tea berry-blue

Hello, my lovely friendslist!

Today is the day the therealljidol poll closes. There are only eight people left, and two of those people are going home.

I am currently lagging back in second-to-last place, and that would mean I would be pretty much out of the game, which would be sadness!

So, if you have the time and wherewithal (I know ticking boxes is very difficult and exhausting), I would muchly appreciate if you could tick the box next to where it says the_vernacular! You can read my entry this week, a story about fictional bluestockings, here.

[Poll #1753938]

And, since he is in last place, which is very sad indeed because he is so beloved and squishable, It would be extra awesome if you could tick off a vote for alephz as well.

I really want to ask you to vote for everyone, because I thought pretty much everything this week was awesome, but alephz is my fellow tribute from District 12.

But do read the entries if you have time, and tick some boxes! Every time you tick a box, an angel gets its wings!

Thank you, you are all the most best!

...And may the odds be ever in your favor!

<3 <3 Have a happy Thursday! The poll closes at 8pm.

strategic note: if joeymichaels is in the bottom two, then whoever is third-from-last will be going home for sure. The safest place to be is in the top four on account of potential immunities.

I have exciting photos I will be posting later, plus a huge backlog of cocktails, including a drink I made last night that was so good it ought to be framed. I actually got my mother to gush over a vodka drink, people!

Anyway, had a nice weekend, nice Father's Day, not very eventful but very productive. I love just being out in the garden in the sun planting things and doing things.

There's also this hill in the yard, between the garden and the house. It's not a very steep hill, more of a gentle roll. But it is just steep enough. For what, do you ask? Well, I'm sure many of you (those of you who encountered hills in your childhood) have done the thing where you lie at the top of a hill, and start rolling, and the inertia brings you down to the bottom, so that were it snowing and you were in a cartoon, you would be in the center of a giant snowball, but really, it's like a fun ride with resulting exciting bruises?

I did that! Yes, I did. I rolled from the top of the hill to the bottom and it was exhilarating. And worth the bruised hip bones, oh yes.

Today I had a very nice Madison Square Lunch, with many lovely people as usual, and I had some nice saag paneer with rice.

After work, I had a very productive therapist session. It was really nice and positive and exciting and I may post about some of that conversation later.

Anyway, then I came home...to an apartment that was fragant with Eau De Gas. I couldn't get hold of my super. Now, I've never had to call the super for anything, although I have run into him in the halls a couple times when I needed something and he's been very responsive. So imagine my surprise when I call the number posted in our foyer and...it's disconnected. I went down and knocked on his door for a bit, and only his dog answered, so I called Con Edison (our gas provider). I had to wait outdoors for the Con Ed rep to show up, but it only took 20 minutes, so enough time for me to run and get a kombucha and sit on my stoop waiting. The lady Con Ed sent out was lovely, and very friendly and helpful and she turned off the gas valve and tagged my stove as whatever the equivalent of condemned would be for gas stoves, so now I have to call my landlord and request a new stove, I guess?

Hooray!

It's another therealljidol week! There are only eight people left.

I wrote a story about fictional bluestockings that is slightly inspired by one of my ancestors! But only slightly.

There are only eight entries this week, so I will just quickly tell you what they are all about under the cut!

( About my fine LJ Idol Pals )

You can also vote in the poll for your favorites! So do that! If you would like to vote for me, I am the_vernacular, as always.

[Poll #1753938]

Wow these entries were all kinda awesome. Squee.

Oh, also, I have an appointment for a consult for my next tattoo! Eeeee I am getting bees.

Oh, and also also, crap, I just realized the dinner I have for tonight requires a stove. Tea, you should not have waited until 11pm to dinner!

I have exciting photos I will be posting later, plus a huge backlog of cocktails, including a drink I made last night that was so good it ought to be framed. I actually got my mother to gush over a vodka drink, people!

Anyway, had a nice weekend, nice Father's Day, not very eventful but very productive. I love just being out in the garden in the sun planting things and doing things.

There's also this hill in the yard, between the garden and the house. It's not a very steep hill, more of a gentle roll. But it is just steep enough. For what, do you ask? Well, I'm sure many of you (those of you who encountered hills in your childhood) have done the thing where you lie at the top of a hill, and start rolling, and the inertia brings you down to the bottom, so that were it snowing and you were in a cartoon, you would be in the center of a giant snowball, but really, it's like a fun ride with resulting exciting bruises?

