Sometimes Things Do Work Out

So, there are many reasons why this is a tough week. My husband moved out (when I objected to him happening to invite his unemployed new soulmate at dinner time expecting me to feed her too three days in one week). He couldn't understand why that would bother me. Even the poor girl was desperately uncomfortable (and he's told me she hates to be around me - apparently being rude to me is just fine).

Does anyone else need an explanation?

So the same week I file for divorce and have flu-from-hell, along with my two smallest children, and loan my van to my soon-to-be-ex for his birthday campout with his girlfriend and his cronies, I also get to run the Valentine gauntlet in every store.


And I look at my Amazon.com wishlist, to see if there's something there I could get myself that would cheer me up (yes, I did buy several manga, too) and I notice that a ring I'd put on there back when I was still thinking of myself as a married woman is now out of stock. Now, it's not a pricy ring. I like colored stones, always have, and don't much care if they're "genuine" gemstones or semi-precious or CZ or whatever. And I actively prefer silver to gold. Always have. So, when I saw this dramatic ring on amazon.com, I just loved it:

But I can't buy myself a $155 ring. There are too many priorities that preclude it. So, when I went down my wishlist and saw it was now out of stock, I wasn't really surprised. Missed that window, I thought. But I was curious to see if there were other multicolor CZ rings out there. Surely this wasn't the only example!

So, I looked, and, sure enough, there were quite a few. Some were quite nice, though none appealed like the first one I'd seen until I saw this one.

 

Look the same to you? Yeah, me too. And this beauty was a whopping  $38.26.  Heck, even I can afford that, so this was my Valentine's Day gift to myself, as pathetic as that sounds. By the way, if you feel like you MUST spend $155+, the first one is now back in stock.

I did worry that the real thing would be clunky or heavy or muddy or dangerously sharp and catch on clothes or children. But it was gorgeous, fit nicely on my hand and seems very comfortable there. 

So, sometimes things work out after all. And my daughter gets a jewelry box inside another box that she can play with for HOURS.

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Piracy

The down side to going on strike is that one is almost honor bound to cough up a new post after the strike is over or the strike doesn't mean anything.

Unfortunately, the reason I'm not blogging much is sadly still in force and I wasn't sharp enough to come up with a really good topic, but the strike provides one.

I admit it. I've heard the sort of "anti-piracy" legislation's goin' to ruin the internet noise every several years since I first wandered on to the internet. It usually came to nothing for the very good reason that legislating anti-piracy instead of addressing the reasons behind the piracy has yet to work. In the long run, it always fails because the underlying problems aren't better.

When my father first bought a laserdisc player (back in the early 80's), laserdiscs (not to be confused with DVDs) cost $10-30, could be readily copied (but why bother?) when video tapes were running $90-200 a piece for the rental market. Laserdiscs looked cleaner and nicer. Players were expensive, though, and still riddled with bugs. Movie makers were already whining about copyright infringement and copying and piracy at the time. Laserdiscs might have caught on; it was the perfect situation for them to take off until those making laserdiscs thought "Hey, these folks are connoisseurs; they'll pay more not less for movies" and doubled the prices while those making tapes said, "Heck, I bet we could sell these to regular people, not just rental stores, if they weren't so stupidly expensive." Movies started coming out $10-20, laserdiscs went to $20-50 (and then extinct just as DVD's burst on to the scene) and, what do you know, the general public started making video sales as big or bigger than ticket sales.

The lesson seems obvious to me, yet the book vs. ebook industry is doing it again. Just like the music industry did before they started offering mp3s at reasonable prices. You want $0.99/dollar, the consumer will stop buying it because it can be readily found elsewhere at a price that's closer to the value. Crank back the greed and the incentive for something illegal dries up.

Clearly, the industry is not learning quickly.

Still, I was not really getting involved. I didn't think either bill had a high chance of passing (and I feel even more strongly so now), but, I admit, when I saw Wikipedia planning to go dark to protest it, I did more research, enough that I thought it worth my while to put in my two cents.

