Kaymyth

... "Not mentally ready?" For a gap year? Isn't that supposed to be a breather to destress from high school before going on to college/university? What kind of idiot drugs have they been smoking?

One I saw earlier today on another forum: "Dance like nobody is watching. Email like it will end up in a deposition."

Well. OK. But beware, spoilers for the latest season of iZombie lie herein! Also, there is discussion of the less pleasant aspects of zombie-ism, so squeamish people might not want to click. I AM SO EXCITED! They have literally been teasing this as a possibility since the 80s. And the Corsair, the gender-switching Time Lord that Eleven talks about in The Doctor's Wife? S/he was actually originally mentioned in the Fourth Doctor story Shada, which never actually aired due to a BBC strike.

James and I watch iZombie. It's a hilariously fun show, and we enjoy the heck out of it. And it slips little jokes in under the radar that a lot of people would miss. Well, a friend of mine recently discovered it and has been binge-watching to catch up. And he found the most glorious pun hidden in there that I totally missed and shared it with me, saying, "Bad zombie show! Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done." Me: "THIS IS GLORIOUS, I must share it with James so he can giggle now!" Him: "No! Bad. You're both bad. You're why they do this." I'm not sorry at all.

Sewing counts as domesticity for most people? But you're right, costumes are probably not technically "domestic". Working on my Bast costume for God Auction. I pleated so much linen. So. Much.

Yep. Yet another step in preparation for portraying an Egyptian deity on Sunday. In related news, I am a moron and I burned my fingers on my iron while working on sewing. Eh. At least it's not as bad as the burn I got from the oven the last time I tried to bake something. I really am a tragic failure at domesticity.

Tonight is session 1 (of 2) of getting henna! I am going to be very decorated.

It always gets me correctly when I'm at home. But when I'm at work, it's hopelessly lost.

Thank you. She is a Good Dog. A bit displeased with all of the poking and prodding (and needles!), but OK. It's going to be a matter of just monitoring her health for the next few years. Dachshunds can pretty commonly live well into her teens, and some have been known to make it past twenty. The vet said she's still "got a lot of miles on her" so we'll just take the best care of her we can.

Background: I have a 15-year-old dachshund named Leia. She is an adorably neurotic little thing, and I have had her since she was a tiny puppy. Of course, the moment I met my now-husband, she immediately became his dog. Suffice to say, she is rather strongly intertwined into our hearts. A couple of weeks ago, she had an...episode? She suddenly got dizzy and stumbled over to the side. Got up, fell back down again. Then when she finally found her feet, she walked around in circles for a moment, periodically glancing up at me with a perplexed expression on her face. "Mom? Why am I turning around? I'm trying to walk straight!" We, of course, got her into the veterinarian as quickly as we could. He looked her over, gave us a rundown of what the potential causes could be, and took some bloodwork to run tests. Other problems: she's a little bit underweight, and she has a heart murmur. The good news is, the bloodwork came back clear. That's...also kind of the bad news, because it didn't really give us anything to go on as to why she lost her balance like that. The possibilities: 1. A low-grade ear infection. She does have a ball of wax deep inside her left ear, which we've been treating and breaking down. If there's fluid pushing on her inner ear, it might affect her balance. This is the most benign possibility, and unfortunately, not terribly likely. Something like that would cause more than just one major dizzy spell, plus her pupils were slightly different sizes when the vet checked her eyes, indicating a more neurological cause. 2. A vascular event. Not on the level of a stroke, but a similar cause. A heart murmur like hers can cause small blood clots to form and wander into sensitive places. It might have temporarily stuck in the wrong spot in her brain. (I'm looking at this being the most likely scenario.) 3. A brain tumor. Do Not Want. Probably not likely. We're going back to the vet today for some follow-up tests and to get her vaccinations updated. We also need to schedule a teeth cleaning, because they're in pretty bad shape. I imagine there will be a few extracted. I'm hoping this improves her appetite a bit, cause eating with sore teeth is no fun. The heart murmur we're just going to have to keep an eye on. I now have scheduled on my Google calendar for the next five years a reminder to check her breathing every two weeks. If she ever goes above 30 breaths per minute while asleep, we may be looking at congestive heart failure. Right now she is at 20 breaths per minute, so not at all a problem yet, but it's likely to get worse as she ages. Dangit, guys, my puppy is getting old.

