Never got much higher than 40 degrees today. In fact it's 40 right now. Hopefully this hard freeze/cold snap of DOOM will be over tonight so tomorrow will be a little more bearable. *checks weather.com* Never mind. The nighttime lows for the next two nights are still predicted to be below freezing. Thank goodness the highs are predicted to get up into the 50s the rest of the week. Boo about the possibility of rain, though - my Newgen girls are coming over Friday night, and we were going to drive down to see a local house with Christmas lights cued to music - lightazmic.com if you want to see them too.

Finished the ornaments a few days ago, and delivered them yesterday. The high school ministry admin loved them so much. I'm really glad that she's happy with them.

Lost out on another job today. I was covering the phones for Mom at church this morning, and got called up by the office manager. She told me that they had decided to hire the person they had brought in to temp the position (admin to the missions pastor). I had kind of figured that they wouldn't go with me, and that they'd hire Katie instead, seeing as she's already been trained to an extent. Mary told me that I was fairly overqualified (a story I seem to be hearing a lot of lately), but she knew some people who she thought might be interested in me, and she asked for permission to give them my resume. Like I'm going to say no!

So the Christmas season continues undaunted, but I feel kind of left out. I don't want to think about what I want for Christmas, because I don't know how I'm going to do Christmas for anybody else. It sounds kind of lame, but the opposite sounds selfish. Maybe I can make scones for some people; butter is kind of expensive, but I know that Grandma likes them, and maybe I can wash the windows for Mom and Dad... provided it gets warm enough to do it soon. It'll have to be Christmas Great Depression style, because that's about all I can afford to do. Dear God, I want a job for Christmas. (Nope, I never really believed in Santa when I was little. It helps that people in costumes scared the living daylights out of me when I was a kid. If I couldn't see their face, nothing doing.)

It's a cyclamen, and I love it because the head of the flower bends down, but the petals stand up. Essentially this plant blooms upside down. It's so cool. Plus, it's one of my favorite shades of pink.

I also love it because it's proving very hardy... I've been watering it every other day, and it only needs indirect sunlight (but lots of it), so its spot by the door is the perfect place. Me owning a plant is like the kiss of death. I have killed lots of flowers, mostly because I try to take such good care of it, but end up screwing up anyway, so the fact that it's still alive and looking relatively happy is a big coup for me. Turns out, according to the Cyclamen Society, I've been watering it perfectly. Yay me.

I've decided it needs a name (because giving things names is a lot easier than talking about "my plant" or "my laptop" (especially since I've had so many laptops)), but I can't decide what to name it. The first thing I thought of was Hilda, but I don't know why. I'm also not 100% in love with that name, so the hunt continues...

Taking a break from ornaments... I only have seven (eight if you count the special ornament Joel is getting) more to do, so I've got time.

EDIT: Right now I'm debating between Aveline and Tzeitel as a name for my plant. Yes, I am aware of Tzeitel being a name from Fiddler on the Roof. But it's Hebrew (Cyclamen are the national flower of Israel), and it means "princess" without going with Sara(h) like everybody else does.

After an near-to-all-nighter, I managed to finish the first batch of ornaments last weekend. So yesterday I sat down and cranked out six from the second batch, which are now hanging in the garage after getting paint penned today. Now that I'm making masking tape stencils for everything, and I found a wider brush for painting the crosses, I'm getting the acrylic phase done much quicker. I ended up combining the two paints for a better look: acrylic as a primer, because it sticks to the glass better, and paint pen on the top because it covers better.

The fumes aren't bothering me as much any more, which is good... unless of course they've killed the fume-detecting part of my brain, which would be bad. Either way I'm not coughing as much anymore, which means that it was probably more remnants of that cold instead of the paint.

So, anyway, that's the extent of the ornament update for now. It's been nice to spread them all out, because like right now, I get whole days where I don't even want to look at orange paint. Burnout, thy name is Robyn.

New meme: Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."

litlover12  asked and I answered:

1. What would you say is the best episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000"?
2. And speaking of MST3K, the classic question: Joel or Mike?
4. For a romantic pairing, do you prefer Middleman/Wendy or Middleman/Lacey? Or are romantic pairings overrated and would you rather have them all be just friends?
5. I know you paint ornaments -- what other kinds of arts and/or crafts do you do?

If I die some time in the next three weeks, tell my mama I died like a man.

Or something like that.

