August 26th – September 3rd

Trip includes:

• Daily Breakfast, 4 lunches, 4 dinners
• 2 nights at the London Marriott County Hall
• All transfers
• 5 nights at Cardiff Marriott
• Early admission to the 2013 Cardiff Comic Con
• Private photo shoots with Colin Baker & Sylvester McCoy
• Private VIP London Doctor Who Tour
• London Eye Flight with Champagne
• BBC Broadcasting studio tour
• Thames cruise with dinner, drinks & dancing
• Tour of Cardiff Castle & Welsh banquet
• Private tour of famous Cardiff Who filming sites including: Bad Wolf Bay, Upper Leadworth, Farringham school, the house from Night Terrors, The Forrest of Dean where The Time of Angels was filmed, the castle from Vampires of Venice as well as MANY OTHERS!
• Tour of the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff with a private catered lunch

Want to register?  GO HERE NOW!  I AM ALL CAPS EXCITED!!

The little girl thought “That one needs love”.

So they brought him home, and the first thing he did was break the screen door trying to get in to be closer to the family.  The girl’s brother said they should name him Bart (after Bart Simpson) since he seemed determined to get in trouble.

He was trained for Head of Ranch Security by the family’s older dog Fibber McGee.  The Head of Ranch Security is a very important job.  They warn the family of trouble or anything unusual happening outside.  They have a bark for a familiar car, a strange car, the mailman/UPS deliverpeople, snakes, coyotes and various other critters.  The family learns which bark means what, so they can be ready.  Ranch dogs are very important members of the family, for this reason.  They are working dogs, and they know it.

Bart grew up to be an eternal puppy.  Up until the day he died, at the ripe age of 17, he was a happy, sweet puppy.  But that came many years later.

Several years prior to that sad day, 2007, the children in the family were grown and gone.  It’s possible that the mother and the father felt a little lonely, and maybe Bart did too.

One day, the mother of the family was at the vet to pick something up for Bart, and she saw an ad for puppies to give away.  The picture was of a litter and there was one puppy of them all that was looking right into the camera with a bright, happy look on her face.

They weren’t planning on getting another dog, they hadn’t even really thought about it…but that puppy worked some magic on the mom.

Bart, unlike Fibber, was completely fine with a new addition.  He welcomed her as a new buddy.  The mother and father said that the little pup would follow Bart around and looked a lot like Maggie Simpson, when she would follow Bart on the TV show.  As an ungainly puppy, she would sometimes fall over just like the cartoon baby.

Thus, Bart and Maggie became a team.  Bart looked out for her, and trained her in all the ways of taking care of his people.  Maggie turned out to be brilliantly smart. The mother always says Maggie would drive the car if they were skilled enough to teach her.

Bart, Maggie, the mama and the daddy were all very happy together.

A few years ago, in a land far away called Los Angeles, there lived a very sad and lonely girl.  She recently had her heart broken, but had felt lonely and overwhelmed for a long time before that.  This girl worked in an animal hospital.  She was also very, very poor.

One day, a family came in with a dog.  The children were crying and they carried this dog in surrounded by sadness.  The girl looked at that dog’s face, and felt like she’d been struck by lightning.

The girl was busy working, and didn’t know much about the dog, but she couldn’t stop thinking about her.  She felt like a middle schooler with a crush.  She started making excuses to go past the dog’s kennel.

The small dog was very scared.  She was about 20 pounds and had only three legs.  She didn’t understand why she was there.  But instead of cowering in the back of her kennel, she came right up to the front and challenged everyone.  Barking and snarling.

The girl could really respect that.  This dog was frightened and alone, but she was a fighter until the end.  The girl thought maybe she could learn something from this little dog.

So she asked the rescue group about her.  It seems this little dog was found at the tiny age of 4 months, wandering the streets of LA with a leg that didn’t work right.  The rescue took her in, had her bad leg removed so she could move more easily, and found her a home.  But the mysterious past the pup endured made her difficult.  In spite of loving her very much, the family couldn’t deal with her aggression, and after almost a year they returned her to the rescue.  Which is why she ended up boarding in the Animal Hospital where the girl worked.

