Some very silly fluff, via Caitlin. I’m not in the mood for much else today…haven’t taken my meds for the second day in a row, so I’m feeling kind of scatterbrained. After my girlfriend wakes up I’ll fill my medbox so I can take my meds again.

bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now…
Added: Just for fun, states I’ve worked in are in small caps.

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington DC /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

Via a Metafilter posting comes a Wired story about three phreaking brothers in Israel, who happen to be blind. While I don’t condone their hacking and phreaking, I am really impressed by what they’ve been able to do. It would have been better if they’d used their awesome skills for something useful rather than harmful (and let’s not debate whether phreaking is harmful, okay?) but what they’ve learned is just astonishing - more than many sighted people will ever do.

I noticed Swerve in the beverage cases at the snack bar at work today, so I thought I’d see what information I could find online. That led me to BevNet, where I found these other interesting drinks.

• Afri-Cola - Comes in a cool bottle.
• Aloe Splash - Have any of you in California or Arizona tried this?
• Acqua della Madonna - It’s just sparkling water, but I have got to get this bottle for my girlfriend’s collection of cobalt blue glass bottles.
• B.I.G. Brooklyn Egg Cream Soda - I’m not sure about an egg cream soda versus a regular egg cream, but I’d love to try the diet version.
• Barq’s Floatz - It’s only available in “select Mississippi and Louisiana cities,” which makes me think it must be special or it wouldn’t be in such limited release. (Ain’t marketing cool?)
• Bong Water - Somebody actually named this drink bong water! It’s only in Chicago and it comes in four flavors.
• Fizzies - I heard about these on the Food Network show Unwrapped. Now that they’re discontinued, they go for a lot on eBay.
• Gay Energy Drink - This is the only beverage I’ve ever seen marketed to the gay community. There’s even a rainbow on the package.
• Hemp Soda - Unlike Bong Water, this really does have THC in it…but only a little.
• Jeff’s New York Egg Cream - I appreciate that this comes in diet vanilla and diet chocolate, but the other flavors just shouldn’t exist…an egg cream should be chocolate!
• Jones Soda - I used to get Jones Soda all the time, but it’s fallen off my radar screen. I had no idea they’d introduced a turkey and gravy soda!
• Kickapoo Joy Juice - I just love the name.
• Oop! Juice Holiday Sodas - I don’t think the flavors are particularly innovative, but they did come up with cool names like Gefilte Fizz and Ghoulade (black lemonade!).
• Orbitz - I only ever tried the Vanilla Orange (I think it was at Québec’s Musée de la Civilisation), and I’d love to get my hands on another bottle. They’re not too expensive on eBay.
• Peep One Erotic Drink - It’s not the only “aphrodisiac” drink mentioned at BevNet, but it does have a cool Engrish description from the manufacturer.
• Pepsi Kona - I never even heard of this one: it’s a coffee/cola drink from Pepsi, and was available in regular and diet before it was discontinued. Unlike Crystal Pepsi, there don’t seem to be any bottles of Pepsi Kona available on eBay.
• Pink Energy Drink - A diet energy drink marketed toward women. Very pretty packaging.
• Rudy Begonia’s Belcher - It’s marketed to kids, but I think the concept is hilarious.
• Sex Kola - The flavor names (like “Lust Lemonade”) are cool, and the package design is neat too.
• Ting - I had one of these grapefruit drinks while we were waiting for our flight home from Grenada. It was actually pretty good.
• White Soda - It’s carbonated milk. Huh? Comes in Strawberry Chill and Lemon Vanilla Ice flavors. Huh?

If you don’t already have a skin cookie set for this site, you should now be seeing the “Be Mine, Valentine!” skin. If you do have a skin cookie set and you want to see it anyway, you can jump to here to see it.

Somebody posed this question on an anonymous smut-related mailing list: “anyone know of a site explaining what would be a good strap-on dildo to buy, and tips and tricks on how to use it?” and other members on the list directed them to me! I love being a local answer gal for things like this. I thought I’d share the advice I gave here, too, but it is sex-related so I’ll hide it. Don’t click to read it unless you really want to hear - it’s not raunchy, but it is explicit.
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A’s parents get a lot of magazines, including several newsweeklies. They pass them along to me because I like them, but sometimes they forget and just save them up for a while, and then I get two months’ worth of magazines all at once. When that happens, I flip through as fast as I can and tear out pages that look interesting, so I can read them again later (and potentially blog about them). I am still going through the most recent few shipments from A’s parents, but I wanted to mention what I’ve been tearing out so far.
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I got up this morning and there was snow everywhere; I watched TV to learn that the federal government was under an “unscheduled leave” policy. My employee handbook says that if the government changes its status, they will send out a voicemail to notify us of the office status. I called several times and never got such a voicemail, then finally spoke to one of the schedulers, who told me the office was open. I got ready to leave, cleared off the car, and backed up the driveway successfully. Of course our neighborhood wasn’t plowed yet, but I made it out to the main road anyway with a minimum of sliding. To my surprise, the main road wasn’t plowed either, and the traction kicked in while I tried to turn left. I went a little ways but I could tell that I wouldn’t be able to make it up the next hill, so I gave up and turned into another subdivision that would get me back home.

Last night I determined that interpreting and whitewater kayaking may not go together very well. In my work lately I’ve been noticing the beginning symptoms of repetitive stress in my right shoulder. I discussed it with my co-terp because she’s gone through something similar, and we talked about how to readjust our body positions while interpreting in the hopes of reducing strain. At the rolling class last night, I was able to get the boat off the car pretty well by myself, and carried it halfway to the door before somebody helped me with it. In the pool, I was really nervous and the instructor did his best to help me relax. He flipped me over a couple of times and brought me back up, and he had me wet exit so I could feel myself in the water. He went on to work with somebody else, and I tried doing some hip snaps off the boats of my classmates. In about twenty minutes, though, I realized that my right shoulder was in a lot of pain…in exactly the same place I feel it while I’m interpreting. So I told the instructor I was going to take a break for a bit, and I went over to the hydrotherapy pool which helped slightly, but not much. I could tell I wouldn’t be able to get any more kayaking practice in because my shoulder hurt, so I left half an hour early - which meant I got to put the boat back on top of my car all by myself. I managed to drag it up there and get it secured, and I made it all the way home safely!

Now I have to analyze how much of my feelings were leftover fear, and how much is genuinely because of my shoulder. I know my shoulder was a factor - it still hurts, and I’ve been taking Liquid Advil since last night - but I have to consider that maybe I just used it as a good excuse to leave because I was still scared. I was scared, but there was pain. I just have to decide how much of each.

I’ve got a lot on the schedule today. A is at class right now. I have to go pick up the boat from Spring River and have them help me get it on top of the car, which may involve purchasing a foam block cartopping set from them. I hope that goes well - I’m a little nervous about it. I have my second rolling session tonight, and after what happened last time I am pretty nervous about it. I’m also going to have dinner with my parents today, but I don’t really want to go - I want to sit at home and fret about the class tonight. I know I’ll have fun once I get there - I get to bring Cordelia to show her off! - but the way I feel right now is like I just want to hide in bed all day.

Woo, this is awesome! It has been decided that the 2004 JournalCon is going to be held in Washington DC! I got an e-mail encouraging me to vote in the survey, which I did even though the hotel stuff wouldn’t apply to me. The JournalCon DC site is probably going to be superseded by the main JournalCon site, but it’s still pretty cool.