nekosensei

* This is a big fuckin' deal -- Hah hah! Nice! Joe Biden doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut at times, but this was an entertaining one...

* Not much to say lately. Still recovering from whatever bug I came down with on Sunday. The good news is that I was less congested this afternoon and I was able to get some work done. Yipee!

* Today's dose of Schadenfreude brought to you by Roy Ashburn, a California State Senator. (Link swiped from rm)

* Ok Go -- This Too Shall Pass --> This is really cool.

* Texas police warn spring breakers: Stay out of Mexico border towns

* Finally got some food down me, and I'm no longer nauseous. Yay for no longer feeling like I'm going to pass out from hunger...

* Didn't have much to say today apparently. Spent most of the day recovering from my stomach bug. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

* The Chilean earthquake tipped Earth's axis and made days shorter. (Link swiped from rm)

* Fifteen houseplants you can use as an air purifier I wonder if any of these are toxic for cats... (Link swiped from haikujaguar)

* In Search of Lost Sounds: Why you've never really heart the "Moonlight" Sonata. A couple collects antique pianos and stores them in a building that used to be a library. They then use these pianos-- the pianos that composers such as Beethoven or Mozart used to create their works-- to re-create what they originally sounded like. Go read the article and then listen to the Moonlight Sonata as played on a modern Steinway and a 19th century Viennese piano. The difference in the quality of the sound is striking. (Linked swiped from doomsey)

*"Womb Lynching:" On the anti-choice targeting of African-American women. This is an article describing how pro-life groups are equating abortion with eugenics. Wow...how low can these guys sink? (Link swiped from bonobochick)

* My voice is still MIA. I think I might have to employ some interpretative dance tonight...

* I started having the same trouble falling asleep last night as I did the night before, until I had the bright idea of grabbing my iPhone and playing an app called Naturespace as ambient noise. Seriously, if you have an iPod or an iPhone and you have a hard time with insomnia, go get this app. It's free.

* Last night, I dreamt it was spring and there were flowers. I particularly like the pretty red ones. Then, I woke up in the morning to discover that a couple more inches of snow fell overnight. Boo.

* Still sick. And now the congestion is kicking in. I'm taking Sudafed, but thankfully, I haven't had any problems with it, which is surprising because the last time I took it, I had some major issues with it.

* Crop Mob. Too bad they don't have anything like this in Illinois. I think I would learn a thing or too. (Link swiped from rm)

* Keeping Ancient Samurai Traditions Alive in Japan. A family in Japan is teaching samurai traditions in Kyoto. (Link swiped from laurainlimbo)

* This is a cool animation. (Swiped from bottledgoose)

* A few days ago, I looked up long-range weather using Farmer's Almanac to get an idea of what the weather would be like in our region in March. This is what it said: "MARCH 2010: temperature 29° (7° below avg.); precipitation 2" (1" below avg.); Mar 1-9: Snow showers, cold; Mar 10-14: Snowstorm, then snow showers, cold; Mar 15-22: Heavy snow, then snow showers, cold; Mar 23-26: Rain and snow, cold; Mar 27-31: Sunny, then rain, turning warm."

I was hoping for an early spring, but according to this, it's going to snow, a lot. And it's going to be colder. Anybody have any idea of how accurate the Farmer's Almanac is? Because if it is somewhat accurate, than next month is going to suck...

* Andrew Koenig found dead in Vancouver. Well shoot. I was hoping that this would have a much better outcome than what it did.

Yeah...aside from posting my picture-a-days and books read, I've haven't been saying very much. Lately, not much has been going on that can't be written in 140 characters or less on Twitter. I'm still reading LJ though, just don't have much to say. Having said that, here's an update.

* We have snow! Thankfully, we don't have nearly as much snow as Wisconsin. Our area stayed warm, so we got a good chunk of our precipitation as rain. Thank God. I was able to go out and get nice pictures for picture-of-the-day. Today I went to Graue Mill in Oak Brook, and took pictures in the snow. I got some good ones.

* I am sooo tired from shoveling snow today. I would have used the snow blower, but there was a lot of slush on the ground, and the snow blower wouldn't have done much good.