One night, a few days after meeting this little dog, the girl was sitting at home, alone as usual, and thought to herself “I wish that little dog was here with me.  That would be nice…just to cuddle with a little dog.  Maybe with that dog.”

The girl started going to the animal hospital in her time off, to visit the dog.  The hospital workers warned her about the dog’s aggression, but the girl wasn’t afraid. “I understand her.”  she said, as the hospital workers shook their heads in bewilderment.

The girl was very poor, and couldn’t afford a dog.  But her friends at the animal hospital saw how much the girl loved the dog, and they brought her a big box full of old dog things they didn’t need anymore. A bed, bowls, collar, leash and more.  But before the girl could get the dog, she would have to pay a fee to the rescue.

She asked the head of the rescue how much it would cost.  Normally, the girl could never afford even the small adoption fee, but the head of the rescue said “I love this dog, but with her issues I’ll never find her a good home. You can have her for free, because I know you’ll love her like she needs to be loved.”

So, the girl brought the dog home.

The dog immediately went into the girl’s bedroom and hopped up on the bed as though she’d been there forever.

The girl tried very hard to name the dog Ripley.  But the dog just wasn’t having it. She refused to acknowledge that the word even existed.  Then the girl thought “Hm.  Well, I guess since the family already has a Bart and a Maggie, I should name her Lisa.”

The first time the girl said the name, the dog perked her ears and wagged her tail. As if to say “Finally! I thought you’d never guess it right.”

The girl and the dog lived happily ever after.  Best friends, companions, and partners in a life that can often feel so, so lonely; but will always send you just what you need most, at just the right time.

4:00 – 4:45PM WEBSERIES CREATORS ANONYMOUS
What builds The Guild? Is web content replacing television or supplementing it? Webseries creators from Geeks and Gamers Anonymous (Alex Langley, Katrina Hill, Marko Head), The Variants (Richard Neal, Ken Lowery), and Awkward Embraces (Jessica Mills) gather to discuss the creative process from inception through casting, fundraising, production, and promotion of original programming in the age of YouTube. (BALLROOM E)

Come by and say hi!

More info here:  http://www.wizardworld.com/programming-tx.html

Dogs are not people.  They do not think like people or react like people.  They are dogs.  Understand your dog, before you judge your dog, or anyone else’s dog.

My rescue pup was given up by her first adopters for biting a kid.  They didn’t understand her, because they had a big family and a bunch of dogs and they didn’t have time to understand her issues.  I fell in love with her at first sight.  A 22 pound, three-legged dog who was clearly terrified. But instead of cowering, she barked, and snarled and said “If you take me down, I’m taking you down with me!!”

Man.  I could respect that.  Fearless.  A fearless little three legged dog.  I had to get to know her.  And, after a week, she came home with me.

It was just me and Lisa against the world.  I’ve loved her with all my heart, and I worked with a trainer to understand why she behaves aggressively toward strangers.  He helped me understand how she thinks, and how I should behave in order to put her at ease.

My dog has behavioral issues.  She’s aggressive to strangers.  She has separation anxiety.  Yes, it can be stressful to deal with.  However.

My dog is the brightest part of my life. She saved me from the darkness more times than I can count, simply by loving me.  She makes me smile every day.  Everyone who has gotten to know her (after the initial scary introduction) has grown to love and respect her fearless spirit and intelligence.

And sometimes, when the world seems so sad I can’t imagine existing for one more day, she looks at me with those big brown eyes and asks me why I’m sad.  “Mama, why are you sad when walks, and car rides, and chasing squirrels are so much fun!”  She would lay with me in bed for an entire day.  Not asking for anything.  Just being with me, because she knew I was sad.

The rescue group I adopted Lisa from told me that they weren’t sure they would be able to adopt her out to anyone because of her aggression.  They said they felt so lucky that I wanted her, because they loved her and didn’t know how to rehome her.

