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pyropixie

Confined to the phone

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For those of you that have not read my previous posts, I moved at the beginning of October. My current set up does not give me enough space to have my PC set up, and after the demise of my laptop in June of last year, I am left computerless. OH THE HORROR. Seriously, it has been quite an adjustment. I would say my connectivity/addiction to the internet and my computer has decreased over the last couple of years – it is still rather frustrating that I cannot simply jump on my computer and look something up or work on an art project.

SO – I am confined to my iPhone at this time. Please forgive me for any janky formatted posts or weird pictures as I am still trying to work out the kinks from using the app. My biggest problem thus far has been that the app will only upload low resolution/300×200 versions of my photos, which I find frustrating. I’m sure that I will resort to uploading them directly to my hosting and linking them from there, but I really wish I could figure out how to upload them from my phone in the app.

10 October, 2012
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Halloween Treats – Utz Mini Pretzels

Posted in Junk Foodies by

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So Halloween is upon us, not that you would know from the scorching weather here in California. But – you know what that means, SNACKS! Reese’s, candy corn, and pumpkin… everything. One thing that really caught my eye were the Utz Mini Pretzels covered in Butterfinger pieces. This sounded like a match made in heaven. I’m a sucker for salty/sweet foods and pretzels are one of my favorite snacks. What could go wrong?

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That was until I opened the bag. When I peaked inside the box I knew that the serving sizes would be small, but I didn’t know there would only be 3 in the bag! What a let down. They were all stuck together so the only reasonable way to eat them was to just shove the whole thing in my mouth. I’ve never had Utz pretzels or chips – as they are only distributed on the east coast. I must say, they are no Rold Gold.

The pretzels taste like any generic store brand pretzel, which I’m not a fan of. The outside on the other hand is delicious! I wish there was a little more Butterfinger – but all in all, they were tasty. I don’t foresee the box lasting very long at my house. Each pouch is 70 calories, which is pretty reasonable if you are looking for a small sweet treat.

Texture: 4/5 – the pretzels seem a little stale, but still have a decent crunch along with the Butterfinger outside coating.

Smell: 5/5 – these smell delicious!

Appearance: 3.5/5 – the picture on the outside of the box promises a bit more of Butterfinger crunch on the outside, but I was rather underwhelmed.

Taste: 3/5 – overall these are good, but not great. If they were made with Rold Gold they would be a home run.

6 October, 2012
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Sicky sick.

Posted in Video Games by


So at some point during my move over the weekend I contracted some sort of creeping crud. It started as a scratchy throat on Sunday and turned into full blown sickness Monday. I tried to power through work Monday and Tuesday, but I knew Wednesday was looking grim. I called into work and spent most of my day in a DayQuil haze. I decided to kill some of my bed bound time playing Crimson Alliance.

This game came out about this time last year, but Richard and I hadn’t played yet. I was jonesing for a new dungeon crawl because Torchlight and I broke up two weeks ago due to an accidental character archival on my part. My bitterness has forbidden me from picking up the game again. Anyways – enough about that.

In true fashion, I decided to roll a warrior type. I prefer to play hack and slash characters as I am not good at being stealthy or not running directly into the middle of combat. I like that I don’t have to worry about spending skill points and leveling up skills and abilities. The only way to alter your stats are by equipping new armor and weapons.

We beat the game and DLC in about 8 hours, which I can’t tell if that means we are good at video games or if the game is just that short. I enjoyed grinding through dungeons and that they incorporated replay value by allowing certain doors to be opened by certain classes. I also like that there is an area specifically designed to farm gold, but I hate the fact that you cannot sell old armor and weapons. Also the AI tends to lag a bit when there are large battles being rendered and sometimes it’s hard to figure out where you are since your only identifying quality (aside from your half dollar sized avatar) is a colored ring around your feet. We made this especially challenging by playing the same class.

Your game play is also rated as bronze, silver, and gold, and much to my dismay – being a perfectionist and all – is how damn hard it is to get gold. We were never able to obtain it. I’m looking forward to replaying as a different class to unlock the other secret areas. I’d say it was worth the 1200 points.

Image is property of Certain Affinity and Microsoft Game Studios

4 October, 2012
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On the road again…

Posted in Uncategorized by

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When I was younger, I always thought it would be fun to move places – and even to this day, the thought of becoming a traveling nurse is something that I constantly toy with. Until it comes down to actually moving. I lived in the same house until I was 14, then my parents decided to move out of Los Angeles to Northern California. We moved a couple of times while living in the area – most of them were pretty low key since we were already pretty much living out of boxes. I finally ventured South to Sacramento on my own in 2008 and I have since moved 5 times (this weekend will be 6) in the last 4 years. The dreams of how fun it would be to move slowly fade as you are forced to pack your belongings into boxes. I must admit, I am a terrible packer. I have  a lot of motivation in the beginning to organize things and pack as I go, but then I get down to the wire and end up shoving everything in random boxes.

