Did you guess this is all from one person? This whole “bitch!queen” act this person has going on has got to stop because, well, there is only room for one “bitch!queen” in the house, and you’re not it, person.

Edit (some four hours later): So upon installing Wamp Server on my computer (because Xampp decided to just die), I went smoothly through the process of installing and acquainting myself with the program, before realizing: I have no username and password. So upon looking in on phpMyAdmin, I found it and was greeted with this message at the bottom of the page:

“Your configuration file contains settings ([blank] with no password) that correspond to the default MySQL privileged account. Your MySQL server is running with this default, is open to intrusion, and you really should fix this security hole.”

*roll eye* That sounds like my 8-year-old neighbor telling me last year “you really need to shave your armpits.” Yes, 8-year-old MySQL database persona! I will fix it because I really should!

I was coding a layout for Michelle » in WordPress (…so WordPress left an impression on me), and a few bugs popped up.

Mainly, the recent posts thing. You see, I thought this code would certainly work, because I had used it before myself:


 }
}
?>

It’s not the fact that I could pull directly from the table (which is horrible by far), but the fact that I was guessing the table variable–and it took 2+ hours to actually find the $wpdb variable!–shows how much WordPress + Tess != happy situations and experiences.

I’m not one to down a script, and I know not every script is perfect for everyone, but I don’t know how I managed to to be OK with dealing with WordPress on a daily basis for as long as I did–because, sometimes, WordPress is just so frustrating!

First off: it’s not a complete re-design, only a rework of of the user system, mainly directed at making users’ experience better than mine. Which should tell you how very unselfish I am¹.

Users can now: register (to make a long story short, CAPTCHA works like a charm) and login from the main page. From there they can edit their profile and post comments á la WordPress, except there’s, well, more SPAM protection. This means that you don’t have to fill out any more forms (except comments) or click “Log Comment” every time you want to post a comment.

Users with a member status can upload as many userpics as they want á la LiveJournal, except there’s no limit, and your userpics won’t disappear at random intervals or be renamed for no apparent reason.

As for the layout itself: it took three days (yes, three days) to not only make up the idea for the layout and code it, but to code the code behind it. Such as the RSS feed for Flickr and LastFM, and to make sure users could do the things I stated above. There may or may not be a very rant-y post coming up about the struggle I had with WordPress, RSS/XML and OOP, and why I’d have to have a struggle with WordPress in the first place…!

1. OK, not completely selfless—I had fun doing it, and or I don’t think I’d have done it.

So, in a bid to be a bit different, I decided to compile a list of what’s been going on with me as of late¹.

1. For the past two weeks, I’ve been working furiously on Listing Admin », so much so that I cleaned the entire house (and I have a nice sized house) all in under two hours when I got frantic, and I now have a dime-sized callous on my right wrist. I feel lost, now that the main update is over, so much so I find myself daydreaming about coding + web development twice as much as I did before…I even sent myself to sleep last night with all of my dribble!
2. In a bid to be more active in a community other than web development, I started teaching myself Piano, which is pissing me off, because I can’t control it with a mouse! Despite this, I’ve managed to learn all the keys (CDE, FGAB), learn half the notes (I only have one note down), one simple song and three Kate Nash songs. Yay?
3. Raine » (yes, you are featured twice in a blog post…amazing) posted a very spot-on post about weight loss » and how we actually don’t really do it properly, and I ran into that little issue here lately; I thought I was losing a bit of weight, despite me not exercising for quite some time. I take medication for a disorder, and it’s causing me to not hold any type of food down, which I found out was the cause of my weight loss. Of course, the thing to do would be to, oh, stop taking the medication, except I’m stubborn and a little bit of a cheap-o; I’m stubborn in the sense that I refuse to back down from the challenge and a cheap-o, because I hate switching medications, and despite me not being able to eat (most of the time, not all), the medication is working great for me. Doctor’s appointment in October will address this, I hope.
4. I’ve been enjoying the Fall TV line-up (…somewhat, but that’s another post down the road), and also Fall itself! We are in the middle of our first cold front, and it’s so nice not to have to run the air conditioner on high, and to walk outside feeling comfortable. Florida does not always equal the most fabulous of weather, and I’m truly hoping this’ll bring a good Winter.

There’s a few other bits and odds, but they’re a bit private, so I’ll leave it on that lovely note, yeah?