I'm all for people who own intellectual property making a profit on it. But, offering anyone the opportunity to shut things down without due process strikes me as a dangerous precedent. And it won't change the piracy, but simply turn it in another direction. Until the underlying issues that drive the piracy are corrected, it WILL continue. Meanwhile, turning on watchdogs for the rest of us - well, I like my internet now. I don't want someone screening it beforehand unless I want someone to screen it (and those options exist already). SOPA timeline, participant list, etc can be found here.

And that's the way I see it.

Update: (Wow, that was my 400th post here)!

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On Strike

Today, we are striking against censorship

Join the largest online protest in history: tell Congress to stop this bill now!

Join The Strike!

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Bad Blogger

If you're someone who frequents any one of my three blogs, you've probably noticed that I have not been a good blogger the past few months.

Truth is, I'm still struggling with some things, perhaps more than I should. I tend to have a good head in a crisis and I've been somewhat self-congratulatory that, with the dissolution of the life and future I thought I'd had, I hadn't been more broken up or shut down emotionally. Despite the rather drastic changes, the easy way my soon-to-be ex-husband brushes off our life together, I've been handling the practical aspects and the paperwork because, hey, I'm always responsible for those. For Lee, divorce was instantaneous and painless. Still, I was managing. I thought, "Damn, I'm handling this pretty well."

Well, the practical, handle-the-details coolheadedness I needed to do what needed to be done seems to be wearing off, and the reality of the situation is making me a bit less than practical at the moment. Lee said Friday, "Get over it already," and I realized, I hadn't gotten over it at all, that the past decade of romance I tried so valiantly to believe in was largely in my own mind, as ephemeral as anything I put on paper.  And I haven't really let that sink in.

Pathetic. Humiliating. Meaning I'm not, I fear, good company at all.

So, folks, I'm afraid you'll have to bear with me a bit longer until I'm a little bit less basket-case-ish and have come to grips with what my life has become. Hopefully, I'll show up with a good topic, something less pitiful.

Sorry.

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It's Been a Demotivational Year

As I took down the calendar we bought last year, a custom jobbie we bought through Despair.com (makers of many fine demotivational products), it struck me that the different posters for each month (bought for the humor and/or the cool picture that went with it) were frighteningly prescient in hindsight. Especially given my current circumstances:

January - Destiny - You were meant for me. Perhaps as a punishment.

February - Madness - Madness does not always how. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "Hey, is there room in you head for one more?"

March - Pessimism - Every dark cloud has a silver lining but lightning kills hundres of people each year who are trying to find it.

April - Power - Power Corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it rocks absolutely, too.

May - Trouble - Lucky can't last a lifetime unless you die young.

June - Sanity - MInds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can borrow mine.

July - Tranquility - As long as there are children in the world, there will never be any real peace.

August - Regret - It hurts to admit when you make mistakes - but when they're big enough, the pain only lasts a second.

September - Vision - How can the future be so hard to predict when all of my worst fears keep coming true?

October - Worth - Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.

November - Wishes - When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destory all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor.

December - Insight - When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The smart left a long time ago.

So I'm not doing that this year. My New Year's resolution is to restructure a life that had largely been centered on my husband and my kids. Kids are still a priority, but my own life is just a bit unstable at the moment.

Next year, my calendar are all cool pictures of the moon. Hopefully, there's nothing prescient about that. Hope your year was better than mine and your next year is a real winner!

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Stephanie Sings Again!

Stephanie was asked to provide all the vocals for a local music teacher. Different instruments in the background are all his students. The voice, well, it's all Stephanie the Younger.


For your mp3ing pleasure. If you only listen to one, make it "Santa Baby." So beautiful.


Away in the Manger

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Feliz Navidad!

White Christmas

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

We Three Kings of Orient Are

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Santa Baby (really, my favorite)

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

They're on my website, too:

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Today's Philosophical Question

If someone falls in love, fully and truly, for the first time, believes in it whole-heartedly (soulmate, epiphany, finding each other through eternity, all that jazz) to find out (a decade later) the other person just wasn't really that involved and never saw it that way and, well, goodbye...

Doesn't that argue the first someone really doesn't know squat about love?

Does this mean she isn't qualified to write about it any more (given that it was an element in all her work to date)?

What do you think?

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