hello to the cosmos ~ I am returned from exile

I am now returned to my home!

I returned just in time for record snowfalls (almost two feet!) and sledding and crazy snow fun.

Also returned in time for the December Cavalcade of Schlock, and then ended up at what I shall refer to as A Very Calvalcade Christmas.  Which mostly involved amazing chili and beer bread (I will soon learn to make beer bread!), alcohol, and Wild Zero.  It also involved Lost Skeleton of Cadavera, but we were rather done by then (we played the Wild Zero drinking game!) and three of five were down by the end of the movie.

Merry Christmas (only slightly late)!  I am off to begin preparations for the New Year.  By which I mean the New Year’s Eve Party, naturally.

~the leaves are falling back east…that’s where I’m gonna be~

Extra-special bonus points to anyone who recognizes the lyrics!  [Except for Carlos-the-Jackal.  I know he knows I know he knows.]  That song was, ironically, on my soundtrack while I took a train from the East Coast to Oregon before flying to the Land of Loud Birds to live.

I am moving away from Mississippi [which never really got its own little slogan name] and returning to my rightful home.  I will no longer be writing in exile!  To celebrate, there will be drinks!  And reunions!  Reunions with drinks!

Because I love nothing so much as not losing my cocktail recipes updating my blog, here are some potential fall-themed drinks for reunions!

Zombie Cocktail | Autumn Colors Cocktail |  Warm Apple Pie |  Hot ‘n’ Spikey Texican Tailgate Cocoa [Note to self A: Create drink named Hot Drunken Hedgehog Cocoa  Note to self B: Find someone to illustrate this concept] |  Pumpkin Pie Martini

autumn stalks the lands

It does.  It becomes cold in the morning when I go out frolicking with emo-puppy in the dewy grass.

Fair enough, Internet.  He frolicks.  I stagger along and mutter curses because dawn is not an appropriate time for frolicking in my general opinion (unless one is still, perchance, awake).  Dog walks are even pre-coffee.

Because I have been living in the land of loud birds I have the cold tolerance of orchids.  To keep me from dying, Cryssy sent me a FOX HOODIE for my birthday!!!  Internet, I can have fox ears.  While my general opinion of hoodies with ears has been low, let me tell you I suddenly understand!  I made the squee noise when I opened the box.  I smiled when I held it up.  I smiled when I tried it on.  I smiled when I looked in the mirror.  I smiled when I though of how appalled everyone will be.  And now I am preparing to snuggle up with this hoodie, some rum, and either Neverwhere or Small Favor on audio CD.

Among my first projects when I finally get a job (wish me luck on my test to prove I am good enough to score an interview to become a bank teller!) will be to get a thermos that can hold hot drinks to drink while reading on the porch with this hoodie.  Autumn is my favorite season, and I should spend some time out in it.  Also, perhaps soon a hookah and then I can choose/mix flavors to match the books I am reading.  Ladies and gentlemen of the Internet, this idea pleases me greatly!  (Do feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.  🙂  I am interested to see what flavors you think books (or perhaps characters) should have.)  I realise that this is going to lead to drinks for books and me getting very, very drunk and perhaps dropping these books (or these drinks!) into either a snowdrift or a bath.  Or toasting marshmallows over candleflames in a Jack-o-lantern.

Okay, come to think of it – I might do that sober too.  The marshmallow bit.

Also – THANK YOU FOR FOX HOODIE, CRYSSY!!!  *kiss*  Fortune cookie!

rumors of my death may yet be slightly premature

Slightly.

I just keep falling off the face of the Internet.

I am still narrowing down which projects to play with and hope to have an update there soon.

I went to New Orleans with Carlos-the-Jackal and he bought me a delightful book For Neruda, For Chile which is a collection of poems written following the deaths of Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende and the overthrowing of the government of Chile in 1973.  It seems to be a book that is hard to find (I of course walked into the store and there it was, humming softly and expectantly) and it is full of some poems best described as haunting – in the sense of both longing beauty and bloody apparitions.  I have not read all of the poems yet.  I cannot read them more than a few at a time.  They leave the sound of guns and the scent of blood and the soft, warm dampness of soil on a fresh grave in their wake.  War and death invade, twined in light and darkness and a slow cascade of syllables.  Pablo Neruda is the only poet I have begun a poem for, and finding this book prompts me to finish it.

