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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Lis' LiveJournal:

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    Thursday, November 12th, 2009
    1:40 pm
    Stop making me cry!
    I'm tired and still sick and work sucks, and then I keep reading frakkin' Touching or Sweet or Sad stuff on journals or that people keep e-mailing me and please have mercy on me and stop it!

    I am always an emotional landmine ready to go off, people! I cry at EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING! And you're killing me today. I want to go home and cry more.
    Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
    11:03 am
    Today is someone's birthday, and that someone is me
    I am siiiick. I don't feel like doing anything. I am sitting on the couch, just having finished a conference call that I put on mute so I could cough without disturbing anyone. I feel every inch of my 35 years today.

    I don't think it is the flu. I think I have a bad cold, but I don't have a fever (I think I did last night but today my temperature is OK). My biggest problem is body aches. My back and hips are killing me.  Keith is also sick, but so far (knock on wood) Rachel seems perfectly OK. No congestion, no fever, no irritiability. She was in a great mood last night and this morning, and slept well trough the night, so I'm counting my blessings and hoping she misses this.
    Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
    2:39 pm
    Work sucks, and other news
    Actually, no other news. Because work sucks and I'm too busy to post. But I'm fine, just busy. I'm going to Sweden in two weeks, that's news.

    SO BUSY.

    Current Mood: busy
    Friday, September 25th, 2009
    9:19 am
    What a week
    I'm absolutely fried, my kid won't sleep through the night, work is so busy it is insane, and I'm having a weird mix of  PMS and allergy symptoms that is leaving me feeling ick.

    But I'm still in a strangely upbeat mood. Maybe because it is Friday?
    Thursday, September 17th, 2009
    7:51 am
    In which I use one social media to discuss another
    I have three pending Friends Requests in my Facebook inbox.  One is from a girl I knew my whole childhood from Sunday School. I didn't actually like her. We were not friends. Her older sister was outright mean to me. I can't figure out why she would friend me.

    The second is from my high school choir director. That seems weird to me. I mean, I have my high school speech coach on my friends list, but the man also is just battling back from nearly-fatal cancer and is just sort of all-around awesome and inspirational. The choir director was nice and all, but it's not like we were super close or anything. I can't figure out why she would friend me.

    The third is from the wife of my high-school boyfriend. She went to high school with my sister, but despite these two tenuous connections- I have never met the chick. Her husband and I broke up as amicably as is reasonable to expect for two teenagers, and I have no particular feelings toward her one way or the other, considering that neither of us even knew her at the time we broke up. So, again, I can't figure out why she would friend me.

    I have not had any bad experiences or drama with Facebook to date, but these are confusing.

    Current Mood: confused
    Friday, September 11th, 2009
    12:29 pm
    Time passes
    My baby hit the 18 month mark this week. She's incredible. Her laughter is the best music I've ever heard.


    The weather here today is somber and wet. It is a far cry from the absolutely stunning weather eight years ago. I had taken vacation time away from work- my mom and my aunt were visiting. We'd spent the day before in DC doing touristy stuff, and we were preparing for more site-seeing that day as well. The sky was stunningly blue and there was no trace of the stifling humidity so common in this area late in the summer. 

     Keith and I only had one car at the time, so we were going to take the bus to the Metro station, but we got off to a late start and missed the bus we wanted. When we reached the Metro station, a gentleman with a portable radio stopped us, mentioning that we looked like we "hadn't heard the news."  It was right around then that the station closed- no more trains into DC. Something had happened.

    The rumors we heard were varied. A car bomb at the Senate. Something happening at the Smithsonian. As we waited for the next bus to come take us back to my neighborhood, federal employees came flooding out of the station. They'd all been evacuated because something had happened at the Pentagon. We didn't get the details about the planes in New York until later.

