I woke up this morning and wondered why I couldn't move my arms properly. Had I slept wrong? Was I sick?

OH NO, I just took a cramp after moving a bajillion boxes yesterday. :D

We spent the evening in, watching Holstein decide that my shirt sleeves were evil and mocking the evening news. I also discovered that I left ALL THE PRESENTS I bought for people in my flat, so at some point today or tomorrow we have to go back to my flat, BRAVING THE THREE PERILOUS INCHES OF SNOW, to get my gifts for everyone.

In our family it's been a tradition since I was tiny that on Christmas eve you get to open two gifts, which are invariably a book and a pair of pyjamas, so you can read yourself to sleep waiting for Santa, and on Christmas morning you're in nice new pjs for present-opening. Last night, despite it not quite being Christmas, Mum gave me fancy new flannel pyjamas, and instead of a book I got a stuffed sock monkey.

Oh family. Never change.

The Pengi Hat



We did a Secret Santa at work. The person I got, one of the shift managers named Trista, is a HUGE Pburgh Penguins fan. ...so I decided to make her a Penguin Hat. Which got shortened to Pengi Hat. It took 3 times... but I think it's worth it. She seemed to like it a lot. As did the Big Boss, who wants one for her son. :D

WELL THAT WAS AN AFTERNOON.

My family arrived at my place and I told them, and this was my mistake, "You're going to have to go down the street, turn around, and pull up to my place so we can unload."

They got stuck in the snow at the end of the street.

Three inches of snow.

In a four wheel drive pickup.

I MIGHT HAVE LOLED. And then spent forty minutes helping push them out.

Anyway, we got my new hideous chair and my bookshelf up to my apartment, took the rest of my stuff to storage, dropped off the U-Haul trailer, and made our way downtown to the hotel. It took us two trips to get all the luggage to the hotel room, because everything my parents brought is in tote bags. Apparently they've sworn off luggage? I don't even know.

But we are here in the hotel now, safe and warm and awaiting room service. We were upgraded, which rocks the house; it means that the room I'm sharing with Emmy is just a room, but if we go next door my parents have a PALATIAL SUITE we can all hang out in.

And, obvs, the internet works.

I'm so glad we have no more moving to do.

ugh... so many cookies...

So the insurance adjuster called. The cost of the damages is more than 80% of the total value of the car. ...yeaaaah they decided to total it. He's going to send me a breakdown of how much they'll be giving me, and a sheet for power of attorney so he can handle paying off my lien and then will write me a check.

Then it's car shopping time. Sweeeeet. I'm definitely finding something with a CD player. ...maybe power locks and windows. I'm a simple kinda girl. Suggestions? ^_^

Other than that... All I've got left to do is put my Christmas cards in teh mail (tomorrow) and maybe go shopping for a Christmas outfit.

( Speaking of Christmas... )

Not much else going on... though I'm actually glad I get a few five hour shifts this week. Cuz really... yeah. tired. ^_^ Hoppy hols kids!

Fandom-specific

[DCU] shadowvalkyrie: DCU musings: "Specifically, porn. [...] Even more specifically, kinky porn. And the discrepancy of why the Bruce/Tim variety tends to be a great deal more popular than the Bruce/Jason one."

[Torchwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer] firefly124: Okay, so everybody else has probably already read this AfterElton article (the article compared Torchwood and BtVS in regards to character death, and the post builds on that. I'm not being more specific because I'm unsure whether details about Torchwood's third season are still considered spoilers.)

General

thete1: "I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!": "This has been on my mind -- harshing *my* squee -- since that first Transformers movie came out and so many of you were full of excuses about why you were going to see it anyway. Despite the racism."

