1. If your life were a movie, what would the title be? Wow, probably "Enigma Girl" because I'm so weird. I was going to get that on a license plate once.
2. What songs would be on the soundtrack? The hyper 80's dance track would have Bowie & Queen's "Under Pressure", "No More Words" Berlin, "Cars" Gary Numan, "Dance Along the Edge" Concrete Blonde. "One Way or Another" Blondie, "It Ain't None of Your Business" and "Mental Hopscotch" from Missing Persons, Lene Lovich "New Toy", Nina Hagen "So Bad". The dreamy orchestral score would have Alan Parsons "To One in Paradise" and "Fall of the House of Usher", Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". From Suzanne Vega the remix of "Tom's Diner", "Ironbound/Fancy Poultry" and "Solitude Standing". Got to have some jazz too, Vince Guaraldi's "Linus & Lucy" and "Cast Your Fate to the Wind", Nina Simone with "Wild Is the Wind" and "See-Line Woman", Miles Davis "Autumn Leaves" And for nostalgia's sake, Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind".
[More soundtrack additions - "Destroyer (Paranoia)" The Kinks, "Surrender" Cheap Trick, "99 Luftballons" Nena, "Vienna" Ultravox, "Destination Unknown" and "Words" Missing Persons, "53 Miles West of Venus", "Topaz" and "Roam" the B52's; "Come On Eileen" Dexy's Midnight Runners, "My Way" Nina Hagen, "Shake It Up" The Cars, "Welcome to My Nightmare" and "Only Women Bleed" by Alice Cooper]
3. Would it be a live-action film or animated? Why? Live action, don't really care for animation...
4. Casting: who would play you, members of your family, friends, etc? Reality wise? Janeane Garofolo for me, Tom Arnold for my husband, Laura Dern for my best friend... my family, my mom always reminded me of Joan Bennett, my dad is sort of a cross between George C. Scott and maybe Spencer Tracy, my brother would be Ozzy Osbourne (he actually looked just like him when he was younger).
5. Describe the movie preview/trailer. "She careened through her life at the speed of light, she faced danger on a daily basis and called it a job. She wandered the night alone, just a girl and her gun. She dated bad boys and drove fast cars, learned and lost a lot on the way but never regretted the trip. Now she's in love for real and settled down but the story is just beginning..."
Well, today was a whirlwind, I'm still hyper, so what am I listening to? Jane's Addiction, sort of matching my heartbeat and typing rate which is interesting... Got to get their new album, saw them on TV last night, they still sound great. Convinced my husband to get rid of his 10 year old recliner, I know it's killing his back and neck, I looked up one on LaZBoy's website, we went in and bought the thing outright tonight, very cool, easy commission for the salesgirl. I called in advance to see if they had any in stock in the showroom, we bought some furniture from them about 5 years ago and it had to be special ordered and took like a month, and they had the chair he wanted and in the maroon color he wanted (no more beige, yea!). He got the only red one in stock in the city, it will be delivered next week (we don't own a gas guzzler big enough to tote furniture). AND it was on sale with a trade-in discount, so he'll get something for his old chair when the Salvation Army comes to retrieve it.
I can't believe how easy it all went, and that we're not stuck with another piece of earth toned furniture (one sofa and chair still to ge replaced). His favorite color is red, the chair fit him perfect (it's their Atlas chair, it's the biggest, comfiest one they make, too big for me). I love LaZBoy's stuff, we bought a dual recliner couch and a big overstuffed non-rocking chair for me (I'm not a rocker) when we moved and they're so well made and comfy, well worth the investment. Got one of those pop-up coffee tables too, eat dinner on it every night. Their stuff is so gorgeous, I could wander around in their showroom sitting on furniture for hours [sigh]. They have a cool website, you can test out colors, test decorate rooms, etc. I've always wanted a chaise for myself, for the bedroom, probably end up with a smaller recliner eventually, though. We have an old semi-broken chair in there now to basically hold pillows and provide a kitty window perch, but it would be nice to have a real reading chair in there also.
I whimped out on taking my last steroid today, slept really heavy and fitful and couldn't face another 24 hours of steroid withdrawal. Restarted on my bc pills tonight, too, they don't play well together and I don't feel well when I'm off them, too many hot flashes and such. We went to the Adobe Cafe in Sugarland after we bought the chair, dinner was great but I have had a metallic taste in my mouth all night and now I'm getting a swollen lip on one side, more withdrawal I'm assuming. Took some Lysine, hope that stops the swelling. Went to Half Price Books after that, I bought four cat books (Cats in the Sun, Asleep in the Sun, The Mediterranean Cat and The Silent Miaow) and a new werewolf romance that I didn't even know was out (read the prequel as part of a supernatural trilogy). Couldn't really afford it all, but the photo books were like 75% off retail so I couldn't pass them up.
