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  • Silvertree

    Mod post: No wishlist posts in blogs

    By Silvertree

    Please be aware that we do not permit swap-related content on profiles or in blogs. Please post this content only in the For Sale, Swaps, and Wanted forums, or in the Wishlists topic. ~from Swapping 101  Thanks!
    • 5 comments
    • 4,201 views
Gone Batty
 

It's mine!

Last month I sent in my final car payment. I can't believe I've had my car for that long but there you go. I paid a bit extra every month so I was able to pay it off five months early and save some on interest. Since I usually receive my bill at the end of the month I thought maybe the title would be showing up any day now. Just to be sure I called the car loan people and found out that it hadn't been sent yet. Hmm. I'd heard that you sometimes had to call and ask them to send it and I even had visions of them telling me I needed to pay some sort of fee to get it. But no, the nice man on the phone said they'd send it out right away and to my suprise I came home last night and found that they had fedexed it overnight. Whoot! I now have the title in my hot little hands and my car is allll mine.   That's definitely a feeling of accomplishment.
miss apple

miss apple

0
Filling the Periodic Table
 

I am *not* as badass as I pretend.

So Rusty had to go back in to work today. He left at 6, and I was expecting him at home around 8-ish.   Just before 8, I heard an indistinct scratching rattle noise outside. I thought it was Rusty digging through his pockets for his keys. To be nice, I opened the front door. Immediately, something furry ran in, and I squealed and ran out.   Anyway, I hung out in the breezeway, nearly hyperventilating, for about 10-15 minutes until he got home, and met him out in the parking lot, then explained quite panickedly about the situation and why I couldn't go back inside until he took care of the unidentified creature.   Please note we have the worlds two most useless cats. Carmen is old and very blase about such things, she would not wake up from her beauty sleep for some random woodland creature. Pushkin just gets bewildered.   Anyway, Pushkin was some use, he was able to lead Rusty to where the creature was cowering. Rusty ended up putting a box over it, and sliding another piece of cardboard underneath. We took the box out to the nearest stand of trees (our apartment complex is kind-of built around existing clumps of trees. It looks beautiful, but sometimes I feel like we're a little *too* close to nature)   It turns out the unexpected houseguest was a very cute, but completely terrified squirrel. Poor guy. I wonder what convinced him to scratch on my door to get in.
antimony

antimony

1
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

Really random, very mutant

Well, I haven't been very chatty on my blog lately. I've focused a lot of my chatting towards commenting on everyone else's blogs! You give me things to talk about without coming up with something of my own!   Hey, it's 06/06/06 and the President landed in my state a few hours ago. Hmmm... what does this say? It's ostensibly because he is going to deliver a speech on immigration tomorrow, but as a blue person in a red state, I find it significant. As in: "Oh my god, Satan has arrived!" So I exaggerate. The W. isn't clever enough to be the Old Nick. Now Dick (hmmm...Dick/Nick, Dick/Nick...)Cheney or Rumsfeld, maybe, but not W.   OK, now to drive this into the gutter, because I always go there, has anyone seen photos of Dick Cheney's package? Not that I would want to look, but the Wonkette political blog runs a few photos of it every now and then. Now we know why he isn't called Richard. However, I think he has an ostomy bag or something like that packed in front, especially in the first picture. I can't get a link to the photos, because Wonkette always redirects you to the front page of the blog. But if you want to see what I mean, google "Dick Cheney very big Wonkette." You will get hits on links to two photos of the Dickster that ran on Wonkette. You be the judge of what THAT is all about!!!
valentina

valentina

8
Filling the Periodic Table
 

My garden, 8 days later

Strawberries: These are going nowhere. Not dying, but not thriving either.   Roses: I'm so sick of these fussy bitches. I am seriously tired of the fact that the relatively benign incecticidal soap I'm using only keeps the aphids at bay for about 3 days at a time.   Habanero: It's putting out glossy green leaves all over, and there's almost a dozen buds on top.   Hanging Tomato: If you scroll down, a week ago, the plant came half way up to the hook, now they're way up there, I'm curious how huge this thing will get! It's got 2 sets of open flowers, and 2 sets of brand new buds. I will hopefully have a ton of tomatoes.   Experimental Tomato: It's clearly not thriving, but it's not dead yet either. It's also got a cluster of flowers.   Morning Glories and Moonflowers: Both have started growing vines. I'm curious just how fast they're really going to take off.
antimony

