Space Marine and Dragonwrangler Bar & Grill

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zanzjan

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Also: Hi, folks. Sorry I haven't been around much lately. Life's being kinda crappy for me, so I've been mostly hiding. Hope y'all are well and writing like the mad, brilliant fiends I know you all are. :)
 

Fenika

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Also: Hi, folks. Sorry I haven't been around much lately. Life's being kinda crappy for me, so I've been mostly hiding. Hope y'all are well and writing like the mad, brilliant fiends I know you all are. :)

Never forgive you. Don't keep leaving us. Everyone keeps leaving me.

I may forgive you if you bump my nice Art of riding thread in OP. ;)
 

eyeblink

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Good evening Cantina. Review of 1700 words and a further 900 words of SS today, so that's enough for one day. Saw Zero Dark Thirty this evening, so that's 10/10 for the Best Picture Oscar nominees ahead of the ceremony - the first time I've ever managed that.

Overall, a good day. And now it's 1am and time for bed.
 

jallenecs

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Holy crap! Three hours in the tax office, trying to get our income taxes done and out of our hair. They were packed to the moon with other early filers, and they have THE WORST CHAIRS in Christendom! By the end of it, my back was spasming so badly that I couldn't draw a full breath.

But it's done and dusted, and I don't have to worry about it for another year. Back home, with something warm to drink (hot cocoa, for the win!), nice friendly medication, and a book to read. So the evening is at least going to end on a high note!
 

_Sian_

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I heard the news about the boy here first, then NPR.

Future Girl: covering America's headlines first!

Lol. Probably has to do with you guys being asleep, or settling down for the night, while it was only 9ish here. Radio was on :)

Let me see what I can do tonight. Mainly, I just need to nose to grindstone and get this done so I can then get it fixed.

^ is me.
 

AbielleRose

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Also: Hi, folks. Sorry I haven't been around much lately. Life's being kinda crappy for me, so I've been mostly hiding. Hope y'all are well and writing like the mad, brilliant fiends I know you all are. :)

ZAAAAAAANZ! *tacklehugs*

Holy crap! Three hours in the tax office, trying to get our income taxes done and out of our hair. They were packed to the moon with other early filers, and they have THE WORST CHAIRS in Christendom! By the end of it, my back was spasming so badly that I couldn't draw a full breath.

But it's done and dusted, and I don't have to worry about it for another year. Back home, with something warm to drink (hot cocoa, for the win!), nice friendly medication, and a book to read. So the evening is at least going to end on a high note!

Yuck! Glad that's all over with for you! Your evening sounds relaxing and awesome.
 

Raventongue

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Hi folks :) So not only did I fix the fusebox issues myself... I did so after my neighbour who usually fixes things tried and failed twice. :D This makes me exceedingly happy.

I also just had the best muffin ever. On the bottom and inside, it was as fresh and soft as you can get without being gooey, and on the top it was as crisp as you can get without being burnt. NOM.
 

Raventongue

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Okay, maybe for someone with a serious sweet tooth stuff that tastes good is bad for you.

Surely not everything that tastes good to you is sweet. How about pizza? It may not be super-healthy, but that's all fat and salt, not sugars.

Besides, what people call a sweet tooth is, on a biological level, more accurately called a sugar addiction. Like any other addiction, it can be broken- few if any folks are ever truly doomed to choose between feeling cruddy + aging poorly due to bad diet vs. eating things that don't taste good their whole lives.

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now, before it stops being helpful and starts being annoying.
 

lilyWhite

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That is a good idea: banana bread muffins! =^_^=

Today has been a most productive day! I wrote a chapter and a half, stocked the house up with plenty of goodies, and started on introducing my girlfriend to the MOTHER series. (She's a little better at EarthBound than the Mass Effect games. Emphasis on the "little".)

Methinks I'll run until midnight writing, then throw myself into bed. Ah, sweet serenity. =^_^=
 

Raventongue

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Aaaaand it's Multiquote-Woman to the rescue!

