Zorac's LiveJournal

So, finally here's my opportunity to bore you all with details of what I've been doing for the last month or so. Well, selected highlights thereof. This being part the first, so hopefully windows can do less damage than when it crashed and lost the whole lot...

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Examples of recent t00bularity:

1. Remember to check public transport availability before booking flights
   So, I booked my flights to the south of France to spend Christmas with the parentals around a month ago. Last night I got around to checking train times, and discovered that there are no trains from Birmingham to Oxford after my flight gets in. Arg! I am left with two options: train to London, coach to Oxford - this is doable and in fact gets me home at a not too indecent hour (provided everything runs on time) - or a taxi from the airport all the way home (I feel my wallet melting at the prospect of that).

2. The lid stays firmly on the cocktail shaker, but the cap doesn't
   A couple of days ago, I was experimenting with home-grown cocktails again. I know my shaker holds together well (indeed, it's sometimes difficult to get the bottom and top apart afterwards), but one does need to hold the cap that goes over the strainer in place while shaking. Can you guess what happens next, boys and girls?
   Corrollary: Experimenting with making your cocktails pretty colours does not necessarily result in tasty flavours. Curaco + grenadine does make a fine purple colour, but not a flavour I'm in a hurry to repeat.

3. When planning to make chilli, it helps to buy chilli powder
   Er... yes.
   Corrollary: The stuff in that strange bag in the back of the cupboard labelled "Chilli" is probably much hotter than the mild chilli powder you normally get.

This weekend I had my first experience of Thanksgiving, thanks to the wonderful hermorrine. I flew out on Wednesday afternoon and caught the red-eye back on Sunday night, so it was a nice long stay. Thanksgiving itself involved a not inconsiderable amount of cooking - with me acting as sous-chef (making myself useful and trying not to get in the way too much) and turkey-chef (well, there's a first time for everything). Starvation was fended off with cheese (having completely forgot about it last time), as dinner was heading for around 6pm. We had roast turkey with stuffing, green bean casserole and sweet potatoes. The pumpkin pie we put off (for reasons of time and space) until after we got back from the cinema (Love Actually). Yum!

Friday had a much later start (not having turkey to contend with, and also having no great desire to catch the 6am start of the sales), so when we headed out, lunch was the first stop (at Steak 'n Shake, where we had ...er... Steakburgers 'n Shakes). After this, we went shopping for pants (that is, trousers) - hermorrine had heard about my difficulty finding trousers that fit and had selflessly volunteered to help out, in particular with getting me into a pair of jeans (something I haven't worn for many a long year). After that, it was the cinema again (The Haunted Mansion) and then to the store (to stock up on Dew and Reese's, plus getting more immediate necessities).

Saturday featured a Super Sekrit. After that, we had time to kill, and ended up in Starbucks (my first time, despite their omnipresence) before our final cinema trip of the weekend (Brother Bear). After that, we had some rather fine Italian food at Luigi's House (and yes, the Portillo name continues to amuse me). Sunday was a quiet day at home , watching some DVDs (X2, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas and the final part of The 10th Kingdom). Alas, all to soon, it was time to head off to O'Hare to catch the last 'plane home.

If I was evil, I would simply post a strong recommendation to all the Oxford folk that they pop down to G&D's and try out the Devil's Chocolate ice-cream.
If I was evil.

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Dear Mr. Sainsbury,
I frequently purchase from your supermarkets small packets of minced beef with which to make my exciting cuisine. Alas, of late, said item appears to be all to often out of stock, reducing me to the lazy-man's option of a ready meal. On the subject of ready meals, You seem to be making more and more of them that are for two people. Isn't that defeating the object of the exercise? Not to mention discriminating against those of us with only one mouth to feed.
Yours Unimpressedly,
zorac

Dear Sandwich Vendors,
Lettuce belongs in salad, and even then requires a nice vinaigrette dressing. It is not nice in sandwiches. Please stop putting lettuce in virtually every sandwich you make, just for the hell of it. And don't tell me to pick it out if I don't like it - even if I do, that limp lettuce taste remains. And don't even get me started on lettuce in with burgers or other hot things...
Yours Frustratedly,
zorac

Dear Apple,
Panther has the best (and most useful) eye candy ever. You rock.
Yours Fanboyishly,
zorac

It's been so long since I last did a big whopper of an RL update that I've almost forgotten how. Or perhaps not. Here follows a tale of two weekends and many movies.

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Sometimes Y!M conversations ramble across the strangest topics. An example is included below for your elucidation:

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So, in case you hadn't guessed from the above, I'm off to the windy city on Friday. Squeee!