This is pretty much where I am at right now.

I started packing at the beginning of the month, knowing that I had to be out of my current place by October 1st. I of course started with all the easy stuff – clothes I don’t wear often, my toy collection, records, etc. Now I am down to 2 days before having to move out, and my room as degraded to the hot mess you see pictured above. Honestly, it’s a bit overwhelming. Tonight I plan to power through as much as possible so that by the time my Mom arrives tomorrow morning, it’s all ready to go.

Wish me luck.

28 September, 2012
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Effie Yeaw and everything inbetween…

Friday morning when I got into my car to head to work, my coolant light started flashing and my car made a weird grinding noise. On Saturday I took it to the dealership to have them take a look at it, since my old lady is getting well, old. I had the entire day to kill so Richard picked me up from the dealership and we went on all kinds of adventures. While waiting for him – I meandered over to Home Depot to check out paint swatches for a spice rack that I plan on turning into a toy display that I got at the Goodwill for a whopping 2 dollars. I am dreaming of a gradient color scheme, but I think I am overestimating my painting abilities – we shall see.

First we hit the bank so that I could deposit my paycheck and then Noah’s bagels for a delicious pretzel bagel. Those are so good, as long as they don’t over toast them. Richard asked me if I had ever been to the cement slides and I told him no – which ended up with him giving me a horrified look and he proclaimed that we must go. We hit a grocery store to pick up some wax paper to slide down on and stopped in a nearby party supply store to check out what (little) Halloween stuff they had in. We made our way across town to the cement slides. Let me just state that those things looked really shady and I thought for sure that this was asking for injuries.

Richard told me that you could either use a slick cardboard box or waxed paper to slide down the slides and we both opted for the box option since there were plenty strewn about from previous visitors. I decided to add another level of danger to my sliding adventures by attempting to hold my phone while holding the box and sliding down a cement slide. Luckily it all panned out.

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The cement slides and my delicious lunch at LaBou

After the cement slides we hit Fry’s Electronics to browse. Then to Dimple records where I was shocked that we didn’t walk out of there with a single thing. I attribute this partially to having stayed away from the used record section. That always does me in. After that we hit the 99 cent store to see what Halloween stuff they had (are you noticing a trend here?) We went across the street to LaBou for lunch. Everyone always rants and raves about how good this place is, but with its short daytime hours I can never seem to make it over to one before they close. Luckily we ducked in about a half hour before. I got a delicious bowl of tomato soup (pictured above) and Richard got a baguette and dill dip – man that was SO good. By the time we had finished lunch they were done with my car – so we went over to pick it up. Had a nice little scare on the way home because the shop DIDN’T SHUT THE HOOD OF MY CAR, so it started bouncing up and down as I was driving down the road – luckily I was able to pull off on a dirt shoulder and Richard jumped out and shut it all the way. JEEZ. After dropping his car off at my place we went over to Effie Yeaw to take in some sun and sit by the river.

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Looking up the river
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Looking down the river
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I thought this leaf looked like a heart
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Neat branch and mini waterfall near where we sat
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My legs and some pretty flowers behind where I was sitting

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The view from my little spot in the rocks

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I have no idea what kind of flowers these are but they reminded me of lavender

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Dead crawdad and the view of the park behind where we sat.

It was nice to spend some time down by the river. It was perfect in the shade – We watched a guy trying to impress a girl by attempting to skip rocks and he fell down twice in the process by throwing them too hard and losing his footing. I did my best duck quacking at a couple of ducks and they came up to us. I like to think it was because of my quacks, but I’m pretty sure they are just overly humanized and were waiting for food from us. Richard spotted the crawdad pictured above in the water (it was dead) so I promptly got a stick to poke at it a little and flip it over to check it out. On the walk back to the car we spotted some dear and watched a little bunny chow down on some greens. He was beyond cute.

Out in the parking lot there was a large group of deer including one baby fawn. They got a little spooked by the people walking on the bike path and turned to head back out into the large field behind the parking lot. There was a U shaped fence around the section they were in and all of them with the exception of the fawn managed to navigate under a steel rope and back out into the field. The poor little fawn couldn’t figure out how to get around on the other side of the fence and was crying. Richard and I decided that we needed to give them a little help. He went to explore to see if the fawn could get to the group from the left side of the parking lot while I slowly walked closer trying to encourage him to walk to the right. Richard said that there was no access to the left so I started to make a large circle around to the left to push the fawn to the right – keeping my distance but close enough to get the fawn to move. He kept getting himself trapped in the corner of the fence and kept crying which was breaking my heart so I moved in just a little closer before he finally went all the way right and under the steel rope to be back with his group. Richard and I high-fived for good karma.

Did you do anything exciting this weekend?

2 September, 2012
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