For those who know where I've been - lucky creatures. For those that don't - it wasn't that exciting. In fact, it's just internet world sucking me in. There's Amazon Drama, where I've been living all year to the total obliteration of just about everything else; there's Twitter discover (dudes) and then Facebook. Which all equals "living under rock" in some fashion. So, just thought I'd say I do live, I'm just not living HERE so much. I'll try to be more updatey. :)

Both CASTLE and DOLLHOUSE are "unofficially" renewing for season 2. I'm so happy I had to share. :)

So I broke down and signed up to Twitter. For the most part, this means my very little to say has only a little space to say it in. However, I do kind of like knowing what my friends are doing, so that's cool. Now, if only Bloglines would report on my LJ friends, I'd be in business.

It's been a wild week at work. We broke a sprinkler head for the fire system, which sprayed water everywhere and caused a little flood. Luckily we're a recycling firm so not much was damaged that wasn't already headed for a melt down of some kind. The fire department came which was a little unexpected, and they helped move the water with little floor squeegee's. Said they wouldn't charge either. Decent of them. Cause I've a feeling the building manager will charge for the repaired head. Like, a lot.

In addition, the vice-president of sales came to visit (supposedly unnanounced although I found out the day before and told everyone) and with him came the head of IT (and the purchasing gal, don't ask how those two things mesh, I don't know.) and with them came the salesman from the midwest. Now it hasn't been bad. The IT gal is up in everyone's business (checking for porn, and I mean that literally) and making things work a little better. But what HAS been bad is the salespeople who (supposedly) work in our office are actually coming to work. This is bad.

Don't get me wrong. I like them both just fine. I just like them better when they're not in my office complaining about the boss (who they never see cause they're not at work) or about ... everything, generally. The main guy thinks he's in charge of everything, knows everything, and is always right and always FIRST. The gal is full of drama, panicking over nothing to start with and then bitching about it later. She's so busy having a panic, she doesn't listen to what anyone is saying. Because she doesn't listen, she then complains to (anyone who will listen) when she has nothing to really complain about. Irritating.

If you want to follow me on Twitter for fun and exciting updates, it's Deoris1. I know, truly original. LOL

Wow. I need to post more. Well, this isn't terribly interesting...but its my blog so, just don't read I guess.

I live in a house where things are sometimes just a little wrong. It's an older house and stuff is kind of crap and we don't do much other than watch it decay for the most part. One of these things is the shower in the bathroom.

When we moved in, it was all right. I mean, it's a tiny bathroom but it has a tub and one of those shower hose things, so you can get along. It has a pedastal sink and a toilet. The only shelving is a little wall hanging thing with an open grid door. We keep most of our things in the closet outside the bathroom.

As time goes on, things keep getting a little worse. The toilet does that sweat thing and leaks all over the floor. The floor then kind of molds and looks kind of bad. Eventually we ripped up the floor and sealed the thing better and replaced some wood and moved on. It still looks kind of terrible and the toilet didn't stop sweating.

The shower is the big pain in my backside, tho'. We replaced the hose and shower head we had before and the one we have is really awesome pressure wise. Sadly, it doesn't sit in the 'dock' for shit and you have to kind of mush it around to get the stream to face outward. Today I couldn't even do that. It was hold it in my hand or stand on the door (sliding glass).

On top of that, the faucet leaks. We started by replacing the washer. Which worked for about three months, then we had to do it again. Eventually, DH grew tired of that and took the handle off and replaced the handle with a wrench. (One of those squeezy locking kind. I don't know what it's called.) Now it just leaks all the time in a steady stream.

This, and the fact that this is the only bathroom/shower in a house of five adults, means there is constant moisture on the ceiling. So now there's some mold there and then if enough people take a shower in a short time, it drips on you while you're showering.

Today most all of this occured to me. I don't feel clean. I just feel...frustrated. Time to learn some home improvements.

*sigh*

For those in the know, I have RA. I have medication for it, and it was working pretty good. Was is the key there. I had an appointment in January, but I missed it. This means the medication I had ran out and I needed more, which I didn't have a prescription for. I made another appointment and the guy assured me there would be no issues, but when I called to have it filled, they wouldn't. I had to take a lab test. I was already OUT of medication at the time and they told me this Friday night at 5:30.  Yeah. Okay.

