1. It doesn’t like me.
2. My body doesn’t like it.
3. Manic energy is
      a. Bad (when used to obsess over problems)
      b. Good (when used to clean)
4. It comes in tasty flavors.
5. It is not helpful when trying to concentrate (i.e. work on journal layout, consider college choices, do homework, etc.)
6. After years of not drinking soda, energy drinks, or coffee, it makes me REALLY FREAKING WIRED.
7. I crash so hard omg. *falls asleep after frantically cleaning porch and office*

So Steph has this awesome idea that involves the Revolutionary War (the American one) and I shall say no more about that because it is, after all, her idea - but I was helping look up Revolutionary War people and found this Marquis de Lafayette guy. HE IS SO ADORABLE. Srsly. He’s awesome in every possible way. He was BF to George Washington! He was made a general at age 19! He kicked butt in multiple wars! He ended up in a Prussian prison and his wife and daughters petitioned to join him! HE NAMED HIS SON GEORGE WASHINGTON. omg dying of cute need lolcats to survive

So, Gibby’s problem seems to be an unbootable hard drive. Don’t ask me how that happened. The data is there, I’ve accessed it, it’s all fine - but the drive won’t boot. So, I grabbed a second SATA drive (being in the third generation of computer engineers has its perks, namely half-terabyte drives sitting around waiting to be used) and went to install Kubuntu from DVD. Well, that was interesting, because the GUI on the DVD wouldn’t load. So, okay, fine, install in text mode. Which was peachy, but then when booting from the brand new install, my monitor freaked and said crap about the resolution being too big to display. So I’ll burn another copy of Kubuntu and try a reinstall. But at least I fixed the damn BIOS so it shows what it’s doing instead of waving a pretty graphic to distract the simple-minded. (Dad helped too.)
…You know, sometimes I wonder what audience I’m writing to on this blog. The only real answer is me.

Ohmigosh dinner is gonna be so good. :D Okay, the potatoes might end up a little underdone, but it will be soooo gooood. XD I took two giant chicken breasts, dredged them in some whole wheat flour, fried them real quick to make them golden and crispy, quartered a bunch of tiny red potatoes and dressed them with rosemary and oil, tossed a tiny pit of thyme on the chicken, and it’ll all bake in the oven for half an hour or so. It smells heavenly already. :d I thought about adding some other veggies, but onions would overpower the seasonings and carrots are gross and we really don’t have anything else handy. But as always, I’m not actually working from a recipe, so the results might be a little less than perfect. Who knows, though - I made a lovely dinner of turkey breast, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce not too long ago, and it all came out just about perfect. :D I’m slowly getting the hang of this “cooking” thing I hear about.

It isn’t often that I like a book enough to remember it once I’m done, much less make a note to obtain my own copy. I am rather scornful of the quality of most writing nowadays. However, I just finished Stephen Brust’s To Reign In Hell and I must make happy noises about it.

First of all, I am currently delighted by all things thoughtful about the Bible, which really is a very interesting book. Like all intelligent human beings, I loved Good Omens. Now I try To Reign In Hell (which is in fact about Heaven) and it is just as good as the better parts of the Old Testament, like Sodom and Gomorrah. Have you actually read that part? It’s great, seriously, although not as fun as Revelations. Anyway, the book. The concept is hokey at best: the war in Heaven that led to the creation of Hell and Earth. The execution is flawless - even though it’s all politics, it’s a lovely balance between convoluted and crystal clear. The plot devices are believable, the characters earnest. Even better yet, the writing is fantastic, especially considering the material. I particularly love that Beelzebub speaks in the poetic cadances of the King James, although it does stick out like a sore thumb. The world is magical and yet consistent; it’s established without being spelled out or repeated over and over as if to a child, which is always a nice way of establishing things for the reader. I really cannot recommend this enough - I will quite likely reread it as soon as this read-through has settled in my mind, and I’ll find a nice copy of it to shelve next to Good Omens and the handful of other books I’ve deemed worthy to keep well-loved copies of.
Seeing as the copyright is from before I was born, I’m sure I am very, very late to the party on this one, but it is a fantastic book. When I finished it, my immediate reaction was not, “Oh, that was a nice story about the Bible stuff,” but rather an urgent, “But I want to know what happens next!” And then I laughed at myself a little, because I do know what happens next.

