So I laid down to catch 90 minutes of sleep earlier today, and when the alarm went off, I was still so out of it I gave myself another 90 minutes. Since I really, really needed to get just a couple of things at the grocery store today –as in couldn’t wait until tomorrow’s payday– I forced myself to get up. I assure you, I didn’t want to get up. The sleep I was getting today was just as lousy as the sleep I got last night, which means it wasn’t at all restful.

You may notice, I am not at the grocery store. I got dressed. I made a list of the few things we had to have NOW. I got my pockets loaded with my electronic devices, identification, and methods of payment. I drank a cup of Dr Pepper to boost my energy and spirits. Then, Lin called.

He’s having an even more wretched day than I am (my day not being so awful, I’m just so tired). We chatted for a bit, and he unloaded about the things going wrong for him at work. I told him I was headed to the store to get the missing ingredient for cookie making, because I haven’t made him cookies in days (and I feel badly about that). He mentioned he bought some cookies today. Since his cookie needs were filled, I decided my new vegetarian diet can wait until tomorrow to officially start, so I didn’t really have to go to the grocery store today. Thank goodness. I’m not kidding when I say I really did NOT want to go.

So now I am doing the dishes with the last drop of dish detergent, and I want to sweep and vacuum before Lin gets home. Other than that, I doubt I will get anything else much done today. Just … too … tired. But, I have had a really productive week and gotten many things accomplished, so a day of not getting things done is OK by me. Everybody needs to be able to cut themselves some slack once in a while when a day just isn’t going as it was supposed to go. Tomorrow will be better.

Oh, and after only two completely meatless meals, my stomach seems to have settled down. It truly does seem as though my body was rebelling from eating far too much meat lately. I’m going to go totally vegetarian for about a week, and then I’ll start bringing some meat back into the dietary plan. Animals are tasty! I don’t want to stop eating them completely!

Well, the dishes that were soaking are probably ready to be washed, so off I go to do a tiny amount of housework and then once again become a lazy slug.

I have done it. I have taken control of my online existence. I have fed the ouroboros his tail. The circle is completed. I am now able to post audio, video, photos, and text to Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, and my own blog all at one go. No muss, no fuss, easy as I please from anywhere in the world with cell phone towers. Additionally, I can post to just some places or groups of places or filter what I post at those places. And no damn expensive data plan necessary!

Ever see the movie Hackers? When Cereal Killer is broadcasting on the hacker network and he says “I kinda feel like God” … yes, that is kinda how I feel right now.

Woo hoo!!! I have Posterous to thank for it. Great service, and I hope it lasts. Why, I think I’d even pay a little every month to use it, but for now, it’s FREE. How cool is that? I did have a few problems getting it all set up, but once I did, it all worked like a charm, as evidenced by the previously posted photo of Sasha that went absolutely everywhere at once. Everywhere … at once.

With all that said, it’s highly likely I will be terribly annoying today as I try things out with all my new god-like posting abilities. I doubt I will end up doing massive crossposting from my phone too much once the newness wears off, seeing as I am so infrequently out and about and wanting to post things, but now I freaking CAN, if the mood strikes. I really can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I’ve been trying to get this all worked out for ages.

In other news, I had to log into the T-Mobile web site to get some information, and that was when I noticed that our phone bill wasn’t lower as it was supposed to be when our new contract kicked in. Somehow, they are screwing us on the family plan messaging. I thought we had that straightened out, but now it looks like maybe they canceled our unlimited family messaging altogether while simultaneously charging us for unlimited messaging (in a really odd way). There isn’t much we can do about it until the next bill comes out and we finally see what the hell they have done. I expect there will be some kind of insane muddle involving speaking to idiots at customer service when all is said and done. I do love the T-Mobile service. It’s very reliable and works everywhere I need it to work, but their billing department seems to be staffed by monkeys on heroin.

And now I think I’ll have my second cup of coffee, a little breakfast, and make out the shopping list. Even though I slept very poorly last night and would really not go shopping today, we need some of those things that are total requirements for continued existence. I’ll just have to caffeinate myself as much as possible, get the shopping done as quickly as possible, and then … a nice nap (or two).

The only problem I have at the moment is that I haven’t figured out how to attach categories to the Posterous crossposts at LJ and my blog, but if it’s possible, I’m sure I’ll eventually figure out how.