So along with the irksome work crises, there have been some upsides in the last couple of days. Somehow I managed to get the spare room cleared out and the flat into some semblance of order before Mum arrived on Friday night. We cooked up a nice steak dinner and watched a DVD. Yesterday, we trundled into town to scour the charity shops, and our luck was in - there was a book sale outside Oxfam HQ in Summertown. Between that and the shops there, we picked up a fair few books, and I garnered an original edition of Trivial Pursuit. Lunch was at Pierre Victoire - their usual excellent deal, £8.90 for a three course meal. After this, we went to the pictures to see Down With Love, then home. After tea, we pursued trivialities until the crises returned once more.

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On Saturday, we didn't get up until quite late, so I only ended up seeing one talk in the morning, although I did do some browsing of Kompulsive Alley. Lunch followed much the same pattern as Friday - low scores for the food (a cottage pie and Bertie Bott's) and high scores for the speaker. Ari Rapkin gave a very interesting multimedia talk about how ILM work some of their magic - the cloth simulation being her particular area of expertise. Plenty of nifty clips, including Dobby out-takes and naked!Yoda.

In the afternoon I only went to one talk - a very enthusiastic Steve Vander Ark and angiej on the Past, Present and Future of the Wizarding World - see The Harry Potter Lexicon. I also actually did some shopping - picking up a copy of the Gnome TossFling game for $5, a couple of books (one HP related, one not) and a magic wand - soon to appear in an icon for voldie_zorac. There was also the entertaining Fandom Squares for those of us skipping the Founders' Feast.

In the evening, hermorrine and I took advantage of our money-off coupons for the buffet at Gulliver's - which was nice, particularly in getting to have multiple desserts! I got bullied into putting footwear on by the safety-paranoid staff (it's a fair cop) and had my photo taken with Goofy. Later on, we hosted a game of Trivial Pursuits, where I showed off my lack of knowledge of American Sports and History and expetesso showed off her strength at snapping corkscrews (the one we were sent up was obviously a touch flimsy - on the second attempt, the hotel sent up a Cast Member armed with a more heavy duty one).

Friday was the first day of formal programming, so it was up bright and early to grab donuts for breakfast with the first talk. I caught a full morning of talks, all of them interesting, with the highlight being Dr. Roger Highfield's on The Science of Harry Potter (such that I was inspired to pick up a copy of his book). I also enjoyed talks on Fandom History (having missed most of it) and Fanwords (despite t00b only getting one tangential mention).

The lunch was rather disappointing (soup, plain salad and a cookie), but Judith Krug's Keynote was both interesting and informative (as well as being entertaining). I did know that the HP books had been the target of banning campaigns, but I wasn't previously aware that they were so overwhelmingly the most popular choice. I was pleased to hear, however, that most banning attempts ended in failure. It also reminded me of a TV advert/infomercial I saw earlier in the trip in which a guy asks about a book in a library only to find that it has been banned. The librarian demands his name, and when he refuses and tries to leave, he is approached by to serious-looking men. The tagline was along the lines of how it's great that America is Free (and not like that). Oh, the irony.

The afternoon programming was mostly taken up by the Slash Panel and the one on "Can Draco Malfoy Be Redeemed?" These had been moved to the Great Hall on the grounds of expected attendance - which must have numbered several hundred. Both panels were very interesting, with plenty of good points raised. Some of the audience participation was a touch irksome with people just spouting a long speech on Their Opinion - I kept wanting to say "And your question was..?", but all-in-all it was good.

Next up was the Quidditch. I was playing for the San Juan Seagulls (a.k.a. John's All Stars), along with Captain queerasjohn, aegeus, sternel, thethrillisgone, ursamajr and vlamidala. The game was fast and frantic, but great fun. We eventually lost 60-160, owing to the entire randomness of catching the Snitch (and I've heard rumours that the other team's Seeker had inside information), but claimed a moral victory ;-)

In the evening, it was the FictionAlley birthday bash over at the Copa Banana in the not-a-Dolphin, so for variety's sake, we decided to have dinner at when of the restaurants over there. Big mistake. To start with, no one came to seat us so eventually we picked our own table - the only one that had actually been cleared. No menus were forthcoming so eventually I got up and snagged some from behind the cash register. After we'd been sitting there for the best part of a quarter hour, one of the waitresses deigned to come and take our order - but it was a good ten minutes before even our drinks came, and considerably longer before we got food.

To add to the evening's entertainment, the not-a-Dolphin Fountain decided to live up to its name - without warning, a waterspout appeared out of the floor (we heard someone at a nearby table suggest that the basilisk was attacking). Thankfully, it wasn't close to where we were seated, but other diners were less fortunate - water continued to bubble up for some time until maintenance turned up to fix it. There was no great surprise when the check also took a long time to arrive after we requested it.

The party itself was great fun - nmalfoy spinning the disks, queerasjohn single-mindedly trying to glitter the entire fandom and "mischief maker" drinks in FictionAlley cups. I indulged in much t00by dancing (including my popular Mact00bage number, the Time Warp), proving along the way that despite being male and straight (and thus in a tiny minority), I can still sing along to the entirety of It’s Raining Men and will shamelessly request Y.M.C.A. Thankyouverymuch...