And he is a hottie.

Four years ago today, I met the most wonderful girl in the world. I fell in love within the first 30 seconds, and I'm still falling. It took her a whole week to feel the same way. We were married four months later.

Was there some other big-deal anniversary today? I'm too busy to keep track.

Of course there was. I am very upset that you could dismiss the importance of the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

Wallace and Moray FTW!

A! Fredome is a noble thing
Fredome mays man to haiff liking.
Fredome all solace to man giffis,
He levys at es that frely levys.
A noble hart may haiff nane es
Na ellys nocht that may him ples
Gyff fredome failyhe, for fre liking
Is yharnyt our all other thing.
Na he that ay has levyt fre
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte
The angyr na the wrechyt dome
That is couplyt to foule thyrldome,
Bot gyff he had assayit it.
Than all perquer he suld it wyt,
And suld think fredome mar to prys
Than all the gold in warld that is.

Amit (6), that's a lovely thing. Congratulations!

Today, I get new carpet in my house. While they're here doing that, I'm going to be stripping the wallpaper in the bathroom. While neither of these is particularly *fun*, they will make my house more salable/rentable/attractive.

Also, I get to figure out what to do with some of these weird vegetables from my CSA. I know I'm pickling beets and cucumbers and canning tomatoes. It's the ones I don't know that I need to identify and find uses for. It's an adventure!

#6: Awesome. Ain't love grand?

Then I will go home, play some Wii Fit games to work off all the calories I consumed, help my son with his homework, walk the dogs, pet the cats, pick at my dinner, wash the dishes, and make our tea. There might be a new episode of "The First 48", my favorite detective show (with real homicide detectives on the Job).

I will observe the moment of silence, and then I will carry on with my life.

My aunt also has a birthday celebration today, and I hope her luxury chocolates are delivered in time.

When my son was 2, he was in one of those contraptions that let him speed around the house. We turned our heads for a minute and when we looked up, he was inches from going out of the door and onto the porch - not a good thing as he would have gone ass over feet in this big plastic contraption.

Luckily, Lucy saw what was going to happen and had gone over and placed herself between my son and the door. She waited patiently until we removed him.

She was looking at us like, "What is this? Rookie Parent Night?"

She has endured pulled ears and tails and gives kisses whenever asked. My youngest son of eight months loves to rub her fur, and watching her close her eyes with pleasure as he does that is a very awesome thing.

Happy birthday Lucy Girl! (the wife wanted to name her Liberty because of 9/11, but I said that would be slightly tacky.)

Catalunya triomfant,
tornarà a ser rica i plena.
Endarrera aquesta gent
tan ufana i tan superba.

Bon cop de falç,
Bon cop de falç,
Defensors de la terra!
Bon cop de falç!

Ara és hora, segadors.
Ara és hora d'estar alerta.
Per quan vingui un altre juny
esmolem ben bé les eines.

Bon cop de falç,
Bon cop de falç,
Defensors de la terra!
Bon cop de falç!

Que tremoli l'enemic
en veient la nostra ensenya.
Com fem caure espigues d'or,
quan convé seguem cadenes.

Bon cop de falç,
Bon cop de falç,
Defensors de la terra!
Bon cop de falç!

(Triumphant Catalonia
Shall once more be rich and boutiful
And drive back those people
Who are so greedy and arrogant.

A good stroke of the sickle,
A good stroke of the sickle,
Defenders of the homeland,
A good stroke of the sickle!

Now is the hour, o reapers,
Now is the hour to stand alert,
So that when another June comes
Sharpen your tools well.

A good stroke of the sickle &c.

Let the enemy tremble
On beholding our banner;
Just as fall the golden grains,
So in time shall we reap chains.

A good stroke of the sickle &c.)

Also, happy birthday Xopher! :)

Also, I really liked this perfume ad by David Lynch, which makes great use of Blondie's "Heart of Glass".

Also, there will be grocery shopping.

Luckily, I'm typing this at work where Simon (Best Dog In The World, East Nashville Region), cannot see and become disconsolate over the threat of such a strong contender for the national title.

I'm going to post some things I've sold on eBay, take a walk around town, try to get some more money out of my bank, probably spend it on videogames, and then play some D&D in the evening. All the while trying to contain my excitement about the Large Hadron Collider.

I dropped my 3 year old off for his second day of preschool today, and he was completely nonchalant about my leaving. Last time (Tuesday), I didn't even get a wave; this time, I got an absent wave and a microsecond of attention, before he turned himself back to the pressing matter of playing with the toys and other kids.

With my older son, the first couple weeks or so of this were filled with heart-rending drama, crying, clinging, and shreiking at me not to go. So this was a very welcome development.

And also my niece, who is 4 today!

And it's a beautiful day here in NYC and despite it being 9/11 and blue-skied, I didn't have a single flashback.

See excited scientists via the BBC.

I have now learned how to make and decorate sugar cubes, a skill so genteel and Edwardian that the very having of it makes me happy.

