Less than 72 hours til opening and throw wide the gates at Bristol!

As seen in a food shop in Nassau, Bahamas:



If you can't read it clearly, it is labeled: Jamaican original Caribbean style International Juice - Carrot Juice and Stout.

I'll take "products that make me gag just from reading the label" for $200, Alex.

Of course, I'm sure it's just yum-yum-delish, since they had so much of it in stock.

It's only one picture, but one of my shots from Looptopia '07 is now being used on the City Colleges of Chicago website. :)

Oops. Forgot to give full link - for those interested, pictures from Fan Faire 2009 - Las Vegas are now all posted. :)

The winning costume for the 2009 Fan Faire:

I always have several books being read simultaneously, of course. Recently finished:
-- Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn by Catherine Friend
-- Jen Lancaster's Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl's Guide to Why it Often Sucks in the City, or Who are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me?.

Just started:
-- Geoff Nicholson's The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism
-- Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It
-- Antonio Graceffo's The Monk From Brooklyn: An American At The Shaolin Temple. (Graceffo's book sadly is nowhere near as entertaining as Matthew Polly's American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China; but both are interesting reads after having visited Shaolin).

For a change of pace and a much shorter title, I also recently started Terry Pratchett's Nation.

So, what's on your current reading list?

Free shipping on my Zazzle products through the end of June - use code "JUNESHIPFREE" when ordering!

If there's been any photography of mine you'd like to see on a product... now's the time to ask me to put it on something! And if there's a Chicago neighborhood you'd like to see for the In The Hood selection, state it now. (Anything I don't get posted in the next two days, I'll post on the 29th). I'll get the wider selection of designs from here over on Zazzle today or tomorrow.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Zombie March Chicago 2009 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/meryddian/sets/72157619823988210/

Chicago Steampunk - pictures from the June 4 expedition to the Art Institute modern wing are being added here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/meryddian/sets/72157603808422965/ (more to come later tonight)

I have been meaning to go to Molly's Cupcakes (2536 N. Clark St, Chicago - between Diversey & Fullerton) for quite some time, but let's put it simply, shall we? It is a good thing for my diet/weight loss efforts that the city's choice cupcake emporiums are all in Lincoln Park and thus, a major effort for me to go check out. Because seriously? Diving face-first into a cupcake display case is not a good look for anyone. And Molly's treats are *just* that awesome.

It was with some relief that I found that Molly's cupcakes are normal-sized - that is, what you can make with traditional, 12-to-a-pan old-fashioned sized cupcakes, not the massive, bigger-than-your-fist sized muffins/cupcakes that you find in the coffee shops today. (You know, the ones so huge they can be mistaken for softballs.) So, to try them out, I ordered six different flavors and took them home. Granted, I'm not proud that my dinner was a sugar-fest, but I only managed to eat approximately 3-1/2 cupcakes' worth before I keeled over in a combination of omgnomnomnom incredibly-rich goodness, and sugar shock.

Flavors in question: red velvet with French buttercream frosting; classic chocolate with cream cheese frosting; and then four "center-filled" flavors - Boston cream, cookies-n-cream, tiramisu, and strawberry shortcake. Seriously, each one was so deliciously tasty in rich that even after trying a forkful of each one, I had a hard time deciding which was tastiest. I think my favorite was the tiramisu; and the strawberry shortcake was the lightest. The Boston cream is a knock-your-socks off chocolate piece of sin (and what honestly did me in, although it was awesome).

Between 15 different daily flavors, plus cookies, bars, tarts, cakes, cheesecakes and other yummy treats, you can also design your own cupcakes from four base flavors (vanilla, chocolate, red velvet, and carrot cake), five frostings, and a dozen toppings.

Are you vegan? Don't worry, they have four different kinds of cupcake for you, too.

And if that's not enough incentive - Molly's donates a portion of every sale to help out local schools in their community.

So I'm marking Molly's as a special indulgent dietary splurge in my books, but like I said, it's good they're not local for me - because they are that incredibly delicious that I just want to run right back there!

So I was wrong, but this (really!) would've been my 2nd guess (battle debris, anyway) - they finally announced where you see R2-D2:

During the Drill Machine sequence as the Enterprise comes out of its barrel role amidst destruction of the other Federation ships above Vulcan, we cut to an interior Enterprise bridge over the shoulder of Kirk that is looking out through the front viewscreen. In space, R2-D2 is floating in the debris from about the top middle of the screen to the bottom right.

