Rebel Yell

For the curious, I decided to publish my undergraduate and graduate theses for public viewing on the web. I currently have them in a .pdf format.

The Yoking Together of Fierce Opposition An Analysis of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets

History, Sketches, and Satire An Analysis of the Works of Washington Irving

Happy 2009, everyone!

I DID THIS ALL DAY YESTERDAY!!! And you know what? It was really fun.

It’s beautiful–sleek, black, elegant…MINE!

I’m not so good with icing things, but using an icing bag really made a difference. (I used Royal Icing, which I made from a recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens cookie cookbook.) My dad even noted that the cookies I iced with the bag were “really nice,” as he proceeded to devour half of the cookies. Oh man, this is the best.

Some dingus tried to impress me at work today. He was one of those “I’M THE PAGANEST PAGAN TO EVER GRACE THE PAGAN SCENE!” attempting to regale me with tales of how he screws with Christians, how he’s so anti-Christian, how he’s SOOOOOO pagan that Christians are fighting to convert him for brownie-points with Jesus, every other pagan is a loser, and so on and so forth. “LOOK HOW AWESOME MY THOR’S HAMMER TATTOO IS! IT’S GIGANTIC AND ON MY FOREARM!!!!”

At one point in the conversation, he’s talking about some girl he saw at the Galleria with a goddess moon-phase tattoo on her wrist. He claims she had no idea what it was because when he greeted her in Old Norse (of all things) she had no idea what he was talking about. “Hur hur, she was so dumb she didn’t even know what her tattoo meant!” I had to resist the urge to mention that Odin frequently beams messages into my head through the porcelain fillings in my teeth that were mined from an old pagan burial ground in the Black Forest.

He’s lucky he was trying to be funny, because I was having a hard time controlling the gales of laughter at his expense. “I’d hate to keep such a beautiful lady from doing her work, and as much as I’d like to continue this RAVISHING conversation, I’d better let you get back to what you’re doing.”

That word doesn’t mean what you think it means. XD LOL Old Norse!!

If this wasn’t Loki visiting me in disguise, then it must have been some other trickster. I don’t think anyone is really THAT lame. I can’t imagine that any non-politician could possibly be full of that much bullshit.

I stopped by the mall for a bit on my way home. It was a really interesting experience, in that it wasn’t what I would normally expect. There were still crowds, lots of people shopping for the holidays, but a lot of the smaller stores like Ann Taylor and Banana Republic and GAP had VERY limited selections. It seems as though they’ve pared down their inventory during the economic downturn, to save on costs I’m assuming. Most of these stores are also running ridiculous sales–Banana Republic had a sale going on today where customers spending $125 would get $50 off of their order (and so on for each $125 you spend). I spend about $275 today and got $100 off of my total order, most of which was already at least 50% off. Ann Taylor had 30% off of their merchandise; GAP was selling all of their hats, scarves, and gloves for $10 each.

The crowds were as large as I expect for the holiday season, and as usual everyone is looking for sales. However, I think people are looking for better sales and discounts this year than they usually are–of course, how could you not when your retirement account has tanked and the economy is swirling, swirling, swirling down the toilet? People are definitely cutting back, but they’re not cutting entirely. It’s still Christmas, and I think people are determined to have a good holiday no matter what. I think it’s also difficult to change your habits after such a long time. But, I think everyone is changing and adapting. Things are different now, and people must change or lose everything.

I have to admit, I did spend a lot of money today. I used money from my savings (though I didn’t take much) to buy some badly-needed new clothes, just in case I happen to get this new job I’ve applied for (it’s true; I may leave Half Price Books, soon, but I don’t know for sure just yet), and a warmer winter coat. I also got wrangled into getting my makeup done at the Chanel counter in Dillard’s. Other than my makeup splurge, I stuck to sales and looking for good deals. When I left, at about 4:30, the traffic wasn’t very bad at all, which was also unexpected. It was more like a regular weekend than the holiday shopping season.

I think people are starting to really see that you can’t spend more than you earn and make up for it on credit.

A few months ago we got hit by a hurricane. Today, snow. Houston, your bizarre weather patterns never cease to amaze me.

We bought a tree today. We’ve had live trees every year, except for the years we lived in Saudi Arabia, and I can’t imagine a holiday without a live tree. We’ve been getting trees from the Houston Palm Tree company off of I-45 near Nasa Road 1 (southbound side, just before Nasa 1), and I think I prefer their trees to any others.

The attendant was a really nice guy and showed us the Noble Fir trees (we’ve had a Noble Fir every year, except for the year that I couldn’t find one under 10′ tall and had to get a Douglas Fir), then told us that he had some newer “fresh” trees as well. We bought a 6-7′ tree, tied it to the top of my car (no roof rack, no hooks; wtf lamest SUV ever), and took it home.

Even though the tree has that wooden stand and plastic bucket thing nailed to it, I don’t like to use that stand. The trees last longer and stay fresher if you cut off the bottom two or three inches and about six inches of the bottom branches, then use your own stand. My mother hates this, because it’s a ridiculous amount of extra work, but I like doing it and I like a tree that lasts until Christmas Day, and not one that lasts for a week and then dies. As I was cutting into the tree, I noticed that the tree was full of sap! I’ve never had a tree so fresh that it oozed sap as soon as the saw cut into it. It’s extremely fragrant, too, and our entire house smells like a pine forest.

