"Sapphic vampiricism- the love that dare not spell its name."

- Dr. Terrible, 'Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible'

DEVO in Akron photos

Duke Nukem Forever was announced in April 1997, at which time I was a senior in high school. They just released some new in-game footage a little over a month ago and speculation is high that the game will be released "soon."

Things I have done since Duke Nukem Forever was announced:

Graduated high school
Loafed around for a year
Moved to upstate New York
Learned to ride, train, and groom
Became a riding instructor
Went to college
Written several hundred pages of usable work
Read several hundred books
Owned six computers
Learned to cook
Crossed the Atlantic five times
Spent most of a year in the UK
Got married twice

First snow of the year...

Admittedly it wasn't a very heavy snowfall, nor did it last for too long or stick for more than a minute, but still, snow.

I've got a rhyme that sounds like a riddle...

What's round on the end and high in the middle?

We didn't get back in until around 4:30 AM last night, and I've only got about 85% of the hearing back in my left ear. (Based on the only other time I had this happen, I expect it to be back to 100% by tomorrow) I am also still giggling madly at intervals. If by this you can extrapolate that we had an excellent time, you would be completely correct. DEVO in Akron was, as described by one of our fellow Spuds, "like a mini-DEVOtional, " which means very very good indeed.

We missed the opening band because about three hundred people besides ourselves had chosen the "will call" option from Ticketmaster, and the box office people can only hand out tickets so fast. However, we did get in in plenty of time to get settled before a very welcome surprise; Chrissie Hynde turned up and did three acoustic songs, as well as closing the show with a new Pretenders song.

And then, after a short break and the mandatory introductory film (as always featuring General Boy, who was actually present in the audience, another bonus for the concert being in Akron) Our Boys were on, and man, they were cooking. We had good seats, but I ditched them immediately and bolted down to the railing around the orchestra pit, which gave me enough room to dance properly, but put me right next to the speakers, which explains the temporary deafness, not that I am in any way bothered by that, because I had an amazing view of the stage, and vice-versa #grins# I was right next to a woman for whom this was her first time seeing them live, and she was also having a blast; it's fun being female because you're allowed to dance with each other without any sort of social penalty :) At any rate, aside from being shoved aside by a guy with a movie camera twice, I managed to stay right by the stage the whole time.

The other part that causes me to giggle madly at intervals was that I managed to get ahold of a backstage pass for a short interval, and I didn't even have to resort to any nefarious measures- apparently simple politeness will still get you pretty far. Didn't have the camera, though- sorry.

Afterwards we headed to Luigi's, a local Italian restaurant that's open until 4AM. We met up with two of the Spudtalkers, and hung around eating and chatting until the rest of the gang (who had passes and had been at the event afterparty) got in, somewhere around two. We stayed long enough to say hi and bye to everyone, and then took off; Akron is just over a two hour drive, even though it's almost entirely interstate, and we had to get home before the Owlvark got too tired to do the trip. He was fine, though, and we had a couple of energy drinks in case he wasn't, and the trip was completely uneventful- at three in the morning, 80 and 79 are almost completely deserted. We got in as mentioned, about 4:30 AM, and zonked out almost immediately.

I'll put some photos up once we've sorted them out, but we some errands to run this afternoon, and I'm notoriously bad about updates anyway, so it may be a while.

So, I got ahold of a used sewing machine over the weekend, which was excellent, as I've been hand-sewing everything for a while now. I don't mind hand sewing, and I even enjoy it on small projects, but since I'm putting together heavy drapes for the windows (I'm trying to keep the gas bill down this year...) stitching by hand just isn't the answer. And I always enjoyed machine sewing as well; Bummy started teaching me when I was very young, and I was reminded again of how much fun it was when I did a quick job putting together a sash for my wedding dress.

Sadly, the machine I got didn't last; we took it apart and oiled it first thing, worked the gears by hand to make sure they weren't frozen, and did pretty much everything you cando without specialized knowledge, and I managed one drape before the motor started to fail. The Owlvark (who has his own blog now, by the way) figures that there was something inside the motor that was frozen or rusted, which it had to work against, and finally gave up after being under too much load. By the end of the drape I managed to get done it was definitely struggling.

Currently, I'm browsing the 'net looking at new sewing machines. Well, new to me, anyway, as I keep finding older used models that look much more useful than new ones do. I don't need a machine with a computer in it; I need it to do some very basic sewing, not perform complex equations, and there's less to go wrong the less complicated it is. Also, I find the older models more aesthetically pleasing, although that's only a minor point. I'm quite liking the Husqvarnas that I've seen so far; there's actually a local dealer in Erie, but unless they do used ones I may browse Ebay a while longer.

more animals

more music charts

Yes, I'd really like someone to give me a convincing explanation of exactly how debt is going to cure debt. Then I'd like another convincing explanation of how rewarding the people who caused the problem in the first place is going to convince them to be more responsible next time. Alice did her best to believe in three impossible things before breakfast, but I tend to sleep late and thus need more help with it.

As usual, Sinfest is right on track. Note: may or may not be NSFW depending on whether you work in a school or with nuns.