Rebecca Borgstrom's Friends

Yes, yes, Rocky Horror remake
Okay, look, there's pretty much exactly one way wherein the whole Rocky Horror Picture Show remake idea gets interesting: an all-Scientology cast. Honestly. Okay, maybe not honestly, but I think the idea has a couple of lulz. What's your cast? Personally, I'd nominate:

John Travolta as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Sure, sure, it's easy, but the decay will make him terrifying, and he's got experience in drag. Also, he's played a transvestite in film. (I know, I know, too easy...)
Katie Holmes as Janet Weiss, largely because of the seasoning brought by the off-screen freakshow drama with...
Tom Cruise's Super-Ego as Brad Majors. Small, ineffective, and desperately overcompensating. Tell me I'm wrong. I dare you. But that's not all! We have...
Tom Cruise's Id as Rocky Horror. (Yes, yes, I know, double-casting. But he's an OT, right? He should be capable! And c'mon, picture him prancing around in those mouldy goldies. Weeks of nightmares.)
Cartoon Xenu, voiced by Nancy Cartwright, as Riff Raff. Villain... or hero?
Kirstie Alley as Magenta. She's played aliens with weird sex drives, and besides, she has that crazed look you need.
Lisa Marie-Presley as Columbia. Aheh.
Isaac Hayes as The Criminologist. Picture him saying "Heavy. Dark. and Pendulous," and I think you'll be sold.
Beck as Beck, playing Eddie. No, he can't act, but so what?
The Re-animated Corpse of L. Ron Hubbard as Dr. Everett von Scott (A Rival Scientist), because you just have to. Finally, in cameo roles:
Giovanni Ribisi as Ralph Hapschatt, because somebody has to do it, and
Greta Van Susteren as Betty Munroe Hapschatt, because who better than a Fox News troll to play a woman subverting her identity to a complete jackass?

Amy Heckerling directs. We tell them it's a metacommentary on The Church of Scientology vs. Psychology, but really, well, with any luck at all, they'd set the location on fire and burn the whole place down around themselves. Or, well, so I can dream.

Current Mood: okay

Housing bailout bill
Okay, so there's this "housing bailout" bill (HR 3221) that's pretty much a Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae bailout bill. It gives Treasury Secretary Paulson only very loosely limited access to US debt instruments to bail out these two government-chartered but privately-held housing-finance corporations. I've linked to articles talking about why this is a bad idea before. The House passed it last night; it goes now to the Senate.

One of the reasons this is bad is that the stated ideas about how much value loss the housing credit crisis includes still do not reflect reality. They still assume that housing prices can be stabilised at historically high levels, which is not going to happen. I'm sorry; it's just not. The real losses are now starting to be acknowledged as being around US$1.5T. This bill essentially allows Mr. Paulson to cover these losses with government money, which is to say, taxpayer funds.

Now, the US government debt ceiling will limit that (unless raised again) to US$800B or so. But no matter how you cut it, that's an absolute assload of new government debt - which means new government borrowing, or created money - and in a pretty short period of time.

Here are the questions you need to ask:

What's that going to do to the US dollar? And what's that going to do to the cost of US government borrowing? And what's that going to do to the cost of financing the current very large government debt? And what's that going to do to the size of that debt, once you add in the new, higher interest rates generated?

I suppose you could also ask, "Do I want to pay to bail out these bondholders?"

The bond market already appears not to like this discussion. The 10 year bond has added 359 basis points to bond interest rates since Mr. Paulson said it should happen a week ago. (C.f. chart here.) This could be real. Or... might not be. I suspect that if it passes, we'll get another short-term stock rally, which will make everyone feel better - at first.

Look, I understand the urge to Do Something. I have my own ideas about what should be done. (I was arguing for the Short Sharp Shock some, what, 18 months ago?) And I'm not at all as confident about this as I am most things I go public about, but the time factor makes taking my best guess and hoping it's the right one kinda mandatory. I could be wrong about what should be done; I could be wrong about the fallout from this. I would say the odds of being wrong are higher than usual, because there are simply too many unknowns.

