buttercup

OH MY GOODNESS LOOK AT ALL THESE FANCY NEW THINGS!

So I logged into Blogger to leave a comment on How About Orange, and of course I HAD to fill out all these fancy new profile boxes etc.

Looking good, Blogger! I like the tag system, that's been a long time coming.

I'm still on eljay, by the way. I've gone mostly friends only, but if you're over there and you used to read here, pop into my f/o post and say hi, I'll add you! (I mean, I don't think anyone even checks this page anymore; I just wanted to make sure no one feels left out. I JUST WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY JEEZ.)

It's weird seeing this blog again! I use capslock a lot more these days. Rabbit is in school. We have our own house. 2008 has been a pretty crappy year, but I think it has been that way for everyone, right? I haven't read a book in months because I've been learning to knit. My goal is to be good enough to be able to read AND knit, that would be sweet.

I sort of miss the simpleness of this blog, but I wouldn't trade the friends I've made in the past couple of years for anything. Livejournal is good for kicking you out of your own skin every once in a while, at least.

Strange ghostiness. I should come back here more often.

Okay, I think we've seen two of the six stages of grief re: my letting go of this journal a little. Now it's time for another one: acceptance.

I'm pretty much only updating Satellites, my livejournal, these days. I really like the format, the tags, the cuts. And even if you're not on LJ, you can still comment; I haven't disabled anonymous comments.

I really HATE switching over, especially with all the entries I have over here, but everything changes, I guess.

This blog isn't going anywhere, it'll stay here, it's just not going to be updated very often. I wouldn't say it will NEVER get updated again, but it will be a rare occurrence. Good English and my crafty blog will still be updated the same as before, though. You know, assuming I ever finish a book (or make something) again.

The entire catalog of Crafters Coast-to-Coast episodes is here. Do you know how many times I've looked for that and haven't been able to find it? You don't, but it's a ridiculously large amount.

I effing LOVE that show, but I can never remember when it's on, so even when I'm home, I don't get to watch it. I wish they would rerun it in the evening instead of just showing it at noon. (This is why I need a TiVo. Well, that, and so that I can watch "Lost" with the attention to detail it deserves.)

Anyway, my reason for looking for craft instructions now: next week we're starting a new schedule which involves earlier dinner and a walk in the evening, so I'm pretty sure I'll be able to start up the holiday crafting. I haven't made my xmas planning list on my crafty blog public yet because I'm still narrowing stuff down, but damn, is it ever long. Exciting, though.

I'm actually really digging all the tags and cuts and everything over at livejournal, so I'm using that for my little diary-like entries. I didn't think I'd like it this much, but the format is very clean. so yes, this means I have FOUR blogs: this one, the livejournal, my crafty blog, and good english. But they each serve a purpose, which is nice since I'm so borderline OCD, anyway. It's like a really organized filing cabinet for my brain.

So basically the lj is like an online diary, and this is more link-oriented. when I have long entries about one particular thing, I put them here. the lj is for quizzes/memes, recipes, "my day"-like entries, and extra-personal stuff (since I can lock those entries).

Anyway, let me stick some content because this entry is really boring so far:

Last night was a perfect TV night. Premieres of "Arrested Development" and "Kitchen Confidential," a new ep of "Prison Break," and a kickass football game (Skins vs. Dallas AT Dallas, and we won, HELL YEAH). The only thing that could have made it better was a new "Daily Show," but they needed time after the Emmys, so it is forgiven. Plus TDS's lineup this week is stellar, so I'm willing to cut them a little slack.

"Kitchen Confidential": based on Anthony Bourdain's autobiography, and it costars Nicholas Brendon. Two checks in the plus column. And based on last night's ep, the writing and cast are excellent, too. There were a few eyeroll-worthy moments in the episode, but they weren't that bad. I think I'll watch it whenever I get the chance.

"Prison Break" is my new guilty pleasure. There are parts of it that require SO MUCH suspension of disbelief, and some horribly corny lines, but The Hotness and the soap-opera intrigue are keeping me glued to it.

This is the beginning of the craft-at-night season for me, and I get a lot of TV/movie watching done when that rolls around. So it's good to know not everything on at night will be total crap.

And before I forget, the MRI went swimmingly. There are more details on the lj. And with that, we're done with the doctor's office visits for now, thank god. And everything so far has come back normal, so we're operating under the assumption that they're just febrile seizures.

Which means now is the time to buy stock in Children's Tylenol.

But even if it does, I think you'd agree this is important. This is from an e-mail I got from MoveOn.org. I still have to research this, find out how much (if any) of it is spin, but right now it's pissing me off an awful lot:

The Pentagon announced just this summer it has been collecting and using data—including such sensitive personal information as Social Security numbers, ethnicity, GPA, personal email addresses, height, weight, and even the cell phone numbers of kids, without their parent's permission. They had been keeping the database secret for more than three years—a violation of federal privacy laws and the privacy of tens of millions of young Americans. In addition, a little known provision in the federal No Child Left Behind Act is forcing public high schools to release the personal information of their students to local military recruiters, again without the consent of their families.

