Woo! I managed to get in on the tail end of a forum thread started by Godthrasher saying he'd take people's pics and make Magic: The Gathering cards with 'em (there's a program in which you give it a pic, tell it what color & casting cost, type of card, power & toughness if applicable, abilities, and flavor text, and it creates it all for you). I am playfulkitten: Redheaded Angel. Wheee!

I told ya it was gonna be a spammy day...

Someone posted this adorable polarbear pic, and I wanted to make sure I shared it with you.

...has had more sex than me. (edit: changed link 'cause the other one went away)

No, that's not my personal statement. It's the chorus to the song animated in the video. The song is by TISM, and the animation by Benard Derriman, both from Australia. (Might want your headphones for this one if you're not alone or mostly so.)

It's already going to be a spammy day for me, I can tell. Two posts and it's not even 9am yet.

I read this on the forums, and I just had to reproduce it. (It's credited, and I'd produce a link, but none was provided.)

Edit: LiveJournal user Suthainn saw this in my journal, and was gracious enough to provide a link to where it originally appeared, which is in Strange Horizons: you can find it here.

The Great Old Pumpkin

by John Aegard

You must know, Doctor, that I did not choose to seek psychiatric help. I have no faith that I shall exit this room a healed man; I know now that I have been destined for the asylum since childhood. No mere conversation with you can steer me clear of that fate. That said, let us proceed with this court-compelled farce before my mad prattle provokes your crabbiness further.

As you are no doubt aware, I am the issue of solid Dutch stock—the prosperous Van Pelt family of St. Paul. Mine was a comfortable and happy childhood, and I spent much of it in the devoted service of the Great Old Pumpkin. For him, I cultivated an annual pumpkin patch—mostly Autumn Gold and Big Max, as I thought he would find the Atlantic Giants tacky. I also evangelized him in the community, relating the tale of how, every year on Hallowmas Eve, the day when the spiritual most strongly encroaches on the substantial, this mightiest of gourds would rise to revel across the world with the most sincere of his adorers. My neighbors were understandably skeptical; after all, not once had this superbeing ever chosen to grace my pumpkin patch or any other place in our town. I vowed that I would coax him into my backyard, and I set out in the manner of a learned man to discover how I might do this.

This quest led me into mouldering libraries, cramped basement antiquaries, far-flung correspondences, and, on one occasion, frightening and persistent telephone conversations with a lunatic in Boston. The last raised alarms in my family. I promised them I would turn away from my studies, all the while resolving to continue them in secret. I committed everything I knew to memory, burned all my papers, and embroidered my most unfathomable and precious secrets in near-invisible thread on my security blanket, which as you can see, I carry still.

My continued investigations led me to certain grim texts detailing eldritch and macabre sincerities—chants, autosacrifice, sinister configurations of pumpkins—which would bait the Great Old Pumpkin to my patch. On the Hallowmas Eve of two years ago, my investigations bore fruit, so to speak. I believe that I saw him—orange, flaming, and magnificent, hovering above me for an instant and then vanishing skyward into the constellations.

Having tasted this small success, I knew that I could not simply sit and await him, but that I must seek him out. Thinking that such a search would be better conducted aloft, I decided to hire an aeroplane. My modest allowance raised complications, though; it took me eleven months and three weeks to save up a sufficient sum. With that money jangling in my pocket, I struck out for the aerodrome and asked after a pilot skilled in night reconnaissance. The mechanics there—diminutive, jaundiced fellows—directed me to a small French-themed café alongside the airstrip.

There, I met my pilot. He was a veteran of the war, with a characteristically large Gallic nose and sharp black eyes that peered from just underneath the seam of his leather flying cap. He nursed his root beer silently, his manner that of the haunted serviceman, and let his two friends supply the conversation. On his left sat a pretty French girl, whose eyes were completely obscured by heavy spectacles. On his right sat a chattering yellow fellow—kin, by his looks, to the mechanics in the hangar.

I approached and sat down with them to explain my business.

"Sounds dangerous, sir," the French girl said when I was finished.

The pilot's small yellow friend warbled at us in a strange language—Aramaic, perhaps.

The pilot waved away this concern and nodded at me, indicating he would accept my contract. We set an appointment for dusk on the eve of Hallowmas—only five days distant—and I left him to his friends, leaving, as a gift, a jug of root beer.

On Hallowmas Eve, I found at the aerodrome a scene of reassuring efficiency. Mechanics fluttered over my pilot's machine—a Sopwith model that was, like him, a veteran of the war. They poured it full of fuel and castor lubricant and fed long belts of brass cartridges into the breeches of its Vickers-guns. I was surprised that we would be going armed, but after a moment's thought, I was again reassured; an attitude of constant readiness befitted my pilot, as a man of action and a daredevil.

The crew chief noticed me and I was instantly incorporated into his bustle. He and his fellows boosted me into an observer's cockpit that had been cut into the fuselage behind the pilot. In their chirping Aramaic, they intimated to me that I would need some kind of headgear, so I wound my security blanket around my head and face in the manner of a Bedouin tribesman. Over this arrangement the mechanics snapped a pair of goggles, and I felt snug as one of the Vickers-gun's chambered bullets.

My pilot appeared then, climbing a ladder and vaulting into the Sopwith. I skritched him on the head to indicate my readiness, and without delay he barked out the order to start his engine. The aeroplane chugged to life, instantly suffusing the air with a hell-hot mixture of castor oil and petroleum vapors. The pilot's silk scarf flapped before me as we bumped off of the grass and onto the airstrip, and within two hundred feet the Sopwith was aloft and headed for Eau Claire, where one of my correspondents maintained a very sincere pumpkin patch.