In a post titled Saying Goodbye, yourlibrarian talks about important changes in TV, reality shows, the demise of the WB, and that the cause for the popularity decline in music games could be "a stranglehold on copyright".

cluegirl: Thoughts Contingent on Reader Entitlement; the fandom edition: "So what is it that makes us as readers so much more ready to be spiteful about work we DID NOT have to pay for? Other than the fact that we can, and the writer in question is unlikely to have highly paid lawyers who might give us a telling-off for acting like arseholes, I mean?"

skuf: Where's all the meta?: "Remember back in the day - e.g. 2006 - when [metafandom] issues were posted about every other day and had shitloads of links? What happened? Brainstorming: ..." (Cross-posted to DW, where the big discussion obviously seems to happen, but I decided to link the IJ version on principle.)

xie_xie_xie: metafandom and its discontents: "But the last three or four times I submitted a link, either mine or someone else's, either QAF-specific or "big picture" fandom meta, it was just ignored. I never knew if they just didn't like it, or didn't get it, or what the problem was."

I kept meaning to make an LJ entry today, and then things kept happening in my brain, you don't even want to know. So instead, you get a list!

1. While my knee is healing rapidly (I'm a good healer, to make up for tripping on NOTHING, ALL THE TIME) I've had to shorten my gait, so it takes me like, five minutes longer to get EVERYWHERE. This is improving my balance however.

2. The slow-walking thing is why I'm glad that the mailman came to see me today and took the last of my Christmas mailings, because omg I did not want to walk to the post office.

3. Which in turn means I can get a cab home. Ooooooh. And clean the kitchen in preparation for The Arrival Of My Family.

3a. Five bucks says that the first thing Emmy says to me when she sees the collage I made of images you guys sent me is, "Why is there a naked man with a frying pan in the corner?"

I'm going to just have to tell her "Art is its own explanation" or something equally ridiculous because I often ask myself the same question, and have yet to find an answer beyond "It was there."

So, my parents and sister are driving cross-country to Chicago for the next two days, in order to bring me the stuff I left in storage with them when I moved here. They're also bringing me The Best Chair Ever, which my mother acquired sometime in the 70's. It has bright-orange nubbly upholstery, and is almost unbearably comfortable. I am very excited to own a hideous comfortable chair.

What I had not anticipated is that my parents would not pack things with which to entertain each other while they are on the road (I have no doubt Emmy is glued to her headphones and hopefully struggling through the last of The Great Gatsby for school). As the dog -- who they're bringing along, apparently in a padded box mounted on the dashboard -- is asleep, mum's primary source of entertainment is texting me.

I love them. I just have to remind myself sometimes.

I've been wrangling this post over and over in my head for about a month now, perhaps a little longer, and it's still just plain messy, so I'm going to plow through and see what I can make of it.

At the start of November, a friend of mine died. Her husband's wishes are that there be no memorial post, so I'm not going to talk about who; if you knew her, you've heard by now, and if you don't know who, then you needn't worry.

K and I met via the Whofandom earlier this year, while I was working on Nameless, and we shared an interest in digital publishing and its effect on the wider world. Not to make this all about me -- though grieving usually is about the survivors -- but she was instrumental in opening my eyes to some things about writing, and my writing in particular, that I hadn't considered.

She sent me an essay on Nameless that she'd been working on, examining the use of geography and space in the novel. It was a brilliant piece of work standalone, but it brought home to me the fact that this story wasn't just being read by the Cafe or talked about it amongst people I knew. It was out there, in the world, and people were reading it and forming opinions that had nothing to do with what I thought or felt. People were analyzing what I did and finding things in the writing I hadn't consciously put there, but which were there anyway -- the same way I did in school with books I read and plays I worked on. To be the subject of that focus is at once thrilling and frightening, but endlessly educational.

She made me feel -- as the VOYA review and many people have done since, but with her, it was the first time -- like a Real Published Writer.

I've since learned through a mutual friend (to whom I am indebted for maintaining communication when K's eyesight failed her, and sharing in the mourning) that she had a wide array of literary interests and that I was in extremely respectable company under her eye. I'm glad to have known her and the thoughts she had on my work. She had notes on The Dead Isle too, which I expect to have in due time, when the sorting and sifting and other work is done. I'm very much looking forward to hearing what she said about it.

