kitt79

Sooooo do I have to give LJ moneys in order to not see the stupid pop-up-ad-that-isn't-a-pop-up-so-my-ad-blocker-can't-stop-it ?

We went to the bird fair today and I bought Oy a pretty little orange head female :). And 2 society finches to keep Milly company when I have to take her out of the cage to make room for the happy couple. They are hopping around chirping excitedly now. I did buy them from one of the more expensive vendors; the cheaper ones all looked a little shady. I paid $60 for the gouldian and $9 for each society - the cheap vendor was asking $35-40 per gouldian but they were all small, skinny, and many of their birds looked kind of beat up and stressed out. I decided it was worth $20 for the peace of mind -- these guys are big and healthy. We also got a huge bag of seed that should last us at least 6 months if not a year, enough cuttlebone to keep Merlin happy for ages, and some perches and toys. Winry had a good time seeing all the birds, too.

Also, the "splat" of my treefrog jumping onto her head a few minutes ago was absolutely priceless.

I'm about to give up for the night, as it's late and baby is always the ticking time bomb of FEED/SLEEP/DIAPER/TEETHING.

I have disabled all my addons (even though the problem exists in Firefox, IE, and SeaMonkey).

I ran spybot, avg, malwarebytes, vundofix. Spybot found some things, but nothing major, and nothing that seems to have fixed my problem.

I updated windows, avg, java, and flash.

I rebooted everything multiple times.

I cleared my cookies, caches, history.

I can sometimes load the login page to gmail -- but after logging in, if I click anything in my inbox it simply times out.

I can sometimes login to facebook as well, but once in, I can't update my status or get to anything else (although, oddly enough, an app -- Realm of Empires -- worked for me for about 10 minutes).

Myspace, livejournal, and every other site I have tried seem to be working just fine.

Apologies to Tamane for apparently lacking the google-fu, but all my searches have come up empty. Well, not empty, but not right.

I'm down to wondering if it's the hub or wired bit of the router; Rist's laptop loads things fine via wireless connection. I still strongly suspect Something Bad has possessed my computer, more than anything, but I can't find anything.

Grrrrr... my computer is making me sad.

Facebook logs in but then I can't do anything before "oops, facebook is experiencing problems..."this is making me crazy! I can browse most sites but gmail will only occasionally load my inbox, and once i'm there i can't do anything and geta message about internet connectivity problems. i have run vundofix, updated and run avg, updated java, updated windows, rebooted three times, rebooted the modem and router twice, cleared my cookies and history. This also happens in IE.

I blame the rum...

Completely forgot the hour+ of rehearsal and then the waiting in line and then the actual world record breaking attempt at Thriller Sunday night!

It was fun! I was sore!

Well DragonCon has come and gone. It's always hard coming back down, and I think this year even more so because with an 8 month old, it's not like I can sleep for a full day ;-).

I got there with Winry early Thursday and checked in while William went home for more people transporting fun. We stowed our luggage and joined the registration line -- mercifully short at 2 pm on Thursday, thank goodness they opened it early. I even picked up William's badge, since I had his ID and postcard. I have video of people running through the switchback lines... it only took us about 30 min. (Ticketmaster was apparently much much longer.) On return to the room we took some photos of our view (we were on the first floor so right there over the lobby where all the action is!). We visited Holly at the Cruxshadows booth for a bit. Dinner was at Mama Ninfa's (mexican), and I had celebratory beer. Winry had celebratory cheese and bits of fajita.

We attempted to go to Voltaire's show at 12:30, but Winry was very unnerved by the lights, darkness, sounds, etc. I ended up leaving William inside, chatting with a security person for a few, then going back to the room. We still ended up staying up til 3.

Friday morning we made our way to lunch (yes, we slept that late). Managed to meet with MK and some others in the food court and got some french fries for the little one, who happily grabbed everything in sight until Someone scared her with a duffel bag. You know who you are. After that it was downhill in terms of baby mood. We went back and sat up in the Pulse loft and people watched until Holly got into her costume. Various photos were taken with Cruxshadows and people stopped to aww at the baby, who was getting fussier by the moment with all the flashing lights and crowds. She was at her wit's end by the time Nana and Grandpa showed up to save her from us freaks.