Here's a new web page some folks here might like -- two great tastes that go great together: legacy comic strips and Middle English. Japes for Owre Tymes, the brainstorm of one of my fellow Comics Curmudgeon denizens (call me Muffaroo), now in its second big day.

I'm still pleased (feeling old, but mightily pleased) to be Daddy. Much of the day, the Vaio on my left functions as a dedicated photo server, and moments in Sarah's life keep flashing before my eyes. She continues to take as much strength as I have, but she's in first grade now, and such a sweetie.

Thanks, China. I can never repay you, even if I shop at Wal-Mart every day for the rest of my life.

Also, despite the cull that took place this summer, there are lots of ducks and a large gaggle of geese enjoying the ponds beneath my office window. And it is not even 80 degrees today.

I shall go to the market, and to the fabric store to buy the fabrics for my daughter's Senior Night dress (we ordered senior pictures yesterday -- when did she grow up?).

It is sunny and warm today, but not hot, and it will be a nice day to work in the garden and listen to the frogs and the birds. There are tadpoles in the garden pond; the hummingbirds will probably buzz me while I'm trimming back the marigolds (they did yesterday while I was working on the roses).

Now if elves will come and make this heap of apples into apple butter, my life will be perfect.

And another happy birthday to Xopher!

We had this day first, before the bad guys got it. So we have better title. Happy anniversary to everyone who got married on September 11!

Today I am at work, being industrious and virtuous; after work, if all goes well, I will go to hang out with a dear friend I met online a few years ago, and then come home to Scraps. And my boss has threatened to chase me out of the office promptly today, using my six-foot-long pencil. (I have a deal with her husband to do the same to her on Fridays.)

I believe I read the article in What's Up, a newsprint magazine that someone gets homeless people to sell as a way of job-training them, but I'm not sure.

Anyone recall that guy's name or know where to find that article?

Today is also the birthday of my friend Stuart Stinson, a fan whom some of you may know, and of my spiritual twin Jeff Magnus McBride, whom I met in a drum circle at Rites of Spring and who was born just eight hours before me; you may have seen him as Joran Dax in the Deep Space Nine episode "Equilibrium."

Today I'm going to bake a galette for the departmental picnic tomorrow. My former boss gave me a bag of Cox's Orange Pippins from her tree. I tried some a few weeks ago and they were tasty but very hard. Since then I've learned they're meant to be stored and they get oranger and softer. They should be right just about now.

It is another beautiful day in paradise. Today I shall take hedgeclippers to the deer paths in the salal. Their paths are never wide enough for me, and I like a nice walk too.

Bandit is my Japanese Chin. He was abandoned in the park near our house on September 12, 1998. At that time, he weighed 6 pounds and was about a year old.

Thanks to the folks at JC Care for helping with the initial vet bill, and thanks to everyone who helps with rescue no matter the breed or the species!

I am, too.

But this day isn't an ordinary day. I woke up just as I did in 2001, and for a moment thought I was feeling that 'whomp' that vibrated under us when the first plane hit. The sky is overcast, the temps are almost chilly. My spouse is on another continent, friends in Texas are in a high state of anxiety. All this on top of a couple of weeks of friends in Haiti, Cuba and New Orleans getting clobbered again. Soooooooo.

I take consolation in history, reading the presidencies leading up to the Civil War, learning that we're no better now than they all were then. Argh.

This is good; I must however congratulate the several of you who have considerably more awesom planned for the day!

Life is good! With any kind of luck we'll be doing this Monday through Friday for another 15 or 20 years.

Later tonight I will have rehearsal with the parish choir I sing in, and we might go through the Haydn Mass in which I get to sing the alto solo parts. Go me!

Also, it's payday; Groceries can be had!

I went for an interview with a temp agency today, which made me feel a bit bad about myself because it's admitting that I can't find work otherwise, but then after I took all the tests (math, spelling, grammar, various computer programs, data entry, etc.) and completely blew my interviewer away with all of them, I felt a little bit better. Apparently I did at least twice as well on all of them as the norm.

And it was after midnight last night, so technically today: I found a karaoke place that has "I Eat Cannibals" by Toto Coelo, and I sang the living daylights out of it.

I picked up a library book on a whim because it was near the one I had come to get, and it's pointed me in an entirely new and exciting direction for the paper I've been working on. (Okay, that happened a couple of days ago, but I'm still feeling the smartypants high.)

My son will shortly be turning pi.

She's trying to decide where to go to college and what to major in, and she's interested in government, criminal justice, and/or international relations. May there continue to be a place in our country's government, protective services, and international affairs for people of her intelligence, character, and compassion. She and her friends give me hope for the future.

Happy birthday also to one of my livejournal friends who dislikes her birthday for many reasons. I personally am glad she was born.

Happy anniversary yesterday to my parents.

I'm going to a workshop about Moving Beyond the Imposter Syndrome in a few minutes here. It should be positive.

And Merlin Mann, my boyfriend and I all simultaneously came to the same conclusion about "productivity," creativity, and the internet yesterday. It had been brewing for a while. I read 43 Folders yesterday and it all crystallized. Things are changing for the better.

