Oh yeah, before I go to sleep I almost forgot what was definitely the weirdest thing that happened today... we saw a 77 car accident on the Sam Houston tollway on the way to visit my husband's family for Xmas (which went very well, BTW). That's a big accident even for the psycho drivers in Houston. All the news people seem to have slightly different final counts on this, but the last one I saw tonight was 77 so I'm going with it. Here's another link for this story (don't miss the photo gallery).

We were driving down South Main at lie 10 am, taking out little shortcut to the Beltway, and we kept seeing firetrucks and other emergency vehicles scattered about, but didn't see any accidents. We passed a guy standing in the median with binoculars, then saw a few helicopters circling the area. For Houston, there's nothing really unusual about that, though. As we approached the underpass where we turn to get on the beltway feeder road, we looked up and saw some more flashing lights on the bridge, a smashed up dirty (turned out to be smoky) van, and noticed that the few car parts we could see were sticking up at strange angles to the overpass bridge.

Then we turned onto the feeder road and looked back, and cars were backed up as far as we could see. Lucky for us, the beginning of the accident was just before our entry ramp to the beltway, so no one was on the beltway for several miles. There was a new truck on the grass, more helicopters, lots of flashing lights. For some reason this last month or so, people have been smashing their cars up left and right on the damn beltway. Running into toll booths, other cars, etc. I was actually a little apprehensive about driving on the thing because of all the weirdness that's been occurring.

This bizarre scene occurred because of morning ground fog at like 7 am. Cars smashed into each other on BOTH sides of the beltway, burst into flames and general mayhem ensued. Unbelievably no one was killed, lots of injuries, totalled cars and assorted trucks and SUV's. People jumping out of moving cars, running around the freeway like chickens with their heads cut off, frigging unreal...

We watched all the details on the evening news when we got home. When we came back (the same stupid way, not knowing the how bad it really was, freeways are shut down for accidents daily here), apparently most of it had been cleared. There were still some wreckers and cops around, we couldn't turn back onto South Main, police were keeping anyone from driving beneath the bridge. We were commenting to each other how bad the pollution was today, but it wasn't our normal daily brown air, it was burning cars...

Lest anyone think the bat girl in my logo pic is me, here are some photos of me at about the same age. I wish that was me, but I never had that cool of a Halloween costume. And if it were me, I'd be dead by now, that's a turn of the (last) century photo.

I did start looking at her and realized that she actually does resemble me a bit, though I can't find a decent picture of me to compare. I had blonde curly hair, that turned darker as I got older, but most of my life I had bangs. Her eyes are darker than mine also, mine are green. Her face is a little fuller, though the shapes are similar. Soon after these photos I got my one and only short "pixie" haircut, my dad still has the long blonde ponytail from the traumatic hair-cutting session (I liked it, he was the one who was traumatized). But I've had my hair long ever since (and much darker, of course).

I'm two-thirds of the way through the holiday celebrations and I need a nap. I've been feeling so run down this year and my health has been suffering as a result. One more family get-together to go and that's it for awhile.

I had always thought I was overly talkative most of my life, but in recent years I find myself becoming almost too quiet. I think it's for several reasons, partly because of my increasingly severe tinnitus (my ears hum and buzz with little provocation, the sound of my own voice is often painful to me), partly because my voice seems to give out after too much talking (too many allergies and a persistant dry cough), and partly because my husband and his family are too hard to keep up with in conversation. They are louder and much more animated than I am, and talk endlessly about subjects I can just smile and nod at, relatives and places I don't know, movies I haven't seen... Not that there's anything wrong with that. My family does talk, but we're a much quieter, more soft-spoken lot, except my brother, who is fairly animated and can match my husband in volume. I'm also a classic example of a highly sensitive person, I like to describe myself as an empath of sorts, and can sometimes just be overwhelmed by parties in general. (My husband does not understand this, he just thinks I'm weird or anti-social)

This weekend my husband's sister and her family are in town, which means more smiling and nodding for me. Which is fine, they are a fun group of very enthusiastic and talkative females. We're doing the in-law family Christmas with them, and then we should be pretty much done for awhile with the exception of a few birthdays in January and February.

The trashy vampire romance has turned out to be much better than it started, I think I'll read the second in the series next. Once you get past all the gratuitous sex and heaving bosoms, there's actually a fairly interesting, original vampire story going on. Yea, a new vampire series to follow!

