Cyn's · Little · Den

I adore peppermint ice cream, and while some stores have begun offering it year round, it is still distressingly hard to find. Not to mention all of those wonderful mint/peppermint coffee drinks, dessert drinks, etc. that are available only during the Holidays.

So, I woke up at around 2:30 this morning with a certain urge that needed attending to.

Unfortunately, I lost my balance, and ending up falling onto the toilet, rather than sitting, smashing my shoulder into the handle, and by association, the tank in the process. All seemed okay until I attempted to flush said toilet, at which point I discovered a hitherto unknown geyser that originated from somewhere near the rear bottom of said tank.

A call to maintenance and a half hour later, I have the super here replacing my entire toilet. That's right: replacing. the. entire. toilet.

In the process, the guy leaves the door open. When I realize this, I go looking for my cat. Upon not getting a response from him in the house, I go out to call him. He doesn't typically wander very far when he does escape to the Big Room, but this time, he's not responding to my calls.

FML

ETA: He let himself back in not long after I posted this. Thanks for all the wonderful ideas. It wasn't my worry that he wouldn't choose to return; more that I was worried what might happen to him in the meantime, or the possibility that he might manage to infect another cat in some random act of chance (he is FIV+, as I may have mentioned).

So, in one of my classes from a while back we were doing a unit about personal choices, free will, goals, personal betterment, etc. Here is a list of questions from one of the units.

Feel free to answer in comments, or privately, or in your journal, or whatever. Of course, if you post it in your own journal, rather than in comments, I'd appreciate a link to the entry in comments. Of course, I could turn this into one of those memes where you answer in comments and repost in your journal... nah. Just be aware that I'd like to see your answers if you're comfortable with that.

• Who do you love?
• Where is home?
• If I could grant you a wish, what would you wish for?
• Who would you like to see that you haven't seen in a long time?
• What other language would you like to be able to speak?
• What skill would you like to have?
• What would you do if you won a million dollars?
• If there was something about yourself that you could change, what would it be?
• If there was something in your life you could do over, what would it be?
• If you could change something about the world, what would it be?

Originally posted by jimhines at Have Yourself a Slashy Little Christmas

Yes, he did one. Yes, I found it. Yes, you can watch it, right here, right now.

Originally posted by gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

So, I'm in the office today, and I decided a few minutes ago to finish up a project I've been working on for two weeks or so. In essence, it's tabulating volunteer hours for various projects and assigning them to various categories from there. So, over the past two weeks or so I had managed to get all of the data entered into the master data sheet. I had also created all of my necessary subsheets for each project, each partner family, and each individual volunteer.

As I'm working on porting and referencing the necessary data, I get to a point where I want to save. When I try to do so, it tells me another version is open. I only opened one copy, so I am rightfully confused by this. Upon glancing down at the task bar, however, I see that, for some reason, both the main workbook and a 'backup' are open.

With a roll of my eyes, I attempt to close the duplicate document, only to have the entire thing crash. Not a big deal, right? As an Apple owner, I expect to be able to re-open the program and have the document right there--I know that a Windows system isn't going to conveniently open it exactly where I was like my Mac would, but I expect it to at least give me the most recent version; i.e. the one I opened when I started working on it five minutes previous.

Imagine my suprise when I find, not my nearly-complete workbook on my screen, but one wherein only 1/3 of the necessary entries are on the master sheet, and none of my tertiary sheets exist.

Did I say suprise? I meant absolute frustration and venomous loathing.

I feel a sense of disappointment when I see Christmas sections being set up before Halloween in most of the stores I walk into. I'm waiting to see how long it takes before we start seeing Christmas year round. We'll end one sale and give people a month's rest before we start the commercialization all over again for the next year.

The fact that Black Friday was extended over anywhere from 3 days to the entire period between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year kind of defeated the entire purpose of Black Friday to begin with. It used to be an informal thing, acknowledging the idea that most people did their Christmas shopping the day after turkey, because they had the day off. Then the sales started, to take advantage of this. I can understand up to that point. Where it started to get a little out of control was when a given retailer's entire financial picture for the year was dependent on that day's sales. Bad day, and they were in the red; good day, and they were gonna end up in the black for the year. No it's just blatant greed and one-ups-manship.

It's ironic, and a sad commentary on the state of the country's populace today, when the focus of what is supposed to be the celebration of Christ's birth is celebrated in the spirit of more than one of the Seven Deadly Sins. We create the antiChrist every year, and every year our creation becomes stronger.

