In Which I Go To The Avengers And Also The Moon

I don't exactly feel qualified to *review* this movie and do it any justice, as I'm not a Marvel connoisseur (let me just pause here for a moment to exult over the fact that I spelled "connoisseur" correctly the first time for once), but I will say I enjoyed it. Since I've hardly gotten around to seeing any of the individual superheroes' movies, why was I looking forward to this one so much? Good reviews aside, Joss Whedon and Iron Man were not the only reasons ... but I'd be lying if I said those didn't factor in. 

I mean, c'mon, Stark's like a scrawny obnoxious Batman, gets the best theme music, suits up in Cyclones colors ... what's not to love? 

Okay, some of those may be Ames-specific, but two out of three ain't bad.

Also, since about half of the guy's screen time is as a GIANT FACE with some computer-y stuff around it (for most of which time I managed not to think, "BuffyBot?") ...

Tony! How is your money?

...you can't help but notice what pretty eyes Robert Downey Jr. has. I mean, I am seriously a little envious of those eyelashes.

As for Joss Whedon, well, I've already managed to reference his work once and I haven't even gotten to the part where I'm referencing his work, so, there's that. Grr. Argh. Speaking of, when Thor (whose lines were funny for the opposite reason of Stark's -- he's got such a dead serious expression and delivery) is describing the Bilgesnipe (do you not have those?), despite the scales I can't help but picture it as Dru's chaos demon. All slime and antlers, y'know.

Anyhow, it's a fun movie, just watch it. Whether you know what's going on or not it's tons of fun visually -- in action and fine details as well as in more "posed" scenes like the Avengers on the street or the final remnant of the name on the Stark building. My mom watched it, didn't realize that Bruce Banner = The Hulk until like halfway through the movie, and she still loved it. As with any movie with source material, your biggest concern would probably be if you go in knowing *too* much about what's going on. When consistency/accuracy is at odds with mass appeal, guess which one invariably wins out?

Oh, and of course, watch the news monitors near the end for the "superheroes, in New York?" cameo.

And finally, let us have a moment of silence for all of the space-eels who died being awesome.

That's a moraaaaay

Well. In other news, the moon was pretty last night. Wait wait, I'm going somewhere with this.

I'm still figuring out my new camera, so most of the time I'll just set it to Auto and hope for the best. Because of this, at first all of my pictures were like this:

So the following dialogue ensued.

ME: Camera, why you gotta be this way? You were EXPENSIVE for a point-and-shoot, man! You've got like, 25x zoom! Is this really the best you can do?

CAMERA: Maaaaaybe.

ME: Is that so?

CAMERA: I'm not tellling....

ME: You know what, enough of this. MANUAL OVERRIDE!

CAMERA: !!!

ME: [presses random buttons]

CAMERA: Ow, wait, stoppit! Fine, fine, this is how well I can actually see it, okay? Are you happy now?

ME: Dang, Camera, why couldn't you have just started with that?

CAMERA: I dunno, didn't see the point. Now it just looks like a rock instead of a glowy rock. What could you even use this picture for?

ME: I can ... I ... I'll show you Camera, I'm gonna put it on a BLOG!

CAMERA: 'K, whatever, can you put my lens cap on now? It's getting late and my battery's low.

ME: We still have a long way to go, Camera.

I like to think it was secretly trying to teach me how to use the Manual function, though. I mean, I'm still clueless, but it's a nice sentiment.

In which my unhealthy squirrel obsession pays off

...well, a little at least.

As does my propensity for eavesdropping on tech-related questions that do not currently apply to me, with the generally-accurate assumption that at some point I will manage to break something in a similar way and have no idea how to fix it on my own.

So, backstory: On Tuesdays I have to loiter a while on campus near the lake. The lake is home to two swans, some ducks, many geese, and various squirrels, raccoons (which is apparently a typographical error, since there is no such thing as more than one raccoon? Ah, spellcheck), chipmunks, and such small deer.