Also – please go to see this post by Neil Gaiman.  Not because he writes glorious, glorious books (which he does).  Not because his blog is lovely to read, especially as we settle into fall and there can be mulled cider with it (which is true).  But because he has taken a stunning picture, and you should see it (it is set as the background for my laptop right now, so that I may continue to stare at it at will).

from the edges of dream and dusk and dew-tipped eternal meadows

Today is full of things.  Carlos-the-Jackal and one of my other common people to babble at at random are gone.  Carlos-the-Jackal will return and demand I tell him things (even though he is the one who just went away!) so this post is so that when he returns, if I am out of words, he can still have them.  (And because anyone still reading this blog does indeed deserve both updates and cookies!)  Newer, excited, more boisterous words!  They will continue to frolic here.

Today I prepared a resume for an open casting that was abjectly ridiculous.  If they call me back, I may question some sanity.  Writing it was some of the most fun I’ve had here in Mississippi (it was fun, and that was during the euphoric phase of the month, which generally lasts about seven hours max, and is a great time when it happens).  I left with my mother and brother and headed down to casting (where we waited in line to fill out a form to be placed with a picture in a box) and then went to lunch.  On the way to casting we crossed the Mississippi River to Louisiana, a place I had never been until today.  It was for less than three minutes, but it was awesome!  Louisiana and I will see each other again, of course, because I will see New Orleans.

I am working on a lot of projects and am very excited!  I need to come up with a schedule, and then I will share some of these plans.  I am in a creative phase, but my creative phase begins with CHAOS!!! so some of these projects will likely not ever be completed, and I think it would be good if I waited until I knew which projects stood the chance of a snowball in a very hot fplace.  Hopefully creative will equal more blog.

Twitter is proving both awesome and distracting.  I have stumbled across things that have been awesome.  I love it when I can’t sleep.  At least until people are mostly sleeping and I have no updates and then start searching for more people to follow before the world ends because I am half asleep and must be distracted or creatures born of nightmares will twist their way out of the shadows.  This is a very real danger, and you should take it seriously.  I have very dangerous nightmares.  Post more on Twitter, or they will come for me.  For you.  For all of us.

Should you need to better understand what kind of world that would be, watch the Amon Saga.

Note to the universe: Ruby Tuesdays makes a tasty Pomegranate Lemonade.  The slight extra bit of something not perfect should be drowned in vodka.  It is served with vodka.  I recommend this.  (Just not with one’s family.  Unless you drink with your family.  As a general rule, I don’t.)  In the event my dreams do claw their way from shadow to substance, these drinks could be substituted for rum in the event of a rum shortage – or even for variety.  Consume many such drinks.  Duct tape, torches, rope, and cats are your friends.  Suspect everything else.  Sometimes suspect even those things which are your friends.

absinthe, ninjas, mojitos, hookahs, and…literature — what?

I am now located in Mississippi, the funnest state to spell (from now on tFStS!), where at random my neighbors bring offerings of food.  I still adore Sonic.  I plan to learn to make gumbo.  I am reading Downtown Owl, by Chuck Klosterman (who brought us Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs).  Downtown Owl has that sleepy, transcendent small-town aura down.

I am poking around the Internet reading about all manner of things, likely because while I find these sleepy, transcendent small-town auras to be endearing and beautiful, I am not meant to live in one.

Absinthe Hookah (technically the 26 Inch Amber Stargaze)

I found this hookah, which immediately reminded me of absinthe!  Then I went off on a tangent of absinthe peekings (while debating the wisdom of getting licorice tobacco and adding a shot of absinthe to the base) and  found some interesting and pretty things.  Like the absinthe fountain, for when you want a little tap to drip water over your sugar cubes.  And some absinthe spoons so pretty I love them (even though they’re gold!).  Now tempted to drink absinthe with sugar and water (instead of straight, which is how I actually like it).

