The Time I Carved a Storm Trooper Pumpkin

So, a few years back, I decided I wasn't young enough on the inside and wanted to carve a pumpkin. I'd done this before, poorly. I always ended up tossing the pumpkin out of a second-story window and being satisfied that I'd done my part in contributing to Halloween Anarchy. What made this time different? I have a husband who knows how to do stuff and he gives encouragement! Hooray for positive reinforcement!  Alright, lets reminisce together and show you the time I actually successfully carved a pumpkin.

 Here's the pattern. I was supposed to print it out and tape it to the pumpkin but I'm a rebel without a printer so I just used a white piece of paper. Okay okay, I used like 8 sheets of paper before I got it right. Did I tell you that I can't draw either?

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  This pumpkin was about twice the size of my head. That's a totally accurate, scientific measurement.  I figured the paper would hold up against my caveman hands and wet, pumpkin-y insides. Yep.

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 Don't do what I did and do this in the living room on the carpet. That TV table collapsed twice and my butt fell asleep from sitting cross-legged. Oh yeah, make sure your knives are sharp or better yet, get one of those kid's pumpkin carving sets, they're cheap and you aren't going to use them for anything else.

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 This was the fun part, getting to dig around inside the squash. It was really hard to try to dig out with  just my fingernails so I ended up getting a spoon and scraping the insides out. I don't know what this could be good practice for. Taxidermy? Nevermind, that's gross. Hey look! Hockey on TV!!

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  Save these. Put'em in a colander or sieve and run them under cold water, pressing them against the side to separate all the gooey shit from the seeds. Toss the clean seeds on a baking sheet and throw that shit in the oven at 200 degrees for, I don't know, I forgot they were in there and was lucky I didn't burn the apartment down. At this time, take a short break and give your hands a rest because they are about to get fucked.

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  This part was NOT fun. Take a toothpick or something pointy with a good handle on it and prepare to make 10,000 tiny holes. That's right, you gotta poke out the pattern before you can cut it and it makes a dotted pattern on the pumpkin which allows you to tear off the paper. This part is hard to explain, but the end result is to have a copy of the design on the fruit that you can follow with a knife like a really sharp game of connect-the-dots. This part wasn't hard but my hands hurt like six bitches in a bitch boat afterward.



Seriously, I spent the last two periods of the hockey game poking holes in that pumpkin. I wanted to give up, especially because we lived on the second floor and I had a reputation to uphold but my husband told me I could do it and he's usually right so I kept going.


   NO MORE HOLES PLEASE BABY JESUS

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  Yeah, yeah I'm well aware we skipped a whole section. I can't find the pictures. Guess you're just gonna have to figure out how to stick a knife in the thing and follow the dotted pattern from youtube. As long as you aren't trying to cut large lines out quickly you'll do fine. I did. Look at that thing. It's beautiful in the way that ugly dogs are, like, "That's my thing, I made this thing and I approve, it looks mostly like what I meant it to." So I know it's a bit early for this kind of post but if stores are putting out candy I should be able to get away with a little pumpkin fun.  Sorry I didn't cut off any fingers or anything climatic but there's always next year!



  I got a little overboard with the success of the first pumpkin so I got another one. I'm glad I stopped at this one because at $12 a pop, art isn't cheap. I look back and I like them, the pictures are kind of neat but really what I remember is "I spent $24 on a carving of a storm trooper and a deer that is only going to rot away...This is nearly as bittersweet as it gets and I paid for it." The worst part was that no one really got to enjoy them but us. Kids don't even smash them like they used to. I was looking forward to coming out the morning after Halloween to find my little experiment smeared all over the parking lot. It was the first time I'd had a pumpkin worth displaying and no one even bothered to smash it!
  I'll probably do another one maybe this year and do a post on that closer to the real holiday, it was a cool thing to do even if it did take forever, hurt the hands and only last a few days. I like getting flowers, don't I?

Food that's too pretty to eat, a rant.