P.S. Leviathan was in it. That makes me incredibly happy, since Leviathan is an integral part of my personal mythos. Also, Beelzebub and Satan are adorable best friends. <3

Got the motherboard, installed everything, still having issues with computer. Sigh. I am so far over my head I’m considering giving up on the system entirely and “upgrading” everything other than the drives. My brain is swimming in technical specs and retarded product reviews. “It doesn’t exceed its physical limitations when I tell it to! MINUS THREE STARS.” Except with more misspelling. It is not a quantum computer, people, it is not magic. Stop screwing up the product scores.

I am right at that border between having other people make my computer work and making my computer work by myself. It is frustrating to run up against the edges of your knowledge and end up hitting yourself in the face. Repeatedly. I need to find a manual for my new motherboard. (Aha, so that’s the configuration for the front panel pins!) …But it still hangs when loading the BIOS. I really wish I knew what the problem here is, because it is apparently not the motherboard. Is it the RAM? The CPU? The cables? The video card, despite there being no video problems? Did a jumper get put on wrong? Sigh. Tomorrow I will begin eliminating the peripherals again, and if I still can’t figure it out I will throw my hands in the air and get off my butt to get a job so I can pay the bills and buy a new computer. The setup I want will only cost $220. That is cheap for what is essentially a new computer, and it is all in formats that are actually very popular right now instead of obsolete refurbs. I just need to make sure Kubuntu will support it all. I can put hardware together, really… I do realize that replacing my computer seems a bit drastic, but look at it this way: I could waste money buying obsolete refurbished or open-box parts in an attempt to diagnose the problem by fixing it, or I could upgrade my computer and fix the problem by removing it.

Reminder to self: if you can’t get it to work, RMA the motherboard. Also, do not give in to the temptation to call it a “mobo”.

Dad ordered me a new motherboard. Cross your fingers! I refuse to make statements that the new motherboard will make it work, because that is just asking for it.

Brother is even more annoying than usual. First it was, “Oh, my apartment can’t kick me out for non-payment!” And now it’s “Woe is me, I have to pack my old apartment in a hurry because I put it off for a month and a half and am now out of money. Poor me, lalala, someone should fix it for me. Oh, it’s such a mess, how did that happen, woe.” It’s a mess because you’re a disgusting slob, brother dearest, and no one will fix it for you because it’s got absolutely no effect on the rest of us. You’re lucky Dad is helping you transport your shit, you whiny little pathetic worm. And then he was bitching about how my step-family stole me away from him. WTF? So apparently now he hates the step-family that went to enormous efforts to make him feel loved and to care for him EVEN WHEN HE SPENT A FEW YEARS THREATENING TO KILL THEM. And now he’s sulking in his room because I said I feel no sympathy for him having to pack. Whatever, if he wants his stuff on the curb, that’s his problem. I have decided that I am not responsible for waking people up or reminding them to do things they said they were going to do. It makes me twitch sometimes, but I just remind myself that everyone is only responsible for their own actions, so I need to just let it go.

On the plus side, it seems Hikage is moving in and bringing her cats with her. :D :D :D Nettie! I am so stealing that cat, I swear. Ahem, I mean, uh. Anyway. :D She was over yesterday for a bit and we got started on cleaning out her new room. Hopefully a person living in the room next to mine will help allay my nightly fears of zombies and monsters under the bed. My nightlight helps but then there are funny shadows everywhere. D: I am so afraid of the dark, guys, it is not funny. Hilariously, my night vision with glasses on and glasses off are not appreciably different. WOW that was a tangent. :D

P.S. Thanks, Supernatural, for making the fear of the dark even worse. D: Okay so the bed monster was in a fanfic but IT WAS REALLY SCARY.

