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y'know how I am 3 months behind on rent? and freaking the shit out over it, because even once I get my taxes and pay off the back rent I am still in this lease until july? I just talked to my landlord, and once I am paid off, she is down to let me out of my lease early without sublet fees or any such shit. So I can move in April instead of july. This means I have to get cracking on getting a place, cleaning this one out and Z needs a home for his drums and cars, but it also means I can move soon.

Crossposts: http://maevele.livejournal.com/527877.html

dingsi

I had to feed her birds, he explains.

They were sitting in my ribcage
All I ate went to the birds
I was always hungry. -

He takes another bite.

eggcrack

Conservative youth organizations are upset with Paavo Arhinmäki for refusing to give state funding to anti-LGBT Christian organizations.

Because being biased against bigotry is so unfair and awful of Arhinmäki. Sniff.

"Sniff" as in "O OH SNAP", that is!

Crossposts: http://bofoddity.livejournal.com/169893.html

ajollypyruvate

Kitten Season is going to be a damn nightmare this year.
Stupid birds are already shrieking at each other outside my window(s).
Had to buy sunblock three months earlier than planned.

giandujakiss

U.S. Plans to Sue Banks Over Bonds

Federal securities regulators plan to warn several major banks that they intend to sue them over mortgage-related actions linked to the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move would mark a stepped-up regulatory effort to hold Wall Street accountable for its sale of bonds linked to subprime mortgages in 2007 and 2008. At issue is whether the banks misrepresented the poor quality of loan pools they bundled and sold to investors, the people said.

Banks whose activities are being examined in the civil investigation include Ally Financial Inc., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., people familiar with the matter say.

Representatives of the banks declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the SEC.

In a meeting with reporters last month, Robert Khuzami, the SEC's enforcement chief, said the agency's mortgage-bond investigation was looking for evidence that firms "failed to disclose important information when selling these securities."

Mr. Khuzami declined further comment on the investigation.

The multiple pending investigations have the potential to change the way Wall Street operates, according to financial specialists.

"If the SEC is effective in pursuing these cases, the Street will take notice," said Campbell Harvey, finance professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

"But it's not clear if all these disparate investigations will go anywhere. One good question is why these cases are taking such a long time," Mr. Harvey added.

Regulators say the nature of the cases means they are very time-consuming to develop successfully. Any enforcement actions typically center on technical questions of disclosure, rather than simple fraud such as theft.

We'll see.

Meanwhile, there's this:

After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.

Despite the billions earmarked in the accord, the aid will help a relatively small portion of the millions of borrowers who are delinquent and facing foreclosure. The success could depend in part on how effectively the program is carried out because earlier efforts by Washington aimed at troubled borrowers helped far fewer than had been expected.

I'm not terribly well-informed about this one, but the basic concerns are that despite the large $$ number being bandied about, the banks will actually pay very little; a lot of the expense will be paid by investors who are still holding on to mortgage-backed securities. There is also concern that the terms simply will not be enforced, and that - as the NYT points out - very little will actually be done to help struggling homeowners. Finally, the holdout states, NY and California, were concerned that this settlement would immunize far too much poor conduct; it's definitely been narrowed, somewhat, but it lets Bank of America off the hook for essentially failing to live up to the terms of a prior settlement involving misconduct in connection with Countrywide loans (Bank of America bought Countrywide a few years ago). You can read more here and here.

Crossposts: http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/1434794.html

chomiji

Here's hoping the day brings you friends, fireworks, and tasty foods, especially cake!

Current Mood: sick
Crossposts: http://chomiji.livejournal.com/361367.html

unusualmusic

LEGO Friends - LEGO & Gender Part 1

LEGO Friends - LEGO & Gender Part 2

gehayi

I have a lot of dragons to post at the moment, including an egg bred from one of last year's Valentine dragons. (

kippurbird and

das_mervin have given me most of these eggs and hatchlings, because they are incredibly generous people.)

I know I have not posted much, because I do not have much to post ABOUT. I've been editing and spending a lot of time in bed--the latter because I have a very stabbity right heel. I don't know if it's an infection or a bruise. I woke up on Saturday with a sore heel that, on examination, was bruised on the right side, so I would say that one of the boots for the pump squeezed the heel and a very small rounded bone in the heel much too hard...but it could be an inflammation of some kind. Or both. So it is off to the wound center on Friday morning. Joy.

Also, I watched The River, which was pretty good.

ignipes has dubbed it Supernatural in the Amazon With Female Characters Who Aren't Dead and No Classic Rock. And instead of the Metallicar, there's a boat called Magus.

