email: autumnriver@yahoo.com

This is a statue of a fox, one of many at the Fushimi Inari Taisha, the Grand Inari Shrine in Kyoto, famous for its many torii gates and its bronze statues of foxes.  I want to visit there someday.

My Passions
Manga: X, Berserk, CCS, Basara, KKJ, Rurouni Kenshin, Sensei!, Naruto, Juline, Suki Dakara Suki

TV: Buffy, Enterprise, Home & Garden Network, Iron Chef, International Channel

Reading: Meriwether Lewis: A Biography by Richard Dillon.

Biseinen: Kusanagi (X), Fuuma (X), Touya (CCS), Gatts (Berserk), Itou (Sensei!), Kakashi (Naruto), The Red King (Basara), Cho (RK), All the CCD cuties (Clamp Campus Detectives, X) and most especially Bob (Husband)

Hobbies: Learning Japanese, Calligraphy, drawing, writing, hiking, touring old houses, collecting foxes.

Cat of the moment: Lily

Subterfuge: Reynardine

From a drugged stupor

Antihistimines are the Spawn of Satan. Yes, they help you breathe, but they make me so freaking dopey that I have problems stringing more than a couple of words together. Bleh.

Thanks to those of you who wrote to inquire regarding my health. I'm feeling somewhat better now, although not quite up to full throttle. I'm still sick, Bob is hacking, heck, even two of the kitties have colds! It takes a nasty cold/flu/whatits to make one realize just how badly the house needs a thorough dusting! So guess what's on MY agenda next week? Bleh.

Since I'm feeling chatty:

Kerianne, if I were you, I would argue that $200. If two sales reps told you that it WAS included in your plan, and you choose their service based on this (even if you didn't choose based on that, SAY you did), then you are entitled to some kind of adjustment on your bill. Take this advice from someone who used to work in collections: you CAN get phone companies to adjust down bills. Cell phone billing practices are notorious for their inaccuracy. Fight it!

Rachel, I like your new layout! Sure the animated LOTR movie is horribly dated now, but it was pretty cool back in the 1970's when it came out (although my cousin was of the opinion that it was much better to watch when stoned...not that I understood what that meant at the time...). How the heck do you track the Y!J auctions, anyway? I didn't think you spoke Japanese?

Satsuki-chan, it should be 6 tbsp flat, but almost everyone I know ends up doing a little mound. My latest project is to make a lemon bundt cake, with a lovely glaze made from lemon juice and powdered sugar! The ingrediants are sitting on the counter, I'm just waiting for my sense of taste to come back...

Lika-chan, congrats on the new computer! No more lost stories, eh?

Speaking of stories, still working on something for your birthday. It's not done yet...won't be anything huge, but I think you'll like it. It's been hard to get motivated writing--a lot of my creative time/energy has gone into SCA...sewing garb, working on armor, that sort of thing. But lately, I'm missing writing. It's hard when you're caught between favorite hobbies!

I got a manga fix this week: new fun with Burai, which is a bunch of lovely Shinsengumi having adventures. Looking forward to trying to work my way through that. Also finally got Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. I had seen the anime via fansub, but never got around to getting the manga. Very odd. I like it! Also picked up volume 1 of Legal Drug. I'm really fond of Mick Nekoi's artwork. I wanted to pick up Wish, but as the English translation is about to be released, I figured I'd read that for now. I can always pick up the Japanese version later, I suppose. Yes, I'm a manga junkie. So what? ;-D

So, back to stitching. What the heck was I thinking, hand sewing a 10-gore tunic? Baka baka baka!

Thursday, August 29, 2002 08:10 p.m.

*hack* *wheeze*

Man, I don't know what I've got, but I'm sick as a dog. Coughing, sore throat, can't breathe, stomach problems...oh, and sleep is not happening either.

The only thing making me feel better is that Bob got it, too. It's so much nicer not having to suffer alone. Although I do whine a great deal more than he does.

Sunday, August 25, 2002 01:35 a.m.