1. I almost went with Raine’s idea (er, meme?) of listing bad habits, but I’m a bit robotic and unreal, and I just refuse to open myself up to the that.

Or, I could skip all that “junk” and sum it up in a few sentences. For starters, my original idea had been to separate the entire blog by category, that I kind-of, sort-of accomplished », but I knocked off the idea because the script was being faulty, and I didn’t want to deal with it at the time. Cue in the actual revamp, in which I plan to not only implement this, but to divide the blog into sections…a little bit like Dee » vs. Angela » with a side of Tess. I’m very much aware not every single one of my blogs are interesting, and therein lies my fault: I want to make everybody enjoy themselves, and even in my seven years of blogging, I still can’t grasp the fact that I can’t.

Which is kind-of, sort-of why I’m doing it in the first place.

What’s bothering me is not that it will probably be December, late March before this is finished and executed, but I actually like this design! It’s tight and a little small for my likes, but the general setup definitely had me comfortable. Oh, the woes of designing and developing¹!

1. « I say Christina » take over the designing, and I stick with developing. Admit it! We’d make an awesome super-duo, eh?

Things may be broken, but by the Gods, THE RSS FEEDS *DO* WORK OR ALL FEAR THE WRATH OF A WOMAN SCORNED BY RSS AND XML, BUT REALLY XML AND OMG STFU.

…

Also a monumental mention: today is Lyone’s second birthday!

1. « OK, I was swinging around my camera, but…HEY. It takes arm work and the will to stand in freezing temperatures to get the effect!

—

I had a Bleach dream, AND MY FIRST ONE AT THAT. Sure, a couple of characters have been featured¹, but nothing Bleach-related, and it’s all-star cast consisted of Ichigo, Byakuya, Rukia and, for the shocker!OMG here, B’s wife Hisana.

And, before I start, I will be initialising the names, because I refuse to repeat each Japanese half of you² can’t really pronounce anyway.

So, B’s wife, which for anyone following Bleach, died before the actual storyline. She’s alive and very well in this version of Bleach (OK, it’s a dream, BUT STFU LET’S PRETEND IT’S A ~VERSION~), and I and B are battling it out. It’s a bit like the epic scene in season three, and I and B end up disintegrating, except a far-away voice explains that a part of each “soldier” is left behind, which H and R can therefore use to bring them back to life.

H and R do do that, and they are therefore…trying to bury themselves? They find these “plates” in the dirt, and sit on them. B ends up going back to his house with H, and I and R do something that involves B being pissed at I. I’m thinking it had something to do with two people “fooling around”³.

It sounds really fail-y, but it was very vivid, and very B-centred, which confuses the hell out of me. I don’t like B, and I’ve had no interest in his storyline, or H for that matter. It confuses me, and makes me question my brain and it’s functions. Do I love B secretly? Am I losing the love of Kensei and Hitsugaya for B? AM I REALLY JUST READING TOO MUCH INTO THIS?

—

On a completely unrelated note: I am building⁴ a script that is being a douche to my inner sanity. Dear Amazon EC2, I DO NOT LIKE YOU. Not Very Sincerely, Tess

1. « “Featured” as in “featured in a sex dream”. I’m not above mentioning I dream about anime characters and sex, but I am above mentioning whether several characters may have joined me or not in a Rangiku-like fashion. I have some dignity!
2. « And me too, admittedly.
3. « SEX, guys, sex.
4. « OK, not really building. I only have the config file, and the class file written up. BUT STILL, I have precognition, it’ll be a douche, mark my words.

So, to prove I’m a huge liar, and I’m ~not~ a fat, lazy person who sits on her fat, lazy ass, I’m underlining the things I told myself I’d do in 2010:

Learn JavaScript, in which I hate. Hate, hate, hate. If I can turn it off in my browser, I feel unsafe. However, it can benefit my scripts and I, so I’m going to kick the bucket and do it. Get more active, though this isn’t necessarily about weight, just about me getting for active and healthy. Can’t hurt, and there’s no limit.

While I won’t expand on how I spent ten minutes digging through my old WordPress entries in my old databases–and it’s just my luck that entry didn’t make it over with the conversion to CMS Admin–I can safely say that I have actually completed both of those. While the latter has seen me going back and forth, up and down¹, I ACTUALLY DID MY RESOLUTIONS.

