Half-a-Million Steps!So it's day 44 on the Striiv and I hit the 500,000 step mark - wOOt! It's a good thing too, because the bonus points I received from that allowed me to build an other stage on a Fairy Tree -- Fairy Trees are hard, but also necessary to get me more land in the game.

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1. Sunscreen! - I didn't think much about it beyond SPF until janedavitt reported last summer that her sunscreen had a warning on it that it might cause skin damage. Really. If your sunscreen has Vit A (retinal) it may cause more harm than good. paian hooked us up with the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) Guide to Sunscreens. It rates sunscreens to make-up that claim to protect skin and gives a good guide as to what to look for.

2. Garden Protection! - No, it's not a cream. With the return of the bunnies and a fresh crop of the *MOST ADORABLE* baby groundhogs, it's time to install the electric fence ;-) It runs on D-batteries; it won't hurt them too much, but might save me peas!

3. Peas! - The garden is shaping up. We thinned the garlic a week ago and have been enjoying the seasonal treat of the green garlic. You can use the whole plant at this stage, which is milder than garlic will ultimately be. The Amish Snap Peas have climbed to the 4-5 ft range and are now popping out flowers - white, in case Mendel was curious. I will do a larger post on this with pics so you can see how the straw pale plantings are going.

4. Laundry! - The dryer has once again blown a thermostat. That's fine though because we have the line except that the line broke too. ;-) I'll be fixing the line in a little while and determining which thermostadt to order. It isn't a bigger problem with the dryer. It's a problem with Mom and I forgetting to check the outside dryer vent for a build up of lint. Lint blocks end of vent pipe, heat builds up, thermostat blows. <--- As an engineer, this pleases me because it's how the dryer world is supposed to work.

Speaking of which, *HUGS* to idyll! Dryers catching on fire is *NOT* how it's supposed to work.

5. Summer TV!

Time to program my TiVo for the premiers happening in the next two weeks:

Rizzoli & Isles - June 5, 9pm - TNT. Jane and Maura solve crime! They tend to talk about boys too much, but this show is highly femslash friendly. The secondary cast is completely charming - The secondary cast has that family vibe that the Castle cast also has.

Royal Pains - June 6, 9pm - USA Network. I've seen a lot of folks dismiss the show as just "rich people problems", which is a part of the show, but there's more to it. Overall, it's simple relaxing summer fun with an engaging cast. The main cast is not 'rich' and wend their way between the rich people world and the everyday world, often leveraging the money connections to do good. Good mix of gender with a nice topping of cultural diversity (Indian). Leads are canonically Jewish, although Jewish culture is not featured heavily.

Saving Hope - NEW SHOW - June 7, 9pm (at least in my area - as always, check your local listings!) - Canadian CTV show that will also be aired on NBC in the US. Fan connection is Michael Shanks. Chief of Surgery at Hope Zion Hospital falls into a coma and wanders the hospital in spirit form.

Coming up the week of the 13th - Suits, Falling Skies & True Blood
ETA: Burn Notice June 14! /ETA
In July Leverage, White Collar, Covert Affairs and Warehouse 13

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Right, so I started walking with my second Striiv on April 17

Yesterday, Day 32, I hit the 350,000 step milepost - Yay! My current average steps a day is 10565 - 10,000 steps a day is not good enough any longer ;-)

I'm about 1.4 miles away from the UltraMarathon of 135 Miles - so that should happen today.

I'm 1088 stair away from climbing Mt. Fuji (16520 stairs) - that will happen sometime this week. My stair walking happens but sometimes I have great bursts of lots of stairs and other times I have just my average and then on the weekend sometimes I don't get stairs in at all because I really don't have stairs or hills around the house - currently 467 stairs.

I can really feel the difference in my daily endurance for walking and in the muscles along the thighs and gluets that are part of the stair walking. My knees sometime ping me, sometimes not. But overall after I've been sitting, once I take about 25 stairs, I'm feeling warmed up and back into the stair walking.

My game play has shifted now that I've loaded up the original island and am working on the very expensive Turtle Island. I have to save up a lot more cash and a lot more energy to get anything accomplished. I went on a buying sprint for Turtle Island and found out exactly how small the starting surface was. Granted I built some "medium sized" stuff, but I almost ran out of room to put up two of any of the "big" things that are needed to unlock other parts of the island.