The Sopwith climbed swiftly, and soon we encountered the first layer of clouds. The air grew wet and unsatisfying and utterly dark save for the flames jetting from the Sopwith's exhaust ports. Unaccustomed to the altitude, I dozed until a sudden roll to starboard jerked me awake.

I sat up in my seat, searching the skies for whatever had drawn my pilot's interest. We had emerged from the clouds and into a supernaturally clear night, with all of creation spreading out in a great inverted bowl around us. And before us, just this side of the horizon, was a faint orange glow upon the clouds.

Within a few minutes the speedy Sopwith had overtaken the glow. My pilot descended until our landing wheels were skimming the orange-suffused clouds and then began to circle slowly. My watch said we had been in the air for fifty-five minutes. We were approaching the limits of our safe endurance. I closed my eyes and prayed that my quest not have been in vain, that I be allowed to see the Great Old Pumpkin, and as I whispered the last beseeching word, I heard my pilot yelp.

There, not more than a thousand yards off our port wing-tips, was the Great Old Pumpkin himself, ascending from the clouds as smoothly as if he were borne by a Manhattan elevator. He was as magnificent as I had imagined; his stem rose majestically from a creamy orange body of heartbreakingly perfect radial symmetry, and bountiful vines streamed behind him like hair from Botticelli's Venus. My eyes were suddenly wet with tears, and I realized that I had reached one of those measuring-lines by which we gauge life's progress, that all days after that one would be ineffably different from those that had gone before.

We came out of our turn and headed directly for the Great Old Pumpkin. I suddenly remembered my camera, stowed on the floor of the Sopwith's observer cockpit. I bent to retrieve it, all the time keeping my eyes riveted on my subject—which then whirled and presented its face to us.

The camera fell from my nerveless fingers and into the clouds below as I beheld this blood-curdling horror. Instead of friendly cross-eyes and gapped teeth, into its wide orange visage were sawn jagged spirals of alien script, and though of course I could not read the glyphs, simply witnessing them was enough to understand their meaning. They dragged my mind away to their subject-places, each of them impressing upon me a cavorting pageant of despair and rot. Worse than that was what lay behind those awful incisions, for instead of a candle or (for safety reasons) a lantern, within the Great Old Pumpkin burned a queer kind of furnace that was tended by thready, murmuring minions. This furnace emitted not light and heat but rather madness, and with horror, I realized that its emanations were not illuminating the clouds, but rather that the clouds were fluorescing under them, just as a squid will fluoresce under certain radiations.

I shrank from this dread emission, pulling my head down into the observer's cockpit. My thumb instinctively found my mouth, and I clutched my security blanket, which had escaped my head somewhat. I sought to reassure myself with a familiar chapter of the Gospels. "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled!" I shouted to myself. "And there were shepherds out in the fields. . . . I bring you good news of great joy that is born this day in the city of David!" But of course, it was useless; the madness shone through our fuselage as if it were air. I felt my mind changing, unraveling as I bathed in it. Certain parts of my psyche withered to dust; others swelled like an autumn squash. My very essence was reshaped as was the Pompeii of antiquity.

Time ran strangely in the thing's proximity. It seemed I had lived ten years before my ordinarily quick-witted pilot reacted. I can imagine no more pitiful response than the one he chose. He drove us directly at the thing and reached for the triggers of his Vickers-guns. Their sound was hollow and faraway, and their flashes mere sparks before the luminous glory of the Pumpkin.

"Dive!" I screamed at him, but that sound was lost with all the others. My pilot's gloves seemed to have frozen on the machine-gun triggers. We crawled towards the terrible thing, spitting impotent tracers. I slapped my pilot's shoulder, and this finally galvanized him; he ceased firing and nosed the Sopwith over, sending us plummeting beneath the thing. One of the threadlike tenders glanced over its shoulder at us as we passed the lowermost incision. Then, from somewhere in the ventral portions of that awful fruit, came a response: a white-hot hail of eldritch fire that lashed us and drilled pumpkin-seed-shaped holes in the Sopwith's wings and fuselage.

Our engine's tenor suddenly became uncertain. My pilot shook his fist and cursed our enemy, then we plunged into the coal-mine black of the clouds. I was strangely calm as we fell; the sudden, smashing death from a high-altitude crash would be a small toll to pay to escape the grasp of that dread orange being, I knew. The worst horror, though, was yet to come.

The pilot reëstablished control of the plane just as we emerged from the clouds. For a brief moment my sense of self-preservation reasserted itself, and I was flooded with relief, but then I saw the sight that ended my life as a normal man and ushered me into true understanding: beneath us, in all the fields of Wisconsin and Minnesota, stretched a starfield of pumpkins, their luminous orange faces turned upwards towards their god, their mouths wailing mockery of all civilized life. My pilot could not resist this damned noise; he also howled tribute skyward.

The sound overwhelmed me, and I slumped feebly in my seat. I have no further memories of that night; somehow my pilot must have regained enough of his senses to fly us home and put me in a taxicab. I awoke in my own bed at sunrise the next morning. The orange stains and pumpkin-seed holes in my security blanket testified that my awful adventure had been no mere dream.

I will admit that sometimes, I feel a temptation to seek out the Pumpkin again and perhaps learn more for the experience. This impulse is the only lunatic thought alive within me. The cyanide-laced candies I have mailed to my correspondents, the jars of petrol I have flung into the antiquaries and museums, the shootings at the aerodrome café—these are the actions of an eminently sane man. You see, Doctor, while I cannot claim full knowledge of that sinister gourd, I know this much—we cannot risk another encounter with him. If some fool shall call him up again, he shall be no more kind to us than the plow is to the anthill. The only record of my foolish pursuit that I dare allow to survive is my precious security blanket. I have embroidered upon it certain spells and rituals which I hope will serve as a bane to him, so that he will be unable to approach this world. You confiscate it at your peril.

