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May 26th, 2012
 | 11:41 pm
La la la, I keep forgetting to post. The things that I am thinking about most lately are not suitable for LJ, and the things that are particularly well-suited to LJ are busy (a) climbing on the furniture, (b) being in bloom outside, or (c) involve being asleep in a sunbeam, all of which interfere with typing.
Greg is the climbingest! Oh god, a new piece of furniture is conquered every day. I keep peeling him off of, fishing him out of, or coaxing him down from locales that strain topological credulity. He always looks exceptionally pleased with himself, and a little irritated that I am calling a halt to things before the news crew and the verification team from Guinness World Records arrives to admire his latest ascent, but he has a happy nature and is willing to forgive me and move on, particularly if I have some distracting cheese in hand. TOE! is the word of the week. We all have toes, it develops, and he points out all toes frequently in case anyone had any doubt. TOE! also means Toby, our cat. Dr. Gramma offered him some TOast and the confusion was palpable. For my feet? Oh... for the cat? Oh... for a snack! There sure are a lot of toes! We have also mastered NOSE! and UH OH! and CHEESE!; and he can reliably point at mumma, Greggie, gramma, grampa, auntie, Ben, dada/papa, cat. He will fetch his bottle, his truck, or his binky if asked, or anyway he will maybe half the time, because you have to be in the mood to obey, and well, toddler.
I am still loving on my new-to-me macbook. Today I have been specifically loving on a hidden object game, Pure Hidden. Now, I like the usual sort of hidden object game, which drip cheese like a tuna melt, but this is something else altogether. They took a hidden object game, removed the plot entirely, and shipped all the cliches off to a correspondent on a far-away planet who had never heard of them but was DELIGHTED by them but also a little confused, and shook it around a bit, and sent it to France to class up, and it's just so WONDERFUL. The hidden object scenes are really artfully arranged, everything clearly hidden and disguised by hand by a skilled graphic artist. The traditional pipe rearranging mini-game appears first as "redirect the heat from a chicken's butt to hatch out eggs in a bizarre labyrinthine chicken coop" and the first reassemble this puzzle mini-game is an art print of a volkswagen van done over by graffiti artists. At one point dramatic, sombre piano music starts playing and the game sternly commands: "DECORATE YOUR BATHROOM." There's a scene where a comic book hero shakes his head disapprovingly at you while you search for a banana. The overall effect is like, a really zen version of Hyper Bishi Bashi Champ. <3 <3 <3
That's a link not to the game developer's site, which has autoplay sound, EW, but to game distributor Big Fish, who are my main hookup for cheesy casual games. They publish from a variety of developers and the quality and style are widely varied, but I wish to call them out for their fabulous and praiseworthy customer service. I've had issues with a couple of games to the point of needing to contact tech support, and they write back promptly with these lengthy, articulate, polite emails, where it is clear that an intelligent and technically capable person has thoughtfully considered every word I wrote to them, gushing with the desire to either fix my problem or get me a credit for a replacement game. I just.. was not expecting that from a place that sells BAKERY DASH 3: EVEN MORE CINNAMON and PHANTASMAGORICURSE: MYSTERY OF THE LEGEND OF THE HIDDEN PUPPET and MAHJONGG JEWEL ADVENTURE. (Well... or games to that effect.) But you get down with your bad casual self, Big Fish, you're doing it right. Golf clap!
