Snapshots of Transition

On Friday I will be the proud owner (or loan slave, whichever you prefer) of a brand new 2008 Dodge Caliber. Right now I'm just the pre-owner of the aforementioned Dodge Caliber. I'm pretty excited about this, although it's a little intimidating too.

Exciting because:

A) It's brand new. I've never, ever owned a brand new car; I'm liking this change in my otherwise mundane goings on.

B) It's roomy. I went from a Bonneville to a Carolla after a car accident. Do you have any idea how small the backseat of a Carolla is? My kids had their knees under their chins in the thing. Seats five adults my ass.

C) It's a stick shift! Okay, so a lot of people won't understand my excitement on this point. But anyone who either used to drive a stick back when they were the norm rather than the exception (or still do drive a stick or have a sportscar of any merit whatsoever) will understand why this is awesomeness incarnate. Manual transmissions are the shit, period.

D) For the size and the room you get and the nice ride, it's friggin' cheap compared to other similar cars.


On the other hand, it's intimidating/confusing/morally antithetical because:

A) It means a car payment. Mind you, it's only for four years and it's not bad comparatively, but it's still a car payment. I haven't had one of those in a very long time.

B) I told myself at one time I would never be caught dead in a station wagon. Of course they call them "crossover" cars now, but let's be honest. Sure it's a cross between a sedan and an SUV. People over 30 - you know it's true! - what is a crossover, really? That's right, ten years ago we called it what it is. And what it is is a station wagon.

C) It's blue. Not dark blue or gray-blue or even that sandy metallic blue. No, it's electric blue. My kids think the color is the coolest thing ever. That alone scares me.

D) Did I mention it's a station wagon?


All in all, I'm a happy car purchaser. Yay for new cars!

My new addiction that is distracting me from writing. Although I wouldn't be writing right now anyway this is at least a good excuse.


My main character and the current RealmRaiders guild leader as decided during the first annual RealmRaiders's Evening Arena Smackdown (along with one of her many pet slaves) -





Alt #1 who is still in full St. Patrick's Day swing accompanied by his bodyguard -





And my baby Alt #2 of which I'm quite fond, except the blond hair :-P -





Seriously, who need to pay for WoW when you can do this for free? ^_^

So for those of you who don't know, although most do, I'm 30 years old and I'm a smoker. Not just a smoker, but a longtime smoker. I don't care for cigarettes really, but I've always said I'd rather smoke and kill myself than not and kill everyone around me.

Having said that many times, I didn't know until this year just how fast they were honestly trying to kill me.

Early on I started getting sick a lot. Then came the chest pains, and then arbitrary swelling of various appendages. Then came sudden bouts of dizziness. The swelling and dizzy spells actually concerned my mom enough to tell me I needed to get in to see a doctor. So I did just as I started having trouble breathing for no good reason. Turns out a have a whole host of problems.

Problem 1: Heart disease. Contributing factors turned out to be long-term anemia and smoking. I've seen my general MD, and I got to visit with a Cardiologist.

Problem 2: Severe anemia. I've known about that for a while, although no one every figured out what caused it. General MD's handling that one too. Bringing me to -

Problem 3: Thyroid imbalance. That's been pinned as the culprit for the aforementioned anemia, which helped progress the heart disease. And last but certainly not least -

Problem 4: Solitary Pulmonary Nodules. The name's a little misleading considering I've got quite a few of the little bastards, particularly in my right lung according to the CT scan I had. The good news is that they're supposedly pretty small each. The bad news is that I have to go in to the Pulmonologist before we determine whether they are benign or malignant to see if it's histoplasmosis (a bacterial infection of sorts) or if it's the early stages of lung cancer. And just checking the stats on lung cancer survival rates is depressing.



I'm hoping my body will stop this silly revolt very soon, because lemme tell ya - it sucks when the body won't cooperate anymore. Not to mention I have two kids to get into college before I can croak.

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Bombs away!!!




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Well, my baby finally played out in the road one too many times. (For those of you who don't know who Lilith was, she was my grey and white tuxedo kitty and the one who had kittens in August.) I came home today and found her about 30 minutes ago, so kadreshina was kind enough to retrieve her for me since I couldn't do it. And it sucks because she was a year and a half old and one of the sweetest cats I've ever met, with a very unique personality. She was kind of like me; she really only became an adult after she had her kids. Up until then, she never stopped being a kitten.

So this is my public farewell to the sweetheart who adopted me rather than it going the other way around. Bye bye, sweetie.

The year's almost over, and I'm in the process of collecting music for my annual end-of-year CD mix, which is something of a tradition. I've never let anyone hear my Year In Music recaps. However this year I'm thinking of making a few for some friends. Just for the hell of it. And because I've actually got some time this weekend and not a lot planned since my work schedule for New Years is shit.

Ah well, back to scanning tracks.

I'm so far behind in my word count, it's shameful. However this is the first year that my lagging word count has not made me lose hope that I can catch up before month's end. Why this is, I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired of not finishing this, or maybe I'm sick of giving up before really giving myself a chance to push back.

Either way, I'm nearly 20000 words behind. And I'm still going anyway. Root for the underdog!