Ok, finally worked my way through the backlog. New photos of Ryan! They start from here: [link]

A couple of highlights, teasers if you will: [link]

The Hunger overtakes him: [link]

Resistance? Still futile. [link]

If you could spare a little starting~ma for DH, that would be great. Right now, they're stuck in NC (Elizabeth City Airport) because the APU on the jet is not cooperating. If they can't fix it themselves, they'll be there until morning when the FBO reopens.

edit: Four hours--and a whole lotta ~ma later--it magically started. They were so eager to get home they had the throttle at 102% flying at 548 knots. They made it from Elizabeth City, NC to Georgetown, DE in 14 minutes. Now to tear the jet apart to figure out what the hell is going on...but not tonight. They just want to drive home and get some sleep. Thanks again everyone! We should figure out how to bottle this stuff.

After a long time, I started a new LJ under Pharaby.

Please be to be befriending me, so I can write more.

OK, thanks!

I'll be going mostly dark again for a while (not that I've been super-talky any time recently). I'm still trying to sort through a lot of really bad emotional stuff, and I just haven't felt at home here (or anywhere) for a while now.

My email inbox will always be glad to see Buffista pixels, and if I ever get a phone again, I'll be sure to let people know what it is.

We put Max to sleep yesterday. He was 12.

We took him to the hospital on Friday because he was no longer able to walk. The hospital found that he was diabetic (glucose level over 500 and went over 600 later that day), and his already-bad liver values became terrible. By Saturday morning, it looked clear that he no longer had a chance, but we decided to give him one more day. By Saturday night, he began to have difficulty breathing.

We brought him home on Sunday, and the vet agreed to come to our house so Max could end it at home. When Max got home, he threw up and started convulsing and moaning in pain. We calmed him down with a dose of his pain medicine (thank God for Buprenex) and waited with him for the vet. The vet put him to sleep while Hubs and I petted him and told him how much we loved him.

Did I ever mention the Buffista connection with how we adopted Max and his sister, Marie? We planned to go to the NOLA F2F, and our regular cat sitter couldn't make it that weekend. We decided to check out a local boarder. While the boarder was showing us the facilities, they introduced us to two Himalayans that had been abandoned there a year earlier. Max took one look at us, walked to the front of the cage, and said, "O hai. Yoo iz owr hoominz naow." And, well, we couldn't resist.

A lttle it's-ok-ma for my teammate La Femme Assbeata. I crashed into her tonight at practice and am now at the ER with her. She may have a dislocated shoulder.

Update: No dislocation but her arm is broken. She'll be ok but some quick healing~ma.

This is a ~ma request for a friend of the board who's going through a swirl of of things with uncertain and possibly bad outcomes.

Some "it's just breast disease"~ma, or even "it's actually nothing"~ma would be awesome.

And then maybe a dash of "parental health and not dying"~ma, with a large handful of "other parent coping"~ma.

It's been a helluva autumn.

My beloved aunt is unable to eat any solid foods due to her epiglottis not working. Hope that the tests today show why and offer an easy fix.

My church does a Holiday ExtravaGANZA every year and a lot of the money raised goes to missions (some being: Malaria work in Africa, a school and orphanage in Sierra Leone, weekly food for a local homeless mission, a local women and children's shelter) - I am helping to gather items for the silent auction and am casting a wide wide net in the hopes of bringing in some items that may not be regular features. If you have items, or if you work for a company that has product that it donates for tax write-offs, please contact me. Placards listing the donor will be by each item. Thanks.