While law compels schools to violate the privacy of ordinary Americans, it also creates a way for families to "Opt Out" of both the local high school military recruitment lists, and the national Pentagon database. If you know someone between the ages of 16 and 25, spread the word: you can "Opt Out" to stop the Pentagon from using your data, and to prevent your high school from releasing it to recruiters, by clicking on the link below.

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=919

Working Assets, Mainstreet Moms (the MMOB) and ACORN have put together a useful website called LeaveMyChildAlone.org that helps you easily generate letters to both the Pentagon, and to your local high school district to opt-out of both databases. If you are a parent interested in protecting the privacy of your child or if you're between the ages of 16 and 25, this is an easy way to protect your privacy. (As with the national "Do Not Call" list, the Pentagon will retain your data in a "suppression file," but will no longer use it. The high schools, however, will remove your data before releasing lists to recruiters.)

While government intrusion on our privacy is bad enough, the use of a corporate marketing firm for this work is even worse. The government has hired private marketing firm BeNow, Inc., to manage the data, known as the Joint Advertising and Marketing Research Services (or JAMRS) database. With increasing reports of identity theft and security breaches at private data collection firms, compiling such a vast collection of sensitive data without consent, particularly on minors, is irresponsible—even dangerous.

The JAMRS database is updated daily and distributed monthly to the four branches of the military for military recruiting purposes. Information is collected from a variety of sources, including DMV records, SATs, and ASVAB test results. Use the "Opt Out" tool to stop JAMRS from using your data or the data of your child, or forward the tool to other parents or students you know.

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=919

Congress is just starting to realize the implications of what they have done by going around parents in this way, to get at their kids. People are really mad about this. Join the effort at LeaveMyChildAlone.org for action alerts related to this issue.

Thanks for all you do.

Joan, Tom, Noah, Marika and the MoveOn.org Civic Action Team
Tuesday, September 20th, 2005

Because I don't want to leave without dropping a fun link: check out Earthenwood Studios' fruit and veggie and sweets charms! Check out their other stuff too -- I got an Earthenwood star-shaped wooden button in a Sampler ages ago, and it's so charming and detailed. Love.

And how about a link to the first website I ever obsessed over? Squirrel Hazing, y'all. Seriously. See? I am not ashamed. I was young and this was all shiny new. To me.

Let's not get into the "Roar" fansites, okay? My first fandom. My role in that fandom mostly consisted of printing out pictures of Heath Ledger. Oh, ye good olde days.

The VA Department of Emergency Management has a pretty thorough website. I'm a little . . . impressed, I guess, although I probably shouldn't be because that should be something that goes without saying.

Granted, the top of their Ophelia page says "Hurricane Gaston, 2004," but it's still pretty good. It even lists the actions that have been taken to prepare for Ophelia, going into details like:

FEMA has 213 trucks staged in Emporia, with 100 containing water, 100 containing ice, and 13 containing Meals Ready to Eat. If needed, the trucks can be deployed to areas of the mid-Atlantic affected by Ophelia.

So yeah, I shouldn't be impressed, but I am. it's not a pretty site, but it gets the job done. Virginia.gov isn't too bad, either.

As far as this one goes, I think we'll be okay. If we ever get another Isabel, though, sweet baby goats, we are going to be at Mom's house the MONTH before it comes through. That sucker was bad enough in the House w/No Name. Luckily I am a paranoid bitch if ever there was one, so I had filled the bathtub with water, which took care of us as far as unfiltered-water needs went for the couple of days the power was out. Here, however, I'd be too chicken to roll the will-a-tree-fall-and-flatten-us dice.

(Or something to that effect.)

We have to get an appraisal done in order to do the refinancing thing, because it's been over six months since we had the first one done. Luckily, the new bank we're dealing with does NOT make us pay $350 for an appraisal we never even get to see. No out-of-pocket charges. Take THAT, First Virginia Bank of Suck. (Note: that may not be their real name.)

However, we are going to have to put a little money into it, since the house has been, you know, lived in since the last appraisal, which was done right after we moved in. We need to bleach the counters and stovetop (or whatever it is you do to a stovetop), find something to wash the kitchen floor with that won't make it sticky, and clean up Rabbit's room, which is now functioning as a catch-all. Rabbit doesn't go in her room very often, and she definitely doesn't sleep in there, so we've kind of been putting off the decluttering. We also need to find a circular rug for the bedroom carpet, to cover the spot where Rabbit decided the carpet should be sparkly and orange. And Ben needs to patch the hole in the bedroom door. How did it get there? That's not a pretty story, we'll leave it at "asscat."