Or, on the other hand, the Senate could be passing Smoot-Hawley for a New Generation later this afternoon or tomorrow.

Do what you think you need to.

Current Mood: worried

BTW, Norwescon attendees
I know it's stupid early, but those of you going to Norwescon next year for sure might want to go ahead and reserve your rooms. (You can do that here, at the Hotels page of the Norwescon website with a credit card.) We're through half our room block already (as of a few days ago) and they already had to expand the Wednesday block so more concom members could register. (Don't worry, we're not almost out of rooms on any day regular attendees might care about. Just half out, which is bad enough.)

I dunno what's going on, but people are reserving rooms crazy early this time, which kind of continues a trend started last year when the hotel was booked up by late December. So now you know. ^_^

Current Mood: surprised

Who am I and why am I awake at 2am?
Crashed allll day today instead of getting a much-needed haircut, but luckily I was able to get one in the evening, and still felt up enough to stop by the grocery store, where I found all sorts of crazy stuff I could actually eat (some has corn in it but I seem okay on corn now as long as it's not the first ingredient.) Then I crashed some more instead of cooking the yummy vegetables I had bought. Brad has been super nice about cooking food but I sort of have to twist his arm to get veggies to occur outside of the addition of spinach (and I guess onions count as a vegetable,) so if I want veggies I generally need to cook those myself. I had a pretty good stir fry planned out to use up the napa cabbage and red bell pepper, plus some sweet potatoes, squash, and leeks I got, but instead, zzzz. I'll try to do it today.

All that sleeping, and mild flareup leftovers (ow my hands) means I'm pretty firmly awake now. I'll try some ibuprofen and see if I can get back to sleep. Not that I necessarily need more sleep, but I'd like to keep on my current schedule.

I've been taking ibuprofen every day since I started the dental work, mostly because it made my teeth so incredibly sensitive that I couldn't eat without it. I seem to be getting used to the crown, though, so I may start tapering off and take it reactively instead of proactively. That's a long time to be on it in a row, I know, but actually I think I've been more functional than usual for this time of year on it. Hmm. I should talk to my doctor, which will take organization. I think it's okay as long as I'm easy on my liver, and as I don't drink that's pretty easy to do.

I've been sort of half day on, one day off, which I'm trying to remind myself really is better than usual for this time of year. Ibuprofen seems to have only gotten me so far, but yeah, farther than usual.

Things to remember to do:

Call allergist tomorrow and schedule for Monday.
Get a few things to eat on the trip. I picked up some cereal today but having some transportable food for the plane etc. would be good.
Pack for trip (going to try to do that tomorrow so I'm not running around crazy on Friday.)
Finalize roster for arenas by Friday morning.
My mother may need to be driven somewhere Monday and I must not forget!

wow i'm tired
They like me, those people in the Kirk land, take-off-your-shirt land. But omg I'm tired. One person had a request for a song I'd never heard of. Another one leaned in to try to look at my sheet music (actually just notes) for "Life in the Underground (The Militant's Song)."

Also,

westrider came by and said hi. ^_^

eta: broke 1 string (nbd), tore up all the new green pics. Dammit. Finished one song with a broken pick, which was kinda cool. Crowd didn't seem to notice.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Life in the Underground (The Militant's Song) | Crime and the Forces of Evil

Friend of a friend in need
For those of you who are local to the Puget Sound area,

prettyshrub has put out a call for a friend of hers in need: she has severe allergies and needs assistance getting a wood floor put into her apartment. Wood flooring has been given her but she needs people who know what they're doing to contribute labor.

If you're interested in helping, go check out

prettyshrub's link over here. Thanks, folks.

Kirkland Wednesday Market!
I'm off to the Kirkland Wednesday Market at 111 Park Lane, Kirkland. I've never been to this one before, so I'm nervous. I'm getting there early for setup time and warmup, and I should start around 2PM. Wish me luck! ^_^

Current Mood: rushed

"the embers of the summer lost their breath and disappeared"
Huh.