Now it's a waiting game of building the energy over the course of a week or more to build up the big stuff and hoping to get the 30% discount to buy the next super expensive thing.

I mention the game play because game play is important.

I'm also (slowly) reading through Jane McGonigal's book, Reality is Broken. It talks about things that don't surprise gamers at all. Games motivate us to do stuff. Her premise is that one of the reasons that gaming is bigger than ever is because reality isn't providing us with the same kinds of opportunities that games provide us. Gamers spend 80% of their time losing - and we don't care. A good game is about working at the top end off our skill set -- something that reality often doesn't let us do.

Actually, I immediately saw parallels to fannish activity. For me and I know many on my friend's list being involved in fandom is about participating in a community of people willing to push the envelope on a specific piece of media - whether that's in writing fic, challenging authors, speculating on the canon, manipulating the pics, drawing or in any of the other 100s of ways that fans express themselves.

For me, writing fanfic allows me to explore and push my creative side - to work on the edge of my creative abilities. <-- and that is one of those things that I think we struggle to explain to those that say things like, fanfic is a waste of time - why not publish? For me the desire to do this is not about having professional cred it's about working on my edge.

Jane McGonigal's theory is that what we need to do is design games that give people the gaming experience but at the same time do some kind of social good. Often that's when what we cite as the best of fandom - the works or discussions that challenge the media we are invested in that deal with biases in the canon and either transform them or protest them.

But getting back to the Striiv - there's a social good in that device and game as well. When I sync my device, they take my total step count and use it as a walkathon where sponsor corporations are donating to charity. All my walking has been earning clean water for kids in developing countries. This is not the reason I bought the Striiv, but it was definitely a straw that tipped the balance.

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Mouse -
When I got up this morning, there was a stuff moving in the kitchen sink. this usually means a baby version of the gigantic crickets has gotten stuck in the sink and can't hop out. This morning it was a baby deer mouse. He's terribly cute and tiny. Currently he's residing in a 1 qt plastic soup container on the porch railing - yes I did poke air holes for him. When I'm awake - really awake - he'll be taking a trip to the local wildlife preserve - miles from anyone's house.

Baseball-
My sister is a Yankee's fan. Her husband is a Red's fan. So, for their big trip to New York City they chose a hotel in the Bronx and went to the Friday night game themselves and treated the rest of the family to yesterdays Reds vs. Yankees's game at the new Yankee stadium.

I can watch a baseball game, although I find them much too slow nowadays. I prefer football or ice hockey. So I toured the New Yankee stadium (mostly to get my step count up ;-) The Museum in the stadium is nice. We got there about an hour and a half before the game and the line was crazy long to get in. Around the 6th inning, it was all clear :-)

Indeed Lobel's sliced beef sandwiches were awesome, but the sweet sausage with peppers and onions was also good :-) Lobels is on field level along the left field foul line. We were on the right field line at the terrace level, so it was a good walk.

Family (connected through Baseball and Arthur avenue :-)

Arthur Avenue -
My sister and brother-in-law had already gotten that the Bronx was not necessarily the best hopping off point for seeing all of NYC. But they had heard that the Bronx's Little Italy up on Arthur Avenue was worth it. So we fought our way out of the parking garages and headed over. Just so we could meet up we picked a restaurant name so we could plug the same address into everyone's GPS.

It turns out the parking lot we stumbled on was for Marios and since we could a)get in without a reservation and b)park for free in their lot, the dinner decision was made. The food was really good NY Italian. I was especially pleased that eggplant parm was made right with flour and egg - no breadcrumbs ;-) That gave my Mom, sister, her hubby, my aunt, uncle and I a great chance to catch up.

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( spoilers for the 9th Season Finale, speculation about cliff hangers and some meta about the actors- nothing earth shattering. )

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GIP!

Well, that's not this years bunny, but it was a backyard bunny about 8 years ago. The thing is the bunnies were part of my backyard pets until a tragic winter two years ago when the melting snow revealed that getting too close to the road I live on is deadly. But the bunnies are back and are mysteriously hanging out under the shed today.

Under the shed has been a bit of mystery this season. Normally I'd expect a family of groundhogs under there, but we've seen both the groundhog, the local cat and the bunny under there. On the other hand, we were in the shed at one point and heard the distinctive squeaks of a clutch of baby mammals coming from below. *shrugs* maybe it was some baby birds. At any rate, the bunnies are back.