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May 22nd, 2012
 | 11:15 pm
Hah! Who has a working laptop! That would be me! I am the proud owner of a moderately ancient (2007) macbook which is nevertheless vastly more powerful and uh, not broken than my more recent Dell, which gave earnest service for many years but is now chiefly valuable for its interesting stickers. My years of macphobia are, I confess, dissolving pretty rapidly, once I figured out how to click the mouse (SHUT UP IT WAS TRICKY) what in god's name the weird-ass symbol means that, it turns out, means the option key, and how to make the desktop a horrible orange aesthetic disaster despite the best efforts of Apple's cringing interface team. I keep waiting for some horrible crippling bug to happen that I need to google an obscure script-based solution for on back-alley forums behind a BEWARE OF SNOW LEOPARD poster, but it turns out I may be leaving that behind with Ubuntu. I say this with love, Ubuntu, for lo, you have been very good to me and also oh god modern versions of Windows would have made me STAB A THING. But since Ubuntu gave up and switched to a mac interface anyway, only crappier, what the heck. Also this is free! Where by free we understand we spent money on a non-free replacement laptop for Joe, like. No marginal cost perceived by me today due to sticking my fingers in my ears and going LALALALALA? There we go!
Next paragraph is all about the dentist! Avoid, dental-phobes!
I could tell it was going to be a cheerful day today when I ENJOYED getting fillings. I mean, I've always preferred getting a filling to getting a cleaning at the dentist. Cleanings have a strong chance of making me go BLURRRGH even after banning the use of the fluoride rinses/trays whatever. (I am a HUGE FAN of the protective effects of fluoride, and I WISH VERY HARD that I could tolerate fluoride treatments, but blah blah blah gag reflex blah. Just to be clear.) But fillings have local anesthetic, which is FASCINATING! And you get to lie back and sort of check out mentally while people poke your face with kind intentions, it's a tiny not-very-good spa in a sense. And the smaller drill makes a cool theremin sound and the big one is like a blender only they're blending TEETH and that's kind of creepy but also HILARIOUS, and at my new dentist - it's been like four years, I should stop calling him the new dentist - there's this cool camera set-up where you can watch the tooth reconstruction action, and it's just all pretty interesting, usually up to and including the point where I go "this almost but not completely mitigates the discomfort and pain this procedure involves." But today I was like, THIS IS GREAT! Which is odd even for me. This has been a fortnight of strange doings and many roller coasters literal and figurative and uh whee here I go! Today was a good 'un. With a lot of file transfers.
Greg had his first bubble bath today! Almost. We were all super stoked, because he LOVES baths, he is going to be SO EXCITED! But the bubbles scared the crap out of him and he criiiiiied and cried until we drained the tub. Oops. Poor little bean! A fresh bath with no bubbles and lots of trucks restored his faith in bath-kind. Maybe we'll try that again when you're older, kiddo. OOH OOH LOOK A BEAN ICON! Only took me a year an' a half...
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May 19th, 2012
 | 04:38 pm
Ah, context, so important.
A few years ago I had a patient stop mid-sentence, grab my face, and say "Do you know how cute you are!" It was very alarming and I stepped back and looked horrified, and they seemed to understand it was inappropriate, and that would have been that, except they bring it up and apologize again every time they come in. AUGH STOP. I would have long ago forgotten entirely, but instead the creepy lives on. o/~ How can I forgive them? / They won't let me forget! o/~ There are some complications involving this person's mental health which mean that straight up saying STOP TALKING ABOUT IT is not actually a great idea. So I just stand four feet back and respond to smalltalk with single words in a flat tone when this person comes in now. Which happened again today, with another two apologies.
Anyway, half an hour after that encounter today, another patient came in and grabbed my face. But this time I laughed and said thank you, because it was a one million year old (approximately) patient who is a favourite of mine, and they were calling on god to bless the noble pharmacist and her son and her mother-in-law.
I was interrupted while writing this to give advice about an over-the-counter product to yet another patient, and this patient reached up to pat me on the head and say "Good old Brooke! She always knows." My head is just irresistible, folks. (This person has a serious intellectual disability and I will quite happily accept a pat on the head from them.)
Judging by the last hour, my head gets cuddled all day long at work. It's funny that that one incident years ago felt so transgressive. I'm not sure someone watching it in a series of head events in my shifts would have picked it out of a line-up. But ick, it sure did.
