The Holocene Mass Exinction Event

saw the rifftrax "the five doctors" live show last night with a couple friends. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS EXPERIENCE. :D

back from gally. feelin' the urge to do a con write up like i used to, but i've fallen from the habit of taking notes every panel (and also of... going to every panel). but i'll get something up. ^__^

hi i'm not dead :D

sister [talking to olive]: if you were a little girl, you'd have freckles.
me: ...and a moustache.
sister: ...and small, little beady eyes.
sister: and the slightest unibrow, kissed light by the sun.

sorry, no cute pictures this time.

charlie is dying. we're taking him to the vet tomorrow to make sure he's not suffering.

thank you to everyone. you've all been so supportive. it's meant a lot to me.

here is charlie getting his ultrasound on monday! the doctor had to shave his belly, but not down to the skin, so charlie doesn't have to be embarrassed.

the news is not good, but it's better than we were expecting (which was, "make your cat comfortable for the next couple of weeks"). his symptoms, plus the ultrasound results, seem to point to one of two possibilities; lymphoma, or inflammatory bowel disease. both are incurable and will eventually kill him, but both are at least partly treatable, and especially if he has IBD, he could still be around for several years with a good quality of life. right now the doctors are leaning towards the IBD, because the ultrasound revealed his lymph nodes to be normal (hurrah!), but there's no way to know for sure without a biopsy. whichever disease he has, it's affected his intestines, thickening the walls so that it's become progressively more difficult for his body to absorb nutrients from food.

he's always been a very picky eater, but over the past few months he'd been getting more and more picky, until he finally stopped eating altogether, which is why we first took him to the vet two weeks ago. thankfully, what the x-rays seemed to show was a growth, was actually just an awful blockage in his colon (which happens if an animal isn't eating or drinking enough to pass what's left in it), and once we started him on a fluid IV every day to deal with his dehydration, it cleared him out. it's also made him feel well enough to eat periodically, though he only eats small amounts at a time. he's hungry all the time, because his body wants nutrients, but when he eats it seems to make him feel sick, so he only eats a little. and it apparently has to be the most ridiculously delicious shit in the world or he won't even lick it. dudes, you do not even understand how many fucking cans of processed fish we have in this house right now, trying to get him to eat SOMETHING. do you know how many different types of "fancy feast" there are? THERE ARE A LOT. right now (yay!) he is eating a little bowl of this hypo-allergenic grain-free food that comes in a pouch. he actually ate half, and then went back on his own to finish it off, which is like a total win.

charlie's got another big thing coming up on tuesday -- an endoscopy, so they can get a sample of his intestinal tract and test it to figure out which disease he's got. it's a bit scary because they're going to have to anesthetise him, and he has a heart murmur which could complicate things. but if everything goes well, then the doctors will get what they need, and then hopefully we can get him on some medication and get him feeling better and putting weight back on, and he'll still be here at christmas so he can see how jenna louise coleman manages to become the new companion after being a [spoiler] in the season premiere.

thanks for all the comments on the last post, guys. they were really appreciated. <3

yesterday was a good day. went hiking with a friend up buck mountain. the peak was lovely, great view of lake george, lots of people eating sandwiches and laying on rocks. it was also a fun hike; very nice just to walk and talk and look at trees and be in nature, expecially now i'm living in an apartment building. after hiking back down the mountain we went back to albany to meet some other friends who were doing some slackrope practise, but just missed the actual rope stuffs. instead we all went to have unexpected dinner at one person's house. it was a group effort. other people may have done dishes, chopped veggies, and cooked, but i certainly contributed with my "picking up dead mouse found on kitchen floor" action. tasty food and drinks were had, banjo was played, a couple people had to get home cos of work in teh morning, and the rest of had a few more drinks, talked about cats, death metal, and sam keith, and then went to a burlesque show. anyone who has wondered what i look like on my knees drinking a beer held between a burlesque dancer's legs should have been there.

afterwards was a bit more hanging out, then sleepover tiem. then this morning was a delicious group breakfast of french toast, bacon, and fresh-baked pastries. then, an album of death metal covers of rush songs. LOLARIOUS.

rest of today uneventful but nice. heard from my lovely wonderful mysterylodge, and she'll be in town sometime this week and we are going to DO IT UP. in some fashion or other. i'm very excited. have missed her loads since moving from MKE. now i'm drinking some wine and i think i'll watch the second episode of sherlock, which i've been meaning to do for ages. am not expecting much from it, but eh, i want to watch the eps in order.

btw guys, last week's episode of true blood was EPIC. oh wait did you not know that i love true blood? COS I DO. it is a perfect blend of lolarious and actually good. i feel like each season gets better than the last. i hain't seen the new ep because this season i've been watching with my sister; it is Our Show, and she is out tonight. another one of Our Shows is nurse jackie, which is fucking brilliant, and if you haven't watched it (or heard of it) you should seriously give it a try. hilarious and also hardcore as fuck. i approve.

first day of short-sleeve weather of the year! hurrah! biking for groceries so much more fun when face is not being torn off by below freezing winds.

on way to the store:

me: *riding down the street*
10 year old kid: "Hey yo, can I ride your bike?"
me: "Ha! No, man!"

also saw a man walking his cat. yes, on a leash.

