H & I are headed up north on NYE to see Cinematic Titanic riff on three movies (Those three movies being “War of the Insects,” “Samson and the Seven Miracles” and “Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks”) at the Keswick Theatre in Ft. Washington, PA (a suburb north of Philly).

In our first two days of the new year we plan on catching The Mummers Parade, visiting The Independence Seaport Museum's "Skin & Bones: Tattoos in the Life of the American Sailor" exhibit, FDR Skatepark, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and South Street (where we will probably do some shopping at Digital Ferret, among other shops). Breakfast at The South Street Diner will be had at some point, lunch or dinner will be had at La Pizzeria and Nifty Fifty's.

The only thing we are missing is FRIENDS! We have made loose arrangements to meet with two or so friends (you know who you are), but if you are going to be in the area and we don't get to see you all that often - PLEASE give us a heads up and we can try to hang out for a minute.

 I do have a whole other show planned out for more holiday musical goodness, but for now, if you're looking for (actually GOOD) podsafe music that's fitting (and different from everything you're already heard a hundred-zillion times) for the season, I humbly entreat you to visit my podcast's little station, and listen. ^_^  (Both streaming & download available. :))  There's silly, quirky stuff here, traditional-ish sounding pieces, orchestral pieces, choral works, a kid-friendly piece or two, Celtic-y bits, archaic bits, and swing here n' there, too. :)  (The next ep'll have Dar Williams, some rock-ish stuff, and lots more too. *beams*)

♥♥♥
Merry Christmas & Happy Yule Everyone!!!
Nae

So I guess I had a pretty massive freakout over the past couple of days. It's chronicled on Twitter, more or less. To me it seemed to start with a horrible dream I had Monday morning. In this nightmare I was making a real effort to reconnect with my characters, but I'd gotten the wrong ones, which were more or less the Cure. (Anybody with half an eye can see the Cure's influence on Lost Souls, or so I assume.) They had all gone down to Shell Beach and commandeered barges, a tugboat, and some kind of tanker, with which they were planning a terrorist attack. Samuel L. Jackson was tearing down the Reggio highway in a furious attempt to stop them, but everybody knew it was my fault and hated me, including Chris, who promptly dumped my ass.

Some of my worst dreams are those in which I'm back with one of my exes. I remember Chris and feel the lack of him, but know I have to be with this once-beloved foe instead. It is the hollowest, loneliest feeling I've known in dream. Usually I wake up, become aware of him sleeping beside me, and feel tremendous relief. This time I woke up within the dream and knew I'd really done it, I'd finally fucked up bad enough to lose him (by putting the Cure on terrorist barges in Shell Beach, yes, I see the absurdity of this, but it didn't help at the time). I saw life without him, an endless featureless plain the color of a bruise. I cried and woke myself and him up saying "Chris. Chris. Chris" and babbling about wrong characters on barges, trying to explain this utter incoherence.

The ensuing day did not pass well. Even tranked to the gills, I couldn't seem to stop sobbing and panicking and doomsaying. I could not bathe. I could not even consider leaving the house (this has been a problem lately). I finally called my intermittent shrink and sobbed and babbled some more until she agreed to give me a few, VERY few, barbiturates to help me function over these next few days. I don't stress much about the holidays (we stopped doing gifts years ago, stocked up on stuff and unable to afford it), but my mom and a dear friend are coming to visit, and I would like to be able to act like something resembling a human being around them. Those who were reading back in the dark days of 2005 will remember my adventures with Dr. Jesus and the Great BUTALBITAL. Butalbital has come into my life again, with its idolatrous-sounding name and its extremely short-term help. Short-term because it's addictive as shit and not even slightly appropriate for treating long-term depression, but thank God she heard enough of the fraying in my voice to throw me a quick merciful lifeline (a scant 10 pills to be parceled out carefully over at least 4 days, worryworts) until I can go see her and figure out why my usual shit's not working anymore. Pharmaceuticals, you've nearly killed me and you've saved my life, both many times. Just like a goddamn lover, ain'tcha? ("Almost had your hooks in me, din'tcha, dear?")

So today my Butalbital and I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the house, and baked a lovely chocolate chip-pecan pie. Tomorrow we'll greet our guests and try to absorb their love through the merciful haze that says so kindly, "No, that bruise color isn't filling your vision, you don't reek of rotting meat, these people love you, they're not counting the hours until they can get away or silently analyzing the stupidity of everything you say."

