I found myself.

Check-in bag? Packed.
Carry-on bag? Packed.
Fredneck overnight bag I can stash in my trunk? Packed.
Tickets and passport? Accounted for and stashed in the waist pack that I'm wearing.
Trash? Taken out.
Recycling? At curb.
Sheets? Changed.
Water heater? Shut off.
Mail? Stopped.
Paper? Stopped.
Lawn? Mowed.
House? Well, it looks cleaner than it did this morning.
Stuff I'm forgetting? Will be remembered five minutes before the plane leaves on Monday.

I'm off to Frederick, and from there to Italy! If I don't post again between now and Monday, see you all in 2 weeks!

*runs out*

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

*stops for breath*
Paper's done.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

ETA: And turned in.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Happy birthday kevenn! Hope it's as fabulous as you are!

It is with some regret that I make this announcement: I will not be attending the 2006 Gathering of the Gargoyles.

I'd love to go. Really, I would. And I would go if not for the health reasons, financial reasons and personal reasons that my friends list will hear about tomorrow. Hell, those of you with money and a desire to get out to LA near the end of June: Go register.

But I can't justify blowing off the other things that prevent me from going. One of the big lessons I learned from G2004 is that a vacation crammed into a back-to-back series of insane events is NOT a vacation, especially when you make yourself completely sick from the stress and wind up running a low-grade fever at the Masquerade and pass out and sleep through most of it.

...okay, off-tangent, but you get the point.

The reasons why will be explained tomorrow privately. Right now, I need to turn in.

TaleSpin coming to DVD August 2006. (Thank you, dotsomething for spreading the word.)

Jen, I bet you know about this already, but I also want to add: Seeing as how your birthday is around the time it's (supposedly) getting released, you're not allowed to buy it.

Besides, surprises in this group? Never work out too well. ;)

I've already plugged Absurd Notions before, but today's comic made me laugh out loud.

I did not see that reference coming. :)

Hey, you know N&A: Mandi's Low-Tech Tribute?

Well, now (read: a second after I post this) all its e-mail links point to an account that does NOT make my browser crash under popup ads half the time. (virtually flips off Mail.com) My apologies to all of you who tried to contact me through the site. I can now wash my hands of mail.com for good.

As for the rest of my site, there are two reasons I haven't updated worth jack:

1) No time. You all know why, I've ranted enough about this.

2) I know too much about W3C standards now. Seriously, with all the front-end Web work I've done in the past four years, I now look at the HTML for my old site and want to cry. Man, any peer review on those pages would get the serious smackdown by my co-workers. Then I consider everything I'd have to do, every tag I'd have to change and fix, to handle it all, and want to bang my head against a wall. Bleah. It'd almost be easier to start over completely.

...after I get my classwork done. Which I'd better get cracking on.

Ran to Trader Joe's on my lunch break, and wound up in line behind an elderly man who had 39 - count them, the cashier did, 39 - boxes of Kashi Go Lean cereal in his cart.

No one can tease me about my mad Better 'n Peanut Butter stocking there ever again. (I mean, really, it made my 4 jars look like nothing.) :)

Also, since I would love to participate but KNOW that I do not have the time to contribute (good Lord, I barely have time to read!), I am going to pimp the crossing_lostrp RP community. It's an open-ended ongoing game with some fantastic writers. Only reason I haven't signed up? I know I don't have the time it requires to really take part. Like I said, I barely have time to read and am impressed. Those of you who do, check it out.

Okay, an actual public entry to show I'm not dead. Most of my posts have been real-life-related, hence, they've been locked. So here's a random smattering of links I've blathered to people about but never gotten around to posting.

1.) Talismen - A fantasy webcomic with gorgeous art and an intriguing story, despite the fact that visitors are getting it out of order. Return of the Exile, the first published story arc, actually takes place 8 years after The Knightmare Knife, a 24-page preview of which is running right now. The art sucked me in, but the backwards order kept me going; the protagonist of RotE didn't remember prior events when that story kicked off, and discovering what he'd forgotten at the same time he did made me want to read all the prequels. I may actually pick up one of the prequel novels when it gets to print.

2.) Girl Genius - Actually, I think most of the people on my friends list have read GG, but I keep forgetting to put it in my links. Adventure, romance, mad science, and great art... Jen, I hope you've read this, it's right up your alley.

3.) I am a Japanese School Teacher - Weekly editorials by Az, who's been teaching English in Japanese high schools for the JET program since 2003. Seriously, if you thought American high schools were messed up... :)

Yeah. That's it.

Oh, I can picture myself trying something like this at that age.