#geekgirl76

[copperbadge]

waffilicious

when i lived in chicago i loved visiting the art institute and one of my favorite things to do was visit what i called “the echo chamber,” which is a gallery with temporary exhibitions which is itself an art piece and also has the most wild acoustics any room in an art museum could have. i loved just sitting there in the atmospheric lighting and hearing the whispers bouncing off the walls.

Oh yes! I love it too. It’s one of the places I take people on my tour, but I always stop them a few feet away first and make a bet over whether we’ll walk in on someone making out in there.

(Odds rise sharply during the school year when high school field trips have access. It’s awkward and frankly annoying.) 

geekgirl76

Let me guess, Hereford based? I never thought I'd have OPINIONS on cattle, but my go to "only cows I'd own" are Herefords.

LOL! Yes, 25% Hereford -- they’re mostly Brahmin though. 

[themonkeycabal]

geekgirl76 replied to your post “The only thing I’ve learned during this lockdown is that I’ve...”

Ugh. High five on the garburator! You deserve ALL the bourbon (so gross, but you do you. ;) )My step dad was a master plumber, he plumbed sky scrapers, he taught plumbing at our provincial trades school, and the swearing he'd do when it came to installing/replacing them... You rock!

That makes me feel loads better. They are really the worst. I consider myself rather handy, and I’m willing to do any number of un-fun handy-tasks, but damned if I don’t hate garbage disposals worse than almost anything else. It’s really a two-person job, and ideally, one of those people should have three arms, but unfortunately and hellishly, there’s only room for one regular two-armed person. 

Also, there were spiders. I had spiders in my hair. And I accidentally dumped the old disposal and its contents on my knee. I took the longest shower ever. 

[lightshadowverisimilitude]

geekgirl76 replied to your post “moiracolleenodell replied to your post “I cannot stand this shit: Me:...”

This may be my excellent health team bias showing, but I always assumed most clinics have one doctor at a time taking relatively urgent cases? Mine do a rotation where one week out of the rota, they do a half schedule so you can still go to that clinic, even if you can't see your own doctor. Feel better! (and at least it's not a virus?)

This is actually a separate facility. My primary is a “network” so, theoretically, I can go see any Dr. in the “network,” but in practice, whoever I’m talking to just says, “Well, your primary is Dr X, and he’s not available for Y weeks.” That is the end of their side of the conversation. “Is there any other doctor available” is usually a big inconvenience to them, and I didn’t even know that this network also runs a walk-in clinic that gets billed as a primary care visit. *rolls eyes super hard*

My complaint is not even that my doctor is never available for sick visits, but the whole concept of telling someone who just started the conversation with “I might have strep throat” “How would you like an appointment 3 weeks from now?” is insane. 

“Oh, it looks like your doctor isn’t available for 3 weeks, lets see what else we can do.” Would have been totally fine. Even, “Your doctor isn’t available for 3 weeks and there is absolutely nothing else that we can do for you, can you get to an urgent care or minute clinic? (Or hey! The “walk in clinic that we offer across the parking lot and will bill just like a visit to your PCP??”)  would have been fine. “Would you like an appointment in 3 weeks to be tested for strep throat?” Not okay. I have had similar conversations for severe flu symptoms, and a UTI. 

Nevada is really terribly ranked for health care, and I have not yet encountered a situation where they have someone who is just available to take urgent cases. Why would they, when they cram that Dr. with as many 15-minute appointments as they can fit in the day?

I tried to get to my husband’s doctor - he’s an older gentleman with a private practice and still functions in a pretty old-fashioned way. However, I had to put in an APPLICATION to get in to see him, and was apparently denied. 

[tehnakki]

geekgirl76 replied to your photoset “janey-jane: spockfascinated: janey-jane: Star Trek, Mudd’s Women...”

Please tell me somewhere else in the collection is the drapery fringe!

Unfortunately no, you can see the whole collection here: https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2018-ready-to-wear/moschino/slideshow/collection#51

But I am not up todate on my TOS Fashion, so there may be other looks they pulled from.

[akathecupcakes]

geekgirl76 replied to your post “Started a new cross stitch today!”

Bahaha! My kind of cross stitch! (love the needle keeper BTW!)

Thanks! I got both the pattern and the needled minder from Subversive Cross Stitch! The pattern is “It’s Decorative Gourd Season” :D

[mhalachai]

geekgirl76 replied to your post “work social events”

Isn't that what sippy cups are for? ;)

“it’s just my fruit-and-mint-infused water-bottle, nothing to see here officer”

(no i work in hr there’s no drinking on the clock)

[beautifulwhensarcastic]

geekgirl76 replied to your post: founderofshield replied to your post: ...

