I think I have this blogging client working. I like it because it has spell check. I always typed my entries in Text Edit anyway, and pasted into MT, in order to take advantage of spell check. I am a somewhat dyslexic and phonetic typer. Oh, and I am trying to break my habit of typing all letters in lower case. It’s become a bad habit, and it makes it hard to write properly when needed. In fact, as i try to do this, I keep forgetting to capitalize the first letter in the first word of a sentence, and rather seem to just randomly capitalize another word in the sentence. For no reason. [e.g.: I just typed lower case F, and cap N in the previous sentence.] So, hopefully, I’ll be able to type like a grown up, and regain my previous typing speed.
Now that that dull business is out of the way, because you needed to know all of it so badly… did I tell you that all the trees have blossomed? They did, all at once. Last Sunday at approximately 2:37 pm, all the cherry blossom tress burst into bloom. I could swear that I heard a faint POP noise Sunday at approximately 2:37 pm, but that could have been my imagination. And soon, as spring progresses, it will be raining pink and white petals everywhere. At the UofW, in the Liberal Arts Quad, there are cherry blossom trees, planted so that, together, they make a letter W. Not that you’d be able to tell, unless you looked at them from above. When I would leave at the end of winter quarter, the trees would be beginning to bloom. When I came back, for spring quarter, it would be raining petals. I loved walking through the quad, with all flora in the air. Made it seem ethereal and faerie land like. Except for all the college students sprawled on the grass and throwing frisbees and just generally destroying the etherealness of it all.

there are no line breaks when i use that thing? i’m one big run on paragraph.

hey there… this is just a test. i think i finally got this little mac os x blogging client working. s’cute! so i’m just trying it out. queer eye for the straight guy is playing on tivo. i can no longer give QEFTSG my total and complete attention, because after it’s over, i feel crappy. i look around my house, and think of all the things they say when they walk into apartments… then i start to imagine what they’d say if they walked in mine. and i feel like crap. my casita is a mess, there is no organization, there are books everywhere, not even in stacks, my couture is non existant, my hair is in good health but it’s currently a blah color. although, i do have good Product.
Oh, looky, the QEFTSG food guy, Ted, has purchased a wine from chateau st. michelle. which is about 15 minutes from me. up in woodinville. earlier, he told a fish market guy he wanted to do the “seattle thing” and throw the fish at him. it lacked the spirit and talent of the pike place fish guys.
oh -uh… queer guy jai bought the straight guy a lexmark printer. bad idea. crap printers, in my experience. i have no scientific proof of this, just my opinion.

Oh happy St. Patrick’s Day! I am wearing green of course. It’s hardly unusual, however, as it is my favorite color. Dr. Stevil is not wearing green, and I have promised to pinch him later.
St. Patrick’s Day makes me think of Louise, as she always boycott’s based on Scottish pride. She’s ashamed of her Irish heritage. She prefers to think of herself as part Swedish. It’s true. I have composed a St. Patrick’s Day limerick for Louise.
I have a friend named Louise
Who’s heritage it is fun to tease.
Tho Irish she’s not,
In fact she’s a Scot,
Who cares about such technicalities.
Ahhhh…. poetry.
Speaking of Louise, she has two cats, Fred and Muffy aka: Suki. Suki is a shy, sweet, fat cat. Fred is more outgoing, and very friendly, all black, part manx with no tail. But Fred has a slight piddle issue. That issue being he prefers the couch to the litterbox. Louise’s bf’s shoes and pants playing a close second. She’s tried all manner of things to figure out how to deal with it, but nothing has worked yet. We were standing around the pod, discussing the issue the other day, and I told her she needed to contact the pet psychic. She was unfamiliar with the pet psychic, so i explained.
Louise: This must be some American thing… the British would never go for this type of foolishness.
Me: hmmm…. maybe. But you know, I could swear that she has a British accent.
So I tivo’d an episode of the Pet Psychic and guess what? British!! Fully and completely British, she is. As British as …. stuff from England. And while, yes, it is an American show, you can hardly blame us for that. That’s tv. But the psychic herself is most definitely British. The show is great. In this episode, she talked to a huge, gigantic tortoise. As she spoke with him, he kept walking away… hmmmm. She also talked to a depressed dog, a rabbit with a princess complex, a senegal parrot who was suddenly fighting with his budgie buddy, a bunny audience member who said it liked going outside and then inside and then outside and then inside and a giant african parrot who said it liked one of it’s new cat housemates, but not the other. Oh, and it knew that some of the names he was called, by his daddy, were quite rude, but said with love. She also talked with pets who had passed away. It’s all very entertaining.
If I seem skeptical, it’s because I am, most likely. However, if someone asked me if I wanted to take Pru on the show, and bring along a picture of the b, I’d do it in a heart beat. I’d love to know what’s going on in that fuzzy little head of Pru’s. And I’d love to know what Phoebe thought of her life. And me. I miss the b… and her fuzzy little bunny butt. I asked Pru if she was depressed, because the house was a mess and she had no room to run and frolic. She just gave me a look that said “Cat’s do not frolic, we might, from time to time, have extra energy to dispel, across an entire room, but that is all.” Such a lie, that kitten freaks out all the time. In a dignified cat way, of course.