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Yesterday I went bowling! Brenna and I are totally starting a bowling league. She's working on team t-shirts with leprotic lemurs on them. How this squares with our bowling names - WOODSTOK and SNOOPY - is unclear. (8 character limit. We can in fact spell Woodstock, despite the copious drinking that our bowling style demands.) After 3 games, where I think our total combined scores may have cracked 450 (the top score for one person in one game in 5-pin bowling) but then again maybe not, we went to visit mom and dad and their 4 dozen pet oysters, who have mysteriously not been seen since. Last seen being delicious. Shucking knife found at scene. Best Friday afternoon ever.
They have penguins at the aquarium now! They all have cute little bracelets on, probably for identification rather than style, but who knows. They are from South Africa! I did not know Africa had penguins. I mean, they're endangered, so it doesn't have very many, evidently. There is also a new porpoise, Jack, who joins Daisy. Jack is very interested in the human child exhibit next to his tank. Daisy is pretending to be indifferent to humans now, because she's sooooo much cooler than Jack, in fact, Jack who? Oh porpoise drama, you are pretty adorable. Oh man, and the sloths! One was just sitting around looking like a wig as usual, but the other one was SLOWLY HAVING A SNACK! I took a video I was so excited. (Sloths set the bar for excitement pretty low, it's true.)
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May 17th, 2012
 | 01:38 pm - What's! On! My! Camera!
What's! On! My! Camera!
Babies and flowers mostly! This is stuff from the last month up until the day before Cedar Point.
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May 15th, 2012
 | 05:49 pm
I'm on a hairplane! Well an airplane. But my hair is living it up in grand anime fashion. Somewhere over Montana, on my way home from our annual pilgrimage to Cedar Point. OH MAN IT WAS GREAT!
Free funnel cake!
I rode the Maverick, which is a totally badass hardcore coaster because I am a RIDE WARRIOR. Twice.
We both won prizes in claw machines. In CLAW MACHINES. The machines where NO ONE EVER WINS ANYTHING. (Except Roper, rumour has it.) Bwahahahaha.
We wrote issue two of La la la!!! I will get around to printing it up in a few weeks. I still have quite a few copies of issue one, act now etc.
Amy brought me cheese which is also caramel. CARAMEL CHEESE. Does that sound gross? Because it's actually REALLY AMAZING.
We rode the raptor like seven times and drove it twice and I love you forever you green scream machine smooch smooch smooch XOXOXOX.
Amy went on the Windseeker with me! Like six times! It gets ultratall and she is acrophobic and she just loves me that much and I mean I am pretty great but DAWWWWWW I LOVE YOU TOO.
Giant. Pickles. Oh. Hell. Yes.
The Witches' Wheel is henceforward to be known as the Dryer of Love.
TGI Friday's made us so many fruity drinks. All of the fruit.
Seagulls are idiots.
God the weather was so PERFECT. Sunny and a slight breeze and warm and the hot tub and the sand and wiggling our bare feet on the Raptor and listening to screams drift across to our hotel room, and and and.
We managed to find a Scotchy on the way home and had lunch! Hah!
On our way there, it was National Train Day, and there was a couple getting their wedding photos at Union Station, bwahaha I love you you dorks.
NASA was there on Monday! We didn't find their booth, but we did learn about magnets, or something.
Disgruntled Kinex employee. Hee hee hee.
I have ultra-classy safety orange cedar point short shorts now.
Amy has rather a lot of snow globes.
I SEEM TO HAVE HAD RATHER A NICE TIME.
Wheeeeee!
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May 12th, 2012
 | 07:51 am
In Seattle, having some extruded pancakes (WOOOOO!) and a mimosa before my flight to Chicago leaves. COASTERS SOON!!!! OMG I AM SO READY FOR COASTERS.
I went to a meeting of the Teen Girl Squad last night, for the first time in years! By teen girl squad we understand drinking, pastries, and giggling with a bunch of classy dames who are oh hell naw not teenagers, thank god. So nice to see you all again! There were many pink drinks consumed, and after a tipsy grocery shopping field trip, we made girly fake martinis with gooseberries instead of olives, which was freaking awesome.
