buttercup

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.

Have I mentioned my love for Aimee Mann? She's from Virginia! I had no idea. Although I should have known after reading that The Forgotten Arm, her latest album, tells the story of a couple who met at the VA State Fair:

It is a concept album, detailing in a series of vignettes the story of John, a boxer, and his girlfriend Caroline, who meet at the Virginia state fair in the late 1970s. As the two travel across the United States, their relationship begins to fray as John's addiction comes to light; however, the album's final song indicates that John and Caroline stay together.

I gotta say, it's a great album. I think I like it better than Lost in Space, even.

Added bonus: the Virginia State Fair itself is this month, starting September 22. I haven't been there in a few years; if we can get the bucks together, I think we'll let Rabbit experience it for the first time this year. Complete with funnel cakes and tons of vendors selling state-pride peanuts.

This made me laugh and made me a little happy yesterday: on the way home, I saw a car with writing all over the back windshield. In huge letters: "4 SALE / 40-MPG!"

At least people are starting to care about it. I hope this concern holds over after prices simmer back down.

Also, I enjoyed driving past the 7-11 and seeing the "3" in "$3.19" and "$3.29," etc. written in skinny black marker on the price sign. They ran out of threes! How great is that? It looked like gas was nineteen cents until you got up close. And on the other side, premium was nine cents until you got close enough to see the two threes written in skinny black marker. They could have at least found a THICK sharpie, man.

I wish I had my camera yesterday. Sight gags abounded.

So Rabbit's EEG results (from last Monday) were abnormal. She had four or five abnormal spikes. The pediatric neurologist couldn't decipher the relevance of those spikes, though, so she had a follow-up EEG yesterday. Exciting and wonderful.

Actually, it went very, very well. The nurse Rabbit had for the first one was really good with her; she was nice to her and Rabbit liked her. However, Rabbit has a HUGE problem with anyone messing with her head, and she screamed pretty much the whole time the nurse was putting the toddler cap on her and using the little syringe to move her hair out of the way.

If anyone's lost, I'm sorry -- since Rabbit's so young, instead of using individual nodes for the wires they use to read brainwaves, they use this cap that looks like a swimmer's cap. All the nodes are embedded in the cap, I think (I'm not too sure about the science involved), and there are these little plastic circles with tiny holes in the middle placed strategically throughout the cap. The nurse puts the cap on the child and uses a syringe (needle-less) filled with the EEG goo to move the hair under the holes out of the way (and I guess the goo conducts brainwaves or something. That sounds dumb, doesn't it? I should really look this up.), and the nurse has to press down a little bit with the syringe, and THAT is where Rabbit goes nuts.

Anyway, so the nurse last time was good with her, I thought. Until yesterday, when we had the Best Nurse Ever. She was so cool: she let Rabbit watch cartoons while she was attaching the sticky nodes (arms, side of head, ears), and she even let Rabbit help stick 'em on. Then she brought out the big gun -- a necklace with a plastic bubble wand/liquid pendant. So while the nurse put the cap on and did all this stuff that Rabbit hates with the fire of a thousand suns, Rabbit was sitting there BLOWING BUBBLES. Then the nurse let her lay down and watch cartoons for a few more minutes while she made sure everything was hooked up right. It was, so she turned them off and Rabbit was still while the flashing lights did their thing (and I looked away just in case) and then she fell asleep two minutes later. It was the perfect EEG experience. I know that sounds weird, but it really was. And the nurse and I talked a little, and Rabbit snored just like Dad does, which is always good for a few laughs, and then it was time to go.

Patient/healthcare provider relations really have come far, huh? Mom says that she remembers my EEGs (when I was young) being a much different experience. For the sleep-deprived EEG, she had to keep me awake for twenty-four hours. All night she and Dad took shifts. And then they had to keep me awake during the long drive to the hospital. While the EEG was being done, not even one of them was allowed in the room, and they were only allowed to watch through the window for a few minutes. I do not envy them that (rather scary) experience.

Contrast that with today's kiddie EEG experience. Sleep deprivation means going to bed late, getting up early, and skipping naps. (I'm sure if the child is old enough not to need naps, it's a different story, but Rabbit's only two.) Not only am I allowed into the room, I'm allowed to lay on the bed and cuddle with Rabbit, as much as the wires will allow, anyway, and I'm encouraged to bring her favorite naptime books and whatever stuffed animal or blanket she may require.

