miss apple

That is the exact same way we adopted one of our kitties when I was growing up. All of a sudden a gray tabby started to hang around the yard and after a few weeks one day we just opened the door and she came in and made herself at home. When we took her to the vet they said she'd been fixed and was about five or six years old. We guess she was someone's pet but no one ever posted signs for a missing cat. It took a few weeks but the other three cats adjusted to her presence just fine. If Star isn't that old I'm sure she'll be fine with a new companion (unless she's really aggressive - then I'd put more thought into it)

Holy shmoly, that's impressive

Hope your husband (and you) are feeling better. edited for improper grammar, ack.

I feel like I should get a sticker that says "I made a phlebotomist happy today!" Every time I have to have blood drawn for tests they always tell me "oh, you have such nice veins". I guess that's cool. Though I'm not thrilled that you can see most of my veins because I'm pretty pale, I'd rather have an easy time giving blood than not. I'd have to say I'm lucky that no one's ever missed a vein or had to dig in my arm.

I wish I had my old ringtone, which was cicadas. It was nice and chill but different enough to grab my attention when it rang. Now I just have the standard generic variety that comes with the phone. I had a Katamari ringtone for about a day but it was obnoxious when it rang and I couldn't adjust the volume.

That's so totally true about that Roxette song! I loved that song when it came out but it makes absolutely no sense.

My cafeteria manager guy rocks! A few weeks ago I asked him if it was possible to get some Boston Creme Pie (yes I do have a fixation) as one of the desserts. He said he'd check and today he told me that it will arrive on Monday! I loves me some BCP

Saturday I did something I thought I'd never do. I bought a pair of wedge heels. I've been hating that trend ever since it came back a few years ago but the last few months I've found myself thinking "oooh, those are cute" while leafing through magazines with features on wedge shoes. I actually had no real need for a new pair of shoes much less heels, something I hardly ever wear but Saturday was a bad day. I was having this insane Boston Creme pie craving and for some peculiar reason there is none to be found in this area (outside the frozen food section in the grocery store). The Cheesecake Factory has earned my enmity for discontinuing their cheesecake version as well as putting nuts in the choloate chip cookie dough so that was out and none of the local restaurants seem to have it on their dessert menu. Too pedestrian I guess. Since this is out of my reach I decide that I would be happy with a chocolate muffin with cream in the middle from Starbucks. But do you think I could find such a thing at the three SB in a two block radius? Nope. I guess it was available for approximately one week in April. After being thwarted on the dessert front I decide to take my work laptop to Panera so that I can sit with my husband, browse the net, and sip a refreshing gallon of iced tea. Also to get away from the messy apartment that needs cleaning. Silly me, I never use this particular laptop and didn't configure it when they gave it to me eight months ago so I can't remember the password and unlike Linux, Windows is a complete pain in the ass to break into. Instead of sitting watching my husband tinker on his laptop I decide I'll go to Hechts and see what they have in the way of shoes. I wander around and it seems they are having a sale but most of the shoes are ugly or expensive even when they are on sale. I remember thinking that there was a pair of retro black wedge heels that I liked but I didn't see them out on display any longer. As I'm about to leave I see them stuffed under a rack. I try them on but they are size six and are a bit too small. I decide that if they actually do have my size in stock I'll buy them even though I think $59 is a lot to spend on shoes. This is me playing a silly game where I dare myself to spend money if something actually works in my favor even though I'm really hoping that it doesn't. Suprise, suprise they have my size. I try them on and it feels odd to be taller and to see something other than my familiar chucks on my feet. I almost change my mind but decide to get them anyway (hey, shopping is theraputic right?). Lucky me the salesgirl gives me a coupon and I get them cheaper. A small victory in an othewise crappy day.

Right now I'm listening to a Duran Duran remix album and the song Wild Boys is playing. I happened to see that video over the weekend and it's even weirder than I remember. It's also weird that I remember all these little factoids about the video (like how Simon LeBon almost drown on the windmill thing when it got stuck under the water and he couldn't get out of his harness, stuff like that) It reminded me of this Duran Duran fact book that my sister had which I would read over and over and marvel at things like how many walkmen Simon had lost during the year and that Nick Rhodes' dyed purple bangs turned pink in the hot sun when they were shooting videos in Sri Lanka. I suppose what's even stupider is the fact that I remember this stuff and that it's occupying space in my brain that could surely be used for something else. I still love their music though.

