Back to Work

Good news, Zhaun's taking the 15th-19th off in August and he wants Dustin to cover for him and me to do dairy. I said I'd do it. I'll also let Julie know sometime that I'm willing to work other things too, like checking if it gets busy in November or something.

I got hot dogs and buns today. I can't wait, I haven't had hot dogs in a long time.

Work wasn't bad. In fact it was ok. I did receiving while Bonnie worked on catching up paperwork. I had to watch some training thing on reclamation and take a test. Then I helped Bonnie with paperwork.

I hear the guys are going to be starting on the floor of the house today. Yay!

back in town

Well, I'm down at Timmy's house now. I'm going to be eating burritos for dinner in a minute here. I have my old, big computer hooked up. The monitor is huge! I think it's a 19" or something, 1280x1024 and my netbook is 1024x600 and is tiny.

Tonight I'm just going to do my online stuff, maybe see if PVZ works alright. It was so weird. I'd had Plants vs Zombies installed on my netbook but Victor got me an achievement I didn't want him to get me (he was fixing it cause it was crashing and thought it'd be cute to put in the mustache code, ugh) and so I uninstalled the game, steam, and deleted the steam folder. Then I reinstalled steam, reinstalled PVZ and... my old-old game from way back before the crash of last year came up!! 0_0 Weird... It says I'm logged in as "recovered 1". huh. Well, I'm just happy of that. Now I have to see what happens on this end. I don't know if I want to jinx it or not. I might just not try it at all on this computer and save PVZ for my netbook only. But I don't really want to do anything big like Fallout or Battlefield 2 or anything. We'll see.

It's weird being in town again. I hear cars and people all over outside.

I would also like to say that I had previously shoved Zack Efron (sp?) off as being part of the Robert Pattinson and Justin Beiber glitter and sparkles crowd. But, you know what? I saw 17 Again and groaned when I saw who was in it, but he's actually really, really good. My respect for him rose. I'm not going to judge him entirely by one movie but I am willing to give him another try.

Day 2

Pictures from Day 2:

Boards for framing foundation blocks.

A finished one.

Three more.

Two more.

House site.

Again.

Leveling the frames. Originally we were told to dig out the ground but later Steven said to put stakes and level the ground up with rocks.

Different angle.

Cutting stakes.

From my lawn swing.

Deathly Hallows pt2

Me and Emily saw Deathly Hallows pt 2 on Saturday. It was really good. It followed the book pretty well, and I really liked some of the things they added. I do think it's funny that just about every time they show James and Lily they have different actors. And same for Aberforth Dumbledore, totally different actor from they one they used in OOTP. Neville is awesome, just great. So is McGonegal (sp?).

The trailers. One or two ick-looking movies I don't even remember what they were. Then the new Twilight trailer. Lord knows why I continue watching that horrid series but I do want to see the new one. *sigh* Then was the new Batman one and I really wish they'd just stop. That's not Batman. He may be dressed up as him and people are calling him that but that is so not Batman.

**Spoilers**

So, I really liked how they portrayed Snape. :) The first scene was delightfully angsty. I cried during his death. How retched. In the book Voldemort simply has Nigini bite him once. In the movie Voldemort stabbed Snape and then had Nigini attack and that snake was vicious to him! Over and over, I was cringing. The Prince's Tale had me sniffling too. omg, this is totally a fangirl's dream come true. They pushed the angst in Snape's memories way up. I am going to be one happy fan-vid maker. I mean, it has Snape in the Potter's house holding Lily and crying while rocking her body back and forth! That was not in the book, but, seriously, that has got to be one of the best additions to the movies that they've done. Sure the book shows you that best friend syndrome is why Lily overlooked Snape. Oh, Sevvie, you poor, poor angsty man. mmm... Oh, the videos I'll be able to make later. And Snape being all shook up and leaning on the wall and crying and... mmm... Ooh, Severus Snape...

Let's see... I did not like how they made the actors look in the 19-years-later scene. At most I'd assume they were... 25-27? But they're supposed to be 36. I do like that they showed Draco in that scene but they should have mentioned Neville. Actually, I don't remember if his fate was told in the book or if Rowling said it later.