I would call it VERY good, but I have to take off points for the shaky cam. (I loathe the shaky cam. I know that it's supposed to make it look as if the series is a real documentary shot by amateurs, but nevertheless I'd rather be able to look at the screen and not feel that the cameraman has motion sickness. Give me smooth, inobtrusive cinematography any day of the week.)

That said, it was a good show. I have, however, concluded that the four genre savvy people (the cameraman, the mechanic, the mechanic's psychic daughter and a TV producer who looks suspiciously like a certain wizard from Chicago and who is clearly imitating his very dead and very British teacher's voice**) need to ditch the three genre blind ones. The genre blind ones are the obsessed wife of a Steve Irwin-type who went missing in the Amazon jungle and who seems to be having an affair with said wiz--er, I mean, producer; the resentful son of the missing man; and a young woman who is the child of a missing crew member of not-Steve Irwin, and who looks very much like the Doctor's daughter, Jenny. The genre blind ones do things like find a creepy tree in the middle of the jungle covered in broken dolls--which is clearly based on the Isla de las Munecas--and take one of the toys.

I'm hoping that they'll get more savvy as the series progresses, though. In any case, I do want to see what happens next week.

Oh, and does anyone have any suggestions for what I should be watching on streaming Netflix?

**I know Paul Blackthorne is English, just as Terrance Mann is from the American South. And for the most part, he speaks using his normal accent. But just for a couple of lines at the beginning, he addresses the obsessed wife, Tess Cole, in a husky, Harry Dresden-ish accent...and from that point on, I decided that Clark Quietly was either Harry using a fake name or a hitherto unknown twin brother.

***

Current Mood: awake

awils1

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angiereedgarner

mixed media on canvas, 30 x 30"

( A detail here, maybe a little easier to read some bits-- )

awils1

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Current Mood: anxious

rosefox

I have given up on taking my laptop into my room at all. We really need to get that 100-foot ethernet cable at some point.

On Monday, I ordered a dishwasher! This is SO EXCITING. Then Xtina and I used up some Container Store credit and dropped some cash there and at Bed Bath & Beyond. We now have a shoe rack in the hall with our shoes on it, a shelf over the toilet with various bathroom things on it, a cup for our toothbrushes, a nail brush (did you know unpacking boxes makes your hands filthy? now you know), and most importantly, two portable closets in my room and two extra closet rods hanging from the absurdly high ones in Josh's room. This let me unpack all the clothes from the Jugglebox wardrobe bins, which makes a lot more space in my room. Of course I then had to spend several minutes fussing with the floor plan, but I think I have it figured out now.

Yesterday I also epoxy'd brackets onto the bathroom wall, so now we have places to hang our towels. (Grrr at the lazy contractors who stuck the towel bar up with, kid you not, double-sided tape.) And I swept the bathroom floor and cleaned the bathroom sink and moved some furniture and shelved some books and mounted a towel bar on the door (I got to use the drill to make holes in things! That was fun) and some other things I think. Oh, I went to the hardware store and tried to get shelf backs but they didn't have the right materials, and I got keys made and got a light switch to replace the one in the living room, and I moved some furniture and unpacked a bunch of bins...

...and then Xtina gently pointed out that I was clearly attempting to avoid having feelings, and shortly after she went to bed, Josh got up to make tea and I crawled into bed with him and sobbed on him for a while because everything is hard and exhausting and I am so overwhelmed and augh. He hugged me and told me everything would be fine and made me take taurine and sent me to bed, which was pretty much exactly what I needed.

Today I went to work and got all my work done early (this never happens) and went out and was social and then came home and sent off some emails about things I have been massively procrastinating on because they feel so huge and daunting, and hey, whaddaya know, that wasn't so hard and now I feel a lot better.

*facepalm*

I suspect I'm about to come down with the cold that Josh is getting over and Xtina just got hit with, and being sick always makes me emotional, so that's probably part of it, but mostly I just fell into that old foolish pattern of doing small things to procrastinate big ones. I am so grateful to my loves for making sure I didn't stay there too long.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://rosefox.livejournal.com/1734589.html

gamerchick

I thought I was in labor yesterday. The fact that I am posting this and not a baby picture should tell you exactly how that went. I got woken up at 2 am by contractions that were pretty much textbook as far as real labor beginning, to the point where we were calling everybody and updating social networks and stuff letting them know that we would probably be going to the hospital soon. Around 9 I decided to get in our whirlpool tub to try to get some relief, which pretty much stalled everything out. I then spent the rest of the day dealing with contractions that came and went, being strong enough to require my full attention while they were happening, and coming as close as 4 minutes together at times. Around midnight, after almost 24 hours of all of this,

