All the scars on my knuckles have faded to complete invisibility.

This is disturbing me on the same level of my missing memories.

ETA: Wow. I'm sitting at Sckavone's hoping my food comes soon, and the woman next to me is wondering aloud at the balloons and the bikes, and the parade route signs and the strangeish people wandering around with trombones*.

"It's probably for the Fair," I offer.

"What fair?"

"The Division Street Fair."

"Is that TODAY?!? Usually there's signs! Will there be art?"

I look over at three different signs visible through the window. "Well, probably, you know, it's Portland."

Oh, if any PDXpeople are looking for me, I'll be volunteering at the Oregon Brew Fest from 12-4.30, then drinking at the OBF from 4.30 until my free tokens run out.

*Trombonists are wierd by definition.

EATA: This is really so I remember it for RS-- The book may end, but the story's never finished."

EYATA:Oh, no, the stupid bitch I mentioned earlier just made fun of one of the Get a Life Marching Band and Colorguard ladies. 'Scuse, I'mna gonna cut a bitch... Oh, good, she left before I had to hurt her. You do not fuck with the Auxillary, because we may wear sequins but we're the descendants of military sword and sabre squads and will fuck your shit up.

Apparently like, half my department is going to the OBF tomorrow. Which I'm working. So after my shift, I get to drink for free!

Drunken coworkers are hi-larious. Must remember camera.

11.45am, I was finishing up my lunch (Lemongrass Chicken House Special from Bambuza) and I looked down and realised I had on two completely different shoes.

At which point I promptly made the rounds of my coworkers pointing to my shoes and repeating over and over, "I am so cool, you want to be me when you grow up."

I also just got a text message from Niko. It is currently 10 weeks until his wedding which is probably why he said "I need your snail mail addy"

I texted back "We have defenses in place to protect against letter bombs."

ETA: He texted back, "It's for the wedding invites you goof."

My reply: "Sure, that's what they all say."

This post should be subtitled "How A Lot Of My Conversations Have Gone Recently".

I don't diet. Y'all know that. I reject utterly the concept that an 'athlete' is someone who's skinny. I dance and sing and eat ice cream and green beans (sometimes for the same meal). There is no such thing as good and bad food in my world, just tasty food. I go on twenty mile hikes and drive half a mile to the store and I only trust one person in the wide wonderful world to tell me if I'm healthy, and that's the person in the mirror.

The glorious thing about the Internet? You learn stuff has names. And apparently, my life fits in nicely with something called Health at Every Size, or HAES.

Here is a good summary of HAES, complete with a pretty triangle graphic that outlines the three components: mental health, intuitive eating, and movement. Mental health is appropriately the foundation of the triangle, because without a healthy mind, what the hell use is a healthy body?

Or, as deeleigh puts it:

Weight loss programs tend to cast adults into the role of children, and they use doublespeak. They call blindly following instructions and ignoring your body's needs "taking control of your life." I would call that "losing control of your life." They call organized shaming and self flagellation "support." I would call that "mental torture." They've even begun to steal size acceptance and HAES rhetoric. They treat intelligent, disciplined adults like stupid children and make them feel like failures when they can't succeed long term in restricting an autonomic system. This fucks people up, mentally and physically.

After watching Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Act I) seven times, I must say my favorite part occurs at 11:58.

Best $3.99 I've spent on entertainment this year. Yes, I bought the 'season pass' on the iTunes. That's how I watched it seven times today.

Not at work! I have a two hour commute, people! Public transit!

Dear slash writers of the world:

BOYS DO NOT GET ALL CHATTY LIKE BAD ROMANCE NOVELS WHEN THEY HAVE ERECTIONS.

At best, they get all chatty like bad porn.

Here's the best thing to do: write the scene the way you want. Then go and cut every sentence to less than five words.

This will keep me from cursing your name and also keep your characters from going OOC.

Thank you,
Mee

Three minutes in, we've got a snarky art school graduate temping at some science lab, a big funky fugly monster, and a nattily attired superhero with fun gadgets.

They had me at funky fugly monster.

*writes Mrs. Mary Sue Middleman in her journal and draws little hearts around it.*

Ben: It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Wendy: So did the Carter Administration.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

I need to make this public service announcement.

If someone comes up to you and offered you money, eternal youth, and a pony to go on a Japanese game show...

RUN! FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR PERSONAL DEITY REPRESENTATIVE, RUN LIKE RABID BADGERS ARE AFTER YOU!



(because if you go on a Japanese game show, rabid badgers is one of the milder options)

Best. Protest. Ever.

Ya see, in Burma, women are being kidnapped and basically enslaved by the military, to fetch, carry, and be raped whenever the men want.

But, here's the thing: the military rulers of Burma are superstitious about women's underpants. They honest to God believe touching women's knickers or even a woman's skirt will take away their mojo.

I am not making this shit up, yo.