(I originally had the Oxford comma in there, but it looked like I was claiming Merlin Mann was my boyfriend. He is not. Quite the opposite problem to "My parents, God and Ayn Rand.")

And now I go to class. Normal.

It's a work trip, so it's not all fun and games, but getting to see so many things - getting to see a play at the Globe! - makes me happy this week. Next week, I will be happy to see my daughter.

After work today I'll be dropping my youngest daughter at her rehearsal for "Meanwhile, Back at the Superlair" and proceeding to the meeting of our hippotherapy/therapeutic riding facility, where we will allocate the very nice chunk of change raised by our very successful inaugural 5K race. We'll be able to help a lot more kids now who otherwise couldn't afford to come.

That tree frog video is marvelous! For me, a low-key day. I'll probably go off and spend time communing with my storage locker. But yesterday, I replaced my lost cell-phone! Small victories.

A quiet domestic day, here.

Open the door and come on in
I'm so glad to see you, my friend
You're like a rainbow comin' around the bend
And when I see you happy
Well, it sets my heart free
I'd like to be as good a friend to you
as you are to me

I figured this was a better place than most to jump in, because 10 years ago today I met the man who finally became my husband 40 days ago. And tomorrow we leave for a weekend press trip that doubles as a short paid honeymoon. I'm more thrilled than I thought I would be that my marriage counts as normal now.

It's a beautiful day here in the Pacific Northwest, and I was able to see Mt. Rainier in the distance as I rode the bus to work today. That in itself is special.

In every way, today is a normal day - which is how it should be. Have a good one, everybody.

There are probably better lives, but this one is pretty good and I like it.

And thanks, everyone, for this thread. The weather here was lovely today, and despite my headache all day, most of it has been good.

The bad, I will deal with elsewhere.

LizT @76 ...tonight we go to the British Museum.

I can't remember my first visit, but I still feel excited every time I go. Have fun!

I have just finished tweaking a website I'm working on a bit, there's fresh coffee, and I need to go down the new office of the NDP candidate in my riding and finish making and running cables so we will have internet.

Argh, crimping network cable. I hate it and I'm slow and awkward at it. But there will probably be Timmy's

Today is my former supervisor's wedding anniversary. I haven't seen her in a couple of years but I wish her all the best.

As for the rest: sorry, but grief is normal for me today. I'm not scared or angry so much, but one further happy thing is that I've come to accept it's okay to hurt. And it still does, and I still do.

Sorry to be a downer. Didn't mean to.

Really I stopped by because Making Light's thread that day was my lifeline (oddly, it won't show in the archives), and so I wanted to say thank you to all of you. What gave me comfort was that you were still here.

Today I'll spend my time sewing a nightgown for a dear friend who is getting married at the end of the month. After that I will finish packing for vacation--our very first as a married couple.

Happy birthday, Xopher!

Today, after work, I'll make my 10th solo drive* home from the BART station, refill the feeder that the HooverBirds have emptied, prowl the tomato jungle for ripe specimens, and settle into bed with a book and four of my favorite critters (one hominid and three feline).

* -- finally got a driver's license -- only 29 years "late". Hey, 45 is the new 16, right?

Jeff, #81: Congratulations to both of you!

Our day isn't being exactly "normal", courtesy of Ike -- but that just means we have different things to worry about. We've had a moratorium on TV/radio on this date for about 5 years now.

My interns and I are going to celebrate by having a hot pot at our favorite chinese restaurant. Now I get to go back to more of my regularly scheduled work. (not all, but more)

Life is approaching normal.

Victoria

From the AP, on the occasion of the LA Angels winning their baseball division title yesterday:

Torii Hunter put on goggles, got on the clubhouse floor and began doing the butterfly and backstroke in a puddle of beer and champagne.

Hunter and the Los Angeles Angels had plenty to celebrate yesterday.

They became the first team in the majors to clinch a playoff spot this season by winning their fourth AL West title in five years.

"I love it. I'm Michael Phelps," Hunter bellowed, invoking the Olympic swimmer who won eight gold medals in Beijing. "This is what it's all about."

Hunter's about 30 and has won division titles before in Minnesota, I think. Joy never gets old.

W. H. Auden said it very well indeed.

Happy birthday Xopher and the twins and Uncle Tom Cobleigh an' all; happy anniversary to those who are celebrating. Lord, thank you for this day. Shalom. May all sentient beings find peace.

And happy birthday to all to whom that sentiment applies!

And also congratulations to Kate Nepveu (I had no idea!) and to all the other parents and recent parents, to the recently and the anciently married, and to everyone who's carrying on with life.

And finally, thanks to all the delurkers. What a good occasion for it!

Today I'm working on drafting and writing papers, and then tonight I'm going to an art opening, out for dinner with friends, and then dancing at a club downtown.

