1. Fried Dill Pickles. Orgasmic. We stopped by the Boulevard Diner on the way home from Stuhr's to take in a little nourishment. We ordered the fried green tomato/dill pickle platter for an appetizer. I have a new love.

2. Lost & Fawned featured one of my collars in her new Treasury.

{Mink & Silver}
An intimate new years party in a woods at midnight. Bring a fur coat & champagne.

So many pretty items in that listing.

Thank you Lindsey!

3. An Amazon box arrived yesterday with my name on it and that no one here claims to have ordered. I'm not opening it until Friday.

4. Friends.

• 22:02 I've been forgetting to tweet lately. Consider that my Christmas gift to all of you.
• 22:55 Yay Firefox... tinyurl.com/y972z58

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(click for Spotify playlist)

We're back on January 29th @ Barden's Boudoir, Stoke Newington Road and our guest DJs will be Heidi Heelz (Dice Club) and miss_glitch!

It neeeeeeeds to NOT snow until I get to Mom's for the holiday. Please!? I am terrified of being stuck in a snow storm like two years ago. And terrified of being stuck here alone for the holiday. And I know that several of my friends would have me over for the holiday if I was trapped here and that would be fine, but it wouldn't be home. And I need to be home. My mom needs me home. We need each other this year.

I am just not able to make myself celebrate. Everyone at work has handed out lovely wonderful thoughtful gifts and I have made some candy and it seems entirely inadequate to the task of being a Yule giftie. I have made about a quarter of the usual things I make because I just don't want to celebrate the holiday. I keep thinking how happy and thrilled I was to be preparing treats last year in anticipation of seeing my sisters and how much fun it was going to be with them and mom and me all together again, and I just can't do it.

I am so tired of hanging on by the skin of my teeth.

I can do this. It will get better.

Following this past weekend's large, non-stop ad on the opening page of The New York Times website flogging Seroquel as a treatment for bipolar depression, there's a new TV commercial for it, showing probably all over the country, that I just now caught while watching the local news on KDKA. A young mom is sitting despondent on her living room sofa, a boy-child playing quietly nearby on the floor. A voiceover tells us this woman doesn't need to have her life paralyzed by bipolar depression, and that's why she should ask her doctor about Seroquel. And then she gets up off the couch, approaching her son.

website

The TV commercial

Poll #1501997 Do Reeebok Easytones Catch Your Eye for Your Butt?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

Are you familiar with the new Reebok Easytone sneakers that can supposedly tone up your butt?

If you're familar with Reebok Eastyones, have your considered buying a pair?

Are you a lady or a gentleman?

I keep a list in the back of my head of things that I am ALWAYS in search of. A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon one of these fine treasures on ebay. Vintage 4 and an 1/8 inch wide dark elastic. Similar to what you would find on corset inserts in the late Victorian and Edwardian era. Total bonus points for the small pattern on it as well. I'm going to attempt to dye a piece of it black, but either way I'm not really sure what i will do with it first. Definitely will be put to use on some corsets but I don't have anything in the works for it yet.

BEWARE of the petticoat Monster!


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this was what it was like a couple days back..think its a nice picture! (of Chris's parent's back garden , which is oriental themed.)

So, my family is old school Baltimore, hon. My family is also very superstitious, and a lot of their superstitions are so weird and uncommon that I was sure they were just totally made up. One is that no one in the family is allowed to take down the Christmas tree before January 10th, which my family calls "Little Christmas." I have no idea why-- and neither do they, frankly. I've never heard of "Little Christmas" before. Wiki turned up this, which makes some amount of sense, given that my family has Irish roots, though it lists "Little Christmas" as Jan. 6th. Anyhow, you couldn't take down the tree early, or ~~bad things would happen.~~

(For the record, this article mentions this; "Leave the decorations up until January 6. In Ireland, it's considered bad luck to take the holiday trimmings down before Little Christmas.")

Anyhow, one year, my stepdad picked a real dud of a tree. On Christmas morning, it barely had any needles left! Convinced it was a fire hazard, he got rid of it the next day, despite protests from my mom and from my Aunt Mary, who lived across the street.

Within two months, both of my grandparents were dead, each following freak accidents. My grandmother had a heart attack during a home invasion at her apartment complex on January 5th. Not long after, my grandfather had fallen and died on his balcony.

My Aunt, to this day, will not speak to my stepfather, as she firmly believes he "killed [her] parents." Well, technically, she doesn't speak to any of us now, but that's a different squabble. The last Christmas I visited her, she was telling the story of how Adrian killed her mother (!). She has one of those tacky holiday doorbell things that plays a different Christmas carol at random whenever someone rings it.

Just as she finished telling the story, the doorbell went off and started playing "O Holy Night," my grandmother's favorite carol. When I went to the door, no one was there.

If this is abnormally disjointed, my apologies.

Normally, it is my practice to reply to you with a personal 'thank you' when you comment, but I'm a little tapped. So, please let me say that we cannot thank you enough for all of your amazing words of comfort, love and prayers through these last few weeks, and especially towards the end. We have felt them and you have helped us get through this incredibly difficult process.

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We truly love you all. Thank you again.

When I was in high school from 1969 until 1973 (Yes, I'm older than your parents, right? Oh, thanks for telling me how surprised you are!), even then it was possible to take a computer science course--or at least I recall there being one available. I didn't take it because my math skills were lousy. And then at the community college I attended, such courses were definitely available and quite popular. Needless to say, when I then attended University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, the Computer Science Department was practically taking over the joint, and some alumni from that era have created companies and systems like Netscape, Siebel Systems, Mosaic, Lotus, Firefox, and Safari. Yes, those fellow alums are doing just fine, thank you.

It's interesting to learn that now, there is a declining number of students taking computer science courses in high school, and fewer high schools even offering courses. To read more about it, click Fewer High School Students Taking Computer Science, in the Washington Post.

• 18:25 WTF, 2009? Brittany Murphy, too? I'm glad I'm not a celeb this year. Geez.

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