Miracle Machine: Quesadilla Maker

I've had this baby since my boyfriend and I moved in together a while ago.  Up until recently, I've only been using it for what is was named for: Quesadillas.  Which is expected, generally you buy an item and use it for what it was named for.

These last few weeks however, my boyfriend really wanted tuna melts.  In our last place, our oven had a special slot for a broiler, and made things much easier and a lot less messy than just attempting to broil sandwiches on a cookie sheet in the normal oven.  I really was not in the mood to deal with our oven, considering it can be a pain in its heating up and thoroughly heating.

Then, the miracle idea. "Why not just use the quesadilla maker?"

Damn, may have been the best idea my boyfriend has had in our 7 years together.

Kidding.

Or am I?

Since then, I've been making anything that could reasonably be made in the quesadilla maker in the miracle machine.  French Toast, tuna melts, pancakes, grilled cheese, and of course quesadillas.  It's very non-stick, so I don't even need cooking spray or butter, and evenly cooks all the things I listed.  Larger sandwiches like the melts can sometimes get a bit squished, but in the end they're just as tasty squished or not, so it doesn't matter.

So, what other possibilities does the miracle machine present?  What other awesome meals can I make simpler with my Quesadilla machine?  Only the future will tell...

App - Pocket Frogs

The long and short for this app is it simply is adorable.  Little frogs of different breeds and colors, breeding them to try and make new and rarer frogs, hopping around lily pads to find gifts...it's simple, but provides lots of fun for organizational OCD people like myself.

I currently have it on my iPhone, but with a little research online, I found that it also is available for Android.

Basically, you start off with a starter frog, and get to jump around lily pads in the 'pond' area, eating flies and finding wild frogs to breed with once you have tamed your frog with enough flies.  The pond area is where you find new breeds as you level up, and can also find little gifts sitting on lily pads to nab.

Back where your frogs reside in their 'habitats', you can move them around, sell them, gift them, catalog them, etc etc, or check up on frog eggs in the special habitat called the 'nursery', which can also act as an additional habitat for adult frogs if needed.

There are 23 primary colors, 16 secondary colors, and a slew of breed patterns.  Frogs are named by these statistics, their primary color being the first part of the name, the secondary color being the second part of the name, and the pattern being the last part of the name.

The challenge of the game is to collect all the possible frog combinations, which is quite a lot, meaning the game can last a while for those wanting to actually 'complete' it.

If you are logged into the 'Game Center' app of the iPhone, you can find your friends through it to trade with, making obtaining special colors or breeds easier if your friends managed to get their hands on them.

Want to trade froggies with me?  Add me in game center, snochan15.

Gaia Spotlight: Virgil - One

So, I'm always up for a good giveaway thread on Gaia Online.  I'm always on the lookout for them, and when someone is actually having one that doesn't seem sketchy or have about a billion prerequisites before you actually receive anything, there's a good chance I'll stick around and chat for a while, see what's going on and all.

In result, I found out about Virgil-One, or Deqqy, or just Virgil, there's a lot of names he seems to go by.

Click to go to his facebook giveaway page

Virgil runs giveaways at least 3 times a week.  Sometimes they're huge, sometimes they're smaller, but usually, if you end up winning one of the main prizes, the item is worth over 100,000 gaia gold.  If you don't win one of the main prizes, he puts of 50 50,000 gold prizes here and there, so often, there's a good chance you'll at least win something.

I discovered his page about 2 months ago, and have participated in almost every contest since then.  In result, I have won the following items:

• 350,000 gold through the 50k contests
• 400,000 gold through one gold giveaway
• Talisman of Evil
• Literary Luxury

So yeah, that's a pretty nice bit of stuff to win for free for doing a bunch of silly, random, and simple things on a facebook page.

Don't have a facebook page?

Get one.

Upcoming Art for League

So I can't say I have much inspiration for writing tonight, and in result, I'm just gonna show a WIP piece I have for Aatrox, the Darkin Blade.  I plan on drawing a piece like this for every champ eventually.

"Is it too late to get a refund on that skin?"

u totaly wastd yur $$$ - toxic league player, 2013

 To be honest, unless you are a pro, and I'd even imagine they've heard it before, this line is something almost every league player has heard when they're playing a champion with a bought skin:

"Is it too late to get a refund on that skin?"

It's likely one of the rudest, most irritating things to say, and is the toxic person's not so dickheaded of a way of telling the target person they sucked something awful that match.  Of course, there's three types of people that use this kind of toxic behavior.

