Bah!

Had two problems with the internet last night: first, an MSN Arizona server was down (I spent six minutes on the phone crawling under Enki's desk to tell the lady about the near-obsolete modem to learn this? Given that I asked if it was their problem first off on the phone?), and second, the MSN server had gone down right when Votania had been configuring her Very First Firewall (awww!), so we have to work on getting the settings on that correct today. (I anticipate headache).

Third, everyone was tired and out of patience. I've really got to start looking carefully before I barge into the living room and ask questions, because I might be interrupting an important conversation.

Fwd: happy poem

( Phenomenal Woman poem, attribution not personally known by me )

To do:

Watch Three Kings and Dr. Strangelove.

Whee!

Dave has his Evercrack!! Yay Dave!

Someone happy called me last night. When he called, we had to specify which of the huge set of Daves he was. It was nice to talk to someone male with a warm voice.

Calling all California people...

(Yes, this means you, Lisa...)

I will be in the general LA area arriving the 26th of December, leaving the 6th of January. My last weekend there is pretty much booked with Dawn's wedding at Knott's Berry Farm (the delightful possibilities! Another collectible Dave [collected by Dawn]!), but the rest of the time is likely to be able to involve many different sorts of getting together.

So, like, post comments and/or email and stuff...

Mmm, coffee cake.

The really good kind is where it's about half apples, raisins, and nuts, held together with brown sugar and the cake matrix, but barely, and it crumbles all over the plate... mm.

We wound up making it together. Group project. Mmm, committee cooking. Delicious, in our household.

It feels like home. I'm reading Spectrum (happy tablet computers!) and there is the feeling of home.

Yaaay: shelvage

Clover called while Votania was busy braiding Marx's hair in there (at least, I think that's why the door is closed and *ping* yeah, most likely locked) and found the saw (yay!) and will be bringing it over (yay!) so that we may cut the boards that will be forming our brick-and-board shelves and then put them together (yay!)!

We will share the coffee cake.

Ahh, the comforts of home.

Oooh! Eye candy!

<drools>

Silly Kid Moments

Someone sang "Joy To The World" in front of Nephew. (That would have been Mommy, would it not?) Yesterday for a couple hours, he was wandering around, singing. "Jeremiah was a bold frog" ... but it didn't stop there.

You know how kids are with songs with names in them. "Mommy was a bold frog", "Joanie was a bald frog", "Marxdarx was a bold frog", "Darkside was a bald head"....

For whatever reason, I'm reminded of the astonished comment he made upon drinking sparking cider: "You turn wine into soda pop?" ....It does come out of a winelike bottle, after all...

Laundry

Need to do laundry today. That will, of course, include working out.

This morning, 271.

Adam says that at the moment, I am capable of causing traffic accidents; eventually, I will be able to stop traffic. No one recommends for me to walk past a construction site.

Silly get-to-know-you-better survey

( Please. )

Contemplations on porn and arousal, sparked by sithjawa

Steph, you mentioned that you thought that erotica that gets inside the head of one of the characters would be a big turn-on for people, in the situation where you have the two people, and the viewer/reader is identifying with one, where the person whose mind was revealed the most would be the fantasy partner of the viewer.

That would work excellently well for those people whose turn-ons include the getting inside the head of the partner. However, for the person whose turn-ons were primarily related to the vicarious experience of the character being identified with, the trip inside the headspace of the partner might be a distraction from the loss of self inside the mind/body of the other character.

OK, that was unnecessarily convoluted.

Anna and Betty are getting it on in the erotica, and Carol is the viewer. Carol identifies with Anna. The bit of erotica details not only the physical things being done to/with Betty, but also inside Betty's head and motivations for the scene. Carol likes the psychological closeness to a fantasy partner; it makes the experience more intense.

Now we have Cindy. Cindy identifies with Anna, but wishes to submerge herself within Anna's physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings, rather than getting inside Betty's head. If Cindy were in the place of Anna, she would not be reading Betty's mind; she would be taken up in the moment and feeling and doing everything herself.


When writing erotica, keep in mind the audience. Are they likely to want to skip over the details of the character that they identify with and concentrate on the partner, or are they going to want a vicarious experience through the thoughts, actions, and feelings of character they identify with?

Workout

Morning weight: 271
stretches
20 situps
23 butterfly flaps @ 40 lb
4 lateral pulldowns @ 60 lb
16 lateral pulldowns @ 70 lb
10 dorsal pulldowns @ 70 lb

Goal: to be able to lift and carry my own former body weight at least 20 feet

Waaaugh?

Working out before I've eaten the main meal for that section of the day, especially at weights heavier than I'm accustomed to dealing with, gives me the shakes.

Fortunately for me, I know the feeling and go and correct it. Why the waaaugh? this time? Because I thought I'd eaten enough this morning. But ooops, it's afternoon now... and I have been eating the chocolate-covered espresso bombs, and that knocks my metabolism up to a far higher burn rate.

Votania made delicious tuna-fish salad, and I have put away half a sandwich already. Mm, tuna salad on rye. This is a good thing.

After I've finished lunch, I shall go, switch laundry from washer to dryer, and finish my workout. Endurance reps at lighter weights, this time.

Mmm, that feels better.

40 more lateral pulldowns @ 50 lbs; was thinking about going for 50, but my body would have been a little irate over that one.

Next up: shower.

Household

Getting the leak under the sink taken care of. Someone will be coming in to take a look at the place where the carpet has worn away, leaving spikies. Hopefully the A/C drippage (condensation from cold pipe) will be stopped... Votania's sink is being thoroughly shopvacced.

