Takoyaki Journals

I "liked" Doctor Who on Facebook, which means that I get constant updates and video clips of old doctors and things. Mostly I ignore them, but the other night they had one saying "Do you love Amy Pond? In the next half-season there's an episode devoted to to her backstory that will break your heart!"

In a fit of "Someone is Wrong on the Internet" I clicked on the comments to say "NO. I don't love Amy, get her the hell off the TARDIS." And as I read through the comments I saw that there were two camps. The people who hated Amy...mostly women. And the people that love Amy, mostly men. The men were baffled at the Amy Hate, and decided that we must be either die hard Doctor/Rose shippers or just jealous because Amy's pretty.

Um. NO.
HELL no.

( And here's why. Warning, as River would say...Spoilers! )

On Ask Metafilter, it's an unwritten rule that if you ask a question that relates to a cat, you MUST post a picture of that cat. So last night I dutifully posted a link to a picture of Roxy on my Flickr page. Holy Shit! Now I know how to get hits. I got something like 256 people going to check out my cat.

Anyway, going to my flickr page reminded me that I haven't posted pictures of my dining room set here. This is the bad thing about LJ vs Facebook or Google+, it's just so much easier to do that there, even though LJ is so much better for actual posts with meaty content.

Anyway2! My table!

So Dad had had the chairs stained & waxed and all those good things. I did the table, stain, 3 layers of top coat and wax. Mom put the new fabric on the cushions. I think it looks pretty good!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darjeelingtea/5928731216
(sorry, Flickr's not so good at embedding)

I've been good about eating at it ever since I got it. And it's actually prompted me to get more actual book reading done instead of eating in front of the computer. So people should come visit me, I have a place to eat food now!

I thought that was the end of my woodworking adventures. But last Sunday I went to Ikea and bought a huge shelving set with a cabinet. It's all in plywood instead of their laminate, so it was dirt cheap. But I think once I use my new skills to sand it, stain it and finish it, it should look pretty nice. I won't be able to match the mahogany of the table, so I'm going to stain this blue.

I have, like, 5 posts I need to write up.  But I just wanted to get this out of the way...

If anyone would like a Google+ invite, I have some.  So far I'm pretty pleased with it in comparison to Facebook.  But it's kind of like a fax machine in that it's only useful if there's someone on the other end with one too.  So if anyone's interested, let me know.

I'm still on my romance reading kick, and ran across one that was a little different, and it made me think a bit. "Forbidden Magic" by Jo Beverly was interesting because it had a Manic Pixie Dream Guy. Usually it's the heroine in a Regency Romance who's like a Disney Princess on speed. She'll be the one who is overly familiar with servants, who of course adore her. She'll put up with the deaf butler and the elderly housekeeper because they're like family. She'll have the three legged dog and keep frogs in her reticule. (Srsly, I have read like 3 books now where the heroine keeps a frog in her purse, wtf?) And the hero will be very staid and proper, but he'll learn to love her joie de vie, yadda yadda yadda.

But in this book it's the hero that has the chaotic household. The maid has one eye, the dog has a perma-snarl, the footman has a limp... there's even an inappropriate parrot. He loves the heroine's little brothers and sisters and lets them eat ices for appetizers and plays with them. And of course the heroine who's had to have everything under tight control to keep her family out of serious trouble, learns to loosen up and enjoy life.

I was amused by the Manic Pixie Dream Guy, but what kind of surprised me is that making the Girl the uptight one made her almost unlikable. I'm so used to the heroine being immediately sweet and accepting that it's a little off putting when she balks at the ex-pickpocket working as a servant for her little siblings. Which is a bad reaction on my part. I would probably balk too. But it's interesting that it's an expectation that I didn't even realize I had.

I've been watching too much Iron Chef America. The past few days, whenever I look at my clock during my lunch break I think "Fifteen minutes have elapsed" or "one minute remains..."

So I have totally been in the mood for fluffy, funny historical romance novels lately. Just...something happy you know? But most of what I've been reading is crap.

There is no excuse for this! Genre fiction, and I think romance novels in particular get a bad rap for being trash. But I've read a lot of good ones that I've really enjoyed. So when I was in the mood, and I couldn't find anything, I asked people for reccomendations. And I've been reading my way through them, and half of them make me want to committ an act of violence, because they're nice and readable until they introduce the idiot ball.

( So, yeah, let's talk about the Idiot Ball. )

It's been awhile since I did a link spam post...

For all my ferret loving friends...

Amphibious ice cream truck. Oh come on, this MUST be on Top Gear.

I assume you've seen the little boy with the otter, but just in case.

I wish I lived somewhere that had cool food trucks.

A neat article about parrots and crows problem solving.

Ann, you're a translator. Can you translate this from French?

.....Yes, because Japanese and French have SO much in common.

(Today is not going nearly as bad as yesterday.)

Happy Towel Day to all my froods.

Today I have the attention span of a ferret in a glitter snow globe.