The one thing that sucks about updating icons and icon keywords is all the broken-ass icons on your journal that happens.

On the other hand, there are a few icons now that are not Incubus-related! I KNOW, it's a damn miracle.

What is up with all these earthquakes lately? There's been like three big enough for me to feel in the last three days.

Not surprisingly, having a baby does, really change everything.

( Strangely, it didn't really change things in the ways I thought it would. )

I know you all need more pictures of the baby so here you are: Joeybear.

Literally.

So, as has probably been made evident by not only my Suspicious Absence but also by the ecstatic crowing of my husband on Facebook, I had a baby!

( Baby TMI here! ) At 5:01 pm PST on February 27th, Joseph Russell Kragenbrink was officially born!

Joey passed all of his tests over the rest of Friday and Saturday and this morning with flying colors. He was born seven pounds six ounces, and nineteen and one quarter inches long. Right now the internet is being a turd so I'll have to link photos for those of you who haven't seen on Kev's Facebook later. I am sore and tired, but Kev's Mom is here right now, and then my parents arrive later this week and his father the week after to help us settle in with the kidlet and figure out how to best take care of him. So far we're doing pretty well; we seem to have figured out the whole breastfeeding thing. I'm obviously probably not going to be around much for a bit while we work into a schedule and I recover--I'm on a 6 week 'pelvic recovery' plan where I am to take things easy and not lift anything heavy. Lucky for me the baby is not so heavy. :)

Anyway...I'm a mom! It's still surreal.

Edit: Here are PICTURES!

Just in case it hits the news or whatever, yes, there was a 3.4 Earthquake in Marina del Rey like five minutes go, which for those keeping track is pretty much exactly where I live. It was a fast rolling quake that was over just about when I realized we were having an earthquake, and me and Kev and Blitz and the alien in my stomach the baby are all fine. :)

So I mentioned to my good friend ka1idurga that I was a little bit bummed that I couldn't go see the Neil Gaiman reading in town because my parents had picked that very time to come visit and I knew they wouldn't appreciate the experience, alas. So she being the super awesome person she is went and got a copy of the Graveyard Book signed for me and sent it priority mail! I am very psyched, as this was a super awesome thing for her to do, and I am very grateful. Also luckily, Mr. Gaiman is putting up clips of him doing the reading on his site, so I shan't miss a thing.

Thanks, Kali. :)

The next web edition of the prestigious, wonderful, exceptionally high-brow magazine Lucy Magazine is coming just around the bend. I advise everyone go there and read it, because it's awesome, and ALSO because I'm on board now as a staff writer and my first article is coming up, which might, MIGHT count as a publication, provided the Editor in Chief doesn't decide she hates it and wants to burn it all to the ground. (I'm begging for mercy here, Kate.)

I feel like this is an accomplishment, but also something of nepotism since the Editor in Chief was a good friend in college and lived RIGHT ACROSS THE FLOOR from me senior year and was part of the Don't Let Lauren Be A Hermit collective. But that's okay, I can take a little nepotism, it gives me something to do.

Also, I am proud of myself for actually having the raw article submitted BEFORE the content deadline. This is like a first for me. GO ME.

If for whatever reason you feel the need to Google image-search under just the keyword 'Incubus' again, for the love of God put the SafeSearch back on.

x.O

For anyone who might be reading my FL and wondering how Kev and I are, we weathered the quake just fine. It was apparently centered in East LA and we live in West LA, and by the time it got to us, it didn't even knock anything off of anything. It woke me up from a perfectly nice nap, though. >:|

In any case, no worries, we (and the cat) are all hunky dorey!

Packages from fangulation came! I give you the inevitable first try:

Incubus

Description: Spectral white musk and the heart-stopping chill of sheared mint, fanned by caramel-touched body heat, and the diabolical sensuality of black musk, nicotiana, and sage.

In the bottle: I smell the caramel and mint the most, in the bottle. I would have never thought those two scents went together, but I think I like it. Like a mojito with just a little too much sugar in it.

Wet: Lots and lots of caramel, but now I can smell the sage and something else, which might be the musk or the nicotiana, not sure. Luckily, it isn't going to soap on me so far. Mmm, sugary.

Dry: The caramel has already calmed down on this a lot. It has quite a throw on me, but it doesn't seem to be turning sour. It's sticking with the sage and the tobacco overtones, with this hint of sharpness and then a layer of sweetness. I don't know how to describe it, but it keeps rising up off my wrists in layers and mmm.

