Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow, and the girls and I will be going out in Kazimierz, hopefully to Propaganda (although without butter, I am uncertain how we will all fit in the building). Propaganda is a wonderfully kitch bar which is plastered from stem to stern with Communist (you guessed it) propaganda posters from pre-1989.

Actually let me see if I have a picture tucked in here...yup.

This supreme level of awesome could only be contained in Krakow, I'm convinced. After tonight is St. Andrew's night, where everyone gets their party on before the start of advent, the following day. I don't know what advent is, being a heathen and all, but I guess I will come to a decent understanding when I live through it here.

In a little over three weeks (believe me, we have been counting down the days) I will arrive in London to meet my amazing fiance and go to Stonehenge for winter solstice. Then to meet his family and get married before I head for Budapest to start off my spring semester in Hungary. For those of you who are interested, I will be renting an apartment in Szeged after my entry tour and my hubby will come out to live with me there. I can hardly wait!

The stuff that goes down while I'm away.

Boo.
I'm in Krakow, Poland, studying abroad until mid-December. I will go to Hungary in January, and will be spending the interim with my fiance in York, England.
I'm having a great time, and have fallen deeply in heart with honey beer and pierogies, European fashion, and glomke (which is rice and meat wrapped in cabbage.
Getting lost and not speaking Polish are my newest skill sets. Thank you for the thundering applause! I have been posting some pictures on my other site, www.greenchairtraveler.blogspot.com . Take a gander if you get bored. Much lovies!
Jess

Dear Dish Network

Thank you, Dish Network, for creating the DPTC Channel. What's this, you may ask? Why, it's the DOUBLE PITS TO CHESTY CHANNEL. Since I didn't know what DPTC meant, I had to do a bit of investigation, and learned a couple things.

It's nice to see that you are truly educating people, Dish Network and Unknown Body Spray Company. Thank you for teaching men how to bathe in cheap cologne. Did you know that it's summer? Did you know that heat (summer) makes fellas sweat? Did you know that women have much more sensitive sniffers than guys do? I have indescribably vivid memories of being on the job with these fellas who used that particular technique, to my olifactory terror.

But do you know what the worst part about the DPTC channel? I watched it for more than an hour, in the hopes that they were going to play more than the one three-minute commercial. Over and over again, I hoped. Possibly after half an hour...nope. An hour? Nope. That's about the part where I lost heart and turned the channel.

But knowing me, I'll watch it tomorrow.

Awesome by Proxy

My friend Jenn has a website on Blogger, in which she records one of our conversations for posterity.

But Soft! What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?

It is the east, and Trivia Weekend is the sun.

Coming to 89.9 WWSP on April 17-19 is "Trivia 40: Here's ooking at you, Kid", a fifty-four hour trivia extravaganza. This raw display of mental muscles is not for the weak of heart (or the weak of liver, come to think about it). I will be staying in Stevens Point proper for the weekend, just so I can be a little more snuggly with the vibe that is trivia weekend. It's the world's largest trivia contest, so for all you road-side attraction fans...this does qualify as a weekend-long roadside attraction where people do phone-in responses as well as city-wide scavenger hunts. And since Easter will be a fond memory by the time Trivia rolls around, wouldn't you like to have a little extra in the way of scavenger hunting? I know I do!

For those of you who have been so cruelly parted from Trivia by time, distance, or inclination, I would like to mention that WWSP has online streaming radio here:

http://www.90fmtrivia.org/

You might just want to scroll through the team names, because they are generally a hoot. The team I'm in is called "This is why we can't have nice things." It's not "Gene Autry's Ninja Warriors" (actual team name: http://members.tripod.com/~ganw/) but it's appropriate and always makes my roommate and me laugh.

And as a hint for the newbs: The first question always has something to do with Robert Redford, and Belt's (Home of the Big Cone) always has "Trivia Mavens" on their sign.

Seriously. Always. So here's to the first Trivia that I plan to attend since Trivia 33: All in the Family. Let's hope that Trivia 40 is even better...or at least that it isn't a tragedy.

Happy April, Fools!

