Just when I think I’ve heard it all, something to vile and horrific to be true turns out to be true. In this case, it’s a twist on the classic urban legend, where the unsuspecting Mardi Gras tourists are lured into a hotel and wake up to find they’ve had a kidney removed.

In India, that’s not the case. People are selling kidneys on the black market. Poor people are actually being lured in with the promise of money, being paid $1000 by black market doctors, who turn around to sell the kidneys for 10 times that amount to “transplant tourists:” rich people who need kidney transplants and can afford to travel around the world to pay for a black market kidney and an illegal surgery.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to read the news.

From xkcd.com.

So, I got under four hours of sleep last night because my fibromyalgia’s acting up and my back spasmed uncontrollably until 2:00AM. If the zombie apocalypse happens today, you’re all on your own. You’ll find me shambling unmolested among the hordes of flesh eating dead, because they know their own.

After discovering I was subscribed to over 150 blog feeds, nearly all about knitting, I went on a blog diet, ruthlessly cutting anything that I didn’t adore to pieces or that hadn’t updated in the last month. This doesn’t count my LJ feeds, which, for the most part consist of close friends, who for the obvious reason don’t count toward the overall blog total, and a couple of things that feed my inner fangirl.

I’m down to 16 feeds total on a variety of topics: knitting, crochet, humor and vegetarian cooking. They’re all things I actually read instead of skimming (except the one in Finnish, which I “read” for the pictures). I figure if I need more knitting or crocheting inspiration than my current line-up provides, I can do a Ravelry search and not have the continuous time sucking drone of blogs feeds demanding my attention.

Bold the ones you have read and pass it on.

The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club
1- The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2- The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3- Dune, Frank Herbert
4- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5- A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6- Neuromancer, William Gibson
7- Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9- The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11- The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12- A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13- The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14- Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15- Cities in Flight, James Blish
16- The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17- Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18- Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19- The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20- Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21- Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22- Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
23- The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24- The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25- Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
27- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28- I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29- Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30- The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31- Little, Big, John Crowley
32- Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33- The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34- Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35- More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36- The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37- On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38- Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39- Ringworld, Larry Niven
40- Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41- The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42- Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43- Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44- Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45- The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46- Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47- Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48- The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49- Timescape, Gregory Benford
50- To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

My question, as always, remains “Do they give awards at this level of geeky?”

I want one month where I have no physical ailments. I had a migraine (or a hugely bad tension headache, hard to tell which) on Monday and I can’t take anything to help with them. I had the bad reaction with Imitrex. Cafergot and Excedrin Migraine don’t work. Alieve is a joke. It upsets my stomach and only works about half the time on normal pain. All I can do is sleep. At least it’s relaxed a little and I think a trip to the massage therapist might be in order to take care of the last of it, since I’m currently leaning toward it being a bad tension headache vs. a full blown migraine.

I want one winter where I don’t get a flat tire on the coldest day of the year. Last night my passenger side front tire went flat. The tire has a slow leak, which means I need to take it into Collins Road Tire to get it fixed. On the plus side, I was going to meet HR for dinner where I discovered the problem and I’m now the proud owner of a mini air compressor which plugs into the accessory port (aka - the cigarette lighter) on my car and as long as I have power, I can put air in my tire and get it to the repair shop. Given the number of times I’ve had tire troubles, the purchase was long over-due and I was right next to the Mega-Target, so I didn’t have to travel far to make the purchase.

I want bad things to stop happening in threes. Last night, after going to B&N to play Magic with our friend the Man of Stutz, we came home to find the furnace blowing cold air and the house down to 50 degrees F. It was 10:00 PM and you know if you can find a repair tech to come out at that time of night, you’re going to get charged an arm, a leg, and a kidney for the repair bill. HR’s dad came over and helped with it. It could have been really expensive, but fortunately, it was just the pilot light had blown out. Apparently that can happen if a draft comes down the chimney just the right way while the furnace isn’t actively running.

All in all, everything could have been much worse and I’m thankful for that, but I still want one winter without this kind of hassle.

It’s already half past January and I feel like I’ve gotten not a thing done this month. My knitting has stalled, as I’m faced with the prospect of needing to cast on my mom’s arm warmers in order to have them done in time for her birthday and yet I have absolutely no desire to knit arm warmers. Yes, it’s what she wants, but I just don’t want to do it.

On top of it all, I haven’t managed to touch any of the projects I’d hoped to start after the new year. There has been no craft room cleaning, nor any sorting clothes out of my closet to give to charity. I haven’t written a damn thing, and I’m still stalled out on my Doctor Who watching. It all feels too obligatory to me for some reason and that always sucks the joy out of things.

About the only thing that seems to be progressing is my WoW playing, and even that’s more a matter of obligation to friends who want me to be able to do things in the game than actual desire to play.

Tomorrow starts the first day of the Lighten Up Iowa Challenge. I’m captaining a team with five of us, called Los Perderdors, who will be working toward the goal of building more exercise into our weekly schedules. Hopefully that will kick start the rest of everything else and give me some motivation to start moving on the other items on my to do list.

I live.

My cold is down to the manageable level after several days under the influence of DayQuil (which barely does anything and still makes me drowsy) to go to work, and NyQuil at all other times to get some relief from both my symptoms and consciousness, too, as it happens.

My friend, Heather, got me the most amazing and amusing book for Christmas, Zombiemania: 80 Movies To Die For. It’s a total scream, in the hysterically amused sense. It even has an afterward by Mark Donovan, of Hulking Zombie fame in Shaun of the Dead.

Brilliant! All hail our hulking zombie lord!

Genre fans should put this book on their “must read” lists, right after The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. I’ve been enjoying reading the reviews, which include such things as “six degrees of necrophagia” and “It’s that guy from the one with the thing.” It’s been really fun to read and then re-watch the various zombie movies from my collection under the influence of NyQuil, which is to say I’ve been putting the movies in and falling asleep on the couch while they run.

I’m going to shamble upstairs to get some coffee. Who knows? After an exciting day of catching up on the laundry (which is currently in a sad state, thanks to being too ill to do anything but take NyQuil), there might be more zombie films and knitting, too!

It comes in a yummy, melt on your tongue, cherry flavor. Tasty.

Oh, wait. Isn’t it “tasting good” the clue you need to take it?

Today was my first day back to work after the holiday since I took a few days of vacation to parlay my time off into two full weeks, and I just have to say, this cold is kicking my @$$. There shall be no joy in Knitville nor Whoville tonight. I’m taking a nap.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson about Tylenol Severe Cold Sinus: Never try to knit kid mohair into lace while taking this extreme cold medication.

I tried the Razor shell lace scarf from One Skein Wonders in some German kid mohair. I lost the tag but it was the only one in the sale bin at Hearthstone Gifts and Supplies and it was $5 and change for kid mohair. Whee!

At least I figured out I’m too messed up to knit before I screwed up the pattern or the yarn.