Called in sick to work today. Haven't had cramps quite like this in a few months... I think staying at home in bed and waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in seems like a reasonable course of action.

My body needs rest. My mind needs rest. I think I'll go do that.

"That’s why I say I have no problem with people dieting for health reasons (ie stepping up the veggies, eating more nutritious food, etc) but have a problem with people dieting for weight loss."

Woah. Dude. That just came up along side me and bonked me in the head. The words "diet" and "dieting" are superduperOMFG loaded. They're powerful! They're bad! They're good! They're necessary! They're... simply a term that refers to an ordered method of eating. If you let it be.

Dieting. D-i-e-t-i-n-g. By planning the meals that I choose to eat, and taking in mind both my body's needs for fuel and my mind's needs for satisfaction and my large intestine's needs for a little peace and happiness I'm technically doing this... d-word thing.

Although I can't really call it that because dieting has such baggage, so I call it "mindful eating" or "HAES" or something of the sort. Huh.

Oof. It's Thursday already, and I'll be on the plane home in a few more hours. Wah, I don't want to go home. I don't want to go home! It's not just that Florida is lovely, and that it's fun to be out of town, and that there are still tons of places that I didn't see. It's that it's so wonderful to be here with Jeff and Vrae and Sarah. We just have so much FUN together. Horrible jokes, lots of foolishness back and forth... it's going to hurt to have to return to these folks being text on a screen. I want this dynamic to last forever.

We'll do it again sometime, right?

...vacation pictures/doodles coming soon! :D

I'm totally lovin' Orlando. And Jeff's place. Jeff's got a nice place. With a pool! A big pool! :D ... it's like, the pool for the fancy building complex he's in. It's got fountain-thingies!

...as a result, I'm going to need to buy a lot more waterproof sunscreen. With the highest possible SPF. I'm a little burnt. Okay, a lot burnt. But we're ALL that way, me and Vrae and Sarah... so y'know, we can all buy nice soothing lotions and go "ow ow ow" together.

It's bizzare, when I sit back and reflect upon it. I've always, always considered myself an unfeminine tomboy, a total loss when it comes to all matters feminine. It's been a core part of my identity, damn it. But that's an identity that I've carved out for myself since puberty hit. Whatever it is that I've carved, it's awkward and ill-fitting now. I'm not the same person that I was at 13. (Heck, I'd probably be extremely irritated with my 13-year old self, if faced with her today. 13 year olds are... trying.) I'm 26 now, twice that age, and I've changed.

I like clothes. Boy, howdy, do I like clothes. I'm equally likely to drop too much money on new shoes or shirts as I am to buy video games or computer parts. Hell, I like shoes, all of a sudden. I used to loudly proclaim that the idea of having a zillion pairs of shoes is stupid. Functionality before form! ...but if I can get lots of functional shoes that have nice form, well, I'm willing to change my position... I fuss with my hair. I'm FINALLY figuring out make up. I'm... girly.

At least, I'm damned girly in comparison to all the guys I find myself hanging around with. Not a hard thing to accomplish when you've got, say, boobs, but.... dwuh, Gaz dropped a notch or two on my esteem-o-meter when he admitted that he'd just dress all in black every day of the week given the chance, as it was easier. And he's lucky I didn't bonk him with something when he started to crank about his mom's "bad" cooking. "Bad" being defined as "has different-colored vegetables in it". The boy seems to have some kind of fixation on everything having an unwavering consistancy, wether it's his wardrobe or his shephard's pie.

I suppose that's veering onto a slightly different topic, though. Ugh, boys. I'm tired of boys. Very, very tired. Where are all the men, exactly? Hiding in the couch cushions? Not that I'm in any hurry to go and pair myself off or anything, but hey. I'm a mature woman in the prime of my life, some things can't be entirely helped. Nothing wrong with a bit of healthy desire, wink-wink nudge-nudge eybrow-waggley-waggle.

Buuuuuuut for now, it does feel good to be free and unburdened by boy-type obligations. I'll be taking off for Florida in a few days, and for once it's just to hang out and have fun and meet up with friends. Only that. No stress, no strain. It feels fantastic, I'll have you know.

Lemme know if anyone wants a tacky souvenir! :D

(Quiz from piloter, because he's just nifty like that.)

This morning was a good morning to go play Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, it only occured to me to do this after I successfully and safely made it to work. Which is a shame. I even had Becki with me! We could have sung the epic music together as we set off on our epic quest to get a taxi/get a bus/get a taxi/catch the bus oh wait that's not the right one/get a taxi/what do you MEAN they're taking the busses off the road!?

