I am going to eat coleslaw and half of a cheeseburger for breakfast. Then perhaps half a cantaloupe. [note: I wrote this post this morning, and did indeed eat the burger]

. Lori got a bunch of boxes from her work because she wants to build a temporary playhouse for the cat, filled with crinkly cellophane and toys and treats. I intend to do no work on this project and will merely sit back and watch the cat a) go bonkers and play with it endlessly or b) ignore it completely.

. Rumblings of a standard minimum wage are afoot, much like the Mincome of the 70s. I sincerely doubt that we will ever see anything like this in a Harper government, but one can still dream. Also the comments to that article are strangely not as loathsome as comments sections tend to be.

. Last time we were at a Fred Meyer's we picked up some Twinkies, and then realized that American Twinkies taste different from Canadian ones! They're slightly bigger and more pale, with a distinct citrus taste and a sweetness that hits the back of your throat. Canadian ones are browner and have a more caramelized, less sweet taste. We like the Canadian ones btw. The American ones also have these odd little ... cake clots in them.

. Also I just remembered I have a bunch of Def Jam Poetry up in my dropbox, for whoever's interested. Be warned that the topics covered in the poems can be very triggery. 

I got some peanut butter to keep at work today for breakfasts -- I generally have squirrely bread toast with avocado or cheese or egg or peanut butter -- and it has a recipe on the back for cookies. With no flour! Just peanut butter, sugar, and an egg. I am intrigued but also wary. Have any of you tried making cookies like that? 

I also tried poaching chicken breasts for the first time so I could make chicken salad and stuff like that. Normally I roast chicken if I want it for other applications, but I figured I'd try poaching and followed a Martha Stewart recipe where you bring the poaching liquid to a boil, put the chicken in, boil for about three minutes and then remove it from the heat. The residual heat in the liquid supposedly cooks the chicken over the next fifteen minutes. I feel like I should have boiled it a little longer, because although it wasn't pink in the middle it still had that ... texture that to me signals that it's not cooked enough. But apart from that, it was surprisingly tasty for poached chicken. I might try poaching some salmon too!

Tomorrow I am gonna visit the parents and pick up one of the 40lb sacks of pine pellets that Meera uses for litter. I think I'll take my dad with me, because he likes to feel as though his daughters need him to do masculine tasks once in a while, and I think he wants to be kind of involved in taking care of Meera, awww dad. He asks how she's doing every time he calls. Sometimes more than he asks how Lori's doing, lol.

 Also jesus christ people seem to get really goddamn upset that I hated the novel The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  Go home, y'all. Have some tea. It's okay.

What better way to try and journal more frequently on DW than to post a picture of our new cat?

She's not NEW new, glockgal and I got her at the beginning of July, but sometimes we still look over at her and are like what have we done omg why is this living creature in our house. Her name is Meera (we wanted to match her cousin-dog upstairs, who is a black Portugese water hound named Mishka) and she is so so sweet, tiny and fast and shiny and she talks SO much. She does that thing where she runs between our bedrooms at four in the morning trying to wake us up, but we've started a method where if she's standing on our pillows meowing, we grab her and hug her. Then she objects and goes away to entertain herself pretty quickly, heh.

We did end up going with VOKRA rather than the BC SPCA, and we haven't regretted it, so thank you to the folks who recommended them! She came to us on a diet of Wellness grain-free that we mix with raw food, and she uses these super cheap pine stove pellets as litter -- we get a huge 40lb bag of it for about six dollars, and the sawdust that it breaks down into is compostable. Which is great since we have a big ol' compost bin in the backyard of our house. And speaking of the house that we're sharing with highschool pal Dasha and her fella, we renewed the lease for another year!!  Which is SUCH a relief, because we love it here and were dreading having to move so soon after moving in.

Also if anybody has advice for how to keep spiders out of the house, please share! We used to use chestnuts but I don't think they're being that effective and a spider the size of my goddamn palm scuttled across the living room floor the other night.

The landlords have agreed to renew our rental lease in August instead of making us move out, yaaaay! The change came due to a death in the family on their part, which is sad, of course -- I would have preferred if they'd changed their minds due to less awful reasons -- but still, I'm happy we get to stay here for at least another year.

Other things going on with me:

[ this first section is mental health stuff, so skip down to the next if you'd prefer ]

- I've been suffering anxiety for a couple of years now, after getting out of a +20-yr friendship that had become toxic, getting in an accident that totalled my beloved car, moving twice, having my new car vandalized, losing my job, finding a job, and having our new place broken into and our laptops stolen. It's gotten down to a more manageable place, but my work offers employees free counselling and access to a CBT program (the employee program is acronymmed "EFAP" and the CBT thing is called "Beating the Blues" so I can't help but view it all as faintly masturbatory, heh), so we'll see how that goes. On the initial visit the counsellor told me to not get angry at my anxiety or frustrated with myself for still feeling it and not having "moved on" yet, so that in itself was a help because I hadn't seen it that way.