What I am not doing is teaching - I was up for a sabbatical, and I decided I wanted to live in Seattle for a year, so I moved here in August. I'm still amazed that everything worked out, and that I am getting paid to do research for a year in such a lovely city. As Sarah E said (#85): There are probably better lives, but this one is pretty good and I like it.

And I still smile every time I see Mount Rainier looming on the horizon.

Bruce @71, yes, that's a very good way to put it. It's been long enough that very few people remember what Memorial Day was in memory of (Originally, it was the Civil War. Then, the first World War. Now it's just the beginning of summer.) We need times to mourn as a community well as to celebrate.

Today I'm doing the usual things at work: fighting with Linux installations, trying to get code to do what I want it to, not what I tell it, etc. When I go home tonight it will be to give one of our new dogs, Jemma (nee Jompa), some extra affection to help her over the bladder stone removal operation she had yesterday, and the ear infection she's been fighting. I'd forgotten, in the years when we didn't have a dog, just how much they take you out of your own life and troubles and make you part of theirs.

This morning I got to do preschool storytime at the library where I work. The kids seemed to have fun. This afternoon we're traveling to visit family, by plane.

Happy birthdays, and happy romances, whether beginning or enduring. And strength to all who mourn.

So I'm scrambling for another venue. I suppose I could rent a hotel room, but then how do I get all the food there? And I was kind of planning on cooking some things to order during the party, so that doesn't work so well in a hotel. Maybe I just won't do that. Much as I love cooking things and having other people eat them, it may not have been such a great idea to plan on spending the entire party in the kitchen anyway!

I'm. Not. Giving. Up.

So my plans for today now have to include venue-hunting, and my plans for Saturday may have changed drastically. End report.

Recent Sproglet pic

Normal day. About the only difference is the fact that I'm not paying any attention to politics today.

I smile when I listen to good music.

"Could have brought you whiskey, could have brought you wine;
The only thing I can't bring is time, time, time."

And at this point, I'd pretty much invert those phrases (Hi, T!).

Hope to bring you all a lot of time.

The clinic had a stuffed toy singing owl with glasses and mortarboard hat humming pomp and circumstance.

We're happy!

(One horse to human age calculator I found suggests this is equivalent to a human age of 60; I'd lean more towards 70, but in any case it's pretty good.)

Beautifully phrased - please stay delurked!

Maybe I'll have a big party next year in Jerusalem.

Pleasant normalcy: I treated myself to sushi rolls for lunch today (just because I wanted to get away from my desk for a bit, not bring a sandwich or salad back as I often do). Yesterday morning Andy and I decided to go look at birds on our way to work (this is only a slight detour from the shortest route) and spent a pleasant few minutes watching egrets and sandpipers. I like my neighborhood.

Give her my love, and have a wonderful time.

Thank you for this thread. It doesn't dismiss what happened, but I think the biggest tragedy that day was that "normal life" came to a violent halt, and a thread like this proves that life still goes no, and is good.

Happy and normal...My niece and oldest nephew have started school, and I had a breakthrough on a story that had been stuck.

And good wishes for Xopher's next year, too!

Today is payday and my last day of work this week. No alarm clock tomorrow morning!

It was overcast as I drove home this afternoon and I realized just how much autumn clematis there is around town. The blooms are sweet-smelling and almost glow in the dusk. The difference between autumn clematis and all sorts of other annoying, vining things is that when I sprayed Roundup on the huge mound of stuff growing on my fence, the clematis was the only thing that grew back.

I'm two weeks short of 26 years married, myself. Last Saturday a small fragment of Mom's side of the family reunited: one of my two surviving uncles, the only aunt-by-marriage, a mere eight cousins and some of our spouses and children and grandchildren, a couple of friends of my brother-in-law come to help deal with the barbecued whole pig, a paultry thirty or so people (most of whom went home with pork). Sort of a last minute deal, it was. We were out at Puget at a private park, the same one where my wedding reception was held all those years ago. The sun was out, and so was The Mountain, reflected in Nisqually Reach at slack tide. Pretty damned excellant.

Tommy has been a member of Styx since the mid-1970s. He wrote or co-wrote, sang, and played lead guitar on a number of their hits, from "Crystal Ball" to "Too Much Time on My Hands."

These days, I don't spend all day, every day, listening to the latest Styx album over and over and over, but when I was in school, Styx was the world to me, and Tommy was one of those imagined friendships that make everything okay.

I also had a trip to the dentist today (bleah), and I'm preparing for my part in a little exhibition tomorrow (my second one - maybe someone will buy a painting!)

Just one reason why America is still The Beautiful to me, despite everything.

Happy September 12th.

I hate moving. But it will be good to once again be home.

Her 8th grade English teacher is having them write daily journal entries from prompts, in a specific paragraph format. As I have been around the block a few times, I know that the teacher is just using a strategy that she thinks will get actual writing out of the students, in order for them to practice the format, and she doesn't care about the content nearly as much as the form.

