is happening at Dreamwidth, for a wonder; having a place where I actually want to post makes it easier to stick with my determination to get back to doing it. Reading and commenting will continue here; I wanted to see if I'd actually manage to break the habit of not posting before making any announcements, and have had some success.

If you want to read what I'm up to over there, are not on Dreamwidth yet, and you only want to read and comment, the OpenID functionality is excellent -- will let you have a reading list, will let you comment non-anonymously, will let people give you access to locked posts, probably everything you could want as a reader and commenter. If you would like to be able to have your own journal to post in and the ability to post as well as comment in communities there, and haven't got an invite code yet, tell me, I've got a few. If you somehow cannot figure out where my journal is and would like to know, tell me. If you would like to be given access when I decide what I'm doing with access, which I haven't yet, and aren't planning on actually setting up a reading list that I would notice you adding me to, tell me. So on and so forth.

If you need a kitten break (and really, who doesn't need a kitten break?), go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNS6SUe-kGc

There is NOTHING coherent to be said about that link. The only way to adequately describe it is something like "OMG OMG CUTE KITTY OMG EEEEEEEEEESOCUTE!" It is 3 minutes of pure high-grade cute porn, and eventually it has sound.

January: Godot, you are a FREAKSHOW.
February: All from part 1 of the meme; I'll probably do parts 2 and 3 eventually.
March: By way of mithrigil and lazulisong, name a character I write and I'll tell you how s/he lost her/his virginity.
April: ...so, if anyone has been wondering what I've been up to lately, the answer is that I've been blogging like a FIEND about baseball (and not just the Red Sox) over at pitchcount.
May: Oh, right, already there. 3-0 Red Sox.
June: (no posts)
July: (no posts)
August: about the last two weeks or so, the better. (The title of the post was 'the less said'.)
September: meril did it, and I don't think I ever have, so.
October: (no posts)
November: (no posts)
December: But my wrists are, or something; I am apparently having a bout of tendonitis that's a mite worse than the random thing I've had for like a decade where I'd have a sore wrist for one day out of the blue (with no obvious provocation) and then it'd go away almost immediately with little change in habits, and I am going to try my darnedest (despite the Simming obsession that's caused it) to get away from the computer for my 3 days off this week and do more restful things.

...yeah, I had some really untalkative stretches there, didn't I?

This year I did a lot of things that I really needed to do, even if many of them were unpleasant and/or daunting, so while I don't know if I can say it was a good year, it was definitely one in which I grew a lot.

Interested parties might wish to have a look at the Emishi and Amon mistletoe pictures over in my Sims journal. ;)

(The version you'll see if you click through is higher quality... all 8 seconds of it.)

So we were sitting on the couch, because she's been playing FF7 for me (verdict: I enjoy the cast, Cid is 7 kinds of awesome, and I would love to tinker with materia, but the part where you trip over a minigame every time you turn around is annoying), and Button was all curled up in my lap napping cutely and purring. We hit a point where she decided to stop playing and go to bed, and I said something to the cat about how I would need to get up... eventually... okay, not right away, because she was warm and cute... and then stated that what I really wanted was a service cat, who would go around with me and sleep on me! In fact, everyone ought to have one, because the world would be a much better place; after all, it is much harder to be unhappy with a cat sleeping on you.

And she said, "Well, yeah, but it couldn't solve ALL the world's problems, because you'd still have people like Doctor Claw! He had a cat on his lap all the time!"

Things that make me happy, as per mithrigil's meme which I was tagged for but could not do: my hands and wrists feeling much better! I will still be resting them most of the time this week, but I got through the weekend (3 10-hour shifts plus one shortened to 6 by using some floating time to get out early for the Pistons game) without more than a little discomfort, so soon I can play Sims 2 again. ;) I'm still going to make an effort to limit the particularly repetetive activities so I don't go overboard again, though.

