Mostly movies I have watched during the last weeks. Credit would be nice but is not necessary, as usual. Happy icon grabbing!

- 2x vector illustrations by Jenny Lloyd
- 4x stock photos from StockExchange
- 4x "UP" (Caps by darciana
- 1x "Astropia"
- 4x "RepoMan - The Genetic Opera"
- 4x "Metropolis"
- 2x "Orphan"
- 3x "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog"
- 3x "Dragon Age: Origins"



Preview:



( Icons behind the cut )

NEW WAVE.ELECTRO.INDIE ALL NIGHT WITH YOURS IN MURDER DJ INFEKKTION
SPINNING ACTS LIKE DEPECHE MODE,LADYTRON.CRYSTAL CASTLES,NEW ORDER
PEACHES,SHE WANTS REVENGE AND MORE ALL NIGHT!!

DRINKS SPECIALS ALL NIGHT

$5 COVER
21+UP ONLY

THE INDUSTRY
8021 PINEBROOK
SAN ANTONIO,TX

I had decided two days ago I wasn't doing this tradition, because it was too easy suddenly to name all the words I never tell people when they continue to ask me what do you want (/for Christmas)? It's much easier to make that list this year and much harder to make this one. Thanksgiving, the holiday and the days off and the football and the family, did not happen for me this year.

But this evening was Foreigner's Thanksgiving hosted at Nikki's house, and I decided early in the morning I would require this of myself today. So I wrote this list while sitting on the couch as said event in short hand for this write-up at home .


( Cut Epics Levels of Gratitude and TMI )

Tags: about me, coworkers, edwardcarlisle, family, friends, gaming, holidays, holidays: thanksgiving, korea, milliways, my girl, quotes, religion, teaching, travel, twilight, universal contemplation, work, writing

Black Friday Anti-Deals: What Not To Buy
By Sean Fallon
Black Friday may be when prices drop, but if you've carefully read the list of deals, you can tell it's also a BS marketing gimmick. Here's how not to get fooled (plus, what gadgets to avoid at any price):

In other words, many of these "deals" really aren't deals at all. Often, Black Friday sale products are priced differently between stores, or they are priced at or above deals you can find elsewhere any day of the week. You might see a particularly juicy deal in a flyer on a big ticket item like an HDTV, only to discover that the store only had a few units to sell. The bottom line is that you need to do your homework, and this is a good place to start.

After digging through a mind-numbing quantity of deals, I came away with a few impressions about how some major retailers do business. Simply put, they are taking advantage of the herd mentality. Losses taken on truly great deals (which are often in limited quantities), are made up by selling high volume products or crap products at or above their normal retail value.
— Rest of article here, including lists of bad buys per major realitor

Current Location: Home

I had decided two days ago I wasn't doing this tradition, because it was too easy suddenly to name all the words I never tell people when they continue to ask me what do you want (/for Christmas)? It's much easier to make that list this year and much harder to make this one. Thanksgiving, the holiday and the days off and the football and the family, did not happen for me this year.

But this evening was Foreigner's Thanksgiving hosted at Nikki's house, and I decided early in the morning I would require this of myself today. So I wrote this list while sitting on the couch as said event in short hand for this write-up at home .


( Cut For Epic Levels of Gratitude and TMI )

Tags: about me, coworkers, edwardcarlisle, family, friends, gaming, holidays, holidays: thanksgiving, korea, milliways, my girl, quotes, religion, teaching, travel, twilight, universal contemplation, work, writing
Mood Swing: contemplative

* Thanksgiving was so pleasant. It is the first year since childhood that we stayed home for the entire weekend and we're reveling in the quiet freetime. No family drama, no suitcase lugging, just the three of us hanging out together. We took Graeme to the park and then headed home to cook once it got dark. It has finally been dry after a week of rain and the air smelled, on Thanksgiving, like burning leaves and snow. Knowing that I'll be spending most of the winter in Florida, I'm able to really enjoy these cold days, this transition into winter now. After dinner, we cleaned up all our autumn tokens and decorations and replaced them with a fresh sheaf of holly in an ice blue vase. By the end of this weekend, we plan to have our tree up, too!

* It has now been eight days since Graeme nursed. I've been sleeping by myself in our guest room downstairs and it has been glorious. No offense to Daniel, but I don't sleep well with someone else. And no offense, Graeme, but you've kept me up for two years. I'm not sure how long this sleeping arrangement will last, but plentiful sleep (and maybe not having the nutritional demands of nursing) have reversed a lot of my seasonal depression. I'm sleeping undisturbed enough to have dreams return, full-force, which is such a relief.

