I am seriously remiss....

I have been remiss in my blogging duties. When I set out on this journey - I nobly committed (to myself of course, not someone else... .... seriously - who wants that kind of responsibility?) to blog at least two or three times per week. And I succeeded (at first, sort of - well - the first two weeks).

And yet, alas, alack, I look at my last post, and it is for VALENTINE's DAY! I mean, St. Patrick's day has come and gone - so long ago that the green has already faded from our upper lips - and April has fooled us once again - and still I have not updated my blog.

So - I'm here now... and I wanna know - WHO will be at the theater on May 8th? And if I even have to tell you what movie I'm talking about - then you probably won't be there anyway ;).

~Kat

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Sci Fi Authors

I'll admit it, when it comes to my love of sci fi - I'm mainly limited to TV and movies. Which is really odd give my absolute love of reading! I really enjoy reading a good sci fi when I can find it, but finding them has proven difficult for me. When I look around, it seems that sci fi and fantasy are all piled together - and they are NOT the same thing. And there is such a wide array of "sci fi", that looking for one I'd like is akin to picking through the items at a garage sale.

What I love is a good story set in the future in space - with aliens yes, but also with humans. I also LOVE anything having to do with time travel. That's probably my favorite. I just read The Time Traveler's Wife and really enjoyed it. Not hardcore sci fi - but cool nonetheless.

So I'm asking for help! If you know of good sci fi authors who tend to focus on either space or time travel - I would love to hear about them! Give me authors who produce real page-turners!! I crave written sci fi!!

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Un-freakin' Believable

Get this... are you ready? Army scientists have developed a technique designed to regrow human body parts. Yep - new body parts. Apparently the scientists combined materials from the intestinal lining and the urinary bladder (yummy, right?) to create something called the "extracelluar matrix" (Sounds like a good sci fi title). When this substance is applied to a damaged body part, it boosts our natural ability to repair ourselves and voila - new body part. (or would that be, theoretical voila?)

One test subject had cut off the tip of his finger in a model plane propeller (...oh come on, we've all been there). The substance was applied to the finger continually for four weeks, and the finger started to repair itself. They didn't specify how advanced the repair was - but apparently it was enough to get them all excited.

Now I'm thinking, what if this doesn't have to be limited to only replacing what body parts we already had - but was expanded to give us extras? Who doesn't need a couple of extra arms these days? Four legs for faster running? Actual eyes in the backs of our heads.

Oh the possibilities are endless...

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I Believe in Evolution!

Outlook has been driving me batty lately, so I took Evolution for a test run... and have decided not to look back! Evolution has the same basic interface as Outlook, so it was very intuitive... the only things it did not have were the things I didn't want anyway - like the buggy behavior I've witnessed over the last year or so - like having to input my email password EVERY TIME I opened Outlook EVEN THOUGH I checked the dang REMEMBER PASSWORD button EVERY TIME!!

ARGH! Okay, there's a little residual anger there.. it's alright.

Anyway, Evolution is an open source Linux-based program - and my husband has been asking me if I wanted to give Linux a go for a few years now. So, based on my recent experience with Evolution, I'm thinking of switching my OS from Vista (the bane of my existence, the source of all evil in the world) to either CentOS or Ubuntu... I'm testing them both on different computers right now and deciding which I like best... which brings me to a question... which Linux OS do you recommend?

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An American Privilege: Jury Duty

How is it that something touted as a 'privilege' has to have the word 'duty' in the name?* I've always wondered that.

Well, for some reason, the "jury lottery" LOVES my husband, lol. I don't know why, but in the 15 or so years that he has been old enough to serve, he's been called for jury duty more times than I can count! I don't envy him this; the one time I was called - I was able to get out of it because I was VERY pregnant and the doctor had advised me (because of my varicose veins) not to sit or stand for long periods of time - and they couldn't guarantee me the ability to stand and stretch my legs every hour or so. The judge actually rolled her eyes - but couldn't go against doctors orders either... I was content to be the object of her derision if it got me out of that big boring room full of people who also didn't want to be there.

Just the other day, in fact, my husband went to get the mail and lo and behold, there was ANOTHER jury summons with his name one it. He got into the car, reading it with disbelief. "Again?" he said, as he turned the summons over and back again and again as if searching for something... "isn't there like an 'opt out' box I can check or something?"

I burst out laughing, imagining jury summons coming with a box at the end: "check this if you wish to be removed from our mailing list".

Wouldn't that be awesome? LOL! Of course then there would be no one (or at least, just the same few people) to serve on the juries. -- Hey! We could make jury duty a "community service"... hmmm....

*now before anyone labels me as "un-American", I just want to say that actually serving on a jury might be fun, but jury duty is about as fun as a root canal. I think we need to rework the whole jury selection process...

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Blogging is HARD work!

Ugh... I have just finished changing the template for Kat's Healthy Living, and I'm pooped. My goal is a complete redesign, so I'm nowhere near finished with that - but it took me forever just to setup a new template, and then add everything back in!! (I would love it if you'd go and see what you think!)

When I loaded Kat's Eyes, I thought, "hm, now it looks a little drab in here"... but am I going to vamp this one up? Nope. It's just too dang hard. This site has been around longer and there are add ons and widgets galore - I shudder to think of how difficult it would be to redo all this. Its similar to the feeling I get when I think of moving to a new house. I'm like - HOW on earth will I ever gather and MOVE all this STUFF??

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