Minecraft is nothing new, but I have been playing it hardcore on the Xbox 360. I must say that I enjoy playing on the Xbox more than the PC. I feel that the menus are more intuitive and easier to use, and wished that more of my friends would play on the Xbox, but I am content with my own little land. The above picture is a drawing that I created as a blue print for a new village that I am building. Yes, I am that nerdy. Come play with me! Pyrettia Blaze on Xbox Live!
Hi everyone! How was your weekend? I can’t believe somehow Monday slipped by me and now we are closing in on Tuesday evening. Friday night was spent over at Jonny and Julie’s place for an impromptu bar-b-que at their place. It was mostly spent noshing on chips and watching the guys play Donkey Kong and Street Fighter on the Nintendo 64. I tried my hand at Street Fighter, which I have only ever played in the arcade because I never had a 64, and was accused of button mashing. Talk about a sore loser! 😛
After catching up on some much needed z’s, and a little Minecraftin’ I headed over to Tim and Lauren’s place for lunch and hang out time. After debating quite a bit about where to eat, mostly because I am not an adventurous eater, we settled on a place called Bowl & Ramen in Sacramento. I used to live near the area but had never eaten there before. Let me just say again that I am not an adventurous eater, so it took me a couple of reads of the menu before settling on something that I figured would be relatively safe to order. I ended up ordering Tteok-bokki + Gunmandu 떡볶이+군만두 (Rice cake simmered in spicy sauce and fried dumplings ) which is pictured above and below. I was not expecting the rice cakes to be so large (maybe about the size of a nickel in diameter?) but they were extremely good. They had a similar consistency to mochi, which I’m not really a fan of, but it was not nearly as gummy. The general consensus was that I ordered the best dish of the afternoon, because what meal is not complete by sampling each others food? I would definitely go back again and have this tasty dish.
After saving a little room for dessert, at least thinking I did, we were off to a European bakery that I had never been to before called Ettore’s. We made a slight detour before and stopped a local pet store so Lauren and Tim could check out the cats. They are looking to get a little brother or sister for their lovebug Xena. After prying the cats out of Lauren’s hands we were off! I must admit, it was hard to not take one of those cute kitties home, but alas, I already have 2 at my Mom’s place and my current living situation would not be conducive to bringing in a furry feline friend. When we walked into Ettore’s, the place was packed. I was like a kid in a candy store with all of the delicious looking confectioneries they had. It was downright cruel to be made to choose just an item or two. Tim picked up a handful of lemon macarons and a pistachio macaron – not a macaroon! – Lauren picked up a piece of the raspberry crumb cake, I picked up a black on white fudge truffle type thing, a chocolate macaron, and a milk chocolate and white chocolate chip cookie, and we got a small salted chocolate caramel tart to split. We all had a our respective plates and tasted each others treats, all of which were divine. I was ready to call uncle when we got to the salted chocolate caramel tart because I was way past full, but how could I pass that luscious beauty up. It was honestly a little slice of heaven, and I’m glad it was only one forkful, as it put me over the top.
We somehow managed to make it back to the car without wheelchairs and vegged out on the couch to play some Xbox 360. We started off by playing some Scott Pilgrim where I noticed a subliminal Continue? and also a cool toy for me that I will be sharing on Thursday! After that we hit Mel’s diner and had dinner. I was still extremely full from my lunch with Tim and Lauren so I had a scoop of ice cream and french fries – totally healthy, right?!
I spent most of the day Sunday in bed playing Minecraft and half watching the new season of The Office. After Richard got off work we hit A-1 comics where I managed to buy not a single thing, and then the Sunday ritual of pizza (not spaghetti like last week!) at Celestino’s and Asylum.
How was your weekend?
How did the month slip by and I only manage to hammer out a single blog entry? Sad, sad, sad.
um. excuse me? when did it become december? how did i lose an entire month?
oversharing – do you do it? where is the line? i was thinking about this on the drive home today from the pharmacy, trying to decide how much is too much. i recently upgraded to an iphone, and have been religiously updating instagram (unlike my poor little blog here) and also downloaded the newly released Path today. but just now many social networking sites does one really need? facebook, twitter, instagram, path, foursquare, blah blah blah. what is the need to feel like we need to share every moment of our lives? im still trying to figure this out. i for one hate facebook. the only reason why i even still keep it around is because it allows me to easily keep in touch with a few friends that live far away and pseudo keep tabs on what my friends are up to. but i dont ever really feel the need to update it with anything pressing. i like instagram because its like twitter with pictures. short and sweet and somewhat artistic. it appeals to my photographer self. but at what point do you lose the magic of a moment because you are too concerned with tweeting about it, facebooking about it, taking pictures of it, etc.
i recently saw VNV Nation in san francisco, which by the way was an INCREDIBLE show, but i could not believe how many people held up their phones the entire show, or snapped pictures upon pictures, or text or whatever during it. maybe im old school… maybe im missing out on something that all of these other people know about, but i couldnt make any sense of it. i had just recently got my iphone and was very tempted to snap a picture or two during vnv, but i decided that instead of worrying about if i got the shot i liked, cropping it, filtering it, typing about it, posting it, whatevering about it; that i would enjoy the show, start to finish. i feel like i did the right thing, and i dont feel like cheated myself out of not ‘creating memories’ by not posting pictures of it. i got to laugh at all the funny things ronan said, instead of scrolling through the camera memory to see if what i got was acceptable to me. i got to sing along to all my favorite songs, instead of trying to hold my camera steady so i can upload the footage to youtube later.