* So my latest dream, I was back in my show choir days and for whatever reason, our director had to separate us into two separate choirs. It was clear, as he was assigning people one-by-one, that Choir A was all the talent and Choir B, not so much. When it was my turn to stand up and be sorted, I gave a rousing argument why the uneven distribution was unfair and that the less-talented, less-disciplined singers would never grow if they weren't surrounded by those better than them. I sorta knew where my impassioned argument was going to lead me but I was still gut-shot when he said, "Fine. You can be in B." We were so bad, we had to stay in an amusement park cave world not totally unlike Goonies. I was herding cats, trying to get everyone to practices so that we could beat Choir A or at least put in a respectable showing next time we met. Then I got word there was some sort of leadership position, over both choirs, up for grabs. I was going to use it to reintegrate the choirs. I signed up, along with a bunch of people from Choir A. We had to sight-sing in elimination rounds but a lot of the music was fevered orchestral stuff, to throw us off, where we'd have to imitate various instruments. Finally, it was down to me and a blond guy who was, frankly, probably better than me. The final challenge format was a weekly showcase from different musical styles. Somehow, I got the pick of the styles, so I knew the only way to beat him was to pick styles that wouldn't mesh well with his Broadway training.

I picked reggae, jazz, and a few other styles. I had a week to (faux)dread my hair and prepare before our first competition--reggae performed on horseback. I killed it. ;) I felt pretty confident that I was going to squeak through as the winner when I woke up. :D

* Today, we plan to finish our Yule shopping. Against my plans to not shop yesterday, I did end up going to Division Street to support some of our local businesses. I bought hoodies from Threadless, a few fair trade gifts at Greenheart, and a bunch of toys for all the kids in my life at Building Blocks. Today we're going to visit the Illinois Artisans shop downtown to pick up some handmade things for the various women in our family and then, with the exception of Daniel, we're done! I've been gift-wrapping for a week, so things are piled up and I hope, by Monday, to have most of it shipped out. This way, we plan to really enjoy the holiday season without the rush, able to sit under our tree and drink cocoa, have dinner together and watch Elf. It'll be nice. I've had presents cluttering up the joint since probably March. ;)

* We're leaving, in less than four weeks, for Florida. The concept of packing our car for a weeklong road trip and then three or more months in Florida is overwhelming. Daniel will be flying back and forth every week, which is good, but I still feel the need to organize and pare down the house in our absence. We considered starting a packing list this weekend and Daniel just closed his eyes, covered his face, and said, "Yeah, let's not." :D I mean, do we have to bring all our kitchen stuff? Bedding? Toys? Who knows. So yeah, we'll get to that later.

* On the perfume front, I've been living in holiday chocolate bliss with BPAL's hot cocoa El Dia de los Reyes and Misery Love Company's dark chocolate and orange Inigo Montoya. Mmmmm.

Tags: florida, holidays

We did brave the wilds of Black Friday-- but only because J was desperately in need of a haircut (you know those mushrooms in the Super Mario games?) and because our favorite hairdresser just moved to the Bubbles in Towson Towne Center. We indulged a little at Starbucks-- double tall skinny peppermint mocha-- but I think when it comes down to it, I prefer plain 'ol coffee with peppermint mocha coffeemate. I'm losing my taste for lattes. We also decided that we need tee shirts that say "shut up, we're newlyweds," because of the bratty fourteen year olds petulantly heaving and rolling their eyes at our shmoopitude.

I did stop in Sephora, and the damage was surprisingly low. I got the Stila lip glaze collection with the intention of keeping Kitten and gifting out the others. Saw the Urban Decay Book of Shadows II and wasn't overly impressed. Thought about picking up Celebutante but they were thankfully out, and they also weren't carrying any of the Sephora favorites kits, or I'm sure one of these would have fallen into my basket.

Went into Lush. Was not at all impressed with any of their new stuff, honestly. It's all starting to smell the same. I still love me some Jingle Spells, but for the most part, I've been really underwhelmed with the new stuff and can no longer afford old favorites (Ocean Salt) I used to love. I did buy one of the new shower tablets for J to help him get going in the morning-- we'll see if that works. Yankee was too overcrowded to really sniff anything and I was surprised that my favorite thing there during my brief stay was the Mistletoe tumbler.

Next was Target for some necessary home goods, but while we were there we did pick up a tree-- our first! A 4 1/2 foot cashmere pine. Plus some basic ornaments in silver and crystal for a winter wonderland-- I'm sorry, had to stop for a moment because Jason was doing a velociraptor with machine gun impression-- theme. We're putting it up tomorrow.

Today: I'll be working on commissions in DC while Jason is bike riding with the guys, then we're heading to Marshall to visit reedrover, achaosofkittens, and fireandearth. My social calendar is pretty booked for the next few weekends, but I keep wanting to add on and on and on because there are too many people I haven't seen in far too long. Gotta make dinner plans soon.

