Perhaps Doctor Mrs. Uncle Davy is not my favorite person in the world. (She made a point of telling me that my nice black lacy party skirt was "girly", and upon my dubious look, insisted that "lace is girly!" I found something to do which was out of the RV.)

Uncle Davy has a tiny mop-dog, as if Gabrielle had been hit by a shrink-ray and had rolled in some spilled coffee. The dog has a Tile chip on her collar, and a bell, because she will crawl into remote corners of the house (Uncle Davy and Doctor Mrs. Uncle Davy's house) to take a nap and no-one can find her. Uncle Davy's keys are likewise Tile'd. The Tile only tells you the rough geographic area, so the bell is necessary so you can hear when she moves.

( Read more... )

Dear Mama,

It turns out that the blue hair thing wasn't just a phase, unless you consider starting to want blue hair in 1995, trying it in 1998 and 1999 and at various points thereafter, and still wanting permanent blue hair in 2008, to be "a phase". The only reason my hair isn't blue right now is that my job's dress code isn't so thrilled with blatantly unnatural colors. That and the fact that bright blue hair and long long hair really don't go together very well, and I do like my nearly waist-length hair very much. But indigo is still an option, given that my natural hair color is so dark.

Love,
Joanie

So SCO is bankrupt?

I'd only read 1/3 of this poem aloud before Heather made me stop. Via sraun.

That career meme:
( My results. )

TMBG is going to be in Tucson! Hmm... Except that's right in the middle of Prime Moving Time, dammit.

Wednesday: Took a look at the place that M found. Whatever the woman's motivations in picking out the spot, her instincts were dead on. The place seems fabulous, and a great fit. It's a coffeehouse/gym/art haven/stuff-shop/retreat kind of place, by and for the LBGTQ population. It's well-lit, well laid-out, has wi-fi (keyed), and has the most comfortable and sheltering aura of any place I've walked in to short of my best friend's room on a day when he's feeling especially protective of me. I'd be comfortable moving right the hell over there next time, but this is something for the group to decide. Group was small that night; I wound up half in IRC, half ripping Circle of Fire into shreds and rewriting it tighter and better, and half present for the plotting, gossip, and medical woes catchup session. Fruitz is a blessing -- I can be listening to my music without stressing out my laptop even more.

Happy New Year, by the way, for those celebrating.

Thursday night was again minus the traditional dinner, because that night has become not the best night. Negotiations are in progress about a good replacement night. I'm reluctant to suggest a work night, because of how early we have to get up in the morning. That'll become a little better once we get moved out thattaway, but it's still not an easy timing.

I wound up with the His Dark Materials trilogy in omnibus form, and commenced reading that as soon as I finished off Born to Rock. In the bookstore, I had found the books in shiny new release form, in connection with the movie coming out soon. I wandered over in search of Born to Rock. In the YA section, I observed an employee letting an older couple know that the book down there had the book that they wanted, but it was an omnibus with the rest of the trilogy. My ears perked up, and I wound up swapping the omnibus they were holding for the trilogy I was holding, and we all walked away happy.

hcolleen and I went to the little Turkish restaurant in the same plaza as Changing Hands. Their hummus is tasty. It's a great place to unwind from work.

As we were getting settled into Vash in the parking lot outside Changing Hands, hcolleen commented about the magnetic sign on the side of a nearby car. I took a look. hcolleen was curious about the domain name, of course. I took a look, and something about that domain name struck me as familiar - www.masterpiecemassage.com - and suddenly I was leaping out of the car, flying across the parking lot, and shouting. I was right! It was karlita. After exchanging a hug and doing a happy little dance around, she wanted to know who I was. And then there was more hugging and giggling! There were introductions all around. warrior_priest got a picture with my cellphone, and I posted it immediately. It was the sort of event that someone of V's generation might describe as "cosmic", and I agree profoundly!

Friday: Morning: checking email, answering comments, reading. Afternoon: getting hcolleen's banking done, hitting IKEA to take a look at furniture (Myrrh's dad is going to be pitching in on a couch, especially given that relatives will be descending upon her soon and will need a place to sleep), hitting Lee Lee's for tea, LJ, shower, and now bed.

