Just wondering... what kind of yield would we be talking about if it were possible to gather all of the 4th of July fireworks* set off in the U.S. in a given year, and set them off at one time, as one big explosion?

*except those lame ash snake things--they don't count.

We spent much of the day out in the yard pulling weeds and spreading mulch. The city delivers mulch for free on request, so we have a huge mound of it out in the yard and we're trying to salvage all the islands and beds in the yard. (When we rented the place a year ago, most of the landscaping had long since returned "to the wild" and we've been fighting an uphill battle ever since.) After getting hot, sweaty, and covered in dirt (whee!) we had showers and then stared blankly at each other. The sun had sort of fried us for the day. We had ambitious plans for doing some work around the house (we have friends coming over tomorrow evening) but didn't feel up to it.

So we went to a local pizza place, which came highly reviewed in various Google searches. We'd initially planned on eating there but the Family From Hell and their 97 screaming children were there before us so we ordered to go and waited outside on the patio. The pizza was meh. It was ok if you loaded it up with Parmesan cheese, garlic salt, and red pepper flakes. Otherwise it was bland beyond belief. The crust was also too hard. Ah well. The breaded, fried mushrooms were yummy.

We ate that while starting to watch Life of Brian but soon we were both dozing off, so we put the movie on hold until we were more alert and went out to the yard to lay in the hammock instead. It was nice and cool outside and the hammock is, as hammocks always are, divine. We both dozed off. In all we were in the hammock almost an hour and a half. We came inside, got some grapes, and sat on the screened porch watching the fireflies for an hour or so. We tried to get the cats to watch them, but they seemed uninterested (even when I brought a few in from outside! Lazy cats...) then Dan headed up to bed.

I've been listening to the neighborhood set off illegal fireworks for the last ninety minutes, and will be attempting to go to bed myself in a few minutes.

Its about Malcom Reynolds in rubber gloves and Doogie Howser in goggles. And they fight crime.

My padded envelopes arrived, which means the sale post is back open! You get a head start - not posting to the communities til Monday. Tons of rares. Also tons of GCs. Please take them!

Adam's off at a gaming day, and I'm... hangin' out. Hi. How's by you? **twiddles thumbs** **whistles tunelessly**

Medical
Doubling my dose of Toprol did the trick; no more cardiac issues. And no appreciable increase in side effects.

Otherwise, it's been a decent week, healthwise. So decent that I tried to get extra exercise yesterday and, um, no. So I'm very ouchy today.

I described this thusly to my mom: "Imagine you're on a tightrope. No, wait - imagine that tightrope on the ground. Lying in the mud, so you can barely feel it. And you have to walk that tightrope, on your tiptoes. The ground on either side is variable and untrustworthy. In some areas, you can jump off and dance a jig. Some are quicksand. And you have no way of telling which is which. So there's no way you can even be careful. You're always just one step away from a flare, and you never know which step that's going to be."

So that's me, on my tiptoes, trying to dance anyway. In any case, other than the muscle strain from yesterday's exercise, I'm fine.

Story
Story is marinating, gestating. Three at once, actually. Triplets!

Blogathon!
Artifacts are arriving! Got awesome stuff from ultra_lilac, aaronace, pharminatrix, and shrijani this week. I'm going to have lots of fun writing these stories...

I am really fortunate to have such gifted and generous friends and readers. We raised over $3,000 last year with just a few auctions and, of course, the writing. Will this be the year we break $5K? I really hope so. Going through the training for BARCC really brought home what amazing work they do - not just helping people in crisis, but working toward prevention. Much to say about that. Probably Monday. Anyway, if you make stuff, do consider being part of this. It's going to kick ass. :)

And yes, I will be making at least one artifact myself...

Pants are bankrupt
So tell me what's been going on in your world.

Elayna
Last night was her first sleepover night. Between last night's movie night, tonight's dance, and tomorrow and Sunday's trips, I'm spending four days without seeing her. I know, she usually goes to Florida for the summer; I should be more accustomed to being without her! But it's weird having her just half an hour away, and I want to hug her, I want to listen to her talk about all the cool stuff she's doing. *sigh* I miss my girl. But she's having a great time.

Daily Science
As MESSENGER flew past the night side of Mercury in January, its Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) scooped up ions from an atmosphere so tenuous that it's usually called an "exosphere." FIPS measured the expected amounts of ions like sodium, potassium, and calcium that had previously been detected in Mercury's exosphere, but to the science team's great surprise there was also water present, and in large amounts. "Nobody expected that. I don't know a single person that did. We were astonished, just astonished," said MESSENGER science team member Thomas Zurbuchen.

Daily BPAL
( Stormclouds Over the Midway, Knucklebones, L'Heure Verte, The Blockhead )

Friday memage!
Wearing: Jeans and "Epilepsy: Seize the Day!" t-shirt. Hey, I'm Seizure Lass, I can joke.

Reading: New Space Opera, Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everyone, still slogging through The Fibromyalgia Advocate (useful, but somewhat demoralizing), and about to start Laurie Edwards' Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in your Twenties and Thirties.

Writing: Gestating, as I said. Two stories getting ready to come out, and one will be considerably longer than my usual; the third referenced above is a significant change to an existing story.

Planning: eustaciavye's birthday brunch on Sunday. Otherwise? Nothing. Anything fun happening this weekend?

What are y'all up to?

Jesse Helms died yesterday.

I can think of no one more suited to deliver his eulogy than the late Molly Ivins.