I've been wanting to start posting more, and noticing the total failure of my attempts to keep stuff I might potentially spam my flist with off my regular LJ by having separate journals, so I guess I will talk about whatever here now instead of trying to keep baseball on one journal, religious stuff on another, etc. -- but I did convert my Sims 2 journal, asimmetrical, into a closed community so that I can take advantage of the photo storage on this account without subjecting everyone who just wants to read Sims stories I might write to all the details of the rest of my life, as my intention, and my history when I have been posting here more often, leans toward a lot of random personal and fannish chatter. (So if I recently added you and you are a Sims 2 person, feel free to drop this journal and add that one instead. Unless you want to read my natterings on RL/baseball/religion/etc., anyway, in which case you should add both! But I really don't care about (or use the word) "friending".)

As far as baseball goes, things are starting to get interesting again, at least as much so as they can be with no actual baseball to watch (since Charter doesn't seem to carry ESPN Deportes, which is where they show the winter ball -- I need to bug them about the baseball channel, too, it is less than a month!). I am sort of amused and sort of dismayed by the fact that CC Sabathia is doing the MLB equivalent of standing around on LA streetcorners with a "will work for food" sign. (Dear San Francisco Giants, please sign him. Maybe Barry Zito will agree to pay some of his salary. I am starting to warm up to you guys now that the cancer is gone, and I want to live in your city again someday, so please give him a contract long enough that he'll still be there when I get there. ...if he can still throw a baseball then, given how long that might be. ;_; But seriously, maybe he can teach Zito how to pitch again, they are both lefties. XD) Also, Gerald Laird is a Tiger now -- Hey, meril: June 19-21! Take the vacation, I'll do the plotting. XD -- which might reduce the Red Sox chances of prying Taylor Teagarden (yes, that is a man's name) away from the Rangers, but I'll take it anyway. Plus I won't have to watch Julio Lugo play for them since they signed Adam Everett, and at least he's got D to go with his sad bat.

Also, Greg Maddux retiring makes me a little sad (despite the short portion of his career that I was able to observe -- well, and also because of that), but it probably is the right time... and now we get to see whether he becomes a pitching coach, and how insanely good he will be at it.

Oh, and that Pistons game I mentioned earlier -- here's Andrea's report, and here's the awesome shirt I bought, only mine is green! (Thank goodness for the gift card work gave me for my quality scores, and also for the sale they were having, both of which made swallowing the silly price of a shirt with Swarovski crystals on it easier. I knew it was the one I wanted as soon as I saw it.) Walter Herrmann, btw, is very hot and also very tall, as you might see in the photo Andrea posted. (But I still like Derrick Turnbow's nose better than his.) He had to sign a lot of these. XD

...speaking of Derrick Turnbow, finally there is news again! (If a very brief mention in the article.) Actually, as meril pointed out to me, he'd been linked to the Pirates a few days ago also, I just wasn't news searching then because of hand issues. More mention briefly here. Also, while all two of us who care already know about this, Seth McClung has a website now.

Also (also also also), I seem to have become addicted to Forensic Files on TruTV. I had to tear myself away from a block of episodes that ran from 11pm-4am last night, because as one episode is winding down they usually give a teaser in the commercials for the next one, and I can't resist the how-they-figured-out-whodunnit. (I also like Cold Case Files on A&E but those are a whole hour, A&E has longass commercial breaks, and sometimes they turn out to be "cold case, blah blah, not solved for 20 years, blah blah, then someday in the late 90s or early 00s somebody remembered that we had DNA testing now and used it, and it matched some guy who was in prison!" and Forensic Files doesn't always do cold cases but tends to almost always have something more interesting than just "we didn't have DNA analysis or computerized fingerprint matching when the crime was committed, but now we do!".)

But my wrists are, or something; I am apparently having a bout of tendonitis that's a mite worse than the random thing I've had for like a decade where I'd have a sore wrist for one day out of the blue (with no obvious provocation) and then it'd go away almost immediately with little change in habits, and I am going to try my darnedest (despite the Simming obsession that's caused it) to get away from the computer for my 3 days off this week and do more restful things. Like watching a bunch of X-Files episodes, probably, since Andrea gave me seasons 6 and 7 for Christmas last year.

...not that I was posting anyway, but.

So anyway, Monday night after work we drove down to see if the place where I was supposed to take my road test was accessible, since I knew it was near the area that was (and still is) flooded. It was on the near side of the roadblock, so we headed back home, whereupon I had to stop in the middle of the little street that cuts up to our apartment building because some critter was at the side of the road looking interested in crossing. It was a rabbit. A black rabbit -- wild rabbits in the US are brown.

