Lately I have gotten way too many anonymous replies to my posts containing spam or gibberish or both.

I don't want have to block anonymous repliers by default because it just won't stop, so here's the rule.

By default, whatever post in my journal that you, being a person and hopefully not a robot $nigerian/$russian/$political/$religiousFundamentalist spambot, reply to - it will be moderated. It won't appear until I decide to unlock it.

And if you don't have a name that LJ can recognize, you won't be allowed to post, at least if the software is working correctly.

I will moderate most posts automatically; it's my default now. I will delete as spam or as abusive anything that becomes threatening, or is an attempt to swindle me, or is just someone passing on the latest internet meme where it doesn't belong.

If you post pseudonymously and spam or troll and don't leave a name or obvious identification so I know you're real, I will at least delete, and may report as spam or abuse, and this mean that the administrators of Livejournal will in their own time get around to doing something themselves, perhaps blocking your access.

It's a little over eight years. I came home moderately hopeful after a job interview, and Penny looked like she was asleep, but she was ice cold, and she wasn't moving, no breath, no pulse, no response.
I could relive the whole thing again but I don't have the energy to do so.

It was a cold, dark day like today. I've been having emotional flashbacks all day long, but strange ones. Nothing has been the jagged ripping pain, the empty feeling is still there, but mostly it's been a kind of acceptance.

Three of my friends from church died in the last two months. That was very much like 2005/2006, except that death isn't so much an enemy as a thing that happens, like the cold dark weather.

I'm ready for spring and rebirth.

Of interest possibly to jarodrussell

The Hoogie Kickstarter for a tank-tracked power chair.

For anita_margarita

This made me think of the job you finally transcended:

8 Surefire Ways to Demotivate Your Employees

Vinaigrette, my last cat left from the ones Penny and I raised together, has been suffering from a bad case of kidney disease, which is the common way that cats die when they get really old. Vinnie was almost 23, or in human-equivalent years, about 112, and she'd been having trouble smelling food and eating for a while.

She was too weak today. On Saturday night, I took her to the emergency vet for fluids, since I didn't want her to be miserable too long, and Sunday (easter) my vet was closed. So she was OK-ish, with the usual feeding and watering by syringe. She was not energetic though, and she was having increasing fits of pain, and only weighed about 4 pounds. She wasn't able to walk more than four or five feet before collapsing in exhaustion.

So I took her to the vet this evening. I didn't want to do it in the morning because it would be too noisy and too long a wait.
And I selfishly wanted more time with her.

She has been trying to find a quiet cool place to hide, and yet would call for help, so up until then it was clear she wasn't ready to go, but today, she was just too tired.

The vet gave her a very large dose of anaesthetic. She relaxed immediately when the pain stopped, then breathed twice more, then she was gone. Of my cats, she was the least attached to her body at the time she went, so there wasn't as much a sense of her vanishing, perhaps similar to Faux Paw who clearly wanted to be with Penny (who had passed a week earlier.)

I will miss trying to sleep with her face in my face, I will miss her ear-splitting yowls of indignation from the hallway that she didn't know where anyone was, and I will not miss at all the tiny, fading whimpery mewls of pain near the end.

She was a very nice cat, a master of allergen production, and a lap fungus par excellence.

Thirty-two years. And six of them missing.

I remember though.

Spent yesterday and today helping my brother move out of the trailer he was going to buy before he discovered that it was infested with 23000 different varieties of pernicious mold.

We drove down yesterday at 9am and didn't even get done with the crap in the house, because it mostly was NOT packed yet.
It was cold and rainy all day, trying to snow but too warm for success, until it got dark around 5pm, and we decided that enough was too much, and we would come back today to finish it.

The house was so nasty that I ended up coughing all the way home and Ty was having allergy attacks nonstop. When we got home I dumped all my clothes in the washer with a couple scoops of oxy-clean to kill the spores.

Between Vinnie the world's most allergenic cat and the mold gunk that hasn't gotten clear, I dreamed this morning that I was smoking cigarettes that I stole from my mom. (Mom can't smoke any more, as she has even worse lungs than the brother I was helping to move, and lighting up would detonate the oxygen tanks. Thank you, Philip Morris.)

Another 9am run south this morning, I ended up springing for the u-haul and for a run to the dump when the dumpsters were already full. I'm now considering three or four complete rinses with the neti pot.

