how do you live so happily while i am sad and broken down?

I bought my first laptop in 1998, and using the free CD from Best Buy, I signed on to AOL and began my first foray into the wild and woolly place that was the World Wide Web.

There was a lot of confusion about what this Information Superhighway was, what it could do, what its ultimate purpose was. (Here is the answer to that) But one thing was for sure: we weren't using our real names for this. I remember picking out my first username - showing my state pride & pointing out that in my early twenties, I was still uncertain about being away from everyone and everything I knew. Over the years, I've tried different ones out for size as I built my first web page, posted onto my first message board, joined my first online dating site. Then in 2003, on a slow afternoon onsite in Winnipeg, vixalicious was born, and that has been my online identity ever since. If you google it, seven of the first ten links will point you in my direction.

But now, the online world is changing. It has gone mainstream. My parents are on facebook. Newscasters awkwardly fumble to tell viewers what twitter hashtags to use. So now I have three online realms: 1) Fannish world: LJ & DW; 2) Online dating - linking to nothing else I've ever done; and 3) Facebook, twitter, and tumblr - all the public face of Real Life Me.

The only problem with that is that I didn't understand the change when I was setting everything up. My twitter and tumblr usernames are set to vixalicious, my email on facebook points to it. I have multiple email addresses that are set up to forward to my main email, which is, again, vixalicious. I could then choose which one I reply from, but now with my smartphone I can't; if I reply on my phone, it comes from vixalcious. So basically my family, friends, co-workers, and random people I've met are all one google search away from finding my fannish life. And that makes me uncomfortable.

Option A: Let it go. Continue hoping that no one will be curious enough to search it based on the link they see on my facebook profile, and laugh it off when someone asks about my weird email address.
Option B: Change my email accounts around so that my name account is the main one, and vix routes to it. Annoying because I'd have to move my contacts around, and I'm not sure what would happen with all my calendar stuff.
Option C: Rename my twitter and tumblr accounts, and switch my email around; possibly even create a new email to match that could be given to everyone. Giant pain in the arse, but gives the greatest level of protection.

I am not sure yet what I'm going to do. Still mulling it over...

So I finally got around to setting this up (on one laptop anyway). Does anyone know if there's a way to get your icons to match up when crossposting from Dreamwidth to LJ? I've looked on the faqs, but can't seem to find anything that mentions it.

In other news, I re-watched Julie & Julia tonight - I've blogged for years, no one has wanted to publish me! :( But still, a cute movie.

ETA: Well that was stupidly easy. If the keywords match exactly, it posts. I'm a dork.

No, I haven't given up on this. I will complete it! Even though I've spread it out over 3 months now.

Day 26: Your week, in great detail

Monday, March 1:
Woke up feeling not so great, with a bad headache. Worked all day, nothing too exciting. Then I skipped tennis practice since I was feeling not so good. I ran over to Michaels to buy paper for my photo album, and then went grocery shopping. I was going to get myself dinner at Moe's, but I missed their operating hours by about ten minutes. Came home, fixed myself dinner, worked on my photo album.

Tuesday, March 2:
Woke up feeling feverish and clammy. I took my temperature, and it was at 99. I was actually relieved, because that explains why I'd been in such a bad mood; I'm always rage-y when I'm getting sick. Finished up work early, so I worked on my photo album. Made myself some soup.

Wednesday, March 3:
Still tired, but feeling better. Worked - did some support call work, held my two training sessions for the week. Found out that Bob Bryar really has left MCR, very sad. Worked captions for my photo album. Stayed up far too late faffing about on the internet, re-tagging old journal entries.

Thursday, March 4:
Got up and ran to my physical therapy appointment for my carpal tunnel. Last appointment, yay! Grabbed lunch from Willy's, and came home. Worked on support calls all afternoon. Completed the embellishments on the photo album. Was safety person for my friend Katherine for her first eHarmony date; she was not kidnapped, yay!

Friday, March 5:
Worked on support calls in the morning; annoyingly I have 5 going right now (this is not my actual job, just helping out another department) which are basically resolved but am waiting to hear back from the client to confirm that what I've told them actually worked. Then did my actual job in the afternoon, four hours of conference calls, an hour and a half of paperwork. Took a super quick shower, and ran to tennis drills. Went out to dinner afterward with Katherine, our regular Tennis and Tequila outing at a local Mexican place. Came home after and put the photo album together, finished, yay!

Saturday, March 6:
I took a day for myself. Slept in til noon, didn't really get up at that point. Worked on tagging old LJ entries, read a blog by a woman who gave up her career to move to Hong Kong with her boyfriend, did laundry, cuddled cat. K came down after work, and we went over to my friends' house for an awesome vegetarian dinner (fake chicken cordon bleu, rudabega (sp?), asparagus, and homemade rolls, with pears and caramel ice cream for dessert, plus yummy lemonade cocktails!) and a movie - Girls Will Be Girls - which should totally be a cult classic, it's hilarious. Hint: none of the girls are actually girls. Came home really late.