And, yes, they’re not hugely important, but I did it! To prove, again, that I am also a sucker for my own punishment and that I can’t keep up a two-in-a-row resolution win streak, I present to you my expeditions² of 2010.

1. LEARN HOW TO FUCKING DRIVE. That’s at the top. I don’t care if I still struggle with enrolling in school, as long as I can travel to actually do that, my life shall be complete. I’ve had my car for five years, it’s about time.
2. Do something with my icon script that I may or may not have been developing for two years. Hannah » is the only person to have seen it, and it was horribly outdated then, so I’d like to see it actually become…dated? Redated? UPDATED.
3. Write a sex scene! I haven’t done this since 2005, so…yeah, maybe that’s not a expedition FOR YOU, but it is for me! …STFU!
4. Maybe turn that icon script I was may have mentioned into OOP. …I’m thinking this may be a FAILURE. Take my word for it, procedural coding is my OTP for many, many reasons.
5. Make something called a portfolio. I’m not quite sure if anybody has heard of this, but it’s something almost nobody wants to complete, and if it is completed it collects dust. Oh, I know! Let’s make this before-last expedition a Let’s-watch-as-many-TV-series’-as-humanly-possible expedition!
6. My last expedition is private, but I will be revealing it once it’s completed. Stay tuned, it’s original and awesometastic and p0rny! (I added those first two to make it seem exciting.)

Let the lost ark of–I mean, “expedition”!–BEGIN!

On a partially serious note, I am also participating in: Project 365 » and am a developer everywhere. BY GODS, I WILL MAKE 2010 GREAT.

1. « I blame us moving, even though we weren’t moving for three months…
2. « I call my resolutions “expeditions” because they a) sound more interesting and b) will make me actually want to do them like Indiana Jones had a son, versus me not wanting to because they’re, indeed, actually resolutions.

I, of course, have a digressing problem, and should probably just go ahead and get on with that, yeah?

Reading… a ridiculous amount of fanfiction! As I’m waiting for a book to come in the mail–and I’m kind of lazy, and am not reading the book I do have–I’ve been making like a sponge and sucking up pir8fancier’s » Draco/Harry fanfiction ». I know most of my readers don’t get into slash fanfiction, but the stories are so amazing. I’m not a fan at lack of sexual details, but the characterisations and humour is very, very potent, and I love how the author has mixed in the secondary characters so well–it’s almost about them, too, which I enjoy! So far, my favourite one is Bite Me, Hate Memes (and it’s sequel) and On One’s Knees. Just…asdfgkhk!

Listening… to Little Boots–who Haley » unknowingly got me into–who is an amazing artist! I love how techno and electronic her songs are–a personal kink, believe it or not–and her voice is so beautiful. In fact, the sister has filed Little Boots under my “weird and versatile music taste” category–something I feel was termed prematurely, because I was playing “Symmetry” at the time, and let’s face it, that song is weird–a clear sign I’m listening to her too much, but there’s no such thing in my eyes.

Coding… Pumpin’! »’s new layout, and finishing up Icon Admin, a flat-file run icon script. Which is all being released tomorrow. Wherein, I haven’t even started on Icon Admin³, but, hey, I’ve never done anything by that thing called rules.

Excited… for my new memory card, which is also in the mail, ready to be delivered! I mentioned on Twitter a couple of times that my memory card decided to die one day, and I finally had the money to replace it. I’m crazily excited, because I can pick up my Project 365 project from where I left off, and start taking decent pictures again. It will be fabulousity!

Making… a Victorian themed layout for Pumpin’!, and…it sucks. It’s one of my favourite eras in history, but I’m pretty positive I chose the wrong theme, considering my lack of skills with layouts sometimes. However, I can’t give up now, that would just be backwards and stupid and OK I’m being lazy.

Admiring… Mehmet Turget »–a Turkish photographer I found in 2008 and have been stalking ever since–and of course, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott », my favourite fashion photographers of all time. I’ve have never failed to name an editorial by them, and I love seeing their work. ♥

Watching… my Dad make Thai soup, with a side of lemon soufflé. It makes me admire my parents ability to bring in different cultures into our house, and we always manage to find something different to eat. Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Mediterranean…you name it⁴!