     The bus was very crowded so I wasn't sitting next to my mother at that point. Instead, she sat next to a young woman who couldn't stop crying; she couldn't get through to her parents on her cell phone. I watched my mom comfort that girl and calm her down, and knew that we had missed that first bus by design- not so that we wouldn't be caught in the chaos in DC, but so that my mother would be there for that young woman.

    Mom and Aunt Karen were supposed to fly home on the 13th. Instead, on the 12th they managed to get a rental car. The rental agency was on the grounds of Dulles Airport, the airport from which the planes had taken off. My husband's car was followed by military vehicles as he drove, with no other cars around, on normally bumper-to-bumper airport access road. I later heard stories about agencies all over the country that ran out of cars, of people doubling up with strangers to drive to far-flung destinations. I guess everyone assumed that they wouldn't be able to get anywhere near Dulles that day, because the place was a ghost town.

    I lived then, as I do now, very close to the airport. You don't even realize you're taking the sounds of the airplanes overhead for granted until they are silenced. For the next several days, the only planes in the sky were military. Whenever you heard them, you'd glance skyward nervously and shudder.

    Current Mood: reflective
    Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
    8:55 am
    It's ME!!

    Somehow I've managed to kill three computers in the last month: my home PC and two laptops at work. Um, hopefully I didn't do that by visiting Livejournal...

    My brothers-in-law have returned safely from Saudi Arabia. No one in the family is speaking to us because we dared to question whether sending two minor boys to a country where the foreign parent's parental rights vanish the minute they touch down was a good idea. Yep, makes us evil people. You know what? No Big Loss. Those people are idiots.

    Work is crazy busy. Rachel is awesome- she is really trying to talk a lot now, and is just adorable. She's been sick, but is on the mend.

    I finished Peacekeeper Wars and now feel sad because of the lack of Farscape in my future. It was awesome.

    I'm trying to read back through old posts, but we'll see how far I get. Instead of doing that (because God Forbid I actually take an interest in y'all or your lives, heh), I'm doing a meme:

    Apparently the average is 6?  Try 46, suckers!  English majors FTW!

    Instructions:
    Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

    1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
    2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
    3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
    4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
    5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
    6 The Bible (x)
    7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
    8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)
    9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
    10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (x)
    11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
    12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ( )
    13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ( )
    14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ( )
    15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ( )
    16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
    17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
    18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x)
    19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
    20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
    21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (x)
    22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)
    23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )
    24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )
    25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)
    26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
    27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (x )
    28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)
    29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
    30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ( )
    31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ( x)
    32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ( x)
    33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
    34 Emma - Jane Austen (x )
    35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ( x)
    36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
    37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ( )
    38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ( )
    39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ( )
    40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne ( )
    41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (x)
    42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (x)
    43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
    44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ( x)
    45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
    46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
    47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ( )
    48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ( )
    49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
    50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ( x)
    51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ( x)
    52 Dune - Frank Herbert
    53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
    54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (x )
    55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
    56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
    57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (x)
    58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (x)
    59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ( )
    60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
    61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ( )
    62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
    63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold( )
    65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (x)
    66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
    67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ( )
    68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ( )
    69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
    70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( x)
    71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
    72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (x)
    73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett ( )
    74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
    75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
    76 The Inferno - Dante (x )
    77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
    78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( x)
    79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
    80 Possession - AS Byatt ( x)
    81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
    82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
    83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ( )
    84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
    85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( x)
    86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
    87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ( )
    88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( )
    89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( )
    90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
    91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ( x)
    92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
    93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
    94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (x)
    95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ( )
    96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
    97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (x)
    98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
    99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ( )
    100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ( )

    Current Mood: chipper
    Thursday, August 13th, 2009
    2:14 pm
    Howdy
    My sister was at the emergency room three times over the weekend at my Mom's, and another time once they got her home to Cininnati. Kidney stones. I never, ever want to get those, they are obviously excruciating.

    Otherwise, the weekend was fine. It's always nice to go home.

