wiseheart | Party pooper LJ!

Current Mood: pissed off

Entry tags:

lj woes

Party pooper LJ!

Well, folks, it seems that LJ has decided to crash our birthday party - the original post is no longer visible. But I still have most of the comments in my inbox, and will re-post the original entry and list the available comments with the simple mentioning of the names, if it's all right with you. If not, tell me, and I'll delete yours.

We won't allow LJ to crash our party!

Original post

Hi folks! *waves*

Time is flying by, isn't it? It's that time of a year again - I'm getting older. In this case, I'm turning 56 on October 9, which means I'd have been retired for a year already, back under the old regime. Women could retire at the age of 55 back then. So I've decided to ignore all that fantastic headway we've supposedly made towards democracy in the last two decades and have considered myself retired for the last year, blithley overlooking the fact that I'll have to work another 6 or 7 or only God knows how many years.

So, let's party! Last years virtual birthday party yielded 943 comments on 7 pages, which won't be easy to top, but we're good, aren't we? WE CAN DO IT! WE CAN BREAK THE 1000-COMMENT-BARRIER! So, let's give it a try! In the recent years, it has always been great fun, so let's have fun again!

You're all cordially invited to help yourself to a slice of virtual cake of your choice. If you want to post your favourite recipe in a comment, be my guest. If not, just drop by and say hello.

Cheers!

Note: The party will be closed on October 9, at midnight, sharp.
Join us and have fun! Feel free to start any thread, any topic you want; we can discuss it, mock the general stupidity of life and laugh at it.

Last count was 1328 comments on 6 pages.

NB: Shoud the original party post mysteriously reappear, I'll delete this one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

altariel:
Morning.

badly_knitted:
Wow! Look what happened last night while I was busy sleeping and this
morning while I was battling my rabbit to make him take his medicine....
1126!

Can we reach 1500?

rcfinch:
And look, where I am it has even stopped raining, so I can postpone the
Ark-building to post some more comments.

rcfinch:
Does anyone know what timezone UTC is? I keep seeing it next to the
icons, and it's two hours behind on my own time, so it's not another
abbreviation for GMT.

I replied:

UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time; apparently the abbreviation is a compromise between the English 'CUT' and the French 'TUC' proving yet again that a compromise is when nobody gets what they want. I I am correct in assuming you are on 'European' time, the reason UTC is two hours behind you is because it doesn't observe summer time. Strictly speaking, neither does GMT: we here in the UK are currently on BST (British Summer Time).

[\geek]

solanpolarn:
I finished my current patchwork project, so I thought I would share some
photos of the result. It is a bag slightly bigger than a standard paper
back -- I mostly give books as presents, so I think this is a good size
to make gift bags. Actually it is just big enough to fit one of my
Deep Space 9 or The Next Generation DVD box sets of the old
hard plastic casing type. I thought this crowd might actually find this
an informative size description, which pleases my geeky heart no end!
Anyway on to the photos:

Red side

Purple side

Purple side with lining showing

Re-post :

that is wonderful - love the color choices

Edited 2012-10-07 17:11 (UTC)

solanpolarn reply was

Thank you! I am very pleased with how it turned out. My vague plan is to use it for my sister-in-law's birthday present since her favourite colour is purple .

stevie_carroll:
Happy Birthday!

solanpolarn:
There are currently 1159 comments to this entry on 5 pages, making this
comment 1160. The sun is shining outside so I will leave you good people
for awhile to go for a walk in the pretty weather -- one has to enjoy
these things when they are around! How many comments and how many pages
will there be when I get back?

wiseheart:
My most profound apologies for being this late to my own party.

But I haz teh excuses, yesh, I does. I've cleaned the entire flat, which
took me approximately five hours or so. It's always a trial. Our flat is
small (53 square metres, and that includes the balcony) and quite
corwded, as

the_wild_iris,

ithilwen or

earonn could tell you, had they come to the party.