So I started painting ornaments yesterday, but the paint I was using (acrylic; it's worked on the ornaments I've painted in the past) wasn't turning out so good... so I went to Michael's for a paint pen. The paint pen works amazingly (it needs a few coats on the darker ornaments - blue, purple - or maybe a primer of some kind), but the fumes are killing me. And with me getting over a cold, I'm already having coughing issues.

So I've got 4 hanging in the garage on my makeshift yarn clotheslines waiting for the paint to fully dry so I can move on to the next coat/step.

Joel loves the ornament design! He said that while it might have been sketchy before, now it's official that I am awesome. :P

I now have 36 ornaments sitting on my floor waiting for paint. However, I need to figure out where I'm going to hang them to dry before I do anything with the ornaments directly. In order to do what I've thought of, I need to find this mythical ball of yarn that is hanging out somewhere in the house. Mom said "on the bookshelf," but we have a lot of bookshelves in this house and in the garage (fairly odd for a family that doesn't read a lot, save me and Mom).

Update: Mom showed me where the yarn was, and I got it hung pretty fast. Now to actually get started on these ornaments. I have three packages of 12 to do, and a week to do each one (until I get to the end, when I only have to do 6. Perfect timing for Thanksgiving weekend). I think I'll crank up the tunes and practice...

So that was an exercise in disappointment.

I mentioned a while ago that I had an idea to start a copyediting/proofreading business, and I finally got the flyers up and everything. Friday I got my first client! I also offer tutoring, and he needed help getting ready for a placement test, so we agreed to meet this afternoon at 2.

He never showed. I waited for fifteen minutes, but he didn't show up. On top of that, I found out the hard way that Modesto Junior College purges their community bulletin boards every so often. My flyers were gone. So tomorrow I get to drive back to JC and put up more flyers. Maybe I'll talk to someone about how often they clean them off.

I'm bummed, but not enough to stop trying. Though for future reference, there is nobody on campus on Sundays, so no tutoring on Sundays unless it's at a Starbucks or something.

Again, the holiday forces conspire against me and turn me into a Christmas-minded person before the official start of the Christmas season (when Santa shows up at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade). This morning I got a call from the high school pastor at church. He knows that in the past I've painted ornaments and given them as gifts, and this year, he'd like me to make 30 ornaments to tie onto the leaders' gifts. (I've never made that many in one year!) I'm way jazzed, because this is the first time anybody has "commissioned" me to make art for them of any kind - usually I offer.

So I've got a design ready - I don't have to kick into high gear on these yet, but I've had it on my mind all day - and now I just need to wait on whether or not Joel likes it. I figure if I make 12 a week starting next week (with time taken off for Thanksgiving of course), I'll have them done in time.

I'll keep track of how the project goes here, just so you all can share in the experience. :D

( Here's design idea #1: )

Also, designing ornaments, going to the Christmas section of Target to price ornaments, and giggling with Lauren over the Christmas CDs has gotten me into the Christmas spirit. I'm listening to Christmas music. Sort of. I'm listening to a snarky 20-something deconstruct some of the worthiest targets this side of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch."

The mind goes odd places when you're bored and not-sick...

Post the oddest word you've ever heard in a children's (that is, having children as the general "target audience") movie. I think the best benchmark is whether or not your average kid is going to know/have to ask what it means when incessantly quoting that movie later. (Hush, you know you all did it.) Whether or not they explain it is irrelevant; assume this hypothetical kid wasn't paying attention.

The list (so far):
Beauty and the Beast - expectorating
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie - digested (too bad Mike Nawrocki decided against his original idea for the first song: it would have contained the word "duodenum" and would certainly have topped the list!)
Labyrinth - oubliette (which is actually accurate to historical oubliettes, at least until Hoggle opens the broom closet)
Aladdin - quid pro quo (from litlover12 ); addendums

So I decided it was time to redo my journal. What do you think?

I'm kind of proud of it, not because of all the hex codes I had to find to match the picture (not so hard) and look good together on the page (a little harder), but because I had to a) figure out which layout to use (went through a lot of ones I couldn't customize the way I wanted), and b) learn how to add a custom header image. That I am most jazzed about, so thank you to everything_lj for the help. They are very helpful for people like me who want to include custom CSS in their layouts (none of which I remember from my time in Media Applications class at LU).

Okay, time to get ready for church.

