So, as per usual, it’s been a bit since I last updated.  Things are still pretty much the same, busy, busy, busy.  Set a few goals for the ol new year, one of which involving completing, or beginning to complete one or more of my novels I’ve been working on.  Just need to decide which is worth attempting to publish.  I’m thinking the fantasy one to start, as I believe it would currently have a larger audience, but we shall see.

Other than that, I have been role-playing again with a passion in an attempt to regain my writing skills in order to get back into the swing of things.  I haven’t illustrated in a tick either and I’d really like to get back into that as well.  Just attempting to regain some things I’d tossed aside for a while in order to enjoy freetime again and hone my creativity a bit more.

This weekend is Doctor Who weekend as I need to get through Series Two that I received for Christmas since I’m an obsessive fangirl now.  All things British, you know.

Can’t wait for Torchwood to come back and Burn Notice too!  Soon…

Good luck to my cousin on the new jobbie that she wants to apply for.  Right up her alley.  I think she’d be brilliant at it.

Love to all.

Okay, so it’s been awhile, again.  I do have quite a bit that’s been going on that I’ll post about, though. 

When it comes to Ryan’s back, we finally, after three neurosurgeons and two insurance companies, got the discogram approved that was needed in order to decide the best surgery options for Ryan’s many back levels that are effected.  We have that on the 23rd and then it’s supposed to be a week on the results.  Fingers crossed this will get the surgery ball rolling and not have any more hiccups with this whole situation that we’ve been dealing with for over 2 years.

In other news, been getting Toybox Design ready for the public and e-mailing a few client bids out in order to get money to help out with things while Ryan’s on disability.  Not just for that, as I love web design/development, but it will help.

Still trying to finish my Harry Potter scarf.  I’m a slow knitter, apparently.  I also have a tatoo to design for a friend this weekend.  I’m going to try to get that and the site done except my stomach’s been screwed up by medication these past two days so hopefully that won’t pull me away from getting things done.

I’ve seen a few movies/shows recently worth watching that I’ll list here:  300, Firefly, Burn Notice, Blood and Chocolate, and a few others I can’t remember.  I want to see Stardust and cannot wait for The Golden Compass to come out.  Fun!

Gotta run…there’s work to be done!

Hey there, friendly neighborhood SpiderFriends…

I know.  I suck at posting, but I’ll get better.  Let’s see…what all has been going on.  Nothing new yet with getting the husband’s back fixed.  Waiting to hear the verdict back from neurosurgeon and pain management negotiations to get him to surgery still.  Apparently, doctors seem to require a month to get their shit together.  Sheesh.

Other than that…not a whole lot going on.  Trying to game more often with Lizard Games and also some side projects and hoping to get together the manuscripts for two of my stories I’ve worked on for a few years.  Cleaning them up for inconsistancies and severe character changes made.  Then onto making animated shorts for some in Flash…which will be groovy and I will share with you.

Saw a few movies/series that I should share my appreciation for:

1.  Howl’s Moving Castle - LOVE IT.  Renewed my obsession with Miyazaki movies.  Now I want that one, the art book that goes with it, and perhaps Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service.  I love that style of animation. It’s about the only one that I can take that isn’t more along the lines of what I consider adult anime art (Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, etc.).  This movie was brilliant and the backdrops they created in it are marvelous.

2.  BattleStar Gallactica - Okay, okay.  I was really pissed when I first saw previews for this and found, what I thought, the fact was that they turned all the Cylons into chicks.  Okay, so they didn’t and okay, so I ended up liking the preliminary episodes.  Thanks, Rabbit.  So now I apparently feel compelled to see the rest of the series.  Sheeyit, man, sheeyit.

3.  The Fountain - Beautiful costuming, brilliant acting, and quite possibly the saddest and most disjointed film I’ve ever seen. When I say SAD I mean “ball your eyes out depressing”.  Unless your in a slightly sadistic mood where you feel like depressing yourself, I’d avoid this.

That’s all I remember of what I’ve seen new that made an impression on me.  Back to RPGs.  I want to start up my X-Men RPG again that Lys and I had ran a while back along with some others.  I have to clean up DoM and to a major overhaul on 2050:TUA, but I think I’ll be dropping Greystone into the retired pile as it’s very hard to game things that involve the Astral Plane and not confuse even myself at times.  2050 will be darker, with the newer version, and DoM, well the characters may not even congregate at the castle before venturing into the Dark Plains.  I’ve got other things up my sleeve.  So I may get these started enough to where, with a good intro, I could start running the games on these as well.  Either of these, as far as potential to be published into a novel, I think might have a good run.  But like I said, major cleanup in the works. 

I have a new design I’ve created in flash for Toybox Design and will roll it out once I get the site portfolio section complete.  It will be a clean/fun look. 

Good times.