Large and small alike, they are all fed on bread by idle hikers and eager children, and so have become quite (at times unnervingly) tame. I walked up on this group yesterday and only three of them even noticed me -- the female mallard second from the right isn't turning her head to look at me, she is tucking her head under her wing and falling asleep.

Anyhow, all I have to do is sit down and it's as if I'm not there at all. So the squirrels promptly started being adorable because they obviously knew I couldn't find my camera. One was drinking from the lake, one was playing with bark chips. Finally I managed to get my camera out, on, and focused in time to take a brief video of Adorable Teenage Squirrel #3 fighting with a scary stick. It was one of the cutest things I've personally witnessed and recorded a squirrel doing, and I was eager to get back home and share it. I still had time to kill before that, though, so I went through and started deleting subpar images from my camera in case something else interesting happened that required even more video space.

One of them was so blurry, I didn't know why I hadn't deleted it immediately. I clicked the trash can icon, and the "Yes" button, and then ... I clicked back a couple pictures to where my video should have been, and it was GONE.

Noooooooo.

My camera is not very good at making it clear which preview images are images and which are video stills, and I apparently misjudged which images came before and after the video I wanted, because I had deleted it. Just like that. IT WAS BLURRY BECAUSE IT WAS A SQUIRREL MID-CUTE-ATTACK. After fretting about this (and the lack of an "undo" button) for a good thirty seconds I realized that (unlike similar disasters I'd had in the past with less-sophisticated media-recording devices) the image had been stored on a memory card, and the thing about memory cards was that deleted things weren't necessarily Gone Forever. 

I rushed home (being ridiculously careful to remind myself not to take anymore pictures with the camera in the interim, just in case), jumped to the first forum post I could find asking about recovering deleted images, and LO AND BEHOLD, there were options. 

I hooked up the Lumix, downloaded PhotoRec, and with a few keystrokes I had recovered my beloved squirrel (along with ten or fifteen less-beloved squirrels that had been deleted in the same run).

As the sort of person who's had more than one "NOOOO, I TAPED OVER MY FAVORITE SONG/TV SHOW/RANDOM SOUND CLIP AND NOW IT'S GONE FOREVER AND THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS FINDING IT ON THE INTERNET" moment, I have to say I don't entirely mind the "nothing you delete is ever really gone" element of today's technology.

In which there is more of an actual recipe

Okay, welcome to part two of "learning to bake from a college student whose cupboard is full of instant noodles and oatmeal."

Now that you have your crust cooling, your cream cheese softened, and your sweet potatoes cooked nice and mushy, it's time to assemble everything. Brush the cookie crumbs out of that mixing bowl and put the peeled sweet potatoes in it. Make sure they're peeled right, with no gross bits or buds or eyes or whatever. Flecks of un-mashed potato are okay, big stringy chunks of stuff are not. Mashing them with sour cream makes things go a little smoother, and it makes the mashed parts paler than the rest so the chunks stand out and can be mercilessly pureed.

Okay, mash that stuff up and put it in a bowl, or maybe whatever you used to melt the butter in for the crust. Now dump all that cream cheese into your once-more-empty mixing bowl. If you have a real actual mixer, then by all means use that, but otherwise get ready to build some superhero arm-muscles.

If you have brown sugar, you'll want to add a bit over half a cup of that. Or, use white sugar and pour in some molasses. You can make pretty shapes if you want before you mix it all into a mush.

Add enough to make it a nice sort of silly-putty shade.

Mix it really well at this and subsequent stages, cream-cheese chunks are sort of off-putting. Now you need about three eggs; two is enough for two packages of cheese, four if they're medium and you're using three packages. 

Bystanders tensely awaiting the arrival of all the king's horses and all the kings men. Okay, now you're adding them one at a time, so if it's looking too runny at some point just don't add another one.

Once those are all mixed in and it's fluffy and lump-free, pour in whatever fall spices you want. Pretty much the same as for pumpkin, though I prefer more ginger and no allspice for sweet potatoes.

Pour all that in, whatever amounts look good.

Mix in a cup or so of sweet potato, break out the masher again if it's really lumpy.

Pour it on that crust you made a little while ago.