We went computer shopping yesterday! Joe has a new laptop. I am EXTREMELY excited about this because I am going to inherit his ancient macbook, which is way faster than my current machine and also isn't completely fucking broken. You've been good to me through some hard service, little Dell, but oh man are you unusable now. Battery won't charge, sound won't work, instant hibernation if the baby touches the power cord, which happens a lot, la la la. So YAY new computer! And after being seduced by this ipad, I am even kind of excited, rather than skeered, about it being a mac. The fact that it is still in great shape despite being considerably older than the machine it is replacing says something, for instance. Hopefully it'll last a bit longer, heh. The one thing I'm sad about is it's already covered in JOE'S stickers. I'm at least removing the creepy camouflage lucky poo sticker. We'll see about the rest.
Okay off to the gate to the plane to the el to the FIDDLAR to the train to the taxi to the hotel next to the COASTERS TOMORROW MORNING AWWWW YEEEEEEAH.
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May 9th, 2012
 | 09:09 am
ONE TWO THREE FOUR I DECLARE A THUMB WAR! I've been yelling that for like a week, mostly at Joe, not because I hate his thumbs (I resent how they are IMPOSSIBLE to defeat in a thumb war, seriously, they're HUGE, but I am grateful for all the cool stuff they do) but because he is used to me yelling strange things at him and isn't hung up on having to parse them all and ANYWAY are thumb DRIVE wars a thing yet? Vixy and I are going to make little luchador masks for ours and then... uh... the fighting mechanic needs some work, that's as far as we got.
I have ordered my new screen/digitizer! In a depressing moment of adulthood I got a black one, deciding that a banana slug yellow one wasn't worth an extra forty bucks and a several week delay. It would also sort of scream I VOIDED MY WARRANTY, although I doubt there will be any question of this by the end of the procedure. We watched a video last night of how to do it. I went "Jesus that looks tricky!" and Joe went "Oh, hey, this guy did *obscure technical thingy* with the proper technique, good for him." which is why Joe gets to do ipad surgery on my precious orange baby. Ha ha "gets to." This is why I have accepted Joe's generous offer to do so, I mean. It's a good excuse to finally get his own heat gun, see! I have fond memories of my first overnight stay with Seph, age eighteen, rolling over in the morning and looking blearily at his bedside table, which had a clock, his glasses, an alarming phallic looking heat gun, and a grimy can of Yellow Wire Pulling Lubricant. "Joe... what's... that... for?" "Mhuhh?" *two hours pass* "Joe... what's... that... for?" "Pulling wires." "..." "No, no, ACTUAL WIRES." And he showed me a wire harness he was building for his dad. Ah, romance!
My new screen has already shipped, with the cautionary note "The delivery of your order may be delayed due to the Canada Postal Strike that began on June 3, 2011." I uh... well, it for sure won't arrive before July 2011, that is true, yes. I'm hesitant to call that a /delay/ at this point, mind...
Beautiful day! We are going to walk over to the drive to see Auntie Brenna's new digs. Bren is willing to grudgingly tolerate the company of me and mum as long as we bring her nephew along. Well, that's what I get for making the world's finest baby.
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May 8th, 2012
 | 01:49 pm
I thought I was going to get four fillings done today, but it was cancelled at the last minute, so I have been floating about running errands with the vague feeling that I have weaseled my way out of something. It's probably just as well to delay the fillings until after this weekend's additional cotton candy damage has been figured in. In the grand scheme of things.
