If it's not too late, I'd like to say a big thank you for all the condolences extended my way yesterday and the day before. The suddenness and unexpectedness of Katharine's suicide hit me -- and all of her friends -- especially hard, which I feel sure she was not able to anticipate. To check up on topics here through those days and see that yet another one of you was thinking of me and others was support I realize I badly needed.

Thank you all so very much.

I have opened some cafepress shops. They are named msbelle1 through msbelle8.

www.cafepress.com/msbelle1

Unfortunately you cannot easily get from one store to the next. You have to change the end of the web address to navigate between them.

eta: combined store link

I will also be in the SF Bay Area on April 10 (and the week before, leaving the 11th) and would love to get in on anything with Katie M and/or SFistas. I'm terribly behind in every thread, so if someone could drop me a line at my profile address with any plans or plans in the making I'd be grateful.

I'll be doing a Lush shop at some point, that much I know.

I got fired this morning.

It wasn't an April Fools joke.

I'm looking at this as a blessing in disguise, because the job wasn't working for me either. Luckily, we'll be okay financially for a couple of months. But please send jobma DC-wards, and email me at red_emma78 at hotmail dot com if you know of any editorial job openings.

Totally crappy thing to do when I started a discussion in Lightbulbs today, but....

Going dark for the weekend!! Will be back Monday, possibly sooner depending on parents internet connection.

I'm going to be all kinds of shades of dark in the coming 10 days or so, due to Passover (and being at my parents, where the ratio of computer (1) to persons (7) is far from ideal). I'll try to check my e-mail as regularly as I possibly can, and I hope to get to sneak some peaks here as well.

In any case, I wish those of you who celebrate Passover a happy and peaceful holiday, and to each and every one of you as lovely a time as you could possibly have.

Before I go, however, according to the Buffista Calendar, tomorrow, Saturday, April 3rd, is Tom Scola's birthday, so lots of early wishes to him, for a great day and a wonderful year.

Attention NYCistas!

I will be in your fair city May 21-30 (or maybe just thru the 28th, there is a NJ-relatives issue). Unfortunately causing me to miss the F2F, but I'm gonna be excited about the trip anyway, K? I have many tentative and zero concrete plans for my time, but would love to meet any and all NYCistas (on their return from the F2F, or if any of you are unable to attend, we could have like an F2F satellite...just thinking on my feet here) for drinks, lunches, ice cream or whatever.

Profile addy good.

I'm in Luxor, AIFG! However, just wishing a handful of -ma the way of my friend, who's arriving in Cairo right now. Cairo being a city notable for its present lack of me. Ahem. All being well, the taxi service will pick her up from the right bit of the airport as per my arrangements and usher her off to meet an Egyptian friend of mine outside the train station, where he will have successfully purchased tickets for her, and she'll have a nice safe journey down through the desert to arrive here at 4am. Ahem. I am, however, flapping madly right now, and although this isn't a big deal and I'm sure it'll all work out fine, any spare -ma would be appreciated.

(Hugs to LJ and wishes that this will be the start of something better. Deepest condolences to Theo and friends - so very sorry for your loss. How utterly awful. I am happy that your friend is at peace now, but I'm so sorry for you all having to cope with it. God bless.)

A quick request for a little clear lung~ma for my mother. I just made a quick trip over to her side of the state because she is in the hospital with pneumonia. Never a good thing since she is in her 80’s. She is upset because she was scheduled to come see me tomorrow for a jazz show on my side. (we live 140 miles apart)

I'll pop into Natter with an update after I see her. Thanks in advance for the good thoughts.

Hi, this is Susan W.'s DH, who's never posted here, but anyway.

Here's the current PTBNL news: We went into the hospital on Saturday morning and have been trying to induce since then. It's been a lot of fun -- in the way that attending a seder with Mel Gibson would be fun.

We've now been in hospital for 34 hours, and Susan is only 4cm dilated. They kept increasing the pitocin all day long until she was having brutal contractions every couple of minutes. Unfortunately, it hasn't helped with her dilation, and since she didn't get a lot of sleep last night from the early contractions caused by the prostaglandin gel, she was completely wiped and hellaciously frustrated.

After some discussion with the midwife we've shut things down for the night -- no more pitocin, Happy Pill (TM) for Susan, and start fresh tomorrow with some water breaking. PTBNL is in great shape. Heck, she's in better shape than her mother. I'm hanging in being a guy and trying to advocate for her in between my snarky comments.

So, that ma thing you guys talk about, we need some right now. Thanks.