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Waist Cinchers - Better Pix [18 Jul 2008|10:16am] britgeekgrrl Filter: public. I've taken some better pix of the cinchers, you can see them here. The LJ-special price is $100 each, plus shipping. If nothing moves by 10AM PST, Saturday, they're going to ebay, where the opening bid will be $120. Reminder for the conscientious: I'm selling these to pay for Casa Cthulhu living expenses. (but I'm spending the rest of the day playing with a fun-fund project. I promised myself that much of a reward!) 4 comments|post comment

Whew. [17 Jul 2008|08:04pm] britgeekgrrl Filter: all Three waist cinchers. Details are with the pix in the gallery. Click through to the full-sized pix, as they are HUGE. I'll take better pictures tomorrow when a) my camera's recharged and b) Mr. Sun is doing his thing full-on in the back yard, so I can get some real light going. I'm not happy with how the blue cincher photographed as it doesn't do it a scrap of justice. That particular one is paisleytastic! *ahem* Anyways, none of them are pix I'd put on ebay, but they give you, dear reader, an idea of what I've done. I haven't figured out how much to charge yet. I'm brainfried. If you fall in love, make me an offer. Your luck might be in. I really don't want to touch a needle for at least another week but, no rest for the wicked. I am, however, going to play with a personal project for the rest of the evening, distressing some leather whilst I watch TV. Maybe I'll tell it about the global socio-economic situation. That should distress it nicely. Edited to add: Oh yeah, it's always a given in my case, but I keep forgetting it's not standard. All items use steel boning (in this case, 1/4" spring steel) and twill lining, and the fashion fabric is also interlined with the same twill. Because of they way they're built, According to the costume-history experts on my f-list who know these things better than I do, you shouldn't tight-lace with this type of garment, but you can certainly get snug... Edited to add yet more: I'm selling these to go towards COBRA/living expenses. The fun little leather project? That one will be for the recreational piggybank, if I manage to actually make what I'm trying to make... 13 comments|post comment

Random Short Unrelated Things [12 Jul 2008|08:11pm] jojobear99 Murray is extremely curious about what we do in the toilet-room downstairs. He's not very curious what we do in that room with the indoor plumbing upstairs where he occasionally gets bathed. I'm slightly obsessive compulsive about the front window of my car being clear of dirt and bugs while I'm driving. Sometimes I even keep windex and razor blades in the car to touch up what the wipers and washer fluid won't get off. I haven't bothered to actually balance my checkbook in over a year. I have at least been opening my statements and at least eyeballing that they look right so I don't get dinged by mistakes or unexpected charges. If anyone's keeping score, Gas is down to $4.45/gallon, 8 cents a gallon cheaper than it was the last time I filled up. I once missed several points on a math test in high school because I mis-added 13 + 9 somewhere along the way. Ooops. But differential equations in calculus? Those made sense to me. I've  been reading a book on hebrews that I checked out from the church library. I like that my church has a library. But I tend to forget to use the libraries I have available for long periods of time in between trips every three weeks (to return due books and while I'm there, get more). Murray likes to beg me to take him out for walks when I get home for lunch. He likes to beg again when I get home from work or after dinner too, even if he's had a long outing with my mom. I kind of think he just likes going out as many times a day as he can convince people to take him. When I was in kindergarten, my favorite color was school-bus yellow (not to be confused by any means with primary yellow or pastel yellow, I was very upset when my dad mistakenly painted my desk lemon yellow instead of school-bus yellow). Somewhere along the line in elementary school I changed my mind and decided red was my favorite color though, and that just stuck. But when I had my desk re-painted in 6th grade, I had it painted pink to match a ballet-slippers desk-lamp I used to have. I like to sew while I watch netflix. Today I watched Mork and Mindy (the TV show) season 2, disk 2, and I sewed an orange slice ornament out of felt while I watched. I see why the show didn't last though, the second season lacks the oomph the first had, killing off two of the main characters and replacing them with a more annoying character is a hard way to win fans. Murray has two favorite nooks in my room, one is between the return for my desk and the window-seat, and the other is between my bed and closet. When he's in the closet nook, you can't even see him unless you come over to just the right spot in my room. I think he goes to hide there when he wants to be alone but doesn't really want to be by himself (otherwise he'd just go lay in my sister's room). I first started sewing felt toys when I took a sewing class after in after school program in fourth grade. We'd meet in the library with a lady who'd teach us how to sew, and I loved making the felt toys so much that I kept making more of them on my own out of felt from the Five and Dime (yeah, the Five and Dime is long out of business...). Apparently I never outgrew making felt toys though ;-). post comment

