Sorry, Faithful Blog-Readers, But You're Only My Second Priority!

I'm off to the airport in a little while to pick up my sister. She's going to be staying with me for a week, along with her husband and their three-year-old son. My mother's also apparently planning on coming out for a couple of days later in the week, too.

I'm not sure exactly what we're going to be doing... Maybe a roadtrip or two, maybe a lot of sitting around shooting the breeze and watching DVDs. But, either way, doing the socializing-with-family thing is doubtless going to cut into my usual twelve to fourteen hours of online time, so blogging is likely to be very light for the next week or so. Try not to take it too hard, 'kay?

Hee! They Found Me Out.



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| courtesy of mewing.net. where darkness and secrecy abound.

The Academic Girl Next Door?

I am a hybrid of: Academic Girl Girl Next Door Click on the pictures below to read more: Take the 'What Kind of Girl Are You?' quiz at CookingToHookup.com

Well, one of those is kind of accurate...

Hey, It's the Most Interesting Thing That's Happened Here in Ages.

The New Mexico Tech website has more info on our freak hailstorm and its aftermath, including links to pictures posted by various people. Apparently, the county may well end up being declared a federal disaster area...

Monthly Meme

I should be doing useful stuff. Instead I'm doing this.

Current clothes: Blue jeans. White socks. An olive-colored pocket t-shirt. No shoes.

Current mood: Tired. I got less than five hours of sleep today. I was feeling really irritable earlier, but I seem to be getting over that now.

Current music: Most recently, Leonard Cohen's New Skin for the Old Ceremony.

Current annoyance: My front yard's flooded again, after that freaky-ass storm.

Current thing: Procrastination.

Current desktop picture: This image of lightning at Kitt Peak Observatory.

Current song in head: It appears to be "Funky Cold Medina." For absolutely no reason I can fathom.

Current book: Last Man Running, a Doctor Who novel by Chris Boucher. I adore Boucher's TV work, but I must admit, I'm kind of disappointed in the book. For at least the first hundred pages or so, it's pretty much been: they walk through a forest and fight a monster; they walk through a jungle and fight a monster; they take a swim and fight a monster... It might actually translate into a decent episode on screen, but as a book, it's dull.

Current video in player: Nothing at the moment. Just finished copying a bunch of Farscape episodes for a friend of mine in Finland.

Current DVD in player: Er, the most recent one would be a Farscape disc I was copying. Shh. Don't tell anyone.

Current refreshment: Just finished some Wintermint tea. I'm not that fond of it, actually. It tastes sorta medicinal. But I bought a box of it, so I keep drinking it every once in a while.

Current worry: Getting the house cleaned and stuff before my sister gets here on Sunday. Also whether my front yard is gonna be dried out by then.

Current thought: My nose itches.

Search Request Thursday

Here:

world peacekeepers, 1:18 toy playsets: I don't think Peacekeepers play with toys.

my ticklish sister: My sister is actually very ticklish. Or at least, she used to be. When we were kids, all I used to have to do to tickle her would be to waggle my fingers in the direction of her neck, and she'd start shrieking and squirming. And then, of course, I could legitimately defend myself to Mom with, "But I'm not touching her!"

verbosity my tunes: Alas, this blog has no tunes.

paranoid schizophrenic wav listen sound: I knew you were making recordings of me! You're all out to get me!

How can I become cooler: Well, this is how I did it.

sue and malcolm camper rover: Well, I hope Sue, Malcolm and Rover enjoy their camping trip, I guess.

kinky customs nude pics: But if they're customs, they're by definition normal, aren't they? Which would by definition make them not kinky.

betty and sex: Yes, they go together like, um... Two things that haven't gone together in a while.

nude star trek sims: How can you tell they're Trek sims if they're not wearing uniforms? Unless they're all aliens...

pumpkin carving designs and tinkerbell: Oh, yeah, there's a scary Jack'o'lantern idea.

religion farscape blog essay: Hey, I actually wrote one of those once! Oh, my god, you mean somebody might have actually come to my blog looking for something that was on my blog? Wow. That's a first.

"betty's brain" software download: Sorry. My brain software is proprietary.

funny aragorn nude pictures: See, this is why Middle Earth doesn't enjoy freedom of the press.

"download douglas adams": Hey, when you figure out how to download dead people, let me know, 'kay?

hailstorm in socorro on oct 5th: Freakiest damn weather I've ever seen in my life.

pervy retreats: Are those like writers' retreats? Only for perverts?

culture differences when involving hygine: Well, some cultures spell it "hygiene..."

subtitling maximum words: Umm, how big's the screen?

pictures of socorro hailstorm: I kind of wish I'd taken some, but as I don't have a digital camera, I wouldn't have 'em to post, anyway.

stark psychology disorder farscape: I think the poor guy's got several of them.

"drive without my glasses": If I tried that, I would die.

They'll Take My Net Access Away When They Pry the Keyboard from My Cold, Dead Fingers.

According to this article, "Study Participants Suffered Withdrawal Symptoms, Feelings of Loss When Deprived of Web Access for Two Weeks." Well, duh. Man, the very thought makes me cringe...

Alienated

One of the things I did while I was lying around being sick was to finally finish watching the Alien Nation DVDs I've had for ages and have been slowly going through an episode at a time. And, damn it, now I really, really want the TV movies. Why are these not available on DVD? For that matter, why isn't the series more widely available on DVD? As far as I can tell, the only place you can get them from is Columbia House. Come on, surely I can't be the only person who remembers that show with fondness? If there's a market for all the other shows that are out now on DVD, there's gotta be a market for that one.