We stopped the car in the middle of the road and got out for a closer look. The bunny hopped on up the road, and, as we followed, into our parking lot, where we got to play a big game of keep away, staying between the bunny and the brush. She wasn't terrified of humans, just untrusting about being touched by unfamiliar ones. Finally, since it was obvious we weren't catching her on our own, I ran up to get Andrea's phone so we could call Kirk (Andrea's former art school teacher and head of the local rabbit rescue, who as it happens lives about 3 blocks away) and see if he and Jaime (Jamie?) -- Kirk's boyfriend -- could help. They said they'd be right over, and thus begun the dance of two humans and one rabbit as the former tried to a) keep the latter still (no success at all), b) get ahold of the latter (almost!), and c) keep the latter from getting away entirely (well enough that when the guys arrived with flashlights, a net, and some portable fence, we knew where she was hiding).

Eventually we flushed her out of the brush and Kirk netted her, and we got her into a carrier so we could bring her in and they could check her out. She's at least part lionhead, and officially we're fostering her for now, but with fewer bunnies than we had originally planned to have, and one appearing more or less on our doorstep... (also, she is so cute).

I was up pretty late that night on account of adrenaline from chasing rabbits around and generally being busy talking baseball (especially since the Brewers, the team that's distracting me from the Red Sox this year, fired their manager with 12 games left to play), I think we did, um, something in the morning (probably got bunny stuff), and then I napped before the road test that afternoon. Passed without incident (and actually managed the faux parallel parking quite handily despite the last time I'd even practiced it having been two vehicles ago in an empty parking lot; the Cobalt steers SO nicely and is small, so it wasn't bad). Promptly took the car out on my own last night to pick up some goodies at the health food store (and discovered a fabulous liquor store that also carries the cheese for your wine and cheese party, among other fun things, since I'd wanted some Blue Moon and did not want to venture back PAST the apartment to get it), and today I ran an assortment of errands in the afternoon, including picking up some new shoes as my existing sneakers were just too beat up. It is very exciting!

I like the Brewers' new manager already, since he promptly yanked a starter who'd been having a particularly bad time of it his last several games and put Seth McClung, my favorite overly tall high-round draft pick who's struggled in the majors (and also my favorite redhead), back in the rotation, so I guess it's time to cross Wisconsin off my visited-states list (now at 35 plus D.C.) next week, as his last start of the season will be at home against the Pirates, and Andrea's camera is excellent for taking pictures of baseball games. (She may come with, since the trip would fall on her days off, but now it's totally up to her instead of me making puppy dog eyes over dragging her along.)

Am thinking about taking a new schedule. I've been doing the 4 10-hour days thing (which happens to also be the working all weekend thing) for almost two years, since I picked that schedule up not long after I finished my training, but it's time for a change, and now I can work an 8 hour day, since I don't need Andrea to drive me and therefore she doesn't need to sleep specifically in between dropping me off and picking me up. They just advertised for a class working 2:00pm-10:30pm Sunday-Thursday, though I intend to ask for 1:30-10:00 or 1:00-9:30. (Amusingly, my original schedule was 12:30-9:00pm, and I kind of hated it, but after two years of getting weekends off being like pulling teeth, I'm totally willing to live with the working nights for a while; having my license also means I can start applying to WMU with an eye toward going back to school once I have free tuition. (Plus there are many office jobs of the sort I would like to have there anyway, and I need to get out of the credit and banking industry like whoa, but the biggest reason to apply for WMU jobs is definitely tuition.)

Tomorrow we take the pretty black bun (who actually has some brown and even some few white hairs mixed with the black) up to the vet for a "we found her outside" type checkup and to see about getting her some meds for her little bunny cold, and Friday it's back to work, hopefully to find that I've sorted out a way to cover next Friday morning so that I can go to an 8PM Eastern ballgame and either let Andrea drive home late at night or crash at a Motel 6 and drive home in the morning.

Finally, for your edification/amusement/whatever, flooding in downtown Kalamazoo. This was several days ago, at a bank branch I sometimes use, sent to me by a coworker. I'm, um, glad we live on the second floor AND on a hill.

