This was the real reason for this post. This picture amuses me, and I like making funny faces. Took this just before heading out to Sin City tonight. I should wear tophats more often.

So, I decided to just dye the last 3 or 4 inches of my hair. I was planning on doing my old "dark tulip" that I used to do all the time, but Shoppers didn’t have any. Well, "Rubine" looked close in the bottle…

Apparently "Rubine" translates almost directly to "neon pink". Who knew? I am very, very pink. The picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s practically neon. I remain convinced that it looked way more red on the bottle.

Also: I would look better with a bit of lipstick on. And maybe if I let my hair dry completely before taking pictures. meh, whatever.

Nick thinks I look like a popsicle. Aw, thanks. Love you too, honey.

So, I haven’t seen any of the new 3d movies yet, and only vaguely remember them from the brief popularity they had in the 80s when it was all about “THROW THIS THING IN YOUR FACE BECAUSE WOO LOOKY HERE WE GOT THIS HERE THREE-DEE TECHNOLOGY.” Although the old glasses were far more cool, with the paper frames and the red & green lenses. We got to the theatre fairly early, since it was a sold out show, but even then were not near the front of the lineup. Still, we got decent seats, but somewhat off to the side.

The 3d started in the trailers for Toy Story 3 and Tron. And I started getting a bit dizzy. Well, shit. I was rather nervous at that point that said dizzy was going to get worse, and I dislike vomiting in public or wasting money, so this was a Bad Thing. But, it never did — I just stayed mildly dizzy throughout the entire movie. Phew. I think it may have had something to do with sitting so far to the side. The opposite side of the screen had a bit of a blur to it, which just seemed to be from the angle.

Anyway, dizzy & blur aside, the 3d was pretty neat. They’ve gone away from the THROW THIS IN YOUR FACE style, and now just use it to add a little depth to the scene. Much preferred, thanks.

The movie itself? Absolutely gorgeous, as usual. Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter was dead on, nobody could have Red Queened as well as Helena Bonham Carter, Mia Wasikowska was a perfectly fragile looking Alice (until the end, anyway) and the vorpal sword was, in fact, vorpal. I’m not a huge fan of Anne Hathaway and … didn’t quite think her “look” was right, but I liked her performance of the White Queen anyway.

And I could listen to Alan Rickman’s voice ALL FREAKING DAY.

The story was good enough, entertaining and fun, but of course it’s a Tim Burton movie: I’m there for the visuals. And it paid off, it was fucking pretty.

Worth a watch? If you like Tim Burton style movies, and Johnny Depp’s particular insane brilliance, then absolutely. And now… futterwacken!

Update: This is a little too accurate. Luckily, I love it. Deedly deedly deedly deedly!

We’re funny. (Warcraft knowledge possibly required.)

Due to Nick being out of town, we decided to reschedule Valentine’s Day until yesterday: When I had purchased 2 tickets to see Jonathan Coulton perform at the Rio.

So. Awesome.

First, we got to experience Paul & Storm, and “experience” is surely the right word. You know, I hate the idea of opening bands, but at the same time I’m usually impressed by them — from Howie Day opening for Tori Amos, to Macy Gray opening for David Bowie… honestly, there’s a raeson the musical artists I see choose these bands, and it usually pays off in spades. And yet, I get all “Don’t go too long, and get the hell off the stage” … and to my delight, that’s a lyric from Paul & Storm’s first number: “Opening Band”. Okay, they had caught my attention at that point, and with amusing songs as “Nugget Man” (moment of silence for the Nugget Man) and my favorite, “The Captain’s Wife’s Lament”. (Amused Arrr.)

Of course, no matter how amusing and entertaining, they’re not who we came to see.

Jonathan Coulton was AWESOME. If you’re not already a fan, you should be. There was no disappointment, he was as good as I was expecting. Played almost every song I was hoping to hear, and even a few I wasn’t familiar with. How had I never heard Mr. Fancy Pants before? What’s wrong with me? Heck, I finally appreciate Beyonce. (Er, you may have to hear him live to get that.)

Anyway. Was faboo. Was a good evening, spotted the infamous Kimli, finally met (well, sort of) Renee, and wound up in the balcony sitting behind cas & kdot. Hooray for good people!

Also, I picked up an awesome t-shirt that reads “Visit beautiful Skullcrusher Mountain” on the front, and “What’s with all the screaming?” on the back. I approve.

Best of all, know all the good sneaky parking spots since I work around the corner from the Rio, and did not get trapped. Eek.

Happy Valentines Day, sweetheart. Hope you liked it!

Anyway, I mentioned this to a coworker who has known Nick for about 20 years.

“Nick is like a samurai!”
“How’s that?”
“Because he can do totally gay shit and nobody would ever question his masculinity for it.”

