faster pussycat... type! type!

You're dying to know, aren't you? I am a beautiful unicorn!! But look, I have also a Shadow Creature! Take the quiz yourself.

Your Primary Mythical Creature

Air Types
The main strength of the Air types is intellect. The second element indicates the most probable focus for this intellectual activity.

Unicorn
Air with Water

Astrologically associated with Gemini and the Third House

Unicorn types are very concerned with the communication of ideas. They are witty and likeable but can also be quite shy. They are easily bored and easily distracted, and may seem unpredictable and superficial for this reason. Actually they are very deep and are usually trying to find the connections between the people and things around them. They are highly imaginative but not very practical. They love knowledge for its own sake and are not concerned about putting it to use. They are socially astute and sensitive to others’ feelings, but may still appear somewhat aloof. They are drawn to grand schemes for unifying people but these often don’t extend beyond the initial idea. Very logical and rational, Unicorn types are also unconventional and even bizarre. Other people may regard them as fey or just strange.

Your Shadow Creature

Earth Types
All the Earth types have problems relating to productivity and stability. The weakest element indicates the main focus of these problems.

Wodwose
Earth and Fire

This shadow is beset by inertia and a feeling of hopelessness and stagnation. They are prone to depression linked to apparently insuperable odds. They exhibit an attitude of defeat that is betrayed by their fatalism and pessimism. They often find themselves trapped in a rut of grinding routine. They have no energy or sense of direction. They often alienate others because of their negativity and narrow outlook and because they feel anger and resentment toward them. Passive aggression is used to good effect. They are self-neglectful of their physical needs although they may binge on unhealthy foods and substances. The biggest obstacle of weak Fire is to overcome anger and aggression; the biggest obstacle of weak Earth is to overcome self-centeredness and greed.

Admit it, you regard me as fey or just strange.

Posted by jodi at 18h23 | Permalink | Comments (8)

Well, I finished my fifty thousand words. I put them all in a row, with punctuation and capitalization and such. These words, while not created by me, are arranged in a particular order that came only from my brain. The decision to put commas, periods, quotation marks, question marks, exclamation points and even the occasional semicolon was mine, and mine alone. The images and ideas that come to mind, when one reads these words in their particular order, are mostly lies and fabrications. They never happened. If they did, they did not happen the way I portrayed them. Any resemblance to people or events is purely coincidental.

If all that makes a story, I guess I wrote one.

Posted by jodi at 15h19 | Permalink | Comments (2)

is 44,168, currently. Because today, and yesterday, I wrote like a fiend. But it's babble. At this point, I'm just filling space in my story editor, you know? I don't want to fail. and I won't. I'll have 50k by the end of the month. But it's not exactly a win, either. I did not do as well as I did last year.

Oh well. No reason I can't write a story in any other month, as well.

Posted by jodi at 22h18 | Permalink | Comments (2)

My mom gave me the turkey liver, to bring home for Pru. And now it's sitting on the kitchen floor, since she knocked it off it's little plate. I guess I have to pick it up. blech. But here is a picture of Pru, "helping" me with my Tarot card puzzle.

Posted by jodi at 22h10 | Permalink | Comments (4)

NaNoWriMo donations have exceeded the $60,000 goal, and it's not even the end of the month! Which means that they've raised enough money to fund three new libraries for children in Cambodia. How cool is that?

guh... I'm still full!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by jodi at 21h33 | Permalink

The are installing the new sewer line. I'm pretty excited about it. Because they are professionals, and have all sorts of fancy machines, they do not have to dig a trench the entire way. Just a hole by the house, and then a gigantic hole by the curb, next to the street. Unfortunately, a lovely magnolia tree had to be sacrificed. In reality, the roots of the tree were probably the cause of the problem. We wanted to save the tree, but it was not possible.

I am a huge fan of trees. It's one of the reasons I live here. And I hate to see a good tree die. I'm saddened.

click for larger image. that's my stepdad next to the tree.

Rest in peace, sweet magnolia tree.

Posted by jodi at 13h45 | Permalink | Comments (6)

i've been wanting to do some red for a long time. Using the bigger banner babe made that possible. The smaller version was free, and it was hard to select all the tiny pixels of the bikini to change colors. So I broke down and bought the image, and it's much easier now. And she's bigger!!

Cuz.... size matters.