This very morning, I have finally discovered how to send photos to the internet from my phone … without the expense of a ridiculous data plan. Neither my cell phone service nor my cell phone makes it easy to do, because I am certain they would much rather get more money out of me, but I knew it was possible, and I finally got it worked out. Yippee!

At the moment, I can get photos and text directly to Facebook, TwitPic, and Twitter. The last piece of the puzzle is getting the photos to crosspost to my blog, which will then (hopefully) also crosspost to all the places those posts go. There must be a way to accomplish it, and I bet I eventually figure out how to do it.

For now though, I am just tickled to be able to get photos on-the-go to the places I can. Very cool! My online empire continues to grow.

Today Twitter … tomorrow, the world!

My appetite has gone missing.

The first day, I thought it was just some sort of stomach bug. I’d been a little queasy throughout the day, and that queasiness got worse when I began making dinner. Then it really got bad after I ate said dinner. I popped some antacids in my mouth and thought nothing much of it. I didn’t feel completely awful, and my body is pretty efficient at getting rid of stomach bugs.

The next day I did feel better, but I wasn’t at all hungry, even though I’d not eaten much in the previous 24 hours and should have been very, very hungry. I figured it was still just a virus of some sort and it would work itself out. We had Popeye’s Chicken that night, and I ate it but with less gusto than I normally would dig into crispy fried chicken. I felt a little queasy afterward, so a couple more antacids were taken, and I continued to not think much of it.

But the odd queasiness while cooking or eating and the lack of any desire to eat any of the food I was serving has continued. I wasn’t even terribly interested in the turkey and avocado sandwich I made the day I baked the bread, and for me to not be able to finish one little sandwich with two of my favorite foods on it after days of not eating well made me realize something other than a stomach bug might be responsible.

I’ve been watching what I am eating, when I am eating it, and what the result is. I have added some new spices to my cooking lately, and it is always possible for me to find some new thing that causes me some odd little allergic reaction. I am allergic to a great many things, and there are likely a great many more things out there I haven’t been exposed to yet that I’d have to avoid if I knew about them. So I cut out the new spices and just started eating the most basic things I ever make with only the most basic of ingredients that I know I have no allergic reaction to at all.

No change. Still get queasy while cooking and eating, and I have no appetite for anything much beyond bread, butter, peanut butter, jelly, and fresh (not cooked) veggies and fruit.

Last night I decided to make some round steak slow-cooked in cream of mushroom soup with pasta and steamed cauliflower. This is one of my favorite meals. It’s one of the few meals that leads me to piling my plate high and stuffing myself like a glutton. I forced down as much as I could, and then I put the rest in the fridge for today’s lunch.

I just tried to eat those leftovers –perfectly fine leftovers with nothing at all wrong with them– and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t! The smell of the meat made me feel sick to my stomach, so I tossed it in the trash and sat down to eat the pasta and gravy. I love pasta and gravy, but today I didn’t love it at all. I took another bite or two, and my body informed me it simply wasn’t going to cooperate. I was not to eat this pasta and gravy. So I tossed it in the trash as well and made myself a peanut butter sandwich, which seemed to go down easily.

The conclusions I have come to after some days of considering this problem are that I either have caught some sort of stomach bug that only effects a person’s ability to eat meat (seems unlikely) or that I am once again sick of eating meat (has happened before in the past). The solution? I think I’ll go back to a vegetarian diet for a while and see what happens. I have to do something, because I am beginning to lose weight, and I don’t have any weight to lose. It’s still entirely possible I’ve caught some virus and this will all sort out in another few days, but even so, cutting the meat out of my diet for a while isn’t going to hurt anything and might help.

It’s really sad, because the meat we get is so good, and I know it’s tasty and ethical and healthy, but my body just doesn’t seem to want it. I do try to listen to my body when it starts screaming as loudly about something as it has been the last week. Alas, this means far more kitchen work for me, because I can’t exactly force a vegetarian diet on my unwillingly husband. Oh, I mean I could do that, but it’s likely to lead to much complaining and unhappiness. He is, after all, a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and I much prefer him with a happy stomach.

So now to remake the shopping list to account for all those raw food/vegetarian/fruitarian meals I’ll be needing in the next week in addition to the usual stuff. I’ll be suffering through tonight with grilled cheese sandwiches and whatever I make for dessert while Lin eats the big pot of stew I planned for tonight. Tomorrow, I start eating what my body seems to be craving, and I guess we shall see what becomes of that. Hopefully, it will improve the situation, because I desperately need to start consuming more calories soon. Five pounds lost in one week is just too much for someone who doesn’t have any spare pounds at all to lose. Seriously, weight loss for me is usually a crisis situation and leads to even worse health results. I’ve got to fix this problem fast.

