debxena

Somehow, I was struck by this plaintive little story in the local paper:

Mason City officials say one person was injured in a fire that apparently started when a shoe placed next to a heat lamp in the top of a fish aquarium overheated.

The fire happened Sunday afternoon at a mobile home. Officials say the fire was contained to the aquarium that was a housing a lizard.

Fire Capt. Richard Paulson says one person was injured and taken to a Mason City hospital. The person’s name was not immediately released.

Paulson says the lizard died in the fire.

Poor lizard. And I can just imagine the kind of living space where a shoe is likely to wind up on top of an aquarium.

I can't stop laughing about this, although the fact that this guy is an elected official should give me pause.

In the opinion of Arlington Mayor Russell Wiseman, President Barack Obama's speech on Tuesday night on the war in Afghanistan was deliberately timed to block the Christian message of the "Peanuts" television Christmas special.

Wiseman made the statements on his Facebook page, where he declared Obama to be a Muslim. Only people on Wiseman's "friend's list" had access to the post. ( Unsurprisingly, the mayor also doesn't get the Friends List concept )

I'll be over here, listening to Joe Cool's Blues, one of my favorite albums. Wynton Marsalis' dad Ellis wrote some of the music for the Peanuts specials, and Wynton and his brothers join their dad and other artists to record these favorites. Now, that's family values transformed into art.

There have been a lot of issues with notifications with several email providers for the past 2 weeks. Seems that a spammer has been using insanejournal.com as a landing page for their spam. This is causing some email providers to either delay or completely block mail from insanejournal.com.

There isn't anything we can do about this besides continue to be vigilant in suspending these accounts. If you own an account that gets suspended with no notification it is because your account was mistakenly identified as a spam account. Due to the shear volume of accounts being suspended we cannot review each individual account so some mistakes may be made.

Please understand we have been and will continue to do anything we can to stop this spam and therefore restore the ability to send email to a number of providers.

Title: A Week and a Day

Fandom: Highlander
Characters: Methos, Duncan, Joe, a few OCs
Pairing: Methos/Duncan (already formed relationship)
Length: approx. 2375 words
Warnings: a little bad language, Methos in a caustic mood
Summary: There's a week and a day to go before Christmas, and Duncan has a very full schedule. There are parties to attend, and things to do. Methos is less than gracious about all these functions.
Notes: Written for Eva, who always seems to want me to write Christmas stories! I am sorry that this year I didn't manage to do Deep Nostalgia, but I hope this is a second best substitute. A very large thank you to sidhe_woman for the beta, she's a jewel among fen, and a seriously wonderful writing friend; any remaining mistakes are entirely mine.

~~~

( There was one week and one day until Christmas. It was a cold, blowsy Friday night, not quite eight o’clock, and as dark as Methos expected the deepest confines of Hell to be.  )

I've been so scarce on LJ for so long, I think I'm making more of this posting thing than it deserves. So I will just babble.

I had the best Thanksgiving in a long time. My father died over a decade ago on Thanksgiving, very suddenly, and that cast a pall over the holiday for years. But I've reached the point in mourning where you welcome the reminders of the person you've lost. And memories of my dad were nicely bookended by the opportunity to see my kids, both of whom came home from college. M:TNG-1 was ill, but at least I was reassured she was getting a bit of rest, and emails indicate she's feeling better now. M:TNG-2 brought a delightful friend, or, rather, jwaneeta brought them both and the cranberry sauce.

Mr. M slaved over the stove Wednesday night and all day Thursday, producing turkey with all the trimmings, including absolutely amazing fig stuffing. We set up and trimmed the Christmas tree, wandered around Iowa City, and jwaneeta dragged me out to the movies. We saw "2012,: which is the funniest film I've seen in ages, with the added bonus of pretty images of the Earth being destroyed.

From now until January 3rd we are going to be selling Permanently Insane accounts for their regular price of $50. In addition we are selling Permanent Extra Userpics for $25. This will bring the userpic total of your Permanently Insane account to 500 for the life of your account.

I always lose this website: http://www.imagechef.com

And I always spent at least an hour scrolling through old entries to find where I hid the darn website so I can share it when someone wants it. *pings brain* Remember to search, here brain. I will tag this.

All of the IJ holiday sales have ended and prices are back to normal. We will be putting Permanently Insane accounts on sale for their regular price before Christmas.

I have turned on today's special Black Friday sale.

Until 4:00pm(EST) we will be holding a sale on Permanently Insane accounts, Permanent Extra Userpics, and Insane Userpics the prices are as follows.

Permanently Insane account - $30
Insane Userpics - $70
Permanent Extra Userpics - $5

At 4:00 today all prices on IJ will go back to their normal amounts.