antimony

2
Emain Macha
 

Music to write by

So besides occassionally painting my character, I AM purely geeky enough to also come up with soundtracks for the novels. Wooboy, that's some good geek.   Ahem. Not even sure why I'm sharing this, except to give folks something to giggle at.   So let's see: For the fantasy novel, a typical soundtrack looks like this —   1 — Boulevard of Broken Dreams — Greenday 2 — Candy Everybody Wants — 10,000 Maniacs 3 — Everybody Knows — Concrete Blonde 4 — Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) — Eurythmics 5 — Behind Blue Eyes — The Who 6 — The Stranger — Billy Joel 7 — The House of the Rising Sun — The Animals 8 — Control — Poe 9 — Shadowman — Brother 10 — The Game — Disturbed 11 — Walking on Broken Glass — Annie Lennox 12 — Revenge — K.M.F.D.M 13 — I'm Alive — Disturbed 14 — Twelve — Seven Nations   So it's a happy kind of book. For the science-fiction novel, it doesn't get much cheerier:   1 — Hello (turn your radio on) — Shakespear's Sister 2 — Theme to a Fake Revolution — Powerman 5000 3 — Celebrity Skin — Hole 4 — Tom Sawyer — Deadsy 5 — Wild — Poe 6 — Knock a little harder — Yoko Kanno 7 — Last Things — K.M.F.D.M. 8 — Tear it up — Andrew W.K. 9 — Flaming Telepaths — Blue Oyster Cult 10 — Ask DNA — Yoko Kanno 11 — Out of Control — Hoobastank 12 — Epiphany — Bad Religion 13 — Veteran of the Psychic Wars — Blue Oyster Cult 14 — DOA — Foo Fighters
Macha

Macha

8
Emain Macha
 

TV Nation

I took the bus to work this morning, because my sweetheart is out of town for a while, and I can't drive (for a variety of reasons....it's a long story.) I used to take the bus every day to work, and it was fine, although occassionally a bit scary. And this morning was about textbook, save that the bus was a little less crowded than it can be, and there were no strange encounters of any kind.   But they had a TV on the bus. A nice big flatscreen tucked into the corner, playing a highly condensced version of Reuter's headlines.   Now I've seen this before — but generally in nicer neighborhoods (I live in the 'hood) and while I must admit that I could see the appeal, it was a bit chilling. That was, as I recall, also my reaction to first seeing telelvision monitors in the check-out lines of supermarkets. Not a sense of "hey, that's cool!" but more of a sense of unease.   I can still remember, when, as a teenager, I first realized that society was embracing the cautionary tales of cyberpunk science-fiction with open arms, that there were people who, far from being outraged or repulsed by William Gibson's societies of corporate control and vast inequity, thought that the idea of the continual survellianced society was cool. I've never met one of these people, but they must exist, because I keep seeing their handiwork, like flatscreens on grocery story check-out lines and in cars and on buses. This Max Headroom-esque idea that we should live in a society where it is impossible to escape a television screen — when did that become the rule of the day?
Macha

Macha

5
The Road to Santiago
 

Glutton with a big...stick

Oh my. I am really beat after riding in the heat today and getting lost on top of everything else. However, I found a little church in the village of Champagnolles that was just a goldmine of smut. The entire sculptural program was peppered with the most profane things, and ot a single religious image anywhere. How bizarre. The piece that really grabbed my attention was this glutton, who obviously has other things on his mind besides food.     Unbelievable. There were couples having sex, men showing their anuses, misers with money bags that looked like huge scrotums. Very graphic for church sculpture. I left and got lost, and finally made it back to the other church I was going to photograph today in the village of St.-Quantin de Ranconnes. That church had a very detailed anus-shower (that's show-er as in "one who shows"), but I have no idea why. He's over the door, so perhaps it was to usher people into the church quickly?   The strangest thing I'm noticing, though, is the lack of obscene women sculptures. There are plenty of women on the level with monsters and demons (the misogyny of some of these programs is mind-blowing), but not in lewd or sexual context. Yet one more avenue for me to explore...
Heretic

