Well, I got some good news about my daughter. They did an MRI, and didnt find a growth in her brain, like they feared. They now think it was allergies putting pressure on her brain causing the problems. So she is on allergy meds, and hopefully things are looking up.

When I logged in earlier today I'm sure I saw a new story by Nancy Cole. Like the favourite morsels on my dinner plate I elected to save it for later while I took care of other internet 'duties'. Now it's gone! What a disappointment.

I hope it's merely to receive a little more polish before releasing it to the hordes ... or am I really going illusional?

Robi

...Live! http://www.flightradar24.com/

[EDIT Unsurprisingly as news of the site has spread rapidly today, the server is very busy. You may need to refresh a few times before it will let you in.... the config panel is supposed to have a user count, but whenever I've been in today it's stated "Too many users!"]

So far, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden appear to have closed down their airspace.
Helpfully, the Health Protection Agency have advised there's no health risk from the plume (unless you're flying a plane through it...)

Here's apparently what the Captain of the 1982 flight in which all four engines temporarily failed told his passengers - talk about understatement!

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are all doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

So why do I feel three days older than dirt? I'm so frustrated right now with the VA, with life, with damn near everything actually. I won't go into any of that in this blog, since you all have your own problems to deal with. Remember that BUTTON story that Grover posted? If that damned button was right here, right now, I'd jump all over that thing... in a freaking heartbeat, and have NO regrets about it after!

Well, my writer's block has ended, and I am back to writing again. Glad thats over, whew! I think I will get a hold of the gender specialist next week, if i can. It feels right.

Watching this video reminded me of a time when the world was new and bright and I was young and hopeful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QP-SIW6iKY&NR=1

The wall had just fallen a couple of years before and it was a time when we all wanted something better than the clusterfuck we've got...

2 songs that meant a lot to me then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDSh5wUtXt4&feature=related

I wanted to give yawl the 1989 video, the one that gave me hope for a better world back then, but I think this one is more appropriate. Sadder, wiser, but still hopeful.

Normally I don't do this, but I felt so moved that I just had to pass this along. I don't know how familiar you all are with the hit Disney movie, "Mulan", but it's been one of my favorites ever since it first released.

It's based on the legend of Hua Mulan, and tells the story of a girl who cross-dresses as a man to join the Imperial Chinese army to keep her father safe. Prior to this incident in the animation adaptation, she has a disastrous run-in with "The Matchmaker".

N.J. Elementary
School Cancels
'Cross-Dressing'
Fashion Show

www.foxnews.com/us/2010/04/13/nj-school-cancels-cross-dressi...

A school
superintendent in
New Jersey says a
"misunderstanding"
led an elementary
school teacher to
mandate that all
students -- including
young boys -- dress
as women in a now-
canceled fashion
show to honor
Women's History
Month.

The Working Girl Blog #5: Having lunch at the office, or maybe I should just keep my door closed

I spent the morning with my three team leads, talking about user requirements, and the fact that we had some questions that only the client can answer. Actually, a whole lot of questions. I had a short five minute talk about it with the boss. The upshot of it was was that all four of us are on our way to Richfield, Minnesota tomorrow.

Sorry, been busy.

Find Chapter 7 of SECOND CHANCE up on my site: http://tanyastales.yolasite.com/wip--second-chance.php

At long last we have
a sufficient quantity
of these so that each
person may have one
of his own.
Guard it with your
life. These TUITs have
been hard to come
by, especially the
round ones.
This is an
indispensible item. It
will help you to
become a much
more efficient
worker.
For years you have
been saying, "I'll do
that as soon as I get a
round TUIT."
Now that you have a
round tuit of your
very own, all those
things that have been
needing to be
accomplished will
surely get done!

There is a school of thought which states that the Daily Mail is engaged in an ongoing project to classify every inanimate object into those which cause cancer, and those that prevent cancer.

Perhaps not quite as daft as Facebook increasing your risk of cancer (!), apparently turning on a light when you wake up to relieve yourself in the night can cause it...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1265277/Cancer-dan...

There are lots of things to say about Afghanistan's plains, but I think Metallica has done something really important here and I wanted to share the video with yawl.

I might write a story to go with this, but honestly, I think anything I might add would be a pitiful effort beside the story they tell. This is something worthy of Kipling.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MetallicaTV#p/a/u/0/mRitfbhITLM

Mrs. D's biopsy has been postponed until next Tuesday. The lack of urgency and the well-wishes and personal testimony by some here would seem to indicate what everyone has been so encouraging about - it's merely precautionary at this point and that's a huge relief for all of us here. Thanks again for your prayers and thoughts and encouraging words. Andrea

The video is from a STNG episode which had Ryker falling for an androgenous person from another world who's civilization frowns on having only one gender... in fact, they consider it a crime and they have a "cure" for the perverse members of their civilization who commit the crime of having tendencies of being only one gender.

