ShooShoo

Please Watch "Animal Witness: The Michael Vick Case"

2008-08-27T00:05:00.001-07:00

If anyone's still around and reading my nearly-abandoned blog these days, please take the time to check out this program. It will be re-airing several times in the next few days on Animal Planet... What a great show; both informative and enlightening: Did you know that most of those horribly abused "vicious fighting dogs" have now been adopted, and many were happily placed to families with children?? If only MV could be sentenced to have to suffer anywhere near the suffering he caused to the poor animals under his care. Before I get carried away on my soapbox though: Please check your local schedule and watch (or Tivo, or whatever) this if at all possible. It's a very eye-opening program, especially to anyone who believes that pit bulls are inherently mean-tempered dogs! Thanks! :)

A talented ventriloquist?!?!?

2007-08-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

Who woulda thunk a ventriloquist could win America's Got Talent?! As much of a reality TV junkie as I am, I don't tend to have much interest in shows like this, or American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, etc (Last Comic Standing being the one exception; I've always loved it, and think it's a few steps above those others, but I digress...)... However, because I love Sharon Osbourne, I had to check AGT out this season. Whenever an act like a juggler or a fire-eater or a ventriloquist comes on, even if they appear talented, my immediate reaction tends to be, "Okay, so the person is talented, but honestly, is there really a chance s/he's going to be America's next big star with *that* kind of talent??" So was the case when I first watched Terry Fator appear on AGT. But man, time and again, every time this guy had a chance to perform, he blew me away more than the time before. I've never seen anything like it... And before long I found myself actually hoping the guy would win... Not only did he really impress me, but all three of the judges (even Piers, the "Simon-wannabe-type" that tends to always be one of the judges in this genre of reality shows). And not only did he impress all three judges, but obviously he really impressed all of America; at least the viewers who voted. And I'm telling you, if you didn't see him and you are doubting me (and I wouldn't blame you a bit if you were), you have to check out some clips of this guy doing his stuff. It is truly incredible. I still can't really believe I'm promoting a ventriloquist... But the guy can really sing, and go back and forth between impersonating-singing via dummy, and singing "himself", seamlessly. Often in completely different styles and ranges. Enough about him, because I can't explain it nearly well enough to do it justice... You just have to see it for yourself. And the fact that a ventriloquist could win a show like this truly says it all... Reality-cheeseball-show factor aside. Honestly. Terry Fator deserved this title, and I'm *so* happy he won. I hope his career continues to make history for ventriloquism in the future (it's so weird, I still feel funny saying such things... but that's just how good he is!).

I was torn for awhile there, because Butterscotch is also really talented, and also incredibly unique. I'd never heard of a beat-boxer who also sings, and sings pretty well to boot! But she doesn't just sing and beat-box, she does both at the same time!... Oh yeah, and can play piano at the same time too! Seems impossible, but she pulls it off... and does quite a phenomenal job at that. I think it's quite possible she will help bring this new style mainstream, and I feel as if I actually may have witnessed the making of music history. How often does one see a style of music that's so truly new and original? Not quite as dramatic as seeing Elvis on TV for the first time, but still, same idea. It's pretty exciting!

So before I ramble on too long, get distracted (who, Me??), and abandon this post along with the dozens of other "drafts" that age away un-posted, I'd better wrap this up.. But one more thing before I do: Honorable mention must go to the other two talents who ended up in the top four. First, Cas Haley... For the most part I detest reggae, but this guy really makes it work, even for me. I don't think he's an outstanding singer, but he's just got "it"... Charisma and character, and just seems like such a sincere and sweet guy.. America couldn't help but love him, to the point of voting him as second place for the entire season's competition. I personally would have put Butterscotch in second place, but hey, third sure ain't bad... And I honestly believe all four of these finalists are gonna do just fine. The last of the four, Julienne Irwin, also sings a style I'm not exactly fond of, country... but she just has such potential, and just seems so sweet it's almost sickening... but not quite. :) She's really just a doll... And though very green, she grew & matured over the short period this season of AGT aired... I think she'll go really far, and will continue to do better & better as she grows up and gains more experience at what she's doing.

Oh yes, and while I'm in the midst of honorable mention, there is one more act who certainly deserves it... the Calypso Tumblers. Another type of act I never would have thought could have impressed me like they did... They've been street performers for years, and I wish they could have gone further than they did in the competition. But the stuff they do leaves you with your mouth hanging open... Truly amazing... See for yourself by checking out above link and following the video links at the bottom of that biography page. And by the way, my enthusiasm for them has nothing to do with the fact that each and every one of them has rock-hard, perfectly sculpted bodies... I swear! But it certainly doesn't hurt, either. ;)

Speaking of pets...

2007-08-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

If you scroll down my sidebar on the right, you'll find a new button added for The Animal Rescue Site... You can click once a day (it's free!) to Provide Food for Shelter Animals. Once you click the button on their site, scroll down for links to several more similar donation sites: There's one to Support Free Mammograms to help prevent breast cancer, one for the support of Child Literacy, one for Feeding the Hungry, one to Save Rain Forest Land, and one for Child Health Care. Each can be clicked once a day... there's no easier charity than that, am I right? :) Although it can't be a bad idea to support the organizations which advertise on these sites, if you see anything that looks interesting to purchase... just as an afterthought. Oh yes, and one more thing, there are also links you can add to your own blog for any or all of these charities, should you be so inclined.

Vote for Nutty!

2007-08-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

Please vote for my precious puppy dog for pet of the month at LuvMyPet Photo's Pet of the Month contest. Grand prize is $100, which isn't that much, but I could use anything I can get these days.. Besides it would be bragging rights for my doggie, whom I love more than life itself. Luv My Pet is a "traveling vet" that goes around to different pet stores where you can bring your critters for immunizations or microchips, etc, at a much less expensive cost than if you just bring 'em to the vet for the same treatments...