The Wikipedia entry for Gadsby is (currently, at least) almost a lipogram itself (and would be, if it didn't mention the missing letter at least once).

(Ganked from qaqaq.)

Bush's latest disaster tour:
( Read more... )

Friday's comic went up on schedule. I'm on FIRE, people!

Don't forget the Molson-swilling moose

• Happy Independence Day to my U.S. readers, and welcome to the weekend for everyone else! I thought about trying to do something to mark the holiday, but decided against it because for one thing, "Scandal Sheet!" time has come completely unstuck from the real world, and also they're way too far into the woods to be able to see any fireworks.


• I'm trying to make my characters' clothes look a little more real. The results are uneven so far; I think Foster looks really good in panels one and two, but I wish I'd spent more time on Max's shirt. Also, Max stepped into a hole between panels three and four. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


• I have the day off today, so hopefully I'll have time to finally upload L.S. Taylor's wonderful fan fic this morning. Cross your fingers.

Happy Fourth to those that celebrate it... 

For me, though, today is importante because my dog turns 4.  :)

Today I laughed at Dan.

I laughed a lot. I may have even fallen over laughing. His CPAP machine arrrived today, you see. A lot of people in his family have sleep apnea, and he is showing signs of it. His insurance does not cover any kind of sleep disorders, and the sleep study is thousands of dollars. His doctor was willing to write an Rx for the machine, however, since there really isn't any harm in using it even if you don't have sleep apnea. So he will try the machine and see if it helps.

So he puts on the mask to try it out. He looks like an elephant. Except funnier than an elephant. I giggled a lot.

Then this evening we had a fair amount to drink, then went out and sat in the hammock and watched the fireworks, which was really, really nice. After we came back in, we watched a very small amount of tv and then Dan went to bed. I went in to tuck him in and he put the mask on and hooked up the machine. Then he attached the hose to the clip at the top of his head.

I lost it. I think I started crying I was laughing so hard. The effect was something like this:


Fortunately he was laughing at least as hard. I really hope the machine works for him. He's been having so much trouble getting restful sleep.

In other news, yesterday was my one-year anniversary with the State of Nevada Office of Veterans Services, which means I'm officially off the new-hire probationary period. ^___^ Doesn't feel like a whole year has gone by, but there it is. WEWT!

(The user icon is the badge for NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command; my first duty station in the Air Force was the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex just outside of Colorado Springs CO. Yes, the same place Stargate Command is located. XD)

Holy shit! They've discovered a copy of the long-lost full print of the movie! I need to see this ASAP.

Horrible night. First, I didn't get to sleep until 2 am. Then at 3 am I woke up feeling extremely nauseated. I tried to change positions to see if it would help, but was rewarded with that familiar increase in salivation that only means one thing.

So I got myself into the bathroom, lifted the lid, pulled back my hair, and....spit. I felt on the verge of vomiting, but it just didn't happen. I almost think that's worse, because I couldn't relieve the agony in my stomach.

Then I just curled up in a ball and rested on the bathroom floor for awhile. I thought about whether it was the stir fry or the turkey sandwich, and whether the girls would be hit with it, too. I hit my head on the shower at one point, though. Eventually, I crawled back to bed and found a reasonably comfortable position. I vaguely remember Alan getting up and my asking him for some rolaids or something.

I finally got out of bed at 9:40 this morning. I feel a bit headachy and just overall achy, but the stomach is better. I have no idea what that was about, but I didn't enjoy it.

In other, better news, today is Maverick's 10th birthday. So happy birthday to my fuzzy yellow boy!

Heathcliff sat naked on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped, and morosely stared into the distance. He'd spent most of his life never setting foot outside this bleak apartment. It seemed like forever since he’d felt passionate about anything. More of his life now lay behind him than before him, and as far as he could see, his future consisted of nothing but day after day of napping, wandering from room to room, eating out of cans, and staring out the windows for hours on end. Intolerable.

Then he remembered he was a cat, and felt better about everything.


http://view.break.com/528932 - Watch more free videos

Today is the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle! So a big shout out to all you doubters out there. May your quest for truth be successful!

Also, Happy Birthday, circuit_four!

It was a year ago today that we arrived in Cleveland in the big truck with all of my stuff in it. Dan and I have been living together now for one year. Note that neither of us has killed the other. This bodes well for our future together, I'd say.

:)

We celebrated by opening a bottle of wine and sitting out on the screened porch watching lightning bugs and eating cheese & crackers and grapes. It was very nice until Cory jumped onto the table, which has a glass top, which his weight disbalanced. I managed to grab the glass and push it back into place, saving the plate and Dan's glass, but the (empty) wine bottle and my glass (not empty!!!) were not so fortunate. The bottle didn't break, but the glass became many sparkly fragments on the floor.

So we got to end our romantic evening by sweeping, vacuuming, and wet-vac'ing the floor. Alas.

Stuff you might have missed in Wall-E (I suspect there's a lot of it -- the scenes in Wall-E's home would benefit greatly from freeze-frame viewing on DVD). Ganked from yakavenger.

Neat site I stumbled on with cool pics: Childhood Fears

I hate shaving. It hurts, then my face feels chapped, but then if I don't shave for a while it gets real itchy. And yes, I have tried everything, so don't be like, "Oh, well then you're doing it wrong, you need to use a straight razor and the blood of a new born lamb!" How about you guys? Men only please, this is about FACE shaving.


Poll #1216729 How Often Do You Shave Your Face?
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

On Average, I Shave...