Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Here's one I'm interested if folks' reactions to and opinions on: "These days, status conflicts are driven less by economic fears than by threats to the masculine mystique." -- Richard Goldstein.

Aewake. Shouldn't be. Too groggy to do anything productive, not even hitting one of the items on my "things I've been meaning to post about" list. So a "drive by" post...

When you run into an unfamiliar LJ user, peek at their interests list. Ypu'll see plenty of the same-old same-old, but you'll also trip over phrases in the "Oh, I should've thought to mention that too", "I never thought of that before", "sounds interesting -- I wonder what it's actually about", and, of course, "whiskey tango foxtrot?" categories.

I just found someone who lists "putting bras on cats" as an interest.

And I'm sleepy enough for my mind to go off on three tangents from there simultaneously.

I got an hour of sleep (I'm about to go back and try to get another hour or two -- wish me luck), and woke up hearing the beep my phone makes to let me know I've missed a call. So I got up, found the phone, saw a missed call from an unfamiliar Baltimore number, guessed what it probably was, and checked my messages. It was an oil company calling to arrange for me to meet their driver for a delivery, and saying that since they'd missed me, they wouldn't be able to deliver oil today. So I called back to do whatever needed to be done to make sure oil could be delivered, and the dispatcher got the driver on the radio and found out he'd already come here anyhow and replaced most of the air in that silver thing in my basement with oil. I hadn't thought to go look at the guage in the basement before calling, 'cause the message had said they couldn't deliver it today. Turns out what that really meant was "if my fill-pipe is behind a locked gate", which it isn't. Okay, that problem was pretty easy to fix: call up and find out the problem didn't really exist. *whew*

Where did the oil come from? A concerned friend paid for it and had it delivered here. I really hate needing this kind of help, but since I do need help, I'm damned lucky to have the friends I've got. And I am extremely grateful to this friend.

So I thank the friend who bought me oil, and I thank the Lord for granting me such friends (believe me when I say that I do not take for granted the number of people who help me in various ways (and the ones who'd like to help except that I'm so bad at asking for help)), and I pray that someday I'll be doing well enough to be the one helping out friends in need.

I'm celebrating in the obvious fashion: I turned on the furnace.

Actually, even more than the physical comfort of the warmth (it's already four Kelvins warmer than when I turned on the heat, and my fingers are working noticeably better as a result), I'm feeling the reduction in stress from not worrying that that last eighth of a tank might get used up while the weather's still cold enough for pipes to freeze. If we continue to get occasional sane-for-January breaks in this pretend-Baltimore-is-Buffalo cold, I can probably stretch this most-of-a-tank to Valentine's Day or later, and that ought to be late enough to not have to worry too much after that. [knock wood]

And by next winter I hope to have gotten through whatever paperwork and bureaucracy (I always have to look up the spelling of that word; can't I just call it ... "writingdeskocracy" or something?) to have government assistance with such problems so my friends won't have to worry quite as much. And maybe even a working fireplace.

I just found out how to properly do something I'd been using stupid workarounds for, by tripping over the answer in a comment to an entry in a journal I was only looking at because a friend commented that two of her friends had used the same phrase in journal entries today.

I guess I was really supposed to look there. :-)

I failed to get back to sleep earlier. Being sleep-deprived I also had no sense of time and failed to get out of the house early enough to make it to MVA before they closed at 16:30 ... I had thought they closed at 17:00 or 17:30 ... Oh well, it'd probably be better to show up in the morning instead of right at closing, especially since I'm not sure whether they're going to cope with the letter explaining that the uncle who signed the title is the executor of the estate of the uncle whose name is on the title, in a straightforward matter or a PITA manner.

I'm going to try again to get some sleep.

I just learned a new word (from vamp_ire):

"Actually, [dommie] is usually a word used for a female ageplay dominant. It is a cross between Dom and Mommy."

blackthornglade

Okay, I get that cats are supposed to be cute (Note to theferrett: not to the exclusion of other critters. I find it easy to recognize the adorability of ferrets as well as kittens), but dammit, when Perrine gets into that "ready to either settle or pounce" position on the stairs with a "looking for mischief" look on her face, or when she peers through the bannister to see what I'm doing on the floor below, my brain goes all melty. Melty in a ridiculous, "oh grow up already", glad-nobody's-watching, sappy way. Melty brain and this warm feeling that is not heartburn in the middle of my chest. It's beyond cute (though it may just be that she's got her claws hooked in my soul). And one of these days I swear I'm going to catch her on film leaping not merely gracefully, but downright dance-like, across that funky dip at the top of the back staircase.

But I was still annoyed with Perrine when I couldn't find my Prilosec this morning. I correctly guessed what had happened to it (she'd knocked it off the table) but it took me a while to figure out where it had gone.

A funny thing happened earlier. I was on Fulton Ave. and heard a siren. Seeing flashing lights somewhere behind me, I pulled aside to let what turned out to be an ambulance zoom past ... And so did every other car in that block! It's so cool to not be the only one for a change!

I had threetwo other things I wanted to jot down before I toddle napwards, but there's more sleep in my head than words at the moment, so I'd better stop here.