|
|
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
| |
6:32 pm - Well, I guess it's about time... Politics as Unusual
|
|
| Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
| |
6:40 pm - In A World of Movie Trailers... OBIT
|
|
| Monday, September 1st, 2008
| |
12:05 am - Collateral Damage Intro Chapter Redux
|
I posted this a year ago for those of you on the WRITING filter (if anyone wants on it who wasn't, let me know).
I am reposting it here for all to see.
It's an irony thing.
( Read more... )
current mood:  contemplative
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, August 31st, 2008
| |
11:57 pm - Raleigh Quattro - Just some musings
|
Still on schedule to go home Wednesday. My dad is still eating (barely, but eating), his voice is shot, he forgets things (appts, pill time), and I have no sense at all whether I have to come back in two weeks or not. We're looking into options (Lifeline.com, medicare/home care).
A little FlyLady (www.flylady.net) thought for you: Nothing says I love you to your family than a clean bathroom, especially when you feel sick. I cleaned all the bathrooms in the house. They needed it, especially my dad's. He wasn't gonna let me do it yesterday then changed his mind this morning and explained basically without TMI that he wasn't feeling good and wasn't too proud of the condition he'd put it in (It wasn't as bad as he said, or he pre cleaned it on me). But when you feel like ass and have to put your face in a toilet, isn't it nicer that you smell pine and flowers than other yuck?
yeah.
it's the little things in life.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, August 30th, 2008
| |
3:22 pm - Writer's Block: What You'd Accomplish if Success Was Guaranteed
|
|
Cure Cancer, win the lottery, and get my life back on track.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
3:10 pm - Raleigh Bound A Trois - New Update
|
We've finished one round of chemo yesterday; three days.
Thank you everyone for your well-wishes and prayers. My Dad, all things considered for the immediate moment, seems to be doing very well. He has more appetite and energy than he did. Once in a while his voice is stronger.
Do not mistake this for him doing well overall though in that this type of cancer he has, does not go away. We will have to do this battle several more times. He will have more chemo in 4-6 weeks, depending on what the doctor says.
I am staying in NC until Wednesday when my Aunt comes for two weeks. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) majorarcanumxii will come pick me up. So far I still have a job. If I tell them this next part, I worry what they will say, however.
I honestly don't know what I am going to do after the two weeks. I am not comfy with him being alone, but me moving to NC and him moving to ATL are not viable options, and he's not really willing to do that kind of drama, expense and hassle.
I've looked into Lifeline.com, and intend to look into Home Care (Just some warm body to pop in, make sure he ate and took his meds and his temperature is normal and stuff). He has medicare so I have no clue what they pay for.
In this election year, you bet your ass I am watching things like this as far as legislation to give relief for things like this. In my parents' generation, people could afford to get a house with a mother in law suite if they needed it, and that was done a lot. Or kids and parents could live in the same area. Now, they couldn't afford to retire to DC and I couldn't afford to stay there, and now we are all spread out. I'm an only child, and many of his relatives are gone, and none of them are in NC, they are in PA and CT where he grew up.
Also it's a generational thing. I was adopted late; usually a person who does elder care for someone pushing 80, is almost 60 themselves. They're usually married, with grown children, in a position to move, move someone closer, take off work, etc. I'm kinda none of those things.
I'm hanging in there. Thank you for the moral support. This is one battle in a long assed war.
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
| |
8:44 am - Raleigh Bound Redux - First Update
|
|
| Sunday, August 24th, 2008
| |
8:53 pm - Raleigh Bound - Emergency
|
|
Sorry if some of you get this multiple times. To all it may concern, Sorry for the form letter feel but I have much to do. I received a phone call earlier tonight from North Carolina.
My father is extremely ill. He never asks for anything, and he asked for me to come home.
I do not know precisely what this means yet but it is serious.
I will leave probably Monday, and I do not know how long I will be up there yet.
I should have computer access, a landline and my cellphone, so I can be reached. If any of you do not HAVE this contact information and feel you need it, write me tonight and tell me before I get going, though if you email me too late, I should see it in NC. I do not know a lot more than this right now, and will keep those who are interested, posted.
current mood:  depressed
|
|
(14 comments | comment on this)
|
| Friday, August 15th, 2008
| |
12:27 pm - Pot? Kettle Calling. Still Black. Film at 11. - John Edwards
|
I know these quotes have already made the rounds of my more politically astute friends, but I love snark and political snark most of all, so I must capture these for myself.
I have had many arguments with people to the effect of "who cares who (politician) is screwing as long as he does his job?"
I care. The below is why.
“I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter.” — US Senator John Edwards, quoted by the Raleigh News & Observer FEB 12, 1999, said of President Bill Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinsky
Interview with Katie Couric: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/19/courics-candidate-questi_n_77448.html
COURIC: Harry Truman said, "A man not honorable in his marital relations is not usually honorable in any other." Some people don't feel comfortable supporting a candidate who has not remained faithful to his or her spouse. Can you understand their position?