Well, I have one full sister, 7 years older, two teenaged step-brothers and a 2-month-old half-sister on one side, and one step-brother approaching 30 on the remaining side. I also have a 4-year-old niece, and a 30-something brother-in-law.

This is enough siblings for me. I think if it had worked out differently, I'd probably feel the same, though. I enjoy the wide age spread, and while my eldest sibling (sister) may get annoying at times, I'm still glad to have her. I'm still fascinated with the newest sibling, as well.

I just got off the phone with my father. My step-mother just gave birth to my newest (half-)sister. She was in labor about 12 hours, and had the baby at home, with midwives in attendance. They don't have a length or weight for her yet, as a result, but the midwives are guessing about 9 pounds. My father said, and I quote, "She's big."

Congratulations to them! I'll probably go up for a visit in a couple of weeks, according to my father's estimate of when they'll be ready for/need/want me to go up there.

I'm way more excited and tearfully happy than I expected to be. No pictures yet, but when I have some, I will post them.



ETA: Note the change of spelling. I like that a whole lot better, and it goes better with Brigala in print.

So, in this episode, we find a situation in which every, single bar of soap/Dove has been, not only removed from its bulk packaging, but from its individual cardboard box, and stacked, bare, on the bathroom shelf. That's 15 bars, folks. Stacked. On open shelving. I don't know if it's as common a piece of knowledge, anymore, as I think it is, so I'll just drop a little fact here for you: bathrooms are moist. Put two and two together, and I'm sure you'll come up with five.

Oh, and, more minor, still in the bathroom: For some odd reason, the woman took all of my haircare and skincare items (which were in decorative baskets, even) off the bathroom counter, put them on the shelving, and then put my razor, along with my 12 extra blade cartridges, on the ledge in front of the mirror, over the medicine cabinet. Because I totally need those every day, and never need to brush my hair, or wash my face or anything. Oh, and she replaced my facial cleanser, from next to the sink, as well as my liquid hand cleanser, with a bar of Irish Spring. Where are the things that were previously there, including a tube of toothpaste? I'll pay you $5 if you can figure it out and show me.

Oh, AND, she added a $50 fee on top of already doubling her rate, in order to clean out the refrigerator. Now, this would be reasonable if she'd actually done most of it. However, I did all but the bottom shelf, which I couldn't get down on my knees to do. She then took it upon herself to clean out my freezer. My freezer that didn't need to be cleaned out. My freezer I'd already cleaned out.

Not only this, but when I asked her about my missing dishes/silverware, she suggested they were under my bed. That's right, folks! Under my bed. She then went to my bedroom, emerged with two dishes, and put them in my sink as proof. Later that night, when I went in to go to bed, not only had she reversed the direction I was sleeping on my bed (pillow where my feet go, etc.) she hadn't actually put sheets on it, and there were three dishes in plain sight! Now, bear in mind that this does not account for the three sets of silverware, two sets of plates, all of my bowls and glasses, etc. that are missing. I'm sure that these went the way of the dodo thanks to her mother's habit of picking up a pile of papers or something, and tossing them in the trash without even looking, even when there are clearly dishes or other things underneath/in between the layers. I've come in just in time to rescue more than one valuable. This includes, but is not limited to, the antique stuffed cat that was my mother's when she was a toddler. Not to mention books. Oh, and the erasable pen I JUST bought for use on my crosswords and other word puzzles is missing, even though the magazine it was attached to has been found.

FML

I think my oddest one is probably pickles and peanut butter in the form of a sandwich. At least, it's the most long-established of my odd tastes. Later in my childhood, I experimented with mayo and bananas and onions, and found that peanut butter-banana, pb-mayo-banana, and pb-mayo-onion sandwiches were pretty damned good, too.

I will note, however, that, unlike Elvis, I never fried mine. Nor did I ever use bacon in any of these combos.

I have my computer back!

Next comes adding another couple gigs of RAM when I see my father next. Also, upgrading to Snow Leopard, since I'm currently running 10.4.11. Snow Leopard is 10.6.x. I'd have had them add the RAM and do the upgrade while they had it, except that they quoted me $40 minimum just for the RAM addition. And that was only for 1G. Plus, my father still has installs left on his license for Snow Leopard. So, yeah... saving at least $150-$300 on upgrades? Priceless.