with it, or if it was even worth keeping a separate blog when everything seems to be going through Facebook nowadays. But I'm sure my six readers would miss my long, rambling stories about nothing just terribly if I did that...

Anyway, I'll figure it out soon, so watch this space for details.

Meanwhile, pictures and video of What I Did On My Summer Vacation are here.

Weekend Update: Wrightsville Beach

2009-06-11T20:01:00Z

I think I could spend the whole rest of my life at the beach and never get over how blue the water can be.

And again, the full set is here. Yarrr.

Weekend Update: Crowder Park

2009-06-11T19:56:27Z

Crowder District Park:

Find the egret!

Angry anole lizard!

Turtles on a log.

And in case anyone is looking for them, the full set of photos is here.

apathychild @ 2009-06-06T10:55:00

2009-06-06T14:55:44Z

Ahh, the stupid things that make us laugh when we really need it

2009-06-05T21:11:06Z

Hey Ben, why don't you learn to do this?

(If you don't want to watch the whole video, well, it's the selection that begins around 4:18 that specifically brought joy to my heart.)

yawn

2009-05-25T05:53:33Z

About half an hour ago, I looked up at the clock and said to myself, "OMG, It's 1:28 in the morning, I still have to make the bed before I can sleep in it, and I have a zillion things to do tomorrow, many of which REQUIRE me to be up early... but... but... but... I must... get... Link... the boomerang of the winds...!!!"

At times like this, I think the greatest thing about being an adult is that no one will force you to go to sleep, and not stay up until 2 in the morning playing Zelda; and simultaneously, the worst thing about being an adult is that no one will force you to go to sleep, and not stay up until 2 in the morning playing Zelda.

whee!

2009-05-22T03:38:11Z

The Wii I ordered last week has arrived, and it is awesome.

So far I think I'm gradually getting the hang of Wii Tennis, am kind of weirdly good at Wii boxing, can Wii bowl over 100 now (finally), and am irredeemably bad at Wii golf. And the baseball just messes with my head -- I feel like it breaks all the rules of perspective that made me a halfway decent batter once upon a time, but whatevs. I know I'm years late to this party, but I love the idea of a video game that actually makes you break a sweat.

I also have the Wii Zelda game, which is the first time I've ever played Zelda (yes, weirdly enough, Amy has never played the swordfighting game about the pretty blonde elf boy before). And, as with every video game ever, I have absolutely no trouble figuring out the puzzles or grasping the logic of the fight system, but it takes me an hour of playing, and instructions from three different online walkthroughs, to figure out how to catch the stupid fish for the quest that gets you out of the starter area.

Anyway, this is a lot of fun, and yes, I have some very, very sore muscles right now.

Gardening Update

2009-05-16T21:09:55Z

My plants don't hate me! I know this because the rosebush is blooming --

-- And the garden continues apace. (That open area between the bamboo stakes is theoretically a path, by the way. And according to what I hear, the beans should be thrilled now that they have some cheapie metal lattice to grow on.)

An oldie but a goodie

2009-05-14T20:21:35Z

WHY MEN DON'T WRITE ADVICE COLUMNS

Dear Robert,

I hope you can help me here. The other day, I set off for work leaving my husband in the house watching the TV as usual. I hadn't driven more than 5 miles down the road when the engine conked out and the car shuddered to a halt. So I walked back home to get my husband's help. When I got home I couldn't believe my eyes. He was in our bedroom with the neighbors’ daughter. I'm 32, my husband is 34, and the neighbors’ daughter is 22. We have been married for ten years.

When I confronted him, he broke down and admitted that they had been having an affair for the past six months. I told him to stop or I'd leave him. He was let go from his job six months ago and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but ever since I gave him the ultimatum he has become increasingly distant. He won't go to counseling and I'm afraid I can't get through to him anymore.

Can you please help?

Sincerely, Sheila

--------

Dear Sheila:

A car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Start by checking that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it's clear, check the vacuum pipes and hoses on the intake manifold and also check all grounding wires. If none of these approaches solves the problem, it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the injectors.

I hope this helps.

