Good news re: my dad-it looks as if they got all of the cancerous bits out in the initial surgery last week, and won't need to do anything further at present, as the tissue at the margins was cancer-free. Thank goodness it hadn't spread! I hope this will be a lesson to particular people in my family who for some unknown reason love to frequent ( Read more... )

This, both the story and the comment thread (but ESPECIALLY the comment thread), is the funniest thing I've read in at least a year.

Aside from spamming you with pictures of my new fish and having lots of migraines, I haven't been up to all that much recently. Ever since handing in my thesis and getting the new temp gig, I feel like time's slowing down. I have so many submissions hanging fire at the moment, both poetry and fiction, but none of them are in a hurry to come back ( Read more... )

( Unflattering photos ahoy. )

( Click here for cactusness, plus a photo of me, because I haven't taken one in a while. There's a pretty good reason for that. )

Snow. Lots of it. That explains yesterday's temperature drop, I guess ( Read more... )

What novel do you remember most fondly from your pre-teen/early teenage years? For me, it's got to be Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game. It has that rare combination of side-splitting humor, engaging plot, and characters with genuine emotional depth. I've just placed an order for it, as my old copy is, I think, shut in an attic in Pennsylvania.

I ( Read more... )

The router arrived this morning, but it should have arrived a week ago. As it turns out, they had got one small detail of our address wrong, and it ended up being returned to sender. FAIL. At least we caught the error soon enough. I have to say, BT has only ever made me mad, but this nice, shiny, free HomeHub router is pretty easy to use. Set- ( Read more... )

( This place is a work in progress. )

My internet access will be spotty to non-existent from this evening up through 14 January. We're leaving the old flat tonight with the last of our stuff, and BT can't hook up service at our new place in Leeds until the 14th. Therefore, my access will be catch-as-catch-can. If I can find a stray unprotected signal, I'll be set, but if not, I may ( Read more... )