A new slideshow... I love my scanner! :)

2007-03-02T01:08:00.000-08:00

The Cardinal Target Rule

2007-02-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

I completely forgot, and went to Target last night with a red sweatshirt on. I kid you not, I was there less than ten minutes, and it was right before closing... The store was nearly empty, yet I still had two different people come up to me to ask for help.

I knew better, but of course was there in a rush and totally spaced it... At least I was in and out of there, as I was Not in the mood to be polite!

Happy New Year! ;)

2007-02-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm a little late. Very unlike me, I know. Did I mention my New Year's resolution to become better about blogging? No? Hmmm, must be why I don't make New Year's Resolutions!!!

So this is a way-over-due quickie (no, not *that* kind of quickie!) to say hello to anyone who may be left around checking in once in awhile. I am *so* grateful for the well-wishers and people who still come by the blog, and even comment on my aging, rare posts. I continue to *think* about posting almost daily. But what can I say, work & life (not necessarily in that order) have both been pretty crazy lately.

I had to come back and rearrange this paragraph because I always like saving the best for last: The bad news is, I'm still not doing much in the way of working out... and I still haven't gotten my bedtime very much under control... The good news is, I do get some exercise; I walk my Lovey-Nutty-Doggie just about every night for at least 10 or so (often more like 20 - 30) minutes each time (it's a start, and will be a lot easier to improve on exercising overall once the days are a bit longer and the weather a bit nicer... Never mind that I have a gym membership and that the gym is right around the corner!)... I am slowly improving getting to bed at a more decent hour (in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of way). I *am* sleeping better overall, by far. Much more soundly, and I take stuff to help me get to sleep much less often these days... Most of the time when I do it's more of a precaution than anything else, or even just something to make me tired when I'm wide awake... It's tough to change the Night-Owl tendencies, ya know?

Anyway, speaking of crazy work. I'm here now (as of this week it's back to the "commute" just one day a week, to come in and help answer our 800 line) with tons & tons to do, so I better sign off for now. Hope to see you again very, very soon!

My Christmas slideshow

2006-12-13T12:34:00.001-08:00

Christmas Ass

2006-12-13T11:40:00.000-08:00

Life is all about asses: You're either
covering it,
laughing it off,
kicking it,
kissing it,
busting it,
trying to get a piece of it,
or behaving like one .....

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

He Said...

2006-12-03T03:25:00.000-08:00

(My boyfriend) Jeff's version of the events that took place the day before Thanksgiving:

You’ve probably already read about the myriad surgical procedures that Sherri had done to improve the symptoms of her obstructive sleep apnea. If I ever harbored doubts about Sherri's grit, I discovered through this ordeal that she ranks as One Tough Cookie. Even if she did keep a stuffed toy penguin with her.

None of the doctors downplayed the difficult surgery or painful recovery period. It can take weeks or even months to even find out if it actually benefits your sleep. You’re on a liquid/soft foods diet for weeks afterwards, etc. And usually between Day 7 and Day 10, the scars are well on their way to being healed and the major obstacles have been mostly overcome.

But, not always. Not in this case, when more than 3 weeks after the surgery, another obstacle presented itself. A tougher test. And not just for Sherri.

As of Wednesday, we had locked in our plans to have Thanksgiving dinner at her newly-wed sister’s new home the next day. We were really looking forward to it - although not necessarily the four-hour drive it would take to get there. This was Recovery Day 22, and while Sherri still had some swelling on her chin and mild discomfort when swallowing, we saw progress virtually every day.

Around 4:30am, her alarm sounded off the time for her usual concoction of pain meds - still taken at set intervals so she doesn’t wake up in full-bore ACHE-mode. I groggily eyed her spitting a small amount of blood into her water cup. Then, a few more times. We checked her Post-Op instructions. Possible slight bleeding. Hmmm. A pager alert returned by the doctor-on-duty validated our concern, but since the mild (certainly not ‘slight’) bleeding had stopped, we were advised to call back if it occurred again.

I left for work with Sherri still dozing, aided by Percocet, which quite understandably had become a most trusted friend since the surgery. At 8:30am I was just a couple miles away when her distinctive ring tone interrupted my otherwise quiet commute. Between what sounded like crying mixed with gulps for air, I heard her say that her cup was now half-full of blood.

Some kind of symphonic neurological misfire took place somewhere in my brain when she added, “…And it won’t stop!”

I think(?) I attempted to sound fairly calm when I told her I was close by, I was turning around RIGHT NOW, and to please sit down if she was standing up. I no longer needed my usual morning java to become fully awake. Honking my sorry Ford horn like a madman, I bellowed out my lowered driver’s side window something to the effect of “Medical Emergency, I Need To Get By!” as I zipped through at least four red lights on the way back home. I found her (standing - dammit!) in the bathroom, hovering over a cup filled with a deep red mixture that looked oddly carbonated. Sixteen ounces. And it won’t stop.

Engine left running, with Sherri now holding a tupperware pitcher below her chin, I again navigated both red- and green-lighted intersections. She held a classic airline-crash stance that whole trip - head lowered, leaning forward - except for that pitcher of what started resembling cherry Kool-Aid I might have made as a kid - an inch of water and far too much sugar added that gave it kind of a sludgey look.

Men do not like to feel helpless. Probably, especially, when it comes to protecting a female. It was not easy responding calmly to her occasional frightened, gasping cries that she was going to be alright, that the hospital was only a couple minutes away (the deciding factor in not initially calling for an ambulance), and to try and focus on taking a breath between spitting half-coagulated foamy red gunk. I remember lightly rubbing her back in the hopes that it would calm her and somehow magically make it less likely that she would pass out on me, leaving me to figure out how to stop the stubborn bloodflow from choking her to death.

I also remember the grateful relief of pulling up to the emergency room door, feeling both confident that she would be under the protection of modern medical science within moments, and amazement that losing - sorry, spewing - at least 32 ounces of blood had not yet rendered her unconscious. I vividly recall holding her arm on the way past the triage nurse who ushered us in, knowing by her movements that she would have made it in whether I held onto her or not.

