Because I am a big sucker and because cats seem to sense that in me, i have a 4 month old calico kitten who is dear, sweet, full of purrs and snuggles but I cannot keep. I rescued her from the Parmer Garage and she appears plenty plump and not at all traumatized, so I'm pretty sure she was just dumped today. I just couldn't leave her there. I'm a big sucker.

As of today it's been 5 years since my father died. So I've tentatively named her Davina or Dav (because I like naming cats 3-letter names). Of coruse, as she's only had this name for about an hour, I don't think she'd mind at all having it changed. She's very outgoing and talkative already!

Now, let me just set this up for you so you know just where I am deficient: I'm WASP. Well. Maybe not the P part so much. But let's just say that I've never really spent much time on, nor understood public transportation. In my world, everyone has cars and if they don't have a car, they lease one. When I'm on vacation or going to trainings or conventions in other states, I'll take a cab to and from the airport, but I tend to plan my travel around the hotel I'm staying in so I can walk everywhere. This is partially because I love to walk, but also because I hate driving in unfamiliar places and do not understand public transportation.

I can make some genuine exceptions to this rule--particularly when it comes to Vegas, which can be too sprawling to navigate after a few cocktails or for that one business trip where I was staying at the Rio. I have plenty of Las Vegas cab adventure stories, mostly gin-tinged and somewhat lively.

( The ride to SEATAC was nothing like that. )

So, here's the thing. I'm just not up for redesigning my photography site, so I've just been casually putting things up at Deviant art. If there are pictures of you or someone else that you're dying to see up there, just ping me and let me know and I can put them up. Honestly, at this point I think it's probably better exposure anyway, in that there's a community and it's very Web 2.0 to borrow a buzzword.

If I get really adventurous, I might buy a subscription or something. But otherwise, that's a good place to see things.

Rachael Ray's accessible good looks are dancing on my last nerve.

That is all.

Someday, this will be me. (link to story entitled: Writers put brave face on bad sex awards.

So, it's not that I wanted to let the domain lapse, it's that Network Solutions couldn't be convinced that I was me and chose not to accept that I wanted them to have money and that I wanted to change where the domain was pointed to, because I was tired of being assraped for hosting. Between the two, and the fact that I really haven't been doing much photography, I just let it go.

My interest in photography has always been a bit cyclical. I feel an intense drive to photograph everything for a few years and then I can't even think about looking at a camera for a while. Usually I just get in over my head and that's that. My minor in photography in college along with doing photography for the paper swallowed my desire the last time. This time it was a combination of trying to branch out into product photography and the death of my father that just combined in a big explosion of I don't want to do this.

So, it's set aside again for a while.

What have I been doing? Well, I pwned nano


The story isn't quite finished, of course, and needs editing, but hey, thassalottawords, right? Some of you may or may not know that I write fanfiction here and there, which is quite fun and addictive but this one is actually original, which I'm pretty happy about. It needs editing and all of that, of course, but I'm pretty happy with it.

But there you go. My dirty little secret is that I've been writing.

I suppose the next time someone gets bent out over Potter porn, I shall have to point them at Lost Girls.

This week I actually saw squeak and ms_xtine live and in person, drinking too much wine and eating yummy Italian (food, not an actual Italian). Dragged along jrenwick so he could watch me get progressively cruder with each sip. He likes that.

Then did the BBQ thing with anricat, which was great. Saw so many people i hadn't seen in a while. You people are down with the busting out the kids. Goodness! I'm all, "AusGoths, V2.0" ;) Hopefully I'll feel social again soonish! Thanks for the hospitality!

Wow, so the last time I updated I was vanity searching. I guess this is one way to ensure I'm still alive. Make sure I still exist as something other than my alter ego-- which is far less fun. Razorfish keeps calling me, or emailing, then... I return the call, chat about what I do and then I don't hear from them. I'm pretty sure the last couple of times before this call was the same person. But maybe the turnover's high and they keep hiring someone with the same name. Hard to say. I'm amused, though.

So anyway, tonight's vanity search showed me that at one point, I was a fairly respected photographer. I'm not sure what happened there. Well, other than "Dad died, lack the want to do much now." I don't know, honestly? I put my camera down before after college when I just... couldn't see through it anymore. I'm pretty sure I'll pick it up again with more pieces of life I want to put together.

Tonight I was vanity searching. I got an email from an ex a few weeks ago and I replied once, got more in return and... didn't know what to say and didn't answer again. Not that the email was of anything important. Really it was just chatting and... I don't find myself very good at idle prattle lately. I end up terse and cranky and anxious to get back into my own headspace again. Anyway, I decided to stop being such an asshole and replied.

But that's not the point. The point is... there's a Donna Clancy flower. Apparently, while I may not be unique, I am a special flower. So there you go, Tyler. Suck on that.

So I was doing a vanity search on "psychocatblah" for... whatever reason. I guess to see what it was tied to and mostly it's my photography, which is good as that was as I intended.

Then things got wacky. I guess search engines can insert your search critera into what's going on because this...


Free virgin boys

... very young nude boys very young boys nude. psychocatblah. ... nude boys young boys young nude. by psychocatblah young boys nude free young boys nude pics. ... www.medievalclothing.info/ar/000055

Surprised me.

