You can without a doubt never be replaced, Little Ham. I have never in my life met a dwarf hamster so eager to be held, pet, and played with. In all your days with me, you never bit or attacked anyone, even if they woke you from a deep sleep. All you ever wanted to do was run and explore and enjoy your little hamster life as much as you could.

I honestly didn't expect to see you like this today. After surviving suicide jumps, an underfoot accident, and last week a mild stroke, I felt like you could cheat death much longer than you did.

I'm glad you didn't suffer. Even with a weakened body, you still ran around like the crazy, playful, excitable ham you've always been the past week, up until just a couple of hours ago.

I'll deeply miss you, buddy. And I hope you have plenty of friends to say "OMGHI!!" to wherever you are now.

<3 :'(

He's survived. Against all odds, two days after being stepped on, he was running in his wheel as though nothing out-of-the-ordinary had happened at all. He seems to have healed up a little stiffly--his back is always bent now in a way it wasn't before, but he's alive, he's happy, he's a little slower, but he's still the same little Paolo inside, my tiny, friendly hamster.

As a complication of his injuries, he seems to have developed a lung infection, but he was seen by the vet for an antibiotic injection yesterday, and now we're just waiting on the arrival of hamster-safe antibiotics I can take home to syringe-feed him. A minor setback to his recovery that shouldn't be a problem since it's being handled properly.

I was so worried about him, so full of hatred for myself at what I did. Now he's running around, curious and cute as ever. <3 my little miracle ham.

I just did a very thorough friends list sorting. For quite some time, keeping up with my friends page has become lower and lower on my priority list, and now with most of my Internet access comprised of a dial-up connection, it's become even more insignificant on my list of things to do when I'm connected. I feel bad about skimming and skipping all of the time, so I had to reduce the number of entries I'm seeing on it.

For that reason and the fact that I want to limit my friends list to as few people as possible for closeness reasons, I've removed a lot of people. It's nothing personal against any of you--none of you have done anything to become untrustworthy or uninteresting, I just feel that we've grown apart or that we were never all that close on a personal level to begin with.

I hope none of those I've removed are offended, and feel free to stop by now and again to let me know how you're doing--I'm certainly not opposed to little, "Hi, how are you?"s, but I just don't have the time or resources to keep up with a lot of different people's lives anymore.

Stata buon, all of you. :]

I couldn't have asked for a more wonderful little animal friend for the past five-and-a-half years. You were the friendliest, most personality-filled rabbit I've ever known. There wasn't a single person who met you and didn't love you. You've left behind a family that will sorely miss you the rest of their lives, but whatever greater power there may be felt it was your time to leave us.

I love you, Bunny. I know you're in a happy place because you don't deserve any less than the best.

<3 :'(

I just did a thorough reorganization of my friends list, and I removed a lot of people. I'd posted a poll in my journal earlier in the week, and if you didn't respond, it's highly likely I took you off my friends list. My friends list was getting to be too much for me to handle, and I didn't see a reason to keep someone on if they aren't interested in keeping up with me anyway.

If you actually do keep up with my journal, though, and just didn't respond to the poll, comment here.

I've just spent the past couple of days working with Bonnie on setting up a new project at her domain that we're both adminning. It's a health discussion forum I'd been thinking about starting and was finally pushed to really bring it into fruition when a couple of people posted entries about getting in better shape the other day. If you're interested in participating or even just checking it out, please pay a visit to Lifestyles. :D

(BTW, there isn't much there yet along the lines of discussion, so feel free to start up some topics to help us get this community going! :])

I've just uploaded around 30 new photos to my gallery. There are a lot of pretty photos of flowers from around the SBU campus, if you like that sort of thing. :)

I was just being curious, and I found out that there's someone I don't know watching liquidstar_feed, so I wanted to give it a couple of plugs. I don't update it all that often, since it's not like a regular blog or journal to me, but add it if you're interested in seeing excerpts of and links to the updates on your friends pages. :)

Sorry to the lovely two people who already watch it and my journal, since you'll be seeing entries about this twice. :x

This came up yesterday while I was at Yale, and I'm really curious if I'm the only one who pronounces this word the way I do, as seems to be the case after yesterday's conversation...