Precursor: These are not instructions. If you’ve never made cold process soap before, go read a proper “how to” guide, or get someone to teach you. This is written for people who already know how to make soap and don’t need every step laid out. There’s lye involved, don’t play with that without knowing what you’re doing. Also, never use a found recipe without running it through a lye calculator on your own first. (I made this one up for myself.)

First, here’s the recipe I used — it’s a little varied from my usual mix, because I wanted to use the last of my cocoa butter & shea butter, hence the odd numbers:

400g Coconut Oil
400g Palm Oil
200g Water
200g Coconut Milk
200g Olive Oil
172g Sodium Hydroxide
100g Grapeseed Oil
56g Cocoa Butter
22g Shea Butter
28ml Lemongrass Essential Oil

I did the usual measuring out of the lye & water. I can’t be sure, but I think the lower volume of water made it heat up more. At least, I can only assume that’s the reason that the glass jug I’ve been using for 8 months to hold my lye/water solution broke off cleanly at the bottom when I submerged it into the water bath. Crap. Well, at least it broke in the sink and not all over my counter. At worst, my sink will drain a little more clearly. Lye all over my kitchen is NOT something I want to think about.

So, I switched to a pyrex measuring cup instead. This worked fine. Phew. Left that sitting in the water bath while I went on to measure & mix the rest of my oils.

The shea butter & cocoa butter were already measured out, because I needed to see how much I had left so I could run that through my lye calculator first. I added the rest of my oils, and measured out the coconut milk and set it aside. Heated the oils, cooled the lye until everything was about 120F (Yes, I measure my oils in g, and my temperature in F — “120″ is a bit more exact than “50″ so being a degree or two off is less of a big deal.)

Got my stick blender out, and started stirring the lye solution into my oils. Blended in very short bursts — I’ve discovered before that a low-water soap can go from “untraced” to “seized in the pot” SUPER fast, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to end up with a solid lump again. Huge pain in the butt. When I guessed it was roughly halfway to tracing, I added in the room temperature coconut milk, stirred a bit more to get everything fully blended, added in my essential oil (lemongrass — yummy!) and grabbed my prepared mold.

It was starting to trace super fast at that point, so I started lumping it into the mold as fast as I could. I usually make round soaps, using a lined PVC pipe, so the more firmly traced it is, the harder it is to get it into the mold. By the time I was finished molding it up, it was roughly the consistency of playdoh, which is ridiculously hard to work with, especially with a narrow mold. Upon reflection, I probably should have grabbed one of my flat pan molds, but I really like my round soaps. Here’s hoping there aren’t any major air holes in there — I pushed at it a lot with my spatula to try to shove it down. Next time, I think I’ll add the essential oil at the same time as the milk so I can avoid extra stirring.

I had a bit more than fit into my single round mold, so I grabbed one of the washed, clean milk cartons I save for exactly this purpose. They’re neat, they make perfectly square soaps.

So, everything is in the molds, and I’m leaving them uninsulated because… well, it’s a milk soap, and I’m told those heat up a ton. They’re sitting out in my pantry right now, and I’m looking forward to unmolding them on Wednesday.

…stay tuned for how they turn out! I didn’t add any color because I wanted to see what the coconut milk did. My soaps tend to be a fairly standard light cream color when left uncolored, so we’ll see how they turn out with the milk.

Updated! Now, with pictures!

I unmolded my coconut milk soaps, and hooray, they seem to have turned out! Will wait a few weeks to really try them, but washing the residue off my hands sudded up quite nicely and left my hands nice and soft, so I think it’s going to be pretty good stuff.

As expected, there are a few "gaps" where there were air pockets. Next time, I have to work on getting it into the molds faster, it’s difficult to work with a long narrow mold when you’re at a super thick trace.

Color: Not much different from my normal soaps, maybe a tinge more yellow… although that’s probably from the lemongrass, which has some minor discoloring effects. Next batch I do (I still have another 200g of coconut milk) I will probably try to color a bit. We’ll see.

I scented these a lot stronger than I usually do, and my kitchen smells very strongly of lemongrass. I am totally okay with this, because lemongrass is awesome.

And now you’re even older.

And now you’re even older.

And now you’re even older.

You’re older than you’ve ever been, and now you’re even older. And now you’re older still.

He still looks like he’s got pudding for bones, but my he’s getting big. Too heavy to easily pick up now, and that snout is starting to look like a proper snout!

But he’s still a goofy looking puppy!

And that’s okay. I have the occasional “jesus fucking christ on toast” fit of rage, but mostly I’m just apathetic toward the whole thing. My commute is a big bungled, especially since I like to ride into town with Nick, and hop the skytrain back. This usually adds 5-10 minutes to my commute, but these days is adding more like 10-20… but I think my regular commute would be a bit shitty anyway. The buses I would otherwise take to get to work are all coming from downtown, so they tend to be hyper-delayed by the time they get to me.