First, some morning haiku:

butterfly stomach
fluttery heart and damp hands
the madness of love

Now onto the meat of this post:

I am cutting back on my news consumption. I’ve been doing so since last Friday, and I have come to believe this one change is most responsible for my better overall attitude about life in general. All the news ever does is make me sad or outrage me, and who needs that several times a day … or all day long?

Instead of constantly checking my news reader or the collection on news web sites in my bookmarks, I am replacing that activity with more usage of Twitter, Facebook, texting, and email to connect with the many, many people in my life. It’s a much more positive and happy experience, and it brings love and joy into my life to be in near constant contact with friends and family, as well as meeting new people and creating even more friendships.

Along the same train of thought –connecting with people more and not data– I have also decided to begin writing letters on paper. The sort that require stamps to deliver. I used to enjoy sending and receiving mail more meaningful than the most recent cable bill or sales flier, and it would be nice to get back into doing that again.

With that said, if anyone would like to partake in the Great Letter Writing Experience, feel free to email me your address (JustOrb at gmail.com) or post it in the screened (and my eyes only) comments on this LJ post (or pass it along through whichever other means works best for you). Even if you think I already have your address, send it along to me again anyway. I have been as disorganized in my electronic data retention as I am with everything else in life, and I don’t know if I could find anyone’s address that isn’t memorized and in my head. I’m going to work on being better about that as well.

I continue to maintain that this is my decade and that great things are in store for me. I also continue to feel that this year will be the year of Big Changes, and thus far –even though no changes have been especially external or visible to the outside world– there have been some internal big changes. I think I have finally found myself, and I like the person I discovered. It’s a shame it took me this long, but better late than never!

Now if you will excuse me, there my furry cat children are demanding attention, and then I believe I will head over to the craft store. I do, after all, have a gift card burning a hole in my wallet!

Overslept a bit this morning. I heard the alarm on my cell phone. I heard it every time it went off. I had it in my hand under my pillow. Yet I still kept hitting the snooze button, because I just couldn’t get my brain to engage. Well, I had trouble falling asleep last night, then I had a weird dream, and shortly after that brought me almost to consciousness a storm blew through with lots of wind, rain, and thunder noise. All I can say is that 5:30 am came way too early today.

I should go to the grocery store today, but considering how low energy I am, I think I’ll just make do with what we have and go tomorrow. In fact, I might be able to put it off until Friday, which would be great, seeing as it’s payday. I’ll just have to see how far I can stretch one large round steak and one small pork roast. I’m pretty sure the two of us can eat well enough for a couple of days on that and what veggies I have.

I guess that means I’ll be puttering around the house doing the usual housework today. Not that I really feel like doing that either, but the dishes need to be done, the rugs need to be vacuumed, and the floors must be swept. Yuck.

Also, I’ll be continuing to tighten up the nuts and bolts of my online empire. Yesterday I got Twitter, my cell phone, and my blog working the way I like it, so now I’ve actually been using Twitter, which has been fun … and slightly addictive. I also sort of got the blog integrated with Facebook, though not too much. I really don’t need all my blog posts annoying everyone over there. Just about all of them read my rantings elsewhere, and I do hate to be annoying. No really! I do!

Now that I’ve had two cups of coffee and a phone conversation with my mom, I have some insta-energy to expend. It’ll vanish soon, so I better get to it. It seems like a sure bet that at some point today a nap will be in order. The bed full of cats is calling my name.

Well at least I managed to crawl out of bed just in time to listen to Apolo Ohno on one of the Chicago radio stations I sometimes listen to in the morning. It was nice waking up to Apolo being charming!

For a Monday, today wasn’t bad at all. No doubt this means tomorrow will be awful. That’s usually the way that goes.

But I got some bread baked, worked on my web site and online empire, pulled some weeds in the muddy garden, and had a nice nap. Now I am just waiting for the homemade french fries to finish baking, and then I’ll make sandwiches with the fresh bread … and all will be good in my world (and my day will be done).