Yes, I am laughing at the fact that 1) they spelled "barrel roll" as "barrel role"; and 2) ooo some bad English there. Grammar police, activate!

(And now I must see the film again. Hmm, when does it come out on DVD?)

Sakurako Kitsa on Flickr has the most awesome set of photographs called "Bento favorites". Apparently she never listened when her mom said "Don't play with your food!"

I'm particularly impressed with the lobster stylized out of tomatoes, and the "spa bento". :)

I love collecting ideas that could either work in my own place, or the vague idea of some as-yet-unbuilt future home.

This staircase, which cleverly combines bookshelf space with creating a staircase in a cramped space (in this case, in a Victorian home) is a win-win project. Plus zomg, bookcastairs!

The whole website - Apartment Therapy - is also really enjoyable to browse through, especially for DIY/HGTV fans. :) (If you like creative living space, also check out saucydwellings).

I was surprised and delighted to discover Minnesota not only has almost two dozen wineries, but half a dozen are an easy half-day enjoyable easy tour from Minneapolis.

A review of the wineries, including pictures, is over on my travel blog.

My route (approximate) is on the map at right - starting at the MSP airport and ending up at the Mall of America (which is a couple miles SW of the airport - tons of hotels in that area).

The Metrodome is a surreal place to see a baseball game. A baseball game just doesn't feel like a baseball game without being outside, and I won't even get started about my opinions in regards to astroturf and baseball. The locals seem pretty enthusiastic about their new stadium, however; you see signs around the stadium noting "countdown to outdoor baseball!". So I guess they feel the same way. :)

If there was IMAX + DBOX + Star Trek 11, I would never leave the theatre. :) *moviegeekgrin*

My chopsticks fortune @ TigerSushi... If someone sits on your lap, does that make them a Laplander?

The only bad thing about an awesome car rental is that it makes you realize what a POS your own car is.

I don't know how it happens, but my flight always leaves from the %#@& LAST gate in the terminal.

What is the last completely random, BIG thing you randomly said yes to, went off and did on the spur of the moment, took a trip, or just followed a sign for no other reason than "because it was there"?

(And by "BIG" I mean beyond choosing Rocky Road when you always, always have vanilla...)

New feature coming to EQ2: player-written books (discussion thread over here). So you can create/write a book in-game, share it with your friends, sell it on the broker (in-game not RL money), put it in your player housing. Kind of neat. Not sure how many of these I'd read in general, but I think it would be interesting to write a character's history and place it within their own home.

Worth reading: The Tyranny of Trends: how fashion affects not only ourselves, but our planet.

The Austin Browncoats ran an eBay auction benefitting Equality Now called "Name The Crappy Town Where You're a Hero". Winners get the right to name one of the towns on various homeworlds of the Firefly 'verse in the upcoming Atlas to the 'Verse, Volume One: The Trader's Guild Guide to the New Canaan Run.

I won one of the slots to name a town on Shinon. My RL name's original meaning is "beloved", so I translated that into Chinese and got "Xīn ài", which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue as a town name, so I submitted Kuei'Shen as my first choice. (As there does not appear to be a direct succinct definition, 'Kuei shen' sometimes refers to the 'spirit' or 'spirits', or as the linked page references, the unity of 'yin' and 'yang'.) I am chose this name as my character in the Star Trek-based sim group (www.slasims.com) was named M'Hawarr Sierra Kuei'Shen; I had originally found the 'Kuei-Shen' character in a book of Chinese calligraphy when I was looking for a Chinese name to add to Sierra's moniker.

Yay! for fun stuff that can support a cause I believe in, AND also get me a cool place in the official Firefly atlas. (Pending studio approval, of course! heh....) :)

New Trek movie?

=/\= It is AWESOME. =/\=

That is all. :)


No, I am not posting any reviews or spoilers. This is so sheer fantastic that this is all I will say:
- Even Trek diehards like myself do not walk away disappointed;
- There's a bunch of inside jokes but you don't have to know Star Trek well to still find them funny.


Any other commentary? I'm waiting til after at least Friday. *Two Vulcan hand salutes of approval!*

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Oh and if you like Monty Python AND Trek... check this out.

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And in other nerd news.... Deadpool spinoff gets cleared for takeoff. WTF? How can they properly portray Deadpool after what they did to him at the end of Wolverine? *bangs head on desk* *sigh*