I met with the VP of HR at the Venture Labs to talk about my job. He said that he's going to revise my job description, up my proposed salary to something comparable to what I've actually been doing there all these months, and get me an offer letter asap (by next week). Sounds good. I'm completely in "I'll believe it when I see it" mode.

Will be devoting the entire day tomorrow to the Cherry Blossom Festival downtown. The doll school will have its usual booth and we'll be selling dolls, demonstrating doll-making techniques, selling washi paper and other stuff, and generally having a good time. The weather is supposed to be terrific (sunny and cool, though a bit on the windy side). Should be a fun but long day.

I've been memed! This is good. My brain is so frazzled atm that about all I'm good for is doing memes and taking naps. This is a character meme, and I was tagged to use Jack Sparrow as my subject.

Jack Sparrow
01. Do you like this character?
Um...letmethinkaboutthatforasecond... YES.

02. What name/s do you call this character?
Usually just Jack. It is a perfect name for him.

03. What image/color do you associate with character?
Image(s): The Black Pearl, Jack sword fighting with Barbossa, the ocean, a compass, rum; Color(s): red and blue


04. What image-song do you associate with character?
Song: What do you do with a drunken sailor?

05. What blood-type do you think this character is?
B-

06. Of all of the titles that this character appears in, what character do you like to put this character with?
Ha! What character would I NOT put Jack with?!? hahaha! Jack is all about equal opportunity for all.

07. What would you want to say to this character?
I'll show you my horizon if you'll show me yours.

08. What do you want to do with this character?
Sex, sail, explore, ( rinse, repeat)


I tag the entire known universe with this meme. Pick the character of your own choice and play along.

Oh dear. I've just discovered the most interesting website ever. I seriously think this is going to become the biggest internet time sink I've ever encountered:

Closer to Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness, God.

(Note: I didn't link to the home page because that page is designed to launch a video immediately when you click the page, and that annoys me ... though the one that's currently featured is fascinating: how vast is the cosmos? ).

The website contains videos from the PBS series of the same name. It is hours and hours of interviews with the world's leading scientists, philosophers and theologians, all taking about topics such the nature of the multiverse, what is time, quantum entanglement, mind/body questions about consciousness and brain functionality and how these issues inform theological and philosophical questions... All great topics, all addressed seriously by some fantastically smart people. I decided to watch one video and ended up spending 3 hours on the site so far. The 'god' topics do show a distinct slant towards the modern Western/Christian notion of a personal creator god (though I've found a couple of the 'god' topics addressed from a Buddhist POV); however,even these are addressed from a philosophical and scientific POV, not from a 'religious' POV.

I foresee much fun to be had here. I feel like chucking everything else I was planning to do today and just browsing this site until I go to bed. Which, alas, I cannot do, as I have some things that simply must get done with what's left of my day. I will have to parcel out my time over the next couple of weeks to go through the entire website.

Oh no! There is also a blog: http://scienceandreligiontoday.blogspot.com/search/label/Closer%20to%20Truth

i will never get anything else done again.

Ahahahaha! Someone made a fantastic Jack Sparrow My Little Pony! He had dreadlocks in his tail! hahahahahahaha!

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Check out this gallery for Joker, Edward Scissorhands, Alien(!), Slavegirl Princess Leia, Elvis, and a bunch of others.


Hee! I needed a good laugh.

My sister is able to walk with the crutches again. She has NOT seen a doctor yet. Aside from nagging the hell out of her about it, I don't know what else to do.

I've received two nibbles on resumes that I sent out last week. We'll see if anything develops. One place called to schedule and interview and the other sent me a written 'pre-screen' questionnaire to see if they wanted to proceed to an in-person interview. In the meantime, this afternoon I dropped in to the temp agency I'm currently signed with and had a chat with them about the situation at the Venture Labs. I told them that I still like the place, but that I have a lot of concerns about the place. The agent I spoke to said she would call over to the Labs tomorrow and have a chat with them. We'll see if anything comes from that, too.

In other news...

Lost has become fantastic again.

beatonna has an amusing comic about Darwin on the MySpace Dark Horse Presents website. It's kooky! I love her comics. Somebody needs to buy me this print of her Tesla comic. Do it! Feed my Tesla obsession, internetz! Do it! hahahah! Anyone who makes webcomics about Tesla is automatically my hero. Check out her LJ for non-stop lulz.

Troubling news.

One of my younger sisters was born with congentital hip dysplasia (essentially a malformed hip joint). She's had two hip replacement surgeries already. They tend to last only about 15 years, and her doctors tell her that a person can only have 3 of these in a lifetime because of the amount of natural bone/cartilage that is removed each time the surgery is performed.

She's been slipping and falling a lot lately and yesterday she fell again and now she cannot walk on that leg at all. She's getting around the house on crutches. When I talked to her yesterday, she said that she was going to wait until Monday to see a doctor because the local hospital near her is bad and she can't see her regular folks until Monday. I'm terribly worried about her.

Add to this the fact that we have a major snowstorm moving into this area. The forecast I just heard is calling for 8-12 inches of snow in the greater DC area, so who knows if she'll even be able to get out of the house on Monday.

Current Mood: worried

Anyone know what just happened to the comics comm, scans_daily? It's been suspended.


Mod Post here, with additional links: http://schmevil.livejournal.com/161736.html

See comments below for additional links.

