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Monday, April 13th, 2009
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2:18 pm - A sound toy:
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| Friday, March 27th, 2009
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6:16 pm - Story rec
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| Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
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12:16 am - Unprotected Music
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Lazar and I have been meaning to catch Coraline in the theatre... so we went to see The Watchmen for the second time. Dr. Manhattan's pretty blue buns may have been part of the reason, but much of the rest was for the music. Hearing "The Sound of Silence" on Really Good Speakers is excellent, plus Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." And I went totally squee when I heard parts of Philip Glass' music from "Koyaanisqatsi" scoring Jon's backstory.
Much of Philip Glass' music has significance for me personally, especially "Koyaanisqatsi", which was the first I'd ever listened to this type of music. I'd never heard anything like it before, and was immediately entranced.
After coming home from the movie I decided to do a bit of nosing about the Internet. I found quite a bit of lovely Glass music on youtube.
I also found this:
unprotected music: Philip Glasss "1+1"
Very cool, in my opinion.
current mood:  impressed
current music: Philip Glass, "Prophecies"; "Heroes"
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| Tuesday, October 14th, 2008
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8:12 am - A new puppy...
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Wow, long time between posts. I decided not post any whining about life or my health issues, so um... yeah. :)
Sunday afternoon Lazar came home with a puppy. He's an Eskie -- American Eskimo -- that we eventually named Reilly. This little guy weighs 1.6 pounds at five weeks, and is made of pure, distilled cute. Imagine a double handful of white fluff with black button eyes and two tiny peaks of ears poking out. He's really too young to be away from his dam and litter mates, but Lazar didn't know better, and the family that sold him claimed he was the last to be sold.
He's an immense handful. House-training is proceeding apace; he's hit-and-miss with the pee, since there's about two seconds of warning, but I haven't had to clean poo off the carpet yet.
Our cat Zach's reaction: Back Away Slowly From The Dog. Really, he acted like Reilly was a demon from hell in miniature. No hissing or anything, just absolute horror and consternation. Horror is slowly giving way to indifference. I have hopes they'll make friends, but we'll see.
Reason why cats are better than dogs: Cats do not throw temper tantrums to get their own way.
Reason why dogs are better than cats: Dogs are smart enough to throw temper tantrums to get their own way.
This morning we had a test of wills over Reilly's false nursing behavior. He tries to nurse our stuffed mountain lion, his blanket and the pillows on the bed. It was cute for a while, but he's getting pretty determined/psychotic about it, to the point where he's going to chew holes in things soon. Enough was enough, and I did that Dog Whisperer thing with the fingers on the neck. There was yelping and whining as if I'd strangled him, even though the pressure of my fingers wouldn't have penetrated a kleenex and all he had to do to get it to stop was back away an inch. Ninety seconds later, he gave up and relaxed. Dog Whisperer = win. :D
I am in trouble. This dog is smart as a whip. He learned 'sit' in about ten minutes, and he's still such a tiny baby he can barely get over a three-inch step. Eskies are known for being willful. What will he be like in six months? I can forsee a lot more contests in the future.
current mood:  tired
current music: TMBG - Hope That I Get Old Before I Die
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
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6:10 pm - Sigh...
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The main drawback of a really entertaining book is that my reading speed doubles. Maybe triples. And I'm not that slow to begin with. I just finished Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman a while ago. It took me under two days to finish, including long breaks for food, sleep, laundry, husband, and other necessities of life. It was a nice fat book, but now it's done! *wail*
On the other hand, it was quite good. If you like Gaiman's style, I highly recommend this one. It is both amusing and creepy, which, I guess, is a Gaiman trademark. He plays around with the language in fun ways, and the characters are fallible and dimensional. Somehow I visualized the main character's father as a combination of Louis Armstrong and Jackie Gleason, in spirit if not in looks. I've been fascinated with Gaiman's rendition of gods and spirits since Sandman, and they don't disappoint here.
Not quite sure what else to say about it without leaving spoilers. It's a nice fun read, anyway.
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, September 15th, 2006
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12:16 am - Free kittens in the Puget Sound area
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| Saturday, June 24th, 2006
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2:34 pm - Vehicular update
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( *sigh* )
Hugs and most public and heartfelt thanks to M, who is a generous soul if there ever was one.
current mood:  frustrated
current music: bored cat whining in the background
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, June 23rd, 2006
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9:05 pm - YAY!!