Yet these good-hearted efforts may still come to nothing; still, his servants campaign in the neighborhoods as I once did. Not long ago a cherubic boy came to call on me to tell me of the Great Old Pumpkin. Since then, I have made it a practice to keep my household firearms loaded and in convenient proximity to the front door.

So that is my story, Doctor. I see you leaning over your plywood desk, ready to dispense your wisdom, to say the words that will cure me and free the world of one more mad menace. But before you speak, consider this! To truly heal me, you must reform the cosmos itself. Your words must leap from your mouth and cascade across the universe, undoing all of the uncaring, unfathomable things that lurk outside our cozy cave of a planet. Can you do this, Doctor? Can you? I see the fear in your face. Come, what say you?

"Stay out of stupid pumpkin patches, blockhead. Five cents, please."

Got this meme from Ria on LJ:

Reply to this entry with whatever is in your cut/paste buffer. Just click on "post comment" "whine back" and do a paste into the resulting box.

I finally, after quite a long, long time, have finished porting over the old (2nd rendition) Bruno forum to its new phpBB home. I still have some templates to finish up, but all the members of the old one who asked to be signed up (and thus linked with their older posts) are signed up, with a few even posting already, and all the old posts were successfully ported over. Phew!

So, if you're a Bruno fan, or like serious political, social, and economic discussions, come check it out, and if you like it, you're welcome to stay!

... and expressing them can get you in trouble.

This is a damn shame, is all I can say. Didn't see the offending post, though apparently it may still be available from Google's cache if you care to look for it, but from the sounds of things no one said anything nasty enough to actually fall afoul of the "don't threaten directly to kill anyone in the gov't" clause.

How fuckin' stupid. I guess I should be glad I never get into rants over politics. 'Cause damn, I sure as hell don't like Bush.

(Though, I am usually fairly careful about what I say in regards to work, in case anyone finds my site or LJ. Not that I have anything nasty or really negative to say, but the idea being that even if a coworker finds either, it won't necessarily be obvious to them that it's mine, i.e. they won't recognize that it's a coworker of theirs who writes it.)

I meant to post this Monday, but I've just had too much other stuff to do between now and then.

I'm not sure this is really me, given I hate the wind except in rare circumstances (bring it on when it's hot & sticky, which never happens, but otherwise I hate it), and I prefer spring and fall to summer. I guess it's that whole forgetfulness thing, which I have in abundance.

... In other news, since I'm saving off all these quiz images so I can use 'em from my own server, due to quizzes eventually going away and their images with them, I really ought to stop dumping them all into the pictures folder and create a subfolder in there just for them. If I get around to it.

Things are actually indeed back. Noticed it last night about 11:30 (so it may have been sooner, dunno), right when I was going to bed. Of course, that meant no updatey for me, 'cause I knew as soon as I started playing with it I'd be up far too late.

So here I am today. Of course, posts I made to LJ I cannot put here, 'cause now a large portion of LJ is FUBAR and I can't get to them. It would figure... but at least I can work on other stuff I was smack in the middle of.

... okay, not really. I'm usually not very witty, and while I am sneaky about things on occasion, it doesn't come up much, and I don't take stuff from people. Scaring people is fun though.

Cardinals are goin' to the World Series!!!

Boo-fuckin-yeah!!!

I'm tired of all this crappy overcast, drizzly weather. I know it's October, but what happened to that ball of fire in the sky?

My site went unavailable again after a few hours of it being up, and has been down all day. I reopened the ticket on it, but I haven't heard squat yet. Probably just have to wait for it to be renewed w/ the registrar itself, and then repropagate. Still, no playing with it until it comes back, which sucks. I have to remember to take the book I just finished, off my current reading stuff, and probably by the time it comes back up I'll be reading the next one, so I'll have to update it and the "next reading" list to reflect that. I also really need to get going on the forum conversion I'm working on. I was so close to having all the posts imported correctly, but I never really got it to finish and to test it properly, so that's still up in the air. Plus I have a few of the phpBB templates to work on, that I can't...

I have a boatload of clothes to put away off the floor and out of laundry baskets. I've been putting that off with, surprisingly, other cleanup chores around the house. They needed doing, but probably weren't as immediate. This week, I've

• Cleaned up a bunch of stuff in the kitchen, including finally finding a better place to put up the tea serving set we got, and buying a recipe box with cards to put recipes in
• Reorganized stuff in the main bathroom; throwing away some stuff (really, really old lotion, almost empty stuff I'll never use, etc.); putting some stuff in the now empty tea serving box to take downstairs; shifting stuff around between the free space and storage drawer under the sink, the sink countertop, the medicine cabinet, and the little narrow drawer thing just outside it; washing the toilet all over; washing the sink again
• Gotten an organizer for my random computer desk shit, and put it to use

I've kept quite busy, and even Monday night started a small cross-stitch project to give to my husband's family. So I'm not just farting around on my computer every night to avoid this. And... it makes no sense at all to avoid my clothes -- I have a hard time finding stuff in the pile, there's a good chance there's some nasty spider lurking in the lower, undisturbed portions of it, and everything that can wrinkle is getting that way. Plus there's a distinct lack of open floor space that would be much better used by actually getting to walk on it. Yet... I still put it off. I just have to bite the bullet and get started, then I'll be fine. But damn, that's the hard part.

