• 15:05 AVATAR was magnificent!!!!!!! #
• 08:52 astonished at the negative comments on AVATAR. Did these people SEE it? #avatar #
• 11:20 Best article I've seen on #Avatar. I concur!! bit.ly/6A684v #

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It is available on Wired( or in the text under the cut )

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• 15:05 AVATAR was magnificent!!!!!!! #

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Went to see Avatar today. It was magnificent. Breathtaking movie cinematically and even has a half-way decent plot! The 3D effects were terrific. Man, not your father's 3D anymore, that's for sure.... Very pagan in feel for those who enjoy that, too.

• 12:37 BBCAmerica! Thanks so much for showing Dr Who so promptly after BBC1 does!!! Yay! #

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• 06:40 Wishing everyone a wonderful Yule and Solstice! #
• 12:37 BBCAmerica! Thanks so much for showing Dr Who so promptly after BBC1 does!!! Yay! #

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• 06:40 Wishing everyone a wonderful Yule and Solstice! #

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Why do I do it?

I was at the Target earlier, finishing my Christmas shopping for Bill. I had to go to the lady's room. While I was, uh, sitting there, I heard sniffling a few stalls over. When I came out, so did she, an African-American lady a bit older than me, and she had obviously been crying.

So I asked her if she was okay.

We ended up sitting in the little cantina with some coffee. She talked. I listened. Her son's in the Middle East. She's sad and worried. I promised to pray for him, and for her, too.

I hope she feels better now.

I wonder what comes over me. I KNOW what's going to happen.

Happy Yule, everybody. I'm glad you're all safe and well, and that I know where you are.

Wishing everyone a great Yule and Solstice!

I hope you will have a happy birthday, Oona!

Found the mp3 cables. Still haven't figured out where I stashed the printer paper.

Found the ethernet cable I was missing from the desktop. Located the silly network connection -- plugged everything in and voila we have achieved main internet connection for the poor desktop. Poor desktop still needs memory like whoa and thinks I'm a crazy woman for trying to run several updates at once. Not my fault you've been shut down for several weeks.

My entertainment center seems to confuse even the Comcast support person. The earliest they can send someone out is Tuesday which is the day before I leave for Florida. I think I'd rather wait until after I come home, if I can't figure it out myself before then.

• 17:03 Our local highschool football team the Niceville Eagles, got the crap kicked out of them in the State Championships. Oh well.. #

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So to update my life:

The temp assignment ended on Friday with a bit of a whimper. The holiday party was on Thursday, so the bulk of the staff didn't bother coming in on Friday, so it was just the boss and me. That worked out well for a slow and leisurely day. During the day I learned about the impending snowstorm. So I trudged to the local store on the way home to load up on the essentials. Note to people in store: saving a place for someone in line is all nice and stuff, but when they bring in a massive cart of stuff? Don't expect the people behind you to be all friendly-like.

The snows are quite impressive. The white stuff has filled up the entirety of my non-balcony outside which makes for a scary sight. No power outages, thankfully. Hopefully all the roads and airports will be cleared in a few days when I disappear from DC for a week. Going from 30s to 60s/70s is going to be so much fun this year.

I spent some of the time emptying and deleting boxes, so I can return my apartment to some form of sanity. New bookshelves will just have to wait for the New Year, if at all. The amusing thing is I decided to try switching around some of the contents of said bookshelves to see if they'd fit better. So my skating shelf has been moved to a new location and I get to look at my writing and miscellaneous books from my bedside. suricattus gets good company with Nick Bantock & Jasper Fforde.

The only snag in all of this is on the technological front. I put together the computer, only to lack an internet connection. I have a cable internet/router combination. I think I have the correct ethernet/modem cables I just can't figure what goes where. And my entertainment unit is *still* in shambles. I really should have written down instructions for that. For a self-proclaimed geek, dvd/vcr hookups are strange and mysterious things. Plus finding the paper for the printer and the mp3 player cables...

Writing wise, not much to report, other than Yuletide successfully written and uploaded. remember_wenn is having its first annual fic fest in February and are taking prompts. I've dumped in a whole bunch of prompts.

Very strange feeling, the first year that Mum is not with us for her birthday.

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• 07:25 I got a new Avatar twitter background twitlay.com/preview.php?id=340 from Twitlay.com #
• 10:43 @HBO I'd spend the day with Jon Snow. #gameofthrones #
• 17:03 Our local highschool football team the Niceville Eagles, got the crap kicked out of them in the State Championships. Oh well.. #

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• 12:27 Niceville High School’s football team will pay for the title of state champion in Saturday’s Class 4A title game Saturday. GO EAGLES! #
• 12:28 Er., pLay. SFAIK, we ain't paying off the refs... #
• 07:25 I got a new Avatar twitter background twitlay.com/preview.php?id=340 from Twitlay.com #
• 10:43 @HBO I'd spend the day with Jon Snow. #gameofthrones #

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Reading about the snow storm on the East Coast reminds me of one of my first Christmas's after I'd earned my butter bars and was stationed at Scott AFB. This would be early 1970s.

As the most junior officer in the squadron, I couldn't just go home to Connecticut for all the holidays. We sort of bargained with one another to find a way to get ourselves to families. I'd agreed to stay at Scott over Thanksgiving and had reservations to fly home to New England for Christmas.

First, one particularly nasty Captain tried to tell me I couldn't go home because my database was acting up. I had to prove to him that it was his report that was the issue not the database, and finally was okay to go the next day (I'd have lost my money for the reservations of course had he prevailed, bastard).

Anyway, I wake up that morning and there is snow. Lots of snow. Snow southern Illinois didn't normally get, at least not in those amounts.

To make matters worse, I try to get to the base, only to discover tractor trailers had jack-knifed in the roadway and there was no way of getting out of town.

By this time I'm resigned I'm not going to get home. I call a friend and beg for sympathy. My friend tells me to get back on the road and get my ass to the base the moment I can and he'll still drive me to St Louis despite the weather. I protest, he insists.

I drag my ass out in the freezing weather, fight the snow, manage to squeeze past the truck (they'd gotten one lane partly open by then) and arrive at the base.

My friend is waiting. Alas, we have only one hour to get to the airport. It is at best, in good weather, an hour and a half (at the time there was no interstate highway to St Louis) drive to the airport.

He gets me and my luggage into the car and we set out for the airport. It takes us more than two hours to get there. Long long past time for my plane to have left.

No cellphones at the time, so no way of contacting the airport to even ask. We, ahem, soldier on.

Get to the airport to learn they'd had to cancel most flights to the East Coast as they were getting the same storm and that mine had not left yet.

I ended up hanging out at the airport for an hour or two, then barely managing to get home, only just avoiding having my home airport close before we land.

Moral of story, no matter how bad the odds are, keep going!

Addendum: same asshole captain called me during my holiday and demanded I come back to Scott AFB IMMEDIATELY. I called the duty sergeant and he went to the boss and the boss told the asshole captain to stand down. The report was no big deal and wasn't needed until after the holidays anyway. Sheesh. Some men are idiots for power and really really hate women they perceive as encroaching on their territory.

Urban word of the day: Cashmas

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cashmas&defid=2736051