It was very epic, oh yes.

I swear, I called every cab company in town at some point this morning. Diamond Cab was constantly busy, and the one time I got through we were put on hold. All the others that I tried just weren't answering. I got lucky on a retry to Vet's, and we managed to have one come get us over by the Scotiabank. And we even got to work a bit EARLY! Woo us! OMFG! Sadly, I'm one of few people in the department that managed to brave the nasty wintery chaos. It's going to be a crazy day in here. I hope the snow lets up, and the busses get back on the roads. (I'd at least like to get home for cheap, if I can help it.)

I really hate getting a cold. I especially hate getting a cold when I'm scraping the edges of my bank account. I'm not sure I can rationalize going and buying another bottle of NyQuil (Green death flavor, we love yooooou~) when I still need to save a bit extra to help with the move.

Yeah, move. I'm moving from my current place, to Andrew Kelly's. I kinda like being all independant and on my own but I could honestly stand to save money. This would allow me to save a pretty good chunk of money. But egads, I hate moving... hatey hatey hate it. The old apartment is clean aside from some obessive wall scrubbing, but I still need to box up most of my stuff AND find a place to drop off all my oogly unwanted clothing AND make sure that Greg can still get the truck and haul me around or find out if I'm going to need to call some movers...

The whole business makes me kinda upset and queasy. I don't like it, and I'm anxious for it to be OVER.

The incomparable lazyjane over at The Friday Fluff at Kate Harding's Shapley Prose has just found a way to make a zillion-degrees-below-zero-temperatures somewhat bearable:

Another cold coping strategy I use is “playing Lord of the Rings.” Instead of walking to the bus stop, pretend you are scaling the peak of Caradhras on an epic quest. Needless to say, this works better if you have a group (a “fellowship” if you will) of other travelers. Don’t forget to sing the theme music. It’s gotten me through many a vicious Chicago winter.

Alas, the cold snap is over. Now we're back to snow and slush and rain. Uh, anyone? What kind of epic quests are damp and squishy? I'm up for suggestions.

Today, I wound up reading Dear Abby. Lots of it. What? All you've gotta do is boot it on over to the nice website the syndicate has up and then you can peruse all you want! It's like eating peanuts. One little crunchy, slightly voyeuristic handful of interpersonal woe, right after the other! Om nom nom.

Reading it also reveals to me just how many douchebags there are out there. Yeesh. It's a good thing I'm not doing her job, because after a while I'd get tired of seeing the same totally "durrrr" problems over and over. "Hit him with a frozen trout, then leave!" sometimes seems appropriate for some of the stuff that gets sent in... I commend Jeanne Phillips, current author of the column, for her grace and fish-free stylings.

Anyhoo. It's payday, and it's John's D&D night! Good times are ahead. Gonna swing by McAllister Place and browse a bit before I catch a bus to his place. I'd like to head back out tomorrow and do a bit of shopping

My knee hurts. It really does. It's all stiff and unco-operative. :( I need to try and get it into much more walkable shape before karate tomorrow...

Ah well, off to the mall. Time to spend the Christmas money from my dad! :3

Due to browsing restrictions at work, I surf CNN on my downtime from e-mails. This story about a terrible crash on the LA Metrolink made it to the top of the news list and... brrr. My God. It's far away, sure. It's a distant tragic thing, and I never let those get to me, sure, but... well, I've actually taken one of those trains, to get back and forth from LA to San Bernardino. It makes it all the easier to picture. It gives the whole thing a weight, a grounding in reality that most things wouldn't have.

It feels a bit immature of me, to only get rattled by something that I've got a slight flicker of personal association to. And kinda pretentious to even be writing about it? Dwah, I'm not sure. My heart still goes out to those people in the accident. It's a shame and a tragedy. It's not something that you'd think would happen, but...

I don't pay enough attention to... um... everything. My surfing habits are pretty fickle, for someone that spends so much time on the Internet. It's like my brain can only hold so many regularly-visited website and blogs at once. I find a new thing, and something old gets culled from the list. Webcomics drift from my attention, I forget about blogs and journals, I set aside one game and play another... Yeah, no attention span.

But I was so happy to wind back up at Websnark, to find that it had begun to update again! I used to be mega-enthused with Websnark, with Eric Burns's writing, with his super-excellent fiction writings at Banter Latte. Then stuff stopped appearing, and I drifted away. But o-ho! What's this? Updates! And what nice, tasty updates they are. It's like I've shown up at his desk, and he's just refilled the candy dish! Candy seems like just the right analogy to use, because his writing always leaves me feeling like I've had something sweet and nice to savour.