Last month I sent in my final car payment. I can't believe I've had my car for that long but there you go. I paid a bit extra every month so I was able to pay it off five months early and save some on interest. Since I usually receive my bill at the end of the month I thought maybe the title would be showing up any day now. Just to be sure I called the car loan people and found out that it hadn't been sent yet. Hmm. I'd heard that you sometimes had to call and ask them to send it and I even had visions of them telling me I needed to pay some sort of fee to get it. But no, the nice man on the phone said they'd send it out right away and to my suprise I came home last night and found that they had fedexed it overnight. Whoot! I now have the title in my hot little hands and my car is allll mine. That's definitely a feeling of accomplishment.

My back itches. I feel like I'm mentioning this too much in the How Are You Feeling thread so I'll expand at length here. For those of you who don't know, I got a tattoo on Friday. It was only the outline but it's pretty big so there's a lot of it and a lot left to go. When I first made the effort to go out and start looking for an artist, finalizing ideas for a design I had no plans to get what has turned out to be a back piece (or at least two-thirds of one). My original goal was to find something to go around the larger of my two older tattoos which have faded and blurred and don't really have the same appeal to me as they once did. I went and spoke to the artist and when I came back to see her design I was instantly sold. It was wider and higher than I imagined but it was as though she just pulled the jumble of images out of my head and combined it with her own ideas to create the perfect design for me. She let me take the outline home and I looked at it every day. Instead of having reservations I found that grew more excited at the prospect of having this beautiful artwork on my back. As the day for my appointment drew nearer I began to get anxious - what if I had a panic attack and freaked out? A small part of me wanted to wuss out but I knew I'd be hugely disappointed in myself if I did that. Luckily I had a good friend to go with me and once I got to the studio things moved so fast that I didn't really have time to stop and worry. I forgot to bring a button down shirt to wear over my front (didn't even think about it) so I ended up using a jacket I'd brought just in case I got cold. Good thing otherwise I'd have been sitting there topless. Once my back was shaved and the outline was put on I had to sit backwards on a chair and lean over the top which I shortly realized was rather uncomfortable. The moment the tattoo artist started I thought I was going to cry. It hurt so much more than I remembered! I could not imagine sitting there long enough to get the whole outline done much less adding color later on. My second thought was that there was no way my hsuband could ever sit through this. He wants to get something at some point but I honestly don't know if he could stand the it. My friend held my hand and talked to me so that I wouldn't focus on the pain so much. I thought there was little chance of that and I also didn't believe the tattooist when she said it took about ten minutes to get used to it - how could you get used to such a thing? But not too long after this thought I did start to forget and I was distracted. Some parts still really hurt; my ribs, my spine, oh my god those were the worst. At first I thought I'd want to take breaks but I started to realize that it only felt worse even after a minute and that it was better to just gut it out. Two hours later and the outline was done. I was at my limit and didn't want to push it. My back was cleaned and then the bandage was applied and I was sent home with aftercare instructions, A&D ointment, and Smarties (actually, she gave me Smarties at the beginning too). I was exhausted but pretty much unable to sleep that night. My back felt like I'd had a sunburn with road rash. I had a couple of pillows from the couch I was using to prop myself up so that I could sleep without moving too much. Apparently I kept pushing them away in the middle of the night and they'd knock stuff off the shelf over our bed and onto my husband's head during the night I did that twice I've pretty much moved from the ouch stage to the itchy stage. I'm not sure which is worse. Pain I can deal with but itching is annoying. Hopefully that will go away in a few days. The funny thing is that when I got my second tattoo I thought it was huge. Couldn't believe I'd done it and thought maybe it was too big. I thought surely I'd do that with this since it's three times as big but no! I was looking at my back thinking, hmmm now I need something on my shoulders.

Jester is pretty fruity though you might need to add something with tropical notes to make it a closer match to Mi-Go. (I'm drawing a blank right now...)

I am absolutely and completely befuddled. I could swear that I had ordered Dragon Moon along with Eat Me and Obatala and Hymn to Proserpine but after looking through my emails and Paypal I can't find any evidence of such an order. I went back to look at the description of Dragon Moon and there's just no way I would have passed that up ::scratches head:: How freaking frustrating to miss out on Dragon Moon as well as realizing that yummy things I thought I had on order aren't and now I have to wait all over again. I'm so annoyed with myself Seriously - wtf? This is from the Dragon Moon thread: I knew I didn't imagine that order! The only thing I can think of is that I never hit the final pay button on the paypal page. Gah

Oh my god am I tired. Lots of tossing and turning plus some freaky dream where I was married to David Haselhoff (who had long hair, wtf?!) made for a poor night's sleep. The night before was like that too only with a different weird dream. I wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me. Maybe I don't want to know. My husband has to go to Vegas for work in July and was asking me if I wanted to fly out towards the end of the week for a mini vacation. I like Vegas but I don't know if I want to go out there when it will be so beastly hot plus I'm not sure if I want to use more of my leave. We haven't figured out if we're going to Europe or Morocco in the fall yet so I don't want to take time off that may be better spent then. It also might make more sense to save up and go in the spring and take a few local trips. I can't wait for the three day weekend to get here, even if I am on call.

