Are you looking for Love?
If so, on my way to the office yesterday, I saw a billboard you might be interested in.

"Sofa and Love - $400."

"If it's something I used when I was younger, it doesn't belong in a museum."

That's pretty much what Siriosa said during Saturday's Gathering of Light. I had mentionned that card punchers, which we both used in olden days, were never seen by a younger co-worker of mine outside of a technology museum.

My wife and I saw Avatar last night.
She loved it.
Me?

Blah.

There will be a New Shinies post, but it will come in two parts. The necklace-crowns and the first batch of earrings will go up tonight late, and pendants and more earrings will go up tomorrow.

And Charlotte and I succeeded in prepping the Little Bitty Magpies and Great Big Magpies and a little of the Mother Of All Magpies... for February. Which is another sort of progress, and a very good sort. We're using the little notebook computer's inventory program to calculate things this year, and it's taking a bit to get used to it, but it's definitely an improvement. I will try to photograph some of the beads later this week to show any of you who are curious. MOAMs are already sold out, but there are some GBMs and LBMs left.

Back to talking about the upcoming New Shinies, though: there are pieces using the new charms I got, which means there are earrings with keys, and earrings with octopi, and earrings with spoons. (I plan to make a few spoon pendants, too, because it wants doing.) And more. You'll see.

And now Jay's sick too. I'm so done.

I love today's xkcd!

Courtland Milloy is the WashPost's black columnist who mostly writes about black things. Today's column is about Avatar and uses Annalee Newitz's story on io9 to compare to his ideas.

We have news that Robert Byrd is back in form after his recent illness and is doing fine getting in and voting.

Finally, some of you probably remember the Salahis, the couple who crashed the State Dinner for India. The WashPost has just put out a series of very revealing articles on them.

This is from 1999 and even if the rest of it doesn't sound good to you, is worth watching to see Shatner do Julius Caesar in hip-hop near the end.

Two young boys, Mark and Robert, have Captain Kirk/William Shatner as their dream superhero. He can fix everything for them. When the boys grow up, they get into the film business themselves. Neither of them are very satisfied by what they're doing and then they run into Shatner in a bookstore. He tells them he wants to do Julius as a musical with him playing all the parts but Calpurnia. They go through the actresses they think might make a good Calpurnia, but don't really think Shatner should do it.

Both guys want to date/mate, but Mark is too uneasy to really settle down and Robert puts too much into his collection of action figures and his ego to keep women. When Mark turns 30, he dreams about Logan's Run, and Robert throws him a surprise party and that's where Shatner hip-hops with The Rated R and his posse.

This is a great movie about geeks, love, fantasy, and fitting in to real life. I highly recommend it.

The snow on top of the van melted into a triangle that looks like a mohawk (particularly since the snow & van are both white) and the top is about six inches today.

I dropped a DVD by the post office and went to Kaiser to get my H1N1 shot and pick up the 75mcg levothroid that the primary ordered Friday. It turns out that there's a national shortage of levothroid and they're back-ordered on 75mcg, so they gave me 50mcg with 1.5 as many as usual, and a pill cutter. I almost turned it back because I have 50mcg at home -- that's what I've been taking for the last three months -- and getting it from the pharmacy is $3 more than getting it in the mail. On the other hand, getting a new pill cutter is a good thing, so I went ahead and got it there.

The line was very long when I got to the pharmacy and there were only two booths open, so I did what I'd been told to do the last time that happened -- walk up to one of the booths and tell them I can't stand long enough to stand at the end of the line -- and that worked for the pharmacy clerk, but I did get mean looks from the people in line.

Junie just dashed at Spirit and hissed. And things had been working so well.

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

I've always celebrated Festivus, although it was not named exactly that earlier on in my life, and I'm in the Reform branch.

It starts with Feats of Grievances the day before, where I review how the past year has gone*.Today, Festivus itself, will have a Dinner with family and an Airing of Strengths**, because those make for much better conversations.

For those doing traditional Festivus: Happy Festivus to All, and to all a good Gripe!



-----------------------------
* Pretty well, actually.  Been involved in launching a non-profit.  A few kerfuffles and glitches occurred, but nothing that was, in retrospect, unexpected. Where said k&g were caused by other people, I've spoken with them to hear what went funny. Nothing left unspoken or outstanding on the grievances list, therefore. Yay.

** Launched a non-profit. Wrote for money. Continued consulting. Threw a party. Participated on a Panel at Worldcon. Saw the oldest living being in the world. Drove 100mph. Helped out. Conversed deeply. Made analogies.

I got to sleep in this morning (ah, bliss!).  When my alarm went off at nine, I was dreaming that I had just happened upon a "Super Toys R Us," (Like a Super Target or a Super Big K), that was 8 stories tall with each floor being a different kind of toy, and I had just gotten the last parking place and was stepping into the elevator.

I decided to sleep for another hour, and promptly went back to dreaming.  This time I was living in a nice apartment building by the sea, which was a few stories deep--all underground with the top floor/entrance at sea level--and a hurricane was about to hit.

GRR. Where is my 8-story toy store, dammit?

I'm working at our group's Bay Area office this week, instead of 1000 miles away, but there are time when I feel that I might as well be 1000 miles away. I've only briefly seen my boss so far because he's so busy. We actually had to schedule an appointment to make sure we meet. That'll happen today. I'm a bit nervous, but I'm hoping things will be said that promise an improvement to my current professional situation. If I do, I won't be able to post about it until tonight because their office is set up to block anything that smells like a blog. No, I don't know what a blog smells like either.

Bye for now.