Apologies for the seeming hiatius of posts for a bit.  There’s been a TON that went on this past month keeping me from having time to sit down and post.  My brother got married, we took my husband up to OHSU to get another opinion on his back and they still have a ton of crap he has to go through before surgery is considered, and then, what I’ve been dealing with these past two weeks, is that I’ve been very sick.  Had a horrid sinus infection after arriving back in Oregon from the wedding that lasted a week with a fever.  Now it’s morphed into a nasty cough, which I may have bronchitius now, not sure and may see the doctor AGAIN next week if this cough keeps getting worse. Also, my ears, or at least one of them, has so much fluid in it I feel like I have swimmers ear.

But enough of my whining.

I saw a few movies over this time that I thought I’d share my opinion on…

1.  Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - I absolutely loved this book series as a kid and had been looking forward to seeing this movie.  Sadly, and this may be just my opinion, but this movie fell short of my expecations for it.  There were only two characters that had any amount of character developement (Lucy and Tummnus) and even that was underdeveloped.  You didn’t feel you connected with any sort of emotion with any of the characters and the story itself seemed to move far to fast because of it.  Effects were okay ad the end fight was okay as well, but nothing that will motivate me to buy this movie whatsoever.

2.  Smokin’ Aces - I will state that I love me some Ryan Reynolds before I give my critique of this movie.  All that fluff aside, I loved this movie.  The creativity behind the shoot-em-up scenes were brilliant and you came to love a few of the characters within.  I love the plot twist, though predictable, and the cinematography was pulpesque and brilliant.  Highly recommended and not for the feignt of heart due to some killer and gruesome fight scenes.

3.  A Scanner Darkly - 5 years ago I saw Waking Life, which is by the same talent that brought this rotoscoped movie to life and I LOVED it.  From an artistic perspective, I considered it’s predecessor brilliant and was anxious to see A Scanner Darkly as well.  It did not dissappoint.  I think, honestly, had they NOT done this movie in rotoscope format, it would not have translated as well.  All actors gave a brilliant performance and there was a bit of predictability in it, however, it wasn’t enough to put me off.  I’d recommend this one as well, although, due to the animation style, some of you may feel a bit seasick.

4.  Farce of the Penguins - Only recently, thanks to my husband, did I learn that Bob Saget of family comedy fame, was in all acuality, a very sick, dirty comedien.  Which I find amusing to no end.  With Samuel L. Jackson as narrator, I was excited to see this movie and it’s potiential to be a hilarious dirty comedy.  Boy was I ever wrong.  It was terrible.  Maybe three moments in the movie did I laugh, otherwise I found myself thinking “What a horrible romantic sappy pseudo comedy.”  Don’t waste your time with this movie.  If you wanna see a bunch of comediens telling jokes like that, go see the Aristocrats.  Shame on you Sam and Penn Gillette for even being in this movie.

That’s all I can remember of the newer movies I’d seen recently.  I’m almost finished with my HP Gryffindor Scarf and will work on recreating a Victoria’s Secret Knit/crocheted bikini that I saw in their mag recently next.  I can make it I’m sure for less than the sticker tag on that baby in the mag.  Also, I’m almost finished with His Darker Materials trilogy.  For those of you who didn’t know, they’re making a movie of this starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.  Go to Bridge to the Stars to learn more.  Check out the movie poster as well.  Iorek looks killer there.

Well, I have another wedding to go to today and then as of next Monday I’m starting Gold’s Gym to workout with my sis-in-law in order to get buff.  Going to work on my tan as well so that I can whip myself into better shape than I was before.  I have a free consult with a trainer Monday after work as well and will tell them I want to have the body of Jessica Biel from Blade 3.  Rockin.

Ciao.

We have these large boxes in our back yard that were just perfect when we moved in a few years ago to use for a vegetable garden.  I’ve cleaned one of them out as the people before us never used it for that purpose (they bathed their dogs there, which is strange…I digress, and have one to go.  I’ve got several starter plants that are anxiously waiting to be planted there and will by the end of this week, weather permitting.

I’m in a weird mood tonight.  Goofy.  But then again, most people who know me would state that I live in a perpetual state of goofy. 

UFC night is Saturday.  I’ll be cooking this time and doing my 5 cheese stuffed shells.  I may share this recipe after Saturday is over so I can write down all that I do to make it.  Real easy…TONS of cheese…and makes enough for the large group that will be here.  Good times.

Well, Pooka, aka, Princess Butters McNuggets is woofing at me for attention…so I shall retire. 

Okay.  I think I’ve mentioned that my husband is on disability due to degenerative disc disease and two botched operations that left him in worse shape than before.  It’s not a good thing when you get told by the neurosurgeon that they’ve never seen a disc that bad before in a 20something year old, nor that they akinned it to that of a 90 year olds.  He has two discs that are bad between the L4 and L5.  The upper of the two was the worst, which was described as gelatinous.

