L found, somehow, found information on the "no shampoo" movement that involves "washing" hair with baking soda and water, and "conditioning" with apple cider vinegar and water. There have been an awful lot of good things said about washing your hair with baking soda, including such things as it gets rid of dandruff and helps ease conditions that cause scalp flaking and sores. So, I'm giving it a go. You're only supposed to wash every few days, and either leave your hair dry or simply rinse with plain water in between, and that's not a problem for me since I don't wash my hair that often anyway. Yesterday was my first baking soda and vinegar wash, and I went into it with *really* greasy hair, because I hadn't washed it in probably 4 days or so. Well, by the time I got out of the shower I was displeased, my hair felt like absolute SHIT, and was far worse after I brushed it and it was plastered to my scalp. HOWEVER, it was VERY easy to brush. surprisingly so... I'd thought it would have been horrible, considering baking soda is drying and well, vinegar kind of is too. Not the case. So, after my hair dried, I was completely amazed to find it not at all greasy, and incredibly soft and smooth and had a lot of body and just... Wow. WOW. There are tons of recipes for baking soda wash, but this is what I used - 1 T soda to 1c warm water, mixed well to dissolve the soda, rubbed into the scalp and rinsed WELL. For the vinegar I used the same - 1 T vinegar to 1c water, just run through the hair (not the scalp) and rinsed. You don't use the vinegar all at once though, haha, you just use however much you need and keep the rest. Don't keep what you don't use of the soda water though, toss that and make it new every time.
Okay, now that *that* boring part's over, I'm about to start playing DII co-op. I've never played it before (I think I mentioned that previously), and I've got a character build in mind that looks pretty interesting. I'm starting with a bone necro, and hopefully that'll work out because necro's a fun class to play. However, if I end up full of fail, my next choice is a cold sorc. Frosty fun!
Been building in Minecraft on my friend M's sister's server lately, with lots and lots of glass, obsidian and stone. And ladders. I'm building in, on and around cliffs, so the only access points will be ladders. Ladders up and ladders down. I'm sure eventually there will be minecart rails, and based on the fact that I'm building very very close to M, we'll probably end up sharing a system and I'll build a hub between our build sites. I might post pictures soon - M's working on an epic build, and I'm just having fun.
It's been awhile since I've really blogged about my kids... The baby's doing really well, he's growing fast and learning faster. Still not talking much though, but that's not a terrible surprise; it tends to run on both sides of the family - kids don't talk until they're ready to talk in full sentences. He loves to "read" his books, and harass the dogs, and run around screaming, and talk on the phone. It's cute. HE'S cute. Now, the adolescent... She's kind of a handful. But what adolescent isn't, right? She's got her own phone now, which is awesome, and I just got her a state ID, which is also awesome; both of those things make me feel better about her being out and about. Her attitude is lessening, and she's getting brighter and generally awesome. She's getting headaches a lot, though. I need to take her in to get new glasses and that might help, but if it doesn't I'm going to have to take her back to the doc for it. Le sigh. But really, all in all, the kids are doing great, and life is generally good around here.
That is all.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
PCs, headaches and inconsequential nonesense.
My "new" laptop is working out beautifully. Except for having a bit of a small HD (which I can deal with pretty easily) it runs close enough to the way I want it. It's a bit faster than my old one - faster processor, more memory, better graphics memory, etc. It's odd to have such an improvement but effectively be looking at the same computer (they're the exact same model). I've been using it for several days now, and so far, since I haven't done anything impressive on it yet, the biggest differences I've noticed have been in how fast applications load and graphics in some games. And they keyboard is fucking terrific. I've missed having a keyboard that works correctly 100% of the time. I do my best, but sometimes it's hard to keep things perfect around, y'know, babies. Hopefully I'll be able to maintain this one, though. :D
I slept on the couch last night ("slept" being a relative term, I suppose) for probably about 2, maybe MAYBE 2 and a half hours. The baby woke up SUPER early (5am) and hubby agreed to take care of him for a couple hours and let me sleep a little more in the bed. So, 2 hours, an hour of sleep, and a FUCKING POUNDING headache later, and I end up having to get up because hubby just can't stay awake anymore. Overnights, fine, I understand, but then he tells me how AWESOME he is at his job (woot) and because of that awesomeness he got um... Starburst. His HUGE AWESOME news of AWESOME DOOM was that he got *Starburst* for being good at his job. I was expecting some bonus or something the way he was going on, but no.... candy. I don't even know how to react to that. Especially since he gave me the candy. Hahahahaha! I guess all I can do is laugh, because... well, yeah.
