Category Archives: Personal Blog

Entries from my personal journal

Personal Blog

5 Shredding Tears and 1 Lisa

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What a fun week! The Shredding Tears performance on the roof of Glassworks was faaaaaaaaantastic! They are such amazing performers! Also, the sound was really nice, kudos to Ken for finding whoever ran sound for that show.

The next day I clambered into the tour van of said Tears and set out with them as an official roadie. The trip was delightful, and their show in Toledo was quite fun. I actually tried very hard to convince Bauer to let me help out, but he was confident in just having me assist Graham in guarding the van as they loaded in and out.

Graham and I make the perfect ominous guard team: a blind man and a short girl. Go us! Here are some highlights from the trip…

Favorite Quote:
“The only thing I’ve ever lost in the band was the band fund which I didn’t lose.” -Bryan Scary

Most amusing moment:
At a pit stop with single user restrooms, Scary attempted to expedite the process when he discovered the men’s room had both a toilet and a urinal by inviting a COMPLETE STRANGER into the bathroom to pee with him (just being polite, the man was next in line after all). Upon the door closing, Mike, Graham, and myself exchanged the most befuddled, horrified, and bemused expressions. What I would give to have captured them!

And the winner of the “It’s Clearly Obvious these guys have spent so much time together that they have assimilated one another’s vernacular” Award goes to…
The word “absurd”

Thanks again to the Tears, who are so very lovable and wonderful people, who let me hitch a ride along their tour so that I could get back to Pittsburgh. I hope they come here to play some time.

Personal Blog

Moved in

Unpacking complete! Well, mostly. 90%, I’d say, enough to clear out room for my roommates to move in their stuff. The kitchen here is fantastic, and I broke it in right away by making stir fry (because it’s delicious! Also because the only eating utensils we have right now are chopsticks).

Will was an awesome help in moving the heavy things around, and he got to go hang out with his Pittsburgh internet friends as well. Yesterday was spent mostly sitting around and watching Will play Zelda (I had high hopes of him beating it before I have to return the game to DC, but alas, we only got as far as the creepy desert place. Oh well).

Today we set out for Louisville once more, for fun and excitement. Brendan is home, and I can’t wait to see him! The Shredding Tears are coming, and I can’t wait to see them either!

If anyone’s in Louisville on Wednesday night, you are REQUIRED to go to the OVCE rooftop benefit concert at Glassworks. Info: http://www.ohiovalleycreativenergy.org/events.php

That’s all for now!

Personal Blog

Pittsburgh!

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Here I am in Pittsburgh! Safe and sound! Yay!

All the stuff is moved into the house, though I have an unruly couple of unpacking days, I can already tell. Some words of thanks…

First, God bless parents. Ah for parents to rent a truck and haul all my junk seven hours up the road from Louisville, and then to carry it all in, and then to hook up my window AC unit, and THEN to buy dinner for me after all that.

Secondly, God bless all my wonderful, wonderful friends. Yes for helping me load and pack my stuff, but also for the wonderful couple of years spent in Louisville. It was a fantastic and enriching time, and I am so lucky to have all of you. I will miss you all very much, but there will be plenty of visiting!

And finally, God bless people who set up unsecure wireless networks, just so Lisa can get online after moving into her new place but before she has internet service of her own.

That is all! More updates when the unpacking finishes.

-Lisa

Personal Blog

Dresses and Books

Two things happened today of interest…

1) Maria peer pressured me into buying a dress. A for-real dress, and an expensive one at that, which I never would have bought when sound of mind. But, as much as I don’t want to spend money, it is true that I own no dresses (after my recent massive wardrobe purge especially), and going into graduate school, I am likely to encounter events in which I will need a dress.

At the very least, it is quite a lovely dress.

2) I nearly tripped over Scott’s copy of Harry Potter this morning on my way out the door. Scott graciously lent me the novel to read first, due to my rapid reading pace. Indeed, I finished the book in record time: 7 hours with a 30 minute dinner break. I haven’t taken part in such indulgent marathon reading in ages. I enjoyed the book immensely.

And now, bed!

Personal Blog

Fondue is a Fon-don’t (except when it’s a Fon-do)

Today was my last day of work, how exciting! My boss and coworkers gave me the gift of two large chocolate fondue dishes at the new Coco’s Chocolate Cafe on Bardstown road. I gathered all the ballers I could and we had dinner there tonight. Delicious! SO DELICIOUS! It ended with me scraping my fingers inside the fondue bowls to get as much of the delicious chocolate as I could. It was an extremely thoughtful gift, and I’m glad my friends were able to partake in it.

Maria, you need to upload those photos you took soon, I want to see!

