Lavendar-Blue Dusk

Hey readers and friends (I think there are still some of you out there *g*).

I'm in the process of importing this journal over to Dreamwidth.org. (They tell me I'm in the queue.) I'm jasmineskie over there, too, so feel free to find me on Dreamwidth.

I won't be making any more posts over here, nor will I be approving any more friend requests here. I may be deleting the whole damn journal, I haven't decided yet. It just rubs me the wrong way that I had to agree to a new TOS that isn't a legal document if I sign the English version but I can't read the Russian version to know what I'm signing, all in order to access this journal. Yes, Livejournal's owned by a Russian company that can do anything it wants with its property. I've got no beef with that. I'm an English-speaking user who doesn't like agreeing to things I can't read, so I'm just taking my toys and playing elsewhere. I'm pretty sure LJ won't care since I don't have a paid journal anymore, so they're not losing money.

It may take a while for the journal to import over to its new home, so I won't be making any drastic changes for a bit yet. Just wanted to give everyone a head's up.

A really long time ago I did a poll asking who still read this journal. The purpose was to update my flist, which is more like a readers list anyway since this journal's become a fiction journal. Today (eight months later - ack!) I finally got around to updating my readers list.

Anyone who responded to the poll should still be on my flist. I also kept anyone who's asked to be friended over the last eight months.

If I made any mistakes, please let me know and I'll add you back to my flist. If I cut you, please don't take it personally. I probably have you friended over on my personal journal - jassyskie. If I don't, it means we don't have much in common anymore. But if you'd like to still occasionally read my stories, just let me know and I'll add you back.

Wow! Thanks to everyone who voted for "Scars." :D Thanks also to foxrafer and stormatdusk for all their hard work with the MOME awards.

Congratulations to everyone else whose stories were nominated and those who won. I saw a lot of favorites on that list. :)

The Tao of Play
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: Musings on letting your inner child out out to play.
Disclaimer: Not a bit of this is true except in my imagination.
Note: Written for the viggos_50 challenge. Word: poetry. One down, forty-nine left to go.
Archive: Only in the viggos_50 community and my journal. Nowhere else, please.

( Sometimes the child that lives behind his eyeballs gets control of his fingers and takes over. )

Thanks to littlegreenleaf, I have my very own copy of the Orlando VMan issue! :D I couldn't find the magazine anywhere around here, and Steph very kindly offered to send me one. Thank you so much, sweetie! *HUGS* You're a wonderful, wonderful friend. :D

Splenda is apparently six times sweeter than sugar, Equal twice as sweet as sugar. This according to some expert-type person on The Today Show this morning. The Today Show, otherwise known as Background Noise Show while I was running around trying to get ready for work after I overslept this morning.

Anyway, back to Splenda... the package says it can be substituted for sugar cup for cup in baked goods. No wonder some products made that way taste too damn sweet, like most sugarfree loaf cakes or the sugarfree granola bars I found. I don't even like sugarfree Minute Maid lemonade, which is so sweet it tastes terrible. News flash, ye olde makers of sugarfree products: I'm diabetic. I'm used to eating things that aren't sweet. Make them too sweet and even if they're sugarfree, I still won't eat them.

On a totally different and somewhat embarrassing note, I'm horribly late in thanking everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday! *hugs* You guys were all so sweet, and not in an overdone, Splenda kind of way. ;) Special thanks to why_me_why_not, rifleman_s, and littlegreenleaf for the birthday cards, ma_chelle, foxrafer, mesnica, and em_ee_ell for the ecards, and viggosterri for the virtual box of chocolate! *HUGS* My family and friends treated me wonderfully too. I got all sort of media-related things, like DVDs and books, including a gorgeous John Howe artbook" from loyaldreamer. *hugs* One of the pieces of art in that book inspired the setting in an upcoming chapter of "Minstrel of the Dawn."

I have a few things to post, fic-wise, that should be up starting either later today or this weekend. I need to get back to work now, but it's too pretty outside and I have no ambition -- I'd rather be out there than in here.

ETA: Apparently I also suck at replying to feedback lately. Spring fever all around, it seems. Will get to that too, but thankyouthankyou generally to everyone who reads and comments. *HUGS*

pseudoblu pointed this out, and I had to share considering that I have a lot of these MEGAbloks Pirates things. Why yes, I will buy almost anything Pirates related, why do you ask? ;)

click on the Toy Animation link

metamaura had a marvelous idea. She started a community -- no_nasty_vgifts -- solely for the purpose of petitioning LJ to no longer make nasty vgifts an option. Go here to sign the petition.

What's the big deal about getting a black rose or a broken heart (or a lump of coal or pile of doggy poo) as a vgift? I personally think a black rose is kinda cool and just as pretty as a red or yellow rose, but imagine -- if you're already down in the dumps and some anonymous moron sends you a black rose with a hurtful message, well, you might not think it was so cool. You might wonder who out there, a person who presumably reads your journal on more than just an occasional basis, hates you enough to spend money to send you a nasty message but doesn't have the balls to sign a name to the gift.

I've had three people on my flist be sent these things recently by cruel, anonymous senders. The gifts were meant to hurt. They were meant to make the recipient feel bad, and in a cowardly way since they were sent anonymously. LJ users can block anonymous comments in their journals. LJ doesn't currently have an option (that I know of) to block anonymous gifts. Sure, the gifts can be deleted, but the damage has already been done, hasn't it.

Some people probably think this is much ado about nothing. For them, it probably is. They can look at a mean-spirited gift, laugh about the loser who spent good money to send it, and move on. Some people just have thicker skins than others; what rolls off their backs might depress someone else for days.

Life (and LJ) already offer plenty of ways for us to be cruel and nasty to each other. LJ doesn't need to make it so easy to be cruel anonymously just so they can make a buck.

See that icon up there? That was me last night trying to write. ;) Although I did get a little writing in here and there between working late, running errands. Napping at the keyboard. And I think food was involved at some point, like at 11:30.

Thank you to everyone who responded to my dead computer post. *hugs* The tech guys called last night and said my computer was ready. The hard drive didn't die exactly -- they were able to get it to work by doing a system restore. Although they couldn't tell me why the hard drive diagnostic I tried to run wouldn't work at all, which is what made me think the hard drive had died so I didn't run the system restore myself with the gobs of restore CDs I made when I bought the thing. Good news is that they didn't charge me for doing the system restore. Bad news is that because I wouldn't pay $99 to have them attempt to save the data, it's all gone and the computer's back to what it looked like when I first bought it. So I'll be browsing around the iTunes info and programs you guys linked me to this weekend to see if I can dump my iTunes library on my computer from my iPod.

I sort of watched Lost last night. You know... I used to tape the shows. I actually have a few eps on my iPod. But this season? I quit taping the eps when it came back after the last break. Last night I missed the first twenty minutes or so, and you know what? I didn't care. The show has so lost me (no pun instended) as a viewer with all those eps devoted to The Others and the mysteries that never seem to end. Every once in a while, it might be nice to actually answer a question with a somewhat relevant answer that makes some kind of sense, instead of all just leading to more and more questions.

Or, you know... I could just be getting grumpy and less patient as I get older. Or something like that. ;)

So yesterday the headline for my horoscope was "communication struggles could arise." Yesterday afternoon was filled with major communication struggles and stress. Even cooking and I weren't communicating well. *sigh*

Today's horoscope: "Mood swings can be intense."

Err... eeep? Like my hormones need any help from the stars, thank you very much.

If you need me, I'll be hiding under this rock over there. The one that's, you know, not covered with snow and frozen to the ground.