#which did not allow any trash that didn't fit in a dumpster

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 215

October 12 Today was a day for cooking and cleaning, so that was at least a change from the last couple of days, plus my parents got to town, very fun! First thing this morning I went down to the big food bank and offloaded all of the stuff that was still in my van, including a surprise ninth case of Takis that I hadn't even noticed before. They did accept it, though I don't know what exactly they plan to do with it. Maybe if they can't give it away they'll just put it in the breakroom or something. But now I have my van back, full of lots of room for future unwise decisions! Yay!  Last night I stayed up super late because I was too tired to clean but too keyed up to go to bed. I mean I did clean, I cleaned the kitchen pretty well at least and that was the big job for the night. But then I decided that the broken recliner really, truly, absolutely needed to go, but it was too big, so I got out a scissors and used some elbow grease to rip the arms right off that sucker. Not as impressive as it sounds, since "semi-detached arms" was the biggest single symptom of brokenness already, but it did make me feel strong! The back of the chair came off without needing to be destroyed, which was less fun but much easier. Tonight my husband carried down the smaller pieces himself, and then he and I worked on getting the still-extremely-heavy center mass portion down the stairs and into the truck. I wound up sort of scooting down on my butt and hanging onto the back bar of the chair while he guided from the front, my mind filled with visions of the thing sledding down the stairs and running him over flat. But we got it done, so now we just need to take it out to the dump and rid ourselves of it forever. Hopefully the truck will still start when we turn it on.  My folks decided to go with an AirBnB about 20 minutes away from us for this trip, and it is super gorgeous. It's at least the size of our apartment with two bedrooms, a large living room/kitchen, and a center room devoted to a pool table. The kiddo is very excited about the pool table. We went down there and took them supper this evening because I had to go to election official training this evening and they didn't want to have to drive themselves back in the dark their first night here. Only trouble was, their place doesn't really have a kitchen, just a sink, microwave and fridge. No problem,  I broke out the crockpot and the emergency second crockpot I got at an auction and spent much of the afternoon cooking.  I made butternut squash soup, a perennial favorite I already talked about, and pulled pork. I was in a hurry because I got started late, so I splurged on a boneless pork loin, cut it into fist-size chunks or a little smaller, then seasoned them with rub and seared them with butter in a skillet till the outsides were brown and had little crunchy bits on them. Then I piled them into the crockpot and deglazed the pan with a sweet onion and a couple tablespoons of jarred minced garlic. Once those were soft and translucent, I added four cups of water to the skillet, stirred it around, and then poured the resultant broth into the crockpot as well. A little bit of liquid smoke, four hours on high, and voila! On a sesame roll with a little barbecue sauce, it was excellent. I showed the kiddo how to use a spiral pineapple cutter to turn a fresh pineapple into a hollow tube, and that made a pretty good dinner.  It's so good to see my folks again! I haven't lived in the same state as them for well over a decade now, but I still miss them a lot and we try to visit as often as we can. My sister lives much closer to me than to the old homestead and we have tried convincing them to move closer to us, but their house is so full of so many things, I doubt it will ever happen. Plus they like where they are and have many friends there, which at least makes me feel less guilty about being so far away. We only got to spend a couple of hours with them tonight, but tomorrow I'm springing the kiddo from virtual learning so we can hang out with them all day. It'll be fun!  This evening was election official training, this time at the auditorium at the middle school to provide lots of social distancing room. I have been to training several times before, but this is the first time I've gone to the advanced training. For this election I've been tapped as the procedural specialist for my precinct, which means I am responsible for reading the manual better than anybody else so that when weird stuff happens, I know what to do. This is especially important in regards to provisional and absentee ballots, which are usually not a big deal but may well be a HUGE deal in this year's election. Apparently nearly a third of the active voters in our county have already voted this year, with three weeks of early voting still left, so we will likely not have the huge surge in election day voters that a presidential election usually brings. But there are 4000 absentee ballots that have been sent out and not returned yet, and each of those is a potential hiccup on the big day.  Even back in June during the absolute nothingburger of a Republican primary that we had, we got a couple of people trying to bring in their absentee ballots, or vote despite getting one and not bringing it with them. Virginia has taken the sensible step of making every voting precinct also a drop-off point for absentee ballots on election day, so people will be able to hand-deliver with no problems. But a lot of people don't understand that once they get their absentee ballot, that's it, that's their ballot and they can't have another one unless they give back the one they've got. If they really want to vote in person, they can, but they have to bring in their absentee ballot and spoil it (fill in all the circles) and then give it to us in exchange for an in-person ballot. So if somebody with an absentee ballot comes in to vote without their ballot, they will have to vote provisionally, and I will be in charge of making that happen. I'll also be working the pollbook again, which means face mask and face shield. Ugh. I had been hoping they were going to set up some kind of barrier system, but apparently not.  Anyway, I've read through the most salient parts of the manual already, but I'll be doing most of the rest in another ten days or so. I can become an expert on just about anything, but the expertise doesn't last very long before it is overwritten with new information. I'd hate to learn all that stuff only to forget it by November 3. 