At IKEA, we started looking at couches. It started out subtly -- none of us was really feeling that there were three people involved in the process -- there was a silent fourth. When we started bounce-testing couches with gameboyguy13 in mind, we knew why. One of the things that IKEA does not necessarily test the happy raw pine basic futon frames for is the ability to be repeatedly bounced on, and the one that myrrhianna had is well-nigh totaled (a group effort, actually -- I helped). It'll be all right just sitting there, but it'll have to be used gently and with a mind to how it's fragile, and it won't survive the move. So the next couch we get is going to have to survive far more bouncing. (It wasn't as bad as the CLIMB-IT episode* with Dad, because that was a single moment of pure bad idea. This was just constant heavy use involving flopping and ROCKETBOY and some injudicious leaning.) We're planning as if JD will definitely be coming back this summer (and coming for Thanksgiving), because while it's still up in the air on his end, it won't cause any difficulty to be prepared and have JD make other plans, it would be inconvenient if we needed to prepare but didn't, and ... well, he's sort of like a little brother now, and he'll always have a place with us.

We had a great old conversation with an IKEA co-worker in the couch section. We wound up on the topic of Kitchen Disasters We Have Known, at some length. I thought we were going to try to take him home with us.

Curtains in the living room are going to be the next big debate. I like the leafy ones! I like blue, of course, but my taste in blue doesn't get to dominate the public areas. myrrhianna gets the master bedroom, because otherwise hcolleen and I would fight and be disgruntled no matter who got it -- we know we're too much like sisters, but we can agree that myrrhianna gets it, on the condition that we get to use her bathroom too, as necessary. The couch color coordination problem was solved, at length -- neutral/white couch stuff, and then COLORFUL FABRICS to make things work. Hooray fabrics!

I nearly got lost at Lee Lee's, because I wandered off. It turned out to be in search of pickled sushi ginger slices (mmm) and more vinegar-based dressing, and a few other random things. Perhaps they should leash me, as if I were an errant toddler?

I still need to make sure that HR got that paperwork faxed to the apartment complex.

---

* Mama was reading a book on (I think) Woolly Mammoths to Tay-Tay and me. She had finished with the book-part, and had moved on to the glossary. "Climate," she started reading. "Climb it?" said Dad, in that bright and cheerful tone that our clan (especially the male members of our clan) substitutes for the phrase 'Y'all watch this!' Dad proceeded to plant his great booted foot on the arm of the couch, and pushed off from the ground with his other foot, intending to climb the couch as we children (I think we were four and two) did. Instead of the desired effect, of Dad standing on the arm of the couch, there was the sickening sound of a 2x4 cracking. When the catastrophe was over, Dad stood there, looking very silly and no little ashamed, with one foot on the floor, and his other leg up to the thigh inside the newly broken arm of the hideous orange burlap couch. The couch was broken like that for years before it finally was thrown out.

George Takei says what needs to be said about that homophobic basketball player. Please put down beverages & your co-workers might not need to hear this.

Must remember to go over and get that cable from trystan_laryssa -- maybe I'll drop by tomorrow night after everything? hcolleen is having some Bad Data Moments, in that after she bought and installed the 400gig new HD, she realized that all her media is on the 80gig one that she just dis-installed, and she needs the magic cable. Which is over with them. So I was supposed to grab it last night while we were watching Trigun, but I just spaced. Even though trystan_laryssa had it located and everything.

My computer speakers are having problems with the right speaker. Alas. It's showing up on the headphones too, so it's part of the wiring and not just the speaker mechanism. Alas.

Let's see. Weekend. Darkside = busy. I did Trigun with trystan_laryssa Saturday night, did dishes Saturday evening, talked with Tay-Tay a little before that, and bled out the elbow Saturday afternoon. This morning, I drove hcolleen to work, then came back and slept until a very reasonable hour, then did laundry and played around on the internet. After hcolleen came back home, I completely dismantled and then re-constructed the pile of assorted bedding that I sleep upon, and we watched some more Bleach. Just as she was getting ready to go to bed, I saw an e-mail from Mama come in.

Communication is great in my family. Really great. So great, in fact, that I didn't know my eldest aunt, the one I'm named for, was having health problems until Mama e-mailed me saying that it was worse than they'd thought. Um. Eeep? I don't think I've seen her for over ten years. She's a wonderful person, and I wish I'd been staying in touch with my whole family better, and. And. And. And Mama and Dad are going to see her and the rest of the family there, and I didn't know why until Mama e-mailed me.