1. « I also suck at that, but once again: shush, we can ignore this.
2. « Don’t hold me to that.
3. « And no, this is not procrastinating, if that’s what you were thinking! I just decided to take a break, and instead of eating, I blogged. …Big deal.
4. « We are, of course, still very much American; bring on the hot dogs, hamburgers and potato/pasta salad!

And before I go on, let me just slide in here that’s there’s a new layout at Lyone! For the feed readers¹, anyway. I’m not one to make a huge announcement, because I’m paranoid enough to think in the future, “…what if person [a] is viewing my archives, and they’re all like ‘WELL, WHERE THE HELL IS THIS LAYOUT SHE’S MAKING THIS HUGE FUSS OVER? I NEED TO KNOW THIS’”, because hey-ho, I think that, and I’m also selfish enough not to think beyond that point.

The layout is admittedly bright, and kind of badly executed, but it’s almost Spring here in Florida of the U-S-A, so I thought it rather fitting I’d change it from drab to fab(iiiish)! I also kind of like the “media footer” – it doesn’t have my new photoblog’s feed up, but it does have rotating anime bits! That’s the new thing, right, rotating things? – and I adore the design of my comments, so it probably will stay until I decide to go back to my simplistic and boring ways.

Back on track, not only with the new layout Lyone’s backend new-and-improved (iiiish), but I not only managed to complete Pumpin’!’s » new re-design and Icon Admin’s » release, but also 90% of what’s been on my to-do list.

Ignoring what’s all going on in that screenshot, I completed part a of my to-do list!. That’s two items from the original six on my « original resolutions list! For someone who rationalises that no, watching Criminal Minds over working on anything isn’t procrastinating, and would prefer to study over attacking anything website-related because at least studying isn’t forced…this is something.

Now if I just hadn’t saved the biggest and most time-consuming list item for last.

1. « I’m admittedly one of these people, yes! I am always the last person to notice a new layout/theme that hasn’t been mentioned because of this, but…HEY. IT’S GOOGLE READER, K? IT’S COOL SHIT.

Reading… yaoi manga! I know some of you could take it or leave it (or just leave it), but I’ve fallen so in love with some of some (very old!) manga! Love Mode–originally released in 1995! I was five-barely-six at the time!–is my favourite so far, but I love Junjou Romantica and Crimson Spell as well! The characters are very intertwined, and in Junjou Romantica, one of the main characters is a writer, and it’s inspired the writer inside me. I think I’m finding my voice for writing, I really do.

Listening… nothing has stuck in my head in April, but I’ve been listening to Eminem a bit, as well as Lady Gaga, Placebo and “Hot Mess” by Cobra Starship (Christina » showed me this gem)–I’m so complex, gais!

Coding… Listing Admin », where I’ve been learning the joys of crossposting to Enthusiast, or just to a different server. It’s made me realise how lucky I am to have a shared reseller on DreamHost–I don’t have to worry about the different servers and MySQL variables!

Excited… for driving! I, Tess, at 20 do not have a driver’s license. I have my permit–for the last two years, no less!–and the Dad just got new tires on my car–that I’ve had for six years in November–so I’m really excited about getting it legal. Not only will the Mom have some transportation herself, but she can now teach me how to drive! Insert huge jump in the air here!

Making… DVDs…? I’ve made some DVDs for the sixth season of Bleach, which the sister has now religiously been watching as well! According to my calculations (half-assed accessing of the situation), Bleach is one of the few anime series that can be watched by anybody, even non-Anime fans (that would be the sister)!

Admiring… Milla Jovovich, oh em gee! My deep, deep love knows no bounds with Milla, but I’ve been enjoying having added to my Milla Jovovich collection of movies (A Perfect Getaway + Resident Evil), and re-waching them. (Did I mention the sister is also in love with Milla? I never said she didn’t have great taste, too!)

Watching… a ton of movies! The two latter above go under this as well, but the amount of movies I’ve been intaking is surprising. The Hangover (finally!) and The Men Who Stare at Goats are lovely, and the Mom and I have never laughed so hard. With the Dad working last Saturday, and the Uncle being out of the house for the weekend, the Mom, sister and I watched The Men Who Stare at Goats and laughed at hippy!George Clooney and unbelieving!Ewan, and stayed up until one in the morning watching The Hangover and laughing at sexy!Bradley, screaming!Ed and ridiculously-weird!Zach. Very, very well done movies.