Posted by jodi at 13h29 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Well, after hours of messing around, I finally got my blog converted over to MovableType 3.x compliant styles and tags. And now the TypeKey link is working, so if you have one, you can log in when you make comments, and you won't have to wait for me to approve them. Again, I think it's a pretty safe thing to sign up for. And once you have an ID, you can use it on any MT 3.x style blog that requires one.

Since they changed so many things in the style sheet, I couldn't make it look exactly like it did before. But it's close enough, right? I'm not CSS expert, I'm self taught and I learn by messing around. And I've done plenty of that over the last few days. Now I just have to fix up the booklist page, and I can get started on Satan's Bookclub!

What do you think the chances are of me winning NaNoWriMo this year? Outlook not good.

Posted by jodi at 10h07 | Permalink

yeah, i know. i've been messing with things. but i can't fix it right now. i have to pay attention to my day job. the one that pays me.

Posted by jodi at 11h03 | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few brief updates you need to be aware of:

The sewer line will not be fixed until Saturday, we are scheduled to return to normal plumbing functions by the end of that day.

EvilDeb is working from home today. She had a doctor's appointment this afternoon to have some novocain shot in her head. Somehow, this is supposed to help them devise a treatment plan for her neck arthritis. She has arthritis in the neck cuz she's getting old. There's not a lot you can do about that. So I think they shot her in the head with a bunch of novocain in order to help her not whine so much about it. Look... I don't know why they did it, all I know is, she couldn't eat or drink this morning before the "procedure" and they had to wheel her out in a wheelchair and "it was actually necessary." Oh, and the drugs they gave her were "excellent," and she's feeling very woozy. And her neck is numb. So my theory about the whining might be correct. She certainly doesn't seem to be complaining right now.

And, finally, in a segment we like to call "Like EvilMother, Like EvilSon," while chatting with me this morning, EvilDeb said that Number One Son, FairlyEvilJacob, was drinking a glass of water only to see a giant spider floating in it. Apparently, he almost barfed. Which totally counts. "Almost" counts in barfing and horseshoes. I guess the giant spider dropped from the sky, into his glass of water. I don't think he actually sipped the spider. However, I enjoyed that story. Brought back memories.

Posted by jodi at 14h35 | Permalink | Comments (15)

Technically, I suppose I could take a shower. As long as I didn't let the water drain. We typically call that a bath, don't we? Oooo, and then I could bail the water out with a bucket!! Fun! You should always try to look on the positive side of things, you know.

Anyway, Ron's getting estimates. Sigh.

Posted by jodi at 16h11 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, the booklist page is pretty much rebuilt. The only thing missing is the audio book section. But all the books I've read since November 03 are listed there. Give or take. I'm sure a few (many) slip through the cracks. Additionally, I have just finished entering in all the books that are on, or around my bookshelf in Delicious Library. Total is 370. It seems like it should be more. I blame my love of the Library.

Posted by jodi at 19h55 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have so little faith in technical support. You know why? Because I deal with it every day. I suppose I'm jaded. In the same way a doctor probably makes a bad patient, I make a bad technical support customer. I would like to get on the line and just demand a senior tech from the get go. I'd like to just interrupt their little speech and say "umm... yeah, I use a mac, so go ahead and transfer me, because you aren't going to be able to help me."

Riddle me this, if I've just signed up for a new ISP and DSL service, and this service, unlike every other service I've used, is occasionally unable to connect to a server via an email program, a server that is fully functional and accessible via a browser.... who's support issue is this? The host of the fully functional web server? Or the ISP/DSL service provider. Yeah, that's what I thought too. I mean they didn't even have me ping the server to verify functionality or check my Authentication settings!!! Amateurs!! [not that it was necessary, I've done all those things. It's just... meh.]

Posted by jodi at 18h54 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, it's bad news, kids, in the flushing department. We are going to have to have the side lines replaced. This is the line that runs from the house, under the driveway, across the front lawn, under the roots of several very tall pine trees, and out to the main line, which is run by the city. Ron is trés unhappy about it. All I hear, when I speak to him, is "thousands of dollars thousands of dollars sigh grumble money anger." Which is easy for him to say, because he can use water in his place up in Anacortes. Actually, it's not easy for him to say. It's apparently very upsetting. I know it would be to me. Which is why I do not own a home. I am too irresponsible to be able to handle the expensive emergencies that could come up. Like this one. I have no idea how much this is going to cost. Or when it will be done. Hopefully this week. I'm running out of clean dishes.

