Random Ramblings

Ok, this is happening more and more lately, so I thought I'd post something up. I don't mind having people I talk to friend me. I love it, in fact. But I'm sort of baffled by the number of people friending me who've never said a word to me anywhere (that I'm aware of).

If you're friending me for my fic, you're in the wrong place because I don't keep it here. I also don't link to the fic journal from here. You'll have to follow one of my fic posts in the relevant community to find it. Sorry. Not that I'm trying to be a pain, but I do have my reasons. If you friend me without any kind of comment (either in this post or any of the others), I'm going to assume you just friended me for the fic and are in the wrong place.

If you're not here for the fic, and just want to friend me for some reason, I'd really love it if you'd comment here and let me know who you are and how you found me. I try to stick people on my filters based on their likes and dislikes and preferences. I'd hate to stick you on a filter where you'd see things you didn't enjoy. That would be unpleasant for both of us.

So come talk to me. I promise I don't bite. Well, not hard anyway.

(and Faye, I see you back there snickering at the abject hypocrisy of this post considering the fact that I friended you without ever saying a word *grin*)

Wow. This has honestly been one of the worst weeks I have ever had the misfortune of living through. What a freaking nightmare, I swear. This is gonna be loooooong, so I'm going to cut it. Feel free to skip if you don't have time, or just don't want to be bored.

( Surgery sucks )

If I continue to improve at my current rate, I'm hoping to be released back to work on October 13th. I guess on the bright side of things, I certainly don't have to worry about any kind of narcotic addiction. Hell, now I can say I'm hard core baby. I had major neck surgery and only took pain meds for four days. *grin*

I've been skimming my flist, and commenting here and there, but as soon as I saw the new US TH dates, I pretty much just stopped reading my flist. If there's something you want me to see that's not TH wank related, please do link me to it because I am finally getting to the point where boredom is setting in and I really really need the distraction. But the last thing I want to have to deal with right now is more TH wank. I don't have the patience for it and would likely end up losing some friends with the things I'd end up saying.

Well, I'm still not fully back in the land of the living (long story and I won't bore you with it right now since I'm not really up to typing it all out yet), but I thought I'd check in and say hi. I also wanted to share a laugh with you guys. I've rather desperately needed something to make me smile, and this was a good one. It's long, but I promise you'll laugh. The thing that makes it even better for me is that I know exactly where this situation took place, as it's less than 5 miles from my house.

( Demonic Squirrels )

Hope everyone is doing well. I've been trying to skim the flist when I've been able to actually sit up for more than 5 minutes at a stretch, but I'll admit I've been horrible about actually commenting, since it's still very painful at the moment. *sigh* I should be doing better than I am. Thank god I have a doctor's appointment today so I can go in and melt down on the doctor instead of my husband for a change. *pets Michael* I am beyond lucky to have the husband I have, you guys. I would not have survived this past week without him.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY



TO YOU!

I hope you have a wonderful day, Dani, even though it's already half-over by this time.

*hugs you and crawls slowly back to bed*

Shhhh! Don't tell.

Codeine is really great, you guys! Lying in bed so much your hips start to hurt, not so great. So I'm up at an ungodly hour, but only in here for a minute (I'll get caught if I stay too long). I have lots to tell you, but not enough time (or strength) to get it all down right now, so instead I'll just say thank you so much for all the thoughts and prayers. It meant so much to me.

And one quick story. I woke up from surgery shivering like crazy. Apparently my temperature dropped a bit more than they were happy with, but it wasn't dangerously low. Still, I was very cold when I came out of the anesthesia, and I kept trying to stop shivering because it was making my shoulders hurt. When the nurse came to ask me if I was okay, what did I say? "Cold. I can has blanket please?"

God, if I could physically have headdesked, I would have done it the moment that left my mouth. Obviously I spend too much time on the computer if I'm speaking in LOLCat when waking up from anesthesia. Geez.

And now I'm going to take my next dose of pain medicine, and go back to my bed. I'll try to get everything typed up some time tomorrow. Love you guys! Lots and lots!

