alara_r

Me to Tom: "Pizza is a vegetable? Didn't they learn better from the ketchup thing?"
Natalya, playing Minecraft: "Pizza is not a vegetable!"
Me: "That's right, Talya. We're going to send you to Congress, so you can explain to them that pizza is not a vegetable."
Natalya: "Well, I'm building my lily pad world right now."

My refrigerator! Oh the humanity!

See, I have hated my refrigerator for approximately three years (it is six years old), because it is made of papier mache and when things break, which they do when you look at them funny, it takes between six weeks to a year to never to get a replacement part. No joke about that. (The papier mache part *is* a joke, although I think a fridge made of papier mache might be sturdier than this.) So I have had my heart set for about three years on a specific type of new fridge, the kind I have been waiting for for 30 years... the kind with a PULLOUT FREEZER DRAWER. When I bought this one, pullout freezer drawers existed but you couldn't get them with ice and water. I really depend on the ice and water maker, so I got one with a side freezer instead of a pullout freezer drawer.

Well, over the years, I have lost three out of my four fridge door shelves (in order to have a place to put my orange juice and milk, I had to fill the fridge proper with condiments and salad dressing), one of my freezer door shelves, and the door to my freezer pizza compartment. The lid to one of my freezer drawers is broken off and we basically lay it on top. The ice maker has broken four times. The logic board/thermostat has broken three times, all of them due to power surges from storms or whatever EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE AN APPLIANCE GRADE SURGE SUPPRESSOR on the outlet. I've been holding on, and holding on, and now, finally, the compressor has given out, after the logic board fried from a power surge.

But I have no money!

The fridge started failing in *JULY*. The insurance would pay for a repair, but we know from sad experience that it takes six weeks to get parts, on a good day, with a responsive repairman chasing Samsung to get the parts for you, so we took the repair money and decided to put it toward a new fridge. We had a huge check coming to us from a major contract. We just had to hold on. It was just the freezer, at first. We lost some food, but we have a secondary freezer, so we worked around it, and we could keep it frozen or at least cold enough to stay frozen most of the time by repeatedly hitting Power Freeze.

But while we were waiting for the huge check, the bills continued to pile up, and I missed paying the business health insurance, and now to get it back on I have to pay three months at the same time, because no matter what payroll has to go out every two weeks, which means if I have ten thousand dollars in my pocket today but I don't know if the vendor who's supposed to pay me next week is going to, and next week is payroll, I can't spend more than my payroll obligation no matter who else is breathing down my neck. So boom, my huge check, gone poof.

Two weeks ago the freezer failed completely. We had to throw out half the food that was in it over the weekend, and there are things that went bad but were frozen when we got to them, so I don't find out they're bad until I open them to cook them. I'd throw out *all* the food, except, no money. But, ok, we have a secondary freezer, and we could keep limping along, as long as the fridge worked.

The fridge side died yesterday.

I had to throw out *more* food. I can't replace my milk or orange juice now that we're done drinking them, until I get a new fridge. I may be able to rent a fridge from a Rent-A-Center or something (a total ripoff for rent-to-own, but if it's rent-until-next-big-vendor-check-clears, I think it's cool.) I have developers (including my husband) pulling sixteen hours a day on a lucrative government contract with net 30 terms, but that means the work being done right now pays out at the end of October, and in the meanwhile NO FRIDGE. I have taken over the employees' mini-fridge for half my fridge food and my ex-housemate's mini-fridge for the other half, but the only reason that works is that a lot of my food went bad. Two mini fridges equals only about half of my full fridge.

So we have to eat all the leftovers, even though the thought of eating this shit makes me feel sick after all the food I had to throw out, because when money is this tight I can't waste food just because it's unappetizing, especially after throwing out so much food that went rotten. And I've been selling books and DVDs and stuff to make extra money while we wait for the big contract to finally pay out (or, now, to pay out *again* so that we have something besides what we need to pay the burning-down-the-house debts), but that's making me like $100 a week on a *good* week. No way does that buy me a fridge. Especially not the $1700 fridge that I have been patiently holding out for for three years.

When we are making money, $1700 is nothing. We've paid that down in *cash* for appliances before. But these damn threatened government shutdowns have had us on a rollercoaster all year and we never catch up. We make money only after starving for so long that all the money goes to pay immediate, desperate debts. I can't believe that thirty thousand dollars passes through my hands in a month and yet I can't come up with $1700 to buy a *fridge*, because every credit line I have is completely tapped and my credit score is in the toilet and there are so many people I have to pay before I can pay myself.

I can't even go get a job. I *have* a job. I'm working full time for a client. But that pays for about half of payroll, and all my *other* clients are soooo slow to pay.

