Quick

• New header!  Somebody rub Sydney's tummy, k?

• The title of my blog, "existence of ellen", comes from the olden times, when I weighed 115 pounds, wore a lot of jewelry made out of chains, padlocks, and rosaries (you know, kind of Sid Vicious + Madonna = melancholy 80's college girl), and attended Radford University.  Everything was called RU something or other.  I lived -- and I swear I am not making this up -- in a big apartment complex near  the university, called RU Living.  Whenever I talked to my older brother on the phone, he would ask me:  "Are you living, or merely existing?"  I didn't know, actually.  But, bam!  A couple of decades later and it makes a good (?) blog title.