so, for quite a while i've been thinking that doctor who fandom is in need of an awesome place for doctor who meta and discussion -- there have been some really good discussions on the anonmeme amongst all the wank, but they invariably disappear within a day or so into the depths of the comment pages. it is the way of the meme, which is as flighty and ephemeral as the internet, except... more so. and the meme shows that there is a hunger for a place in which to engage in this discussion. so i finally decided to do what i've been wanting to do for a while and create a meta comm.

i've got a co-mod (feel free to reveal yourself if you're ready to take on the mantle!), some ideas for basic guidelines and such, and a few ideas for essays. but i am missing the integral ingredient which is AN AWESOME NAME. so far all i can think of is meta_who, which is informative but a bit boring. if someone can think of something more awesome then i will give you internet cookies. or real cookies, if i ever meet you. (ask my roomies from last chiTARDIS. i brought home-made chocolate chip cookies, oh yes). otherwise i will make meta_who tonight! (won't be open for business quite yet, but it will exist).


in completely unrelated news, face is doing better still. also called up victim compensation today -- they said they don't usually recompense anyone for private property, but glasses might come under medical, so they'll send me a form which should come by sometime next week. then i'll fill it out, and wait three to four months for everything to be processed and find out if they'll help me out. semi-hurrah!

i'm volunteering at milwaukee pridefest tomorrow. come by if you enjoy gayness! and are in milwaukee, obvs.

sometimes i forget i live in wisconsin and am surprised when i type it out. hmmm. WISCONSIN.


ETA: the_metadel now exists! no content yet, but that will be coming forthwith, along with guidelines and maybe a fancy header image and stuffs.

today was a bit more actively full of insanity than normal. i've been campaigning for a small political nonprofit lately, and an hour or so into my shift today the sky became orange and black and tornado sirens started going off. obviously i was walking around by myself with no shelter to be had, so i found a walgreens and hunkered down until someone came to pick me up and drove me back to the office downtown. then about ten minutes after i'd finally got back we went back out and started campaigning again because thewarning was over and it had stopped raining. while talking to lots of disgruntled white people i got to hear someone say that the tax on cigarettes was unfair because the money went to fund children's healthcare programs, and if some kids are going to be sickly all the time then maybe they should have just been aborted. also talked to a dude who seemed quite nice except he kept talking about how his wife had just left him a couple of weeks before and she'd taken his dogs and what was he going to do with this house and look at all these caterpillars on his bush, they were eating all of the needles and he'd spent a lot of time on that bush, he'd spent TWENTY YEARS keeping that bush healthy.

i ended up signing out later than everyone else, because i was the only person to get a formal field report form printed out before the printer died. usually i try to get a ride home with peeps cos headquarters are in a slightly shady part of town and taking the bus home required transferring to another bus at an even shadier area. not that i've ever had a problem before, but i do realise i am a tiny gay trans white guy. i had to decide between waiting for the transfer for about a half an hour on martin luther king blvd (doesn't matter what city you're in, MLK is never in a good neighbourhood), at an unlit bus stop, or walk home through a somewhat shady area, but one that i've walked through before and that gets better with each block closer to my street.

apparently my choice to walk home was the wrong one this night, since i got jumped by three young guys and beat up and robbed. dude ran up and punched me in the face, i ended up on the ground, two other dudes ran up and joined in. i was like, "oh fuck", cos i didn't know if i was just in for a mugging because i was small and alone, or if it was an attack cos i looked gay/trans whatever and they had just decided to give me a serious beatdown. in the middle of getting punched repeatedly i was like, "hey, what do you want, i'll give it to you!" and first dude was like, "do you have any money? give us your money!" so i was like, "okay, sure, let me get it," and pulled my wallet out of my back pocket. one dude tried to grab it but i actually said, "hey man, let me keep my driver's license" and kept a hold of the thing, pulled out the little cash i had, and held it out to them. one of them took the money and they all ran off (after punching me one last time, i'm pretty sure). they'd broken my glasses and knocked the lenses out, so i got up and started looking for them in the grass by the sidewalk for about thirty or sixty seconds before i thought, "wtf me, those dudes are only like A BLOCK AWAY." so i consoled myself with one lens and then called 911 on my cellphone in case they noticed they'd only got away with maybe 18 bucks (at most! probably more like 12) and a ticket to pridefest, and decided to come back for more.

the nice operator was like, "is there a safe, well-lit place nearby, like a gas station? you should walk towards it." and i was like, "um... no, i'll just walk toward my house,", cos there WAS a gas station, but it was almost across the street from where i was attacked and i'm pretty sure *someone* must have seen that shit go down. managed to get to art bar (a bar near my house) and i stopped there to wait for cops. i thought that was maybe a good idea since i couldn't see anything, and it's a safe place. talked to cops, showed them area where attack took place, got driven home, talked to roommates, called sister, cops came back to take some photos of my swollen face, talked to my sister again.

i'm actually pretty upbeat, except for the loss of my glasses, which i can't afford to replace. thankfully i've still got my old pair, but they do suck, rather. oh well. other than that, i got some bruises and am out less than twenty bucks, which is pretty good considering i got jumped by three guys. which is what i told my sister when she was freaking out. then she said that as a revenge i should invent a "backpack helicopter" and then fly over those dudes and pull down my pants and take a shit on them. these are the kinds of things my sister comes up with, which is why i love her.

meanwhile, this story is all much funnier if i tell it in person. oh written text, you really *do* affect tone!