ARGH.

I want a new drug
One that does what it should
One that won’t let me sleep too long
One that keeps me awake real good

I want a new drug
One I can get
One that won’t break the law
One that won’t explode my head

One that won’t make me dizzy,
One that won’t make me ache
One that makes me feel like I feel like I’m awake
When I’m actually awake

...which I never am, because I have some kind of sleep disorder the doctors call "chronic hypersomnia", which literally means "you sleep too much" and carries the implication "you sleep too much and we have no idea why the fuck why." It's not narcolepsy, because I only fall asleep uncontrollably in long boring meetings and on very long commutes home, and seriously, don't those make everyone fall asleep uncontrollably? Or am I just weird? (Don't answer that.) But I spend an inordinate portion of my life struggling to stay awake or struggling to behave like I am a functional, awake human being.

Modafinil was supposed to fix this. And it helps, but today I am still fighting not to pass out. Plainly I must supplement with extra sugar and caffeine.

In Sherlock Holmes canon, Irene Adler was a brilliant woman who actually outwitted Holmes, once (in canon, they didn't meet twice). According to Watson, "To Sherlock Holmes, she was always 'the' woman", as if there were no others.

In X-Men comics canon, Irene Adler is a blind precognitive who was probably born in the 1920's or something, because she's in her apparent 70's in the 90's. She is apparently a lesbian (at least, I know of no canonical relationships with men), and she was Mystique/Raven Darkholme's lover for many, many years. While I don't know if we know much about how they met, I know they met when Irene was a young woman, and they were together for the rest of Irene's life, until she died heroically on a mission to stop Charles Xavier's mad son Legion.

Sherlock Holmes now has modern canons that people write fanfic about. Could someone *please* cross these over? I so totally want to see mutant precog Irene be Sherlock's bete noire, the one opponent he never defeated. (There does not need to be Irene/Sherlock; the canon has never actually stated Sherlock was attracted to Irene, simply that he was amazed by her, and if people want to write Holmes/Watson, well, I prefer Raven/Irene and I prefer Irene to be a lesbian, as Raven is definitely bi and I'd like to see some actual full-on *lesbians* from comics as well as bi women. I mean, I am a bi woman, I certainly have no problem with bi women, but there's a serious shortage of women in comics who have *never* had a relationship with a man. So completely platonic Irene&Sherlock would be awesome and would keep each of them "faithful" to their OTP. :-) But I wouldn't cry at Irene/Sherlock either; frankly, plenty of gay people have hetero sex at some point in their lives, and I'm not jealous on behalf of my OTPs, because frankly jealousy on behalf of fictional characters is fail and totally pants.)

I have not seen any of the Sherlock canons or read any of the actual books (read some of the officially published fanfic, like Return of Moriarty and Holmes-Dracula file, but it's not the same), so I cannot do this, but man I want to see it. X-Men Comicsverse or movieverse, either way's good for me.

Don't get me wrong, I still totally love the movie to death. But I just realized that the lack of female characters in X-Men First Class is UTTER BULLSHIT.

( In which I suggest numerous female mutants who could have been in the First Class team, but weren't. )

So I figured something out today.

( More talk about depression and stuff, but in the more clinical context, not stuff I'm suffering from right this minute. )

Does anyone out there know what bullets were made out of in WWII or during the 1960's, in general?

Yes, I know, lead. I'm looking to find out what other metals may have been involved in the composition of bullets, circa WWII through 1960's.

Three guesses why. First two don't count.

My birth state, New York, just passed marriage equality legislation!

This is fantastic news. I am so proud to be a New Yorker. (And so pissed off that my current home state had traitor Democrats who promised to vote for marriage equality and then didn't. Jesus, Iowa is more liberal than Maryland?)

Sadly, I can't really celebrate with my gay brother because he is suffering a lot of emotional stress over a breakup right now, so it's not really a good time to be cheerful over the fact that other gay people who didn't just get dumped can now get married in our home state. :-( But I have faith that in time, he'll find a guy who loves him that wants to commit to him and he to that person, and now, when that happens, they can get married if they want.

Also, my parents' state Senator was one of only four Republicans to vote "yea." I am generally speaking not a fan of Republicans, but New York seems to have a tendency to produce Republicans who are not as big of asshats as most of their party (the only Republican I ever voted for, Congresswoman Sue Kelly, was my Congresswoman when I lived with my parents, and was one of the few Congresspeople to vote against the unconstitutional Communications Decency Act.) While my parents probably didn't vote for the guy, as they're Democrats, I'm sure they're pleased with his vote on this issue.