  

  That's a Bailey's Irish Creme coffee latte. It was delicious. So why did I feel guilty? It was too pretty. 

  So many times I've gone to a really nice restaurant, the food comes and I'm completely emotionally attatched to it. I've named it, figured out where I'm going to display it in my apartment...I think I may need help on that but I don't think I'm completely to blame. Food is just too attractive, it gets served as a feast for the eyes and the stomach and I can't resist!

This sushi?

I didn't get to eat this, a friend ordered it but it looks like a painting! Everything is placed so nicely and it just takes my breath away.  I was instantly thinking "Can I shellac that? How would it hold up over time? Can I order some fake food that looks that good without guests thinking I'm weird?" The answer to all of these questions, after a bit of thinking, is a resounding No. 

  These were at a Mother's Day event I went to at a local restaurant. I regret nothing. I must have stared it them for a very long time before the lady whose guest I was noticed that I was infatuated with them. She was irritable and reminded me that I could take a picture instead of just sitting and staring.  I thought "well, she's absolutely right! If I take a really close-up picture of these then I can call it art and use it as a phone wallpaper!" And so I did that and people think they're fake. They weren't and also were delicious when I finally ate them. 

  How the fuck am I supposed to pick these and make a fucking pie? They're gorgeous!

  This one wasn't too pretty, I just wanted to show you a cake with a giant chocolate penis on it.

  For real, Zebra Cakes? Little hearts? Fuck, I've had these for about two years now and I haven't thrown them out even though they come out every year. I'm kind of attached to these two now like a pair of Twinkees that are riding out the apocalypse.

  This loaf of bread. There's just something that makes me not want to cut into a loaf for the first time. I know it has to be done and I could slice just a little at a time to prolong it but what's the use, once you've cut it, you've cut it.  

  So the point is, I get unnecessarily attached to inanimate objects, especially food. It's a curse. I don't want to bring it home for a pet like a lobster...

I swear. We ate that lobster. 

Cheap French Press Coffee for Dummies

Hey fellow broke people who love coffee! Hope you got your favorite cup today and I'm gonna show you how to make a cheap as fuck cup of coffee that tastes great!
  I used to see french presses in thrift stores all the time. I'd heard they were messy, got coffee all over everything and didn't really filter out the grounds well. I assumed they were only for snobby rich folks who had 15 minutes to spare every day to make coffee and enjoy it. Well, I got one for my birthday this year (New of course) and found that not only do I enjoy the relatively quick process but I've saved money and cut back on how much I drink overall.(so rich!) Anyway, you probably don't care, GET TO THE COFFEE, LADY!!

 Gather the shit.

  You'll need coffee, doesn't need to be expensive. This coffee isn't even this brand, it's $4.00 a bag stuff.

  You'll want your favorite mug, mine holds 2 cups.

  The french press. This one was $9.99 at a major retailer with a red sign. It comes with a carafe (the glass part) and a plunger.

  You'll also want a plastic spoon or a straw or something to stir the grounds with. I got some plastic spoons from a local greasy diner for free.

. Fill your mug with clean water.

                                                                  

     Water fountain, tap, bottle. It doesn't really matter as long as it's clean. I use the mug I'm going to drink out of because it's more convenient than trying to use measuring cups, which often aren't the same volume as a coffee mug. Plus it keeps the mug warm.


 Microwave the water until boiling OR use a kettle on a hot plate or stove.

  Water goes around and around for two minutes in my microwave. I'm kind of glad I don't have a kettle, those things are loud. BOILING, I SAY!


Temper your glass carafe.

   While your water is in the microwave, put some hot tap water in the glass part. You don't want to put near boiling water in cold glass, it could explode! I did this once with some glass coffee mugs and a standard drip machine. Not my favorite mess to clean up after. Kitchen smelled great though.

Dump the temper water and add the grounds.

