These were fun to answer :-)

1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short? Itís very wavy and, unfortunately, very fine so it tangles like crazy. When I was a kid I was a tomboy and my dad would have to take scissors and cut the knots out of my hair just like he did with our Cocker Spaniel.

2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime? When I was a baby it was dark auburn then it lightened to blondish, and then finally became a dark brown as a teen. And from high school on Iíve colored it everything from purple, to blue, to lots of shades of red, dark brown and right now blue black. Iíve always worn it long except for a few years in elementary school when I went through my pixie cut phase.

3. How do your normally wear your hair? Long, usually with bangs cut into it, often pulled back with a barrette or elastic band because itís so hot here year round. I try and blow dry it as straight as possible most of the time, I even have a straightening iron.

4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like? It would be very straight, thick and shiny, and naturally black. Iíd have fabulous Bettie Page bangs (and not the horrid Farrah Fawcett ones that my hair likes to do).

5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened? I dyed it the wrong shade of black back in my twenties and then panicked in the middle of the night and went out and bought a bleach kit which turned it a weird shade of orange, then I had to redye it darker the same night. Sort of a Laura Petrie thing... My hair was fried from the bleaching for like a year.

1. What's one thing you've always wanted to do, but never have? Thatís hard... travel to Europe maybe?

2. When someone asks your opinion about a new haircut/outfit/etc, are you always honest? I am but in a nice way ;-)

3. Have you ever found out something about a friend and then wished you hadn't? What happened? Yes, several times. It almost always puts a strain on our friendship if itís something theyíre embarrassed about (they tend to back off, not me).

4. If you could live in any fictional world (from a book/movie/game/etc.) which would it be and why? Iím reading Christine Feehanís ìDarkî vampire series right now, that wouldnít be a bad world. Her heroes and heroines can transform into animals, control the elements, dissolve into mist, read & control peopleís mind, and best of all, they can clean themselves with a mental command AND make themselves any kind of clothes they want to out of thin air.

5. What's one talent/skill you don't have but always wanted? Too many... to be able to sing in perfect pitch, skate backwards..

After much contemplation and temptation, I've registered a domain name for my cat Phoebe. Her nickname is Gothic Kitty, so she'll be at GothicKitty.com in a day or so. I've been wanting to make a little website just for fun, and I can't help but take pictures of her almost daily so there you have it. She's actually earned quite a few nicknames, but when we call her Gothic Kitty she chirps and tears through the house, so that's our favorite of all.

Sparky says she doesn't know her own name, but she does. Being a cat, she just doesn't always choose to respond to being called. Since we've had her a number of names have occurred to me which would all be appropriate also:

Gothic Kitty - because she's such a Gothic novel, sandwich stealing, mischievious kitty
Cheshire - because a lot of times all I can see are her eyes
Banshee - because she chirps and mews and runs through the house so much
Shadow - because she follows me everywhere I go
Jazzie - because she likes my jazz music so much
Mouser - because her sweet little face looks like a mouse and she loves to chase her mice
Batcat - because of her big pink bat ears and big black eyes
Dogcat - because she retrieves like a dog and is very un-catlike
Kitka - Sparky likes this name because it was Catwoman's name in the '66 Batman movie
Tiger and Huntress - because she's so fierce and relentless
Psycho Kitty and Schitzy Kitty - because sometimes she's just plain nuts ;-)

Also I can put some of the tons of cat links I've found in the last few months up and hopefully, pictures of friend's kitties so that should be fun.

3am and Gothic Kitty's beginning her nightly bath so that's my signal to go to bed.

Quick updates, it's been an interesting last week or so. The electricity has been going on and off all week, probably from the unrelenting heat and the strain from all the AC units running 24/7. Tuesday morning my husband woke me up to tell me our AC wasn't cooling, nice way to wake up. I told him to go out and push the reset button, nada. Luckily the repair people could come the same day and it was only like $200 bucks, some sort of little connector burned out. Later the same day, I had to run out and do errands in the heat, I think I hit 7 stores in like three hours. Everywhere I went there were grumpy customers, glad I'm not in retail anymore. At the post office a man jumped all over the clerk because he refused to fill in his money orders for his bills for him (huh?), he argued for a good 5-7 minutes before he finally left. Can't he write? I don't get it...

The same I day I pull up to my packing supply store and there's a cop outside talking to a woman who had apparently gotten into some sort of wrestling match with the woman who works there... she jumped on me and told me not to shop there when I walked past her, loonies everywhere, must be the heat.

We went out to dinner that night with a friend to our favorite Mexican restaurant and the food was good, but we went through like four baskets of chips before we were finally served. I can't help but feel sorry for them, though, there was like one waitress, one busboy, the hostess and I'm guessing just one cook.

My mom called me out of the blue Wednesday night and asked it I could drive her to the doctor the next afternoon because the weather was supposed to be bad and my dad was worried about her driving herself and he had his own doctor appointments the same day. I had eaten breakfast, was all dressed and ready to go when a few minutes before I was going to leave to pick her up the power went out at our house and it started pouring. My mom called because their power had gone out too, and she decided to go ahead and cancel the appointment, which is good because the first thing I thought when the power died was "how am I going to open the electric garage door to get my car out?".

At the grocery store today the pharmacy people were griping about two out of their four employees not showing up for work and my sacker was bemoaning a toothache while the cashier was telling him he's better go to the dentist or he might get an infection and die. At which point he actually looked a little faint.

What else... oh yes in like an eight hour period our kitty broke not one but two things accidentally. She fell off the bookcase and on her way down knocked one of my antique Halloween noisemakers off the shelf and the papier mache mouthpiece shattered. At the time I was more worried about the cat. Then the next morning while I was in bed, she was climbing around my nightstand and knocked my lamp over which knocked yet another vintage breakable to the ground. It was a ceramic horseshoe that was a companion to a 50's horse lamp I have. Clean break, though, we should be able to glue it back together.

Speaking of, it's awfully quiet in here... I'd better go see what Phoebe's up to...

1. How many times have you truly been in love? Really, truly? Only once to my husband, though Iíve had several false alarms over the years.

2. What was/is so great about the person you love(d) the most? We clicked the moment we met, it was if weíd literally known each other our entire lives.

3. What qualities should a significant other have? Honesty, monogomy, sense of humor, kindness, intelligence, common sense.

4. Have you ever broken someone's heart? Yes, but not on purpose.

5. If there was one thing you could teach people about love, what would it be? That you canít force it upon someone, it has to click for both of you and when itís real youíll both know it.

Quick note before I go collapse into bed... I've been packing stuff to mail for EBay all night, finally had to stop cause I ran out of packing tape! (Errands for tomorrow - go to Sam's, get tape!) On the Dr. Phil show today he's having a follow-up to the episode he did on OCD awhile back, I'll have to have Sparky tape it for me, I got way too much to do today...

Speaking of, I looked in the mirror the other day and I suddenly have lots of little silver hairs mixed in with the brown and black ones, yikes! Is it stress or age creeping up on me? I've been meaning to color my hair again, now I really need to. I look more less like my normal scary Goth girl self and more like scary old hippie chick.

Speaking of, I've been listening to Neil Young and CSNY tonight and flashing back to the days of bell bottoms, moccasins and fringed suede jackets {sigh}. Turquoise jewelry and puka beads... I saw a teenager wearing a puka shell choker the other day, he checked me out at Old Navy. I mentioned I had some of those a long time ago and he said "Yeah, I've got like 3 of these, they keep breaking". I guess some things never change ;-)