Wishing the happiest of birthdays to my favorite drummer/multi-instrumentalist/singer/songwriter and world-class hugger! Love you, Than!

Other fans can post birthday wishes for Than over on blackgoldrush here. I'm getting word to Than about the post, so I'm pretty sure he'll actually see all the notes we leave for him. Go! Leave a birthday comment for him! Black Gold loves you, you know! :-D

Hi all!

Thanks so much to everyone who left me birthday wishes or sent me v-gifts or e-cards or even just thought about me on or around my birthday Sunday (that pretty much covers everyone, right? LOL). I had a very nice day with my brother, sis-in-law, niece and 3 nephews complete with Baskin Robbins ice cream cake - my favorite! The three older kids sang Happy Birthday to me, which was *hilarious!* All 3 really know how to ham it up! LOL

I've been here in Virginia for about 4 1/2 weeks now and I fly home on Saturday. I really want to stay though!

It's been an eventful month - both good and bad - and I hope you all will forgive me for being scarce. I've spent a *lot* of time helping with my new nephew, who is now about 10 weeks old. He's the fourth child for my brother and his wife, and the other 3 are really a handful, so I've had fun playing with the adorable baby who coos and smiles at me while the parents wrangle the other kids. Actually, all 4 kids are pretty wonderful and I'm going to miss them terribly when I leave.

Events (other than the Panic At The Disco concert in DC on April 30th, which I never really did a proper post about and probably never will now, but it was fantastic!!!) of the past few weeks:

A few days after the Panic concert, I slipped on the stairs and badly bruised my ankle (I thought that was the worse injury at the time) and bruised/possibly fractured my tailbone. My ankle is fine now. My tailbone? Not so much. I haven't been to the doctor or anything - not sure they're much they can do anyway other than confirm whether or not it's fractured - but it hurts a *lot.* I'm fine if I'm just standing or lying down or (in most chairs) sitting, but going from standing to sitting or vice versa is excruciating. It hasn't slowed me down too much though.

We took all of the kids to see Speed Racer in IMAX. Not a movie I would normally care about, but watching it with the kiddos made it *so* much fun! They were literally dancing to the music that played over the end credits. It was so cute. :-D

My uncle - the one who had the brain aneurysm a few months ago - passed away about a week ago. I wanted to go to the funeral so badly - he really meant a lot to me - but there was just no way. My parents drove up to Idaho for it, but I stayed here in Virginia. My aunt was very understanding, of course, but I wish I could have found a way to be there that didn't cost close to $1000. If I'd been home in California at the time, I could have driven up with Mom & Dad, but... ::shrug:: That's the way it goes sometimes, I guess. My uncle did pass very peacefully at home in his own bed during his sleep, and we can't ask for much more than that, can we? It is a comfort to all of us to know that he's no longer trapped in a body that no longer allowed him to do the things he loved to do, or even the simple everyday things we all take for granted.

My internet time has be limited due to all of the above things, combined with only having an internet connection in one room of the house - a room you can't keep the kids out of no matter how hard you try. Heh. I'm not used to having to censure everything I read and view online. I've had to avoid porn and even most of the fanfic I usually read! It's been awful! Although darksylvia still hasn't posted any new bandslash, so I didn't miss anything there. Better get crackin' though, L. I'll be home in less than a week and I need new fic from you!!

TV watching has been non-existent. My brother doesn't have cable. Or satellite. Or even rabbit ears for his fancy widescreen TV home theater system. Can you imagine? I did see the movie Transformers though. With my 3 year old nephew shouting "Bumblebee" every few minutes. LOL But alas, I have seen no new episodes of Supernatural, nor have I seen Galeface's episode of Desperate Housewives. Though I heard his scene is really short? Hmmm.

It should come as no big surprise that I haven't kept up with my f-list at all. Happiest of birthdays to anyone whose birthday I missed. Hugs to anyone who needs them. High-fives (or my lame attempts at them - just ask Jon Walker haha) to anyone who has had happy, exciting moments.

It should also come as no surprise that... I think I had more I wanted to say, but I can't remember what... fairly typical of me really. If nothing else, I am predictable. ::lame grin::

ETA: LJ's spell-check:
bandslash     band slash, band-slash, bands lash, bands-lash, bounteously

YES! The bandslash should be bounteous!!! Please share links to your fave PATD bandslash stories from the past month or so! Any pairing. Porn preferred. ;-D

I had no idea severina2001 was doing an anonymous 'leave a message for someone in the fandom you like' kind of project for Valentine's Day, but I saw it mentioned in paddies's and url_girl's journals and went to look and now I'm all blown away and kind of just... wow.

