June 2007 – Home of the Autographed Cat

APPEAL: Pretty Little Dead Girl

On June 28, 2007

cadhla is raising money for a friend by diverting her album sales proceeds. Go. Buy. You want these cd’s anyway. And if you already have these CDs, then you want to give a copy to someone who doesn’t.

A fire sale is what you have when the house is on fire and you need to get things out of it, right? ‘Here, buy my stuff before it gets smoke-damaged’. Well, a very good friend of mine has a house that’s on fire right now, and that means I’m having a fire sale to try to help her put it out.

For the next week, all proceeds of sales from my first album, Pretty Little Dead Girl, will be going straight to her and her family, to help them get through a rather nasty financial crunch — basically, she starts her new job in two weeks, but until then, there’s no money to do fun things like ‘feed the resident small child’ and ‘keep the electricity running’. If we can manage to sell forty copies of the album, at $15 a pop, we’ll raise six hundred dollars, and get them through this stupid speed bump.

To order Pretty Little Dead Girl and donate the proceeds, go to:

https://www.seananmcguire.com/secure_order.php

Put ‘fire sale’ in the comments field. We still have to charge postage (and the international order surcharge, for people outside the US), since I don’t have any money either, but all actual sale-of-CD proceeds will go straight to the donation pool. I’m probably going to do a few art sales or auctions to help this along, later in the week.

Please, feel free to repost this entry, modified as necessary, especially if you have a reading list that differs substantially from mine. The fire sale will run from Thursday, June 28, through Thursday, July 5.

Thank you.

Happy Birthday

By autographedcat

On June 27, 2007

In Blog

Happy birthday to my beloved sweetmusic_27! Hope your day is full of magic, sweetie!

Everything was better when you were 12

By autographedcat

On June 19, 2007

In Blog

This week’s “Tom The Dancing Bug” amused me greatly, and is probably more true than not:

Tom The Dancing Bug

Moving on up to the East Side (of GA 400)

By autographedcat

On June 13, 2007

In Blog

As you may or may not be aware, kitanzi and I are planning on moving into a new apartment. We’ve been wanting to for some time, as the place we are living in currently is, while not exactly cramped, lacking in several features that we’d really like to have in our place to live. For one thing, it lacks a proper guest room, as those of you who have stayed with us over the years will know. It’s also really too small to have more than a couple of friends over a time, precluding us from ever, say, hosting a house filk or having any kind of gathering more than a very small group. Plus, to be honest, we’ve not been very happy with our current property management.

It’s funny, but when I sat down and figured it out, I’ve been at this address for longer than any place I’ve lived since I became an independent adult. I resist change, for good or ill. I like my comfortable routines. But it’s definitely time to take that step. When I first moved into this apartment, my life was very different. I had been sleeping on telynor‘s living room couch for 3 months after breaking up with deidrecorwyn, and was preparing myself to live alone for the first time ever. kitanzi and I had just started dating, but we were long-distance secondaries and there wasn’t any real though that that state of affairs would change. I spent a great deal of time in this cavernous empty apartment feeling lonely and isolated — not yet comfortable exploring my newly won freedom.

There’s a lot of memories packed into these 750 square feet. More memories than you’d imagine five and a half years could contain. I’m looking forward to spending the next year filling our new place with memories as well.

Today’s Thoughtfood: Fifty Things You Need To Know By 50.

By autographedcat

On June 12, 2007

In Blog

Courtesy of aolscalzi, I found the article from the AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons), titled 50 Things You Need to Know by 50.

Now, you might think the AARP is going to serve up a lot of stodgy, get-off-my-lawn advice, but given that their very first tip for life includes “Do the dishes naked.”….

Engelbert Humperdinck offers advice for Karoke that’s just as apropos to filkers:

In karaoke the most important thing is to pick a song by someone you really admire, and take the best of that person while giving the song the best of you. If you are not a singer but want to be part of the fun, pick a cheeky song and act silly. If you can’t even catch a melody, let alone carry one, just speak the lyrics. Pretend you are Richard Harris.

There’s also advice from Star Trek veteran George Takai, Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Seriously, there’s a lot of good thoughtfood here. Go eat.

June Aphelion Issue online

By autographedcat

On June 7, 2007

In Blog

Actually, the new Aphelion was posted back on June 2, but since I was in the full blossom of my recent illness at the time, I just got it up and went back to bed. But there it is.

Of possible interest to my friends list in particular:

Part Three of “On The Corner of Galaxy and Fifth”, the novel Jeff Williams (hejira2006) and I wrote together back in 1998.
My review of Mary Crowell’s new CD, Courting My Muse, plus lyrics to “Magnus Retail” in the Poetry & Filk Music section.
Becky Kletnieks’s hysterically funny “With Great Boyfriends Comes Great Responsibilities”, which appeared last month in her LiveJournal and she allowed me to reprint. 🙂
Plus, of course, lots of original short fiction and poetry by a bunch of other people, and an engaging forum of amatuer writers where you can talk about those stories.

Aphelion Webzine, as always, is found at http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/.

Enjoy!

Blrg.

By autographedcat

On June 6, 2007

In Blog

I had a lot of plans for the weekend, which involved packing and doing some repair work on the apartment in preparation of us moving in July, but all of that got derailed when I got sick.

Getting sick really isn’t something I do, as a rule. I don’t know if I just have a particularly robust immune system or what, but while I might occasionally get an annoying case of the sniffles, I rarely get outright, hurts to move, something is pouring out of every orifice, its only the glorious hope of dying that’s keeping me alive, ill. Maybe once every couple of years, really, do I get sick enough to miss work.

Well, Friday, I was feeling a bit run down, and felt I might be coming down with something. When I woke up Saturday, I was certain. Spent the weekend mostly sleeping, watching TV, and playing World of Warcraft, and generally not doing anything that required the output of energy. Monday, I had my three-month checkup with the sleep clinic (we made some slight adjustments to my CPAP pressure, but otherwise everything is pretty ok), On the way back from the clinic, I stopped by my GP and asked if they could fit me in. I left with 4 prescriptions, and $75 later was home again.

Today was the first day I felt well enough to try and come to work. So I went out, got in my car, and started to pull out, and realized I had a flat tire. On changing the tire, there was an enormous metal object embedded in it. Fortunately, I ponied up for the roadside hazard protection for these tires, so it only cost me my time to change the tire, go to the Goodyear place, and for them to patch it up. Still, by the time they were done, it was after 10am, so I ended up extending my sick time out an extra half-day, and came in at lunchtime.

I still have a fair bit of chest congestion, but my nose is no longer completely blocked (Sunday and Monday nights were the first time I’d slept without the the CPAP since I got it in February), and the sore throat is completely gone. Hopefully, by the weekend I’ll be much more human again.

Good grief, I hate being sick. It’s such a waste of time.