So I did the labs on Monday. Wednesday morning I called the pharmacy. They restarted the prescription and told me that they would fax the doc. I wait and call the doc a little later and they didn't get a fax, but they'll call in to the pharmacy. Later, I called the pharmacy and they got no message from the doc. I call the doc AGAIN and they DID call and leave a message for the pharmacy. I went to the pharmacy and picked up the prescription. It was a lot of work.

That was a week ago and I'm not better. I know it takes time for this stuff to take effect, but in addition my nurse practitioner told me to stop taking Aleve and start taking this 'better' pain med, since I had been having trouble. (I chalked up at the time to weather changes, then I had the medicine bump.)

Basically, I'm still having horrible stiffness and pain. Tonight I had not only the pain med but the Aleve and took 2 Tylenol (regular ones, since I can't find the arthritis formula anywhere) on top of it. I am feeling way too over-medicated.

You know, once upon a time I didn't even take any pain meds at all. I hate to take pills. Now I take 9 at night and three in the morning and all the others during the day. It's very upsetting.

Stupid RA.

My eldest, who will be 20 in July, still lives at home. He has no job, and hasn't had a job for well over a year. He does NOTHING. He sits. He games. He plays on teh interwebs. I have to FORCE him to do anything.

You would think someone who does nothing and sponges off you would gladly take the trash out. Throw away wrappers. Clean the livingroom (especially when I never even go in there except to cross to the bathroom), clean his room, do his laundry, clean up after himself when he does ANYTHING. If I ASK, he might do the dishes. It takes him THREE HOURS. At the very least, and on a weeknight. On weekends, it's more like 8 - 12 hours. To put them in washer. Not even to wash them by hand or do the pans and goddess forbid he cleaned off a counter, tossed away trash or put something in the fridge.

I'm done. I've had it. Today I have like the WORST RA hand pain in a long time. My fingers barely move and I'm making all kinds of typos. Each letter is a new word in 'ouch'. And he....he can't do the pans. Which I have none of. So I can't make dinner. I've been home since at least 6 pm. It's 7:45. I finally (at 7;30) got so mad, I went in and did it myself (he was in the livingroom watching tv). He's like, "But it had all the ickky stuff in it and I'm waiting for it to soak." It was gross. It was moldy stuffing leftovers that nobody (in like 4-6 days) could be bothered to toss out. But you know what? STUFFING! It wasn't stuck on or dried on. It just smelled. Know what gets rid of smells? CLEANING IT!

It took me 10 minutes to wash it, five other pans, three flat "pizza" pans, 2 broilers and the rice cooker (which has been sitting there for at least a week and a half - empty, but unclean - in plain view in front of the coffee maker and toaster). WHY can nobody MOVE things? Why can nobody CLEAN things?

Get out.

I just want to apologize to everyone I know with a LJ. This is because my stupid Bloglines...upon whom I rely to bring me blogs...didn't bother to send me ANYONE's LJ entries since the end of December. I didn't really notice, since I do have a lot of blogs I subscribe to, it was the holidays, and I was ... busy, frankly. Today, I had 97 blog entries to read. (Most of them were from grass_stained andtheemdash and kaminiwa (which LJ is now telling me you don't exist, Elly. Very disturbing, that.)) So, sorry I wasn't keeping up and didn't comment much. I am a tool. I will use LJ 'friends' page more often. Promise.

Yeah, it started. And I just have one comment I couldn't resist. The little man who was sick, the one that hissed his way through the songs....PETER LORRE. I'm just saying.

Totally Peter Lorre.

The rules of this tag are quick & easy:
1. Go to the the 4th folder where you keep your pictures on your computer.
2. Post the 4th picture in the folder.
3. Explain the photo.





I had to modify the rules since I'm overly organized and in the 4th folder was only more folders. So I picked the 4th folder there, too.
This was taken in July 2008 and is of this 'wetland' area down by work. I discovered it in early spring as a nice bonus for where I worked and decided to try to take pictures there of each season. Sadly, they stopped giving me an actual lunch away from my desk, so I haven't taken too many. This was a 'summer' one, obviously. It's full of lush greens. I believe this is "Columbia Slough". Not sure about that.

Tagging: Bryseis (hah!) and icouldbehappy (Celosia)

While I've been having quite the week, it's never as bad as you think. There's always someone who has it worse than you, to quote a song.

Today, in the middle of a business crisis, one of our Somalian employees got an emergency phone call. Apparently, the army there marched into his home town and began randomly firing. His mother, hearing the noise, went outside. She started talking to someone about what was going on. She was shot down and killed.