  The water has boiled and you took it out of the microwave or the stove and set it down for about 20 seconds. you don't have to be super timed, just set it aside while you dump the temper water out of the carafe and put in the grounds. How much grounds? depends on what coffee you have and your taste. For dark roasts a little less than a tablespoon per cup is a good rule of thumb, medium roasts get a full rounded tablespoon and light roasts get the same as medium. It depends on how strong you want it to be. Its going to be a richer coffee than out of a drip machine though so keep that in mind.

Pour the hot ass water in on the grounds.

 It's going to look like this. It's totally fine and you want it to get all foamy like this. If the water isn't hot enough, this won't happen and your coffee will be hard to plunge. It's okay if it looks a little clear like above, the grounds have to steep after you stir them. Yep, that's what the little plastic spoon or straw is for! This is called "Blooming" the coffee. It means the grounds start to swell with water and exude coffee.

Stir it a little



Now we swish it to break up the mat of grounds that forms at the top a few seconds after you put the coffee in. See how much darker it is now? Sweet. Okay, you stirred it a little now what?

Put the lid on carefully and walk the fuck away for 2 minutes.

   Put the lid on but don't push down the plunger just yet. The plunger shouldn't just go sliding down when you put the lid on but be careful anyway and hold it up. If it's really bad about it, it's not getting a good seal inside and it's going to make grainy coffee. Now, walk away from it. Go get your phone, pet the cat, gather cream and sugar if you want it, just don't touch the coffee for 2 minutes or maybe 3 if you like it really strong. You will be tempted, I believe in you!

PLUNGE TIME!!!

  Take off the lid, swish the grounds one more time to ensure a clean plunge!
  Put the lid back on and slowly push down,
down,
  all the way down till it stops. See all the foam is still there, YUM!

Pour!

  I couldn't hold the button down when I took this picture but hold the lid when you pour so you don't get any grounds in the cup. This is my favorite part because I feel like a princess or a lady at court.

BAM COFFEE!!

  Thanks to using the mug itself as a measuring cup, you pour the perfect amount, every time. There's even some of that foam on top. Does it make the coffee taste better? I don't have any scientific proof that it does but my human brain likes to see it very much.  The timing? From start to finish it takes about 5 minutes to brew, about as much time as it takes a drip machine. The two longest steps are boiling the water and the steeping. you can go do other stuff during those times.

 Well, that's how easy it is to make french press coffee. You can buy them for pretty cheap up to 8 cup carafes. I'm the only one in the house who drinks the stuff so I only need one cup. You also make yourself look really fancy when you do it and it impresses just about anyone.  Have fun and Stay WIRED!!!! 

A collection of amusing images

Want to see some stuff I found that I thought was chuckle-worthy? Okay!

Here, we see a local cereal, Jordy Flakes. This guy is Jordy Nelson, a football player for the Green Bay Packers. I thought it should be Aaron Rogers Flakes but whatever, I'm not even from here. They're better than the original, sweeter, more corny and a heavier flake than the Tiger kind.

Of course Darth would light a cigarette this way, if you owned one it would be the only way you lit anything.

 

 Here's a baby possum in an ash bucket. Fucker wouldn't move so I just assumed he had a habit, we had no argument with each other and I went back inside peacefully. 

 When a pickle in your Bloody Mary just isn't enough, I spotted this guy with an entire hamburger on his. 

Okay, I lied. This isn't amusing, it's terrifying. 

 This is a curling iron. No, it's not a pleasure wand. Really. It gets super hot, don't get it near things you love like your genitals.

That moment when the cat thinks there's something tasty in your hair and you kind of freak out. This was the dumbest cat I ever knew. One day I will tell you about him.

From RPG to FPS, A Lady's Tale

Yeah. That's me. 

  I was 18 and I had JUST finished loading up Kingdom Hearts for the first time. I had moved across the country, was away from all the people who had ever known me and just trying to figure out who I was. I had been playing games since Sonic 2 on Genesis and that moment just seemed to be the apex of all the FMVs and emotions I'd ever feel while playing, so, I decided to get a tattoo. At the time, I was only interested in 70+ hour, puzzle filled epics where you felt like you'd saved a whole world and lived a life when finished. The escapism was strong back then. 

  I lived a life like I had videogame bi-polar. I was incredibly happy while saving worlds and learning magic. I was important to all the little NPCs and the stories followed very predictable patterns. I like patterns very much. Then, I would be incredibly depressed until the next game came out and I could dive back into that world instead of the real one. I was a nobody in the real world.

  I was terrible at first person style shooters. My hand-eye coordination is like both of my eyes are on the same side of my head. I'll knock a glass off the table while trying to pick it up and footballs seem to teleport through the air until they hit me in the face. I'm just not good at depth perception and spatial relations. When I played shooters the crosshairs inevitably end up in the upper, right-hand corner and my guy ends up on the floor. Game Over.

  

 My husband is a major SOCOM fan. The developers, Zipper, went out of business so there hasn't been a SOCOM shooter since the PS3. I tried playing when we first got together but playing RPGs leaves you with another hurdle: buttons. 

 I was used to using maybe two out of like eight buttons. There's X for action and O for cancel. That's all you need to swing a space sword at Marlboros. FPS' have like four uses for eighteen combinations. It was like learning another language, hard, so I gave up. 

 Summer of 2013, E3. Destiny was announced and was the baby, the golden boy and the winner of that mythical show of gaming splendor.  I was balls-deep in a replay of Crisis Core for the PSP.  My husband announced that this was going to be his SOCOM replacement. Okay. I thought, "This looks pretty good. I've not really tried to play shooters. I've got to train before this game comes out!"

 So I started training. I started with Fallout 3. It's a shooter but it also has a targeting system that makes it nearly the same as a turn-based RPG. Good story, karma system, perfect transition. I felt like beating that game was a huge step. 

  The next game was Red Dead Redemption. More targeting but in a way that forced me to actually use the sticks to aim. Great story, very engaging and absolutely draining. I actually needed a few weeks off after that one because I was so affected by the way it ended but I was closer to actually being able to play a shooting game on console than I'd ever been!

 Grand Theft Auto V. I thought I was ready, I really did!  If I thought I was bad before, I was even worse now! I was constantly fighting the lock-on system, failing missions and had totally forgotten that the only thing I hated more than FPSs was driving. I drove and died more than I ever had. In the first couple of days I died in GTAV more than I had collectively since I was 7. Bodies were smeared over whatever car I chose and horns honked at me and gang members were deadly at hitting me while I was driving. 

  I refused to give up. I stayed up late, retrying missions and flying planes until I finally started getting it. After a while, I could shoot AND drive. Targeting was my friend again and realizing that cars acted realistically in most cases led me to actually enjoying myself. I thought I was ready!!

  Summer 2014, husband is playing the Beta for Destiny. I'm saving up for my own PS3 so that I can play co-op with him. He's doing really well and getting set up with clanmates. A couple of days after the first DLC drops, I'm ready. I've got my Playstation, headset and some motivation.  

                 (That's my hunter!)

 You guys, Destiny has crosshair reset. When I let go of the sticks, the reticle goes back to screen center. HOLY SHIT HOLD THE 📞, the crosshair just snaps back to true! I wish I could explain it well but this is really the key to making this game fun for me. I like being challenged but I don't like it when I have to be super on top of my game at all times to make it function let alone be good at it.

  Destiny has all the earmarks of a good RPG, character creation (I'm being pretty liberal here, it's not very detailed), leveling, gear management and upgrading, shops, boss fights and fancy cloaks. Yep, as a hunter I get to wear the snazziest neck rags since the Elizabethans but they're very practical of course, I swear.  The point is, is that Destiny was very approachable with concepts I could understand. I'm not saying I'm dumb, I'm saying that it really wasn't the same as going from Skyrim to Call of Duty.  I wasn't expecting it so when I was able to get through the first few missions on my own and didn't get pasted every time I rounded a corner I was motivated to keep trying.  