My nose has been cold for two days, very annoying since it's like 100 degrees outside. Been super dehydrated today, I expected that on the steroids, not afterwards. Uggh, my head's pounding, here we go kids... I've got my music stepped down to Bowie's Heathen now, finishing with Tori Amos Scarlet's Walk, which even relaxes the cat. Yep, she's jumped up in my lap and is grooming the both of us now...
Hey, I'm actually getting an entry in before Friday! One more day of the dreaded steroids, I have no sense of taste left, I can't wait to eat food and appreciate it again... Still much too wired, got lots done this week, though. Just answered almost every message that was hanging around in my mail box, so I can go to bed with a somewhat cleaner conscience.
I flipped out yesterday and chunked down $40 for an anti-spam program, I just coudln't stand it anymore. I'd downloaded this last month but it was quirky with system 9, but so far so good on OSX. I killed almost 100 spams so far today alone, poor Entourage just can't handle the strain of trying to filter out all the Viagra ads...
I can't believe how happy I've been with OSX so far! It's so fast and it's really starting to click in my head, I feel so dumb for not upgrading earlier.
Oww.. I've been grinding my teeth and have chewed on the inside of my mouth, that's annoying... got to get to a dentist soon. I packed like 40 packages for Ebay the last two days, talked my poor husband into bringing most of them in, my back went out last night and I didn't think I'd be able to stand in line for the 30-40 minutes it requires. I need to get one of those stamping programs, they don't really make any for Macs, though, and I honestly don't want to have to pay yet another monthly fee for anything.
Got to go find kitty, much too quiet in here. Still have one package waiting to be wrapped and mailed staring at me but it's so quiet in here I hate to make that much noise, got to be done, though.
Got almost everything upgraded to OSX compatible now. The whole system still feels funny but I'm finding little things each day that make me go "Doh!" which is actually a good thing. I love having the little "light bulb moments", as long as I can remember what I did to get there, then it just pisses me off.
I've got to say, OSX is so far much more stable than System 9, of course it took me years to corrupt my old files, it used to be fairly stable at first too.
Got an email from Apple today advertising their new Power Mac G5, the bastards... I got a dual CPU G4 when they were brand new, with a stunning memory capacity of like 1.5 GB, and now they have a damn Mac that can use up to 8 gig of memory, and is like 10 times as fast as mine. If I won the damn lottery I wouldn't even want to try and keep up with all the upgrades, you'd spend all your time doing nothing but reinstalling and updating things, jeez. My best friend spent a fortune on a brand new G3 setup like a year before they came out with the G4's and she can't even get her new printer to work correctly with her "outdated" (maybe 4 year old?) setup.
Speaking of, my printer is still freaking out with OSX. I did manage to upgrade from ClarisWorks to AppleWorks and found, to my delight, that it's pretty much identical and not just another form of MS Word (which I have and don't like). I know it sounds lazy, but I really like the Apple Word processor better. I don't want hyperlinks and crap popping up at me while I'm typing, I don't even want it to spell check me till I ask it... I also don't like the new version of SimpleText... what's it called (pull up the menu bar, go to applications...) oh yes, TextEdit. It brings things by default up in HTML format, which kinds of defeats the purpose of trying to edit HTML and break down code. I was trying to reformat a template on my finicky auction listing program last night and even manually opening it in TextEdit it wouldn't save it in normal text, it kept wanting to save it in RTF (rich text format), which won't work with my program (which is OSX compatible, ironically). So I've put my old SimpleText icon on the wavery little dock, I think it's the only Classic app on there now...
Damn, my heart is racing still and I have to take two more steroids at bedtime, which is like now... I've been doing pretty good till today, I was itching all over most of the day but no hives yet (knock on wood).
Got the kitty a new toy, she's completely shed her little pink safety nail caps on one paw and I didn't want my husband to get scratched so I got her a catnip Kitty Hoots toy with a really long tail so he can play with her. She did get her picture featured on the SoftPaws page, she's on page one right now of the photo gallery (Phoebe) chasing a blue string . And no complaints about the nail caps, they're awesome, she's just such a gentle cat and she keeps getting them caught on things, she has very small nails but the next size down was kitten size. And having the nail caps on for awhile dissuaded my husband from having her declawed, which neither me or the cat could have done. But I can tell she's so relieved to have one paw naked now, the other one still has several caps on it. She's been doing somersaults on the sofa and latching onto all her toys with her newly rediscovered claws (which have been trimmed, BTW). She was a bottlefed baby and she's hyperintelligent as a Burmese so she knows not to scratch things she shouldn't.
