Donor, Not a döner.

So, yeah. Most of December there were no posts by me. Oh well. There’s this thing called the holidays. It kind of took over my life, but not in the way you expected.

Remember how I said that I was going to be laid off for 6 weeks? Yeah… Didn’t happen. And I had that second job lined up, so for a good chunk of this month I’ve been going insane working two jobs, getting very little sleep, etc. That, and I’ve had a few personal health issues. *shrugs* What’s a girl to do? I mean, I’ve barely had time to spend with family or the boyfriend. It sucks.

So, anyways, I’m keeping this post brief.

I just want to wish all of you a happy holiday season, and that y’all have a good holiday (whatever you celebrate) and a Happy New Year.

The notice is late due to things that have happened in some of our real lives.

November 2009 Global Vampire Community Discussion
Hosted By Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)

Global Vampire Community Discussion on Sunday, November 29, 2009 @ 7:00 PM Eastern US/ET (11:00 PM GMT). If you need assistance with time conversions refer to: http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc The discussion will be held in the IRC channel #vampirevoices on Dalnet.

Topic: The Spiritual Side Of Vampirism

If you have the ability to install or use an IRC client (a program used to connect to an IRC server) to access the discussion, please do so. If you don’t have an irc client already installed on your machine, two popular clients are mIRC (http://www.mirc.com/) and xchat (http://www.xchat.org/ or http://www.silverex.org/news/).

If you do not have the ability to access IRC another way, you can access the discussion by going to http://tiny.cc/vampirevoices and entering your desired Username, then clicking “Connect”. Please be aware that Dalnet limits the number of people who can connect via the browser-based chat, so if you have another option for connecting, we strongly encourage you to not use the browser-based system.

For anyone who has an IRC Client, use irc.dal.net or another dalnet server (http://www.dal.net/servers/) and join #vampirevoices

Please help spread the word to all those you know in the vampire community. The channel (#vampirevoices) is always open so feel free to drop by anytime you wish. We hope to see everyone there!

- Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)
http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/vvc.html

I am a very boring person. I’m still surprised that so many people read this thing every week.

So, things that have happened in the past week. Well… Hrmm.

Not much, really. My main job can’t make up it’s mind on if we’re getting laid off or not. Luckily I do have my other job back, so I’m not going to lose too much money either way. And if my main job decides to not lay us off, that’s extra money for bills and stuff… Maybe even let me buy xmas presents instead of making them.

I’m also starting as an internet DJ for www.eve-radio.com. Thursday nights from 22:00-00:00 GMT. DJ SilverPixie. Now, for all of you who are unaware, this is NOT a vampire radio station. It’s for a video game called Eve Online. So no swarming the IRC chat and turning it into vampspeak. Play nice. These people have no knowledge of my involvement in the vamp community, and I’d like to keep it that way. But tune in anyways. You might like the tunes.

Other than that, not much has been happening in my life. Just been hanging around my house and the like, hanging out with the boyo, etc.

OH! There is possibly a Global Discussion next weekend for the VVC. When the official release is made up, it will be posted here, as usual. I’ll see you there.

Mkay. Yeah, this post is titled Shite. Deal with it. Been cranky lately.

Mom is sick, Jadey (my vamp for those of you in the dark) is sick, the boyo is feeling wonky (but I don’t think he’s sick. Just wonky), and I’m CRANKY!!

Why am I cranky? Apparently I was the only one to see the debacle last night involving the Haven site and forums. What debacle, you say? Oh.. It just decided to go missing for about an hour.

Here’s why. My bank is awesome, and they give me money towards free gas. To show that it’s all spiffy, they sent me a new debit card, thus invalidating my old debit card. And the money for the website hosting was due TODAY. So, of course, with me being a bit of a dumb blonde, I forgot to update my card info in Paypal until last night. So I go in, and it should be an easy thing, right? Change the info before it should be tapped, and evade the site being down for non-payment. Whee. Nope. I change my card, and the page refreshes…

To a message saying that I cancelled my hosting subscription. At first I misread it, thinking that they sent the payment through a day early. Nope. Checked my email. Had an email from both Paypal and the hoster saying that the subscription was cancelled. Which resulted in me going “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..” very loudly. I checked the website, just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Got a 403 error for the forums, and a 404 for the website. Which led to me hyperventilating a little.

Luckily, I was able to get it to resubmit the subscription (PHEW!!!) but it took about an hour for the site to come back online. Oddly, the forum came up before the site proper. I was able to check the forum before I left for work, but I had to text Zilchy and ask him to see if the website was back up.