If you look closely, the link is to "medievalclothing.info" which... I'm not sure why my name would come up there other than maybe there were dresses I was looking for?

I was a little conflicted at first. Were virgin boys being imprisoned and needed freeing? I mean, I could see me getting behind freeing people, virgin or no. Or were they handing out free virgin boys? Anyone who knows me can tell you that I find virgin boys rather irritating and short-lived. I'd pass.

But how do you know if you actually have pinkeye?

Is it because it's concentrated in a certain area or is all of your eye pink?

What's irritation vs pink eye?

Am I contagious?

Don't kiss my eye.

...

My iris itches.

Oh man. I am so feverish. I need to take some Advil.

I mean, I knew I wasn't feeling well, it's been hard to concentrate and I've been nauseated and stuffed up, but like... then I was feeding the cats some treats and on the label it said, "Cats with attitude love Bil Jac."

And I was like... omg. My cats are so OG. They're CWA!

So... from Straight Outta da Kitchen....

'cuz da catz in da hood r alwayz hard
come talkin' that trash they'll shit in yer yard
knowin nuthin in life but to sniff catnip
don't scratch me stray, or you'll get bit

You know what makes me unhappy?

Blowing green snot laced with blood out of my nose.

Of course, now it's blowing clear, so I know it's not actually an infection, but it irritates me more than the dry Austin climate irritates my sinuses.

You know what the doctor tells me? Put Vaseline on your sinuses.

Come ON. We have a pill for shaky leg syndrome... and Vaseline is the only one on my bleeding nose?

I'm pissed.

And yes, I do the neti pot thing. It's just messy and I want a pill whose side effects are likely to be "dry sinuses" like my anti-nausea pills have a possible side effect of... nausea.

Bastards.

After like, I don't know how long of not being able to get into charlottesometimes.com, I finally managed to track down who is hosting it now and got the password! *shock and amazement*

Seriously, this company is passed around like a joint at a frat party. I can think of at least 6 different companies it's been named since I signed up with them. There's probably more that I don't even know of. I should probably be concerned that my credit card number is being passed around as well, but oh well. No weird charges so I guess it's all right. Bah. of course, they changed something on the server that broke my php. h8.

But at least now I can see about fixing it.

I haven't posted in a while. This is a sucky thing to do... to post a meme, but other than allergy updates, I don't have anything more entertaining to share.

The premise is easy enough. Take your name and add "needs" into google and see what it is other people with your name seem to need.

( Donna needs... )

Dear Mom,

I'm not at all fussed that you're dating. Dad's dead. You have to move on. Seriously, I get it.

I just don't want to hear about the sex.

Love,
D.

Well, owing to the fact that my second logo comp wasn't to the CEO's liking on the second day, I was fired. The irony of it is that they hadn't gotten the software I needed in yet, so I'd taken it upon myself to bring in my own copies so I would be able to do my job.

The other amusing part of it was that he specified what he wanted the logo to look like... and didn't like it. To the point of firing me. I feel like there has to be something in this story I'm missing. I mean, it wasn't my best work to date or particularly mind-blowing. The first round of logos was a variety of things including what he'd asked for, a variant and some in complete other directions to cover my bases. Then, no. He had this logo in his head and he just wasn't seeing it yet. That's fine. It happens. I just keep plugging away until I figure out what the vision is in his head. It's an advanced game of, "What number am I thinking of." If I'd known I only got two tries, I would've deliberated over it more.

But clients/managers don't seem to understand that they don't communicate in the same way as designers do. I like to think of it as the secret language of clients. Sometimes "bolder" means, "make it bigger," other times it might mean, "change the color to something bright." Even other times, it means, "I hate this because there's nothing blinking." But I don't know what "bolder" is going to mean to a client until after I've asked questions and worked with them for a while. I can't learn a new language in two days. I'm fairly intuitive, but I fall short at actual mind reading. So... back to freelance.

Because when the lackwits say:

"I feel like, to a certain degreee, by having the magazine here that we are kind of condoning and rubber stamping homosexual behavior," Pringle said.

Because dog forbid we condone homosexuality! What will we condone next? Differing opinions? *gasp*

"It's not about content, and it's not about viewpoint. There should be something here to represent everyone. It's not my business whether anyone thinks it's right or wrong," library director Donita Carlquista said.

Amen, sister. It's not anyone's business but the person reading the magazine.

In response to that request, the library board said its job is not to parent kids. Members say that's up to the parents to do and point out that a special children's section was created for that purpose.

THANK YOU.

For details click here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I implore you… *eyes the motion detector light system* how much movement do they think a graphic designer is likely to make? I can tell you, that unless you've got the motion detector trained on my mouse hand… it's not a lot. Except when I need to activate the lights again, which I wouldn't do except that the coworkers seem to find it amusing that I'd sit in the dark. I'm bringing a lamp tomorrow.

Other than that, it all seems to be good. I don't have all of the software I need, so I'm kind of at a loss at the moment. I did what I could on the bottom of the list with the software I have. I found a load of typos in their current materials, I'm not sure if anyone's so much with the caring about it. Maybe so. I just like getting things done. Plus I hate sitting around waiting for the lights to go out again. *smirks* All in all, it seems pretty cool.