(no subject)

It's very strange for me when people come over to my place in a potluck situation and bring food, and then leave the rest of it - I have sense enough, and have seen it enough since I moved here, not to make embarrassingly counter-cultural-conditioning protestations about it, but you know that we USians in Potluck Land (at least Midwesterners of Polish-German stock and Southerners) take our own leftovers home in our own dishes, and frequently go away from big feast-type parties with leftovers the host has pressed on us. So it always seems strange to me and I have this niggling worry because I have other people's pots and dishes in my refrigerator (and my draining rack).

I spent the last week mostly planning my Passover party and cleaning things in the house: laundry, tidying, rearranging, making lists... . I think I've done the dishes more times this past week than I've done most months in the dark foggy bits of winter (they're foggy so I can't remember that clearly though). It was nice to temporarily feel like I had a purpose. I feel a little at loose ends now, although I've started thinking about sewing projects and getting a staplegun so I can FINALLY reupholster those blasted kitchen chairs.

There were two days in a row where I didn't turn my computer on at all, because this stupid graphics driver bug ( blah blah hatecakes. )

beguile a few minutes with visual humour

anglepoiselamp linked to this cool site. Sleeveface: people obscuring parts of their bodies with record sleeves in order to create some sort of illusion.

hallelujah i heart this sofa so

This is our sofa. As you can see, it has large areas of white on it. We were a little anxious about that, perhaps, but we couldn't resist its seductive, cheery mod floral in any case when we bought it a year and a half ago. Two days ago I thought it might really be on its last legs. There was a single penny-sized drip of red wine right in the white spot on the front, and scrubbing with soda only turned it green; and there was a huge splotch on top of the arm where a cat deposited some catfood when we were out, and couldn't race to scrub it off before the stain set.

But the cover's removable so I peeled it off and sent it through the laundry anyway with my fingers crossed, and it had all day yesterday to dry out and then I dusted it off and stuck it back on this morning, and would you believe no sign of any spots, anywhere? The white is pristine. Ikea must be telling the truth with their boasting about stain-resist white and believing furniture should be made to live on, and not sit apart like a museum piece. There's a rather harrowing video at their homepage that shows a woman on a white sofa splashing half a cup of coffee in the middle of a cushion - on repeat, and in slow-motion. Ugh. But I feel much better about it now. (And it's a good thing we don't have to replace the cover - if it had been ruined I'd hardly have wanted to replace it with something as easily stained, but they don't have any green or yellow covers for our sofa just now.)

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♠ I wish LJ had a format=light option for the outside of journals too (you can view, for example, http://cimness.livejournal.com/?style=mine or http://cimness.livejournal.com/tag/alabama/&format=light - but cimness.livejournal.com/?format=light doesn't work). And to make that easier to use, the navigation strip should have format=light and style=mine built into it in a little drop-down or buttons. If I never click on a journal and find myself trying to read a 300-px wide off-center text area on a wrong-sized ugly repeating background with, for example, bright fuschia on neon aqua - well, it will still be too soon. Two members of my OWN immediate family have tragically put their blogs in medium brown on a dark tan. If you just squint slightly it looks like the icons are floating in a sea of inferior fake leather texture.

♠ My dad doesn't have strong preferences about clothes, and also no taste, so for decades he just let my mom know his sizes and simple preferences (like only dark coloured pants and socks, and checked or plaid shirts) and let her be completely in charge of buying him new ones whenever she thought the old ones needed retired, because you could count on him to keep wearing them after they'd fallen apart. The only things she wasn't in charge of throwing out were the many t-shirts and jeans that dated from when they were in college. And my feeling is, my dad looked like a huge dork but he WAS a huge dork, and at least he was a presentable dork, you know? At least he had the grace to give in to my mom's more skillfull management. (She's perfectly competent to manage the simpler vagaries of a non-trendy male wardrobe - when it came to dressing herself so as not to look totally out of place in dressiness, matronliness and colour choice as a middle school teacher, she needed a lot of help. I think she gave over approval of her own outfits to my little sister after I moved out. I have no difficulty in concluding sight unseen that I was better at it, though. You should see some of the stuff my sister picks for herself.) I have much more difficulty managing Wax, who's stubborner than your average goat, I feel sure, but I think she's made some progress. Her habit of stealing excess pairs of my shoes and never buying any of her own has worked out exceptionally well because I buy shoes very carefully, ( I feel there are some great running jokes about shoes in this situation but I can't quite grasp them )

♠Writer Diane Duane on the WB/JKR vs RDR Books-SVA-HP Lexicon trial. A small-time US publisher that's made of dumbass and fail is trying to publish a print version of a Harry Potter encyclopedia that is already available online, and which is 92% made of direct quotes from the HP novels, despite the compiler's having been firmly denied permission in advance. Needless to say, J.K. Rowling is suing. It's a bench trial, and the judge has finished hearing all the testimony, but no ruling is out yet. An excellent and comprehensive series of links and information going back several months can be found posted in fandom_wank by cleolinda.

♠ Did I ever mention how much I love Blik wall decals? They have a whole Threadless design shop now.