On Sunday afternoon, I went to San Francisco because it was my first-ever chance to see Hitchcock's North by Northwest on the big screen. The first thing I saw when I came out from underground were a bunch of men coiffed with Santa hats and doing some vigorous square dancing. Yes, I was in the Castro District - how did you guess? It had taken me less time getting to the Castro Theater from across the Bay than I had expected so I found myself watching the last part of Hitchcock's 1930s film of The 39 Steps. There was something poignant about the main character's speech for peace, knowing what was going to happen a few years later. And there was something a bit dissonant, during the interlude, with a "Happy Holidays!" slide projected on the theater's screen while listening to Bernard Hermann's Vertigo score.

Then North by Northwest began.

Sure, I know the movie by heart, but, like I said earlier, it was the chance of seeing it on the big screen. Also, there is something connecting to observing the reactions of the rest of the audience, which laughed where it was supposed to laugh, proving it's not just me who enjoyed the witty exchanges found in one of Hitchcock's best.

The experience was slightly marred by a head, mind you. You see, the Castro Theater is an old movie house. It means that, if anyone as tall or taller than you sits right in front of you, it is rather annoying to have part of the picture blocked out. There may be a good reason why the young man never tried to sink into his chair to make himself less prominent. It may be that he is so used to the steep slopes of modern theaters that he never thought his cranium might be something of a visual obstruction in other settings. Or maybe he did, but he has back problems that make it impossible for him to slouch. Either possibility is better than thinking he might be a blankhole whose only concern is himself.

Ah well.

"That's funny. That plane is dustin' crops where there ain't no crops."

Bill was a founding member of the Houston Area Traditional Dance Society; he and his wife Oletia had been contradancing for over 50 years. Bill also had one of the most inexhaustible funds of really bad corny jokes that it has ever been my dubious pleasure to encounter! I used to dig out all my old shaggy-dog puns to throw back at him, and he loved every one of them. He will be missed.

This entry was originally posted at http://stardreamer.dreamwidth.org/561080.html. I prefer that you comment here if you read it here.

I've been working. (That's the Habu papery 2mm linen ribbon in there, after crocheting and wetting and drying and distressing and silver wireworking and all sorts of things. It's very reminiscent of old carbon paper. Quite interesting.)

There will be at least a few New Shinies tomorrow evening.

We got a medium truck with plow, front-loader, and dump truck today, as well as a couple of guys with shovels. They cleared out mostly around my van, but I still had about eight inches of snow on top and on the windshield so I asked Lucila if I could hire her husband to get the snow off the van and he came to do it without being paid. He couldn't reach the center of the top, but I didn't dump any off on other cars and I think a lot will melt tomorrow. I can call Kaiser tomorrow about the H1N1 vaccine.

I headed to the ATM for money and then remembered that I have enough money for the rest of the week, as long as I don't go to the grocery store. I don't really need anything on my list and there's nothing on sale or that I have a coupon for, so I think I won't go. It took me a couple of tries to get the mail -- they hadn't really cleared anything other than the sidewalk near it, and I had to run the van up on some snow to get to the one clear spot on the edge of the sidewalk and then right before the clusterboxes, a big piece of snow had fallen from a tower of snow. I just sort of pushed along under it.

Spirit has been sleeping a lot and not eating the dry food right when I give it to her since she started the Prozac. But today she was awake until now, ate right when I put the dry food on the bottom shelf of the end table, came out and sat on my lap after the errands, and when Junie went by, put her face out to say Hi. I hope that means the Prozac is starting to work.

The SFBC flier came today and the Science Fiction Quick Takes are all Fantasy: five by Kim Harrison, one ghost, one magician, one dragon, and one mythical bestiary. There's not a bit of SF in that. Oh, hmmmm. I didn't even look at the Fantasy: Haldeman, Bradbury, Scarborough & McCaffrey, etc. I bet they swapped the headers.

Here's a tool that Soren and I need!

Please comment there.

Ian McDonald's Desolation Road. Dzur, Jhegaala, Iorich.

So, yesterday morning I settled in to get some grading done after making myself a hearty protein-filled breakfast, and I suddenly found myself running upstairs to the bathroom as my breakfast resurfaced. (And boy, will I be glad when our downstairs half-bath is in!) It appears the stealth stomach bug that Cassie came down with last Thursday night had found me. The next few hours, I degenerated fast: 101.8 temp, chills and shivering. Seriously, I couldn't get warm. I had 3 blankets on me, and then I gave up and headed for a hot shower, which I probably stayed in for too long, and then I finally called Jay to come home because I was worried about falling asleep uncontrollably and not being able to take care of the baby. He came home and gave me a chance to sleep for about 2 hours, but he had a 4pm meeting and no way to get a hold of the client to cancel. The sleeping warmed me up enough that the shivering stopped, and I started feeling a bit better. The fever bopped around in the evening, and I attempted to eat again. That resulted in many wakings overnight to empty the contents of my stomach again as my bowels turned to water. Ick.

I'm much better today. The fever's been gone since this morning, and my stomach's not 100% yet, but improved. I've mostly been worried about dehydration. The fever, vomiting, diarrhea and nursing on top of that has pretty much drained me of all fluids. I've been trying, drinking water, ginger ale, and gatorade almost constantly, but I still feel very dry, and I have a bit of a headache. Oh, and I still don't have the grading done. Or Christmas cards sent. Or presents wrapped. I managed to send Cassie off with her gifts for teachers and daycare provider this morning, but that's about it.

Also? Watching Kill Bill while 3 weeks postpartum and having a four-year-old daughter? Not recommended.