Have some leftover mashed potatoes while you wait, throw on a little molasses or black pepper or whatever floats your boat.

Cook it till it looks less like clam chowder and more like this.

You may want to put a pan under it, buttery crusts drip and start little mini fireworks in your oven. :)

I left mine in for about 45 minutes at 375, and the edges were getting pretty done so I went for 20 or so minutes at 300, then it sat in the oven for a while to cool off. Basically, it should be springy but not too jiggly, and a knife stuck in the middle should not come out covered in greasy soup. You can get fancy with water baths and all that, but why bother when you can just chuck it in the oven? You can even re-cook it a while at a low temp if it's not done in the middle. It's cheesecake, it's gonna be awesome no matter what. Letting it cool is the tough part, I usually make mine a day before but you can skimp on that and try a slice as soon as it's stopped feeling warm to the touch. Now you need to prepare the caramel sauce:

C'mon, you just made a whole cheesecake from scratch, did you really think I'd make you whip up a batch of caramel sauce too? Now drench that masterpiece in liquid caramel and have at it before anyone else finds out it's done.

Thanksgiving recipes? From the lizard girl?

I know, it just doesn't sound safe. Particularly since I currently have a Rubbermaid container full of live insects feasting on the scraps generated by this recipe. Don't worry, no pictures of them. Lots of other pics though, so I'll probably split this up a bit!

Well, this year I made sweet potato cheesecake with gingersnap crust and caramel sauce. I also did this last year, but now I actually know more or less how to prepare it.

So first, put on some festive baking music or something. 

Next you need take the cream cheese out to soften. I used about 2 and a half 8-oz packages -- you can use three if you have 'em, two if you don't happen to have 4 oz. left over from making crab rangoon.

If you're feeling super ambitious, you can even have them all be the same brand, but that requires planning and stuff. Next, you need a couple sweet potatoes, or one crazy big-a ... mazing sweet potato.

That's not all forced perspective with the cream cheese packages, it weighed well over a pound. You can bake it if you have time, or boil it or microwave it or whatever. Just get it cooked all the way through. Don't start mixing stuff in your mixing bowl yet though, you need that for the gingersnap crumbs. By the way, you need ~2 cups of gingersnap crumbs. More is generally better if you want the crust to go up the sides a little.

Then you need to melt 5 T or so of butter, less usually works just fine.

You're mixing food and stuff now, so tie back that unruly hair or people are gonna get grossed out thinking there might be hair in their food.

Once you've spent like half an hour taking pictures of all this, stop for a minute and think whether you're supposed to be writing a 5-page proposal essay today. If you are, take a five-minute research break.

Whew, that was exhausting. Back to the important stuff. If your gingersnaps aren't very sweet, pour some sugar in there.

Mix it up till it's all sparkly.

If it looks like there's too much butter at this stage, add more gingersnaps. If you have no capacity to plan for the future and already ate the rest of the batch, you big giant hog, just pour a little more sugar in there and hope for the best. Now you need to squish it into the cheesecake pan. You can use plastic, like this ginormous bag.

Or if it's just for family, do it the normal way.

Bake that for a while, five or six minutes maybe, till it's kind of crunchy but not burnt. Congrats, you've started the cheesecake and finished a gingersnap crust! I could have just said "make a graham cracker crust, but with gingersnaps" ... but that takes the suspense out of it. Next up is the cheesecake itself.

Electroshock

No, not a treatment program.

I have recently discovered, to my surprise, that I am a character on The Electric Company.

This is mostly surprising because I thought The Electric Company went off the air in the 70's.

As it turns out, there's a new one, and 8-year-olds everywhere (and by "everywhere" I mean "at the library") are just familiar enough with it to instantly conclude upon seeing me that I am "from TV." Never mind that I am not, in fact, a 15-year old Latina rapper; we have the same hair.

Well, I guess it's always good to have a fan base.