Cooking… I cooked 15 Bean Soup¹ last weekend, as well, and the sister and I plan to cook the Mom carrot cake tonight. Or me, since I plan to bake it after she goes to bed, so we can surprise her tomorrow morning. Yaaay to staying up till three in the morning (it’s the thought that counts?)!

Taking a Photo Of… My new coffee cup!

The Dad got it for me after he got the sister one (the Mad Hatter)–I quite like mine, reminds me of…me? (That was lame, shush.)

1. « It’s yummier than it sounds! It’s made of fifteen different types of beans, kielbasa and ground sausage, stewed Mexican (or Italian/regular) tomatoes and cajun seasoning. It’s a cajun dish that the Mom and I have made into a hit. IT’S LOVELY, SHUT UP.

Reading… the manga Bleach, or really re-reading. All I can say for it is a) I love Nelliel, b) Ichigo is one of the best friends one can have, c) Ikkaku and Yumichika are the gayest of the gays for each other and I have an inkling their captain, Kenpachi, knows it and d) Aizen is one of the best villains ever written (he just won’t die, and he makes my skin crawl – that’s some strong feelings to be invoked by a fictional character!).

Listening… (according to my Last.fm stats, anyway!) Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Placebo and « Muse – thanks to Melissa », the song I Belong to You has been stuck in my head for the past three days, and I’m trying to attempt learning it on piano. MELISSA, IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT.

Coding… a Manga reader. Yes, you read that correct. Instead of working on Listing Admin », or poking at Media Admin – which, a month from today exactly, will be releaded – I am coding up something I’ll probably only use once a month or something. That’s how Tess rolls, yo!

Excited… for caffeine. I’m a boring person; I will never have a truly exciting life, so the most exciting thing for me is something with fucking caffeine right now.

Making… a couple of layouts! I’m a coder – I love cracking into CSS and HTML just as much as PHP.

Admiring… Muse’s ability to make me cry.

Watching… The IT Crowd! :D It’s a British sitcom, and one of the most genius things I’ve watched in a while. The IT Crowd – IT for “Information Technologies”, instead of “it” – is about the IT department in a company, and a woman, who knows nothing about computers, being their manager. Absolutely hilarious. ♥

Cooking… pork chops!

In this case I only marinated them, but I am fantastic at marinating almost anything. I’m also rather lame, because I get this whut? look on my face when I actually have to cook and/or marinate food. I’m sometimes so consumed with scripting that I forget I can do anything else! :P

Taking a Photo of… José, our red tail boa snake.

Snakes are very, very overrated, and I could go on a fifty-paragraph rant about it, but I’ll save the *facepalm* moment for another time. José – yes, named after the Dad’s favourite drink, José Cuervo – won’t get much bigger than he is now, and he’ll live a long time, as we didn’t power-feed him. I’ll have to upload more photos of him!

Usually I add a new “Just a Minute…” section every month, but I’m running on a low battery, and I’m just going to go before I no longer make any sense!

Reading… some fanfiction (nothing new there), and J.R. Ward’s new book, Lover Mine. Great plot, wonderful characters, horrible butchering of the gay ones. I still keep coming back, though, so the woman is doing something right!

Listening… to Lorene Drive and Britney Spears, because I love mixing genres, as well as spamming everyone with the genius that is « Blood Brothers (if I so wasn’t starry-eyed about it, I’d feel a little bad!).

Coding… Media Admin, and I. hate. Amazon’s. API. It’s one of the worst things in the world to get around – something I have yet to do, and if you know me, you know I don’t, and won’t, give up that easily – and never thought I’d think that about XML! GO DIAF, AMAZON API.

Excited… that the sister is back! She went to California (San Francisco) for three weeks to visit our older sister. She loved it in California – the pictures! – but didn’t love the sister. I needed someone to fangirl The Whitest Kids U’Know and The IT Crowd with!

Making… abstract art for a project, and its not as horrible as I first thought it’d be; it’s actually quite fun, and the colour options…!

Admiring… Trevor Moore. See “Watching” for further (fangirlish) details.