For the moment, anyway. I never expect things to continue being pleasant. There’s bound to be some sort of crisis hiding just around the corner. I’m not paranoid. The universe really is out to get me! I swear!

Should you find, after upgrading your version of Wordpress, that attempting to publish a post results in it not publishing and a page being displayed which reads “your attempt to edit this post has failed” and asks you to try again, I have found a way to make that stop happening.

1. open the file post-new.php found in the wp-admin folder
2. find the line that says wp_enqueue_script(‘autosave’ ); and type // in front of it to turn it into a comment rather than a command
3. save the file and replace the old one on your ftp client

This disables the autosave of the posting page. Not having autosave on does mean running the slight risk that your browser will crash, the electricity will go out, or some other crisis will leave you having written a thousand words and not having a single one of them saved, but in my eyes, it’s worth that slight risk not to have to jump through hoops to get my posts to publish the moment I hit the publish button.

And if this is the only problem I am going to have after upgrading, I’d say it’s gone very well. I should have upgraded ages ago. The new backend is very nice!

We need bread, and a nasty wet day is the best time to bake some, so that’s what I am doing. It’s on the second rise now, and I look forward to the delicious scent of bread baking filling the house in about 30 minutes. Then I look forward to it being done so I can dig in and have a slice!

The only other news around the house today is that one of those three lonely tomatoes I have been pampering all winter is finally becoming ripe, and a the other night we ate some of the first lettuce of the year. Hopefully by the end of the week I will be able to serve a salad made with nothing but goods from the garden. I’m looking forward to that too.

I’m sure there are ten thousand things I should be doing today other than the things I am doing, but I’m going to keep messing around with my online network, playing silly flash games, and in general being a lazy slug. Rainy days are no good for me for getting things done.

Though I will be doing some intense yoga as soon as the bread is officially baking. My back needs it.

The circle is not complete. The ouroboros can’t catch its tail.

There continues to be a chink in the continuity of my online empire.

I believe the creation of a secondary Twitter account is necessary. Because, you know, I use the one I have so very, very much.

::snort::

I’m going to be making some changes to the way all the various bits of my life on the internet are woven together. Nothing too major, I don’t think. I doubt any of you would even really notice, but if you did, I wouldn’t want you to think I didn’t like you if I stopped following you on one service or something like that. Because it just means I have other ways to communicate with you that work better for me. I’d like to avoid any unnecessary drama about who’s following who or befriending who and whatnot.

I promise that any changes I make to the way my online life and real life intersect will be for the better for everyone. Most people will likely be hearing more from me and not less, and it will be the things they want to hear. Now that can’t be a bad thing, can it? Who doesn’t need more Orb in their lives?! Better yet, I’ll probably end up hearing from many of you more often as well.

I just don’t want there to be any drama about it. OK? I promise, I’m not breaking up with any of you! We’re still BFF’s 4ever!

So you’ve been warned. If you discover you are bothered by the fact I have put you on a different filter or stopped reading your Tweets or taken you off my friends list (or whatever it is wherever it is), please contact me privately about it. I bet you will discover that you are still able to do so in more than one way. Instantaneously too, which means I’m not dissing anyone or angry at anyone or hating on anyone. I swear.

We’ve had a huge murder trial going on recently here in Austin. Some pretty ugly stuff, and I haven’t been following it too closely, though it did get more interesting when he started trying to say he was defending himself from the woman and her five year old son. Yes, defending himself from someone he tied up and stabbed 107 times (the woman) and her small son, who was stabbed four times. As one can imagine, this defense didn’t fly with the jury, and he was found guilty.

The punishment stage of the trial began a day or so ago, and this is where it’s really gotten interesting. Probably not surprising, but Gobert has a history of violence, especially against women. That’s not the interesting bit though. Nope, what’s interesting is that not one but two female jail guards were found to have had romantic relationships with him while he was sitting in jail charged with stabbing a woman 107 times. One of them even went so far as to sneak a cell phone to him, for which she is now sitting in the prison she used to guard and facing a third degree felony herself.

I’m pretty much WTF?! The most beautiful man or woman on the planet could be coming on to me, but the fact they were doing so from the other side of heavy metal bars in a jail cell would be pretty much an instant turn off. The fact the person has been charged with stabbing someone 107 times and has a history of violence, would have me running away at top speed. What kind of mojo must this guy have to get women supposedly in a position of power to submit to him and fall in “love” with him?! It’s just insane. He must be some kind of smooth operator, that’s all I can say.

