We have had ALL the weather today. This morning it was partly cloudy. Then it began to rain. Then it hailed, then it sleeted, then it snowed, and all the while the wind blew and swooped and shrieked around the buildings like a dasterdly thing. Then it cleared way up and now it's melting like mad and the wind continues to wuther!
Woot woot! New Rogue and Gambit busts! The Rogue is a little too T&A for my tastes, but, well, that won't stop me from getting it, now, will it? I like the Gambit quite a lot, though. :)
It was 43 degrees when I got up this morning. Now it's sleeting and winding rather dramatically, and big snow crystals are smashing around with abandon. Smash smash!
I had oatmeal for breakfast instead of girl scout cookies. Isn't that a let-down?
bfe: oatmeal. toast with honey. pork egg roll, small amount of chicken-fried rice, milk. cake & ice cream! arby's for dinner: beef & cheddar w/no sauce, curly fries, small 7-up. cake and ice cream for dessert, yum.
The radio is talking about girl scout cookies and now I WANT some!
I find this to be surprisingly accurate!
I Am A: Chaotic Good Human Bard Fighter
Alignment:
Chaotic Good characters are independent types with a strong belief in the value of goodness. They have little use for governments and other forces of order, and will generally do their own things, without heed to such groups.
Race:
Humans are the 'average' race. They have the shortest life spans, and because of this, they tend to avoid the racial prejudices that other races are known for. They are also very curious and tend to live 'for the moment'.
Primary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.
Secondary Class:
Fighters are the warriors. They use weapons to accomplish their goals. This isn't to say that they aren't intelligent, but that they do, in fact, believe that violence is frequently the answer.
Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan
Actually, nothing disastrous happened. And it is *REALLY* good cake. Wow. I wonder if it's as good with the right amount of milk in it, or if it's 235704 times richer with the extra half cup of milk. Wow, that's *really* good cake!
Oops. Anybody ever put a third as much liquid into a cake mix as was supposed to go? No? Me either. I'll let you know what happens.
Cash flow reality check; upon balancing the checkbook, it is fairly clear that we can't afford this month for me to pay $70/m to swim with the Masters' club. I managed for January to get my act together and swim pretty regularly at UAA; I'll just have to do it again. And maybe I can get ice skates next winter, or something.
It's amazing how easy it is to spend too much money.
Oh yeah, art class last night.
I think I'm sort of ambivilent about the art class I'm taking. It's a beginning drawing class, but what it's seemed to me to be is an overview of different styles, without any real focus on how to do it for more than 90 minutes or 2 hours. Last night we did pen and ink drawings and ink washes. Now, I like ink drawings; one of my favorite of my drawings that I did before I stopped drawing was done in ink, but that was with an ink pen, and we were using calligraphy pens last night, which I found... difficult. I might be able to learn to work with them, but we did this for, well, 90 minutes, and then we did stippling and other stuff which is not much like . . .
Well, it's not like gaining any kind of proficiency with one tool, which is, I guess, what I expect from a drawing class. What we're getting is 'lots of different ways and tools you can draw with', and that's very _interesting_, but it doesn't seem basic enough to me. I have the impression from other people in the class that they feel the same way; I suspect that the problem is that the teacher, who knows all this stuff, has gone beyond the point where actually explaining it and practicing it diligently seems useful to her.
She feels that once a person has completed her beginning drawing class, they're ready to go on to her intermediate drawing class. Well, okay, that's probably true. They're probably ready to go on to /her/ intermediate drawing class. I'm not sure I'd buy that they'd be ready to go on to a generic intermediate drawing class.
Anyway. I sent in an application to UAA for their BA in art for this fall. It looks from their schedules like they've got beginning art courses of one sort and another in evenings, so I might be able to swing a semester of that before having to negotiate weird work hours with my boss. The nice thing is I've got a degree from the UA system already, so I wouldn't have to do most of the generalized stuff.
The other thing is, see, that I really don't want to go to UAA for my MFA. I really, really want to go to Mills. Or Brown, or UW, or; you see my point. And an art degree is one of many that I'd like to have, and I don't mind racking up undergrad degrees from the state system. I'd just like to get outside of that for an MFA.
So! Perhaps there will be art schooling for me in the fall. :)
The other reason I was later getting in this morning is because I came down the stairs to the landing at, oh, I don't know, ten after eight? Eight twenty? And pulled up the shade and discovered a gorgeous sunrise going on over the mountains.
And so I stayed there, and watched the whole thing. There was a bowl created by the mountains, and the sky above it started out hot pink and gold, and gradually faded to a volcano's glow cupped by the bowl, only a hundred shades paler than any volcano ever would be. One mountain peak was in just the right place to keep a shaft of blue shadow cut through the golds and reds, right from the time I started watching, all the way through to the clouds turning white-gold and the sun turning from an idea into a reality over the mountains' edge.
Forget the earth turning and the sun staying still; forget all that. Sunrise is pure magic.
I woulda been up earlier, but I had a very busy weekend this morning.
I was on TOS Enterprise, with most of TOS crew and a goodly portion of TNG crew, including someone who appeared to be Worf's son Alexander, except his forehead was made of white plaster. Solid. White. Bright white. Plaster. With all the Klingon bumps, but white. On a brown face. Very white. Did I mention the white?
Anyway. We got stuck in a . . . black hole sort of thing, and many people seemed to be in a heavily drugged sleep, lying around on the floor of what may have been Voyager's mess hall, now that I think about it. Anyway, that was okay because it warped into a bedroom, and then the monsters in the walls started coming out. The monsters were a blonde lady with chin-length hair and a very, very very long neck. Very long. I'm not *exactly* sure what she was going to do with people, but then the shot cut back to a distance shot and 3 of the long-necked ladies got into a terrible big fight with the crew, and people were kicking the long-necked ladies' heads off and other cartoonishly unpleasant things like that.
Having routed the enemy, I ended up at what appeared to be a military base/mall, where Bishop of the X-Men and I had . . . no, I've forgotten most of what was supposed to be going on. Anyway, we had to take an F-14 and go somewhere, only the first time we went it didn't, er, work properly, and we had to come back after not very long, and I slept through the second trip.