So I called her. Instead of "Hello," I opened with the commentary that my hen Aurora used to greet the universe with when she was unhappy about the way the universe was treating her, much to the surprise of hcolleen. Mama knew immediately who it was, of course. We caught each other up on stuff.

Grandma turns 90 in November. Guide Dog Aunt was thinking about a party, and somehow that turned into a family gathering. But since November is so bad for everyone, it'll most likely be the end of September.

Next time I go see Darkside, I need to go off into his room and hide with him, hopefully getting to just curl up next to him and be petted, because goodness gracious do I ever need a moment like that, just to catch my breath again.

Oh, and what I have typed of "Hell's Angel" has gone missing. Glad I have it on paper.

I was thinking about bed when figment0 called. When we converse, we converse -- and we stray all over the map of possible topics. Things wound up with me talking to a very worried half-twin sister about specific issues about our particular biology, and experimental cures for PMS. I'm not even sure I followed myself...

My apartment complex is doing the annual apartment maintenance budget planning inspection Monday and Tuesday (that's later today and tomorrow), so I've given the place a bit of a once-over as far as cleaning is concerned. Still somewhat messy, but that's unavoidable. It seems as if just as soon as I've gotten things reasonably tidy, something happens to make not enough space to store things again. (I suppose the next thing is unpacking books.)

In any case, I am seeing floor. Well, rugs on top of carpet, but still.

I went down to the office after getting home from work. I left a maintenance request, or tried to. The person in the office was an ancient woman with too much eyeliner in a color that did not match, complement, or enhance her existing eyelashes. She looks (in my memory) to have greying ginger hair, and correspondingly pale eyelashes. The darkest one would sensibly use would be a brown of some sort, and that sparingly. This woman? Black. Unevenly. It looks like a five-year-old took a Sharpie to her face in a sort of reverse red squirrel effect. I would probably not harsh her makeup choices so severely if she were in fact effective at what she was supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, she got lost at "double pole double throw", and told me that I would have to make an appointment to speak with the maintenance staff so I could tell them myself. (And she couldn't just take down my words, even if she didn't understand them?)

That was frustrating, but maybe I'll get results. I have left sticky-notes stuck to the thermostat and the bathroom door, explaining the two major problems, should the maintenance people come by when I'm out (yay Murphy).

I called V and checked in that she was still alive. She was on her way to her first destination, and having a lot of fun. The yard sale last weekend disposed of almost all her worldly possessions, and the rest are in her car, or something. She set out Sunday morning.

When I went to take out the trash, the sky was utterly clear, but I could taste the water in the air. Monsoon season is fun for those of us who have working climate control and do not have to be out in the heat for any great time. (It's been causing deaths for those who don't have working climate control and/or don't have anywhere to come out of the heat.)

The late-night hour and my general sleep-deprived state conspire to make me feel drunk.

Mama called earlier in the afternoon, waking me up from a short nap in a nicely timely fashion. The blueberries have been epic this year. They were at Virtual Aunt's bog-meadow picking some just recently. Dad combined blueberries with the good vanilla ice cream and had too much fun distributing it to friends and associates at the Farmers Market on Saturday.

I haven't seen the little white kitten with the black trim for a while. I hope it found a home with a suitable human. The dark cat who lounges by the pool was presiding over the Game there when I went down with the trash. I'm human and therefore don't understand the rules of play very well, but it seems as if s/he is master enough of the Game that s/he can choose an obvious central spot and still play effectively.

We had a pair of geese: the gander was a gray Toulouse, imaginatively named Toulouse; the goose was an African named Friendly, because she was (and he, of course, wasn't). The geese developed an attachment to Mama, and would follow her up to the garden when she went up there to work, and would follow her down to the pottery shop when she went there to work.

Eventually, they'd get bored, or thirsty, and wander back to the house to do something else or get a drink, but they would often spend a considerable length of time parked on the porch of Mama's pottery shop.

Now, parked geese have two major characteristics. They gozzle things -- anything that there is in nibbling range, they will nibble on, to see if it's edible, or just because they're interested. When Friendly was a gosling, she would nibble FatherSir's eyelashes lovingly. They also emit exhaust periodically, and when they're parked, there gets to be quite a pile of goose exhaust behind the parking spot.

And these geese would park on the porch of Mama's shop.