It is a good feeling watching people who know how to take charge in the ER. If there’s ever a place where the mere presence of confident, decisive people can make a difference, it’s right here. Even if one of them finally had to sternly relegate me outside the door because I was “getting in the way”. Hearing Sherri’s gurgled objection that she did NOT want a hypodermic needle jabbed in her throat gave me no doubt she was going to be Just Fine. Apparently she didn’t really need her stuffed penguin after all.

It was later explained that Sherri had a blood vessel in her throat that didn’t heal properly from her tonsillectomy, which unexpectedly opened. After applying a local anesthetic, they cauterized the small area in the back of her throat, and after a half-day of observation, thankfully allowed me to bring her home. Back to liquids and soft foods for a while. And more Percocet.

We spent a quiet Thanksgiving at home, just the two of us, enjoying Turkey soup and nice, creamy mashed potatoes. We gave a lot of thanks that day.

I have never seen the hit show ER. I don't feel any need to start watching it now. My mother was a nurse in an ER for a time, so I have a good idea about what they do, I just don't understand how they manage to do it, day after day. I am going to write a note of gratitude to those people at the Good Samaritan ER for helping to save Sherri’s life.

I still don't know exactly how to describe the moment while we were quietly reflecting on the ordeal, when I realized that, Sherri and I both helped save her life, too. We kept our heads on straight when it mattered. Once in a while, you look back and realize Life was grading you on another test. I don't know if we scored 100%. Maybe a few points off for running some red lights....

My Own Personal Horror Show

2006-12-02T23:37:00.000-08:00

*Please be advised: Much of the below is graphic in nature (some parts more so than others), and is not for the easily grossed-out or faint of heart. If you fall into one of these categories, you may not want to read the story at all, but please especially avoid the links to the "hidden" pictures, as they are very graphic!

Since my surgery at the beginning of the November, I'd needed to keep a cup next to my bed at night, in case of waking up to any kind of drainage coming out of the surgery sites in my throat or sinuses. Very early Thanksgiving Eve, around 4:30am, I was surprised to wake up feeling like my mouth was full of liquid (since it'd been three weeks since the surgery, any need for the cup had recently been less and less)... But when I spit into the cup, I noticed what came out of my mouth was very dark. I made my way through my dark room to the bathroom and turned on the light to discover, sure enough, it was blood. By that time my mouth was full again, and I spat into the cup once more. Trying not to panic, I woke Jeff up to tell him I was bleeding. Normally he doesn't wake easily, but something in my voice must have gotten through to him because he woke up immediately and got up, trying to be calm even in his dazed state. I continued to bleed, and though I opened my mouth toward the mirror to try and determine the source of the bleeding, it was virtually impossible... the entirety of the inside of my mouth was coated, and my throat continued to produce copious amounts of more & more blood. I asked Jeff (as best I could, as it was hard to talk as blood continually filled my mouth) to please go get the post-op instructions out of the other room, to see if this fit into any expected issues during recovery. He quickly brought them back and read that sometimes when scabs came off incision sites, usually about two weeks after surgery, some slight bleeding could be expected. It seemed to both of us that this was more than slight bleeding; but after five minutes or so, it slowed, and then stopped. We decided it must be fine, and went back to bed. Unfortunately there was a encore performance of this incident a couple hours later. But again, the bleeding stopped after several minutes.

Jeff got up and left for an appointment a few hours after that, and while he was gone the bleeding started up yet again.... Only this time it was much worse. After several minutes passed with no end in sight (by this time the cup I was spitting into, a plastic red 32oz cup like you'd have at a beer keg party, was half full of blood!), I was becoming very scared, and realized I needed to get to the hospital. I thought about calling 911, but wasn't sure I should (now I realize it was probably silly for me not to, under the circumstances), so instead opted to call Jeff. I knew he wasn't far away, and as soon as he heard my voice, he told me he'd be right there. About five minutes later, he was... by this time the cup was completely full of my blood! He brought a pitcher back into the bathroom to replace the cup I'd been using, and helped me into his truck (he'd also thought about calling an ambulance, but decided to just take me himself since the hospital was only a few minutes away, and he could probably get me there in about the time it would take for an ambulance to get to us), and sped off for the hospital. I kept spitting the blood that continued to fill my mouth into the pitcher Jeff had given me, and he pulled around as much traffic as was safely possible: Honking his horn, flashing his hazard lights, and waving and yelling "Medical emergency!" out the window. We made it to the hospital in record time, and as soon as we walked through the emergency room lobby doors, the nurses at the triage station looked up at us and immediately told Jeff to bring me back to the examining rooms. I remember sitting down momentarily in a room right behind the nurses' station... And pretty much the next thing I recall is being on a hospital bed in the emergency room, handing over the pitcher (which by now had blood splattered all over it, and inside it the blood was around three inches deep), and having a nurse stand at my side to suction the bleeding so I wouldn't need to spit it out anymore. Jeff had come back to the room with me, and was kind of hovering around the doorway, trying to offer moral support while also trying to dodge the nurses who were running back and forth around me with IVs (yikes! I wasn't thrilled to have one of those dreaded things again... not that I minded the pain relief it would ultimately be sure to bring), stethoscopes, and other nurse-type supplies... They kept telling Jeff to please move here or there, and finally told him to wait outside the door. I was told my regular surgeon couldn't see me because he was performing other surgeries that morning. Another surgeon who was covering for him came to examine me, trying to figure out where the blood was coming from. It took him a little while; he had to keep using some kind of metal instrument to push the back of my tongue down to see better into my throat. Once he figured it out, he gave me a novocaine shot, and soon after that stuck a cauterizing tool in my mouth to burn the wound closed and stop the continual blood flow. Almost immediately I was pulling away from him, because I most definitely *felt* the searing pain of the cauterization... Apparently he hadn't given the novocaine enough time to take effect. Throughout all this I could periodically see Jeff waving through the window or doorway... I found out later they'd made him sit on a gurney because he'd mentioned feeling a little woozy soon after getting me there (He'd been a trooper and had stayed perfectly calm through the whole morning's ordeal, but I think once he'd handed me over and was able to relax, he started to finally feel a little freaked out about it). He'd tried to decline sitting or laying down, saying he'd be fine, but they insisted... they told him they didn't want to end up with another patient if he ended up passing out! After waiting a couple minutes for the numbness to take effect in my mouth, the Doc came back and started over. This time he got a little further before I again felt the pain and pulled back and groaned, trying to tell him It hurts!, but not being able to with that thing blocking my mouth. He looked extremely annoyed, but had the nurse give me another shot, and waited a couple more minutes before coming back and starting the cauterizing once again. After working on me a minute or so, the ordeal was pretty much finally over, and I was thrilled, as you can see. ;)
They checked me into the hospital, saying I would likely need to stay overnight for observation. I hoped they'd change their mind, and by late afternoon, since there'd been no more bleeding or incidents, they gave me the option to go home. Of course I took them up on it. Of course the whole incident was (and still is) a definite drawback. I had to increase my pain pill intake again, I regressed in how well I could eat (which especially sucked since Thanksgiving was the very next day!) and how well I could talk. But thankfully it was still nowhere near as bad as I'd been the first week after surgery.