So, yay, things are working again.

Now, if I could just get people’s immune systems to get back where they are supposed to be…

Lookit! It’s not even been a full week and I’m updating! Going to hurt my computer because my left Ctrl key is busted, so I can’t copy and paste easily. But never fear!

Okay, so Friday was the Haven’s birthday. Unfortunately, my parents “kidnapped” me and forced me to go with them to Cracker Barrel for dinner. Oh, the forcing that they had to do to get me to go have fried apple goodness. So, since I work graveyards, and Mom came up to my place just as I was settling down to sleep, I got no sleep at all that day, so as soon as I got home, I passed out. I wouldn’t have had room for cake, anyways.

So, the Haven had a belated birthday party. After I spent most of the day cleaning, rearranging furniture, etc. My coffee table is now in a proper place in front of my couch. It has my monitor, the front and center speakers, the knitting machine of awesomeness, and my ash tray. (Yes, Pixie smokes. Get over it.) But I have end tables! And my tower is on the one to my left, and books and CDs are on the one to my right. And random stuff is inside them. The boyo is out of town with friends until this evening, so I cleaned my booty off in between books.

Now, for the party details! I was just chatting with a couple of friends on Skype, so it wasn’t too interesting, but there was cake, I played the happy hardcore Happy Birthday song, blew out candles, etc.  Wanna see?

Sure you do.

Okay, picture one is the cake itself, with it’s black birthday candles. Yes, one is striped and the other has white polkadots, but you try to find black birthday candles at a grocery store a week after Halloween is over with. And no, there’s no cool New Age shop nearby where they sell those year round, like back when I lived in Indiana.

Picture number two! Yup, I blew out the candles. You can see the polka dotted candle mid blowout. Looks spiffy. And like I need to tell you.. I’m not going to spill what the wish was. And yes, that’s my pc with twenty gagilion cables coming out of it’s back, my joystick, and a “rescued” milk crate.

Picture number three! Like I’m going to let good cake go to waste? I mean, I don’t really like chocolate icing. Okay, I hate the stuff. But the cake was cheap, and it’d be bad luck or something to scrape the icing off. So, here it is, partially nommed.

Picture number the last. Poor poor cake is now all nommed and happy in my tummy. All that’s left are crumbs, candles, and a bit of reallllllllllllllly icky chocolate icing stuck to the fork that I just can’t force myself to eat. I mean… Ewwwie.

So, that’s that! Until next year’s party, when there is going to be THREE candles in it. Makes you want to go ooOOOOOoooo, dunnit? You guys go have fun. I’m going to grab me a book and read until the boyo gets home. See you next week!

I know, I know. I said that I’d be updating at the minimum every Sunday. Blame Comcast. Every year they raised the price on the tv services, but if we got rid of the expensive movie channels (that we never watched) you think we’d save money, right? Wrong. It would un-bundle us or something, so we’d end up spending more money. *sigh* So, the parental types who are paying for this whole shebang said “Fuck that shit.” and cancelled the tv service, keeping just the internet and phone. Apparently, we can get what we want, tv wise, for much cheaper at Direct TV. The upside? I now have satellite tv in my appartment. The downside? Comcast is being bitchy that they lost a partial customer, and is therefore making my internet connection a bitch and a half to handle. This is the first time in 2 weeks that I’ve been able to get past the damned log in screen for WordPress.

Anyways, things that have happened..

Not much, really.  I mean, just been working, trying to save money up for when my plant closes for a month and a half. Luckily, I got a call on Monday from my old job I had last winter (when I was working 2), saying that they would have room for me during the holiday season, and when can I work. Yay, for employment! And! I can still file for partial unemployment, since I’m being laid off from a 40+ hour a week job at a much higher rate of pay, and going to a just above minimum wage part time job. Whoo. I’ll have rent moneys!!!

Oh, and Friday is the 2nd birthday for www.blackswanhaven.org . No, it’s not when it was uploaded or became viewable to the public, but it’s when I bought the hosting and the domain name. So, you know I’m going out and buying a cupcake (or maybe a half cake) and putting 2 candles in it for the site. Whee!

The boyo and I are doing wonderfully. Been hanging out quite a bit, to the point where we’re going “Okay, I need a little Me Time.” That, and I’m getting behind on my housework. *looks at the pile of laundry waiting to be sorted* Yeah, I should get to that soon.

