Lines Drawn in Starlight

Because 5 things make a post, om nom nom.

1. The weakest link has been removed from the chain. More work for me, but overall very much for the better. I don't feel very bad that this got the first position in my thankful list tonight.

2. Chocolate glazed, chocolate cake Top Pot donuts are really good when left in the refrigerator. Quiche is even tastier when someone has made it for you... magic dinner! Quesadillas. Being someone who enjoys her fuel consumption. The luxury of having a "favorite food."

3. coffeedaiv. Who didn't have to take a sick day.

4. Aya is returning to his obnoxious self, after a week of kitty cold that included losing his meow. No, really. He has a lousy immune system. Shiva cat only had two days of mild sneezing, but Aya has been knocked down with a very human-like crud (cough, sneezing, no meow) for almost a week. I should not laugh. It's probably my fault that they, indoor cats, got colds at all.

5. Being energetic after a bad night's sleep. Being energetic after TWO bad nights of sleep (for different reasons). Go acupuncture!

Fry fuel: McDonald’s franchisee runs cars on leftover grease

I've been saying for years that McDonald's Corp. ought to diversify into biodiesel. This franchise owner is saving around $350/week in fuel cost, and will recover the cost of the conversion in eight months (per car). I wonder how much he is saving in disposal charges?

( Full of Obvious - Say the words, for Eros' sake. )

I've been thinking that love is a box of crayons. Not any box, but the 64 color big box with the sharpener. Sure, there are bigger boxes now, but that was the one I coveted, the one with complex hues and metallics. I couldn't imagine a bigger box. I used to think some of the colors were grotesque; I questioned who would want green-yellow. Hopeful about others, I tried to use burnt umber. I wasn't allowed to use silver or gold, because I wasn't old enough to handle them. Now that I am, they're nice, but I'm just as likely to select azure.

Speaking of green-yellow, the hypenated names taught me about subtle differences. There was blue-green and green-blue, not called teal then, and red-violet and violet-red, and green-yellow/yellow-green. They were distinct, despite being called what sounded alike. Colors are hard to describe, even when they've been given a label.

Over time, the color names have changed, to ones like Screamin' Green. I think love expectations have been remarketed, too, since the 80's.

Black was the color I would wear out the most, the crayon I'd break first. The peeled half-bare crayon. I liked to do the thing where you cover up a calico of mixed colors with a coating of black, then scrape through for multi-hued lines.

I still have my favorites. Green-blue, dark violet, "unrealistic skin color" peach. I use red liberally, copper sparingly. A person could make do with a basic prismatic; I suspect that a lot of people think that a one row box covers the spectrum. You can get depth out of shading, using the crayon harder or softer as you color. They don't blend very well; attempts will yield either a new, unexpected hue or a mess.

How's that for an extended metaphor?