Um, there's no real point to this post, really, except to say that K did this thing for me, and was a friend. I want to put out there in the world that I miss her, I wish I'd known her better, and I wish I'd known her longer. Grief is natural and fades, and I'm okay; but I wanted to say it, so that it's there.

Things what I have done today:

Cleaned the bedroom and living room
Vacuumed the bedroom and living room (technically the Roomba did this)
Made reservations for the whole family to see Sherlock Holmes on Christmas Day, followed by fancy dinner downtown

(That last one is remarkably difficult. Most restaurants aren't open, and those that are have a Prix-Fixe menu that's a little out of our league, or serve food that one of us won't eat. I finally triumphed, however!)

Things what I must yet do:
WRAP CHRISTMAS PRESENT OMG
Mail two cards
Clean and vacuum the kitchen
Clean the fridge
Cook rice

I cannot wait till my family arrives, in part because they are bringing me A RICE COOKER. \o/

Now I venture out into the snow, to mail a card and buy a hamburger. :D

Title: Season's Tidings
Characters/Pairings: Rude/Tseng
Rating: R
Word Count: 345
Series: None
Author's Notes: it's like polite smut. or as fly_little_wing@lj said " it's smut that almost makes you feel guilty for thinking it's smutty" who, by the way did a mini-beta on it for me! much love neechan! and cross posted like whoa.


Season's Tidings

So, I watched the first half of season one and all of season two last weekend. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I like the television show more than the book series. Its probably because the series expands more on the minor characters and takes away from All-Sookie, All The Time.

( In which I babble with spoilers )

OH AND I saw the episode of House everyone said I had to see, the one that was all about Wilson.

( Three Things! )

3a. I have to say this outside of cut, because really, Wilson? Really?

"She hurt my friend. She should be punished."

Dear House and Wilson: It's okay to be hurt if a woman rejects you, and it's okay to be hurt if she's dating someone you consider a friend. It's even okay to be hurt if she's your friend and rejected your other friend.

You know what it's not okay to do? Punish her for not loving you.

Creeps.

So I totally didin't realise NCIS was new this week. Which is why Sam's Three Things are BELATED.

Spoilers for Episode 7.10, ( Faith )

3a. Okay normally I would mention how I absolutely DID NOT tear up at the end, with McGee and the Most Adorable Child Ever, but instead I have to say this: I watched the latest episode of Merlin last night as well, The Fires Of We're Not Nazguls, Really, We're Not, and the first ten minutes were the most awesome ten minutes of Merlin ever, followed by the most ridiculously stupid forty minutes ever (okay not the most ridiculously stupid of Merlin, though, that would be the fucking troll episodes).

OMG YOU GUYS DID YOU SEE MERLIN THROW HIM HIS SWORD THAT WAS TOTALLY BADASS AND THEN HE DRESSED MERLIN'S WOUNDS WITH HIS OWN. CLOTHES. AHAHAHA.

Characters in most novels, of course, have to have flaws. Novels exist where they don’t, but often the character is either boringly idealized or part of a historical and cultural context that doesn’t exist in most twenty-first-century Western countries any longer. (Characters like Herman Melville’s Billy Budd and George Eliot’s Eppie are also meant to serve a specific allegorical purpose that’s rare for modern fantasy novels). But it’s also possible to make a character too flawed, or to add only “charming” quirks that don’t actually impact a character’s life in any discernible way. I’m sure you can think of at least one protagonist whose only fault was being too generous, or too kind-hearted. (I will never get back the hours of my life which I wasted reading The Wayfarer Redemption).

Here, then, are some (more) ideas about adding flaws to characters and what to do once you have them.

( Read more... )

A rant on loyalty is probably next.

Fear not, I did not die over the course of moving.