“… and Bedlamite’s children are widely acknowledged as the most foul-mouthed in the region.”
i am so proud!!

shhhh… be very quiet. jodi’s got a headache. s’better now. but shucks howdy did my head hurt today. it comes from having a gigantic brain. it also may come from me messing with this little piece of shareware i downloaded. it’s so cute. and i desperately want it to work. but it crashes every time. don’t know why. it’s called ecto. and it’s a blogging client for mac os x. it is supposed to work with MovableType. allowing me to write my entries locally, with extra special goodies like spell check and a drop down menu of html tags. but i cannot get it to work. i either get errors every time i attempt to set up the connection with my blog, lots and lots of errors i don’t understand, or it just crashes. boom. i’ve tried over and over to make it work. nope. won’t work. gave me a bad headache. too much thinking.
and that, kids, sums up what i did today. got up, messed with ecto, went to the library, got a dr. pepper, messed with ecto, allowed myself to get a bad headache and spent the rest of the day getting rid of it. sooooo….. i think my life is a little dull right now.
sigh. ennui.

i recently finished a book called “Jennifer Government” by Max Barry. and I enjoyed it very much. I saw this post, over at chicklit, in the forums, about an online game, created by the author. it’s called Jennifer Government NationStates. which is, and i quote from the FAQ, “… is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It’s really up to you.” When the author created it, he thought it would be kinda fun, it would let people know about his book, and a few people would play. turns out thousands and thousands play.
last night, fee and i created our own nations. i’ll let fee tell you about hers, because i cannot remember the name. it’s got some urdu in it. and i think she’s quite the little pol pot? actually, that might be a bit harsh. she’s a little dictator tho.
my nation is called The Most Serene Republic of Bedlamite . It took me forever to find a word that was not used. believe me. many many bad words were IM’d to fee in the process. i wanted to be the Most Serene Republic of Insouciance. i was thinking there was no way anyone would use that in their name. wrong. then i thought, ah-HA! said it out-loud as well. Surly no one would use the word Tatterdemalion. who even knows about that word? besides me. hands? raise your hands if you know this word? I first read it in Charles Di Lint”s “Moonheart” and since then, i live a daily search for a context in which to use it. It does not come up often. but nope, someone used it. i could not believe it.
so, by that time, i had decided that my government style was going to be “psychotic.” i love the crazies. there were choices like evil, compassionate, and other boring things. but i wanted crazy. so i started looking for words that meant crazy or crazy people. Bedlamite means a madman, a crazy. you know, bedlam… plus.. ite. now, i should have called it The Most Serene Republic of Bedlamites. but i was too excited that i found a name i could use. and crazy people don’t care about agreement or grammar… they can’t be bothered with it. if worse had come to worse, i would have used jodiferous. i just wanted something that had a meaning. a meaning known to the rest of the nations.
After you name it, and pick you style, you chose your motto, your currency, and your national animal.
Motto: Well we are just one big frickin’ ray of sunshine, aren’t we?
Currency: The Phooey [phooey is one of my favorite all time words.]
National Animal*: The Kitten. specifically kittens. not cats. kittens.
after that, you take a short quiz, which i answered pretty much as i would normally. and bamf, you are created. If you’d like to see the particulars of my nation, you are welcome to. the whole game definitely has a humorous tone. you are sent an issue every day, that you have to decide on, decide on the action. what you chose affects your nation, of course. and if you join the UN, even more changes can happen. and i am officially tired of trying to explain the whole thing and will leave you to your exploration of the website and the game. should you so choose.
anyway, it’s fun. check it out.
*originally, i wanted a Big Cat for my animal. dr. stevil suggested the black panther. and then i had to explain to him that there really was no such animal. per se. that “black panther” is a term applied to black Big Cats of many breeds. most frequently Jaguars. but they also use it for black leopards and the like. Panthera is the genus. which they share with the lion, tiger and leopard. which is funny, because there is a genus leopardus, but the leopard doesn’t belong to it. [but ocelot’s do.]
dr. stevil: [ignoring most of what i said] use it anyway.
me: i can’t. it’s wrong. i can’t have a national animal that is not an actual animal. it’s a description of an animal.
dr. stevil: it’s cool.
me: i can’t. it’s just not right. science won’t let me.
dr. stevil: i am not longer interested in this conversation. please desist from discussing it with me any further.