Party pooper LJ!

[wiseheart]

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.

Comments

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

altariel:
Morning.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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?

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

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]

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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

[sammydragoncat]

Re-post :

that is wonderful - love the color choices

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

stevie_carroll:
Happy Birthday!

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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?

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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*

[sammydragoncat]

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.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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!

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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!

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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.

[sammydragoncat]

re-post:

Those look delicious

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

altariel:
Wow!

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

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.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

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.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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 ;) )

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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...

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

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.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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!

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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).

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

jenn_calaelen meant:

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

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

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?

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a very good idea!

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