The defense speech given by Soren, the love interest of Ryker, could be delivered by any one of us, whether we're TG, TS, CD, TV, IS, or whatever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXwWwaBMxK8

Watch, listen, and tell me what YOU think.

Hugs and love,

if I wrote a story with this plot. My ex-wife and her husband are spending a few days staying with my wife and me. Last night we had a house concert in our living room (we are avid folk music fans and producers) and were talking with the artist at dinner. He was telling how he almost married a woman, but she called it off at the last minute when she realized she was a lesbian. Now she and her spouse are good friends with the musician and his wife.

When the heck did reality veer off into cliche filled fiction?

My apologies. Earlier this year I accidentally deleted all of the pictures in my file. Their absence, coupled with the references in commentary and blogs and stories, has affected the database. I removed references and/or restored pictures in all of the stories. As older stories of others to which I provided commentary appear in the Random feature, I am deleting references to the pictures that were deleted in order to help repair the problem.

I want to just curl up and cry right now. I'm sorry. I know I said I wasn't going to post another blog so soon, but I need this. God, I need this.

Coming back to the top here to say, I changed the rating because of language. I don't regret what I said. I needed to say it. Just a fair warning in advance because Zoe's PMSing in overdrive.

Last night after I posted my previous entry, I curled up in bed and watched Top Gun. It helped a little, but there was this nagging feeling that I just was not doing enough.

I honestly cannot remember right now if I mentioned this in my blog, in a response, or in a PM, so in case it's the latter I'm going to go ahead and explain it here before I get to the weird dream I had last night when I did finally sleep ;-)

Danielle J. after getting upset at what she regarded as offensive comments on one of her stories wrote a blog that was unpubbed by volunteer editors for TOS violations. After some discussion, the editors unpubbed Danielle's stories at her request. They were not deleted by Danielle J as I at first thought when I woke up and got involved and saw the stories were not listed under her name.

Her blogs and stories have been restored to BC, except only the blogs that were part of the problems.

A recent study from the Queensland University of Technology shows blondes earn 7% more on average than women with other hair colours, and tend to marry men who earn on average 6% more than other women's husbands.
The survey of 13,000 women showed that the difference in pay was not connected with other factors such as height, weight or education.

On the other hand, a study by Lycos in 2008 showed that 78 of the world's top 100 billionaires had wives or long term girlfriends with brunette or raven hair...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/09/2868901.htm

Ok, author question: Is it your Muse trying to tell you something when you have the same story/dream (sorta) for 4 days running?

There used to be a popular stories, current and all time link whatsit on the right. Is the removal to do with the other problems?

By the way, I think that Erin and and Bob have done wonders to keep things going; a lesson to another, not so good but well known site which went down for slightly longer.

Hugs
Sue

Well, i had a moment at work that reminded me the how powerful a "girl moment" can be. I had been really struggling with depression, and yesterday one of my co-workers (who i have given some of my story) was talking about working at a sexual aide shop, and I asked about shoes, and ended up telling her about the mules I bought. I know its weird, but for just a moment, we were just 2 girls talking, and it toataly lifted my depression. Meanwhile, I am going to be busy for a bit working on my next story. I will check in, but probably wont be on much untill its done.

I was over on FM and came upon a story by Ron Dow75 that had me laughing my socks off. It had aliens, a cloned mind in an alien female body, and a father who thinks his child has gone off the deep end. Heres a link: www.fictionmania.tv/stories/readtextstory.html?storyID=31959...

I am still in shock. I don't know what to do. It takes these things a while to sink in with me, some sort of delayed reaction or something, perhaps owing to a head injury that I suffered while I was practicing my diving skills out a third story window as an infant of 3.

Update - Apr 7 4:51 PM PDT - The site is back, in most of it's glory. The problem turned out to be the voting module not being compatible with the latest release of the database software. So, no voting on stories until I figure out a replacement module or they update their code. And no reporting on old votes, either. Sorry.

Most everything else has been turned back on (or will be) except: reporting comments to moderator (flag for administrator) - that module conflicted with the one that makes Random 5olos possible so it had to be taken up into the mountains and sacrificed to an angry god, sorry. Also, the little clock at the top of the right column that showed what time the server thought it was had a problem when the updates to the search index was run, don't ask me how but the clock interfered and until someone writes better code than my own jackleg module (I wrote that one) we'll have to do without the clock. Isaac says hi.

Many thanks to Bob who did the major work on this debug. We should buy him a bag of chocolate or something, he likes chocolate. :)

Hugs,
- Erin

Okay, no, I'm not asking the question. Didn't mean to use a flaming headline to attract your attention, either. Sorry. I just wanted to repost something I wrote in response to Dorothy Colleen's now-deleted blog posting.