Anyway, I ended up at home getting ready for the shower, and Ted had taken the old towels that I'd put in the laundry room back into the bathroom and I was very very upset with him, and then a conveyer belt dragged me out of the shower and off into the snow, except I ran the other way on the conveyer belt and got back to the bathroom, and had to put books on the conveyer belt only instead I was trying to put words together and they kept vrooming away . . . .
bfe: oatmeal, 8oz oj. toast with honey. egg salad sandwich, milk. licked the bowl of cake mix. :) steak bits, spinach, tater tots & milk. licked icing bowl. :) cake & ice cream (WOW good!)
Woot woot! My drawing is all framed and ready to go! It didn't take 2 weeks like they said it would 'cause they had the frame in town. Woot woot! I wanna go get it! Woot woot!
bfe: oatmeal. toast w/honey. egg salad sandwich, milk & 2 cookies. chili, ritz crackers & milk.
Due to something my friend Christi said today, I went and looked up other Catherine Murphys on the net. I found, among others, a biochemist, an artist, an athlete, a composer and a passenger on the Titanic.
And three hundred thirty three thousand other hits, but I gave up after the first four pages or so. :)
'k, so I'm going to start making what Flit calls Boring Food Entries. Not because I'm in search of homeopathic remedies and/or food triggers that make me ill, and not even really to make me watch my diet. It's more to try to keep myself honest about what I'm eating (which, I grant you, may very well prod me to watch my diet). I did this for a while several months ago, when I /was/ trying to figure out what was making me ill, but I didn't keep it publically. Admitting to everybody who stops by my blog that I ate seven brownies yesterday may be more embarrassing than admitting it to myself. (I didn't! We don't have any brownies right now!)
In other news, the stupid bug I was working on yesterday which seemed to prove, at the end of the day, to be a caching problem, is not a caching problem at all, but is instead buggered-up code somewhere else in the system where I can't get to it. This really doesn't make me happy. :P
Well, I actually was awake at the appropriate time to get up and go swimming this morning, but at 4am Ted's head had exploded with sinus ookiness, and it didn't seem very nice to make him get up earlier than necessary to drop me off at the pool, so instead I got up at ten to seven or something and was at work by 7:30, which is not a bad thing. Sadly, I can't swim tonight 'cause I've got my art class, but at least I got up much earlier.
I have even accomplished getting a load of laundry started.
Oh! On Saturday we brought my Virgo drawing over to the frame shop to be framed. Ted, who is Very Picky about That Sort of Thing (Ted could do frame work for a living, if he wanted to; he's very good at it) is Dissatisfied With the Matting. We chose a nice rich brown suede for the matting, but he wanted a mat with more orange in it than they had available. They had one with too much, and one with not enough, and I settled on the one with not enough. :)
Actually, I think it'll be quite attractive. I think he'll come around to it after he's seen it, but he often has to have a framed piece hanging around for several days where he can see it before he's really satisfied with it. *And* he picked out a smashing orange and black scoured wood frame which was of course expensive but looks really cool with the drawing. :)
The lady at the shop wanted to do just plain old black suede and a black metal frame, but it was much too stark and icky. The blacks in the drawing are not really very black at all. I think I did the piece with charcoal. I could be wrong, 'cause I don't tend to use charcoal, but I think I did anyway. Oh, wait, I can look it up --
--ah, I used pastels. Anyway, so the blacks aren't all that black. They might've been four years ago when I /did/ the drawing, but, well, four years ago.
Right. This was /so/ much more information than you wanted to know.
Hmph. I was in the midst of typing up an entry when my computer crashed. boom! No BSoD, just froze right up. Hmph. So I went and made bread.
Anyway, I'm feeling all spoiled and purrful 'cause I got offline early last night and took a bubble bath and shaved my legs and read a book -- okay, actually, the book wasn't that good, but despite that, it added to the decadence of the whole thing.
Tonight I will go swim. Today I might order ice skates. :)
Here's a pretty cool article about the idiotic extension of copyright laws and some people who have managed to get their case to the Supreme Court. I hope the Supreme Court agrees with them: I think it's hideous that Disney is forcibly extending the copyright laws to protect Mickey freaking Mouse. I was all pissed off when it happened -- all talk, mind you, 'cause I didn't do what this pair are doing -- but pissed off anyway. So I hope they win!
It is my hope to swim this evening. We'll see what else happens, but it is my hope to swim.
I'm going to join the Masters' team at APU. They swim mornings on MWF, so I may, to keep myself in schedule, swim TR mornings at UAA. Which would make my UAA alumni gym membership still useful, which would be pleasing to me. I wish I knew where to find ice skates for wide feet. I'd like to be able to skate at UAA, too.
Having said that, I look on the net and find wide-width ice skates for $100 or so. Ouch. But if I ordered them *right* *now* I could get some outdoors skating down on the lagoon done before it melts...
But $100. Ouch. Maybe I'll discuss the matter with Ted. I used to really love ice skating. Not that I was any good at doing anything other than going around in circles (I never even managed to learn to skate backwards), but I really liked it!
Fuss fuss fuss!
Rassle frassle snarl gnrr! I missed buying the present I wanted to get for Sarah's birthday AGAIN. *Mutter*
OTOH, I got her the other one, so all is well. :)
I met the Jack Russell puppy who lives across from us. :) His name is Moby and he's very squirmy and kept running and running and running around my ankle and getting his lead all wrapped around my ankle and then the cats came to the open door and Moby got very very VERY excited and wanted to go in to meet them and the cats were pretty darned curious and Lucy didn't hiss! But we didn't let him go in to actually meet them, and I closed the door behind myself so I could talk to Moby's owner, whose name I did not learn (she was wearing bright yellow clogs and no socks; I shouldn't have kept her as long as I did, 'cause I expect her feet were quite cold) and while we talked for a minute Moby and the cats LOOOOOOOOOOKED at each other through the window and I want a puppy!
Chuck Jones, creator of Bugs Bunny, died yesterday. He was 89, so he'd had a good run of it, but it's still sad.
I slept in this morning, which is to say I woke up at the usual time and refused to get out of bed, while trying to chase the cats off. :) And now I think I'm going to go find some fud, 'cause I'm veeeeeery hungry!
So Larry said he'd write me a letter of recommendation for applying to MFA programs. However, it's now only a few days until the early admissions deadline, and I'm not sure it's worth it just now. I could go back to school and get another degree in something else over the next year or so, or hell, just go back to school, and apply for next fall. I dunno. *useless flailing*
Possibly a correspondingly earlier bedtime would help with the getting up earlier thing . . . .