Heretic

2
Gone Batty
 

Itchiness and art

My back itches. I feel like I'm mentioning this too much in the How Are You Feeling thread so I'll expand at length here. For those of you who don't know, I got a tattoo on Friday. It was only the outline but it's pretty big so there's a lot of it and a lot left to go.   When I first made the effort to go out and start looking for an artist, finalizing ideas for a design I had no plans to get what has turned out to be a back piece (or at least two-thirds of one). My original goal was to find something to go around the larger of my two older tattoos which have faded and blurred and don't really have the same appeal to me as they once did. I went and spoke to the artist and when I came back to see her design I was instantly sold. It was wider and higher than I imagined but it was as though she just pulled the jumble of images out of my head and combined it with her own ideas to create the perfect design for me. She let me take the outline home and I looked at it every day. Instead of having reservations I found that grew more excited at the prospect of having this beautiful artwork on my back.   As the day for my appointment drew nearer I began to get anxious - what if I had a panic attack and freaked out? A small part of me wanted to wuss out but I knew I'd be hugely disappointed in myself if I did that. Luckily I had a good friend to go with me and once I got to the studio things moved so fast that I didn't really have time to stop and worry. I forgot to bring a button down shirt to wear over my front (didn't even think about it) so I ended up using a jacket I'd brought just in case I got cold. Good thing otherwise I'd have been sitting there topless. Once my back was shaved and the outline was put on I had to sit backwards on a chair and lean over the top which I shortly realized was rather uncomfortable. The moment the tattoo artist started I thought I was going to cry. It hurt so much more than I remembered! I could not imagine sitting there long enough to get the whole outline done much less adding color later on. My second thought was that there was no way my hsuband could ever sit through this. He wants to get something at some point but I honestly don't know if he could stand the it. My friend held my hand and talked to me so that I wouldn't focus on the pain so much. I thought there was little chance of that and I also didn't believe the tattooist when she said it took about ten minutes to get used to it - how could you get used to such a thing? But not too long after this thought I did start to forget and I was distracted. Some parts still really hurt; my ribs, my spine, oh my god those were the worst. At first I thought I'd want to take breaks but I started to realize that it only felt worse even after a minute and that it was better to just gut it out. Two hours later and the outline was done. I was at my limit and didn't want to push it. My back was cleaned and then the bandage was applied and I was sent home with aftercare instructions, A&D ointment, and Smarties (actually, she gave me Smarties at the beginning too). I was exhausted but pretty much unable to sleep that night. My back felt like I'd had a sunburn with road rash. I had a couple of pillows from the couch I was using to prop myself up so that I could sleep without moving too much. Apparently I kept pushing them away in the middle of the night and they'd knock stuff off the shelf over our bed and onto my husband's head during the night I did that twice   I've pretty much moved from the ouch stage to the itchy stage. I'm not sure which is worse. Pain I can deal with but itching is annoying. Hopefully that will go away in a few days.   The funny thing is that when I got my second tattoo I thought it was huge. Couldn't believe I'd done it and thought maybe it was too big. I thought surely I'd do that with this since it's three times as big but no! I was looking at my back thinking, hmmm now I need something on my shoulders.
miss apple

miss apple

0
Sourball Ho!
 

Scoreboard!