But my daughter was finding the prompts problematic -- either too personal, or too complex for her to be able to answer yes or no in six sentences. What do you want to be when you grow up? ("I don't know" was not an acceptable answer, even though these are eighth graders.) Do you believe in karma? Describe a time when you took out your anger on someone who didn't deserve it.

So she was refusing to write the entries. And risking failing English. Even though she reads on a college level and her writing's progressing.

Since I'm a roleplayer and sometime fanfic writer, I suggested that she write the entries in character for someone fictional, and just not TELL the teacher it wasn't her. Richard St. Vier. River Tam. Someone from the anime and manga she loves that I haven't delved into.

SHE AGREED IT WAS A GOOD IDEA AND WILL WRITE THE DAMNED ENTRIES!

Hallelujah.

Today I worked on some training for a job that, I hope, will help me pull myself a bit out of debt and a bit closer to my goal of moving cross-country next spring. Tomorrow (well, later today, the 12th), I will be done that part of the training; it's also payday. Hurrah!

Today I ate an incredibly yummy tomato-and-cucumber salad for supper, and had a McRib sandwich for the first time for lunch (yes, they really are as messy as the TV ads claim). I hung a pair of jeans on the clothesline (feeling virtuous!) and convinced the dryer to dry the smaller items. I talked to a pretty girl. I listened to my littlest brother show off his latest Fimo sculptures. I drove home from work with the windows rolled down, and drank green tea tea while reading blogs.

Thank you all for talking about these things: I have a little smile on my face now, and will sleep better tonight.

Special wishes to Jeff (#81) & his husband. Really, really, special wishes and a Yay! to Margene (#115). There's a lot of us have been through that stuff; it's different for everyone, but still so much the same.

And cheerful hellos to all the delurkers. It's good to meet you.

My day was fruitful and peaceful: did my radiotherapy (Man in the Iron Mask style); managed to have a good meal, having recovered from gastroenteritis; also managed to do and hang out laundry; make and receive a few calls about important stuff, like my job; do food shopping; meet a couple of friends and do some planning for the future. On Wednesday I met a bunch of relatives I hadn't seen for many years who were in town. My close relatives are dead, and others live a ways away, so seeing family is unusual. It made me feel connected in a way that's different to my friends.

Paraphrasing Sarah E (#85): There are probably better lives, but this one is what I have. It has its joys and quiet contentment; just being free from major pain, sickness and disablement(?) for now is something I'll occasionally revel in.
<pedantry> Wouldn't 'normality' be preferable to 'normalcy', which seems to be a fairly new coinage? </pedantry>

Thanks for poking me into remembering the importance of the day. As it happens, September 11th is the day my father would tell you commemorates his wedding anniversary to my beautiful mother. Unfortunately, his wedding anniversary falls on September 5th of every year. He became legend in our family for missing his wedding anniversary 48 times in a row. I wish he was here to miss it again and so do we all.

It is a wonderful place to live, between 75 and 94 and the Southfield Freeway - we drive to Ann Arbor to work and friends, though, and want to move there.

I meant to add that this happened on the 10th. They had the night sky lit up with the memorial lights, too. Got lots of photos.

We stayed in Jersey City, at the motel opposite the Holland Tunnel, across the street from the Home Depot. If the guests weren't German, then they were Brazilian, except us, a BritAm (me) and a Portuguese. My girlfriend tells me that there's a large Portuguese population in Newark.

I want to go back to NYC again sometime soon, and I don't want to take as long between visits as I did the last time (my last visit was in '83, or thereabouts).

May he and you have many more years together, Insh'Allah!

One Easter, I went to a Portuguese Mass with my family in Newark. My dad described it as, "Italian, spoken with a German accent."

I wish yesterday had been defiantly normal. But I found a bug that I had to work around to finish my assignment, then The Client's issue went into Panic Mode, then I went to the first choir practise of the year (having missed dinner because of Panic Mode), then I went home to a full bucket of water next to my sink, and a two-foot-diameter hole in the drywall from the leak that they told me they were going to look at the last time it happened.

Today, They're Going To Look At It.

By the time the leak stopped, it was 0230, and I couldn't get to sleep. And we're still in Panic Mode. So today looks like it's going to be great, as well.

Normal, as opposed to the other? Yes. Normal as in quiet, happy, celebratory? Not so much.

Wednesday, I made a decision about my house-for-sale that made me giddy with happiness. Yesterday, still giddy, I spent the early part of yesterday morning writing a review of Paul Offit's Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure. Review partially done, I went to meet the Bad Moms for coffee. While there I suddenly realized I had forgotten an assignment due at 4 pm for the Mild and Moderate Disabilities class, so scampered home, wrote like a monkey on performance enhancers, and drove over the San Mateo bridge to the Oakland hills for said class.

Returning home across bridge, the bay was that beautiful dark steely blue of twilight. I'd like a trip to the tropics. With boat, if possible.

I continued the normal by writing my nephew Jesse Robbins a birthday salute.

I don't go to church any more, I'm pretty much an atheist, but I do miss the communal Peace that is part of the Episcopal rite.

So I'll send it out anyway: "May the peace of the Lord, which passes all understanding, be with you".