Ok, I'm off for the night. Sarah has the password to my journal, so she'll be updating you guys tomorrow once I'm out of surgery, since it's probably going to be a few days before I'm able to get in here again. You guys behave while I'm gone.

Well, okay, don't behave that much. What fun would that be?

♥ ♥ ♥

Because I'm bored, I decided to do up a post for sparkle text, because I'm always losing the code myself, and there are always people who ask how I did it when I use it. So below the cut are the codes for a bunch of different sparkle texts!

( Because everyone needs a little sparkle in their lives )

OMG, my child is currently playing hide and seek with his imaginary friend. Three guesses as to what the imaginary friend's name is - and the first two don't count.

He's so funny. I'm sitting here at the computer and all of a sudden I hear "Aww, man! You found me!" So I go to his room thinking "OMG does he have friends over here this early???" He's sitting on the bed talking, and I ask him who he's talking to and he says "I was playing hide and seek with Tom, but he found me. So now it's his turn to hide."

My child amuses me so much.

ETA: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Jackson - "Mom, I need to go in your room."
Me - "Why?"
Jackson - "Because I can't find Tom. I think he hid in your room."
Me *looking very stern* - "He'd better not be hiding in my room. If I find him in my room I'm going to make him go home and you won't be allowed to play with him the rest of the day."
Jackson *creeping over to my door and whispering* - "Dude, you can't hide in Mom's room. Come hide somewhere else. I'll close my eyes."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY



TO YOU!

Happy birthday to my lovely, wonderful, adorable Tiffany. I love you, sweetheart, and I miss you and I hope you have a fantastic day.

Aww, my favorite rapper in the whole wide world is 21 today. So it can be picspam time!



O HAI CHIBI!TIMO! God he was just absolutely adorable when he was a munchkin.

( Not safe for dial up )

HAPPY BIRTHDAY



TO YOU!

Happy birthday you guys! I hope you both have wonderful, fantastic birthdays!

This one took me a while. So, I answer these questions with the names of people on my flist, but I'm not allowed to tell anyone the questions unless they agree to do the meme themselves.

( Answers to the questions )

Quick update, since I'm still drugged up. I'm home from the hospital. The test went well. It isn't a herniated disk. I have two bone spurs on my vertebra that are "amputating the nerve root at C5-6". That will probably make more sense to Dr. Song_2_Sing, but what it tells me is that yes, there is a definite problem in my neck, and yes, it can be fixed. So yay. I have no idea whether surgery to remove bone spurs will be better or worse than surgery to shave away a herniated disc, but I'm hoping it will be easier and will require less recovery time. I won't know any details about the surgery until my appointment with the doctor on Friday, but I'll be sure to update you guys when I get the information.

Thank you so much to everyone for all your thoughts, prayers and good wishes. I won't be able to respond to anything tonight. I'm still feeling fairly bad at the moment, and that's despite being high on Demorol. And OMG that test hurt SO MUCH. It wasn't the injection of the lidocain. That stung a bit, but not any worse than a bee sting. Inserting the needle for the dye didn't actually hurt at all. When they started injecting the dye, that started off with just pressure, then started to hurt a little, then started to hurt a little more, and a little more, and just when it was getting to the point that it was starting to really be seriously painful, it stopped. After that, though, they had to get me in certain positions to get the images and OMFG that HURT. It was obviously because those bone spurs were pressing right on that nerve, because it wasn't my neck that really hurt, it was my arm all the way down to my hand. And that was excruciating. At one point I actually almost started crying because it hurt so much, and that's despite the fact that they had given me an injection of Demorol and Xanax and some other pain med. Just when I thought I wasn't going to be able to take any more without passing out, it was over.

So, yeah, this is sort of rambling, and I'm sorry. I'll be more coherent when I'm not high on pain meds. As I said, I really appreciate all of you and am thankful for your well wishes. I will try to anser any comments tomorrow when I'm a bit more back to normal. *hugs to all of you*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY



TO YOU!

Happy 18th!! I hope you have a fantastic day!

