I'm attending reunion. I'll be in the Boston area for a few days before reunion starts. Anyone want to meet up?

As most of you may have noticed, I haven't been posting on LJ at all.

This is not an accident, or me forgetting; I have decided not to post here anymore. While I will continue to log in and comment on friends' entries, I have become consistently less pleased with LiveJournal's behavior in several areas.

If you are interested in keeping up with me in updates, I post as Syzygis on Dreamwidth, so please either comment here or message me over there and I'll add you to my friendslist (I pretty exclusively post friendslocked over there).

ETA: Anyone not on there already who's interested in joining Dreamwidth? Let me know and I'll send you an invite code!

I'm mostly posting this just to vent about it. Ganked from my friendslist.

Meme says:

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

WATCHING MOVIES DOES NOT COUNT!!!

( List with comments here. )

Happy Birthday to jennaria! Love ya, bigsis, and hope it's a good one.

( Cut for diatribe about soda. ) I'm certainly not going to be getting soda from any place other than a grocery store for a while, and I'll probably be avoiding soda altogether.

Things that do not tick me off:

LJ is not blocked from work, so I can occasionally take a few minutes on break and check it.

Things that do tick me off:

And if I happen to scroll past one of these new spiffy links, and my mouse hovers just long enough for the little popup window to show me what the link would take me to, Internet Explorer promptly closes the window. And any other windows I might have open at the same time that once showed LJ info, for good measure. And I only have two 15-minute breaks a day, so it's not like I have that much time to bring the site back up, nor can I use another internet browser, due to this being my work machine.

Hence, my question: who came up with this bound-to-introduce-a-ton-of-viruses idea anyway?

I tend to think I'm fairly good at internet research, I'll admit. So right now, I'm a little suspicious. I'll tell you why.

WomenGamers.com links to an article about how, supposedly, "King of the World" has banned men from playing female characters. Huge debate over the social, gender-based implications ensues.

Problem? I can't find any evidence of a MMORPG with that name. Supposedly, the company that owns it, Shanda Entertainment purchased Aurora Technology and all its products in July. But articles from July don't list "King of the World" as a product of Aurora Technology, and the Shanda website doesn't list any games with that name either. Even Wikipedia has no descriptions or confirming links.

So. I submit the hypothesis that this entire kerfuffle is an urban legend or hoax. Controversial subject (did I mention "King of the World" is listed as a Chinese MMORPG?), no real citations, and nobody who actually plays the game has surfaced, to my knowledge. (Oh, but that must be because they're all Chinese, right? {/sarcasm}.)

Anyone got any data to counter this hypothesis?

( Superheroes Gym Rules )

( Also, more bad poetry! )

Unrelatedly, the same notebook has the cell phone number of my ex-fiance. I think I'm shredding that page, in order to resist the temptation to call it.

About 13 years ago, when my father moved out, our dog, used to having someone home with him all day, went nuts. He chewed couch cushions and smashed venetian blinds. He chewed up an antique Hoosier cabinet. When we started kenneling him during the day, he discovered that if he put enough pressure on the top of the kennel, he could loosen the screws that held it together. The final straw came when we left for half an hour, not having tightened the screws in the kennel, and came home to find him chewing on the waffle iron. My mother called my father to come pick up the dog or it was going to the vet. My father told her that the condo complex didn't take pets. The dog made a one-way trip.

Fast-forward, with a brief pause nine years later, when I shipped my cat off to my mother while I went into the Army. Flash over the next four years, as my cat ended up one of five that my mother was taking care of. Arrive at today.

E-mail from my mother:

This morning, I caught Simon in the act of marking territory on the outside
wall of my studio, within an easy arm's reach of where I'm sitting at my
computer... I have cleaned the wall with apple cider vinegar.

After having soaked my bed upstairs about four times, this is the final
straw.