I hate the unpredictability of online orders. Never know what money's going to come out when. Especially when what is ordered doesn't have a release date yet. Fucking TOR.
Okay. We desperately need a new router. DESPERATELY. This one is off more often than it's on these days. I hate the fact that I can't do *anything* right now, thanks to the fact that my internet connection is so damn iffy because the router is failing. It's not so bad for those who have direct connections via cat5 cables, but.... those of us with wireless connections are just screwed.
Time for me to go run errands.
I slept on the couch last night ("slept" being a relative term, I suppose) for probably about 2, maybe MAYBE 2 and a half hours. The baby woke up SUPER early (5am) and hubby agreed to take care of him for a couple hours and let me sleep a little more in the bed. So, 2 hours, an hour of sleep, and a FUCKING POUNDING headache later, and I end up having to get up because hubby just can't stay awake anymore. Overnights, fine, I understand, but then he tells me how AWESOME he is at his job (woot) and because of that awesomeness he got um... Starburst. His HUGE AWESOME news of AWESOME DOOM was that he got *Starburst* for being good at his job. I was expecting some bonus or something the way he was going on, but no.... candy. I don't even know how to react to that. Especially since he gave me the candy. Hahahahaha! I guess all I can do is laugh, because... well, yeah.
I hate the unpredictability of online orders. Never know what money's going to come out when. Especially when what is ordered doesn't have a release date yet. Fucking TOR.
Okay. We desperately need a new router. DESPERATELY. This one is off more often than it's on these days. I hate the fact that I can't do *anything* right now, thanks to the fact that my internet connection is so damn iffy because the router is failing. It's not so bad for those who have direct connections via cat5 cables, but.... those of us with wireless connections are just screwed.
Time for me to go run errands.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Gaming, you say? Never!
Whelp, there's one week left until my hubby switches schedules at work. One week of "normal" Saturday game. One week until the schedule potentially goes back to hell, and there's no more D&D *again*. *le sighs*
Our friends have been.... unreliable, at best, about gaming. We're supposed to game every week, Saturday evenings, on a steady campaign that was fucking AWESOME, but then they randomly stopped showing up, so we abandoned the campaign. They vanished for an entire month, and suddenly want to game again, right before hubby's shift change. I guess we'll see whether or not this one works out.
It'd probably be easier if we could go to their house, but because our schedule is *vastly* different than theirs, our son is in bed 3-4 hours before theirs, which means he needs his crib. Oh the joys of having a baby, right? Anyway, because we can't head over to their place, it makes for an interesting time trying to get them here on even a semi-regular basis... and *early* enough.
That's been a problem is starting early enough. I mean, I kind of have a life outside of game, I can't stay up until 2-3am gaming anymore. I have to get up with a baby at 6:30am, I have errands to run, things to do during the day. I can't just wait around for something to happen.
In other news, hubby's change in schedule means no more Tuesday night gaming with M and G. M's going to be hanging out at G's most Tuesdays now, and y'know, good for him, but in the meantime, my schedule's completely fucked. I don't take to change well sometimes. Haah. I've asked M if maybe once in awhile we can cancel movie night for gaming with G, and he says it's cool. Awesome. That's a bit in the future though.