That's NOT the way to start your day, end your day, and begin your year. It's literally days past his birthday, too. (It was the first.) He was devastated. He's a real man's man, and he was openly crying and mourning right there in my office. His friend, a coworker and fellow Somalian, took him home safely. I'm still stunned for him, and that was at 12 hours ago now.

Man, do I feel better about my issues. They're still there...but my mom is okay. That's a really important thing.

Someone asked me on Facebook how 2009 was treating me. I'm not sure how to answer that.

I got real mad at an Amazon on the 29th. On the 31st, one of my puppies died. Had to work the 31st and it was bad in the sense that a lot of things went wrong and everyone wanted me to fix it and I wasn't in the mood cause the puppy died. On the 1st, I spent the day working up the Amazon newsletter and a couple of my council didn't send anything in so I didn't have a lot to work with. I also did the Amazon count, which goes on for hours and is tiring. On the 2nd, I went with a friend and had a couple of drinks and it was kind of awkward and wierd. On the 3rd, I spent the day happy and renewed friendships with some Amazons who had left. Today I'm back to being annoyed due to a continuation of the situation on the 29th. To top all of this off, because of the puppy situation I'm terribly broke with bill collectors calling and I got a 450 dollar electricity bill thanks to the cold snap and my son's girlfriend who decided turning up the heat was better than getting another blanket.

I'm kind of left with a "get it all out of the way now" feeling about 2009. I'm hoping things straighten back out for February.

And that it stops bleeding snowing.

One of the puppies died last night from Parvo. This is a pretty simple and preventable virus that attacks the immune system in dogs. I have been pretty skint lately and haven't had the money to take the pups in to get the shots they need. I feel so bad right now, you can't imagine. I feel like it's all my fault because I simply couldn't afford to take them in.

Well, bills be damned. I'm taking Zoe in to the vet when we take poor Kaylee in this morning. I can use the money I was going to spend on outpatient treatments for Kay on Zoe and get her some shots. She, we think, already had the Parvo since she was sick first. She was just stronger than Kay.

I'm so sad and I have a day of work to get through.

So sad. :(

Oregon is not known for snow on the valley floor. It snows sometimes, 2 or 3 inches sometimes. Sometimes a foot, then it melts in 2 or 3 days. I've been snowed in for over a week. It's totally uncool. Right now, they're reporting 14"...and I sank up to my thighs today in snow as I struggled to work, which they finally cancelled because the buses stopped running. Here are some snow pictures.

Pat and Vivien at the window while I was taking snow pictures. This was about Tuesday last week.



Here's Zoe on Saturday.



Here's my house today.


Here's the same snow family, but the day it was made, Thursday, before all the snow fell on it.

It's 23F right now. It's supposed to snow. It stayed a very breezy 52F in the office all day, causing me to wear coat, hat, scarf and occasionally gloves the whole day. The fan wouldn't shut off and I basically spent the day in air conditioning! The repairman was called, but didn't arrive. They're supposedly coming tomorrow.

Which is when the snowstorm comes.

Now, I want to stress that I live in Oregon, and not in Minnesota or any kind of snowy state. It snows here rarely and everyone PANICS when it does. Nobody here knows how to drive on it, at least 3/4 of the population does not have (and refuses to buy) tire chains. I know because we went tonight and literally stood in a line for a 1/2 hour. It snowed 2 days ago and folk are just now getting around to it.

There was a conference call this am with the corporate HQ, where for the first 2 minutes a tyrant (that means 'owner') went on a verbal rampage and bereted us all for daring to want to know how bad things should be before we close the shop. I mean almost 2 min exactly, with idiot questions like, "What's the weather like today, hmmmmm? Oh, right 25 and SUNNY! Go to work!" and slammed out the door of the conference room. Once that was over, we actually got down to tacks and have a plan in place. Pardon me if I just say 'idiot' and move on.

Might be home tomorrow. Which will be nice since its warm here and...I seem to have a fever and a scratchy throat. It just might be from working in a 52F office with the air conditioner on....but maybe it's just all in my head. I should just go to work, eh?