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Hurray, they found the car! "Car lightly shaken, contents stirred, but nothing seems missing, not even much gas," as Lazar says. Man, that saved us a really large headache. *is grateful*
current mood:  jubilant
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12:14 am - car stolen
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Lazar's car was stolen tonight at work. Much crapitude and curses, especially since our credit's so bad only an idiot would sell us another one. It just never ends. :-(
current mood:  anxious
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, June 20th, 2006
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9:09 pm
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| Wednesday, June 14th, 2006
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11:17 pm - ye olde slashe
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| Sunday, June 11th, 2006
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4:12 pm - Telecoms want a pay-toll Internet
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The telecom companies want Congress to hand them control of the Internet, so they can charge extra fees for preferential access and control content. Read about it
here, then go here and tell your Senators you support Net Neutrality.
current mood:  pissed off
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 4th, 2006
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1:52 pm - Cloud/Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts II
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| Monday, January 23rd, 2006
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11:30 am - For the Politically Inclined
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| Wednesday, October 19th, 2005
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6:23 pm - Police force, or clown corps?
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Phoned Mom yet again, this time to check if our new phone is working, and got a bit more info. Apparently the grocery incident was on Sunday. (?) Somehow the toilet tank cracked in two on Sunday as well(it is ancient), and Mom went to spend the night at motel, having had to shut off the water at the main to keep from flooding the basement. Monday she was discussing it with her friend Linda and a neighbor who was plumbing-proficient, and both said she looked terrible. She showed Linda the bruises, and Linda promptly took her off to the ER. Her description of the time of events is a little weird, I must admit, and seems to be changing.
Mom's acting kind of oddly paranoid and defensive, too. She wouldn't let the doctor term what happened as 'amnesia', saying that she could remember who she was, she'd just couldn't remember the last week. Which is in fact a kind of amnesia. She seems to think that the doctor believes she inflicted the wounds on herself deliberately, and is deeply offended that he could think that. She's concerned and outraged that people might think she'd been drinking or been beaten and is afraid to tell. (Blood test showed no alcohol.) She can get defensive about herself and be critical of others, but this seems a bit -- well, fairly exaggerated to me.
Right now, I am absolutely seething. Mom got in contact with the officer who talked to her at the ER, who promised to get her the police report tomorrow afternoon. This means the guy hasn't actually written it yet. It is the officer's opinion that the blood spatters came from the cats, who must have cut their paws on the broken toilet tank. And then pawed at the tub, the shower curtain, the walls....
Oh, right. Of course. The cats. Who have perfectly intact foot pads, and no wounds anywhere else.
Did the police take samples of the blood? Is it cat blood? No samples. Pictures? No pictures. Not of the blood, or of Mom's bruises. Fingerprint the house? No. Check for *any* sign of forced entry at the house? Well, I'm pretty much assuming not.
Oh. My. God.
What complete incompetence. No, this is worse than incompetence. This is like, criminal negligence or something. To fail to investigate in even the most basic way, to fail to collect even a tiny bit of evidence is just so wrong. If the local police treat an incident such as this so cavalierly, what other crimes have they failed to investigate properly? What if Mom was indeed attacked, and her attacker is somewhere out there? Testing the blood to see it was human, and hers, would have at least ruled that out.
I just... can't believe even these small town police would be so negligent.
I did convince Mom to go back to the hospital and get the ER nurse who is her friend to take pictures of the bruises. It really should be the police, but Mom feared that Officer Catsblood would have to see her naked, which she didn't want at all. I tried telling her they have female officers for that, but it didn't really help. At least she promised to go back to the ER, and the nurse is the one who documents evidence at the hospital, so it might do some good.
I very much want to read the police report, and perhaps call Officer Catsblood's boss or -- or Internal Affairs -- they don't have an Internal Affairs department. Well, someone, anyway. I don't know who to contact to see that this is investigated. I suggested Mom talk to her lawyer. He's a civil lawyer, but he might have a clue. The police in her town *need* to have this attitude of theirs adjusted, before some serious crime happens and somebody dies through their indifference.
current mood: pissed off
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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10:26 am - Missing a week
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Tuesday morning my mother called me with some alarming news. It seems she remembers nothing of the last week. She remembered leaving work the Monday before last, part of the short drive home, and then nothing but a few fragments. This Monday she got up, and discovered she had horrible bruises from head to toe, including all over her shoulders and back, no memory of the last week, and smears of blood on the shower curtains and woodwork in the house.
She walked to a friend's house, who took care of her: ER, police, cat scans and bloodwork and x-rays. Nothing points up a cause yet. Her blood tests showed no drugs, the cat scan seemed clean at first glance, and the house did not appear to have been broken into. She must have driven or been driven home, because her car was in the driveway. The source of the blood is a mystery, as apparently Mom has no scratches or abrasions anywhere, nor any sign that she had had a nosebleed or something. I suppose even these small town police would think of testing the blood smears to see if it's her blood. Her doctor thinks it *may* have been a mini-stroke, if it wasn't something violent.
Rather than being shaken, my mom seems simply confused, wanting to know what happened to her during this lost week. One of her friends who works the ER and saw her come in mentioned seeing her on Friday at the local grocery, pacing circles around the bread table. (Some kind of fugue state?) She also vaguely recalls watching TV, on what she thought at the time was Thursday, although the show she watched is on Friday nights.