*wah* I don't know what I ate that made my tummy unhappy, but crampy gassy owieness. *whimper* I feel sorry for me.
God damn it. I did a whole shitload of work yesterday and I'm finding pieces of it that have been fucked up by my QA guy and I am *really* not happy about this. And he's been in meetings all goddamned day and I don't know what happens if I *fix* the fucking things because I don't know what he was /doing/ with them.
*frustration*
*sigh*
Well, *that* was nothing like getting up 15 minutes earlier. But then, I slept very badly. A lot of tossing and turning and waking up. Stupid cats.
Well, I got up 15 minutes earlier in sort of the hopes that if I got up 15 minutes earlier every day it wouldn't suck quite so much to get up at 5am on the 1st. Of course, if I get up 15 minutes earlier every day including weekends I'll only be getting up at 6am on the 28th, which still means trying to drag my sorry ass out of bed an hour earlier suddenly.
Stupid February with only 28 days. If it had 31 like a SENSIBLE month . . . .
Art class went pretty well tonight. It took me several drawings to finally get the idea of what Tessa was talking about, for the first set of drawings, but then I got it, and she said I'd gotten it, so, well, that was good. And then the second thing we worked on was crosshatching, which I can do, so, cool. Then we did, um, something else, and then we did a couple of 'things I need to work on' sketches, so I worked on perspective/foreshortening, and I think one of the drawings would have turned out quite nicely if the model hadn't kept squirming and fucking up my drawing. :) But some of the others turned out all right, so I'm reasonably pleased with that.
*wibble* I wonder if I could train myself to get up at 5am by March 1st. There's a Master's swim club that swims at 5:30am at APU on MWF (and a little later on Saturdays), and I know the coach is really good, because he used to be my sister's coach in high school. But I'm fat and out of shape and uncertain and meep.
That was kinda weird. I just went out to the mailbox to put some mail in it, and it was very bright, and I happened to have my sunglasses in my pocket, so I took my glasses off and put the shades on.
I don't remember the last time I went outside without corrective lenses. It is very big out there. Very big and very . . . fuzzy. Weird.
Oh, you wanted to know what grad school I was thinking about? Sheesh. Nosy.
I'm thinking about going back for my MFA in creative writing. There's a fairly decent MFA program at UAA.
The only problem with this is that I actually /want/ to go to Mills College in Oakland for an MFA. But it costs several thousand times more, and, well, is in Oakland. So I don't know. :/
UAA has plenty of other undergrad degrees that I'd like to get. Anthropology, geology, theatre, art ... the problem with going back for another undergrad degree is that grad classes tend to not be in the morning, which would mean I could still work, whereas undergrad classes are all over the schedule. Also, of course, one can get research assistanceships and teaching assistanceships as a grad student, which come with a Free Ticket to Classes, and free school is good.
I'm feeling a bit low. :/
I called the school. Their office hours are 8:30am to 2:30pm. I called at exactly 2:30. Nobody there. :(
So what the hell is a person supposed to do if grad school applications want letters of recommendation addressing her 'academic preparedness' if she hasn't been in school for SIX YEARS?
Henry suggests calling the school and asking. How practical of him.
It seems I was suffering from Lesser Ick, rather than Greater Ick. Probably dehydration and being overheated. This is a good thing.
Sadly, Tori has Greater Ick (the flu, apparently), and so she and Jai aren't coming over for lunch. But we'll go to lunch this weekend or next, maybe! Yay! :)
Icky tummy. Donno if it is icky tummy from dehydration or if there is Greater Ick involved. And Jai wants to come over with Tori for lunch, and I'd love to see them, so I hope it is not Greater Ick. I will drink water and maybe that will help.
A couple days ago we went over to Borders to try to find a book (which we didn't find, but we found some others, so, er, that's okay) . . . boy, I really feel pretty icky . . . and while we were looking for it, I noticed two women sitting at one of the tables with a Quite Large Pile of young adult and children's novels that they were going through, 90% of which I'd read. One of them happened to be holding The Grey King at the moment, so I stopped and said, "I don't know what you're doing, but that's a really fantastic book," and they said, "Oh! Thanks!" One of them, it turns out, is doing a children's literature class over at, er, I forgot what high school, which I thought was just really cool. So then, being me, I said, "If you want any more opinions, I've got plenty, 'cause I've read almost everything you've got on the table." And they said, "Oh! Really?" And so I sat down with them for a few minutes and went through their list of books that they had, and the pile they had on the table.
They had some great books. Witch of Blackbird Pond, Summer of my German Soldier, The Grey King, of course. Bridge to Terebithia, which is depressing as hell but *God* it's a good book, and Jacob Have I Loved, which I was like 'you *must* do this one, it's a *wonderful* book', and Anne of Green Gables, of course, which is just one of the coolest books ever written. I dissed Charlotte's Web and The Golden Compass, saying I knew CW was a good book but I just didn't like books where animals died (they didn't have Watership Down on the list and I didn't mention it -- well, okay, in part because I haven't actually read it, which is sort of embarrassing) and said as far as I could tell I was the only person on the planet who hadn't particularly liked TGC (it wasn't *bad*, but I felt no compunction , but one of the women laughed and said, "No, I didn't either! Oh, I'm glad someone else didn't like it!" and nudged me and laughed some more, so that was fun. :) And I'm remembering all the titles with female protagonists, and none of them with male protagonists. There was a -- Scott O'Dell? book with a male protagonist that I think I read a hundred thousand years ago, but I knew the title and storyline at least generally anyway 'cause, well, good book.
Oh, I wish I'd thought of My Side of the Mountain, which is a great book (with a male protagonist). *Oh*, I wish I'd remembered that. Drat! It was Stellar or Service High -- probabl Service. I wonder if they're doing book-ordering through Borders and if I could get hold of them. Hm . . . Anyway, it was a lot of fun. :)
So Mom's been researching the Lee geneology, and we're reasonably certain that we have a Richard Lee born in 1783 in North Carolina who is Ted's great-to-the-Nth-uncle or possibly grandfather. Sadly, from the 1850 census and before, they don't ask for names of children in the house, just ages, so it makes it harder to track back. Still, it appears that Ted's people have been in the States a Long Darned Time! There's a Stanford Lee who fought on the *Northern* side of the Civil War who is probably Ted's great-great-great-great-grandfather, which is extra-interesting 'cause they were slave owners, back in the day. I can't wait to find out more! It's all very interesting!