When we moved in, we brought the old furniture with us. Not only b/c we
had to move twice in 7 months that year and invested all our spares
(little ast hey were) into the first place. We liked our old furniture.
Not all pieces are 200 years old like the china cabinet, but they're all
big and heavy. Mum isn't allowed to lift anything heavier than 2 pounds,
so you can guess who gets to drag the things from one corner to the other
so that the wall-to-wall carpet can be hoovered.

Anyway, fleet is clean now, and we've finished the filling and icing of
the Ischler cookies, too. The only thing I wanted to do but didn't get
around is the thawing out of the fridge. I mean the freezer part. The
fridge is too full, so I can't store the frozen stuff there, not even
temporarily. Ah, well.

Actually, I went and thawed out the freezer today, while cooking pasta with ham, cheeese and sour cream - it was overdue. Mum's a jewel, as those who've met her know, but she's also old and doesn't always notice wen something gets spilled. I had to do something before we start growing mould.

For the same reason, I also had to scrub the bven. She doesn't see when soup or anything else boils over, which then gets burned onto the enamelled surfaces and is bloody hard to get off.

It's a good thing that I already prefer my fingernails short.

Cooked/burned food on the surface is always hard to scrub off.

re-post:

Congratulations! That sounds like a lot of work.

wiseheart reply was:

*groans* My back agrees with you whole-heartedly.

badly_knitted:
Your bear icon is adorable! He looks so cuddly =D

In my reply, I explained that it's the only icon I've ever made myself, with the help of LJ's old icon maker. The picture is from a former student whom I liked a lot (I taught all 3 children), and the icon reminds me of the girl, even though we've drifted apart for years by now.

Edited 2012-10-07 16:53 (UTC)

wiseheart:
And Updates˘

Usually, yesterday would have been the day when I make the Friday Night
Mass Update Announcement (TM). But I can't post anything not related to
the party until it's over, now can I?

So, announcement here: FF.net updates as follows:

1) I uploaded the penultimate chapter of "The Prisoner of Dol Guldur";

2) I posted Part 06 of "The Adventures of a Consulting Time Lord" - this
is the one in which probably!immortal!Ianto finally meets Thirteenth
Doctor-as-Sherlock and thinly-veiled hostility ensues.

3) I have not updated "Sleeping Dragons 04 - Atonement" b/c
Chapter 10 is still under work. This was a hectic week and I haven't
finished the chapter. *sighs*

their was a post before mine which I was agreeing to your not stressing over your updates.

re-post:

I agree, ceative muses should not be rushed, and it's better when you have the time and energy to play with them.

wiseheart

Yeah, but I know that you of all people are eager for an update, and I hate to disappoint my regular readers. They're such a small, endangered population, they need to be cuddled and fed with updates and spoiled rotten all the time.

Perhaps in the meantime I can get you interested in "The Adventures of a Consulting Time Lord"? It's not Torchwood, but it has Ianto, the Doctor, and even some fleeting Gwen-bashing in one chapter, ;))

I know I replied, but I'm not sure if it made it on, it was right before LJ Party crashed.

I come from a very artistic family, and I understand the creative process should not be rushed, so I am willing to wait for your next update, I'm sure I will love it when it comes. Please don't cause yourself undo stress , especially on your Birthday month (I know a lot of people who say the whole month of their birth should be celebrated.)

As for "The Adventures of a Consulting Time Lord", I do intend to read it, I just haven't started it yet. I will be sure to tell you when I do catch up on that story.

Edited 2012-10-07 17:36 (UTC)

I've just got your reviews mailed to me by FF.Net. Thank you so much! I'm glad you like the story - it is a bit unusual, I admit.

I really am enjoying it - I'm glad you have Mycroft their to control the Doctor a bit, and I think the interaction between the two should be entertaining.

muuranker:
My comment is about the value of fun.

I am just back from a lecture by Dr Joe Flatman, who used to work for me,
and now works for English Heritage, about the value of heritage in the
modern world. One of his key arguments is that heritage is fun, and fun
has a great value.