Tags: retail

Good morning! As I continue reading, practicing, and living my life, I keep getting closer to Wicca and farther from whatever I started at...

I'm cutting this, because it got long...

( Anyway, this post is about names. )

Mood Swing: cold

I'm playing with it (and back logged SG: U, Merlin, Sanctuary) instead of chopping up the vegetables for Foreigner's Thanksgiving which is in a few hours. Google Wave looks all sorts of fun and nifty. I'm having such fun. Between this and Trillian (and my new laptop and I!devices and Kindle), I am continually upping what I expect in a technological device.



Do you have one?

If yes, drop me your e-mail address and I'll add it in!

If no, and you want one, I have invites! Drop me an e-mail address!

Tags: friends, geek the girl

liz_marcs posted in her journal about the neglect of female veterans, and what Congress plans to do- or not:

Most of the people on the phone are asking questions I would ask, so I was just going to listen to the answers, when a question popped into my head:

Female veterans. Namely, lack of services for female veterans within the VA system itself.

I have a relative that runs a homeless veterans shelter and he's felt that he lacks the resources to help female veterans. THis, with Iraq and Afghanistan bringing in a lot more female veterans than past conflicts. Also, [info]ginmar, herself a veteran of Iraq has mentioned this issue in her journal.

So, yeah. I hit him with the question: There are a lack of services for female veterans. I know people experiencing this first hand. Can you do anything about this?

There was a little bit of a "Humina, humina, humina" when I asked. *evil smile*

But, and this is the important bit here, I'm the first person to bring up the issue of female veterans to him. Period. Amen.

He acknowledged that the VA is under stress across the board. I also definitely got the sense that the idea that female veterans might require different services from their male counterparts was not an idea that actually crossed his mind. To be fair, the female moderator seemed to be taken aback by the question when I put my question into the queue as well, so I suspect that this simply isn't an issue too many people even think about, male or female.

According to Congressman Capuano is that a big part of the problem is simply that there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of information out there. (Keep in mind, this is the first time Congressman Capuano had even been asked about services for female veterans.)

Although he was very receptive to getting more information about the issue, the problem is getting the information to him (or to any congressman/senator who might be willing to do something about it, really) from a reliable source with hard data.

I understand that lack of hard data. When I was assaulted in my own home off base by a neighbor, I was not asked to fill out any incident report, or go see a counselor. No, my first sergeant told me that my problem was due to the fact that I was a 'fallen woman' and wasn't chummy with Jesus. His solution was to pray over me. I had to go to the German police to get the resolution I needed, which very nearly created an international incident.

Sigh... and that was just ONE thing that I had to deal with. I worked just as hard as anyone, was probably smarter than most, but was always treated like a second class citizen- due to both my marital status (single) and my gender. And that was while I served. It was even worse when I got out. No real outbound counseling. No departing physical exam. No VA references.

The VA doesn't know how to deal with us. They miss so many opportunities to do a better job. ginmar's misadventures with the VA are a classic case in point. And it isn't just that- female veterans do not have homeless services- there are no facilities for them. The VA doesn't know how to deal with us- it's either wait forever, or it's all in our heads.

No, it isn't. My physical injuries are very real, and as the years pass, they are not getting any better. My mental injuries are pretty much 'all in my head'. I don't look or act 'sick'. So I must be OK, right? Sigh...

I have a hat my dad got me at the BX a year or two ago. It's one of those fancy veteran's baseball caps, but the patch on mine reads 'Dysfunctional Veteran: Leave Me Alone". I rarely wear it, because it hits too damn close to home. "Just Barely Functional" might be closer to the truth. I function. Mostly.

Maybe that's the problem. Not a big enough data set, not enough war stories and input from female vets, no 'hard' evidence, because of cases like mine which were pretty much swept under the rug so that when they were audited, they wouldn't have any messy personnel incidents to explain or follow up on.

Hard data. Good luck in getting it, y'all. Can we trust you to actually do something good with it? I mean, really?

I'm not an entitlement-poisoned citizen, but I've been living in or very near poverty since I got out. I have not been able to rise to my true level of ability because of things that happened to me while serving- things that still harm me even today. I truly fear becoming some muttering bag-lady on the street somewhere. This is a very real fear, since the homeless population is still heavily salted with veterans- both male and female.

I just want to be treated like a human being. And I'd like my benefits that I believe are my right- and I don't care what I was told when I got out- I was honorably discharged. I served during Desert Storm. I put up, shut up, and got screwed up in spite of my efforts to cope.

They owe me. Big time.