When I posted yesterday's first post, I had a Hot Pocket. When I went shopping, I had a couple of food cartridges from McDonald's. It wasn't a case of not having an appetite so much as a case of me simply not paying attention to my appetite. That's kind of weird for me to be that preoccupied, but whatev. I mean, after blogging I decided to take a nap, and the stomach demanded food, but I said, "Screw you; I'm trying to sleep." And after getting food from McDonald's and shopping, I got on WoW and was busy with stuff when my hunger reflex went off again, so I ate some Doritos and continued playing.
...but around 11-ish I started getting really hungry, so I decided I'd make tacos; looking over the supplies in the kitchen I realized that I could make mexican lasagna, which I'd actually intended to make in January or February, so I got the stuff out and made that instead. It takes longer, but it ends up being more food out of a pound of hamburger.
I ate two helpings of it. One is normally enough to fill me up--the lack of eating during the day caught up with me--and in fact I ended up getting acid indigestion from eating so much. But it tasted so good....
This is another one of those dishes I haven't had since Mom died. *sigh* She really liked it and used to make this every other week or so. She would have made it more often if I could have stood having it more often, but I get sick of eating the same thing all the time.
* * *
There were a few things I bought yesterday that weren't on my list, but mainly they were things that I'd thought about putting on the list and hadn't--mostly stuff for one of my big salads, which I haven't had for a while and have been having a hankering for. But the one thing I didn't need was a bag of Doritos, "Salsa Verde" flavor. That first came out in 1999 or 2000, and I remember bringing it to the Saturday D&D sessions and munching on chips while playing. That's probably my favorite flavor of Doritos, and when I saw it sitting on the shelf I failed my Will save. Argh etc--so into the cart it went.
As impulse buys go, it's not really much, but the whole point of making a list and sticking to it is to avoid impulse buys, particularly on junk food. It's fine to see something and realize, "Crap, I wanted to put that on the list." It's another to see something and say, "Gee, that stuff tastes good, but I don't really need it...." and put it into the cart anyway.
* * *
So I hit Ace yesterday to get paint for the helmet. I spent a few minutes looking over their selection; not only could I have done a "rock" finish, but I could have done gold, silver, chalkboard (so I could write on it with chalk!) or a hammered finish. I had the gamut of colors, including various flourescents, to choose from.
This stuff is getting crazy.
I did briefly consider the hammered finish, but decided that basic gloss black would fill the bill handily. Besides, the more complex you get, the more expensive the paint; the stone finish is $11 a can.
I paid $4 for one can of Ace brand gloss black, and could have paid even less than that for a generic brand.
...it amazes me, when I stop to consider it, how much I picked up over the years from my Dad. Dad was a paint chemist; if he knew anything, it was the chemistry of coatings and their associated solvents. (And Dad knew a hell of a lot about everything.) That's how I know that generic spray paint (with toluene etc as a solvent) isn't going to damage fiberglas; and looking at the label inside the helmet I learned that the fiberglas had been made with polyester resin, which is particularly impervious to most average solvents.
I mean, you might be able to soften it with polyethylene glycol, which is paint stripper. But the solvents in average spray paint? Somehow I doubt it.
Paint is basically a pigment, a binder, and a solvent. When you apply it to a surface, the solvent evaporates, leaving the binder and pigment in place. Everything else is details: whether or not a paint is self-leveling, what kind of texture it dries to, film strength, adhesion, etc, etc. These can be altered by changing the chemistry.
"Oil base paint" is typically made with linseed oil. You heat up linseed oil and it polymerizes (as the son of one of Dad's friends found out--more on this in a bit) and you mix pigment with it. Thin with turpentine--presto, you've got paint!
It's another one of those things that's simple to explain but really complex in practice.
* * *
Okay, the story of Dad's friend's son:
The kid volunteered to change the oil in his dad's car. The dad didn't supervise the operation.
As he drove the car, it started behaving oddly. It lost power, and became less responsive, and finally it stalled and wouldn't start.
...turned out the kid had replaced the engine oil with linseed oil, and (as noted above) when that gets hot, it polymerizes. So the oil gradually got thicker and thicker in the engine until--
* * *
There's a car show in Peotone today--it starts in about two minutes--and I'm still on the fence about going to the thing.
It's not that it's hot out; it's just that it's six miles west and six miles south and I'm not sure I feel like driving.
To make matters worse I had a minor panic attack after going to bed, and had to take a Xanax; I'm still pretty zonked from that. And the grass needs cutting. (But I could do that tomorrow.)
* * *
While hacking around trying to see if there was a translation of the Haruhi art book, I found translations of the light novels on-line, finally. I've got Rampage of... and Wavering Of..., light novels 5 and 6, respectively, out of 9.
How does Rampage of... begin?
I had a bizarre feeling several days after the conclusion of the O-bon Festival.That's right! It's "Endless Eight"!
At the time, I was sitting in my own living room, tuning in and out of the middle school baseball
games, which I had little interest in. It was kind of my own fault, being wide awake by afternoon
and having nothing to do. Even when bored to death, I lacked the strength to face that hill of a
pile of summer homework, so I continued to kill time by watching T.V. like a slouch.
So I'll probably dump both 5&6 to the Aluratek and read them, and then get the subsequent volumes and read them, because I'm tired of the glacial pace at which the books are being released here.
Besides--there are 13 extant volumes of Fairy Tail and I need to buy those, plus the Kimi ni Todoke I don't have, and-and-and....
* * *
As I was going to bed last night I was singing a stupid little song, in an old man's voice, about all the stuff I've forgotten:
I've forgotten how to pilot a spaceshipThen I realized what the song was actually about and was briefly depressed.
I've forgotten how to fight a pack of skeletons
I've forgotten how to be a pirate--
You become an adult and you put away the childish things. You don't have time for "make believe" any longer; besides, it looks silly.
But just now I realized that I haven't forgotten any of that. I still know how to do those things, and more besides; sit me at a table of like-minded people equipped with the right books and dice and we could spend days doing all kinds of things like that. Take that, depressing old man song!
* * *
Heck, I don't even feel like painting my helmet. How sad is that?