Have fun on your birthday,

wiseheart!

wiseheart:
1202 comments? Seriously, 1202 comments? And that on Day 6? The
mind boggles!

solanpolarn:
I am back! I had a lovely walk along the Thames in mostly sunshine. My
first set of biscuits have just come out of the oven, the second set are
baking and the third set are chilling in the fridge so as to get hard
enough to cut. I have also washed one set of fabric for my next patchwork
project and a second set are in the washing machine right now. In the
mean time this party has gained an extra 53 comments and moved onto the
6th page!

rcfinch:
I make dinner, I eat it, I come back here, and we've reached page 6 and
1200+ comments. This is huge!

solanpolarn:
I wish you were all here, because then you could help me eat the results
of my baking:

We have
three different sorts of biscuits, though two of them are the same dough
but with different jam. However, the majority of the flavour comes from
the jam so I am counting them as two different sorts. They are, very
imaginatively called jam biscuits or syltkakor in Swedish. The
other sort is called chess squares (Swedish: schackrutor). I am
sure you will all be surprised to learn that the brown squares are
flavoured with cocoa. ;-)

This is
all the biscuits, except for the ones I had to eat to make sure that they
tasted right. I could actually do with some help eating them all. I used
to bake for my family when I was a teenager; there were six of us then
and I somehow still bake and cook as if my brothers and sister and
parents all want a share too.

re-post:

Those look delicious

altariel:
Wow!

wiseheart:
I know it isn't really a party topic, but since we're already sharing, I
thought I'd point out that October 6 is a day of tragic historic
significance for Hungarian people. It is the memory day of the 13 martyrs
of Arad. It is a national holiday if it doesn't fall on a
Saturday anyway, and we all learn to recite those 13 names by heart at
school.

Yeah, we're a strange people. We can celebrate our defeats and tragedies
most splendidly. We still haven't quite figure out how to celebrate the
*good* things, though.

And those seem to be all the top level comments I can find for now... I am sure that there are some missing :(

Oh, well.

On to helping with the threads in a bit - first, a rest for my hands and trying to persuade this computer not to lag so much!

You have done an excellent job! I have filled in some comments, but now I think I shall take a bit of a rest as well and go out to enjoy what appears to be another sunny day.

Teamwork! o/\o
We will get there in the end :)

Yes, go enjoy sunshine! It is far too rare to ignore! ;)

Jesus, Jenn, the two of you have catapulted us forward to Page 6 again - that's a fantastic feat! You more than deserve a break, and please be careful with aour poor hands.

This is the 3rd time I'm trying to post this reply. Hopefully I'll get lucky.

Because I know I posted it before, but I can't remember exactly what thread here is the recipe for Swedish pepparkakor:

Swedish 'pepparkakor' – thin, crisp ginger biscuits
100 g of margarine or butter
1 dl of sugar
¾ dl of golden syrup
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
1 ½ tsp of ground cloves
1 tsp of ground ginger
1 tsp of ground cardamom
1 tsp of ground bitter orange peel – last time I made these I couldn't find this so omitted it
1 ½ tsp of baking soda
3 ¼ dl (200g) plain flour

Melt the margarine with sugar, syrup and spices in a pan over low heat. Leave to cool. Mix the baking soda with the flour and then mix this into the margarine/sugar mixture. Cut the pastry into two pieces and make into loaf shapes with rectangular or circular (elliptical?) cross-sections with a diameter of 3–4 cm. Wrap in foil and leave them in the fridge over-night or in the freezer for a couple of hours. Cut the loaf-shapes into thin slices, of thickness 1–2 mm, and put on baking parchment on oven trays. Bake at 175°C for 6–8 minutes. Let the biscuits cool on the oven tray; they tend to be soft when they come out of the oven but will go crisp when cooled down.

Many, many thanks to everyone who's helped to reconstruct the party discussions! In a single day, we've recovered 1/3 of the whole thing - it's amazing, and I love you all to pieces for it!

I've imported the first 200 comments to DW but must wait until they've processed the first update, I can't save the rest yet. Later, hopefully *crosses fingers*

But I also saved all 6 pages as html files to my hard drive, just so that all the beautiful things be kept.

