The Thing That Goes Doink

Happy birthday, trystan830! Hope it's a great one!

In response to this meme I was given the following list from dqbunny:

( Info dump ahead!  )

I'm a fan of my bed.

It's big. It's cozy, especially when my husband isn't hogging the covers.

Anyway.

I stayed up late with forgotten_relic, finally turning in at 1:30 this morning. I managed to pull myself out of bed at just after nine, grabbed my Aperture mug filled with coffee (the cake may be a lie, but the coffee isn't), and settled on the couch to surf teh interbuttz. I made sure to post on my brother's Facebook wall for his birthday (he's 26 today), and yesterday most of the family got together to celebrate my grandpa's birthday a day early. (Yes, my brother and our maternal grandpa have the same birthday. It's a family thing, apparently, to share a birthday with another family member.)

Also, today, at least according to LJ, is faithchan's birthday, so a very happy birthday to her! I hope it's wonderful!

Tomorrow is my husband's birthday, but we're going out to dinner tonight because we figured trying to do it tomorrow would be too hectic. Since he doesn't want a cake, I'm making a blueberry pie (unless he wants a different kind of pie...I should probably check with him) instead. This is going to be my first attempt at making crusts from scratch, which could go horribly, horribly wrong. Or it could just right and I get a perfect, flaky crust.

If everything turns out, tomorrow the "Food Porn" album on Facebook will have a few new additions. (Goober that he is, he's not allowing me to play with my cake decorating supplies. So he'll probably end up with slits in the crust in the shape of a cake because that's how I roll.)

Anyway, I'm more or less just killing time until the Pro-Bowl starts and I'll watch some of that before we go out for dinner. Seattle went from having one person selected to five when four other people dropped out due to either illness or injury. As it stands the Seahawks did okay this past season and I really feel that they're on the right track to give the 49ers a run for the money next season.

I think that sums up everything for me at the moment. Life's been pretty quiet around here. It's been warm (today it's in the high fifties) and kind of wet, but it's always possible that we'll get hit with another snowstorm. I would not be against that, especially since I'm officially off of crutches I can actually go play in it. (Though first I should consider hitting up either Big 5 or REI to find snow pants. Wet jeans suck.)

Ganked from earthstar_moon

1. Reply to this post with "ICON ME!", and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

Her picks for me:

( Icon squee behind the cut! )

Because I haven't done any in a while. If you need to figure out my fandoms, check the interests section of my profile. :3

Give me a character from one of my fandoms and I will tell you:
* How I FEEEEEL about this character
* All the people I ship romantically with this character
* My non-romantic OTP for this character
* My unpopular opinion about this character
* One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Um, yay?

Sorry I forgot this yesterday - I was a bit busy. ^^

Happy birthday, sistaofpeace1! Hope it was wonderful!!

So far loving all of the features of a paid account here on LJ. LOVING THEM. Mostly the extra icons. XD

Anyway, today I have another meeting for the KNRC fundraiser. I've had a meeting each week for the last three weeks. Two weeks ago was a KNRC fundraiser meeting, then last week was the TCLBA meeting, followed by another KNRC fundraiser meeting tonight (which means I need to quickly change out my shirt - I've been pretty good about looking professional at the KNRC fundraiser meetings). What's notable about the TCLBA meeting was that Representative Doc Hastings came in to discuss the future of the Tri-Cities after Hanford clean-up and shut down is complete. I don't want to get into the details of the meeting, but Doc was really candid about working across party lines when necessary, and especially when it came to doing what was best for our region.

I have a feeling that with my new job I'm going to learn at lot of interesting things.

What I'm not looking forward to with the new job is that I'm essentially set up as a "self-employed consultant." That means that I have to pay taxes quarterly based on what I earn each quarter in order to avoid paying penalties. I may need to pop into H&R Block since tax season is upon us and ask them what I am required to do. I've found a couple of tutorials online about how to file at the end of the year (especially since I don't get a W2 for this), but I need to know what the requirements are throughout the year.

Yes, I am grateful for employment - I just wish my taxes weren't such a pain in the ass.

I decided that I wanted a new layout - or more accurately I wanted to test out a new layout.

That would be Yoko Littner from Tenga Toppa Gurren Lagann. And she is badass. (Although, you'd have to actually view my journal on the whole to see it...but more on that later.)

That said, I decided I liked the badass/girly juxtaposition of this particular layout, made by the lovely nappo_kami_sama and can be found here if it's something you're interested in. If not, well, whatever. She's got some pretty cute icons and wallpapers (mostly from Gurren Lagann, but Vocaloid, Kuroshitsuji, Kobato, Offuri, Miliyah Kato, Tetsuwan Birdy Decode (Birdy : The Mighty) as well.

I think the new layout is nice, but it lacks a custom reply, so I simply override it and it goes to LJ default when viewing locked entries (which are hilariously denoted with a "new!" banner sprite) and comments. I also think that when I get paid (yay job!) I'll look into getting a paid account because I still want more icons, damn it! And since I found someone who has screen capped the entire series of Gurren Lagann, I'm going to look into making a mood theme (non-animated) and some icons as well. I have caps of both movies and I may make a series mood theme and a movie mood theme. Because I'm special that way. XD

And while I ♥ my Haven mood theme, it doesn't really go with the whole Gurren Lagann thing I've got going on. But in the mean time I'll stick with Nathan & company until I can find or make a Gurren Lagann theme I like. ^^

I suppose I should finish shopping for my husband's birthday, and at some point next week I need to buy cards. Lots and lots of cards.

To all of my LJ friends who have paid accounts: is it worth it? I'm really starting to be irked by the ads, especially the ones that temporarily reroute me. I was just wondering what people's thoughts and opinions were as far as paid accounts went, and if I should just shell out the cash so that I be done with the ads.

Doing some further research, I figure that if I get the 12 month paid account, that evens out to about $1.66 month for more user pics and no ads. For a year. And it'll be automatically billed. So far I'm leaning towards "yes" rather than "no" for a paid account, going with the yearly option instead of the six month or two month option.

Now to the actual blog post. I'm going with my friend Maria to Zillah tomorrow to tutor her kitten, Raja. Since most of the vet clinics around here charge well over $100 for just the operation and the clinic in Zillah is less than $100 for the operation, blood work, and a full check-up, we figure it's worth the gas money to go to Zillah, which is an hour away from where we live.

We're not sure whose car we're taking yet, but I'm lobbying for mine, especially since my husband and I just gave it its monthly check-up. Oil is fine. Coolant is fine. One tire is a little low, so I'll get that taken care of before too long (currently too hot to do, thanks). Besides, mine also has the better stereo and the blue-tooth connectivity for my phone. Also, since we're going to spend the day up in Ellensburg and I actually sort of know my way around town, we decided that I would be driving in E-burg anyway. Since I figure my car is road trip worthy, it'll probably be safer to take my car.

Since I had to run over to the auditors office this morning to renew my tabs, I took advantage of the close proximity to the Fred Meyer fuel station and gassed up, followed by a stop at the car wash because we've been having dust storms. There's still a very fine layer of dirt on my car, so I'll probably end up having to use the brush on my car next time, but it's looking better than it did.

My car is smaller than Maria's, but I don't think we really need a ton of room for two people and a kitten. We had also invited another friend to come along, but we haven't heard anything from her, so we've taken the radio silence to mean that she either forgot about it, or can't make it. Either way, it's no big deal. We're heading out early tomorrow morning (leaving the TC proper no later than 7:15) so I'll be showering tonight and attempting to go to bed early (we'll see how well that works out).

Well, I think I need to hydrate myself properly before heading back out into the heat so I can inflate my tire.