Lisa brightens every day.  She hops up to me in bed in the morning and looks me in the eyes.  She says “Cheer up Mama. Life is simple.  Life is about loving your pack, protecting your pack, and enjoying every moment without being concerned one bit for what’s going to happen someday. Because right now we get to go outside and chase kitties! Isn’t that wonderful!”

And sometimes, I think to myself. “Yeah, that is pretty wonderful.”

Anonymous

The good news is, I’m handling it much better than last time. Last time I cried in the Apple store. Two days in a row. In front of two, different, cute genius bar dudes. And not little tears in the eyes, or silent weeping. It was, like, face crumpled, red nose, heaving, sloppy, snotty, UGLY CRYING.

Of course, back then, the contents of my computer felt like my literal entire life. Now, that’s not so much true. Plus, I learned my lesson about backing shit up. Though I’ve probably lost most of my music, I rarely listen to a lot of it anyway. The good stuff I buy on CD…as a backup.  Or ITunes, but something in me just really likes having CDs. I don’t know what it is.

I tend to hoard them in little hidey places. One of my ex-boyfriends opened up my glove box to find 10 CDs scrunched in it and nearly had a heart attack.  My car has a CD player, ok? Sometimes I use it, OK?!

Anyway.

In a really odd turn of events, I spontaneously bought a Lisa Frank spiral notebook out of nostalgia today, so I guess that’s what I’ll be writing on for the next however long it takes to figure out if it’s worth fixing the puter or getting a new one.

That’s going to be…interesting. Do I even remember how to hand write? I had to sign my name to something the other day and hesitated for a second like I couldn’t remember how.  I sign things like…never.

In other news, my fucking thumbs are exhausted from writing this blog on my phone.

Jeebus. If it weren’t for my wifi enabled smart phone and Kindle Fire I would definitely be ugly crying right now.

He charmed me into revealing my secret geek out…

I grew up on 100 acres of cactus, mesquite trees, wildflowers and various scrappy herbivores and even scrappier carnivores. As a kid, I was always fascinated by hawks, floating on the air currents like they hadn’t a care in the world.  An armadillo my brother cleverly named “Army the Armadillo” lived in the grove of Chinaberry trees.  Armadillos may carry leprosy, but they’re adorable.  Crafty jackrabbits were always an exciting spotting.  They’re fast as hell, and sometimes all you see are their giant ears, bounding through the tall grass.   At night, my brother and I would sit outside and listen to the coyote packs call to each other, from miles apart.  If we couldn’t hear them at first, we would call out ourselves.  Howling and giggling, until the coyotes called back.  They always do.

When I was growing up, sunflowers grew to insane heights.  A child, on horseback, nose to nose with flowers as big as my head.  Every spring, the ground would be blanketed with every color of the rainbow. Texas is famous for its wildflowers.  Our chinaberry grove was the closest we had to real trees.  Mesquites get to be real tree size, but they are scraggledy, scruffy plants with thorns.  The chinaberry grove was full of tall willowy trees, that actually changed to fall colors and lost their leaves.  None of the other native trees on our place did that.  Many a day was spent out there, building tree forts and playing super heroes.

Last year, Texas was ravaged by wildfires that reached temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees.  They swept across the landscape leaving such destruction behind, you can still see damage a year later.  Whole patches of earth that can’t sustain even a little grass.  Stones that shattered in the heat.

However, for the most part, the earth is recovering remarkably.  After all, before people came along, wildfires were a natural part of the ecosystem here.  So, now, everything is growing back, turning green.  The creatures have come back and are slowly building their numbers up.  In spite of this summer being one of the hottest in history.

The chinaberry grove is gone, but it’s been replaced by what my brother has called the “chinaberry nursery”.  Tiny, baby trees.  I went to check on the nursery and I got lost.  The paths we spent 18 years wearing out through the grove are gone.  It’s young and wild all over again.

Hiking out to the chinaberry nursery, I had to keep an eye out for snakes.  I stepped around cactus. I shoved my way through sharp, prickly bushes. My dog got grass burrs in her feet. My face ran smack into a Mesquite limb, and I tripped over a rock.  I was hot, sweaty, bleeding and annoyed.