What happened is that Verizon basically lied about DSL coverage in the area (This took me two days of getting bounced around phone trees, half of which are in India, and non-appearing technicians to find out, btw), so I canceled with them and it took a bit to get stuff worked out with Comcast (it took a while since I got a disappearing tech on their end too, but I actually got a credit on my account for that.. and then I had a bad TV box that I just got replaced today). I have cable internet at speeds about twice as fast as the best Verizon could have offered and cable TV with OnDemand, which is something I occasionally actually indulge in. (I am somewhat mollified to have heard that in Delaware Verizon's legendarily bad customer service has earned them an investigation from the FCC. Still, boo.)

I am also sick. My voice quit all through Tuesday and Wednesday with an agonizing sore throat. It's back now, but now I've got sinus and upper respiratory issues in line with the occasional BACTERIA WANT TO EAT YOUR HEAD infections I get. I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow. It is late enough that I don't have to miss a third day of work, but I'm still trying to gauge how I feel since I'm not exactly in the sort of work where if I overestimated how well I am I get to just go home when I start to feel really crappy. On the other hand, being out MAKES ME NUTS.

Yeah, Christmas is getting to be a bit of a non-event here at the ranch. I have my pretty wreath that smells nice, but between the move and the utilities drama and then being too sick to really want to do much more than sit in a chair and be a zombie, no decorating beyond that is happening. I'm going to be lucky to get my shopping done and get everything wrapped at this rate. :| Hopefully next year will run better.

---

Entry originally posted at http://teh-kittykat.dreamwidth.org/33718.html

comments and counting...

Updateroo time.

So, tomorrow is Christmas-Palooza. I'm cleaning my room and my bathroom in anticipation of peoples. I'm wrapping presents, making cookies, and doing Christmas cards (If you haven't sent me your addy DO IT NOW!!!). It's been a fun few days since Mom got home from her foot operation. Apparantly, revised plan A is that she has to keep a splint on for two weeks, Better than a cast for six, but still. So I'm pretty much in charge of making Christmas. ...yay.

Got to see the car yesterday when I went to retrieve a few things before the Insurance company moves it to their storage facility. ...you can see the engine where my drivers' side headlight used to be. O.O Quoth my dad "...how did your airbag not go off?" We're all pretty certain that the insurance agency is going to total it. I'm hoping for enough to pay off the last of the car loan and put a downpayment on a new car. And I do mean a NEW car. First of the year car sales... always a good thing.

Other than that... not much going on. Work on the Pengi Hat continues... once it's finished I'll put up pictures and provide the pattern for anybody who wants to use it. ^_^

AHAHAHAHAHAA I THOUGHT I WAS GOING INSANE.

I decided that Domino's Pizza was not a healthy option in my life, so about two months back I stopped ordering it. Which really means I stopped eating pizza, mostly, because local pizza places are either too expensive or too shit (yes, shittier than Domino's, I know that takes effort) and Domino's is the only chain place that delivers to my area.

The night before I went traveling I decided, well, I can have one once in a while, and I ordered a Domino's pizza.

It tasted awful.

I thought, great. I've weaned myself off the one pizza I used to tolerate. Now I don't even like Domino's. The sauce is gross and what's up with the garlic salt on the crust?

THEN I SAW THIS. Dominos refomulated their entire pizza recipe.

They say it's only available in Ann Arbor, but it's definitely available at my local Domino's too, and it is foul. The sauce in particular is offputting (red pepper kick, not so much, too sweet, oh yes), and the garlic salt on the crust just tastes of grease.

BUT AT LEAST I'M NOT CRAZY.

I got my bloodwork back from my doctor yesterday, but I'd already posted a bunch so I didn't want to spam. I am reasonably healthy for someone who falls down a lot, though I am Vitamin D deficient (Vitamin D-ficient!) so she gave me a prescription. Let's recount the pills I now take on a daily basis:

4 Calcium (2 morning, 2 evening)
4 Naproxen Sodium (2 morning, 2 evening)
1 Vitamin D (evening)
1/2 - 1 Vicodin (evening as needed)

These are all prescribed by my doctors and in the correct doses, mind you. Finally my body is beginning to match my 83-year-old personality. All I need now is a cane and a pair of high-waisted trousers.

