lightcastle

There is joy in outrunning the rain when you can actually hear it chasing you with a million tiny feet and feel it snatching at your shirt in frustration.

I am quite tired, so no elaborate moving stories. Those of you on facebook saw most of it in real time anyway.

+ The movers were prompt, efficient, and even a bit snarky.

- The place had not really been cleaned.

+ I inherited furniture and plates and wine glasses.

- It is possible it has bedbugs.

+ The Landlord already knew of the infestation next door and arranged to spray today. (Hoping to make it before I moved in, but that part didn`t work out.)

- Have to avoid the spray and so am crashing elsewhere.


So now I need to dig up the apartment planning software misskitty79 sent me and see if I can lay out my new digs some. Tomorrow will be the first real unpacking and moving of furniture.

The day did end on a good note, however, due to a phone call.

She: "Would you like to be our official photographer next season?"
Me: "Why yes, yes I would."

In a shocking display of good judgment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued new rules for Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals that protect patients’ right to choose their own visitors during a hospital stay.

And yes, that included same-sex partners. It includes anyone. If you, as a patient, want someone to visit you, they have to have full and equal access to visit you as anyone else. The only reason to deny you a visit should be clinical. The rules will go into effect in about 2 months.

From the press release:

"Basic human rights—such as your ability to choose your own support system in a time of need—must not be checked at the door of America’s hospitals," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Today’s rules help give 'full and equal' rights to all of us to choose whom we want by our bedside when we are sick, and override any objection by a hospital or staffer who may disagree with us for any non-clinical reason."

[...]

"These rules put non-clinical decisions about who can visit a patient out of the hands of those who deliver care and into the hands of those who receive it," said CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD, MPP. "While we still have miles to go in making care more patient-centered, these rules make it easier for hospitals to deliver on some of the fundamental tenets of patient-centered care—care that recognizes and respects the patient as an individual with unique needs, who treated with dignity and granted the power of informed choice."

I was all intrigued to find out who could possibly have sent a package, the kind you have to go to the post office to pick up, to me at my parents' place.

- Perhaps emerlion suddenly sending the flag tie after all?
- Maybe a forgotten professional association bonus?
- An ex going all passive-aggressive?
- A secret admirer?


Sadly, it was just the IRS.
Trick, therefore, not treat.

In other news, the ticket to LA is purchased, the play gets better with each performance (now if only people I know would actually go), I brought back another box of random clothes from the parental units, and I need to renew my passport.

My, oh my, but am I getting overbooked. It's almost a relief I got stood up tonight, since it gives me a chance to wash stuff and pack for StrowlerCon. (Not that I have the slightest idea what to wear there, especially since I won't be able to get my hands on a Racaille shirt.)

The play progresses apace, although it has hit that stage where everyone gets antsy about everything. Tomorrow there's a meeting for the film, and Thursday night I am on a midnight bus.

I rather suspect I'll be overbooked clean through the end of the play. I may even go to Halloween parties in character since I'm not going to have time to think of a costume otherwise.

I am also sad to note that I won't get my tattoo finished for a while because my tattoo artist has a screw loose. (Literally. The delay was due to her breaking her arm in derby, and now that she mostly healed, the screw holding her arm together is slowly coming out. She has to go back under the knife.) Thus I will be stuck with a half-finished tattoo a while longer.

(By the way, she eerily looks like one of the main characters from Dragon Age II, and even has a similar name.)

So what's the over/under on "met, proposed, accepted, moving in" all in the same month working out these days?

(Not me, of course. I think even if I *had* suddenly started a passion - or, you know, anything - here, this would be pretty drastically out of character.)

Speaking of marriage, here's a rather nice primer on the difference between civil union and marriage in the USA.

Completely unrelated, but Dr. Seuss Fabric

There's also a whole lot of discussion about this video from Eminiem and Rhianna. You should read bfp's take (well, as this reminded me, I should read bfp more often) since I think it is an interesting one. Sadly, if you follow the blog, you'll see the conversation in the comments get ugly.

I was sent an email by Shadesong this morning, pointing to a paragraph in a post on the ThinkGeek Facebook page.

Apparently other geeky girls were delighted with them too--and, even better, boys as well! We should've known. So we're currently working on printing them up for the dudes who would prefer to not wear babydoll t-shirts. Thanks for your patience (and restraint), guys.

Well. What do you know?

I've used that title before.

It's nice when this city goes a little bit mad with hockey. I don't appreciate the riots (and even if I did support them, I feel you don't bust out the flaming cars and broken windows until you win the cup. A second round win? That's like giving a standing ovation for a show just because you know someone in the cast. It's weak.)

It's nice to be working on a Fringe show, even if I'm not acting in it. Production is a necessary part of the pie as well.

It's nice to be an escort/guide/help to someone here to lose herself in dancing for 5 days, even if I won't get to see her due to the event schedule and her boyfiend has explicitly demanded she not hang out with me.

It's nice for dive bar bartenders to remember you despite you not being a regular or even coming in more than once a month, and buy you a beer because they remember you're out of work but looking.

It's nice having a family doctor again. I like that he didn't blink when I asked for a batter of STI tests, asked why, and wholeheartedly supported the "I moved back seven months ago and have no reason to suspect anything, I just prefer getting tested now that I have health care card again."

(All negative, btw, not surprising given my sex life or lack thereof.)

Him asking about my depression was also nice.

The food here is good, too. :)

The great globe light of the Castelluccis is no more.

It was in that style that I suspect was popular in the 60's and 70's - just a big round white-frosted glass globe around an incandescent bulb. My parents have had it for as long as I can remember. I suspect it predates my sister. It's been a strange alien dome for adventure people to explore. It was the light source for artistic photos my sister took in high school. It's always been the source of illumination linked to my parents' living room.

Last night, my dad, having trouble getting the TV to respond to the remote, leaned back quickly and knocked it off its pedestal, shattering it utterly.

And so now we have new lights in the living room, and some small piece of my childhood is gone.

All things pass.

This is a simply brutal takedown of Obama's leadership style (or lack thereof) and the problems it is causing.

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Plants want to live too. The whole "I am vegetarian because I respect life" thing never resonated for me. (The health reasons, the environmental reasons, the protest against the cruelty of factory farming reasons... these I have no trouble grokking.)


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Hey, HP computers are racist! (More specifically, it seems the face tracking camera may not pick up black faces well.


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Ethecofem has two questions:
1) Do you identify as a feminist?

2) Has your relationship been affected by misogyny?