I just saw on the news that King Richard III was supposedly uncovered beneath a parking lot in the U.K.

And they're supposedly making some distant relative of his pay a fortune in parking fees... :Wha:

I've only ever seen two types of boxes... circuit breaker boxes with leavers you switch back and forth--those are easy. If you know which breaker, you switch it off, and then on. They look like leavers.

Scary scary boxes with actual fuses... those you need to buy an actual fuse and insert it. The ones I saw screw in. They were round.

It turned out to be the second kind, but I actually think I'd have been more intimidated by the switches. My dad, who is sort of a jack-of-all trades with all kinds of electronics and computers and shizz, once showed a fuse to me up close when I mistook it for a lightbulb (I was 6).

Once we knew a dead fuse was at fault it was an easy fix. My beautiful little attic unit is so small that it only has two of the fuses in the box- Tom had trouble because the only one he knew was mine was the working one. I went in and figured out which was my other one on the first try (go me!!), and now it's labelled for future reference. And then I looked at the broken one and wrote down the size in case I ever need to buy one- they're 15s.

Fuses blow well before their lifespan in the house for some reason (outdated circuitry, I'm told). Apparently so often that we, as in all the tenants of the three apartments in the building, communally keep a spare fuse or two on hand at all times, which the landlady is responsible for supplying. I shouldn't be so shy- could have gotten fixed much faster if I had just gone and knocked on the neighbours' doors to tell 'em my outlets were doing funny things. I mean, I did bake them cookies :D

I almost wish I could get mah Daddeh to teach me everything he knows about tech shit, but I know he learned so much of it through trial and error that even if he had the patience and whatnot it would still be flat-out impossible to teach it to anyone.

King in a Carpark in the name of my next band.

I have only one thing to say to that: :e2headban !

Given that one item on your list would make me dead, I'll go with "sometimes".

:roll: ... Good point. Okay, I amend that to "not everything that tastes good is waist-widening, artery-clogging, or diabetes-inducing".

Is it the shrimp?

One of my close friends, her mom is allergic to celery. Of all things, celery. She found out when she was standing around eating celery with three of her kids and a family friend, and she said something like, "I like celery, but I don't like the way it numbs your mouth. Or how it tastes kind of like hot sauce. Or the funny feeling you get in your throat afterward." ... Thankfully, it must have been a mild allergy.

The same friend is dating a guy who's allergic to chocolate- not some additive in the chocolate, but the actual cocoa. I suppose this means he could eat white choc, but he doesn't.

There's also one of the ladies in the Halifax writers' group who has a deathly peanut allergy... And is dating a guy with a slightly less deadly but still serious peanut allergy. They joke that if worse came to worse he could be the canary to test food before her.

They got the 5 yr old boy that was a hostage in alabama out. I'm so very happy. That just made my day :D

I'm mega glad he's out safe! Yikes.

Oh man... I did not even know there was a hostage situation. I have really been living under a rock without internet at home or any kind of phone, I honestly suspect I now get most of myt non-local news from the Cantina. Wow. Time to start checking the CBC website every morning or something.

I'm now hoping that nothing embarassing will happen to my corpse. ._.

I'm more concerned with nothing grotesque and potentially painful happening to my body until after it's a corpse. Of course, knowing the laws of fate, this will likely mean nothing embarassing will happen to my body but loads of painful things will happen to me before I die, while you'll have a low-pain life and pain-free death after which something terribly embarassing happens to your corpse.

Oh, my poor giftee. :(

Despite my story actually being close to finished, I feel the same way based on quality. I shouldn;t have signed up for a short story swap... But then when the hell is there ever going to be a novel swap? :D

Saw Zero Dark Thirty this evening, so that's 10/10 for the Best Picture Oscar nominees ahead of the ceremony - the first time I've ever managed that.

What did you think of it? I saw it an was a little disappointed, though not nearly as much as I was about Hurt Locker. I've heard a lot about Hurt Locker not being nearly as accurate as it's said to be, but being who and where I am, I am not qualified to confirm or deny it. I just didn't like the storycraft and I found the filming style to be a cheap gimmick.