I successfully managed to keep my finger out of danger most of today. Washed my hair, showered, ate two meals. Then I had to run an errand after dinner and ended up banging it around about 3 or 4 times before I got out of the garage... Never drive under the influence of pain. Damn thing started throbbing again like crazy after the abuse, so I took another Vicodin when I got home.

I'm getting sleepy now, I think I'm going to go to bed and read some more of my trashy vampire romance I started last night (I wanted something easy to read, I only read romance novels if they have vampires in them). My hubbie has agreed to go the grocery store with me tomorrow, usually I go alone but he feels sorry for me. I'd blow it off, but we're all out of food in the house, we had a Burger King lunch and ordered Chinese food in for dinner. I hardly ever eat burgers, so I asked for a "hot apple pie" with mine, still need to eat the thing but I'm stuffed from dinner still.

It's not been a bad day, really, though. I got up much earlier than normal because I went to bed early, our doggie's been doing pretty well today, mostly sleeping. After dinner I actually watched The Osbournes� for the first time, much better than the frightening Anna Nicole Show. She's on the cover of the new issue of Texas Monthly magazine� we got in the mail today, she won their "Bum Steer of the Year" award.

What else... oh yes, a local politician wants to turn the Astrodome into a huge gambling casino�. Since they opened the new baseball (formely Enron field) and football stadiums, there's not much going on in the Dome. I'd hate to see it torn down, it's just a few miles down the freeway from where we live.

I don't feel quite as sorry for myself after seeing a story on TV about a poor teenage boy who "accidentally" cut both of his hands off with a power saw. Now he's back playing football, defense I think. Don't remember what show it was on, I just tried doing a websearch on the subject, lots of weird things come up.

Well my hands are getting tired, think I'll got to bed before the painkiller wears off. My nose is whistling, I hate it when that happens...

The evening started out really well, only to come to a horrifying crash. Technically, it's still a full moon, and this week has been a helluva a rollercoaster ride, so I'm blaming it on that. (And I hate rollercoasters, so that's not a good thing). I'm not as wordy as usual tonight because I'm only typing with 7 fingers. And I'm fairly sedated and still in shock from the pain, but I'll tell you about that in a moment.

After my last entry, at which time I was in a really great mood, my husband and I went out and had a very pleasant dinner at our neighborhood Mexican restaurant, it was packed full of lots of older folks and some families, including a table full of screaming kids next to us which set off my tinnitis and my left ear is still ringing. But the food was tasty, the service excellent. Then we drove to a neighborhood liqor store to finish up shopping for my parents, inlaws and I purchased an excellent bottle of 10 year old tawny Port for myself, which turned out to be much needed. We were going to go to the big store downtown, but didn't want to be gone that long.

Our errands were completed quickly and we were congratulating ourselves on not being gone too long because our 16 year old Lab can't be left alone too long and then the horrific chain of events unfolded...

Whenever we get home from being gone together, my husband opens the garage door for me (I drive usually, and his side of the garage has the only automatic opener), then he runs right into the house to check on the dog. At her age, it's amazing she can still walk, though she has very weak back legs. She's not in pain, just very numb. I pulled into the garage, trying to align the car where it wasn't too far forward and instead ended up parking where I just cleared the garage door. As soon as I got out of the car I called out to him to inquire if the dog was OK, and he said in an emotional voice "No!". Not knowing what horros I would find I rushed in and saw the poor dog sprawled in the living room, she had made it a few feet from her bed, crapped all over the carpet, and then fallen down in it. Not to sound unkind, but occasionally we have to leave her alone, and most of the time when we return, she's still asleep on her bed, and sometimes has gotten up and walked around the house. But we have come home to similar problems before. Huge nasty mess...

My husband is the official dog poop picker-upper, so I offered to close the garage door, which I rarely do because I'm only 5'1". We have two metal garage doors on tracks. Like an idiot I tried to hurry, and reached up for the door awkwardly because my damn car was too far back, and I grabbed it in the wrong place. The door is heavy and started coming down as soon as I touched it, and about 2 seconds later and a third of the way down, I realized my left hand was caught in it.

