I know someone who can really use them right now. A woman I used to work with at my old job is going through something no parent should ever have to. Her 9 year old son went swimming in a public pool on Saturday and was found floating unconcious. He was revived but right now they don't know the extent of the brain damage that may have been done. They have him in a medically induced coma and he's on a respirator 60% of the time. Apparently there are encouraging signs - he moves his eyes and lips and reacts to being touched. However they have to bring him out of the coma very gradually because otherwise it will be too much stress to his body, and until he is they can't tell how much brain damage there is. I don't know how long that will take, but apparently the doctor told his mom it will be a "long, slow road". For her it's going to be a long slow nightmare. So if anyone can spare some prayers if you pray or good thoughts if you don't, please send them to Sai and his mom Pallavi. Much appreciated.

Seriously. 

I unlocked a new balance exercise called the Lotus Focus. You sit on the balance board in the lotus position (or, as they helpfully point out, if you can't do it just sit cross legged) and try to keep your spine perfectly straight  and balanced for as long as you can. On the screen is a picture of a candle, and the flame shimmers at any movement and goes out when you lose your balance. They try to distract you, like with a moth flying near the flame, and footsteps in the distance. Anyway, I was able to keep the candle lit for 90 seconds. Not bad for someone with sucky balance I guess, but when you blow your candle out you hear this deep grunt/shriek like the sounds they make in karate - I don't know how else to describe it. Jesus. I jumped about 20 feet in the air. I think I screamed a little too. I'm not sure my heart can take this game. 

I got tickets for Sheryl Crow next week - they had a $10 lawn seat sale, woot!

Still grinning like a fool at the thought of Colin and Ryan together in Montreal *happy sigh*

I promised a couple of you I'd give updates on this, so here 'tis: 



Now back to squeeing over Clay's Montreal news ;)

Yeah, remember when going out on a date with a hot guy or girl and getting trashed was cool? Well, now that I'm all grown up and stuff,  the NEW cool is Friday night, drinking an iced coffee and getting ready to plunge into all these great fics that have been posted. Time to put a dent in my fictigue ™ (look, Allie! I did the ™ sign!), which is defined by the lovely Allie as: 

fictigue, n. The state of being overwhelmed by a smorgasbord of tasty fic while at the same time knowing you've got no time to read it all NOWNOWNOW!

I also may take a stab at writing some more tonight. Get one fic done and I always expect to be on a roll (looks ruefully at 3 works in progress)

Woo hoo! I love Friday night!

I downloaded a free trial of Snag It so I could try my hand at icon making.  So far it's just giving me a headache, lol. Question for you icon making pros... I'm not sure how to ask this so it makes sense, but.... I'm trying to make an icon out of the picture I used for this entry *points*. See how it's kinda rectangular, and doesn't fill the whole "box" that you can use for icons? Like most icons come out bigger, and more square. Is there a way to make the picture bigger? I can't figure that out. With the size it is now, when I put the text on it you can't even read it. *scowls*

Help? Please? :)

Well, I survived ;) But dang! I really am not usually a wuss when it comes to weather. I'm not joking when I say I've never seen anything like that wind last night. It did settle down and it was pretty windy for the rest of the night, but nothing like the two half hour or so bursts of what had to be hurricane force winds. The tree by my parking space made it, luckily for me. Surprisingly there weren't too many downed branches, but when I went out this morning I discovered that this high wooden fence that separates the complex's parking lot from the empty lot next door was completely trashed - 2/3 of it is splattered on the ground and the rest is hanging in shreds. Day-um. Luckily there were no cars parked there - it's the fire zone.  

Not much wind happening now, but it's gone down to the high 30s/low 40s, when yesterday it was close to 60 even with the rain! Stupid weather.

I was sitting here at my desk and all of a sudden I heard a ROAR from outside and the windows started rattling. I looked out and saw that the wind was blowing so hard that the trees were actually bending over nearly double. Ho...ly... SHIT. I have NEVER seen wind this strong. As I was looking out the window the power went off and came back on again right away. I turned on the weather channel, really worried that a tornado could be coming - dead serious, I've never ever seen this much wind. Nothing about tornadoes but they had one of those red screen crawls with the beeping sound saying severe thunderstorms in the area with dangerous winds. The part that scared me was it said "seek shelter NOW in a sturdy structure and stay away from windows". OMG... is my condo considered a sturdy structure??? The wind seems to have died down some but I can still hear it, and a "strong wind warning" is in effect all night.  

Ugh - just as I was typing that, there was another big ass gust of wind. It's freaking me out. 

Someone make this stop... *shivers*