is there a door number three?

You can pick one chocolate from the box. What kind of filling do you hope is inside?

Coconut. Always coconut.

There are these “healthy” snack bars out there that are like Mounds but made by Atkins. Total calories? 170. Calories from fat? 110. Total fat? 12g. Saturated fat? 10g.

Just to compare, Mounds are 230 calories, 120 from fat. 13g total fat, 10g saturated.

So which one do I eat? Neither, because I hardly ever allow myself to eat candy bars. Sad face.

 

day thirty

And we’re done with another NaBloPoMo! What did I learn?

• Coming up with an interesting writing prompt each day for 30 days is challenging.
• The internet has more shitty writing prompts then interesting ones.

For serious. Let’s look at some of the ones that I decided not to use:

Describe your dream vacation.

You only get three crayons to make your picture. Which do you choose?

Animal face-off! Who would win in a fight between a wild turkey and a small pig?

Write a brief piece of fiction using the prompt “Yo-yo.”

I guess that, if you’re a talented writer, you could take any prompt asking for your favorite place to get a cup of coffee or a story about when you had to return a purchase and turn it into something entertaining. But I have nothing worth saying when told to discuss what color I feel like today. So please stop asking.

day twenty-nine

I had a dream a few weeks ago that I sat down to run my Schizo game at Dead of Winter this year and had forgotten to bring just about everything. And I tried to roll with it. I was so relieved when I woke up because the dream was actually me walking through, methodically, how I was going to make due with what I had.

So now I’m just a few days out from playtesting it before the con next week, and I’m not ready. You’d think I would have learned my lesson. But suddenly I have PDFs to fix and photos to print out and things to hole-punch…

But it’s gonna be great. I hope.

day twenty-eight

I saw the other day that one of the search engine terms that lead to my site was “references to drinking in Gatsby.” I’d like to think that my list is the most comprehensive out there.

day twenty-seven

The problem with breaks away from work for more than 3 days is that you start getting used to staying up late and sleeping in and basically just not going to work. Then it’s Sunday evening and suddenly you remember, oh yeah, right, this isn’t really my life. It’s 10pm bedtimes and 5am at the gym and that work thing. But come on, seriously. Regular sleep, being healthy, and earning money? These are good things.

Unless you stop doing them for a while. Then they’re pretty hard to go back to.

day twenty-six

I spent some of my Thanksgiving break at my parents’ house, where they have satellite cable. Pretty much every time I go there I find myself sucked in to some new ridiculous reality show–or two. This time it was Storage Wars and Restaurant Impossible. And did you know that Say Yes to the Dress has a bridesmaids version?

It’s a good thing that I don’t get cable at home.

day twenty-five

Who do you think is going to have more tents up, the Occupiers or the Black Friday shoppers? It saddens me to say that I think it will be the latter.

day twenty-four

So how many people still rattle off facts about tryptophan after eating all that turkey? They think they’re so smart, don’t they? It’s old news, people. Turkey has a chemical that makes you sleepy. But so do other foods. Take it away, science:

L-tryptophan needs to be taken on an empty stomach and without any other amino acids or protein in order to make you drowsy. There’s lots of protein in a serving of turkey and it’s probably not the only food on the table.

It’s worth noting that other foods contain as much or more tryptophan than turkey (0.333 g of tryptophan per 100 gram edible portion), including chicken (0.292 g of tryptophan per 100 gram edible portion), pork, and cheese. As with turkey, other amino acids are present in these foods besides tryptophan, so they don’t make you sleepy.

Maybe it’s the fact that you just had three servings of everything with extra gravy plus a few glasses of wine that’s making you a little sleepy, hm?

Happy Turkey Day. I am so full.

day twenty-three

What holiday traditions does your family celebrate?

She doesn’t seem to care if others join in or not, but my mother always has a slice of pumpkin pie for breakfast the day after Thanksgiving. I follow this tradition as well, but then again I’d have pie for breakfast every damn day if I thought I could get away with it.

day twenty-two

Earlier this year I purchased a new laptop, to replace the one I’d had for the last 5-6 years and had finally slowed to a frustrating crawl. Being unable to afford a new laptop and sitting for 10 minutes every morning while it finally got itself working was a daily reminder of the series of choices that had lead me to being in debt.

But! Now I have a shiny new laptop and a lot less stress. Sometimes, money does actually buy happiness.

Except now of course I’m thinking of how I can afford a desktop computer.

Here’s the thing–I already have the keyboard and monitor. Because when I got my laptop, I was honestly pretty damn disappointed by the letterbox screen. For reals, who is really all that bothered by the lines of black above and below the older style when you full-screen a movie? What it means is that I had to edit photos on a much smaller scale, and some programs have so many toolbars, etc (that unlike in Firefox can’t be hidden) that it limited my viewing space considerably.

Because I have amazing friends, I was gifted a lovely large monitor so I could have a super-cool two-screen system, and also got a free keyboard. And it all more or less fits on my tiny desk.

But it’s a lot of wires. For one, I hate the touchpad mouse that a laptop has. Touchscreens in general never work for me. So I’ve got a mouse attached. And a keyboard. And the monitor. And my speakers.

But I wanted a laptop because I often take it into the living room so I can putter around there while, say, watching 3 or 4 hours straight of Criminal Minds. What? Don’t judge me, I only have so many channels that come in clear (thanks digital cable for taking away “kinda fuzzy but still viewable” channels!) and ION seems to show nothing but Criminal Minds, Ghost Whisperer, and now Monk. And here’s a major White Whine, I know, but gosh it’s annoying to unplug all my external accessories from my laptop so I can use it while watching TV!

So, perhaps a computer tower is something to start saving for. Although in comparison to the immense peace of mind that finally buying a laptop gave me, having peace from wires is really not as important.