I am seriously ticked off about this. scans_daily was one of my favorite comms in the LiveJournals. This was not only one of the single most entertaining places in the LJs, it was also probably the best free advertising that the comics business could have asked for.

All signs point to author Peter A. David as the person who pulled the trigger on the comm.

IBM offers laid off US workers the opportunity to keep their jobs... if they will move to India and work for pennies on the dollar and be subject to local labor laws.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/outsourcing/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213000389


Ah, capitalism at its finest.

I am sick again, this time with worse symptoms than before. I'm so annoyed. I'm going to see a doctor in the morning because whatever this is has settled in my chest, there are pus sacks forming on the back of my throat and I'm having shaking chills. So disgusting. To add insult to injury, I can't find my stupid insurance card. I tried to look up my account online and the insurance site said my account was 'not found' so now I'm worried that my COBRA status wasn't set up properly. Ugh. This sucks.

Stolen from evb

Okay, so I ordered Chinese carryout Saturday night because I'd worked all day and didn't feel like cooking. They gave me two fortune cookies. This was the message in cookie number one:

"Only listen to fortune cookie, disregard all other fortune telling units."

My fortune cookie is bossing me around. o_0

And what I am supposed to make of a fortune like this one, from cookie number two? Only tears can bring a dreamer back to earth.

Thanks a lot, fortune cookie elves. (I imagine that they are like the Keebler cookie elves, only Chinese.) Are they trying to tell me that I need to have a good cry? That's not very nice.

Anyway, in other news, the situation at the Venture Labs is finally starting to move. I should have a go/no go answer from them within a week. Stay tuned.

Our media has been reminding us at every turn that the election of Barack Obama is a historic event, and it most definitely is. But for me, it's more than that. For me, Obama represents a return to the values that I was raised to believe in, a return to the principles that America is supposed to uphold. Obama's election means an end to rule through fear and greed and contempt. An end to the steady erosion and outright violation of our Constitutional rights and freedoms in the guise of 'protecting' America and "patriotism." An end to "pre-emptive" wars and torture. An end to government programs and policies shaped by Christian fundamentalism. For the last 8 years, I have felt like I have been living in an evil, Orwellian parody of America. Now I have America back, and it feels really, really good.

If Barack Obama is able to achieve only a tenth of what he sets out to do, I will still always revere the man for just this statement alone:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

Yeah. All it took is that one simple sentence to expose the 'Bush Doctrine' for the lie that it was. Let this be the end to "Patriot Acts" that erode civil liberties and unjust wars based on faked intelligence, and an end to America acting like the a bully who tramples on her enemies and allies alike.

Obama campaigned largely on a theme of hope and millions of Americans turned out to support him and his ideas. Now it's time for him and all of America to get to work and turn that hope into reality. We may have a hard road ahead of us to fix the mess that Bush left behind him, but we'll get it done.

I try to avoid taking nighttime cold medication because they all tend to give me nightmares; however, I've lost so much sleep to coughing over the last week that I broke down last night and took some Nyquil. All I wanted was a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. The results were... o_0

( Read more... )

It is brrrrrrr cold outside. Seriously, it's zero degrees out there. It's freaky cold for the DC area, but at least there's no snow, not yet anyway. I hear there may be flurries on Sunday or Monday, but nothing that should interfere with the Inauguration on Tuesday.


Speaking of, on Tuesday America gets the most adorable president in the history of ever. I ♥ him. I think he has a fabulous smile.

Caught cold. Staying home. That is all.

la la la ...can't sleep... la la la

Since it's nearly 6:00 AM and I have to start getting ready for work in an hour or so anyway, I guess I will just give up trying to get any sleep tonight. Can insomnia kill you? Bah. Who cares! Sleep! Who needs it! Not me. Apparently.

Happy 2009!

Adios 2008. I shall not miss you.

Happy Holidays!







sent to me by my friend T in sunny Florida

My dad has been discharged from the hospital. The doctors think that he will likely need a pacemaker to control his irregular heartbeat, but insurance being what it is, they have to release him from the hospital and send him home for 'observation' on medication alone first to see what happens. My dad says that he is still exhausted and he's having short term memory problems now, but otherwise doesn't seem to have suffered any other sort of adverse effects of the stroke which is a huge relief to me.

I've started rattling some cages at the Venture Labls so that I can get folks to give me a definitive answer about the status of my job. Are they going to hire me yes/no? If yes, when and at what salary? What are the exact job duties that they expect me to perform? Is the salary they're planning to offer aligned to my job duties or (as I strongly suspect) based simply on what the accountant has allocated (which is at the lowest possible end of the scale)? I hope to have answers by the end of December so that I can make a go/no go decision and get out of this awful limbo that I'm in.

My dad is alert and pretty much his usual self, though he says that he feels utterly wiped out and tired. The hospital is holding him for a couple more days to monitor his heart since he's now having some sort of irregular heart beat.

So...things aren't as bad as it they have been, but now there is a new, secondary heart issue to deal with.

My dad had a minor stroke this morning. He's in the hospital, undergoing tests. My sisters tell me that he is alert and seems his usual self, but he has no memory of what happened. I don't think this is the first small stroke he's had, based on what I can glean from my mom. The doctors want to keep him at the hospital for one or two days minimum for observation and testing.

That's all I know at this point.