RL Achievements and ToW-split 2/16/09

[Alicorn]

Oh I'm sorry for your lost Jessi. She was such a pretty rattie. She couldn't of asked for a more wonderful, happy home. **huggles**

[WisteriaLynx]

Apparently, your roommate pulling her effing pillow over her head and adjusting it (desperately and many, many times) to see if she can find any way to drown out your "outdoor-voice"-level phone conversation isn't a particularly strong clue that you're being a really damn big nuisance. (Please note that you are sitting facing said roommate's bed the whole time, so you CAN see her, and you walked in past midnight and turned the overhead light on when she had just fallen asleep, and then called someone Because You Could.)

I don't care what time zone her friends live in, I have had enough of this shit. If making her phone calls at eleven instead of midnight is too annoying, then she can make her damn calls in the morning. (Or even better, not make them in the room in the first place.) I am talking to every RA in the res hall tomorrow if need be, but I am not putting up with this for another night.

... how the heck did I even get matched up with her? I put down on my roommate-selection form that I'm a really light sleeper who has a really hard time falling asleep, and I like to go to bed early (so I have the maximum chance of actually getting a decent amount of sleep).

[Rainbow Daydreamer]

Reinstalling the AV, the firewall, then MSN, worked worked worked! And just in time for Werewolf!

[Slugawoo]

I now have -$5 in my bank account. D:

[Jessi]

One of our ratties, Star Anise, has a very, very rock-hard tummy =/ We noticed it tonight while doing cage cleanings and weekly checkups. Could mean one of many things.. she's blocked up from eating too many bird toys and fleece hammocks, for example :P Or, on a more serious note, she may have either an internal tumor or an enlarged organ, particularly her liver - neither of which you can do anything about.

She's only a year old, and is my extra-special rattie, so it's frustrating, to see the least. Vet calls will be made Monday... til then, if you could keep Ani in your thoughts, it'd mean a lot to us.

[Fjorab_Teke]

Aww, poor girl. I will keep her in my thoughts.

The news on my end is happier. I bought a 2001 Toyota Corolla. Though it's got used-car quirks, most notably the obvious signs of having been used by an active family of which at least one was a smoker, it's in good shape. The quirks are bearable, and most of the icky smokiness has faded out. The best part is that it's the COLOR I wanted, that certain metallic teal blue that had me gawking each time I saw one. I was hoping that I could find one at a decent price and driving distance.

I am still keeping my 1985 Toyota Supra (an old rare sports car with many non-standard parts, but still far too awesome for me to even think of selling even if someone offered way above its dollar worth), and I still plan to restore it when time, funds, and resources come available. But at least if I'm far away from my hometown in the Corolla, I won't be in such trouble if something goes wrong and I need it fixed pronto. It also means that we have a car that more comfortably seats multiple passengers, and my husband will have a car.

[WisteriaLynx]

... for about three weeks, I had no problems. She got it. If she came in late, she was still kind of an ass and turned all the lights on, but at least she was QUIET. If I was sleeping, she didn't make phone calls; she worked it out with people to make them during the day.

And now she has apparently decided this is too inconvenient.

I'm figuring out how to request a room change. We don't talk. AT ALL. Except when absolutely necessary. It's not like I'll miss her; we're just a drain on how the other wants to live (and I'm the only one willing to compromise *glares*).

[Miguel]

You guys have raised nearly £150 for the running of Neocolours. That's quite an acheivement, well done everyone

Click through to the thread here (shameless promoting the donator congratulations thread, ahem)

[bonecrivain]

A wild fire started in Santa Barbara (CA) last night. I spent most of the night talking to friends who are either in the area or still have connections there. My old college campus was a focal point of the fire for a while--there were 1,000 students trapped in the (supposedly fireproof) gymnasium overnight, and the campus lost several buildings and 14 faculty houses. I know every faculty member who lost a house--by name and sight, if not personally. I've been to several of their houses. It's devastating.

Video of a dorm burning. (This is where I lived my freshman year of college.)

Photos of the fires on campus, including the area around the library. It's unbelievable. In wide shots, it looks like a volcano erupted above the city, and lava is pouring down the hills. In videos on the news, you can see fire billowing out of windows and houses burned down to their foundation, with flames outlining the rooms. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7729058.stm

Several of my friends have been evacuated from their apartments now. A couple of them were doing laundry last night when the smoke and heat from the fire reached them: they left their wet clothes behind and went to another friend's house, where ash is still falling. No one knows yet how long this is going to last: "Fire officials said on Friday that achieving control of the blaze was 'not even in sight'."

I've been at a loss for words. It's hard to believe this is actually happening. I lived in Santa Barbara for 6 years. I was thinking about moving back in a few months. All of these people and their homes. =(

[Kari]

Woke up this morning to a very wet carpet in my dining room, a soaked towel on the floor of my bathroom, and water that wouldn't stop coming in through the bathroom. Turns out the water line leading to the fridge in the vacant apartment next door had burst and was spewing all over the place -- so much that it was flooding over into my apartment. Some carpet cleaners came and sucked up most of the water. I've got two strong fans in the place now, one under the dining room carpet and one pointed to the bathroom. They're rather loud, and they're in here until Monday...at least none of my belongings were damaged.

[Huggles]

Wow. Those pictures are amazing, so much so that I wish they were from a movie instead of real life destroying people's homes. They're very surreal and scary.

[Fjorab_Teke]

My favorite musician lives in Santa Barbara. The fandom email list has several posts hoping he and his family (and his house) are OK.

It's still sad about the rest of the destruction.

"Achieveawoe?" for me now... My husband and I had a discussion over the phone (YAY!! phone calls are priceless b/c he's in Iraq), and the reason he called was to ask me a Very Important Question. We decided that he should re-enlist (we had previously leaned toward not doing so), since the economy is still pretty bleak, and despite the major downsides (moving a lot, being apart for long times) the Army's benefits are good and retirement is early and leaves off with continued benefits.

This also means that the direction he's going is different so I will probably NOT be moving to Kansas. I'm relieved that I probably won't have to make that huge hasslesome move. But it does mean that I won't have such a good excuse to hang out with people relatively near there. I WILL be going for a visit at least once though!!

[Jessi]

Ani, my rat I mentioned quite some posts ago now, has a cancerous mass.

-sigh-

[Slugawoo]

Wow, everyone seems to be down on their luck lately. :|

Those pictures of the fire are amazing in a very, very bad way. They're really creepy but kind of pretty at the same time. >.<; I hope everyone's made it out okey. Hopefully with winter coming up these fires will break out a little less.

I'm sorry to hear about your rat, jessi. Is there any chance of her getting better? :(

[Jessi]

Slugawoo, as far as I know, no =/ From what little I know, there doesn't seem to be much you can actually do about cancer in rats. She's also really gone downhill fast in the past few days, so it's just a lot of quick decision making. But I'll update here when we know more.