Pretty, pretty, pretty

I am now off to watch Naruto (because I have found that I greatly enjoy the RIDICULOUS NINJAS!) and have a pre-packaged mojito (that is really not comparable to the real thing but still tasty).  I have spent the night wondering what breakfast foods/tobacco flavors would go best with ridiculous ninja, and have decided that either pancakes/waffles and many tasty toppings or salmon soufflé and mimosas (with pink champagne, ladies and gentlemen) for the sheer absurdity will do.  The tobacco flavor I associate most strongly with this escapade is blueberry – extra interesting because I don’t actually eat blueberries.

Yes.  Really.  I have an affection for the ridiculous ninjas.

EDIT:  Adding also – absinthe soap!!! (With or without sugar!!!)

so….

Anyone else read books about quantum physics in a bubble bath with a mojito after crazy days, or am I alone in that one?

On that note – what kind of drinks go with what subjects?  I think we need a whole list of drinks here!  Answer any/all in the comments, or suggest your own.  🙂
a.) __________________ is to zoology as mojito is to quantum physics.
b.) Tequila is to __________________ as mojito is to quantum physics.
c.) __________________ is to forensic anthropology as mojito is to quantum physics.
d.) Sake is to __________________ as mojito is to quantum physics.

E is for extra credit!
E-1: Mojito (white rum + sugar + lime + sparking water + ice + mint) = quantum physics.  Which part(s) represent(s) simply physics?
E-2: That taken into account, please explain this version of a chocolate martini:
1 shot chocolate vodka + 2 shots white Godiva chocolate liquor + 1/2 shot creme de cacao + 2 shots whole milk = __________________.

Wait! you say.  Fox the above post has NOTHING to do with physics and everything to do with chaos!
To that I can only reply: did you forget who I was? And have you had the pleasure of reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman?

~cookies and rum~

I have them!  Hot chocolate chip cookies and Pyrat rum.  Made.  Of.  Win.

Also, I have missed you all while I was away (being sulky and quiet).

I am leaving the Land of Loud Birds for the new and unknown land of Mississippi!  Which may or may not be named the Land of MANY Poisonous Snakes or the Land of the Owls.  I am promised by advance scouts that both may be found in our yard.

Catfish recipes, anyone?  I hear I will need to know them.  Also, cornbread.  General Southern cooking?  Let me know.

🙂

I have adopted dragon eggs!

Okay, in the spirit of cute and curious, I have adopted dragon eggs.  Apparently they need you to click on them to live.  As I’d rather like to experiment and see what they turn into (maybe I’ll get a zombie-dragon!), I’ve put their clicky links up here.  Have at it – if they hatch, I’ll update you.

And…a new random obsession for a kitsune….

I am once again enthralled by cute things.  This time in the form of Bento boxes.

Already my Ravyn and a Bunny have had to suffer through my sending them links upon links to bento related thingies!

Sometime after the holidays I will likely get a pair of bento boxes (one for me to take to work, one for mom to take to work) and thus I can eat more tasty diet foods.  More likely than not I will get the Laptop Lunches ones, which seem to be the superfunctional and not overly cute (amusing as it could be to pack my mother lunch in a Hello Kitty bento box), and they sell replacement inner parts for when I inevitably lose some or want to pack a couple up ahead of time with leftovers.  Of course, the internet is full of cute bento boxes – some of which cater to my cherry blossom obsession.  People, there are even chopsticks catering to my cherry blossom obsession!

So now when I win the lottery and have my very own commune, I will ALSO be making lunches for all my people to take away with them.  In addition to the soap making, jewelery making, and vodoun charms.  As long as I don’t get these things mixed up, everyone should be fine.  But I can’t pick up many more cute hobbies or I will not have time for my hookah.  And not having time for a hookah would be a tragedy.  Flavored tobacco for the win!

Should I get these boxes, I will update you with the pictures!  For now, I will leave you some links to fun/cute things.

Lunch In A Box! –  A fun blog with many links and pictures.  Load of tips and recipes.  Focuses on quick rather than time-consuming cute, so excellent for the kind of things to pack every day.  (Also – she has instructions for a relatively simple-looking apple bunny!)

Cooking Cute – Although this blog seems not to update frequently (like I can talk), it has a huge amount of resources and information on it.

Kitchen Cow – Full of pictures!  With BEEF STROGANOFF in a bento box!  (There is even a recipe for the stroganoff!)  However, all that really needs to be said for this site is this “zombie rising from the grave bento for the win!“