1. Completely Irrational

You give up first blood, miss a skill shot, or ult someone in the wrong direction.  Immediately, if you have a skin, this toxic person is going to flip out and ask you the question above, and likely stick with it for the rest of the match into the after game chat where they likely will ask the enemy team to report you.  Even if you played the rest of the game fine, or only made one or two other small mistakes.

2. Irrational

This toxic fellow isn't as bad, but everyone has their off games or days.  You end up playing poorly in the match you're teamed up with this person, not at the top of your game, and toward the end they'll pop the question.  There's a good chance they won't take into consideration you're having an off game/day and report you, likely after a lot of raging either in chat or verbally at their computer screen.  Doesn't matter that you've played this character 7 out of 10 matches in your match history and won 6 of them.

3. Rational

But Tal, there's a rational person that uses this toxic behavior?

Answer is, yes.

If you bought the latest skin on the skin sale and the champ to go along with it, and after 10 games straight of playing this champ with 10 straight losses, your game with this person being no better than the last 9, not even I would feel sympathy for you.  This is likely the one time where the person asking you this question is legitimately trying to help you, if anything, at least save up RP for a skin, for a champ, you know you can play well and will utilize more efficiently, even if they come off the typical toxic asshole we all have come to hate in the league community.

Being Artsy Fartsy

Art has always been a big part of my life, from my baby days of drawing with spaghetti sauce on my high chair, to my college drawing classes and musical endeavors, I've dabbled in a lot of different things.  Some areas I'm better at than others, but with my wide range of creative outlets, I'm more a jack of all trades than a master at any one in particular.

Music

While I've dipped into multiple instruments here, my primary instrument is the Alto Saxophone.  My mother bought me a professional grade saxophone when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, and I played and practiced it quite frequently.  Sadly, I was never into jazz much, which was a set back for a saxophone player, resulting in me trying other instruments such as the oboe, piano, flute, clarinet, and trombone.  None the less, when I was asked which instrument I wanted to play in Concert Band more, the higher band at my high school, I chose the alto saxophone over the oboe, the two instruments I had auditioned on, and was the instrument I played until I graduated.

In college, I had one semester of being a music major, and in result, one semester of being in band.  I managed to get into the higher end band for the semester after an audition, but due to the odd schedule of practices and moving out of being a music major in my second semester, I no longer had an outlet of playing my saxophone.

After that, when my brother entered college, he ended up using my saxophone for band himself, and I haven't personally played for about 3 years now.  Even then, I still find my fingers playing scales on an imaginary air saxophone from time to time.

Graphic Design

This was covered in a previous post I made, so if you want to hear and see about my talents in this area, I'd recommend checking out the post.

Jewelry

Making jewelry is something I've always really enjoyed doing, picking up cheap, clearanced jewelry when I used to work in an accessories department of a retail store, and dismantling it for parts toward my own pieces.  Between doing that, and purchasing new beads, string, wire, etc from bead stores, I have quite a collection of materials for making custom pieces.

I have to admit, finding the creativity and energy to make jewelry has always been the hardest part of making it in the first place.  When I get started, there's rarely anything that can get in my way.  I just have to get there, being the hard part.

I would have to say my favorite pieces to makeare bracelets, followed by anklets, then dangling earrings.  Necklaces take a lot of time and effort for me, and are really the one piece that I tend to rush and end up with less than favorable results from.

This is the set of prayer beads that someday will make their way into the hands of my best friend!

Nail Design

I love painting my nails.  Usually I wait until they get long and strong, then I paint them with a solid color,  draw on top of them with another color in some nifty design before sealing it with top coat.  The most popular design I've had people notice and 'wow' over is my tiger stripe design, which I usually did with black nail polish base and then white stripes that crossed from the sides of the nails, tapering about 3/4 of the way to the other side of the nail.  Once I have decently long nails again, I'll likely paint them up and make a post showcasing them.

Art

I've always loved drawing, but I am quite terrible at anatomy.  I always get it wrong no matter how much I practice and study, so a lot of my art is 'chibi' or a kind of henna design esque sort of art.

My chibis are kind of derpy, but then again, what's better than a derpy chibi?

My other type of art started when I was bored at the 6 week long training at my old job.  There was a restaurant nearby that gave you styrofoam cups for your drink, and I had gotten one on my lunch break.  Considering there were more than a few breaks, pauses, and general down time during training, I started doodling on the cup.  This is what I ended up with: