I will be in NYC until Saturday.

Texting from my profile is enabled, but tell me who you are! You crazy voyeurs may wish to watch my Twitter account, as TxTLJ doesn't like to work for Verizon for some reason.

I'll try to get a voice post or two in.

Link me to important stuff.

Wish me luck!

Well, I booked a Thursday-Saturday flight. If all goes well, I'm leaving tomorrow morning and returning Saturday night. If anyone has a couch for me to sleep on (or knows someone with a couch to sleep on) for the two nights, it would be much appreciated. I just had to book this flight ASAP, and booking a two-day flight was actually less expensive and means a bit more fun for me.

Well, looks like I'm going to NYC tomorrow. Please advise.

Firefox 3.5 is here, and it is beautiful.

Private browsing! Porn mode! (Though I do wish you could just open a separate private tab and let the others remain non-private, so I could have two Gmail accounts open in Firefox at once.) Unclose that last tab! Open your current tab in a new window! Close everything else!

And I'm just getting started.

Go. Download.

Mum, Dad, and I went out to eat on Saturday. As soon as we got our food Michael, an old friend of Dad's, arrived by himself. Dad yelled across the restaurant very indiscreetly to get his attention. Michael didn't notice, so Dad got up and told him that we were here, and Michael sat with us.

They go way back; they've known each other since they were kids, I think. Jeffrey has known most of his friends since childhood too. Me? Not so much. I'm not really friends with my childhood friends, despite what Facebook may say. I've always been great at making friends but not so great at keeping them. They either make new (and apparently better) friends, or we just move on with their lives. I really hope this isn't a pattern. If it is, then who will be my Ghostbuster? (I don't even believe in ghosts.)

Also, most people from back in the day don't know what social media beyond Facebook (and MySpace, but I stay far away from that) are. If they did, I'd be either more inclined or less inclined to interact. Even Twitter would suffice.

I love my horoscope from my Onion calendar so much that I had to share it. Okay, so it's actually from late May, but I'm going through the days slowly but surely.

The stars have decided that if you're going to be such a prick about everything, you'll just have to find the future out for yourself from now on.

All right then. I'll get right on that.

Michael Jackson is dead, and he took the Internet with him.

Dad likes his bottled water. As today would demonstrate, he likes his particular brand of bottled water.

Jeffrey and I went to Ingles to get said crates of water, raincheck in hand from the last two visits when the water was on sale but not available. As soon as we entered, we saw the water, grabbed three crates, and checked out. He handed me the receipt to give Mum when she came in. Easy.

Mum came in later and asked if I had the receipt. I did. Oh, nothing was wrong. We just got the wrong kind of water.

I pointed out that we bought the right brand.

Oh no, she told me. You got purified water. I said spring water. At this point I told her that getting the water was not my responsibility (true), and therefore this was not my problem. Dad wasn't pleased either because purified water tastes dead. That's right. Dead. Apparently there's a difference in the kinds of non-Dasani waters. Who knew?

In that case, let me introduce you to this novel concept called a reusable water bottle and the filter on your kitchen sink. You'll be sending less plastic to the landfill as Ringgold doesn't give two shits about recycling AND you'll be saving money. It's win-win.

Meanwhile, Mum was on the phone with Ingles seeing if she could get her money back and get her second choice of water instead.

Water. It's serious business.

I opened my email this morning and was greeted by one of Amazon's usual emails recommending me stuff. This time it wasn't recommending TVs or nursing books like the norm. It was actually (gasp) math.

This book (Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions) was the first book it recommended.

This might be a sign. Of what, I don't know. Either way, I'm tempted to buy it and read it, especially to see where the group theory in the bedroom comes in. (n-somes, anyone?)

* The first two weeks of my contract with myself have passed. I now have exactly 2.5 months to go before moving out. Okay, a little less than that because the first of September is a Tuesday. I won't start panicking for a few more weeks.

* I finished Dr. Nbook 74 today. Number 75 is waiting to be started, likely tomorrow. This makes two Dr. Nbooks in a row whose titles are based of Indigo Girls songs. I wonder what this says about me.

* I'm having a yard sale this weekend at my parents' place. Of course, since we live in a tiny road off the middle of nowhere and will just make a ton of signs, few people will show up. Especially since, as unpredictable as weather is, it's slated to rain only on Saturday. All this stuff really needs to go. I can hardly walk in here, and it'll make packing a lot easier.

* I'm also getting rid of books in this yard sale. Gasp, you say. Not all my books, mind. Just the ones I bought years ago so I'd look well-read and so I could tell myself I'd read them one day (right?). Then I realized a ton of them were in the public domain, and besides, I can take only so much Shakespeare in one session. (Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello are still safe. Yum.)

* I've been wasting most of my time on Hunch ever since its public opening. It's based on the idea that I use whenever I pose a question to LJ or Twitter or Google: because there are so many people out there, someone out there knows the answer. Hunch helps indecisive types like me make decisions, but it actually gets smarter as more people use it, which is why you should get an account instead of just fooling around. Come on, virtual banjos for contributions? That's what I call fun. Hunch isn't as great as human relations, so it won't tell me who on my flist has the hots for me. For almost everything else, though, you can dive in, play a few topics, and once you've played a few, you can tweak them and make them better. I made one to help you decide whether you should do NaNoWriMo. Try it. You might like it. You can also find out whether you can fight a bear and win. I have a very very slim chance.

Let the next 2.5 months begin.

Over the past day or two I've noticed several scratches on my arms and hands. This strikes me as strange because the most physically dangerous thing I've done lately is leave the house, and I can't think of a single time where a sharp object got that close to my arms.

There's only one conclusion I can come to.

My house is no longer safe from raptors. They are attacking me in my sleep.

Now that the raptors are in the house, how can I get them out?

I had a blank calendar that one could customize with their own dates. I did this, using it to keep track of dates for a story I was writing. This lasted for only a week, if that. Here's what's inside.

Week of 1/16/2000 (This was far before I actually thought of this story)
On Monday, the 17th: AG sees TK at soccer practice. Letter from Andella, TK learns about AG.

The days for that week are numbered, but I wrote nothing else.

(Andella? Really?)

I'm most prolific in Dr. Nbook when I'm emo, but least prolific in LJ and in actual writing. The opposite is also true.

Also, I dropped two fountain pens tonight while writing. That has to be a writer's sign for seven years of bad luck.

(Don't worry. They're both fine.)

What do you do with personalized gifts that serve no purpose for you? Apparently the church I used to go to decided to give me a book called God's Promises for Graduates upon my graduation. Really nice and all, except for one thing.

I'm not Christian anymore.

Advice? They did the same thing with high school too, just before I decided their religion wasn't for me.

(Oh, I haven't dropped off the face of the Internet completely; I just haven't felt like updating. One day there will be a real update.)

Over time I've accumulated items that I can't return. Not because I've damaged them in some way, but because I borrowed them from a friend fully intending to return them, but we're no longer in touch, and now we're no longer in touch.

What does one do with these items, anyway, especially when there's a chance you could see them again? Keep them? Give them away? There is a really good recipe for a chocolate torte in one of them, so I'm just saying...