I went to swim today, although I had a Bad Feeling that the pool would be closed, so I asked Ted to wait a few minutes before he left, so I could come back out if it was closed. I went in and looked at the bulletin board carefully, and saw no indication that the pool was closed, so I changed into my swimsuit and showered and went to the door to the pool--
--upon which was posted a piece of paper saying that the pool was closed. *sigh* By that time it was far too late to catch Ted, so I dawdled around and showered and still only managed to take about 17 minutes to get washed and dried and dressed. On the way out, I saw a posting on the bulletin board saying the pool was closed.
*more sighs*
So I farted around for 45 minutes and looked at class schedules and thought about going back to school and watched some cheerleaders and finally got to come home. And I was going to make ice cream, but since Ted made waffles this morning, there were not enough eggs!
But! I sent Shaun to buy eggs, and now he has, and so now, I will go make ice cream! Vroom!
Boy, am I spoiled. This morning I said to Ted, "What are you going to make me for breakfast?" And he said, "What do you want for breakfast?" And I said, "Waffles!"
And so he got up and made me waffles! Aren't I *spoiled*? *beam* I have the *best* husband. :)
My toffee turned out! Yaaaaay!
However, now it's too late to make ice cream, so I'll hafta wait til tomorrow to do that. :)
Baby steps!
So. We joined Keri and Aberdeen and Angie; introductions were made, and Keri remembered me, I think, 'cause I'd been in proximity to Michlvis when we were there in November. (Well, that and I'm from Alaska. That seems to stick in people's minds for some reason ... ). Conversation ensued.
For three hours.
I couldn't *possibly* cover everything that we talked about, but I'll give it a shot. *laugh* First off, Keri was *supposed* to go running off relatively early that evening because he was supposed to be doing a scratch recording (I think I have that phrase right) for some some ridiculous commercial thing in which he was doing a soul-man singing ... monkey.
Keri is a black man. You should have *seen* his expression when he was talking about this. You should have seen *Sarah's* expression. It is possible you should have seen *all* our expressions. Keri was like, "But it's cool! They're paying me! It's cool!" It was *really* funny. He had this /grand/ expression of "The things I do for my art/the things I do for money/is this not sort of painfully ironic?" He clearly wasn't *offended* by the gig, but it was just as clearly a source of ironic amusement to him.
We got into this HUGE discussion about astrology, for heaven's sake. He was wearing a Pi.. pic .. fish necklace! Y'know! The astrological sign! Pisces. Boy, that looks wrong. That! Anyway! He was wearing one! And I commented on it! So we got into this big old discussion about astrology, and Keri knows a bunch about astrology, it turns out, and upon Sarah telling him that she was a Pisces (are you *sure* that's right?) with Leo rising or something like that, he said something helpful like, "Oh my god, are you confused," and then in like two sentences nailed Sarah's personality. It was scary.
'course, then he did me. Er. Nailed my-- you know, I'm not going to come out of that sentence unscathed, am I? I think I was born at 2:50 or so in the afternoon, and he thinks that makes me a Cancer rising, and I'm embarrassingly typically Gemini anyway ("Geminis," Keri said, "are the only people scarier than Pisces."), and he said something to the effect of, "You're basically right all the time," and for the REST OF THE WEEKEND, they wouldn't let me live that down. Every time I said anything, they were like, "Kit's right! We know Kit's right! She's always right!"
Of course, we were also running around saying, "Jesus nightlights!" all weekend, too, which is something we wouldn't let Sarah live down. The other day online, she was looking at some website, which evidently had Jesus nightlights, and she said, "Jesus nightlights." on Too, and we all thought it was an inventive new curse phrase. "Jesus nightlights!" So to express surprise we kept saying, "Jesus nightlights!" *laugh* We might be silly . . .
Jesus nightlights aside, we stood in line for about an hour and a half, edging our way towards James, although miraculously, hanging out with Keri made all of our feet stop hurting. Or we stopped noticing them, anyway. Every once in a while the line would move, and I kept saying, "Baby steps!" and we'd baby-step a few steps closer to James. Well. We girls would. Keri watched us every time and then did a slinky step or two forward. He was a lot more -- I'm not sure dignified is the right word. Slinky. He was a lot more slinky than we were. :)
*helpless laughter* A woman walked by an a guy's arm, and although Sarah and Angie and I missed it, Keri and Deen both saw her snap her gaze around to *seriously* check Deen out. As soon as she was out of hearing range, Keri said, "Let me *out*!", and I think it may have even made Deen blush. *grin* There was, as Deen said, cleavage inspection.
There was a lot of cleavage going around. As Sarah mentioned, Keri kept doing this sort of, "Boobs. Okay," glance, as if, indeed, making sure none of our breasts had scampered off while he wasn't looking. (They hadn't.) Sort of as part of one of those boobs-okay glances, he ended up smacking my shoulder and going, "Okay, I gotta ask, what *is* this outfit? This is *not* Alaska clothes!" I said, "No, this is we-went-shopping-today clothes," and I think ultimately it came around to him being impressed I'd had the balls to wear it. ('It' was a bustier and black jeans, fwiw.) It was flattering, anyway. :)
I no longer have *any* idea why I told him to chew on Emily's finger, but I did, and for a priceless moment there he considered it. *howls of laughter*
OH OH OH ULTIMATE EGOBOO MOMENT. Well, for me, anyway. Again, not sure why, but we were talking about UFD's music and I mentioned -- oh, I was saying that I thought 'What In God's Name', which is one of the pieces they did in November, was one of the most powerful pieces of music I'd heard in a long time, and I wanted to know what the actual title of the song was. Keri was like, "Thanks, oh, In God's Name? You kinda named that for us. In that email, you called it In God's Name and that was *way* better than anything we'd been trying out for it, it was perfect."