In other news, I realized how frighteningly easily-amused I am. Quick backstory: I have a useless habit of repeating things in a schizophre-- eh, poetic -- way and putting the wrong word endings (usually from another language, though I likely get them wrong in that language as well) on things when I'm saying them in my head, just for the sake of making them sound different. Things like -dad or -itas instead instead of -ity or -ness, -mente instead of -ly, and -en instead of -s for plurals. I don't always notice I'm doing it, which I suppose should be worrisome.

Anyhow, it was the last one that figures in today's tale. I was ... well, you know I have a gecko, right? Because that will cut down on a lot of explanation here about why I was putting morio worms in an ashtray. Anyhow, I was talking to myself about how the dish was deep enough to contain the beetles, but was it enough for the worms ... the wyrms ... the wyrmen ... VERMIN! And then I ran to my dictionary to confirm that "worm" was in fact the root for "vermin," and was excessively pleased that it was, because I do not have a life.

Some of you may be slightly more squeamish than would allow for my safely posting an image of my tub-o-worms, so we'll go safer and post some pretty pink blumen:

Pretty, yeah? Go outside, enjoy the weather, don't be like me and sit alone in your room inventing a new type of screwdriver ... wait, no, that was someone else who also spends most of the day living in a box.

Job Security

So, guy walks up to the desk at the library the other day, looks around suspiciously then turns to me.

Guy: "You ever think of having an off-duty cop patrol this place?"

Me: "... Hm?"

Guy: "Ever think of having an off-duty cop patrolling this place?"

Me: "Ah, why?"

Guy: "C'mon."

Me: "..."

Guy: "You know."

Said it as if I were deliberately avoiding a subject. I mean, he wasn't as interesting as the next guy who kept insisting he was in a Very Big Hurry while checking his watch-less wrist and asking me questions he could have answered more quickly by looking them up himself ... yeah, I don't know what it is about Mondays.

And also it's snowing now. So.

It's been a stressful week and we're just beginning. Have some balloons I found on campus:

Yes, I also feel strangely drawn to guess which one's bigger. Which reminds me, you know that thing they always have in "mind tricks" books, where the words say one color and are printed in another and you have to say the printed color aloud? Turns out I'm really good at that one. Does that mean I have poor reading comprehension or am just too familiar with the "magic trick" for it to work?

Oh, dear. He took the red one.

I don't typically title my blogs with direct quotes from movies, but I felt like making an exception today.

I have a new cameraaaah, and it's red. That's really all that's important, right?

It works much better in low light,

... in regular light ...

... in Wal-Mart ...

...and just in general, really.

It's a Lumix DMC-ZS7, and I've only dropped it on the concrete once. So far.

In other news, five people have stopped working at the library since I started up there. Some timing I have. :( I wonder if this is tied to my ability to chase away every mall and grocery store I've ever lived across from simply by being in the area for a couple years.

Decisions, decisions

I've decided I'm going to get a new camera.

Decided it just now.

I'm making just over no money, and my limited photography skills mean I can't rationalize that a new camera's going to help that (the way I could with my drawing tablet, which was all but a necessity - I never could have drawn my Easter Bunny with a touchpad or a mouse).

Still, I wanna camera.

I'd prefer that it isn't plastic (I drop things a lot; my little Fuji J38 would have been deceased long ago if it weren't made of sturdy stuff), that it takes decent low-light pictures (my little Fuji might, if it would ever focus), and that it let me tweak a few more settings manually. Unfortunately, that ... doesn't really narrow it down as much as I'd hoped. Not to mention, I see all the shiny expensive cameras that do AWESOME THINGS and I wannnnnt.

But I must be reasonable here.

There is a budget.

I'm going to say ... $350, max.

No idea what that will get me, but off to the Interwebs to find out.

Wait, I'm already at the Interwebs.

While I sort this out, have a gecko:

You can't really see his face. Because. my camera. won't focus. in low light.

So we meet again...

