I'm glossing over lots of background in order to cut to the chase. I did something completely frivolous last week. I went and bought a Nintendo Wii console. And you know what, the damn thing is _fun_. I like that it makes you get up and move around. It's not another excuse to be a couch potato. Setup is easy. I had it out of the box, installed and playing games in less than half an hour just based on the quick start guide. This weekend I've been playing with the included game; Wii Sports. I also bought the Wii Play game and the Wii Fit game and balance board (ok, so maybe that's not completely frivolous). I never bought a game console before. It just seemed silly when if you really wanted to play games you could do it on a full-blown computer. Just call me 'Mr. Late Adopter,' I guess.:)

The games in Wii Sports are simple, which is good for me, but fun. Boxing seems to be the most physically demanding, in that you don't spend much time standing still. I'm still at the beginner settings of course and I expect to be there for quite awhile. So far my only serious complaint is that the motion sensor in the Wiimote could be a bit more sensitive. It may just be me adapting to the interface. An attachment to improve the sensitivity is available and I may fetch one of those next month.

I haven't spent the whole weekend with the new techie toy though. Most of the weekend I've been either sleeping or working on stuff here at the house. There is always lots to do here and I decided this weekend I was just going to push myself to get some of it done. Plus I've been spending a lot of time with my other cat. It's been two months since Fezzik died. The immediate shock is past but I'm still trying to put together what my day-to-day life is going to be like without him. I'm not sure I can express this properly. In words it sounds much too dramatic and 'over the top'. It's just this feeling of being vaguely lost, not quite sure what comes next. It's the same feeling you have with any big life change I guess. But I'm starting to get more of a handle on it and that's good.

Watch for more Wii-related posts as I get more time to play with it. As always I'll do my best to mark the posts so you can skip it if you're not interested.

-----wayward

Available today only!!

I will get straight to the point. Is there a correct way to fold a fitted sheet so that it looks neat and tidy and does not take up a ridiculous amount of room in one's linen closet? I try and I try, but my folded fitted sheets always end up as wrinkled piles of fail that hog all the shelf space and make my duvet covers, towels, extra blankies and pillow cases feel crowded and irritable. Help, martha stewarts of lj!

Thanks.

So, a month ago, we moved into an apartment building built in the 1920s. In hot, sweaty Los Angeles. In a relatively low-income area.

Very soon after moving in, when getting water or going to the bathroom in the wee hours, we noticed the presence of German roaches. Not surprising, I guess.

So we cleaned. And caulked. And the maintenance guy plastered some other gaps between the sink cabinet and the wall, we duct-taped other holes we later saw around pipes, etc. The pest control guy poisoned (the gel stuff they eat and bring back to the nest). We did the same in other areas of the house, though we didn't see them elsewhere. We put down boric acid in the cabinets. Later, my boyfriend found a ton of dessicated egg sacks under the fridge (like Alien...he felt like Ripley) and cleaned it out as best he could. So they obviously made a roach city of the fridge before, and the previous tenants, I guess, did nothing. So we poisoned under there, too.

Didn't see any for awhile, blah, blah, blah.

Tonight we found a few nymphs and fresh eggs under the fridge and I am FREAKED again. This means they aren't just living in the walls but in the area under our FRIDGE -- maybe they were all along, because we found the eggs nestled in a place we had previously missed -- which is difficult to clean and I just KNOW we missed some eggs and that there are probably some adults in there, hiding...they're living with US now, and this is like a horror movie for me. I can barely kill one without hyperventilating. I clean like a maniac but I don't think it makes much of a difference; there's always a crumb or water somewhere.

Do you have any advice for treating the area under the fridge, where they're obviously nesting? Is poison our only option? Can we spray anything inside the fridge, where we can't reach/see properly? Is the landlord required to replace the fridge if the roaches were already living in it, or is what pest control doing (spraying around the building and poisoning inside the apartments) the extent of their obligation to us? Any words of wisdom are appreciated.

(On top of it all, we found fleas on our indoor cat yesterday. Probably from the alley his favorite window views, where I've seen a stray cat or two hanging out. We bought Advantage, which worked for us last time, but if mice and bedbugs get added to the equation, I'm going to go off the deep-end. Does hot weather + old building + large city always = plague of vermin?)

So I have a tiny little herb garden, but my basil and mint plants have pretty much taken the whole thing over and are trying to smother the life out of all my other plants.  I've been adding mint to my tea and coffee, and have had so much pesto and bruschetta lately that I'm starting to get sick of it.  What are your favorite things to make/do with these herbs?

I have in my possession an antique gold locket in the shape of a flat chest (the kind you see in pictures showing treasure chests). It was handed down to me from my great aunt Fanny on my father's side, and inside on one side is a photo of her and on the other side a photo of my great uncle Will (who is either her brother or her husband, but I don't know which). The locket is over a hundred years old, I think, and I will pass it on to my eldest daughter as it's supposed to go to the eldest child in each generation.