After about fifteen minutes of sawing at the tree with my dad’s old, rusty saw, I got out my new hack saw and finished cutting off branches and the last bit of the trunk. The tree is now set up in our front foyer, in a heavy-duty metal tree stand we’ve had since before I was born, and now I can truly say that Christmas Is Coming (even though technically my family celebrates a bastard hybrid of Christmas [Eastern Orthodox/Coptic AND American Protestant], Yule, and Festivus).

Today, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by shoppers looking for bargains at Wal-Mart.

In New York, video footage showed as many as a dozen people knocked to the floor in the stampede of people trying to get into the Wal-Mart store, Fleming said. The employee was “stepped on by hundreds of people” as other workers attempted to fight their way through the crowd, Fleming said.

“Several minutes” passed before others were able to clear space around the man and render some aid. Police arrived, and “as they were giving first aid, those police officers were also jostled and pushed,” he said.

“Shoppers … were on a full-out run into the store,” he said.

The crowd had began forming outside the store as early as 9 p.m. Thursday, Fleming said police patrols had reported. Just before the doors opened at 5 a.m., the crowd probably numbered at least 2,000, and when the doors were unlocked, “the crowd surged forward” forcefully enough to break the store’s doors, he said.

The man was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

I hope the sale was worth it for two thousand people to trample someone to death. Meanwhile, Pirates hijack a chemical tanker in Somalia, there’s a continuing standoff at a Bangkok airport, suicide bombers attack a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, and Holy Hell is breaking out in Mumbai.

Commandos believe one gunman could still be holed up in Mumbai’s luxury Taj Mahal hotel, more than two days after the start of a rampage that has left at least 160 people dead. Bodies of hostages were found earlier at a Jewish center targeted by attackers, while many guests were freed when police cleared the Oberoi hotel. More

Meanwhile, America is trying its best to spend itself out of a financial crisis with holiday sales.

Several months ago, one of my friends had mentioned wanting a ballet barre for one of her BJDs (Amatsu, a little human-phoenix dancer, from her fiction project). I quickly made up a design for it and said, “I’ll make one for you!” This was in April or something, and I had gotten the tools and materials together shortly afterwards, but never had time to work on it. I mentioned a few months ago (September-ish) that I’d be working on it soon. “OMFG YOU’RE ACTUALLY MAKING IT!?” Well, yeah–I said I would, right? I’m just a rather slow starter sometimes. ^___^;;;;;;;; This week, I finally started on it.

TOOLS AND MATERIALS
Construction bits:
1/2″ poplar dowel, 4′ in length
3/8″ poplar dowel, 4′ in length
2′x2″x1/4″ poplar slat
brass hooks
brass furniture tacks
wooden knob ends
1″ wood screws (found in tool box; exact size unknown)
#18×1″ tacks/nails
wood glue
Hammer
Screwdriver

Staining/Finishing:
Minwax spray stain in Dark Walnut
Minwax stain in Cherry (in a can; found in garage)
Formby’s Tung oil finish
Formby’s Lemon oil
Towel scraps (for rubbing the stain and finish into the wood)

All these materials plus a few hours of my time yielded this….
Dimensions: (roughly) 2′ x 1′ x 2″

Yes, I know that the cap on one of the dowels is wonky. Unfortunately, it wasn’t cut in a clear spherical shape at the factory, so I ended up with one spheroid and one oval…oid. It still needs a few more coats of Tung oil and a coat or three of Lemon oil before I’ll really be happy with it. It’s outside drying in the sunshine right now.

I stained it with a light initial coat of Dark Walnut, then added a rubbed coat of Cherry, and then a few more coats of Dark Walnut. The barre is intentionally lighter than the stand, but it would be fairly easy to add a few more layers of darker stain to change the color. Initially, I had merely nailed the upright dowels into the stand, but even after I attempted gluing them they were still rather unstable. So, I took the nails out and screwed the uprights into the base. Even though this is for a doll, I didn’t want it falling over unexpectedly. D:

I really need my own workshop. Dear Santa, Please give me a workshop full of Craftsman tools for Christmas. I have been extra pretty good this year….

I hope everyone is having an awesome Thanksgiving!

Today was the first time I’ve used food coloring in a canning recipe. I made Jalapeño Jelly today, and the recipe calls for “green food coloring” with no amount specified. Do I use five drops? ten? fifty? the entire bottle? It’s my first experiment with coloring, so I go for broke–I used the entire bottle. For future reference, using the entire bottle of green food coloring yields St. Patrick’s Day-green Jalapeño Jelly. The green is so deep and rich that it looks like candy.

Canning is probably the best experiment I’ve done in the kitchen. Cooking and baking are always a stab in the dark–if you use too much salt or the spices are off, then your food tastes wrong. But canning has been comparatively easy. Fruit, sugar, water, pectin. Boil, add to jars, process, eat. It takes a while if you make the preserves without pectin (the real old fashioned way), but you end up with something that’s delicious no matter what. You could burn the preserves, and sure it wouldn’t taste as good, but I burned the first batch of Orange Chili Marmalade that I made and the sugar and chili offset the scorching enough that it just added a deeper smoky flavor to the marmalade.

The only problem I’ve come across thus far is making the spicy preserves. Cutting the peppers and then boiling them burns the hell out of my hands for days. It feels a bit like sticking your hands into a howl full of chili paste, and inhaling while you’re cutting peppers is never a good idea. I don’t think I’ve sneezed and coughed that much in my life! It’s worth it, to be sure, but damn if it isn’t uncomfortable! However, I can’t argue with these sweet, delicious preserves! If only I had a pressure cooker, I could preserve vegetables as well!