This year, there's no Trunk or Treat at church, since it's a Saturday, and the church doesn't like to mess with the weekend services. (Which I totally agree with. So hold the thing on Friday. Seriously, Children's Department, geez.) Trunk or Treat itself is rather meh, but it's probably the only chance I'll have this year to dress up, so now I'm looking at a costume-less Halloween. Which is probably okay, seeing as I can't justify buying a new costume, and nobody recognizes me as Carmen Sandiego or as Susan Pevensie. I get called either "a spy" or "Princess Fiona."

But it's okay. I'll just have my movie marathon like last year, except this year I'm going to kick it up a notch. (Take that, Emeril. Bam!) Of course I'll have the standbys: Corpse Bride, Casper, Hocus Pocus - you know, cheesy Halloween goodness - and some MST3K B-grade horror-movie wannabe (I think this year it'll be "The Screaming Skull." You gotta love a movie that claims that it'll scare you to death, then, should you actually die of fright, offers your grieving loved ones a free coffin... maybe so you won't sue. IDK.) And, maybe I'll throw in Thriller. I do love me some Vincent Price.

But this year I'm adding one of the scariest things I've ever seen. Marc Summers' Mystery Magical Tour (not to be confused with the Magical Mystery Tour), which aired on Nickelodeon for years when I was a kid. I first remember hearing about it when I was 5, and let's just say I took the "spooky/mystery" aspect of it a little too far. (What can I say? I've always had an active imagination - and even at 25, it sometimes gets the better of me.) So naturally when I stumbled across it on YouTube, some deep-seated memories came bubbling up to the surface. It was an interesting feeling, one I don't usually have. Can't say I necessarily like it. Partially because I'm being reminded of what a weird kid I was.

Actually, now that I think about it, and read the Wiki synopsis, I don't think I've actually seen more of this than the commericals. My mom is fairly anti-Halloween (funny, it's one of my favorite holidays), and I can certainly see her taking me to the church's Unhalloween Party instead of letting me watch "spooky" TV shows. But after the way it's stuck in my memory for all this time, now I definitely have to watch it. It's a matter of honor. (Even though it doesn't look like it's aged very well. Holy crap this thing is over 20 years old.)

Ooh, it's been a while since I did a good meme. Got this one from scarletumbrella.

The rules:
1. Open a music player.
2. Go to 'all music'/'library'.
3. Hit shuffle/repeat/randomise.
4. Find photos of the first 30 artists/bands that come up (no repeats and no cheating).
5. Have people guess who the artists/bands are.
6. Paste this in your journal and do it too, so I can have fun guessing as well.


( Do you accept the challenge? )

Ever since first acquiring my coat of arms back in April, I've started to take an interest in heraldry (mostly in the design and creation of coats of arms, and the blazon, which is the description of the coats of arms. It has its own language, so I'm learning how to "speak heraldry")

I'm also having fun learning how to paint heraldic designs, which brings me to show off ( this little beauty: )

• 16:30 @thesporkwielder Yes, based on an adventure *I* had in the Rot. You're welcome. :P #
• 16:39 @thesporkwielder Thank you, though I mostly played spectator... Did I ever tell you about the Froot Loops? #
• 19:13 @thesporkwielder ROFL! Where did you get that? #
• 21:31 The phrase "easy-peasy" (and any other rhyming phrases that follow, i.e., "lemon squeezy") needs to DIE. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 00:40 Found this while searching for a good halloween costume... I wish I had the money. tinyurl.com/m2grok #
• 10:20 Going to spend the day at Grandma's house! #
• 15:29 Stuck messing with MS Paint on the world's slowest computer for Grandma while she and Mom shop and sisters swim. I need a nap. #
• 23:29 May I offer you a wide-awake nightmare? im.ly/b9b29/ #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 01:37 Scones turned out amazing again. I love making those things... and eating them, too. As if there was any doubt. #
• 14:09 @TeamMarkD All about the support for @mark_dacascos over here - love him on #Middleman and on #IronChef! #TeamMark #
• 15:15 Just sang "W/ A Little Help From My Friends" on Beatles Rock Band. I had to go up an octave to sing it, so I sounded like a Disney princess #
• 17:22 @erguncaner Pfft. I once watched two friends eat six-by-sixes. Coincidentally, there were EMTs at the next table. Good times. #
• 21:52 RT @madlermeow Check this video out -- Funniest Movie Line Ever bit.ly/hN79T // Only too true. #tcot #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

