In which I follow ywalme's example, and share what I learned from my last 20 LJ posts.

1. I am older than the husband of one of my friends. (This scares me.)
2. Out of a collection of quotes designed to prove that a late politician was a lying scumbucket while alive, I will pick out the most hilariously surreal to link to it.
3. Reading back entries of my old journal makes me re-link nifty things, in different format.
4. I have been dreaming about sex, and metaphorge is symbolic of The Really Hot Guy Who I'd Really Probably Not Have A Chance With In The Waking World.
5. My cat got spayed.
6. I have been trying to walk, but some days are better than others.
7. Drugs might make me more stable, but I still worry.
8. I am starting to think that my writing might rock again, and I am regarded as a good writer, if insane, by my peers.
9. One of the things that the Church of Scientology swears by is one of my hot-button issues that can leave me raving angrily and relatively coherently for up to half an hour. (Private post, as it's a not-coherent-enough draft.)
10. I think that Dumbledore is as sane as Captain Ahab. Also, I link to interesting discussions elsewhere.
11. My second grade teacher made me memorize poetry for spelling tests. This proved to have an effect on my sense of humor later in life.
12. I have trouble distinguishing between vowels in certain words -- namely, is it oragamist or origamist? One of them is surely wrong, unless I'm blind enough to have spelled them both the same.
13. othercat might come work with me! (Private post, chat log.)
14. My soon-to-be stepfather-in-law forwards some pretty damn cool things. Also, I'm more Quaker than I thought I was.
15. When famous ubergeeks do not know LJ ettiquite, things can get gnarly fast.
16. I braindump when I clean house. This reminds me that yes, I do need to do it more often, and also, sometimes things come out. Furthermore, I need to sometimes remember where I put things...
17. I have no problem with the proposal of traveling for 6 hours round trip on a bus to see my best friend for 1 or 2 hours.
18. I like to write amusing little essays about life's trials. Also, I felt I had to explain some things for the non-geek in my readership.
19. I still am capable of rambling on at some length about how much I'm in love. (Locked.)
20. My best friend's father astounds everyone who knows my best friend with his utter lack of clue when it comes to suggesting alternate careers that my best friend might go into. (Filtered.)

Furthermore:
I'm not posting half as much as I was wont to in other days, because at the present moment I am at work most of the day. Rest assured that I'm writing just as much, it's just on paper.

Computers crashed bigtime. I lost the connection to the mothership in the middle of a survey. The young woman on the other end of the phone was patient. and I got the relevant info down to call back.

When that program redscreens without us logging out, we have big problems... (Screen turns red when telnet connection drops. Connection not supposed to drop w/o logout.)

The system is down. We are bored. Of course, this had to happen right after I took 100mg of the caffiene, so I'm alert, even. (I'm careful with the stuff -- I had one half a 200 mg caffiene pill earlier, and the other half a bit ago, and plan on no other buzz today. No coffee, no soda, nothing. ) So, not only awake but bored.

Drew a little cartoon of Mr. Bitter, an improvement on the one if last night. I portray him as speaking, saying :I kniw everything! I never shut up!" That one, I will only share with those already annoyed by him. I also drew a fairly accurate picture of a systems crash:

Supervisor: "The system's down. Don't touch anything. Aigh!"
MRR1: "Zzzz"
MRR2 (tearing hair): "I just had one more question!"
MRR3: "Yay!"
MRR4 (kicking back & relaxing): "Awh yeah."

Not quite a year ago, wibbble asked me:
If anything were possible, what would you most like to do/be/happen? What price would you be willing to pay for this?
And I answered:

"The one thing I couldn't trade for my heart's desire was my heart itself."

I would like, more than I would like anything else, for Darkside to acknowledge of his own free will how deeply he cares for me, and I would like that deep caring to grow into the romantic variety of love, and I would like to marry him and start a family.

I could not trade possessions or money for this. I would, will, trade my right to complete independence for the responsibility to remain with him in a binding of mutual love, respect, and support. I would trade my hope of finding someone better-suited for the surety of knowing that best-suited or no, we're doing our best, determined to make it work. I would trade complete control of my environment for compromise and occasional discomfort. I would trade sole use of my computer for sharing, in perfect love and perfect trust. I would, if it came to it, trade DSL for a dial-up, financial stability for uncertainty. I would trade polite distance for the occasional TMI about bodily functions. (Though there's been a bit of that already...) I would trade loving all of my relatives for coming to terms with the fact that my father-in-law is a bit of a prick, and my husband can share some of those same qualities. I would trade near-complete privacy and being able to set my own hours for sharing a room, and a bed, and zonking out early so as to not keep him awake. I would trade only seeing him at his best to seeing him at his very worst, when he comes home tired and unhappy. I would trade my childless status for... the unknown.

I would trade who I was for who we both know I can be. And I don't think I'd regret it.

My answer still stands. Those are the things that I am willing to trade, that I can trade. That's what lies behind my quiet certainty.

Well, the family birthday party for the outlaws (Sis's family) went well. That Woman, her biological sister, is actually going sane! Everyone is impressed.