Excuse me while I fall right over dead. *beam*
After the evening was over -- you'll notice there's absolutely no order to this writeup -- we all admitted to each other how we all knew Keri was flirting with everybody, but we all felt that he was *particularly* and *especially* flirting with 'me', for whichever value of 'me' fit the person speaking. We were all very impressed with his skill. *giggle*
*laugh* We eventually made it up to James, and I'd *told* my friend Trent that I'd say hi to James for him, and I really *meant* to, but when I got up to him, he looked *so* *tired*, and all thoughts of Trent popped out of my brain and I said something to the effect of, 'Oh, sweetie, you look exhausted, go home and go to bed'. I don't *think* I *actually* said 'sweetie', but I'm sort of afraid I might have. *laugh* And he said, "Oh great. That's the worst possible thing you can say to an actor, love. Might as well say, "You're out of a job, fired tomorrow, you'll never work again, get out!"" which caused me to laugh a lot -- he was just giving me a hard time, not actually offended -- and I admitted I was a terrible human being but he still looked like he needed rest. :) And Keri took a picture for me, and then I took pictures of Deen and Sarah and Angie, despite Deen being all startled and claiming she had photos and didn't need any more, but it was good she got one taken 'cause he hugged her and said, "Nice to see you again," as she was leaving, which, well, excuse me, mind boggle! Go Deen! Emily has become a Repeat Figure in James' Existence. That's pretty cool. :)
And the poor guy really was exhausted. Leaning on the bar table they'd brought out so he could have something to sign autographs on, and he just looked pooped. I'm just *blown away* by the fact that he stayed for two hours, to talk to *everybody*. He is really, *really* good people.
Okay, there's like fifteen thousand more conversation bits to record, but I've forgotten half of them and my brain is turning to goo anyway, so I may give up for the night. After we staggered out of the club, we went to Denny's and had a 2am dinner (as usual, we hadn't eaten since, um, lunch), during which Sarah became so tired she almost fell asleep in her food. I actually thought she was going to. *laugh* Tired, *tired* girls. But we had FUN!
Oh yes. We had a minor bookstore accident, too. We went in for one book and came out with, um, five. But it cost under $40, so it hardly counts! Er, right? Right? Anybody? Bueller?
I bought like nine books this week (mostly through trade credit and gift certificates, but still). It's not exactly as if I have no books waiting around to be read, but what do I do? I go and buy nine more.
But heck! I read one of 'em today! That, um, counts for something, right? *cheesy smile*
Well. In a few minutes, I'm going to go try for the *third* time today to make a successful batch of pralines so I can make praline ice cream this ... well. In theory this evening, but it's beginning to look more like tomorrow.
The first attempt, the recipe was no good, but despite looking *very* dubiously at the recipe, I tried it anyway, and it was an utter failure.
The second time, I used the almond toffee recipe, because, well, that's /basically/ what pralines are. But I burned the toffee. It's not inedible, but it's not good enough to put into ice cream to make praline ice cream. Because I'm a snob. :) So I'm going to give it another shot. In fact, I think I may continue to make tiny batches of almond toffee until I get it right, because I never have been able to make a successful batch. This will take up a lot of butter (unless I get it right with the next batch, which is not impossible) but it will mean that come Christmas I'll know how to do it right. :)
However, even hearing me explain about these disasters (and man, I've managed to splash hot sugar water on myself three times today, OW), Sarah still wants to come up here and be my roommate 'cause I make ... what did she say. 'The coolest stuff'. :)
It can't be *that* hard to make almond toffee, darn it!
Baby steps!
So where was I? Right, I was having people's breasts poke me in the back. Not, I repeat, an experience to be recommended.
James showed up around 10, and was immediately plagued with sound problems, which caused his intro line to involved the word 'fuck', I'm pretty sure, although I don't actually recall what it was. Because he had very little time, there was relatively little banter, and that, from James, is pretty unusual. He's usually quite a clown. His set list included (in no particular order), Cadillac Man, Dangerous (a new one he wrote, which he said, "Two people know what this song means, and if Joss tells anybody, I'll kill him," about), Goodbye (aka Hundred Acre Wood), Come As You Are (easily the best rendition of anything he did that night), Chocolate Jesus, Angel (another original), and another Tom Waits song. And maybe a couple or three others; he didn't do more than ten songs, and was sort of frantically going through his sets that he had written down to see what he could or should do in the time he had available.
He was very much in Bruce-Springsteen voice on Saturday, which is, well, not his real voice. He wants to grow up to be Bruce, clearly, but I like his own voice better. I think at it was mostly due to nerves/frazzlement over being late/time pressure, because normally he's not quite so much in somebody else's headspace while performing. Oh, one of the new songs he did was something he'd just written, and he said, "I'll probably forget it," and he did. :)
Several people asked for Rest In Peace, which he did not do, which did not surprise me. He shook his head and smiled the first time, and then looked sort of exasperated as people kept asking. He did do 'Goodbye' pretty much on request, though, 'cause he was going down his list of what to do and somebody called, "Goodbye!" and he kinda went, "Okay, I can do that," and did.
I really can't remember much of what he said--in part, probably, because he didn't say a lot. When he did Angel, he mentioned it had been written for someone in specific, and "No, I'm not going to tell you where she is!" There was quite a bit of swearing at the sound system, and a lot of general frustration, and then they tossed him offstage so the next band could come play.
The woman behind me said, "Is that *it*?", but it didn't surprise me, I guess. He was so late, and there were other bands, so, well. He's not a professional (at least not a professional musician!) and I'm pretty sure that the only reason they didn't just totally cancel him is because there were three hundred crabby people waiting for James Marsters (with Capital Letters) to come perform. So I told the woman behind me that he usually played a lot longer, but since they were running so late, they probably needed the stage for the next gig, and she seemed relatively mollified.
So Sarah and I struggled our way out of the club and went looking for Deen and Angie. Upon locating them (they were in the already-forming line (line! not mob! that was new!) to meet and greet James), we promptly went back into the building to use the restrooms (14 Below has the Smallest Restrooms Ever), and on the way back in, I saw a guy and said to Sarah, "I think that's Keri, the lead singer from Urban Family Dog," and she said, "Why don't you go ask him," and I was like, "Nah, he'll stop and talk to Deen if he sees her," and when we came out again, indeed, Keri was hanging out with Deen and Angie and talking to them. So introductions were made all around, and really, *that's* when the evening started to turn good.
Oh, wow, that posting last night actually posted. I didn't expect it to, and so I'd been a Clever Kit and had saved it in another file so I could repost this morning. But I don't have to, hah!
So the cable modem crashed last night and Ted and I went out to dinner at Lone Star, this being our Nod To Valentine's Day, then went to Border's and spent Ted's birthday gift certificate (new Anne Perry! New Joan Vinge! Woot! Okay, I seem to have spent 2/3rds of it myself. o.o) and then went to have ice cream and then came home and I made brownies (which I ate two of and made myself feel all gooky later, too much sweetness) and we watched the first three episodes of Angel from this season, 'cause Deen ROCKS and gave me tapes up to relatively recent episodes, and woot! So there was Angel-watching, and it was good. Fred is cute. Darla is skanky. I like Cordy's hair. Heck, I like Wesley's hair.