    It is also nice to be home.  Work has been good and busy this week. The weather is hot and humid, exactly as it should be in August.

    I watched the final regular series episode of Farscape on Monday. I know it's ten years after the fact, but I cannot frellin' believe that they cancelled that show! The ending was insane. It takes balls to disintegrate your romantic leads just after they finally get together. I'm very much looking forward to the saga-ending miniseries, but I need to have a whole evening to myself to do it up right.

    I also caught an episode of True Blood. I've read the first 8 of the 9 Sookie Stackhouse books, upon which the series is based. I had a few quibbles with the ep, but for the most part I thought it was a great adaptation that expanded the universe of the source material in a great way. I'm not sure it'll be appointment TV for me at this point, but I'll definitely watch a few more eps to get a better sense of it.

    This summer, I'm also watching Top Chef Masters, Hell's Kitchen, and Survive This. Survive This is a half-hour reality show that follows a bunch of teenagers being set various survival tasks by Survivorman's Les Stroud.  I can't even defend myself, but I like it.


    Current Mood: chipper
    Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
    8:30 am
    Headin' out
    I'm working a half-day and then going home to finish packing and getting ready for my mini-vacation. Rachel and I are heading out this evening for Ohio. I'm hoping that she'll sleep most of the way, which is why I'm waiting until after dinner to hit the road. The problem is that I'll be driving pretty late by myself, but I promise that I'll pull off and rest if I get sleepy.

    Probably no internet access until Monday, so nobody do anything comment-worthy, OK?   

    Current Mood: bouncy
    Thursday, July 30th, 2009
    8:30 am
    An open letter to the anonymous asshole
    Dear Anonymous Asshole,

    Stop e-mailing my husband. He does not believe you. He knows that I am not cheating on him. He knows that our daughter is HIS child. He trusts me.

    But every time you e-mail him, he looks at me funny, because even though he trusts me, you've introduced a little niggling doubt. He blames himself for that, but I don't. I blame you. And I HATE you.

    I don't know what I did to you. Hell, I can't figure out who you could be. You have nothing to gain. But hear me- if I find out who you are, there will be hell to pay.

    Current Mood: angry
    Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
    8:31 am
    Here I sit
    The guys in the next aisle over here at work are cracking up. I have no idea what they're talking about or what is so funny, but it is such a happy, pleasant sound.

    It is an overcast, cool morning- it would be a lovely morning for a walk, or a cup of tea out on the deck. Instead, here I am at work. I've made my deal- I'll be here for a while now, and I'm fine with it. More money, some increased responsibility, and the management team put on notice that they need to keep me happy- this is a good trade for a potential disaster going elsewhere (and a potential bonanza, too- that is the problem with roads not taken, you have no idea). Still, I'm content for now.

     


    Current Mood: sleepy
    Friday, July 17th, 2009
    10:42 am
    Oddly apt

    Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Star Trek and Cats
    The story should use alternate dimensions as a plot device!Idea from The Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Idea Generator:  http://kaction.com/badfanfiction/
     Story after the cut )"Well, Spock?" Kirk perched anxiously on the edge of his captain's chair, ready for action.

    In contrast, Kirk's science officer appeared calm as he looked up from his viewer. "Negative, Captain. We were not successful in returning to our own dimension. However, we do apppear to be orbiting a planet."

    Disappointment and frustration charged the air on the bridge of the Enterprise. Since being drawn into a wormhole 33 hours earlier, the crew had made attempt after attempt to return to their normal dimension. The planet below was of no consequence; their priority was getting back into the wormhole.

    "Catain, we're being hailed," Uhura interrupted smoothly.

    "On screen."

    The face filling the screen was unnervingly familiar. One or two giggles were stiffled somewhere on the bridge.  

    "I am Old Deuteronomy," the giant freaky cat began, "leader of the Jellicle Tribe. May I assume you are visiting from the Heaviside Layer?"