And bonus! the bunny failed to find the garden before Mom went outside and restored the gate she forgot to close last night. The last week or so I've been spotting the bunny in the far reaches of the yard when I get home from work. Today was the first time we spotted bunny out the French doors.

--Funny how the bunny starts stalking the garden just as the carrots start sprouting, isn't it? ;-)

In other garden news, the peas are around a foot tall and are clinging to the trellis. Garlic and shallots are doing great. Leek and Onion sets are finally establishing themselves, but we lost a bunch. I'm considering moving a few of them o establish another planting row. It looks like the beets may have sprouted, but the tiny things could also be a bunch of weeds.

Last weekend I picked up 4 straw bales from the local farm. We topped them with composted sheep bedding aka - Ewe Poo ;-). Mom and the rain have been keeping them wet. The idea is to let them compost a little, until they're past the hot stage. I stuck my hand in the bale yesterday. It was wet but not warm. We're going to water for another week and then plant tomatoes, beans and peppers in the bales.

The parsley and cilantro may also be breaking ground. Not sure if the old lettuce seeds took ... not sure I care ;-) I like a little, and I do mean a little, salad now and then and I love lettuce wraps, but otherwise I don't have much use for lettuce. Wilt me a pan of hardier greens with tons of garlic and some olive oil any day.

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Hour of Scampering (2919 words) by justhuman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Susan Ivanova/Talia Winters
Characters: Susan Ivanova, Talia Winters
Summary: Purim before and after Talia is faced with Control.
Notes: Written for ariestess in the rarewomen Challenge. Many thanks to tsuki_no_bara for giving this fic a cultural read through (Jewish) and to media_junkie for the beta.

( Hour of Scampering )

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The only thing you need to know is that Optional is Optional.

Below the cut there's a lot of discussions about pairings. If that's not your thing, gen would be great. I did include a optional prompt if you're looking for a prompt.

( but if you want to go down the rabbit hole... )

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Tags: not_prime_time

LJ has created V-gifts to support Planned Parenthood. There are three styles of V-gifts at different monetary amounts. All money goes to Planned Parenthood.

Of course the comments are what you'd expect. What got to me was the rendering of the comments on the first page. LJ - comment rendering is still screwed up.

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*Notice how the fannish interest post got top billing today? Yeah, I want to be more fannish, but life is time consuming.

*Work - I was moved out the R&D group that maintained the current products and moved into the group that is developing the next product. It's not a promotion - it was much more about desperately needing engineers on the new product development and the ever shrinking budgets on the older products, but I do feel loved.

At the same time, it is a big mentality change. The way that I do things is exactly the same - same test reports and methodologies, etc... But with the new products there are tighter timelines, larger groups of people to negotiate with and new tools. I spent the last two weeks beating my head against Labview. But I did leave work with a big victory over Labview on Friday, and I think I've cleared a path for the next set of programs I need to write.

We have employee groups at work. The Green Team is losing it's appeal - the team, not my committment to Green living.

On the other hand, the Women's Network has been fantastic lately. I got to go to a company leadership conference and and leadership conference sponsored by Simmon's College -- the busy trip to Boston last month. I"m still not sure if I'm a person that will ever network my way into my next job, but I feel like I'm gaining a bunch of insight into at least bolstering my status at work.

On top of that, I've gotten the opportunity to lead a Women in Science and Engineering Event via the Women's network. I co-chaired last year and while people have genuinely been trying to help me since October, I've been basically on my own. However, this has not gone unnoticed and I've gotten a lot of praise lately from a bunch of highly placed folks. I've also gotten a lot of help in the last two weeks, so hopefully the event will go off well in the next two weeks.

We'll be helping 5th grade Girl Scouts earn their Product Designer Badges. It's right up my company's ally; it's targeting girls at the right age to tell them they can do whatever they want to do. We've been working with the young ladies at the local high school robotics team - it's also been great mentoring them in project management skills.

*Travel - Beyond the trip above, I went to Tribal forces with lucifrix. We had a great time and it was great getting back into the groove of the things I like to do. We're heading out to con_txt next month and I'm trying to plan some gaming convention stuff with media_junkie I'm also getting out of the house once a month with some pagan gals and a second time for shamanic drumming. In other words, I'm not feeling so stir crazy for not having my house to myself.