Yay for backups!

You are welcome! It was a so sad to have it vanish, but helping put things back is fun in a way - I'd already forgotten some of the conversations!

*hugs*

(I guess in some ways it is like a rl party, helping tidy and wash up at the end ;) )

Somehow missed the coffee thread! Horrors!

espresso_addict
> So, new thread about the most important substance in the universe... I
> mean, of course, the black gold that is coffee. A few questions to
> get us going...

> What's your favourite formulation? How long have you been drinking it?
> What do you have with it? How many coffee icons can we display?

> My favourite's espresso of course. Dark, rich, with just a hint of
> bitter, and a lovely cream on the top is the way I like it. I've been
> drinking coffee since before I can remember, but I'm informed that my
> first coffee tipple was made with milk & instant! I took to drinking
> black filter coffee, with sugar, on holiday in France at around ten, when
> there was no milk offered by the hotel. I lost the sugar gradually as I
> went through my early teens, but continued drinking mainly filter as a
> student. I didn't really take to espresso until after I had my own house.
> Since then there's been the escalation of coffee production tech and the
> search for the perfect bean. I used to drink Santos & Java until
> Whittard's went out of business, and now drink almost entirely a mocha
> blend called Mocha Guatemala. And on the side? Cremini, dark chocolate,
> chocolate cake, mineral water.

> Over to you...

Edited 2012-10-07 16:50 (UTC)

wiseheart:
I'm with you on the espresso - and Ianto agrees.

I drink my espresso dark, with one tin piece of non-carb sweets - or with
a drop of milk or cream if the coffee is too strong.

espresso_addict:
Yay espresso! I definitely find something sweet but not sickly on the
side goes down well. I'm not sure there is a too strong, but some beans
have unpleasantly sour or bitter side tastes, which I guess milk might
alleviate. Sour coffee I can't abide.

I meant "tiny" piece, not "tin" piece, of course. I make a lot of typos because of the incredible slowness of my browser(s).

solanpolarn:
I have never learnt to drink coffee. A friend of mine at university told
me I wouldn't be able to get through an engineering degree without it,
which just made me determined to prove him wrong. I then went on to get
my Ph.D. without drinking coffee as well... Now I mostly carry on not
drinking coffee out of habit and a little bit to be difficult. I do love
the smell, though! So I guess my favourite coffee is the bit I put in my
family's traditional birthday cake -- chocolate of course!

espresso_addict:
If you love the smell, that counts! Decent coffee is a lot like dark
chocolate, without the sweetness, if that tempts you at all :) There is a
lot of not-so-good coffee around, though. Instant, anything out of a
vending machine, stale filter, sour espresso... all to be avoided.

solanpolarn:
I do occasionally thing if possibly learning to drink coffee, but I find
it does taste very different to the smell. And I have found that I really
enjoy drinking mint tea, when I feel like a hot beverage so it might not
happen any time soon.

espresso_addict:
The smell & the taste are different, so I can understand that. And herb
teas can be really refreshing, which coffee isn't. Feel free to start a
tea thread, in opposition, by the way! :)

solanpolarn:
Thread started below! Feel free to contribute. ;-)

espresso_addict:
We can fight for comments :)

solanpolarn:
I think the coffee thread is winning, but to be fair it has had longer to
get going so far. Maybe tea will catch up. ;-) And it is all for the good
of the number of comments anyway.

espresso_addict:
Coffee will win! Tea will die!

solanpolarn:
but chocolate tops them all!

espresso_addict:
I think I'd put coffee ahead of chocolate, even! But it's a close call.
I'd hate to live without either.

wiseheart:
Amen. You really must start a chocolate thread tomorrow. That's your
speciality.

wiseheart:
When you don't like it then you don't like it - we are different people
with different tastes, and it's good so, IMO. I for my part only drink
any kind of tea when I've got a really really bad cold and can't
taste it anyway.