Ooooh, I love tea with cherry jam!!! I’m the only one in my family that still does that! My grandma and her brothers did when I was little, and I’ve resurrected the practice now that I have a proper sour cherry tree.

That’s great! It’s wonderful you’ve kept that tradition, especially since it’s so delicious :) 

[copperbadge]

Post office bounty!

I have quite a few of these waiting to get written up, because the post office gave me ALL MY HOLIDAY CARDS two weeks after the holidays were over, so there are more in the pipeline eventually. If you don’t want to see them, since most of them will be about this length, you can block “post office bounty” as a tag.

In the meantime: So much glitter in my life right now.

Clockwise from top left, the lovely cardinal is from @nightshadezombie, thank you for your greetings both to me and the Cryptids :) @nowordsforthis sent me the geometric card which reads “I survived 2020 and all I got was this lousy holiday card”, which I love, and so does Cap :D

@bookfanatic sent me a delightful red panda, one of my favorite critters, and thank you for the good wishes! Below that you can see a row of pets from the family of @algaegirl17 (the rest of the faces were Humans, so I hid them) and thank you for letting me know via ask it was coming! 

The kitty in snow comes from C. in MA, thank you for the good wishes and tell Umple and Mungo thanks too! The skycars, meanwhile (oh how I wanted to take skycars at Disney this year!) are from Daniel, and I think you should know your Tarot has been shown off a lot this year :) The lovely wrapped-gift is from @geekgirl76, thank you for the belated Chanukah wishes (everything was belated this year so I don’t mind in the least, lol) and lastly the snowflakes in the center are from @sarsypan. You are not wrong about what a weird year it’s been.

Thanks everyone for the cards! They did cheer up a rough January. 

[themonkeycabal]

geekgirl76 replied to your post “hey hon just checking in again to see if yer doin' okay? sending hugs...”

Oh, shit... Easter baking?! I totally forgot about easter bread when I was buying eggs... Welp, going to go back to my run verse reread and pretend I didn't see that... (I have a full flour bin, but eggs are on limits, so I only got one doz.)

I must just be lucky enough to live near a lot of chickens, because we’ve had no egg issues. Flour yes, eggs no. I’m not going for any grand baking, but I’m going to do a small batch of hot cross buns on Friday. I’ve never made them and haven’t had them in years -- i think I’ll bake the cross in and then give them an orange glaze when they’re done. I just figure it’ll be a fun thing to do. 

[akathecupcakes]

geekgirl76 replied to your photo “This is Vincent, my and Kit’s perfect and beautiful son. Pepper has...”

LOL! Well, it IS a lap...

Yeah, I can’t fault her for that.

[beautifulwhensarcastic]

geekgirl76 replied to your post: Apartment hunting dilemma. No, I haven’t bought...

Ugh, there’s a reason they put buying a home up there with having a baby or getting married on the life stressors lists, right? *sending happy home hunting vibes your way*

Thanks! :) lol, funny thing is, if I had a baby the decision would be easier because I’d be looking for something bigger with additional bedroom. 

[copperbadge]

dignitywhatdignity re: sewing

Gotta have a 3a on a Copperbadge list!

It’s tradition! IDK, I feel like limiting what I say to three items helps keep me focused, but there’s always one more slightly less relevant thing I feel must be said...

geekgirl76  re: sewing

LOL! I think I know which pattern you’re talking about! (I think I have about 3 copies of it!) It also makes an excellent jumping off point for a ROTJ Luke Skywalker!

What’s so interesting to me is that while yes, obviously it helped me make the coat, I feel like basically any coat pattern would have done the same -- I modified the front and the collar so heavily and tailored it so specifically to my torso length that really all I needed was a basic coat pattern to start from. 

I mean, I’m not saying I’m an expert tailor or anything, it was a basic “sack with arms” kind of a deal, and also sewing my own shirts or coats would be a tremendous pain in the ass. But now that I know how coats are cut out and pieced together I feel like I could pretty much assemble one either without a pattern, or with only minimal pattern that I would then modify to the specific body. 

Like, patterns are great, but mostly in my case they’re meant for teaching me “How shapes fit together” and once I’ve done it a few times I can basically pattern something out from scratch, which is how I did the bicycle seat cover -- “Oh, I know in theory how this ought to work, it’s a flat top with a strip around and buttonholes to tuck under”. 

Which is a talent I did not expect to have, to be honest, given I have semi-poor spatial sense and failed geometry twice. It’s probably because I started sewing so young.

bibliophilecats re: glasses

Posts like these make me so happy: seeing another adult who is still into fan culture, fanfic etc. Fastly approaching 40 myself, I do not feel so particular 😊 I used to think at that age one is supposed to be married with children and house, to be a "regular middle-aged adult".