Hey, I may be a September 11 baby, but I wasn't born yesterday!

*muted trumpet goes "HWAA, hwaa, hwaaaa"*

Thank you very much, I'm here all week, don't forget to tip your waitress...wow, I haven't seen a rutabega in years!

*exit in a shower of vegetables*

Fortunately, I read Jim's posts in Making Light: so I knew the answer: eat the chewable baby aspirin and phone 911. I drew a great pair of paramedics, Alsaedi and Thomas, and a good hospital, Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn. The hospital won't let me go yet.

I remain frustrated over not getting to post the Hurricane Ike story. Now the NYTimes is all over it, and they quoted the exact line I meant to quote. Foo!

Tip o' the hat to Jim for making #157 possible!

I slept in, needing to catch up on my zzzzs. I picked up Babes in Toyland because Josh and I need to watch it for next week's Broadway musicals larp. I've been warned about the minstrel show.

I met Josh in the city, and we had dinner at Congee Village, where we ordered no congee. I had duck's blood, which was precisely the taste I'd been craving.

We went to Stephen Tihor's place, where some D&D took place. I ignored that to work on my apa for Lee Gold's gaming zine, Alarums and Excursions, and to listen to show tunes and scenes from Hello Dolly on youtube, as I'm playing Dolly in that larp. Turns out there's an entire high school performance, up on youtube in 17 parts, not half bad either. This was really useful because the movie version made a couple of changes, and I wanted to see what the original play did.

As Josh is playing Horace, we also discussed methods of making that total personality shift at the end plausible, as well as how to modify the scenes for the dymanic chaos that is larpdom.

Meanwhile, the person playing Lucy from You're a Good Man Charlie Brown has been having an amusing dialogue online with the person playing Schroeder about the fox trot and Beethoven. And, we offered another player crash space if he needs it.

I think I did some minor work on the larp we've been working on for over a decade. Today, to my delight, one of my co-gm/authors has come around to agree with a decision I think we should make. I need to see if we have a holdout, or if we just have a friend who's not checking her email. If it's the latter, we go ahead and implement. If it's the former, and she really feels strongly about this, we don't. We are not breaking friendships over this game.

But, it's still amusing to see our Official Larp Consultant dance a jig as he watches us one by one coming to agree with what he begged us to do over a year ago.

I found out the hospital I was in recently has wifi that patients can use (although they don't accept any liability for safety of laptops, of course). That would have been a nice 21st Century Moment for my stay, but I didn't have any wifi-enabled devices to try it out with (although one visitor I had fiddled with an iPhone on it for a bit).

*when I had a serious gall bladder attack last year, I called 911 when I did because my symptoms were entirely too reminiscent of Jim's description of a heart attack, and I didn't want to take any chances

Dammit, that sucks.

My yesterday was a bit unusual, as I had the beginnings of a cold and stayed home from work. Later in the day I went to the 1920s Torchwood RPG and was all heroic; before that I finally posted on my LJ; and had a brilliant idea about storage for a bunch of rolls of art paper that have been taking up space in my room: unroll them, sandwich them between two big pieces of cardboard, and stuff them behind the dresser! Aside from that, though, the day was pretty much a wash, as the cold turned out to be quite energy-demanding... And today as well.

Please keep this in mind when making your plans. Thank you.

Yikes! You're in my prayers.

I wonder how many people have had their lives lengthened by reading Jim's posts. Though it turned out not to be a heart problem, I went to a cardiologist a while back, pretty much entirely because I read one of Jim's posts, which made me realize it was really stupid to just assume it was nothing. And I have baby asprin in the house pretty much explicitly because of his advice about heart attacks.

Other than my mom's birthday on the 13th (and Xopher's on the 11th, yay!), I have only to report that I spent the evening with two very wonderful people, snuggling on the couch and watching decade-old VHS tapes of Animaniacs and Freakazoid. That was the only thing the TV got turned on for. It was a good evening.

My instructions from herself are to look after Patrick and look after the hamster. Both are, at the moment, asleep, and as far as I can tell they are adequately looked after. We have spinach for the hamster when he wakes up, and there will be a Teresa for Patrick to visit when he wakes up, so those are the cunning plans as I know them at the moment.

When I extended my visit due to a bout of ill health, I didn't exactly figure I was going to wind up being Additional Useful Person In Times Of Unexpected Medical-Fu, but there ya go. I've been Extra Person Re-Phoning the Nice 911 People after the first call got dropped, and also Person Useful For Opening Doors for the Nice Paramedics, and then tonight I got to be Assistant Bringer of Orange Juice and Various Teresa Noshes. All of this is to say that I'm really really really glad we called within three minutes of onset, and that the flashing-lights-wagon got here within five minutes, and that she's in good hands now. Because she is. They seem a very fine lot there.

The Making Light Auxiliary Corps stands ready to spring into action. If at any point there's any possible way I can help Teresa, Patrick, you, or the hamster, please let me know; I'm sure I'd only have to elbow a couple hundred people aside to be first in line.