#quarantine #election 2020 #recipe #furniture disassembly #you think that is bad? #one of my first apartments we used a sawzall to chop my sectional sofa into four pieces #so we could fit it into four different dumpsters at my apartment complex #which did not allow any trash that didn't fit in a dumpster #it was a little messy but it worked

[none-of-your-biscuits]

Okay so chopping up this part of my hgs rant between multiple things to talk about bc they're all kinda short(the LGBT+ "rep")and/or things I don't have enough knowledge on to go super deep into (music and animation)

Okay let's get it over with real quick

The LGBT+ rep is fucking trash

Pretty much all the lgbt (actually just L, T, Maybe B, absolutely no + and no G bc theres no one around to be gay bc this show hates men (besides like maybe the self insert teacher but I don't want to talk about him more than I need to))

So let's go down the list of the uh "rep"

We have, 1 trans man, and while they did put on their big kid shorts and say the word transgender, they immediately ruin it by basically have him read off the first answer you would get if you googled "what transgender????" And then he was an awful character for the rest of the show and I hate him

We have the lesbians (cousins? Aunts? The Wikipedia says cousins) who are, they're just stereotypes, like, they're apparently based on a real person but being "based" on a lesbian doesn't make them good rep or characters, and they're throwaway characters, you could cut them out entirely and nothing would change besides minor story elements

And then we have Snapdragon (which I will continue to use they/them for)

This could be a controversial opinion (if anyone else even cared about this show) but this character, is not trans rep (again apparently based on a trans person and again, doesn't make them a good character or proper rep) nothing that Snapdragon did in the entire show said "trans" to me, everything they wanted to do didn't have anything to do with changing their gender (which is an entirely different topic but just know I hate transition magic so much), they just liked feminine stuff like the costume in the Halloween episode or painting their nails, and with the writers being the way they are im really not surprised we wouldn't be allowed to have a feminine male character (or non binary character, again we don't have any of those) so they did not create a transfem person they just enforced gender roles (there was like some last minutes tacked on dysphoria which didn't make any fucking sense bc this show has horrible writing and didn't fit in with Snapdragon at all (the only example I can think of at this second was like them calling their shoulders broad and I'm just staring at this absolute twig of a kid and questioning if the writers even know what they're saying))

And as a trans (non binary) person it's so disheartening even from an absolute dumpster fire show

And then the last couple are pretty vague hints which is so aggravating when you switch between "oh nOes SHE LIKES GIRLS" which are hinted at with thyme and sage but are never actually confirmed bc this show is fucking garbage and then the whole "transgender is-*google search answer*" thing like pick a fucking lane Jesus Christ

Rosemary had a crush on the plot device boy and a weird jealousy thing for sage so like it's implied shes bi/pan (or they're just going for "no that was comphet actually." Without knowing what that actually is)

Parsley is there. I guess. She said the plot device boy was cute or smth I literally don't care I fell asleep watching that episode

Okay I'm done with that bc I'm full of rage about that

So let's go to the music

I'm not a big music genius or anything but even I know the music is bad

Not even in like a "this sounds terrible" way but it literally just doesn't fit the shows energy

They have this high energy bouncy music for a show that's supposed to be rated mature (I'll get to that some other time) and it just doesn't work

If this was like a magical girl anime (which it sure looks like it is) I wouldn't question it, but the music doesn't make me go "oh no this is a little intriguing a tiny bit scary wonder what will happen" it makes me go "haha silly slice of life anime with no stakes :D"

Your Intro Song is supposed to be your big moment as a show creator, it's supposed to set the energy for your show, and if someone is gonna have to listen to it every episode, it should at least sound good

So like, as an example they could have used something in the same vein of like the wizards of waverly place theme, like it has the vibes of a show thats rooted in slightly spooky Hijinks and magic

So moving on from that to the animation bc I can't not talk about the animation

The problem I think is that (from information I've gained through osmosis with friends and YouTube) is that there's so many mistakes but they're all such noticeable and simple ones, like coloring issues or using stock photos (like maybe just don't cut corners) like simple fixable stuff, there's absolutely no way anyone on the writing or editing or hell in the animation department watched this and went "yep that's good" like they fucked up stuff like the scale of characters or just straight up changing designs multiple times like did they not get a reference sheet? Isn't there like a person who's whole entire job to find animation errors and either fix them or at least point them out to the people who can fix them? And then there's just character design problems but again not my wheelhouse but like cmon, even I could come up with better designs than this and I'm not even a drawer-er/artist/ whatever and I could complain about designs more but honestly I can't think of any that wouldn't take me like several paragraphs to explain why I don't like them so I won't

Anywho toodles I'm off to write the next part of this while I'm still in the mood

#biscuits ranting about hgs