I went to the Apple store to sadly show off my cracked ipad screen. Boohoo, etc! Really it's just kind of amazing that it took me a whole YEAR to crack the screen. (There was a sleepy Brooka plus arms full of diaper bags plus tenuous grip on ipad plus sidewalk incident.) Anyway, they want $250 to repair it, so I have opted for now to put scotch tape on the crack and put my fingers in my ears and go LA LA LA LA LA and Seph is going to take a crack at fixing it, or an un-crack hopefully, har. His desk slash bench is sort of a warranty-voiding fantasy island, so it's a shame not to take advantage if you have the chance, really. I just found out you can buy SLIME LIME or BANANA-SHAMING YELLOW (or other more tastefully-coloured) replacement digitizers online, and it's a good thing I didn't know that before or I would have cracked the screen on PURPOSE. Well maybe not. But I would have been SORELY TEMPTED. Hopefully I can find a source that will ship to Canada.
After the Apple store, I went to the new Lego store down the hall in Oakridge, and hee hee hee it's like one is a parody of the other. (In which direction I cannot decide.) The Lego store even has Brick Consultants who greet you at the door! Hee hee hee. I was half expecting a lego genius bar where Zak the Lego Maniac would consult on architectural issues, but alas no. They did have a mini-fig salad bar where you could roll your own. Buckets and buckets of little heads and torsos! Of all the days to leave my camera at home. Yes, yes, I know I have three other cameras just in my purse alone, but they don't count for W!O!M!C! purposes. Meanwhile the Apple store was wearing an Ikea costume, because there were a dozen employees in those bright blue t-shirts, and then a dozen children there on a field trip wearing Bright! Yellow! commemorative Apple Store Field Trip t-shirts. It seems a little weird to organize a field trip to go be indoctrinated in the product line of a particular retail store. They did seem to be having a blast, though. It's May, probably anything they learn from here to the end of June will just dissolve over summer vacation anyway, what the heck.
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May 7th, 2012
 | 10:10 pm
Sunny day! I technically went outside, too, to check the mail. I get postcards every weekday lately! This was a genius plan of mine. Other than checking the mail, today had a lot of lying around while the baby attacked me, biting and hitting (and laughing SO HARD about it) while I frowned and feebly fended him off. Sort of passive-aggressive parenting, it's a philosophy. Okay no, but I am still in the tail end of my SNOTULOR THE DISGUSTATRON virus and kind of low energy. We did have a spirited match of cheese baseball bowling, wherein I set up a line of Gogo's Crazy Bones (tiny plastic monsters) and bean knocks them over with a string cheese and cackles maniacally, 20 GOTO 10. V. popular. May have to set up a league.
I have been experimenting with my antidepressant dose. I've been doing VERY well lately, and had ooched my dose down to a third what it was last year. This evening I opened a cupboard door and it sprung open more quickly than I expected and I burst in to tears because OH NO IT'S ALL TOO MUCH. Annnnnnnd then I went upstairs and took more prozac and I am going to back up a step in my dose titration ladder for a while. (The one benefit of the disgusting and hideously expensive liquid form of it I take is that gradual dose changes are super easy.) Because sorry cupboards, you're not ACTUALLY very poignant. I checked and they're from Ikea, not the windswept blasted heath of unrequited millwork. I'm annoyed when I get weepy, because dude that ain't my style, but at least it makes monitoring my depression really OBVIOUS. No need for wishy washy likert scales! Maybe it is my style after all in that sense. I actually estimated my current blood levels and calculated a loading dose to bring me back in to the range from two weeks ago most efficiently. (Although with a drug whose mechanism of action depends on receptor remodelling, this is of questionable importance, but eh.) Because I may be moody, but by god I did actually pay attention in those interminable pharmacokinetics lectures. Seriously the lectures on narcolepsy were easier to stay awake through. Actually I wrote "I Fell Asleep (Reading the Silmarillion)" during a narcolepsy lecture to stay awake.
Besides adjusting my dose, things are also looking up because this weekend is the fifth annual BAAGTMFCPFRCHY! That's the Brooke and Amy Go To Cedar Point for Rollercoasters HELL YES uh... event? Patent-pending adventure-date? Whatever, there will be trainwine, our tongues will be blue, Amy will have coaster-hair, I will spin around until my freckles fly off, and we will have SUCH unwise quantities of cotton candy, in accordance with prophecy.
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