Either I will ship him off to you, at my own expense... or he gets put
down. Your choice. He is very nicely affectionate, and loves nothing better
than snuggling under the covers with a human at night... or wedging himself
between the small of a human's back and the back of a chair (especially in
front of a computer!) But he would do best in a situation where he is the
ONLY cat...

No, Maman, he would do best in a situation where he's not one of five cats. You didn't have this problem until you accepted the last two. And now you've put my back up against a wall, because I've repeatedly told you that I don't want Simon, and I'm almost ready to adopt a shelter cat down here, but I know perfectly well your threat is genuine. And it wouldn't be the first time I took Simon to save his life.

D*mn it.

So today I went linen shopping. This is something that's been overdue for a while; I have two futons and no full-size sheets. So I went to Linens 'n' Things to get some sheets. I got two sets of full sheets and one full-size blanket.

( Or so I thought. )

Anybody know any good products that actually get the dishes clean as well as shiny? I did my first load of dishes in my new dishwasher last night, and when I got up this morning, it had gotten the old, dried-on dust gunk from my work mug (now you know why I stopped using it), but there was still oatmeal on the outside of yesterday morning's bowl (although the inside was shiny) and traces of stuff on the knives. I really don't want to have to double-wash my dishes, once by hand and once by machine; I'd really rather not wash them by hand at all.

Got in safely this morning, after crashing at a Super8 just north of Tucson. (I tried to find one sooner, but ended up taking an alternate route instead.) :/ Anyway. Am back, am busy. Will post later with details.

leanne_opaskar asked some questions.
( And here they are. )

If you want to ask me 5 questions, post them as a comment. If you want me to ask you five questions, just reply to this post telling me so.

I now have Lords of Acid stuck in my head. I'd write down the lyrics, but they're *not* work appropriate. (bashes head against desk again)

(tries to get back to problem set that needs to be faxed in 1 hour)

So this morning, having the day off, I decided to try out a bellydancing workout video I'd checked out from the local library a couple of weeks ago. In the beginning of the video, the instructor said there were two types of bellydancing -- high-energy and sinuous. She was going to use the sinuous type for this workout. Cool, I thought. I might be able to do this.

Ten minutes later, puffing, sweaty, out of breath, and sore, I stopped the video. Not even because of not having enough space (although I don't) or because of my foot (although it did hurt). This was just too much work for me right now. I think I need to start slower, which makes me feel a bit silly, because I had no idea bellydancing would be too strenuous for me.... Oh, well, In another couple of months, I'll try checking out "Bellydancing Boogie" again and see if I can keep up any better.

My supervisor pulled me aside as soon as she saw me at work this morning. I had left early to attend class yesterday, so I'd missed a mandatory meeting at 4:45, and she needed to brief me on the contents of that meeting.


A former co-worker, a friend, had shot himself.

Apparently, after leaving the company just a month or two ago, he had moved to California, where he had been told a job would be held for him. Then he discovered that they had given it to somebody else. I knew that while he was still here, he'd taken a couple of vacation days only to come back and find out that the job he'd been under consideration for had gone to somebody else because they couldn't get in touch while he was on vacation. Apparently, this second failure was too much.

I worked with this man. He filled in for me while I was recovering from my bunionectomy. Before that, when he was in another section, we talked on the phone every time there was a problem with paperwork he sent me. He was unfailingly pleasant and polite, a hard worker, and always willing to help out.

I wish I'd known it was this bad. I wish I could have done something to help.

We're having a memorial service on Friday. I've been asked to sing the National Anthem and to speak. I'll sing, but I don't know what I'd say.

I can't believe he's gone.

Doing homework this afternoon, I rediscovered a joy in calculation that I'd nearly forgotten. If only I didn't have to stop in order to leave and eat dinner and go to choir....

This morning, waiting for a meeting, I sat down and picked up a book; Owlflight, by Mercedes Lackey, which I find useful for filling up small doses of time without me worrying about being so engrossed that I can't put it down when I need to. A short while later, a co-worker came up; let's call her R.

