Five years ago, on this day, I married Dale. Today, more than ever, I’m so glad I did. He’s such a wonderful guy, and absolutely perfect for me. So much so, that even strangers notice it.

A couple of weeks ago, during a trip to visit my parents in Virginia, Dale and I were shopping at Home Depot. He was pushing a dolly and accidentally ran it into the back of my ankle. It was a minor impact but caused a bit of bleeding. While we were standing there awkwardly (me with my leg up behind me and him bent over holding my ankle) one of the employees walked by and asked what had happened. I explained it to her, and she offered to take me back and get a band-aid for the cut. As she handed me a bandage, I made a comment about Dale feeling really bad about the accident.

She said, “I know. I could tell by the way he looked.” Then she said, “You all must be newlyweds.”

I told her we weren’t, and it would be five years at the end of the month.

“Oh my goodness! Five years and he still cares that much??” She paused and looked wistful then added, “you are so lucky.”

I nodded, smiled, and agreed whole-heartedly.

The next day, my parents hosted a big party, inviting friends, neighbors, and co-workers. One lady, Michelle, was an old friend of my mother’s. Throughout the party, whenever Michelle saw Dale and I together, she’d point and squeal and say something about us being so cute and cuddly with each other. My mother would usually add, “yeah, they’re inseperable.” Later that evening, I sat down with my mother and some of her friends. Michelle was, well, far beyond tipsy at this point, and she slapped my knee and practically screamed, “you and your husband, so loving! How can you still be like that after five years?” I replied that Dale is a really wonderful person and she added, “yeah, I can tell. You’re so lucky! My husband and I,” she shook her head, “no way we can be like that.”

After the trip, when I was back at home, I shared those stories with my friend, Genevieve. Her observation was, “you’re the most touchy-feely couple I know!” And something along the lines of ‘you can tell how much you care about each other.’ It’s so neat to see him through other people’s eyes and still see such a sweet loving guy.

I’m so happy that Dale and I are together. We’ve made it through some tough times, caused by both internal and external issues, and I really think that’s strenghthened our relationship. I can’t imagine a day without him in my life. He’s my best friend and my lover, and the most important part of my life. Best of all, he puts up with me.

Happy Anniversary Dale, I love you!

Dale’s reading the austin.forsale newsgroup and came across this posting:

fs: air guitar picks



3 air guitar picks available $3.00

**note: ONLY to be used w/ air guitars**

Our own beloved big white guy has been featured by CNN.com! Congratulations, Randall!

These are children playing with sparklers at the Fall Festival block party my parents hosted last weekend. More photos like this can be seen in the gallery.

Ok, ok, low-budget Matrix-style, but this is still a pretty amusing little movie.

I have the unique privilege of owning the AOL Instant messenger nickname ‘pamela.’ This is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it’s easy for people to remember my AIM nick. On the other hand, the IM community at large seems to have issues differentiating between a person’s real name and her AIM nickname.

At most times, I only allow users on my Buddy List to IM me because I get bombarded with stupid IMs if I don’t. Things like “Hi aunt/mom/sis/friend,” “who is this?/r u pam?” and “u were hawt in Barbed Wire!” Occasionally I would unblock my nick and have conversations with random strangers who IM’d me.

Ever since first seeing Kevin Fury’s AOLiza logs, I’ve wanted to run my own AIM chatbot. Recently, I found a Java-based module I was able to install and run easily. I turned it on, and within minutes clueless strangers were having semi-coherent chats with… no one.

I’ve set up a new LiveJournal account that will only contain posts involving the Pamela AIMBot with occasional comments from me.

Go check out The AIMBot Logs if you wish. (Be aware if you add it to your LJ Friends list right now, it’ll probably spam the heck out of your Friends page. I did backdate entries, and the journal itself appears fine, but on a Friends page, it shows all the posts under today. :P)

Oh yeah… You may want to add ‘notyourpamela’ to your Buddy Lists. If you see that screen name on along with ‘pamela,’ it will mean that the AIMBot is running on ‘pamela.’ If only ‘pamela’ is on, then it’s probably me.

