like a true nature's child

flist, i have a question for you. sometimes, when i do not sleep well (or, uh, do not sleep because i'm noodling around on the internet til 2am), i, like many people, get dark circles under my eyes. however, this does not go well with the image i am trying to project at work of being competent and on top of things even at 9am.

now, i realize that the obvious solution to my problem is 'go explain this to the nice ladies at sephora and let them sell you things' which tbh is probably what i will end up doing. except i find sephora a little intimidating when i have zero idea of what i'm looking for, so, uh, could you tell me a little bit about what some of my options are? and, possibly, how idiot-proof they are when you are moderately sleep deprived and not a a morning person?

So, I've been watching Sherlock, and I don't have any commentary on it that I feel like needs to be said by me enough to bother to type up, but then someone on my flist linked the preview for the third episode, and, WOW is that a crossover I would read.

Someone should tell me about it.

how am i ending* 2011? on the couch with a cold, finally watching last week's 24/7. unparalleled glamour, that's me.

*i was going to say 'celebrating the end of 2011', but honestly, a bunch of things went really well for me in 2011, of which maybe the biggest for me is how much more sane i feel now than i did in a lot of 2010.

( i can't promise this won't turn into cooing about claude giroux )

1. The caroling is terrifying to me. I still haven't watched it with the sound on, and I have no plans to.

2. I like Joey segments for two reasons: a) we can check in on whether Joey still looks like Tazer did at that age (yes.) (Thanks for the pics, Andree!) and b) we can see which players can deal with children and which can really really not.

3. Man, Sharpy was an awkward-looking dude in his teens. How did he grow up to be stunningly beautiful?

4. heyyyy kaner's tights hey. (and by tights i mean ass, obviously.)

5. No, really, I think the "Behind the Scenes" segment needs to be retitled "check out kaner's tights".

6. Hey, it's the Landmark Center! And Rice Park! Hi St Paul!

7. Recall that in the segment about the equipment staff, when Clint listed the players that cause the most work for him, they were (I think) Hossa, Kaner, and Duncan "Very Meticulous" Keith. And then the conditioning coach talks about how he's there to help players get ready for the game in whatever way they found useful, and what do we see? Carbomb warming up on his own. Hossa getting stretched out. A bunch of dudes playing two-touch. Kaner getting stretched out.

8. And then Kaner gets worked on between periods too. (Speaking of, can you really "shake out" the lactic acid? Because if you can, I'll feel bad for doubting the coach who kept telling me that.) I'm getting the impression that Kaner is rather high maintenance.

it may be awhile til i, cough, get around to watching either 24/7 or NHL 36, so while I wait, a meme:

Tell me about a story I haven't written, and I'll give you between one and three sentences from that story.

look, it's either that or i tell you about trying to drag my engineering co-workers into small talk at the work holiday party. (spoiler: unsuccessful)

I realized I hadn't posted in like a month, which whoops! Maybe I should get on that. Although, let's be honest, the real thing that spurred me into posting was realizing that this means that the top post on my journal for a month was speculation on tazer's condo, and that made me look much crazier than I really am.

For example, I didn't try to stalk him even once while I was in Chicago! not even to get the answers to these pressing questions.

speaking of, i was in chicago this weekend and it was great! I met/saw again/spent time with a bunch of awesome people, and we didn't run into any oilers being tourists downtown (sorry hannah), and at no point did i feel weird and awkward, and i had a great time, except for the parts where i got in at 130am or where i was worried about blowing away. and no one died of slightly-hysterical laughter over dinner when estaal was a minus 3 in the car-pit game.

i asked on twitter a while back if anyone was worried that they were going to accidentally talk about their hockey holidays fic to their recipient, and apparently i am not the only one with that fear. let me explain a chain of events that makes me think this is a perfectly reasonable fear:

9:00: Person A is writing their fic at me, for an unknown-to-me recipient. this gives me a tangential idea.
9:05: I compose an email to Person B that starts "[Person A] is telling me about [story] and that made me think of [this other thing]."
9:10: Delete email unsent, as I should probably not tell B about A's fic, just in case A is writing for B.
9:20: Reconsider. After all, A showed me the prompt from her recipient, and it didn't look like the sort of request that I think B would make, so she's probably not writing for B.
9:30: Realize that A is not writing for B. because i am.

So I have more-or-less adopted a policy of radio silence, out of sheer self-defense.

(links available upon request)

1. Bobby Ryan thinks that the way to bust a slump is to take his linemates out to Olive Garden.
1a. It appears to work.

2. Evander Kane is actually good loooking.

3. Andrew Ladd is living (with his wife) in Tazer's condo in Winnipeg. ...for good? until they find a place? he was unclear.
3a. Tazer has like 30 copies of NHL11, and none of the other ones.

4. The Jets are the only NHL team who know how to deal with rookies just out of junior, as they have found their 18-year-old players a nice billet family to live with.
4a. Unless you count Briere as a billet family all on his own.

5. As opposed to the Oilers, who have stuck RNH in an 'apartment hotel' on his own.
5a. Halls and Ebs invited him over to dinner, but then rescinded the invitation so they could go to a movie together.
5b. And then spent the time after his mostly-hattrick leaning in front of him so they could talk to each other.
5c. He really is going to be the Leddy of Edmonton, isn't he.

[Poll #1781688]

DISCUSS

internet, i have moved! on one hand, the packing and coordinating stages made me stressed and miserable, but the new place is super cute and i am super pleased with it. the actual physical moving didn't even suck that badly, once my brother and i got the hang of it! we were moving via SUV, and were not particularly aggressive about stuffing it to the brim or using the roof rack, so we made LOTS of trips and had plenty of chances to get it down to a science. (it's about a mile and a half between the two places, and we had parking on both ends, so it wasn't that bad to keep driving back and forth.) and we got the rental returned with about 90 seconds to spare, which i was rather proud of.

we had no major mishaps, accidents, or parking tickets, although we did break my bookshelf in half. (it's more or less back together now.) the bookshelf's one of those Target flatpack ones, assembled inexpertly by yours truly, and we were taking it off the roof of the SUV. i had one end, my brother had the other, we moved slightly wrong, and suddenly i was holding one half and he was holding the other, and they were no longer connected. and we proceeded to laugh hysterically while standing in the middle of the street.

my new place is kept up! and clean! and managed by professionals! and ALL MINE. (i'd post pics, but everything that i own that is not large furniture or food is in a wildly disorganized heap of bags, boxes, and rubbermaid containers in the living room. every moment that passes, the chance of me bothering to do anything besides unpack my shower stuff, clean clothes for tomorrow, and my sheets continues to drop. and, frankly, the sheets might get skipped for now. the sheets are for the mattress on the floor, btw. not on the bedframe.)

one of the great things about my new place is its gigantic kitchen. so many of the places that i looked at had, like, a corner of the living room, or a wide place in the hallway that they were calling 'kitchen,' but i like a big comfortable kitchen. the downside is that is Ye Olde Somerville Kitchen, which has a number of distinctive features. like non-existent counter space.

( so, help me re-arrange it until it makes sense? )