Also, bunny.

meril did it, and I don't think I ever have, so. My set from her below the cut, and while I am unsure how good I'll be at thinking of questions, if you really want some from me then leave me a comment. (If you do so, you are also supposed to take a turn at the meme in your journal.)

( 1/4 of 20 questions )

*scratches head* Do any of you remember pimping Don't Change Your Plans by Ben Folds as a fannish song call, or remember anybody else whose journal I might be or have been reading having done so, and who it was for? I swear I became aware of it for fannish reasons, but the only character I have myself who likes it is not a common subject of fannish activity (though moreso on my flist) and I cannot for the life of me remember who mentioned the song or in what context.

about the last two weeks or so, the better. However, we are off to Otakon (and baseball on the way) at the buttcrack of dawn Wednesday morning and hopefully can relax then. Maybe.

I have a Twitter account which I might post to at con, here, if anyone is in fact interested.

Well, taking a suggestion about an almost identical (to the one I'd already picked out as compatible)video card that was $20 cheaper has me instead upgrading my power supply (as I was very careful but still failed to notice that part of "almost" identical was a 50 watt higher power supply requirment). Computer's in the shop overnight and I'm spending more... but it's the better option in the long run than returning the card and getting something that will just barely run with what I had.

meril, the rest of that game is mostly just painful to watch. When McClung isn't struggling or being run over, everyone else is screwing up their baserunning. Also, why is there not a volunteer corps of sad-pitcher-huggers I can sign up to join? Also also, I am tired of seeing that collision replayed. :( (They replayed it in the game a bunch, then ESPNews showed it too.)

Yesterday my monitor started doing this thing where, when it came back from screensaver, it would be very dark for a few seconds before brightening up properly. I did not think this was a good sign, because it was a new behavior in a 3 year old monitor, but it DID brighten up properly eventually...

Today, it would not brighten up at all, and developed the charming new habit of then going totally black after a minute or so, requiring that I turn the bedamned thing off and back on to get it to light up at all, and even then it was very dim. Surely a sign of impending death in an LCD monitor. (Probably in any monitor.)

So now I have a new one. Price range on 19" monitors was pretty narrow (and was on the low end of what I expected before checking); I went with an LG on account of a 2ms response time sounded pretty good to me, and I decided to avoid bothering to dig around for a non-widescreen and just went ahead and got widescreen despite misgivings, though if I run into any issues that I cannot resolve to my satisfaction I might change my mind on that.

...and then the keyboard tray ripped off my cheapass computer stand, so I think a new one of those might be needed soon too. >_< (Keyboard on lap is not uncomfortable, but I think the tray helped stabilize things.)

On the other hand, while poking around to see if I should upgrade anything else, I discovered that memory for both my and Andrea's systems has gotten astonishingly cheap (like, $23.99 for another 1GB cheap), so an upgrade is on order (and I may upgrade my video card too, because that is also el cheapo and, like the memory, checked for system compatibility by folks in the know).

...I suppose I should also finally upgrade Firefox and Mozilla, since my themes for both can't cope with the widescreen-ness.

YouTube video of skit, thanks to lakupo for finding it. I do recommend the other video for now, though, since this was shot from some ways back in the audience. (But it has the interesting factor of sometimes showing what was onstage and sometimes showing what was on the in-house video screens.)

Pictures of us and our group cosplay (Phoenix Wright and Final Fantasy IV):
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac16a0015.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac16a0030.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac17a.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac17a0002.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac17a0003.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac18a0008.html

Pictures of the rest of our group doing their own things (Tokyo Babylon (and X) and Death Note):
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac16a0002.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac16a0003.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac16a0035.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac16a0036.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac18a0004.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac18a0005.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac18a0006.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac18a0007.html

Skit photos (FFIV):
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac17b0046.html
http://www.fansview.com/2008/animecentral/ac17b0047.html

SKIT VIDEO W00T:
http://www.acparadise.com/acp/vid/3781/h
(registration required, but confirmation is automatic)
We won a Judge's Choice award, from the judge who up until this year was one of the masq announcers who was on stage during the entire thing for many years and saw all the skits close up. W00T! labtech, mithrigil says she owes you a lot more than cookies and would mail you a cheesecake if she could figure out how. (She makes a mean cheesecake.)