Though I'd love more action over at Banter Latte. If his usual posts are tasty gumdrops, then the fiction there is like a big, hard, chewy caramel that gets stuck in your teeth.

So I did some cooking tonight.



Delicious and wonderful Kraft Dinner tuna cassrole. Oh my. Oh yes. No seriously, it came out REALLY GOOD and I kinda wanna share. I've got to use up the stuff in my fridge before I take off for vacation next week, so this gets rid of the cheese, some of the milk, some cream-basil pasta sauce, and the yellow pepper that was threatening to go funny.

It's great. Seriously. I'll need to stop myself from eating it all tonight. Oof.

Am I the only person on LJ who isn't flipping their spleen over this sudden "no more basic accounts, now it's advertisements for all" business? Is it really such an enormous imposition, to have some ads here and there? Have I just gotten too used to all the other sites on the Internet having commercial claptrap scattered about that I can just ignore it?

It seems entirely over-reacty to go "OH NO LJ HATES US AND THIS IS UNFAIR". I don't think it's a big deal. I don't give two shits.

It's kinda liberating to say it.

It's been busy here at work, yessir. The new classes of agents just keep pouring in... and for once, they're actually for our campaign! Help is in sight and relief is at hand and blah blah blah why should we care, exactly? Because one of the recent classes has, I swear, Orlando Bloom's long lost twin. (crevette, you may want to sit up and pay attention, here.) He's a tad shortish, and has one or two more piercings than you might expect... but oh yes. Quite the resemblance. Very Will Turner-esque, mmm. Dark haired, pulled back, bit of facial hair...

Ahem. I'm quite glad that they've sat him like, 8 rows down and over. Don't get me wrong, I like me some eye candy, but I don't think I'd be able to concentrate with him too close by. Goodness knows I need to concentrate. Yes. >_>

So the weather's kind of sucking, right now.

And apparently, according to Greg? This is not the sort of thing that would actually stop Richard from running a D&D game. ...Y-yay? I think? We're gonna try to make it uptown before the busses stop!

I'll just express some general optimism here, and make no statements like "well how bad could it be?!" because that's just asking for it.

Oof, why can't the day go faster? I've got a D&D game tonight. Like, my first game in... years. Since all that farting around with Nick and Chris back in high school. I'm looking forward to seeing the kind of stuff that Greg and Richard and their buddies get up to, and to see if it compares to the backstabbery and jerkassery that we goons got up to at the back table of the chess room. (I ought to write about that, sometime.... bowls of mashed potatoes and rampaging lizardmen and the terrible, terrible vengeance of the thief's guild...)

Naturally, this means I've got an excuse to roll all those dice that I've bought! Yay dice! There's something about a big bag of shiny-colorful dice that makes me happy. I've always been a sucker for pretty shinies, and I guess any hobby that allows you to tote around a little bag of brightly-colored fits-in-your-hand 'treatures' is a good one, hm?

Although I wish I could remember where the purple set came from. I don't think I remember buying a purple set....

Ghh. Arrgh. AAAAAGGGHGHGHFHAL;FD!!!

So I was supposed to go to the movies with Greg this Saturday. To the movies! WITH A BOY! ZOMFG WOWZERS. Big major event-type thing, that. It would figure that the first time in YEARS that I plan on doing something like that, that my girl-parts would suddenly kick it into overdrive and leave me paralyzed on the living room couch, unable to do much more than twitch and dry-heave.

:(

Really, there's not enough :( to express my levels of profound sadness.

But, Greg's an understanding kind of guy. We're gonna reschedule movie night for sometime later this week. And y'know, it's in times of need that you find out how nice your friends really are. Becki? Lawrence? Heidi? Thanks so much for coming downstairs/coming over and bringing me pills and glasses of water and blankets. You guys are fantastic and I love you.

In other news, Gabriel's feeding tube is out. So far, he's doing fine. Eating just as well as ever. He had a bit of a horf last night, but the reason seems to have been because the little genius has been EATING the cotton bandaging from around his neck, when he picks/licks at it. Can't have that, no sir. So I've taken to binding it a little differently, with a bit of pantyhose, like the vet showed me. I'm going to have to get him back in before next Saturday, and get his bandages done again, I know it. The Saturday vet just isn't as good at bandaging stuff as the weekday guy is.