I drink coffee purely for the taste of it. It doesn't keep me awake or
whatnot. I remember making my first degree, when I tended to dawdle all
day and learn for the exams at night, I was easily capable of falling
aslep over some boring book I was supposed to study in ten minutes after
having had a really big double espresso (black, without sugar) at nine
p.m. *g*

solanpolarn:
There are a number of things I didn't like the taste of when I first
tried them that I now really love and from what my coffee drinking
friends tell me that can be the case with coffee as well which is the
only reason I keep thinking it would be nice to drink it. I would like to
share in their enjoyment.

My cofee career started at upper primary, due to the bad influence of Mum and Granny. *g*
We had these little square lumps of sugar, and I loved it when they dripped them into their coffee for me - I ate it like other kids ate candy (not that I didn't ate candy, mind you).
From there, the way to addiction was free.

espresso_addict:
It took me two decades from instant-in-milk to double espresso, so I
think it's definitely an acquired taste.

solanpolarn:
I did try to learn to drink coffee in my youth, though it was the
chocolate that was the big draw: At my Grandpa's there would be elevensis
of coffee and his home-made chocolate fudge (no-bake) cake, known to the
family as 'kedge', every day at eleven. If you didn't drink coffee you
got to do the washing up from breakfast instead... (You did still get
kedge though, but not the time to sit down and savour it.)

espresso_addict:
Homemade chocolate fudge sounds scrummy!

espresso_addict:
I find I've built up a big caffeine tolerance. I have to have about three
or four double espressos back to back to start feeling buzzy these days,
and that tends to make my stomach rebel.

Me:
> Proving people wrong is fun! ;)

solanpolarn:

Indeed it is! And it makes me awkward as well, which I kind of like.
These are two of the reasons I became a vegetarian a few years back...

Me:
> Coffee! :)

> I mostly drink filter coffee (well, cafatiere), as that is a fair balance
> for me of effort vs results. Black, sugar or sugar syrup - I make my own
> cardamom and/or cinnamon syrup (and sometimes other spice ones). I can't
> deal with a lot of hot milk, so can't drink most of the fancy versions...
> Espresso is nice when I'm in the mood for it...

> When I feel like a treat I can get really nice coffee as there is a
> coffee and tea shot here that sells loads of different kinds of coffee
> which they grind for the different makers. Very nice. :)

espresso_addict:
I drink cafetiere in preference to filter when I can't get espresso,
because it's much easier to make it strong & it does get a good head of
cream. I've never tried syrups (bit of a purist) but cardamom & cinnamon
sound delicious. Perhaps also ginger? Ginger biscuits work well with
coffee.

I've lived in the middle of nowhere for well over a decade, but one thing
I miss from living in a city is a decent coffee (& tea) shop. I'd love to
be able to try lots of different beans/blends, but doing it via mail
order is very expensive. There should be coffee tastings :)

Me:
> Ginger syrup could work well - I made a mixed spice one with ginger for
> Christmas (last year? the year before?), but maybe I should experiment
> with it sometime :)

> Coffee tastings would be fun...

espresso_addict:

Ginger is another of my great loves; it goes with everything in my
opinion. [And have I said before how much I love that icon of yours?]

Me:
> Ginger is wonderful! I mostly can only make ginger stuff if I am going to
> be the only person to eat it, as nicely gingery to me is apparently far
> too strong for most other people.

> [thank you - it is an amazing icon - I had it for years but didn't make
> it...]

espresso_addict:

There is no such thing as too strong where ginger is concerned! I adore
stem ginger, crystallised ginger, dark chocolate ginger biscuits, root
ginger added to curries & stir fries, fresh powdered ginger in mulled
wine &c&c :)

wiseheart:
I'm all for coffee tastings! We should organise a big get-together in
Vienna, the coffee capital of the world, and indulge in our shared vice.
;)

wiseheart:
> I'm all for coffee tastings! We should organise a big get-together in
> Vienna, the coffee capital of the world, and indulge in our shared vice.
> ;)

espresso_addict:
Oh, god yes! That would be superb. I love Vienna.

wiseheart:
Vienna is just plain fantastic. Even without the coffee. But, of course,
it is the ultimate centre of Eurpoean coffee culture.

