Another place to muse...

So, the verdict is in in the Casey Anthony trial, and she was found not guilty of killing and/or abusing her daughter.  She was found guilty of four counts of lying to the police.

I'm okay with this.  In fact, were I on that jury, that's how I would have voted.

That doesn't mean that I think she had nothing to do with it; in my gut, I'm pretty sure she did.  But we can't put people to death because of what our guts tell us; we need the evidence to back it up, and we just don't have that. 

Let's face it; neither side put on a very solid case.  But most importantly, the Prosecution didn't prove theirs, not to mention the Defense's case amounted to diversion tactics.  Again, do I think Casey had something to do with this?  Yes.  Do I think there are things going on in this family that we don't know about?  Yes.  Do I buy that comedy of errors about Caylee drowning in the pool and then Casey and and her father making a bunch of bad decisions?  (He's a retired cop for pete's sake!)  Not for a minute.  But, in my mind at least, the only thing the Prosecution was actually able to prove was there was a dead body in the trunk of Casey's car.  They never proved that that body was even Caylee, much less who put her there.  They weren't able to prove how Caylee died.  If they can't even prove it was homicide, how can they expect a conviction for murder?  Add to that the fact that most of the rest of the evidence was circumstantial at best and a lot of the witnesses contradicted themselves or didn't make sense (Cindy Anthony's search for chlorophyll turned into search for chloroform?  Seriously?  She's a nurse!  She knows a thing or two about biology and chemistry and should know that the two things have nothing to do with each other, even if they are spelled kind of the same.  What a load.  And my favorite: someone picked up Calylee's skeletonized skull, wrapped duct tape around it to keep the jaw in place, then put it back with the rest of the remains and draped her remaining hair over her face.  Huh???) and this thing screams reasonable doubt.

I'm proud that the jury was able to look at the evidence (or lack thereof) and decide that, even though this woman is a liar and candidate for Worst Mother of the Year, they can't convict her of causing her child's death.  It makes me have faith in the system.  What a great celebration of Independence Day.

The only thing that makes me sad is that we may never know what happened to Caylee.  That poor little girl.  May she rest in peace.

Trying. to figure out this new LJ app…

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

My best and oldest friend is KEZ.  We met in Kindergarten and have been close friends since 3rd or 4th grade.  She's one of the few people who I can literally tell anything.

Her mother died today.

It wasn't unexpected; she'd been sick for six months or longer.  Since mid-October, I've been somewhat involved in KEZ's attempts to be there for her.  See, KEZ lives several states away now; she moved there when she got married and she and her husband now have a young son.  So, to come home, she either has to drive ten hours or fly.  She's been trying to get up here every couple of weekends, and to save time she's been flying.  When she flies, she doesn't have access to a car.  So I've been her taxi a lot here lately.  Not that I minded; it's given us a chance to hang out and yak.  And my mother and I watched her son the Friday after Thanksgiving; the one time she and her family drove up.  He's a sweet little boy.  I just wish all of this was for a better reason.

It's a weird feeling, knowing she's gone.  It's like a light has gone out somewhere.  A part of me feels a little empty.

And it's not like I was really close to the woman; she was KEZ's mom; that was all she really was to me.

I don't know; maybe it's empathy.  KEZ is my best friend and she's had a big loss.  I wish I could hug her.

I think I'll hug my mom tonight.

Swiped this from Lady Wolfy's fanfiction.net page...love it!

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

I need a little advice. My mother’s computer (which my dad had made by a local computer shop; it’s not a name brand) finally gave up the ghost for the last time not too long ago. We’d already replaced the hard drive twice, and it had been having what it called “significant hardware errors” for a while. Personally, I think the power supply didn’t like talking to the hard drive, but I don’t have any real proof of that other than intuition.

So the hard drive died for the final time, and, considering the fact that it was 3 years old and only had 512mgs of RAM and she’d been complaining about how slow it was for quite some time, I finally convinced her to get a new one. I told her that for what she wanted to do (email, web surfing, grandchild pictures), that she could get a cheap desktop for around $300. Considering it would cost at least that much to fix, she agreed. I also convinced her to order one from Dell instead of going with my dad to some indy store he’d seen while driving through town (??? I literally told her that I didn’t feel comfortable sending her computer shopping with my dad; he doesn’t know as much about that kind of stuff as he thinks he does).

So we got her an Insperon with 3Gbs of RAM and a 1.5Mhz processor; more that she needs actually, but about the lowest you could get. We were able to get Vista on it; I’ve not heard anything bad about Windows 7, but I’m always leery about going to a new version of Windows until at least the first Service Pack comes out. (Any Win7 users out there? What do you think?) That, and I’ve not used Win7, and I don’t want to be have to be figuring stuff out while I’m trying to help her.

Anyway, on to my question: Probably the biggest thing she uses her computer for is email. On her old computer, she was using Outlook Express, meaning she downloaded everything onto her computer. Now, you need to understand; my mother is computer illiterate. I mean really bad. (I’ve been encouraging her to get a new computer for a while, but she had refused because she wouldn’t be able to get Win XP on a new one because she’d heard so many bad things about Vista. But here’s the kicker; she always called it “XL” no matter how many times I corrected her.) She clicks on everything, signs up for everything, keeps every email she finds even remotely interesting, never deletes her headers (grrr), forwards all these stupid “forward this to 11 people or you’ll have bad luck” messages (double grrr), doesn’t empty her trash… etc, etc. She got ripped off a couple years ago after getting sucked into a phishing scheme (which she blames on the website that was copied, not the phishers).

