Archives for category: favorites

see more of her comics over at her blog. for now, here are links to EVERY ONE OF HER TNG COMICS. you’re welcome, fellow nerds (or picard lovers. sexy sexy patrick stewart mm MM!). example from captain’s holiday:

mom: guess what we did today

kara: ?

mom: well, dad went in to help load some of jessy’s things to move down to peoria this morning at 9

mom: i was going to go in to help load the u-haul after i took grandma for her hair do

mom: but dad was done before i even took grandma

mom: sooooo – we went to look at the 09 toyotas and test drove one

mom: picked up lunch and then went to zimmerman’s to test drive & look at the civics

kara: OMG YOU BOUGHT A CAR

mom: we were just going to see what they could offer us with a trade in and ended up buying one!!

mom: the deal maker for buying the car was she threw in the mud flaps ($149) for free

kara: mud flaps were the deal maker?

kara: are you kidding me?

mom: not really – but we were ready to leave and she asked what would it take to buy it today

kara: ha

kara: and you said free mud flaps?

kara: which are only $150?

mom: well, it was a pretty good deal to begin with

mom: like i said – we really weren’t planning on buying a car today – it just kind of happened

kara: hm

kara: you ‘accidentally’ spent $15,000?

mom: kinda – maybe – sorta

kara: can you ‘accidentally’ spend $2000 on a new computer for me?

mom: LOL

kara: i mean you saved a ton of cash on those mud flaps…

mom: LOL LOL LOL

mom: dad’s almost rolling on the floor

today i took my mom and dad to nate ‘n al’s in beverly hills for lunch (corned beef, pastrami, honey smoked turkey). as we were standing near the door waiting for a table i was kind of zoning out (as usual) and when i came to i realized i must’ve been doing the thousand-yard stare in the vicinity of this guy because suddenly our eyes met.

AND IT WAS BRENT SPINER. and inside? i was LOSING MY SHIT. but on the outside – totally casual as if i hadn’t just realized i was standing five paces away from DATA, EVERYONE. DATA! and he’s just, you know, sitting there having lunch with a friend like he’s a normal person and not also DATA.

so i point him (DATA!!!!) out to my mom (being sure to tell her to ‘be cool’) and to my dad as well (me: ‘be cool dad – be cool’; dad: ‘who is this guy again?’). after awhile we’re seated, and our table is around the other side of them and slightly behind so i can finally see who brent spiner (who is taller than i thought) is having lunch with…

AND IT’S MICHAEL DORN. WORF, PEOPLE! – WORF. and can i tell you? he is totally adorable (wireframe glasses!) and totally hot. and tall. and hot. did i mention hot? and my day? MADE.

you have no idea how hard it is not to ditch my parents right now so i can watch some ‘first contact’. seriously, i’m barely holding it together.

update: more trek fun for you – tng for comic relief, original series fun, my favorite episode of reading rainbow aside from the one where levar is sent on a birthday quest.

update: my friend jocelyn referred this entry to la.metblogs.com!

the LA county fair was fantastic, but remind me next year to space out the fried foods a little better. in all, i had 7, meghan had 8 and josh had 9:

  1. beer-battered french fries
  2. fried onion rings
  3. fried zucchini
  4. deep fried cookie dough
  5. deep fried coke
  6. deep fried sweet corn on the cob
  7. fried banana & peanut butter sandwich
  8. fried bacon-wrapped jalapeno filled with cheese (i didn’t have this one – i was busy eating my pork chop on a stick)
  9. fried avocado & tomato (i guess this was sort of gross so i didn’t try it either)

other fried foods available included frog legs, snickers, s’mores, oreos, waffles, artichokes and apple fries, which i really wanted to try but by that point i just couldn’t eat any more fried food. john and maria went and i got to meet their friends david and naomi who were awesome too. next up: halloween horror fest at the fairplex. woo!

addendum: on the way to the LA county fair after what seemed like hours of driving:

kara: where are we?

josh: pomona. orange county.

kara: …that can’t be right.

update: photos

the art market was fantastic! we made a lot of money for lisa and had so much fun. there was a steady stream of people the whole day and the vibe was so fun and positive! i did, however, blow any profits i might have made on cupcakes, on buying other people’s stuff. it was well worth it though! congrats to everyone who partcipated, hugs for lisa and thank you to everyone who came!

  1. do you smoke? not like, every so often you’ll have a smoke at a bar or at a concert, i mean do you smoke. yes? sorry. unless you have some pretty overwhelming qualities to make up for this, it’s not going to happen. overwhelming qualities might include: …uh…jeez. basically you would have to awesome in every other way to make up for this. and you’d have to agree to never smoke around me.
  2. corollary (sort of) to #1: do you have chronic bad breath? i guess it’s kind of shallow, but i can not be getting up close and personal with someone who always has dragon breath.
  3. i like guys with skills. guys who know how to use tools and fix things around the house or know stuff about cars or hardware or, you know, physics. if you have to check the internet when you want to hang a picture or don’t understand what an alternator is, we’ve got a problem here.
  4. are you religious? guess what? i don’t believe in god and even if i did, i think organized religion is an outdated scam. are your hackles up? in that case, be satisfied that i’ll burn in hell and we can go our separate ways.
  5. do you bathe regularly? at least every other day? no? buy some soap, hippie.
  6. there are these things called video games. are you aware of them? have you played any? can you name a title besides ‘tetris’ and ‘zelda’ and ‘super mario bros.’? if the answer to any of these is ‘no’ – sorry.
  7. there are these things called movies. do you go see a lot of them? if not, are you prepared to see a lot of them? no? i neither understand nor am willing to spend time with your kind.
  8. i eat a lot. and often. if you’re at all put off by the idea of going out and having a girl half your size put away twice as much as you, you can fuck all the way off. but before you go, i’m gonna eat the rest of your fries. kthxbye.
  9. sci-fi. are you contemptuous of it? will you make a snide remark when i get excited about something that happened on ‘battlestar galactica’ or when you see that i have all of ‘star trek: deep space nine’ on dvd? we will never get along.