EDWARDS: Of course. I mean, for a lot of Americans-- including the family that I grew up with, I mean, it's-- it's fundamental to-- how you judge people and human character-- whether you keep your word, whether you keep what is your ultimate word, which is that-- you love-- your spouse, and you'll stay with them.
......
COURIC: So you think it's-- an appropriate way to judge a candidate?
EDWARDS: Yeah.
Et tu, Brute.
current mood:  snarky
current music: Blackmore's Night - Diamonds & Rust
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, August 7th, 2008
| |
11:10 am - GUESS WHO'S COMING HOME TOMORROW?!
|
Yesh. (See Icon). the 8th - 19th.
It will be a glorious time, full of much win.
current mood:  excited
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
11:07 am - Paris vs. McCain
|
I know some of you have already seen this but I hadn't until this morning.
I do not normally think very much of Paris Hilton, but this has the sort of career-saving self-depricating humour as William Shatner on Priceline. It's kind of cute, actually.
current mood: amused
current music: I Dreamed A Dream - Les Miserables
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
| |
10:48 pm - NAIL IN THE FENCE: A Passaround
|
Thanks to lucv_cate for sending me this!
The story below is why I do not like the saying, "It's easier to say sorry than get permission."
NAIL IN THE FENCE
There once was a little boy who had a bad temper.
His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.
The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.
The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say "I'm sorry", the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one."
current mood: hopeful
current music: Night Ranger - Sister Christian
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
| |
1:41 am - GENEALOGY: The Tale of Ner Middleswarth
|
Some of you know that I am a fairly involved (when I have time) genealogist.
My Dad's people have a famous Congressional ancestor who has been misrepresented for years in the Congressional Directory and subsequently Wikipedia and online sources proliferated the wrong data for years.
My cousins and I banded together and pooled our data and made them change it.
You have to truly appreciate what a daunting and theoretically impossible task this was.
One of our cousins is a writer for a national digital genealogy group. He covered our fight to correct history, and the article just came out. It is just completely full of win. I'm very excited about it, though a bit embarassed he captured me calling Congress stupid (well they were!).
He says:
Friends and Cousins,
The article about your quest to repair Ner Middleswarth's biography is now available online.
Use this link: http://www.digitalgenealogist.com/current.html . Once there, click on Genealogy Action Committee. Incidentally, you're welcome to read any of the other stories with active links as well.
Thank you all for your help with this story. It was a fun project, thanks to you, and I think it may awaken other online genealogists to the potentials for fixing their own histories.
Best,
Richard Aurand Sherer
Go see!
PS: Trivia note. This line makes us kin to Tom Brokaw (the Broucards married into the ancestors of the Middleswarths, and also Paul Harvey (whose real name is Paul Harvey Aurand).
current mood:  accomplished
current music: I Fought The Law (And The Law Won)
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, July 20th, 2008
| |
1:40 pm - What Price Freedom? NEWS ITEM/POLITICS: Soldier in famous photo never defeated 'demons'
|
I have known that the military doesn't truly do enough for their charges for a long time now. The question is, where is the most constructive place to put all this outrage? The story below sadly is nowhere near unique. The below is a possibility that every serviceman and woman faces, for us and for this country. I feel stupid getting mad about it without a place to go be mad AT, though. Suggestions?
Soldier in famous photo never defeated 'demons'
By ALLEN G. BREED and KEVIN MAURER, Associated Press Writers
PINEHURST, N.C. - Officers had been to the white ranch house at 560 W. Longleaf many times before over the past year to respond to a "barricade situation." Each had ended uneventfully, with Joseph Dwyer coming out or telling police in a calm voice through the window that he was OK. But this time was different.
current mood:  pissed off
current music: Nena - 99 Luftballons
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, July 13th, 2008
|
5:44 pm - Crossposted to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) good_rpers_rock : It is delicious LARP. You must try some.
|
Thank you to an ever growing laundry list of OWBN LARP people who are finally making years of RP work pay off!
Thank you for putting fish on plot hooks.
Thank you for including the small sheets in important stories.
Thank you to STs who use the little weird plot devices all over my character sheet.
Thank you to responsive players who follow up scenes with more meaningful, plot advancing roleplay.
Thank you for not metagaming, powergaming, or rollplaying.
anvilchorus, ashestoheroes, bioascension, blackrevenant, dempcat, drgnsyr,
drowsy_poppy, forbiddenkisss, iamthewin, illannoyed, irrevocablyme</div>kaylin, madjulyin, majorarcanumxii, opaquedelusions, perpetuallysad, rojir, shadow_heart, sheniver, sidhedevil, thisspacevacant, violindmb, whiteymcdrow & zerhanna</div> and anyone else who might be reading this and I might mean you too and just don't know your LJ username yet! :)
You guys are my reason to put on my biker boots every other weekend.
current mood:  inspired
|
|
(9 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
5:05 pm - Quiz stolen from dempcat - The Attachment Style Test
|
|
Your result for The Attachment Style Test... The Error Message44% Anxiety and 26% Avoidance! You seem to have fallen through a tiny crack in my scoring system. Stand by. I'm working on it. Take The Attachment Style Test at HelloQuizzy
This explains so much about my life.
current mood:  indescribable
current music: Daniel, Servant Of the Lord (Spiritual)
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| |
3:43 pm - General updateness.
|
Still not working. As in times past, a couple of interviews and temp assignments that do not come through. As in times past, my agency swears on a stack of Bibles that I am not doing anything wrong or that needs changing. I still send out a few resumes a week, even to places that are kind of a long shot, just in case.