Teresa, my thoughts are with you, and my hopes as well.

That's funny! :D I always find it humourous when people ask me if Portuguese is a dialect of Spanish. Heh. Some of the things I've read indicate that Italian and Portuguese are closer to the original Latin than are the other Romance languages (Spanish, French, and Romanian).

I've heard that some think Portuguese has something of a Russian sound to it (I'm speaking of the Continental variety, not the Brazilian); it's the 'sh' sound of many esses that gives Portuguese a slight 'Russian' sounding quality. When I hear it, however, especially the numbers, I hear what sounds to me like a mix of Spanish and French.

Teresa @ 157: Then I got this strange pain that was kind of like indigestion only not, and then it radiated up my chest and neck and lower jaw ...

Eek! O.O Not good!

Some months ago, because of palpitations, as well as some chest pains, I had a couple of visits to the local ER. During my last visit, I was injected with some radioactive isotopes so they could take an image of my heart at rest, and then under stress, to see if there were any blockages. None were found. My heart is something that concerns me greatly since my great uncle and my father both died from heart attacks. In the end, it was discovered that I've hypothyroidism (which explains the weight problems I've experienced over the years), and now I'm on levothyroxine, with me having to have blood work done every few months, and my dosages increased incrementally until the right level of medication is found.

I hope all is well with you and that you're soon released with the proverbial 'clean bill of health.'

Teresa, be of good cheer and get well.

Patrick, take care of yourself.

Teresa, Patrick, hamster dude, you, and other Fluorosphericans can be assured that the Antipodean Branch of the Making Light Auxiliary Corps will be knitting together and parcelling up as much available supplies of positivity and stubborness as can be gathered to help with any shortfalls you have there — any surplus to your needs you are welcome to send on to the Caribbean and Gulf areas, where we hear there are other areas in need (and maybe to those recovering from the fires we heard of earlier).

Helpful as they are, I've spent far too much time of late in or around hospitals; thinking of people I care about also being stuck there — DO NOT WANT.
*waves both arms encouragingly and slightly wildly from moonlit rooftop in Sydney, with extra thumbs-up and thanks to Unca Jim* (They're used to odd behaviour 'round this part of the city.)

Teresa -- Get well soon, and all that. I spoke with the Internet, and everyone agreed not to do anything wrong until you're back on your feet, so you don't have to worry about that.

Xopher @ 156:
*tips his wineglass, his waitress and his hat*

Also, here is some Stubbornness. I'm from an incredibly stubborn family, and I can spare quite a bit!

Feel better soon! (Or else!)

Then you know how to pray (at least the very simple kind called "keeping a good thought"). If you want to structure it a little more, just take a moment every now and then to picture Teresa happy and healthy, doing the things she loves to do.

If you want to be more formal about it, you can close your eyes and visualize this Lady (or print out the picture and look at it). That's the White Tara, a Tibetan Boddhisatva. Those hand gestures mean "I grant boons" and "fear not."

Chant the White Tara chant, which is "OM TARE TUTARE TURE SVAHA" (aum tah-ray too-tah-ray too-ray svah-hah). This is a chain of Sanskrit praise words chosen more for their sound than their meaning; OM you're familiar with; TARE is vocative of the Lady's name, and SVAHA means something like glory. Just say it over and over.

After you've said it for a while, try to visualize light coming from the Tara's heart and going to yours. Let your heart fill up until it overflows; then let the light flow from your heart to the person you want to heal (in this case Teresa).

Belief in any deity or supernatural being is not a prerequisite for this process. It's all about focusing the mind. Of course, if you think it would be wrong FOR YOU to pray without having belief, you shouldn't do it. But let me tell you, the White Tara won't care. And as far as I know, it's in no way offensive to Buddhists or anyone else for non-Buddhists to chant this chant and call on the Tara.

elise, don't forget to make fresh coffee for the hamster, and put some oil on Patrick's wheel so it doesn't squeak all night.

Me, I've been blathering away on the "60s-70s Denver: Incontinent Nostalgia" thread over at bOINGbOING, and hijacking part of it to go on about Fort Collins as well.

But you... well, you know already. Everybody here has already said it better than me. Get well soon.

Happy birthday and anniversary, belated or otherwise, to those having them. Best wishes and congratulations to those embarking on and/or completing adventures.

Sending healing white light to Teresa. So very, very glad that you headed the words of Jim and took prompt action.Hears to a speedy recovery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebI8H5nq5L4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jndn4xqsRz0

My Thursday this week wasn't special, good or bad--well, I discovered a new pizza place--but:

Yesterday, I got a new appreciation for the law in all its silly majesty.

Tuesday I saw John M. Barry talk, mostly about Katrina and the Mississippi River but also about Newt Gingrich and Jim Wright, and someone else asked the question I didn't get to ask.

Monday I was told I did yeoman duty, and got general praise from all but one particular asshole for doing it (and getting shit from that pathetic excuse for a human being--who does possess the dignity and worth inherent in all human beings, and I hope someday he'll find it--is praise, too.)

