Post Something Positive Here...

Congratulations, Cat!

~Ulrika~

Moved to Off-Topic.

OK... ok... what do you want to know?

You cant go... you just cant... who would I hate then? (joke) Every hero has to have an evil nemesis... don't do this to me!!!! I neeeeed you!!!!

Seriously... good luck with the baby... lots of stuff changes when you have your first. Hope you got lots of sleep before the birth.

I heard about that game, Catherine! Just yesterday, I think. I used to play Yahtzee and it was fun. I don't remember how, but any variation of it in SL sounds fun.

Ulrika, you may be able to spend more time on the forums and in the game than you think. Little babies - you spend so much time just kind of lying AROUND with them. Feeding them, holding them, etc. My girls are 15 and 18 now, and I didn't really get online, or at least not into anything very use-ful baby-wise, until the littlest one was - oh, I don't remember. Maybe two or four or something.

Anyway, once I did I was SO pissed off that I hadn't had it all along. I would have had my computer in the kitchen, and would have sat on line while doing all that feeding and whatnot, talking with groups like Moms Online. I was the only one home with babies that I knew irl, and boy, that would have been a wonderful source of both friendship and information during those long hours at the high chair.

You may already have a kid and know this, but it's when they get MOBILE that the diaper really hits the fan. [edited to say, I see now you said it was your first.]

Ask some questions about me, Ulrika! (Nice ones.) I love to answer questions, and I'm usually the one doing all the asking of them, lol. (Actually, I think most everybody likes to answer questions about themselves, when they are in the mood to.)

coco

I'm not Ulrika, but... You've said you get paid a lot to write for a living. If you can answer without giving away too much RL info, What kind of writing do you do? Fiction, non-fiction, technical..? General category and some non-specific descriptions is fine.

My eldest brother is a writer and PhD student (dissertation only, finally) at Tulane, and I've done some proof-reading of his stuff. (I actually try when it's his work, and not mine here.) Basically, trying to punch holes in his plots, posing any screaming questions he may have thought he answered and didn't, and generally ripping his work to shreds to make him think harder about it... So writers always interest me. That's the reason I ask.

Ulrika-- where's your forum AV pic from? It looks like it's from anime or something.. that would be a positive thing, I guess.

It's all non-fiction, alas. Someday, once the kids are gone, maybe something different. For the past eight years or so of it , I've had a permanent gig with one magazine; i.e., yearly contract and all, and I can't write for anyone else. But then I took a year's hiatus to get my mother settled into assisted living home, and stuff like that, and I should be getting back to work. Problem is, I don't want to. Okay. MONDAY I will. I promise.

Subjects - largely health, plus a very tad bit of law and a smattering of relationships/sex. After I became a mother, things tended rather naturally toward family things - not articles about kid issues, per se, but family dynamics. I loved doing those. Plus health all along.

Monday. My problem is I've been doing this quite a while and I really WOULD like to quit. I mean, really quit, not just a hiatus. So I think Monday I will either **** or get off the pot about it. I think I'll just bloody flip a coin and be done with the decision. I picked writing as a career so that I could stay home with the kids when I had them. My mother was divorced and worked all my life, and though she did a terrific job of it and it also made me an independent and self-sufficient person, I did get lonely, and wistful for a father, and had a lot of responsibility, and I didn't want that for my own kids, if I could avoid it. Hence, the stay-at-home career. I've been lucky, let's face it.

Thanks for asking! I've interviewed a million people and I love doing that, but everybody likes talking about themselves, when they're in the mood, and I'm no exception, lol.

What kinds of fiction does your brother write? And what is his PhD in? My favorite author hands-down for the past ten years or so has been Dean Koontz. Only one book of his did I not fly through, spellbound all the while.

coco

His PhD is in English/Criticism/Deconstructionism. He can rip apart a classic novel in 5 minutes flat and tell you what each indivual part, sentance, word means. Quite frankly, he gives me a headache. Especially when he gives me books to read, and I tell him it sucked, and he says, "I know." ...Then why give them to me?!

