CritterKeeper

I find that a distinct possibility. He doesn't exactly know what he's actually doing....

You were fated to make that choice. It is, after all, kismet.

Take comfort in the fact that society's attitudes have shifted far enough that jerks like this feel the need to legislate against what more and more people think is obviously the right thing to do. Used to be, there was no "need" for such laws because everyone bought into the bigoted attitude without being told they had to. Now, people rise up in protest and boycott entire states over LGBT rights!

The latest Meg Langslow mystery. It's a series by Donna Andrews. Meg is a blacksmith by trade, with a large and eccentric extended family, and the books each feature a different setting or hobby/obsession, from a computer game company to a science fiction convention to Xtreme Croquet and competitive rose growing. The author has a wonderful sense of humor, and the novels are relatively short, fast reads so they never feel like work. If you want to read for enjoyment, nay, for pleasure, this is a good series to choose.

Earlier tonight, my several-years-old iPad2 dropped about a foot and a half onto the floor, cracking the screen significantly more than the last two times it fell hard enough to cause damage. (The first time it fell the screen was fine but the volume button was permanently damaged.) The worst damage was to the "home" button, which lost its little cover and, unlike the similarly-damaged power button on my laptop, it does not work to push the exposed mechanism beneath, despite being able to feel the little post in the center depress with a slight click. There are a number of important things I can not do without that button, and the glass around it has sharp edges. In other words, I can no longer just continue to use it any longer. I am going to have to pony up for a new one. My usual tactic with computer stuff is to get as good as I can reasonably afford, but not get useless (to me) stuff. Thus, I want to get a relatively new model, but *not* spend the extra that Cellular versions would cost. So far, Target is out of stock everywhere and can't ship, and Best Buy apparently only sells Cellular models with 12 to 24-month commitments, which don't include my cell company anyway. I'm moving on to the Apple store site to see how much it would cost to just buy direct....

Spontaneous hair and eye color changes. I'm still waitng for someone to change eye color. Given how badly Sarah would like to have her magic make her taller or, ah, more well-padded, I was kinda expecting her to get the eye color change, just out of the sheer perversity of the universe. Hey, there's no claws for that sort of talk!

Let's see if this works....

I'm betting we can keep blaming 2016 for miserable stuff for at least a couple more months. Celebrities who die in 2017 but got sick in 2016. Bad movies that were released in 2017 but made in 2016. Heck, many of us will be blaming 2016 for much bigger ills for at least four more years....and I'll stop there so I don't have to move this to the Politics thread....

Eh, it's Times Square's celebration, and New York gets to foot the bill, I'm happy to give them thst one. You want different songs, tune in to WFMT's show The Midnight Special. They do "folk music and farce, show tunes and satire, odds and ends, madness and escape." And they've bern doing it for several decades, which means they've accumulated a lot of really good comedy stuff, much of it classics you don't hear much elsewhere. They do all requests for a couple of hours, meaning their best stuff, then a live show, then some more requests, and then next week they do even more requests 'cos there's no way to fit them all in to one extra-long show. Their shows of Christmas material are pretty darn good, too.

How about the networks let us actually hear the music once or twice, first? As I complained about in the "Annoying" thread, everywhere I looked, there was inane chatter and annoying blather, with maybe a note or two audible behind it every once in a while. If you can get them to get these "hosts" to shut up long enough to actually hear the music a time or two, then I'll get to work on getting them to rotate songs. (Although I'm not sure why you think you'd like the songs they'd choose to replace those any better....)

Dang, 106 is pretty good! I don't think we can hold this one against 2016.

I didn't really mind the neighbors who set off fireworks at midnight, given that they finished up by quarter past. It's the sudden outburst of several especially loud ones at 1:30am, after over an hour of quiet, that annoys me. Also annoying was the network coverage of the ball drop at Times Square. Endless chatter and babbling from the "hosts" on every channel, even during the traditional performance of "Imagine" before the drop and playing Sinatra's "New York, New York" after. I just wanna hear the music, not a bunch of blather!

Did I just miss it, or did we not get any Christmas Ellen-and-Nanase pic this year?

I can recall a T-shirt along those lines, claiming that the wearer had had many conversations made up entirely of quotes from TV and movies. "It's like living on Darmok!"

So, the high ambient magic is contributing to the hijinks! Depending how 'viscous' magic is, i.e. how quickly holes are filled in, their running around may be contributing to extending the spell duration. When they calm down and stay in one place for a few minutes, they may carve out a 'hole' in the local magic just long enough to let the spell end.

I think most cat food cans I've seen are too light to be steel. They're aluminum with a lining on the inside. My parents' dog used to get ahold of empty ones and she could dent them, or even put holes in them, fairly easily.

The submission part comes with offering to let Susan be in complete control, letting her touch any way she wants, with Sarah staying passive and not contributing to the action. Again, generally, the purpose of a visit to a chiropractor or masseur has a purpose other than play, the subject of a massage or chiropracty is participating in the process, and there are strict limits in place to keep things on a professional level. Not to say that either couldn't be turned into a BDSM scene....if someone was blushing as hard as Sarah's blushing there, while getting their spine adjusted, then I'd wonder about where their head was at. Seeing what the Top has in store, where and how far they'll take you, is a big part of the appeal. You're arguing for my perspective here, not against. ;-) Your friend is being a Domme there, whether she knows it or not, but nonconsensually. It's generally considered bad form to do stuff like that without the permission of the person being touched, and if she tried it with the wrong person she could find herself in trouble for sexual harrassment and/or assault. Picture how a woman might feel if a man did that to her; yes, there are men who don't like being touched, especially in an aggressive way, even if it's a pretty woman doing it. Kinky doesn't have to be whips and chains. It can be a scarf or just a few words (”Keep your hands there"), a feather or an ice cube. A lot more people engage in bondage, sensation play, and power exchange than most people realize. It's considered normal by the mental health community now -- "kinky" is no longer a diagnosis, just a description.

I seem to have won a helicopter tour of Chicago. More precisely, two rides, to be used for two people once or one person twice, depending how I choose to spend them. Except the web site says there is a strict weight limit, which I currently exceed by about forty pounds. I was already planning to ask my boss if she'd like to join me, now I have another reason, because she's short and not far off of a hundred pounds, so maybe they'll accept the two of us as coming in under the "per seat" limit together. I do understand the practical reasons for a weight limit, and will offer to sit in the middle -- I'm tall enough to be able to see over most other people. If the boss isn't interested, maybe I can ask to be put on a flight with children on it. Either that, or I'll ask to be paired with someone else who's over the limit, and use both vouchers at once, to make an average per seat under the limit, and we can balance each other at opposite windows. There's got to be a way to work this out, and most people seem to be quite reasonable, given the chance. If we can't work something out, I'll just have to give the flights to someone else. At least I can make someone else happy, and I got the joy of winning something. ;-) [Oh, look, there's that copy-paste higlighting effect again....]

A client bought the whole practice lunch today, from a very nice Italian place. Salad, bread, lasagne, fettuccini alfredo, some kind of chicken ("saltimbocca"), and pizza with real slices of mozzarella cheese on it. Oh, and a large regular bundt cake and two smaller ones, chocolate and red velvet. The boss brought a variety of sodas. We marked off a little extra time for lunch and kinda turned it into a party. :-)

The oldest cat I have personally met was 25 years old. There are a number of well-documented cases of cats living into their late twenties and beyond, with the world record being an astonishing but well-documented thirty-eight years old. As medical care, diet, etc. improve, the lifespan of a species tends to improve, too. The hedgehog chapter in the Manual of Exotic Pet Practice lists hedgehog lifespan as 5-10 years. In the wild, an African pygmy hedgehog would only be expected to live 1-4 years; in captivity, 4-7 is more typical. Again, as we learn more about proper care, housing, and diet, their lifespans in captivity have been increasing. A cross between a cat and a hedgehog could have a life expectancy anywhere between the two, including at either extreme. Given that Noriko didn't leave until at least after Tedd was born, and he's only 18 now, it's definitely quite plausible that Max and Jeremy are older than that.

Dang. I'd heard she was in the hospital, but hadn't heard this yet. Is it bad that I am now wondering whether they'd finished filming whatever scenes they needed her for in the current trilogy? (Or that I thought to myself, Disney just lost their best Princess!) She was one heck of a lady, and it would be nice if her legacy is complete and her role in the series is fulfilled.

The opposite, according to Wikipedia. While other carbonated waters may have minerals or such added, seltzer water is usually just water and carbonation.

I'm very sorry for your loss. We had several years in which medical crises seemed to always occur around Thanksgiving, but thankfully we seem to have shaken that trend. Here's hoping you similarly shake off your December woes after this.

The fact that she's doing this with Susan, sure, but what they're doing is definitely kinky. Of course, some people see kinky play and sex in different ways, so they might play with anyone but only have sex with one gender. Kind of like how Ellen decided she's bisexual but homoromantic. I haven't heard any independent term applied....perhaps heterokinky/bikinky/homokinky? As for switch vs sub, while interactions outside of play may not have any relation to interactions during play, you're right that Sarah does seem to dislike being in charge of the relationship in general, but I think it was more having to always be in charge that was getting to her. Elliot seems like he might be a decent service Top, if he isn't too wigged out by the whole idea, but I don't know if he'd have any real desire to be a sub or a Dom, either. I could definitely see Grace getting into sensation play, and once Tedd got over the inevitable hang-ups about it, I think he'd be a good Dom/Top within play sessions. I don't see any of them wanting to go 24/7 or otherwise doing power exchange outside of play sessions, though.

Perhaps it wasn't a watch, but a FitBit. Seems like everyone is wearing those things these days!