Before you panic, I'm fine.

I did take a small detour on the way home from Gulf Wars to stay a day in the lovely facilities at the Lake Charles Memorial Hospital. Kinda like a very expensive hotel with freaky spa services. I had a "cardiac event." As much as that sounds like some fundraiser for a charity, it seems that's what happens if you combine stress, photoreactive medications & too much sun, asthma & too much pollen/dirt, and well, stress.
.

It wasn't a heart attack. No damage, EKG good, cholesterol fantastic. It was a spasm. I cooperatively re-created the "event" for the doctors some hours after they admitted me just to make sure. Much fun was had. I spent most of a day wired for sound hooked up to monitors, x-rayed, drained repeatedly of blood and other fluids, shot up with blood thinners, and generally scrutinized for ghastly things like pulmonary embolisms and other art projects I'm not authorized to create. I'm also certified as not diabetic, in case I wanted to know. Wheee.

So they said NOOOO stress hahahahahahahaha *coff.* I'm happily tranqued the hell up and the cat is loving the juice out of me.

My husband and Wolfram (make that the newly minted LORD Wolfram) were awesome. I married an Eagle Scout, and Wolfram is the calmest down & tactical dude in an emergency (who knew?). Rock on, dudes. And thank you.

Some selections from txts on the road for your reading enjoyment:
Friend One: So, on the no stress, did you laugh at them?
Me: Kinda. They didn't like the crazy laugh so I just laid down on the horrible bed thingy.
Friend One: LMAO
Me: Oh sure u laugh now its not so fun when Death tries to sqeeze my head off like the top of a Capri Sun drink bag fuck u Death getcher own goddamn capri sun I'm still using this bag get on witcher bony self go on git
Friend One: OMFG LMAO it hurts

Friend Two: Breathe and take things one at a time
Me: Oh hell I may get myself some liquor, go on a bender, lock myself in the house and take a few weeks for myself doing nothing but watch cartoons on cable buck naked with the cat, screaming "where's yer god now, motherfuckers?"
Friend Two: Jack says take video.

I have this tarot app on my phone, pops up a card of the day every day. The day I was in the hospital? Three of Swords. Sure, funny as a heart att--- crap, now I gotta find a new phrase. ;)

Because the Petit Four adventure continues. I think even if the snack cake industry recovers, I like mine better. There's some indications my friends may feel the same way. :) In any case, they bravely are eating the experimentations, so I shall bravely carry on.

( Cut for calorie consumptionCollapse )

or in my case, these [expletive deleted] burrs from the wasteland that was once our front yard.

Ten years of drought in Central Texas and our lawn is kinda like a tan crusty mat of Texas sand burrs. Looks just fine, actually. But over the past few years, those little fuckers have won the war and are finally in everything in the house. Throw rugs, upholstery, curtains, blankets, SOCKS, shoe soles, mats, towels, pants, chairs, ugh, you name it, you touch it, it's got sand burrs in it. I pick them off before I do the laundry. I pick them off after I do the laundry. I pick them off while I'm putting the laundry away. I pick them off when I'm getting dressed. I pick them off when I step on one and yell. I sweep them off the tile. They're an army of invasive little knives.

The jokes on them, though. They'll never sprout on the tile, so their journey to spread their seed far and wide was thwarted. Ha! Screw you, sand burrs. Unless they've taken over the landfill where my trash goes, in which case I guess they win. Dammit.

It seems I have acquired a "frozen shoulder."

I am choosing to celebrate the fact that I do not need surgery for it. In the meantime, if I move my arm the wrong way (and by "the wrong way," I mean "in any way useful to me") sharp pain so intense shoots through me and whites out my vision. What a splendid undocumented feature. This has been going on for the last two months. My hair is a fantastic ratty mess because I can't reach up to do it. Fortunately, everyone who has encountered me in recent months is far too polite to mention it. That, and I think it's not too different from the way I usually wear it.

I have also acquired awesome new skills, like the ability to put on a shirt without moving my right arm at all. This will come in handy should I ever want to compete on some obscure Japanese game show. I have discovered it is possible to drive a stick shift by performing a jaunty little dance in the driver's seat. I shall not share with you strange gymnastics in the shower that involve the use of a long-handled bath brush. Unless I just did. Hmm.

I am tired of collecting medical conditions, and I'd like to move on to Faberge eggs.

"Athiest: Most athy. More than just athier, but the superlative athiest. The highest athy one can achieve. Super athy at its best. Total athy win."

Hey, just because I make fun of someone's spelling or grammar doesn't mean I don't respect their religious beliefs or lack thereof. I once tried to beat my first husband to death with the coupon insert from the Sunday paper because he simply wouldn't use the subjunctive case properly. Don't read more into my comments than that. Kthxbai.

Recently, inexplicably, and ironically, I developed a four-box-a-week jones for Zingers. I did not believe that Hostess would actually go under. Ha. I still believe that America won't stand for the interruption in its critical Twinkie supply, and that someone will buy out the recipes and start making them again. In the meantime, of course, there seems to be both no rehab available nor really necessary.

I've taken to making petit fours, a delight of my childhood near New Jersey Italian bakeries. Because if I have to make little cakey goodness, there's no point in aiming for crap. Sure, it's fine for guilty pleasures, scarfing at midnight out of the box watching terrible tv. That's one thing. But if it's all a pain in the ass to make, it might as well be worth it. My friends are being awesome good sports at eating the beta versions. I loves them for it. <3 I'll post more iterations as they manifest.

( Cakey porn behind the cut....Collapse )

For the love of God, stop discussing the acts of the lunatic fringe as if they need to be addressed.

You can find idiots who want to secede from the Union in every state -- yes, even yours -- they're on the shelf next to the militia nuts. They've been hatching their crack monkey plots in their compounds or wherever. They just feel empowered enough to come out of the woodwork because previously rational people are now interacting with them. STOP THAT SHIT.

While you're at it, stop listening to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and all the other hate-oriented, nonsense-spewing dipshits who wouldn't have any play in a rational world either if sanity came up for air. SERIOUSLY, QUIT IT.
( I'll keep going...Collapse )

A Facebook friend of mine in Croatia posted this, which I think is hilarious. Not so much because it's really a funny joke, but because I recognized it without knowing Serbian so much. Good Lord, do I know the punchlines to so many stupid jokes?

Razgovaraju verenica, ljubavnica i domaćica o seksu, pa se dogovore da obuku crnu kožnu seksi odeću te tako iznenade svaka svog partnera.
Nakon nekoliko dana sastanu se ponovo.
Verenica: - "Joj kad me je video rekao je ženim te odmah i navalio."
Ljubavnica: - "Otišla sam u kancelariju, razgrnula mantil i kad me je video, prestao je raditi i navalio."
Domaćica (25 godina u braku): - "Ja obukla sve crno seksi, stojim kraj vrata, a muž otvori vrata, gleda i reče: "Betmene, šta je za večeru?"

Perhaps some of my Russian friends can translate the following for me? I would be very grateful. :)


from context and codebreaking, I got this

HepeA = front view
CNHHa = back view
Kpon = top/exploded view

Please excuse my pathetic excuse for Cyrillic. If I knew how to use Cyrillic characters, I'd have typed this into Babelfish or something already and not necessarily bothered all of you.

Apmrk = essentially Coat One, of some kind
3nHyN = Coat two

Can anybody tell me what kinds of coats these are?