This weekend we went to DH's old workplace one last time. We moved to Dallas 5 years ago because the music retail company he worked for in Ohio was begging him to take over a store -- he was offered places in Vegas, Denver and Southern California before he accepted here. He was excited because he would be involved from the ground up, as the outdoor, urban retail complex wasn't even finished yet, and he would be involved in construction and inventory and fixtures and hiring and everything.   Unfortunately for him, 2 weeks after he opened was 9/11. Retail across the country tanked, and his brand-spanking new store was no exception. Add in management changes, and suddenly the golden boy was a problem child. Without going into detail, things ended on a bad note, but it was a company-wide problem. They've since closed a bunch of prominent retail stores, and they're closing the one DH worked so hard to open.   So we go there on Sunday, a couple of weeks before their closing, and it's like a mausoleum. Empty, cavernous and depressing. But DH wasn't depressed, because he actually got a better job afterwards with lots more security. And he can Scoreboard!   The sports radio station we like here has a term: "Scoreboard!" Like if someone is bitching about how much greater a coach is over Phil Jackson, you just say "Scoreboard" and realize Phil Jackson has won 9 NBA championships. Not that I like Phil Jackson, he's a pompous ass , but he has scoreboard over Larry Brown or Pat Riley or whoever.   I'm babbling, but my point is to appreciate when you can Scoreboard over something -- not in a mean, malicious way, but more self-affirming.
dawndie

dawndie

0
Filling the Periodic Table
 

Finally, an exam update...

So I took the exam about 3 weeks ago...   It took me this long to recover enough to be willing to blog about it!   Anyway, The test was 4 hours and 35 questions. All calculation/numerical questions, but multiple choice, so no opportunity for partial credit if you make arithmetic mistakes.   Although it's against the rules, a lot of people take their MC letter answers out of the test. The evening of the test (after the sittings are done in all time zones) one person will usually volunteer to run the PAK (popular answer key), and everybody sends them their answers. They then create a key based on the idea that usually wrong answers are fairly evenly distributed between the different wrong answer choices (with the exception of tricky questions that trick people into one specific wrong answer) so that the right answers are usually the plurality of answers for each question. The PAK is usually right to within a question or 2.   According to the PAK, I got 24/35. The pass mark is usually 21-22. (The pass mark is set each sitting after the tests are all scored. Although the societies say that the exams are not "curved", it's pretty clear that the pass mark is usually set to keep the passing percentage pretty steady)   I'm not going to tempt fate by claiming I passed, but the odds are pretty decent I may have pulled it off. I won't know officially until July 14.
antimony

antimony

2
This Old Snark
 

Rinky-DINK

The Snarks are what you could call DINKs (Double Income, No Kids - Snarky just learned of this acronym last week because she is culturally out of it). They aren't wealthy, nor are they well paid, but they are comfortable and able to indulge in small luxuries like restaurant dining when they want and the occasional pair of new (but sensible!) shoes.   They know they are lucky to have managed their previous investments well enough to be in their current house (which they love just a little more each day even with all the blemishes that every old house has). Though she hasn't been completely willy-nilly about their post-real estate orgy, Snarky has been feeling like the other shoe must drop from their recent "fixin'/preppin' the house for total habitation" purchases.   And that shoe got dropped yesterday over the phone with The Mister. He wants to give notice at his current job. He plans to have his last day be the Friday before the Labor Day weekend. He won't start looking for another job until about a month before his last day.   Snarky knows the contributing factors to this major decision are not flippant ones, but she can't help but feel a bit of panic, a bit like the rug was pulled out from underneath her feet.   He hasn't been happy in that job almost from the beginning. He has been dealing with depression and poor health exacerbated by the high and constant stress. At one point last night he turned to her and said "And if a year from now, if we are both in jobs we really love but that don't pay as much, is it that much of a loss if we can't keep this house?"   And Snarky was torn. She wants him to find his place in the world, she does. She would even like to find out exactly what she should be when she grows up. But this house... this house is already so special to her. She'd like to have her cake and eat it too.   Snarky has been taking pictures like a madwoman, but instead of downloading and formatting, her evenings have been taken up with weeding and painting. She hopes to give you updates soon on the continuing evolution of ChezSnark. There's been hardwood floor refinishing, tub resurfacing, Asian Tigering, and even more painting of retina-searing hues.   She just hopes she won't be covering all of this up with eggshell in a year's time.
darkitysnark

