I'm so upset right now.

habibekindheart's 2 1/2 year old son was killed in foster care. There was evidence of physical and sexual abuse.

I know a lot of you know her, and know how much her family has been through at the hands of CPS. It was clear she very much loved her children, and I can't imagine that ANYTHING in her home situation could possibly have been anywhere near as bad as this.

(Edited to add: I have no reason to believe that the children weren't removed for completely spurious reasons, and don't mean to imply that there was any good reason for the removal. Which makes this all the more terrifying and heartbreaking.)

I'm so upset.

I hope his 4 year old sister, who was in the same home, is OK.

This post has a little more info and information about donations.

God CPS, please stop giving hell to loving but imperfect (who isn't?) families and concentrate on the kids who NEED help.

R.I.P. Octavia Butler.

Her books, especially the Parable books, are some of the few I've read more than once as an adult. I just finished re-reading one of her books yesterday.

R.I.P TOC (The Other Cat)

1990 - December 9, 2005

Playing around on Davis Wiki, koyote and I discovered they had an IRC channel.

On this IRC channel, we met tarzxf.

Then we ran into him at Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's, where he recognized us because I was wearing the Davis Wiki shirt which I'd won (well, Leif won actually, but it is too big for him) the night before at the Linux User Group of Davis meeting, where the wiki happened to be the topic.

koyote friended his LJ. He read our profiles, and asked how we knew funjon, kikikimi, zenshadow and snapdad (old IRC friends from elsewhere). Turns out he worked with them.

And then it turned out that he had also worked with koyote before koyote and I met.

Then I read through his journal, and found a link to an article about a guy who he'd gone to high school with, who had died in a plane crash recently. This guy was the first friend I made in Davis. He left a while ago, and this was the first any of us here had heard about him dying.

So yeah, small world.

So here we are in Davis.

It's strange being back, but also feels like we never left, because it's so much more familiar than Virginia.

It's weird being in a place where a good portion of babies are carried in slings and other people breastfeed in public.

It also made me realize how odd it is to have a large percentage of the population between the ages of 18 and 22. I feel old here.

We haven't seen all the people we wanted to see, which is a bit depressing, but that's life.

I found some organic pumpkin pie flavored baby food at the co-op, so Leif gets Thanksgiving dinner! Or dessert, anyways. They also had turkey and vegetable flavor, but since we haven't done much with solids yet, that's probably too much to try at once.

He ate a slice of banana the other day. He's been throwing fits when I eat anything, so when we went to Ben & Jerry's, I got a banana royal and shared the banana with him.

Leif did great on the plane flight - he slept for half the time (long enough for me to watch most of Charlie's Angels 2. Weird weird movie), and was pretty quiet the rest of the time, though a bit bored. He also slept the whole time on the train.

Tomorrow we take the train down to southern California to visit my mom's side of the family for Thanksgiving.

I miss Davis. I wish we could stay here, but it lacks good paying jobs and reasonably clean air.

When I was 14 or so, I used to watch seaQuest, not in small part because of Jonathan Brandis, who played Lucas. Yet another in my string of crushes on geeks (or people who played geeks, anyways). He apparently killed himself the other day. So yeah... not sure what to think about that. He (and seaQuest in general) were one of the bright points in my life that year, at a time when I was starting on my depressive/suicidal phase.

Here's what Wil Wheaton says. Not surprisingly, I'm not the only one who associates the two of them. They played similar characters (seaQuest was widely considered to be StarTrek underwater, and Lucas the Wesley of seaQuest), and I had crushes on both of them.

Must leave the cafe and go visit people...

Gwendolyn rattie died.

I think I need to give the baby up for adoption.

Suddenly I not only have appetite again - I have energy, too. I've actually been pretty productive at work this week, and right now I actually feel like going to the exercise room. I think this is a first.

Everyone is being deployed. On the pregnant friends page, I've read posts from several people whose husbands are being deployed within the next few weeks. Many of them are expecting babies shortly. A friend of mine is trying to find the money to visit her fiance in Hawaii one last time before he's deployed. I hate this. Why exactly are we sending all these people over there to have their lives potentially destroyed?

Oolong, the bunny that balances stuff on his head in my userpic, apparently died today :( Poor bunny.

I can't write anything.

So many moods to chose from, and none of them really fit.