A DAY OF CELEBRATION!
celebrating 7 years of stupidity, nothingness, lulz, meme, quizzes, life, bitching, whining, moaning and blurbing-- HUZZAH!!! in all this time i haven`t really done anything to celebrate my lj's bday so i figured i`d atleast throw together an image and attempt a little blurb this year. :P
at 7 years old, this livejournal currently has 2,018 entries, 272 tags, 4,879 comments received, and 115 mutual friends. not that these stats mean anything, but for the record. :P the large majority of the people who are currently active on my friends list have actually added me relatively recently. most of the people who have been on my friends list for years no longer even use lj. :[
originally this lj was "melodybluu", a pretty random username... one of a million that i threw around at the time. it wasn`t until 2004, i think, that i finally came up with a username that stuck (nighstar). since then "nighstar mayfair" has been the name that i have gone by for nearly everything. as you may or may not know, i also have ljs in other languages: noktema (esperanto) is the oldest following this one, created in 2004; les_etoiles (french) made in 2006 and sadly hardly updated; daresore (japanese) the latest of my ljs, created in 2008. the french lj aside (*sigh*), i try to update all of my ljs when i can.
a few months ago i started a completely nerdy and useless-to-anyone-but-me project in this lj: i decided to go through all of my older entries (entries made before tagging was available) and tag them, starting with my first entry. it`s been a sloooowww process as i mostly only do it when i have nothing better to be doing, but thus far i`ve made it to August 2003.
before coming to japan, i made all of my older entries that did not relate to JET friends only, so to those reading this without and lj account: :P sorry. to those of you who are on my friends list and who have access to such old entries: i hope you dont bother looking through them. :P its all bleh anyway. i am tagging my older entries for my own convenience, reference and nostalgia.
speaking of convenience, reference and nostalgia, i`ve mentioned this before but livejournal has partnered up with a site called Blurb that allows you to have your lj printed into a physical book. it is still my goal to do this sometime... god forbid livejournal dies someday and i lose 7+ years of memories...
anyway, yeah. 7 years and counting!!! w00t!!!! :D i`d blurb more but i`m sure you`ve heard enough if you`ve read this far and i need to go to bed anyway.
other reasons for celebration:
left: new, right: 3+ years old
the new glasses i ordered a week+ ago finally came in yesterday and i picked them up today. :] i`m really happy with them, Paris Miki (store) did a great job with them-- they put in extra effort to make the thickness of the lenses as unnoticeable as possible at my request and they did an even nicer job than was done with my older classes. <3333 my eyes are seriously utter shit so without special technology and then more shaving away on top of that, my lenses are so thick its embarrassing... ^^; design-wise, i got what i had been hoping for which in reality wasnt a huge difference from my old ones, but the differences that are there matter much to me. <3 ah, and also the new pair, like my old pair, have transition lenses. :]
on to the next topic of bugs, as i seem to keep stumbling upon interesting ones lately. tonight i dont have the time to tell you how i stumbled upon them, but let it be noted that i found more than 1 of BOTH of the things pictured. click to enlarge the photos.
lastly and quickly (i need to go to bed damnit!): HOMEMADE PICKLES?!?!?!?!
i have been craving-- DYING for American pickles for forever... hell, i`ve missed them and wanted them since i got here lulz. i FKIN LOVE pickles so much... ;-; i love Japanese tsukemono (pickled things) too, but god it`s not the same...! i`ve made tsukemono too...
SO! i went searching for EASY recipes that hopefully i could make here in Japan, which was hard to find. many recipes and methods used crap that i could only get in America, such as packaged pickle-making spices and such... i also had to take into account that Japan`s cucumbers are fkin different from the cucumbers that would generally be used for American pickles...
finally, i found 2 recipes that i liked:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Refrigerator-Pickles---Quick-n_-Easy/
http://thecuttingedgeofordinary.blogspot.com/2009/06/easy-refrigerator-pickles.html
being the person that i am, i couldn`t just use one or the other when trying this-- oh no. that`s not how i work. i took what i liked from both recipes, combined it and changed/added a few things as i saw fit. here`s the result in photos with minor captions as I NEED TO GO TO BED-- URGH!!! if anyone wants elaboration/more details, feel free to ask.
the ingredients that i used. i got HELLA lucky as a store near me not only had fresh dill but also had cucumbers that are closer to what i needed! amusingly, they were labeled 「昔（何とか何とか）キュウリ」 ("ancient/oldold (blehbleh) cucumbers").
cucumbers cut into spears + garlic + dill + red peppers
boiled salt + (tiny bit of) sugar + water + vinegar
COMBINED!!! then covered and thrown into the fridge for a few.
BAM!!! jarred pickle spears!
my AIM is to not touch these for ATLEAST 2 days. give `em time to get all... mouthwateringly... pickley.... *droo-- BUT! that may be hard. ^^; either way, when i do break into them, i will post how they turned out. :]
*passes out without proofreading*