Now I'm going to get some breakfast. HungryKit!
Baby steps!
Okay, this will be as much update as I have time for, which is I don't know how much. :)
So I left off with us panicking about clothing. And hair. We'd bought this brush-in color goo stuff, which they claim you could style your hair and then brush in, which is like saying you can style your hair and /then/ gel it. Didn't work the way it said it would. But I liked my hair okay anyway, and Sarah kept saying hers looked like she'd fingerpainted it, but it didn't. :)
We have no record of the clothing panic, because it didn't even *occur* to me to take pictures, so you'll just have to imagine four women going AUGH and the like about their clothes. Eventually Deen and Angie both changed into other clothes they'd brought along -- but that was after we'd gone to the club. Anyway, that reduced the panic factor, and I wasn't panicking, really, although I did end up being the only one wandering around with bare nekkid shoulders. C'est la vie.
Anyway, after panicking, we went to the club, and got in, and then the Interminable Waiting began. To be utterly blunt, the whole thing sucked quite a lot. We stood around for two hours while the crowd got uglier. Way, *way* too many people were in the club; I'm sure that the entire club's capacity wasn't met, but 95% of the people in the club were in the stage room, and there was no breathing room, and people were crabby before James was an hour late. Many people seemed to be under the impression that the show was going to start at 8, not 9, so by the time 9 rolled around they were already unhappy, and then there was no explanation as it crept up to 9:10, and 9:15, and 9:30, and eventually to 10pm.
Initially we were all four up at the front of the room, more or less, but then people were *leaning* on Sarah, and she didn't like that very much, so she headed for the back of the room, hoping it would be less crowded, and I joined her. Well, it was less crowded. For a while. And then it got just as crowded as the front of the room. Way, *way* too many people there.
And there were people chanting, "We want James! We want James!" and doing other crap like that, and I just thought ... buh. The guy doesn't do this because he has to. It's not an obligation on his behalf to show up and entertain people. I just ... I donno. I thought it was astonishingly obnoxious. Perhaps I live in a different universe than most people.
I certainly live in a different universe from the chick who actually got up on the stage and was sitting on one of the speakers (?) and peeking backstage periodically. The horrifying thing was that she had hair about Deen's length, and was wearing a v-neck shirt, and from where we were the lighting was just not good enough for us to be able to tell if it was Deen, and we were going to be just *horrified* if it was. Fortunately, it wasn't. :)
So it got hotter and more uncomfortable and I discovered that the *real* disadvantage to wearing shoulderless/backless tops is that tall women with large breasts stand behind you and poke you in the shoulderblades and arms with their breasts in their knit tops and it feels *horrible*. Glah.
Wow, I'm having bad net. I wonder if I'll be able to save this...
Gosh, the cable modem went down for an hour this morning, so I ...
... wrapped Christmas presents and made bread. Er. :) Sadly, these are *late* presents, not early ones. :)
Great. Apparently I caused a great big muddle at work. In an attempt to make an older site uniform with the newer ones, I created a new directory and moved some files around. I didn't, however, do this through the Mysteries of CVS, and as a result there are emails flying and hands waving and people going, "Urk!" and discovering that if they fix it, they'll wipe out all the Q1 release work I've done, and --
Bugger. :/ I didn't _mean_ to goof everything up!
In other news, I skipped art class last night in favor of sleeping, and I think that was a Good Idea. I was soooooooo tired. Of course, the result was that it made it much harder to go to sleep when I went to bed at a quarter to eleven, but once I went, I was really out. Man. One more day and I might be back to normal. For some value of normal.
WAH. The post office sent Geni's Christmas stuff back to me. WAH. So now I have a box of very stale Christmas candy, and a book. *crossed eyes*
Ok, I think I need breakfast now.
Baby steps!
Okay, so. Like, some attempt at writing the weekend up. First, let me say, MY FRIENDS ARE NUTS. I mean that in the *best* possible way. *laugh* I must once more thank them for FLYING ME DOWN TO CALIFORNIA ON A WHIM (actually on a plane), which caused another of my friends to say today, "Do you fly down to California _every_ time James plays at 14 Below?" Well, thus far, since I left Alaska, I _have_ in fact flown down to CA every time James has played at 14 Below, except the time that nobody went 'cause Deen was in Alaska. (Well. Probably some other people went, but they weren't us, so they don't count.)
So I got on an airplane at 12:40AM on Friday morning. As far as I'm concerned, about 2 days passed this weekend: Thursday, and then, like, Saturday. Or maybe Sunday. It's hard to say. Anyway. I did try -- and sort of succeed -- to sleep on the airplane, so I wasn't as totally useless on Friday as I thought I might be. Which is good.
There was an exciting moment where the Sacramento airport was all fogged in, and they were talking about routing us to Oakland, and I had no way to get ahold of Sarah who was waiting in the Sac airport, and so I was going, "Eeee!" and thinking real hard and fast. I thought: okay, if they re-route us, then Delta will surely be helpful and will be willing to page Sarah at the Sac airport and tell her that I've been routed to Oakland and I will tell her that I'm going to just get on the train to Tamien and walk over to Aberdeen's house because Deen lives 235 feet from the train station and *eee* if she sees that I've been routed to Oakland she won't *drive* to Oakland will she? no she couldn't be that foolish at least I don't think so well I'll do what I can and I'll find a way to get ahold of Deen and have her call Sarah and--
But then the fog cleared up and I landed in Sac anyway. :) We drove down to the Bay Area, geeking about Maddock pretty much the whole way, collected Angie and Sarah gave her the pooka of which I do not have a photo! Snif! But it is a blue and white and other blues fuzzy pooka and it's awfully cute and Angie SHRIEKED a lot and that was quite satisfying. :)
And then we went to get Emily and then we DROVE and DROVE and DROVE and DROVE and DROVE and then we DROVE some more. And we listened to musicals and we talked and talked and talked and TALKED and talked and listened to some other stuff and talked and talked and talked and then we stopped for dinner and then we drove some more and eventually we got to the hotel.
Which was just as nice as it was last time. Plus, we were exactly 43 feet away from the hot tub. So at midnight we all crept out and went hot tubbing and then splished quietly in the pool and then more hot tubbing and then more splishing and then staggering towards the beds and lying around giggling helplessly until 1:30 in the morning, at which time there was Suddenly Sleep.