    Kirk shook his head. "End communications, Lieutenant. Helm, get us the hell out of here." 

    The next trip through the wormhold took them back to their normal dimension. For several weeks, however, Kirk was sure he heard various members of the bridge crew humming "Memories."

    - The End -

    Current Mood: amused
    Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
    10:48 pm
    Too much
    I do not get it. The guy sang pop songs. Really good ones. He was also a loony and potentially a child abuser, and no amount of catchy pop music makes up for that. And even if he wasn't a molester, even if he was just a weirdo who was too out of touch to understand that he did weird things that seemed inappropriate- he was still just a guy. Just a pop star! A very talented performer, but not a god or a hero or a selfless public servant. He does not deserve all of this.


     

    I saw a comment else-web, where someone asked (rhetorically, not directed at me), "I wonder how you'd feel if people were calling your father a freak and a pedophile on the day of his funeral?"  You know, I wouldn't like that at all. Of course not. But on the other hand, my father has never been on trial for child molestation. My father's funeral wouldn't be costing tax payers millions of dollars for traffic control, either. It wouldn't be on television for hours and hours because for some reason this is "news". I do not get it.



     



    Current Mood: confused
    Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
    3:58 pm
    HEY INTERNET!
    How ya doing?

    Current Mood: silly
    Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
    7:59 am
    Happy Canada Day
    www.facebook.com/photo.php

    To my Canadian friends (you know who you are)- have a wonderful day!




    Current Mood: busy
    Saturday, June 27th, 2009
    4:26 pm
    Tired
    I have realized that I am out of step with our culture a little bit. I love TV, I love movies, I love music, but I really, truly do not care about Celebrities.
     
    I do not get the fascination with Jon and Kate (and I liked their show before it became all about their marriage instead of their kids). 

    I feel a little bit of "oh, that's too bad" about the recent death of Farrah Fawcett, but mostly because I know she was very sick and suffered greatly. Cancer sucks. 

    And man alive am I already sick to death of the eulogizing of Michael Jackson- yes, he was a pop star. Yes, his music was HUGE during my formative years. It is strange to think that he's dead. He was also a child molester-  at the very least, he  behaved inappropriately enough that he kept being accused of it- and I have a hard time understanding the torrents of grief about his passing. He was weird and creepy, and hadn't been relevant on the music scene for a long time. I feel sorry for his kids, of course- because they've had definitely a weird and probably traumatic life already, and now they have to deal with this upheaval. But that's as far as I can go.

    I just...don't care and don't want to hear about it anymore. I want my entertainment websites to tempt me with spoilers and casting announcements. The rest of it? I don't care.

    Current Mood: over it
    Friday, June 19th, 2009
    8:26 am
    Truthiness

    If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.


    Current Mood: busy
    Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
    10:18 am
    CHOMP

    So, my kid is a biter. Yay. She's getting three new teeth, has been a little irritable, and yesterday took a good bite out of her little one-year-old playmate. Poor Paytin (and yes, that's how they spell it) has a lovely chomp mark on her arm.

    Paytie's mommy wasn't mad, though, which is nice. Just like I wasn't mad when Rachel got bit at Sunday School. I mean, what can you do? You try to take action in the moment, but when they're that little, it is hard to discipline them later. We did, however, play the Yo Gabba Gabba song "Don't bite your friends" twice last night. Because I'm awesome as a parent.
    Thursday, June 11th, 2009
    12:33 pm
    Surviving
    I'm still around. Just busy and sort of depressed. Out of sorts, ready for a change that isn't coming, that sort of thing.

    In cheerfuller news, my kid loves Yo Gabba Gabba. She's a dancin' fool. That is definitely a bright spot of every day.

    Current Mood: blah
    Sunday, May 31st, 2009
    12:04 pm
    HAPPY BIRTHDAY BELSUM!
    Happy birthday to my psychic twin. Live long and prosper!

    Current Mood: happy
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