Part 1 (which includes notes 2 people left for... me? wow.) and Part 2

Whomever left the notes for me... I love you. And Severina - you're just the sweetest for putting it all together. I feel bad that I wasn't keeping up with my f-list and didn't know about it until after the fact. Totally my fault. I'd like to think I would have left notes for a ton of you, my friends. There's no question that I owe you all hugs and gratitude for your friendship and fabulousness! Words have never been my forte, though, in case you hadn't noticed. Heh.

With that in mind, happy belated Valentine's Day! ( Some of you have already seen this, but have another laugh at it - on me. )

Also -

wishing the happiest of birthdays to carnivalnights! May the coming year bring you many wonderful things.

P.S. - Doing much much better re: the Demon Super!Cold, though it sure doesn't want to let go of me. But my 6 weeks is about up, Mr. Cold. Time to be leaving already. But really... doing so much better than I was.

	to qafaddiction

Just what everyone wants for their birthday - gaudy animated graphics!! You can always go back and look at your b-day post from last year here or from the year before here. Those were much better. But the sentiment is just as heartfelt regardless.


Hope you had a great day hon!

So... I haven't had my hair cut in ages... I trimmed a little bit off before my trip back east, but that was in May of last year. Before that, I chopped a bunch of it off myself... um... a few years ago. I posted pics then too, but I don't feel like looking for the post right now. But the last time I had my hair cut by a professional was in July of 2001. I remember, because it was right before my oldest niece's first birthday.

Well, I finally got around to doing it again. Only about 7 weeks or so before the same niece's 7th birthday. Ha.

( Click here for the pics )

To file under Misc. - LJ stuff I just noticed (good, for a change):

1 - to link to an LJ user, community or syndicated feed, you use the same code for all of them now: <*lj user="name of user, community or feed here"*> without the *'s of course. No more trying to remember which way to code it, and it automatically puts the correct icon in front of the name indicating which of those 3 things it is.

2 - You can set up a notification for the birthdays of everyone on your friends list. Just go to your Manage Message Settings page and it's in the second section, titled "Friends and Communities." Now if they would just add support for custom friends groups to that, it'd be perfect. Not sure I need a birthday notification for every single person/group/whatever on my f-list, no offense. ;-)

No idea how long these two things have been this way, but they were new to me, so they'll probably be new to someone else too.

Happy Birthday to paddies today!


Pity Party for Me Tomorrow
Unfortunately there's no alcohol, so don't bother coming. Heh.


Happy Birthday to armandlegg on Saturday!

---

FYI - I don't read my flist at all anymore. But I will see comments on this post. In case it matters to anyone.

I suppose this is where I should point out that life really sucks right now, mainly because we just changed my antidepressant and haven't got the dose right on the new one yet. Great timing, huh? WTF was I thinking? ::shaking head::

Hi all... still alive. Not kicking, but alive. Still have my nasty cold and my allergies are horrible, but I still think it's gorgeous out here in Virginia. Went to Falling Water as planned on Friday, but skipped the other FLLW house we were planning to see that day. I was just so exhausted after Falling Water, and my dad and brother didn't care one way or the other. I took almost 200 pics at Falling Water, but probably only 2/3 or so of them are worth keeping. Incredible place. I highly recommend it, and especially recommend doing the in-depth tour as opposed to the regular tour. You see more, you get to take pictures, and they give you time to take pictures. I'll have to put mine up on one of my sites after I get home and get them sorted.

One classic view for now (I'll have to try and erase all the people on the one balcony/patio thing... of course there was no way to get a pic without them there):



Not much else to tell. We were planning to do a boat tour up the Potomac for my birthday on Thursday, but it looks like the weather will be better on Tuesday, so we'll probably do it then instead. Just from Alexandria to Georgetown and back. Should be fun.

Might skip touring the Capitol on Wednesday though. Just not that interested in it, and I'm getting kind of sick of sight seeing.

Coming home on Friday... will no doubt be jet-lagged. Had no trouble when we came out here, but I think going back is going to be a lot harder. Um, as far as jet lag anyway. Other than that, it'll be nice to be home. Love it here, love my brother and his family, but I also love my own bed and my own computer and my nice, quiet home.

Hope everyone else is doing well. I'm still not reading my friends page at all, so I would have no idea. Pathetic, I know. (That also means I won't see any birthday wishes that get posted in any of your LJs... not saying I expect anything, but if someone were to send me b-day wishes, I'd want to know so I could thank them. Does that make sense?)

Must get to bed soon. Plus my sis-in-law wants the computer. Heh. Later!