Hopefully the Sky Is Done Throwing Things at Us Now.

By the way, here's a local newspaper article about yesterday's scary-ass freak hailstorm. They're not exaggerating about the damage, either. Me, I got off lucky. My car is now completely covered in little pockmark dents, but nothing actually broke. I know a lot of people whose cars are completely totaled, and I don't think there's an unbroken skylight in town. I would not want to be an insurance agent in New Mexico right now.

Man, this is what I get for being all smug about not living in Florida, isn't it?

"The Classic Story of Boy Meets Girl..."

This fan-made TV ad for the Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars miniseries has me giggling hysterically. Hell, even if you're completely unfamiliar with Farscape, it's gotta be funny. Check it out. (Warning: Requires Quicktime. Contains some spoilers for the Story Thus Far.)

I Don't Know Where I'm A-Gonna Go When The Volcano Blow

Check it out: Mt. St. Helens Volcano Cam. It wasn't doing anything interesting when I looked, but at least now I have proof that it's there, since it was completely invisible behind the clouds the time I actually visited.

My sister forwarded me an e-mail she was sent at work describing how to deal with being covered in ash. (She works for an insurance company, so I guess they know all about ash-related damage.) Kind of disturbing stuff. Gee, I'm glad I live in New Mexico, where I just have to worry about baseball-sized hailstones dinging the hell out of my car...

One of Those News Items I Am All But Obligated to Blog

"The rocket plane SpaceShipOne has shot to an altitude of more than 100km for the second time inside a week to claim the $10m Ansari X-Prize." Yay, team!

Hail, Hail...

Geez, I mean, you hear about golfball-sized hail, but I'd never actually seen any before. It keeps setting off the neighbor's car alarm. Heh.

Looks like it's mostly starting to turn back into rain now, but I'm still hearing occasional loud thumps on the roof.

(Wait, did I say "golfball?" Some of these are baseball sized. Holy shit. And it's starting up again now...)

Weather Report

Wow, it's hailing like a sumbitch here. Damn, but that's loud on a metal roof.

So, Am I Still Sick, Or Am I Just Lazy?

Still haven't decided whether I'm going to go in to work tonight. I keep thinking I feel a lot better, but whenever I'm up and about for an hour or so -- not even necessarily doing anything, just being vertical -- I get all tired out and want to lie down again for a while. So, yeah, maybe not.

It's odd. Except for the one bout of flu where I was knocked out for the better part of a week, the times I've been sick over the last year or two seem to have followed roughly the same pattern. Day 1: Feel fine most of the day. Develop a slightly scratchy throat by bedtime. Day 2: Wake up after very little sleep feeling like complete crap. Headache, sore throat, general achiness. Terrible congestion that actually clears up considerably after a few hours, especially with the help of a little pseudoephedrin. Day 3: Symptoms mostly gone, still some headache, but very tired and listless and weak. Day 4: Pretty much better. I'm not really complaining about this. It could be a hell of a lot worse. But it seems strange, because most of the colds I've had in my life have been annoying, lingering things with much more pronounced symptoms.

Watching My Language

I'm feeling slightly better today... Still have a headache, though, and my sleep schedule's completely out of whack now, so I'm not sure whether I'm going to go in to work tonight or not. We'll see. At some point, at least, I am going to have to put some clothes on and go to the grocery store, because I need "feminine hygiene products." And orange juice.

In the meantime, I think I'm just going to sit quietly here in front of my computer and entertain my poor headachy brain however I can. Given that my brain has strange ideas of what's entertaining, I've had it doing more quizzes, this time to test your language skills in Spanish and French.

I got 10/10 on the Spanish. It'd be inaccurate to say that I speak Spanish, but I can read it pretty well. I'm not gonna be picking up Cervantes in the original or anything, but I can usually (if slowly) make my way through a newspaper article.

On the other hand, I scored 8/10 on the French, which I do not speak at all. I am capable of recognizing the meanings of a few isolated French words, either from having picked them up somewhere or because they're similar to Spanish or English words, and several times the one word I recognized would appear in one of the multiple-choice options and not the others, which made it a pretty easy test.

Do I Have to Wear That Hat?


You are a Bavarian.

What's your Inner European?
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Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me

I went to bed last night at about 2:30 with a slightly scratchy throat. I woke up this morning at 6:30 with a scratchy throat, a phlegm-clogged respiratory system, aching sinuses, and a widespread general feeling of bodily unhappiness. (Also cramps, but I suppose those aren't especially relevant, except inasmuch as they contribute to my overall misery.)

Apparently, my plans for the day have just metamorphosed into: "lie in bed a lot, drink liquids, and sleep at random intervals whenever it actually proves possible."

And I'm pretty damned sure I'm not going into work tonight. Which I'm sure my boss will be thrilled about, as we've already had a bunch of people out for various reasons over the last few days.

And, to top it all off, I thought I had some orange juice in the fridge, and I don't. *sniff*

The Shift-Worker's Dilemma

For various reasons, I've only been managing to get five or six hours of sleep for the past three nights -- or, rather, days -- and as a result I am feeling incredibly wiped out right now. I'm still on night shift for another week, though, which leaves me with a dilemma: should I force myself to stay awake for another four or five hours so as not to throw my schedule off, or should I just give in to sweet, sweet sleep and worry about next week when it gets here?

At the moment, I am leaning strongly towards Plan B...

Ewww!


You are Fluffy Mackerel Pudding!! You somehow
manage to combine seafood and dessert into your
wonderfully fluffy world. We should all be as
tolerant of New Taste Sensations. And of
big-yolked eggs.

What Weight Watchers recipe card from 1974 are you?
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