Anyhoo.  We battled the insurance company, Providence, for over a year and a half after he had two procedures that didn’t work and he needed a fusion.  All the while, we had a craptastic neurosurgeon whom didn’t seem to have time for the vast amount of patients he had.  So we went to a new neurosurgeon, pain management office, and went to his general practicioner to get the low-down on why someone who was 6′2″ had dropped weight down to about 145.

Come to find out, all the strong pain meds he was on completely screwed up his system…leaving him with high-blood pressure, zero creatine being produced, high calcium and potassium levels, and the inability to really stomach anything.  He wouldn’t have had his if the insurance company would have approved he fusion/dynesis that he needed to begin with.

That was about a year ago.  Now, after going up and down trying to get his chemicals balanced for him to even be cleared for surgery again, the doctor/neurosurgeon locally has stated they do not want to clear him as they think the risk would be more than they want to take and they don’t know if they can, in fact, fix his back with a fusion.  So they told us today they basically want him to stay this way and try physical therapy to the best he can to help him be comfortable.  Physical therapy was attempted in the past and this made his back and the pain worse.  So now he’s basically being told to live on disability and they aren’t really going to help him get better.

Insert choice explictive here.

For two and a half years, he has not been able to live his life as he should be able to.  He’s too young for this.  Whom used to be a soccer keeper, a damn good one at that, and a hard worker at his regular job, has now been reduced to living on pain medication and being mostly confined to laying on the couch.  Too much activity causes his back to seize up in knots and spasum and causing him to be down for days…this is all the while he’s on strong pain medication.

It’s just depressing.  Why the hell do we have doctors and insurance if they aren’t there when you really need them?  Sure, they’ll be there for you when you have a cold or when you need antibotics, but when you REALLY need them, all it seems is that they cower into the shadows, too afraid to make a decision or to cheap to help pay for it.

GROWL.

My husband and I have a favorite restaurant in Eugene, OR, called Shoji’s.  You know, one of those Japanese restaurants that performs a show as they cook your food for you.  Everytime we’d go, we’d get the fishbowl drink to start and share and get a wee bit tipsy just in time for the show to begin.  The cook would show off his mad skills and toss up the best tepanyaki we’ve ever had.  We went there so much, on special occasions, that I started to quiz the different chefs that we encountered on how they made it and then I took that information, perfected it, and came up with my own.  This is best cooked if you have a wok.  Not that you cannot use a large skillet, mind you; however, with the wok, it really saves your flinging rice all over your kitchen walls.

Serves 2-4 (depending on how hungry you are)
Cooking/Prep time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
2 cups long grain white rice (Do not use Minute Rice.  If you do, you’ll be sorry as it’s too wet for this recipe.)
4 cups water
kosher salt
1 bunch green onions, finely chopped
2 large eggs
1 Tbsp. margarine
Sunflower Cooking oil
2 chicken breasts, diced
teriyaki sauce (any old brand will do, I like Kikkoman, myself)
Wok Oil blend

Bring the water with a dash of kosher salt to a boil and add rice.  Turn to low and cover for 20 minutes.  Next, in your wok or skillet, heat the butter till melted and add in eggs and scramble.  As the eggs are almost done, with your spatula chop them as finely as you can.  This will save time when you add it to the rice later.  Set the eggs aside, covered.  Next, spin the wok oil twice around the pan and heat your skillet/wok back up again.  Toss in your chicken and cook until almost done.  At the end, throw in about 1 cup of teriyaki sauce and cook for another 5 minutes, allowing the teriyaki to somewhat reduce and very slightly carmelize. Set aside, covered. 

About now, your rice should be getting done.  Once complete, take a fork and fluff.  Add the eggs into the rice.  In your wok/skillet, pour in roughly a cup to a cup and 1/2 of sunflower oil and bring to a simmer.  Throw in your green onions and cook for 2 minutes.  Immediately dump in your rice/egg mixture and toss until the onions get fully encorporated and the rice looks to be covered in the oil.  Here’s where it gets tricky and you really have to watch things, otherwise you’ll either get really greasy rice or burn it.  What you do is take your spatula or favorite tool and press the rice upside the walls of the skillet or wok to the best you can.  Let it sit for a few minutes until you see steam rising from it, then flip the rice.  Everyone’s wok/skillet cooks differently and you may have to play with it a bit till you have it down pat.  You’ll want to repeat this a bit till the rice just barely begins to fry…then you will need to add in about a half a cup of teriyaki.  Toss to encorporate and then repeat the press/flip method until the rice begins to get a light golden brown.  Immediately remove from the heat at this point and cover and you’re done.

Now you could always fancy this up with some chopsticks, tea, and saki and let everyone pile the food on your plate at will.  I will sometimes bake up some marinated tofu to go with this instead of chicken, since I used to be vegetarian and I’ll also add a step before the frying of the rice, and stir fry some of my favorite veggies (onions, mushrooms, zucchini, squash) and set that aside to serve with the rice as well.  My husband is a total meat/potatoes carnivore, though, and so that usually gets skipped. 

Have fun and enjoy!