Aw yeah! There’s a whole community of us. Tumblr actually skews way older than you think, as does fandom, it’s just the younger members tend to be louder and post more. (I mean, fair. I did too at their age.) But yeah, fuck adulthood milestones, I own my own home and would rather be single than in a bad marriage and don’t want kids, so here I am. :D 

col1999 re: glasses

Sam. I, too, like to keep an old pair or two as backups - I get it, I do! But your prescription has probably changed too much for those to be useful now. (But now I'm thinking how neat it would be to have some sort of display of all my old glasses, especially to see how my tastes have changed. And lens thickness since I used to need coke bottles before the thinner lenses were available and cheap.)

LOL! Yeah, those glasses would really hurt my nose if I tried to wear them now anyway...

If you were to look at photos of me from childhood to adulthood, you can pretty much pinpoint the moment at which I started picking my own glasses frames. My mother favored MASSIVE round lenses, like think if Harry Potters’ glasses were 2-3 times larger, with tortoiseshell frames, that made me look faintly buglike. Around 12 or 13 the lenses suddenly square off and the frames turn black or silver, and from 13 to 20 or so you can see the lenses get gradually narrower and narrower. But from 20 to 40 I pretty much stuck with “narrow squared lenses, black frames”. Once I find what I like I very much stick with it, something that is currently, I can tell, frustrating my villagers in Animal Crossing. (I don’t want to wear a stripey shirt and a sporty cap! I want to wear my wetsuit and bandanna all day every day!) 

[copperbadge]

swords-n-spindles re: oktoberfest pie

German who lived in Munich for 25 years here. Am wheezing in horror at this pie abomination. Also the opinion of locals about the Wiesn (yeah, nobody but tourists says Oktoberfest, sorry) is both "horribly overpriced spectacle for tourists, work makes us go each year, we hate it, make it stop" and "that's OUR party, of course we're going, it's tradition, here are seventeen paragrafs on where to get the best Brathendl".

Oh! So kind of like the Christmas Market in Chicago. “Don’t go, it’s horrible, but if you do there is only ONE CORRECT PLACE to get potato pancakes. Wait, I’d better go with you, I do need to do some holiday shopping.”

thegollux re: dumplings

serious question: what is the benefit to pre-cooking half of the chicken stuffing. this feels like food poisoning waiting to happen.

It’s actually a way of keeping the filling cohesive inside the wrapper while avoiding food poisoning! :D 

So, the thing is, when raw ground meat is boiled or steamed inside a wrapper like this, it coheres into a little meatball inside the wrapper, so it doesn’t just fall apart all over your plate when you bite in. But in order to fully cook ground meat inside a wrapper, you generally have to cook the dumpling until the wrapper is way overcooked, making it gummy or tough. 

There are other solutions, like binding the meat up with egg or a sauce, but they don’t give quite that same texture, and can get difficult to wrap, so the solution is to cook SOME of the meat, so some is already pre-cooked, and leave just enough raw to hold the rest together while it boils/steams. You don’t have to cook as long to be sure the meat is fully cooked through, but you also don’t get the “this turned into a pile of crumbled meat on my plate” issue. 

spaci1701 re: dumplings

I'm very jealous. I've only got a hand cranked pasta roller and it's very challenging to roll sheets by yourself - just not enough hands. The best part of doing your own filled pasta is that you can make all the really weird filling combos you want. So far my fave has been Sheppard's pie pierogi.

That sounds amazing! 

Yeah, Mum asked if I was sure I didn’t just want a countertop version, where the same amount of money could buy me a wider roller, and I said that it came down to hands -- if you’re cranking with one hand and feeding with the other, you need a third hand to catch the dough. 

junker5 re: dumplings

Does your mixer have a name? He looks like he has an awesome personality, like DumE orSci’s Calcifer! 😊 The dumplings look amazing.

LOL! No, I never bothered naming him -- I usually only name things if I’m going to be referencing them in conversation with other people, and I never got into the habit of whimsically naming things because in high school I would do that and whatever I had named would break, so I stopped :D 

geekgirl76 re: dumplings

Yum! Side question, how do you like your soda stream? I'm a carbonated water junkie and I'm seriously considering one, even though I have a rule about no appliances that use propriatrary inserts. (though, with the internet, I suppose that's not as big a deal as it used to be, someone, somewhere would either start selling them or create a hack.)

