Hey Kiba! Welcome back. Come by more often!

I went to a rum bar with a couple friends, and really wish I had a higher tolerance. I only had one drink, but so many looked awesome! Then some dancing, but the DJ was awful, so my friend and I mostly stood around and checked people out and tried to figure out if they were single or not. And we went home before 10pm. Yeah, party people what.

I can report incremental progress with Mom's cat. While he still fled under the bed when I visited, this time he didn't shy away when I reached under to pet him. In fact, he purred, licked my thumb, and put one of his paws in the palm of my hand.

I really want to sit down and talk TV with my niece, now. We seem to have very similar taste and she has some interesting opinions and insights.

That's my Niecelet! She's the only other fannish adjacent person in the family. And we talked movies today.

Did any of you guys become infatuated with certain music after the age of 30 (a different music than what you already loved by age 25)? I would love to hear your experiences.

My. Chemical. Romance.

Then they brought friends.

There's a local church that is actively trying to recruit gamers and geeks, and has a booth with a bunch of swag emblazoned with JESUS (hearts) GAMERS!, and images of Jesus holding an Xbox controller. I am a bad person for finding this hilarious, right?

Not if you send me pictures, you aren't.

My hair drove me nuts today so I sucked up some courage and walked into a salon and went with the first available stylist. I like the color and the cut seems good. Will know more when I style it myself. The greys are gone for now and I have bangs again. Woot!

I found my adored stylist in PDX this way. She had a cancelation and I got very lucky.

My use of the f word was 100% intentional. And he totally flipped out about how he doesn't like that word and , to help me out, he would "give me a lesson on Guy101" which included not being so rude to someone who finds me interesting and wants to spend time with me. Which, how condescending! And totally proves that my response to him was not based on my imagination.

Meet him for coffee and definitively kick him in the 'nads. Ass.

So thanks, pals!

We're a good group for that. Certainly have been for me.

Hi Kiba!

Speaking of music, where do people who are still discovering new music find it? I use to hear new things on the radio, but that doesn't seem to be a thing now. I'll look up stuff mentioned in fic or follow links from Tumblr, and now and again my niece will suggest something that (I can only assume) won't shock her aunt with undue sexuality or profanity. (I type with my Pogues-laden "New uses for safety pins" playlist going in the background.)

DavidS, so much better.

I went to a rum bar with a couple friends, and really wish I had a higher tolerance. I only had one drink, but so many looked awesome!

I find it awesome that there are whole bars devoted to rum. (I'm an infrequent drinker so my education in alcoholic matters is minimal. Perhaps everyone but me already knew about rum bars? In any case, it's delightful, and I like to imagine Capt. Jack Sparrow spending a lot of time at one.)

We're a good group for that. Certainly have been for me.

Truer words.

Speaking of music, where do people who are still discovering new music find it?

I've found Pandora & Spotify to be pretty good for music discovery.

I use to hear new things on the radio, but that doesn't seem to be a thing now.

Algorithm driven stations like Pandora are usually pretty good for this. You punch in your preferences and it finds similar things.

I used to find cool smaller bands and artists by going through CD Baby, and searching by types of music. Their filters are fairly extensive so if you want to find a woman with a celtic element to her music who likes Tom Waits you can look things up like that.

I still read lots of music blogs and that's where I find intriguing new music. One of the nice things now is that you can check out a song instantly by just going to listen to it on YouTube.

Stephanie, it sounds like the friend is an absolute twat. Defriending is a perfect option.

Happy sunday!

CD Baby sounds good. I tried Pandora a while back and their algorithm didn't seem to work for me. I should probably try it again, though, since that seems like the sort of thing that would be under development

Thanks!

I tried Pandora a while back and their algorithm didn't seem to work for me.

I don't really listen to Pandora for new music. It's best of for me to just listen to the Miles Davis Station and that brings up other jazz artists I like in a particular style and era.

I have a Decemberists station on Pandora that, if I had time to write everyone down when I'm listening at work, would be an utter gold mine of new music. Truly, we live in a golden age of earnest warblers with minimal instrumentation and hyperliterate lyrics, and I kind of love them all. The only ones I've taken the time to hunt down and aggressively adore are First Aid Kit, but I do adore them quite a lot.

In other news, what do they teach them at these schools? Matilda wore her kick-ass perfect Ozma costume, using this as a reference (didn't have time to do the crown and couldn't afford the fleur de lys, but got all the rest of it, including the big OZ scepter), and *every single kid* who talked to her wanted to know if she was Princess Leia. Plus at least two teachers.

Dude. I. What? First, I honestly had no idea she was an obscure character. She's not in the first book but she's in all the others, she's basically the President of Oz (also surely the first transgirl ruler of any nation, real or imaginary) and she's Dorothy's best and most loyal friend. There are, like, fifty books by now and she looms large in approximately 49 of them.

Second, I'm mildly insulted (NSM the kids, but very much the grown-ups) that anyone would think I'd be dumb enough to respond to a Read Across America book character costume challenge by dressing my kid up as someone from the movies. What the what, people? Whole different art form! What do they teach them at the schools nowadays?