So, here is (more or less) all that has transpired since last we met, dear reader:

I acquired a new computer (Desktop, HP pavilion, under $500, nice big screen, just waiting on the wireless adapter)

I found my camera

I realized I had lost my camera (in this order, because before finding the poor wretched thing in a heap of grimy snow on the side of the road, I'd assumed it was still in the house somewhere)

I removed the guts (SD card, battery) from my camera, laid it out to warm up, applied a little Pledge Multi-Surface to the LCD and body to remove the mud and grass, reassembled it, and discovered that despite 24+ below-freezing hours in a snow bank, it was in perfect working order. Hurrah for Fuji. Not so for the pockets in my coat, as they are less-than-ideal when it comes to retaining the objects placed in them. I haven't any pictures of my camera in its sad state, as my camera was busy being in a sad state at the time, but here's what it might have looked like if it were an orange:

I found an orange on the side of Welch street.

I discovered that college students are not big on reading forms before they sign them (long story regarding library cards).

I finally got around to watching the 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland. Pros: Literally rated PG "for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar"; not sure whether the Jubjub bird is a harpy eagle, an archaeopteryx or a Wargle, but it's fantastic; the Mad Hatter was pretty clearly Jack Sparrow. Cons: Closing credits song (the mood seems odd for the setting); Hathaway's White Queen was quite creepy, we needed some character development for that woman (and don't you dare say "sequel"); the Mad Hatter was pretty clearly Jack Sparrow.

I finished reading Gaiman's Sandman series; great fun seeing how each artist interpreted Matthew the raven.

I marveled at the obstinance of the robins, who insist on arriving in a snow or ice storm EVERY YEAR. Today they huddled miserably in the crab-apples outside the library while a few inches of snow hurtled around them in 30-mile-per-hour gusts. I was working, so no photos of that. Sorry. Have some kraut juice:

That is all. Good night.

FIRST

First post!
Of the year, that is.
On this blog, that is.

My New Year's Eve celebration consisted chiefly of eating pretzels and wearing everything leopard-print that I owned.
There's actually quite a lot of it.
Though I just now realized I forgot the pin, the leopard pin. Got the gloves, the shirt, the necklace (yes, the necklace!) but not the pretty stalking leopard with the green gem eyes.
I don't, now I think of it, know where that pin is at all. Dear me. I like that pin.

Moving on. Went somewhere just a little fancy, but stayed indoors and watched the sleet build up on the roads and turned up the heater and read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and wondered just how many hotel rooms in other states could boast a completely unobstructed view of sleet-coated cornfield stubble from their third-floor windows.

Magical.

Was nearly trampled to death in the morning as the previously-deserted lobby filled with families in pajama pants just in time for breakfast. Was very nearly punched in the crotch by a small child who was violently stretching and yawning without paying attention to his surroundings.



There were corndogs in the cooler along with the skim milk and the fruit and the low-fat yogurt. Wasn't entirely sure what to make of that one except that in Iowa we have corndogs for breakfast, and if you have a problem with that well you can just take your lite yogurt and your fruit cup and shut the heck up. Or something to that effect.

I got the first week of my Penguin Project set up, but aside from that have truly done nothing constructive and don't really plan to. Even this blog represents a surprising amount of effort on my part - as reading it has no doubt been on yours. I'm not going to re-read that sentence to see whether it was grammatically correct, I'm just going to go back and sprinkle some random pictures from last year/week throughout the text to make this all halfway worthwhile.

Vultures!

On my way home from the library I was whining to myself about not having brought a camera (there are always photo opportunities when you put a bunch of volunteers in charge of dress-up materials), when I saw some crows circling overhead, gathering in a big cloud to roost like I'd seen so many times on campus.
Except for the fact that these weren't crows, they were vultures.
I'd never seen that many vultures in town before, but from the huge amounts of feathers scattered over three blocks, they gathered there somewhat often.
It was several blocks home still, and 90 unpleasant degrees, but I managed to walk-jog-walk-pause-jog home for the camera, splash cold water all over my face, grab a tangerine from the fridge to eat on the way, and then walk-jog-walk-eat-walk-pause-jog-eat-walk back to the vultures' tree.

Some interesting discoveries:

• Turkey vultures resemble turkeys not only in appearance, but in their aroma when dozens of them are clustered in one place.
• Vultures in droves seem to attract mosquitoes in droves.
• Citrus, at least in the quantities available in a tangerine peel, does not ward off mosquitoes.
• My camera's zoom capabilities are only slightly better than those of Shawn's binoculars in the pilot episode of Psych.