Saturday was an extension of Friday, or possibly Thursday. I'm not sure it was actually its own day. We got up at a surprisingly reasonable hour -- 8:30ish -- and managed to get all 4 girls through the shower in about an hour, and went down to breakfast at about 10. This was sort of silly, given that we were scheduled for lunch at the Chart House at 1, but we were VERY HUNGRY, and the breakfast at the Courtyard Marriott in Marina del Rey is quite good, and -- right. There was breakfast.
Then we did some shopping, which Sarah covered nicely in her writeup; to summarize, there was a lot of Shopping Face. And then with the Shopping Face firmly in place, we went to -- oh. For some reason, we ended up buying ALL the makeup. Girls are weird. Anyway. We went to the Chart House, where we stood around outside for a few minutes admiring the waves (mostly Angie admired the waves, and shrieked, and swooned, and I obligingly recorded a few seconds of waves crashing and then some more seconds of me blathering, the former of which was for Angie and the latter of which was unintentional but caused high hilarity when discovered. :) (It's a .mov file and my computer wants to run it with QuickTime. I have *no idea* how well/if it will run on other systems. Let me know if it sucks the big hairy moose whang.)
We waited around quite a while at the Chart House, hoping Nichole, Sarah's agent/friend, would show up, but something must have come up, because she didn't make it. So we ordered lunch (the smallest lunches we've ever ordered there, due to the whole having eaten slightly less than 3 hours earlier) and the people at the next table over kept mentioning my name, except *they* were talking about Katie Kerowack, however her name is spelled. And it was very yummy. Lunch, not the people at the next table over. Sarah and Deen and I all had clam chowder and Angie had a chopped spinach salad that she thought was the oddest looking salad she'd ever had, but that it was very very good. And Deen ordered the calamari and ate all the tentacles. o.o And, of course, there were Hot Lava Cakes or whatever they're called, which are *appallingly* good desserts. So all was well.
After that we drove through Topanga Canyon, which, we are pleased to announce, is still as lovely as it was last year, and went shopping at the um somewhere that we went shopping last year, too. This involved more Shopping Face and quite a lot of nerves and eventual purchases, including a cute tank toppy thing I bought for Angie as a birthday present. It says 'She-Devil' on it, or something. It's cute. :) And then we had hair disaster, and -- well. Okay, not *really*, but we went to get our hair styled, and Deen and Sarah came out looking quite spif and the lady I got shaved half my head. o.o
I went in and said "I want the back to be short enough that I can't grab it, and the same over the ears." Well, this is what I ended up with. Hello. BoyKit, anyone? Eeee. I mean, it's not bad, but she turned me back to the mirror when one half of my head was done and my HAIR was SHAVED an INCH over the top of my ear! I went, "Oh my GOD!" mentally, but, well, it was too late, you know? Nothing to be done. So she finished.
And then she shaved my face.
I shit you not. She took her clippers and she shooped off all the little fine hairs along my cheeks and jaw. I still can't decide exactly how I feel about this. I'm either amused or offended. Or maybe both... I mean ... she shaved my FACE! *splutter*
After being shaved (!) (which, incidentally, made Angie and Emily laugh a *lot*, because (I think) of my expression), and after Sarah's hair was done, we trundled off back to the hotel, where there was panic about clothing, but I think I may put all that in another entry. :)
Okay, I'm off to California in an hour or so here. Back on Tuesday. Have a nice weekend, everybody. :)
Augh! My parents came home LAST night and we weren't there to pick them UP. AUGH. I thought they were coming home TONIGHT.
So Mom showed up on the doorstep at 10am for the dog this morning. *whacks self in head* AUGH.
Although I did realize after a while that their coming home explained why Mom's car wasn't in the driveway when I went to walk the dog, which was a little strange, because Ted stayed home sick and thus wasn't driving it. It seemed vaguely wrong to me, but I couldn't quite figure out why. Ahem. *wry look*
Last night, Ted put the comics away. I had a charcoal drawing on a 6x4 foot piece of folded paper sitting on top of the comics. Ted moved the piece of paper away, not knowing what it was.
Zilli crawled inside. Red and white and *black* cat!
I leap with joy and happiness! Maddock is returning! Okay, there's not actually a website up there yet, but Maddock is the Old West MU* that I used to play on, and it had some of the best RP I'd ever had, and I've whinged about it having gone down several times over the past four years (FOUR YEARS!), and now Shae is bringing it back up, and I'm *really* pleased.
Maddock is from whence came my characters Tess, Miss Gem and Remy, the former two of whom are going to come back for play. I think Remy will fade into the background and become an NPC, but yeah. Maddock! People should come play!
Maddock was really a labor of love. This is the game that had such a well-developed website (which will eventually be at the above URL) that the Montana Historical Society contacted the keeper of the page and wanted to know if they could put Maddock on their list of historical Montana towns. The page keeper said, "Er, well, you do know it's not real, right?" and they said, "It's not!?"
The MOOSE linked below are, incidentally, a momma and baby, the baby being born sometime last May or June; he's a yearling.
I wish that my fingers were not so goddamned fat that my wedding rings will not fit on them. :(
Well, class last night was pretty cool. A lot more useful to me than the first week. We did some perspective stuff, and I had an apostrophe (that must have hurt)!
Foreshortening is really hard for me to wrap my brain around, and we were working on it last night in class. Tessa stopped by my desk and said here, you need to work on the legs, and I said I could see that they were wrong, but I didn't know how to fix them. So she showed me how to look at the model in a different way, and basically it comes down to Tony's whip-demonstration way of looking at what you're doing.
When Anthony is teaching somebody to use a whip, he tells you to envision yourself as standing in a railroad track. The body, the shoulders, are the track. When you're using a whip, you want the whip to be _outside_ the track, because if it is is _inside_ the track, you will have a piece of leather moving at supersonic speeds hitting you in the face, and that's a bad thing.
Well, foreshortening works kind of the same way. The shoulders (and hips) make kind of a railroad track. The parts of the body that are foreshortened are actually _outside_ that track. They're not inside it; putting them inside it elongates the body and destroys the perspective effect. My tendency has always been to put them inside the track, even though I knew it was wrong. I didn't know how to correct it.
Now I do!