So while we're on the gory stuff, I have more pictures that the brave and curious can look at... And a disclaimer to go along with them: Jeff now totally regrets not haven taken any pictures of me the day of my surgery. At the time he just thought I looked *so* bad, and was so out of it, that he thought I'd be pissed if he took my picture looking so awful. I'm pretty bummed that I can't see what I looked like... But I also can totally understand why he felt he shouldn't take any pictures at the time... All this to say that since then we've both wanted to make sure to get pictures of anything "photo-worthy", though what qualifies as photo-worthy is certainly subjective, especially when it comes to pictures like this! And though I know this kind of thing is seen as morbid or gross by the average joe, to me it's important to have stuff like this documented, especially because it's the kind of stuff that ends up forgotten because of how traumatic it is (Though on the other hand, most normal people probably look forward to forgetting something like this!) . So with that: Here is a picture of me, still looking pretty jacked up, right after I got home from the hospital the *first* time, two days after surgery (if you dare to look closely into my nose, you can see the tubes that had been placed there... Man it was a huge improvement in how I felt several days later when my Dr. took those out! Anyway, so here is a picture of the inside of my throat 2 weeks after the operation. Still looks pretty gnarly and gross, huh?? Healing is pretty slow going with this kind of surgery. To this day I still have to eat my meals excruciatingly slow. Which is not all bad... I've pretty much been forced to lose well over 10 lbs throughout the healing process (A net of 14 lbs so far, but initially I lost that much in the first week, because I couldn't really eat at all!). One more you can see if you so choose, even though the picture doesn't do the actual scene justice really... When Jeff came back to my house after bringing me to the hospital, he walked into my bathroom and saw what looked like a crime scene. There was also blood splatter all over the walls behind my sink... even on my cell phone as I'd been trying to call Jeff... Pretty stinkin gross, and SO scary. I'm so glad it all ended up okay... But man stuff like this sure makes a person feel thankful for who and what they have. :) And I'm *so* grateful Jeff was there for me that morning (as opposed to about an hour away at his job, where he normally would have been that time of the morning), and that we both managed to stay so calm to get me through the whole thing!

Almost there...

2006-12-01T01:24:00.000-08:00

Just updating, since I know Mr. Fab is anxiously waiting.

I am *still* working on my scary, gory story. And my boyfriend Jeff (who was with me through the whole thing) has even written his own version of events. There are pictures and everything, thoough I don't think most people would be likely to want to see them... They're pretty stinkin graphic! But a few brave souls may venture into their morbid curiosities for a little peek. I think by tomorrow (technically today), or Saturday at the latest I should get the thing posted, finally.

In the meantime, Happy Friday! Because of the emergency I've been writing about, my leave from work was extended through this week into next, I'm due back Tuesday. Hopefully I'll be talking totally normal by then. And thank God I'm able to work from home! 'Cause according to my doctor it could take up to 3 months to be fully healed!

Anyway, blah blah blah, yada yada yada... Enough blather for now. Gotta finish the real thing here, and am just trying to get in the habit of posting regularly again in the meantime. Nighty Night!

As usual...

2006-11-29T02:12:00.000-08:00

...I have a story to tell, and am too much a procrastinator and/or too much of a perfectionist to have finished typing it up & editing it yet. Dangit, but I want so bad to get myself blogging more. So for now I'm just here to say I have a really scary, gnarly story to tell. COMING SOON! And you'll not only get my version of events, but (my boyfriend) Jeff's as well.

Is the suspense killing you? I bet it is! ;)

I'll be back.... Soon... I swear!

Heavenly Raviolis

2006-11-11T22:40:00.000-08:00

The other day I had raviolis that tasted like they came straight from Heaven. They weren't even the fancy kind, they were Chef-Boyardee mini raviolis out of the can. But if it's the most solid thing you've eaten in a week, it tastes pretty damn good, trust me! :) For the entire week before I'd had tiny sips of broth, or protein drinks; tea or apple juice and as much water as I could manage. The night before my raviolis I'd realized I could steam some cauliflower and smash it up as finely as possible with butter. I was so excited until I started to eat it, and found I could barely get any down before it became totally cold. So by the time I got to the raviolis, and realized the sauce & pasta were not nearly impossible to chew up & swallow... They seemed almost as if they were the best thing I'd ever tasted! :)

So I had my surgery on the 1st of this month. I don't remember much about that day, just bits and pieces of my boyfriend Jeff being there encouraging me, patiently trying to figure out things I was trying to tell him when I couldn't talk because my tongue was so swollen. Trying to write stuff down instead but being so drugged up I'd nod off in the middle of what I was writing. Having the nurse encourage me (repeatedly) that I didn't need to worry, everyone who has this kind of surgery feels like they can't breathe.. And her (and then Jeff again later, when I'd forget) showing me on the monitor next to me that my oxygen level was staying between 96 and 98, which was normal, so if I worried I could always check the monitor.From what I'm told it's good I can't really remember much, because I was pretty bad off that first day.

