Headline on CNN: "Jackson dies, almost takes Internet with him". Apparently there was so much searching for news and contacting friends and posting of tributes yesterday that Google, Twitter, Wikipedia, and AIM went down for a while, and I know LJ was down also when I first tried to post yesterday.

And I see there were online rumors that Jeff Goldblum had been killed, and Harrison Ford, both untrue, but spread like wildfire.

I guess I shouldn't even be surprised, really, but I'm a little awestruck that the death of a celebrity can impact the Internet like this.

There are many I really like, but I'd have to say the full version of Thriller.

I heard about Farrah Fawcett at lunchtime today. While I was never a fan, she was a big icon of my youth and showed considerable talent in her roles after Charlie's Angels. Sad as her death is, everyone was expecting it.

When I heard about Michael Jackson over the radio in the grocery store, it was a complete shock. I'm surprised at how upset I am. It'll make no sense to people for whom he's always been that creepy pedophile guy, but he was an amazing and charismatic talent. Whatever bad he's done, that's what I'm remembering now.

Just spent the last two+ hours catching up on LJ after neglecting it for something like four days. First of all:



Better late than never, I hope.

Last weekend I went to my 40th high school reunion in Gainesville, Florida. (Yes, I'm THAT old.) It was fun... well, mostly. People were friendly. I even remembered a few of them beyond "Your name is vaguely familiar." (Graduating class of over 700 plus my shyness = I didn't know most of these people.) Spent most of my time with my two best friends from high school, and it was really nice to be with them again. Hadn't seen one of them for 30 years.

( What is it about high school reunions, anyway? )

So. I arrived home last Sunday, and on Monday the shit started to really hit the fan at work regarding massive changes coming up. I haven't said much here, but I've been spending a lot of time on our impending move to another floor in our building, along with a move from our own locally run IT network to a centralized and much more regulated network. Let me just say, WE WILL BE ASSIMILATED. The people in charge of this project appear to be astonished by my whining about whether we'll actually be able to do our work under the new system.

Wednesday was my day off, and I spent two hours on a conference call from home. Argg.

Then, to make things perfect, Wednesday evening I came down with another cold/flu/whatever with fever, runny nose, sneezing, etc. Took Friday off and refuse to even look at my work email until tomorrow.

And I think I'm addicted to Sims 3.

All of which is kind of a long-winded explanation for why I haven't been around much.

To my first friend in fandom,
to one of the first writers in Power Rangers fandom,
and still one of the best writers in Power Rangers fandom,
to a wonderful author,
a force in the fandom,
a great friend,
and a terrific person:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, germankitty!!!!!

I'm toying (rather seriously) with the idea of getting a personal domain and using it for a permanent email address that won't be affected by my ISP or a hosting site going out of business or not providing POP3 service. Since I suffered total brain-freeze trying to decide whether to go with .org or .net or .me or .name (which seems hard to register for some reason), or .us or WHATEVER, I thought I'd ask if anyone out there has done this (I seem to remember someone mentioning it) and if you have any advice or suggestions.

Thanks!

New Hampshire is yay!

California is fail! (Well, for now.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, starandrea!

Title: A Walk in the Park (You’ll never know how much I wanted to call this “Dog Day Afternoon”.)
Fandom: Power Rangers Time Force
Descriptors: Fluff, slash, Wes/Eric, puppy!
Summary: Eric had decided months ago he would never have another pet. Sometimes life has other ideas.
Rating: PG-ish

( Have a slice of Wes/Eric/puppy birthday fic. )

I rely on my cellphone, but am thinking of switching to either cable phone or a cheaper plan. I have to carry a Blackberry for work now and don't want or need to have TWO cellphones on me, and leaving it at home to use like a regular phone is a waste of money.

I have two one no Dreamwidth invite codes if anyone wants them - just ask.

Both taken!

lilyleia78 tells me she has two unused codes as well. Contact her either directly or through me if you're interested.

My cat Dusty is doing excellently, and had his stitches out yesterday. All is well for now on the kitty front, despite the fact that during his recovery I managed to accidentally drug the wrong cat with painkiller. She was so funny - sat on the fridge staring into space until I lifted her down, and then looked around wildly like "Where am I? Who am I?"

Dick Cheney. Sorry, dude - while you make excellent points about terrorist imprisonment and interrogation and I agree with at least some of what you say, all that self-righteous indignation over the word 'torture' just makes you a colossal hypocrite. Call it 'enhanced interrogation' all you want; we know what it really is.

RPM: I like this season more and more. It's got a subtly more adult perspective and a lot of self-awareness, like Ninja Storm did. LOVED the "Why do we have to scream 'RPM GET IN GEAR' every time we morph?" and "What's with the fiery explosions?" ( Spoilers for Brother's Keeper. )

And I'm writing a Wes/Eric/puppy OTP for starandrea. Life is good.

I've become a sheep branched out to Dreamwidth. Anything I post here will be crossposted on LJ for the foreseeable future. Account name is cmar - nice to get exactly the name I wanted!

This morning has gone from a low to a big high! First, Dusty is the WORST patient ever when it comes to medication. Well, I shouldn't say that - before the operation he would gulp down his treats with a pill hidden inside, no problem. Now his appetite is off and he's probably not feeling so good, so he'll eat only a couple of treats and spit out the pill half the time. I tried pilling him and we had a horrible session Friday morning ending with the pills half disintegrated and sticking to my fingers and Dusty in misery. So I got the same meds in liquid form - he HATES them, foams and drools all over, and fights like I'm trying to kill him: not the best thing after major surgery. After this morning's struggle he hardly ate any breakfast, threw up, and is still growling at me.