It's awfully quiet in here, I'd better go find her and put the both of us to bed.
I don't like these questions this week... but I'm so wired from the damned steroids I'm in the mood to ramble and type... One of my lifetime ethics codes has always to be straight-up honest with people, sometimes at a detriment to myself, but I have an over-active conscience, I'm not even religious, I think my dad ground it into me, he's the same way. We're both always worrying someone misintepreting things we said, it's hard to curb the need to overexplain things sometimes...
1. When was the last time you cheated? I do everything the hard way, unfortunately. I've never cheated on anyone in a relationship, and I never cheated in school. I'm not sure if the fear of getting caught was worse than the moral implications...
2. When was the last time you stole? I had the bejeezus scared out of me in elementary school when I was in a local five & dime store and a friend of mine stole something and they grabbed both of us. Our parents had to come get us, if I ever had a thought of stealing after that, the shame of that incident cured me. I've always been one of those idiots who tells sales clerks when they give me too much change back, etc. Maybe because I've been a cashier, maybe because I know it will come back and bite me kharmically. I also worked as a security officer and store detective for years...
3. When was the last time you lied? My career goal in my 20's was to be a police officer, so I'm pretty boring. Come to think of it, though, I did lie about my vision in the applications because I was so desperate to get in. You were supposed to be like 20/30 max and I wore contacts but they were super thin and couldn't be seen. I would have failed the medical physical eventually (got them corrected later with RK), but that does count. I'm a bad liar to people who are close to me, I'm more of an "omission" type person. Like I "omitted" telling my husband I had two credit cards instead of one, and his pet peeve is being lied to, so now he's calling me a liar, which just crushes my self worth, because one of my guides in judging myself and others is honesty. The older I get, the more brutally honest I'm actually becoming. Not in a cruel way, but I think there are enough lies floating around out there that people need to hear the truth more to stay grounded in reality (don't get me started on politics).
4. When was the last time you broke or vandalized another's property? I'm terrified of breaking things, even my own things. Probably like 15 years ago when I backed my ex-husbands giant old car into the brick flower beds at my apartments. Didn't scratch the car, though.
5. When was the last time you hurt a loved one? My husband with the credit card "omission" fiasco. And the sad thing was I wasn't running around just blowing money, the economy tanked so bad after 9/11 I was just trying to keep up financially and the whole thing made sense in my mind. But he's terribly hurt and thinking I did it personally against him.
Rambling, steroid induced update... I got in to see my neurologist last Friday and he agreed to let me pass on the $3000 MRI and instead of intravenous steroids (5 days of a catheter and lots of possible side effects, yuck!) he gave me an enormous 10 day run of oral steroids to take. 2 days each of 20 mg pills starting at six a day and tapering down to one. Scared the crap out of me, usually steroids and I don't get along, but so far just some minor heart palpitations, too much sweating, some itching and my food tasting funny. And, of course, the bizarre spurt of fake energy and overactive brain waves. I figured "no sleep this week" because so far I've been taking 40 mg at bedtime, but I've been taking my Ambien and Klonapin all together and so far not too bad.
I figured perhaps at least I'd get some things done this week with the extra nervous energy, going to work on my new Ebay store, Enigma Arts, where I'm transferring all my postcard auctions to try and keep my listings on MorticiasMorgue a bit less jumbled. I've got the artwork almost finished, I can't do anything halfway, then I just need to transfer a bunch of my PC's over there. I still need to get GothicKitty up, I've been having too much fun playing with Phoebe and snapping endless photos so far, though. She's getting so big, in a few weeks she'll be a year old!
For some reason, even before the steroid regimen began, I decided one night that I just needed to completely upgrade my Mac to OSX. After downloading yet another program that told me "use the OSX version, it's better, OS9 is dead" I just got really pissed and decided to try it. It had been so long since I installed OSX originally that I had to pretty much reinstall it to get it to start up correctly. A lot of the programs I already had (Photoshop, GoLive, Toast, Suitcase...) were already OSX compatible, so it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I'm still using my old ClarisWorks, I need to get AppleWorks, I've got MS Word but it annoys the crap out of me for some reason. The thing that disturbed me the most about OSX when I first tried to play with it was the lack of the Apple Menu, and all of my beautiful hierarchal menus, desktop folders, labels, scrapbook and little things like that, but I'm getting somewhat used to it. After like 13 years of using the same basic system, it's rather disorienting. I like to put my files in my own folders, dammit, so they make sense to me, and I'm the only one who uses the computer... I switched over to a much more high tech version of Scrapbook, though, which I already had for OS9 called iData Pro. The company that was distributing it wen out of business, but the program creator is keeping it going and giving away free trials on his website, so check it out now, awesome program!
