Periodically one should probably update one's sticky post, which I finally have made myself sit down and do.

My name is Kat. I like to be called Kat. If you know me well enough to know a variation I've told you is okay to call me, you are welcome to do so. Otherwise, I'd appreciate you sticking with Kat. Easy, no?

Considering this is the first thing you see upon loading my livejournal, I suppose some basic information is appropriate:

- I welcome anyone to friend me if it's something they want to do. I cannot always friend back, but I do go and look through journals periodically that have me friended, even if they're not friended in return.

- I have tertiary Lyme Disease, bartonella, and babesia. I sometimes talk about my health here; I more frequently do so on inthelymelight.

- I write. I write poetry, I write original stories, I write fanfic. Fanfic is the only thing I put up with any frequency, and I confess I haven't written any for a while due to being busy with health problems.

- I'm sarcastic. It shows sometimes in my posts.

Read Astonishing X-Men 25. Still not happy. Still sulking in a corner until events take place so I am happy again. Do like Ellis' writing.

Have finished The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home, which on its own I might mock but is INFINITELY better, still, than the first one. Also have read the End World Almanac, which has maps and such. I like maps.

Did I mention I'm still sulking about X-Men? Just checking.

...My Mighty Huntress Cat is stalking, I believe, a piece of lint. All about the floor. Charging at it from time to time. And a few times she's jumped straight up in the air, which I don't think cats normally do. Leaping forwad or onto something, but not so much...like jump-roping.

Mighty Huntress Lioness Of The Savannah, however, knows not these facts. Mighty Huntress Lioness Of The Savannah needs not these facts. For lo, she is both swift and fierce, and her prey of lint and flies and sometimes springy cat toys knows well it should run in terror from her hunting skills.

Ten year battle with pain highlights Lyme disease debate.

The link takes you to an article on CNN.

I am twenty-two years old as of this past April. I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease the January I was fifteen.

I have been sick from it and in pain, however, since I was ten.

This is why knowing that it literally is an epidemic terrifies me to think about. It is estimated that there are more people in North America with Lyme at this point than there are with AIDS.

Scary thought.

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My dog's sicker than she was a bit ago, and I'm a bit fretful over her. Half of me want to deal with a long bus trip and greyhound down to spend a weekend with her. Just in case. The other half of me is far more reasonable, but still fretting.

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Busy week. Tomorrow blood work and doctor visit, Thursday having Lunch Und DVD-Watching with ltcmdrwhitman (if I spelled that at all correctly, which I may or may not have), and Friday going to have tea with someone at a Starbucks. Which, admittedly, is not where I think of for going for tea most of the time, but it's not so much going to bother me.

My life may not be exciting, but it's at least slowly and surely getting more and more active.

All right. My brain is filled with plot bunnies for Narnia fic--no crossovers, though I have several of those as WIPs, one of which if I ever get going on will probably eat my livejournal alive--and I can't figure out which to work on.

So, obviously, it makes perfect sense to ask you all to give me more ideas! (Well, it does, a bit. If I read one and suddenly know what to write, be it long or short, that's an advantage, even if all the other fics will still be waiting for their turns.)

So. Narnia-fic. Only book based, thank you, I deny the rape of the text known as the Prince Caspian movie exists. Double points if you have an idea for Golden Age fic.

*goes to poke at things and try to make stories work as she'd like*

In 2005 I ran a meme. The meme worked like this: you recommended books in a comment to my post, and then you put a link to the post in your journal, asking other people to come and recommend books, who would then link to the page with the meme in their journals.

It was rather successful, and since then I've been trying different ways to display the recs easily. At one point I had most of them up on my website before discovering the php script I was using made my site vulnerable to a hacker.

But I am now putting all of the books into a LibraryThing account, and I am planning to run the meme again to get more recs yet. The purpose of this is, basically, no more than someone having a resource when he or she can't think of what to read next. In theory, all of the recs will be organized with genre tags.