So last night, Nick & I were going to wander around a bit and see what horrible, horrible things they’ve done to my city. So, I popped on the skytrain after work and headed to Granville St. I was going to pop onto the Canada line and take it one stop over to Yaletown, where Nick works. Well, that was an utter fail. When I got into the station (which took 5 minutes just to battle crowds on the street) and saw how long the line was… yeah, no. I skedaddled out of there and walked.

And got annoyed. And more annoyed. And further annoyed.

I don’t like large crowds of people when I’m trying to get somewhere. Drives me crazy. I’m totally okay with being PART of a large crowd — like, say, a concert, or watching Stephen Colbert help Bob Costas ride a moose. That shit’s fine. But trying to get THROUGH large crowds makes me extremely cranky. So, given that I walked from Granville Skytrain to the heart of Yaletown… with EVERY SINGLE SIDEWALK full of people with no idea where they’re going…

By the time I got to Nick’s office, I was seethingly angry, frustrated, and wound up so tight I think you could hear me go “twang”.

Luckily, Nick had some last minute work stuff come up, so I got to hang out and watch him work and CALM. THE FUCK. DOWN. It was very nice to simply tell Nick “I’m angry and frustrated and I need you to fix this so that I don’t have a big hairy conniption right here” and have him take care of me and soothe the olympic beast. Which he did, wonderfully. My, I love that boy.

I think I signed some sort of NDA (does anyone actually read those things?), but the game he’s working on is past beta anyway, so I don’t think there’s anything I can share that isn’t already public knowledge. For example: It’s a wicked cool game. (Review snipped because… hmm, apparently I’m still not supposed to say anything, even though it’s all public knowledge already. Alas. Better not to step on toes, though.)

So anyway, olympic fever. As I mentioned, Nick’s office is right in the middle of Yaletown. I was unaware of how insane Yaletown was, with my general “head in the sand” method of dealing with this Olympic invasion. I work near Broadway Skytrain, where at most, we get large crowds of olympic-goers trying to get to a specific venue. Nobody comes to this neighbourhood to hang out, unless they’re trying to score some drugs, and honestly the Art Gallery’s better for that anyway. Yaletown, on the other hand, is fucking NUTS. The generators powering the music is occasionally louder than the music. All the restaurants have expanded their seating practically into the road, and the roads are full of vendor tents anyway. All the restaurants have increased their prices to the point of ridiculousness — although Nick’s employer is nice enough to bring in catered lunches. Bonus, no ridiculous lunch prices… and your “we’ve got a game to finish” staff don’t have any excuse to leave. Ever. Ah, video game industry, how I love you and am disturbed by you all at once.

Anyway, we wandered down around the Plaza of Nations, where … unknown crappy band was playing, and there were a ton of vendors setup selling shit. And wow, do I mean shit. I saw … a sock vendor that sold cool socks, and a hat vendor that sold animal-hats with ATTACHED MITTENS. Ok, those were freaking awesome, and if it wasn’t for the whole “Nick would never be seen in public with me wearing a crazy animal hat with attached mittens” thing, I would have bought them all. But everything else was utter crap. Like, stuff you’d be embarrassed to sell at the Night Market, and the Night Market has some amazing crap. Lots of bling, though. If you like things that are SUPER SHINY and can be seen from space, this is the place for you.

Instead, we bought hotdogs. For $5 each. Ouch.

At that point, my knee was starting to ache and Nick was starting to limp (we’re both a little beat up this week) so we decided to just head home. We are not very good olympic viewers. Maybe we’ll try again next week and hit up Robson St. Anyway, we cut through the DTES, where Pigeon Park was … totally deserted. How bizarre. I reminisced about how I saw my first crack pipe there. How nostalgic. Still, lots of other people wandering around screaming obscenities and for once, nobody offered me drugs, although someone did try to sell me a pack of cigarettes for $5. I continue to shake my head at how this city can change by going one block in the wrong direction. It continues to depress the hell out of me.

So that was my adventure. My knee still hurts, damnit. I suspect it had something to do with standing in a mud puddle for 4.5 hours on Wednesday with inadequate shoes watching Stephen Colbert be hilarious in person. My legs were numb to the hip by the time I left that one. Totally worth it, but I’m paying the price — I just about fell down the stairs last night, it seems that my knee doesn’t appreciate me putting weight on it when it’s bent. Oops. Knee brace it is.

Regardless, I remain absolutely head over heels in love with that fabulous boy that I share my life with, and I’m so, SO happy that he’s on a plane right this second coming home to me. I leave in about 15 minutes to go pick him up (with CUPCAKES!), and THANK FUCKING LORD. I am missing him so much.

He makes me feel fuzzy inside. And now, to go grab the cupcakes… and off to the airport!