It's nice to have a version of AfterDark back, though I miss Boris ;-) I'm beginning to make peace with the Dock, though it still gets in my way. The font anti-aliasing is rather annoying too, I'm having enough trouble reading right now without making my fonts fuzzier and slightly smaller
The system does seem to be more stable, though, less crashes. It also restarts a hell of a lot faster than OS9 did. When I added an external hard drive to the old system it doubled my startup time, but OSX just bounces right back. It's a bit quirky, sometimes clicking on the weird little transparent menus doesn't work (I have to click on the desktop then back again). I like the updated iTunes and the new version of Fetch is fancy.
Oh well, more later, I need to try and wind down a bit before bed, still have two more steroids to take. I just went in and created the new Ebay store so I guess I'd better go make my About Me page and add my pretty little graphic to the store listing. Those little 310x90 logos are so easy to make, I don't know why more people don't at least make the effort. I get lots of compliments on my Morticia's Morgue store logo, I think it makes you look more professional (and more memorable to people).
I'm behind, so here's the last two weeks Q&A:
Jul 11, 2003
1. Do you remember your first best friend? Who was it? Iím told my first best friend was a little boy named Douglas, who I called Guggas. I seem to recall getting into trouble with him for being out after dark one evening. In elementary, my best friend was the neighbor behind me, Anita Shaw, who was bold and adventurous and seemed much tougher than me. Unfortunately, when we changed to junior high level, the line splitting schools was literally our fence line and we were split up. My best friend for junior high was a very cool young gay man named Byron Bozeman. He was one of the smartest people Iíd ever met and he actually had big aspirations for his future. Then HISD split us up again for high school and my best friend was a young Lebanese immigrant named Fadi Salha. He spoke a little English and I spoke a little French, but he learned English much faster than I learned French. He was the only person in school who could beat me at pinig-pong.
2. Are you still in touch with this person? Because of a bad first marriage and moving around the state, Iíve lost touch with most of my early friends, even though I live in the same neighborhood I grew up in now. My parents are more in touch with them than I am, because most of the families still live there too.
3. Do you have a current close friend? My best friend is my friend Mary who I met soon after I moved back to Houston, and then a few years ago she moved back home to New Orleans. So we talk long distance and she travels back and forth a lot, occasionally Iíll get to make it to NOLA also.
4. How did you become friends with this person? She was at a regular party that my husband (then boyfriend) and a friend of his were hosting. She was dating an old friend of theirs (sheís traded up since then) and we both hit it off with our common interest in Anne Rice and spooky things in general. Sheís like 8 years younger than me, most of my friends have always been older or my own age, but sheís very mature. Sheís the youngest child in a family of boys (who are my age) so a lot of their interests rubbed off on her.
5. Is there a friend from your past that you wish you were still in contact with? Why? I looked up Anita, sheís living back in Montana with a brood of kids and animals and she and her husband are in law enforcement, which is really cool. Iíve heard Fadi is a dentist, still living in town and doing well. Iíd love to find out how Byron is doing, last I heard he was living in an old restored house and he and his partner were doing some sort of landscape design.
For July 4th Questions click the READ MORE link below...
July 4th
1. What were your favorite childhood stories? Ummm, trying to think back that farÖ My favorite early books were ìA Childís Garden of Versesî, ìSam, Bangs and Moonshineî, ìThe Velveteen Rabbitî. Anything with witches or cats in itÖ A little older I was obsessed with Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Hitchockís The Three Investigators, Black Beauty.
2. What books from your childhood would you like to share with [your] children? Not planning on having any, but if I did they would be deluged with books.
3. Have you re-read any of those childhood stories and been surprised by anything? Not really, other than the fact that I colored in some of them.
4. How old were you when you first learned to read? I canít really remember not being able to read, although we didnít have pre-school when I was growing up.