After the intitial stab of blinding pain, some logical part of my brain told me "Push the door back up in the oppsite direction, now!!", which I did and yanked my hand out, then the screaming began. My poor husband came running into the garage just as the door crashed down only to see me doubled over, clutching my hand and repeating "Oh, my god..." hysterically. I was afraid to look at it, and afraid to let go. I have a mortal fear of crushing parts of my body in doors or other moving objects. He knew what I was going through, because earlier this year (while transporting the dog to the vet), I shut one of his hands in the door of his car. (He had his hand wrapped around the area between the back and driver's door)

It seems that neither of us have managed to break anything in either accident, but my middle finger of my (fortunately) left hand is now hideously swollen and throbbing despite two Vicodin and several glasses of the Port. Now my biggest wish is that I don't lose my damn fingernail. I've never lost one in my life, and I'll completely freak out if I do. I can live with the pain, but the swelling and purple color are scaring me. Even my husband's hand didn't look this bad. I also seemed to have nicked the two adjoining fingers because they are sore and periodically throbbing, though right now it's hard to tell exactly where the throbbing is coming from.

So the remainder of the evening has been fairly non-productive on my part. The carpet was cleaned, all I did was run paper towels back and forth to the sink...

Whoa... headrush... I had to go lay on the floor for a few minutes with my feet on the couch, I felt really faint. I was going to try and shower and wash my hair before bed, but I think I'll skip it, don't want to fall and break my neck in the damn bathtub. The dog has been doing amazingly well, BTW, she's walked around some tonight, had some water and food. I think I'm going to try and go to sleep before my last painkiller wears off. More later...

Weeee! I'm almost done with my Xmas shopping for this year! One more trip tonight and that should do it. My dad clued me in to a great shortcut for holiday wrapping, using those pretty decorative bags. He also told me he got his at the dollar store. I thought, yuck, I don't want to buy stuff at the dollar store (I'm a giftwrap snob). But I haven't found any bags for wine, etc. that I liked this year (for less than $5), and lo and behold, they had tons of them, for a buck apiece...

OK, I'm spoiled and ignorant (and like everyone else this year, really broke). I had to ask the girl that was stocking things "How much are these?" and she gave me a weird look and said "A dollar...". I just wanted to make sure, you know? A lot of things had price tags on them for $2 and $3 and I didn't want to be presumptuous and walk up to the register with a dozen bags and just "assume" they really were a dollar each.

My husband and I have been alternating playing post office hell this week. I think we've each spent about 2 hours there in the last few days. We have to go 3 or 4 times a week year round, but during the holidays it's teeth-grinding fun, trying not to shout out "You idiot! You don't even have a single label written!!" to the person with a stack of gift-wrapped department store boxes who is pulling them out one at a time asking the poor postal clerk "Do you have a box that will fit this?". I always feel worry for the clerks that have to deal with all of the "It's how much??" questions, I get asked that every day by new Ebay bidders who can't read my really carefully thought out auction descriptions (which include postage prices).

Getting dark, time to go back out and eat dinner, probably some really low brow Mexican food (we have a coupon!), and then on to the liquor store, where I'll probably end up buying myself a too-expensive bottle of Port along with our gifts. It was 80 degrees yesterday here in lovely Houston, and now it's down to almost freezing again (at night, at least). I always forget each year how much I hate the cold. During a 100 degree August day, a little bit of cold weather actually sounds good...

So mote it be... a small change, but I think more interesting and attractive.

Why Wednesday's Child? I actually was born on a Wednesday, it certainly suits my temperment, I was adopted, and I think it works well with my Addams them from my main site. And I had the cool graphic and have been wanting to do something with it :-)

I think I'm going to change the name of this blog... too long and not as descriptive as I'd like (though it is actually true, all of my ramblings ARE done in the night ;-)

I have a bit of downtime from Ebay� because of the holidays, nothing ending till tomorrow night so I think I'll design a new weblog graphic. I've been using a pretty basic Movable Type style sheet and I'd like to perk up the look of my weblog anyway. So don't say you haven't been warned...

I do have bags of Xmas gifts to wrap, thank goodness all of the commotion doesn't get rolling till next week, I only have one more stop to make to complete my shopping. A long drive through lots of traffic across town to our favorite liquor superstore�, but they have a huge gourmet section and their employees roll around the store on skates so it's sort of a fun holiday tradition. I was going to wrap tonight, but I didn't feel like sitting on the floor for hours with my legs asleep.

Another close call... I typed a nice long blog (If it had been a snake) and stupidly did not save a backup of it, and when I hit "publish" I got this wonderful error message:

mk/dir (my URL path): Permission denied at lib/MT/File/Mgr/Local.pm line 100

Crap! Tried to back up in my browser, afraid that my post had been wiped out, but it kept bouncing back to the damn error message. So I thought, OK, must be something to change in the "local.pm" file. Downloaded it, nope...