Watching… The Whitest Kids U’Know! OH EM GEE. I took my cable company’s, Comcast, advice – surprising; they’re a shitty company with even shittier advertising methods – and watched it on IFC, and have never looked back. It was created by Trevor Moore and Sam Brown, and it loosely based off of Trevor’s first show. Although all five boys – Trevor, Sam, Zach, Darren and Timmy, in order of hiring – write the show, Trevor’s the head writer, and I just marvel at his, and their, genius. Darren and Zach are my favourite, and Timmy makes me laugh so fucking hard; Trevor is the best at ridiculous-but-still-funny!wigs (and pants) and Sam with his ridiculously crass (but still funny) skits! While I wouldn’t suggest this for the squeamish or easily-offended, it’s some of the funniest shit I’ve seen in a while! Also, a quick shout out to Grandma’s Boy, the best movie ever made. Fin~

Cooking… brownies, because it seems to be all I’m good for. I admittedly passed on a few chances to cook, but I’ve been wrung out with coding – AMAZON. I’M LOOKING AT YOU HERE. – that I just haven’t felt up to it.

Taking a Photo of… Nay-Nay!

Nay-Nay goes through these daily rituals of randomly coming up to me, meowing and jumping up into my lap to cuddle. Most of the time she stays for twenty seconds before getting bored, but she actually let me take (really bad) photos of her, and cuddle with her, too. (My hand was trying to hold her head still long enough to get the shot. Alas, I was not successful. I have failed thee.) So, to make up for the quality, here’s a photo of a yellow grasshopper (and to remind you all I’m not a horribly bad photographer):

Feeling admittedly nostalgic – I remember the sister, the friend and I would collect grass hoppers, kill them and then throw them away because they stunk. We actually made a sport of catching them. …Which is kind of not-so-nostalgic, and more morbid. I couldn’t do it now, only marvel at how weirdly cute it looked.

Playing… The Spill Canvas – Our Song », which is the best damn song ever right now.

Reading… Gena Showalter’s latest book, The Darkest Lie, from her series The Lords of the Underworld, which was fabulous (and also happened to contain one of my favourite characters!). I also have be re-reading Jacquelyn Frank’s Shadowdweller series, which is just so… intense! The grammar is so great, the writing style feels so old, and… I’m just at a loss for words. It’s gorgeous. ♥

Listening… Puscifer! I’m such a Maynard fangirl, I’m surprised I just got into one of his many projects, but I love almost electronic feel to it! So far, I love the Drunk With Power (Version 2), Rev 22:20 (Dry Martini Mix) and The Undertaker (Renholder Mix) songs. :D

Coding… a little of this and that… I’ve been working on a secret project–three, actually!–which lean more towards CSS and graphic design, but since I managed to code a imagemap without the tag, I figure that’s worth my vacation from PHP.

Excited… to watch the latest season of The IT Crowd, aaah! The sister and I promised we’d wait for the season to end to watch them all – that’s how we do it! – and I can’t wait for it! *rubs hands together*

Making… icons! I’m not very good at them, but sometimes (mostly when I’m procrastinating), I open up my graphics program, and just go to town. I like to think of it as my way to relieve The Stress of Life.

Admiring… Homotography » (I promise the site is cleaner than the title hints at!) – introduced to me by Christina », unsurprisingly – and I just love this blog! As the subtitle says, it’s a site that has “photography with homosexual tendencies”, in both female and male tendencies (yes, I totally just referenced itself!). I just love the photography, really¹.

Watching… some delicious new movies, including Clash of the Titans, Remember Me (by force, and no, it wasn’t good) and The Book of Eli. I think I may be – wait for it – …picky. It just seems that the void inside me can’t be filled. When I think, “this could be a movie I can replay over and over and over and annoy the parents with!”, but alas, the last movies to fill that void have been Sherlock Holmes and The Wolfman.

Cooking… black beans! :D

I had no idea what I was doing when I was making these; the Mom called me, said “cook these, they’re kind of like 15 Bean Soup~”² and I was like, “…OK”, and there we have it. They were delicious, though, especially with the yellow rice!

Taking a Photo of… The Dad’s motorcycle! He had it in the shop for… well, over a year, and he just finished his course to get his motorcycle license (and scored the highest grade on the written exam – like the man needed anything more to go to his head).

And Nay-Nay, who was giving me a side glance so reminiscent of my own that I just had to post it. She learned from the best, after all (if you click the photo for the larger version, you can kind of see me in her eye).