In the meantime, I'll keep trying to get better (being sick SUCKS BALLS), and keep trying to get the baby better (cause he's sick too), and hope nobody else in the house gets sick. O_O
Our friends have been.... unreliable, at best, about gaming. We're supposed to game every week, Saturday evenings, on a steady campaign that was fucking AWESOME, but then they randomly stopped showing up, so we abandoned the campaign. They vanished for an entire month, and suddenly want to game again, right before hubby's shift change. I guess we'll see whether or not this one works out.
It'd probably be easier if we could go to their house, but because our schedule is *vastly* different than theirs, our son is in bed 3-4 hours before theirs, which means he needs his crib. Oh the joys of having a baby, right? Anyway, because we can't head over to their place, it makes for an interesting time trying to get them here on even a semi-regular basis... and *early* enough.
That's been a problem is starting early enough. I mean, I kind of have a life outside of game, I can't stay up until 2-3am gaming anymore. I have to get up with a baby at 6:30am, I have errands to run, things to do during the day. I can't just wait around for something to happen.
In other news, hubby's change in schedule means no more Tuesday night gaming with M and G. M's going to be hanging out at G's most Tuesdays now, and y'know, good for him, but in the meantime, my schedule's completely fucked. I don't take to change well sometimes. Haah. I've asked M if maybe once in awhile we can cancel movie night for gaming with G, and he says it's cool. Awesome. That's a bit in the future though.
In the meantime, I'll keep trying to get better (being sick SUCKS BALLS), and keep trying to get the baby better (cause he's sick too), and hope nobody else in the house gets sick. O_O
Monday, July 25, 2011
Aw, Shucks
Whelp, so much for the possibility of gaming fun tomorrow evening. Yesterday my body decided to give me a big fat 'FUCK YOU!' and I'm getting incredibly sick. It's all hitting my chest right now, but in a day or two it will be in my chest *and* my head, and then a day or two after that it'll be in my face, for WEEKS. In the meantime I'm so exhausted I can barely sit upright. I've been in bed most of the day and L's been taking care of my youngest. This will probably happen tomorrow too, and then as soon as it moves up I'll start feeling better enough to take care of my kids myself.
This really sucks, I was looking forward to some SB3 and maybe LBP2, and watching the guys play DKC. Aah well... can't be helped.
In the meantime, I'm going to drink my juice and go back to bed.
This really sucks, I was looking forward to some SB3 and maybe LBP2, and watching the guys play DKC. Aah well... can't be helped.
In the meantime, I'm going to drink my juice and go back to bed.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
It's DnD!
Spent last night creating a character for a D&D game (3.5ed) one of my besties is running. My hubby was running a game (god I want to finish that campaign sooooo badly!) but he got burned out when our other players became totally unreliable for awhile. Anyway, made a character, completely out of my comfort zone. I typically play an elf or half-elf magic user. This character is a human fighter. Wooooah. I had no idea they had such a small skill set. Drives me nuts! I'm not sure how well I'll be able to handle being not much more than a beat-stick.
I have no idea what my friend has in mind for his campaign, but we're all starting with high stats but otherwise completely standard. 1st level, standard starting cash for our class, we have to buy all our own shit, including weapons and armour, with our starting gold, and that's about all I know. It's been awhile since I've played in a game where we've all started at 1st level. Of course, knowing him it's going to morph into some Lovecraftian horror game where we might as well have sanity instead of HP. Haah.
I have no idea what my friend has in mind for his campaign, but we're all starting with high stats but otherwise completely standard. 1st level, standard starting cash for our class, we have to buy all our own shit, including weapons and armour, with our starting gold, and that's about all I know. It's been awhile since I've played in a game where we've all started at 1st level. Of course, knowing him it's going to morph into some Lovecraftian horror game where we might as well have sanity instead of HP. Haah.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The Old Switcheroo
God, switching computers sucks. I do it every few years, and every time I forget what a damn hassle it is to get done! I'm on a new laptop (which is a hand-me-down and fortunately the previous owner, my friend and roommate M, left a few things on so I wouldnt' have to worry), and the HD is half the size of my old one. So there's not a lot I can do except store stuff on my external (which I am) until I either stick my external in here (hah, it's a laptop drive in a case, muahaha) or just get a new drive in general. It sucks having no space - my old laptop was a 250 gig, the new one is a 130 (130!!!!! How did my friend survive on 130 gig??!!), and my external is a 320. I'd really like at least a 500, so I've got room for not only my games (yeah, despite my last post, I *do* still own, and play, some PC games) but my music, pictures, videos, and at least a few movies so I don't have to stick them on my hubby's stupid-big 3tb (two 1.5tb really) drive.