dayzdark and I decided to go to the hospital and see what was going on. Upon going in we learned that the entire day of effort had accomplished absolutely nothing in terms of getting any closer to actually having the baby and so went home to get some much-needed sleep. It was a really difficult day both physically and emotionally and I'm glad it is behind us now. The only thing good about it was that it gave me the chance to practice and fine-tune the coping mechanisms and comfort techniques I've been learning and establish what will work for me and what won't, for

dayzdark to get practice being a labor support person (and he did such an amazing job), and for us to experience the whole checking into the hospital process and see how that goes so there is less uncertainty about it later on. The timing was also not the best since everything started when both

dayzdark and I were at the end of our day and tired already, so it's nice to have a second chance at having this start at a time when both of us can do it on more sleep.

Now that I'm 5 days past my due date I am really just ready to be done with all of this, despite my ongoing worries and anxieties about parenthood. I have an appointment on Friday to get an ultrasound and see whether it's safe for me to continue the pregnancy to 42 weeks (god please no) or if we need to start talking about an induction, which I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to avoid since from what I have heard that will pretty much torpedo my chances of having a natural childbirth. If you are wondering what you can do, at this point in time I don't think there's much beyond praying and/or sending energy for a good outcome and a swift resolution, and volunteering to help out with the Space Oddity party at MarsCon if you will be there since the thought of it just gets more complicated the younger the baby gets.

Thanks for the support and friendship you've all given me already. I hope to have better news for you soon.

Current Location: 55418
Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: watching Torchwood: Miracle Day with Eric and Noel
Crossposts: http://gamerchick.livejournal.com/635397.html

kate_nepveu

Remember how, earlier today, I was so proud of myself for getting SteelyKid new keys and a large neon-green keychain to put them on so they wouldn't get lost?

You guessed it—in the five minutes between dinner and bathtime, they vanished into thin air and half an hour's determined looking by Chad and I together have not turned them up. (And I foolishly did not buy a duplicate keychain too.)

And of course she's a toddler with very patchy short-term memory so she has no idea where she left them.

On the bright side, we found the clear key that these were meant to replace.

Current Mood: chastened

hokuton_punch

O KABLARGHARGH.

That is my thoughts on today.

Also why isn't it fucking May yet. SO MUCH NEED FOR AVENGERS.

( At least I have meme to work with. )

Current Mood: blah

othercat

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Current Mood: amused

atalantapendrag

Got a sort of Magnetic Fields mood going on.

Current Mood: lethargic

othercat

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Current Mood: apathetic

atalantapendrag

Yesterday my caseworker tried to help me fill out an inventory to send to some movers so they could give me quotes. So I spent most of the afternoon talking to potential movers on the phone, which was really unpleasant. One of them is sending someone this afternoon to do an on-site estimate *shudder* I sent my mom the detail I'd gotten from each one and talked to her on the phone. I also gave my caseworker her email address. I'm sure she thinks her rah-rah-you-can-do-it is some kind of encouraging pep talk but it just makes me feel worse, more overwhelmed and more alone.

Friday is when the housing authority inspection is supposed to take place at my new complex, and Monday I'll be calling them to make sure all went well. I'm running on a serious emotional spoon deficit right now. I really wish there was someone who could take care of me for just a few weeks :(

Current Mood: anxious

kate_nepveu

SteelyKid is very taken with a clear plastic key that we found somewhere-or-other, which I should never have given her because, as is inevitable with a small clear item (that is broken and thus cannot be easily attached to larger more visible items like keychains), it got lost this morning.

She took it pretty well, but all the same, I hit the store today and bought her a key with a built-in LED, a Winnie-the-Pooh key, a neon green coil clip-thing, and duplicates of the keys.

The only question, of course, is where to put the duplicates where we'll remember their location.

(I decided to put them in the cabinet that also holds the duplicate plush dog that's her favorite stuffed animal, which is logical. ~~However, I have now discovered that the dog isn't there. Oh dear.~~ False alarm—it was merely really squished under something else.)

Anti-Oppression Linkspam Community

so

Changeling

Bigots don't like it when their bigotry is called out! News at 11

It's February, not April.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice....

Happy Birthday to neotoma!

LEGO's issues with gender.

Dragons, Heels and Television

(no subject)

paradigmatic first world problem

(no subject)

"We can love one another, I've been told that it's okay"

(no subject)

punished for my hubris

(no subject)

Reading: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs Part One

(no subject)

...More school grumbling.

Trying to get through it

parenting lessons learned

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April 2010

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