Anyway, ravioli day was exactly a week after the surgery, and since then each day I've felt quite a bit better than the day before... Each day I'm able to take a little less pain medication, each day I'm able to swallow food a little better. I felt so crappy for the first week, that I'm just incredibly grateful to be feeling noticeably better. Speaking of pain meds, the most recent dose is makin me a little loopy, so I'll sign off for now. But just wanted to check in and say I am very optimistic that soon I'll be sleeping soundly, getting back in shape and getting a lot more accomplished (including more blogging!).

Just doin' it!

2006-10-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that when you spend a lot of time thinking about all the things you want (and/or need) to do, it can feel impossible to choose one to start with? Just me? Well that's been a major part of the deal with my lack of blogging. And I'm realizing with both the writing and with all the other to-dos in my life, I need to stop worrying over which thing to do first, and start just picking something and just DOing it! One day at a time, one minute at a time, one thing at a time.. Whatever it takes!

So here I am. I want to share some of the good stuff that's been goin on in my life, since the last few & far between posts have mainly been sadness or "down-ness" in one form or another.

One of the major things I have shared briefly was my plan to buy out my sister. Well that's officially happened. I say "officially" even though in a way it doesn't *feel* official, having needed her to cosign the loan for me. But the bottom line is, it's my name on the mortgage and I'm keeping the family home I grew up in... I figure I can always sell down the line if it turns out that I bit off more than I can chew. But if I'd sold it, there'd be little to no hope of ever getting it back. And it's a safe neighborhood, a "desirable" neighborhood (albeit modest... the homes are about 50 years old, and fairly small by today's standards), and it's always been home to me, even when I haven't actually lived here in my adult years. So I'm officially a home-owner, and I'm staying where I know I want to be right now (and very possibly in the long-term future as well!). :)

Hmmm. Here I am again trying not to get bogged down by all the other things goin on I'd like to write about... How about I mention two more for now:

One happy-happy news item is related to the update I just wrote about... When my sister and her husband move out at the end of the month, they are leaving me the adorable, sweet, funny, doggie Peanut! :) I'm soooooo grateful. I was getting pretty bummed out at the thought of her leaving town with them (they're moving a few hours away). I'm very attached to her, and she to me (she usually follows me around the house whenever I'm home... I have to tell her "stay" if I'm going in the other room just for a second, 'cause otherwise she automatically gets up to follow me). So knowing that, and also for a few other reasons, Lisa decided to leave her to me. In case you aren't familiar with the Nutty-dog, here's stuff Ive written about her previously, and more on her and my cat Hobie here and here.

And one other quick but important update, scary but potentially (hopefully) with a very happy ending: I am scheduled for surgery on Nov 1... After all the trial and error; drugs, C-pap, etc... It seems to be the best chance I'll have at finally being able to breathe normally when I go to sleep at night. Which in turn should help me to finally get rested and energized, and before long healthy and back in good shape. There will actually be three surgeries in one, because each is expected to help me somewhat... and each in itself may not make a significant impact on me. So the Dr who will be performing the surgery gave me the option to do one at a time (and potentially have to go back in the future for the 2nd and/or 3rd procedure), or all at once. I figure while he's in there, he may as well get it all out of the way so I don't have to go through the pain and healing more than once! I still have to confirm that insurance will take care of the majority of the costs... But in the end I know I don't want to keep struggling like I have been, so I want to move forward and hope & pray that this will finally make the difference that I need. The thing that scares me maybe as much or more as the potential pain and surgery itself (and I say that fully aware that the thought of acutal surgery will become scarier asit gets closer) is the thought that there is no guarantee. But at this point I'm pretty desperate to find relief. So if you're reading this and are the "prayin' kind", please shoot a little prayer up on my behalf... If not, I appreciate any good thoughts you can send my way instead. :)

Much more I could say on each of these topics as well as others... But I need to stop for now. I swear I am going to write more often, even if just quick updates, that's better than nothing! Dontcha think?? :)

Here's to you, Mate!

2006-09-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

I heard the news roughly 24 hours ago, and I still can hardly believe such a passionate, exuberant person's life is over. I think we as a society are pretty hard-pressed for heroes anymore, but Steve Irwin is the rare kind of person I'd qualify as one. Such a passion and love for animals, for his family, and to bring the message of conservation to anyone who would listen...
I've checked to try and visit the Crocodile Hunter homepage throughout the day and night, with no success as of yet. Apparently they are flooded with traffic; no surprise there...

I love that one of his best friends in life was his beloved pit bull, Sui.
He knew how inherently wonderful these dogs are, despite the unfortunate bad rap they have.

One of the catch-phrases I've somewhat adopted as my own is, Isn't she goa-geous?!! ... In fact I'd just said it earlier yesterday, when Jeff and I were on a train ride though the redwoods up in the nearby Santa Cruz mountains. It was Goa-geous up there...

To Steve Irwin's critics: I hope you can reserve judgment over his "scandals" until you hear the full story. Tonight I watched a Larry King interview that was done shortly after the incident where Steve fed a crocodile with one hand while holding his baby boy in his other arm. Steve is sincere and humble in talking about this situation, as he also is with other criticisms people have of him, but he doesn't back down from his passion or apologize for his goal to bring awareness to everyone about the need for conservation. There was and still is so much to be learned from a person like him, and in many different ways...