See, this is one of those times when I love progress with a fiery passion.

Next up is an MRI two weeks from now, and then a meeting with the pediatric neurologist. This sounds scary, but it's really good, because it means that instead of being tut-tutted into silence, our concerns about her predisposition toward a seizure disorder are actually being listened to. Always a good thing. At least, that's what I keep telling myself to keep from nibbling my fingernails to the quick.

"Here's a project we're working on to gather Katrina data. Donated money? Please donate a little time. Join the Katrina PeopleFinder Project. It's easy. All you need is an internet connection and the ability to copy data into a form.
After Katrina, many friends and family members have been separated and left with no clear way to find each other. Hundreds of internet web sites are gathering hundreds, and probably thousands, of entries about missing persons or persons who want to let others know they're okay.

The problem is: the data on these sites has no particular form or structure. So it's almost impossible for people to search or match things up. Plus there are dozens of sites - making it hard for a person seeking lost loved ones to search them all.

The Katrina PeopleFinder Project NEEDS YOUR HELP to enter data about missing and found people from various online sources. We're requesting as little as an hour of your time. All you need to do is help read unstructured posts about missing or found persons, and then add the relevant data to a database through a simple online form."

LINK: the PeopleFinder Volunteer page

The server was down a little earlier this evening but it's back up again. I'm off to do a little data entry before crashing.

I hadn't heard of Drinking Liberally until about five minutes ago, when I was checking old entries and found a link in a comment on the Freedom Walk (gag) entry. How is this possible? Such a cool idea, and it seems really well organized. There are "90 chapters in 39 states plus DC."

The Dupont Circle chapter in DC even has its own blog, with a Freedom Walk category and all.

Verra nice. They've also got a ticker going which lists sixty-five days until the next Virginia elections, which reminds me that I should probably do some candidate research beyond this is "Ms. X and she is in Party Y." Yes, my brain really IS that big. Now, there's no need to be jealous. Well, maybe a little.

I cannot do these things, but maybe you can:

Okay, actually, you know what? I was going to make this huge list, but everyone knows all the obvious things that can be done already. Here's a big old list from NPR, if you don't. Give money to the Red Cross, volunteer with the Red Cross, donate to other relief efforts. Just don't send THINGS unless you live really close to the affected areas -- that seems to be the main message. Which is really kind of awful because I could do that, I could give so many things and make things to give, but I guess that just has to wait. It is just so frustrating to know there are so many things you could do and not be able to do them.

I want to give blood, the one thing I know I can give that's needed, but the high blood pressure gods are frowning upon me these days. Here are a few things that I just received or didn't hear about until recently:

* I heard about a request for people in the construction/building industry to go down there. but I can't find any links, so maybe I imagined it.

* offer to give shelter to displaced hurricane victims -- you have to be within a 300-mile radius of the affected areas, though.

* clicky clicky and Oxygen will donate $1 for "Katrina Kid Relief."

This whole thing is such a mess.

I'm not getting into the political stuff except to say that this is effing ridiculous, how this is being handled and what's not being done. It is heartbreaking and a little terrifying to see what's going on down there. Let me put it this way: I fear for our country if this is our typical response to a disaster within our own borders.

And if another person implies in my presence that the people who are stuck in the disaster areas are at fault for their problems, eg they should have gotten out of there instead of apparently hanging around, I might explode. Or cry. It's fifty/fifty.

A glitter post reminded me about this: by law, we are able to obtain our credit reports from each of the three credit bureaus for FREE as of yesterday!

The new law enables consumers to request their free credit reports through a central web site, toll-free telephone line, or by mail and gives them the option of making a single request to get copies of their report from all three major credit bureaus. Consumers can order their credit reports by clicking on www.annualcreditreport.com, calling 877-322-8228, or filling out the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mailing it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.

Of course, keep in mind there are a lot of scam sites trolling for your info. That website listed there, annualcreditreport.com, is the ONLY one that's legit. If you go through the credit bureaus themselves, by the way, you still have to pay for the reports.

The Times-Picayune "breaking news" blog.

Now there are fires:

State environmental officials confirmed that two fires were burning out of control Friday morning in the New Orleans area.

Rodney Mallett, communications director for the Department of Environmental Quality, said a warehouse that is used to store discarded oil products was on fire in the 3500 block of Chartres Street.

The second fire was located on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish, but he could not give a location or details about the blaze.

