** UPDATED 9/14 **

We reached our Final Milestone, so all 3 Calendars have been unlocked and are being raffled, as are the special NASA items. In addition, Richard and Wendy Pini will be signing the items before they are sent to the winners!! Amazing! So please give for this worthy cause ! Drawing will be held on 9/20 – Winners will be notified by email. Please allow time for the items to be signed and shipped after 9/20.

THE DETAILS

On September 23, I will be walking in the AIDS Walk Portland – a 2.5 mile walk through downtown Portland to support The Cascade AIDS Project and their work. By taking part in the walk, I am helping to raise funds to prevent HIV infections, support and empower people affected and infected by HIV/AIDS, and eliminate HIV/AIDS-related stigma.

In an effort to maximize my fundraising, I am raffling off part of my Elfquest Collection – specifically, I am raffling off Calendars. New in package (not mint because there is very minor corner damage)

$5 per raffle entry, 1 special entry plus 5 regular entries for every $25 you donate – Special raffle details at the end.

Scroll down for the TL;DR

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I love the song “Walk on the Moon” by Great Big Sea — We first heard it while on the cruise in 2008 and it has never lost its impact on me… The album version is so much more nuanced than the live version with really fabulous cymbals, bells and chimes… Anyhow, the lyrics really speak to me and lately I have realized how much I try to live my life with the abandon that I feel in the song…

Walk on the Moon
Performed by Great Big Sea

Is it just me, or a message from above?
Bells are ringing, push has finally come to shove.
The door before me now is open just enough.
And I’m sick and tired of waiting for dreams that never come,
And games I never played in, but still wish that I had won…

I’m alive, I’ve got one shot and I’m taking it to you.
I’m alive, I’ve come to realize not a moment too soon
That this is my one small step, this is my walk on the moon.

Don’t you think their hands were shaking as that rocket ship touched down?
I’m sure they shivered when they finally touched the ground.
And the giant leap so fragile that it hardly made a sound.
But, it must have been amazing what a world they got to see.
So I don’t care, my foolish fear won’t get the best of me now

I’m alive, I’ve got one shot and I’m taking it to you.
I’m alive, I’ve come to realize not a moment too soon
That this is my one small step, this is my walk on the moon.
This is my walk on the moon.

Oh it must have been amazing, what a world they got to see!
So I don’t care, my foolish fear won’t get the best of me now…

I’m alive, I’ve got one shot and I’m taking it to you.
I’m alive, I’ve come to realize not a moment too soon.
I’m alive, I’ve got one shot and I’m taking it to you.
I’m alive, I’ve come to realize, not a moment too soon
That this is my one small step.
This is my one small step,
This is my walk on the moon.

Thinking about it, by having my Twitters show up on my Thingie — it’s like having a white noise machine on as you drift into sleep… It doesn’t actually mean anything, but it makes you feel better knowing it’s there…

I really ought to post more… I know, I know… I have said it a hundred times and each time I mean it sincerely!! I wonder if I should start doing Friday Fives or something like that to help me get back in the swing of things… Some of those questions are still really fascinating and it would be interesting to see how the answers have changed…

Anyhow, I just wanted to post (not that I expect anyone to see it) and see how it felt…. maybe I can get back into doing this… It’s not as hard as I expected to write more than 140 characters

I haven’t posted an actual journal entry in ages, but I have finally hit the point where I have more to say than can be conveyed in 140 characters…

(Political rant after the cut)

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(Cross-posted to my LJ)

Closing up shop on 2008…

* I am finally 99% over the Stupid Ex — still get pangs of wondering why and how, but they are so few and far between… For this I am grateful…

* We elected a President that I feel good about!! Huzzah!!

* Picked up a horrible addiction to World of Warcraft… I love the game, but I am so addicted to it!

* It was a year for re-connecting with some people
– My Ex in Arizona… Though he is slow to write back and generally very bad at staying in touch — still it was nice to hear from him and get the update on his life
– The Ex in New York… Things are stressful but chugging along in his world… It was nice to hear from him and we tried to get together, but that just wasn’t in the cards… I hope his current project goes well…
– One of my best friends from California… I hadn’t spoken to him in ages but we got in touch almost by accident — it was a weird/funny situation.. We chat when running around together on WoW… I wish he’d move to Oregon…
– And a local friend from way back… we ran into each other on Linked-In and managed to get together to hang out one day… I wish his health was better, but it was good to see him out and about again…

* There were failed re-connections too… It sucks because they were people that I miss having in my life… In some cases it was just that we drifted too far apart… others just wouldn’t or couldn’t accept my apology when given… I tried, but there has to be effort on both parts, right?

* After the disastrous Thanksgiving, everything seems to be back to normal… For now

Welcoming in 2009…

* Hopefully things will be fiscally peaceful and not scrambling from check to check…

* Good health and happiness are major goals for this year, too

* Looking for new housing might be coming up, but we’ll see…

* I need to try to actually buckle down and WORK this year… Seriously.

* Should I try again to recover a friendship? Maybe I was being hypersensitive and need to be more understanding…

* How do you tell someone a thousand miles away that you want to date them? Would flying out for a dinner date be too forward?