The doctor also thinks I should pre-emptively lean towards The Mediterranean Diet to keep up heart health since my family has a History. This particular dietary structure recommends a lot of bread, rice, potatoes, fruit, legumes, and nuts, and fish as the primary meat. This suits me to the ground and means I can eat a lot of sushi guilt-free.

I'm just going to politely ignore the bit about eating a shit-ton of vegetables, and buy more carrots.

Man they want me to eat a lot of olive oil though. How do you get that much olive oil in your system? There's only so much you can dunk in it, and I like hummus but it gets old fast.

Maybe I should just do a shot of it every now and then. I could call it the Greasy Martini. "It's a shot of olive oil...with an olive in it. Shaken, not stirred."

MUM SENT ME GROCERIES.



I love her. She knows of my passion for bagelfuls!

(I would like to say that while I love brie, the "brie log" is ill-concieved. Too much rind. It's not bad, and it's convenient for cracker snacking, but you're better off buying a wheel.)

In the insanity of this morning, and of learning how to make ebooks (my curve is steep!) I almost forgot to tell the best story of my day.

Yesterday we got a flyer about a special deal that a few downtown hotels are offering to employees of downtown businesses. It was a little bit vague on the details, so I called the central number and asked a few questions. The woman I spoke to was SO PLEASED I was going to spread the word that she took down my name, company, and email address.

Cue an hour later, a rep from the hotel company shows up at the office and brings me a bag of candy and a GIFT CERTIFICATE for a free night's stay at one of the hotels, as a thank-you.

IT'S STAYCATION TIME.

I am upright! And coherent!

Okay, semi-coherent. But coherent enough to complete all my work tasks with a minimum of bewildered weeping.

Actually I have some very exciting stuff to share with you this morning.

First, 51stcenturyfox gave me a lovely early Christmas present -- www.extribulum.com. It's my very own domain name! Which is good 'cause damned if I know how to set stuff like that up. :D

Right now it redirects to my Lulu storefront, but I hope to badass up a website sooner or later. Thank you very much, Foxy! (She also wrote me a lovely poem about it.)

And, if you visit www.extribulum.com (link your friends! :D) you will notice that Nameless is now listed twice -- once at the top of the page and once at the bottom. This is because shezan poked me into action and Lulu provided the means to create an ePub file of Nameless. Yep -- you can now download Nameless, the e-book, and load it into the ePub reader of your choice.

Because a lot of people who have bought the book or downloaded the PDF would like it as an ePub, it seems a bit unfair to charge for it right off. The ebook will be free until the end of the month, at which point I'll raise the price to $3 (about $1.80 of that is profit; for some reason you can give the thing away, but if you charge for it Lulu takes a fair-sized chunk).

You guys will have to let me know how it looks, 'cause the Calibri e-reader's kind of buggy and tends to make random sentences disappear until you resize the screen, at which point it makes other random sentences disappear. :D

We oughtta have an initiative constitutional amendment to ban 7:00 finals. 8:00 classes are hell enough. *got up at 4:00*

...so the adjuster called. From what he knows and what I told him, he's pretty sure the car is totalled. >.> He's having it inspected just in case, but he's still pretty sure that's what's going to happen.

Joy and bliss. I get to go car shopping. -_-

I am home from the clinic! (for those of you reading on IJ and JF mirrors, I have a sprained/possibly torn MCL. No breaks!)

I'm to ice and elevate today. I got a prescription for vicodin and didn't check it before I filled it -- holy crap he gave me 30 500-mg tablets. So I'm taking half-tablets, which should be more than enough.

You can tell I was a little bit high when I filled the prescription. I bought vicodin, Calcium tablets (I was almost out), a spare Ace bandage, a toothbrush, two Snickers bars, and a jar of jam. I don't even remember buying the jar of jam.

