the egg is now in a nest made of shitty swords and soft puppet ass

The cleaning procedures outlined in the manual for our laser engraver, which you have manufactured, tell us that one should not need to clean the actual laser eye itself since it is tucked away off to the side and presumably shielded from smoke and crud in some way. [ETA: it has been some time since I thoroughly read said instructions and I managed to misremember the hell out of this particular admonition]

So as said laser engraver began a gradual process of what appeared to be losing power over the past few months, attempting to clean said eye itself was furthest from my mind.

Today, finally fed up with the machine’s bullshit when a plastic name badge looked like crap when engraved at 100% power and 30% speed (the normal setting for this plastic is more like 80% power and speed, the setting I actually used is normally reserved for deeply engraving shit into solid wood) , I soaked a Q-tip in alcohol, bent it to reach the presumably shielded laser eye, scrubbed gently, and withdrew a black Q-tip. I repeated this process until the Q-tips I withdrew were no longer black.

As far as I know, this has never once been done in the 5+ years since this shop acquired this machine. Why has it never been done? Because supposedly, it did not need to be done. We knew this to be true because the owner’s manual had telled us so. Amazingly, the removal of 5+ years worth of guk on the laser eye fixed my problem immediately.

If this instruction manual had pants, they would be on fire [ETA: A friendly guy from Epilog has cruised by and cleared some things up. That was not the actual lazer eye, but a wee mirror (in my defense, the manual--which I've, uh, obviously not read in a while--does say it shouldn't need regular cleaning, which is probably why I was thinking what I was thinking). Anyway: lrn2RTFMbetter, self.]

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

For those interested, here is the convoluted-ass course from this weekend’s race. Approximately. I’m a little fuzzy on where exactly those last few turns were.

So I got a phone call from my mom this morning. She had gotten the turkey and was holding it for an aunt who was to pick it up and then cook it.

Last night, this aunt called to inform Mom that the turkey would not fit in her oven.

And so, this morning, Mom calls me and goes “so, would that be something you could tackle?”

To which I replied “OH GOD NO.”

Okay. I know, theoretically, how a turkey works. And of course here in the future, we have the Internets to help us with things like that. But still, I am really not comfortable with the idea of my first real-world turkey-roasting experience being a huge Thanksgiving turkey without an experienced turkey-roaster physically within shouting distance in case something goes pear-shaped, and Mom is at the farm. And the absolute last thing I need to do in this family of picky eaters (several of them complain if the potato salad isn’t served in the proper Family Potato Salad Bowl, for Christ’s sake) is destroy the fucking Thanksgiving turkey.

Mom is going into town to get a turkey roaster for the farm, and has promised that for Christmas, she will supervise and I will roast the turkey so that next time someone does this I will be prepared.

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

I made trophies for a zombie walk today.

After hours, I am also able to commandeer the laser engraver and scraps of plastic, metal, and cardboard to fabricate parts for a proton pack.

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

Do not leave your bike helmet in back seat of Aunt Boss’s truck on Friday evening. If you must leave your bike helmet in the back seat of Aunt Boss’s truck on Friday evening, please notice that you have done so before you start pushing the bike towards the door to go for a ride-n-run on Sunday morning.

As I may have mentioned, I do not ride anywhere without my helmet. Ever. Not even to the corner store a block away. Not even to the mailbox. It is not done.

The punchline: just yesterday I was at Wal-Mart (having arrived there by means that were not my bike) thinking “huh, it’s probably about time for a new bike helmet,” because I replace them about every six months whether I need to or not, and then I thought “… naaaaaaaaaah, maybe next week.” So my ride-n-run turned into just a run today, oh well.

I’m guessing this missed call from Aunt Boss I found on my cell from last night was in regards to this. Woops.

In conclusion, here are two of the first plants I’ve ever managed to not kill (the basil plant which is still also alive and well is not in the picture), plus two community cats.

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

So I went out to do my second-to-last day of Couch To 5K today. I made it. That’s not the problem.

No, the problem was… I have one of those things that’s like a teeny tiny fanny pack just big enough to hold the three mandatory items: my ID, my cell phone, and my apartment key. Especially my apartment key.

So off I went, chugging along my route. I heard some sort of noise at one point about half a mile out, like something small and metallic hitting concrete, but I didn’t think too much of it–I kick small metallic sidewalk debris all the time and besides it could not possibly have been anything important like say my apartment key, because of course it was safely tucked in my little pouch which of course was zipped securely.