The first time I saw a Starbucks there I nearly cried.

espresso_addict:
We could do with a thread for favourite city :)

wiseheart:
Tomorrow. We'll need new topics tomorrow, too.

espresso_addict:
Hey, you were going to bed! And I was going to get up off my backside!

wiseheart:
I'm so tired I'm nicking in while typing. But the new vacuum mattress
still needs at least an hour to swell to the required proprotions.
Perhaps I'll share with Mum tonight.

espresso_addict:
Vacuum mattress? I've never heard of one of those. (I have one of those
special foam ones that responds to body heat and is supposed to be good
for bad backs.)

wiseheart:
I guess it's something similar. But very comfortable, in any case.

espresso_addict:
I'm so glad it was comfortable! A good bed is so important.

rcfinch:
Umm... I hesitate to say it, but I'm more of a tea person. If I do drink
coffee, though, it's often of the espresso kind. And the label says it's
Arabica.

espresso_addict:
I will never speak to you again!?! (But actually, as I've admitted in the
tea thread below, even I do drink tea from time to time.)

The Needlework Thread

I don't know what happened to

solanpolarn's amazing patchwork pictures - I'm sure they were up a few minutes ago - but in any case, this was my reply to them:

Oooh, this is very, very pretty! I've got a handbag that's leather patchwork (not hand-made, of course), but this is sooo much better!

To which

solanpolarn replied:

Thank you. I am very pleased with the result. One of my planned projects
is making a patchwork handbag for my self: I went on holiday to the Isle
of Lewis and Harris and while there I bought a bag of scraps of Harris
tweed. I have long intended to do a 'crazy quilting' patchwork, but seem
to keep being drawn to ordered things. However, I am going to make myself
do 'crazy quilting' with different shapes and sizes of the patchwork
pieces for the tweed handbag, at least on one side. I did some searching
on the internet for tweed handbags and found one that was reversible, so
I thought I would do that. Then I can impose order on one side and do the
irregular thing on the other.

sammydragoncat:

that is wonderful - love the color choices

solanpolarn:

Thank you! I am very pleased with how it turned out. My vague plan is to
use it for my sister-in-law's birthday present since her favourite colour
is purple.

And yes, I found it - now! - but I won't delte the comments. In several threads, we summarized the discussion in one comment, so I take the liberty to boost the numbers this way. *g*

Stupidity should have its own advantages, too, after all!

In the same thread, I told about the quilt we made for my colleague and fellow choir member, Lizzy, for her 50th birthday: the one made of individual piece with our initials, and what a rubbish mine was cuz I can't stich for the life of mine (Grandma was always exasperated with me).

jenn_calaelen meant:

That sounds like a great gift - very personally, and things don't have to
> be technically brilliant to be wonderful!

solanpolarn agreed:

and things don't have to be technically brilliant to be wonderful

Indeed! My sewing friends and I even agree that small imperfections make
things even more precious. For one thing it proves it wasn't
mass-produced by a machine.

Somewhere along the same thread

badly_knitted said:

I'm more of a knitter myself - my user name is somewhat misleading as I'm
> not really bad at knitting. I named myself after one of my long ago
> guinea pigs who looked like one of my sister's knitting attempts and so
> earned himself the name of Badly Knitted Pig.

solanpolarn answered:

We had a cat when I was young that was really called Josefin; however she
was generally referred to as The Monster, which was short for The
Bird-Killing Monster. My older brother went through an ornithological
phase, and was very upset that The Monster kept killing -- and eating --
birds. The older cat we had was far too lazy to kill birds.

Suggestion:

In order to avoid another crash like the previous one, what do you think about starting a new entry, with a title like Birthday Party - The Second Coming?

We can start new threads there in thw remaining two days and continue the reconstruction work whenever we have the time. It won't do, missing all the fun, just because we had to clean up LJ's mess.

What do you think?

That sounds like a very good idea!

And hopefully backing both up will work even if lj decides to be evil

Apparently, DW is still processing my former request. *sighs*

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 6 of 7

Party pooper LJ!

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