Poll #277161 Sherbet Pronunciation
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 95

How do you pronounce the word "sherbet"?

If you chose "other" for your response to the previous question, try as best as you can to explain how you pronounce it here.

It is very disappointing to come home after a long weekend away to a computer utterly devoid of waiting IMs. :[

However, the fun of today more than makes up for it! I sat in on two panels at I-CON today ("Why People Suck" with Jonathan Rosenberg of Goats fame and Randy Milholland, the author of Something Positive, and "Dammit! I am Evil, Not Cute!" with the same plus Chris Cracknell of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic), and they were a fabulously good time. :D Jon is rather quiet, but makes up for it by being wonderfully witty when he does speak up, Randy is very outspoken and totally hilarious in person (I particularly liked his comment on how we have a particularly good-smelling con at Stony Brook XD XD), and Ghastly did a great job of turning the second panel in directions it didn't need to go a couple of times. ;D They better be coming back next year!!

Earlier in the day, I'd spotted the Goats table in the Sports Complex and took the opportunity to ( pick something up... )

Phillip called near the start of the second panel, and Jon had everyone yell "hi"--and Phillip hung up. What a meanie. ;]

After the panels, I went up to Randy to check out the book of art he'd brought with him and wound up getting a signed original SP art that I liked because it was really personal with a frustrated exclamation and some incomplete-ish parts, heh. (Also, the really, really nice ones were well beyond my budget. ;P)

Lastly, I waited around for other people to finish buying art, and got ( my photo taken with Randy! )

After I started walking away, I noticed he'd reached his hand out, and I turned back around to shake it, since he'd just shaken this one guy's hand before the photo with me, and he stopped me, gave me a big hug, and said, "I give hugs to girls!" XD He passed me and Kathleen (not the one I go to ballroom dance with) in the hallway a few minutes later on his way out and said hello and good-bye again. He's a really nice guy. You know, underneath all the sarcasm and nasty wit. ;D

From an entry on my friends page:

Look. I'm not some tree-hugging hippy, and I don't think I've ever spoken about this sort of stuff before...but, I am outraged about this post right here.

READ THAT. I am about to fucking vomit. I have read some horrible things, but this one is the worst I've read in a while.

I know some/a lot of you are animal lovers. I refuse to sit still for this, and I hope you all agree with me. Even if 2 of you agree, this post did some good.

Here is some contact info I looked up...

Jane Bender - Jane.Bender@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Plant City High School - plantcity.highweb@sdhc.k12.fl.us
Charles W. Raburn - Principal - Charles.Raburn@sdhc.k12.fl.us

PETA
501 Front St.
Norfolk, VA 23510
Tel.: 757-622-PETA (7382)
Fax: 757-622-0457
E-Mail PETA at info@peta.org

I already wrote to PETA and to this woman's school. Please, please, please send off an email to one of these addresses. It DOES make a difference. As it stands, it appears this woman will not have any kind of criminal charges pressed against her, and she'll continue to teach.


I understandably was unable to read the entire article. Having held a tiny, two-month-old rabbit in the palm of my hand and see him grow into one of the best pets ever, I cannot imagine the level of depravity a person would have to display to heartlessly murder two day-old bunnies--in front of her entire class, no less. Please say something to these people if it matters at all to you.

I've just made live the new LiquidStar! :D Lots of new content was added, lots of outdated content was scrapped or updated, new skins were made, and a whole new overall look was set up. Go see! And while you're at it, join the mailing list! ;) The old mailing list just up and DIED one day, and I never brought it back--it only had five subscribers anyway. ;P This new one better wind up with more, since it took me over 10 hours to write and debug the scripts.

Yeah, I spent the whole weekend uploading this new stuff. That says nothing of all the other hours I spent rewriting content and making the new skins. One of which still doesn't work in Firefox, but I'll get around to fixing that.