Robert

Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus

2009-05-12T22:48:33Z

Oh, it looks even worse than I imagined possible and that makes me delirious with joy.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

Lazy Hedgehog

2009-05-12T04:14:06Z

Lazy Hedgehog
Originally uploaded by lasrina.

...It's a short walk to the food dish.

Right after this was taken, Owen tried to flee the camera (he doesn't like the bright light) and managed to get his fat hedgehog rump stuck in the entrance to his purple plastic house. Now, you'd think that, having been a hedgehog for about six years now, he might have figured out that the spines point backward, so it's a different proposition for him to crawl forward through a small tunnel than it is to back in...

I guess it's time to put the hedgehog on an exercise regimen. I could buy him a teeny tiny workout tape now, or just wait until I get my Wii and get him started working on the balance pad for Wii Fit...

Boogie Boogie Hedgehog

2009-05-03T01:21:06Z

Oddly enough... this is EXACTLY what it's like to own a hedgehog.

Bread

2009-05-02T03:25:04Z

Yayyy! Bread!

To explain: I borrowed my aunt's bread machine a shamefully long time ago to try that whole homemade bread thing, and only just now got it working (this involved first finding the downloadable manual online and then surprising difficulties in actually locating the right kind of yeast at the local Harris Teeter). Started the process about 9:00 and just now took a lovely, fluffy loaf of bread out of the machine.

The only thing is... bread machine bread, apparently, comes out really oddly shaped, if you put it through the whole process inside the machine. Rather than a technical loaf, it's sort of a cylinder with a dome, and I have no idea how you're supposed to slice such a shape. Oh well, next time maybe I'll just let the machine do all the heavy lifting on the kneading and transfer it to more traditional pans in the oven to bake.

Franco

2009-05-02T00:16:20Z

Franco
Originally uploaded by lasrina.

One more from the trip up home 'n'at.

The sign says "Do not touch," but most of the people walking by still pat him on the helmet.

Charlie's Zoo Day

2009-04-30T03:13:08Z

Charlie Zoo Day (6)
Originally uploaded by lasrina.

This is (obviously) a lion, looking rather regal in rearview, which is not always easy for zoo animals to pull off. (The rhinoceros, for example, is very unattractive from this angle.)

This one is my favorite non-human picture of the day, I think, because his mane is so fluffy, and because there's a lioness hidden beside him -- both of these are things that you can see much better in fullview.

There are some pretty happy human pictures in this group as well, but I will spare anyone who doesn't want to see a gazillion pictures of one ridiculously cute but sleepy baby, plus a bunch of people you don't know. Instead, I will just say that the full set of zoo pictures is up in the Flickr set Charlie's Zoo Day.

die die die pampas grass DIE

2009-04-23T18:45:30Z

May I just say that Dave (po_sparky ) is the best chainsaw-owning friend ever, and my dad (cpl_recoil ) is the best dad ever? They came over today, and Dave helped me with lots of outdoorsy work, and Dad helped me with lots of annoying plumbing work, and among us we got a heck of a lot done.

The dreaded pampas grass is GONE. Not via the chainsaw -- it was too springy for the blade -- but Dave taught me about mattocks, which are The. Best. Tool. Ever. He has a long-handled cutter mattock that made it a snap to dig the pampas down to its creepy little roots. And break it up, with the same tool, which is such a simple and wonderful piece of equipment that I can't believe I'd never used one before.

Oh yeah. I want one of those for Christmas.

So the pampas is currently roots-up in chunks (to prevent it from taking again) on top of a pile of brush in the natural area, and I have a beautiful patch of dirt -- the nicest dirt in my yard, of course, which is otherwise mostly clay a quarter-inch down -- which I can seed in as the summer goes on. I'm hoping that as long as I tractor over it regularly, the inevitable pampas shoots won't get a foothold again, or that it'll be like bamboo -- the all-knowing internet suggests that with certain "pest" plants, the most efficient thing to do is to keep razing them to the ground when they shoot up, so they eventually expend all their energy and the roots finally die in place and you don't have to dig up half your yard to end the madness.