Why Is it...

that everytime I go hiking on the Prairie Trail at the Mines of Spain, I get lost? That trail is only 2 miles, but I ended up out in someone's soybean field. I had to find a road (which was gravel), hike over to a paved road, and walk along the paved road until I figured out where I was. Which was outside the park! (The soybeans should have tipped me off, I guess, huh?). Anyway, had to hike a few miles in to get back to the area where I'd parked my car...I'd say maybe 7 miles in all.

Note to self: next time, bring a compass. The prairie grass is so high that it comes past my shoulders (and I'm tall) so you can't really look out to see if you're in the right place or not, which is how I got lost. Again.

Satsuki-chan, we keep seeing news about horrible flooding in central Europe. How are you and your family doing? Hopefully, you're not in the areas affected! It's so nice to see folks getting into Tolkien again. I've been a fan for years and years (my cousin gave me the books when I was thirteen, and I've been addicted ever since). Oh, and on A Song of Ice and Fire, there IS a German edition, but I'd read the English if you can get ahold of it. It's long and ongoing, but well worth it. And the prose is a lot easier the read that Tolkien's! Yes, there's slash...Loras/Renly anyone? And you'll love Sandor the Hound.

Alison, I still like the theory that Sorata was so bad in the sack that Arashi must needs destroy him. ;-D In all seriousness, though, I have a rough time with Arashi. She's a cool character, but very hard to sympathize with. She really needs Sorata, if only to let her get in touch with her own humanity. Maybe she switched because her wish was fulfilled and there was no further reason to live? I don't know...

Rachel, your mom sounds like a twin of my mom. She gets on me about our curtains every time she's here. However, my tastes are so different from my mother's. If she had her wish, the whole house would be in blue and pink, instead of the greens and burgundies that I favor. There's nothing wrong with the color blue, per se, but having been forced to wear blue most of my childhood, I find that I resist any blueness in my life now (blue jeans excepted, of course!). Well, actually, I do have some blue clothes, come to think on it...as a redhead, blue is one of those colors I can wear well. Wait, is there a point to this paragraph? Oh, yeah, curtains. We'll have to get some this winter...right now, we've just got lace up, which is okay, but you can see right through it at night, and it doesn't keep out the cold at all (Iowa gets VERY cold in winter!). Good luck with the living room!

I'm going to stop now, because I'm incoherent. Rarr.

Thursday, August 15, 2002 12:42 p.m.

Kawaiiiiii

Oh, this is just too cute. Bob sent me this link. Him and his cat girls!

Wednesday, August 7, 2002 07:55 p.m.

Cardinals and Bishops and Priests, oh my!

Alison, I'm not a Catholic, but I live in an area where almost everyone else IS. A Cardinal is a couple of steps higher than a Bishop. This is how I remember it: a Priest runs a parish, a Bishop runs a diocese, an Archbishop or Cardinal runs an archdiocese. There may be a level above archdiocese, but I don't know what that's called. The Cardinals are the ones who elect the Pope (guided by the Will of God, it is supposed). I think there are only 6 Cardinals in the US total?

Satsuki-chan, I remember the 80's and the fashions thereof, having worn them myself, as pictures may attest. I even had big hair. I wore a lot of leotards with tight stonewashed jeans and an oversized shirt above that. Actually I had a thing about wearing black and white most of the time, which wasn't smart with my ruddy complexion. Errr...don't wish it back. (Of course, I was really skinny then and could get away with wearing anything I wanted!)

We heard back from the repair shop. It'll cost $1,500 to get the car back on the road--evidently, there was a lot wrong with it. We have to replace two tires, the struts, the tie-rod, the brakes, the muffler, plus some maintenance stuff that we've been putting off. And we're gonna have to bite the bullet and pay, because it's still cheaper to repair a paid-for car than it is to buy a new one. What sucks is that I really don't like that car (Bob got it before we met). So I-con may be out for this year, unless we day-trip it. Honestly, with conventions, it isn't the convention itself that's so expensive. It's the hotel costs, the food and the trip to the dealer's room that gets you!

Hope you had a Happy Birthday, Ammie-chan! Yes, I'm working on something for you. It's not done yet, sorry, but hopefully by the end of the week....

Wednesday, August 7, 2002 06:39 a.m.