My awesome gaming system. 1337!!!
So as you all know, I purchased the Sims 3 recently, and I was trying to run it on my Macbook. I really shouldn't say trying, because it worked, but not as well as I'd have liked it to. It was slow and choppy at times, I couldn't maximize the graphics settings, and fast-forwarding was a joke.
Brady had been offering to build me a gaming computer of my own, as long as I saved up the money, so I figured I'd now take him up on the offer. The only thing was that I didn't have the money saved up, but he had the Bill-Me-Later option with New Egg. So I'm using his account, and I'm the one paying the bills, but the computer has been worth it.
I don't really know the specs, except that it's Intel Dual Core, and the processor is like 2.69 gHz (technically 2.7, but it only sees 2.69.) It's got 4 gigs of ram, and sees all 4, since I'm running Windows 7 64-bit. (Gross, I know.) I also have a pretty good graphics card. I don't know the specifics, but Brady said it's slightly better than his. I have 600-something gigs of hard drive space, and I also installed a wireless card. Why - I have no idea, but it works.
Here's the awesome part. The case is pink!
It's small and compact, and has blue LEDs on the fan, and gives me a temperature reading on the CPU and hard drive. Mine's always hotter than the gauge in the picture, mostly because it's so darn packed in there. The graphics card takes up the whole left side.
So anyway, I'm pretty excited and I thought I'd share that with everybody. I also have a pink Logitech mouse with it, and a keyboard that glows purple! ^_^
My finger will fall off.
So about a week ago, Brady and I made a bed from Ikea. You all know that. I briefly mentioned that I slammed one of the pieces of wood into my left thumb, while we were pushing the pieces of the bed together. That picture is here. I'll not embed it to spare you if you don't really want to see it.
So at this point, I'm waiting for it to heal. I realize it's more than likely dried blood, and not just a bruise, so I will probably have to wait a long time for it to fully grow out. Like up to 6 months. It's also very possible that it won't grow out, and it will fall off, and I will just have to grow a new thumbnail from scratch.
It really sucks, and the thought of having an ugly fingernail bothers me. I bite my nails bigtime, and I worry about having an ugly thumbnail. I worry that if I go to the nail salon they will judge me based on my ugly thumb.
I'll keep you updated on the status of my ugly thumb in coming months.
A new bed. Err… Pile of wood.
This past week the bed frame Brady and I had been using finally broke. It was one of those plain metal kinds on wheels. Not very sturdy to begin with, but the wheel literally snapped off, and we were left with a bed on a slope. I was joking with him that I was having dreams about falling, sliding, slipping, etc.
Saturday Brady and I went to Walmart. I should note here that I've never shopped at Walmart for myself and never intend on doing so. I feel embarrassed for human society when I go there, and feel like disciplining other peoples' children. After hearing me complain for the first 10 minutes, and not finding a bedframe at all, Brady decided we would take the adventure 45 minutes away from Delaware, to the nearest Ikea.
I've never been to Ikea. I was expecting a store on par with Target, Best Buy, or something similar. But no, this was like the Please-Touch-Museum. Or an Art museum. There was actual organization here, which was a relief in comparison to Walmart. They even had a food court. The food seemed really cheap, but was not Vegan, and I did not partake.
Finding an appropriate bedframe was the difficult part. We didn't actually get to the section we needed until the end. All the bedframes seemed to be either size Queen or Twin. We have a Full sized bed. We contemplated a few that were no better than simply having the mattress on the ground itself. We wanted storage, but all the ones with storage were in the $300 range.
Then, we decided to go into the kids section, and we found it. A nice sturdy wooden loft bed with space for "activities" (Step Brothers reference). It was $199 on sale from $399. We would be able to bring Brady's couch back upstairs from the basement, and have our own living quarters under the bed. I have to say, however, that the idea of a loft bed makes me very nervous, but the sign at Ikea said it'd hold 400 lbs weight, and we probably weigh 281 lbs combined. I hope we'll be okay. I've never seen a loft bed collapse except for in Step Brothers
The other concern I had was that we drove to Ikea in my 2-door Volkswagen Rabbit. It's been known to haul a good bit of stuff, but I wasn't sure if it would fit an entire loft bed. Luckily the entire bed was packed away neatly in two separate boxes that had no problem fitting into my car (surprise!) and we were able to get the bed home.
That was the easy part.
I understand the need for instructions to be easy to understand for any language, but I don't even think the Swedish could understand the instructions. It's all up to interpretation, and involved a lot of staring at tiny details in the pictures. Brady and I work tech support for a living so are used to figuring out problems and understanding the mechanics of things. So what I didn't understand was how do other people figure out how to build these damn things? Do they all call the Ikea people to come to their house and build these things? And how do those people handle their job? There must be some sort of high-suicide rate. I can't imagine having to build shit from Ikea all day every day. I would probably cry.
Despite a bashed up thumb, red and near-bleeding hands, scared cats, and probably angry neighbours, we were able to assemble the bed within 8 hours. I don't love the bed, but I love the extra space. I've never assembled anything from Ikea, and I will never be assembling anything from Ikea ever again. Next time we go to Ikea, we're buying plates instead. They don't require assembly (or at least I don't think they do!)