What I Need:

1) Someones--yes, it's plural--to help enter the books into the LibraryThing account.
2) People to participate in the reccing meme again when I put a post for it up and link to it on their own pages--possibly even if you choose to not share/can't think of books to rec.

So. If you want to help with 1, leave a comment. :) Meme will be up when I get more of the already-existing recs entered.

All I have to say is this:

OH MY GOD WHY ARE NEITHER OF MY HOUSEMATES HERE FOR ME TO MAKE FLAILY HANDS AT SILLY REAL LIFE REQUIREMENTS ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH.

ETA: Two things.

1) OF COURSE ONE HOUSEMATE WAS ACTUALLY IN THE HOUSE! I just didn't know it. *headesks*

2) If you haven't watched this week's Doctor Who yet? I seriously suggest that you wait to do so until next week and watch this and the last one back-to-back. I wish I had. For many reasons, the least-spoilery one being that the pacing is such that I spent a lot of the first one waiting for things to pick up and move along. It's not bad! Just very slow.

And so the blogger returns to her blog.

Returning, admittedly, with more white hairs (apparently I'm skipping "grey" and going on ahead to white, which is interesting to see when one has black hair) and a great deal of exhaustion (it's been a long year so far, and I wish I meant that less literally).

And now to figure out what to write. I suppose health-wise it's enough of importance atm that I should post it here as well as over at inthelymelight, but for any of you who don't like to hear about health things I will put the lovely cut.

Before I start, an update: remember when I asked for people to comment with e-mail if they fit one of three groups? In the next week, all members of all groups will receive an email, even if they haven't received one yet, and things related there will get rolling.

( Health: The Good, the Bad, and the TMI: )

Meanwhile, Ember has started to reveal her secret plan to drive me utterly mad. AKA, Ember is now eating around the food that she spent a week pouting for, and now she cries if I don't give her the food that she previously rejected and wailed over when it was offered to her.

Eating. Around. The. Cat. Food. She. Tantrumed. For.

She's lucky she's cute.

I've had some not-so-great news in various areas in the past few days, and I'm afraid it's requiring most of my attention and energy to deal with it. I'll get done everything I've said I would, but the "when" bit is, quite frankly, not something I can guarantee.

We Are Marshall is officially the best movie ever at making you cry repeatedly starting from five minutes in.

I ONLY CRY AT MOVIES WITH ANDROIDS. NOT FOOTBALL. Oh my GOD WHAT THE HELL WILL THE END OF THIS MOVIE DO TO ME?!

(I cried at A.I. and Bicentennial Man. I don't know what it is about androids, but they make me weep.)

My cat is a freak.

She broke me down, so I ordered a 7 lb bag of the brand I'd been feeding her. The Safeway guy brings it in, along with many other groceries.

Ember suddenly gets VERY ALERT.

I'm going through, putting things away, and she's sniffing and searching around my ankles.

Finally I have the things that need to be put away atm--freezer or fridge things--and half the cupboard things put away, and I go to flop onto the couch and rest.

And there's a meow. And another one. And I turn to see my cat rubbing herself against the bag of cat food. Like an animal might twine between and around her owner's legs, Ember was going around the bag, nuzzling it and meowing.

Resigned to the fact that my cat is a freak (along with the fact that she has me wrapped around her tiny kitty paws) I took the bag and went upstairs. To my room. Where her bowl is. The bowl that has been FILLED WITH CAT FOOD, FILLED TO THE BRIM, AT TIMES, EVERY DAY FOR THE PAST WEEK.

Ember ignoes it. She frantically starts her pre-eating rituals. (I'm not kidding. Before eating, Ember goes to the piece of carboard I keep that she can scratch at. She has to sharpen her claws on it for a few seconds before eating. Every time. Mighty Huntress, etc.) Apparently, I am not fast enough, and Lady Ember begins to frantically meow at me again. Like, perhaps I am going to not, really, finish opening the bag in front of her that I'm struggling at? MAYBE I WILL CHANGE MY MIND. Or perhaps, being a mere human, I am so foolish that I might forget that I was SUPPOSED TO BE OPENING THE BAG, or I might not recognize the importance of haste.