Bleh, I'm cranky and probably need a nap. But if I nap, I will avoid the clothes another day, and probably not sleep well tonight. Not that I'm doing that anyway... I think I keep sleeping funny, which is making my neck and sometimes back sore, and making me keep waking up. Mrf. Need to flip the mattress, maybe that'll help.

Time to go home and see what I can motivate myself for. (Will it be clothes-putting-away, or some other household project instead? I'll probably water the plants first, since they're overdue, but that won't last very long.)

My subdomains are still down. What the hell?? I can't very well test the import of data from an outside, homegrown forum, into a phpBB forum on the subdomain, if the bloody subdomain doesn't exist to the web!! Damn it!

My site is back on the air! I can't believe how bummed I was when I happened to look early this morning and found out it was down. I... I think I may need a 10 step program.

So... expect a few extra slightly back-dated (timewise anyway) posts to appear under this one as I add some of the stuff I've wanted to post today, but only could stick on LJ.

 

I just heard someone at work say stoopnagle. I'd only ever before heard my mom say that, and I totally thought she'd made it up, like all the creative non-swearing words she came up with in the car when soemone did something stupid. Like... when she was stuck behind someone going 25 in a 40 for no reason (no weird/bad weather, etc.) she called 'em a pootwaddle.

So... yeah, that was weird.

(The guy is in my mom's general age group, I think... maybe a couple years older, dunno.)

I meant to post this yesterday. Federal rights granted only to married couples, and thus denied gay couples.

As long as you have a working Java plugin, go here and play to your heart's content. I sure as hell have. Between it and LView's seamless pattern tool, I've been working on creating repeating (along the horizontal) backgrounds to use for a theme...

Which File Extension are You?

Which Nigerian spammer are You?

Which OS are You?

I apologize to anyone who thought I was available on AIM this weekend. Somehow I managed to leave without setting it Away or disconnecting (I usually do one, then the other, in quick succession).

We drove out to Springfield, IL, to get J's car back. They couldn't find anything wrong with it. Apparently the stuff that dripped onto the driveway wasn't any car fluids, so at least they figured that out. There's this junk they spray all over the underside of cars so that they don't get messed up by the weather while waiting on a lot to be sold. Usually it's mostly or all washed off by the time someone takes it home; however, there was some on J's transmission area, and he said sometimes the junk will get up onto the catalytic converter, which gets hella hot, and of course it'll melt it, making it drip on the ground. So that's what that mysterious brownish orange stuff was.

Only thing they can think of is that some metal filing or some such from the transmission casting may've gotten lodged somewhere for a short time, making the gear shift not move. He thinks that even after it unlodged it might've still behaved less than optimally for a little while after that. They put over 100 miles on the car, and it shifts fine, all diagnostics come up great, there's nothing in the transmission fluid. J says it still feels like it doesn't want to go into 1st from neutral once the car's been running (it doesn't happen when he's just started it and going out of neutral then). But if there's nothing wrong...? Who knows. At least we'll be reimbursed for the towing, and don't have to pay for the time they spent on it. And we have it back now. T'is a long fucking drive.

On the upswing, there's the most awesome steak restaurant called Alexander's out there. J'd been there twice with his parents, and figured since we were there we'd ask around. Very good steak. Basically, you grab your meat from the fridge (which is labeled in case you don't recognize each cut raw, thankfully), then either you grill it up on their open grills or they do it for a small extra fee. Plus there's unlimited salad bar (I didn't visit it at all), baked potato, and you can toast your own toast on the grill with your meat, optionally adding melted butter and/or garlic to it. I asked J to do mine as well as his, since I wouldn't know what I was doing. We both had medium-rare ribeyes, and yum, was it good. So I guess that made it all worth it, in spite of the grand fucking irony that I was 100% sure would happen, which is that the fucking people finally approved a contract and will be returning to work Monday. *sigh* They called and left a message today asking if we still needed someone to look at our transmission, and that they'd be opening their service shop Monday.

And MySQL was down most of the weekend. So of course this post would've been made Friday night, and I'm putting it in as Friday night, but I'm really posting it Monday morning. There have been issues upgrading CPanel. CPanel upgrades are also supposed to upgrade MySQL and a bunch of other stuff, which it fucked up this time around, and so the upgrade had to be done by hand, and all kindsa things got messed up. And of course, for a while there MySQL warnings in PHP were turned back on, so while MySQL was down and before I referenced all mysql methods with an @ to turn those warnings off, my site was generously peppered with all kinds of warning messages. At least it all seems to be fixed now, finally. (Apparently things got back to normal some time yesterday afternoon or evening.) I really wonder if they actually don't have a test server area, with a sampling of people's sites, that they can do upgrades on first. That would probably help.

I got my hair colored last night, permanently this time. Woo! It's redder than I had planned, but... I lahk eet!

I even took pictures last night. But I was really tired, I was already up too late, so I didn't have time to write this till now. So, pics (click thumbs to see 'em):

And of course, J finding red hair as his favorite, certainly approves!

*Pic hosted locally, and resized 50%. Copy/paste codes from original site will differ.

I don't know how well I solve other people's problems, though I'm willing to listen to friends when they have them, and offer suggestions if they're wanted.

(It has places to optionally enter a spacefem username and/or livejournal username, but as far as I know, you don't have to enter either to get quiz results. Also, I pretty much ripped out the formatting, so while mine mimics that of the quiz results paste codes, it has no table formatting at all. Down with tables and font tags!!!!!11 )

The phase of your hallucinations reminds me of those balmy days when the championship mould was breeding, when the fish were long, and so were the valued floats of men we drank through narrow straws...

... yeeeahhh.

Get your own right here.

