Hi guys. Just wanted to post quickly to let you know that I am alive and well and not on campus trapped in my office in the dark while soldiers search the building for a crazed shooter. That's just my co-workers, and while I'm happy I was late to work and am not with them right now, I'm scared for them, too, and worried.

Here's what I know. At 8:15AM, while I was buying my breakfast taco at the People's Pharmacy, Lacey from work called me, She was like, "Where are you?" and at first I was like, "Oh shit, am I possibly in trouble for being late?? No waym I stayed until 7:30 last night..." So I tell her I'm getting a taco at the pharmacy, what's up? And she's like, "Don't come in, go someplace safe. There's a possible gunman on campus and they have us in lockdown, sitting in the office in the dark with all the doors locked."

I went to campus, deciding to wait it out. There are a lot of alerts at UT, usually about an armed person wandering around, but the thing is... it's perfectly legal to carry unconcealed (or concealed) weapons at UT. Maybe not assault rifles, but handguns and other types of rifles, yes. So an armed suspect is pretty common and usually the "alert" ands after 20 minutes or so.

I kept texting with Lacey, and then I heard on the radio that the shooter had killed himself, so I called the office wondering if I should come in, but my boss said no. Then I heard on the radio that there might be a second shooter, and decided to get the eff off campus while I still could.

Now I'm home and worrying about my friends who have supposedly been evacuated to north campus because the shooter was last spotted in Calhoun, which is one of the 2 buildings I work in, and connected to Parlin (in that Parlin becomes Calhoun halfway down a hallway on the way to the elevator). I just saw pics of soldiers entering my building. Lacey is texting me that they haven't been evacuated because they are "in the hot spot" and she said there's lots of crashing and thudding above the office.

I'm going to go do something useful to take my mind off this. Just thankful that everyone I know is safe.

Does anyone know where I can find a download for the performance episode of SYTYCD?

PS- Hi.

...or something silly like that. Someone recently asked me if I had all of Chicagoland in one file, and I didn't, but it sounded like a good idea, so I made one. This includes everything ever related to Chicagoland, except for the music mixes, which are linked to, but the files have expired so I need to put them up at mediafire at some point, hopefully soon.

The Word file is read-only, not that I'm worried about plagiarism, just to be safe. The advantage of the Word file is that each section is anchor-linked in the document, so when you click on "The Worst De-Virginizing Ever," for example, it will jump straight to that story instead of making you scroll through the two stories that come before it. I don't have Adobe Acrobat, so the PDF links don't actually work, but the page numbers are listed so you can just jump to the page you want.

And that's it! I don't know if people still read this fic now that it's been Jossed, or if they still read J2 at all, but making this was more entertaining than working, so at least I got something out of it. Here are the files:

Last Stop: Chicagoland
+Word format
+PDF format

I'm thinking of doing this for some of my other long fics as well; just the ones LJ made me split into parts. If there's a particular fic or series you've had a hard time locating all the parts to, or have just been yearning for it all in one handy file, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Now I'm sad that I refuse to give LJ any money, because I no longer have my House "It's not lupus" icon, which is finally appropriate! Oh well. The good news is, I don't have lupus. The bad news is, I definitely have rheumatoid arthritis.

I don't have a lot of time to tell the whole story, but I finally saw my rheumatologist on Friday. I guess she was mostly freaked out because she was so wrong about me in her initial examination and wanted to correct it ASAP. She didn't think I actually had RA, so when my CCP came back high, my SED rate came back high, and my thyroid peroxidase came back high, she was pretty surprised. I guess because I'm not really in a lot of pain, and I don't get morning stiffness (yet). She was thinking it was fibromyalgia or something, but no. It's RA.

In any case, I convinced her that I don't want babies, so she put me on methotrexate, which I started on Friday. It's an immuno-suppressant that should slow the progression of the RA and keep my immune system from attacking my soft tissues, which will hopefully keep me from having the sorts of deformities my mom has. I can take the prednisone if I want to for short periods of time until the methotrexate starts making me feel better (about 2 months), but I doubt I will take it. I have to get my liver and kidneys tested monthly to make sure they're not being damaged by the methotrexate. And I have to take folic acid every day as well. I have a prescription for it, which is weird! But whatevs.