Either way, it's WAY less of a mess than it was. I know pampas is not completely 100% evil, and can even be rather attractive -- heaven help me, I've actually considered planting some of the root chunks elsewhere in the yard -- but I didn't realize how strange it was that it was just stuck out there in the middle of the lawn until I saw how much the overall look of the property improves without it.

And speaking of improving the overall landscape...

Here's the ugly sticky-up tree stump that was a blight on my yard this morning:

And here it is leveled off:

So I no longer need to worry quite so much about hitting THAT with the tractor, bwahaha.

Here's a tree out back that was rotting, and I can't imagine how it wasn't completely dead, but it was tenaciously hanging on... despite having fallen over directly onto another tree and getting sort of permanently stuck there by its upper branches.

Here's the tree after being cut once -- it kinda fell down and a fork in the branches caught even tighter against the tree next to it, so we couldn't move it any more that way.

But then Dave made one more cut and toppled it for good.

And now, for no good reason except that I had the camera out, here are Even More Azaleas.

Be Alert!

2009-04-23T00:04:08Z

It started off very innocently...

Me: "I wonder if they're ever gonna cut the grass on the hillside out there."

Coworker: "Yeah, it's starting to look like wildlife habitat. Like there might be giant rats hiding out there."

Me: "Or lions!"

Coworker: "Or packs of roving dingoes!"

Me: "That definitely does look like dingo habitat. We'll have to watch out for them when we go on our afternoon walk."

Coworker: "I'm not going. It looks too chilly out there. Chilly and blustery. And there might be dingoes."

Clearly, what our office needed was a little dingo awareness.

These are now hanging up all over said coworker's cube:

Yeah... so that was pretty much my afternoon.

I should not be left to my own devices. Seriously.

sigh

2009-04-19T02:17:56Z

The pampas grass is winning the fight, I fear. Another hour or two with the hedge clippers today still didn't raze it to the ground. Was hoping to get it to the point, maybe, where I could just run it over with the tractor, but that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen; it's just a little too live and moist to burn out, and there's still a bunch of dead junk left that's too stubborn to cut with any of the tools I own. The one solution I am NOT at the moment considering is using a chainsaw.

Also gave the azaleas a much-needed trim, and cleaned a lot of junk (sticks, sticks, sticks, weeds, and sticks. Oh, and for some reason an old oil filter. And then some sticks) out of the natural area along the west side of the house -- the area that I'm slowly filling up with color. Even made a little inroad on the clump of small trees and large weeds, vines, busted branches and generally ugly nature along the edge of the driveway, where there's a small tree that will look perfectly nice if I ever get the junk cleared out so the deliberately planted plants are actually visible.

The biggest excitement of the afternoon was when I was happily hedge-clipping away at the big pink azalea in the backyard and suddenly got a burst of sparks and a burnt-metal smell; whacked right through the extension cord, I did. (Dad assures me that it could have been repaired, but as I've only got about, I don't know, a BILLION feet of clearly visible orange extension cord left over from the bad ol' days when I had to string together four or five of them to run the electric mower, I decided to send this one to the electronics graveyard instead.)

So, yup, that was my day.

CO2 stops here

2009-04-17T02:38:13Z

Today I planted two azaleas, one lilac, and several mosses that I hope will spread and become wonderful shady-area ground cover; also thinned and transplanted some ornamental grass and used up the rest of a bag of grass seed (the areas I seeded a couple weeks ago are for the most part doing great, and I got more growth than I expected, considering that most of the bald spotshad to do with big patches of clay).

We're in that nice time of year when I can actually be outside without collapsing from heat or pollen, and I wish I had an unlimited budget, so I could really go nuts with the flowering ornamentals.

Bubble Wrap

2009-04-16T19:05:54Z

Bubble Wrap
Originally uploaded by lasrina.

Now if I knew anything about who did this to my coworker's cube, I'd be more than happy to share that information. It's too bad I was nowhere near it and didn't see a thing.

Yes it has

2009-04-15T21:41:03Z

see more dog and puppy pictures

Last one, I promise

2009-04-14T01:51:21Z

"Them aliens was everywhere."

Samurai Trunk Monkey!

2009-04-14T01:50:41Z

Trunk Monkey

2009-04-14T01:41:29Z