And this all needs to be done before Tuesday. BUT we don't get the check from Evil Homebuilders of Doom (note: may not be their real name) until Friday afternoon, if they even keep their word about that. (We are allowing them to use part of our driveway as a starting point for our new neighbor's driveway. She's supposedly an environmentalist, so this might be a pretty cool neighbor situation.) So that means we have Saturday through Monday to fix it up. BUT I have to work Saturday to make up for missing Friday, because of the appointment with the pediatric neurosurgon. And then Monday is Rabbit's MRI. So basically, Sunday will be some sort of deep-cleaning holiday around here.

It'll all be worth it if we can get refinanced and pay off some of those annoying medical bills. Especially since we'll have more coming in soon from the latest appointments/ER visit.

Sometimes I wish I could look into the future and know if this is all worth it in the end. The money thing, I mean. Just a simple yes or no.

You (once again) know who you are,

I wish you would read this, and maybe think about it for a little while. Especially the last bits.

I thought you knew better and it's kind of disappointing that you don't. But I think it's fixable. Please just try.

Love,
Karen

-------------

Really, it's a very good piece. It puts a lot of things into perspective, even taken on its own merit and not re: the situation in NOLA.

Please disregard, or at least, take with a grain of salt, the poor-upping that follows (there are links in the comments on Scalzi's site). It raises a valid point (first-world vs. third-world poverty) but the way it's gone about is crappy.

I always forget about John Scalzi's website and then someone will link to something he's written and I'll remember for about a week then the cycle begins anew. I've discovered his feed on lj, though, so that won't happen again. Triumph!

(link via prettyfool)

Oh god, I just saw Ashlee Simpson's little jig on SNL. I missed it the first time around. Why oh why didn't she just sing the song and be all, "oh, it's so good I had to sing it twice"? Fantastic. God, it was like that time in high school when I realized you could see the band of my (school-required) nylons through my crocheted sweater because they went higher than the waistband of my skirt. And it's really cute, the way she blamed it on the band. How awkward.

Also awkward: MTV's jump from their special Katrina-related news/diary thing to the repulsive brat-centric show "My Super Sweet Sixteen." Damn, that's some bad programming. The ReAct Now concert they played was quite good, though, and I gleaned this tidbit from it:

You can also make an instant donation to the Red Cross from your cell phone. Just text the word HELP to the number 2HELP (24357) and $5.00 will be donated. 100% of this money goes to the Red Cross Hurricane Relief Fund. Your $5.00 donation will show up on your next cell phone bill.

I hope it works with prepaids. I always have money left on my phone when I have to re-up (every ninety days) because I rarely use my cell phone, so it's an easy thing to do.

Never fall for Virgin Mobile's line, by the way. Crappiest prepaid ever. I have no signal where I live; I have to drive twenty minutes to get it. Cingular, however, reaches out here. Also their customer service is useless. I had to get my phone replaced because the battery wouldn't hold a charge -- I found this out the first day I had it, which was lame. They wouldn't let me handle it through e-mail, I had to call them. And then I had to schedule a day for the phone to be picked up. This was right after I had Rabbit, so I was a little busy. Very annoying. And now I'm using Ben's cast-off VM phone, and we can't remember what the "v-code" (urgh.) is, so I've contacted them three times to ask about a workaround so that I can enter top-up cards from the phone, and they have ignored me each time. Just bleh. Don't do it. I know the commercials seem cool and the site is pretty and the whole thing seems hip, but it's not worth it.

Well, that was a wide range of topics, wasn't it?

I forgot to mention that I broke the bad-meal streak. Chicken and White Bean Chili. It was delicious. The recipe is at my livejournal, since I've decided to use that for stuff that I wouldn't normally put up here. Stream-of-consciousness fluff posts, recipes, and quizzes/memes. Here it is, if you're interested. Feel free to friend me, I'm too lj-shy to do any adding myself yet.

I never thought I would care enough about cooking to be bummed over a couple of nasty dinners, but there you have it. When I was a teenager, I could cook grilled cheese sandwiches, scrambled egg sandwiches, spam and pineapple, french toast, spaghetti, tacos, and salmon cakes. That was it. Now I feel like I can cook anything I see; not necessarily with perfect results, but I'm not afraid to try. The girl who grew up dreading the days she was assigned to cook is now trying to master this little domain. It's kind of fun, actually. Even the miserable failures are fun in their own way. Which is good, because there have been a lot of them along the way.

I still can't sleep. This has to end; last night's bedtime was four in the morning. Luckily this was a weekend I could sleep in.

(Things Rabbit accomplished this time around: putting half of the box of wipes all over the floor, screwing up the little hand-painted-paper boards I was using for tops on the plastic crates we use for bedside tables. At least this time I was smart enough to move my box of nail polishes to the bathroom before I went to bed. Our floor is very festive, thanks to a little early-Thursday-morning painting spree.)