So, Panties for Burma was born. The addresses of the embassies worldwide are here. Donate that old, worn, elastic-shot, hol(e)y pair to the cause.

Men's drawers also gladly accepted.

As I reported last night, Sam Adams is going to be the next Mayor of Portland, Oregon.

Apparently, we are the largest US city to date to elect an openly gay mayor. And it didn't come up once during the campaign.

He's Sam. Everyone knows Sam. Everyone knows Sam's gay. NO ONE CARES.

Except, apparently, CNN.

Who can just bite me.

Portland is fucking awesome.

At 8:15pm, with 43% of the Dem vote counted, they called Oregon for Obama.

Why does Wolf Blitzer sound so SURPRISED?!? And depressed?!

(For those who give a shit, they called for Sam for Mayor at 8:20pm. Everyone else can stare at the icon. Because politics is teh sex0rz.)

That's right. Today is the day to declare a personal, one-day moratorium on dieting. There are no good foods or bad foods. There is just food, which keeps your body running and happens to be v. v. tasty to boot.

(This is, of course, the philosophy I run with all the days of my live-long life.)

From Shapley Prose, the top 10 reasons not to diet:

10. DIETS DON’T WORK. Even if you lose weight, you will probably gain it all back, and you might gain back more than you lost.
9. DIETS ARE EXPENSIVE. If you didn’t buy special diet products, you could save enough to get new clothes, which would improve your outlook right now.
8. DIETS ARE BORING. People on diets talk and think about food and practically nothing else. There’s a lot more to life.
7. DIETS DON’T NECESSARILY IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH. Like the weight loss, health improvement is temporary. Dieting can actually cause health problems.
6. DIETS DON’T MAKE YOU BEAUTIFUL. Very few people will ever look like models. Glamour is a look, not a size. You don’t have to be thin to be attractive.
5. DIETS ARE NOT SEXY. If you want to be more attractive, take care of your body and your appearance. Feeling healthy makes you look your best.
4. DIETS CAN TURN INTO EATING DISORDERS. The obsession to be thin can lead to anorexia, bulimia, bingeing, and compulsive exercising.
3. DIETS CAN MAKE YOU AFRAID OF FOOD. Food nourishes and comforts us, and gives us pleasure. Dieting can make food seem like your enemy, and can deprive you of all the positive things about food.
2. DIETS CAN ROB YOU OF ENERGY. If you want to lead a full and active life, you need good nutrition, and enough food to meet your body’s needs.
And the number one reason to give up dieting:
1. Learning to love and accept yourself just as you are will give you self-confidence, better health, and a sense of wellbeing that will last a lifetime.

And now, also from Shapely Prose, DEPRESSING STATISTICS!

Seventy percent of normal weight girls in high school feel fat and are on a diet. Ferron, C. “Body Image in adolescence in cross-cultural research” Adolescence 32 (1997), pp. 735-745.

Over half of the females studied between ages eighteen and twenty-five would prefer to be run over by a truck than to be fat, and two-thirds would choose to be mean or stupid rather than fat. Gaesser, Glenn A., PhD. Big Fat Lies: The truth about your weight and your health. Gurze Books, 2001.

A survey of college students found that they would prefer to marry an embezzler, drug user, shoplifter, or blind person than someone who is fat.* Gaesser, Glenn A., PhD. Big Fat Lies: The truth about your weight and your health. Gurze Books, 2001.

Up to thirty-five percent of normal dieters will progress to pathological dieting and, of those, twenty to twenty-five percent will progress to partial or full-blown eating disorders. Shisslak, C.M., Crago, M., and Estes, L.S., “The spectrum of eating disturbances,” Intl Journal of Eating Disorders 18 (3) (1995) pp. 209-219.

Jews: 5.1-6.5 million
Soviet POWs: 2–3 million
Ethnic Poles: 1.8-2 million
Roma: 220,000–500,000
Disabled: 200,000–250,000
Freemasons: 80,000–200,000
Gay men: 5,000–15,000
Jehovah's Witnesses: 2,500–5,000

May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which he has created according to his will.
May his Kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say, Amen.

May his great name be blessed, forever and ever.
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored elevated and lauded be the Name of the holy one,
Blessed is he- above and beyond any blessings and hymns,
Praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say Amen.

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say, Amen.

Daddy-O gave me this plotbunny almost a week ago. Jackass.

( So, this is like vaugely anti-canonical because canon is for pussies. And because I want Martha there but don't want to deal with Zombie!Owen. If you don't like that, go write your own bloody story. Not mine, no money, don't sue. Rating? Uh, SexImplied and Nekkid... weapons. Plus boykisses! )

Why do I like making Ianto angst like an angsty thing on Angst Day in Angstonia spill things in the kitchen?

I really don't travel outside my neighborhood a lot. There's really not anything I need beyond there.