I used to use SKYPE a lot; spending hours talking to my friends. I used to talk to one of my friends in Qatar, who is a patron of BC, and another who lives in Saudia, plus several people here in the US. Then the service overseas, began to gradually deteriorate, and then the finally in the states. It got so I kept it on and mostly talked only to those who called me on it, if the service was working that day.

On Cross-dressing and Transgender

There are, in my opinion, a number of levels to cross-dressing and transgendered tendencies. (For the sake of this essay, I will only deal with Male to Female, mostly because that’s the side I know best).

I received my communication from the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC, this afternoon informing me that I do not measure up to the selected criteria. I am apparently of the type that is a risk of becoming an illegal alien.

then why can't someone invent a hanger that will keep a wide necked blouse from ending up on the floor? Ever since men decided that staring down a woman's cleavage was a desirable option, designers have made blouses that have necklines approximately the circumference of a small city so they can peer down into the the Valley of Flesh. So why are even those wide hangers with the little indents for straps on them still too small to keep a blouse securely on them?

Well, I feel like a coward. I was going to go to my local pride center again tonight as dorothy, but after i got ready, i was overwhelmed by anxiety. I was trying my best to force myself out the door, when I saw a kid go by outside, and just couldnt make myself leave the house dressed. Sorry folks, I feel like i let you guys down, like i am going backward instead of forward. Sigh.

The penultimate posting of the Cynthia Chronicles is now up. To me, Chapter 8 represents the most important chapter in Cindy's life since her first encounter with The Wizard many years before. There are several chapters and tales under construction that may eventually appear in The Cynthia Chronicles - Volume 2. These will follow the further adventures of the group as they go through college and beyond. We will find out what the major motivation has been behind The Wizard and his group's actions.

To all of you who have been wondering if I have fallen off the face of the Earth, I can honestly say that gravity works on me too and I am still here.

Pen's mum's funeral was held on Thursday and I have been busy helping with the arrangements, most notably, the Order Of Service booklets. My job was to produce pictures of Rosamond that would hopefully show her as we best remembered her and from the feedback and number of people who were keeping their copies, it was mission accomplished.

I noticed someone has been reading Who Is Sylvia and voting. Thank you for letting me know you enjoyed the story, whoever you are.

:) Portia

Someday I will make it all better.

I am just not satisfied at all as to the action, dialogue or anything for this next chapter. It's as though the events in my head, the one you are waiting to read, are toying with me all by themselves.

Well, I went to put on my forms last night, and one of them has decided it was time to develop a tear in the form. I've temporarily used a tip from the The Breast Form FAQ 4.0 at http://www.blooberry.com/bformfaq/index.html using the adhesive parts of band-aids, but I'm quite sure that is a temporary fix.

Unfortunately when I went to the site I have bought them many times before "www.4transgenders.com" and they are no longer there. It comes up to a search site that is definitely not what I was looking for.

Can anyone recommend a reputable site I can use to replace them?

Hugs,

On his blog today, Andrew Sullivan posted this little YouTube gem from The Harvard Sailing Team, a New York comedy troupe.

The video runs about 4 minutes and can be found by clicking here.

I know this has nothing to do with TG elements, but I know a lot of you are computer savvy, as I am not.

Yesterday, my computer somehow caught a cold. A trojan horse or virus, I'm not sure which, was acquired. I called the local tech support number that was listed on the anti-virus program Grover and I use for our computers.

This is important. I have a friend who wants to transition, and thinks that their grown children and present wife will be fine with it. She has not talked with the children before this time about it.

I think that if there is any chance of success, then the wife and children need to have known about the situation for a long long time, and it will take a woman of astonishing fortitude to survive it. She will read this blog.

Many Blessings

Gwen

Well, once again, I am reminded not to make decisions when in the middle of a depressive episode. Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to keep writing, I am feeling better emotionally. Besides I have a story to share, and I dont know any group who would "get" it like you guys and gals will, or so I hope.

I was gonna do this as a comment on another blog post, but I figured it was important enough to have it's own spot.

At the link below is a website telling the history of Bikini Atoll. It is not a happy story.

http://www.bikiniatoll.com/history.html

I wish to offer my sincerest apologies to all of the authors here on BC. I have been a member here for almost 40 weeks, and have been a visitor for several years. Up until now I have been a “lurker”, reading stories and not voting or commenting on any stories that I like or dislike. I have read the blogs, and generally scan the comments at the end of stories, without adding anything of my own. (Though I have started to vote for stories that I like). I truly enjoy this site and most of the stories that are posted here, I like the community feeling and mutual support that is offered.