I can't recommend Michigan Avenue Immediate Care highly enough, for those in Chicago who don't have a doctor or need to see a doctor NOW but don't want to go to the ER. I was seen within half an hour, they charge on a sliding scale so you can generally get fairly cheap medical care if you don't have insurance, and they have really nice doctors.

I did have to do the Walk Of Shame in my pyjamas, but that's why I wore pyjamas instead of just jeans, so I didn't have to keep taking off my pants; I could just wear my pjs and roll up the cuff. Undressing and taking off my shoes are the hardest thing right now.

I am going to go sit down forever.

Dear YouTube peoples:

All I really want to see is pretty pictures of a nifty phenomenon that happened over Norway a few days ago. Because of the pretty. Because of the amazingly beautiful, in fact. I mean, that was totally awesome and I wish I'd been there to see it firsthand.

I really don't need your tinhat explanations of what it means. Please to be not showing me crop circles and telling me that stargates are real.

Whyyyyyyy can't you all just enjoy the pretty? And let me see it without having to swallow your global thermonuclear martian theories along with?

:P

I AM HOME. The shuttle took FOREVER because he decided to drive up Halsted. WHY? WHY NOT!

I am sitting in bed with my leg up on a pillow and an ice pack on it. Is anyone shocked I keep ice packs in the freezer for moments like this? Me neither.

The full story is, this morning I was going to walk my hosts' dog, because he loves me best and despite fearing the rain might actually pee if I walk him in it. So I was standing on the steps to their mud-room, and my host said, very clearly, "Be careful! The tile is slippery!"

"I will be extra-super-careful," I said, or words to that effect, and then put my foot down on the tile and tumbled headfirst to the ground.

I tried. I really did.

I'm sure the fall sounded worse than it was, considering I took a hall table with me and nearly took the dog out in the process. I'm sure I traumatised the poor dog, and probably my hosts as well. I felt ok at the time, so I picked myself up, walked the dog, carried my bag to the car, and went to the airport. I got on the plane, got a seat where I could elevate my leg, asked the flight attendant for an ice pack (btw, Southwest flight attendants are the coolest MacGyvers ever) and spent the entire two-hour flight elevating and icing in fifteen-minute increments.

When it came time to get off the plane, my knee felt...funny. And then it hurt. So I caught a shuttle home, yay door-to-door service, and put in a sick-call to work via email for tomorrow. I'd go to the ER tonight but I'd just sit there in uncomfortable dirty chairs for hours on end, when I could get a good night's sleep and go to the nice Immediate Care clinic tomorrow morning. I trust them more; they're the ones who had me see a specialist for my wrist after sending me off with a splint, when they didn't even have to call me again.

Dad Lucky thinks that it's either a really bad sprain or a fracture in the head of the tibia.

If my leg is broken again I'm going to laugh and weep simultaneously, just to scare the Immediate Care people. My New Year's Resolution was not to break any bones in 2010.

A few words, dear friends. If the roads are covered in black ice, to the point were you fishtail once, do a 180 turn and crash into the curb? The likelihood of your loosing control of your car and slamming into a much larger vehicle, leaving your own car crushed like an accordian is VERY HIGH.

I'm fine. Other drivers are fine. Little shaken up, but then I had to climb out of my car via the passenger side door because the other one wouldn't open.

...and I only had six more payments on the car. *sigh*

My brothers are chasing each other around the house, fighting over who gets to practice running in high heels next.

It would be much more impressive if the only pair of heels we have weren't so short.

In the insanity of the last few days, I've been remiss in not sharing with you a new triumph for Nameless!

A few months ago, I was approached by Rebecca, a reviewer for Voice of Youth Advocates, which is a library journal targeted at librarians and teachers serving teenagers in a literary capacity. Although VOYA does not ordinarily review self-published books, Rebecca thought they would be interested in Nameless because of the process of its creation, and they agreed to publish a review in the December issue of the journal. VOYA is also tentatively set to run an article about Nameless which I believe will be in April's issue.

