Well, lessee, the last couple of weeks I’ve been busier than a one legged man in an ass-kickin’ contest! The bad news, pt. 1, came on Monday July 10: Dave fell into a deep hole and broke the shit out of his leg, courtesy of his new and untrained dumb ass guide dog. His leg was severely broken and he had surgery late Monday night. I was hella busy with the Moon but fortunately his mother drove up from St Simons to be at the hospital with him. I talked to him Tuesday and he was doing ok. Friday rolls around to bad news, pt. 2: his mother calls to tell me that he’d had a heart attack and they had to do angioplasty and a couple of stents to fix that, but he was still doing ok. She implied that his leg was the real issue and they are worried he may lose his foot. (I’ve since learned that this info was not accurate, his leg is doing great.) On top of this, I had plans to be in Knoxville for the weekend to attend the festivities at our friends’ house, so there was much stress.

So, the good news is that the trip to Knoxville was very good. I got to participate in a wiccaning for little Christopher Dante Samhain Cantley! It’s been years since I’ve been in circle and it was an honour to call the West Quarter for the ritual. The Going Away/Pirate party was fun and we met some really cool peeps that we plan to hang with at DragonCon! Yay! We’ve got Wiccaning and Pirate Party pix that’ll be up soon!

On Sunday, our family was congenial and ::gasp:: even HAPPY. We wondered where the pod people put my real family and decided that they were probably in the basement tied up! LOL

On the trip back, there was a HUGE accident on 75 SB just before the Cassville-White exit which is about an hour north of Atlanta. An 18 wheeler on 75 NB jackknifed and went across the median into the SB lanes, blocking all of them. We sat for 2+ hours while they tried to get one lane opened up. We were approximately 5 miles from the accident when we stopped and the traffic went back as far as the eye could see behind us by the time we got moving. I don’t have any specifics on the actual size of the backup since that stuff NEVER makes the papers. We have lots of pix of this – even the overturned truck. It was carrying a load of plate glass, which was being scraped up by a Bobcat as we filed past. It was the second time I’ve been caught in a complete stop of an interstate. The other was on 40 near Needles, CA at the CA/AZ border, which was also about 2 hours, but in 100+ degree heat – GAH! At least this was early evening and we had our iPod for tunes! I’ve been in a bunch of 30 min or an hour jams – living in Atlanta and all – but nothing this severe. It’s odd to me that you never hear about it the next day.

We finally got home at 10pm last night and collapsed into bed. We’ve got a Traffic Jam post coming soon with the funny stories from it and all the pix. It’ll probably be at Nick’s Site.

I did talk to Dave during the traffic jam and he’s doing well. Now there’s just the logistics of getting him rehabbed and making sure his dogs and house are cared for in the interim. Should be interesting.

On that note, I’ve got to get off this Mac and start the rounds: hospital, Dave’s house, Kroger, etc. You guys give Dave a call on his cell if ya wanna wish him well.

I was going to use the word “nonplussed” to describe Hobbes’ overall attitude towards the shmousie in the previous post, but a red flag went off, so I looked it up.

Come to find out, what I have thought of as a “legal” use of nonplussed is actually a North American error in usage! Yipe! Here is the Oxford Dictionary explanation.

Along this line of thought, I saw another link to a LIST of common usage errors found in English! Yay! It’s in alphabetical order and quite thorough!

My inner Grammar Nazi is SO HAPPY!!

**Caroline, this one’s for you, too!**

Well, we got rained out here in Decatur and they are not firing the ordnance until Labour Day weekend. Bummer. We still had fun hanging out in L5P with Black Heather. We attended the Criminal Records “bbq” (it was vegan, so kinda nasty), drank beer, ate at the Vortex then came home to watch some of the Twilight Zone marathon. Then we headed to Twain’s to meet some poeple and wait for the fireworks. Sadly, as Pat predicted, we got a huge thunderstorm and no fireworks. Boo!

Ah, I found yet another time waster:

Make a groovy portrait icon!!

I guess that’s it for the all round update. I’ve got some stuff to write about if I ever get around to it!!

I’ve not felt well for over a week now. I’ve had lower back pain, which was hurting like a beeyoch last week. I’ve no clue what the hell happened, but it’s been bothering me. I also got the visit from Aunt Flo, so that only made things worse. Blargh. That’s why the pickins have been so pathetically slim around here lately.

Hopefully I’ll get back into writing something with content very soon!

Hey, folks!

There has been a rash of spam commenting around here, so I’ve changed the way comments are handled. I can’t seem to get the “Trusted Commenters” thing to work, so it appears that your comments will be held until I moderate them. I hate that, but I hate spam even more.

I don’t know why the Trusted Commenters selections don’t work, but they don’t. It’s either allow any comment to published immediately or none, so I’m going with none for now. Hell, even MY comments aren’t published immediately!!

Grr. I hate spammers. HATETHEMHATETHEMHATETHEM! They ruin the internet(s) and they fuck up the flow of blogging and email. They should DIE DIE DIE. It’s too bad that the spam filters for MT let anything that says “nice site” through. I’ve tweaked the shit out of the filters, so let’s see what we get. :-)

In any case, hopefully I’ll find a way to fix the spammer issue and things will get back to normal soon. Until then, you can still comment but it’ll not show until I log in and moderate. Sorry.