Playing… Megan McCauley – Porcelain Doll ». I just recently got my hands on Megan’s 2007 album, Better Than Blood, and I just fell more in love with her, if that was at all possible in the five years I’ve been worshipping her. *hoards music player*

Remodelling… zee living room, courtesy of the sister and I!

Ignoring the crap quality of the photo, we moved around pretty much everything besides the TV (not pictured), because of the cable cord. We like it, though, because it opens it up quite a bit. :D

(The next “Just a Minute…” won’t nearly be so image-heavy, promise!)

1. « AND I SWEAR MY ICON FOR THIS ENTRY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY FEELINGS TOWARDS THAT SITE, OR THAT IT CAME FROM THAT SITE EVEN THOUGH THAT PARTICULAR EDITORIAL MAY OR MAY NOT BE THERE.
2. « “15 Bean Soup”, for those that don’t know the recipe, is ground sausage and kielbasa browned with celery and onion, and then cooked with the bean mix (fifteen different kind of beans, as the title says), stewed tomatoes and the Cajun seasoning that comes with the beans.

Reading… Bleach!

I bought volume… 26, along with the character book and artbook (the latter two of which were brand new), something I regret not doing sooner. I knew about 99% of what was in the character book, but I loved re-reading about everything, and seeing the different profiles and assessments. Other honourable reads: “Demon from the Dark” by Kresey Cole – the author keeps getting better and better and I hate it – and “The Vampire’s Bride” by Gena Showalter; that one isn’t new, but it’s still such a great read. /floats

Listening… to Milla Jovovich. Insert slapped palms to face, loud gasps and prolonged staring here. While I have a wide range of interests in music, I usually don’t listen to new things, or things that are… erm, hippie-ish, for lack of a better word. I’ve had her album + other work for eons, and only listened to some things here and there. So far I love “Gentleman Who Fell”, “It’s Your Life” and “Ruby Lane” – and of course “Mezinka”, because despite my dislike for Dummy, the movie is ridic cute, and the song ten times more so. It’s just… not the kind of music I listen to, but I’m still listening to it! *confused*

Coding… nothing in relation to Listing Admin », something I felt was needed in order to remain the peace (I talk to my scripts, and he does not like me right now). I did manage to write up a to-do list script, finished my beta testing script for reporting bugs, and added in some mods for Listing Admin. There is no Tess without code~

Excited… for the fall TV line-up to start! Sons of Anarchy is starting off the celebration, with Merlin following lead, hey-ho!

Making… random to-do lists, which kind of explains the script above. (It was an impulse script, OK?!)

Admiring… everyone’s » ability » to keep » blogging », even during summer, the boring of the boring months. The end.

Watching… Criminal Minds – I’m a junkie; it’s the new Supernatural, where I know about 99% of the episodes summaries and titles – and random movies here and there. August is a boring month all around.

Cooking… nothing. :( This upsets me, and I promise to dazzle you all with a cherry pie next time. 8D (Yes, yes I am bribing you.)

Taking a Photo Of… the sister’s dog, Cassie!

I know, something that isn’t a reptilian, feline, or something green! Our dogs are quite old – Cassie will turn 10 on November 10^th, and Baby will turn 12 on November 14^th – crotchety, and a tiny bit spastic, as it took me 20+ shots to get this semi-decent one of Cassie.

Playing… Muse – Starlight », from their Black Holes & Revelations album. I know most fans look at this as one of more “meh” songs off the album, and a bit overrated, but I just love it. Matthew’s voice goes so well with the music. *stars in eyes*

Remodelling… my room! I also happened to break my canopy in the process, so I shall stamp a “To Be Continued…” on this section, and hope none of you think I have it out for my annoying canopy.

Writing… about a character, one that I hold very, very close to my heart (but not close to my boobs, so it’s a female). I was writing rough, rough, rough drafts of vampire!Merlin fanfiction – and therefore sending it off to Christina » to get input, spazzing and mostly spazzing – before ditching it mid-month when my muse took a very unwanted vacation.

(It should be noted that I while I did not go a “Just a Minute…” entry without mentioning Christina », I have not mentioned, talked about, or displayed a picture of Nay-Nay. Except for maybe just now. But still! As my partner for better or scratches, that’s saying something, right?)