think I'm going to take up smoking, mainlining bacon grease, and camping out in the Krispy Kreme lobby.

Hey, just breathing the air can give you cancer.

So the smoking and bacon grease can be forgotten but not the Krispy Kremes. (I never said I was a saint.)

Things I did this weekend:

• Ate a muffaletta
• Avoided Bourbon Street
• Checked out the F2F hotel
• Neglected to give the restaurant manager at La Louisanne a Buffista business card (curses!)
• Tried on a gorgeous Edwardian corset at Trashy Diva that fit me perfectly (and would have been bought on the spot were it not (a) $395 and (b) in the wrong colour) and had the nice saleslady write down all the pertinent info for me so that I can order one when I have money again, possibly to be picked up in NOLA during the F2F.
• Ate dinner ten feet from Harry Shearer
• Drank a lot of martinis.

How are you?

How are you?

Jealous.

How are you?

Not as good as you.

IOW, jealous. But, at least I'm in good company. (Hi, Lee!!)

Oh, the spiffy. [link]

Before the Industrial Revolution, painters used Yellow Ochres or Orpiment (sulfide of arsenic). Occasionally painters found some Gamboge, a strongly colored secretion from trees that resembles amber. Gamboge was used for glazing before Indian Yellow became available in the middle of the 19th century. To make Indian Yellow, cows were force fed mango leaves and given no water. Their urine was collected in dirt balls and sold as "pigment." The resulting artists' color was a warm transparent glazing yellow. But Indian Yellow was lost somewhere between the decline of cruelty to animals and the rise of manufactured pigments.

And a thousand cows sighed in relief.

Ooh, and I just got an email telling me that the documentary I additional-edited back in August is premiering at Sundance! Supercool!

Scared.

I just put in the mail (yes, I remembered the stamps) an application to Central Arizona College and a transcript request for the app. to my alma mater, Cedarville University.

Yea, PM! May your credit spread far and wide.

Go you, Windsparrow.

I got on a tidying kick this weekend, and I asked Hubby what the future held for an old Mac something he'd bought several years ago and only used once. Its primary purpose in life these days is cat perch. I could really use the shelf space.

Hubby: "I'm going to turn it into a server."

No, he isn't. It's an old Mac, we run a Windows network, neither of us knows that much about Macs, and when he has the energy he uses it for things he really cares about. But, delicate male egos being what they are, if I tell him these things he feels like I'm telling him that he'll never recover fully and be the man he thinks he should be. And he's only 48 years old dammit.

Sorry, not going there, never mind.

It's very hard to de-clutter when all the stuff is being used as a defiant "fuck you!" to a universe that wants to bring you down. I know, attainable goals, if he concentrates on a few things that actually have a shot of being accomplished, it all won't be hanging over his head, accusing him and reminding him of what he can't do anymore. But the man's been told on multiple occasions that he'd never walk again etc., and he always comes back, plus he's been dead three or four times and has come back from *that*. Living with the lesser-heroic is probably less dramatic.

The above is less a search for advice and more a seasonal rant.

At least the sun's out.