I have an OK Cupid account. I created it because I was curious about their match questions and I take the quizzes sometimes and so my friends could see my quizzes. I don't really do anything with it, it's just there.

I added a picture of myself from a few years ago. I added a Dorothy Parker poem to my almost empty profile at one point.

Actually, it was after getting an email from some guy who said I seemed really awesome from my profile and he'd love to get to know me, we'd totally get along. Not quite remembering what was there I checked my profile. It was completely empty! But OK Cupid wouldn't let me leave it that way once I'd accidentally clicked on Edit Profile so I added the poem. I tried to add the Q&A from this post but the formatting didn't work and I got tired of putting effort into it. Man, I like that post.

I wonder if I still have that email... I don't tend to delete them. Well, I did delete one that I suspect was supposed to be insulting but decided to just delete it instead of try to parse what the person was trying to say and figure out if it was or not...

Anyway, last year in July/August I got 6 emails (this is not including people putting my profile on their "saved" lists or whatever or silly messages OK Cupid sends me). Then hardly any. This year, I've gotten 6 emails since the beginning of the month.

Apparently WA does not have spring fever so much as midsummer fever. Or something. It's probably the heat. :)

Of course, today has actually be wonderful. Chilly and a little windy and cloudy and looking like rain. It was an awesome day. I actually closed my window a little.

Hrm. I wonder if I would get fewer or more emails if I admitted that one of the things on my mind a lot is zombies. I haven't posted about them but that doesn't mean I don't think about it! Those wacky, wacky zombies.

World War Z is an awesome book, by the way. I highly recommend it even to people who aren't a fan of zombies/horror since it's ... not really about the zombies themselves.

Complication in GBS plans in October--thanks, BFFN!
It occurred to me tonight that now that I know that my reconstruction surgery will be on the 18th of September, this means that the GBS show here in Seattle, which is on October 1st, will fall smack dab in the middle of my recovery time.

Oh, I'm still going. MISSING GREAT BIG SEA IS NOT AN OPTION. I will simply most likely have to sit during most of the show--I mean, given where the reconstruction is going to be, Vertical Movement will be RIGHT out, even if Séan makes charming jokes about bouncing bosoms. Mine will not be up for bouncing, that's for damn sure.

And I will take consolation in the knowledge that we actually have pretty bitchin' good seats: seats 5-8, row F, center section, main floor.

But getting to and from the show will be... interesting. I'll most likely still be on pain meds at that point, so I won't be fit to drive.

mamishka,

technoshaman, or

casirafics, we'll have to talk arrangements!

hm.
An idle thought: coal futures are sharply down. Oil futures are down sharply again too. Supply has not really increased, and while there's some funny business with speculation and market interference against speculation going on in oil, and futures contracts are already entering the weak-demand autumn season for oil, I don't know that any of that is going on in coal.

So ticking off the various possibilities, I'm starting to wonder whether there's been a quiet cancellation of a lot of industrial projects out there in the background. (The manufacturing survey was not good, but I'm wondering whether the cancellations hit a critical mass.)

No actual data for this. Just a thought.

Current Mood: thoughtful

shoot me
I can't even write a goddamn three-chord punk song right. It's got four chords now. Shoot me.

Current Mood: amused

A Really Interesting UK "Brain Sex" Test
Nabbed from

rowanf's journal. It's a "Sex ID Test". I like the fact that the results tell you when the results are inconclusive along with the ones where they find things to be more conclusive.

I am highly amused that I scored 50 on the male side, right where your average guy would be, though with the spatial rotation questions, I scored 100%.

If you want to take the test, you should probably do it before seeing my results.

( More babbling about the results. )

Current Mood: amused

State of the Cone
As is all too usual for me I'm way behind on reading LJ right now.

But the dogs are doing great; Moose passed his six month cancer checkup with flying colors. His blood work was "boring." "Boring is good!" He's been in great shape, and he's recovered from the stiffness and limping from the neck problem he had, and he's going back to the kennel and having fun again. Jack still has enough energy for TWO dogs, or even THREE dogs, so he comes back from daycare still bouncing and playing while Moose crashes out to take a nap.

Jack has been changing into a summer coat and it's REALLY funny. First he shed out his undercoat in symmetrical tufts, the same way Moose does, though a month or so later. So for instance he'll shed a tuft on each hip, then another one farther up, and tufts on both sides of his tail, etc. It's really cute. But unlike Moose he also sheds his top coat after he's through with the undercoat, in big patches so he looks like he's been attacked by moths. For such a shorthaired dog he makes a LOT of fur! He definitely likes having all that fur brushed out.

I've been crashing every day, usually in the morning until the early afternoon, but some days I make it until around noon and then crash until evening. Ugh! But I'm still getting up in the morning and making Brad lunch, at least, and that means I usually eat a decent breakfast too, because I just have some of whatever I packed for him. I'm a little cranky at just how tired I am all the time, but honestly I'm doing better this year than I did last year so I should be grateful for that. I just slow down in summers and that's that. It means I look forward to autumn. My day goes like: make lunch for Brad, walk if I have the energy (usually not, sadly), eat breakfast, scritch the dogs if they're not at daycare, noodle around on the computer some, crash crash crash, then get up in the evening and do stuff with Brad or with WIR.

I keep forgetting about allergy shots on Monday (probably because I'm especially dozy on Mondays for some reason) so I MUST remember to do them next Monday. Blowing them off means I end up having to do them even more.

On the plus side I haven't been spacing out on either dental appointments or vet visits, so that's good.

Book Log #39: Wings to the Kingdom, by Cherie Priest
Wings to the Kingdom, the second Eden Moore book by

cmpriest, is a somewhat lighter-hearted read than its predecessor Four and Twenty Blackbirds. The grimness of the plot of the first book is resolved somewhat as Eden begins to make peace with those events; moreover, since her credentials as one who sees and interacts with ghosts have been established for the reader, more room is left to devote to the plot.

Which is, in this case, Eden's investigation of why ghosts are appearing en masse on a local battlefield, and what's happened to the entity said in local legend to be their guardian. Joining her in her endeavor are two of her friends as well as celebrity investigators of the paranormal--who, as far as Eden is concerned, may or may not be legit. There's just enough followup with the previous plot to show that not only is it having an impact on Eden's relatives, but also that it's bolstered her reputation in the area, and in ways she doesn't particularly like.

The one quibble I have with the story is the time-displaced chapters from the point of view of the mortal antagonist who sets the plot into motion. We don't see him come in until several chapters into the book--and then, we jump back "seven weeks earlier" to see his events. Which didn't quite click for me. I'd have preferred to just tell the story from both his point of view and Eden's linearly in time.

But that's only a minor quibble. All in all the tale is very solid, and I'll much look forward to reading the third book. Three and a half stars.

D'Merle or C.F. Martin
Anybody know where I can get D'Merle (formerly D'Angelico) bronze mandolin strings? Or C.F. Martin without having to special order? I've called the usual places (Lark in the Morning, Trading Musician, Dusty Strings, Mills Music) and have thus far found no joy except for a single set of Martin at Mills. I've had them order a second so I can have two sets - I'm not going into a performance without backup strings anymore - but I'd rather not have to do special orders.

Current Mood: surprised
Current Music: Marking Time, Waiting For Death | 鷲巣　詩郎

Reconstruction surgery now scheduled
Just got off the phone with Dr. McMillan's office to follow up with them and let them know that leave shouldn't be an issue, and to ask what the next steps would be in getting reconstruction surgery scheduled. The receptionist said she could help me with that, and let me know that the earliest Dr. McMillan had open was September 18th. I said I'd take that; that's plenty of time for my team at work to plan for my absence, and for me to get current major obligations done and dealt with, project-wise.

Hopefully, it'll also give us some time to further beat down debt to brace for the likely large bill for staying in the hospital for a couple of days.

There will be a pre-op appointment on September 2nd to settle all pertinent details, and I'll need to do another round of FMLA paperwork. Here's hoping it'll be the last.

Cross your fingers, folks.

That certainly could've gone worse; also, tonight's Tricky Pixie
So I got down to the shops and discovered O HAI STAGE AND BAND AND AMPS, not on the calendar, and they've moved some things around so the good spot under the tree isn't available anymore. So I was What! Gir! and they were "technically it's not us, and no, you can't stand at the end of the table." And they made me go face a road in the parking lot, which I tried for like three songs and then said "screw this" and moved over to the other side of the traffic island at least facing part of the market. But I still had to compete with the stage act, which was loud enough to be a problem.

I tried what I could with my flute set, but that mostly failed, so then I got out the mandolin and started playing, and then got just a little annoyed and decided THE PARK IS MINE or at least this corner of the market, and started playing like that was actually true, and as loudly as I could...

...and it worked. I actually took over that part of the market, at least while on mandolin. It was kinda awesome in that omg-I-can't-believe-this-is-working kind of way. It cost me four strings (!ouch! !ouch! !ouch! !ouch!), but it turned a crap and nearly-abourtive day into a genuine success.

As for tonight's Tricky Pixie show, there aren't a lot of audiences who will deliver five-part layered harmony singalong - at least, not outside Wales - but tonight's audience did. That was pretty epic, and I was proud to be a part of it. Good show all around, really; the room, acoustically, was a bit of a problem (way too live) but the sound crew did good job of dealing with it, and the band was nicely on. Plus it's just nice to see

s00j and

stealthcello and Alec and everybody ^_^. Alec also gave me some suggestions for more durable mandolin strings. I'll apparently be needing them. *^_^*;;

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Luv Song | Jane Jensen

A Few Other Things...
Jet, when we were in the Badlands, would point out a different path up or down the cliffs and say, "THAT is the path to certain destruction."

We also discussed the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Lost Arc for like an hour, in detail, with graphic positioning of exactly what happened, what didn't happen, what was movie magic, and what should have happened when the ball rolled down. The hazards of being in a car for hours with a seven-year-old with the same attention to detail and plausibility that both his parents have. I think it would have driven nearly anyone else insane.

I'm glad we're family. *laughs* I think anyone else would have killed us.

Current Mood: content

Hancock
John and I got a rare chance to go out to a movie yesterday when Jet went off on a birthday party where they took him to the ballpark and they got to see a Rockie's Game. So we picked Hancock.

I would not say it was Epic.

*laughs* But it was fun. We enjoyed it and the off-beat comicbook sensibility. Will Smith makes a very good Lost Boy. Charlize Theron was a lot of fun to watch.

( Cut for spoilers, kinda. )

Current Mood: gloomy

Off to play!
Off to play - Lake Forest Park, noon-2ish. Wish me luck for moneys!

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Shout | DEVO

Meanwhile, over in BFFN land
So, yeah. Went in for a couple of followup appointments on Thursday morning, back-to-back: a check-in with Dr. Towbin since he wanted to see how I was doing, and a check-in with Dr. McMillan, to ask about next steps for proceeding with reconstruction surgery.

Dr. Towbin seemed generally satisfied with the state of the area where my late lamented right breast used to be. However, there is that swollen bit I mentioned in my last post. I don't know what the hell is up with that, whether there's just some old fluid trapped in there or what. It's gotten a bit larger and more noticeable since I started doing the weights workouts, and I asked Towbin about that--whether there was any risk that I'd torn something not quite properly healed yet. He said no, and was feeling kind of cautious about doing anything about that bit yet. If it's not subsided though by the next time he sees me, he'll probably stick a needle in it to drain it out. Until then, I shall employ judicious icepack therapy to see if I can get it to go away on its own. Meh.

Meanwhile, it's looking fairly likely that I will be proceeding with having Dr. McMillan do the procedure of taking some muscle tissue off my back to rebuild me in front. I have learned that my conception of how FMLA leave works was wrong, too--I'd thought that it pulled from my pool of available vacation time and then became unpaid leave if I used that up. However, according to our benefits people, the way it actually works is that it pulls from sick leave first, then vacation, then unpaid. And sick leave and vacation are tracked differently. So I shouldn't have to worry about taking a hit of unpaid leave for this, since like with the mastectomy, it'll be 2-3 weeks recovery time. And probably a couple of days in the hospital to start it off, too, and most likely another six weeks before I feel entirely normal.

Which means that my current exercise regimen will take a hit, which is annoying; I'll have to back off the weights again shortly after having restarted them. Dr. McMillan and I will have to discuss how I can roll exercise back into my routine, once we do this thing.

I need to call her office back on Monday and set the wheels in motion to get everything scheduled. It'll probably be in August, maybe September. Wish me luck, folks.

More food and exercise data
(Hrmm. I need me a good 'doing exercise' icon. Maybe something involving bending from Avatar: The Last Airbender, just to go with the Katara healing icon I'm using now.)

Haven't had an exercise/food update in a bit, so here's this.

I failed to do weights on Wednesday. This was not entirely due to lameness; there's this bit that's gotten kind of swollen where I had the mastectomy, and I'm a bit concerned that this has gotten aggravated somehow due to my recent chest exercises with the weights. I did have a followup with Dr. Towbin on Thursday morning (more about this in another post), and he seemed to think it was okay. So I did do weights yesterday morning. But in the meantime, I'm also employing the mini-icepacks I was given before during prior procedures, to try to encourage that swelling to go down.

I have not lost any weight to speak of this month so far, which I'll admit is a little disappointing. However, I also haven't had any significant gains. I've been hovering right around the same immediate area I was in at the beginning of the month. Given that my energy levels have been improving, I'm willing to chalk some of this up to the weights exercises starting to do a little fat->muscle conversion.

We had an article up the other day on the Times site talking about how food diaries work for people for one strong reason: that as long as you're honest with yourself about it, it provides accountability. People were quoted in the article as saying how they found themselves avoiding eating certain things because they didn't want them to be on their food logs. I myself have begun to experience this--it's how I've managed to talk myself out of oh, say, buying Zingers at the corner market store, or getting snack chips out of the vending machines at work.

I have also begun to look for alternate snack concepts like dried fruit packets from Whole Foods, stuff that would store well if kept in my desk drawer at work. Found some tasty dried mango bits that I may be sampling again. Y'all will also notice I've been plowing through Tic-Tacs like they were water. This is an attempt to satisfy the urge to keep my mouth occupied--with something that's hardly any calories.

Meanwhile, ( food data for the last several days, feel free to skip... )

And, the walking log:

Miles since July 10th: 22
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2955
Miles out of Minas Tirith: 118
Miles to Hobbiton: 1507

Book Log #38: White Night, by Jim Butcher
I was sadly, sadly remiss in getting

jimbutcher's White Night read in a timely fashion--it's been a complicated year, what can I say--but now that I've finally finished it, I am happy to report that the Dresden Files continue to be solidly entertaining.

It's still a little weird to me to read about an older, wiser Harry; the early books made such an impact on me that that image of him is still very strong in my head. And, of course, it was reinforced by the sadly short-lived TV show. On the other hand, it is satisfying to have an older, wiser Harry in the current books. Any series that runs on past a few books really needs to have long-term character development to hold a reader's interest, and in this, Butcher really shines. Though at the same time, some fundamentals of Harry's character remain constant, like oh, say, the snark. Three words, ladies and gentlemen: BOWLING! FOR! VAMPIRES!

This far into the series I suppose it's inevitable that any given novel will pretty much involve mostly familiar characters. But this time around, we had enough appearances of non-regularly-recurring characters that I kept having quite a bit of deja vu. A character we haven't seen since Storm Front shows up as important to this plot, in addition to several more regularly appearing folks. Lots of followup to previously established plotlines occurs, interwoven with the new story.

Which, not surprisingly, is a problem designed to hit Harry right in the chivalry: women practitioners of magic are getting killed. As per usual, things start with a bang as Harry and Murphy begin to investigate, and they build up to a satisfyingly explosive finale. In this particular book's case, quite literally. ;) Four well-deserved stars.