Also, nice version of last year's skit:
http://www.acparadise.com/acp/vid/1202/h

No sooner do I post a picture of how long my hair is than I cut it all off. Man, did I ever miss this.

Oh, right, already there. 3-0 Red Sox.

The main reason I'm now leaning in favor of cutting all my hair off again is that I inevitably end up putting it up because it's in my way. Add to that the fact that it's too staticky to leave down in the winter pretty much at all, and the fact that I always end up with my purse strap pulling on it if I leave the house with it down, and I begin to realize that it's kind of a pain in the ass. Plus I hate trying to get it under a wig, and I can BUY a wig to make up for the fact that I was going to use my own hair for one of my ACen costumes. Also, it's annoying to dye hair this long (which I would have to do at least once more before ACen, really, since my roots are pretty long), and if I leave it alone for long enough to get my license and THEN cut it off, I'll be stuck with a mismatched ID photo for a few years. Plus it's getting warm, and having all this hair on my head is hot.

Cons are mostly the fact that I've spent a lot of time growing it (and still would kind of like to see how long I can get it to grow, since it's about as long now as I've ever had it before), the fact that I've bought a bunch of stuff like scrunches and bun traps that would become pretty useless if I cut it (since Andrea prefers her hair loose), the fact that it's harder to find dye that wouldn't just be wasted on super short hair (the drugstore kind can't have anything saved for later). Also, no more ponytail sticking out of the back of my baseball cap. I like that. (Weird habit of mine, I guess, when I have a buzz cut I tend to dress more girly, and when I'm all decked out in boyish baseball gear I like having a swishy ponytail.)

Definitely tempted to go back to buzzing it.

In brief:

Why I'm not really doing much of anything on any existing LJ clones, and why I will use the one Denise is working on when it launches.

I'm a pretty princess.

My girlfriend is really awesome. But you knew that.

If the camera hadn't been in Andrea's room (and she hadn't been napping by the time it was prepared), I would so have photographed my dinner tonight. It was not only delicious but really very pretty. (Salmon with wasabi and soy-ginger glaze, and Archer Farms asparagus risotto with some goat cheese and actual roasted asparagus. OMGYUM.)

...so, if anyone has been wondering what I've been up to lately, the answer is that I've been blogging like a FIEND about baseball (and not just the Red Sox) over at pitchcount.

I cannot believe I have just spent TWO HOURS OF MY LIFE on the phone with first the cable company, then Vonage, all for a savings of something like $20/mo to us as a household and no savings whatsoever to me as an individual. (Rearranged things so we have the same TV+internet service as what we had with our about-to-expire bundle, but the phone service will be separate, cheaper, and billed to the person who actually uses the phone.)

On the other hand, we get to keep our phone number (a few friends and relatives have it), I think the price of our non-phone services may be slightly lower, and the channels for the baseball package I ordered are already active (there just isn't any baseball on them yet).

...I should really make sure the phone number is still going to be unlisted, though. We already get too many random dialer calls. :P

It's available as a community name. Should we? (Not that we aren't all already on each other's flists, but it'd make it easier to find stuff pertaining to our cosplay plans specifically, instead of having to remember that the discussion of blahblahblah was in /this/ post on /that/ person's LJ.)

By way of mithrigil and lazulisong, name a character I write and I'll tell you how s/he lost her/his virginity. (If I don't know, I'll tell you so.)

Someone posted to yankeesfans -- the primary, mainstream Yankees comm on LJ, with over 1300 members -- trying to get people to discuss slash pairings. Sadly, it's not there anymore. XD

MY POKEMANS BIRTHDAY PRESENT. LET ME SHOW YOU IT.

Case 1-5 is kind of lollarious now that I'm reviewing it for purposes of moving on from RPing scenes set between 1-4 and 1-5 to scenes set after 1-5. Every conversation in Edgeworth's office and the last day of trial in particular.

(Because I found it while I was looking for a different post, which turned out to be from June 2006 instead.)

Still probably my favorite comment I have ever gotten.