Managed to get back to my blog home, yea it's still there! Check my blog URL, not posted... Tried to rebuild the index page, the little pop-up window gave me this lovely error message:

Writing to /(my URL path)/index.html.new' failed: Opening '(my URL path)/index.html.new' failed: no such file or directory

That's sort of scary... Stroke of genius, maybe it's actually something really simple and obvious I need to update! Yes, no PERL script required!

Had to drop the 2 out of the "home2" path in my Blog configuration setup under "local site path" and "local archive path". Rebuild successful, I hope that's all I need to fix in this daisy chain. Next obstacle is upgrading from MT 2.21 to 2.51, this is my first upgrade for MT, so if you don't hear from me again for a bit, that might have something to do with it.

OK, I feel sufficiently stupid... I've been unable to login to my own weblog for a couple of weeks now and after petitioning the MT Support Forum for help (and getting only one response to my cry for help), I've finally figured out the problem (obviously, or I wouldn't be here). For the complete embarrassing story click here.�

After a month or two with no problems, I suddenly got an invalid login/author unknown error message when I tried to login, and being very ignorant of this whole weblog thing (I've only been doing this since September), I searched through and read all of the other questions by people with seemingly the same problem and tried everything that was suggested before even posting a question on the forum, but nothing worked...

I ran the Reset Author Script so I could login with the generic password, and it wouldn't run. I then read that if it won't run through the browser, to run it through a shell access program (I have a Mac, this is harder than it sounds). I managed to finally figure out the commands and do that, and then it told me there was an "Unrecognized character" in the script itself. In the computer world, a new error message (something other than a 500 Internal Server error is actually a sign of progress. So I posted my query to the Support Forum and� waited. Girlie was� nice enough to point out that the reset script wasn't working properly because I'd probably not uploaded it correctly (in ASCII mode). Which, it turns out after I re-uploaded it a few times more (I have a Mac, have mercy on me, OK??) did seem to be the problem with the script.

Now I started getting a new error message (making progress!), "Can't load author". Only the fix for that problem is right back where I started (sigh). Now life is getting busy with holiday shopping, no one else is answering me, so I decided to get past all the hectic "real" problems and come back to this with a clear head. I also don't want to risk screwing up what I already had installed.

One of the main questions that� is asked on the Support Forum is "did your host upgrade or move anything"? I actually asked my webhost this and was told they did a hardware upgrade at the time I began having problems, but that it shouldn't affect anything. Wrong!! On a whim tonight I figured what the hell and went in and changed the path on my mt.cfg file by dropping the "2" out of the home address. Presto, it suddenly works again. So I guess the moral to this story is don't believe everything your webhost tells you, they may be unaware if a path has changed slightly. The only difference I noticed in any of my related programs was I suddenly couldn't go backwards as far as I used to be able to on Fetch (back past www). Having three potential "home" addresses to choose from, I chose the plain "home/www/" and it worked.

Now if I can figure out why my Word 2001 keeps crashing on startup. It's happened before and I somehow blindly managed to fix it, but of course, I can't replicate the same repair this time, even though I swear I'm doing the same steps to fix it... OK, now I'm going to retro-post the bizarre dream that had me login to this frustrating mess to start with.

This dream actually happened on 12/7, when my MT login problems began, so I'm setting the date back to when I originally entered it for accuracy's sake.

OK, had a real doozy of a dream this afternoon, gotta write it down before it slips away. Another variation on a house dream (gothic staple, I guess, couple moves into an old house in an unfamiliar area). It started off sort of odd with my husband me that part of the bumper on my car had been ìsort of damagedî. For some reasons, our cars were being stored in someone elseís garage several blocks away, and when I got there it wasnít my current car, it was the green ë73 Corvette I had in my 20ís (my baby!). The entire rear end was missing, leaving a bunch of metal framework sticking out (which isnít the way theyíre actually built, but itís a dream). I freaked completely out, telling my husband that this wasnít minor damage, that someone had stolen the entire rear end and the car wouldnít be driveable now because the gas tank assembly is in the rear and if the car was rear-ended it would explode. (Source of this knowledge is a real-life incident with said car where an idiot at a Jiffy Lube backed the car into a cross pole, cracking the fiberglass rear bumper and damaging the gas tank mount) This part of the dream went on for a few minutes longer, with me trying to figure out how anyone got to the car in a locked garage, then came to the realization that someone else had keys to the garage. Then we walked back home, and looked at my own garage, which had one of those old-fashioned garage doors that opens all as one piece (and is not lockable I suppose, I saw one on HGTV's House Hunters the other day and remember thinking that I donít like those type of doors) and I pulled the door open and the Corvette was backed into the garage seemingly intact now...

