Congratulations to (non-LJ-endowed) Dreaming, who got his nursing degree today! He sure has worked hard for it.

(And thanks to surrealestate for calling my attention to this delightful occasion.)

Howdy. I will be upgrading aq.org and moving it to new hardware Sunday afternoon and evening. This means that delivery to email addresses hosted there (including mine) and web sites hosted there will be down for that period.

This does NOT affect polyboston.org or mailing lists on lists.aq.org, since those are on a separate machine.

I’d been on the fence about whether to participate in the LiveJournal content strike, but after reading this post about it by sunspiral, I will be participating. Since I don’t post every day anyway, you wouldn’t know unless I told you, so I’m telling you. ( Some explanation, but not enough :-) )

At least one person at last night’s party wanted to know ( where I got the fish socks I gave cathijosephine )

sionnagh is renting a four-bedroom house on O‘ahu. If you live there and you are a really nice person, you should totally rent one from her! If you don’t live there, but you would like a place to stay for a visit, you should still rent one for her. (At $175.00/week, it’d be a lot cheaper than a hotel, and you’d have access to a kitchen and the company of a very nifty person.) From her post here:

Aloha,

Jay suggested that I post that I still (and again) have a couple of rooms for rent here on Oahu. I'm asking $600 a month, or $175/week. It's very close to the bus line, which will take you around the entire island. If you're interested, I can send pics or more info. I'll probably keep at least one of the rooms for this sort of thing through May.

Hugs,
Tigris

[EDIT: As of December 30, the rooms are still available.]

cathijosephine is looking for a new home for her sweet cat Chickenfinger. Here’s her own post about it.

Really, can you resist this cute little fuzzy face?

[Copied from email I just sent to a mailing list.]

Hi. So I was just down in my basement and I heard some rustling. Turns out there's a skunk in the corner. My renters have been moving stuff out of the basement, so I'm guessing it got in when they left the door open or snuck in while their backs were turned.

Any advice on getting a skunk out of a basement without getting sprayed? My first thought is just to open the door and hope it leaves, but what if it decides it likes it better indoors (as I do)? And what if it decides its family should come join it?

(Cross-posted from polyboston for the benefit of Boston-area poly-friendly people who might show up if I give you the extra nudge. :-)

Hi! Just wanted to remind folks about tomorrow’s monthly Poly Boston dinner at the Alewife Bertucci’s. Details are on the calendar, but the short of it is: 7:00pm at the Alewife Bertucci’s, and it would be nice if you could RSVP so I know how big a table to get us. (Commenting here is fine.) See folks there!

Hi. As announced here, sixmoredegrees.com is back open. Inspired by the now-defunct sixdegrees.com, it’s a way of expressing social links and drawing social graphs, except it’s a bit more whimsical; it lets you express relationships like “is loathed by” and “would do unspeakable things involving runny jello with” as well as the more mundane “has met”, “is partnered with”, and “wait, who is this person, anyway?”

( If you have no interest in this, you can skip the rest. )

sparkymonster and several other wonderful people on my Flist have called my attention to International Blog Against Racism Week. From starkeymonster’s post:

It's International Blog Against Racism Week! YAY!

How to participate? oyceter says...
1. Announce the week in your blog.

2. Switch your default icon to either an official IBAR week icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBAR week icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so. Here's a round up of IBARW icons.

3. Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race in fiction, review a book on the subject, etc. (Linking back here (ibarw) is highly appreciated!)

For inspiration, here are last year's IBARW posts. You can also check out this post for further resources.
...

PSST: It will help a lot on del.icio.us if you title your entry something topical, as opposed to just "Intl. Blog Against Racism Week."

I’m unlikely to manage to actually manage to post anything appropriate, since I’ve been busy enough lately that I haven’t even found time to post about the important stuff that’s happened to me personally¹, but I think it’s a great idea and I wanted to point people at it.

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¹ F’rinstance, I twisted my (other) ankle on Saturday and fell down in the middle of the street. Got an awesome bruise on my thigh from the curb. I’m fine, though; the nice drivers stopped and didn’t hit me, and I’m back to walking almost normally now.