I did that! Yes, I did. I rolled from the top of the hill to the bottom and it was exhilarating. And worth the bruised hip bones, oh yes.

Today I had a very nice Madison Square Lunch, with many lovely people as usual, and I had some nice saag paneer with rice.

After work, I had a very productive therapist session. It was really nice and positive and exciting and I may post about some of that conversation later.

Anyway, then I came home...to an apartment that was fragant with Eau De Gas. I couldn't get hold of my super. Now, I've never had to call the super for anything, although I have run into him in the halls a couple times when I needed something and he's been very responsive. So imagine my surprise when I call the number posted in our foyer and...it's disconnected. I went down and knocked on his door for a bit, and only his dog answered, so I called Con Edison (our gas provider). I had to wait outdoors for the Con Ed rep to show up, but it only took 20 minutes, so enough time for me to run and get a kombucha and sit on my stoop waiting. The lady Con Ed sent out was lovely, and very friendly and helpful and she turned off the gas valve and tagged my stove as whatever the equivalent of condemned would be for gas stoves, so now I have to call my landlord and request a new stove, I guess?

Hooray!

It's another therealljidol week! There are only eight people left.

I wrote a story about fictional bluestockings that is slightly inspired by one of my ancestors! But only slightly.

There are only eight entries this week, so I will just quickly tell you what they are all about under the cut!

( About my fine LJ Idol Pals )

You can also vote in the poll for your favorites! So do that! If you would like to vote for me, I am the_vernacular, as always.

[Poll #1753938]

Wow these entries were all kinda awesome. Squee.

Oh, also, I have an appointment for a consult for my next tattoo! Eeeee I am getting bees.

Oh, and also also, crap, I just realized the dinner I have for tonight requires a stove. Tea, you should not have waited until 11pm to dinner!

It's LJ Idol Poll Close Day, and I went from having a very comfortable second-place lead last night to being one vote away from the bottom this morning! I didn't think I was going to have to ask for votes this week, but I suppose I do. Here's my entry.

But here's the thing. It's a poll with four people. alephz who is currently at the bottom, is one of the people I most love and adore, and I really don't want to see him eliminated either, never mind that he is an awesome writer. Plus, he's told me that I'm not allowed to sacrifice for him. So what would be especially amazing is if you could put some tickies on both of our names.

I'm the_vernacular, as always.

[Poll #1752356]

I also want to draw your attention to one of my favorite pieces of the week in a second poll. yachiru wrote this crazy insane riff on The Wizard of Oz that is off the hook in a should-not-be-so-far-down-the-poll way. I don't know yachiru very well, so this isn't a "please vote for my friend" thing, this is a "please vote for someone who consistently shows up with awesome ideas and writing" thing. Here's the entry in question. You can read the other entries by ticking the links in the poll. Two people will be eliminated from this one, so if you have other favorites, vote for them, too.

( slightly longer poll below the cut )

Thank you very much! Whoever makes it through this poll will be in the Top Eight, so that will be excellent and fun! Last year, the entry assignments got more exciting the closer to the end they went, and I'm hoping that's going to happen this year!

Both polls close at 8pm Eastern Time tonight, so in about 12 hours.

Grrr, so I had a whole lovely entry typed out and LJ ate it. I am sure it was a delicious entry or something, but it could have left some for me.

I have a bunch more stuff to post in an "official" blog post, but this one is just for LJ. Official blog post is going to wait till tomorrow. It will have a rum cocktail and possibly some other things. Who knows?!

Anyway, these are the things for LJ!

1) I have been incrementally going back through my LiveJournal and making a lot of posts that used to be friends-only public. I've also been making a lot of posts that were on special special filters into friends-only posts. I think I have done from December 2001 when I started this LJ up to halfway through 2005. Sound like fun? I think it does. I tried to be careful not to make posts public if people who commented shared personal information, but mostly these weren't very deeply personal posts, I just, for various reasons pertaining to my own personal life at the time, locked a lot of things I would never dream of locking now. I don't know that anyone would ever want to trawl through my LJ, but if you want to see things like entertaining poems I wrote when I was 15, or pictures of me and liret dressed as pirates, these things are free and open to the public now!