Another good thing is that my stepdad finally got the crap-top fixed. What does that mean, exactly? Well, okay, it’s not fully fixed, since the built in keyboard is shot, so I have to use my usb keyboard, but there is a functional OS on it (Cynsanity must have possessed my stepfather, since Puppy Linux is installed), and all the programs that it comes with. Which means I can find where I stashed my thumb drives with all the website information on it, and actually get down to updating the site. Yeah, I know, I have a high powered pc in my apartment that is fully capable of writing HTML and CSS. But here’s the thing you need to understand. My mother taught me everything I needed to know about website design and coding. She is not upstairs with my super pc. She is downstairs. So, since the crap-top is portable, I can be sitting on her couch, watching tv or eating dinner, and go “Mom, how do I make it do this?” and she’ll show me. Which is somewhat difficult to do over the phone, especially when you can’t think of the right words to describe what you want the damned thing to do.

So, since I’m going to have more time on my hands, hopefully there will be major updates (content wise, at least)  to the main site. I doubt I’m going to change the layout much, though I might tweak the settings a bit. I don’t know about you guys, but in Opera on my regular computer, a weird gray border is on the left and right sides outside of the content. It irks me. And no, I’m not going to use Firefox or the like. I’ll test the site in it (since that is apparently the default browser for Linux), but otherwise I can’t stand the fucking thing. Same goes for IE. And yeah, I have Google Chrome installed on this pc, but I never use it. It looks funny. Especially since I’ve been using Opera since version 1.something. And it’s now on 10.1. You get used to certain features, like the ease of blowing up a page. I’m getting older, and my eyes hate me, so most websites I have set to 120% or higher. Especially the ones geared towards the vampire community, since light sensitivity abounds, so they are normally dark backgrounds with somewhat dark or freakishly bright text. Gah.

My vampire is fairly fine. She’s had houseguest type people for the past couple of weeks, so she’s been keeping social, which is totally not her norm. But last week she was under the weather, and her allergies have attacked, thanks to said houseguests. Jadey is allergic to some of the chemical compounds/oils in coffee. And the residue sticks to coffee mugs, even after several washings. The houseguests have tainted EVERY SINGLE ONE of her coffee mugs with coffee crap. So she’s been slightly freaking out about it. Upside is that when I go to visit next time, I won’t have to worry over which mug is my coffee mug as much, since there will now be a much vaster seclection for me to choose from. Downside is that she’s going to have to buy some more mugs, and find a place to stash them so they won’t get tainted like the other ones. So, while she’s been popping her prescription thingies to clear herself up from the coffee attack, she’s been feeding like mad. I was wondering why all of a sudden I was in the McD’s drivethru a few days ago and ordering a big mac combo for dinner… And 4 McDoubles and a McChicken for later, and debating on ordering some chinese food to go with it. Should have known then, since the only time I crave McD’s is when I’m feeding people like mad when I’m at normal energy levels.  And unless I’m pregnant (which I’m not), no one in their right mind would think that General Tso’s Chicken, a Big Mac, and a large order of fries makes a good tasting meal. Oh, and a large Diet Coke. (The Monopoly game is going on.. Sheesh.. That’s an extra 2 tabbies!!)

Halloween was fairly uneventful. I went out with my sister and mom to take the little brother trick or treating. Two streets into it, I got too cold and walked my ass back home, prepared to take the car and pick them up when they were done. But, Mom, the genius that she is, had taken the car keys with her, so I went back to watching the NCIS marathon. I <3 that show. Later, after we sorted through candy (I got a decent haul, just from those two streets), I went down to one of the bars to hang out and join the costume contest. Totally lost (to a slutty fairy), but saw some interesting costumes. One guy glued palm fronds to a hat, and would stick his arms out. He was a tree. A girl zombie was walking about with a spaghetti pot on her head, claiming she was a pothead zombie (hehe). She later put her pot on tree guy’s head, and he thus became a pot plant. A soldier (I believe he was Marines) had just returned from Iraq. While he was over there, though, he prepared for Halloween. He stole badges and patches off of Iraqi police uniforms, plus the beret, and when he got back, made himself an Iraqi police costume. It was very nice. He was cute, too What, just because I have my boyo doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate handsome men when I see them. I just can’t touch.

Anyways, that’s about it. 2 and half weeks (roughly) off my life, summed up into one normal sized blog post. What is this world coming to?