*Home - Now that Spring is here Mom and I have been working on the garden. Our garlic cam up just fine, a bit beat up with the drought conditions we had for a while, but looking good. Friend Misal gave me some leek and onion sets a few weeks ago. They're alive, but not thriving yet. Our potatoes are just breaking ground. The peas we planted 3 weeks ago are up about 5 inches and are reaching for the trellis. We planted carrots and beets last weekend, along with some lettuce, cilantro and parsley. We've gotten a reasonable amount of rain lately and hopefully that will keep up. This weekend I'm going to pick up some straw bales for the above ground plants like tomatoes, beans, squash and cucumbers.

We've also been successfully weeding out the front flower bed which had some "weed trees" in it. We needed to dig down a couple of feet to get the roots out. Now we're working on manually destroying the roots of the thistle plants. We've got about 80% of the bed done. Once we're there, there will be a lot of bulb flowers going in :-D

*Fitness - aka Striiv!obsession.

For those that missed it, I bought a new 'pedometer' - but this one's different.
- it rewards me with a game. The game is powered by my movement. It is not a lie that we can be inspired by games and believe me, this isn't a very special game - it's about the connection to what I'm doing

- it tracks going up and down stairs. It has long term milestones that it gives me game points for. From April 20 to May 4, I climbed up over 8100 stairs - I'm almost half-way up Mt Fuji. Why all the stairs from a girl that took the elevator *up* for years? Steps are a 1X multiplier in the game. Running is a 5x bonus and Stairs are a 10x bonus.

-I started wearing an older pedometer in mid-Feb. I was doing 4-6000 steps on average. I immediately went to doing over 10K steps all the time - at least on weekdays when I'm at work, when I can move more than at home.

-media_junkie showed me the Stiiv and has one of her own. We've been constantly trading achievements. Recently there was a big software push into the device that changed the game rules, making the game harder. We bitched and moaned, but decided we just needed to walk more because it was a lifestyle.

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Not Primetime Challenge - a multifannish challenge for shows that are for medium size fandoms - too big for Yuletide, but not overwhelming (20K fics). I missed the nomination process, so there may have been more criteria - some older fandoms that haven't had much action in recent years made the list. I missed adding NCIS, which totally fit the criteria, but some of the fandoms on there that would definitely interest various folks on the friend's list include, but are not limited to:

Angel, Big Bang Theory, Buffy, Burn Notice, Castle, Chuck, Due South, Dark Angel, old!Doctor Who, new!BSG, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Grimm, Game of Thrones, H5O, Highlander, Leverage, Merlin, Once Upon a Time, Primeval, Psych, Sanctuary, Sherlock, Sports Night, many!Treks, Sarah Connor Chronically, Sports Night, Suits, Torchwood, True Blood, Vampire Dairies, Veronica Mars, West Wing

The challenge is set up like Yuletide - the link above is an ad that was run on Yuletide because it had a quick set of comprehensive links. Sign-ups end May 8.

I shouldn't be signing up for it, but I so am. :-)

*I am catching up on Suits - Oh, my God - awesome! Mom and I are loving Harvey and Mike. Mom probably doesn't think their having sex, but I completely agree with janedavitt - they are not only having sex, but frequently having kinky sex. We're getting one episode a week on the USA repeats, so we should be caught up soon. Never again will I doubt my fannishness for USA Network - they all deserve a shot

*-but not necessarily continued interest. Fairly Legal has been booted from my TiVo. It's a bad sign when they want you to like the main character because she's quirky and marches to her own drum and all you want to do is smack her for acting like she's 7. If they ditched Kate and made the show about Lauren, I could come back.

*In keeping with my fannishness for USA Network (and making up for initially turning my nose up at the 'lawyer show'), Mom and I have signed up for a season pass of Common Law -- two buddy cops that have each others backs, but actually go to couples counseling because they fight constantly. This has *WIN* written all over it.