So, in order to help keep some of that crap off of her computer, I told her she would be better off reading her email on the web instead of downloading onto her computer. Her ISP offers web-based mail, so she wouldn’t have to change her address. Except it’s pretty primitive for web mail, and she hates it. “You have to scroll too much and I can’t find the buttons.” So when her new computer showed up, I set her up with a Yahoo mail account, which looks very much like Outlook and will pull her POP mail, so she didn’t have to change her address. Except she hates that MORE; the ads squeeze in the size of the reading pane and she has to scroll more than on the other site!

So, here’s the long and the short of it: I don’t trust her to download all of that stuff on to her computer, but she hates the alternatives that I’ve found for her. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to just leave her to her own devices because she’s just going to get herself in trouble and then I’m going to have to fix it. Suggestions?

P.S.: Yes, we have a firewall and a virus program and a spamblocker, but none of that is foolproof. Don’t get me started on some of the things she’s done and the arguments we’ve had….

Is there some major divergence in my astrological chart at the moment?  Cuz everything’s falling apart at once.

Things were going well; the concert on Sunday was awesome and I was feeling pretty good for once.  But things started going south Sunday morning, before the concert.  I went to have breakfast and discovered that my milk had gone bad.  #*@$ing refrigerator!  I’m going to have to put some kind of lock on that thing just so I know it’s actually closed!  

So I got all ready to go to the concert; I got in my car and turned the key, and….it wouldn’t turn over.  It sounded like it wanted to; it didn’t spit and sputter the way it sometimes does on a cold day (it was in the 40s, btw, so there was no reason for that).  All the dash lights and the radio came on, but even so, I thought it might be the battery.  I had no time to mess with it, so I just ran back in the house and asked mom if I could borrow her van.

I dashed off, and, like I said, the concert was awesome.  But I was starting to get a headache by the time intermission rolled around, and by the end of the concert, I knew I needed to find a couch.  I spent the rest of the night and both Monday and Tuesday nursing a migraine (read: sleeping on the couch in front of Futurama DVDs).  My hormones have shifted again; I’m fairly sure that’s what’s behind this.   My period is late by a week and I haven’t had any of my standard PMS symptoms.  Yay  <----note dripping sarcasam.

The good news is I had my car looked at on Monday, and it was just a computer glitch that caused it not to start.  The mechanic fixed that for no charge.  The bad news is he said my brakes needed new brake pads: $250.  *Sigh*    

And this morning, when I made up my mind that I was going to go to work whether I felt like it or not (I really didn’t), I crawled from beneath my covers only to find it chilly in my apartment.  That’s not that unusual; unless the heat is actually running, it’s always cold in there (except when it’s hot, but that won’t happen until at least July).  I went to bump it up a couple of degrees to get it to run, but when I got there, my thermostat said 61. !!!  The lowest it should EVER get is 64, and at that time of the morning the lowest it should have been was 67.  I fiddled with the buttons and I heard the switch click, but the furnace never came on.  Unable to do anything as Dad had left to drive bus and Mom was still in bed, I pulled my robe around myself and went to get some breakfast.  Later, I went down to look at the furnace, and there was a light on it that was blinking.  I figured maybe the pilot light had gone out, but I talked to Mom later, and she said that it doesn’t have a pilot light.  I came home from work to hear the furnace running; turns out my thermostat, which is the kind you can pull off the wall, wasn't seated correctly.  *Grumble*

My headache is starting to come back now, [extreme expletives deleted].  Everybody send good wishes my way; maybe we can turn this thing around.

Ugh. What a lousy weekend. I had the worst migraine I’ve had in a very long time. It really pissed me off, too, because I actually started to feel pretty good towards the end of last week. I had plans to clean up my place a bit and gather my stuff to do my taxes. Hah! I somehow managed to get my laundry done and the garbage taken out, but that was it. I spent the rest of the weekend on the couch. Still not feeling all that great. I hope to get at least a few of the things done tonight that I didn’t get done over the weekend.

On top of that, I’m a little worried about Romeo. He refused his breakfast this morning of dry food and gave me the song and dance that he wanted to be fed. Tired of listening to him, I gave up and gave him a pouch of wet food. I went to have my breakfast and after he’d trotted away, I noticed that he’d only licked the gravy off; he hadn’t eaten any of the meat. I coaxed him back over to his bowl and then he ate it. So, I have two theories: either his teeth are bothering him again, or he REALLY has me wrapped around his little claw. I think it’s probably some of each.

But then I came home tonight and discovered that he'd thrown up his breakfast (on the carpeting, of course! My place is almost half vinyl flooring, but could he throw up on that? NOOOOOO). He almost never throws up. I offered him dry food again and he again refused it. He did eat all of the canned food I gave him, not just the gravy. Mom said that her her cat Zoe threw up this afternoon too. I'm hoping there's just a little kitty stomach bug going around and they'll all be back to normal in a day or so....

Swiped this from ladyoneill , from whom I requested a Dick/Kory fic:

The first FIVE people to comment in this post get to request that I write a story of indeterminate length of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level. (If you absolutely can't write, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to offer drawings or icons or something instead.)

A couple of caveats: If I'm not familiar with the universe, I'm not going to write in it.  I'll give you a chance to make another request if I'm clueless about your first.

I DO NOT write slash.  Period.

Don't expect anything long and earth shattering; it'll probably be a ficlet.

Other than that....

Just remember, if you request one, you have to be willing to write some!

Your result for The Fan Fiction Personality Test...

The True Fan

OOC is blasphemy, canon is everything.

Take The Fan Fiction Personality Test at OkCupid

So, I'm having a migraine.  My head hurts and I feel pretty goofy overall.  But oddly, I'm in a pretty good mood.  Usually when I'm having a migraine, I feel crappy in every sense of the word.  Think PMS cranked to 11. 

I'll never understand my body....