The house is still slowly coming together. We have a chores system now, which appears to be helping. It's not up to speed just yet (as in everything getting done) but it is a mountain better than Pre Chores List. The roomie now has an LJ illannoyed and a new bed (pets Craigslist and Freecycle). You'd have to be seriously asleep to have missed the memo but majorarcanumxii moved in in May (psycho wife drama). Pass the popcorn...
Working on stuff for our online roleplaying game as well as LARP, which has gotten very interesting of late. The LARP people here were very quick to include us and make us feel welcome when we were new, and maybe it's just due to living closer to game but many come to hang out and visit, and even (4th of July) stay over. I have many new LJ and Facecrack pals now. Whee.
Sanctuary is becoming a reincarnation of what it once was many years ago before I got divorced and everything fell apart - I've said for a long time that there is just only so much even a sincerely trying person can do to pull their life back together without some help, and I just had more than I could carry going on. Once we moved out of Hamilton, things have started to take off. The house is in phenomenally better shape, I've lost weight and am eating better, I'm less stressy (not as little as I'd like but better than I was), things are cleaner and more organized and we're going out and having people over, even with money being tight.
My daughter is coming down in August for two weeks before Fall Semester begins. This will be a thing of beauty.
There is HYPOTHETICAL talk about us going up to DC sometime in Sept or Oct for a few days. More to come.
I was talking with brute_force about how some people in this world get handed a lot of bad crap to deal with and they just do what needs to get done, while others crumple and shut down over so little. What I have noticed is that even though there are still some things that seriously need to get dealt with over here, it is less scary than it was. It's coming back to "just get it done" mode, finally. There's still some big stressy things left but finally I can see a path to getting them dealt with. This hasn't happened in a long time.
So what is new with everyone?
current mood:  mischievous
current music: Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
|
|
(8 comments | comment on this)
|
| Friday, June 27th, 2008
| |
12:25 pm - Zombie Goodness Updates!
|
|
Tony Todd in Talks to Topline 'Dawn of the Dead 2'!
20 May 2008 3:57 PM, PDT | From bloody-disgusting.com | See recent Bloody-Disgusting.com news The other day the Hollywood Reported confirmed this story that Producer Richard Rubinstein is planning a direct sequel to George A. Romero's legendary Dawn of the Dead, which ends with the survivors hopping in a helicopter and taking off to who knows where. We got the inside scoop this morning that star Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destinations, Hatchet) is in talks to star in the sequel to the film, which told the story of four people's escape from an urban nightmare to a suburban one. They barricade themselves in a shopping mall and try to start new lives. Todd starred as Ben in Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night Of The Living Dead.
Escape of the Living Dead (2009)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1227143/
Starring Tony Todd (Ben in the 1990 Remake of Night)
What's kinda weird/interesting also is that Richard's name isn't on Escape but Tony Todd's is, with John Russo who bought the "Living Dead" franchise and keeps competing with George's movies... yet Tony is supposed to be working with RICHARD, and yet he is starring in Escape... are there two competing movies coming out next year?
And apparently Russo did a comic of this back in 2005 (I'm not a huge comic fan so I completely missed this before): http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Living-Dead-John-Russo/dp/1592910343/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214584434&sr=8-2
as well as a second sequel, Escape of the Living Dead: Resurrected
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Living-Dead-John-Russo/dp/1592910475/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214584630&sr=1-1
This all started because of a link a friend showed me on Rubenstein suing Capcom over Dead Rising, the video game. While the game is kinda cool, I am not sure that Rubenstein doesn't have a point - putting a disclaimer saying you have no connection to Dawn of the Dead doesn't absolve you entirely from culpability for using that image.
And while it's hard to say one can copyright "a shopping mall", let's face it; when you say Mall and Zombies you think of George Romero and Dawn, period end of story, that's become iconic.
Half the idiots posting on here do not even understand who Richard IS never mind that he has been involved in Romero's franchise since Laurel Entertainment put out the original Dawn. They act like he is some uninvolved studio suit. Jerks.
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/deadrising/news.html?sid=6186724&om_act=convert&om_clk=gsupdates&tag=updates;title;1
current mood: frustrated
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, June 23rd, 2008
| |
3:14 am - OBIT - The end of an era... George Carlin
|
|
| Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
| |
11:21 pm - NEWS ITEM / HEALTH / SCIENCE: Healthy lifestyle triggers genetic changes: study
|
|
Healthy lifestyle triggers genetic changes: study I've been taking supplements and detoxing and eating better lately and it appears to be helping; though the scale doesn't seem to move much, my measurements are. (Yeah I know, sometimes that's muscle). Seeing this article was one more reason to stay with it.
current mood: hopeful
current music: Alison Krause - Down In the River To Pray
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
apprehensive