My Name is Candace

and I am a Journalaholic. It's very hard for me to pass up yummy journals. ESPECIALLY when they're on sale.


I particularly love the red triangular sticker on this one.


And the brown pages inside. I got 3 of these and Prawn claimed one:
(By Kaira Baggins. Concerning Hobbits.
When I was dead, then some other hobbits would get my house, but I adopted another hobbit. His name was Frodo Baggins, and then Frodo would get my house (switches to pencil) and the other hobbits would not get my house.)



Mollusc chose this velvety embossed one:


Additionally, Prawn wanted this very colourful book (also bearing my favourite sticker) :



It's handy to have something big enough to trace your body on in case the mood strikes. ^_^



The brown one was on sale (with more yummy brown pages) and the black one wasn't, but it was cheap



AND it has paper like THIS inside:




So, yeah, I have a problem.


In other news, I found some leaves outside!



And some daffodils. Real ones!


But Emmett says it's still too cold.



I know how he feels.

A Rash of Pictures

I got BG addicted to this liquid crack a couple of weeks ago. I shouldn't have told her where to buy it, because then I could have extorted large sums of $ from her for it.



It snowed again last night.




I figured as long as I was out there barefoot in the snow, I might as well get a picture of the bench. I'm hoping to be sitting there, sweating, in 3 mos or so.





Does my pussy make my ass look fat? Wait. Don't answer that.


At any rate, he's extrememly pleased with himself.




No, sadly, they aren't hickies. I traced this mystery rash to my hogu tonight. I don't think I've blogged my sparring gear. Maybe someday. It used to make me feel like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man when I put it on.



Now I have to come up with some sort of wrappy thing for the shoulder straps. Or go with the neck gaitor that MuNKi suggested. I think I'll try the wrappy thing.

Random Thoughts

I'll leave you with these weird snippets while I go about my day, and hopefully you'll add some of your own. :)

It makes you smile and rich.

It's souper than the rest!

the Dulce de La Leche League

Overheard

"You're a extra, extra, extra, extra poop head!"

"If we send it to Yi-yi (through email) will we still have it?"

"Please take your nest out of my room."

"I have a mining level of 32."

and

"He looks like someone from Pride and Prejudice."

"Like Mr. Darcy?"

"Only without the claws."

(that one was Prawn, re Hugh Jackman on the cover of XMen 2)

And just now, a conversation between Grumpy Newspaper Man and a mom and her kids. Grumpy Newspaper Man is an enigma. He's always at the library, always sitting in the wing chairs by the fireplace, always reading the newspaper. Apart from this, his only other known activity is giving candy to young children.

Grumpy Newspaper Man kind of freaks me out a little. The first brush I had with him, he had given candy to Sluggie without my knowledge or consent when she was about 7 or 8. Loathe to be rude to an older person (TKD tenet #6 "respect your elders"), she had taken it (ironically thus breaking another TKD instruction) and come promptly to me whereupon we discreetly disposed of it.

Since then, our interactions with Grumpy Newspaper Man have consisted of him giving us dagger eyes when we are talking near him, him making disgusted noises and pointedly flapping his newspaper when we are talking near him, and him "yelling at" my 2 older girls and one of the librarians when they were talking near him. Oh, yes, and being subjected to him talking loudly (way louder than we ever do) to his cohort, "Grumpy Newspaper Man's Cohort." They are apparently both retired teachers (you can't help but learn a lot about them when they are yelling to each other across the wing chair section), so maybe after all those years of struggling to be heard, they just hate the sound of anyone's voices but their own.

Just now, Grumpy Newspaper Man approached a child and gave him candy. I think he asked the mother first, because I heard her say "thank you for asking." But it was purely extortion, because then he made the child smile at him. No, really. And then he gave a sucker to the kid's sister and made her smile, too.

It kind of makes me flash back to when I was 5-ish in Hong Kong and some fat white dude came to the top steps of our yard as I was going out to play. He made me tell him my name and give him a hug, even though my little 5 year old arms didn't come near to reaching around his ample gut. Even though I didn't know him from Adam. I was too afraid of being rude to him to decline.

Something about Grumpy Newspaper Man just doesn't sit right with me.

Geekery

I'm so pleased to be raising mini geeks! ^_^


Helm's Deep




Aragorn, Legolas and half of Gimli (so he'll be short enough) man the wall.



Theoden hides inside where it's safe



Gandalf has brought the Riders of Rohan over Mount Spiderman just in time to save everyone from. . .



. . . one dead orc!



In other news, MuNKi made yummy bread



and stew



And I made "Lembas cookies."


One mouthful is enough to give a grown man a sugar buzz for an entire day. ^_^

Lizard Gizzard

I've got tickets to go see Eddie Izzard. Huzzah!

Oh Hoppy Day!!

Yes, I'm letting the wider pics bump my sidebar. :)

I'm going to try to do more pics now that I've returned to the Blogging world. I did some writing while I was gone -- not enough, but more than usual. My novel is about 1/3 done now. I read and listened to a bunch of books, watched a bunch of films (though a large portion of that was the LOTR trilogy over and over and over again ^_^), played a ton of Scrabulous games, did a lot of TKD, sewed some goodies, and ate, drank and was merry.

Additionally, MuNKi choked on the anniversary of my dad's death, but his co-worker (the lovely, lovely Erica, may her name be forevermore praised! I'm not kidding) Heimliched him, and saved his life. So you owe all additional forthcoming MuNKi anecdotes to her.

Some of what went on during my hiatus was recorded digitally for posterity as you will now see.

The dangers of Kool-Aid, sale hair dye, and too much estrogen in one place:










Come and join our newfound D&D geekery!! Did you know that you can emboss velvet with rubber stamps and an iron? Cool. :)







Quilting Cat Approves of This Thread (T-Puff awaits her turn in the wings) :



Let it not be said that I never finished that quilt. The Prawn loves her quilt.






We have entered a phase of prolonged LOTR obsession. It's still going strong. (Men of Gondor. . . Yummmmmm. . .) Mollusc has become a GIMP wizard and created this for her desktop:



Sluggie and Jet wait for me to finish making her Fellowhip Cloak:



Trillian helps me with the hood lining:



She is pleased.



"RRR shorts." I hacked off the legs of a blown-up pair of jeans, cut off the 3 big flowers from the flared bottoms and sewed them onto the leg. Prawn chose the placement as they will be her shorts. They look better now that they have washed and frayed because the edges of the flowers are fraying to match the bottoms, which helps to tie the whole look together. (Don't I sound fashion-knowledgable? Don't worry, it's just a facade.)



I. C. Frosty Trees: