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Seanan
cadhla
24 July 2008 @ 05:19 am
There is something wrong with my cat.  
Lilly is dear and sweet and lovely and utterly out of her goddamn tree. She is, essentially, the lickiest damn feline I have ever encountered in my life. She'll just lay there for hours, licking my fingers, my toes, whatever. I've woken up more than once to find her industriously licking my chin. She was properly weaned. She's never been without food. She just has the oral fixation of a bi-curious cheerleader at a Popsicle convention.

From discussions with Vixy last night:

[info]cadhla: My kitty unhinges her head and squalls.
[info]vixyish: *giggle*
[info]vixyish: *sends virtual pettins*
[info]cadhla: She's shrieking like a banshee.
[info]vixyish: what's wrong?
[info]cadhla: She's bored. This is the real problem with being the owner of a Siamese.
[info]vixyish: intelligent, easily bored, vocal.
[info]cadhla: Yup. Basically, I own a mini-me on heavy drugs.

She's almost always within three feet of me, which has the amusing side effect of making me paranoid whenever the cat isn't in sight. Much like the mother of a small child, who takes silence as a sign that something is about to explode in a big and unpleasant way. As I type this, she's sitting in my lap, purring like a motorboat.

There's something wrong with my cat. Namely, she's OUT OF HER MIND.
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Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Dr. Horrible, 'Brand New Day.'
 
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Adam Selzer
adamselzer
24 July 2008 @ 07:16 am
The Dark Knight  
Yep. It's all true. I even had a nightmare with the Joker in it last night.

Wow.

Batman and the Joker being the iconic characters that they are, I assume that someday, another movie with the Joker will be made, and someone else will have to play the role. I sure wouldn't want to be that guy, though.

Heath'll probably get the oscar nod everyone's talking about. Gary Oldman should get one, too. There are really only a small handful of people who don't end up playing the same character over and over and over, and at least two of them are in this movie.

Other cool thing: lots of neat explosions. But comic book movies are finally starting to take themselves seriously now, the way comic books themselves have been taking themselves seriously (well, off and on) for years. But there's always room for some explosions. I don't think it's a spoiler to say stuff explodes.

Interestingly, this is one of very few movies where I've ever thought the MPAA rating was too lenient. This should have been rated R. They almost must have bribed the MPAA. Further evidence that the MPAA ratings system is arbitrary and generally ridiculous.

I recognized every "Gotham City" shot, and even a handful of interiors that we could see them filming, which was also fun. They don't try to cover up the fact that it's Chicago for even a second.

As you can see, my thoughts on this aren't exactly organized yet. I'm still kinda in a daze.
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
23 July 2008 @ 02:47 pm
OSCon: Wednesday afternoon  

Well, so much for keeping a trip report up to date in realtime. I'm taking real-time notes in a text file; I *might* be able to upload them to steve.savitzky.net. They'll probably still be text. Yeah, I could probably cut-and-paste them into LJ, but that's a manual process and it ain't gonna happen.

Lunch with [info]webmaven (*waves*) and several other good conversations. I'm starting to have the same problem here that I have at filk cons: the hallway conversations are more fun than the sessions now. That's probably a Good Thing.

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Current Location: OSCon, Portland Convention Center
Current Mood: happy
 
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Seanan
cadhla
23 July 2008 @ 12:13 pm
A cry for help from the flying monkeys!  
I need to have some custom greeting cards printed. I've been looking and looking, but almost everyplace I can find either requires setting up an online store (not exactly the desired direction, here) or ordering something like 200+. I don't need 200+ greeting cards. I need, like, fifty at most, and that's being generous. Twenty to thirty would be a better ballpark. So I need a company that will...

* Let me order a small quantity.
* Let me provide the graphic.
* Print in color (front only; back is black/white, interior blank).
* Preferably charge me something sane.

I'll order larger numbers if quantity math kicks in -- IE, if twenty cards is $20 and fifty cards is $25, I'll naturally go for the larger number of cards -- but would still like to keep this in a reasonable spectrum for both quantity and price. I'm basically using strip sale money to print these, and there just aren't that many comic strips going begging at this point!

Help?
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Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Dr. Horrible, 'Brand New Day.'
 
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Seanan
cadhla
23 July 2008 @ 10:36 am
Iron Poet XI, Batch IX.  
Hello, and welcome to the ninth batch of poems written for round eleven of Iron Poet, the game where you give me three words and wait patiently until I slog through the roughly thirty thousand requests to give you a poem. Okay, not really, but sometimes it can feel that way. Please remember, while waiting for a poem round-up, that this round comes immediately after the longest round in Iron Poet history: Iron Poet X, which ran from May 2006 to October 2007. So yes, it could be a while. Patience is a virtue that keeps your resident poet slightly closer to sane. But only slightly.

Today's poems include:

* To Oz for [info]bercilakslady. (Jumprope poem.)
* This Is When for [info]pensnuggles. (Rhyming verse.)
* Trickster Duets for [info]vixyish. (Song form.)
* The Light for [info]stagemanager. (Blank verse.)
* Linger On for [info]variablerush. (Blank verse.)
* Trial of Seperation for [info]djbp. (Blank verse.)
* Twice Upon a Time for [info]vielofire. (Song form.)
* Wardrobe for [info]ladymondegreen. (Rhyming verse.)
* Autumn Girls for [info]tigertoy. (Rhyming verse.)
* After Alice for [info]thindu. (Alliterative stave.)

This round is CLOSED to new submissions. I'll be opening a new round...someday. When I finish the various other things I have pending, and my personal madness allows.
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Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Little Shop, 'Somewhere That's Green (Reprise).'
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
23 July 2008 @ 09:19 am
Travel notes  

The continental breakfast was down in the exhibit hall this morning; I bagged it and went back to the hotel for something with protein and potassium (i.e. hash browns).

I don't really like eating alone, though. Grabbed coffee and conversation back at the conference; the hotel may have bacon and eggs, but the con has melon and Charbuck's. Need both.

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Current Location: OSCON keynotes, Portland convention center
Current Mood: content
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
23 July 2008 @ 09:08 am
OSCON: Tuesday night, Wednesday keynotes  

Last night's keynotes were Mark Shuttleworth (Mr. Ubuntu), Robert Lefkowitz, and Damian Conway.

Shuttleworth spoke without slides, bouncing back and forth between technical and community issues. Conway was, um..., indescribable. Quantum computing, special and general relativity, and some hilariously funny and totally faked Perl demos illustrating "positronic variables" that get set backwards in time.

Lefkowitz was the most interesting: he talked about software development methodology, using Quintilian's Instititutio Oratoria as a framework. The interesting thing about the open source process (in his version, which I don't necessarily agree with) is that it starts with a commit to version control, and includes users. There's no requirements phase; it's replaced by bug reports and feature requests.

Right now I'm in the morning keynotes; I'm probably not going to have much time to blog. Tim O'Reilly just came onstage. This is the 10th OSCon, and the 12th anniversary of the first Perl conference, which I attended in San Jose.

Net's getting laggy. *cheery wave*

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Current Location: OSCON 2008, Portland Convention Center
Current Mood: content
 
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Seanan
cadhla
23 July 2008 @ 08:17 am
My horoscope is...less useful this week.  
Capricorn: I predict you will have 32 dreams as you sleep in the coming week. In at least five of those adventures, you will be offered a chance to wield a magic hammer like the one that belonged to the Norse god Thor. You're under no obligation to use it, of course. But if you do, it could help you smite dream adversaries, from stupid giants to evil ducks to rash-covered devils. You could also take advantage of it to build things, like a dream house or a dream boat. The proper use of the hammer will be a constant test, since you'll have to be ever-alert and adaptable as you decide whether to employ it for destruction or creation.

I'm sure this has some deep meaning that I could unravel if I really stopped to think about it, but honestly, who has the time? Plus, I am way too much of a Wes Craven girl, and when you tell me that I'm going to acquire some magical awesome spiffy-keen-o dream weapon, my first thought is 'so when is Freddy Kreuger planning on showing up?' I'm not sure I appreciate my horoscope telling me that a crazed serial killing madman from BEYOND THE GRAVE is about to start stalking me, although I suppose the early warning is nice. It's good to have some idea of what's coming, anyway.

Anyway, I'm still working on that whole 'learning to be patient' thing from a few weeks ago. There are moments where my inner Verruca Salt really just stomps her foot and screams 'I want it NOW!', and really, it's difficult to argue with her, especially when my innate tendency to distract myself from becoming frustrated with delays by working on more things which can then, yes, become delayed, leads to me getting snarled up in a vicious feedback loop. I can be patient about one thing. It's when I'm trying to be patient about fifteen that I get a little bit frayed around the edges. Twitchy cat is twitchy.

On the plus side, twitchy cat has an entire plate of heirloom tomatoes, and that's helping a lot. The nice thing about combining 'easily distracted' with 'fairly OCD' is that I can sometimes ooooooooo-shiny myself out of killing people with a machete. And that's good, as I might otherwise run out of people to lose patience with.

It is a slow uphill climb, the path to patience. Perhaps I can smash it with my dream hammer. Yes.

Smashing is good.
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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Dr. Horrible, 'Brand New Day.'
 
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Andy
andybeals
23 July 2008 @ 06:57 am
store wars  

Star Wars take-offs have been done to death but this one is oh so cute!
 
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Adam Selzer
adamselzer
23 July 2008 @ 08:38 am
From Weird Chicago: Murder at the Drake Hotel  
(This is cross-posted from The Weird Chicago Blog, where three parts of the series have already been posted).

've been doing some research on Chicago hotels and run across the DAMNEDest story - one of those "how in the hell didn't i know this whole story" sort of things.



In January, 1944, Mrs. Adele Born WIlliams, a 58 year old society "matron" walked up to her apartment at the Drake Hotel with her daughter and found the door unlocked. Inside, they found a gray-haired woman in a black fur coat. Without a word, the woman pulled from her curse an antique pistol and fired two shots at Williams' daughter. She missed, then left the bathroom and fired several shots at Mrs. Williams, eventually hitting her in the head, causing a wound that would prove fatal within hours. The fur-coated woman then walked out of the room and was seen by a couple of men before Williams' daughter cried for help. "I could have tripped her," one of them men later said, "but I'm not in the habit of tripping strange women."

And so began a case that got stranger and stranger. Among the twists in the tale:

- Police launched a massive search of the hotel and found nothing. However, four hours later, the murder weapon was found, shattered, in a stairwell, apparently having been dropped from a high floor. Police had search that place - then gun had apparently been returned to the scene of the crime!
- Similarly, a spare key to Williams' room was reported missing from the front desk at the time of the murder. Mysteriously, it appeared back on the desk at 10 o'clock that evening!
- Mrs. Williams had $100,000 in cash in a safety deposit box for reasons unclear.
- No jewelry or valuables were taken.
- Just before the murder, a phone call had been placed from Mrs. Williams' room to a fish and ale house two blocks away.
- The girl who worked the desk was a convicted hold-up girl with a bizarre past.

The mystery remains unsolved. There was never a suspect, and though various motives were suspected, none of them really held up. It was a huge story in 1944, and mentioned at least once a year on the anniversary in newspapers for at least a decade later (interestingly, as of the late 1950s, the Trib was still spelling "clue" c-l-e-w.). Today, it's been totally forgotten - until Weird Chicago came along, of course!

This case is quite a corker - this will be the first of a series on it! Consider it an addendum to The Weird Chicago Book - which, of course, is what this blog was intended to be!

For the record, I've never heard anything about the Drake being haunted other than some vague rumors. Anyone have any stories about it?
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Adam Selzer
adamselzer
23 July 2008 @ 08:31 am
Wedding wedding wedding!  
My sister arrived in town yesterday!

Today I'll be trashing the Slacker Sack - the giant foam bean bag thing that we got in place of a couch a while back. It turned out to be fairly useless, as it isn't much different from just having a mattress after a couple of weeks. Plus, it kinda smells of cat pee. An ikea loveseat is in order. Also going to mop up the floor and get it ready for married life.

Hoping the babysitter for the wedding night works out. I booked a room at a hotel for Ronni and I, but we may have to cancel it.

Hoping to make it to Batman tonight with the people with whom I snuck around watching it being filmed last summer. We saw Batman duck away from the set to send a few texts from the cell phone which, for the record, he appeared to be keeping in his utility belt.

Working up some publicity info for GHOST HUNTING FOR SKEPTICS, the nonfiction book I wrote for Llewellyn. I need to update it a bit; I brushed off the use of thermal imaging cameras in the book, but I've recently been using them a lot on a MAJOR investigation that I can't talk about just yet (loose lips, etc). I thought they were basically useless except that they looked good on TV, but now I've found that they can be pretty useful. For instance, you can use them to read inscriptions on gravestones that have worn away and are illegible to the naked eye. You can also use them to find out EXACTLY who farted, which is handy.
 
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Seanan
cadhla
22 July 2008 @ 09:11 pm
Song: Crazy Little Girl.  
Crazy little girl with the bat-black hair
And the eyes like summer thunder;
Comes along and hits me with her ghostlight stare
And asks, "Did you ever wonder
How we come to walk on this dead-dirt road
Where the buses never run?
How are we supposed to get the things we're owed
When the work is never done?"

Crazy little girl with the dead-white skin
And the smile like berry-brandy
Comes along and offers up her midnight sin
And says, "Innocence is candy.
We give it out as freely as trick-or-treat
When the jack-o-lanterns glow,
Until the day we're longing for something sweet,
And we wonder 'where'd it go'..."

        Oh-oh-oh
        Crazy little girl in her walking shoes
        With her ghostlight eyes and her crossroad blues
        Never heard an offer that she'd refuse,
        Never turned a dead man down,

( Well, she's gone to Bedlam in her stocking feet... )
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Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Seanan McGuire, 'Crazy Little Girl.'
 
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Seanan
cadhla
22 July 2008 @ 08:27 pm
Normalizing the world, one Siamese at a time.  
I woke up this morning with one of those amazing smash-the-world-like-an-egg migraines that only comes along once every six months at most (and thank all that is holy for that, as these days always sort of make me want to die). I'm blaming delayed reaction from New York, honestly, since I really didn't drink enough water for like, a week, and my body abuses the hell out of me when it gets dehydrated. Me and my body: a mutually abusive relationship. Bastard.

Not being an enormous fan of 'commuting while crying,' I elected to stay home, sleep, drink lots of water, and take lots of painkillers. This worked out pretty well for me, as I now feel fine. Even my sore throat has gone away. All hail water!

My mother showed up around one to sweep me away to the farmer's market, where we obtained a sickening number of strawberries and blackberries and split a thing of kettle corn. I also bought a sack of heirloom tomatoes, and will be having tomatoes for breakfast tomorrow. Because there is nothing better in this world than tomatoes for breakfast. Save, perhaps, tomatoes for lunch and dinner.

I finished the inks on the next With Friends Like These... strip -- it's titled 'Do the Necronomicon!' -- and finished the base inks on the strip after that, titled 'Shoulder Angels 101.' I'm going to start penciling my New York trip report strips over the course of the next week. That doesn't mean they'll be finished any time soon, but dammit, they'll be drawn.

I also managed to finish processing the pending edits for Newsflesh, which made me cry all over again. Every time I work on this book, I cry. Either it's good, or I have broken my emotional barometer.

And that was my day, plus a hefty dose of NCIS. How was yours?
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Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Scissor Sisters, 'Tits on the Radio.'
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
22 July 2008 @ 06:44 pm
Travels with Plink and Cthulhu: Portlanded  

Well, here I am. The afternoon has been filled with wonderful conversations. My seatmate on the plane, a student at SJ State interning in the marketing department of an open source company, and here to work their booth. A woman on the train, going to OSCon for the first time now that her company has gone open source.

The woman handing out badges and bags, who turns out to be a long-time Tolkein fan -- she told me about the badge ribbons they've started using and I mentioned that I was familiar with them from SF conventions. (I added one of my CC&S ribbons left over from Baycon.) A guy in the hall with a home-made PVC-pipe didgeridoo.

MaryBeth Panagos, business relations person for OpenMediaNow.org, the people behind the GNASH flash clone, which it turns out is optimized for use in embedded systems, making it ideal for things like user interfaces on gadgets. Turns out she has a copy of my CD; we mostly talked about recording and my upcoming projects. We apparently met last year when I had preorder bonus disks in hand.

Yeah, I'm a little different these days. But only a little. I still have trouble with phones, and have yet to get in touch with didn't even leave a message when I called [info]_amethyst_fire_ to give her contact info for this weekend</del>. I'll try a couple more times tonight. But she called me back anyway! Today has been made of win, with awesome sauce.

And I'm still really bad with names.

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Current Location: Red Lion Portland Convention Center room 305
Current Mood: content
 
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Tony Fabris
tfabris
22 July 2008 @ 01:04 pm
Sheer Genius  
To our surprise, we are featured on the page for Monday's Girl Genius. (It's in the text below the comic.) We're very flattered! Girl Genius is fantastic, and we're honored to have been mentioned there.

The song appears on this album to benefit our wonderful and suddenly-disadvantaged friend Tom Smith. Tom is awesome, and needs our help, so go donate!

For our regular fans, we have several special announcements coming up related to gigs, house concerts, and a chance to win a special bootleg DVD made of one of our recent shows. Watch this space!

And oh yeah... it's a free Vixy & Tony MP3 if you follow the link to Girl Genius above...
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
22 July 2008 @ 11:24 am
Morning made of win  

The SJC airport has finally joined the 21st Century and put in free wifi. This doesn't seem to have stopped Wayport from trying to charge you $7 for a connection.

The [info]flower_cat should be getting out of the hospital right about now. I'll update this post if I hear from her before I have to board.

Had a couple of good conversations, including the limo driver who turns out to be a former professional musician. (In a band with a long name which I have written down somewhere in a card that's somewhere deep in my backpack right now.)

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Current Location: ssh to the Starport from SJC
Current Mood: happy
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
22 July 2008 @ 09:08 am
Travels with Plink and Cthulhu: Almost gone  

In about three hours I'll be on a plane waiting to take off for Portland, to attend OSCon. From there I'll be going to Seattle on Friday and meeting the [info]flower_cat in the airport for a weekend at the Big Green Monster. My luggage is piled by the door, with my little plush Cthulhu situated where he can greet anyone who opens my suitcase with appropriately unspeakable plushie horror.

( My itinerary is under the cut tag )

Normally I would be calm and happy, but with the [info]flower_cat in the hospital I'm stressed and grumpy. Knowing that Colleen is safe at home, it turns out, has a big effect on my mood when I'm traveling. I'm going to miss that -- as well as her -- terribly. (09:44 The Cat's getting sprung this morning!!!! So that's a huge load off my mind. Happy Bear!

Keep in touch! My LJ username at gmail.com works, as does the email address in my profile -- I'll have good net access at the con, and expect to be blogging most of my trip report.

Almost forgot -- Kat's new version of the Tres-Gique.com website is live. Still have to move it to my hosting service at DreamHost, and it could stand some tweaking, but it's up.

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Current Location: Grand Central Starport (office)
Current Mood: stressed
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
22 July 2008 @ 08:14 am
Update[3] on the FlowerCat  

When last seen, around 8pm last night, the Cat was doing much better except for the joint pain. Even that was improving since they finally started letting her use aspirin; she's gotten about half her normal range of motion back in her fingers.

(For those just recovering from their weekend, the original post is here and the updates are here and here.)

Thanks to those who have come by her room (333 in the Santa Theresa Kaiser hospital) to visit. I'm guessing she'll be in until tomorrow, though there's a chance she might get sprung this evening. Her cell phone is within reach. (09:42) Just heard -- she's getting sprung this morning!!!

Had a call from her a few minutes ago; she's bored and grumpy, and didn't sleep well at all. And I'm stuck here waiting for my ride to the airport for a business trip to Portland. GRRR.

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Current Location: Grand Central Starport (office)
Current Mood: stressed
 
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Seanan
cadhla
22 July 2008 @ 08:05 am
With Friends Like These... #58: How to Write a Book, Part III.  
First, the strip:

With Friends Like These... #58: How to Write a Book, Part III.

Second, the footnotes:

It wasn't until this strip was finished that I realized I'd managed to cite a horror novel in every single panel except for the last one (Rosemary and Rue, of course, being far from horror, unless you're afraid of fairy tales). But seriously, all the books directly named in the first panels of the strip? Horror novels. I'm sending the Tim Waggonner to a friend who refused to believe it was as bad as I said. The poor fool.

The last panel in this strip marks the single panel in any strip that has caused me to want to cause the most physical damage to the people around me. I draw left to right, ink right to left, detail left to right. This means that the earthquake-style cracks weren't added to the shirt until the strip was almost finished, by which point a lot of people had pointed out my 'misspelling.' This might have been less annoying if they'd asked before reading over my shoulder...

In case folks missed it before -- I did post on a Sunday, which was, perhaps, not the smartest thing I've ever done -- I am currently running a strip sale. This batch includes such gems as 'the first time I drew Debbie Ohi' (#50: Art!) and 'Seanan does horrible things to Vixy' (every other strip). This strip has already been added, as the sale is currently ongoing. Drop by, browse, and help keep me in art supplies.
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Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Reefer Madness, 'Mary Lane.'
 
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Mandelbear
mdlbear
22 July 2008 @ 07:40 am
Hippo, birdie, two ewes...  

... to the lovely and talented [info]vixyish!!! Have a great one!!

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Current Location: Grand Central Starport (office)
Current Mood: worried
 
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