Okay, it was needlessly cruel, but I have been waiting to say it alllllll day. Some of the highlights of my day have included, but are not limited to:

• Having a conversation which included the word "skep," as in a place where people keep bees. Yay!
• Watching Fruits Basket until the wee hours this morning (seriously, we're talking 4:30 am here) and crying like a girl (conveniently enough) made for a remarkably happy morning.
• Recognizing visually that Fruits Basket is animation-ally speaking (and I know, is not a word, but it should be) directly between Full Metal Alchemist and Code Geas. Early to mid episodes have the "V" fingers and noodly body shapes which typify Full Metal comic relief..as well as the quasi-feminine eyes of male characters (thick black upper lids, etc). As the series progresses, the faces become more idealized, the limbs longer and more elegant. That is Geas.
• Those who are into the voice actors should know that Tohru (FB) is voiced by Laura Bailey, who I first heard as Sana on Kodocha and that Kodacha's Aikito and Fruits Basket's Kyo Sohma are both voiced by Jerry Jewell. (YAY! Super COOL!)
• Oh! Speaking of Full Metal- Aaron Dismuke, who did the voicing for Alphonse Elric (the walking suit of armor) also did the voicing for Hiro Sohma, who was incidentally the CUTEST SHEEP EVER!!!
• AND!!!! If you register at www.tor.com you can get a free e-book from Charles de Lint, Spiritwalk. Fabulous book, fabulous author, fabulous day. No foolin.

Happy Pi Day! (Resistance is Futile)

Today is Pi Day (3/14). Please enjoy your Pi Day with circular confections, but please, don't be obvious.
For your listening pleasure: http://pi.ytmnd.com/. Calling this ditty entrancing doesn't come close. I feel as if I have been assimilated.

Make Some Popcorn....I'll Wait

I don't know exactly how I did it, but I made a little movie of my trip to Milwaukee. YAY! There are no pictures of me in there, but lots of neato stuff that I saw when I was at the museum. The movie has no sound, so don't worry that there is something wrong with your sound. I haven't figured that part out quite yet.
This movie was made possible by Picasa at http://www.picasa.com/, whom I will thank by name when I get my Oscar.

Cult(ure) of Personality

Spring break makes me happy. I love the first couple days of basking on the couch like a lizard on a rock, sunning myself with the glow of the computer and/or the television. There's usually lots of sleep, but seldom in my bed. I feel duty bound to stay up wayyyy past my bedtime and conk out on the couch, only to be woken up by slobbery dog smooching in the morning, and then the feeling of pressure that comes from an eighty-five pound Old English Sheepdog alighting upon my person like Blitzen on a rooftop. I doubt if I will learn my lesson before she cracks one of my ribs.

I'll be painting the crown molding in the living room, going to the dentist in Milwaukee twice (nothing major just yet, it's still mostly preliminary stuff), and hopefully watching lots and lots of anime. I've been watching Ranma 1/2 as often as possible for the last month or so, and it will be nice to actually finish off the series. I'm also looking forward to crocheting again. I had to cut it out of my life for a little while, because there was just so much going on between school and home improvements that there just didn't seem to be enough time to focus on making blankets. That's not such a good thing for me, because I find crocheting to be a hard core stress reliever. if you can use the phrase "hard core" to describe the process of making scarves, blankets and doilies with a crooked stick. However, my schedule has a week's worth of flex and I'm itching to start. I'm trying to calm down on my yarn collection, so I won't be buying any new yarn until I finish the stuff that I have, and I won't be keeping all the blankets that I make.

The blankets might not look attractive, but I'm sure that the Humane Society in Wisconsin Rapids will be happy to take them off my hands. Wisconsin Rapids has a no kill shelter, so when I have anything that I think they might want or need, they get all the goodies. I may not have the lifestyle to have a pet, but it's nice to be able to help in some small way.

Anyhoo, I have been playing with this stuff enough, and it's time to watch Witchblade...except by watch I mean "doze on the couch with Witchblade playing on the dvr".

Wheeee!

I love museums. Somehow they manage to keep all the stuff that I would if I had a Bag of Holding and a slightly more evolved sense of the macabre (Am I the only one who got a little chill when (re-)reading that last bit there?).

This handsome fellow is relaxing in a glass box at the Milwaukee Museum.