Sunday, March 7:
K got up to leave for his parents' house in Florida for spring break early. After he left, I went back to bed until noon. Still tired, but not so hungover as I probably should have been (yummy cocktails were yummy) thanks to copious amounts of water ingested throughout the night. Personal computer wouldn't start; took battery out, started up. Had to restore, screen is not working right (flickers, goes dark, etc). Backed up files in case of premature death; will probably take it in to Best Buy sometime this week. Ran to play tennis, sort of won - I won the first set 7-6, and then half way through the second set, when the score was 3-3, my opponent forfeited due to fatigue (she has had a cold this week.) I am happy to have the points, but it was a bit of a let down. One of the girls on my team was playing a match at the same time, so I stuck around to watch the end of her match, and then we went to dinner. I came home, and have planted myself on the couch, and that pretty much brings us up to date.

( Future Days )

Mostly because tonight, for the first time ever, as far as I can recollect, I made soup from scratch. And it was edible! It was a recipe typhoo put up last year, for sweet potato and lentil soup. It's actually good, even though I didn't entirely follow the recipe because tomatoes are yucky. Next time I think I might try substituting something in their place, like red pepper or snow peas.

Also, I finished the basic layout of my France sabbatical photo album, meaning all the paper is glued down and the photos are attached. Tomorrow I will work on captions for the photos, labels, that sort of thing, and then finish it up with the embellishments. Then all that remains is putting the pages in the actual album! This one went pretty fast. I think I started it somewhere in mid February, and really have done most of it in the last few days.

And I ordered prints of the photos for January and February stuff for this year, so that should get here right around the time I finish up! Yay!

Also, in accordance with one of my goals for the year, I am going back through old journal entries and updating my tags. I am finished with 2003, and working on 2004. I had forgotten how long I'd had this thing!

Off to crawl into bed...

So today I seem to be doing.... naaaaaaaaaathing.

I am ok with this. So far I have slept in til noon (for certain values of sleeping in. Thanks, cat.), caught up on facebook and LJ, tried to reload my customized mood theme only to realize I didn't save the files, downloaded a ton of mood themes from frostianmoods, and now I'm trying to figure out how to host them on photobucket.

My plans for later in the day include:

*possibly going to Pike's to try to find a plant that isn't toxic to cats. I keep buying them, then bringing them home and finding out they could kill Cinnamon if she eats it. I am growing some herbs from seeds though; we'll see how that goes. It was a kit with chives, basil and parsley. I am most excited about the parsley, and of course that's the one that isn't growing so far.

*get a salad from the Mexican place I like.

*grocery shopping. I'm planning to go late in the day, so that everyone else will be watching the Super Bowl.

Aaaaaaand that's about it. I have to figure out how many moodthemes I can have on my hosting site for free.

Ok, so today was kinda crap. I downloaded about 6 file recovery programs and none of them could see my NAS drive. So then I had the brilliant idea that I could just hook up the drive to my laptop by USB... except I don't have a USB to USB cable. I ran to Walmart and bought what I thought was one, but it turned out to be an adapter. Oops. Who needed that $15 anyway? Then I ran to Best Buy, and the guy there said that it was much more complicated than that and rambled for a while while I pretended to understand him. It always amazes me how easily I'm thrown by things in those situations. He kept asking me if I had a WEP. Only he was saying it Double U Eee Pee, instead of whep, like a word. Anyway, long story short too late, it's to difficult to get the files.

So I'm downloading them again. Those of you in bandom will understand the horror of this - most of these songs were stuff I'd downloaded from bandombigbang. On the plus side, all the rare mp3s I'd paid to download from Paste Magazine were still available.

And I'm going to start backing up my NAS now.

Also I had to put soft paws on Cinnamon tonight because they'd all come off, and now she hates me. Want to know how to make a bad day worse? Get your cat to hate you.

So I finally got around to putting up the stuff from DragonCon, check it out :D

DragonCon 2009 Barry Bostwick on Supernatural guest spot

DragonCon 2009 Alan Ruck talks about being on Star Trek

DragonCon 2009 Louise Fletcher & Bruce Davison on Worst Acting experiences


Photos!

I promise to put some sort of post up that has something to do with me sometime soon.

I'm back. I've gone from skip=400 to current on LJ tonight, and found out that Panic at the Disco is splitting up and LoudTwitter is no longer posting my twitter stuff on LJ and that the internet just generally sucks right now. I am sad.

Also, I miss my cat.

More soon about my vacation and more crazy cat-lady adventures and stuff but now? Bed.

How do I take an mp3 and cut it down? I have one that has all this talking before it gets to the song, and I want to get rid of it before I put it on my iPod.

So I had a check up with my doctor today from my little hospital trip. All is well, and I always come away from my visits realizing how awesome my doctor is. Today's notable things - I had to have a sunspot burned off, so that's not good. Pale skin for the lose, there. Also, he vetoed that Breastlight thing I posted about a while back. :(

ETA: Also, dilemma - my cordless phones have stopped working, and I believe it's due to the batteries. Cost to replace the batteries - $64. Cost to buy new phones - $80. I hate to buy something rather than repair, but I'm worried that if I shell out fo r the batteries, it might not turn out to be that that was wrong. Ugh.