After Winry went home we sort of drifted off wondering what to do with ourselves, being baby-free. We finally decided to go to a dealer's room, and got about 2/3rds of the way through before they closed. (I bought an Om necklace.) We went back to the room to prepare for dinner, which ended up being Azio's. (With....Pam, Bill, Harry, Colt, MK...is that it? Friday is so fuzzy....) After a stop by the room for... refreshments...we went to the Abney Park show, and caught a little bit of Weep beforehand too. I danced happily until a bellydancer tried to get me to join her, which intimidated me into sitting down. AP played at 1:30am so it was again quite late when we got to bed, probably 4. Ish.

Saturday we again graced the food court with our presence (after I made a pit stop to get Winry's LFG onesie), stopped at CXS for more photos, and hit the Art Show. I liked the way they did it this year; they seemed to have more room, and the print shop was contained within the room in such a way that lines didn't form in awkward places. I bid on two prints I liked, and drooled over some things I couldn't afford to bid on. Someday. Back to the Marriott where William went up to the room for a bit while I went shopping, finishing off the other two dealer room areas. I bought a tail to match my cat ears. Dinner was the Metro Cafe, a 24-hour diner, and then after a stop by the room for more refreshments, we got in line for CXS. Met some friendly old-school goths in line, and later they brought me more refreshments. Hooray for new friends. The show was awesome, as always, and although Holly was pretty critical of herself, she did fine. One of her flags flew off during Dragonfly, which was funny enough by itself, but which caused Jessica to crack up, which in turn made at least William and me crack up... ah, the funny. After CXS we returned to the booth to hang out with them and take random photos, until 4 or 5 am... then we went on an adventure to the 47th floor, where Jason dropped balloons towards the Pulse loft... we attracted an audience for a few minutes, but eventually all gave up and went to bed around 6.

Sunday we got up quite late. Lunch at the food court. A second swipe at the art show. Returned to the dealer's room, bought ears that matched my tail better. Bought some cat-eye contacts to complete the ensemble, but didn't put them in until later that night. Dinner was Azio's yet again with some guildies and others, and we discussed at length the state of the union. After dinner I put my contacts in, with a lot of help, and a lot of rum, and we ended up backstage with CXS folks for the last bit of Faith and the Muse, and most of Ayria. The rum proceeded to wreak havoc, dogs of war were slipped, and once I recovered we headed back to the room...where we all slept soundly until monday morning came...way too early.

We packed our things and put them in Marriott storage. Ran to the art show and collected our winnings. Made final purchases in the dealer's room, and a final lunch in the food court. And then all too soon, it was 4pm, and time to say goodbye :(.

Random highlights; excellent roomies, good drinks, Pie, good food, friendly Marriott staff, good music, dragoncon tv, and all our fellow guests. :)

Only 358 days left!

Life is interesting.

Before I had Winry, I worked a bazillion hours a week. Okay, more like 50 hours, with commute it became 60 hours, more or less. When I was home and not pregnant, I played video games, surfed the internet, learned about the animals in my care at work, and generally wished I had more money. When I was home and pregnant, I played WoW, slept, surfed the internet, learned about babies, wished I had the energy to prepare my house for baby, and generally wished I had more money.

Now I look after the baby, and generally wish I had more money.

It's a tough transition. I thought (and still think) of myself as a gamer, as a geek, etc. But do I do anything geeky lately? Aside from shop for affordable geek baby toys? Not really. And it gets to me sometimes. I was so used to feeling like writing, and in an instant I could be at the PC typing up whatever-it-was. Or perhaps I wanted to know some obscure bit of information -- boom, surf for a moment, and there it is. Maybe I had a new video game, or perhaps I felt like making a new website, no problem. Now, with a baby who understands quite well that this shiny box is taking away Mommy's attention, I hardly sit in my computer chair. I hesitate to even start a livejournal entry because I know that somehow I will be interrupted. Baby will be hungry, or inconsolable, or some other inevitable thing only Mommy can fix. I don't really know how I find time for Crittergeek posts -- I guess the potential for tiny bits of money-making is enough incentive for Rist to put up with the sad baby for another 5 minutes.