R: What are you reading?
Me: (shows her the cover of the book)
R: I didn't think you read that fantasy trash.
Me: (thinking: you mean you didn't notice any time prior to this in our three years of acquaintance?)Fantasy trash?
R: Well, I thought you'd read stuff like The DaVinci Code.
Me: I heard it wasn't that good. (note: in terms of historical accuracy more than anything)
R: Really? I'd heard it was really pretty good. I've been meaning to read it.
Me: (refusing to "justify" my fantasy reading with mentioning everything else I also read) So what about that fantasy trash?
R: Well, I was kidding. Sort of. You know what I mean. (Note: she was in training with me. When she "was kidding," she's looking for an excuse to explain away a very real opinion she has, but doesn't want to take responsibility for.)
Me: Yes, I do know. That's why I'm asking. Fantasy trash?
R: Well, a lot of people who read this stuff are into those roleplaying games.
Me: Roleplaying games.
R: (Big long story about a boyfriend in high school who read fantasy and played D&D, which she saw as a bunch of "nearly grown men pretending to be flying things.")
Me: (Invoking "what's wrong with doing improv acting for the sake of your own entertainment?")
R: (ends up trying, and failing, to justify, including such throwaways as "I played in the Masquerade once.")
Me: (with a thick sense of irony, mentions the local chapter of the Camarilla.)

R has once again buried her foot in her mouth up to the knee, and I'm sick of it. (Instance 1, during training; telling me that my now-ex-fiancee, then boyfriend, was only with me so he could get into my pants. Instance 2, also during training; telling me that people with medical restrictions against certain types of physical exertion were just shammers, knowing full well that I had a slap lesion in my shoulder that landed me with medical restrictions.) I have six months left here, and once that's over, I'm never contacting her again. I'm sick of her small-minded hypocrisy.

Encounter #2: ( Warning, religious mush inside cut. )

My car radio station gets changed on a fairly regular basis, but in my small town, there are three non-country stations that I rotate among: the oldies, the classical, and the "80s, 90s, and today!" The classical mostly gets changed because my boyfriend can't listen to it while driving without falling asleep; the other two rotate because of ads or annoying music.

Well, this morning I woke up with a song of the "80s, 90s, and today!" station stuck in my head. It's one of the overplayed songs I usually change the station for, but I couldn't. Get it. Out. Of. My head. So I decided, well, why don't I dissect it?

( Fathers, be good to your daughters. )

Anyway. Hopefully I'll be able to lose this song now, although apparently looking up the lyrics infected my computer with undeletable adware.

Edit: Oops. I thought I'd typed the /a at the end of that hyperlink. Well, fixed now.

I'm currently planning on making filters so that I don't spam my LJ friends with random stuff. (Currently the only filters I have are for location-specific reading, like "work safe.") So: please reply to this post and let me know if you want to be in one/more of the following groups.

(Yes, I'll be figuring out how to do polls soon; meanwhile, bear with me!) (:

a) Religion
b) Food
c) Medical
d) Planning

I can't guarantee that I'll be using these all the time yet, but I'm trying to get my life in order, and I figure there's no point in forcing everyone to listen in!

To the anonymous benefactor who just paid for 12 months of account time,

Thank you so much!

-Kate (plotting icons)

...about making cake that's the consistency of a thick paste is, when you open the door to the freezer (somehow justifying to yourself that yes, that tray will stay balanced up there) and the tray with the glass cake pans falls off onto the ground and the cake pans break, the cake will be so gooey that it holds most of the pieces of glass together.

Now if only the dogs would stop trying to eat the tasty pieces of broken glass, we'd be all good.

For those of you who knew I was having my left foot operated on today, th doctor says it went well. No more than moderate nausea, which is mostly over, so I can actually eat again. Foot is in a big black boot, with strict instructions not to put *any* weight on it, so I'm hopping around on crutches. I am back at my friend's house recuperating, and might just have a month off work (!) while it starts to heal!