Still better than Avatar.
 
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Raventongue

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Ack, I have less than ten minutes to get to the nearest bus stop! Silly Halifax creating the illusion of everything closer together than it really is due to having so many long, straight streets!

Toodles, Cantinafolks :) May be back if I miss my bus.
 

zanzjan

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So not only did I fix the fusebox issues myself... I did so after my neighbour who usually fixes things tried and failed twice.

Awesome! :)

Is it the shrimp?

Actually no, although I know a number of folks with shellfish allergies. It's the stuffed peppers.

I know someone allergic to garlic, and another friend allergic to ginger. I'll stick with my allergy over either of those, any day.
 

bettielee

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Yup! A friend of mine who's now at the Uni of Leicester (that's like 'lester' for non-UK folks) was working on that dig. They've been pretty sure of it for months, but I guess they've got pretty definitive proof now. It was really exciting when they first found the bones, too! :)

yeah, I remember hearing about this months ago... then I was like, didn't we already hear about that? But - it's good they got the proof....

and I've heard the lady in charge of the dig has written a movie script and alledgedly, Richard Armitage has agreed to star.

and hello everyone! I'm trying to get out of a snit.
 

aliwood

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Morning :Sun:

So I had a bad dream last night, and realised towards teh end that I was dreaming. So I stuck a good ending on it. Go me!

Today I am going to pretend that I am a writer. :e2writer:

:Coffee:
 

10trackers

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Morning.

*grumbles at super early parcel delivery guy*

Today is the day we celebrate the one who gave the world much awesomeness: my mom. :D
 

eyeblink

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[Zero Dark Thirty]

What did you think of it? I saw it an was a little disappointed, though not nearly as much as I was about Hurt Locker. I've heard a lot about Hurt Locker not being nearly as accurate as it's said to be, but being who and where I am, I am not qualified to confirm or deny it. I just didn't like the storycraft and I found the filming style to be a cheap gimmick.

Still better than Avatar.

(not really spoilers as ZDT is based on historical events)

Oh certainly, and if James Cameron had beaten Kathryn Bigelow to Best Director that year, I would have been throwing things. I've followed her since I saw The Loveless, Near Dark and Blue Steel back in the 80s - a hugely able director without any doubt. Much has been said about her rather macho taste in subject matter, but who are we to tell someone what they should write and/or make films about?

As for Zero Dark Thirty, it's a very well made film that didn't feel like the two and a half hours it was on. I appreciate that it didn't take some of the more commercial shortcuts it could have done, which possibly means that for some of its audience it didn't knock it out of the park. I'm not qualified to comment on accuracy, but on the other hand I am aware that characters had to be composited and other forms of dramatic licence had to be taken to tell this story in this time.

I didn't find it as jingoistic as some people are claiming - in fact it explicitly questions whether the end justifies the means. And the very last shot is anything but triumphalist - it's of Maya (Jessica Chastain), after Bin Laden has been apprehended and killed, absolutely drained and in tears.

In the light of conversations going on elsewhere on AW, a couple of things occured to me. In the YA forum there's a thread which involves talk of the "fridging" trope (the dead girls thread). Interesting that a major motivation in the (female) protagonist's goal is the death of another female character about an hour in. But that's not really fridging as (and there's been a thread on this recently) the film passes the Bechdel Test quite easily. Maya and her friend Jessica do have conversations about subjects other than men - and that's leaving out when they talk about their work to each other, as that work does involve men (hunting down Bin Laden and his cohorts). Also Maya has a brief conversation with another female CIA operative in one scene who says that she admires her.

Also nice to see a female lead not weighed down with romantic subplots to make her "relatable". Jessica Chastain is excellent, and may get the Best Actress Oscar this weekend...if Jennifer Lawrence doesn't get it. That's one category where I'm unsure who will win, but it will be one of those two.

Today is the day we celebrate the one who gave the world much awesomeness: my mom. :D

It's my Mum's birthday too! Are you the Dutch sister I never knew I had?
 
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