*OMG! Sherlock! Mom and I have caught up on the first two seasons and it's mind blowingly good. It's one of those fandoms where I don't think I could invest the right amount of brain power writing case fic and I don't think I would ever give Sherlock and his psychosis a great voice, but damn, would I read that. And, the kink built right into canon is jaw dropping. Can't wait for Series 3 (hope they're getting a Series 3 - BBC often makes decisions that I do not understand)

* As you know, I'm more a casual SPN viewer. I'd like to highly recommend the recent episode The Girl with the Dungeons & Dragons Tattoo to everyone even if you abandoned the show because it broke your heart in some way. Felicia Day is absolutely awesome and the writers turned off the shoe level misogyny for the night to let her be awesome. Of course, Sam and Dean still don't get that girls can do anything, but Felicia doesn't let that get in her way :-D

*Last night I watched the series finale of In Plain Sight and am sorry to see it go. As series finale's go it was - I don't know. I'm used to series finale's that end in apocalypses or near apocalypses. I do have to say that the lead character - Mary - becoming pregnant because the actress that played her became pregnant was a real game changer for the series, but characters that you didn't expect to get pregnant, getting pregnant is always a mind shift.

( Spoilers - In Plain Sight )

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I just finished my Rare Woman challenge and could use some beta help -- possibly more than one because this is an unusual one for me.

Babylon 5 - Talia/Susan, Season 3/Season 4 - This is not a timeline heavy fic
Rating - everyone
Word Count - 3000
The fic heavily features Purim

tsuki_no_bara was very kind and gave the story a quick read for the Jewish cultural points.

I could definitely use a grammar beta and it would be great to have a B5 reader as well -- not necessarily the same person. I watched all of B5 in real time, but canon was far from my head. I do have a quick and dirty summary of the aspects of canon important to this relationship.

Timing: The story won't be revealed until May 7. I posted it this morning to a hidden collection on AO3,because it'd due before I'll be home from work today. But that's the joy of challenges on AO3 - I can go back and add edits before the reveal.

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It's officially, the Striiv is an obsession. It's the only way I can explain how I went up - and I mean that *UP* literally - 656 stairs today when I could have had a very happy existence at about 26 stairs.

And it's only getting better. The product is moving out of it's Beta code and I just downloaded a heap of improvements, bells and whistles. One of the whistles is the mystery boxes. I just got a cool thing, but it's only good for the next 6 hours...you know, when I'm asleep. media_junkie, it was the 3X chance of animals :-) I did pick up a couple of extra centaurs, but now I'm really down on energy for building my second parthanon.

Ah well. As MJ and I discussed earlier, it's now becoming a lifestyle.

In the meantime, they've added a ton of new features including tracking of my stats on their webpage. That part still needs some work, but they're moving in the right direction.

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( spoilers, but of course )

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A Cure For Boredom (81714 words) by emmagrant01
Chapters: 8/8
Fandom: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: Explicit
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, John Watson/Others
Summary:

They'd never talked about sex in the year they'd known each other. Well, that wasn't quite correct: Sherlock had never said a word about sex; John had bemoaned his personal dearth of it on many occasions.

*

Knowing what we know about Sherlock, the start of their more explicit relationship couldn't be an easy, fancy a shag?. In this fic it involves multiple partners and subtly crafted voyeurism and D/s. Throughout there is character exploration for both John and Sherlock - definitely not just a PWP as the author demurs.

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I'm at tribalforces, enjoying some TV time with fellow fans.

Mom and I did some gardening on Thurday morning. Friend Misal was kind enough to share some onion and leek sets. We planted them in the same raised bed with the garlic. We also put in the potatoes and the peas. But it is so *DRY* Much too dry for April.

I picked up lucifrix on Thursday afternoon after a first world tradgdy. My new Striiv was on a leash, attached to my belt loop. I had plugged it in to recharge while I drove. So I stopped to put air in the tires. As I got out of the car, my Striiv was hanging in mid-air, stretched between me and the charger when the door hit it and irreperarable cracked the screen.

*arrrrgggggghhhhh*

The manufacturer doesn't do repairs on serious damage like that, but they did give me a $20 discount to buy a new one. Not what I was hoping for, but they didn't have to do anything for me. New one is on the way.

I'm trying to get over it ... trying. I picked up another cheap one to feed my step obsession.

The Tribbles are helping :-)


Congrats media_junkie on hiting 100K steps -- I'll be catching up soon!

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( Spoilers, natch )

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So I did make it home around 12:30am on Thursday night or, you know, Friday morning.

We got a little turned around coming out of Boston and headed West instead of due south. It worked out because we got off near where we had been staying and knew where to find a Thai restaurant. Well fortified on holy basil and thick rice noodles, we made our way peacefully down 95.