I finished my run and plodded on home–twenty minutes earlier than usual! Great! Getting out of the apartment earlier sure was nice, now I’d have plenty of time to lie around with bags of frozen peas on my shins but first I needed to feed the downstairs neighbor’s cats who were gathered around my door mewing as cutely and pitifully as possible even though they and I both knew they were not starving to death because I’d just fed them before I went to bed. But they still needed food, so let’s just hop up the stairs and open up the door and–

–and discover that the little pouch at our waist, the one we were so sure was zipped… wasn’t.

Uh oh.

ID? Present. Cell phone? Present. Key?

…Key?

……KEY!?

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“Oh fuck,” I said.

“Meeeeh,” said the cats. The little fluffy orange girl cat sat down and licked my ankle.

Back down the stairs I went. See, I could have called the apartments… but the office didn’t open for half an hour, and they would have sent a locksmith, and they would have charged me $30 for that plus whatever it would cost for a new key and possibly a new lock and they just loooooooove to nickel and dime me to death on piddly shit like that, this is the same management that tried to charge me $80 in late fees on a water bill I accidentally underpaid by $2 and paid as soon as I found out two days later, you know they would have a field day with a lost key and well fuck a bunch of that.

At this point, I was pooped from my run and still not entirely awake, so my brain kept coming up with all these ideas that sounded great at first but fell apart as soon as I realized that they involved things that would have required me to, y’know, get something out of the apartment I could not get into.

“Hey, I’ll just get on the bike and pedal along the route I took, and–crap”

“Hey, if I dropped it in the street it’s good as gone anyway, I might as well just go inside and get ready for–crap”

“Well, before I run off looking for my key, I should probably feed the neighbor’s cats, they–crap”

As I walked, scanning the ground for shiny things, I remembered the little noise I’d heard. Oh please, I thought, OH PLEASE LET THAT BE WHERE IT LANDED AND NOT THAT HUGE MUD BOG WHERE THE WATER MAIN BROKE THE OTHER DAY.

Sure enough, in the general area where I’d heard the noise, there was my key on its little dog tag. I’d gotten this little dog tag from one of those machines at Wal-Mart where you put $5 in and get a little engraved tag out.

I should note, as a punchline of sorts, that I’d had this tag engraved with the immortal words “WITH IT OR ON IT.”

I returned home in triumph with my shie–er, key and went on about my business. And I still got to work on time.

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

• Starting Week 7 tomorrow; what this mainly means is no more intervals, it’s all solid running from here on out. Week 7 is also three runs exactly the same as Week 6 Day 3, which is good, ’cause that one was–well, it wasn’t bad, and the walk breaks I took were like ten steps, but I still took more than I would have liked and probably more than I actually needed. Also I was a tool and took one at a point that turned out to be twenty seconds, tops, from the end of the 25-minute run. hurf
• All this time, I’ve kept lugging the Week 1 podcast around on my Clip because I knew someday I would want to break it out to see how far I’ve come. I did that Friday morning, two or three intervals of it, at quite a bit faster pace than normal, and that was enough to crack my shit right up because now I cannot believe I ever thought running for sixty seconds was hard. I haven’t quite had a run feel the way it does when I dream about it yet, but I’ve come close enough a couple of times to want to keep going.
• ugh I have turned into one of those d-bags who wakes up at the asscrack of dawn to run.
• I’m glad I gave Gu a second chance after a first less-than-pleasant experience with the strawberry-banana flavor (which I had to choke down with a whole bottle of water); the coffee flavor tastes like those little coffee hard candies, and the chocolate flavor tastes like something you would drizzle on ice cream. I’ve taken to sucking one of these down to top off the ol’ gas tank before I ride to work.
• That and sitting on the couch for a few minutes with bags of frozen peas on my shins. Laugh if you must, but it has made a world of difference.
• Okami is officially one of the best games I have ever played. I can’t play it during the week, because if I sit down to play it I’ll be there for four, five hours. I beat Crimson Helm yesterday!
• I need the Ghostbusters game so bad. And The Conduit.
• I am hooked on this shit, specifically the chocolate-mint flavor. Chocolate-mint flavored water, yes, I made the O_o face at it too, but it really is quite good.
• I got stranded at work until about 8 tonight due to inclement weather–not so much the rain as the thunder right overhead. And then the thunder stopped and I ran out of Hetalia fansubs to watch, so I came home.