i bought maggie mason’s book, and i am going to try to do an idea from it at least once a week. this is #32.

there is something bizarre and awesome about how cecile and my “girls’ night out” means pulled pork bbq sandwiches and ‘grindhouse’.

i’ve been meaning to post these for awhile, but work has been crazy and i’ve rarely been home except to collapse into bed as soon as possible.

robot + cupcake

head over to motionographer and check out jarratt moody‘s time-based typography project.

view @ motionographer
mirrored on hyperbolation (don’t want to lose the link to this one!)

via josh spear

update: pat & jessie’s photos

spelunking/cave exploring/whatever was….incredible. the single most exhilarating experience of my life. we drove down early – the drive is about six hours. mark picked me up at 5am and we picked up lindsay and katie at 5:30. we met up with pat and jessie at 6 then started the trip to wyandotte caves near corydon, IN. once we got south of indianapolis the drive was really pretty – lots of exposed rock, hills and trees. the final few miles to the caves was gorgeous – a winding road with trees all around that would part every once in awhile to allow a view of a beautiful valley or hillside.

after lunch at the cracker barrel, we changed into our spelunking clothes and met our guide, dave. we got our helmets and headlamps and were briefed on general cave etiquette. once in the mouth of the cave and through the gate it was immediately much cooler and surprisingly dark. the next 3 hours were spent scrabbling over rock fall, climbing up steep walls of rock and piles of snot rock (dave: they’re slipperier ‘en snot), and crawling through narrow holes.

at one point a sideways cartwheel-like maneuver was required to pass into the main room containing the actual pillar. pat, jessie and mark are all over six feet tall, and had some difficulty with this. for once, i was happy to be small; i could shuffle through it sideways (still very awkward and involved a lot of contorting though). once everyone was through, we found places in the big room to sit and switched off our lights. for the first time we experienced complete darkness; you couldn’t even see a hand right in front of your face. it was very relaxing and not scary at all. we sat for awhile and listened to the bats squeaking and flying around above us.

the way back was much easier and faster. we already knew what we could do and what we could climb, what slippery or stable ground looked like. as we were approaching the mouth, we ran into a walking tour group in the lighted room at the beginning of the cave system. they looked at us – sweaty, happily exhausted, and covered in mud (and possibly bat guano). we looked at them – khakis, gleaming white sneakers, tucked-in polos and button-downs. it was an odd feeling of…i don’t know – accomplishment? macho superiority? no, probably closer to pity because they wouldn’t be able to have the same sort of fulfilling experience we had just had.

we went to the restrooms to clean up and change. everyone’s knees were pretty badly and widely bruised, elbows too. heels of palms were sore and abraded. i got away with the least amount of bruising because i could crouch down in a lot of places where the others had to go on hands and knees. we went for dinner right away and i have never felt like i really earned a meal until that evening. the blue moon was delicious and the steak was fantastic. there was a lot of napping on the drive home.

i think overall it was more strenuous than any of us had anticipated. there was a lot more climbing and lowering yourself down steep angles than i thought there would be. at some point we had just half-slid half lowered ourselves like crabs down a very steep and slippery wall and those of us in the front had a moment to stop and catch our breath. we were standing in the bottom of a steep-walled room, at least fifty feet to the ceiling, with no visible way out. dave pointed his light to the ceiling opposite. there was no opening we could see and the way up looked almost featureless – there was no real rock fall to climb on. we all looked at each other. “we’re going up there??”

everyone had to sign a waiver first, and it was easy to see why. there were a lot of moments when a slip or a misstep could’ve led to someone falling down a rock-lined hole. at any given moment, not being aware of where you were putting your feet and also making sure you had a good hand-hold could’ve meant a bad fall.

i realize looking at this that i’m making it seem impossible or terrifyingly perilous. it was hard and definitely dangerous, but i was surprised by how much i was capable of – i think everyone was surprised to find they could do more and push themselves further than they thought. i was surprised i could climb out of a narrow hole, surprised i could free-climb slippery rock, surprised i could balance in a chimney on one tiptoe while getting my other foot right in front of my chest to lever myself up to the cave floor. surprised by how confident i felt in my ability to do all these things.

i wasn’t surprised by how much i loved it. i think i said “i love this” at least ten times while we were down there. a quarter of the way through mark and i were already planning out our next trip. it was the most wholly physically demanding thing i’ve ever done – today, two days later, my body still hurts in places i didn’t know i had muscles – and every minute was thrilling. i’ve never felt so alive – cliché? yeah, but completely true.