Bible Study Thoughts [11 Jul 2008|03:51pm] jojobear99 1) Something jumped out at me when I was reading the other day. Deu. 3:11 mentions the size of the bed of a giant (King Of of Bashan) as being "...4 cubits in width according to the standard [or common] cubit". Why add this whole clause "according to the standard cubit" unless this isn't the cubit they usually used (royal cubits?) Previously I'd done a little preliminary research on the cubit and which cubit length would Moses have measured the tabernacle in, seeing good arguments for the length being in royal cubits. like to investigate this anomaly usage of cubit further, but this little gem seems to be one more piece of evidence in favor of that argument. And evidence that the enemy king's bed was slightly smaller than it sounds ;-). 2) Thou. I was reading up on some biblical Greek grammar stuff, and came across an explanation of why "you" is the same for singular and plural in English. Basically, English *used to* have different conjugations for the two, thou art for the singular, and you are for the plural. Using the plural address (you are) was also occasionally used as a polite/formal version for the singular, and the singular (thou art) was considered more intimate/informal. Over time the singular informal was replaced with the formal or plural usage (hence why it is you are not you is). Understanding this makes it so much more clear why old hymns are so chock full of vocabulary that sounds antiquidated or colloquial today. Why would a hymn say "thou art strong " rather than "you are strong"? Because it was emphasizing the familiar intimate relationship we have with God. To someone from that era, a modern worship song that uses you eg "you are my all in all" would sound like God is formal and distant, not accurately representing the character of God. post comment

[08 Jul 2008|11:40pm] jojobear99 Keri (step-cousin) and Mike (keri's husband) are in town visiting Gary (my uncle) and Kathryn (Gary's wife, and Keri's mom), so Kathryn invited everyone (mostly relatives) over for a meet the new baby party tonight. I resolved the schedule conflict with junior high ministry by going to Keri's party for the first 40 minutes or so and then leaving for junior high ministry. It was great to see Keri and the new baby and everyone, briefly though it was. Junior high was a lot of fun too. I was the only 8th grade leader who was able to make it tonight, so it was kind of good that I was able to make it, I ended up leading the 8th grade girls* discussion by myself and God's always pretty graceful when it happens like that, which I'm thankful for, never gives more than we can handle. (*Technically they are incoming high school freshmen now) And on the fun side, tonight they had the snow-cone machine out and popcorn to go along with the movie and bible study (their summer program, movies under the parking garage). It was still plenty hot out so snow cones was a wise choice, and they had tons of flavor choices to choose from. I'd really do myself well to get a camping chair though, my beach chair totally fell apart a couple years ago, and a beach towel on concrete is nowhere near as comfortable as a "real chair" would be. But somehow at church is one place where I seem to usually have better than usual clarity of mind...things just seem...clear. Good reflections on life at the moment while we watched the movie part. A couple chapters of the movie were scratched badly, so they had to skip them and just have Ryan summarize what happened in them, but the good side of that was unlike last week they didn't run 45 minutes over, they actually ended a few minutes early. So I contemplated whether I should go back to the party that was probably about to wind down. I tried to call, but realized I didn't have Kathryn's number and my mom and grandma weren't answering their phones. So I just went. And as I got there, the last few visitors (excepting "Grammy", Keri's grandma Martha) were leaving. But Keri was happy to see me back to visit a little longer, so I stayed a little while and had some desert that they'd forgotten to set out at the party, and kicked back with the family in the family room. You know really, that's probably actually more fun than being there with the whole party. Kind of reminded me of old times (back when I was in college), hanging out there when its just Keri and the family on pleasant summer evenings, relaxed, not a big production going on, just chill. And before I left, I tried to test out my long-exposure night mode on my camera on their awesome backyard view. At first I tried it just supported by the fence, but the wire fence isn't a very good support, and then Gary offered to get out his tripod (because it wasn't that hard to dig out) and we set it up on the balcony upstairs where it wouldn't have to position as carefully to not get the fence wires in the picture, and took a couple shots, and yeah, they came out pretty cool. I imagine they'd come out even better with a more professional camera with a remote shutter button (I couldn't figure out how to combine 15 second shutter mode with 2 second shutter delay mode).   (I liked that the shot on the left has better foreground, but the one on the right you can see the freeway better) 2 comments|post comment