Here’s the thing.  West Texas has been described as an acquired taste.  Not classically beautiful, not particularly easy on strangers.

Mostly because West Texas just doesn’t give a damn.

It’s here to thrive and survive, not to please you.  It’s your job to learn to deal with its challenges.  Snakebite survival 101, tornado warning signs, where to step to avoid getting your feet stabbed with thorns, etc etc etc.

It’s also your job to appreciate it’s hidden beauty, it’s glorious strength and the treasures it has to offer if you’re paying attention.  If you don’t want to bother, well that’s fine.  West Texas didn’t need you here, anyway.

But, before you give up on West Texas entirely, you really should hear about the frogs.

Of all the creatures and growing things of my home, my favorite are the frogs.  Now, West Texas is very dry.  Very.  Which is what makes these critters even more remarkable.

They burrow under the ground, and lie dormant…until there is a rain.  And not just a sprinkle, but a real, soaking rain.  We get three or four of those a year if we’re lucky, and every time, the frogs come out.  Suddenly, the air is full of a sound that is almost alien, it’s so rare.  Hundreds upon thousands of frogs, suddenly awake and rejoicing in the rain.  They sing and sing and sing all night long, until time for them to return to their sleep.

It’s remarkable.  All my life, it’s never ceased to stop my heart in wonder.

Just a year after those devastating fires, we can still hear the frogs after a rain.

And that is why West Texas is the BAMF of the Continental United States, and where I plan to end up after the Zombiepocalypse.

This is how I feel at being unemployed.  I have defined my life by the things I have DONE. The GOALS I have ACHIEVED.  And somwhere along the line that life went horribly wrong.  I turned around one day and realized I was completely depressed and miserable.

So now I’m trying to live a stripped down life in order to really figure out what I want in life.  What do I really want?  When I die, what do I want to look back on and be proud of? If I were to die right now, what would I most regret not doing?  Not having?

If I’ve learned anything in the past two years, it’s that you can’t live for the amazing moments.  The amazing, incredible, mind blowing moments in life are wonderful, but you can’t build a life on them.

The fact is that you have to build your life on the mundane moments.  I recently crashed with two friends and I was blown away by how wonderful the boring parts of their life are.  I thought “Damn, no wonder they’re so happy.”  The times in their life that involved ABSOLUTELY NOTHING were filled with…contentment.

I learned a lot from living with them.  The times in my life that involved nothing were usually filled with working towards a spectacular something.  It didn’t even occur to me that there might be something wrong with that until I walked into a room full of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and felt envious.  I looked at those mundane moments and realized for the first time what was truly missing in my life.

Just to clarify, I’m not talking about a boyfriend.  I’m talking about the ability to just be…to just exist, without a constant feeling that you’re missing out on something better.   Always before I felt contentment meant the death of ambition.  This has been proven to be untrue.  I witnessed two of the most spectacularly brilliant people I know, both of whom are in the process of working towards realizing their dreams, sitting on their couch doing absolutely nothing of import.  And I felt nothing but contentment from them and a feeling of missing out within myself.

Life has plenty of spectacular amazing moments.  Life has plenty of heartbreaking defeat and disappointment.

But the true beauty lies in the simplicity.  The quiet moments.

I’m not going to lie.  I have absolutely no idea how to live that way, and I’m starting to panic.  I feel a lot like that astronaut who accidentally got untethered and is basically going to just keep drifting for as long their momentum will carry them.  All I can think about is the fact that my calendar is empty and I have nothing of import to do all day.

But I’m working on it.  I guess that’s all anyone can really do.  I’m trying to look at the nothing and not feel terrified of the lack of something.  I’m trying to channel a little Zaphod Beeblebrox.

I’m trying to be ok with taking some time off from having THINGS to DO.  This is what I’m saying.  Actually, maybe instead of Zaphod, I need to be channeling the Tao of Pooh.

No, I take both of those back.  I should be paying more attention to my dog.  She took a 20 hour road trip with me.  She had no idea where we were going or why we were going there and had this look on her face the whole time:

Yeah.  I think we should all be more like Lisa.