I did managed to catch a tiny cold that ran me down further on Friday with a runny nose that I couldn't stop, but it seems to have cleared up for the most part. I'll have be careful for the next couple of days because on Thursday I'll be heading down to Tribal Forces. While we're passed the official end of registrations, the con could use more membership and I'm sure that if you're going to be in the Philly area next weekend (Friday night to Sunday afternoon) the con comm would set you up :-).

In the meantime I've been trying to get used to my new assignment at work. On the surface it looks like I didn't move much, because I'm still in the same department. However, I have a new boss and my work now involves developing new products and not just providing TLC to the current products. It's a whole different way of looking at the stuff I do and comes with stricter deadlines.

So between the travel, the new job, and the early spring forcing the gardening schedule, I've been trying to reorganize mentally. I've been catching up with an older fandom to write my Rare Women assignment, due at the end of April. But I've been also trying to open up my writing files and put some actual words down on open projects. Unfortunately, some of the activity has left me so worn out, that concentrating on the creative side of the force has been hard.

Need to make that a priority in this new season - ride the wave of ascending power to make more fic.

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For me it will mean heading down to the Catholic relatives who actually go to church more than just Christmas and Easter to celebrate the latter. There will lamb with copious amounts of garlic and rosemary - yum :-)

As for me, I didn't do much to celebrate the Equinox this year. I love the themes of balance that come along with it - not to mention the bunnies, the eggs,the daffodils, the maiden goddess, the rise of the conquering hero (Arthur sword in hand, uniting the kingdoms, but not yet being granted Sovereignty).

There's chocolate, but one of the things about being an adult is always having chocolate ;-) -- That and I still have nightmares about molded chocolate bunnies from my days in the chocolate store ;-)

Chag Sameach all around! (It'll work for all the big festivals today)

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I'm pretending I don't know it's 5:40 and that I've been up since 5.

I'm in the middle of a lo-ong week. Tuesday I drove up to the Boston area with a co-worker for an event - an event that sadly wouldn't allow me to hook up with the Boston peeps and to personally wish wesleysgirl a happy birthday!

So Tuesday night it was dinner with a few of the Boston area co-workers. Yesterday was a trip to co-worker's facility where I got an engineer's tour of one of the manufacturing lines that I should know some things about - FUN!. And good that I did it because not nearly as close a look on the building tour later in the afternoon. The afternoon was a the US companies annual Women's Leadership Meeting. Okay, so all of this involves multiple CEOs, CFOs and VP (I do work for Megacorp - yes, there are alot of people in charge).

But that meant being "on" all day and into the dinner that started immediately after. I follow the tried and true engineering tradition of being an introvert and all those people, and dress shoes and not wanting to spill dinner on myself and...

And today it's an all day Leadership conference at a Boston area hotel followed by a drive back to Jersey. The conference has a *huge* turnout of my company peeps, so, I'm still on.

...catch up to you around midnight when I get home and unwind to go to bed so I can go to the all day technical meeting tomorrow at the home base.

*tries not to fall asleep, right now*

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I got a new step counting gadget - the Striiv.

Since I'm easily distracted by new gadgets and my step counter is
populated with centaurs - it's a winner so far!

*Normal step counting is easy -- gigantic numbers on the main screen
*Easy switching to see steps translated into miles and other measures

Now onto the extra encouragements

*Game - the game on board is building a virtual fantasy world. You
have an island map and you can plant flowers and trees and build huts
and statues and ponds and such. The things you build earn "money" to
your bank at different intervals. When you choose to build or plant
something, you take money out of the bank, but then you must spend
"energy" to fertilize or build. Energy comes from your walking.

Energy is not just a straight translation of steps. When you check in
with the Striiv it frequently offers you a challenge - like adding
another 100 steps in under 5 minutes or walk 100 steps in 5 minutes.
If you accept and complete the challenge, it gives you bonus energy.
There's also a challenge section where they offer an easy, medium and
hard challenge -- if you don't like them, you can hit a button and
they will shuffle into new challenges.

There are also "quests" in the game that allow you to earn money and
additional island features, but changing things in the island.

*Charity. There are corporate sponsers who are willing to use my step
counts as a walk-a-thon. Right now I'm working on earning a polio
vaccine for kids in the developing world. And, I can sometimes use
"energy" to boost my step count a small amount for the walk-a-thon.

In other words, it's got me distracted and frequently encourages me
to walk for just a minute or three minutes more. I'm at 6280 steps
just after lunch. That is sometimes the daily total on a "busy" day
when I'm walking to meetings on the other side of the building.