So...we have this attorney here in our firm who has been nominated as one of the most beautiful women in Dallas in a contest being run by D Magazine. And, ok, yes, that's a pretty nice thing for her and I'm sure she's quite flattered and honored. But I am absolutely appalled at the fact that the entire firm is being asked - through our business email address - to vote for her. Maybe that's petty of me, but my god, to me this is just incredibly unprofessional. She's not the one sending out the emails, one of the other partners in the firm is. But he keeps sending out emails, and keeps sending out emails, and keeps sending out emails encouraging us to vote every day for her to win this stupid beauty contest. WTF does that have to do with work? Seriously? And why the hell are they pressuring us to vote in a beauty contest??? They don't even want us using our work email addresses for family business, but it's okay to harass us to vote in a beauty contest? I'm supremely unimpressed.

God, what a horrific weekend. I didn't get to do much of anything on Saturday, because we kept waiting for the weather to get bad (which it never did), so we didn't make any big plans. So I pretty much spent the entire day moving between the couch and the computer room, and accomplished absolutely nothing.

On Sunday I was supposed to go to a wedding shower, but when I picked up the pan of baked beans I was planning to take with me, my hand went weak again and I dropped them and spilled them all down the front of me. It didn't burn me too badly, but the whole situation sort of overwhelmed me. At that point I pretty much just sat down on the kitchen floor and cried. I'm already so tired of my hand and arm not working right.

In the end, however, it was probably for the best that I didn't go. My sister called me that evening and told me what a nightmare the thing ended up being. Seriously, it sounded like something out of a movie, you guys, with the future in-laws acting up and a great-aunt carrying on at length about the heritage of Barak Obama. I'd have gotten myself into so much trouble if I'd gone, because even if I didn't love Obama, I do not tolerate racist remarks around me or my child. I'd have ended up in a huge fight with my family at a wedding shower. Dude, does it get more trashy than that? Well, okay, maybe getting in a fight at the wedding itself would be worse, but still.

So now I'm sitting here, actually glad to be back at work with something to distract me. I'm fighting a cold and trying to tell myself that I'm not sick, because I'm afraid they'll delay the surgery if I'm sick (and they probably will), and at this point I just want it to be over. All this waiting and wondering is making me insane. I'm not exactly the most patient of people even at the best of times, and god knows this isn't the best of times.

But, enough whining. Our Houston office is still closed, which means my workload should be relatively light today. Hopefully I'll be able to accomplish something with the time. *crosses fingers*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY



TO YOU!

I hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Those avoiding politics, please to be scrolling on by.

( OMG, SO MUCH WIN )

Once upon a time there was a story. It was an HP darkfic. Harry had been captured and was being held prisoner at Hogwarts. In this fic, there was a game that was played at Hogwarts in happier times, and Harry and Draco were absolutely the best at it. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something like one person would say "Did you know Ron Weasley wears women's underwear?" and the other person had to answer with "I know" before making their own "Did you know..." question. First to get pissed off lost the game. In the story, Voldemort makes Harry and Draco play the game, wanting some amusement before he kills Harry. I can't find the fic. I've used every single phrase I can possibly think of in Google to try to find it, and have been painfully unsuccessful. I tried using hpstoryfinders, but no one there seemed to recognize it either.

For those of you who read HP fic, does this sound even remotely familiar? I'm begging here.

So, the remnants of Ike are hitting Dallas. We're currently getting a smattering of rain, and some pretty good wind gusts, but seriously (and poodle_foam can back me up here) we get storms far, far worse than this every single spring.

And yet, when I went to the grocery store a little while ago, there were at least 40 people there buying bottled water, bread and canned goods. Because "OMG HURRICANE!!" *eyeroll* Over-reaction much? God, people.

Sadly, though, the damage on the coast is pretty significant. The entire island of Galveston is under 2 to 4 feet of water from the massive storm surge. A lot of the high-rise office buildings in downtown Houston sustained some very serious damage. They're estimating that they're going to have to attempt rescue of around 100,000 people who ignored the mandatory evacuation orders and are now trapped by the flood waters. It's going to take a while to clean up from all of this.