Hopefully, if we can bitchslap my ISP, I’ll be able to update again next week!

“You said you were going to update more often… What’s up with that?”

Well, this is what is up. Pixie’s got a boyfriend! Pixie’s got a boyfriend!

“Yeah, so? You’ve had one since waaaaaaaaay before you started this thing.”

I know I did. But here’s the thing. He and I had a major falling out. And thinking back on somethings that happened in the course of our relationship, I am very happy that we are through. So, I was wandering around, and, when I didn’t think I wanted to have a boyfriend, the most wonderful man got dropped into my lap.

“Mkay… Why should we care?”

Well, you know my rule? “Feed the vamps. Don’t date the vamps.”?

“Yeeeeeeeeeees….???”

He’s a vamp.

“?!?!?!?”

I know. But I’m not his donor. He came into our relationship with one in place already. And, my vamp and I haven’t been on the outs cause I luffs her to pieces. So the Vamp boy and I are totally copacetic. He noms his donor, my vamp noms me, and he and I go at it like bunnies. It’s a win-win situation, don’t you think?

“Eeeewwww… Totally TMI. Keep your sex life out of this thing..”

No. I don’t have to. That, and apparently there are people out there that think that we’re all celibate creatures, above having sexual urges or needs. Yeah. Right.

Anyways, so I’ve been having fun with my boyo. I mean, if you haven’t been reading my tweets, you don’t know about the super awesome scarf I’m knitting him. Yes, knit. I can’t stand how slow it is, but I want him to have a manly scarf, dammit. And I hate to admit it, but crochet isn’t that manly. I’ve updated my status on Ravelry about it, and the girls at Craftster are crossing their fingers that the “Boyfriend Sweater Curse” doesn’t include scarves. And you want to know when I met him? Shortly before my last post. No, not the anniversary post. The one before that. So, I’ve been in super lovey dovey mode for awhile, and everything has been getting ignored for him. Including the vamp forums I’m on. Even the VCMB, which you know I’m addicted to. Yeah.

“Sooo… Does this mean you’re getting over the lovey dovey phase and going to update more often.. LIKE YOU PROMISED???”

Well, yes and no. We’re still in the lovey dovey phase. Probably going to be like that for a good long while. But yes, I’ll be updating more often. I mean, this is a new venture for me. I haven’t dated a vamp in a long time, so far my vamp <3’s him (even though she hasn’t met him yet, since she’s in Texas, and, well, we aren’t), and I’m still all “OMG, he’s perfect!”. So, I figure that this would be a good thing for people to know about. People already know (via my previous posts) that not all vamp/donor relationships are romantic. Well, not all vamp romantic relationships involve feeding, either. Yes, my first instinct is “His energy is low. I should feed him.” but I don’t, because his donor takes very good care of him. I’ll still give him a bit of a top off, but I can’t fulfill all of his needs at the moment. Yes, my boyo is a hybrid. And I’ve never donated sang before. It is a very new thing for me, but for now, I’m happy.

Really and truly happy.

So, I’m going to end this for now. I’ll put a message for myself that I HAVE to update next Sunday, at the very least. I’m not going to be insane and try to post every day (like I did in the beginning of this whole bloggy thing), but I’ll try to at least update weekly.

Have fun, be safe, and all that jazz.

Yup, I’m late. For a female to forget an anniversary? Scandelous. But I have an excuse, I swear.

So. Donor, Not a Döner is now a big two years old. Be frightened, people. We’ve hit the terrible twos!!! And, in about 2 weeks, www.blackswanhaven.org will be two years old, as well. Time flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it?

So, let me pause this for a second, pull up a second tab so I can share with you the stats so far for this lovely venture that I never remember to update (unless my vamp or someone pokes me repeatedly to do so).

Mkay, since I started this thing I’ve got 26 posts, 8 comments that I kept that weren’t spam, 1 page, 4 categories (rant, uncategorized, Weekday, and Weekend), and 11 tags.

We’ve had two main searches that ended with people coming here. People specifically looking for this place, and the one lone guy that stumbled across us while looking for the recipe for a Döner sandwich (which, I’m told, is veeeeeeeeeeeerry tasty!).

They keep adding new buttons to this thing. If you haven’t noticed, there’s now a twitter feed. Yes, it’s my personal one. I doubt we’re going to make one for the Haven (unless Passer or Winged wants to man the helm on that). You want a peek into a donor’s life? Take a look at my tweets. I’m reaaaaaaaally not that exciting. You know, going on about my boyfriend, yarn, etc. You know you want to.