So thumbs up - it's doing it's job. We'll have to see how long the
shiny lasts. Before I bought my Wii-Fit, I read that the shiny lasted
about two months, and that was true for me. But, the Wii was making me
choose how I wanted to spend my time. I walk at work all the time;
this is just encouraging me to take the long way around.

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Got up this morning and it was chilly and I was reaching for the
heavier coat because it was so much colder feeling like March.
Indeed, we're going well below freezing tonight, 24F and I'm concerned
for my garlic plants. Yeah, they should be able to handle some frost
and even snow, but they're up about 8 inches already - not the short
little guys just breaking ground when this kind of stuff hits. Any
gardening advice? Can the Garlic take it or should I be looking to
cover up the plants tonight?

*

In other news, media_junkie, Mom
and I had a fantastic time at Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on
Broadway.

Tip: Unlike a lot of shows, this one makes full use of the vertical
space on the stage - lots of stuff happens over the bus. We started
in the back of the orchestra and our view was obstructed by the apron
of the mezzanine. Broadway theaters tend to be small and the Palace
theater is definitely one of those. Don't be afraid of Mezzanine or
even Balcony seats at this venue. (watch the back of the Mezzanine for
obstruction form the balcony apron/)

Fortunately (or not) there was rowdy group of 10 women all celebrating
their 50th birthdays together complete with tiaras -- Yeah for the
women going out having a festive time, taking the town! Boo to the
fact that those beeotches spent the first act chatting, climbing over
one another to get to the bar and getting the usher's flashlights
shined on them for not being able to put their damn phones away.

The ushers took pity on us and moved us to the front row seats on the
extreme right. *MUCH* better view of the show in comfier chairs and
we got some glitter rained down on us :-D Tremendously fun show.

*

MJ also pointed out a pedometer/activity tracking device - the
Striiv. It tracks your activity like a lot of the advanced
pedometers, but it also plays games with you. Specifically to play
some of the games it makes you walk a certain number of steps. It is
also hooked up with some sponsors that donate to charitable causes
when you walk a certain number of steps. Those are the kinds of
encouragements that could convince me to walk some more. It's got a
steep price tag, so I was curious if anyone else had played with one
and tried it out. Anyone have info? The reviews on Amazon are
encouraging, but the Reading list and F-list are all knowing and often
a girl's best friend :-D

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But I really loved the movie and so did the audience I was with.

How do I know this?

I was in a theatre packed with teenagers and it was silent.

In other news, I have media_junkie and you do not. Be jealous :-) In the capacity of Queen of her own gaming company, she did a day of creativity for one of the local school districts near me.

Along with Mom, we had Thai-Indonesian fusion last night and Japanese tonight, followed by The Hunger Games. Tomorrow we're anticipating PF Changs and Priscilla Queen of the Desert on Broadway - because as callaoressene pointed out recently, Drag Queens make everything better. (And also, short notice tickets to Book of Mormon cost a fortune ;-)

And while we have not seen drag queens yet, Jane Espenson's Husbands is made of awesome. If you haven't had the chance to check it out, the first season's webisodes are all linked on their site. There's about 22 minutes out there. They've got a Blooper reel at the bottom of their Kickstarter Page. It's set up to collect cash for the second season -- in five days they've picked up $44K of their $50K goal, so yay second seasons of Husbands!. Early on there was a lot of cool swag from Jane's days with Buffy and BSG -- there are a few things left. It's still worth clicking to see the vids on that page even if you're not interesting in contributing.

Also, I want to write Canadian Shack fic with Husbands Cheeks/Brady running into Fraser/Ray K.

...but first Gibbs/DiNozzo need to finish having sex there. *sigh* the unseasonably warm weather -- you know spring/summer weather I don't usually see until May caused Mom and I to garden all of last weekend. It gets in the way of the writing process.

Tired now.

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The latest LJ News Post is talking about alot of changes. I leave it to you as to whether you think they are a good thing or not.

( The testing results got long, so cutting to spare everyone who is not interested -- although if you start seeing spoilers splattered all over your Dreamwidth or the Sunnydale Herald as a scrunched up mess, the explanation might be in here. )

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Tags: dreamwidth, lj

Doonesbury continues exploring how the GOP wants to insert government in a woman's life -

Today's strip

Yesterday's strip

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