Does it bother anyone else that, in the HP:HBP trailer, memories look very much like dildos?
Now, I kind of want to write a drabble about Dumbledore fucking himself with the memory of meeting Voldemort. Hee.
I need to pack. I leave for Taipei, Taiwan (by way of a long-ish layover at LAX) at roughly 8amCT on Saturday, meaning I need to leave the house by 6:15am. Tomorrow night, I’m going to Ravinia with friends, so I need to pack tonight.
I’m still debating as to whether to take a taxi to/from the airport or to park. Parking at the airport will be $96, plus mileage to/from generally runs the company around $24 round trip. Taxi cost including tip is around $58 each way. The nice part about the taxi is that if I’m jet lagged and out of it when I get in on the 10th, I don’t have to drive. The bad part is that the wait for a taxi at ORD always sucks. If you make a reservation in advance, you get a good rate, but I’ve yet to have the taxi company be there within fifteen minutes of me calling…which is ridiculous given how many taxis are at the airport. If my car is there, I can be out of the airport within fifteen minutes.
I’m also debating about which suitcase to take. (I know that this stuff is trivial. But typing it up is at least getting me in a mood to pack.) My usual long trip bag got broken on our Vegas trip, and since the nearest repair shop is 20+ miles away, it’s not repaired yet. It has three wheels instead of the four that it should have, so it’s off balance when it’s sitting down, but you can drag it on the back two wheels almost like you would a normal, non-spinner suitcase. Alternatively, I could take my black rolling duffel, which is a bit less comfortable to drag, but it doesn’t have a balance issue.
In other news, I might have to go out to Seattle toward the end of the week that I get back from Taiwan. Fun!
As part of my procrastination, I’ve been studying my basic Mandarin books and online courses. I’ve memorized how to say hello, goodbye, and how to introduce myself. I’m still working on how to ask if you speak English (and understand the response), how to say something like, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” and how to order food/drinks. I want to learn some basic navigation things, too, like:
* Please help me hail a taxi.
* Please point to the nearest train station.
* Please help me find someone who speaks English.
(In case you can’t tell, my choice of phrases is heavily influenced by watching The Amazing Race. 
)
I’m using Mango Languages as my online tutor and formal lesson, and I’m using Speak E-Z Chinese as my more advanced reference guide. Oh, and I’ve learned how to say fuck as both an exclamation and as a verb. Hee.
Now, it is true that Taiwan, and Taipei in particular, is one of the most American-friendly Asian countries. English is part of the school curriculum, albeit at the level that Spanish is in American schools. There’s also many, many American companies with offices there, so English is widely spoken by expatriates and their colleagues. But, I consider this a great opportunity to learn something new.
I will say, it fucks with me majorly that Japanese and Chinese are similar but not the same. In Japanese, you take a normal sentence structure and add ka to make it a question. In Mandarin Chinese, it’s the same gist but the question syllable is ma. Also, the connector syllables (that turn a word into an adverb or modifier) are similar but not the same. I guess it’s good in the sense that I’m used to the grammatical structure, but I find myself doing this weird hybrid Japanese-Chinese stuff.
I need to watch Firefly on the trip over, maybe. That’ll help with my Chinese cursing, ma?
This may be the only reason to ever watch the Megan Mullally show.
For those who were curious about the livelongnmarry LJ auction that I posted about awhile back, the latest total shows the amount raised at around $46,000. The comm heard from one of his handlers that George Takei is very touched.
As for the things I bought, I am getting an animated icon made and I’ll be getting an epistolary fanfic via postcards from an LJer’s world travels.
You can follow the total as it rises at this link.
For anyone who hasn’t found it through other means, if you upgrade to Wordpress 2.6 and you use a custom permalink structure (aka “pretty permalinks”) as I do, there’s a bug. To be specific, if your permalink structure includes a reference to your index.php file, they will no longer work. The workaround is to edit/create your .htaccess to use mod_rewrite and remove index.php from the link, as described here.
I’m not a big fan of using mod_rewrite, but it’s the only workaround to maintain pretty permalinks with WP 2.6. The WP gods are aware of the problem and are determining a proper fix for the next release, but given the workaround, it’s been deemed non-critical.
Pictures that accompany this post can be found in the Gallery of the Org* at this link. If you’re going to read this post in entirety, I suggest you read it before you look at the pictures, lest you get spoiled about certain happenings.
Some backstory:
On the Monday before we left for Vegas, we went to the American Bridge & Social Club to do a practice game (and get me some much needed black points). While there, we ran into a one-time (literally) bridge partner of mine. She’s a dear and sweet lady, but she and I were not well-matched in skill level (and I wasn’t good enough then, probably still am not, to know how to compensate for a partner with minimal bridge knowledge) , and so the partnership wasn’t a fit. But, we left on good terms, and she still enjoys the game. The AB&SC runs a lesson before each game and has a very informal and friendly club with lots of beginner-to-novice players, so I was really glad that she was going there. I was telling her that we were there to get some practice before the NABC, and she mentioned that her son works as a DJ at the Playboy Club. She said he could get us in if we wanted to go on a night he was working.
Well, my dear husband & I had not heard of the Playboy Club in Vegas. We figured it must be a new addition. After all, it had been a full year since my DH had been to Vegas, and almost two since my last trip. But, we are always up for scantily clad babes, so we let her know that we’d love to go and to let us know when and how.
The next day, I had a message on my phone from her giving her son’s DJ name (DJ OB1…so cute!) and telling us that he only was working on Tuesday and Friday, and that our names would be on the list to get in as comped guests of his. So, we do some research on this club to find out where it is. Turns out that this (link is work-safe) is the club she was referencing, and it is attached to Moon, a very hot nightclub…and in case you didn’t go to the links, both clubs are at the top of the new tower at Palms. Well, this works out just about perfect as we’d wanted to go dancing and partying the night we got in. This was also far more of a boon than we were expecting, as the cover for a Friday night to this place is $40+ per person.
We’re back from Vegas! More in a bit…and this post has been delayed due to some kind of firewall issue with my webserver. I originally started composing it around 2am this morning.
If you look back in the archives at this post, I could have posted it last month and it would have been almost totally accurate. Yet, the post was made about 3.5 years ago.
I guess the good news is that I’m finally making progress. I’ll start up at LFGSM this fall, assuming my (science love him) former manager can manage to get a SIGNED recommendation letter over to them. So far, he managed to miss the deadline by a month and then sent a letter not in the template they wanted and unsigned…and that only happened because I was texting him every other day to remind him.