Hehe, yeah I'm definitely tempted plus if I survived Arizona in August I can probably do Vegas in July.

Ok, I admit it. I went shopping yesterday. I didn't need to but I did it anyway. It was the MAC thread that made me do it. I just had to see the new lines and I haven't bought any thing new for a while...er, yeah. I thought I was going to get off easy with a couple of pigments and one of the new cheek stains but then I saw the new liquid liners and - swoon! They had aqua and lime, how could I turn that down?! After that I went down to the book store to pick up the last two Southern Vampire books that are available in paperback. Then I went to Urban Outiftters to check the sale rack because lately I've been finding some amazing deals there. Yesterday was no different and I scored a black lacey 80's style skirt that kinda looks like it got caught in the car door because it has an uneven hemline. Original price was $68 marked down to $4.99! Score!

I had initially decided to start my blog with a recap of my vacation but I'm feeling pretty tired at the moment so I think I'll do that later. I had to get up at quarter to five this morning to work on some servers during the maintenance window. Unfortunately there's no other time to do this but I don't really mind. It means that I get to leave work early and that means I'll miss rush hour traffic. The only crummy part is that I have to get up early the rest of the week to finish the installs so my sleep schedule is going to be off this week. The first thing I'm going to do when I get home is crawl into bed with my vampire book. I'm not usually one for vampire stories but I really like Charlaine Harris' take on them. My only complaint is that they aren't long enough and I usually finish them within a day or two. It's a nice change from all the history stuff I've been reading lately. I almost wish that I didn't have belly dance class today but I know I'll change my mind once I get there. That's how it usually goes with yoga too. I just wish I had the chance to take a longer nap after work but since I have to get up early that's probably a good thing. Gah! My boss keeps sending me emails about new projects and tasks and my mind is so mushy right now that I just can't process them. I have a feeling it's going to be like that all week.

Rakshasa This haunting, exotic scent is named in honor of the shapeshifting demons from Hindu mythology. Sandalwood with rose and patchouli. This scent is so subtle to my nose. The only thing I think of when I sniff this is stone roses. Not the band but freshly cut roses scattered on damp stone. No sandalwood (sadly) or citrus and I really don't smell any patchouli in the usual sense but I think that's what is giving it that rocky earthiness. It fades even more after a few hours but I still get whiffs of it now and then. This is very quiet and comtemplative.

Monster Bait: Underbed This scent is driving me nuts because it reminds me of something so familiar yet I can't put my finger on it. Wax tart? Candle? Suntan oil? I can't remember. Mostly what I smell is vanilla with a hint of lemon. Not harsh like Lemon Pledge but soft and just enough that the cakelike scent isn't too foody. I'm amazed at how much this calms down out of the bottle because it seemed quite strong at first. After a bit I can smell the coconut and I think that's what seems familiar - very reminiscent of suntan oil. Like angel food cake and Hawaiian Tropic mixed together It works really well though

Monster Bait: Closet Where's the drooly icon when you need it because MB:Closet is definitely droolwrothy. As shelldoo mentioned this is similar to Beaver Moon but with a boozy note instead of the vinegar tang. I can almost taste the red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting I don't get much in the way of fruitiness but there is the slightest hint of blackberry that keeps this from being too sugary sweet. This a playful, sexy, girly scent. I don't think any of the monsters in my closet ever smelled this good!

Blood Pearl is a delicious spicy red coconutty scent

Love, love, love Lump of Coal! In the bottle it smells exactly like those molton lava cakes where the middle is all rich, hot, gooey, chocolate. Once on it doesn't really change though after a few hours though it does mellow a bit so that every now and then I get wafts of brownies. There's the barest hint of something perfumey that keeps this from being a total foodie blend. Being Naughty smells damn good!

Someone's already selling Beaver Moon? Wow, that was fast. It doesn't look like the girl from the shirt though. Maybe the pink and black design didn't work so well on a tiny label?

Blood Moon is spicy and sweet as others have mentioned. For some reason I do not get the lunar oil undertone that I get from most lunar blends which I find interesting. This actually reminds me of Chimera but with a redness and an exotic and mysterious depth - perhaps the red sandalwood?. I think this is one of my favorite lunar oils so far and the lable is fantastic.