I should add that these squirrels did all this digging after I had doused the hell out of the plants twice with this anti-critter "wax" that has a main ingredient of capsaisin, which is what makes peppers hot. Apparently we must have some squirrels in the neighborhood that are immune to all but the hottest concentrations of the stuff. Damnit.

First frost is going to come soon anyway, so I would've taken it in within a week more than likely. However, I'm still incensed that two of the plants died, and I'm worried about the remaining two going into the indoor winter season with little sunlight in such an unhealthy state.

Mucho swearing inside...

Goddamn sonofabitch motherfucking cocksmoking goatfucking shiteating squirrels!!! Now I know why our crazy neighbor next door fucking shoots at the damn things with BB guns! In less than week after I separated the snapdragon and dusty miller into two pots from one, since one was just way too damn full with both, I went from having four fairly healthy snapdragons, to two half dead snapdragons plus a couple cuttings I'm hoping will root themselves anyway. Aaargh!! I want to fucking scream. I want to fucking wring the neck of every goddamn squirrel I see in the yard, in case they were one of the ones digging. In. My. Goddamned. Flowers!

I could've lived with it if they'd wanted to start digging in the dusty miller. No problem, I bought 'em myself on somewhat of a lark. But I got the snapdragons as a gift from my grandparents' best friends' daughters, that our family (mom, dad, sis, me, & husband) got one pot of four plants, at my grandmother's funeral. And now two are already fucking dead, when they were doing just fine. But no, all of a sudden the goddamn fucking rats-with-tails decided they needed to dig at them and eat their roots and wreak general havoc in that pot. Fuckityfuckityfuck!

That pretty much fucks the rest of the day, I'm so pissed. I now have the pot sitting in the sun room on the table in there, with the two (hopefully) live plants replanted, and the whole thing freshly watered. I can't fucking believe this. If I'd have known, I would've let the damn things keep being overshadowed. At least they'd all still be alive and able to flower for summers to come. Damnit!

So Friday morning before work, we heard on the news the machinists and teamsters were going to have another vote on a contract so they can stop being on strike. That gave me the impetus to call Lou Fusz to find out if we could be bumped to the top of the list, if the contract passed and the strike was over. I had the chance to call at 11am, and the answer was "Yes, of course you would be, but they already voted it down." Shit.

So, that gave me the push to arrange to tow the Subaru to Springfield, IL. The guy in the service department at L.F. gave me the number of the towing company they use, and that afternoon I started making phone calls. I looked up the number for the Springfield shop, and talked to them about when we should have it towed there. The nice lady said she might even have time to look at it the next day, and if not then certainly Monday. So, I called the towing company and set it up for them to come get the car at 9am, so it would arrive around 10:30 or so and be there for a good 3.5 hours before they closed for the day.

A little before 9, the towing company called and said they were going to be late (why don't cable companies do this?), and they arrived at about 10:30. J was apprehensive, since this was his baby we're talking about, so he asked him to have the shop call us when they got the car. They did so around 1pm, and J was very much relieved. They didn't have time to work on it since it was an hour before close, but said they'd look at it Monday morning. So, J's car is well on its way to being fixed.

I also found out that I have my first two cavities, tiny surface ones that had to be found by the dentist poking my teeth with a pointy thing, at the age of 27. I have an appointment in mid January to have them both filled. He joked that they're really small, and he'd be using tooth-colored stuff to fill them, so I wouldn't even have to tell people I'd had any yet. (I like my dentist. Been going to him since he was still in his old office in Jennings, before he moved to Hazelwood, and he's a really nice guy with a good sense of humor. And he's young enough still that he's probably got several more years until he's retirement age.) The upswing of this last visit, though, is that after I came home I was able to convince J he should make an appointment for a general checkup and cleaning (it's been at least 7 years since he last saw a dentist!), so I called right back and made one in the beginning of December.

We have new drawer pulls for our new drawers in the kitchen. See, the original ones were a plate with a second piece knob that is almost like it "snaps" into place. However, over time and with many hard yanks, half of them are loose in their attachments and can be pulled off with ease. Whoever thought that was a good idea... *schmack* So now we have new drawer pulls, this time just regular handles, to replace them all with, roughly in the same metal style as the cabinet handles (which are regular, vertical, no-knob handles and are doing fine). Plus we got extra ones for the false fronts under the kitchen, so we can properly hang dish towels over them, rather than hanging them over the cabinet door under the sink. (Those actually have knobbed pulls on them too, one of which has a knob loose enough that it sort of rests in its hole, the other of which is missing its knob, 'cause of course everyone yanks drawer pulls even if they're for false fronts. ) I figure we'll put those on in the next few days. I might actually do it myself, just to say I did something useful and "handy" around the house.

Also, I'm nearly done with my current stitching project that I wanted to get done months ago. It literally has about a dozen stitches left, which I would've done last night, but it was already late, and they're all different colors where I managed to miss a single stitch here or there, which takes longer in getting each different color back out, etc. So all that's left is to sew those stitches, rinse off the temporary ink I'd drawn the border with (it's this blue stuff that comes off in water), dry it, mount it, then frame it. I will then pick a box and stuffing to ship it to its destination, and make a trip to UPS. I'll finish it tonight, then send it tomorrow after work. Have to send him a PM about it...

I have some more, simpler stitching projects I'd like to sew in time for Christmas as well, though I'm not 100% sure who'll be getting what, or if I'll finish them in time anyway. But they'd serve well as birthday presents, or next year's Christmas presents, just fine.