Oh, and if you’re not on my buddy list but would like to be, leave me a comment with your AIM nick.

Take a group of kids age 10-13, some computer games their parents used to play, put them together, and what do you get? Electronic Gaming Monthly wanted to find out and ended up with comments like this:

In regards to Pong…

Tim: My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.

In regards to Tetris…

Tim: Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?

ECM: Sorry, they don’t explode.

Becky: This is boring. Maybe if it had characters and stuff and different levels, it would be OK. If things blew up or something or—

Sheldon: If there were bombs.

Becky: Yeah, or special bricks. Like, if a yellow brick touched a red brick it would blow up and you’d have to start over.

John: Why haven’t I won yet? I’ve paired up so many of the same color.

EGM: Don’t worry about colors.

John: I just lined up six of the same color. Why didn’t they blow up?

EGM: Nothing blows up.

In regards to E.T. the Extra- Terrestrial (once named the worst game of all time by EGM)…

Tim: Can I stop now?

…

John: This game is so confusing.

Kirk: No wonder it’s the worst ever.

In regards to Space Invaders…

Tim: This is nothing compared to Grand Theft Auto III, because you can’t steal a taxi cab, pick up somebody, then drive into the ocean with him.

What? No Centipede? What about Burger Time or Q-bert? *sigh* Kids today have no idea how lucky they are.

I know I’m not the only person who’s lately noticed the horribly annoying trend of spam comments*. Just today, I ended up deleting three of them, off two different web logs. I had just begun to wonder what I could possibly do against this crap when I stumbled across Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist plugin.

I’ve already installed the plugin on two of my all three of my MT installations. Bless the man!

* Spammers have begun to leave random link-filled comments on blogs, often as an effort to boost their sites’ Google rankings. Just more evidence that spammers are about as charming and useful as rancid skunk assholes.

My little found kitten is gone. A friend of ours volunteers with the Humane Society and managed to find a foster mother for him. Earlier this evening, we handed him over to the Humane Society’s foster coordinator.

I managed to keep from crying until we were done saying goodbye and were walking away.

Dale and I really wanted to keep the little guy, but it wouldn’t have been very fair to the cats we have now. Plus the Humane Society is going to take care of him and see that he’s vaccinated, neutered, and placed in a good home.

We know we did the right thing, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Well, Dale and I went to take Zoë for a walk, and we came home with a kitten.

There’s a flood plain near our house where we take her to let her play in the water, and shortly after we got there, we heard a kitten crying. I led Zoë away and Dale searched for it. He found a tiny kitten, so I took Zoë home and came back with the car. We took the little guy to the vet.

He’s estimated to be 3.5 wks old. He’s got pale tabby markings and fluffy fur. Definitely not a shorthair, but not quite a longhair. He’s got a cream base and the stripes are grey, not as defined as other tabbies. Eyes are
itten-blue still.

He’s very playful and kept moving constantly the whole time he was at the vet. By the time the vet checked his heart and breathing, he was purring. Right now, he’s curled up in a towel on my lap and pretty much sleeping on his head.

The vet said he should be starting to eat solids now, and pooping on his own. We haven’t had him long enough yet to test either theory. He appears healthy, except for a bit of discharge from his eye and nose, which may indicate Upper Respiratory Infection. He didn’t do any sneezing, wheezing, or have any other symptoms, so it may just be boogers. He’s just started a general-purpose antibiotic. The vet said he’s really too young to test for FIV/Leukemia and worms, so it’s best to keep him separated from other cats.

And that’s our big problem. We have 7 other cats! And, we’re going out of town on Thursday.

Anyone able to take in a kitten? He’s a real sweetheart! I’ll have photos up in a few minutes. Photos are here.