* I've been having a lot of weird dreams these past few weeks. Last night, I had two dreams. One was a nightmare about being married to this incredibly abusive guy. I mixed some sleeping pills into his drinks and left while he was asleep. When he woke up and discovered that I was gone, he came after me. Apparently, me leaving him besmirched his honor. Okay buddy... (I got the feeling from the dream that he was a very traditional Muslim). My family hid me in this hotel, and the dude managed to figure out where I was. I dreamt he snuck into my hotel room while I was sleeping. In the dream, I startled awake to the sound of his voice. He cornered me and I ended up fighting with him. Many things were thrown. I got away and someone in the hotel lobby called the police. I hid behind the concierge's desk until the cops came and escorted him out of the building. By the time the dream ended, we were talking about me leaving the country for awhile because the guy just wasn't giving up. We were talking about either Spain or Peru. I woke up and then complained to doomsey that I had had a bad nightmare. He was annoyed. I was just plain happy that I had a nice, rational, normal hubby and not scary dream hubby.

The second dream was an afterlife of sorts. If I had to describe the feel of it, it was a mixture of Harry Potter and art house film. Some of the images were surreal, but cool. Living people had a double because they were both body and soul. And omg! Creepy nun-like people wearing gray habits! Where do I pull some of these things out of exactly? I swear...this dream would have been perfect fodder for a novel. Anyhow, at some point, I had made some friends and we were traveling together. None of us knew exactly what was going on, but those that had been dead longer had a better idea how things worked than I did. We all got the impression that the place we were at was temporary, and that we would eventually pass on to another one in a hundred years or so. All of us looked like we were in our late teens-early twenties, which led me to believe that all dead souls took that form. I also didn't remember how I died. At the end of the dream, I was pulled into some kind of "support group" for people who had died young. That's where I found out that the jealous hubby from dream número uno had found me wherever the hell I had run to and killed me. Murder. Lovely.... (There was more to the dream, but...enh...don't feel like going into it right now).

* So...what's with all the dreams about death and dying lately? Well, I'm approaching the two year anniversary of when I damn near dropped dead. Maybe my subconscious mind is still sorting things out. Also, I think part of that second dream might have been motivated by something I had read in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which I had been reading right before I went to bed. That's a very cool book, by the way...

* cosettemonster is being barfy again. She was horking up her food last Thursday-Friday. She got better after I gave her a Vitamin B12 shot-- which is usually prescribed to animals with IBD-- but she's been puky again today. If she's not better by tomorrow, I'm calling the vet. She does have the funky kidney values, and the vet told me to watch for throwing up and loss of appetite. I'm not playing around with this.

* For those of you into photography, you guys should check out the LJ community, lj_photofile. It's a cool group. Lot's of amazing pictures. I think I might post more of my stuff over there...

I so sleepy. I went to bed late last night because I was trying to see if there was a way I could read some of the ebooks I already have using my iPhone. I discovered that I can if they're in .pdf or .txt format. All I have to do is email them to myself and then open up the attachment. Eventually, I might buy some more ebooks from Amazon and read them using my Kindle app, but for now, I'm going to stick to the stuff that's on my servers. I eventually want to get my hands on Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. First, I want to see if reading things on my phone is indeed easier on my neck than traditional books.

When I did go to bed, I got woken up intermittently by cosettemonster, who was barfing. Fortunately, she was polite and jumped down from the bed every time she had to yurk. She threw up both meals yesterday, and she was throwing up again in the evening and overnight. Once again, I am feeding her her breakfast a couple of pieces of kibble at a time. If she doesn't keep it down, I'm going to call the vet to see if I can get her in this morning. I really don't want to go in because I have a baby shower I want to go to, but the cat is more important.

Also, doomsey is going out of town today to meet with a client in Boston.

*sigh*

arwenmonster (who has a chronic sinus infection): *sniffle sniffle sniffle SNORT sniffle sniffle sniffle*
nekosensei: My sentiments exactly.

( Click here )

Other than that, today hasn't been that good of a day. cosettemonster threw up everything she ate today. She urped up both her breakfast and dinner. She also threw up after drinking water this afternoon. She did drink some more water later and was able to keep it down. Poor kitty! Other than that, she hasn't been acting sick. She still begs for food even though she tosses it up later. I'm thinking it's hairballs because she did cough up a small one earlier today. I had also caught her eating some hair that Arwen had shed earlier in the week. Yeah...that wasn't too bright on her part. I'm going to try feeding her a little bit of food later tonight before I go to bed and see if she'll hold that down. I'm giving her until tomorrow. If she doesn't hold down her breakfast, I'm calling the vet. Oh...I also read something triggering on one of my friends list and got upset. It didn't help that I'm probably PMSing and I'm stressing out about my cat.