After speaking to both regular vet and surgeon, only three meds are really essential and two of them are very tiny pills, so I'm going to do my best. No more major struggles, though, it's too stressful for both of us.

And now the good part - the biopsies are back and THEY ARE ALL BENIGN. No cancer, no chemo, after he heals up he should be fine. What a relief!

THANK YOU so much to everyone who sent good wishes to both of us - I guess they worked!

It's been a stressful few weeks for us - my cat Dusty came home from the hospital yesterday after major surgery.

The last time I posted about Dusty, he had just had dental cleaning cancelled because his blood wasn't clotting normally and x-rays showed some abnormalities. On my vet's advice I took him to a vet specialist clinic for an ultrasound. All the things from the x-rays turned out to be okay, but they found a mass in one of his adrenal glands, two masses in his duodenum (between the stomach and intestines) and a node in his liver. They did another blood test for adrenal function and advised surgery. Monday his adrenal gland was removed, the intestinal masses were biopsied (they're in a location where removal is very difficult and risky) and the liver node was removed. He recovered well despite some heart problems and came home last night.

So this morning he's eating well, not a normal amount but getting there. I have to give him SIX different medications now, and he won't gulp his treats with a pill in them anymore, so ARGG. At least the pain meds can stop soon, and the others after one to two weeks.

The next thing to worry about is the biopsy results, which might come as early as today. It's obviously likely he has cancer, which may or may not be treatable. My regular vet called a couple of days ago just to talk about how I was feeling, which was so nice it almost made me cry.

"Get well" and "Get hungry" vibes for Dusty would be appreciated!

VP Joe Biden's remarks on the Matt Lauer show:

"I would tell members of my family - and I have - I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now. It's not going to Mexico, it's you're in a confined aircraft when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft. That's me. I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway. So from my perspective, what it relates to is mitigation."

A stupid thing for a politician to say, certainly, and totally over the top by basically advocating not traveling because of about 100 cases of flu nationwide (about half of them right here in NYC) and sadly one death. Overall swine flu seems no worse than any other kind except that it's hitting in the spring instead of waiting for winter like any other self-respecting virus.

(I was amused by the after-foot-in-mouth backtracking, which was particularly stupid - he meant don't travel if you're sick. He meant don't ride the subway in Mexico.)

But - beyond the drama queen overreaction, he's absolutely right. Airplanes with their recirculated air and subways with thousands of people packed into a small space and holding onto the same poles are both excellent ways to catch a disease. Modern travel in general is spreading disease in ways it never could a couple of hundred years ago. I'm not crazy about riding the subway either, more because of colds than flu, but it's just one of the risks we take in daily life - and a lot less of a risk than getting in a car every day.

Amazon has pulled sales rankings from an assortment of books because of their adult content. Which would be okay with me except that a disproportionate number of those books happen to be GLBT themed - many obviously dropped for that reason only since they don't have any adult content. Meanwhile, Laurell K. Hamilton's porn literary efforts go unmolested. Hmm.

More here, and thanks to itsbuttery for passing the link along.

First - many thanks to the people who wished Dusty well. He continues to act quite normal today, although I think he's pissed at me for taking him to the vet yesterday.

Okay, icon meme via germankitty:

1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

And the icons germankitty chose:


This is a screencap from PR Ninja Storm, with Dustin doing his moto-whatsis tricks. The image of man and machine flying free against a blue sky struck me as beautiful.


Ha! This was inspired by a semi-smutty piece of Tetris fanfic on ffn. Yes, Virginia, there is Tetris porn. (And Minesweeper porn, and anything-you-can-think-of porn.)


This was created for the PR icon contest comm - pr_icontest. They did a slash contest to celebrate the startup of prsw22 and this one won honorable mention as I recall.


So a bunch of people were commenting on ffrantsrants about all the sometimes repetitive, sometimes less-than-brilliant things we keep seeing posters and commenters say over and over and over and over again on fanficrants. Someone mentioned starting up an FFR drinking game, and someone else said that would be against the LJ TOS since mass alcohol poisoning would inevitably result. Then kidkai said "Let's have FFR bingo cards!" and created one, much to everyone's glee. I took his bingo card (with permission), revised it somewhat and added more, and turned it into an icon.


This lovely creation was made by hagar_972 and is used with permission. The kitty is cute and we all have basket case days, don't we?

I took my cat Dusty to the vet for a dental cleaning today. When I dropped him off this morning the vet tech and receptionist were talking about someone's cat that had to be put to sleep. Then at lunchtime I got a call from the vet telling me the dental was cancelled because they couldn't get an IV into Dusty; his veins kept blowing out. He has some kind of bleeding disorder, he's lost too much weight, his kidneys are in the wrong place, and his spleen is missing. When I picked him up there was someone there whose cat had fallen out of a window and died. And one of my FL has a cat that got hit by a car. *hugs*

At least Dusty is home now and seems to be feeling fine despite misplaced organs.

http://www.woot.com/

But then, they're always funny.

A very Happy Birthday to mzdany and celiloquy!!!

My eye is better, and thanks for the nice comments. After six days of popping pills and using creme, the swelling is down and there's just a tiny sore on the edge of the lid. The creme dried my skin so I woke up this morning with the skin of my eyelid all cracked and peeling. Lovely. Shouldn't have to use it any more so things should get back to normal soon.

And Dusty continues to do well on antibiotics - he does still growl at the other cats, but he really always did that. He's always been a little psychotic. This morning, after failing miserably last weekend, I'm trying again to collect a urine sample from him so he's shut in the bedroom with a litter pan containing only a few grains of litter and a handful of shredded paper.