:::Spammers, grumble, Spammers:::

Tough and funny and a little bit kind: that is as near to perfection as a human being can be. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

I spent the first part of my morning deleting spam comments. Even thinly disguised comments that appear to be made by a human are spam when they include a pile of links to advertising sites. Just saying.

I've also added moderation to all comments older than three days -- so at least next time I won't have to go back so far to delete things. *sigh*

I woke early this morning to the sound of a loud THUMP! DD had fallen out of bed. I went upstairs to make sure there were no broken bones and she was buried under her covers, but I heard a small, muffled "sorry" so figured all was well.

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I know you all know how much I love my Nook... I love, Love, LOVE my Nook (one really cool thing? If you take it into a Barnes and Noble, there's always some sort of coupon that shows up when you open your Nook ... a couple of weeks ago it was for a free dessert at Starbucks, another week it had a free coffee). You can even go into a Barnes and Noble and read ANY eBook they offer for FREE for one hour (rather like how you can browse a book in the store). It's non-proprietary, you can upload books in several formats without problem or cost. I read on it constantly and it's actually easier on my eyeballs than a regular book.

The reason I'm raving is this: Barnes and Noble now has a Wi-Fi only Nook for $149, and a regular 3G Nook for $199. In all fairness, I should mention that Amazon countered the lower price with one of its own on Kindle, but I'm such a huge Nook fan (and not so much an Amazon fan) that I have to rave about what I love.

Yesterday, I went into our local Barnes and Noble and bought THREE Nooks and THREE $50 BN Gift Cards for the LASR/WC/Aurora anniversary party in August. We are giving them away (so if you've been wanting one, but the bank account says no -- this is your chance). We're having a scavenger hunt starting August 2nd with just over 150 authors. It's going to be a ton of fun and I can't wait! I suspect I made the Nook lady's day, though, by buying three Nooks. Wonder if she sells that many a day usually? *G*

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In Pillar Place yesterday, things started off a bit rocky. We still had two pillars outside The Box on their food: Mu and Epsilon. Apparently that was a mistake, since when I got up yesterday morning, one -- Mu -- was AWOL. I searched, and I searched and I searched ... but caterpillars are pretty tiny and there were lots of places it could hide. I needed to catch it before it started settling in to make its pupa, so crawled around looking underneath furniture and watching where I stepped (I had visions of squishing it ... yuck).

I have a HUGE ficus tree in my office and I started thinking Mu went there to hide, so was looking, one branch at a time, for a pillar. As I circled the thing, I looked down ... and there she was. Half on the floor, half on the heater vent looking completely exhausted. If you consider her size, the six feet or so that she traveled was a LONG way.

We've opted to put them in separate containers to pupate -- not as small as those toilet paper "gizmos", but I taped a paper towel over the lid of our monarch containers and put a stick inside and left them there. As of last night Mu, Nu, Gamma and Eta were all purged and ready to start cooking. Epsilon was HUGE, but seemed disinclined to walkabout. Maybe he did last night -- I'll be able to check once DH is up.

We're watching Alpha very closely since he should be hatching into a butterfly at any time. I'm excited to start seeing these critters! So far, Mu's little jaunt aside, things have been fairly smooth. Here's hoping that keeps up!

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You're Sweet Because You're Zany

You've got a little zing to you, and people appreciate your edge. You would never use your wit to hurt anyone, but you never pass up the opportunity for a good joke. Your take on the world is a little unconventional, and you don't mind entertaining people with your observations. You may not fit perfectly into the mainstream, but you wouldn't want to. You like being different.

The Sorbet Test

Works for me! LOL...

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Monday Mourning

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing. ~Maurice Maeterlinck

Yesterday was a rough day in Pillar Place: Swallowtail ... Both Hannah and Fiona hatched and BOTH were massively defective. Hannah looked like someone had forgotten to iron her wings -- they were about 75% pumped up, but didn't quite make it all the way. Fiona, OTOH, never stopped looking all crumpled as though she'd just climbed out of her pupa. Both were unable to fly. Absolutely broke my heart. I thought that maybe Hannah might figure things out, and decided to let her have a chance -- I put her out in the middle of a field of flowers near my house, but I knew Fiona was a goner so she was humanely euthanized (i.e. put into my freezer for several hours).

The worst part about this is that these weren't the ones we thought might have problems. Carole is the one glued to the netting, and Fiona's box-mate, Greg has somehow broken one of his webbings, too. They are the last two swallowtails we have and I sure hope they emerge healthy.

Everything is quiet (except for lots of milkweed munching) in Pillar Place: Monarch. We haven't found any more eggs or bugs yet, but today we're making another foray into the milkweed near the library. Wish us luck.

Butterfly tidbit: Butterflies taste with their feet. They don't have mouths that allow them to bite or chew, instead they have a long straw-like structure called a proboscis which they use to drink nectar. But the proboscis doesn't have any taste sensors. A butterfly's taste sensors are located on the bottom of its feet. By standing on a leaf, the butterfly can taste it to see if it will be good food for her caterpillars.

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Note to spammers: even if you mask your spam links inside what appears to be a legitimate comment... I'LL KNOW. And it will be summarily deleted. Yes, I read all my comments. Yes, I will find it -- even if it's on an ancient post. So really, just stop it.

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Did more writing yesterday. I actually wrote the ending of something (no, that doesn't mean it's finished. I almost always write the ending first or at least right after the first couple of chapters -- gives me something to work toward) but wonder if having these two get engaged at the end might be too precipitous. Twice I've had reviewers state that they felt my characters needed a "hopefully ever after" instead of a "happily ever after" because they thought things moved too quickly. So... I'm giving this ending some thought.

Anyway, it was good to write.

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Because I Had Nothing Better To Do Today...

I have enabled comment moderation.

This morning I was spammed in Chinese (using Babelfish it seems it may be a private investigation firm... yeah, like I'd hire someone who is spamming a blog) on no less than THIRTY of my posts and it is continuing even as we speak. As quickly as I can go in a delete them, a new one shows up.

So... all comments will be moderated for now until this stops. It's far easier to decline a comment than it is to go in and delete it after it is posted.

I'm sorry. I HATE moderation. I HATE word verification. But more than those, I HATE SPAMMERS.

May all you blasted spammers be relegated to the deepest part of hell.

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Word Verification

I've gone back to using word verifcation for a while... hopefully it will stop the spam from a person using Chinese symbols that I keep getting -- once or twice a day.

I curse all spammers. May they all live eventful lives and find their armpits infested with the fleas of a thousand camels.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr....