*hugs ninhursag and britomart_is* Thank you so much for the pretty snowflakes! They totally turned around what up to that point was a pretty miserable day.

I mean, here I was, feeling grumpy, surfing the web at the car dealership, while waiting for my car to be looked at so they could tell me that they would need to change all my tires and completely bankrupt me or something. And I then I saw the messages about the snowflakes, and immediately, the guy from the dealership appeared, as if by magic, and gave me a bill for $0.00 and the keys to my car, and told me that there was nothing wrong with my car except that one of the tires was a little low on air, and they filled it up a tiny bit and now everything works fine.

(... *cough* In my defense, I actually did try to fill my tires up with air myself before I drove all the way to the car dealership, but the dealership must have some kind of magical air, because my attempts accomplished nothing except wasting 75 cents in quarters, and theirs fixed everything, for *free*!)

I choose to believe that the snowflakes were magic, and they forced the car dealership to fix my car for free, yay! So, thank you for that. *g*

But seriously, the snowflakes completely unexpected, and it made me very happy to get them, and I keep going back to my profile page to stare at them. Thank you, ninhursag and britomart_is! ♥♥♥


This post was crossposted from Dreamwidth, where there are comments. You can comment here or there, if you wish.

OK, so every time I go for a trip somewhere, especially somewhere new, I like to take a lot of pictures, sometimes of people I know, but most of the time just of things around me that catch my attention. (It's much easier to take pictures of inanimate objects than people, after all, and running after people and begging them to stop in every place I want to photograph gets old really fast.)

And every time I do this, I can pretty much guarantee you that at some point in the trip, there will probably be at least one person who will inevitably take it upon themselves to explain to me how useless it is to take pictures without people, and how those pictures are just a waste of space, and how one can always buy postcards or professional photographs that would be much better than anything I could take, and how taking pictures without people is just completely pointless.

And... I just don't understand that! Yes, of course a professional photographer would take better pictures than I would. But then they wouldn't be my pictures! They wouldn't make me remember what it felt like for me to be in all those places, wouldn't bring back the wonder I felt that compelled me to take them in the first place.

But apparently, none of those reasons are considered good enough to want to take pictures of my own without people I know. So, I'm generally forced to admit that the main reason I take all those pictures is that I know it will make me happy to see them later. (Which apparently also isn't a good enough reason for me to take all those pictures, but it's at least generally enough to convince people that I'm too crazy to argue with, so they leave me alone. *g*)

So (heh) to prove to those people who don't believe me that there are pictures without people I've taken that I still like, even years later, I decided to make a small picspam of some pictures I took on my trip to Italy last year that still make me happy whenever I see them come up on my random picture Picasa screensaver at home.

So, here are some pictures I took in Italy last year:

( Pictures from my trip to Italy last year )

So in conclusion, I think that "because it will make me happy to see them later" is a perfectly good reason to take any pictures I want with my own camera, for my own use. I am a little puzzled that there are actually people who don't seem to agree with that.

*goes back to look at the pictures some more, and remember how much I loved that trip* ♥

OK, so I've finally given in to peer pressure gave up trying to resist all of those extreme reactions I could see outside the cuts and watched the new Torchwood mini-series all in one sitting this weekend. And having watched all of it, I've got to say -- I find myself in the interesting position of disagreeing with pretty much *every* reaction to it, both positive and negative, that I've read so far. I mean, I've gotten sort of used to being completely out of step with fandom in the last few years, but I think this might be the first time I've disagreed with everyone I know. This might actually be a new record. *rolls eyes*

( Spoilers for the whole series. Don't read if you don't want to be spoiled. )

( There is a gay porn sculpture in the foyer by the front entrance to my apartment building. )

ETA: ( And here, by popular demand, is the pictorial evidence. )

I only have one thing to say about the Prison Break series finale...