What did I do for 4th of July? [08 Jul 2008|03:38pm] jojobear99 Short answer: absolutely nothing. At least nothing celebratory nor social. I lounged around the house in my pajamas and read a library book. I wanted to do something fun and social. Really. But no one in particular invited me to do anything with them, and I never actually got around to calling anyone to organize anything msyelf. A backyard BBQ where I could meet some new interesting people would have been cool, except I don't have a BBQ nor an interesting bunch of friends who would get along to invite. I had another idea that it'd be cool to get some people together to go into the city to watch the fireworks (Pleasaton hasn't done their own fireworks on the 4th of july since the year they had a shooting at the county fair when I was in high school). But I didn't organize it and neither did anyone else so it didn't happen. But its probably just as well, because one of my co-workers said they did go down to the pier in the city to watch the fireworks and all they could see was a thick layer of fog between them and the fireworks. Not to dis my awesome time reading my library book about Hebrews, because it was a good read, and some cool insights about God and stuff, but that's a different kind of fun. Saturday I did actually get out and do something social though, unrelated to the 4th of July. After a good several months of phone tag and her voicemail with her phone number deleting itself on me, and having to get her phone number from Paul again, and her being on vacation and this and that and the other, I finally got in touch with Elena, a friend from high school who is still apparently in town. Her family was having a party to celebrate her mom and little sister's birthdays and graduation(s), so Elena was inviting a couple friends. Sounded fun enough. Ahhh, good to get out to a backyard party. Except it didn't really lead to any new social contacts or anything. I didn't get to talk to Elena all that much because she kept getting called away by her mom to help prepare drinks or serve food, or a cousin she hadn't seen in years would show up to visit with her...so I mostly ended up mostly conversing with her little sister's friends. Keep in mind her kid sister is now, it turns out, just turning 21. The party had its laughable moments like when Elena's sister commited party foul by cutting her foot minorly by accidentally dropping a glass bottle on her bare-feet. But her friends were talking smack about church (Maybe you don't want to hear much about my interests then, because I think church has changed a little since you were 12, and you know, some churches don't make pre-teens sit through boring adults services then...). And finding other topics of conversation that might have better common ground didn't go any better. Them asking where I'd gone to college just turned into one of those snide "oh you're one of those smart people then aren't you?" remarks and mention of my interest in travel was just fodder for "Oh Uganda (ugh), I wouldn't ever want to go there". And so on. So next time I try to get together with Elena, I think it'll be without her sister's friends. Course, from the sounds of Elena's busy schedule, between her working on her BS and her job working on weekends, it may be hard to find compatible times to get together and do stuff together (she'd taken time off work for that party), even though yay, someone who might be willing to do single people things with me ;-). Aaaaand, now I remember why I didn't post this earlier. Because it just sounds like a lot of complaining, and complaining doesn't do much of anyone any good. post comment

Tonight was the last game of the softball season [07 Jul 2008|11:16pm] jojobear99 We actually had a very close game. We were behind a couple points when the clock ran out, and the ump decided he was going home, but we were playing the other team from our own church, and they wanted to play another inning, so we kept playing, and in the last inning we scored a few runs (I even scored one, yay), and had a one point lead and they had the last up. We had a great shut-out of that last inning though. A caught pop fly in the outfield. A couple people got on base, one of them was at third, almost ready to tie the score up again. I was playing catcher that inning, and then the batter hit a fowl almost straight up, and I caught it scoring us another out, and then another pop fly later, we held onto our slight lead for a win that doesn't mean anything :) So I had one good play in the game (and one earlier that I might have been able to get if I'd been quicker on realizing it was going fowl). I'm getting considerably better at the batting too ever since a couple weeks ago Tricia discovered a kids bat in Anna's bag. The kids bat is only 23 oz instead of 34 oz. But that difference? Wow, its amazing, I'm not struggling to make the bat go where I want, I can actually aim the bat with consistency at the ball. I don't get as much power, but then again, if you mis the ball, or hit just the very top of the ball because you can't control the bat well enough, power won't help you much anyway....and with the kids bat it tends to go somewhere in the infield that makes the infielder or catcher run for it usually giving me enough time to outrun them to first. Now if I could just learn to throw and not have the ball hit the ground 20 feet from wherever I throw it.... They had a guy there with sign up sheets for the fall league. I'd been debating the idea for a while, and decided to just go for it. Apparently the fall league is organized a little different. Officially I think its the "Valley Bible Church league" this time, and the way that league works is they mix up the teams every game so that you meet different people from all the different churches. Which actually sounds kind of good to me. They had both co-ed and womens league to choose from. Although the womens one sounded appealing on the grounds of skill level probably being a little less competitive, the pluses of potentially having opportunities to meet single guys and "impress" them with my lack of softball skill sounded more fun ;-) So another season of softball it is...with most of the rest of July off, which is probably a good thing because its supposed to be 103 tomorrow (not that I would have had a game tomorrow...but...summer = high potential risk of games where you're dripping sweat before you even star playing (like today). 3 comments|post comment

I've been kind of slackerly in posting lately [07 Jul 2008|05:05pm] jojobear99 Due to the general apathy and lack of noteworthy events in my life at the moment, I'm feeling uninspired. Feel free comment with input about what topics or kinds of posts you'd enjoy reading more of. Otherwise I might just continue to be slackerly or something. 1 comment|post comment

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