The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Adventure!

I dunno, I’ve been really trying to do more interesting cooking these last few days. I’m not sure why. But on the way home from work on Friday, I went, “You know, I bet I could make something like that Zuppa at Olive Garden.” Of course, I knew nothing about it, really, besides there were potatoes and some sausage in there. I also knew that even though I was saying I was going to make something like that, I would probably end up making something that was nothing like that. But my vague plan sounded tasty, and Brer agreed that while I’d not be anywhere near my “target,” it would probably be a good meal. So, you know, I tried it. I fried some sausage, and mixed it in with some potato soup, which I then put a bit of cheese in. It was not bad at all! I ate it.
Then Brer is like “You should season shit,” and I’m like, “Fine, Mr. I Know How To Cook.” So I took the rest of it and added this Red Pepper Garlic seasoning I had. Then I taste-tested.
Man, that made the world of difference! It was fantastic! I stored that newly seasoned stuff for later.

Anyway, so that went well, and today I was like, well, I need to make something, and I vaguely remember reading about how you could like… fry ramen noodles and shit that I read when on an internet ramen quest for no real reason. So I just kind of made things up. I boiled some noodles, drained them, and threw them in a skillet with some chopped-up chicken and some oil and cooked that shit. I mixed in the seasoning from the ramen and some of the Zesty Lemon chicken flavoring stuff I had, and let the noodles get all brown, then ate. It was pretty tasty, I have to admit.

Am I learning something about cooking? I still say no. I dunno, it never feels like I’m really doing anything special. But I guess I am technically cooking, and to be honest, it’s all pretty fun to do. I don’t think I’ll ever be a particularly fantastic cook: my tastes are too bland and I am too much of a carnivore for that. But I can clearly fend for myself. That’s pretty awesome, I must admit.

I had a day off! What did I do with that time?

Uh, I watched way too much Yu-Gi-Oh GX.

Look, it’s not my fault, okay? (It’s totally my fault.) I just realized that they have every single episode of every single Yu-Gi-Oh series on Hulu. What else was I supposed to do? Play good video games? Nap? Enjoy my free time? I mean, come on.

But yeah, I mean, I watched a lot of this show in my youth, more than I care to admit, and going back to it, man, it is way worse than even I remembered. And I remembered it being really quite bad! Even if it is absolutely flawless.

I just can’t get over the voice actors on this show. When fans who aren’t getting paid but are making fun of your show do more acting, put more emotion, and just generally give more of a shit than your voice actors, you have a problem. I mean, so many lines just seem like the people reading them had no direction at all. They didn’t know if there were other characters around, or what they were saying right beforehand, or anything. This is especially true for anyone who is not a main character, who could be reading a grocery list for how much energy they put into their lines. I mean, I get it. This show is STUPID. But the characters think what’s going on is important, and fuck it, you’re getting paid to pretend, you can at least pretend, you know?

In addition, the choices the translators are making are just… what? What? I remember an episode where they replaced Sake and drinking with “Hot Sauce.” That makes sense, even if it’s stupid. Don’t want kids knowing about drinking, I guess. But I recently watched a dumb episode. It was called something like “Curry Worry.” But during the episode itself, they never say curry. They say “pot roast.” What the fuck? That clearly is not a pot roast on the screen! Plus, I mean, kids today very well COULD know what curry is! Or if they don’t, maybe you can expand their pallet a little bit by making them want to try it. It’s not like curry is some vice or something. What the hell?

Finally, the way the game treats its own rules is just really annoying. Sometimes the rule where destroying a creature in defense mode doesn’t deal damage works, but sometimes it doesn’t. I swear a lot of the time the main characters are just pulling extra cards out of nowhere that they don’t have, which is weird, because they do try to cover refilling people’s hands by having them play Pot of Greed and Graceful Charity quite often. At least, unlike in the original Yu-gi-oh, there’s much less of “card has an ability that makes no goddamn sense and would never exist” a la the Catapult Turtle Gambit. They’re just playing cards that very well could exist, but are so situational as to make a normal, sane player of this game never run them. But of course, Yu-Gi-Oh characters can pull whatever card they want out of their deck at will, so those cards then become very powerful. But whatever. At least I could see an actual, physical playing card having that rules text more often than not.

All that said, I watched like 4 and a half hours of it today, and will probably continue to watch it for awhile. I am such a sucker to a world where things are resolved through card games. Even when everything is fucking terrible about it.

Let me just tell you about my proud teacher moment, okay?

So this semester, of course, I have been teaching. My class has been obscenely small. Like, to the point where I dunno why I was being paid to teach this small of a class, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain. It’s numbers have dwindled from 7 to about 4 or 5, depending on the day. We’re now at the end of the semester, and we’re just kind of coasting along.