Last night I was up until after 4am just messing with all my music, trying to get it into iTunes without all the damn duplicates (don't know why, but when I added my music it duplicated all 3,000 files, aaahhh!!!), deleting everything, re-adding everything, re-making my playlist, blargle blargle. I wish I could say 'fuckin iPod' but y'know, it would have taken more time with just my mp3's than with iTunes. Now I just have to do the rest! Whee!
Pretty graphics, though. That's one of the biggest reasons I switched out, even though this has a smaller HD, is because it's a faster processor with more memory and a better graphics card. All of this means it'll be so much easier to run my more graphics intensive games, like oh say WoW... Heeh.
Some time in the next year I'll probably be taking advantage of my hubby's work program, they have a partnership with Dell and for a 10% down payment you can finance a computer through the company instead of through Dell directly, and the payments are taken out of paychecks instead of your bank account. Awesome Alienware FTW. I Heart Alienware, and fully intend on getting one someday.
Uhmm.... I think I ran out of things to say. My son is being a whiny-butt and my daughter's playing the Xbox, my hubby's out doing yardwork and both roommates are sleeping. Rawr.
Last night I was up until after 4am just messing with all my music, trying to get it into iTunes without all the damn duplicates (don't know why, but when I added my music it duplicated all 3,000 files, aaahhh!!!), deleting everything, re-adding everything, re-making my playlist, blargle blargle. I wish I could say 'fuckin iPod' but y'know, it would have taken more time with just my mp3's than with iTunes. Now I just have to do the rest! Whee!
Pretty graphics, though. That's one of the biggest reasons I switched out, even though this has a smaller HD, is because it's a faster processor with more memory and a better graphics card. All of this means it'll be so much easier to run my more graphics intensive games, like oh say WoW... Heeh.
Some time in the next year I'll probably be taking advantage of my hubby's work program, they have a partnership with Dell and for a 10% down payment you can finance a computer through the company instead of through Dell directly, and the payments are taken out of paychecks instead of your bank account. Awesome Alienware FTW. I Heart Alienware, and fully intend on getting one someday.
Uhmm.... I think I ran out of things to say. My son is being a whiny-butt and my daughter's playing the Xbox, my hubby's out doing yardwork and both roommates are sleeping. Rawr.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
A Confession (of sorts)
I have something I need to get off my chest. A confession, if you will...
I am, contrary to popular belief, not a true gamer. I mean, I LOVE games, but I don't play them often, or many. I enjoy storylines, cutscenes, even some gameplay, but most games I'm interested in I'm only familiar with second- or third-hand.
For example - one of my favourite game series in the history of games is Kingdom Hearts. I love the story, the battle system, the puzzles, the leveling system, everything about it. How many of them have I played? One. I own all but one (in English, anyway), but I've only ever played the one (which happens to be 358/2 Days), and not even all the way through. But I know the entire series inside and out. Youtube and wiki are my best friends sometimes.
Another such example is Devil May Cry. Okay, so DMC4 I watched my husband play all the way through start to finish, but the others, I've never even picked up except to buy. I'm *going* to play them... someday. In the meantime, I'm content with knowing the story through other people and teh interwebs.