Either way, I empty the old food into a bag (in hopes of trying to slowly mix it in so she'll eat it, cause I've got 18 lbs of this stuff) and fill it with Ember's brand of choice.

You would tihnk she'd been stranded on a desert isle with nothing to eat but a polar bear. She reacted to the pouring of that food like I was giving her water from the fountain of youth. I watched her for a few seconds and then left the room to let her be alone with her beloved Purina for Indoor Cats.

And to bang my head against the wall for being such a sucker, who still has 18 lbs of Friskies Gourmet Dry Cat Food to find a use for.

She's lucky she's cute.

Okay, I'm on a Cats Laughing and Emmba Bull kick--where I've been before and will be again--and so I looked around online to see what treats I could share beyond just links to buy the CDs. Which, hey, I may as well list again for those of you late to the party. This post is long, and even with cutting parts of it it's still long, but it's all, imo, worth the scroll-through. There are free and legal and many MP3s linked to here!

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Cats Laughing

- TheOfficial (I Think) Cats Laughing Blog That Has Lots Of Information And Downloads: This is listed on Wiki as being the official blog, and I think that they're correct. It's also an active blog, not a defunct one, which means that more things are coming.

- Amazon's MP3 Site - All MP3s From The First Album Available for Download The blog says the second CD will prob be announced this month. Each song is $0.99, $8.91 for the whole album, and there are nine songs. However, before you go to download there, you should get the songs that are available on the Internet Archive for free--and legal, yes.

- The Page With Links To Free MP3 Downloads: There are four from the first album and three from the second. The links on the page take you to the archive.org page for the song, and you can choose from various formats to download or stream it in. Because I may as well, here are links to the individual archive.org pages:

( Free and Legal Cats Laughing MP3s - 7 Total from Two Albums )

- The Green Man Review of Cats Laughing, Written By Maria Nutick: It's hard--really, really hard, believe me, I've tried--to find lyrics, let alone complete ones, to songs by Cats Laughing. This review--which covers both albums--contains some, which I will paste at the end of this bit behind cuts. (Note: I am pretty sure that some of these are not the complete set of lyrics. It gives you a taste, though, which is what a review it meant to do, and hopefully will interest you enough to get files from archive.org and maybe even buy full CDs.) It also just happens to be a well-written review, so if you want to know more about what sort of band they are, read this. As I said in the last post I made on this, the review also features an MP3 of For It All, a song from War for the Oaks, for free download; I am going to give a direct link to the file, along with the lyrics.

• Complete MP3 of For It All
• ( Lyrics to 'Enchantment' )
• ( Lyrics to 'Teller of Tales' )
• ( Lyrics to 'Black Knight's Work' )
•( Lyrics for 'Draw the Curtain' )

- Cats Laughing on Last.FM: All of Cats Laughing songs have been uploaded to Last.FM by the blogger on the official site.

The Flash Girls

I know, I know, this is getting long, but I think it's worth it. ...You may not, in which case, scroll on by!

- The Official Flash Girls Blog That Also Has Lots of Downloads and

- The Page On That Blog That Links To Free MP3s of Theirs at the Internet Archive. Again, I'll list the songs and individual links to archive.org pages behind the cut.

( Free and Legal Flash Girls MP3s - 14 Total from 3 Albums )

- The Flash Girls on Last.FM: Again, all songs by the duo have been uploaded onto the site.

- Dream Haven Book's Flash Girls Page: Maurice and I and Play Each Morning, Wild Queen in CD format are available here for purchasing. For The Return of Pansy Smith and Violet Jones see below in the CafePress Store section.

-The SteelDragon CafePress Store: This cafe-press store has several sections, selling items related to different subjects or groups. I'm listing the ones related to the topic, but for the record, there are other parts to the store that have nifty-looking things. The related ones, however, are as follows:

• The Cats Laughing Store: This store features both of the albums (the first album and Another Way to Travel respectively) for sale in CD format, and it also has a Cats Laughing mug

• The Flash Girls Store: This store has the album The Return of Pansy Smith and Violet Jones in CD format, and it also offers a Flash Girls mug for sale.

