Melissa Dunphy

Remember the clusterfuck of a backlog the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services experienced after they jacked up the price of citizenship last year? Eh, you probably don't, but I sure do, because I became eligible for citizenship three days after the price hike, so not only did I have to pay $700 to apply, I was sure that the insane pile-up of applications directly before me would hold up my application past this November at least.

Apparently, however, publicity over the backlog has caused someone to throw money at the problem, because I just got a letter requesting that I appear for my naturalization interview (and civics exam) on May 30! Assuming I pass, I may be naturalized on the spot, or at the worst, at a swearing in ceremony a few weeks later. Holy shit! I'm going to be a citizen! I'm going to vote! I could make money on the side as a notary! I no longer need to fear deportation every time I get a traffic ticket!

I'm so excited. I'm going to find and buy the cheesiest Americana sweater in the world to wear to the interview. And then, as soon as I get my papers, I'm going to buy and wear this shirt as an expression of my FREE SPEECH AMERICAN VALUES RONPAULRPONPAUL:



In cat news, it turns out Hunter does not have hyperthyroidism or any kind of wacky disease that would show up in her blood work. I am relieved that she won't have to take pills for the rest of her life! But in the meantime, I have to keep shoving diarrhoea pills down her throat twice a day, so she hates me, and there's the prospect of paying more money for more diagnostics down the road if it doesn't clear up.

Labels: cats, immigration, politics

Hunter has lately had blood in her stools. I finally had enough of a break in my schedule to take her to the vet this morning, and discovered that she has lost a bunch of weight since the last time she was in the clinic, and the vet suspects hyperthyroidism. She is having some bloodwork done (poor thing, she has tough veins, and the vet had to stick her so many times to get a sample), and I should know for sure what's wrong in a couple of days.

I am sad.

Labels: cats

Labels: cats

As you can see, Hunter has taken to hanging around outside now that the weather is decent, so I took her to the vet to have her shots. Apparently, she is eight or nine years old! I had no idea. This explains why she seems to prefer climbing to jumping - her hip joints are middle aged. She sure has a lot of pep for an old lady, though, as demonstrated by her willingness to stalk a groundhog about twice her size (she didn't have the nerve to pounce, which is probably one reason she has lived so long).

Summer school ended today, and thank Christ. In the course of six weeks, my public speaking course took me from being quite comfortable giving a speech to being neurotically full of dread and anguish when giving a speech. From now on, whenever I hear someone give a formulaic speech as advocated by the course material, I will immediately discount everything they have to say. Also, PowerPoint is evil and should be obliterated, along with everyone who relies upon it.

Poor Lexx. I took him apart, desoldered the broken power jack and soldered on a new one. The jack itself seems to be working fine now - it is able to recharge a battery. Unfortunately, the system won't boot. In fact, nothing at all appears on the screen when I turn it on. Sigh. I'll troubleshoot some more this weekend. It's become something of a challenge.

• Lucy is blogging!


• Louis Wain was born in London’s Clerkenwell district in 1860 and eventually became an artist. To entertain his wife on her sickbed, Wain started drawing their cat, Peter. Wain continued drawing cats for newspapers and children’s books until he fell victim to schizophrenia in 1917 at the age of 57. Wain allows us a unique insight into the delusions and course of illness in a late onset schizophrenic ...


• Via an old workmate from Sydney, Multimodal Music Stand and instructions for building it.


• Here is satellite imaging of the wee little village from which the Greek side of my family hails. One day, after Matt and I have completed the Great American Roadtrip, we should probably hit Europe. Along with, you know, the rest of the world. God, I miss traveling.


• eBay: Nine Inch Nails NIN Closer to God Centipede corset L (item 320132256596 end time Jul-05-07 08:20:06 PDT)

Labels: cats, college, gadgets, summer

First up, my Dell Inspiron 5150, Lexx, which I bought a week after my wedding with the money we saved by not being typical Americans, who apparently spend an average of $20,000 on one tacky day of their lives, has sort of carked it. The power jack stopped working, which according to the internet, is not an uncommon problem in these machines. Dell wanted to charge $400 to replace the motherboard - a little ludicrous since new laptops start at $500 - so we decided I'd be better off ordered a new notebook and parting out Lexx on eBay.

I've ordered a Dell Inspiron 640m from their outlet store. It's the same size as my old laptop but pounds lighter, with a dual core processor (1.83GHz, which is less than my previous 2.33GHz, but I suppose Lexx was a little overpowered given than I don't play games anymore), a gig of RAM (which I'm upgrading to 1.5Gb with my old RAM), 120Gb hard drive (up from the 100Gb I just bought a few weeks ago), DVD-RW (finally I can burn DVDs), Truelife LCD display, and Windows Vista. Cost: $589 scratch-and-dent. A pretty awesome deal, especially given that I expect to make a couple hundred back at least with Lexx.