I woke up today dreaming that Penny and I and some friends were getting together for a trip to someplace. I was happy to realize when I woke up enough, that I wasn't fretting about knowing I was dreaming. It was more like being able to be there. It wasn't too bad.

My brother Casey and his wife Shelley hosted our Thanksgiving gathering. My nephew Levi (the youngest nephew, age eleven, one that Casey just recently gained custody of) was there, and he gave the blessing. He's a neat kid and I think Casey might be about grown up enough to be a great Dad for him now.

It was pretty good food too.

A good day and I'm thankful for all the blessings it brought.

So there's going to be an annular eclipse on May 20th. Like most such things, it won't be visible as such over most of the planet. But, the area where it IS visible will include Northern California. It looks like it will be visible late in the day, since it will be coming out of eclipse at sunset in Albuquerque. But if you are in the area, and you have the chance, please (use appropriate eclipse-watching precautions!) if you photograph it, post the pictures!!

Otherwise, enjoy!


Edit to add: And the Pacific Northwet does it to us again.
We should have had a partial annular eclipse - that is, a crescent sun - and I'm pretty sure we would have except for the clouds in the way.

Also? When I edited this ... Livejournal misread my "save changes" as "delete entry"... and I had to recover it from the edit buffer.

So, unfortunately, useful replies were deleted. I've disabled comments to this one.

Thank you SO VERY MUCH, LJ, for being consistently stupid.

My surviving cat has become very needy. If I am at home, she wanders around howling until she sees me and then crawls up onto my lap or alongside me in my chair, and won't be moved, except to occasionally get up and demand food if her bowl is empty. At what she considers bedtime, she'll demand that I get out of my chair, stop playing computer games or reading, and go to bed. (I generally ignore her. 10pm is not my bedtime.)

Once I'm in bed she'll either craw under blankets and lie lengthwise next to me, or crawl up next to my neck, stick her face in my face, and (still using her OUTSIDE VOICE) meow at me once or twice, attempt to shove my features around with her nose, and then settle down with her paws wrapped around my neck, or if I don't want to put up with that, with her head next to mine on my small barley-husk pillow.
And as I tend to sleep on my side when I can, I will often wake up with her IN MY FACE.

This does not in any way benefit my ability to breathe. I may not be allergic, but she is made of fluffy fine hairs and slightly coarser longer hairs and she will emit clouds of either, at random.

And I wear a mouthpiece at night to keep my jaw in a position where I don't end up with my airway closing.
(This is similar to sleep apnea - if I don't have the mouthpiece, I don't breathe very well at all.)

So. Last night. I woke up with the cat there, eyes open, not appearing to be breathing, and not responsive. I couldn't tell if she was breathing, but she sometimes sleeps quite deeply, so I moved her a bit, and made her wake up. Because I am NOT going to wake up to find a dead cat in my face please. She's very old - about 20 years, maybe 21 - and she's still in good shape but at that age...

Anyway. Needy cat.

About the plague.

So. Friday of last week I caught That Cold That's Been Going Around.
As I had too many hours built up, I left work after 5 hours (as per plan) and went home, with a mild throbbing pressure in my head and a slightly sore-feeling throat.

I decided that I was probably Coming Down With It, and decided to preemptively clean the target zone for the infection with a nasal rinse. (NeilMed makes this as an alternative to the neti pot and it's easier to use, and much more effective than "ocean" saline-spray-can.)

Funny noises, deliberate draining, and I actually felt a little better, but then when I woke in the morning, it felt like I'd sandpapered my sinuses and throat. There was a cat Too Close to my face, and there was also at least a gallon of "protein matrix" in both sinuses, some of it with fine cat hair mixed in from having breathed in Cat all night. But it wasn't difficult to clear it without even taking drugs. I did take an antihistamine to keep the side effects down. The one side effect I couldn't fix was the fever and the feeling of brain not worky.

And lo didst this continue for the next four days. Two of those days were work days and I did not come in to the office to Share the Fun. I'm not willing to do that any more. I did come in on Wednesday after 5pm, and I worked 5 hours, then came in Thursday at 10:30am. And left at 10:30PM. Ugh. Not intended, but I got caught up in what I was working on.

And hopefully won't do the same thing today because REALLY don't like how I feel after 12 hours...