The only side effects I've noticed so far is that my appetite is gone, and unlike with adderall, it's hard to make myself eat even with a little help from my friends. I only take it once a week, though, so I'm hoping the appetite effects will lessen as the week goes on.

I do have my lab results, so if you have specific questions about tests, ask away either in comments or via email (amgolden at gmail). I know some of you had questions for me, but I can't remember who you are, so yes.

That's all for now. Gotta get back to work. Siiiiiigh.

This is going to be a long, probably boring, probably eyeroll-inducing entry about my health (or lack thereof), so if you're easily annoyed or whatever today, you might want to skip.

( Cut to protect you from the whining ahead. )

Anyway, I'm going to stop typing now and do some work. And then I just have to wait until Thursday and see what happens at the rheumatologist's office. But tonight I'm going roller skating! And that will be awesome.

So here's the deal.

( This got long. Unless you care about my health and job or whatever, feel free to skip it, as it is likely not relevant to your interests. )

Anyway, I have to get back to work now. And since this somehow got really long, if you made it all the way to the end, you're awesome and should tell me what's going on with you. I haven't checked my flist in probably 3 months; I don't know what's happening with anything. Speaking of which, did anyone see Thursday's Idol results show? WTF, America? What the actual fuck?? LACEY BROWN is still there, while Alex Lambert and Lilly McQuirky are both out?? OMG, the fuckery. It is sad-making.

So, very soon now I plan to make a post about how my life is totally insanely busy right now because work is kicking my ass because the fucking Texas state legislature keeps making new laws that ITS manages to turn into WEEKS' worth of more work for me on top of like, the job I am actually supposed to be doing. But now is not that time. Now, I am reccing a story that I just read because I'm pretty sure it was for me even though I dropped out of aiholidaybash for above mentioned reasons:

Physics Makes Us All Its Bitches

Go! Read it! If I know my flist, and I think I do, you will all enjoy the fuck out of this fic. I mean, it's 18,000 words of Kris-Brad BODYSWAP fic. As in, Brad and Kris switch bodies, and Adam finally figures his shit out because OMG KRIIIIIS. I mean, how can anyone deny their love of Kris, especially (despite?) when Kris is in Brad's body. The only thing that could possibly be better would be bodyswap alien mpreg wingfic in which Kris gives birth to a unicorn or something, but you know, if we got *everything* we wanted, there'd be nothing left to live for! So go read it. You won't be sorry.

And now, I think I am going to take a bath and catch up on Legend of the Seeker and Merlin and Dollhouse and finally finish winterlive's queenbitchfest fic, because omg I'm only like halfway through. THAT's how busy I've been, you guys. Too busy to finish a 50k-word post-apocalyptic American Idol fic. And that is sadtimes.

Oh also, I sent a bunch of you Christmas cards! And thanks to moonmelody and madam_d for the LJ gifts. Does anyone know if I can combine the gifts so I don't have to pay anything to upgrade back to paid account status? I don't like giving money to LJ, plus since I have 2, it seems like I should be able to use them both and get a free upgrade... but I've tried a couple ways and can't figure out how to use them both at the same time. Ideas? Anyone? Bueller??

Later, I will post a mix to make up for my lack of being around lately. It's a mix for a fic, and I will write a drabble for the person who guesses which fic the mix belongs to. <3

I just looked at my prompts for aiholidaybash and realized that the story I had planned doesn't actually fit the prompt. And also that it's due in two weeks.

HOW DO I LET THESE THINGS HAPPEN???

I'm tempted to drop out and work on my charity fic instead. But I hate dropping out. Uuuuggggghhhh. Take this poll. Tell me what to do.

Poll #1493531 fic-related activities
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

Tell me what to do:

If you answered "drop out", what should I write instead?