There are definitely adaptors you can buy to hook it up to a non-proprietary CO2 canister, but between the perils of dealing with pressurized canisters and the inconvenience, I’ve never bothered. Sodastream makes it super easy to return your canisters (the only issue right now is supply) so I don’t mind if I’m paying a slight convenience fee for that. Now, that said, you also have to buy proprietary water bottles, some of which aren’t dishwasher-safe, and you’re supposed to replace them every 2-3 years, and those aren’t cheap, so bear that in mind. (If you want the machine washable ones, you have to buy a specific type that only fit a certain number of the machines, so do your homework before buying.) 

I do like my sodastream -- that’s their cheapo version and I’ve had it for 10 years, which tells you something about its durability. Especially if you don’t care about flavoring and just want carbonated water, it’s great. The flavor syrups are hit and miss; a lot of them for me have an acrid aftertaste, and again supply right now can be an issue. But the nice thing about having plain carbonated water is you can make your own flavorings. I often make super-concentrated tea and add a shot of that, or just sprinkle Pure Lemon in. 

Anyway yeah -- it’s not the most ideal setup but I do feel like I save a LOT of money and packaging waste with them. 

lionheartmadre re: dumplings

can i just say i love how you gave your mixer a retro fighter plane look? cause that's frikken awesome.

Thanks! I wanted to decorate it up a little and asked Mum for some decals for Christmas one year, and she really came through :D 

katriel-tumbles re: dumplings

Kreplach FTW. I've never had or made them (a tragedy for this Jew) but I get the feeling they're simpler than they seem.

The dough is a little tricky, because it’s got eggs in it which makes it sticky, which in turn makes it a little more difficult to work with without making the end product rather tough. But yeah, if you can get round the dough issues it’s not that complex. 

fanmouse re: dumplings

Finland: piirakkaa, India: paratha, both similar to pierogi. (I am facinated by how similar the words are in the different language families.) Good luck!

Pierogi was on the list, but good reminder about paratha and I’d never encountered piirakkaa! I’ll look it up :D 

[copperbadge]

wonderingstrawberry replied to your photoset “Every once in a while I want to find the person who pitched and...”

Don't you have astonishingly bad luck with cookies in general?

It’s true, but usually I do okay with mixes, it’s just the from-scratch baking I’m terrible at.

This reminds me, I have chocolate chips in the pantry, I should make the second half of the mix with chocolate chips...

lololovescheese replied to your photoset “Every once in a while I want to find the person who pitched and...”

I keep thinking, peanut butter! It needs a dab of peanut butter!

It’s a thought, but I would replace some of the butter with the peanut butter rather than adding it in on top of the butter -- I think the peanut butter might make the cookies a bit greasy. I suppose I could sub in some almond butter for some of the butter in the second batch...probably shouldn’t stir in the chocolate chips if I do that...

geekgirl76 replied to your photoset “Every once in a while I want to find the person who pitched and...”

As a sweet and crispy corn bread lover I feel I NEED this in my life. I mean, it skips any of my pretence at a side starch and goes right to the "will sit down and eat far too many of these" and "holy shit yum!!!" centres of my brain. Does Trader Joes ship internationally?

Sadly they don’t ship at all :/ There’s a recipe for the cookies that probably inspired the mix here; it’s a little complex though. 

mageflower replied to your photoset “Every once in a while I want to find the person who pitched and...”

My local Korean shop has sweet corn-flavored ice cream bars, this seems less weird than that. I'm sorely tempted to try them next time *o*

Sweet corn ice cream is delicious! I like sweet corn Pretz too. I think the problem is that the corn flavor is not as strong in these, and because there’s straight up cornmeal in these there’s also a certain texture issue (they’re a bit gritty). But yeah, they’re not awful, and the mix isn’t super expensive which is why I gave it a try. 

jessikast replied to your post “So, back in January I tripped and fell and knocked my head on the...”

So you mysteriously lost memory while writing a novel about the fae. Have you considered maybe these are connected? Because if this happened in a book, it would be because the protagonist Got Too Close To The Truth and other forces were stepping in...

I mean, I lost my memory and THEN started the novel, it very clearly begins like a day or two after the concussion, so it’s possible the concussion like, opened my third eye or some damn thing, and then when it slammed shut I lost the memory. 

This is why writers are rarely the ones to receive divine enlightenment. We take too many notes. 

cattraine replied to your post “So, back in January I tripped and fell and knocked my head on the...”

Sam, were you stolen by fairies?

Look, anything is possible, but if so I clearly remembered not to eat or drink anything while I was there. 

fatfemme-inist replied to your post “So, back in January I tripped and fell and knocked my head on the...”

Everyone is having a weird year, but yours is being hella extra about it.