Oh, man. I am ashamed of myself for not having thought of that.

I kind of feel like they were really just trying to keep us on the fence about it. Make us as unsure about him as the team was in order to increase tension. The result was...well, a bit clumsy, really.

Well, of course it's hard. Did you not see that they require swords and horses in order to track it down? Have you ever tried to do complex math on horseback? (Your realism is getting in the way of my fun headcanon. There are advantages to not knowing enough calculus to know the exact level of silly the comic has reached.)

Today's XKCD is now how I choose to forever picture @Chaos's classes.

All of the parish's government buildings were pre-emptively closed for today, so she's got a free day off. It's raining buckets, but nothing worse than that.

Yep. I was just Facechatting with her earlier today, in fact. She is on hiatus, but I imagine that she might respond to PMs. Perhaps if you sent her a bribe of cute pug pictures... Nevermind, she has notifications turned off, so she won't get an email telling her people are sending her messages. If anyone really needs to get a message through to her, I am willing to pass stuff along.

More than that, he just wants people to go to JordanCon. (I've had this conversation with him.) It's his favorite convention, and they have an entire track dedicated to Sanderson books. He tries to make it every other year at least, and there's always representation from Team Sanderson there. They always have a ton of guest authors and an excellent writing track as well, and is just in general an excellent, well-run convention. 2018 is going to be JordanCon 10 - I hear tell that big things are planned. And yes, he's going to be there. (hint hint people!)

Yay returned kitty! But not Returned kitty, because that would be weird. First shipment of fabric got located over the weekend. (Apparently one of the roommates of the new owner of the old house thought it was theirs and opened it. Like the Spanish Inquisition, 4 yards of linen fabric was not expected.)

Fabric update: I contacted the seller and explained the situation. They applied a credit in the amount of the fabric price (minus the shipping charges) to a reorder, and I have fabric on its way to the correct address. They are going to contact FedEx in an attempt to track down where the package actually went in an attempt to get it returned to them. I wish them the best of luck. I also got my corset kit this week (this uses different fabric; the linen is for my skirt), so I will probably be working on sewing a mock-up this weekend.

So, I knocked. He was home. However, the package had never arrived. Because local FedEx is made of butts and cannot read addresses or street signs.

Yellow pages would be for businesses; white pages is for people. And generally you wind up looking by name. There are a lot of online white pages services that will let you do reverse lookups, but you have to pay to get any reasonable info, and none of them have email information. Meh. I just get annoyed with myself. I am 39 years old, I should be past stuff like this. I'll suck it up and do it, and have a note prepared to leave in case the guy's not home.

We've been living in this house for two years now. I've pretty much passed any grace period of "oops, I forgot to change my address here". I have social anxiety that crops up in uncertain situations. I'm a helluva lot more nervous attempting to contact someone when I don't know whether they're there/will pick up. (Seriously, I have to make appointments to call friends. It's dumb.) If I know what's coming, I can prep and be ready to launch onto a track. But if there's more than just one outcome (not there; there & friendly; there & neutral; there & annoyed), my brain panics and different scripts get mixed up and I suddenly find myself traveling downwards in a handbasket.

AUGH So, I was starting to wonder why my fabric order was taking so long to get here. I checked the tracking today to find that it was, in fact, delivered on Thursday. To my old address. Yeah. Genius me didn't notice that the website still had our old address programmed in. I mean, I used Paypal and since I knew that our new address is set correctly in there, assumed that the order would just use that. I was wrong because I am a rusting idiot. So. The fabric that I need for a project is now in the hands of the complete stranger who bought our old house. (That is, assuming he hasn't just sent it back.) I have no contact information for this person. Obviously I know where he lives, but I have no idea what his schedule is like or when he is likely to be home. I have no idea if he's going to be understanding about it or act like a jerk. All of these unknowns mean that going over and knocking on that door is a terrifying prospect, but I have to do it.

See, I think of a terrace as being a leveled piece of ground built into a hill. More or less, though my house is a bit odd. The ground floor in the front is a story up in the back because our yard slopes. We have a walk-out basement. So our deck is accessed from the kitchen, but raised up above the backyard. The thing that you're referring to as a terrace is clicking in my brain as a balcony.