To Steve's friends and family: My heart and prayers go out to you. I hope the support and love from all the people you shared Steve with over the years brings you some measure of comfort during your loss. He most certainly will be missed, and no one could possibly take his place.

Here's to you mate: Thanks for all the memories, laughs and lessons. I like to think you're up there in the Big Pond in the sky, swimming with and hugging the crocs and other critters you were never able to cuddle here on earth! We'll sure miss you buddy!

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger (..... ??)

2006-08-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, so how ridiculous is it that it's been over a month since the last time I posted?! In fact, I'm just getting in what turns out to be my *one* solitary August '06 post under the wire. Wow, has life been crazy lately. Not that it's a valid excuse, and anyone who knows me well knows what a flake I can be... Especially when life overwhelms me.

The good news is, it's not all bad. In fact there's a lot of stuff going on that's good and/or exciting. Some of the overwhelming-ness (is that a word?) just outshines the good stuff though, especially when the reward part isn't always immediate.

Am I rambling? I know, highly unusual for me, but at least I'm writing, right (Don't mind me, just reassuring myself!)?! So where do I start" My recent Flickr additions show one of the big things that's been going on: My sister just got married to her boyfriend a couple weeks ago on the shore of Lake Tahoe.
The other, probably most major thing (certainly in the top 5 or maybe even top 3 major things ever to have happened to me) is that I've made the decision to buy out my sister. Our house is officially off the market, now it's just a matter of getting the loan put through. With the equity in the house, there's no doubt that I will get a loan (even with my formerly not-so-good, now virtually non-existent credit), the question is how bad will the interest rate be, and how much of a struggle will it be to make the payments (I guess technically that's two questions, but who's counting?... Not to mention for me to take control of all the bills and taxes and everything else I've become pretty disorganized about in the last decade or so, since depression first became a chronic issue for me. Anyway, unfortunately, due to my lack of credit, it looks like I will have to have my sister cosign, at least until I can get my own at-least-somewhat-decent interest rate. This kinda sucks, because one of the main points of my sister moving out and our plan to sell the house was for us to no longer be connected/attached (whatever you want to call it) financially. But that's enough about that point, for now at least.

*Whew*... A mouthful already, and I feel it's just scratching the surface of everything. Really, I think I've hit the two most crucial things that are happening at the moment. The other morning it hit home how stressed I was when my eye started twitching, and didn't stop for several hours... And again when I was nodding off at the computer later that day for the first time since I started my leave (for exhaustion/sleep apnea/etc) almost a year ago (for the uninformed, I've been back working part time, also due to aforementioned issues, for approx. the last 6 mos.).

Oh yes, let me touch on just one more big (no pun intended) source of stress (among other not-so-happy emotions) lately, and that is my continuing slide out of shape and into a higher weight (if it's possible to "slide" into something "higher"). Seriously, it is so hard to not constantly kick myself for letting myself get out of shape in the first place; and having no energy from being depressed and being out of shape just makes it incredibly difficult to change things for the better. I know this is not the first time I've lamented about this. But it's getting increasingly frustrating, and I know it has to change before I end up turning into Jabba the Hut (comparison used for the unmoving mass of nothing as much as for the fat reference). It will change.... It has to change, and I have, in fact, been taking steps to get my life back into some kind of semblance of being under control. This one particular aspect just hasn't started progressing much as of yet. But I swear on everything that is holy (Is that a sin, to swear on that which is holy? Just curious). It will get better.

Tagged by Thrusher, etc

2006-07-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Just about anything is good that will get me posting right now... And I like this tag, and it's short & sweet, so here goes:

Five things in my closet:

Clothes & shoes (duh!)
dirty laundry hamper
books
photo albums and many, many loose old (10+ years ago) pictures inside a Hawaiian souvenir basket... Need to go thru those and scan many of them, as well as put them in albums!

Five things in my fridge:

soy milk
various Italian and ranch salad dressings
Trader Joe's Cranberry - Raspberry juice
Ketchup... always!
sliced mozzarella cheese

Five things in my car:

Many miscellaneous papers! (ugh, yes, it badly needs to be cleaned out!)
Cell phone charger
spare sunglasses
three little dangly Japanese souvenirs hanging from my rear view mirror (two from Thrusher, and one I got myself when I went to Japan to visit her!)
My "tanning bag"... full of lotions, sunscreens, etc for when I go to the tanning booth, even though that's pretty sporadic.

Five things in my purse (or wallet):

Which one??!! Okay, I mostly carry around a big bag which could be considered a purse, and now I have a new one I just picked up in Seattle, and each still has some of my crap in it... So I'll just pick and choose from each of them.

makeup bag
mini-hairbrush
water bottle (my new bag has a little holder for it on the outside, which I *love*!)
mints (always!)
lotion

Let's see here, I will go ahead and tag Shades of Gray, Mark, Pointless Drivel, Daisy Mae, Ivy, and/or anyone else who is still reading and would like to participate... And I apologize if I'm tagging anyone who's already done this, I'm still way behind on my blog-reading!

So our house is officially on the market for a couple weeks now... No bids yet but we have people coming to visit about every day. If you or anyone you know may be thinking of relocating here to the beautiful South San Francisco Bay Area, feel free to comment and let me know, and I'll get you the details!

Also, Jeff and I came back from our awesome vacation in the Pacific Northwest last week. Hopefully I will get around to posting about that soon, but either way I will certainly be getting pics up on my Flickr page sometime in the next several days... Since I took about a zillion of them!

Sooo much catching up to do, but things have settled down the tiniest bit (since the place is cleaned up and on the market, and we're back from vacation), so hopefully I will *finally* get back into my blogging routine!

That's Incredible... Part II

2006-06-30T00:01:00.000-07:00

Cool Videos > Juggling Chris Bliss

I love it. It seems there are infinite ways in which a person can be talented.

It's really happening!