Bill Weasely. Cute, but not scarred enough. He was viciously attacked by a werewolf and was on the verge of dying, but in the movie he has a little scar on his cheek.

People in the theater cheered when Bellatrix died. bleh. I like her. I do think Molly was awesome then.

They applauded at the end of the movie, though.

I thought it was kinda surreal seeing the courtyard in shambles and remembering the first movie and how things had changed. That was just me, though, I don't know if anyone else felt that way.

"I've always wanted to use that spell!" XD

I was scared they'd take the snake kill away from Neville. It is very important that Neville got that kill. It's a little debatable about who the chosen one actually is.

I thought the Ron/Hermoine kiss was too forced. I do like their reactions afterwards, though. Perfect.

Again! Severus Snape..... *sniffle* Truly he left a Snape-shaped hole in our hearts... I thought that window needed to be more shapely. It was just a blob in the movie but the book clearly states that it is a Snape-shaped hole in the window. Augh, Nigini was brutal with him, bite after bite after bite, poor man! In the book it was one simple lunge but in the movie, ick. Well, I know I was gnawing on my knuckles.

Then some theater employee came in and walked in front of everyone at some point and stood to the side looking around. Dunno what's up, maybe they do that occasionally to see if anyone's pirating. *shrug* Dunno who'd try to record a 3d movie when there's also a 2d version available. But that's my best guess anyway. It kinda ruined the moment though. I forget what was happening when she came in.

Surprisingly I didn't have to use the bathroom at all during the movie. Usually within the first hour I'm squirming. But I sat through a 3-hour movie perfectly fine.

Oh, Snape... They did the Prince's Tale wonderfully. They should have showed Lily's friendship with him in more detail, though. Kinda glad they left out the bits about his interest in the dark arts pushing her away.

Again, Petunia is blonde. Blonde! Would that have been so hard? Course they never did anything about Harry's eyes being green in the book and blue in the movie. But Daniel Radcliff can't take contacts or something I guess. Ugly, ugly man, btw. eugh. Rupert Grint is kinda ugly too. Neville should let his hair grow a little, then he'd be cuter. I'm going to have to look up the actor and see what other kinds of movies he does. Alan Rickman, though, for a guy in his mid-60s he plays Snape really well. Snape's, what, 36 in SS ad 43 in DH. He looks really good. I was never so interested in Snape until the SS movie came out. I saw it when I was 15. And ever since then Snape's been my favorite character. Neville is my second favorite.

Wish the "king's cross" section was better done.

They never tied up Hermoine's parent's and I don't actually remember what happened to them in the book. Did she ever go back and fix their memories? Is that possible? I liked her hair in the 19-years-later part.

**End Spoilers**

I should have gotten a picture of me and Emily standing in front of the poster but I'm not that smart. I wore my Slytherin Crest t-shirt and she wore a Hogwarts Crest shirt. It was fun seeing it with her.

Arrival

We got our home today: Some assembly required! Pictures behind cut.

Victor's Birthday

Wednesday the 13th was Victor's birthday. I made him a cake shaped like an Intellivision out of a red velvet cake mix and marshmallow fondant. This was my second time making fondant and it was so much better this time. Last time I spent forever on it, this time it sorta fell together perfectly. My only issue was that I couldn't quite get the color gold. I tried using lots of yellow food coloring with a drop of red but it just turned orange. And I couldn't get the rest of it black enough. Anyway, here's some pictures:

The cake was a surprise. It was my present to him. btw, my hair is in a waterfall braid. Not a perfect one, because I have no idea how to end it in the go-around-the-head way. I'm more following the style of waterfall braid that Torin does where you turn it into a regular braid at the center back. Also, I have some sparkles on either side at the start.

This is a good picture of me.

Victor playing with the train my mom and Steven gave him. He loves it.

And here's the cake itself. For my second attempt at fancy cake decorating I think it's pretty good.

This is the picture I was going by for the cake. Obviously I made both controllers be in their slots, it was easier that way.

new soap

Me and my mom went down to the lake and canoed around. It was really fun. Peaceful. Beautiful. We were going to get me some clay but it was too deep. If it ever gets warm we'll jump into the lake and get it that way. We couldn't really get a good angle in the canoe without tipping it so we only got about 1/4 bucket. But that's ok.