2) It's that time of year again when I clean out my closet because I am getting out my summer clothes and packing up my winter ones. So I have a huge pile of clothes I would like to get rid of, and some shoes. The shoes are mostly 8 or 8 1/2 with a couple 7 1/2 and a couple 9s and mostly heeled. The clothing is mostly a size 6 or a size small/medium, with some 4s, some 8s, and one or two 10s. If anyone is curious about clothes, let me know and I can take pictures of stuff or just send you a surprise box. I also have various Betty Boop and Popeye items for the discerning whatever you are. As always, the only charge is whatever it costs to ship, and if you can't afford that, please just let me know privately.

3) Most of you probably don't know this, but I quit drinking coffee when I was 17. I was at the point where I needed two 20 oz thermoses of it a day just to function (I preferred caffeine to sleep in those days), and I realized this was bad, so I quit. In the past fifteen years, I have had maybe a few Starbucks-style frozen gooey coffee drinks, a couple of really good cappuccinos in Italy, and that is pretty much the extent of my coffee drinking. But now with my asthma so bad, I've been trying to slurp up a lot of caffeine because it helps. And I'm concerned about drinking so much soda because of all the sugar (also it makes your mouth taste gross after a while), so I actually drank more iced coffee this weekend than I think I have had in the past fifteen years. Anyway, I'm thinking about getting a French press, so I can make coffee at home and electric coffee pots just confuse me. I would like to enlist you all to suggest coffees. I would like ones that come already ground, coarse ground of course for the press, and prefer fair trade/rainforest friendly.

4) I wrote a story for LJ Idol this week. First, I wrote this entry, and then I had to revise it, and I revised it into a very different story.

As always, there is a poll where you can read all the entries (there are only 16) and vote. Please consider dropping me a vote! I am the_vernacular. ( poll beneath the cut! )

The poll is open until Wednesday.

theafaye also did this really sweet thing for all the people still in the game. It's a place to leave nice messages for all of us. It's right here, in case you've been following along and would like to say something. I'm going to try to, as soon as I finish up some work that needs doing!

<3 <3 everybody! Have a wonderful week! Mine starts tomorrow on account of a holiday for Memorial Day today.

Grrr, so I had a whole lovely entry typed out and LJ ate it. I am sure it was a delicious entry or something, but it could have left some for me.

I have a bunch more stuff to post in an "official" blog post, but this one is just for LJ. Official blog post is going to wait till tomorrow. It will have a rum cocktail and possibly some other things. Who knows?!

Anyway, these are the things for LJ!

1) I have been incrementally going back through my LiveJournal and making a lot of posts that used to be friends-only public. I've also been making a lot of posts that were on special special filters into friends-only posts. I think I have done from December 2001 when I started this LJ up to halfway through 2005. Sound like fun? I think it does. I tried to be careful not to make posts public if people who commented shared personal information, but mostly these weren't very deeply personal posts, I just, for various reasons pertaining to my own personal life at the time, locked a lot of things I would never dream of locking now. I don't know that anyone would ever want to trawl through my LJ, but if you want to see things like entertaining poems I wrote when I was 15, or pictures of me and liret dressed as pirates, these things are free and open to the public now!

2) It's that time of year again when I clean out my closet because I am getting out my summer clothes and packing up my winter ones. So I have a huge pile of clothes I would like to get rid of, and some shoes. The shoes are mostly 8 or 8 1/2 with a couple 7 1/2 and a couple 9s and mostly heeled. The clothing is mostly a size 6 or a size small/medium, with some 4s, some 8s, and one or two 10s. If anyone is curious about clothes, let me know and I can take pictures of stuff or just send you a surprise box. I also have various Betty Boop and Popeye items for the discerning whatever you are. As always, the only charge is whatever it costs to ship, and if you can't afford that, please just let me know privately.