Except my Mom sent me a Target gift card and I wanted a new DS game (I wound up getting Lego Star Wars, which should be renamed Crackity McCrackersons).

Mall 205 on a Saturday made me happy, because of all the adorable families running around. And a goodly number of them were speaking Spanish. That also makes me happy because it feels like home.

After I paid for the game at electronics and had a nice geeky moment with the sales clerk who'd been to the Coulton concert (his gf won a snack cake because she had the d20 he'd given her as a good luck charm 3 years ago in her purse), I started wandering through the jewelery and purses section, just having a look-see if anything caught my eye. And there was this adorable family with three girls dressed exactly alike in flowered dresses, all three of the girls looked like my sister did at those various ages, right down to the drastically different hairstyles. So I went, "Awwwww!" and then continued my quest to find a waterproof purse big enough for Moco for under 30 bucks that didn't look like something a 12 year old would carry to prom.

As I walked through jewelery towards the purses, the woman at the jewelery counter ran for her phone and dialed quickly. I said to myself, "You're being paranoid," and I continued on my search.

Mind you, I was acting kind of suspicious. See, I had Moco in my hands and was putting him in and out of various purses. However, when the gentleman in chinos with three walkies hanging from his belt wandered over and started following me from aisle to aisle, that is when I got pissed.

I had to decide then and there how much of a scene I wanted to cause. Could the jewelery counter woman have made the call for some other reason? Did the security guy just happen by? And was this because they'd had 'problems' with brown people in the past? Of course I thought that last part, because, hell, I spent most-all my teenage and college years getting followed around stores by clerks and security because I was young and brown.

I decided I wasn't going to do shit unless they stopped me. At which point I was going to pull on my best news anchor accent and tear them a new one.

But first I wanted an Icee.

I walked through the cash lanes, shoulders tensed for the tap and the "May I have a word with you?" I had my hand in my pocket ready to whip out my receipt for my $35 game. I went through a mental catalouge of what was in my bag that they might stock here and I'd have to answer for. I locked eyes for half a second with a woman in a Manager nametag, and she all but ran to a stationary phone as I walked by.

I went into the little restaurant and knew I had an audience watching me on video. The poor dear manning the food station was sweating like crazy, but that was because she was standing between two ovens. I looked around for a tip jar, to give the kid a couple extra bucks for being pleasant despite the awful work conditions, but of course there wasn't one.

Deciding between orange Icee and cherry Icee took me a few minutes (it's a momentous decision, yo) and I hated having my back to God and the whole store. I'm always nervous with my back unprotected like that, anyways, because I hate people sneaking up on me.

I went with cherry and started sucking it down as I walked to the front door.

A woman who looked much like my Auntie Emma of blessed memory was entertaining a round-cheeked baby in a cart near the door. I smiled, and my eyes slid past the adorable scene to lock with the cold, blue eyes of the uniformed security guard. She was watching me with one hand on her shoulder radio and the other on the holster at her hip. It was probably mace or something like that; but the violence in her eyes was frightening.

I left the store, and looked straight ahead. I was listening, though, for footsteps behind me.

If you do not know him, you are missing a fabulous nerd folk singer. A lovely cross-section of Portland's geeks turned out at the Mission and we laughed, we arr!ed, we clamored for snack cakes, and we sang "All we want to do is eat your brains" at the top of our lungs.

You missed it. Sucker.

Now it's time to eat ice cream and watch fatbabies take on Doctor Who.

If that horror has not hit your RSS reader yet, well, I'm not linking.

However, to add to the legions of women who are going, "Hahahaha! No.", I'll just say that the last time someone grabbed my bosoms uninvited, the cops agreed with me that he had the four broken fingers coming and didn't even write my name down.

The Management would like to point out that violence doesn't solve anything, but it is at times hi-larious.

Our kitchenette is a long, narrow hallway with a door at one end to our conference room, which is a repurposed greenhouse. We have excellent views of all the construction going on in the SoWhat, and there are several potted palms and really nice leather couches in there.

I was getting coffee and my coworker came in, flailing about something one department or another was doing. I was at the opposite end of the counter from the greenhouse door, and he opened it up and said, "Wow, it's hot in here. Poor plants."

Then he looks at me and says, "Every time I look out that window, I see a giraffe."

Of course, at that announcement I took a step away from him and checked where my exit routes were. He said, "No! Come and look!"

"I'm not sure I want to!"

"Come on!"

So I stepped over to the greenhouse door and looked. My bleary early-morning eyes sure enough did see a giraffe.

I blinked, and it was a ROBOTIC giraffe.

I blinked again, and it was a drilling rig of some sort painted yellow.

But that was boring so I blinked one more time and saw a robotic giraffe!

Because the first thing I thought when I saw the new shuttle car system at Heathrow was "Those are just aching to attempt to take over the world, and either the Doctor or Jack or UNIT is gonna have to blow it up."