And man, I must've slept funny in addition to sleeping lousy (lousily?). My neck really, really hurts on the right side, down into my shoulder. My back isn't all that happy either, for that matter. I may have to take a soak in the tub tonight, if I can get the sewing done within an hour or so of getting home. (Or, at least stitched, rinsed, and drying by then. It'd be air drying anyway, so it'll be a couple hours between rinsing it and having it be dry enough to mount.) That would be nice; I'll even get out my bath pillow. Though, I really fucking could use a deeper tub. Not wider, since while that'd be nice, there's no room; the toilet is a mere 2" away. Just... deeper. Make the sides higher. I'd like to be able to have my entire stomach and boobs under the water without lying flat from butt to head, with my head submerged and legs sticking out. Anyone know how expensive it is to have a new tub put in, without fucking up the surrounding shower tile? (I.e. they'd cut further into the tile, but not remove it, or if they had to remove a piece, they'd put back the same color -- white -- and size of tile.) Probably far too expensive.

Maybe I'll just settle for using the heating pad.

Brain Lateralization Test Results

Right Brain (34%): The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive side of the brain.

Left Brain (52%): The left hemisphere is the logical, articulate, assertive, and practical side of the brain

The site's explanation of left and right brainedness:

Left brain dominant individuals are more literal, articulate, and to the point. They are good at understanding directions and anything that is explicit and logical. They can have trouble comprehending emotions and abstract concepts, they can feel lost when things are not clear, doubting anything that is not stated and proven.

Right brain dominant individuals are more visual and intuitive. They are better at summarizing multiple points, picking up on what's not said, visualizing things, and making things up. They can lack attention to detail, directness, and the ability to explain their ideas verbally, leaving them unable to communicate effectively.

Overall you appear to be Left Brain Dominant

*Left/right functions are measured separately so they usually won't add up to 100%

---

The ideal is to develop both your left and right brain. Many people identify their personality with being more right or left brained. "I am just not verbal" or "I just don't like art". The right and left brain are just functions to be utilized, they are not who you are. You are the manager, coach, architect, developer of your functions. No matter how developed one side of your mind is, if you have deficiencies in the other you will be functionally crippled. Right brain deficiencies inhibit your comprehension of life - who you are, where you stand, what's the point. Left brain deficiencies will inhibit your ability to express yourself verbally to others, leaving you mute to the world.

I'd say it's about right. I've never come out really, really strongly as either right or left brained; I've usually been near the middle, which I still seem to be. As an example of the left brained portion, I absolutely cannot cook anything (with very rare exception) without an explicit recipe. (Exceptions being things like spicing spaghetti sauce -- I just dump in some basil, garlic, onion, and sometimes "italian seasoning", and kinda eyeball it. Different every time probably, but still tastes like spaghetti sauce and is good every time.) I also cannot improvise anything on the piano -- I have to have the sheet music for something. For the right brained side of me, I don't always explain myself well and have trouble coming with the right words to do so, and I certainly am not lacking in the imagination department and have no issue making stuff up. Granted, that's most often something rather warped...

So... perhaps I've become more left brained over time, but I still have that general balance, I guess.

I updated a few of my Credits linking icons; specifically the Crosswinds, MovableType, and Trillian ones. The Crosswinds one needed updating anyway, to go with their new look (which went back to using their palmtree & stuff, yea!), and all three were taller than the 80x15 I prefer to use. (None of these three provide such sized linking icons, and Trillian is the only one who provides any at all.) That's been an interesting little jaunt, especially given I only really have LView to work with. (Technically, I also have GIMP 2, but I'm really not comfortable at all with it.)

Edit: I also added a PHP.net logo.

Straight from a thread at the PvP Forums, comes a very funny link to Chris Rock's guide to Not Getting Your Ass Kicked by the Police. Very silly.

You guys have got to see this. It does take a while to load, but I can imagine why. It's so incredibly detailed that the file must be rather large. Anyway, go take a look if you haven't already seen it.

Even if you don't regularly read Queen of Wands, you really should look at today's. Really. Especially if you have, or have ever had, a pet. Particularly a cat.

*giggle*

... I had to add a rolleyes smiley to the list of smilies on my site. I've found enough cause to use it recently, and it has occasionally actually been appropriate (I was actually rolling my eyes as I typed whatever it was, or was mentally since rolling one's eyes makes it difficult to read what one is typing), so...

• milk
• lemon juice
• PopTarts
• cereal
• juice
• chicken breasts?
• ground beef
• fish (if there's anything decent that isn't prefrozen) (picked up some Mahi Mahi)
• Aussie Moist conditioner -- didn't have any left
• fruit bars
• low salt soy sauce
• frozen peas
• sliced mushrooms
• fresh carrots
• bananas
• stewing meat
• marinade (teriyaki, other?) -- decided to make our own

I think that's it, but I may add to it as I come up with other stuff.

Also got:

• broccoli (per llizard's suggestion)
• 3 types of dried beans for a lab J's going to have his chem students do
• a red onion
• romaine lettuce
• baby spinach
• toothbrushes
• Mt. Dew
• bread
• hard salami for J
• International Coffees French Vanilla Cafe
• dryer sheets
• a dozen gala apples

It's nice to have the shopping done & over with.

So, yeah... 200 "have you ever..." questions, with my answers. If you're curious.