5. Do you remember the first 'grown-up' book you read? How old were you? I think the first was Shirley Jacksonís ìWe Have Always Lived in the Castleî which I found at a neighborhood garage sale and bought for the incredible cover have several that pop into my mind though I canít pin them down on years. A Readerís Digest version of ìJawsî, ìThe Exorcistî, ìCarrieî and ìInterview with the Vampireî was a big breakthrough book for me. I ordered it through one of the many bookclubs I was a member of, I think I even paid for it ;-)
1. How are you planning to spend the summer [winter]? Same old, same old. Stay inside as much as possible during the summer heat. Play with my new kitty, she's Burmese and needs a lot of attention :-)
2. What was your first summer job? As a library assistant, I stayed for about a year but it was my first job at 17. I worked there with two of my best friends and really liked it. They let us check out as many books as we wanted, I think when I left I had over 200 books checked out, some popped up years later (and were surreptitiously returned).
3. If you could go anywhere this summer [winter], where would you go? I'd like to go to New England and drive all over the place, got to Salem, NYC, etc. That, or the UK.
4. What was your worst vacation ever? Ironically enough it's a tie between Disneyland and Disneyworld. We went to California when I was a teenager and for some reason my parents were having the only real 'fight' that I really remember, they never argued in front of us, but I remember everyone was really sort of miserable the entire time. Then my parents and in-laws gave my husband and I a trip to Disneyworld for our honeymoon. I'm not sure why, we really wanted to go to New England. Both of us hated it, we stayed on the grounds so we were basically Disney prisoners, had to eat their overpriced horrible food, the mattresses were hard as rocks so we didn't get any real rest, every ride dumped you into a gift shop. And even though it was early spring, there were tons of kids who should have been in school.
5. What was your best vacation ever? My visits to New Orleans probably rank at the top. We used to visit when I was a kid, which was cool because our parents would let us wander around Bourbon Street, take us into Pat O'Brien's. It's always been my favorite city. The year before I met my husband my parents gave me a trip there by myself, complete with a room at the Monteleone, breakfast at Brennan's, a plantation trip. And best of all I got to wander around all night by myself in the Quarter. Not something I recommend, but it was a lot of fun. I even walked through the bad part of the Quarter up to St. Louis Cemetery and took tons of photos. My husband and I have visited there together lots of times, we were even there to see part of the filming of Interview with the Vampire.
Haven't been writing much lately, been having some weird vision problems that are making my computer work (and reading, watching TV, driving...) a pain in the butt. About a week ago I had a flashing begin in my left eye late one night. Last time that happened, it was just a migraine halo. So I took a Maxalt and went to bed. But the next day the light was still there, and a few days later a shadowy area appeared in that eye, not good. So, having had retinal surgery before, in the same eye, I'm thinking, great, I've torn a retina... again. I've been sneezing hysterically for the last month or so with allergies, so I thought with my luck the strain pulled it loose. It took a while to realize that it was just one eye doing it, so it definately wasn't a migraine, I could see the flashing and the cloud even when I closed my eye, which is really annoying.
So I got up early enough to call the doctor's office today, not wanting a detached retina, and called and got an emergency appointment. After a visual field test and exam her best guess was it's an optic neuritis attack from my MS. I haven't seen my neurologist in like a year, there's not much he can do except give me antidepressants and the really painful self-inflicted shots in the leg that I took for a few months and felt worse. Plus I haven't had proper insurance the last year since I've been officially self-employed. So the optomotrist leaves the room to call my neurologist (same clinic) and comes back in and says "he wants you to have an MRI tomorrow and see him on next week". Only problem is, I don't have insurance to cover a $1000+ MRI. And he told her he won't treat me without having it done. She said the treatment is steroids, no problem, I have an extra Medrol Dosepack from another problem, but after reading up on it, it looks like the steroids are to be given intravenously. Crap...
So the nurse is checking to see how much the MRI is for grins, and trying to make an appointment with the neurologist for Monday anyway. I got triple charged for my visit today because it was an office visit, a visual field, and she wrote me a prescription for reading glasses (which she told me she didn't have time to check me for since this was an emergency visit). And actually that wasn't that bad, because it turned out they had been undercharging me for our appointments with our medical discount plan. They'd been charging me 20%, which was working out well, and then the nurse found out when she called them about the MRI that we should be paying 80%... oops. Needless to say, I made a hasty exit after that. I hope they don't send us another bill, we're still trying to settle up with them on our physicals from last year with a "real" insurance company (who wouldn't pay for anything!).
So my vision seems to be steadily decreasing, my RK has worn off and I still have the side effects (haloes, etc.), plus the 40+ inability to read closeup has kicked in, and now my optic nerve is freaking out. And my eyes, head and back are aching from all the tests today. And all I want to do suddenly is read and make pretty websites. I'm still working on my kitty's site, let you know when there's more than a home page there.