3) Most of you probably don't know this, but I quit drinking coffee when I was 17. I was at the point where I needed two 20 oz thermoses of it a day just to function (I preferred caffeine to sleep in those days), and I realized this was bad, so I quit. In the past fifteen years, I have had maybe a few Starbucks-style frozen gooey coffee drinks, a couple of really good cappuccinos in Italy, and that is pretty much the extent of my coffee drinking. But now with my asthma so bad, I've been trying to slurp up a lot of caffeine because it helps. And I'm concerned about drinking so much soda because of all the sugar (also it makes your mouth taste gross after a while), so I actually drank more iced coffee this weekend than I think I have had in the past fifteen years. Anyway, I'm thinking about getting a French press, so I can make coffee at home and electric coffee pots just confuse me. I would like to enlist you all to suggest coffees. I would like ones that come already ground, coarse ground of course for the press, and prefer fair trade/rainforest friendly.

4) I wrote a story for LJ Idol this week. First, I wrote this entry, and then I had to revise it, and I revised it into a very different story.

As always, there is a poll where you can read all the entries (there are only 16) and vote. Please consider dropping me a vote! I am the_vernacular. ( poll beneath the cut! )

The poll is open until Wednesday.

theafaye also did this really sweet thing for all the people still in the game. It's a place to leave nice messages for all of us. It's right here, in case you've been following along and would like to say something. I'm going to try to, as soon as I finish up some work that needs doing!

<3 <3 everybody! Have a wonderful week! Mine starts tomorrow on account of a holiday for Memorial Day today.

I have got to kick this sleep thing. I went to bed after 2:30 last night. So bad, Tea! So bad!

I did wake up on time this morning, but then I got out of the shower and it was already 8:40 (read: later than I left yesterday when I woke up at 8:20), and I don't know how that happened, short of there being a time warp or a fold in the fabric of spacetime or something in my shower!

I meant to write something yesterday in my dress post about my philosophy of the importance of wearing colors when you live in New York, but it's okay that I didn't because I am actually wearing black today. And pearls. It's a very Holly Golightly day, I guess.

I had a nice lunch. I went to Central Park and found a nice rock in the shade and ate my sandwich, but about three quarters of the way through my sandwich, I got bored with it, so I discarded the last few bites and dragged my behind off to Grom for gelato instead.



I think it's time to get the ice cream maker out tonight after I get back from the rum tasting at Astor.

Do you think it is wrong if I eat gelato for all my lunches for the foreseeable future?

I agree.

In other news, for this week of LJ Idol, I need to revise a previous entry. The entry I need to revise is this one.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. What do you like? What don't you like?

It was chosen from three entries as my weakest of the week. The other two are this, which I personally thought was my weakest, and this, which I think everyone thought was my strongest. So feedback in particular relating to how these entries compare would be most welcome, too.

I love everyone! <3 Have a good day!

I am currently living from inhaler puff to inhaler puff. Like, seriously, counting the minutes until I'm allowed to have one again so I don't go over my dosage. In between puffs, the only thing that seems to really be helping is booze. Right now, I'm sipping pisco. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get to work tomorrow and can only drink non-alcoholic things. At least there's only one day left.

I actually felt way better when I went to work this morning. Now I feel way worse. It's like my lungs are heavy and thick and full of fog. I'm watching for the crunchy lung sound that means bronchitis, but I don't have that yet, so whew. I'm hoping I'll get out to Colorado and this will magically clear up when I am in the land of different allergens.

I signed my lease renewal, which is really exciting for me because it's the first time since 2003 that I am not moving at least once in a year. I am going to live a whole year in the same place! Of course, just thinking that starts making me a little itchy to move. And you know when I didn't have asthma? WHEN I LIVED IN BOSTON. Not that I would want to move back there, but the lure of being able to breathe makes moving away seem very seductive. I wish I had a job where I could move around, because I don't think I'll ever be the kind of person who can stay in the same place for more than a few years. It just seems so unadventuresome.

But that's just anxiety from signing the lease, I think! I'm happy about the prospect of not packing up my shit for once.

In other news, LJ Idol requires three entries this week? I honestly am not sure I'm going to finish them, what with being so sick, but I'm surely going to try. I posted my first, which starts with a rendition of one of my favorite folktales in comic form. You can read it here.

I have more to say on that subject, but for now I need to sleep! <3 <3 everyone!

