I feel like I need one of these. Mainly so I don't have to include the list of previous updates in each new post. Links have been updated to point to DW posts instead of the deleted LJ posts.( ... )

I may be on day 7 and counting of some kind of horrible thing that started off as an incipient cold, spent a brief while as a crushing headache, and then mutated into a narcotics-defying cough and a double-ear infection, with some other fun stops along the way; but that doesn't mean I can't edit up a bunch of screenshots in Paint Shop Pro and then type a bunch of stuff into a text edit box!



Previous updates are here.

General warning: sometimes I swear.
Any and all Merrick updates may be tw for fighting, infidelity, miscarriage, abductions (of the alien kind), and death.

Last time: generation six finished up college and went home (where in some cases "home" has been redefined as "the Sim Bin for possibly eternity, unless I feel like chucking them into Casa de Spare, I dunno"). Maddie met and proposed to a townie named Cyd! Jinx wasn't quite so lucky in love.

( Is it time to take my antibiotics again yet? )

Eugh, the UI for Livejournal went all-caps since the last time I noticed it. At least now the image uploader works again. That's actually what stopped me posting several times in the last few months, is not being able to upload the images that I wanted to share.

ANYWAY! Have some pictures from four-day-weekend garden-a-thon that we did this weekend. (I took Monday and Tuesday off from work.)

Sic semper garlic mustard:


Both of those bags are full of garlic mustard. Half of it isn't even from our yard, it's from three different neighbor yards, but nobody else around here bothers to pull garlic mustard and since it's a horrible invasive if you let one plant go to seed then you have 500 plants the next year so it spreadddssss. And it displaces basically all other plants, so where it grows, nothing else does. Entire forest/woodland areas have had their normal understory plants wiped out by garlic mustard. Please, if you live in North America and have any sort of lawn/garden thing, get to know garlic mustard and make sure you don't have any. And if you do, get rid of it. It pulls real easy most of the time, and it's only a biannual so if you mow its tall second-year form BEFORE IT FLOWERS SERIOUSLY ONLY BEFORE, then it won't come back the next year. And it really does smell like garlic when crushed, so it's easy to ID that way until you reach the point where you recognize its sinister appearance on sight.

I really hate garlic mustard.

Sic sometimes honeysuckle:




Before and after. Mecha machete'd out some of the invasive honeysuckle that's busily escaping cultivation at the back of our property, and then we planted a native nannyberry. One of the cut vines kept spewing sap for ages afterwards. It was really creepy.

We also planted five other trees/shrubs plus a couple of phloxes, plus there are other backyard shenanigans, but this is what I'm posting so far.

Man, I haven't posted a Merrick update in, like, forever.

Posted an amusing (to me) text exchange on mah tumblr instead of here mainly because the LJ picture upload thing keeps being a butt lately.

In case anyone was wondering whether I'd done anything exciting today. That conversation is pretty much it. That, and trying to figure out what color to paint the kitchen/dining/pantry room.

Note: this is the spares update for, and should be read after, generation 4.

Previous entries are here.

General warning: sometimes I swear.
Any and all Merrick updates may be tw for fighting, infidelity, miscarriage, abductions (of the alien kind), and death.

The heir for generation 4 was Adrian, and the spouse was the former llama cultist Kaylynn. The mainline kids were triplets -- Lyman, Doc Boy, and Arlene. This is the spares update, with Adrian's sibs and their offspring. Most of it was written as I was playing, some months ago.

( Those header images get harder to make the more spare houses I have to stick in 'em. )

So! This is the view from my bedroom window right now!



As you might expect, it is pretty cold in Madison these days. One would therefore probably be well-advised to take the necessary precautions! But wait, what's this I just noticed on the floor behind my bookcase?



...oh. That... that would be my storm windows. The ones that are supposed to go up. In winter.

Oops.

Also, this is a thing!



Yes, it's the poster that I spent like $100 and about 3 years (off and on, not constantly) getting signed by all the principals from the best zombie movie ever made. Which I just got around to putting back in its frame today. When it's been sitting in a poster tube, having gotten the last of its necessary signatures, since September.

And this is one of my ceiling lights, which are the yellowy blobs reflected in the plexiglass.



Also the top of a floor lamp in the background. I like paper lamps.

And while I'm at it, here is my desk area!



Notice those pesky storm windows at bottom left again. The pile of papers on the laptop is hand-written pages from my apparently-book. The monitor, keyboard, etc are all plugged into the laptop, but I don't use the laptop screen because I can't figure out how to make it be monitor #2.

And this is the stuff that's on my knee and also other places that my doctor diagnosed as lichen simplex years back, but it's actually psoriasis I'm pretty sure?



I mean, it looks nothing like google image search for lichen simplex, and I have it mainly on the outsides of my knees and elbows which Internet tells me that that is where psoriasis happens more than lichen. I dunno. It usually doesn't bother me unless it's wet, but today the knee is acting up and is kind of stinging a little. Feels like rug burn.



Oh. Hello.

Did some art that's on my tumblr now. If your delicate eyes would be blasted into ruin by the sight of a fat body (or if you don't feel like reading A. profanity and B. such witticisms as "because your face"), you should definitely not click here.

why the shit is everything I like on this site dry-clean only

i mean

dammit

it took me until i was 32 years old to own a shirt that actually fit me (without being just a simple t-shirt, which is like the lowest common denominator of shirts, and not something I can wear to work except on casual days anyway), and now i obsessively revisit every couple days to see if there's something new i want to buy

and it's like ZOMG I WOULD WEAR THAT TIMES A BILLION

but no

dry-clean only

fuck dry-cleaning


But damn, if there was a site that would custom-make clothes to your measurements, at an eShakti-ish price, but in more masculine/androgynous styles instead of the usually very feminine stuff eShakti sells? WHOOPS THERE GOES ALL MY MONEY.

Now I should probably get ready for the seven-hour drive we are about to undertake.

So there is a door at my workplace that leads from inside an underground tunnel (because Wisconsin) into one of the parking garages. (The other garage has its own door.) On the hallway side of the door are two clear plastic rectangles that can each display a sheet of 8.5x11 paper slid behind it — you know, reminders of upcoming events, that sort of thing. For a couple of weeks those plastic rectangles have been empty.

On Wednesday I noticed that they had been filled.



but wait

zoom

enhance

enhance




Right then.