Anyways, happy anniversary, you wonderful readers. All 2,995 of you (just by # of hits.. I’m not a stalker, you know).  Go have a cupcake, and decorate it to look like a vampire. Then nom it. Don’t forget the 2 candles!

September 2009 Global Vampire Community Discussion
Hosted By Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)

Any interested are welcome to attend a Global Vampire Community Discussion on Sunday, September 20, 2009. Two different sessions will be hosted to best accommodate everyone’s schedule (the discussion will reset at the beginning of each session). The first at 4:00 PM Eastern US/EST (8:00 PM GMT) and the second at 9:00 PM Eastern US/EST (1:00 AM GMT – September 21, 2009). If you need assistance with time conversions refer to: http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc The discussion will be held in the IRC channel #vampirevoices on Dalnet.

Topics For Discussion:

a. Your Personal Health: What is your opinion on the correlation of various medical maladies common to some sanguinarian and/or psychic vampires? What steps do you take to ensure optimum physical and mental health?

b. Variety Of Feeding Methods: Are some of your specific feeding methods (sanguinarian and/or psychic) more effective than others? If so, which are more effective and which are less or ineffective?

c. Open Vampire Community Discussion: Any topic you’d like to bring up for discussion is welcome.

If you have the ability to install or use an IRC client (a program used to connect to an IRC server) to access the discussion, please do so. If you don’t have an irc client already installed on your machine, two popular clients are mIRC (http://www.mirc.com/) and xchat (http://www.xchat.org/ or http://www.silverex.org/news/).

If you do not have the ability to access IRC another way, you can access the discussion by going to http://tiny.cc/vampirevoices and entering your desired Username, then clicking “Connect”. Please be aware that Dalnet limits the number of people who can connect via the browser-based chat, so if you have another option for connecting, [u][b]we strongly encourage you to not use the browser-based system[/b][/u].

For anyone who has an IRC Client, use irc.dal.net or another dalnet server (http://www.dal.net/servers/) and join #vampirevoices

Please help spread the word to all those you know in the vampire community. The channel (#vampirevoices) is always open so feel free to drop by anytime you wish. We hope to see everyone there!

- Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC)

http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/vvc.html

_____

Global Vampire Community Discussion Transcripts:

Global Vampire Community Discussion – July 10, 2009 – http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/images/VVCGlobalVampireCommunityDiscussion07.10.09.pdf
Global Vampire Community Discussion – August 2, 2009 – http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/images/VVCGlobalVampireCommunityDiscussion08.02.09.pdf

VVC Public Meeting Transcripts:

April 27, 2008 – http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/images/VVCPublicMeeting04.27.08.pdf
August 9, 2008 – http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/images/VVCPublicMeeting08.09.08.pdf
December 6, 2008 – http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/images/VVCPublicMeeting12.06.08.pdf
April 25, 2009 – http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/images/VVCPublicMeeting04.25.09.pdf
August 30, 2009 – http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/images/VVCPublicMeeting08.30.09.pdf

Many of you are familiar with who the VVC are because you’ve participated in our Global Community Chats, have subscribed to our RSS feed, follow Vampire Community News on Twitter, or through some other avenue. For those who aren’t, our public website is available here: http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/vvc.html an excerpt from our organizational statement can be found below:

Once a quarter, we designate our business meeting as “public,” meaning we post a transcript of it on our website. Our next public meeting will be held on August 30th, and we’ve decided to ask for your input on our meeting agenda. Do you have suggestions for projects you’d like to see us undertake, which could involve the entire community? Are there any topics or issues you feel need to be discussed? What would you like to see us attempt to accomplish in the future?

Please remember that public meetings aren’t the same as global discussions. The meeting is only attended by VVC members and the transcript will be made public later. You can refer to prior meeting agendas before making suggestions so you know what we’ve discussed in the past and avoid duplicate suggestions. Please try to make your suggestions for topics with responses that can be thought-out or written out beforehand. That way members who are unable to attend can still submit their views for the record.

We’ve only got a few days, so please try to respond by 11:59 PM on Sunday August 23, 2009. I’ll take your suggestions back to the VVC for consideration or submit them directly via the feedback form (see below). Even if we don’t use it this time, we might include it in a future meeting.

Please feel free to contact me or any member of the VVC directly with your suggestions, or follow this link to post your suggestions to the VVC Community Feedback form: http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/contactus.html