2006-06-21T23:47:00.000-07:00

So, my sister and I are really going to sell our house. We hired a realtor and everything... I think I'm kinda in denial about it... But it's the kind of denial that tends to save me, because sometimes I just need to be in "Survival mode" to make it through something really scary. And this is really, really scary to me. On the other hand, my sister, her son, and her fiance' (have I mentioned that they got engaged?) are on vacation since Saturday... And I must say, having the place to myself is soooo nice. The thought of having my own place is hard to imagine... But at the same time, very very nice to think about as an actual possibility. Trying to get my s*** somewhat together and trying to keep myself from stressing out to much has kept me from getting caught up in the Blog-World, still. I miss everyone, and don't know what my problem is really... Seems like it shouldn't be that hard to read a blog here and there, and to write a little something every few days, but for some reason it just is lately.

In other news, my nephew, Brian (the one on vacation with my sister Lisa) graduated from high school last week. The same high school we went to... In fact he went to the same middle school and elementary school as well... Can you believe it??? He grew up in the same house we did (this one), so I guess it stands to reason; but it's still a trip. Especially because he had a couple of the same teachers Lisa and I did... But as usual, I digress. It was kind of a close call there, whether or not he was going to do the ceremony or have to do summer school instead (which would have screwed up their vacation plans as well as the bummer of missing the ceremony), and he found out just a few days ahead that he'd made it! Wu-hoo! Anyway, here are a couple pics...

That's him, the tall guy in the top row. :)

Click to enlarge

And one of Lisa with Naked Cowboy in Times Square (she sent this to my cell phone this morning)... Cool, huh?? BTW, in case you have no idea who this guy is, he isn't *really* naked, he has tighty whiteys on that say "NAKED COWBOY" on the back! But the picture sure makes it look like he is!!! HeeHee

As is always the case, especially lately, I have plenty more to tell but it's late and I need to get goin'. But I'll be back (sorry for the delay Mark, but yes, I'm still here as you can see!)!

Still here... for now!

2006-06-05T23:20:00.000-07:00

I've started a couple drafts over the last week, but obviously haven't been able to manage to finish anything... Though things have been kinda tough since around the time of my b-day, it isn't as bad as it may seem. I'm okay; though the downs have been pretty down, there are certainly ups going on as well... I'm mainly telling you this because it's come to my attention that I'm being perceived as just being really, really down. Anyhow. Enough about me... Okay, not really! But enough about my moods (for the moment, anyhow), and more about some of the many things that have been going on.

It looks as though we are going to be selling the house. For anyone who may not know, this is the house I lived in from 6 months old to age 18, then off & on until my Dad died five years ago... At which time my sister and I inherited it, and I've lived here again with her and her family since roughly that time. Basically it's where I grew up, and where my parents both lived until they each passed away... And wherever I've lived, this has always technically been home. So this impending situation has certainly been one of the things weighing on me.

Though at the same time, I do look forward to the possibility of *finally* having my own place... At 36, it will be the very first time (I've always rented a room or shared an apartment or whatever). But even as I type that, I think "will I really make it to that point??" I feel like so many things about my life are in disarray... So unorganized. My credit leaves much to be desired... And though I don't think it's totally beyond repair, my tendency to procrastinate has only made things worse instead of better. But it's going to be getting to the point real quick here when I'm gonna *have* to get into survival mode and just take care of business the best I possibly can. I'm not going to have a choice. Well technically, I guess I will, but not really. I mean my sister and her boyfriend are getting married... and they want to sell and move away w/my nephew to a place more affordable and less crowded. And truthfully, even if I'm a bit more conflicted about it than she is, I want that too. I need a place of my own. Or at least a place that isn't occupied by my sister and the family she needs to share her own place with...

Anyway, surprise surprise, I'm beginning to ramble here. There is so much I want to do and need to do, and it will be at least a small miracle if I can manage to prioritize and at least get most of the important things done by the time I need to do them. *Whew* I'm makin my own brain tired. Or maybe that's just the ambien kicking in. But much is coming in my future, so don't be surprised if I'm still very sporadic around here for awhile longer. I sure miss writing, & reading everyone else's stuff... I'm still doing so little of that and I'm not even sure why that is... There should be time. I mean there are people who go to school full time & work full time and get through it... So why does my silly little life always feel so overwhelming? I guess that'd be the depression thing. I have to rise above it somehow. I will. I swear I will. I didn't manage to get off that rambling stretch I was on there, did I? Ah well, it's late and my sleeping drug *has* kicked in, apparently... so before I continue to ramble into a deepening cycle of incompetence, I'd better sign off here for now.

Hopefully I'll manage another update in the next few days... Hope you all are doing good, and I'll be trying to check in on those I've neglected in the next few days as well! For now, Ta-Ta, and Nighty-Night!

PS.. Thanks so much to you all who've been letting me know you're still there, & giving me support thru the comments. It really does make me feel good to know you care enough to say a little something to encourage me. :) Just wanted to let you know I really appreciate it!

Thank God for Three Day Weekends!

2006-05-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

Still haven't felt much like posting lately. And still haven't gotten caught up on reading my favorite blogs. How's everyone doing?? Is anyone still there?

I have been getting a little progress made on posting some photos on Flickr. I have about a zillion to catch up on, but I feel good about having gotten at least a few more online...

I think quite a bit about posting; there is a lot going on, that's for sure. Unfortunately some big stuff is adding to the depression and anxiety, which seems to be a lot of what keeps me from writing... And, ironically, a lot of what gets me thinking about writing at the same time. Does that make sense at all?

---

Okay, I just read a few posts, and wow can you miss a lot of stuff in just the span of a few days, let alone weeks! Thrusher quit her job! How do ya like them apples??!!

Well I sure miss everyone, and dangit, I will get caught up one of these days soon... Thank God it's about to be a three day weekend! Let's see if I can't make a little more progress in my reading & writing this time around...

Ramble On...

2006-05-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

My brain is just all over the place today, so this should be interesting.