Mama has two kilns, both of which live on the porch of her pottery shop. One of them is venerable indeed, and likely predates my birth. It has about as much interior space as our chest freezer (also on the porch of the pottery shop) and fits an astonishing number of pots. Firing that kiln is a major production, involving sleeplessness, checking cones frequently, and meticulous entries in Mama's log book. The other kiln is small, and I actually remember a time before it was there. It fits perhaps six to nine cereal bowls at one time, and has a number of handy settings for time and hotness on a dial or two, and even a "kiln-sitter" feature, where the power will automatically shut off after a horizontally held cone droops to a certain floppiness.

Mama went to load the little kiln one day, and found, much to her surprise, that a kiln dial was out of order -- the little metal plate that indicated the time and/or temperature was completely worn off or missing! She searched all around for it, peering into the dark corners with FatherSir's bonky flashlight, but found nothing. She wondered what could have happened to it.

Then she thought of the geese. The geese, sitting on the porch, gozzling things. And you can't really call a goose in on the carpet for gozzling your kiln's dial's indicators off the kiln, much less a gander.

So she called up the kiln manufacturers to inquire if she could get a replacement part. They, of course, inquired as to what had happened to the old one -- had the paint worn off? No, actually, it had been gozzled off by geese. After they stopped laughing, they sent her the replacement part. She encouraged the geese to park places other than the porch, after that.

Called Mama, and we had a comfortable gossip about stuff. I talked about cats, job, Cello the rooster (he's sadly dead), the Little Fayoumis, and so forth.

votania is home from the hospital. They're still not altogether certain what's going on with the Viking, but he's finally in, after 9 hours in the waiting room. (!!)

I re-arranged the hall cupboard with the cans in it, and am consequently brewing up a batch of chili. User-defined spice, in this case.

It'll be a good week, I hope.

After a while, we had the "froggy little roosters", as they were called when they'd just turned into that croaking teenage stage of chick-hood, still rather indeterminate as to sex. We'd named them Hematite and Onyx, both of them being pure black, having learned the wisdom of androgynous names such as plant or mineral. Both were banties, and both turned out to be hens. Onyx was Narcissa's, and Onyx was an Old English: broad, prominent breast, lovely fan-tail, and more eyes than brain, the pure barely polished black of her name. Hematite was mine, and a banty Sumatra, with short black comb and greenly iridescent shine on her feathers, long tail drooping like a raven's. Hematite and Onyx were as sisters, and went everywhere together.

Their first winter, Onyx took sick, and the two had to come in the house while she recovered. We'd earlier tried, and discovered our error, at grabbing one of the two to pet and hold without grabbing the other. Onyx would cry (piercingly: Old English screech!) and Hematite would fret in her raven-voiced way.

FatherSir discovered, on his own, the folly in grabbing just one. He'd picked up Onyx, and he'd picked her up with less care than he might have, and she yelled about it. That set off Hematite. FatherSir found, much to his surprise, that he was holding two little black hens: Onyx, in his hand, and Hematite, dangling by her beak with a mouthful of the skin of the back of his hand in her sharp little mouth, screeching bloody murder all the while.

The neighbors came over, to see what was the matter.

After that, no one separated Hematite and Onyx.


Onyx got the idea in her cute little black head with the floppy red comb that she, after her winter in the house, needed to lay her tiny white eggs in the bathroom. Nothing would do with the nest boxes in the henhouse. She'd fuss about them, scream about them... we decided, after comparing the size of the egg (she laid every other day) and the size of the bird, that the eggs must have really bad cramps along with them. Mama and I sympathized.

So Hematite and Onyx would hop up onto the steps and wait until someone opened the screen door, and jump in the house.

One day, the door was completely closed, and Onyx wanted to come in. Narcissa and Mama and I were doing something, when there was a disturbance at the window by the couch. Silly little Onyx was trying to perch on the moulding of the outside of the picture window, and not doing a very good job, as it was so narrow. She beat her wings against the window, trying to keep her balance.

We rushed to the door to tell Onnie to get her fool self off the window ledge before she bashed her silly little head against the glass. As we swept aside the screen door, Hematite jumped up, and a few moments later, Onyx came running around the corner and leaped in the house after Hematite.

It got to be a habit for them, after that. Onyx would knock on the window, and Hematite would wait around the corner at the door, to distract the person from closing the door until Onyx got inside.