Greetings from North Carolina! Today is sort of our Christmas since my brother flew in yesterday and we're having the big dinner and presents tonight.

How come Raleigh doesn't have a decent news radio station??

Now prepare for extreme cuteness:

A very Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it!

I've been doing some badly needed cleaning and fixing up because people will be staying here over Christmas, and Saturday morning while I was replacing the 20-year-old shelf liner on my bathroom window with genuine privacy film, I stumbled while getting off the ladder and fell over the side of the bathtub. Luckily I got off with only a very mild bump on the head and a badly sprained wrist. Typing was out of the question Saturday and uncomfortable Sunday but is okay today. The whole back of my hand and wrist is still swollen and bruised. It could have been a lot worse. :)

Who else is going to Power Morphicon 2010? I'll be there!

Last night my neighbor knocked on my door to give me a letter that had been put in her mailbox by mistake. I remarked that it was my first Christmas card of the season, and that I really have to get moving on sending mine. She looked confused and said: "You send Christmas cards? But you told me you don't believe in God."

( My thoughts on atheism and popular perception, let me show you them. Otherwise known as tl;dr. )

I love this delightfully cheesy poster outside a Halloween costume shop near where I work. The only one I can't identify is the second from the right. Wasp? Not - surely not Wolverine??

My foster kitty is doing pretty well. I got his teeth cleaned last week and he seems to have settled down afterwards. Since last weekend he's been getting along with the other cats, until this morning when he had a fight with Dusty. So he's spending the day shut up in the bedroom again, and I hope when I get home they're going to bury the hatchet. (Hopefully not in each other.)

Work is boring. And tedious. But I'm getting that paycheck so can't complain too hard.

I've become obsessed with modding The Sims 3. For weeks I've been trying to figure out how to modify the morphs used to make the sims fat, fit, thin, and pregnant. (Specifically to add pregnant morphs where they don't exist in the base game.) Finally, success! Took me all three days off last weekend, but I figured out the format of the morph files and wrote a program to create new ones. Now more work to package up stuff for other people to download.

The niece of one of my co-workers was murdered a couple of weeks ago, by her mother's stalker ex-boyfriend. (Anyone in the NY/NJ area may have seen this in the news.) He strangled her and then set fire to her room to cover it up, and THEN had the colossal balls to show up later and comfort the distraught mother. I kind of hope hell really exists so people like him can rot there for eternity.

Just when life seems dull and discouraging... shirley_chong pointed me at this. Thanks so much, Shirley, you made my day! All Dan Southworth fans should enjoy this, especially the - er - end.



http://blog.reubenlangdon.com/2009/08/time-warner-lag-commercial/

Atlantic City was very nice, very enjoyable. Well, except for the part where we stood on line for over an hour. Seems the Trump Taj Mahal makes you get a membership card now in order to cash in the gambling money voucher they give you, obviously with the sole purpose of getting your contact information. (The bus we took costs $37, and we get a $30 coupon for gambling money and a $5 coupon for lunch.) Except for that we had a good time, lost a little money, and C and I went to the new carnival pier and rode the Ferris wheel.

Riding through downtown Atlantic City was amazing - when I first went, probably 20 years ago, the city was a horrible slum surrounding the glittery casinos. A disturbing contrast. Now the downtown is mostly new and very nice, with a bunch of factory outlet stores and some parks and stuff. There's still some blocks here and there with burned-out buildings and XXX NUDE LIVE GIRLS, but not a whole lot.

The new diabetic cat I'm fostering arrived yesterday. His name is Salem, and he's quite friendly and very laid back considering he's been pitched into a new home and around other cats for the first time. Blood-testing and injecting him is going reasonably well - where Cyclone purred through the whole process, Salem complains but puts up with it. It'll probably get easier for both of us as we get to know each other.

Looks like I'm getting another diabetic cat - I've agreed to foster a cat whose owner can't keep him where they are now. The agreement is that she'll take him back when she has a job (she just got out of college) and gets her own place.

So on my last day of freedom from additional kitty responsibility I'm going to Atlantic City with friends. Wish me a jackpot.

I have a perverse liking for "Where the Boys Are", a classic of the fifies moral-lesson genre. And I love all the Frankie and Annette beach movies for sheer mindless fun.

After seeing some of the buzz around fandom and having a great fear of being spoiled, I caved and downloaded Torchwood Children of Earth. Having stayed up until after freaking 2:00 am Saturday night watching and then finishing the last two eps on Sunday morning, and after adequate time to think rationally, I can state with authority: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I thought it was masterful, most of it. Oh, there were the usual plot holes and WTF moments, and it's a little hard to believe the British Home Office would have such astoundingly bad security, and it got (IMO) a little too heavily into the angst-and-tears department, but overall I loved it. Except for...... stuff I won't spoil for. AAAGGGGGG!!!!!

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.