Anyway, we sit down for basically our last class. I talk about their drafts, field questions, and then I basically say “Well, that’s basically all I’ve got, so you’re free to go if you want. Just have your final drafts done for next class.”
Melissa, who I’ve often clashed with a bit in class trying to explain things, leans back and says, “Thank goodness. Almost over.” There is a mumble of approval. She then says “I am so glad I stuck it out until the end.”
“Oh?” I said.
“Yeah, there was a lot of times where I just wanted to drop this class. Too much work. But I’m glad I didn’t. I learned a lot.”
“I totally agree,” says Mary. “I thought there was no way I was going to be able to do all these essays, but I suppose it paid off.”
“I’m really glad you all think so,” I said, and I really meant it.

I dunno. I’ve gotten good reviews and such in classes. Always been rated well. I know I’m a fine teacher. But it’s just such a different thing when you’ve been working with these few students, basically one on one, for months, and they really feel like it’s been a useful experience. Their essays have gotten a lot better. Not perfect, but way better. They have really improved. They see that. They appreciate it. What’s more, they decided to tell me.

It’s just good to know I’m being a positive influence. Makes me smile. Makes me happy I’m going to keep doing this stuff, for awhile anyway. I mean, it would be nice if I was doing it full time, had benefits and shit, but still… it’s fulfilling work. Moments like that is exactly why it is.

I am sitting here, shivering, though I am not cold. My dog is asleep under the blanket at my feet. I feel bad for him, because he responds to “Dog” much better than to his name, which makes me feel like a bad dogmom. Still, he likes me, and I like him. We played earlier. He made little happy yips as we ran up and down the hall. He’s a good dog.

I’m mostly thinking about how limited my taste in food is. For whatever reason I have been reading descriptions of food all night, and how fantastic it is. Much of it looks fantastic, but much of it looks like it involves many vegetables, which has never really been my thing. Always more of a carnivore. But as I try to think of what I could eat like that which I would like, I really fail at it. There’s very few “food adventures” I can go on, because I just don’t like so many things. I have the fucking worst kind of palette. I eat the same foods over and over again, and while I really don’t mind that, it’s moments like this that make me wonder if there wasn’t something better I could do. I really don’t know.
I flipped through the holiday cookbook at work, and most looked unappetizing or just obscenely time-consuming to make. I want something that has recipes like the silly but delicious Tater Tot Casserole my sister-in-law taught me to make. Something where you’re combining a bunch of pre-packaged items for excellent results. I really don’t know if those things exist. Also, how lame would I be for owning a cookbook like that?

I have so much to do tomorrow. So much to do. Gotta do that thing, and another thing, and I am also working. It feels like I am always working. It’s not true, but the way I could be working at any moment, at any time, really doesn’t help things. Maybe next semester will be better. I suppose I can hope.

I almost have my Christmas shopping done. My finances are doing very well. If I can afford my house payments in the middle of Christmas shopping, I feel like I’ve got this covered, but who knows. I’m making a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. More pills for me, hopefully. I may be screwed super quick. Life changes.

I shouldn’t worry.

I’m still shivering, and while my nose isn’t running any more, the way that I can’t, like, breathe very well really means I am probably sick. I bend over to pick up something at work and I just have to stop and gasp for awhile. I should make a second appointment for that. More to do.

I should take my dog to bed. I should rest. I haven’t really gotten any serious rest in awhile. At least my hands are healing. They don’t hurt near as bad anymore, which is nice. I’m glad I bought lotion.

I’ll sleep. Getting videos cued up on my iPad is kind of a pain, but it’ll do for now. I should curl up and disappear into bed. Maybe. At least for awhile. At least until tomorrow. Not forever. I’m past that point.
Yeah.

It’s time again for another RAPID FIRE RAMBLINGS, the show were I talk about a lot of little things on my mind. Also, it’s not a show. It’s a blog post.

My knuckles have been bleeding. It’s ridiculous. I can’t move my fingers without my finger joints hurting, and there’s little breaks in the skin all over the backs of my hands. I really don’t know quite what I did wrong, but here’s my theory. My pills are making me use the bathroom a lot more than I used to. When I leave the bathroom, I wash my hands. This dries out my hands, and now that cold weather is here, it’s just gotten really terrible. I have bought some lotion to attempt to deal with this, but if you see my hands for awhile, uh, yeah, they look bad. It’s frustrating.

If there’s any wonder why I want to fix my work situation, it’s because of the silly crap like the last night or so, where, to get enough hours, I had to drive to St. Louis, drive back, immediately work until midnight, and then be back at work at 7 am the next day to work another eight hours. This, combined with me being passed over for promotions and being basically told the reason was me being overqualified? Well, that’s all pretty frustrating to me. I am frustrated at my job. Yep.