I've decided I need a fangirl icon. I'm not usually a fangirl...although I love being a fan...but I have a thing right now that I can't talk about where I squee a lot. Friend of a friend makes me squee. I need a fangirl icon. It is Nathan-related, but really any kind of fangirl icon that's about fangirls should be fine. Where can I thieve one??? :)

I wanted to touch briefly on the story, "Little Kitten". This is mostly because I need to post something today for NaBlo or I lose for sure. I don't want to lose after managing to go all month. LOL

What I was writing. "Little Kitten" was my Amazon character, Deoris', backstory. I'd always thought it might be interesting to show how she became blind and how she learned to get along. For those not in the know, when I began at Themiscyra (Nine years ago.) there were short little biographies about each character. I had initially wanted to be a bard character. At the time I hadn't seen much Xena, but what I had seen I'd enjoyed and joining Themiscyra seemed a great to 'watch' the show without watching the show, so I didn't know that the Gabrielle character was a bard. What I found was that they already had one. They had sorceresses, witches, weapons mistresses, all kinds of things. I read through everything and decided what they didn't have was a Priestess of Artemis. I didn't really want to be magic (they had lots of magic), but I did want to be special so I made myself blind.

Obviously the blind had to have a reason. I made it that Artemis blinded me so that I could see her realm. This worked out really well. Sadly, after I created the character, I stopped visiting the site. This was mostly due to the lack of posting on everyone's part. There was rarely a role-playing post and the only chat posts were "I'm here!" when it was called for. (The posting board itself was cumbersome and gross. That didn't help.)

About three years after I joined, the original Queen stepped down and Jadea stepped up. Under her rule, you had to post once a month or you'd be removed from playing. (It was part of a good idea. She rarely counted the posts or knew who was posting and she said only one post, so you could post in a chat forum and get by.) So I posted in chat a couple of times and she finally cajoled me into posting in the RPF.

I managed possibly a month's worth of posting before I was 'kidnapped' by a blonde woman who literally waved her hand and gave me back my sight. I never really got to explore Deoris' blindness. I did get to explore her return from blindness. (She stared at everything, drew horrible pictures on her walls, stuff like that.) That was really fun.

In about 2005, I wrote a post about her backstory. In 2007, I wrote a second post. This year, I decided to finally get into it and write it down.

I read what I'd written and picked up the story from where I'd left it. I had more information this time. From the past 2 Nano Wins I now had the mother's name, the Queen's name, the Regent's name and a host of other minor Amazons I could draw from. I also have an extensive list of the "Ancient" Amazons and what biographies I could find for them. Using all of this, I wrote my story.

The hardest part wasn't where to end it, but HOW. I knew where I wanted to stop, but I had no idea how to 'get off'. I finally just wrote, "Makes a heck of a story." and stopped writing. Kind of lame, but Deoris' story goes on in the forum, so it's not really 'over'.

Not sure at all what to do for next year. I'll probably think of something. Ronic, Shad and Sosey are still there waiting for me, as is Bron. (Remember Bron, Eden?) I'd like to revisit them. There's also Evan and Reany to consider. Stories I started and then abandoned. I think I might just take them up again.

Well, wrote actually. I wrote a post for Themiscyra which was rather long and involved and still managed to leave something out. I also did the newsletter letter. All told, it was pretty much 1000 or so words. Nano leaves an impression, what can I say?

Had friends visit for a while, which was great. These are my best friends and I miss them terribly. They moved to Snohomish a while back, or Monroe, or one of those, like years ago. Before that, we were pretty inseperable. So it was nice to have them here for a visit. They're coming back at Christmas.

Speaking of, "White Christmas" is coming on the telly here in a bit. I love that movie. I love singing it and watching it and marveling at it. Bing is my hero.

Hope you had a bit of good today.

To say today.




50033 to be exact. Finished the story, too, in it's way. (Can't really finish something that's ongoing, but I put an 'end' on it.) So...all around good time to be had.

Sorry about the dancing about. Just...keep away from the flailing arms.

47176 that's left me 2824 to go.

Sadly, one of the two new medications I was put on last week is not working well for me. I'm exhausted and my stomach hurts beyond all belief. This is a bad thing on a day where eating a lot is the norm. I had one small slice of ham, a tiny scoop of broccoli and stuffing and one small twice-baked potato. It was pretty sad. I drank about half a beer before the cramps were so bad I had to stop. I'm calling them tomorrow and I didn't take either of the meds tonight. I think it's just the wisest.

Anyhow, might not write much tomorrow. Should have some visitors over instead. :) We'll see. DH is working, so I might get some in before anyone gets here. I sure hope so. I want this bitch finished. LOL