And tomorrow? Tomorrow marks the first day this atheist teaches Sunday School.

So, yeah, it's a pretty good world.

"And also with you"

At the risk of sounding like a stalker, I have a get well giftie, and I need to know where to send it. I promise it's not chicken soup.

Patrick, hope you woke up alright and had a great visit with Teresa.

Best wishes to both of you.

And you know what, I don't think I was wrong...the hypnotisable became a little more so, the people with the hideous certainty of their own rightness or cynical indifference to it were willing to exploit them, and the rest of us were still chained by the wrists and ankles to them, as they cheered on the driver heading the bus steadily and speedily over the cliff, ready to jump out as soon as possible and bill the Company for the mileage.

Congrats on the smart move, and I hope you are well enough to come home SOONEST! (And thanks, Jim.)

Sarah, #203, stuff usually goes to Tor.

Please be okay, Teresa.

You too, Patrick.

51 is a bad one, because it sneaks up on you after all the mental prep you do for the 50th.

Talked with T a little while ago on the phone; she'll be in the hospital tomorrow yet, as there are a couple of tests they did not manage to get done today. (I am taking it as encouraging that she's not on the Super-Fast-Track here, because although I know it's frustrating for her not to be able to get home quickly, they do need to figure out a few more things about what happened and what's going on.) P and T talked some, and I know that reassured P; he misses her a whole bunch, but hearing her voice means he probably won't run around on the wheel all night. (Ref: Kip @ #191, which made me giggle a lot.) He is, in fact, sound asleep now; I practiced serious neckrub and backrub-fu on him until a bunch of his muscles unlocked and he said something like "catastrophically falling over now..." and went and crashed out on the bed.

The hamster is asleep inside his house, where he has pulled all the fluff into the doorway again, which is what he sometimes does. I expect he will be out in the morning, asking where his person is, and we will tell him she will be home as soon as she can.

T looked better today than she did on Thursday night (well, 12:40 Saturday morning, technically) when all the excitement went down. They haven't confirmed exactly what happened yet, so none of us can say with certainty what happened, but it's looking pretty much like a mild heart attack looks, yep. And there are so many ways in which getting treatment for a mild one is apt to improve and prolong one's life, so... well, I'm hoping that catching this one is one of those super-lucky things that makes a major positive difference for her.

I dunno if that makes any sense; I think I'm catastrophically falling over sleepy myself now. I am going to go find a pillow and a soft place and lie me down to sleep.

More soon, I hope directly from herself. We go see her in the morning again as soon as they let us in.

If you want to find amusing things for her, by the way, I suggest finding links to images of interesting fossilized stromatolites.

Tired. Definitely tired.

Bright, bright blessings on all that household.

A possibly interesting fossilized stromatolite. White 3d whorls.

Here's one that looks... um... kind of like a piece of meat. It's part of this page.

Not technically a stromatolite, but looks kind of like a Japanese sand garden. Found on answers.com.

Looks like a big stromatolite, but might not be. © All rights reserved.

Also, there is apparently a Flickr group for fans of cyanobacteria. Not many pictures, but some serious microscope closeups. CC attribution-share-alike.

A chunk of stromatolite interestingly framed against a shore, not your typical pools of stromatolites pictures. © All rights reserved.

I like this picture of a pool of stromatolites best out of the various at Flickr. © All rights reserved.

But this bird flying over a stromatolite pool is really neat. CC attribution-non-commercia-share-alike.

Not really stromatolites. Gorse eaten at by sheep in a pastoral landscape that looks like gigantic stromatolite formations. © All rights reserved.

When I was young, on a family trip to New England, I picked up a few mollusc shells on the beach: large, heavy, sturdily-built, and parts of the inside surface were a rich purple/indigo colour. These ended up in a box of odds-and-ends and souvenirs. Some years later, I was doing some rock tumbling, and needed to add something to an under-full tumbler barrel, and on a whim I tossed in a couple of pieces of those shells which had a lot of the purple. Just to see what might happen, basically.

What happened was... beautiful. Flat, smooth, and the colour was a banded structure in shades of ivory and indigo/purple, a bit like fine malachite that had been shifted a couple of colours. I ended up making the best of the pieces into a pendant necklace for a girl I was interested in.

I tried a couple of times after that to reproduce the effect, but never had any luck. None of my remaining shells had as much of the purple stuff, and all of it got ground away in the rock tumbler. The remaining white bits... well, nice enough in their way, but not very interesting.

Have any of you folks seen material like this in use?

How strange of them!

We all had a big laugh about it, and I realized that at some point my parents had become my friends.

And further, that we have been fortunate enough to have my husband's children become our friends as well.

Bivalve or univalve?

And did your ID's undergo a similar transformation, or are you now stuck with a driver's license and passport that are—at best—useless?

Also, not having met either of you, and therefore not knowing your respective sizes...do your clothes still fit all right?

This could be the beginning of a very interesting short story.