Recently, Gamefly has been having a lot of deals. I get a discount from them, too, being a long-time member, so it can get pretty cheap for older games! I’ve ended up buying a lot of mediocre games with split-screen co-op, like Hunted: The Demon’s Forge and F3AR. Why? I keep seeing them and thinking “Brer and I could have fun with that on the couch.” And I’m sure we will. I probably shouldn’t keep buying these things and planning like that, but I just can’t believe he’s going to be here in a month or so. Living here. With me. In a month. I want things to be fun. I want to have all the fun with him, as well as do all the things. We like video games. We should do them together. But yeah, maybe I should stop buying them… I have a stack of quite a few at this point.

There’s a small leak in the tubes leading to my washing machine. It’s not really a big deal. It makes the smallest little puddle after like… running it twice. But the location of that puddle is what is really annoying. You see, it is literally RIGHT IN FRONT OF the door to the dryer. I pull out some clothes, you know, to hang them or whatever, and a stray sock caught in the clothing will fall out and land right smack in the middle of that puddle. After I just dried it. That is frustration.

I am going to go to bed now, since I have to proctor a test in the morning. Goodnight. I’ll write something more substantial later.

I know why you come here. You come here for the cold hard facts. You want to know what’s really up in the world of toothpaste.

I’ve got you covered.

Freed from my mother’s house and the toothpaste she would often purchase for me and place in my bathroom like an extremely nice parent, I was free to buy any toothpaste I damn well pleased. When my tube was running out, I was excited by the prospect of a new, thrilling dental hygiene adventure. I went to the store, where I spied my normal toothpaste. Screw that! I looked lower on the shelf, and there was Crest Complete Citrus Splash toothpaste! It called to me. I have always been a citrus-loving person, and the idea of a toothpaste that did not taste like mint intrigued me. I had to find out. I purchased it.

Then, of course, my current toothpaste didn’t run out for like another month! This is the danger of those tubes that you don’t roll up like I was using. My dog even tried to eat the box the toothpaste was in during that month! Luckily, he was unsuccessful.

Anyway, I finally got to try it and, uh, wow. That was a mistake.

The taste is okay. It’s kind of like a watered-down orange soda? There’s nothing wrong with it. It is inoffensive on that front, and I am certainly going to use the whole tube. But I just didn’t consider how strong the mental connection of “Mint=Clean” is. It feels extremely wrong to brush my teeth with this stuff. Not to mention that, moments after I brush my teeth, I am normally using some minty mouthwash, which just kind of kills the orange taste in my mouth anyway. Add all this up, and realize that it’s not like I hate the taste of mint or anything, and I just really don’t see why I would need this sort of flavored toothpaste.

This has been one of my most boring posts to date! Stay tuned tomorrow, where I write about my experiences with a new brand of freezer bag! (Not really.)

This evening, I got a chance to play with Hinterlands, the new Dominion expansion. There are a lot of those now! And my brother’s father-in-law loves the crap out of them. He brought the new set to Thanksgiving, so of course we had to throw down a little.

It had been a long time since I played Dominion. It was a ground-breaking game, but in a lot of ways, I’ve kind of moved past it at this point. It’s very simplistic, even with a lot of the expansions in play. That’s both a good and a bad thing, I suppose. Still, it is still an enjoyable gaming experience.

Hinterlands seemed to revolve around mechanics that made you discard a lot of cards, as well as cards that have an effect when you buy them. For example, when you buy Mandarin, you get to pick up all the treasure you played that turn and plop it on top of your deck. As far as discarding goes, you have simple cards with discard mechanics, like Oasis, which is +1 Card, +1 Action, Discard a Card, +1 Treasure. There was even a crazy victory point card called Tunnel, which let you take a Gold card every time you discarded that card in particular.

By far, my favorite card, though, was Fool’s Gold. It was a treasure that was only worth one… unless you play more than one copy a turn, where every copy other than the first one is worth four instead. I bought many of them and used them to great effect. I also enjoyed Oracle, which let you look at the top 2 cards of everyone’s deck, and decide whether you should put them into their discard pile or not, then draw two cards. I had a lot of fun with that one.

I didn’t eek out a victory, but it was a fun time. Dominion still has it! I’m not sure who besides Steve would still be buying expansions for it, but it is still a fun game that’s quick to play. Hinterlands certainly seems like a better expansion than, say, Alchemy, which kind of sucked. Although Dominion is not really the focus of my play time anymore, I’m never going to turn down giving it a go, so it was interesting to see what they’re still doing with the game.

Wow. I don’t know what to say! Such an honor. Um, goodness, thank you all. There are just a few people and nonspecific entities I’d like to thank… let me get my notes out here…

I’d like to thank my parents for their part in helping me to move into this fantastic house. They’ve done a ton, and while we, as per usual, still fight about so many things, I couldn’t have done it without them.

I’d like to thank Brer, for working so hard for such shitty hours in order to move down here with me. Like a month to go! It’s crazy! You can do it, love!