These discoveries made for a somewhat lackluster photo experience, but at least I got a few in flight:






Interestingly, in my hurry to free up a little space for these pictures prior to my mad dash back, I managed to delete *all* the other pictures in my camera instead of one.
Well, now I know what that button does.
Serves me right for not moving them to the computer sooner.

Little cat, little cat....

So, for about two hours last night I had a cat.
It was nice.

I had just finished an incredibly productive night of tweeting a running commentary on Friday the 13th (I SO did not know Kevin Bacon was in that), when I heard meowing.
I'd heard this voice before, from a stray out in the carport, but aside from eating the bits of pot roast I'd thrown out for her she'd kept her distance.
Plus, you know, she'd been outside.
This was close.
And getting closer. I looked out the peephole and there she was, coming up the stairs. We don't make a habit here of leaving front doors open when it's 9 degrees out, so someone must've taken pity and let her in the building.
I did likewise, opening the door and uttering the universal invitation for cats - "tk tk tk, c'mere."
She looked me over for a moment, then oozed her way in, purring nonstop to make sure I didn't change my mind. It worked.

No collar, but she clearly wasn't feral, not in the skittish and wild sense. She looked young, acted young - when I held her she pressed up against my chest and let me squeeze her down into a little ball of fluff between my arms like kittens do.

She didn't let me out of her sight, though she was certainly out of mine several times - she'd be walking around me, rubbing against my legs, and then suddenly she was gone and she'd reappear behind a piece of furniture on the other side of the room. How do they *do* that?

All I had on hand was Puppy Chow and the chicken I'd baked a few hours ago, so she got that.
Now, Ed hearts Puppy Chow, but kitty did not heart Ed.
She didn't actually seem to notice her at first, since tortoises don't have fur, or make sounds, or really even give off body heat...But then ...
"Holy ****, it moved!!!"
I wish it had been bright enough in the room to take a video, her reactions were priceless.

"Wait, weren't you supposed to be feeding me?"


"Is it ... dead?"


She finally just ran out of the kitchen, so Ed had to be banished to the bathtub for the night.

Kitty drank a ton of water, ran around a bit, drank more, ate some chicken, ALWAYS purring.
This building doesn't technically allow pets (Ed doesn't shed or make sounds so she's easy enough to hide), so I decided I'd better get her back outside before she got too comfy.
(WAY too late for that, by the way)
Gave her a grand tour of the laundry room, walked around the halls a bit, tried to get her to go outside but she just looked at me as if I were off my rocker. Took her back inside. Remembered she couldn't stay.
I got her to go outside by walking out ahead, pretending I'd stay out there, but I finally just picked her up because the snow's well over a foot deep in places. We walked around the building a few times, with me hoping she'd get tired of me and jump out of my arms at some point like a good kitty, but she just held on for dear life the whole time. It was late, it was windy, it was cold, I set her down in the carport. I'd seen her hiding under the cars before, I hoped it was warm. At least there wasn't snow there.

Of course, she just followed me back to the door. She actually ran ahead of me if I started speeding up.
I snuck in and closed the door in front of her. She stared at me through the glass and waited for the door to open.

I had nothing that would help her, nothing besides the food and water I'd already given her, so I just tossed some more food in a cardboard box with a blanket. I went back outside and she was gone, walked around the building again with no sight of her, so I put the box in a warmer-looking place near a wall.
She was sitting on the sidewalk and watching me.
I came closer, but she ran. I sat down, and she came up. I picked her up and put her in the box. She found the food, ate, wolfing it down and looking up every second like she wanted to follow but had to finish eating first. I went home. If she was still there in the morning, I'd take her to a shelter, though her odds probably wouldn't be much better there. She'd been hanging conspicuously around the area for weeks, after all; no worried owner had come to collect. She probably did alright on handouts and pity. Still, if she was there ....

The box was there this morning, no kitty, no food. Too cold and windy for pawprints to follow.

I hope she's warm.