darkitysnark

7
this machine
 

Personal Inventory

Everything i own, and what's on order:   5ml Alone Cathode Enraged Orangutan Musk Geek Intrigue Litha Masquerade Medicine Show Montresor Pit and The Pendulum, The Red Lantern Snake Charmer Snow White Two Monsters   5ml Pending Dee Harvest Moon Chrysanthemum Moon Carnaval Diabolique Phantom Calliope Mme Moriarty Organ Grinder Doc Constantine Gennivre Midnight on the Midway Antonino Death of the Grave Digger   Imps Alecto Alone And There Was a Great Cry in Egypt Apothecary, The Arcana Bathsheba Black Phoenix Black Tower, The Blood Moon Blood Pearl Bow & Crown of Conquest, The Budding Moon Cairo Carceri D'Invenzione Carnal Carnivàle Caterpillar, The Cathode Clio Coyote Cracked Bell, The Czernobog Death Cap Dee Dracul Drink Me Elegba Enraged Orangutan Musk Envy Fenris Wolf Florence Fortunato Frumious Bandersnatch Geek Glasgow Gommorah Great Sword of War, The Greed Gypsy Queen Hades Hellion Herr Drosselmeyer Hetairae Intrigue Jolly Roger Juke Joint Kabuki Lampades Litha Lucretia Magus Masque, The Masquerade Medicine Show Melpomene Montresor Morella Nefertiti Nephilim Nocnitsa Nyarlathotep Ochosi Odin Old Scratch Orpheus Ozymandias Perversion Pit & The Pendulum, The Ravenous Red Lantern Red Queen, The Resurrection of the Flesh Saint-germain Salomé Satan and Death with Sin Intervening Scarecrow Scherezade Severin Shadow Silk Road Snake Charmer Snake Oil Snow White Spanked Sri Lanka Tezcatlipoca Torture King Two Monsters Tzadikim Nistarim Vixen Voodoo Yew Trees   Imps Pending none
this machine

this machine

0
Diplomatka
 

Terror!

Not sure why, but all last Monday and every day since, I have that song "Terror!" by The Rakes in my head:   And my job in the city won't matter no more When the network is down and my flesh is all torn   Every plane is a missile Every suitcase a bomb There's no reason in my head now Only fear in my bones       So now things are getting back to normal. I am packed into a cramped office with my colleagues, with no air conditioning, bad connectivity and no privacy. Oh yes, and there is lots of B.O. too. I am becoming an involuntary mouth-breather to survive.   There are lots of promises about which agency will pay for all the stuff I lost. But really, I am not that concerned. Every morning we sit out on the lawn and have a meeting (finance took over the conference room) and talk about what is going on. It is what is revealed in these meetings that is foremost in my mind. Some of our staff were tied up and all of their computers taken out of town and set on fire in one of the provinces last night. They were warned not to associate with international organizations (these staff implement an education program). There have been more aid workers killed in the first six months of this year than probably the last three years put together and I can't help but wonder, was this riot an abberration or is something worse on the horizon?   I have been in Afghanistan for over 14 months now. I have dealt with the kidnapping of a colleague, the riots, daily stares and harrassment and yet it has not even occurred to me until now that maybe it is time to pack it up. But packing it up is not that easy. I love what I do. I really feel like I contribute, like I am helping people. I like the Afghans and the foreigners I work with (except for one, but more on that later) and my husband, for once, likes what he does as well.   A few weeks ago I was compiling the results of a survey from our widows' program. One of the beneficiaries wrote, "God bless you people. I pray for you every day". Is it worth it, to have job satisfaction if I have to deal with the potential of having all of my shit looted, my office burned and to be kidnapped? I honestly do not know.   This isn't Iraq--things get done. We are building houses for returnees, digging wells so schoolchildren have clean water, educating little girls and boys, helping widows to live in dignity and trying, generally, to get the people of Afghanistan back on their feet again after all of these conflicts. It's like it doesn't matter anymore who you are or what you do; if you are preceived to be on the wrong side you could get killed. I think that is the part I am having problems with.   Maybe this is just an expected after-effect of all of the "Terror!" I've been through lately. But the good news is that on Sunday the old man and I are off to Bangkok for a conference and then a week on Koh Samet. Hopefully my pallid ass in a bikini will not incite some terror of its own.
Confection