I am currently living from inhaler puff to inhaler puff. Like, seriously, counting the minutes until I'm allowed to have one again so I don't go over my dosage. In between puffs, the only thing that seems to really be helping is booze. Right now, I'm sipping pisco. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get to work tomorrow and can only drink non-alcoholic things. At least there's only one day left.

I actually felt way better when I went to work this morning. Now I feel way worse. It's like my lungs are heavy and thick and full of fog. I'm watching for the crunchy lung sound that means bronchitis, but I don't have that yet, so whew. I'm hoping I'll get out to Colorado and this will magically clear up when I am in the land of different allergens.

I signed my lease renewal, which is really exciting for me because it's the first time since 2003 that I am not moving at least once in a year. I am going to live a whole year in the same place! Of course, just thinking that starts making me a little itchy to move. And you know when I didn't have asthma? WHEN I LIVED IN BOSTON. Not that I would want to move back there, but the lure of being able to breathe makes moving away seem very seductive. I wish I had a job where I could move around, because I don't think I'll ever be the kind of person who can stay in the same place for more than a few years. It just seems so unadventuresome.

But that's just anxiety from signing the lease, I think! I'm happy about the prospect of not packing up my shit for once.

In other news, LJ Idol requires three entries this week? I honestly am not sure I'm going to finish them, what with being so sick, but I'm surely going to try. I posted my first, which starts with a rendition of one of my favorite folktales in comic form. You can read it here.

I have more to say on that subject, but for now I need to sleep! <3 <3 everyone!

I feel terrible this morning!

I woke up about 40 minutes early and drank like a billion miles of water. (by that I mean about a liter). Last night when I got in from Connecticut, I went to the grocery store and picked up an arsenal of fluids. And then promptly drank a whole half gallon of Simply Lemonade. I was tormented about whether to come to work or not. Here is the conflict:

--Work is around the corner form my doctor's office.
--The doctor's office doesn't open till 9
--It takes about a half-hour to get to both work and the doctor's office.

So, do I go to work and call the doctor once I get to work? Or do I stay home, call the doctor, and rush if she says "come in right away!"

I opted for choice #1.

I left the house at 8:13. I usually leave between 8:25 and 8:30.

It was raining pretty hard and for a moment I considered turning around because this can't be good for my immune system. But I soldiered on and even got a seat on the 7 train. Then I got to Queensboro Plaza, which is where I change for the N or the Q into Manhattan, and it was a sea of people. Three trains passed and I couldn't get on any of them because it was so crowded, so I went back on the 7 and took it to Times Square, which is a little roundabout way to work.

I got into work at 9:23. Boo, hiss.

So then I called the doctor's office. THE DOCTOR IS ON VACATION UNTIL AFTER MEMORIAL DAY. So now I'm at work, with no doctor's appointment. Luckily, Hearst has a wellness center and I went down there. The doctor gave me some Claritin, some lozenges, and a strep swab. So now I'm waiting at my desk for the results of my strep swab, and then I'll most likely end up going home to sleep and drink fluids until my psych appointment. FLUIDS. Lunchy folks, I will email you as well, but I don't think I should be coming to lunch today. I don't want to get anyone else sick.

There's an event at Astor tonight with the guys from The Bitter Truth and I'm a bit disappointed because I think I'm going to have to bow out and sit at home and drink things that are not alcoholic instead. But there's Koval tomorrow and cachaça on Wednesday-- Mere, I don't know if you want to do that, but there's cachaça on Wednesday?

In other news, this is my first week after going public in LJ Idol, and I'm not doing very well in the polls. Oh no! This makes me sad because I was really looking forward to writing stuff and sharing it with everyone on my friends list!

Anyway, here is my two-part entry about the Snoopy Sno Cone Maker and eating sno cones in Madison Square. I would like to think people are just not that interested in sno cones but it is disappointing.

What would be not disappointing is if a few of you wouldn't mind voting for me in the poll, pretty pretty please? I feel bad because being sick yesterday and today, I am way behind on reading entries or I would recommend some. I recommend all of you because you are all awesome? My journal in the poll is the_vernacular, by the way, in case anyone missed that little tidbit.

( The poll is below the cut )

The poll closes at 8 PM Eastern Time tonight. I'll be at the doctor so I won't be around to see the results! Eek.

And the doctor just called, I am strep-free!