i consider myself a voyeur to an extent. some of you may remember the explosion of webcam sites in the early.. 00’s? is that even the right way to classify it? anyways, i had a regularly updated webcam on my site, belonged to webcam portals with other people, and we would all watch each other do mundane day to day things. but why? did we secretly compare ourselves to others? did we like the thrill of knowing someone was anonymously watching us in a controlled environment? i didnt know then and i still dont know now. i still chat in chat rooms that allow you to have a webcam on, and i still enjoy watching others do day to day things.
but there is a flipside. i hate foursquare. i dont really care that you are the mayor of fuckoffville. i dont really care that you are listening to something completely awful on spotify, that you checked into chuck-e-cheese with your cat, or that you took a dump in the 4th stall at work (unless you are sending me a text telling me not go to in there because of said dump). while i dont mind watching you do all of these things on webcam or in pictures, just merely reading that on facebook, twitter, or whatever sends my eyes rolling back in my head so hard that you can hear it. what is the difference? maybe its all visual for me. I CAN ONLY READ PICTURES DAMMIT. so add me on instagram @pyropixie to read pictures.
so ive been mildly obsessed with the group de/vision the last few weeks or so. infact according to my last.fm (OH GOD MORE SOCIAL NETWORKING) ive listened to them over 1075 times in the last 7 days. their album Popgefahr has been on heavy rotation while at home (and the only reason why it hasnt been in the car is because the radio has taken a dive and i can no longer listen to my ipod via fm transmitter – womp womp) and you can spot various lyrics littering my currently “redesigned” wordpress theme. anyways, they have been around since the late 80s, and their singer has a dreamy voice. they are german synth-poppy goodness, mellow enough to listen to while working on freelance work or sleeping, but upbeat enough to dance to at the club (which ive been doing a lot of!)
random fact learned at the doctor today did you know that depression can make you feel cold all the time? me either.
once upon a time, i had a music blog. it was never anything over the top exciting, but id be lying if i said that i didnt spend nights agonizing over what to write about. most of peoples feelings on music are subjective. there are a few truths such as nickleback sucks. elvis costello is the only elvis in my book. type o negative was the best band to ever walk the earth. okay that last part might be a little biased.
but, none the less, i do enjoy talking about music, even if it sends me into heated tangents, one upping matches and hipster-esque rants of i heard of xyz before they were cool. alas i do pride myself in trying to learn about new bands all the time, and generally will give anything the ole college try as far as giving them an initial listen.
last night while tinkering around at around 4 in the morning, like any normal person does, i decided that i couldnt be bothered actually picking any sort of playlist for myself, so i resorted to my old friend pandora to do the picking. does anyone else ever feel like when you do this, its like caving in and letting your mom pick your school clothes for you? no? me either. ill admit, my pandora radio stations range from the raveonettes to delerium to johnny hates jazz to covenant to imogen heap to kenny loggins, one must have a radio station for every occasion, no? speaking of pandora, does anyone else hate the interface overhaul as much as i do? HATE IT. alas i digress, as i was putzing around on the internet at 4am this morning i figured it would be in my best interest to put on a mellow station to try and induce those feelings of needing to go to sleep. i chose one of my favorite stations based off the band delerium.
now if you havnt heard of delerium, you should probably check them out. infact im sure you have probably heard of one of their songs, silence ft. sarah mclaughlin (is that even spelled right?) as it has been used in quite a few movies and other promotional material. i originally discovered this band being a fan of front line assembly, and it progressed from there.
for the most part i usually have good luck with this station. it will throw a little enya, sarah brightman, depeche mode, and enigma my way, but will also toss in some new ones that i have yet to discover.
the first that i had heard for the first time (though im sure all three have played quite a bit, but sometimes its not always active listening going on) was sleepthief. much like delerium, the group has guest vocalists for tracks and what really drew me in was the track that had zoe joh on it – mostly knowing her from her work with delerium. they have released two studio albums, one of which contains a cover of the duran duran song ‘the chauffer’. i normally dont care for covers because so many artists botch them so badly, but i admit, i really do enjoy this one.
the second band that i was introduced to was over the rhine. composed mainly of a husband and wife duo from ohio, they are a piano heavy based group with overlaying female vocals. some songs have cocteau twins-esque guitar riffs to them, which gives me that warm fuzzy feeling inside. 12 studio albums later, they are still going strong and have toured with the likes of bob dylan, ani difranco, and squeeze.
and finally, swinging back towards the delerium spectrum, the third band that i am newly addicted to is a group called mythos. based in canada (where im convinced they have some sort of secret factory that churns out amazing electronic groups) an ethereal mixture of acoustic guitars, pianos and synths, also with guest vocalist tracks – the album purity would make a great addition to anyones collection.
so thats it. take off your pants and relax a bit to these new gems for your ears. and stalk my pandora account (pyropixie) and grooveshark account (ladycorrin) just promise not to make fun of me – too much.