Well, you know me, I have to be special. :D 

[copperbadge]

goodnightmoonvale replied to your photo “It is the ninth of May. THE NINTH. OF MAY. We are TWO MONTHS into...”

Look, I'd rather have a polar vortex now than a -40 one in January

You make a compelling point but I remain mad about it. :D 

geekgirl76 replied to your photo “It is the ninth of May. THE NINTH. OF MAY. We are TWO MONTHS into...”

Yikes! Bad time to tell you I actually have the starting of a tan, up here in Edmonton, then.

Yeah, but you have to live in Edmonton, you deserve a tan for that. 

synebluetoo replied to your photo “Well, it took all winter and some of spring, and got held up by a...”

It's very important to have at least one mistake in any string project- stitching or knitting or anything, because evil can only travel in straight lines. Therefore you must fumble at least one stitch so it cannot be cursed.

LOL, that’s what I thought when I made Egregious Mistake Number One. It started to feel like a weird justification, as I went on :D

spaci1701 replied to your photo “Well, it took all winter and some of spring, and got held up by a...”

That's really awesome! I've never even thought of doing all the back stitching of a pattern first - I can see how it would really make the colours easier to fill in. I don't think I could do it that way but it's a brilliant idea.

Yeah I have to admit it was not easy. I also started from the top corner like a heretic, but I’ve never been able to figure out the advantage of starting in the middle, so. 

i-ddpej replied to your photo “Well, it took all winter and some of spring, and got held up by a...”

Out of curiosity, how are you doing your half stitches? Just the usual cross-stitch way, with short vertical lines on the backside? If so, you should know that you'll probably need to put some effort into blocking it at the end to get it back to square. (I ask because it looks like it might already be warping out of square, with the bottom-left/top-right corners being wide and the top-left/bottom-right corners being acute. It's a typical result of wide-scale halfs.)

Good to know! Some of what you’re seeing is based on the angle I was holding the camera (poor, but I’d already put the thing back in the hoop by the time I realized it) but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does have some distortion. It still has wrinkles from the excess being folded up and clipped while I worked on the hoop, too, so blocking would need to happen anyway.

Gonna have to google how to do blocking eventually. :D 

sagedarkwoods replied to your photo “Well, it took all winter and some of spring, and got held up by a...”

Dear gods that's gorgeous. The snakeskin shoes even!

Those motherfucking shoes nearly did me in. The lower shoe was the last thing I did before backtracking for the bits I’d skipped because I thought I was badly fucking them up (I wasn’t, but I needed time to see that) and it was a Real Moment. 

[copperbadge]

sailorsol replied to your post “I simply do not care for the term “shelter in place” so I have decided...”

1) I approve. 2) I think you need to consider the fact that March is now the month that requires surviving, and lay off February in the future. 3) I remember when you used to call them doonagh days, and this is like two or three weeks of it!

OMG yes doona days! Although I still have to work from home and I need two monitors to do it, so a desk is necessary. But at least my commute is shortened. 

spiderine replied to your photo “Taking a break from the Purple Cow today to bring you some fun drawing...”

What is it with all the purple?

Well, I only had two Ed Emberley books, the Big Purple and Big Orange, and I figured I’d make purple a brand. :D 

I have the sequel to the Purple Cow book too, I probably have enough content to at least get us to May. Oooh and I have my Halloween Crafts For Kids book around here somewhere, it has the best “paper bat” template in it. 

geekgirl76 replied to your post “rdprice29 replied to your photoset “Decided it was time to change out...”

I have a problematic relationship with duvet covers, they're far too much bother to wash weekly so yeah, top sheets rock. But then, my bedding is more traditional, in that I often have a quilt or coverlet over my duvet, so it's not like I'm doing the whole all in one thing anyway.

I used to do duvet-plus-quilt in winter, but then I got a super thick duvet and started overheating if I did it that way...

kel121288 replied to your post “rdprice29 replied to your photoset “Decided it was time to change out...”

Wait... there are people who don't use top sheets?

Oh yeah. And I have to admit there is a very nice feeling in just crawling directly under a blanket. But my days of No Topsheet are long past me now...

delphia2000 replied to your post “rdprice29 replied to your photoset “Decided it was time to change out...”

Top sheets can be used as a bottom sheet if they are big enough to be tucked under. Also, sew 2 together with an open end to make a new duvet. My kid (who is old enough to called a full grown ass man now!) also hates top sheets. I figured it was generational.

Oh shit, I might mend the topsheet I’m retiring and turn it into a duvet cover, that’s not a bad idea. Otherwise it’s going to be used as lining for a gift I’m sewing for a friend.