I've also got my maternal grandmother's wedding and engagement rings, which I will also probably pass on to my eldest daughter.

I'd just come back from a walk; I'd worn my leather boots because it was threatening to rain, and I'm very glad I left them on after I got home. I was getting started cooking some rice, for which my method is to bring the water to the boil in my electric jug, pour it over the rice, then do the cooking in the microwave. As I was carrying the dish of hot (recently boiled) water and rice from the bench to the microwave the zipper edge of my jacket got caught on the corner of the bench, causing me to half stumble and spill some of the nearly boiling water onto my foot and the floor. If I'd been wearing sneakers I might have ended up with a burn on my foot, but because of the leather boots, I didn't feel a thing.

...well, that rather sucks. Monsoon arrived late this afternoon, and aside from soaking everything thoroughly again, was having major wind gusts (there are bits of trees everywhere.) The wind managed to blow the seedlings free of the newly made inverse planter. I retrieved them from where they landed and replanted them in a regular pot, but I don't expect them to survive the trauma.

I realize this may be a nasty question but here goes...

My boyfriend are I are moving in together in 2 weeks and I need a good solution for where to put our icky gym clothes. Call us gross but we both wear our gym duds a few times a week before washing (they are already gross, right? and don't dry too smelly). I loathe looking at clothing draped all over the apartment. I don't know if I could deal with hooks on the wall either. But I need a relatively unobtrusive place to put them. Shoes racks are over every door and our bathroom is teeny and we're going to be full up in there. Any suggestions?

I made a fish dinner in the crockpot that takes two hours. At least, I thought I did. Apparently the crock was NOT PLUGGED IN, my big fat bad. Fish is wrapped in tinfoil and rubbed in spices, had been defrosting in the fridge overnight. Are germs too big of a risk to cook this, after two hours, or should I turn it on NOW and just have it for a later dinner?

I haz a bucket!

Laser dog is unimpressed, wonders when she gets the next spoonful of peanut butter.


The coffee can inverse planter is less ad hoc that it might seem -- I cut out the base hole and glued in plastic sheeting a while ago, so today's work consisted of inserting cup hooks (there are nuts threaded on the inside to stop them pulling free), screwing in the anchor (I drilled a hole a few days back), and roping it up. Well, and adding plants and soil of course. I'm not sure how well the plants will do...transplanting them left them a bit wilted and unhappy. But plants don't much like to be yanked out of one place and plonked down in another, so they may yet regain their zest for life.

Yesterday, we heard word that the United States Soldier was captured in Afghanistan recently. Some military analyst on Fox News suggested earlier today that the Taliban could save the United States the headache by executing a soldier that he strongly believes deserted his unit. Hooray for America's News Channel!



Listen asswipe, it doesn't matter *why* an American soldier has fallen into enemy hands. It didn't matter that Jessica Lynch's unit got lost in Iraq and blundered into the enemy, right? You think this American soldier was trying to freaking defect to the cave-dwelling Taliban? REALLY? This 23-year old Private is saying stuff on an enemy video ... you don't think he might have been coerced into doing so? What do you think of John McCain's videos made by the North Vietnamese?

One of ours is one of ours. How dare he pass judgement and speculate on television about circumstances he knows nothing about. Talk about giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Ralph Peters, what a fucking cockroach.

My boyfriend has gotten on a kick for a sweet onion salsa, and I'd love to make it at home. Does anybody have any recipes that call for sweet onions? What is your favorite salsa recipe?

Crossposted

by bean_an_oiche

I'm currently placing ads for IDWCon09 via projectwonderful. If you can think of any websites that would be suitable... let me know!

Finished reading The Lies of Locke Lamora
by Scott Lynch this weekend.

Cor, that's a cracking tale. One of the guys at work loaned it to me last week, saying that he thought I'd like it. Thought I'd read the first chapter to see how I'd get on, and before I knew it I was totally hooked.

Of course, it helps that I like a good heist story, and this is a wonderfully twisty-turny one, set in a thoroughly thought-out and realised world, dripping with atmosphere.

Utterly brilliant. Can't wait to read the sequel now.

The sole bright spot of my day.

Dear large public library system coworker,

We have a staff intranet that has a lot of forms, schedules, timecards, etc etc etc on it and also on the front page of it blog posts. These might be from the director about budget stuff, or from the YS team announcing Caldecot and Newbery winners. They might be from IT about computer upgrades or from capitol projects about remodeling various branches.

I'm a sub so a lot of it doesn't really affect me too much, but today I clicked on an entry that links to this Utne article about the importance and lack of information literacy.

The very first comment (of 2) is from a lady who is an admin assistant in the ILS department saying "Please consider carefully before you post your blog on the front page of the staff web. Could we keep them to topics that are directly work related? Thanks." If you work for a library and you don't understand how information literacy relates to your job you may want to consider working somewhere else. Oy.

(x-posted to my own journal)