He writes a variety of styles of fiction. From a modern murder mystery based in the BDSM community (which the research was FUN to help with!) to pulp style noir tales. One of my favorites of his is a pulp style crime caper, but with aliens and government conspiracies. (Imagine a blend of X-Files, Hitchcock and Ed Wood, with quite a bit of humor and prose thrown in.) I think his novels/stories impress me the most because I know what an academic he is, and how those tales show his more whimsical side. Also because he's brilliant with the turn of a phrase, and using periodic terminology in sparing doses. Enough to impart the feel of the era, but no so much you have to Google the meanings.

Cowboy Bebop, Faye Valentine isn't it?

I can't sleep at all right now. I'm uncomfortable and grouchy. I think that's why I've been such a bear in the forums the past few weeks (even more than usual).

Thanks for the kind words though, Billy.

~Ulrika~

That's what I've been told but I want to prepare for separation with SL just in case. I'm secretly hopeful that I'll still be able to be around a bit.

OK! Do you believe in God and, if so, which flavor? Seriously.

~Ulrika~

It's Faye from Cowboy Bebop. Her image was suggested to me as a possible forum icon, when I first started posting, as my avatar has a black bob and large anime-like eyes.

How about your forum AV image?

~Ulrika~

I didn't see this, when I wrote my reply. Yes! You are correct.

~Ulrika~

Yes, I do Ulrika. As to which flavor, I pretty much believe in all of them.

coco

Ferran, I think you would have noticed if Siggy had been living with us in Belize. If nothing else, the booze would have disappeared faster. Besides, everyone knows Jonq is the one we plan to hit on.

Ulrika, thanks for one of the best WTF laughs though I've had this week.

For the prurient, Ferran and I are long-time RL friends, business partners in Phobos Design, and the rest is our business.

No, I have a better, more explanatory answer. My grandparents on one side were Assembly of God, my grandparents on the other side - the mother was Jewish and the father Catholic. My great grandfather was a preacher and my grandmother was the pianist for Assembly of God. My mother was born into Assembly of God, of course, and became an agnostic, and a Unitarian for one period of time, and considers herself an agnostic to this day. My father was, well nothing I guess, I'd have to ask him, as he was orphaned at ten and I never saw him practicing anything.

My brother was an atheist and my sister-in-law was a somewhat non-observant Jew. We both attended Assembly of God with our grandparents in the summers when we were kids, and Unitarian with our mother for a period of about three or four years; plus I was encouraged to visit all the churches of friends who wanted me to go with them. We were both baptized Lutheran when we were little, because my grandparents wanted it, I guess, and the Lutheran church happened to be the one nearest the house.

In high school I attended youth group at the Unitarian Church with friends down south, mainly because we had very interesting classes; and also attended Catholic mass fairly often, as I had Catholic friends up north. My husband and I were married by an Episcopal priest, who happened to be friends and neighbors of my mother. By the time we got ready to adopt, we had already picked out an Episcopal church for our babies.

After we got the kids, who, as I say, were from Catholic Social Services, they were both baptized in the Episcopal church and the oldest one attended preschool there. Then we changed to another preschool, offered by a nearby Lutheran Church, and the girls had such a wonderful time there that it made sense to switch to Lutheran. When we moved from there, we found another Lutheran church, and they were in the choirs of both churches, and eventually were both confirmed as adult Lutherans in ninth grade.

Before my mother got debilitated enough to go to the assisted living home, I managed to even get her agnostic self to be baptized, also "for the sake of the kids," but let me tell ya, she has been in the hospital sometimes, and the last time she was there, she thought she was gonna die, and looked so heavenly and beatific (I think that's the right word) when the pastor came in and started giving her communion, I realized she thought "this is it," and we had to assure her it wasn't last rites, lol. Then she started looking a lot more normal, haha.

My own religion/spirituality however, is a lot more complex than any of the above would suggest. But yes, I believe in God; I just think there are a lot of equally valid definitions of God.

coco (that was fun!)

People without sig lines.

Sig lines can be turned off in the conrtol panel.

I'm surprised nobody did this, five pages into the thread:

http://www.somethingpositive.net/ - Somethign Positive!

Yes im bumping this thread, just because i didn't see the need to make a new *something positive* thread, and i absolutely have to post my positive or im going to burst.
(also since i live in a very small town, they would probably put me away if i went up on the roof and screamed it out)

I just got word back from our doctor that the results of my sons tests on the large suspicious birthmark he had removed recently, contained nothing bad whatsoever

Whooo....phew..

That sure is positive My!!!

Great Great Great!! hugs