Mom's very anxious that she might lose her job, since she didn't show up to work during the missing days. I certainly think her excuse is a good one! And her supervisor even came down to the ER and talked with her (Mom works at the hospital cafeteria), so I doubt there will be trouble there.
Still, there are a lot of questions without answers. What happened to her memory? What was the cause? Was she attacked, or was it something psychological or physiological? What went on during the last week? Where did the blood come from? The last few years before he died, my father had been into that UFO abduction stuff -- Mom and I joked together that maybe the aliens were real after all.
Her mood was a bit disturbingly cheerful, now I think of it. If something like that happened to me, I'd be a complete snivelling wreck. She was laughing about it some, didn't seem more than profoundly puzzled. We even digressed a little onto the subject of her hourly wage at work, which seems to change according to some arcane criteria not involving overtime. Since this resulted in more money rather than less, she decided she'd leave well enough alone.
I guess the cheerfulness is Mom's way of coping. She wouldn't let her friend Linda call me from the ER, unless it was "something serious." She said she didn't want to worry me. Er... yeah. I shudder to think what she considers serious. She does that a lot, really. She keeps her strongest emotions really close to her chest.
Personally, I'm scared and upset. It's hard being across the country from her, without the funds for air-fare back. I don't really know what I could do at this point, except just be there for her and offer my support. I feel guilty too, because while Mom and I are still close, we don't always call each other every week or even every month. What would have happened if I'd called during that lost week?
More selfishly, I'm upset by this sign of my mother's mortality. I lost my grandparents in my teens, my father just two years ago. Mom and I are the only ones left, aside from distant relations I may have met as a baby. The thought of her being gone makes me realize how important she is in ways I seldom think about.
A phone call this morning turned up no additional news, except that her job wants a copy of the police report, and the responding officer refuses to return her calls. :-/ She has an MRI scheduled for later in the week, however. She mentioned feeling very tired and unwell, and wished she could stay in bed all day, yet plans to do a variety of errands. I suggested that she was healing from the bruises and nothing she had to do couldn't wait another day, but this fell on largely deaf ears. *sigh* I now know what I'd do if I could get to her house: give her a hug and nail her to the bed with a book and a bag of potato chips, and tell her to *stay there*!
current mood:  worried
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 14th, 2005
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5:37 pm - Got too much stuff? Need more stuff?
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Cool site: http://www.freecycle.org/
Freecycle is sort of an interpersonal recycling program where you join a mailing list according to your area, and offer your junk to free to any taker. You can find just about anything on offer. When the VCR died, we found a working one on freecycle. You can find just about anything for offer, from books and magazines to 200 lbs. of mulch. I like that it's more personal than donating to Goodwill. You know for a fact that someone's getting some use out of stuff, rather than it gathering dust on some storage shelf somewhere.
current mood: tired
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| Sunday, October 2nd, 2005
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6:30 pm - AFF has gone nuts.
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Adultfanfiction.net has always had its problems, but this latest set of admins have just caused themselves more strife for no real benefit. How, you ask? By requiring all stories on the archive to have copyright disclaimers, preferably on every chapter of every story. Any story that remains disclaimer-free at the end of October will be deleted. There are no doubt many stories by authors who do not check the aff archive regularly and will have their work removed.
The issue of copyright can be a convoluted one even for experts, but it is my understanding that a disclaimer on a story has no legal valildity at *all*. If anything, the only defense of possible use would be "fair use". See here or here. All this frantic arm-waving about "We must protect the Site" is, frankly, useless.
current mood:  bitchy
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, August 5th, 2005
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3:59 pm - Ideas for post-HBP SS/HP stories.
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There was a lot of anxious fluttering about the SS/HP pairing after HBP came out. It seems to have mostly settled now, but I decided to see how many story-lines/excuses for smut I could come up with. These are free to everyone, although a link back to any fic that gets written would be nice. :-)
~~~~~
( post-HBP SS/HP challenges - SPOILERS! )
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| Wednesday, June 29th, 2005
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6:03 pm - [FIC] Final Fantasy X: Devotional
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Title:"Devotional"
Author: Fairy Armadillo
Disclaimer: Yeah. Still not mine.
Pairing: Braska/Auron
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Moderately graphic male/male interaction. If that doesn't suit, please move on.
Summary: A summoner and a guardian watch each other. Pre-game.
Author's Notes: In game, Braska refers to himself as a 'fallen summoner'. I've taken this to mean that he'd gone on an earlier, and failed, pilgrimage, before he meets Yuna's mother. So in this story, Braska's unattached, and Jecht isn't around. Braska is about 27, and Auron's somewhere between 17 and 19. Which explains certain behavior. ^_~
~~~~~
( Read Devotional )
current mood:  productive
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bouncy
geeky