Afterwards, I gave away belongings to friends, as I’m trying to purge as much stuff as I can before I move. It was like Christmas day: “Who wants one of these…you? Take it!”

Meanwhile, did they make female taurens taller? Or the war raptors bigger? I swear I’m having more trouble than ever in Undercity. I used to just not be able to fit through the elevator door, but now I can’t fit through ANY doors. I have a suspicion that while they seem to have accidentally replaced male orc shoulders with female orc shoulders, they also replaced female tauren war raptors with male tauren war raptors. But, of course, no one’s going to raise a fuss about that (I did, afterall, accept the inconvenience of not being able to fit through doorways as payment for the badassery I would receive riding about on my DINOSAUR).

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

Busy updates

Busy times, busy times.

Tomorrow is my last day of work. Half of me is excited (hence the not being able to sleep so instead staying up late and posting on LJ), and half of me is frantic because I have to leave them in the middle of their hectic getting-ready-for-the-start-of-school time. My calendar is packed full of social obligations I have to tend to before heading off to Pittsburgh, and it’s equally exciting and exhausting.

Last Friday my Kempo friends came over for dinner. It was fantastic to see them again and amusing to watch Brad and James compete on the Wii. Kempo is such an important yet not often talked-about part of my life and spending time with them is always enriching. I’ll try to keep updating within the next week, as I’m sure much will happen before I depart for the north.

A few notes…

1) They should just rename Facebook to Scrabblebook and be done with it.

2) Iisaw (iisaw) posted this awhile back in his journal, and I kept meaning to share it. It is one of the most fun and cleverly designed Flash games I’ve encountered. Brendan, you would like this a lot, so be sure to check it out: BLOXORZ

3) The other day I helped my grandparents set up their first email account and send their first email. They were delighted.

That’s all for now!

Personal Blog

Read-a-thon

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After a respectable 2 weeks, I finished Gone with the Wind, and as I suspected, it was better reading it now of my own free will than it was reading it under force as a 15-year-old.

I say “respectable” in terms of time because I feel I managed to pace myself quite well with this book. I think long books tame my brain into a steady endurance pace, which is difficult to do, as I am apt to devour books in large mouthfuls. It is not as though I skim books and just take in their surface. When I read I do consume the depths and flood my imagination with the details…it just happens in large gulps. I lift words up whole sentences at a time, not necessarily in the order presented, and reassemble them the proper way in my brain to create the story. It is fantastic! It is also why I can’t read anything without seeing it all at once. This makes those little news ticker feeds at the bottom of the TV screen literally impossible to read.

But enough about at. First, commentary on the book: Scarlett is still as unlikable as ever, but believable. So one doesn’t feel sympathy so much as recognition of at least one personal flaw buried in such a flawed character, and that’s what causes pain. It’s kind of like how she goes through the whole book wanting Melanie to die, and when it finally happens, her realization of how important people were to her is sudden and drastic and painful. Thus, you go through the whole book wanting Scarlett to get hurt, because she’s such a bitch, but when she finally loses everything, you notice a piece of yourself somewhere in there and feel pain.

Oh, did I just spoil the book for some people? Oh… IT’S FREAKIN GONE WITH THE WIND. Come on.

Anyway, now I need another great big massive long story of a book to read. And drat it if I can’t find my unabridged copy of The Stand!. Suggestions welcome.

Edit: I also can’t find my copy of Harpo Speaks! This is distressing, as it is one of my favorite books.

Personal Blog

Grandparents? Linux? Madness!

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In the ongoing effort to purge belongings before the big move, I fixed up my spare computer to give to my grandparents. I am running a secret experiment.

I put Kubuntu onto the box, in secret effort to turn my grandparents into geeks. Well not really. See, I have a theory: when all the little grandchildren come over and don’t know how to use the Window-less computer, and my grandparents have to explain it to them, it will give my grandparents confidence!

The other part of my plan is to deter other well-meaning family members from trying to bombard my grandparents, showing them “Oh you just have to do this and this and this and it’s eaaaaaaaasy,” for they will be wary of the unfamiliar and back off.

Shut up, my plan is foolproof! For serious, though, they are a clean slate as far as computers, so giving them a Linux box will make no difference to them. They will likely only use it for the internet and word processing, and games (I plan on regimenting a vigorous solitaire schedule for my grandma so she can learn how to use the mouse).

Either way, they were both startlingly grateful for my gift, as though I’d given them some piece of precious magic. I’ll return to their house when they get the internet set up, and will show them the wilds of the web. My grandmother, in spite of her tentative grasp of the mouse (both physically and metaphorically) specifically requested an Instant Messenger program, so I am confident of her drive and intent to learn how to use computers.

Alas for Linux, else I’d have her on WoW in no-time.