I found myself a few minutes ago on Facebook playing some silly little flash game, just because I had a few free minutes that my brain could spend on something, anything. I have things to do; I have dishes to wash, laundry to load, animals with cages that could use cleaning, but here I was, playing Word Drop, obsessing over beating my last high score. I think spending all day long playing Feed/Clean/Entertain/MakeSleep the baby might just have gotten to me. It's rare that I have time that is mine and mine alone -- normally, my "free" time is cooking, cleaning, that sort of thing. I feel guilty when I do things like play games now, or really anything that qualifies as relaxing. I even feel guilty when I nap with Winry, despite knowing that's the best way for her to get her nap out. I catch myself on the edge of my seat when I eat, even if someone else is watching the baby, scarfing down my food so that when things go bad, I can jump back into baby duty.

It's not that I don't think it's worthwhile; it is possibly the most worthwhile thing I'll ever do. It's just interesting, that all the things I used to use to define myself... I currently can't really do. Not in any serious kind of way. I have my reef tank; it gets all of 10 minutes of maintenance per week, if it's lucky. I check my email -- but maybe 2 or 3 times a day, not every hour. I play games... they are just the 2 minute long flash variety, instead of the 4 hour raids, and they happen once a week, not every night. I caught myself playing a game on my cell phone the other night -- I felt like a rat raiding the garbage scraps.

It's just.... interesting.

Random bits and pieces...

I am on a semi-diet. Drinking almost exclusively water and cutting out a lot of fast food. I think it's working...slowly....

Winry had her 6 month checkup last friday. She did fine, only one session of screaming that night. Tylenol, I love thee so. She is eating various foods... she'll pick bits of food up and try chewing it, even. She really wants to help out when I spoon feed her, too, which makes a big mess but we have a lot of fun so it's all good.

She was obviously fascinated with us brushing our teeth so we got her a toothbrush. She chews happily on it while we brush. She can sit up for a bit without support, you just have to catch her when she inevitably falls over. She has fun in her walker, too. Can't quite get up on all fours to crawl (I blame her huge head)... she gets one end or the other up but not both yet. She's adept at rolling and scooting to her target though. Made it all the way across the bed rolling to get to a cat, and would have followed him over the edge when he fled, except I stopped her.

Working on selling the african grey. If anyone has $500 to trade for a very sweet parrot, by all means, let me know. She's too much work with a baby in the house. Too needy. And the baby wants to touch her so bad... I worry about those little fingers getting nipped.

If you are reading this, feel free to also read my other blog which is all about my various adventures in pet ownership... it's at http://crittergeek.blogspot.com/. Click my ads so I can make a little Dragoncon money :).

Winry has recently been fascinated by us brushing our teeth...

I bought her a baby toothbrush and she chews happily on it while studying us to see if she's doing it right :)

Happy half birthday daughter of mine :)

We saw Transformers 2 today. I actually liked it better than the first one. There were fewer "omg we can make cgi transformers!" scenes... those always irritate me. It's like in LoTR with all the epic shots of people walking, you could just hear someone thinking "omg we are really making LoTR!" and someone else going "Squeee!".

Being the dork I am, I have named my chilean rose "Shelob" and my A. versicolor "Aragog".

I thought my A. versicolor was dying, but he was just getting ready to molt :). Now he is a pretty cobalt blue. I wish they photographed better. I'll work on my lighting next time.

I ended up taking out the rocks that I didn't particularly like -- the mysterious black one, and the less porous/interesting ones. Then I moved the rocks from the 30g that I liked into it. It looks pretty good. The leather coral is fairly happy, although it's pitching a little bit of a hissy fit over being right under a powerhead. Leathers are temperamental like that though. It'll get over it. I moved the large mexican turbo snail in as well, still need to catch the astrea snail and the last lonely blueleg hermit in the 30g.

I have ordered an assortment of snails and crabs from liveaquaria.com and should get them next week :)

Pictures will be forthcoming.....soon.

See it.

No spoilers; it was geekgasmic. I almost cried halfway through for no particular reason other than it was good.

My only complaint? Not enough naked Hugh Jackman.