The good news is, garbage service will resume on Thursday! I've been living on only yard waste and recycling for the past three weeks. Of course, if someone had told me that food waste, and food soiled paper, count as "yard waste" in this town, it would have helped a little bit. We've got quite the little Waste Management plan going in my county, actually. All the recycling in one big blue can. And more stuff than you think can go into "yard waste," which is a big black can. But that's not good enough, when you have kitty litter waste. And various garbages created just by being a girl. My green garbage can will be delivered on Thursday. Yay! I'm going to run around the house and separate all my waste and put it into the appropriate can or temporary large plastic bag!

Trash day has never made me so happy.

Posted by jodi at 14h32 | Permalink

"I'm happy to take this offline and drive a strategy around this."

See, now I find that odd. Because I've heard that Strategy's are a pain to drive.... around anything. Lack of responsiveness, annoying torque steer, darty acceleration, and a vague off center feel. Frankly, I like something with a sportier ride.

Posted by jodi at 13h06 | Permalink

Posted by jodi at 19h12 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sewers are something you probably take for granted. Until you don't have one. Then, friends, you'll understand the genius that is indoor plumbing. Our adventure in sewers begins Friday night, when I decided to run a load of darks, in the washing machine. I heard strange gurgling noises. I had heard them before, when I washed clothes. I wasn't sure why I could hear what was going on in the pipes so clearly, it seemed odd. After I put the clothes in the dryer, I was getting ready for bed, and noticed that there was about two or three inches of blue tinted cold water in the bathtub. I had noticed that the tub was slow draining, since I moved in, but I took a shower the night before. And that was really slow draining. And why was it blue?

The next morning, it was all drained out, I cleaned the lint out of the tub and took a quick shower. When Ron came over that afternoon, to work on the roof, I told him about the shower. And the blue wash water, and the lint. Unfortunately, I did not tell him before he flushed his toilet and it overflowed in his bathroom. I didn't know!! My toilet had worked fine! I didn't know we had toilet issues! While I was at the movies with Louise, he called a plumber.

I got home late that night to a note that read "bad sewage issues. Do not flush, shower or wash clothes. Plumber will be back on Monday to finish. Expensive problem!" Since then, I've been doing my best to use off site toilets. I worked from home today, and the plumber was here for about 4 hours trying to unstuck whatever is stuck. Couldn't do it. Ran a camera down the pipes as far as he could go, didn't find anything, above water at least. So tomorrow, I am working from home again, because the city has to come out and run a "tv" down the "mainline." In which they can see as far as 7 feet onto our portion of the line. They will determine if it's on their part, and if not, I call the plumber back in.

I have to tell you, when they explain these things to me, I hear "blah blah tv blah blah main line blah sewer blah blah blah blah tree roots blah blah man hole blah blah." And it all translates into "no shower for you, smelly girl!!"

Posted by jodi at 15h46 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Oh.. you guys you guys you guys! The most wonderful thing came out today. Delicious Monster's Delicious Library!! And it is delicious! I boxed up some of my books and put them in the garage this weekend. Only a few of them. Before I did that, I wrote down the titles and ISBN numbers. Because I am that much of a bookie. Anyway, I just entered in all the books, indicated their location in the info, and even created special bookshelves to show what was in box A and box B. Don't think I won't be adding a special shelf just for Satan's bookclub books. It has a borrower / checkout feature. So I can keep track of which books I loan to Louise.

If I had an iSight, I could scan the barcodes directly. If I had one. I wonder why I don't have one. I should. Don't you think? I could have a jodicam.

Oh, by the way, it syncs up to my iPod, so I can carry my library around with me. sigh. It's so beeyoo-ti-ful.

Posted by jodi at 19h33 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I started back to work today. And I mean that in the loosest sense. Once I made my way through the 600+ emails I had, I was pretty lost. I asked EvilDeb what is was I did every day, that I remembered being busy. She doesn't know. I figure that whatever it was I did, it was top secret. Nobody else knows, and I didn't write it down. Perhaps, even now, a communique is on it's way, to tell me of my next mission. Should I chose to accept it.

