The move to new hosting from LiveJournal is a success!  And a pretty success at that.  Of course, I’ve lost all the user-pics that go with each blog entry, but into every life a little rain must fall.

Over the next week, I will be prettying up the joint: fixing tags and categories, even adding pages. I have so much more content than I realized!  Pretty cool!

I hope everyone’s having a good weekend.  I know I am. 🙂

Well, In It For The Parking has been on LiveJournal for a long time. But LJ has been seeing a lot of action recently from hackers and governments, and frankly, I don’t like that. Plus, when I type in “http://www.initfortheparking.com” into my browser, I want to go there and not be redirected a bajillion times by LJ.

That leaves me no option but to buy server space and convert it to a “proper” blog. I’m hoping that will help me write in it more often too, since I’m not really giving it the attention that it’s due and instead have been spending my attention on Facebook and G+.

I’ll still keep this account and post a link to updates when I have them, which ought to be more often.

Sometimes things need a facelift and to be reorganized. This is one of those times.

We all could have died today.

We could have blinked out of existence, died in screaming agony together, as an asteroid the size of an air-craft carrier hit the earth. But we were okay. The asteroid passed us, 202,000 miles away. That’s less than the distance from us to the moon. (About 4/5ths the distance, actually) But we didn’t!

Whether or not you believe in God, that’s fairly significant – the survival of the entire human race. But it’s just a passing headline in the news today, and tomorrow, no one will think twice about it.

They’ll continue to mourn the passing of Heavy D, whose untimely death came at the age of 44. I know I’ll always have a great love for the man who I first heard call rappers “lyrical masters” and in doing so, overcame the snobbery that St. Mary’s had bred into me. I remember listening to Heavy D & the Boyz when simply doing so meant that I was rebelling against being who I was: very white, very young, and educated. I couldn’t help loving the rhythm. I couldn’t help appreciating the poetry, even when I was too young to understand the double entendre.

I keep thinking about Occupy Wall Street, and our current political situation here in America — how we’re sitting here, almost waiting for Civil War, when we don’t want one — we just want an end to corruption… and it reminds me of how everyone keeps waiting for the rapture, for Jesus to come back and save them from a world full of corruption… or for a great flying rock in space to come and wipe us the fuck out, so we don’t have to do the work to save ourselves because it simply seems like too big a task… like something that no individual could think of how to do alone.

I believe that God saved us from the asteroid because I believe that we are all a part of God, and frankly, it would have hurt for us all to die.

I believe that God saved us from the asteroid because I am Jewish, and I believe it is our *JOB* to fix this planet and ourselves from the inside out – to relieve ourselves of our own corruption.

My Judaism is as Baruch Spinoza‘s and Jesus’s was. I am a Panenthiest. Down to the slightest smallest atom, we are ALL-IN, 100% a part of the Great Creator, each and every one of us. That spark of divinity exists within us, driving us to do more, to be more, to accomplish, to create, to forgive, to love, to flourish.

And it’s time to stop hurting ourselves with paper that we have given make-believe value to.

People have called money the root of all evil for centuries.

First there was barter, then there was money. I don’t know what’s next, but I do know there is something next, and that we will find it together.

Since banks create money for free for themselves out of absolutely nothing, which we must then pay back to them with interest, the only thing stopping the common man from doing the exact same thing is that we do not have the ability to print the money.

Acknowledging that fact, we must also acknowledge that we are but a breath away from counterfeiters destabilizing the economy now that it is common knowledge that money is backed on nothing but faith.

We can do better than this.

I just don’t know how.

I’m simply glad to still be alive and still have hope and the belief that smarter folks than me are out there thinking about this very thing right now.

Hopefully, we can all work together, and make something good for our future. C’mon, hivemind. Let’s go get em.

Hi there, party people!

Getting back into this blogging thing is a little slow. The past few days I’ve been more than a little obsessed with my virtual minions pets, the Dubois family: yet another wacky, fun-filled time on Sims 3.

It’s been a long time since I played a video game with any sort of actual care. I came close with FarmVille because it mattered to other people if I clicked their squares… but what’s been helpful about Sims 3 for me right now is really appreciating a few things about the game: first that it is really good at showing how there are only so many hours in a day, and that any 1 person can only do so many things in one lifetime without cheating by eating life fruit or being a vampire.

Family 1: The Creepingtons – all monsters. No one ate life fruit but Momma. Nobody minded the flourescent green hottie staying young perpetually. (And by nobody, I mean me and Adam!)

Family 2: Vampir Haus – All vampires, except Mom! Chances of a vampire/human hybrid baby coming out vampire or human is 50/50. 5 kids. ALL VAMPIRES. You tell me. *shrug* Not my fault they’re so pretty. Oh wait… yes it is.

Family 3: Dubois – CEO Janet steals life fruit and flame fruit from both the Creepingtons and the MacRuth Clan (VampirHaus) and has a torrid love affair with the Skeezy Paparazzo who is constantly taking her picture while she is farming, thinking that will get him to shut up. It doesn’t work, and instead gives her a daughter – an upclass farm girl if there ever was one – Una Dubois. So she marries Hank, the Fireman, with whom she creates Dolce. However the dastardly computer is eating Sims 3 and wants her out. When Sims 3 Pets came out, the patch ate her! And today the game is frequently crashing – like every 10 minutes.

SAD FACE! I got to play the game just enough to realize that happiness points are accumulated when you have goals and achieve them. Not just by randomly upping your skill levels in things, that is, unless your goal is to be a renaissance person, and that even someone with the Computer Whiz skill will be a miserable sack of crap if you don’t get them out of the house at least every 3 days… and that even validectorian prom queens have a hard time getting laid when they’re too busy getting paid. *lol* I am a dork. But that’s ok.

Anyway, I figured the fact that the game crashed so much was a sign that I ought to use the time more productively and actually put forth something that might help others as well as myself! So, here’s some big news from me.

After a month of following the Paleo Diet (though admittedly having some skip days) and adding 2mg of Abilify, I have been able to remove Baclofen from my daily medicines without ill effect.

I made sure to add the fact that I added Abilify because I do not want to credit the Paleo Diet 100% for the reduction in pain (the added energy from the Abilify I think has something to do with my perceiving feeling better), but I can tell you this: There was a huge increase in pain when I started the paleo diet for 2 weeks. After the first month, I am waking up without significant pain in the mornings, and that is an amazing difference for me.

I am able to see this on my Patientslikeme.com chart of my Instant Me that I keep up with in the mornings, so I know I’m not fooling myself.

My body composition is still changing. My weight at the moment is steadily declining. So far, in the first month, just by changing diet, not by starving myself or anything – I eat till full – I’ve lost 12 pounds.

And I’ve had fun looking up recipes and making new things, and so has Adam. I’m happy to add anyone who would like to be added to my cookbook that I keep on Google Docs. I just don’t make it public because I don’t want anyone else to be able to add to it until I’ve looked at it and approved it.

I never thought I’d be able to handle having dietary habits that meant that I was eating dairy-free, gluten-free, legume-free, grain-free — but all the food we eat is really fuckin tasty because I did my searches starting with epicurious.com. I’m a foodie for goodness sake!

Anyway, I think I’m gonna cogitate on some goal-setting. I also think I’m gonna look for some more recipes and add a section to the Cookbook called “Menus” where I suggest some of the meals that we’ve prepared. They don’t all jump right out at you, especially if you are just starting and don’t know how to put it all together.

I hope everyone’s having a happy Saturday!