Confection

0
*
 

my top ten 2006

GC -=-=-=- Bewitched Blood Countess Cobra Lily Dragon's Heart Dragon's Milk Frumious Bandersnatch Kitsuni-Tsuki Lampades Queen Mab Shadow Witch Orchid     LE =-=-=-= Ace of Hearts Blood Moon Fruit Moon Harvest Moon The Living Flame Mabon Snake Charmer Storm Moon Sugar Skull Venom
KymbaKhan

KymbaKhan

0
Fishnets and Frankincense
 

A sensualist's golden moment

I was at the health club, riding the cardio cross-trainer (I've nicknamed it the sadiomaster), but I'm having a fine time because I'm reading "Insatiable" by Gael Green, the escapades of an unabashed sensualist food critic who had lots and lots of fun in the 1970's, eating and screwing her way around New York City. And while I was reading and riding (the sadiomaster, remember!) I was listening to Billie Holiday.   I finished a chapter and looked up at a TV, and there was Andy Garcia on screen. What a fine man he is. Could I take much more? Of course, because then the scene switched to George Clooney. ("Ocean's 11" was on TV.) In a brief aside, I think Andy and George make Brad Pitt look plain, but I'm a sucker for dark-haired men.   Could I take much more? Yeah, the guy at the club that I mentally refer to as "Scenery" (I don't know his name) was walking around the track, cooling down from his weight training. He has dark hair too, plus he's classically handsome and he doesn't realize it. I think that men who aren't especially handsome, but act like they are, are really appealing, as are handsome men who don't understand just how good looking they are.   But after that flurry of man-watching, I was content to return to reading Gael and listening to Billie. It certainly did make the sadiomaster session much more worthwhile.
valentina

valentina

5
The Road to Santiago
 

Spinarius

I've heard tell of a Spinarius on the little church of St.-Leger en Pons who has an enormous penis, so naturally, I needed to document this little guy and the rest of the sculpture on the church. It was a beautiful day and a Sunday, so the roads were nice and clear. I rode out and by golly, it's true!   Not only is the feller's twig showing, but his berries are, as well! This corbel is near the front of the church, and is the only corbel on the table that is easily visble from the road. What a bizarre figure. I thought I saw another figure with his genitals out, but it's hard to tell, even with my awesome zoom, because the stone on this church is beset with some heavy-duty lichen infestation, so it plays tricks on the eyes.   I did so much today, I'm extremely knackered and so I'm hitting the sack. More tomorrow!
Heretic

Heretic

0
Whiskers and Whispers
 

Two down, one more to go...

I stink of: Spellbound I'm burning: Wildberry Aromatic Teak incense (which smells oddly like Lush Bathos to me...)   Done two of my exams already. I'm very pleased at how I did with my contemporary physics paper-just a a couple of questions confuzzled me but apart from that, it was all good. The maths paper was awful though. I don't think I did well on it at all. Oh well, I hope I do better on the Astrophysics exam this Thursday-it's the paper I feel most confident about. I'll be so happy when those mofos are out of the way! and I won't have to live in that dump of a flat with those idiotic arsewipes that I had to put up with for the last year...   Finally, the weather's improved! I love it when it's all sunny and warm-not too hot, just pleasantly warm, the way I like it. I can go out in a t-shirt without freezing...and in about two weeks time, I'll be in Crete! Yay! I'll miss not having internet access (and forum access) but I'll be away somewhere away from home for a week or two, and I love Crete, one of my favourite places...hopefully I'll have a nice summer job waiting for me when I return. I seriously need a job, it's near impossible to get a 2 month summer job round here, all the part time jobs available are aimed at gap year students, it seems. But I need to be kept busy for the next two months and to, erm, fund my BPAL addiction!
yeahbutnobut

yeahbutnobut

0
Emain Macha
 

Weaver says hello

I've been writing two books simultaneously for the longest time, perhaps because doing any serious world-building on one setting will inevitably send me screaming into the arms of another for a time. So it was no suprise to me that after doing quite a bit of work on linguistics for the fantasy book I found myself itching to finish a couple scenes for the sci-fi book. And since I'm both writer and artist, I took a yearning to do some sketching.   So a brief sketch of the main character of my sci-fi book. She had very short hair for the longest time, but uh...she insisted. Does she look like a woman it's healthy to say no to?
Macha

Macha

4
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