There are few games I actually play that I enjoy. World of Warcraft I used to play *avidly* (unfortunate financial circumstances have prevented me from playing of late, but as soon as I have the extra moolah, I'm right back on US Kargath, baby! FOR THE HORDE!), Sengoku Basara 3 I really enjoy, even though it's fairly simplistic in both storyline and gameplay (but geez is it immersive), and there are some FPS I've enjoyed over the years. Oh, and Minecraft. I don't know if that even counts as a "real" game, but I FUCKING LOVE MINECRAFT. And I'm GOOD at it. I mean, yeah, what's there really to be "good" at, anyway, right? well, let's see YOU build bridges and minecart railways and grand towers of awesome all over the map while zombies are trying to eat your face and creepers are blowing up your shit! Chea, not so easy now, is it? O_O
A good, good friend of mine is trying to get me involved in the Diablo series right now; as soon as I make the switch to my new laptop we're going to co-op DII. That was the condition for getting the pc - I had to play DII with him. Okay, not a big deal. I'm sure I'll enjoy it immensely; I liked the first well enough. I'm probably also going to try my hand at SC/SCII, even though, y'know, I'm awful at strategy games. I'm always the first army out in RISK... planning is definitely not my thing.
But for all that, y'know what? I'm one hell of a critic. Most of the games I love I know so well, inside and out, that I can tell you what's good and bad about each of them. I can tell you gameplay techniques and strategies, Boss fight how-to's, and the best build for the type of character you're going for. I can tell you why certain games suck and others are the bomb, and I'm *always* up for learning about a new release/future release.
Games are INTERESTING, especially the ones with immersive stories. Which is why, even though I'm not a true gamer, I still enjoy the hell out of a wide variety of games.
So, that's my confession. That is all.
I am, contrary to popular belief, not a true gamer. I mean, I LOVE games, but I don't play them often, or many. I enjoy storylines, cutscenes, even some gameplay, but most games I'm interested in I'm only familiar with second- or third-hand.
For example - one of my favourite game series in the history of games is Kingdom Hearts. I love the story, the battle system, the puzzles, the leveling system, everything about it. How many of them have I played? One. I own all but one (in English, anyway), but I've only ever played the one (which happens to be 358/2 Days), and not even all the way through. But I know the entire series inside and out. Youtube and wiki are my best friends sometimes.
Another such example is Devil May Cry. Okay, so DMC4 I watched my husband play all the way through start to finish, but the others, I've never even picked up except to buy. I'm *going* to play them... someday. In the meantime, I'm content with knowing the story through other people and teh interwebs.
There are few games I actually play that I enjoy. World of Warcraft I used to play *avidly* (unfortunate financial circumstances have prevented me from playing of late, but as soon as I have the extra moolah, I'm right back on US Kargath, baby! FOR THE HORDE!), Sengoku Basara 3 I really enjoy, even though it's fairly simplistic in both storyline and gameplay (but geez is it immersive), and there are some FPS I've enjoyed over the years. Oh, and Minecraft. I don't know if that even counts as a "real" game, but I FUCKING LOVE MINECRAFT. And I'm GOOD at it. I mean, yeah, what's there really to be "good" at, anyway, right? well, let's see YOU build bridges and minecart railways and grand towers of awesome all over the map while zombies are trying to eat your face and creepers are blowing up your shit! Chea, not so easy now, is it? O_O
A good, good friend of mine is trying to get me involved in the Diablo series right now; as soon as I make the switch to my new laptop we're going to co-op DII. That was the condition for getting the pc - I had to play DII with him. Okay, not a big deal. I'm sure I'll enjoy it immensely; I liked the first well enough. I'm probably also going to try my hand at SC/SCII, even though, y'know, I'm awful at strategy games. I'm always the first army out in RISK... planning is definitely not my thing.
But for all that, y'know what? I'm one hell of a critic. Most of the games I love I know so well, inside and out, that I can tell you what's good and bad about each of them. I can tell you gameplay techniques and strategies, Boss fight how-to's, and the best build for the type of character you're going for. I can tell you why certain games suck and others are the bomb, and I'm *always* up for learning about a new release/future release.
Games are INTERESTING, especially the ones with immersive stories. Which is why, even though I'm not a true gamer, I still enjoy the hell out of a wide variety of games.
So, that's my confession. That is all.
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