Also, if you can rassle control of a bus (or can manage to talk a school system into letting their buses be used to save people's lives):

"If you want to save a life get a bus down here," said Carter, whose district includes the French Quarter. "I'm asking the American people to help save a wonderful American city." Her voice cracking with emotion and her eyes bloodshot from fatigue and distress, Carter said pledges of money and other assistance are of secondary importance right now to the urgent need for transportation.

"Don't give me your money. Don't send me $10 million today. Give me buses and gas. Buses and gas. Buses and gas," she said. "If you have to commandeer Greyhound, commandeer Greyhound. … If you don't get a bus, if we don't get them out of there, they will die."

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, who is coordinating federal relief efforts on behalf of the National Guard, could not say when people can expect to be rescued.

We made a tiny land deal and should be getting a check next week (hopefully); I will finally be able to give something then. For now, all I can do is the small stuff. Most of the stuff I'm doing has to do with making long-term changes, mostly prompted by the whole "global warming = more disasters like this" idea. For instance, we're (or I should say "I'm," since Ben isn't really too involved at this point):

* getting the compost bin put in place. I've been saving scraps for a month in the freezer; I really want to get the thing STARTED already.

* recycling again. it got stalled with all the moving around, but now that we're in place I can get it rolling again.

* making less car trips. this is kind of hard, because I don't make that many to begin with, since it takes such a long time to get anywhere and gas is so high up. but instead of making trips on the weekend to grocery shop we'll be doing it on one of my work days, when I'm already in town.

* going to the library six miles away instead of the one that's maybe fifteen miles away. that's a small change, but everything helps, I guess. I would try biking to it, even, but the road we live on is a little to dangerous to bike down with a toddler.

* dropping the consumerism and getting more involved in the DIY community. I'm already pretty DIY-minded, but haven't acted on it very much. and you know, I like prettiness so much that it's hard to not be all consumer-y. but I'll try.

* and I'll be donating more to the food banks, charities, etc. around here, because I always seem to forget about them until something bad happens. once my blood pressure drops again, I'll be giving blood regularly.

When everything gets settled to the point that stuff can be donated, I'll do that too, but for now all I can do is try to leave a smaller footprint. Sort of lame but it gets a little good done, anyway.

Everything falls apart just when you need it to stay in one piece, huh?

Rabbit's EEG was abnormal, which on the one hand is good because it means whatever's messed up will be dealt with instead of pshawed. My mom had to deal with the pshawing when I was younger, and apparently it's extremely frustrating. However, this means more medical bills and more tests. And possibly having to give Rabbit long-term meds, which bites extremely hard.

Gas was at $3.29 this morning, and I'm sure it will go higher since it's been jumping every twelve hours, pretty much. It's ridiculous. I'd move closer to work if houses closer to work didn't cost upwards of $300,000. I might look into buying a small used car if we can get the house refinanced, but I have bad luck with small used cars and I'm not too optimistic about the refinancing thing, either. I wish hybrids were cheaper. Anyway, so the farmers' market is out this weekend, because I can't make the half-hour trip into town just for the farmers' market. That actually bums me out quite a bit; I look forward to it all week.

Ben is being a complete asscat. I don't know if it's stress or what, but he started up one of his infamous fights last night and still isn't speaking to me. Which is, as you can imagine, not so bad since when he was speaking last night it was kind of not that great. Seriously, with everything happening in the world, TOYS ON THE FLOOR are worth a big blown-out fight?

So even though in the grand scheme of things my life is almost peachy, I'm actually feeling pretty crappy right now. If you know me in real life, I'm sorry I'm not more fun these days. I'm working on it, but it's going to take a while.

Crafters United is an Etsy shop with a goal of raising $5,000 for the American Red Cross's hurricane relief fund. All the items are donated by caring crafters and the idea behind it is so nice it makes me want to make out with the crafty world.

The original goal, $1,000, was surpassed the first day, and it's not even the end of the second day and they've already raised over $2,000. And again: all proceeds from Crafters United's sales are being donated to the Red Cross. Awesome, yes? Yes.

I can't post pics from this computer, but this checkbook cover from Yatta is my favorite thing yet (I've only seen half of the shop so far, though). Why does this have to be the month I don't have any money? Aargh. So I can't afford to buy anything this week, but I figured spreading the word is at least something, right?

Sometimes I love this craft community I've stumbled in on more than I thought possible.