I tried that clay on my steps. I used my fingers and smooshed it in around the rocks. I'll go back to give it a second coat tomorrow or sometime. My mom says it dries like cement.

I made a new batch of soap, I don't think I said that before. But I made it using a scale and proper solid fats to liquid fats ratio. I used a 50-50 ratio of hard and soft fats and using the Soap Calc I made sure the properties of the soap fell in the middle of the "good" numbers. I poured it into pvc and used wax paper as a liner. I read somewhere that you can use placemats in your pvc and I want to do that cause they're reusable. But for now wax paper will work. Anyway, I don't know where my pipe cap is and I need more than one anyway, so I put the pipe into old lids (lid to a shortening can and a lid to hot chocolate or something) and out of 16oz I got 11 bars of soap. We would have gotten 12 out of it but two of the bars were a little thicker but not enough to be cut in half, if we'd done it over again and cut them better we would have gotten it. Anyway, I used one of those wire wood cutters. I had Steven cut while I held and he sawed. Then my mom tried a knife but it just made it oval. Then my mom tried sawing with the wire. Then she tried pushing. Just pushing worked wonderfully. My soap is so beautiful. :) It's just creamy white, I used shortening, olive oil, coconut oil, peanut oil, and jojoba oil. And then I threw in some Japenese Cherry Blossom fragrance oil. Simply lovely. I'll keep a few of the oops ones for us and sell the rest. But the most important thing is that they did not crumble when I cut them. This makes me so happy. I don't even need to shave them much. The only ones that need shaving are the ones we sawed. The worst of which we'll keep for us. I'll probably only actually keep two of them, one for me and Victor and one for my mom and Steven.

I have a ton of pictures to put up sometime.

Been a While

Haunted Woods came in 11th place (out of 18 teams) and I got a wooden trophy cause I only got to Rank 3. But playing the same three games (one of the 4 available won't run on this computer) over and over is tiring. Here's my user lookup with my new trophy.

The 20x20 house was too expensive, 3,000 dollars without the drywall and insulation. So we're doing a 12x16 in front of where the 20x20 will one day be. That wound up being 2,100 dollars with all the nails, drywall, insulation, cement, etc. They're delivering all our stuff on Monday. I'm excited.

My path is going ok, I have 5 steps and the dirt's washing out from around them. We're going to get clay from the lake to fill in around them with. That stuff hardens like cement.

We did a lot of tree and limb clearing and mowed the lawn. I restrung my clothes line. The guys are fixing me up an old electric wringer washer to run the wringer by hand crank.

I talked with Bonnie and I'm going down on the 28th and working with her on the 29th and 30th, from the 31st through the 6th I'll cover her vacation. I don't need to work with her at all but it's a good excuse for more money.

Sadly it looks like I'll probably have to wait until then to see Deathly Hallows Part 2. It comes out on Friday but we'd be making a whole trip just for that and I dunno if we should be spending our money like that. We'll see.

Mosquitoes are horrible.

swimming

We went swimming yesterday and it was a little cold but very fantastic. I'd forgotten how much I love swimming. The double buns worked out well for it.

hair stuff

I got a 4th step done on my cobblestone stairs. I need to keep filling in the previous steps with more dirt as the rocks settle.

We did some fireworks last night and they were fun. I spent the last 4 years without fireworks.

I tried a new cookie recipe. I halved it. And I only had big packages of pudding so I guessed on where the 3.4 line was. I used chocolate pudding and put in a little bit more vanilla than it called for. And they turned out really good. I don't know if it's going to be the chocolate chip cookie recipe I'll always use, as they are a little cake-y. But they're really, really good. I burnt some of them by accident but they were still yummy.

My mom gave me some hairsticks. Two are silver. Two are brown with black tips. One is a brownish red see-through with symbols on it. and one is a bronzish swirly-stripy.

We're going swimming today so I'm trying to think how to do my hair. I'll probably double-bun it. I call that my indestructible hair-do. Cause that is more or less what it is.

New blog

I started a new blog, and it's just for stuff about our lives up here, like projects and stuff: This one will still be for everything else. Here it is: http://lifeonmosquitomountain.blogspot.com/