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a very merry unbirthday
My older nephew, wishing to space his birthday out from Christmas somewhat, requested a half-birthday, so the family got together today for a kind of combined Father’s Day/unbirthday party.
Between the hours of 8am & 2pm, I baked a rather complicated cake, made its complicated frosting, made vanilla ice cream, cleaned the kitchen 2 times, did 4 loads of laundry, emptied all the rubbishes, cleaned the kitty litter, made lemonade, and just barely managed not to die of the outrageous 80 degree heat.
Ted went out to do errands, and the first thing he said upon returning was, “In my defense, *you* sent me to the bookstore….”
(The take was 2 cookbooks for said elder nephew, who wants to learn to cook, as well as Naomi Novik’s TEMERAIRE, a book for Indy, and the next three books of the Expanse series.)
Post-erranding, Ted made a ridiculously delicious dinner of grilled veg, salmon, shrimp, & kielbasa, which we all sat down to eat with hearty appetites. We also spent a lot of time lounging in the back garden, where, among other things, I spent a few minutes leg pressing my sister, which is no doubt perfectly normal behaviour.
The unbirthday boy cleaned up nicely, with a whole bunch of *extremely* nice tea (he’s apparently really in to tea, who knew?) and cookbooks along with an offer of cooking LESSONS from my husband the professional chef, and a super cool katana-style letter opener and some other good stuff, and seemed very pleased with his unbirthday.
The cake and ice cream turned out very nicely–the ice cream was so rich and smooth it was practically obscene, which isn’t always the case with my ice cream; I don’t make it enough to be really good at it consistently–and the lemonade was appropriately appreciated.
I managed to walk 4000 steps without actually leaving the house, which seems a little ridiculous. I am absolutely shattered, and to top it all off, I’m coming down with a cold. But it was a splendid day and we’re all happy. Tired. But happy. :)
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Birthday & Wonder Woman
So yesterday was my birthday and it is also the birthday of my many many birthday twins, but I wasn’t online much and so I failed to say happy birthday to Esmerel and Silkblade and Chaz’s niece and also Morgan Freeman and Marilyn Monroe and Superman (the first Superman comic was published June 1 1938 :)).
Happy birthday, twins, and thank you to everybody who wished me a happy day!
Ted and Indy snuck off and got a couple pieces of art that have been sitting around for a long time framed, for my birthday. I had no idea what they were plotting, even with Indy saying, “Daddy and I went to see a man to do a thing for you and the man said it should be ready by your birthday!”, which kind of vague meaningless information is often sufficient for me to figure out what’s going on. This time I didn’t, though, and I was absolutely *floored* to receive these:
I love both of these dearly, and was so surprised and happy! The raven is an artist’s copy of a painting done by an Alaskan artist who lives in Belfast (!!!). She had her copy at a convention to show the prints she was going to have done, but she offered to do an artist’s copy for me because we bonded so strongly over understanding Raven from an Alaskan’s point of view, and, being no fool, of course I said yes.
The other is by an artist whose name I can’t remember right now, but I bought it at…Eastercon a few years ago, and I just…love it. So much. I can look at that painting for *hours*. And while the photo does reasonable justice to the silver frame of the raven painting, it really does no justice at all to the greens and blues and silver-gold shimmers of the other frame. I may have to take a better picture at some point, because it really is gorgeous.
And then also for my birthday I got to go see Wonder Woman with a bunch of girlfriends, which was honestly a terrific way to see the movie. (The women going to the all-women showings at the Alamo Drafthouses in the states are going to have an AMAZING experience.) I looked down the row a few times, to see us all smiling like fools.
There were scenes…I know I’ve seen scenes like then before, but I’m not sure I’ve ever beamed through them before. Watching a woman, watching _Wonder Woman_, doing those things…it meant more to me than I ever imagined it would. I mean, I was looking forward to it, obviously, but…it still affected me more than I expected.
Gal Gadot is terrific as Diana. I mean, honestly, utterly terrific. I think she deserves an Oscar nomination. She was *amazing* in the role. Chris Pine is very funny and charming and this is probably the best-written part I’ve ever seen him in. And Robin Wright is just OH MY GOD. OH. MY. GOD.
There are a WHOLE BUNCH of things I’d have done differently. I would have liked to have seen what a female scriptwriter would have done with the story, for example. But it was funny and it was powerful and it had heart and it made me happy. I hope it makes ALL THE MONEY and I intend to do my part in seeing it more than once to help that goal. ♥
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PokemonGo
Indy and I went on a Pokewalk this evening. Won the local gym back (at great cost, half our Pokemon fainted!). We’re *terrible* at Pokebattles but Indy seems to be learning to embrace the “we’re doing it for fun not for winning” thing, which is great.
and OH OH OH DO YOU KNOW WHY #POKEMON’s MAGIKARP IS SO HARD TO EVOLVE THERE’S AN AWESOME REASON!
turns out there’s a Japanese legend abt a fish determined to climb a massive waterfall. keeps trying, keeps trying, keeps trying. all the other fish mock it, you can’t make it, you’ll never make it, stop making a fool of yourself. but it keeps trying, keeps trying. & FINALLY it succeeds
and the gods look down on this fish & say “good damn job,” & TURN IT INTO A DRAGON AS A REWARD FOR ITS PERSEVERANCE
Hence Magikarp –> 400 candies –> GYRADOS THE DRAGON
HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?!?!?!?