• The War for the Oaks Store: This is the store with the most variety of items for sale. It might, more accurately, be called "The Eddi and the Fey Store" as all items are themed to that fictional band that exists in the book. Either way, they have some nifty things with the motto and a picture of the band, and I'll list them here, because I'm just that nice. If you want a link, though, just go to the store page itself.

( War for the Oaks Merchandise )

I debated giving information about the individual musicians, and then I realized a) this was really long and b) my hands hurt, and so I'll trust that if you can work a Livejournal blog, you're capable of finding such information if you want it.

ETA: Emma Bull's website has posts that contain lyrics to more songs.

...I tune the TV about halfway out quite frequently when I have it on. Not always, but if I'm doing something else it tends to be partially background noise.

Sometimes, statements draw my attention right back to the show, though, such as, "I think this is a space squid, who's about to have space squid babies!"

I love Courage: The Cowardly Dog, and this is just one more reason why.

Recently, I (finally) read War for the Oaks, which is by Emma Bull. Emma Bull is also a musician, and she was a member (and singer) of the group Cats Laughing.

The band in the book is called Eddi and the Fey, not Cats Laughing, but they play a song in the book. It's called "For It All".

This page has a review of both albums Cats Laughing put out.

And this is the page's link to the full MP3 for the song "For It All".

Seeing the lyrics for other songs makes me (again--I knew the music long ago) want to order both albums. On CD they're about $10 a piece, which admittedly is a good deal. They're sold--along with a mug, and music from other groups Cats Laughing Members were in, such as Emma Bull's move to The Flash Girls--at this cafepress store. (And they have War for the Oaks items too! You can have a bag with "Eddi and the Fey" on it.)

And, for a geek fact: Cats Laughing is canonically Kitty Pryde's favorite band--or was at one point, anyway--and when she lived on Muir Island she had a poster of them on the wall. War for the Oaks is also canonically her favorite book.

...About a half hour ago I glanced at the clock, and was shocked to see the time, as it was dark outside.

In the past half hour it has gotten much, much darker, and OH HEY LOOK we have a very heavy downpour of rain. *staring, a bit* Oh and thunder, which means getting Ember into my room in case she freaks, and my shortly after going in with her, again in case she freaks.

Good Lord, my internal clock is confused. In part because I've done a fair amount of physical work today and I woke up early, admittedly, but it suddenly being close to pitch black at 3:00 PM doesn't really HELP.

Simple Shoes is a green-friendly shoe company. The shoes are made of help, leather, or suede, and the rubber parts are recycled. I own two shoes from them, black slip-ons and black lace-ups

Shipping is free, without having to enter a code. There is a code you can enter, though, for $5 off. The code is good until June 30th, and the code is: SmplJUMP08

They have nice, green-friendly, comfortable, and reasonably-priced shoes for men, women, and children. They also have DIY kits, one to make a shoe and one to make a bag.

They sell already-made bags too, of course, but uh. They are not as reasonably-priced, IMHO, as the shoes. Though I admit I stared wistfully at The Feedbag Bag for a while. The bags are all very nice, but uh. $70 for one is not a price I'm in a position to pay, and I dout I'll ever have the desire to spend that much on a bag.

As for Ember's Non-Violent Demonstration Re: Unapproved Changing of the Brand of Her Cat Food, she started up at midnight last night. I went downstairs for an hour, planning to sleep on the couch, and then heard her eventually start crying again and went upstairs in hopes of quieting her back down. She fussed a little more, but when she finished she did curl up on my feet. Which she has not done since The Food Change.

So I fell asleep at about 2 AM and--because my body has decided to be diurnal--woke up at 7:15, but let me tell you, I take that over waking up at 5 ANY day.