I hope your 2008 closed on a positive note and I wish you a happy, healthy and peaceful 2009!!

So last Monday, my grandmother passed away after a long decline and after several years of worsening Alzheimers… After all the details were settled, I made flight arrangements for Doug and me to fly into Vegas and drive my parents out to California for the viewing and services and since it was going to be so close to Thanksgiving, we decided to stay for Thanksgiving, too…

Hours before our flight was going to take off, one of my crowns popped off in my mouth… It didn’t damage anything and it sat fine when I put it back on, but it wasn’t something I wanted to deal with just before I fly off for a funeral, you know? I toyed with the idea of crazy gluing it back on, but Doug vetoed that idea and it didn’t pop off easily, so I left it as is…

I should have taken that as a hint of things to come

The viewing and funeral went fine, the usual family drama but nothing too terrible… The viewing was on Sunday and the funeral on Monday and we were going to drive my parents back to their house on Tuesday. We went back to stay at my brother’s house for one more night and when we came out the next morning, my mom’s car had a flat. Turns out that her two rear tires were completely hosed and had to be changed before we could get them home to Vegas…

After calling my mom to tell her the bad news, we changed the flat tire and repacked everything in the trunk… I got out my phoen to call her back and my phone was frozen up… so I tried to reboot and the power button wouldn’t work… I took out the battery and let it rest and put the battery back in and still no luck… I have NO idea what happened to my hpone, but it had mysteriously stopped working and even now, is out of commission…

We used Doug’s phone to call my mom and then went to get her so she could pay for the tires and run some other last minute errands before going home… The plan was that Doug was going to drive my brother’s 2005 Toyota Matrix and follow my mom in her 2000 Lexus GS400 to the tire store… On the way to the store, Doug rear-ended my mom on the street and wrecked my brother’s car and smashed the crap out of the rear of my mom’s car… Good thing that my family loves him, huh? Luckily no one was injured and, while the Matrix had to be towed back to my brother’s house nobody was freaking out about it… Except for Doug, of course… The Lexus’ trunk was bashed in and the frame looked all tweaked to the left and we were weren’t sure we were going to be able to get it back to Vegas… After our mechanic friend looked at it, he said it could be driven, but needed to be fixed ASAP…

After all the drama with the wreck and everything else, on Wednesday morning we are driving back to my parents house and I am driving… and I start coughing… and over the next 4 hours it gets worse and worse to the point where I have to stop and make Doug drive the rest of the way to Vegas…

When we get to Vegas, I immediately head to bed and start pounding the cold meds… but no good I am sick as hell and feverish and coughing and eventually throwing up all night long… The next morning, I am getting worse and my fever spikes to over 102 degrees… so Doug and I spent Thanksgiving in the Emergency Room in Vegas… After 2 liters of IV fluid, a Chest X-Ray, 2 different kinds of painkillers, 2 different anti-nausea meds and being on oxygen for 4 hours, I finally get out of the ER at 11 PM and we head to the hotel to try to sleep it off…

The next morning, Doug starts coughing and is getting the same symptoms as I had – but thanks to my hospital visit we know how to minimize his symptoms… By the afternoon, both of my parents are also coughing I managed to get everyone sick for their Thanksgiving weekend… Plus I am still the sickest out of everyone and need to go back to the doctor today…

Saturday morning rolls around and Doug and I have to leave early as our plane takes off at 10 AM… After the week we’d had, we just wanted to get home… We get to the airport in plenty of time and the plane arrives and everyone is getting off the plane and just before they are going to load us on, they announce that we are going to be delayed because the plane hit a bird on its way in and they have to clean it up… and then 20 minutes later they announce that the bird hit a light and cracked it so they have to repair it before we can leave… All told, we were delayed about 90 minutes… Just our luck, huh?

We got home and everything is fine, aside from my still being sick… I am going to try to get better meds for my cough from the doctor today, but we’ll see how that goes…

I certainly hope everyone else had a better week than us…

So, about 4 years ago, the website that I used to have got closed because of a lapse in payment and I lost all of the content on the site… By the time I got around to trying to re-establish my site (about a week or two later) some cyber-squatter had purchased the domain name and squatted on it… bastards

I checked my old domain name today because I was using the Internet Archive site to look for an old picture and I noticed that there was nothing at the site since 2006… The squatter is gone and there’s no site at that URL now — which means that the squatter wasted their money for at least 2 years… Yeah, it probably only cost them $10, but it cost them $10 and I never gave in and paid them to move their fat cyber-squatting asses off of my domain name…

I am tempted to go buy it again just because I can

A picture meme

Take a picture of yourself right now.

Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… Just take the picture.

Post the picture with no editing.

Post these instructions with your picture.

I am writing a spoileriffic recap of my favorite parts of last night’s Season Premier

So don’t click the link below until you have seen it

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I am actually considering getting a tattoo.

It all depends on if the person that I am talking to can and will design it for me and if he will do it for me for way cheaper than his usual rates… It will also depend on when i will be near his studio or when he is next coming to PDX…

I am kinda excited