River, Princess Gwendolyn (aka: Princess Pancake) cannot poison people! She is a good princess! She might fall prey to some poisoning plots, however. But no snake bites! Oh my god... none of those terrible snakes. I cannot read any more about them and still keep my "I'm not afraid of snakes" philosophy. What P.G. does need, however, is an animal companion, on her quest. A talking animal companion. I'm currently open to suggestions. I'm leaning towards monkey. I can tell you right now, no birds. Maybe she'll have a snake!

Posted by jodi at 12h55 | Permalink | Comments (3)

My NaNoWriMo project is going poorly. I’ve started and quit about three stories so far. I’ve got about 3700 words of crap. Give or take. But I am completely uninspired. Which lead to some random, free form typing. Which is how we got the story of Princess Pancake. In which our heroine goes off in search of a lost library book, her real parents, and breakfast. Princess Gwendolyn, who is told, by her evil eldest brother Prince Assclown, that she is adopted, and not a real princess. The whole thing is fairly surreal, because I was having such a hard time sticking to any one story. I just thought that if I let Princess Gwendolyn do whatever she wanted, I could probably make 50 thousand words. I don’t want to fail, just because I seem I can’t stick to my original idea. Which was a mystery, and something I still want to work on. Especially since I’ve learned so much about poisons. (Although, I had to quit reading about all the evil snake bites, because they were freaking me out. I’m not afraid of snakes, but if I kept reading that section, I’d probably never leave the house. Certainly never go to Africa or the Amazon. eeek.) However, poisons are pretty cool. And just so you know, everything is poisonous. Everything. So don’t eat anything, touch anything, breath in anything, or drink anything. Or let anything bite you, for god's sake!

My word count is 4,000. I'm woefully behind. I should have at least three times that.

Posted by jodi at 11h27 | Permalink | Comments (5)

Last day of sabbatical. I guess I was soooo excited I couldn't sleep. I woke up at five. I tried and tried to go back to sleep. I was even too restless to just lie there, all snuggly in my comforters. I don't mind going back to work tomorrow. It's probably time. I'm going to run out of money if I don't. It's going to be hard, tho. After a week of vacation, it's hard enough for me to get back into the swing of things, I don't know what three weeks off is going to do to me. After vacations, I feel sort of like someone coming out of a dark cave, into the light, for the first time in a long time. Blinking and blurry, rubbing my eyes... disoriented. Sort of like... being born. Yes, coming back from vacation is a lot like birth, leaving the soft, comforting, dark womb for the bright, sterile, chaotic hospital room. Only your head isn't all squished into a point. Hopefully.

My estimation is that it takes one day for each week you are off, to recover and get back into the swing of things.

Posted by jodi at 7h07 | Permalink | Comments (1)

My stepdad just came in with his girlfriend's dog. It's a fluffy type dog, white, with a fancy haircut.. a bichon? Whatever.* I knew it probably wasn't the best idea, because Pru has never been around a dog before. And I warned him, that she wasn't going to like it. At first, when Ron was holding the dog, Pru sorta sniffed at him. I thought that when Ron let the dog go, Pru would bolt for my room, but she stood her ground. I was standing in the kitchen, going through some mail, watching them. Whenever the dog approached, Pru arched up and started hissing and pfftzing. She also made this terrible wail that sounded scared. But she didn't act scared. She acted wary. Turns out, the wailing sound merely means, "If you come one step closer, I will apply my shiv-like claws to your stupid dog face. Be warned, mutt." I could only assume that by leaving the dog running around, and going about his business, Ron expected the two of them to work it out. And work it out she did.

Hiss! Pftz-pfftz!!

*I'm not the fluffy pedigree dog with a fancy haircut type. I'm more of your mixed breed or lab type dog type.

Posted by jodi at 11h29 | Permalink

I've been without internet since Sunday! Yes! It was horrible and scary. Because now I desperately need to look up the rules, regulations and laws concerning my immigration to Canada. Am I immigrating or emigrating? I'm immigrating to Canada, I'm emigrating from the US. It doesn't have to be Canada, per se, but that does seem the closets and most convenient for me. Plus, I know the language.

Or I could just stick around for the next four years and fight for my right to chose, my free speech, my right to read whatever I want, my right to marry whomever I want, my right to expect the church to keep out of the state, and just about everything else that made me happy to be American. Oy. Just thinking about it makes me tired. But... I guess we have work to do for the next four years.

Posted by jodi at 15h52 | Permalink | Comments (2)