I think at this point in the dream I realized that the house we were living in was a pink stucco house (part of the same episode of House Hunters), which alarmed me a bit. I thought that we had moved into some small town or something, then I began looking around and realized that we were really close to downtown Houston, I could see the skyline all around us, and were in an older neighborhood but still in the same city. We went into the house, walking through sort of a big enclosed porch area where our black & white kitty (who passed away a few years ago) was playing and then wandered into a large home office area and I thought this is a nice house after all...

Then my parents were there at the house and we walked a few blocks to a little home-style neighborhood restaurant where we were sat at an outdoor table (we never do that in Houston, the weatherís too bad). Then it was me and my parents and brother and my dad is telling me to eat more of the food and I looked and saw that they were serving all of the vegetables first, and they had brought like 20 different types and four or five different dishes were sort of crammed together on top of each other in the same bowl, which was a little frustrating. I ate a bit, and then I wandered upstairs where there seemed to be a radio stationís offices. People were assembling boxes of things to take to a promo event (tee shirts, passes, etc.) and a DJ was broadcasting live from a fishtank-like glass room on the second floor. I went back downstairs and realized my family had finished dinner and left.

This is where the dream starts to get weird. I begin to walk back to the house, I have the keys so I figure no problem. On the way back I see two young black men leap off the second story of a house, landing on concrete and then they run away, unhurt. (Possibly triggered by the story I read last night of a German girl who jumped out of a window to commit suicide and lay on the pavement as people passed her by, thinking she was doing performance art) Only I end up at the wrong house, the keys donít work. And then it dawns on me Iím lost, I donít even know the address or street Iím looking for, only that the house is pink and on a corner. I wander in circles for blocks trying the keys on different houses and finally find what I believe is the right house. I go up to one of the many doors and try the keys and they work, but then I see that the opening for the door is only about four inches wide and I canít enter. I go to other doors, many of which appear to have been painted shut and now have furniture butted up against them. I walk around the outside, finding an open-air neighborhood store on one side of the house with lots of christmas lights hanging all around. I keep walking around the block and find that the house is actually half of a duplex, the other half is painted a greenish color. There is also some sort of childrenís private school on the back of the second floor. I keep wandering around the house, trying my keys and finding doors that go nowhere or only open into other outdoor areas. I run into a girl who says she had lived in the house before us and also thought the floor plan was sort of weird, had bad Feng Shui. I ask her how to get into the house, but she disappears. There are lights on inside, but now most of the doors in the front of the house are several feet off the ground, with only one or two small stairs that end too low to reach the doorway.

I go back upstairs where the school is, and unlock a series of doors that just lead me onto the roof of the duplex next door. So I climb around the edge of the roof trying to find a way in. I step out onto an area that turns out to be a metal carport and it falls to the ground. I go back the other way and an skirting the edge of the roof and find myself just barely clinging on to a narrow ledge. I think at this point I decide to give up and jump down, which I somehow also survive without getting hurt. (Iím terrified of heights and falling, BTW).

I go back through the store area and find some more stairs that go up to the house. Someone else is with me now, and Iím trying doors again to no avail, when I open one and there is a very large naked woman standing inside of one (though itís till not inside the house). I slam the door shut and exclaim ìOops, naked person!î but the girl Iím with tells me itís OK to go in, but I donít go in.

About the time Iím ready to give up, a wise older man with a beard appears and tells me that thereís a reason I canít find the entrance to the house. That the part of the house I see is only a facade to conceal our familyís true ìlairî beneath. He says that our family has descended from a long line of zombies and we are very powerful and the house canít be entered by normal methods like keys. We go up to one of the doorways Iíve tried again and again and a girl that is now with us flips a small box (like a doorbell) near the door and it slides up and the door springs open and we walk through into another area that is still open to the sky. We come to another door and it also has a hidden switch. Then we come to another doorway and the man tells me to open it. I donít see any switches so I try to open it and it opens partially then slams shut again. I look at him and he reminds me that we are descended from zombies and tells me to try again. I swing my hand against it with purpose this time, concentrating on my power and the door flies open and we go through to a dark area lit by torches. We begin approaching another door, which seems to lead into an underground area and... my husband walks into the bedroom and wakes me up! Dammit!!