cleolinda | Feeling strangely fine

Quickie: Your happiness is a growing, living thing -- feed it with truth and optimism.

Overview: Get your career priorities in place and it will pay off in spades. Make some changes to your overall game plan. Others may be startled at this change of pace, but you know this will jolt you out of a rut.

Daily extended (by yahoo.astrology.com)
You're able to make smart decisions when you give yourself a little wiggle room and stop making every choice seem like life or death. Isn't it amazing what opportunities appear as soon as you stop being so rigid? Not only do your pent-up emotions flow, releasing tons of stress you didn't even know you had, but lovely little miracles (or as you might call them, 'coincidences') happen when you least expect them. Enjoy!

Mom's surgery seems to have gone okay; she's sacked out on the couch downstairs with a stack of pillows under her knee. She seems to be in a good deal of pain and a little loopy on medication, but: again, they cut open her knee. It's to be expected. Apparently she'd done something to a "meniscus" as well as torn two ligaments that they hadn't expected (but which explained a lot of the pain she'd been in for the last month or two). My stepfather took the day off to be with her at the hospital and then here at home, but since the hospital had them get there at five-fifteen--in the morning--he was pretty wiped out himself. (Slightly amusing story: I heard them up and about at four-thirty, and since I tend to wake up a few times during any given night, I took Lucky downstairs so he'd get taken outside with the poms and fed. [Usually I have to walk and feed him separately, because he won't leave my room until I get up, so he's kind of on a later schedule than the poms.] So I take him downstairs and my mother looks at me like I grew two extra heads in the night. "What are you doing up at this hour?" "Well, actually, I tend to wake up a--" "It's a crime to be up at this hour." So saith the woman who usually gets up at 5:30 and putters around for an hour when she could be sleeping.)

AIEEEE! Click-N-Ship confirms that my BPAL is, in fact, in Birmingham!

eve_the_just: "If you're in the mood for pimping and wouldn't mind adding another link, Serenity opens today. There's a lot of fans who have wanted this to happen for a long time. It's a continuation of the short-lived, but rather excellent series Firefly. Us fans really want this movie to do well so that Joss Whedon (of Buffy and Angel) gets to make a sequel. The more people we can get out, the more likely our dream is." I really don't know that Serenity needs my help--judging from the comments I get, I'm pretty sure my readership is fully aware of it.

I promised to pimp something else, but I've lost the comment/link. And it sounded really good, too--a music community? Fnarrr.

Report Finds Negative Image of U.S. Abroad, Duh.

Crimes after Katrina may have been overblown, our bad.

Ladies and gentlemen, the author of The Book of Virtues and Body Count: Moral Poverty...And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs:

Bennett, on his radio show, "Morning in America," was answering a caller's question when he took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up.
"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," said Bennett.
He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."
Responding later to criticism, Bennett said his comments had been mischaracterized and that his point was that the idea of supporting abortion to reduce crime was "morally reprehensible."

Trivia note for the three people who have read what I did post of The Black Ribbon: Miss Jones' holier-than-thou editor, Mr. Bennet, is named after this guy (with a dash of Pride and Prejudice spelling for flavor). Now you see why.

Harry Potter news: Imelda Staunton will play Umbridge (still rumor, but ooo, nice choice) and casting begins for Luna:

If you are a resident of the UK, then you can also send in an application to the following
Luna Lovegood Casting
c/o Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix
Leavesden Studios
PO Box 322
Hertfordshire
WD25 7XJ
You need to send a photo, your age and your contact details and please don't fax or phone the studios, only write.

Do NOT ask me to magically help you get cast. You laugh, but back when I was running the Digest, a very persistent girl wanted my help in getting cast as Violet Baudelaire in the Snicket movie. You know, like I'm not just some Alabama girl with a paid Geocities account and a dream, or whatever.

Hmm, what else... eye twitch is back, yay. I'm sure figuring out what to do for dinner is going to be an ordeal, because while I'm perfectly content to feed myself, Sister Girl has to flail around and demand that someone provide "the family" with sustenance. Maybe I can swing some pizza out of this, though.