After an hour: This is still holding out as a thick, caramelly scent with some vague, sharp undertones. It's nice. The wind keeps catching it and moving it around the room. I think this is the scent that's most stayed the way it smelled in the bottle on my skin, for the longest. It's done hardly any morphing at all.

After a while: This just keeps on keepin' on the way it was in the bottle. How excellent. :D

Overall: Apparently, this was taylored for my skin chemistry because it hardly morphs at all, and it stays, mostly caramelly but with wiff of the sharper mint and sage and nicotiana. It still gets caught by the wind and pitched to me even now, every so often. Very very nice.

Kev and I went to the Getty center today for our anniversary. We had a very nice time and got to go on a tour of the medieval paintings on display. Here are the photos I took, along with a random picture of the cat, and some photos of Venice Beach.

I made Kev download most of Incubus' discography on his computer because he has the better speakers. I didn't make him download everything because the first two albums are kind of crap, and there's a lot of live stuff. So, of course, I have a lot more Incubus stuff than he does.

But I have like FIVE TIMES the amount of music he does, so when I'm listening to my own music on shuffle with my headphones while he is listening to his, Incubus comes up way less on my computer.

I'm just really, really amused in a perverse, mean way that my husband listens to more Incubus than I do, on accident.

I have a big post full of something like philosophy floating in my head, but I have to preface it with this extremely shallow post. I freaking love Los Angeles.

I've been over other details before, but this is all having to do with Incubus this time, of course. Not only am I going to be in the right city to see Mike's performance of his 'experimental symphonic music effort' in August at the Hollywood Bowl, I am literally in biking distance of Venice Beach (as I have said before) where the illustrious Brandon Boyd is apparently going to be having a show of his...well...illustrations. Paintings, mind, not the ones on his body, although if he wants to show those off too....

heh heh.

:]

I've come here today to talk about a very solemn topic. That topic is mash-ups.

I know that 90% of the music that I talk about on here is Incubus. I sort of advertise the fact that my existence at the moment is over-saturated with that particular band. You guys have (more or less) signed on with that in mind, and sometimes I am honestly astounded at how tolerant you are of it. Proud, even. Kudos to you guys.

This, however, apparently means that I'm the nexus for all Incubus-related things in the universe. I mean, it's got to the point now that the band manager has sent me messages on Facebook. More than once. But that's neither here nor there. Generally speaking,I quite enjoy what falls out of the sky to pummel me with band goodness. Like 'Paradise Spoiled' or Talk Shows on Mario Paint (which is seriously all I can think of when I hear the actual song any more). But sometimes the great fandom network fails me and I get really horrible mash ups.

It's at this point I need to make an aside about mash-ups in general. While I've been known to enjoy the occasional work of remixing genius, I tend to be a music purist. I don't like people dicking with my album cuts. If I'm going to like a mash-up, it's going to be really, really good.

That being said, if all you've done is slap the album copy of Drive over one of 50 Cent's videos, it is not a good mash-up. Especially if you haven't taken poor Brandon's vocals out, so you have these exceptionally confusing moments where there's a skinny effeminate white guy wailing in one ear and some big black mofo who's been shot more times than I've been to the dentist in the other, and you can't make sense of what EITHER of them are saying. Even if you've stripped it down, if one song is in 3/3 and the other is in 3/4, I'm sorry, I'm going to notice when the beats don't fall in the same spot. And it's going to drive me insane.

I don't know if this is a plea for those people with remixing software and too much time on their hands or a plea to my friendslist to let me remain ignorant of the product of all that, but there you have it.

And oh, yes. Dear Incubus: Re: that 'official' Tupac-Drive Mash-Up. I saw what you did there. Don't do it again.

So of course I changed my layout again. This apparently meant changing the moodtheme to match the whole Look Alive vibe here. So, there you go!

Back in LA. Not dead. Update (and why I should be more attentive to my phone's camera capabilities) coming when I am not stupid tired. Icon has nothing to do with post!

I put it on the IJ too.

Pick any of my characters, past or present, and I'll tell you one fact about them that you'd probably never notice unless they were naked.

A while ago, I tried my little phone camera out on the sunsets around here. Here's the results. Most of them are of Venice.

( I pretend to be good at this. )

The birthday, despite raining and fevers and UTTERLY FORGETTING to have my Incubus DVD marathon which might have to happen tomorrow, anyway, my birthday went surprisingly well. I even had churros.

Thank you, everyone who has wished me well. I appreciate it a lot.