• 10:20 I am so totally fidgety waiting for a phone interview... #
• 10:25 I hate interviews. I hate feeling like I'm shilling myself. If you like me, you like me, but this attitude does not seem to go over well. #
• 10:31 Okay, it's 10:30. Phone should ring any minute... #
• 10:59 Interview seems to have gone well. Might hear back tomorrow or Monday. #
• 13:33 Just gave my name to Big Valley Christian Jr High/High School as a possible English tutor. Here's hoping things start coming together! #
• 15:10 Went out to lunch with Shannon. Saw this scribbled on the bottom of the bathroom stall door: "Beware of limbo dancers" #
• 20:53 @LUADJeff Which games will be on TBN? We can't find anything in Saturday's listings for this week's game... #
• 21:09 Went to Lauren's Back-to-School Night... saw some old teachers, had flashbacks while sitting in Senior English (she has my old teacher) 1/2 #
• 21:09 and made my Biology teacher feel old - I had him 9 years ago; he said it felt like 3. 2/2 #
• 21:15 Now reading: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters... hope it's good! #
• 23:16 Took some Facebook quizzes b/c I'm bored. Guessed myself correctly on 2 or 3. My NCIS character is Gibbs, Princess Buttercup, and... 1/2 #
• 23:16 Leonard from Big Bang Theory. Figured I was more of a McGee, and I end up with one of the most ineffectual characters from Princess Bride. #
• 23:48 It's 11:45 pm, and I'm baking scones. It's been too hot during the day to make them without worrying about the butter melting... #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

"The Heart Will Always Remember"  (Or at least I think so. I really need to learn Latin.)

I was 17.

Being in California, I was asleep when the first plane hit. By the time I had woken up and wandered, bleary-eyed, down the hall, it was - naturally - all over the news. I thought it was a clip from a movie that the entertainment reporters were talking about since it looked so lifelike. But, of course, it was all too real.

We watched the news in government class, my first of the day. The rest of the day was a blur, mostly because I became a freaked-out mess when I heard about the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, where my best friend lives. Even though I'd heard that the plane crashed into an empty field, I knew I wasn't going to be fine until I talked to her. (Turns out her dad was in Boston - where the hijacked planes took off from - on business and ended up stranded.)

My generation has been defined by this day. My English teacher told us that we were special, because it happened during our senior year, and he had been a senior in high school when Kennedy was assassinated. However, we have allowed ourselves to forget. There are those among us who have bowed to the very same ideas and men who have attempted to kill us, who want to wipe this nation and what she stands for off the face of the map. God says, "Vengeance is mine," but we need to keep fighting to make sure that nothing of this magnitude, of this evil, ever raises its head on our shores again.

This is a day to honor innocent men, women, and children slaughtered by evil Islamic jihadists — and to resolve that “Never again” remains America’s operational stance, not an empty slogan.

Never forget.
Never submit.
Never again.

God, I pray that your peace and comfort will fall on the families of those who were lost on this day. I pray that your hand will protect and guide them, and us, as we remember them.

I have been following news of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader like it's going out of style, especially with pictures of the Dawn Treader herself being released. (The ship is completely beautiful, by the way.) This has led to total Narnia fangirl submersion, and then I started getting creative...

It all started with this.



Of course, Eddie Izzard (the brilliant comic) is the voice of Reepicheep in the new movies, and the quote fits Reep's personality really rather well. If you're a Narnia fan or an Eddie Izzard fan and you're on DA, go favorite this.

That led to this, another Eddie Izzard quote that I Narniafied. (Mostly for the badger line, seeing as this one fits Reep a little less perfectly). I came up with it late at night, so it's not completely awesome, but I love it nonetheless.

This is grossly unfair. I am stuck at home while Shannon is playing Beatles Rock Band with Tahleen and Jarad. Why am I stranded here? Because Shannon wants me to sign for her copy that should be coming today from Amazon.com.

Also, there's nothing to eat in the house, and I'm bored. This game better be getting here, and it had better be flipping amazing, because otherwise I shall be very put out.

Edit: Thought I heard a delivery truck coming down the street. Nope. It's the garbage truck. Shannon also just called, and she told me I could open and play her copy when it got here. Except she has the microphone and the drums (so she could play over there), and I don't do guitar. (Actually I don't do drums either.)