Then for the last hour of the class we did a negative space drawing, where we blacked out a sheet of paper and then erased the bright spots.
I suck at that.
However, one of the drawings I did in class, and one of the drawings I did for homework, Tessa said, "Good job," about, so it was a pretty satisfying class despite sucking a lot at negative space. :)
This is mony's fault:
What Mythological Creature Are you?
And this is Starling's fault:
Find out which Buffy villian you are most like!
(followed by: Glory, the Mayor (which is what I expected to come up as), Vampire Willow, Angelus, Warren/Jonathan, Faith, Angel, Drusilla, Spike)
Now I'm going to go finish cleaning up kitty shit and take the dog for a walk. Don't I know how to have fun?
Well, I did at least some of my homework for class. I need to go by Title Wave and get a book of nudes, or something, so I have photos to work from for the full-body sketches. No writing so far tonight, and I suspect bed instead of writing. Well, I'll do a little bit, at least, so I'm not a total slacker.
Went to the gym tonight, or to the pool, anyway. Guy in the lane with me was having a discussion with the guy in the next lane over about how many lengths of the pool is a mile, 35 or 36. (It's 36.) That's 18 laps, 1800 yards. Which is 200 yards short of my minimum workout, about 1200 yards short of what I average, and 2200 yards short of my intended (if not yet reached) daily goal.
It occurred to me that perhaps I have higher expectations of myself than most people do of themselves.
'k. Gonna take the dog for a walk and do a wee bit of writing and go to bed. Tud.
swam: 3300 yards
ate: oatmeal, brownie, tuna sandwich, glass of milk, 2 brownies, small glass of milk, 1.25 chicken quesadillas, 1/2 root beer, 2 brownies & a small glass of milk
(gosh. anybody else see where i could cut out some calories easily?)
Did I say . . . ? No, I see that I haven't. Or at least, skimming over this doesn't turn it up, so.
I've been working 50 or 60 hour weeks most of the time since about last October. Sometimes more. I mean, even with farting around, I've still been working 40 hours on work, pretty much. This last weekend is the first one I can remember for sure this year that I haven't worked.
And you know what? I'm not doing this crap anymore. 40 hours a week. That's what I'm getting paid for. If I got overtime, or even comp time, ok, that'd be fine, but dude, I've got like weeks of vacation built up if I got comp time -- except I don't.
So that's enough. That's enough of this crap. 40 hours a week, that's me. If it doesn't get done, I'm obviously overscheduled and either I need to give somebody more to do or somebody needs to give me less to do.
There's a certain freedom in this mental state. Or maybe that's just the amazingly bad headache I have right now.
I'm gonna go swim tonight. I may even stop by the women's gym on Northern Lights to see how much their initiation fee is, just because UAA's gym is so wretchedly bad. I'm going to come home and I'm going to do my art class homework and I'm going to do some writing.
And I'm not goddamned going to work.
Headachy. Too hot. Blah.
Brought the dog outside for a walk this morning, thought, "Wow, it's warm! It must be 40 degrees!" Came in, booted up the computer, checked ADN's webpage and lo, it was 40 degrees. I'm so cool. :)
We seem to have animals puking all over the place. One of them vomited on Annie's bed. Yucko.
So yesterday I brought my new signed Rogue comic (Rogue limited series, cover signed by writer and artist, and 'remarked' by the artist -- a head shot of Rogue drawn on the cover, #5 of 299) over to be framed, and the guy said, "Are you in a hurry? Is a week soon enough?" And then called 3 hours later and said it was finished. Hee hee. So we just went over and got it, and it looks /very/ spiffy, and so I am smug. Smug smug.
Next, I'm going to get Virgo framed. Dammit. I Say So.
I wrote this morning. A thousand words (exactly, actually, which amused me). Not on US, but I'll work on US tonight. I started a new Methos novel this morning.
Don't look at me like that. At least I wrote something.
And now I've made lunch because I was very hungry and now I'm sort of eyeing it dubiously and wondering if I really want to eat it. *crossed eyes* I will, though, because I suspect the sudden lack of hunger is because my tummy gave up and decided I wasn't going to eat after all.
Ted has done a lot of housecleaning this weekend and it looks very nice in the office. Isn't he wonderful?
Me, um, well, um. I, um. Wrote some. And scanned some. And, um. Watched Tracker ...
Ok, the pb&j is pretty good, now that I'm eating it.
Well, I wrote a little bit last night, anyway. Not fiction, but not blogging, either. So that counts for something.
*sigh* I just went and got my hair cut, and mostly it's fine, but the woman I go to has this irrational fear of cutting hair very short. I told her to take the back down to a 2, and I didn't do a touch-test before I left the place, and I goddamned well should have, because it's long enough to grab with my fingertips, which means it's at least a 3 which is TOO FUCKING LONG. Jesus *Christ*, why can't she do what I tell her to?
I need a better stylist. :(
And when we got home from getting my hair cut, Zilli came running down the stairs and we said hi to him, and Shaun said, "I just got done molesting him," which pissed me off, too. What he *meant* was, he just got done cuddling and bothering him, but it's not what he said and the phrase upset me.
I am not in a very good mood.
Ack! It's Feb. 1st. I told myself I would start writing again today. Ack!
AHealthyMe successfully relaunched this afternoon. I have fixed several zillion bugs in the last 48 hours. I think I will spend the last couple hours today fixing more bugs, but doing it on the Scan-A-Comic Reward System.
But now I must froth MORE! Mary Anne ALSO went to a (different) BJ/EJ concert! I FROTH! I TWITCH! I SNIVEL WITH JEALOUSY! WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
ARGH! ARGH! *ARGH*! *ARGH*! I FROTH with jealousy! I *FROTH*. *FROTH FROTH*! My friend Lance has the BEST GIRLFRIEND IN THE WORLD and she got tickets to a Billy Joel/Elton John concert and they went last night and I'm SO JEALOUS! ARGH! *FROTH*! ARGH! AAARGH! *FROTH*!
*falls down and kicks feet* SO JEALOUS! *FROTH* *splutter*! *froth*!
In other news, as a reward for fixing bugs last night, I scanned in a comic's worth of scans for every bug I fixed, and consequently I have about twenty-five new Gambit scans. I look happy.
Plus I had an apostrophe (that must have hurt!) and now I fear I'm going to have to do a 'Kisses' section on the Gambit site. Gambit has *all* the best kisses!
(I know. I'm *such* a geek. *laugh*)