And so now, I understand this comic.
Tattoos and Blenders :p (how's that for disorganized?)
It's been a while since I last wrote. This is mostly since not much has happened, but I figured that since I want to keep this blog going, I should post something.
Friday I went shopping, and bought a food processor/blender. A lot of recipes I want to make require me to chop/blend/whirr. I also want to start eating a lot more fruit, and the blender is helping with that. I've been making smoothies out of my orange juice and bananas. I also had some strawberries in there, and blackberries. I bought raspberries, but those were mouldy the very next day. I was so upset about the mouldy raspberries, because (A) they were expensive, and (B) I *just* bought them.
Topic #2: My tattoos. I find my tattoos to be very unorganized. They seem to have no theme. They're just random things in random places, and I'm looking to tie them together a little bit. I'd at least like to get my arm going. I have this large tattoo on my forearm, as I'm sure many of you have seen it. A lot of people lately have been asking me if I'm going to "finish" it. I was kind of insulted by that because I didn't know what they meant by finish. It's done. I spent 3.5 hours in a chair. I consider it done; or do I? I'm now thinking of all the possibilities I can work into my arm. I do have the piece by Sherri DuPree on my shoulder, and I'm wondering if I could get it coloured in, and have a background added, and then eventually work that into a sleeve. I think then I would be really happy with how it looks. I just have to pick what kind of theme I want on my arm. Probably mostly Kurt Halsey, and then Sherri's angel can sit proudly on the top of my shoulder.
I'll think about that while I run off to make more cupcakes ^_^
Some things.
1. I'm listening to Tori Amos a lot today, and really enjoying it.
2. For lunch, I had black beans and rice with veggie crumbles, a "ham and cheese" sandwich on potato bread, and scalloped potatoes made with nutritional yeast. A recipe I found in Peta's College Cookbook.
3. I'm going to finish up Dexter season 3 when I get home from work today. Only 2 more episodes.
4. I need to do some actual work today.
5. My stomach has calmed down from earlier. I was feeling yucky.
6. The next 6 months are going to be awesome. Going to Texas, California, Nevada, and Lewes, Delaware. Not at the same time. My mom is renting a beachouse this summer, I'm hoping to see Holly for hopefully a week also this summer. Then in November for Thanksgiving, I'm flying out to Las Vegas, Nevada with my mom and little sister. We're going to then take the 4.5 hour drive to our destination in California and stay there for a week.
7. I have 1 1/2 hours left of work.
8. Bad things: I noticed that my WordPress blog doesn't know what timezone I'm in.
9. I noticed my new doll's eyebrows don't match her wig.
Mark Twain was a Vegetarian.
I'm starting to get that itch where I don't want to write anymore. It's a pain in the but, it's embarrassing, and I feel like no one reads my entries anyway. But I'll do it, because I can, and maybe someone gets some kind of enjoyment out of it.
I went over to my mom's house yesterday. We went to a little play her community was putting on. It was just a few parts of some of Mark Twain's stories. It was cute. It was very difficult to hear a lot of the actors due to lack of enunciation, or they spoke too softly, but it was entertaining. There was this adorable little boy playing one of the parts in Tom Sawyer, and he must've been about 4 or 5. He was begging Tom to paint in this adorable little voice. He even put on a bit of a southern accent. He didn't really like to stay where he was supposed to be. Curtain call was tough because he wanted to stand in the middle of the stage and wave to everybody, but adorable, none the less.
I made dinner for my mom as well, and I'm a little frustrated with how that went down. I cook for Brady all the time, and he doesn't care if it's vegan or not. He loves everything I cook and eats it and gets seconds later. But my mom was picking on the food. She shouldn't care if it's got meat in it or not. If it's delicious, you eat it. I know she was just teasing me because it was "fake" meat, but honestly, if I was cooking that in a pot, with all the taco sauce on it, it smells good, and it looks like meat, so I'm not sure what difference it makes. Frustrations aside, she did end up eating it, and said it was good, but didn't want me to leave the rest of it with her. I took it home, and Brady ate it, and said it was good, so at least I know it wasn't disgusting. My little sister wouldn't eat it because it had corn and onions in it.
I offered to cook for her again, just sans soy cheese and wheat meat. But she doesn't understand that food can legitimately be made vegan. Animal products don't HAVE to be in something for it to be tasty. I'm sure there's plenty of foods that you've eaten that are vegan by nature. Minestrone soup, Oreo cookies, pasta, pancakes (sometimes). And when I told her I was making vegan cupcakes that mysteriously disappear within days of making them, she said that was disgusting too, and couldn't imagine what one would bake with if I left out the butter and eggs. I noted that so many eat margarine, which is a butter replacement, without thinking twice. But the moment I put "soy" in the word it's disgusting. I'll cook something some day that she won't be weirded out by, but I guess until then she'll always be suspicious of my cooking.
In other news, another one of my dolls was repainted recently. To give you a refresher, she used to look like this:
But I had Aileen (frozen wings on DOA) repaint her to be my cute little deadly Zombie/Elf girl:
I'm going to get her these eyes in 12mm spirit dove. Then she'll need a little outfit, and eventually her own body. That's at least exciting.