It is astonishing to think that, in the grand scheme of cleaning the house, there are really only four rooms and the basement left. Current project is the dining room, which is the traditional fighting ground of the house - the dining room is where all fights about cleaning centered, and where people are most likely to get raised hackles if it actually does get cleaned because ZOMG YOU MOVED MY STUFF. And indeed hackles were raised, but we are all intelligent people here and realized that the process of cleaning involves moving stuff. I am a little regretful that I forgot this room would be a place of strife. The basement will also be a problem, even though it will be remarkably easy to clean. I rather dread trying to clean it because it is a simple fact of life that at least one person in my family will get incredibly mad at me for attempting to restore order and make the basement a useable area. Up to four people might get mad at me, in fact. I’m fine with this, really, I just need to remember to be braced for explosions when I get to it. And I can do the rest of the house first, which will be easy-peasy. Well, one room will be easy. One will be hellish and take forever because it’s such a giant mess and I am not sure I can organize the actual office area, and one will be hellish and take forever because it is disgusting beyond human expression.

I try not to think that technically, I have not satisfactorily cleaned any room in the house. I claim victory over the three bedrooms in use and the living room, and the bathrooms and kitchen don’t count because I am trying to clean them without letting myself notice that I am cleaning them. Also Dad actually cleaned two of the bedrooms, so my contributions are really quite negligible. Huh. That is remarkably demoralizing. Well, soon I will claim victory over the dining room, and that will be most excellent for morale. Ah, and reminder to self for morale: I have in fact also completely cleaned three rooms in another house.

I miss my sister’s cat, Nettie. ;_; She is the sweetest, softest, most entertaining and cuddly thing ever. She falls asleep on my shoulder. She is just - oh, I love her so much! But I never see her or my sister anymore because said sister is working a full-time job and full-time school, so she is basically dead the rest of the time. Poor dear, she works so hard. I wish she’d taken single classes instead of trying to do school full-time again. She could have just transferred the credit to a degree program later… I’m worried that she’ll fail out again because she keeps stacking the odds against herself and setting impossible goals. But I tried to offer advice, and that’s all I can do, the rest is up to her…

MY HARD DRIVE, SHE IS NOT BLOWN. :D :D :D We successfully made sure all my data still exists, and it does, yes it does indeed. A huge looming weight is off my shoulders. I was so stressed - I’m mostly sure that 90% of the irreplacable data has been backed up to CD somewhere, but I would have lost a bajillion pictures and all the music, and mostly sure is not entirely sure. I am increasingly convinced that my motherboard is shot, although I admit to some uncertainty there. But my hard drive is okay! YES.
So, with that victory in mind, tomorrow I will get at least one application for working, and look at no fewer than five colleges from my search, and bring out at least one bag of trash. I set my standards low because my sleep schedule is screwy again, alas. Also, these things are slightly time-consuming. Ah, and I need to find my high school transcript, if I still have it. It’s probably with my SAT scoresheets somewhere… I plan on applying to places like Harvard, Yale, and Standford for the heck of it. I wouldn’t go even if I got accepted, so all I’m losing is postage. :D I could probably stand to start figuring out what to write my essay about. Remember, Lisette, the best essay is the one no one expected to want to read… Pick a topic and then come at it from the most interesting angle possible. Be bizarre. The application reviewers will thank you for not writing about your most favoritest hero or your summer vacation in Greece.

I made meat jello! Or rather, I made some nice beef stock. I was dumb and forgot that boiling bones makes it jello. :D Yay stock~! It’s for making onion soup. Mmmm, onion soup. But really, meat jello looks so weird. I had to skim off the fat, which I’m saving to make suet, and underneath it was not liquid! It jiggled! I giggled. XD

In other news, computer is still broken, and I am putting off doing things. So! Today I will look up colleges and clean the dining room. Trust me, those two tasks are immense and will take me all day and then some. And now I will get to it!

EDIT: Okay, nix on the cleaning, instead I will hang out with Steph. :D But I did look for colleges! Google is not the best thing for college search, but College Board is. Their search is actually really, really good. You can use any single variable you can think of or combine various ones. I just wish the search results were a little more useful than just a college name and a link to the school profile. Ah well, it’s only 180 results, right? :D If I try to narrow the parameters any more it jumps to 0, though.

Hilarious things!