( Well, OK, maybe more than one thing. *g* (spoilers for the whole episode) )

Also, thanks to tassosss's awesome SPN/Jericho crossover, I have gotten addicted to Jericho, all over again. I've been rewatching it from the beginning, and I've forgotten how much I love this show. Jake! Hawkins! So much love! ♥

OK, like pretty much everyone on my flist, I have five Dreamwidth invites to give out, so if anyone still needs one, let me know. I would be happy to give one to anyone who asks. :)

And now, on to my regularly-scheduled post. *g*

( Using the Wii to watch Hulu and video .avi files on my TV )

And in conclusion, I'm in the mood for some new high tech toys! Anybody else have any idea for how I might be able to make Hulu work on my TV, short of actually physically hooking up my computer to the TV (which reduces video quality, in any case, so I don't want to do that)?

ETA: OK, the cross-post tool on Dreamwidth is working much better now! That is really cool! (Although I still managed to mess up the user tag a bit - sorry about that. It should be fixed now.)

OK, so the DW cross-posting feature still has some bugs to work out, so I think I will stick with manual copy and pasting, for now.

I've been watching the new HBO series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, and it's making me happy. I love the characters, the affection and respect this show has for people in general, and for the wonderful richness of the culture of Botswana. Not to mention that it blows the hell out of the Bechdel test. Watching this series fills me with love for humanity. ♥

I am surprised that I haven't seen more about this series from people on my flist. I think there are quite a few people here who would enjoy it.

Also, it is a beautiful day, but I am stuck inside doing homework, alas. Still, it makes me happy to see Spring finally here.

I am mostly posting this as a test of the Dreamwidth cross-posting feature, and I saw from other such posts that the lj cuts don't work with cross-posting yet, so I'm going to try and keep this short. (I'm generally incapable of making anything short, so we'll see how that goes. *g*)

(I will try to use some cuts, to see if the code for the LJ cuts is working now.)

[ETA: Oh. I guess the LJ-cuts work on DW but not on LJ. Well, that's kind of annoying. I guess I'll add them by hand, for now. Also, I need to remember to turn off the option to cross-post when I edit the DW entry, because then the DW edits will over-write any LJ edits that I might have made.

... Yeah, I don't think I will use this feature, for now. I'll have to wait and see if it gets better in the future.]

( So has TSCC been canceled or not?! )

( Watching the anime show Death Note. )

So. Prison Break is finally back with new episodes, for the first time in months, and I've decided to try and celebrate this occasion by live-blogging my reactions to the new episode in real-time, as I watch. I think this is the first time I've tried anything like this, so I'm not sure how well it will work. I guess we'll see. *g*

( Spoilers for the latest episode of Prison Break, obviously )

Wow, this got pretty long, didn't it. Still, it was kind of fun, even if I don't think I could ever do that with most other shows. It's really hard to watch and write at the same time, even if I'm able to sometimes pause to write.

So, after my shameless post begging for a Dreamwidth invite yesterday, I woke up this morning to an email with a Dreamwidth invite, because I was chosen at random from all the people who created and validated an OpenID account over there. So, yay, I have a Dreamwidth account now, too!

I went back and forth for a while about which name to choose, since my username on LJ was sort of the result of a spur of a moment accident, but I finally went with veritykindle over there, as well, since I figured that after (OMG!) more than 6 years on LJ, anything else would be too confusing. Using that name does still make me feel sort of silly, since it has so little to do with how I think of myself, but I've also sort of gotten used to it by now, and I've always been very resistant to change.

( Cut for random rambling  )

But, heh, having said all that, I still am not planning to leave LJ any time soon. I'm quite comfortable in this little corner of LJ that I made for myself over the years, and I'm planning to stay here for as long as I can. Cross-posting doesn't seem like too much of a hassle, even if it looks like I will have to do it by manual copy-and-pasting until DW's cross-posting feature goes live.

So... maybe I'll see some of you over there. I've tried to add the people I've seen mention their DW accounts, but it's been really hard to keep track of these things, and I know there are still people whom I've missed. So, if you've got a DW account, please give me a shout over there, so I can add you. :)


ETA: Sorry for the accidental double-post. It should be fixed now.