So that's the story of my big freakout. As ever, I tell it because of my determination to chronicle the life of one writer's journey through loss, depression, addiction, sorrow, joy, and sometimes redemption in the wake of the post-Katrina federal levee failure. I've written no fiction in three years now, so this is really all I have to offer, and I give it to you without shame. There's no reason for shame. I wasn't like this before August 29, 2005. I'd dealt with depression off and on since I was 17, but at the time of the levee failure I was on no psychiatric drugs, writing prolifically, and (I thought) fairly happy. Now I struggle most days just not to be a mess, and there are a hell of a lot of people who are a hell of a lot worse off than I am ... and a hell of a lot more people who survived the levee failure and its aftermath, but not the lives they tried to piece back together afterward. They gave themselves to the Great Subaudible. I tell you these things in part to keep myself from doing the same.

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

( Celebrated over the weekend in the best way we know how... )

But for real, the holla-day festivities start today with Christmas Eve Eve, then tomorrow is Christmas Eve with my extended family, and then Christmas Day at my parents' house. Kevin's family was supposed to have their Christmas last weekend, but since we were all snowed in under 2+ feet of snow, they rescheduled it to January 10th (it's hard to get 20ish people together, and that's just his immediate family & spouses & kids). So, I'm wishing you all a happy holiday week, however you choose to celebrate it. It's the cold of winter, and friends, family, good food, good drink, good cheer, and gifts help us all to keep the warmth of Spring in our hearts.

Time to finish my WoW dailies, then sewing. I am important.

So, I GOT MY FIRST SALE ON ETSY!!! ^_^   Plus, I just put up each pair of the remaining Humbug Horns for sale there, too. :)  One girl from a faerie LJ community bought a pair already right off my LJ post, and the rest are sitting on Etsy, waiting to be purchased. :)  

Secondly, due to these purchases, I sent off my 2 sales from Etsy & LJ tonight. :)  I walked a ways to a local bus stop, then ended up getting driven to the Post Office (which stays open till ten tonight- how cool is that??), by some good citizen who saw me standing by the road and freaked out 'cause a snow plow passed too close to me for her comfort.  I was fine, but seeing that apparently really freaked her out, so she drove me to the PO out of the kindness of her heart. :)

I took a bus to the Metro back, planning to Metro from East Falls to Dunn Lorring and then walk home from there.   However, unfortunately I also slipped into a snow-covered drainage ditch while avoiding a large snow-hill in the walkway on the way to the PO.  It didn't hurt much to begin with, but through the night it's just gotten worse and worse- and now.. uhm.. OW!!   I rode the train back and forth for a while beyond my stop to hopefully give my ankle a rest before I tried walking home, but in transferring directions to head back home I discovered I could barely walk on the thing.   The pain just kept gettin' worse & worse as I sat, and I ended up literally kneeing my way (i.e. crawling w/o the aid of my hands) w/my blindo cane through the Dunn Lorring station and out to wait for a taxi to take me home.  (I am SO glad I brought that thing to help bus drivers see me!  How could I have known it was actually gonna help me get off the train & down the main railway like a walking cane tonight? ;P)  I think it's just a strain, but I can't help but wonder 'what the hell did I do?" ;P

I've since taken a nice long bath & shower to hopefully ease things, but I sure wish I had some big-time drogas to help w/the pain.   Still, it kinda feels like a much worse version of what happens when I strain things standing too long- so I'm hoping if I just stay off it for a while, it'll get better.   (When my foot slipped into the ditch, it pointed severely and something popped in the back of my ankle between my heel & my leg.  I can still move my foot, but certain positions really make me grit my teeth.)  I so hope it's just something mildly pulled!  Otherwise, what a sucky way to begin the New Year, and start the holiday??? :P  

Anyway, I just thought I'd say "yay, I'm done w/shipping my two first online sales!! ^_^", and wish you all a

Love Love Love,
Nae-Nae

More specifically, YouTube, it is actually the start of the christmas season for me:

Well, it's either me with my sore shoulder, or my housemate with his sore back. So, of course, we've been pretty much taking turns. Yes, now both my arms are sore in addition to my right shoulder. Don't have much of a choice, though, shit needs doing.

Oh, and another note on shoveling: people, clean off the entirety of your car, including the roof & hood. If you don't clean off your hood, you get ice & snow chunks fling off your hood into your face, and you therefore become a road hazard. If you don't clean off the roof of your car, you send chunks of ice & snow into other drivers' faces, and thus become a road hazard.

The pain has pretty much localized in my right shoulder, but has overall intensified. Keeps me from exercising, I haven't slept properly in something like four days, driving & heavy lifting are out, I can't seem to find a position to move/sit/stand/lie down that doesn't hurt, blah, blah, blah.

Edited, 19 December, 2009, 23:10: I'm not really posting to my livejournal account, I've edited this post on Dreamwidth to cross post this entry there. For some effed up reason, the RSS feed from my Deadjournal account to my LJ account isn't working properly.

Somehow I've managed to hurt my arm: a dull ache that intermittently starts in my right shoulder, and runs the entire length of my arm. Keeps me from sleeping properly.