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

…I seem to have just signed up for a 5K.

This one, to be precise. There are a few reasons why I picked this one as my first (and hopefully not last) 5K, including one pretty big personal one–my family lost a very dear friend this year, and if I can maybe help that not happen to other peoples’ friends by doing something I’ve pretty much always wanted to be able to do, well, I’ma go for it.

SO: if you have a buck stuffed in your sofa cushions or whatever, and you could maybe throw it over here, that would be really awesome.

…as for the actual running situation: finished Week 3 yesterday, timed my first mile just for the hell of it and holy fuckballs, if that really is a 1-mile=1-lap trail like its markings indicate, I ran a mile in under 11 minutes. Yes, I realize a 10:47 mile is not terribly impressive to people who crawled sub-8 miles in diapers; those people are cordially invited to go sit on a tack because it is hella awesome to me.

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

So since the place came highly recommended and I had extra money last week, I ordered one of these.

If you’re thinking my God, that is the ugliest bra I have ever seen in my entire life, you are not alone because that’s pretty much what I said. But as I said, if it worked half as well as it claimed to, it would be totally worth it.

It arrived today. This bitch has, I shit you not, eleven industrial-strength hooks down the front of it. This bra does not fuck around. And yes, it still looks like it could stop a bullet and needs “SWAT” stenciled across the front of it in person.

It does not completely eliminate bounce. Although it does hold it down to about a 2.5 on the Richter scale, which is, if not what I’d hoped for, acceptable. And, well, I ordered a large and probably could have gotten a medium instead and will get a medium next time (because there is going to be a next time, despite the not-quite-total elimination of bounce it is still light years ahead of anything I can get around here and oh yes, I will buy more of them), but I am somewhere between a 36 and a 38 right now and would rather err on the side of still bouncing a little but at least being able to, y’know, fucking breathe.

Anyway, it works well enough that I can run in it. And so I did. My non-running ass started Couch to 5K today, with a little audio hand-holding from Podrunner. I love Podrunner anyway just to listen to during my normal walks or living room step sessions or whatever (or um while sitting on my ass but anyway), but the Intervals mixes are made just for C25K and so on.

I still run like an idiot. I dreaded the last two “lol k run tiems nao” chimes. But I ran all the times one is supposed to run, I did not cheat and start running late or stop running early or use the unleashed chihuahua in the silly green T-shirt wandering into my path as an excuse to stop (although I was tempted to pause to hip-check the kid on the Razor scooter off the track, WHAT PART OF “NO SKATES SKATEBOARDS BICYCLES OR SCOOTERS” DO YOU LITTLE SHITS NOT UNDERSTAND but anyway), and I made it the whole half hour and did not die. So, hey.

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

Dear squished remains of huge* spider who just thought it would be cute to take a stroll on the ceiling right over my head:

Listen, guy–I try very hard to be tolerant of your kind. I know you eat bugs I like even less than you, and this being fruit fly season and all, I’d really like you to stay around and do your thing. All I ask is that you stay the fuck out of my personal space.

This includes the ceiling directly over me. Especially when you’re kind of dancing around up there like you’re thinking about rappelling down right onto my head.

Sorry I smooshed you with a broom, dude, but you know the rules.

Regretfully,
Me

*okay, not like huntsman-huge or anything, but huge enough that I don’t want it on me

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.

Sooooo I think I’m going to check this place out on the way home from work today, seeing as how it’s right smack between work and home and has been around for a few years now so it’s probably at least halfway decent and it’s cheap and I have a guest pass. Maybe I won’t flee screaming out the door.

I-I just have this thing about working out in front of other people, okay, though I tell myself it is the same sort of thing that made me not really want to play a DDR machine in public for a while and now that I’ve actually done it I am in love with it, but it is a little different, but I’m getting bored with working out at home by myself, but eeeeeeeeh.

Speaking of DDR, I think next week I may finally have saved up enough to spring for one of these HOLY CRAP GLAD I WAITED, THEY JUST KNOCKED ANOTHER $20 OFF.

[ETA: On second thought, uh, maybe I won't be going to that particular gym. Yikes. ]

Originally published at Fire of Unknown Origin. You can comment here or there.