Fall is my favorite season. September has become a crap month, though. There are the national traumas, of course, and there are our personal ones. Last year, on September 11th, Rabbit had her monster seizure, the one where she stopped breathing. She was flown by chopper to a hospital that had a pediatric ward, and we spent two nights there -- Ben and I slept in chairs in her room -- while they monitored her to make sure she was alright. And now, here we are a year later, going through tests and scans and meeting with specialists. No problems for a year, and then BAM! (no Emeril reference intended), here it is all over again.

I know the big problems our country is facing are much bigger than our little crises, I'm not THAT self-involved. I'm just trying to explain why I may seem a little emotionally unbalanced, in case you have to deal with me in real life and think I'm off my rocker entirely. I'm sorry. I'm not totally crazy (maybe partially), just a little . . . weary.

I think September will always make me nervous.

I have made miserable dinners two nights in a row now. Tuesday night was pastitsio, which I usually cook from a recipe I found in Cooking Light. It's not a true pastitsio, but it's so good. As you can probly guess, my Cooking Lights are in storage, so I hunted down a recipe online.

God, it was so gross. The bechamel congealed in this really nasty, eggy way. And some of the pasta that was on top cooked too much. Shudder. I didn't have as much parmesan as the recipe called for, but it still shouldn't have been that bad. There are leftovers in the fridge that I will have to force myself to eat for lunch because I can't in good conscience waste that much food.

Last night I was really tired and it was late, so I made grilled cheese sandwiches and fries (yay for working ovens!). You didn't think grilled cheese could be screwed up? You were wrong. That was the first time I've ever had a bad grilled cheese sandwich. I still don't know why it tasted so wrong.

It's times like these I wish my mom had been a little more kitchen-oriented. I've been doing well so far with the whole teaching-myself thing, it just gets a little old sometimes.

Tonight is chicken and dumplings, I think. If I have enough flour -- we're running kind of low. We shall see.

I don't want to leave you linkless -- here's one: Knitty's fall issue is out. There's no better combination than cold weather and knitting. I just need to learn how. Trying to crochet has frustrated me to the point that I now recoil in horror whenever I pass a crochet hook or a knitting needle. But looking at that stuff? I really wish I weren't so uncoordinated.

I've got to stop doing this staying-up-late thing. I can't sleep in anymore. This morning, er, yesterday morning, Rabbit woke up before me and stole three self-frosting cupcakes from the counter, ate the tops, and threw the rest in the trashcan. Like I said, I can't sleep in anymore.

I just can't stop thinking and it keeps me up.

Finally gave in and made a LiveJournal so that I can put all of the communities I've been watching on a friends list. Eventually I will learn the etiquette for adding individuals and will add the ten or so of those I read, too. It just feels weird, like snooping.

If I could just put a constant loop of Jon Stewart's monologues on a small TV screen, and carry it around with me, I'd never need to state my political opinions again. He says everything so much better than I do. Of course, he's paid for it.

Okay, the Adult Swim loop has gotten back up to Futurama, which is where I started watching. Definitely time for crashing.

(Remember Angel's obsession with Barry Manilow?)

If you donate to the Red Cross through The Manilow Fund, they'll match your donation and Manilow himself will match it as well, so you're tripling your donation. Eeeexcellent. DO IT. I command you.

They've already raised their initial goal of $150,000, and are extending the goal to $300,000.

We haven't gotten that check I mentioned yet, but if we do, that's where 3/4 of my donation is going. The rest is going to an animal fund, I think. Probably Noah's Wish (their server is kind of cooked right now), which I found out about via this SuperNaturale thread. (For once, I've been lurking more on SN than GC, mainly because there is more discussion about and more linkage to Katrina-related news.) Noah's Wish has a list of items they need; I like that they don't accept ONLY cash donations.

Continuing to work on the Katrina PeopleFinder Project, which I noticed last night FINALLY had a searchable engine at katrinalist.net, although you still couldn't edit entries. It may be finished today, though, I haven't checked yet.

[eta: Wow, I just checked it out, and data entry is suspended for now. I'm not sure why. Maybe because they want to enter data into the katrinalist form instead of the one we were entering data in and have to update the site to reflect that? I don't know. There is a link to VolunteerMatch, which seems like a pretty cool site if you're looking for other volunteer opportunities.]

I did manage to scrape together ten bucks and buy a cute pink scarf and some sushi fabric from the Crafters United shop this weekend. If you haven't checked it out yet, you really should -- there are THIRTY-SIX PAGES of stuff donated by the DIY community. Look, here are some custom-made handmade glass rings for only seven dollars each! You could probably do all of your holiday shopping early at this one shop. And all the dinero goes for good! It's so cool.