Edited, 19 December, 2009, 23:08: I'm not really posting to my livejournal account, I've edited this post on Dreamwidth to cross post this entry there. For some effed up reason, the RSS feed from my Deadjournal account to my LJ account isn't working properly.

From: http://www.austinuu.org/wp/2007/12/the-real-reason-for-the-season/

It’s a time to get out not only our best behaviors, but some of our silliest and most child-like behaviors, too. My god, this is the season when full-grown people talk about flying reindeer, take their children to a million malls to sit on Santa’s lap, then line up and pay good money to see that ballet with mice that dance, and a magical nutcracker who comes to life.

“Comes to life.” That’s it. The real reason for this season has always been coming back to life. Not coming to worship the invincible sun, not coming to Mithras, not coming to Jesus, but coming to life. And all the stories, music, costumes, decorations and parties are like training wheels for us, to help us get back into that habit of being more alive – a habit we seem to slip out of so easily that it’s a good thing we have arranged this annual reminder that more than anything, what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Also, take note of some of my favorite Christmas songs: The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs.

( Even female troll NPCs have it. )

It IS pretty annoying. Like, I didn't really want my troll to be an angry looking old hag with acne scars, so that left me the ONE OPTION EVERYONE USES. Like, the female ORCS have tons of great face options and they're supposed to be "uglier" or whatever...but ever since I heard of Cutefase some time back, I just notice that every...single...female...troll has it. I noticed that nevermore666's Mekt does not, but I think that is because she is wise to the ways of cutefase.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT BTW.

In other news, my first day of work was today and it wore me out because it was a HUGE info dump. I know I'll get up to speed but I was just like WHOA intense. Plus learning the subtle differences between a Mac and a PC is slightly mind bending (they use Macs, I use a PC)...NO RIGHT CLICK?! WTF?!...but yeah. Kinda glad I'm starting during the holidays when things will be slow, though.

So tired now. Must sleep.

Get to know My Guests. Want to know who's checking you out? You can now view the 100 most recent, logged-in users who visited your journal during the past 30-day period with My Guests. For those who prefer to fly under the radar, you can update your My Guests privacy setting here.

Introducing My Stats. If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can now see detailed reports on how many people are visiting your journal, friends pages, and entries (wherever they're posted on LiveJournal). You can also view data on comments and RSS requests. My Stats is only available to Paid and Permanent account holders, but you can upgrade anytime. (FYI, an annual subscription costs less than a large pizza with everything on it, PLUS it's rumored to make you lose weight in your sleep!) For additional details on this feature, read this article in paidmembers.

Get ready to check your vital statistics!. To begin, mouse over Journal in the upper nav bar and select My Stats from the dropdown menu (Horizon) or select My Stats under Journal in the side bar (Vertigo). If you're using another design scheme, you can visit My Stats directly. You'll find My Guests on the My Stats tool bar.

Happy holiday promotion!

We're delighted to tell you about our holiday coupons, which will help you share the love with your LiveJournal friends! If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send up to 10 LiveJournal Basic/Plus users a $10 coupon for an annual paid subscription now through January 15th, 2010. Recipients can upgrade for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25). Please note that these coupons are not transferable and cannot be used to renew existing paid accounts. If you're a Paid/Permanent user, you can send out your holiday coupons now!

Tweaks and Enhancements

1. The search is on: We've replaced our default search tool with one from Yandex, a leader in search engine technology. This means you'll get smarter, more granular results! To get started, enter your search terms and click the Go button to the left of the Find box on the upper right of the LiveJournal header. This will take you to the search landing page where you can further refine by Entries, Comments, People & communities, and FAQs. You can also access the search page directly.
2. Whitelisting: We've released a new option to help you moderate your busy communities more efficiently. If an entry contains a link to a whitelisted (i.e., trusted) site, it will be posted automatically without need for moderator approval. If a post contains a link that is not on the whitelist, you'll be prompted to approve. To access this option, please visit settings for any community you maintain and select the third option in the Community Moderation box (located in the lower left-hand corner). Click the enable link to custom-edit your community's whitelist, which has been prepopulated with trusted domains. You can manually add or delete URLs in the text box. Please note: If you're the maintainer of an unmoderated community, you may see the radio button for this setting checked, even though it's not active. This is a known issue. Please select whichever option you prefer and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. If you're happy with your current settings, then no need to do anything!
3. TMI, dude: We've added some fun FREE sponsored vgifts! You can send up to 50 TMI vgifts to mutual friends (btw, you cannot send free vgifts to communities). If you're a Paid/Permanent user and you want to view sponsored gifts, click Show sponsored gifts on your homepage or visit the sponsored gift page. These vgifts will only be available through Wednesday, December 23rd.

You can view more awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Until next time, stay snug!