I’d like to thank video games for continuing to be entertaining. Lately life has been so crazy I haven’t gotten to play you, but you’ve always been there for me, and when I do get the time? Damn. I’ve had fun.

I’d like to thank my own perseverance and self-motivation. There was a time where I thought you guys were, like… gone. I didn’t think you existed. But over this year, you all have knocked it out of the fucking park, and my life is astronomically better for it.

I’d like to thank popsicles for just being generally delicious, even in the middle of winter.

I’d like to thank all my coworkers at Kohl’s, for being just generally awesome, but also being pretty damn awesome about my transition in particular. I expected at least some resistance, but have basically felt absolutely none. That means a lot to me.

I’d like to thank my brother and sister-in-law, for always being insanely supportive of me. No way I could ever thank you two enough for that.

I’d like to thank Aesa for randomly starting to talk to me more while she was on her trip, which has turned into a fantastic friendship I can’t believe I was missing out on before.

I’d like to thank Q for being such a good dog right out of the gate.

I’d like to thank the internet for being my lifeline.

I’d like to thank the phrase “I’d like to thank” for starting each one of these sentences.

Oh, wait, there’s the music. Well, I’m sure I missed a lot of people, objects, and general concepts, but I will do my best to be thankful for all for all of them! Thank you! It’s been great!

At some point, I started buying popsicles as a cost-effective but probably still bad for me alternative to buying a ton of candy. They were cheaper! I couldn’t just buy them and eat them immediately to keep me from going too overboard! They were tasty! Something like that! My go-to were Lemonade Bomb Pops, which were kind of expensive, but fuck, were they good. Sour and citrus and just… mm. Perfect.

However, recently, I spotted a new box at the grocery store. They were Warheads Freezer Pops. You know, the kind in the little tube where you cut off the end with a pair of scissors? Those sorts of things. They were really cheap, too, like a dollar for a box, so I bought some. I had no idea what to expect, though. The idea of what the box advertised as an “extreme sour” popsicle sounded like a dangerous proposition. Surely it wouldn’t actually be extreme sour? I mean, Warheads the candy are quite sour, but only for a few moments, and then they mellow out quite nicely. I’ve certainly had things more sour than a Warhead, but in popsicle form? Hm.

I’m happy to report, though, that they are completely tasty. They have a constant sour to them, but not overwhelming like the first moment of a Warhead the candy. It’s not subtle, constantly there, accenting the flavor of the popsicle in question. The flavors in the pack are pretty good, too. I’m not a huge fan of the Watermelon, which is probably my least favorite. Even that, though, I totally enjoy. The Blue Raspberry, especially is fantastic, but this is not surprising as I tend to enjoy anything flavored Blue Raspberry. It’s a good mix, and good stuff!

I’m thinking of attempting a switch over to them, if they keep being stocked. They are much cheaper than those Bomb Pops, especially if I eat them at the same too-fast rate as the Bomb Pops, which so far as proven true. It’d be a nice money-save! And having to freeze them might help keep me from eating too many of them.

Stay tuned for more popsicle-related rants and ramblings! (Okay, probably not really. Unless I really do keep trying new popsicles. But even then! Probably not.)

My mother bought an Xbox. She wanted to play trivia with my dad, okay? So she bought an Xbox. That happened. I am going to do what I can to help her do just that. Because I am a good daughter! Even if she still wouldn’t call me that.

But that Xbox came with a Kinect. So when I set it all up for her, I also set up the Kinect, and we tried out Kinect Adventures.
That sure is a Kinect demo sort of game thing!

First off, my parents’ living room is really well set up for Kinect, actually, now that the TV is on the wall. It could see us perfect, and we had plenty of room for stupid flailing about, so that’s nice. The voice controls also work really well, which is totally cool! It’s a pretty neat feature. Still, we had a really good setup, and Kinect often had little problems picking us up. Especially stepping forward and backward! Leg stuff. That was hard for it.

Kinect Adventures, though, was really just a demo reel, but it was entertaining. The series of the minigames seemed to impress my parents, and I had fun enough playing them. They were also entertained by the photographs after every game. I was less so, but was glad to find that yes, I really can look at myself now without cringing. It’s nice! Though I still think the picture-taking is kind of dumb.

The best game, by far, was the one where you’re on the little platform and have to dodge the stuff in a little race with player two. Not only was actually attempting to play that game an actual workout, but it was action-packed, fun, and used the Kinect really well in a way that didn’t make the flaws obvious. Even then, though, it still couldn’t read side-stepping very well, and since you needed to do that to win… well…

Fun was had, but the problems were obvious. There is and always will be novelty in jumping around like a madman and seeing that reflected on screen, but… yeah. Without something nice overlayed with purpose, I just… I don’t need one of those! But it’ll be fun to mess around with it with my parents, I guess.

I do still want to play Dance Central, though. Yes I do.