- CAT. glockgal is allergic and neither of us ever wanted to deal with a litterbox and all that before, but we have enough room and the energy/finances to own a cat now, so we've been getting the house ready for one. Lori ordered a Modkat, I bought a Litter Locker, we're sourcing out making the bulk of kitty's food, comparing reviews of litters, and making toys for her, and since we can't find a decent cat tree that's not covered in carpet, I'm gonna Ikea-hack one.

We do not actually have a cat yet of any sort, but we figure while we look, might as well get the house prepared. We've been trying to adopt one from the SPCA but man, those cats go fast! There's been about three so far that we've attempted to get but been cockblocked on, gdi.

- Midsommar! According to our Swedish friend Tobi who lives upstairs, Midsummer is the Swedenest thing ever and he insists that we celebrate it as a household. So tomorrow night we will be barbecuing, drinking, and apparently dancing around a maypole (we've been told the dancing is non-optional). I'm hoping that the people that Tobi and Dasha have invited will bring their dogs, a pocket beagle named Cooper and a shiba inu named Mochi, to hang out with our household Portugese water dog, Mishka. Last time Mochi was visiting, Lori'd opened the door of our suite and she just marched in and explored the place with Mishka trotting behind her, and then when she left Lori was like "THAT IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME IN MY ENTIRE LIFE", so.

Tobi has also promised that he's making mustard-pickled herring and gravlax, and since Tobi's gravlax made with our Pacific Northwest salmon is one of the most incredible foods I've ever tasted, I am very much looking forward to this!

Yesterday at work as I was leaving the lunchroom, I heard one of the doctors say that her husband was on "dog dick patrol" because their pet has "doggie priapism". DREAMWIDTH IS THIS A REAL THING?!?

Also, in the continuing saga of "that one piece of fanart that glockgal really should have signed properly":



In conclusion, Happy Gregorian New Year! We may end up celebrating with Fritou and mixed pupusas and possibly a donut or two, all of which we can get at the very awesome Duffin's Donuts, mmmm.

Was reading and capping comics last night, and came across this:



Seriously, if Ollie had his business on the side with Hal (as we all know he did), Dinah definitely had hers with Babs. And I approve of all of it.

Sure, there’s hordes of evil to be stopped, people in peril, outer space battles to fight.  But in-between, there’s a full-service cafeteria and lots of other superheroes to talk to.

Looking for a mature, active, two-year-strong DCU roleplay that offers plenty of plotty and casual RP?  One where it’s cool if you want to race/gender/sexuality/etc.-bend some DCU superheroes?  One with an in-house artist who draws the characters? Come join us in the Justice Lounge, modded by glockgal and me!

||   the justice lounge | rules | faq | character list  ||

Bullet point sales pitch:
- minor time commitment, only three comments/posts a week (can be in a conversation)
- any DC comics character (minus the New 52) or DC Animated character (minus Teen Titans, Young Justice, and Green Lantern) is allowed
- there’s art of the RP characters and regular AU chatzy weekend events
- curious what it’s like?  Check out our archived threads

Check us out and consider apping your favourite DC character!

In my attempt to get back into journaling, I may be taking people off my reading circle! Please don't feel that this is hugely personal, I'm just trying to whittle down the list until I get a handle on dreamwidthing on a regular basis again. :)

Tumblr was good for a while when I felt burnt out on journaling, and just wanted to flick through pretty pictures and gifsets and so forth. And it still is! But now I have come again to the point where I want conversations with people, which Tumblr is completely and utterly useless for unless I want to get into a screaming match with random teenagers about how much I hate that fucking "What Does the Fox Say" song. (And that's another thing, I want to talk to some damn GROWNUPS again, heh!)

So from now on, Tumblr is for playing on the DC roleplaying group that I run with glockgal and that's pretty much it. BTW I will be posting an ad for that RP group soonish, so if you've ever considered a DCU game, please keep us in mind!

I probably got this link from somebody on DW but I can't remember who! Anyhow, I want to put it here so I don't lose it: The Aesthetic Politics of Filming Black Skin.

Also I just put my pillows in the washing machine. If the machine manages them and comes out unscathed, I'm'a do my comforter too. SO EXCITING

 So, every time I've attempted to make some kind of "yay! I think I'd like to try journaling again!" post, something dreadful and depressing has happened in real life that sucks that desire right back out of me. 

Which means this time I'm just casually making a post and acknowledging that it may be my only post for the next few months, who knows, anything could happen. YOU HEAR ME, UNIVERSE?

And that said, hello, dreamwidthers! I hope you've been well.