I received the review a few days ago and was really pleased with it. Rebecca submitted a long review and two teen reviewers, Alisa and Julia, also submitted shorter reviews. They're all positive about the writing, which is always nice, but also conscious of the book's flaws, which I appreciated. (Julia, in particular, hit the nail on the head with her assessment of my fear of conflict in writing, and Alisa and Rebecca both commented on the rather leisurely pace of the thing. :D)

It's late tonight and I'm traveling tomorrow -- I'll be out of town this weekend, though I'll have the netbook -- so I'm going to pull some quotes later to add to the brag post, and I'll link when I do so. If you have access to VOYA, which is a great resource in general, check out page 424 of the December issue to find the reviews.

As a little PR reminder, you can always find Nameless (and my other self-published books) in the links on the right sidebar of my journal, and digital PDF downloads of the book are still completely free.

I FEEL LIKE A GROWNUP WRITER OMG.

[Babylon 5] spacelogic: meta: squicks and siblings: "Claudia Christian mentioned in a blog post the other day that a B5 director (...) had told her to play her scenes with Sheridan more "sexy and coquettish" and I had such a strong "EWNOGROSS" reaction that I had to step back and analyze why."

[Stargate/SGA] rood: On Stargate And Why It Will Never Be Among My Favourite Series: "And not only are the languages pure decoration and occasional plot device: the cultures are, too."

As part of her reply to a five-questions meme, the_rck responds to Does it feel weird being a 'mom' in fandom?

IJ-related:

Permanently Insane accounts are on sale throughout December, until January 3rd.

squeaky explained that the issues with email notifications are apparently caused by spammers using the site. Some sub threads deal with different email providers and how to circumvent their blocking of IJ messages. It also says that, if your account is being suspended by mistake, you should open a support request in the Abuse category.

So, it's something like nineteen degrees below zero in Chicago this morning.

Okay, it's 4 degrees above, that extra 23 degree drop is for wind chill, but I'd like you to stop and think about the kind of wind that causes a 23-degree drop in temperature. And then imagine me walking in it, and you will understand that I am not delirious or surrealist when I make the following statement:

My house keys froze to the inside of my jacket pocket this morning.

I'm not particularly fussed by the cold, except when my belongings freeze together. Today does present some obstacles, namely that everyone who could call in sick did so. BossBoss, Coworker Fail, and three department heads are all mysteriously missing, which means basically I'm running the place. The down-side to this is that anyone who could provide lunch support, or who could concievably notice that I don't have lunch support, is gone.

It's going to be a long day.

An unfinished first-person narritive I started in the summer of '08 and have yet to finish. Am posting it now so as not to lose it before I get back to it.

( They say that of all the senses, smell is the one most closely linked to memory. )

I was going to do the "If I came with a warning label, what would it say?" meme that's been going around, but I'm pretty sure "HEALTH HAZARD" covers it. :D Possibly "Contents Under Pressure".

I have been adjusted and massaged and manipulated, and apparently my ass is literally too tense. They kept poking it. IT'S MY ASS, STOP POKING IT.

In happier news, celestialsoda made me an OMG AWESOME drawing of a maskmaker's self-portrait. It's all sepia and Leonardo Da Vinci! And he's sculpting in a mirror!

I'm going into pre-finals semi-silent mode, where I don't write much. Will say the latest from New Jersey pisses me off, but I was also glad today to get up and read Bruce Springsteen's statement on his official website:

A BRIEF STATEMENT FROM BRUCE
Like many of you who live in New Jersey, I've been following the progress of the marriage-equality legislation currently being considered in Trenton. I've long believed in and have always spoken out for the rights of same sex couples and fully agree with Governor Corzine when he writes that, "The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is -- a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law." I couldn't agree more with that statement and urge those who support equal treatment for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to let their voices be heard now.