Okay...

I'm back, I'm tired, and I'm not happy about a great deal of things, most of which have to do with the conduct of my asshole uncle at the funeral, and some of which just have to do with my own neuroses.

I am very grateful to all of you who reached out to me. Times like this, you find out who your friends really are.

The funeral

The funeral was an embarrassment to my grandmother.

( click here for the carnage )

My goodbye

Granny Sallye always loved word puzzles. Crossword puzzles, find-a-words, the jumble in the newspaper. And she was good at them, too. They seemed to be the only thing to really bring her much joy after my grandfather died, before we realized she was getting sick. I like to think they kept her alert for longer. It was really a horrible sign that she was going when she stopped doing them.

Monday night I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought a find-a-word book, one that looked like the brand she used to get. I wrote her a letter telling her how much I love her and I put it inside the book.

When we got to the funeral home on Tuesday for the funeral, I went up with Mom and I put the book in with Granny. I wanted to put it in her hands, but Mom wanted me to put it beside her instead.

Mom said, "Now she'll have something to do through eternity."
I said, "No she won't, I forgot to bring a pen."

I went to the funeral home office and made them give me a pen. It wouldn't have been right otherwise.

Ready, set, SNARK!!!

(this is not meant to offend anyone, especially on my friends list!!)

Here's my version of the comment-drama currently going on in news with the new limits on posting:

bradfitz: Posting limits start right now. It's my birthday. Gimme money.
random free user #1: You suck!! You're, like, so unfair!! I'm gonna take my ball and go home!!
random paid user #1: Shut up, you big baby!! Free users eat shit!!
random paid user #2: How dare you mess with the Brad!! I <3 BRAD!! BRAD 4-EVA!!!
random paid user #3: *makes a "Happy Birthday Brad" banner that surely eats up tons of the argued-over bandwith*
random paid user #4: If you mess with the Brad I will hax0r your journal!! I am a l33t hax0r!! kthnx
random free user #2: How dare you!! I'm calling my lawyer!!

It's like there are two camps of droolers: the greedy cheapskates and the Brad-drones, drowning out the people who have sensible things to say. It's a drama diva's dream...

Seriously, I'm with alm35 here. Brad and crew need to make a choice. When they want us to be patient with slow service and down servers, we get the "LiveJournal is a big community" argument. But when they decide to make a sweeping change without even mentioning it to lj_dev or any of the other groups first, LJ's a business that has to survive. They can't have it both ways indefinitely. And limiting paid users is just stupid, considering how little of the site they make up. And the sneaky way this was implemented makes people -- including me, I was planning on getting some more paid time because I like LJ and want to support it -- less eager to buy time. I'll end up doing it because I've invested too much time and energy in my LJ to abandon it, but being forced to do it is at odds with the cheery "we're all a big family!!" image that the entry page projects.

Just... damn.

( only interesting if you've been following the news-drama )

Okay, now stop bitching at me! :P

All right, I've reupped my paid account (it's a hell of a lot easier now that you don't have to go through PayPal or anything).

You know what this means:

Synfeeds out the butt!!

What are your favorite synfeeds? Remember, free users can now have up to one point's worth. See, free users do get some perks.

Cool discovery of the day!!

Turns out that I am related to ariedana and dawneywawney by marriage!

Of course, considering the part of Tennessee we're from, the only real surprise is that we didn't figure it out earlier. ;)