Anyway, yes, this is supposed to be a happy thing! Whee! :D

I just uploaded the photos I took of Jim Breuer at The Downtown this past Saturday to my gallery. It's really too bad you can't capture comedy very well in still photos, as that show was hysterical. ;D

I've just added about 20 photos to my gallery, including the ones I took during a trip to Fire Island at sunset at the end of January--that album is a definite must-see! :D I've also updated my photolog, in case those of you who haven't friended it are interested. :]

I won't be around for a while. Not on AIM, not responding to e-mails unless they're critical--not even checking my e-mail very often, not on LiveJournal, and so on. I don't know how long I'll do this or whether or not I'll try to catch up on things when I come back.

If you want, you can call me. My phone number is in this entry. I'm not going to be totally avoidant, but I just...nothing is working right now, and maybe this will.

I saw this in alsatia's journal, and I'm sure something at least similar in plenty of other journals beforehand, but I just wasn't really interested in posting it. I am now, and I think I'll even make it public, in case someone reading my journal from my site would like to answer it. :]

These statements/questions are for you to respond to about me. Comment screening is on, so unless you say that you'd like your comment unscreened, no one but me will be able to see it.

1. Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
2. Am I lovable?
3. How long have you known me?
4. What was your first impression?
5. Do you still think that way about me now?
6. What do you think my weakness is?
7. Do you think I'll get married?
8. What makes me happy?
9. What makes me sad?
10. What reminds you of me?
11. If you could give me anything what would it be?
12. How well do you know me?
13. Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
14. Do you think I could kill someone?
15. Describe me in one word.
16. Do you think our friendship is getting stronger/weaker/or staying the same?
17. Do you feel that you could talk to me about anything and I would listen?
18. Are you going to put this on your journal and see what I say about you?
19. Do you want this comment to remain screened?

Because this is just SO DAMN COOL, I'm making the entry public. :D

Thanks to this awesome site, you can have my handwriting as a font!!



Thanks go to 8wishes for the link to Fontifier. :)

Recently I was looking over my friends list, and I realized that there were some people I just didn't feel a connection with. I decided that it really wasn't fair to myself or those people to keep them on my friends list if I'm not reading their entries, and I realized that it felt awkward to be letting them read my entries when I don't feel at all close to them and don't foresee myself getting to know them any better.

With that said, I've removed some from my friends list completely. Please don't be offended by it, and if you have something you'd like to say to me about it, feel free to e-mail me. I have a permanent account, so my LiveJournal address will work just fine for that. This isn't meant to say that I don't like you or that you're a bad person or anything like that at all. I just don't feel right keeping you on my friends list at this point.

If you'd like to leave me on your friends list to see my (rare) public entries, that's entirely up to you. :)

I just realized that I haven't thanked my Sekrit Bunneh for the first gift he/she sent. Bad bad me. :P

Thank you muchly for the lip balms, mini nail polishes, and tea! :D I've been using the lip balms almost daily, haven't had the opportunity to use the nail polishes yet, and have been sharing the teas with my family. :)

And just before Thanksgiving I received the second gift--which pleased me so much. :D Monet is my favorite artist, so those cards have me totally thrilled! The Van Gogh ones are lovely, too, and the stickers had me all eeee! :D Hopefully soon I'll get to paint the mini paint-by-numbers things. The book about the history of paint-by-numbers was so interesting! :D

So if you check my journal, which I hope you do to see this, thank you very very much for what you've sent so far! You're a great Sekrit Bunneh! :D :D

Through the course of a meandering train of thought yesterday while I was waiting for the bus, I got the idea for this poll. There's absolutely no reason behind it except I was curious as to how other people's opinions related to mine. :)

Poll #193183 Roommate Gender Preference
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

If you were going to move into an apartment and were going to share it with someone for whatever reason, both of you having separate bedrooms, would you prefer to room with someone of the same or opposite sex?