1. Bought everyone in the pub a drink? no.
2. Swam with wild dolphins? no.
3. Climbed a mountain? Kinda. A real short one, which was more of a super steep hill amongst other mountains.
4. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive? No. I wish.
5. Been inside the Great Pyramid? no
6. Held a tarantula? no. never!
7. Taken a candlelit bath? Yes, but not nearly often enough.
8. Said 'I love you' and meant it? yes!
9. Hugged a tree-several times? no...
10. Done a striptease? yes, though only in private
11. Bungee jumped? no.
12. Visited Paris? no.
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea? no
14. Stayed up all night long, and watch the sun rise? yes, but not for that purpose unfortunately
15. Seen the Northern Lights? Once, coming back from Christmas dinner at my grandparents' house, when I was little. Was just a little red shimmer, then it was gone. Of course, it's a wonder to see it at all so far south of the arctic circle.
16. Gone to a huge sports game? depends on what's "huge"... no, if we're talking playoff type stuff, yes for regular games.
17. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa? no, never been to Italy.
18. Grown and eaten your own vegetables? no.
19. Touched an iceberg? no
20. Slept under the stars? yes, if being in a tent counts.
21. Changed a baby's diaper? no.
22. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon? no. would like to.
23. Watched a meteor shower? yes.
24. Gotten drunk on champagne? no.
25. Given more than you can afford to charity? no.
26. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope? yes. lots.
27. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment? ... not at the "worst possible moment" I guess...
28. Had a food fight? no.
29. Bet on a winning horse? no. not into horse racing.
30. Taken a sick day when you're not ill? yes.
31. Asked out a stranger? no.
32. Had a snowball fight? yes.
33. Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier? no... I thought people only did that in movies, sitcoms, and silly cartoons.
34. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can? yes.
35. Held a lamb? no.
36. Enacted a favourite fantasy? no.
37. Taken a midnight skinny dip? no.
38. Taken an ice cold bath? no!
39. Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar? no.
40. Seen a total eclipse? yes.
41. Ridden a roller coaster? yes.
42. Hit a home run? no.
43. Fit three weeks miraculously into three days? ... no, I guess?
44. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking? probably.
45. Adopted an accent for an entire day? no.
46. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors? no... which ones? don't know where that would be for most of the family...
47. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment? yes.
48. Had two hard drives for your computer? but of course.
49. Visited all 50 states? no.
50. Loved your job for all accounts? no. most, not all.
51. Taken care of someone who was shit faced? yes.
52. Had enough money to be truly satisfied? yes, but I'm easy to please... more wouldn't be bad, either.
53. Had amazing friends? yes.
54. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country? yes, sort of... foreign exchange student in HS, in a big group dance circle thing.
55. Watched wild whales? no. unless TV counts.
56. Stolen a sign? no.
57. Backpacked in Europe? no.
58. Taken a road-trip? yes.
59. Rock climbing? not on real rocks, just up a climbing wall at Six Flags.
60. Lied to foreign government's official in that country to avoid notice? no. weird question.
61. Midnight walk on the beach? no.
62. Sky diving? no.
63. Visited Ireland? no. would love to.
64. Been heartbroken longer then you were actually in love? ... I don't think so...
65. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them? no.
66. Visited Japan? no. might like to.
67. Bench pressed your own weight? no.
68. Milked a cow? no.
69. Alphabetized your records? Uh... I don't own any records, so I guess not. But I have alphabetized books and CDs.
70. Pretended to be a superhero? when I was a little kid.
71. Sung karaoke? NO!
72. Lounged around in bed all day? yes.
73. Posed nude in front of strangers? no.
74. Scuba diving? no, but it might be fun.
75. Got it on to "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye? no.
76. Kissed in the rain? yes.
77. Played in the mud? probably, as a kid.
78. Played in the rain? yes.
79. Gone to a drive-in theatre? no. would like to, just once.
80. Done something you should regret, but don't regret it? define "should"... (ex: I had sex before I was married, and don't regret it -- but according to whom "should" I regret it?)
81. Visited the Great Wall of China? no.
82. Discovered that someone who's not supposed to have known about your blog has discovered your blog? I don't think so...
83. Dropped Windows in favour of something better? not really... have a comp that dual boots Win95 (old, old, old PC) and Mandrake, but I don't use it much.
84. Started a business? no.
85. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken? yes.
86. Toured ancient sites? depends on what's considered ancient... been to really old castles & stuff in Spain, but nothing like Aztec stuff.
87. Taken a martial arts class? yes.
88. Sword fought for the honour of a woman? no...
89. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight? no.
90. Gotten married? yes.
91. Been in a movie? no.
92. Crashed a party? no.
93. Loved someone you shouldn't have? yes.
94. Kissed someone so passionately it made you dizzy? yes.
95. Gotten divorced? no.
96. Had sex at the office? no.
97. Gone without food for 5 days? no.
98. Made cookies from scratch? yes.
99. Won first prize in a costume contest? no.
100. Ridden a gondola in Venice? no.
101. Gotten a tattoo? no.
102. Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on? no.
103. Rafted the Snake River? no. where is this river?
104. Been on television news programs as an "expert"? no.
105. Got flowers for no reason? no.
106. Masturbated in a public place? no.
107. Got so drunk you don't remember anything? no.
108. Been addicted to some form of illegal drug? no.
109. Performed on stage? yes. not professionally.
110. Been to Las Vegas? no.
111. Recorded music? no.
112. Eaten shark? yes, recently. bought some at the grocery store.
113. Had a one-night-stand? no.
114. Gone to Thailand? no.
115. Seen Siouxsie live? no.
116. Bought a house? yes.
117. Been in a combat zone? no.
118. Buried one/both of your parents? no.
119. Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off? that's a bit personal... but yes. shaved, never wax. never, ever wax.
120. Been on a cruise ship? no.
121. Spoken more than one language fluently? was pretty OK with Spanish for a short while.
122. Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone? no.
123. Bounced a check? yes, by accident.
124. Performed in Rocky Horror? no.
125. Read - and understood - your credit report? yes.
126. Raised children? no.
127. Recently bought and played with a favourite childhood toy? no.
128. Followed your favourite band/singer on tour? no.
129. Created and named your own constellation of stars? no.
130. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country? no.
131. Found out something significant that your ancestors did? don't think so...
132. Called or written your Congress person? sort of... sent in a couple petition signatures once.
133. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over? no.
134. ...more than once? no.
135. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge? no.
136. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking? yes.
137. Had an abortion, or your female partner did? no. never been pregnant.
138. Had plastic surgery? no.
139. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived? never been in a serious accident.
140. Wrote articles for a publication? no.
141. Lost over 100 pounds? no.
142. Held someone while they were having a flashback? no.
143. Piloted an airplane? no.
144. Pet a stingray? no, but would love to.
145. Broken someone's heart? yes.
146. Helped an animal give birth no.
147. Been fired or laid off from a job? no.
148. Won money on a T.V. game show? no.
149. Broken a bone? no.
150. Killed a human being? no.
151. Gone on an African photo safari? no.
152. Ridden a motorcycle? no.
153. Driven any land vehicle at a speed of 100mph or faster? ... only got up to 99mph before we saw traffic in the distance.
154. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced? no.
155. Fired a rifle, shotgun or pistol? yes.
156. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild? no.
157. Ridden a horse? yes.
158. Had major surgery? no.
159. Had sex on a moving train? no... only been on a train once, and I was a kid.
160. Had a snake as a pet? no.
161. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon? no.
162. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing? no.
163. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours? probably.
164. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states? no.
165. Visited all 7 continents? no.
166. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days? no.
167. Eaten kangaroo meat? no.
168. Fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground? no.
169. Been a sperm or egg donor? no.
170. Eaten sushi? yes.
171. Had your picture in the newspaper? no.
172. Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your lifetime? yes.
173. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about? dunno.
174. Gotten someone fired for their actions? don't think so.
175. Gone back to school? Not really, in the "away for a while, then going back" sense... went continuously from the age of 5 thru when I graduated college at the age of 22, and have just had training classes for work.
176. Parasailed? no.
177. Changed your name? yes, when I married.
178. Pet a cockroach? no, unless squishing them under my shoe counts...
179. Eaten fried green tomatoes? no.
180. Read The Iliad? no.
181. Selected one "important" author whom you missed in school, and read him/her? no.
182. Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your apartment needed them? no!
183. ...and gotten 86'ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times, they figured out it was you? obviously not...
184. Taught yourself an art from scratch? yes, I guess... taught myself cross-stitching.
185. Killed and prepared an animal for eating? no.
186. Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt? no.
187. Skipped all your school reunions? haven't had one yet... 10th is next summer, not sure if I'll go.
188. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language? no.
189. Been elected to public office? no.
190. Written your own computer language? no.
191. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream? no.
192. Had to put someone you love into hospice care? not personally; my uncle was under hospice care (at home) until he just passed away last week.
193. Built your own PC from parts? no, just added parts as upgrades.
194. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you? no.
195. Had a booth at a street fair? no.
196. Dyed your hair? yes.
197. Been a DJ? no.
198. Found out someone was going to dump you via LiveJournal? no.
199. Written your own role playing game? no.
200. Been arrested? no.

