Thor Hushovd wins Stage 6 of the Tour! Take that, Mark "Douchebag" Cavendish who didn't even finish in the top ten! The God of Thunder put the hammer down, or something. Ask PhilandPaul. They'll explain it to you.

So, the Tour de France started Saturday, and so far they've had an individual time trial, a team time trial, and two crazy awesome flat stages. Armstrong is in 2nd place, 0.22 seconds from the Yellow Jersey, Fabian Cancellara. (And Cancellara isn't a mountain guy, so he'll probably lose it when they hit the Pyrenees.)

I'd missed the team time trial so much. Cancellara basically pulled his team through it, from what I could tell. Armstrong's Astana team went flat out the whole way, with Armstrong and Contador (who won the Tour in 2007) both pulling a lot.

Today was fucking awesome. My boy Boonen got dropped and got stuck at the back, which was not awesome. But! There was a six-man breakaway that stayed away from 10 km on, and then at about 5 km to go, I think, Thomas Voeckler attacked the breakaway and succeeded! You remember Voeckler, right? He's the one who came out of nowhere in the 2004 Tour, got the Yellow Jersey in stage 5, then hung on to it for an extremely unexpected 10 days.



Anyway, today he attacked the breakaway he'd been with for like 180 km and got away, then rode it all the way to the finish! He spent the last 500 meters or so looking over his shoulder and shaking his head, adorably, because he couldn't believe he was going to win. It's his first Tour stage win ever! And did I mention that he's adorable?



Awesomely, Versus has live video and audio, with PhilandPaul commentating, so I can watch it at work (Um, I mean, listen to it in the background! Right!). And then I don't have to put up with Bob Roll and fucking Craig Hummer in the evening broadcast. Craig Hummer is an idiot and like the most annoying person ever.

Yay! My Tour is back!

Lucy is artsy, yo!

When acostilow and I first rescued Lucy, she was scared to death of us, had a huge cut on her neck that had to be sutured, and seriously lashed out at anyone who came near her. This isn't a good pic because of the annoying red, but it's the best one I've got of her behaviour then. This is the day after we brought her inside, after she'd been to the vet and had her neck sutured. All she did then was sit on top of the couch in a wary huddle and occasionally hiss at people if they came within 10 feet of her.



Moving on to Lucy now. Her neck healed completely--her fur grew back over it and I haven't even looked for a scar. She wears a collar all the time without appearing uncomfortable at all. And she *really* wants to be a lap cat, she just doesn't quite know how. She's still touchy (she gets very upset if you touch her tail the wrong way, for example), but she loves to cuddle with me if it's on her terms. If I lie down in bed to read, she wants to knead my chest or stomach for awhile, then lay down right where I normally hold the book:

Yes, this day in 2003 we won the war in Iraq! Just pretend the last six years didn't happen.

And they are fucking creepy! Even the comb is fucking creepy. My mother took a big chunk of it to school to show her students, because 9th graders get off on fucking creepy. Weirdos.

Also, they're, like, endangered bees, or something, so you can't just kill them. My dad had to get a beekeeper to come out and relocate the GIANT BEE HIVE INSIDE OUR HOUSE. Behind the cut are a couple pictures the beekeeper took before he performed this relocation. (He thanked us for "allowing [him] to save the bees". Uh-huh. You're welcome, bee guy. Now go away, and take your precious endangered bees with you.)

( I like my coffee like I like my women...er...covered in BEES! )

And by "different standards" I mean, "this sure looks crazy uncomfortable to me, but my cat seems perfectly content":



I have new cat pics, but I keep forgetting to actually put them on the computer! I fail at catblogging.

This is acostilow's new cat, Captain Jack, who is aptly named, trying to make out with her boobs:

Today is kind of a crappy day. Let's make it better with ( HOT GUYS! )

I think this is adorable (via Ezra Klein):



Almost as adorable as the original Barack/Michelle fist bump.

Making plans for next Tuesday....These will involve going to vote on my way home from work, then spending the rest of the evening flipping between various news channels, refreshing about 15 tabs, and biting my nails.

Still haven't gotten my computer fixed, but I set up a couple podcasts and videos on my work computer to sync with my new birthday iPod. So now I can listen to Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann on my way to and from work! And I found a free program to convert .avi files to .mp4, so I'm putting some MST3K eps on the iPod too. My dad didn't understand the point--won't I be driving? Yeah. I've seen them so many times I really only *need* the audio at this point. My iPod is currently named Rupert. I plan to change its name to Ripper after I get my computer fixed and can actually put cool music on it.

I missed work yesterday because of a really bad migraine. When I got in this morning (after YET ANOTHER traffic jam because PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE), I found a giant printer sitting in my cubicle. It's the one from the classroom, and it's broken, but I don't know what the hell it's doing in MY area. B has a WHOLE ROOM to scatter junk in, after all.

Oh, and "Undead Journal" can bite me.

Um...not just a six year old, y'all. It takes a slasher to imagine a situation where two Supermans would be *really* HOTT useful.

Yum.

Yes, that's my bed. Yes, that's my Care Bear pillow. Shut up! The sheets are from when I was, like, five! There are only so many pillowcases in the house, okay?! In fact, picara's the one who put that pillowcase on there in the first place! I blame her!

Another area where you should NOT JUDGE ME involves ( last night's episode of Supernatural )

Zoe had a very traumatic day last Friday. She had to go to the vet, because she'd been throwing up a lot. They had to draw blood and everything. picara had to pull out the couch she was hiding behind to even get her in the carrier to take her to the vet. It was very sad and pitiful. The vet thinks it's a food sensitivity, conveniently allowing him to prescribe the fancy expensive food they only sell at the vet's office. (Of course, she hasn't thrown up since she switched to it, so maybe he was right.) This food, of course, does not contain the EVIL CORN. Zoe loves to sleep on the stairs, so a couple of pictures behind the cut.

( I cannot go to school today said little Peggy Ann McKay )

So, Lance is coming back! And he plans to win an 8th Tour de France! Um, yay! I guess!

( cut for my blather and extensive quoting from humourous commentary )

Hey look! I'm already creating a tag for TDF2009!

Image used under a Creative Commons license from Rubenstein.

Lucy has started sleeping on my pillow again! She used to do that when she first started staying in my room, but I kicked her off once cause she was being mean and she never came back. She had her tail all curled around my face the other night!

( pics back here )

My parents got a new printer a couple weeks ago. Zoe was kind enough to help me set it up (read: play with the box and get in the way).

( isn't the box always the most interesting part? )

As far as Lucy is concerned, she is adjusting to her new diet. That is, she gobbles down her food in about 30 seconds in an utterly pitiful fashion. Then she pokes at me a lot to make sure I've noticed that she hasn't got any food AT ALL WOE.

Lucy saw her new vet for the first time today. I wanted to get her set up with a vet in the town we're actually living in, in case anything should ever go wrong where she'd need to see a vet, and also get some advice on how to control her weight. You see, Lucy is fat. She weighed in at 12.4 pounds on the vet's scale, which was less than I'd come up with doing the whole "weigh me, then weigh me holding her and subtract" thing. But still, she's clearly overweight. The new vet says her ideal weight would probably be around 9 pounds.

In case you didn't know, Lucy has a...personality. In that she often wants to kill everyone ever. I was expecting flying fur and blood everywhere, but she actually behaved herself very well. She moaned and groaned the whole time, of course, but the only person she actually tried to bite was me, and she wasn't really trying to hurt me.

Anyway, cutting because I'm going to put up pictures ( back here )