Sunday, June 27, 2010

Interwebs Roundup #1

I figure that since I spend most of my time on the internet, I should probably write about things that happen there too. Thus, I have decided that every once in a while, I'll give an update on the fun/interesting/somewhat bizarre things I have found while wandering through the great expanses of the interwebs.

First up, TKB Trading.

At first glance, it looks sort of odd and professional-ish, but after looking through the site for a while, I realized that it has lots of potential for fun. Lots. TKB Trading sells everything you need and more to make your own make up. It even has free recipes. Making your own make up. Store quality, or better. Is that cool or what? I think it would be awesome to get a group of friends together and have a mad scientist party or something.

The bad news? Since TKB is a wholesaler, they have $15 minimum for purchases. That, combined with how addictive it will probably be once I actually make something, means that if I start buying from this place I will probably have no money left for food. :(


Tea is yummy. Personally, I prefer fruity herbal teas, but pretty much everything is good. Well, almost. What I didn't realize for a while is that the regular tea that comes in bags and is sold in grocery stores is very crappy quality. How do you tell? Aside from wherever the little leaves may come from, the point is that they're little. They're dust; crushed up little bits. Crushed up little bits is not tea, it is the leftovers of tea. It's whatever was left at the bottom of the barrel when they cleared out the other stuff. You know, the good stuff.

Good news! Adagio sells the good stuff. Whole leaves, petals, and berries. It's more expensive (In most cases, $2 for a sample, $7 for a full size, $20-ish for the supergimongous), but you can really taste the difference. I bought three samples a couple weeks ago: Masala Chai, Berry Blues, and Sour Apple.
The Chai is tasty black tea with cloves and some other various spices. In fact, whole cloves take up about as much of the sample bag as the actual tea leaves. You could probably use the stuff to season something. After some experimenting, I found out that it's best at 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup, with the water microwaved for two minutes. It's a smooth and very aromatic tea, and you can really taste the cloves and cinnamon. I'm not a huge fan of chai in general, but it's good stuff.
Berry Blues is my personal favorite. It has hibiscus petals, apple chunks, and blueberries. Yep. Whole berries. It's tart and sweet, and when you're done steeping it you can eat the apple chunks. They're tasty. I'm definitely ordering the regular size of this because my sample is almost gone.
I'm not a fan of the Sour Apple. It's too tart, and that's pretty much all I can taste. The name is definitely fitting. Then again, I might have put too much of the tea in my make-it-yourself bag. Apparently loose leaf tea is finicky that way. It's still not my favorite.

3. Killing your guildmates is fun. :D

One of the other officers in my guild on WoW thinks that we should try doing more PvP (Player vs. Player) combat. This would be nice, except for one little hitch: While she and her girlfriend may be awesome at PvP, the rest of us aren't very good. To solve this problem, I suggested we gather once a week to beat each other into bloody pulps in the name of hands-on learning.

It works. As we fight each other, we learn our own and each other's weaknesses and improve on them. If we keep this up, we'll be a force to reckon with. Either that, or sad little puddles on the ground. Unfortunately, a few hours after we started (Way to tell it was successful: it lasted two hours longer than I planned), some Horde showed up and killed all of us for the fun of it. We realized that if we want to keep this up (and we do), we're going to have to keep changing our fighting spot. Otherwise we'll have weekly ganking sessions instead of practice.

And that's it for the weekly roundup! I'll try to post another next week.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Summer Update!

Yay, summer!

I know I haven't posted in a while. That's for a few reasons, and for once my laziness is not one of them. The most important reason is that I was getting a lot of unwanted attention for a while, to the point of harassment and maybe even cyberstalking. Seriously. No embellishment. I looked up the legal definitions of both, and this fit. I stopped posting on most of the websites I normally visit because I'm pretty certain this guy read everything and I didn't want him having normal updates on my life. Thankfully, he seems to have backed off. If you are he, please stop reading this and leave.

...

Is he gone? Kay.

Other than those issues, I've actually been having a nice summer. Alright, other than those issues, and a REALLY BAD sunburn, I've been having a nice summer. Stupid UV rays. Now I have a weird tan. >.>

I went to the beach with some friends I haven't seen in a while (possibly a year or two), and had lots of fun there. We spent a few hours diving into waves, feeding cheese puffs to the seagulls and trying to swim up to a pelican we named Larry. After we left, we went to Sonic and I discovered two unfortunate things: 1 - I was redder than a lobster. All of us were, actually. We were probably the whitest people on the beach when we got there. 2 - They smoked. Icky.

The next week was full of pain because of my stupid sunburn.

Since then, the only contact I've had with things outside my house has been WoW, and going to see Killers with my mom. I am now craving human contact, and seriously wishing I could run over to Washington because half my available friends live there. Stupid geographical issues.

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In other news (meaning things that are not stupid and/or complaint worthy) I've sort of spontaneously developed a love of nail polish and bright red lipstick. Problem? I lack nail polish and bright red lipstick. I only have one of each. *grumble*

Okay, maybe it is complaint worthy.

Darn!