What's up with all these damn ICQ auth requests? None of them ever say anything that isn't generic, most of them are spamming for the website in the User's (and I use the term user loosely) info, often a photo site I don't dare even be curious about while at work since I'm guessing it could be (not so?) mildly pornographic. Many of them don't even seem to speak English much if at all (several have a rash of characters definitely not in my character set), and one had this super long "Internet Company" ad in the reason for adding that I couldn't even read all of 'cause it didn't fit in the window. Many claim they "found my #" from some site I've never heard of, and doesn't appear to have anything of the kind there, and certainly not one I've ever visited. (It's probably just a spam trying to get me to visit the site in question, I guess.)

What gives? In the last month to 6 weeks they show up at least 3 or 4 a day, most often late at night while I'm not even here. It's getting annoying.

FYI: If you reading this now actually wanted to be added, and I dismissed it as just more of the same, try at least putting something a little more cogent in the reason for the auth so I know who you are -- if I know you from the forums or something, or whatever, please say so, preferably with the handle I'd know you by.

But yeah, this is just recently. Even more annoying, is putting a # on the ignore list doesn't stop the auth requests. Which sucks, because often I'll get an auth request, deny it, then within a minute or two get another one from the same # after already adding it to my ignore list.

(Yes, I already use Trillian, no need to sell me on an alternate client -- I long ago gave up ICQ's crappy ad-riddled interface. I'd like to keep using my # though, since I actually talk to people on it as well as AIM.)

I so need a nap, a massage (we just got a back massager thingy by Homedics), and a long hot bath. In no particular order.

Damnit. I'm doing a little page editing (HTML + CSS) for someone in a pinch, and for a half an hour spent reuploading and validating both the page & the CSS, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why in the hell that any of the HTML I'd moved to the stylesheet from inline styles I'd used in the page, wouldn't "take".

I had no bloody idea. So over halfway through putting them back as inline styles, and removing them from the stylesheet, it finally hits me.

I can't save files directly via FTP, so instead of the PITA that is saving everything directly from the browser, I chose "edit" for the files in cPanel's file manager, copied it all and pasted it, then saved it. I'd saved the CSS file as ".cs" insetad of ".css". And never noticed.

I have no one to blame but myself, but damnit I want to kill something. I feel so stupid right now, you have no idea. And mad at the time I wasted trying to figure it out (though the document is now XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant, and the CSS has a few missing semicolons -- ones in the middle of a set of rules, not optional ones on ends), and then copy back all those inline styles. And now the time I have to spend moving everything back into the stylesheet. Grr!