In the meantime, since I have nothing to lose, I am going to try replacing the power jack on Lexx. I worked on it for about an hour last night, but it seems my 15W Old Faithful soldering iron isn't powerful enough to desolder effectively, so I'll pick up a 30W sometime this week and try again.

Since I don't have a laptop to play with, I've been sewing a fair bit to keep myself busy. I made this Johnny Cash corset to list on eBay, and there's a mint-green NIN TDS corset to come. I also bought a new pattern and made the corset at the left there, and I'm thrilled with it. It fits me better than the original pattern, although it's a bit trickier and uses more materials, so if I sell them, I'll have to jack the price up a little.

Tripoli likes to sleep in chests of drawers. In cat news, Tripoli and Moonlight are now getting along very well, though Hunter still causes a fair few problems. In case you hadn't figured, that ginger-and-white cat who belonged to our negligent bastard neighbors grew on us (we found out her name is Hunter), so now we have three cats -- one for every year we've been married, which is a worrying trend.

Matt took these pictures of the inside of the Harrisburg Capitol building last weekend during a tour which we serendipitously showed up just in time to take. The building is widely regarded as the most beautiful state capitol in the country, funded as it was by vast profits from steel and oil. We went back up to the Burg to see Shakespeare in the Park, which was quite wonderful (last show tonight), though it was more than a little surreal to be in the audience for the first time.

• Bart King, the famous ... Philadelphian cricketer!?


• The effect of taming foxes. Now everyone's going to want a tame fox.

Labels: cats, gadgets

Everyone is having babies.

I know, I know, people are supposed to make babies, propagation of the species and all that. But ... babies. I think the almighty creator missed an ingredient when he was intelligently designing my maternal instincts, because I don't know what to do with larval humans. No idea. And no real desire to have an idea. I like to give them gifts, pull faces at them for a few seconds, then slowly back away to do something carefree and adult, like drive a car in the opposite direction while listening to an exceptionally dull and in-depth NPR report, or drink scotch silently by an open fire with a copy of American Psycho.

Some of the recent bumper crop of babies I'm experiencing obviously has to do with being of a certain age. I'm 26. People my age have babies. But ... I know older people having babies too. And younger people.

If Douglas Adams hadn't made the joke already, I would write an endearingly hilarious monologue here about a non-maternal woman who didn't know she was a fertility goddess.

The only real downside to my opinion vis a vis babies is that my mother is utterly convinced that, according to my Chinese astrological chart, it is vitally imperative that I give birth during the year 2010. I need to have a baby in the Year of the Dragon, or all hell with break loose; my marriage will fall apart, my uterus will fall out, and the sky will no doubt fall down. A few years ago, she was grudgingly satisfied with my assertion that I might consider the possibility of maybe adopting a child who was born in that year ... perhaps a few years afterwards, when said child would be able to form complete sentences, recognize subtle irony, and appreciate cyberpunk fiction. Now it's give birth in 2010 or face the apocalypse.

As far as I can tell, I'm damned either way, so I may as well not drag children into it.

In the meantime, I am seriously considering becoming involved with the local Cat Angel Network, despite their newsletter, which makes them sound ever so slightly like crazy cat ladies. Cats are awesome. They bury their own poo.

And ... uh ... congratulations to all you procreating people out there. Better you than me.

• One step closer to updating the RAM in my brain.


• Daniel Radcliffe in Equus. [Insert noise of surprise and curiosity]

Labels: cats, psychobabble

Are you in the Philly area? A good person? Can you keep a cat?

Our next-door neighbors moved house and abandoned their cat. Another neighbor got in touch with them about it, and their response was "We don't want her. We have dogs now."

Yeah, I know. Don't get me started.

So, instead of leaving this incredibly sweet and friendly cat to freeze to death over the winter, we've taken her in temporarily as of last night. I have no idea what her name is, so I'm calling her Ginger. We can't keep her permanently, though, because we already have two cats, and she doesn't get along with them (it's hard to get adult females to play nice with each other). Can anyone out there keep a cat?

She is so beautiful, and is very social around people. She loves being petted, even by complete strangers, and I'm sure she'd be wonderful with children too. She's well toilet trained (was quite happy going in one of my other cat's litter boxes) and not at all fussy about the food she eats. She's been living on the streets for a couple of weeks now, and is so grateful for shelter, sustenance and affection -- anyone who has taken in a stray cat will tell you that they're twice as loyal as cats that haven't seen the hard life.

Please give her a good home! We really don't want to take her to the SPCA because it's a kill shelter, and the only no-kill shelter in the area isn't taking surrenders because they are full.

I'd estimate she's a year or two old. Obviously, I don't have vet records for her, but she seems really healthy. I'm assuming she's neutered, but only because she goes outdoors all the time, and I've never seen her with kittens.

If you can take her in, please contact me. And if you can't take her, please spread the word!

Labels: cats, photos