Today's activities involve a nap--yes, I feel old, and yes, I still have to schedule one in at some point in the day--which will be needed, I suspect, doing laundry, working on designs for some things and also working to transfer email addresses over for the sickness-group--it takes a lot of while to copy and paste 'em all--and get that sent off. I've ordered groceries, including some things that are what I call "Stocking Up Items". The things you don't need to buy every week, y'know, like cleaning supplies or food that stores for a long time.

And I'm going to work on some original writing, and have decided that I need to actually schedule in time for that each day, too.

If my legs stop hurting in the way they are, I will also take a walk! If not, I have promised myself I will have SOME form of walking each week, even if it's just around the block. I am slowly trying to build up muscle tone and endurance after...well, 7 years ago I stopped being able to do sports or strenuous exercise or dance, and about three-four years ago my pain levels worsened enough that I've been even more limited in what I can do. It takes a lot of very, very, very tiny babysteps to start and get my body in something approaching shape, but I'm doing so. Also still working on a more nutritious diet, which is still hard given my messed-up taste buds.

Still! There is always strawberry jelly! (It's one of the few things that tastes good all the time. Rice Krispies, Harry and David Bing Cherry Chocolates, Smuckers Strawberry Jelly, Organic Baby Carrots, and Milk. And many things rich in carbohydrates and in a bread-like form. See: my mention of working to get more nutrients.)

And now, off to wash sheets!

Today I woke up at 5:15 AM.

Yesterday I woke up at 5:30 AM.

Day before, 5:45, day before that, 6.

Why?

Because my cat is sulking like a six year old. She was running low on cat food, so I bought what was on sale. An 18 pound bag.

I then discovered it was not, as I thought, the brand she'd been eating from before.

"Big deal," though I, "she'll adjust, she did just fine going from kitten to adult cat food."

Aha. Ha. Ha. No.

Ember's refused to cuddle with me for very long since them. She has a full bowl of food, but she starts crying hysterically to wake me up and feed her, like she does when the bowl is empty.

And y'know, I was going to be firm. I was going to tough it out, I was going to let her Deal.

But she's getting earlier and earlier each morning, it takes me a while to get back to sleep due to pain, and today? Today she started crying to get me up and feed her DURING MY NAP.

She gets her damned Purina, and meanwhile I'll be over here, resigning myself to being wrapped around her tiny kitten paws. (Or, possibly, in desperate need of sleep.)

God.

My cat woke me up at something like 5 AM. Finding myself Really And Truly Awake, I broke down and started to do the cleaning that my room has needed since I got back to DC.

At around 2 pm we had a huge thunderstorm--with very, very loud and close thunder and lightning and BOY did my hip not like it--that had the sky so dark it looked like it must be evening. So then finding out it was, in fact, 2 pm, was very disconcerting, though it did make me feel safe taking a nap. And now I am even more confused time-wise, because the sun is out again.

The weather is fired.

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I am still going through and reviewing various net browsers and addon/plugins, but I thought I'd list a few now that I particularly like.

Open hxxp: You know how sometimes people put links in their posts that start out with "hxxp" instead of "http"? This add-on makes hxxp links clickable just like http ones, eliminating the need to paste parts of the url into the browser instead of clicking.

Linkification: This converts text links into genuine, clickable links. This means if someone just writes out a web URL from the www bit onwards, you will have a clickable link, even though there is no html encoding around the pasted url.

No Referer: Allows you to open a link without sending the HTTP referer header.

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It's not even 7 pm and I am so tempted to go to bed. Oy. I feel old sometimes, and this is one of 'em.

...Joss Whedon, you are an assshat.

*has just read Giant Size Astonishing Blah Blah Blah and is going to go hit things now* Oooh, this is going to be fun to adapt in bar.

Batya? We maaaay want to talk when adaption things are worked out.

If anyone cares--Shatterverse folk probably do--I've renamed Lucy's LJ to "called_lioness".

I had a spare token and no other use for it, so it seemed like a good idea. Also, it helps my rage from That Movie.