I have been doing a shit ton of work today. Taking a break though because I just shocked myself changing out a light fixture. My poorly labeled and also just STUPID breakers. The back porch light, NOT on the same breaker and the back of house light LESS THAN 5 FEET AWAY!! I had test the outlet, but it seems one set of wires was not connected well, so I got a false read. anyhoo - scared the shit out of me - outside alone on the ladder. no lectures please. The arm tingles a bit, so I am taking a break. maybe wine.

Consuela, is the amount of help your mother needs standard for a non-nursing home? I don't know how these things work. But if she's frustrated by what can and can't be done, is she sufficiently out of touch that being able to leave her room, for instance, would make up for anything? I know, long shot.

I am taking a break. maybe wine.

Will wine increase your conductivity?

I have been spending time on deviantart looking at pictures created with ballpoint pens. I had a pretty good time with them, but just using one colour. I should not be surprised at any medium--people are painting beautiful things with tea, how is a pen a surprising tool? Anyway...this woman's art is currently making me cheat on my reluctance towards photorealistic art. Wading around is blowing my mind, inspiring me, and awing me in rotating order.

I guess I see what Nick Denton's angle is with using commenter content. First off--it's free, and that's attractively priced. Our attitude to copy-editing and fact-checking is so far more thorough than most of his employees, and...people like it that a commenter wrote something. Comments are reasonably nice, and the first review of mine they used got twice the traffic of the previous one they wrote (I don't expect the last one will). I honestly thought people would be put off by the process, not nice about it. Then again, it's Supernatural.

Yeeks! I'm in the backyard, seriously contemplating setting fire to it. Ash makes good fertilizer, right?

Controlled burns are useful in a variety of circumstances.

Glad you are okay, msbelle! Wine sounds like a good idea. Yikes!

That people can produce visual art at all is so amazing to me that it is hard for me to judge degrees of amazingness. I would never have guessed those were ball point pen, though.

I'm pretty sure Jilli and Cass would turn up to help you if you just asked, Theodosia.

We're really trying to avoid putting Mom into a nursing home. Her medical problems do not demand that kind of care, the only real issues here are her mobility and the dementia. Also, she has always insisted she wouldn't go into a nursing home and we know it will freak her the fuck out if we try it.

I understand not wanting to put her in a nursing home. But mobility and dementia are real, serious issues; eventually it will reach a point where a facility that's not a nursing home won't be able to handle it. Don't avoid looking for one. Believe me, it'll be a relief to already have one chosen, and maybe paperwork done and a room waiting, before the day when she needs it. I am so sorry. This is almost exactly what we went through with my mom, and it is so very hard.

If only! I'm contemplating going down to the day laborer corner and bargaining for a couple guys for an hour or two. All they'd have to do is pull up vines and dig out roots.

If only my Spanish were better.

That people can produce visual art at all is so amazing to me that it is hard for me to judge degrees f amzingness. I would never have guessed those were ball point pen, though.

I don't understand how people sing, much less write music--fuck I am totally random at putting colour onto paper. But I can put people on paper, and it's really quite fun. Still, singing would get me more sex, I think. That and being a slut.

I've found cheap pens to be ridiculously expressive in the past few months--between Bic ballppints (my favourite as well as hers, but I only work in black) and Pilot and Uniball rollerballs, it's a whole new world. But the full palette she's expressing is *amazing*--this was a "daily deviation" which means it was picked as the best of the site, which is no mean feat--there are some crazy CRAZY good people there. I need to take more advantage of it as a resource and scoop up all the learning I can.

I'm trying to not go to my friendly neighbourhood Staples and find the pens that artist said she uses. The reason I can't do that are not the materials. But how can I practice if I don't have them? And they're so cheap! (But they are scented--I wonder what the alternatives are...)

Shit, I'm totally going. Kinda killing time while I wait for butter to soften for the cookie press cookies I somehow woke up convinced I had to make (despite having made another iteration of working out my Platonic oatmeal cookies yesterday). I know I can soften them in the microwave, but I feel this is less risky. The last time I did it the butter was just a teeny bit too soft--I need to experiment with that. Why do I have a preset for softening cream cheese (and ice cream) but not butter? PRIORITIES, Sharp!

I double-checked the email from my sister. Her friend's husband was not at fault in the fatal accident, but although that's remarkably good, it can't take away the residual sensation having been involved in something where someone died, right there, as a result of...there but for the grace of momentum go I in any number of instances. They're not the richest (okay, really scraping by) so the illusion that totalling gets you a replacement anything (much less what sounds like a work-related (delivery) vehicle) probably lasted all of zero point zero negative zero seconds.

Hmm. In my hunt for random recipe caches this morning (fruitful!) I found some of the training materials from working at Countrywide. Those people were serious about process and education. I wish my current employers had the same kind of money to throw at those things, instead of mostly intentions, but then again, one does not want them to get money in similar (impermanent) scenarios. I need to remember to take the course book on productivity enhancement through defect-free development--lovely pipe dream, I wonder what we can crib from that...

Those ballpoint pen drawings are unbelievable.

Random question: we found a driver's license in our front yard this morning -- what should we do? It doesn't expire until 2016. Ohio's licenses have the person's address on them, so we could put it in the mail, BUT that assumes that (1) the person hasn't moved and (2) it's not a fake.

Any ideas? We might wait until Monday and call the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.