The Viking just called. I have laundry to take out of the dryer. A spammer offers me 72 hours of free psychic advice -- rather laughable in this household, actually...

Out of my entire hotmail account, only three messages of the 67 I had collected over the past 2 days are worth reading: two paranoia-government-watch listmails, and one Waldenbooks mailing list message. Columbus day sale? Perk? (I did ask to be on their list...)

Mmm. *sigh*

Put away laundry. The leak under Votania's sink is fixed, evidently. It seems to have been a slow leak. Took out garbage.

Must register for classes for next tri. The details are on my to-do list on Inanna. Must finish the blanket for River. Must do many things, including the 3-page paper for Speech class.

Speech & how it affects my life

( The hacked-out beginnings of a paper for class: draft! )

Too much mush... (entry from last night, much bitching and moaning)

( bitching and moaning )

Poor kiddo.

Shrimpy, the kid of much pain and suffering from my first four tri at DeVry (we suspect he was behind a certain bit of clueless spell-code that made me utterly miserable for three days, and triggered a major life-change) and I are chatting.

The economy sucks. Poor kid finally has found a job. DeVry's help didn't do much for him. He got his current job on his own. His personality surely didn't contribute to how well his interviews didn't go...

I'm giving him a bit of an education on the current political situation. He, poor head-under-a-rock kid, hasn't heard anything from Bush since the arse got his arse in the Oval Office. I just updated him a little.

OK, LJ, here I am!

This is what I really look like.

Only, normally, I'm not wearing yellow.

A virtual orgy of new userpics

This is me at nine or so, with my very best friend in the whole world.

...And another...

Me celebrating Yule as the living aspect of the Goddess

Happy Household

I have discovered the evil that is Yahoo Music, and have invited the 1980's to visit my computer. votania is cooking. evealone and marxdarx are playing with computers. The house is just warm enough, with happy scents and happy feelings, and still needs vacuuming in the living room.

It's been a nice day. Very nice.

*sigh*

Could life get any better than this?

Well, yes. Darkside could be sitting on my bed, playing a game on the console that isn't hooked up to the TV in my room that's never turned on. boojum could be perched on the bed with a book, and the front door could have a cat screen and be thrown wide open to the evening breezes, as well as the windows, and Dawn, iroshi and mcredneck could be chatting with votania, marxdarx, and evealone in the living room.

Celtic Confusion and (the sadly disbanded) Shamrocks on Ice could be having a jam session here. We could have already eaten dinner, instead of being happily anticipating it. We could have a household snake, and the snake could be happily coiled around my shoulders (it's all your fault, sithjawa, for reminding me how neat they are...) ...

...But there are truly very few things that I would change to make this evening perfect.

Silliness, songs, and yarn

Working on the purple afghan for River. Dessert is a glass of the delightful vanilla coke/almond amaretto mixture.

Looking through the songlists, I find "Don't Stand So Close To Me", by the Police, and I giggle: there is a silly Darkside moment associated with this song. The other day when Darkside was driving me home, this song came on the radio, and we began singing along to it. As he pulled into the turn lane, I glared at his sudden smirk, and told him, "Don't you even start making comments about Professor Sandstrom!"

Darkside evidently hadn't been thinking of that, but now ever on, he always will, I'm sure.

"Butterfly", by Crazy Town, is on my list of nifty songs.

Darkside and I have a running joke based on my slight crush on Professor Sandstrom. I happen to think that he's incredibly hot. He's a recent DeVry graduate, and his specialty is security. He's really tall, with long curly red hair. Physically, he's quite all right. But when he opens his mouth, his intelligence shows, and that's damn attractive.

While I'm a student, I would never dream of hitting on him, of course. Unprofessional. But I can still quietly appreciate him to my fellow students, especially my best friend.

Psychological happy-fun (not)

Told marxdarx and votania three of my top psychological danger-signs that manifest in the physical:

Sitting absolutely still, not moving at all
Crossing my wrists
Tracing my fingertips up and down the underside of my forearms

Also bad would be prolonged gazing at the underside of my forearms. In addition to it being a very sensitive spot on the body, it's also that part of the body that would get slashed should I decide to cut my wrists open...

It's not particularly on my mind much, except in the bad moments. I can't promise Votania to not do anything stupid, but I can promise Darkside to not hurt him like that...

twisting times

Evidently Shawn may be moving to San Francisco.

We've been chatting for a couple hours.

It's nice to know that our friendship didn't vanish, even though it was damaged unto death. He asked his daughter to say something to me. She said: "Steven Spielberg is a hack."

We're all growing up.

*sigh*

Thank gods for melatonin pills.

I'm more tired than I have been in a long time.

Phrases that just sound bad:

My lonely pussy cries out for release.

This is where Shammash is locked in the bedroom, sticking his paws under the door, meowing for someone to open it, of course...

A*

Burning the last of the rose candle that accompanied me on my trip with Aunt-Fayoumis. A candle of love and devotion, that one.

Talking with Shawn has left me feeling the need to do a ritual from days past, in that style, once more. I don't know the name of the system, but it's the one that she and I practiced together.

Narcissa and I know that system well. A* and A* were their names; I may not reveal more here.

I know I have spoken the name of mine to Darkside. I must speak with her again one of these days.

Odd.

She never merged into one of us.

I wonder what she's up to.

I wonder if she's writing me.

I have Rose's future mapped so well, but not much beyond the birth of Elena.

A* is waiting for me to come and speak with her again. She has patience, and I do too. It's not the sort of relationship that gets split. I think of her perhaps once a year. It's been getting more frequent. Too much time spent with mirrors of the mind?

Confession:

I was jealous of the SKBC. She was Circled before I was.