Anyway, that’s been in the news lately, and I’ve been trying to figure out what would possess anyone to get involved with this guy while he’s sitting around waiting to find out whether the jury will decide he’s someone who just needs killing or whether he will rot in prison for the rest of his life instead. I have to think he might have been able to pull off a life sentence, but the fact that he’s been able to manipulate two guards already isn’t going to go well for him during the punishment phase of the trial. I mean, not only did that one woman get him a cell phone, she let him out of his cell to help her clean the prison. I can’t imagine the jury isn’t going to be wondering if he wouldn’t also be able to manipulate some other totally weak-willed and stupid female guard into bringing him a weapon or just freaking letting him out of jail. I know I would wonder about that, just about as much as I would wonder what kind of woman gets involved with someone like Gobert while he’s sitting in prison charged with such an awful crime.

Is it really already Thursday?! My how times flies when one is busy … and has a multi-day migraine … and a backache. Yeah, it hasn’t been an especially good health week at Casa de Orb.

Other than me being somewhat busy with a few things and feeling less that fantastic, the only news around here is that yesterday I finally got annoyed with the pathetic broccoli and chopped off their heads. It was quite tasty in last night’s chicken casserole. Really was good broccoli. Just not much of it. Also, I am declaring that spring has arrived. I think we might get down into the 30’s one more night sometime in the next two weeks, but I am going to pretend it’s time to get to work on the spring garden, and I will be clearing out the failure of a winter garden and beginning to plant my spring stuff. Hopefully the weather will be more kind this season, and I won’t have yet another failure to produce tasty, tasty veggies in large quantities.

Got nothing else to talk about on the personal side of things. Nothing interesting anyway. Sometimes life is just mundane and boring, isn’t it?

Since I’ve been busy doing things that keep me away from the computer for the most part, I have been consuming my news in the more American way … listening to the talking heads on the TV. The level of stupid on all the channels remains excessively high.

One thing that is particularly peeving me at the moment is talking heads of all manner (including “experts” and elected officials) referring to the process of reconciliation in congress as the Nuclear Option. It is completely incorrect to apply that particular term to reconciliation.

In U.S. politics, the nuclear option is an attempt by a majority of the United States Senate to end a filibuster by invoking a point of order to essentially declare the filibuster unconstitutional which can be decided by a simple majority, rather than seeking formal cloture with a supermajority of 60 senators. Although it is not provided for in the formal rules of the Senate, the procedure is the subject of a 1957 parliamentary opinion and has been used on several occasions since. Senator Trent Lott (Republican of Mississippi) first called the option “nuclear” in March 2003.

During the 111th congress, opponents of Democratic legislative initiatives incorrectly began to refer to the budget reconciliation process as the nuclear option. For a discussion of the legislatively-enacted reconciliation process, which only requires a majority vote, but which – unlike the nuclear option – does not alter Senate rules, see Reconciliation (United States Congress).

It’s bad enough everyone seems to constantly feel the need to come up with new cutesy terms to describe things that already have terms to describe that work perfectly well, but applying the same term to more than one completely different thing is just stupidity … or, more likely, manipulation of the masses who can’t keep up with all the newly created terms and catch phrases.

I am looking forward to sitting at the computer at some point and catching up on some real news. The television appears to be worthless to me as a news gathering device. Boob tube, indeed.

It’s been cold, wet, and windy today. I just thought I’d mention once again how sick I am of the cold and wet weather. I can live with wind, but only if it’s warm. The chill breeze outside doesn’t make me happy.

Usually by this time of the year, I am happily outside for much of my daylight time puttering in the yard or garden or generally just enjoying not being indoors. Winter is taking its dear sweet time going away this year, and it totally sucks. Even if we don’t end up having another blazing hot summer like last year, spring coming later than expected will still mean a short growing season. Even when it isn’t hell hot in Texas, it still gets a bit too hot for many plants by the time late July rolls around. So this weather is not making me at all happy. My soil temps are never going to get warm enough fast enough if it doesn’t stop dropping into the 30’s every night and raining all the time!

I’d just really like to be outside more by now, planting seeds and getting excited about stuff growing again. The winter garden has been a total bust except for the carrots, and I am ready to get going on spring things. I demand a change in the weather immediately!

And I’d like some smaller utility bills too. I’ve never had to run the furnace this late into the year before.