  Learning to use all the buttons on the controller was probably the next hardest thing, fortunately, there are a lot of places to just run around in a sandbox to make all the mistakes I needed to get the muscle memory down. It didn't hurt that the control scheme is already pretty good. I never liked for my "shoot" button to be X. It should always be a shoulder button.  I threw a lot of grenades at my own feet and blew myself up with a rocket launcher more than was totally necessary but it didn't take long at all to become "good" at the PvE portion. 

I don't want to talk about the crucible. That's the PvP section. That's where everyone splits into teams and tries to kill each other as quickly as possible. You can only hear the people who opt in to voice chat or who are on your fireteam so at least there's no one screaming about teabagging my little sister or little kids playing who really shouldn't be. I had played a ton of campaign so I was all thinking "Let me at'em! I'll murderize'm!" 

 

 Yeah no. So much no. All of the no.

  I died so very much that heaven could be populated if each of my corpses had a soul. I could have accounted for half of New York with how many times I got perfectly sniped from so far away I'd need to rent a telescope to catch his name. I lost a lot of bravado that day but I got better. It's either that or not play half the time or receive half the loot! 

  I'm decent now, I can average a 1.0 k/d so for someone who isn't really interested in that area of play I can hold my own on a team. Especially 6v6. Yep. No, I'm not camping and getting in cheap shots, not at all...

  So I guess that here in 2016 you could say that I bought a Playstation just to play Destiny. I did have games I wanted to keep playing but there's always something I could be doing in Destiny. I already finished those. I can no longer go back and devote 40-60 hours on an RPG anymore, it just seems so tedious! I find myself just wanting to run around and shoot stuff. 

  I'm getting off the subject and I tend to ramble. I'll go into depth with more Destiny stuff in another post but I just wanted to share the experience I had with being so in love with one genre and finding out that I have a burning hot affair with another. I also want to get into the time I spent playing GTAV so there's a lot to say!  Thanks for reading and feel free to share your story in the comments or don't, your choice.

  

Things I Like

I like a lot of weird stuff but it comes from being raised in the millennial generation like a Gen X-er. My parents didn't say I shouldn't or should do anything. If I wanted to do it, I just did it till I got tired of it. Hey everyone's a little off. 😔

  So anyway, here's a few items, see if they jive with yours and if they do, stick around and maybe more stuff will happen that you'll like too.

In No Particular Order:

Headlamps on cars that have wipers. Practical yet silly as hell!

Magnets. I fucking love magnets. I can be happy for hours with some ferrous materials and polarized magnets!

Cows. So many things to like about cows, they're like big doofuses that are cute and delicious. It's possible to think something's kind of adorable and yet still like steaks. I don't think that's weird, no, not at all!

Turtles and tortoises. All tortoises are turtles but not all turtles are tortoises.

  I have turtles as pets so this one is pretty obvious. It does lead to a lot of turtle...things...showing up at my house. One day soon I'll post that collection and it will probably be the longest post I ever make.

Awful, tacky, unloved clothing. This gem is pink and silver leather with wool sleeves. SO, so, so bad. So good. Send pictures of tacky clothing to me, I love it!

Fishing. I like panfish the best but I am known to try for trouts and walleyes as well. Panther Martin Spinners, #2 TruTurn hooks and a lot of gummy baits! I want to raise my own worms someday and I have a certain interest in African Hot Worms. Look it up!

 Video games. I fucking love video games. I'm a Sony-Nintendo kind of girl and I prefer to keep my Microsoft relationship strictly on my desktop. Right now I'm playing Destiny and it doesn't look like I'll be stopping that anytime soon. I'll dig into the transition from Role Playing Games to First Person Shooters sometime.

 I'm a closet otaku. Not quite a weeabo since I neither wear stuff out in public anymore nor do I exclaim in cringy ways. A part of me will miss doing that and I look at pictures of Cons with longing and people in cosplay never fail to attract my attention. Sigh

This is my favorite thing. I've been happily married to a strong, smart, nerdy man and we've been causing trouble for the past 11 years. We are perfectly suited to each other, have no children by choice and go on all kinds of adventures! I guess I'll have to start writing those down...