First of all, thank you to anyone who's still reading. I have been so behind on blogging lately; even reading all my favorite blogs, let alone writing my own. It's hard to imagine anyone checking in with any kind of regularity when so much time goes by between my actually getting posts up.

The main reason I haven't posted more is that I've been having a pretty hard time with life in general lately. Depression has gotten pretty overwhelming as of late... Not constantly, but fairly often. And when I feel like that it's hard to find motivation to write. And even when I do feel like writing, I just feel tired of and bad about the thought of depressing others with what I write. It goes along with my tendency to isolate myself during these times... I feel that friends must get sick of hearing that I'm so down... again.

On the other hand is the question of, should I really feel bad about not blogging more? Not reading as well as not posting? There's no doubt that I miss catching up on the blogs I like to read... Not just for entertainment purposes, but because one tends to get attached to the people you're reading about. I don't think you can help but to start caring about a person when you enjoy reading their stuff, especially when they're sharing about themselves. But I know that what I really ought to be spending more time doing is taking care of business and getting out of the house. Not that I'm doing a lot of those things either, with the time I'm spending not blogging. TiVo is both a blessing and a curse, because it's so easy to just sit in front of the tube, especially when there's virtually always something you want to watch. I did take about a month of not watching (almost any) TV during the week, and it was quite a difference, and really showed me just how much TV I'd been watching. Okay, I can't really give an exact amount, but trust me, it's a lot. Jeff had been expressing concern about this, but once I did cut back he was still concerned, because then I spent too much time in front of the computer (and still didn't get out enough). I may have gotten a few more things accomplished, and gotten out a bit more, but still not like I should. And you want to hear something funny? For my birthday he got me a wireless modem and TiVo dealio (can't remember the technical name) so I could direct TiVo programs directly into my computer in my room. So this means that even when the TV in the living room is unavailable, I can still download and watch the programs from my computer! It's not that I don't appreciate the gift and the effort he put into hooking it up... I do! It's just kind of ironic in light of my current circumstances and struggles... Especially in regards to his feelings about those things. So while the month of significantly reduced TV was somewhat of an accomplishment, it almost feels like I'm doing worse now than I was before... It's just too easy. And where is my self-control? Hard to find when I'm feeling down, that's for sure.

The really sad thing is that the weather here has finally gotten just gorgeous. It's been sunny & beautiful out pretty much every day for the last couple weeks. And still I struggle to feel good enough to really enjoy it. Like I mentioned recently, it's especially frustrating going through all these different medications just trying to feel normal, and it's starting to feel like nothing is going to get me where I need to be. Between the sleep issues, the depression, and my newly diagnosed allergies (sort of diagnosed anyway; a general doc said I have allergies and I was prescribed Flonase... But I think to really know more specifically what's going on I need to see an allergist... Though this is yet another thing that's tempting to procrastinate about, because how can I get excited at the idea of adding yet another doctor to my "repertoire"??!) I just want to get to a point where I have enough energy and motivation to start getting out & getting regular exercise again. I believe that once I'm working out with regularity for a few weeks, it will help everything else to start falling into place energy & mood wise. My goal is to eventually not *have* to be on medication... And of course I still wonder if it's a good idea to be bothering with it at all at this point, since it seems to be doing hardly anything for me. Ugh... It's just so f-in hard sometimes.

Friday, May 12... 10:45 pm
Well I had a bunch more I was going to blather about yesterday, which is why I didn't finish and post this then. And in the interest of not letting this fall into the heap of un-posted drafts I haven't posted since my blog-beginnings, I need to tie this up and just post it.

So one positive (or at least kinda cool) thing to note before I go. Yesterday was exactly 22 years since my first rock concert (unless of course you count The Osmonds, but that's a whole different post!!). 22 years.... Holy Cow! Thus began my "love affair" with Van Halen and David Lee Roth, which lasted through my teens and, though now much less hard-core, all the way up until the present day. Don't ask me how I remember dates like that... I'm just weird that way!

Dangit, i was hoping to have a cool "day after" picture to share with you from that event in my history, but unfortunately it isn't as accessible as I'd hoped. I'll try to dig it up and post it tomorrow!

And *hopefully* I'll also manage to get caught up on my neglected favorite blogs this weekend as well. Ta Ta For Now...

Cute

2006-05-04T23:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Thrusher!

Born this day, 36 years ago...

2006-04-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

In celebration of my birthday, I decided I should post a picture of myself in my Birthday Suit:
Sorry it's kind of an old one, but it's the best I can do.

To be honest, this one is kinda rough. I feel like I've just officially entered middle-age without having gotten married, having had kids, or really having accomplished much of anything I always thought I'd have done by this point. Maybe life works that way for a lot of people, but to me it sure feels messed up. Don't get me wrong, I know I have a lot... I realize I could be a lot worse off in many ways, and that plenty of people are. I'm thankful for all that I have: My relationships, my home, etc. But it's sure difficult to realize that my life's more than likely half over, and to still feel like a kid who hasn't figured out much of anything; where I want to go, and what I want (realistically) to do with my life. One thing I can be grateful for is that most people act really surprised when they find out my age; they tend to think I'm quite a bit younger than I am. Boy did I hate that when I was a teenager... But now, I don't mind it so much.

Also on the plus side, Jeff and I will shortly be heading to my free birthday dinner at Todai. Yum!

Gettin' Springy Wit' It

2006-04-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

That's what I'm talkin' about!

It's about time Spring arrived... And it's about time for me to get outside and enjoy the sunshine!

Musical Meds

2006-04-25T22:30:00.000-07:00

I can't seem to get my tail to stop twitching either!!

I can't remember a time when I've been on nearly this many kinds of medication, let alone jumping from one to another like this. I must be getting old! Seriously, over the last decade I've become a skeptic about "traditional" medicine... So it feels really weird to be on this roller coaster ride of trying a zillion different medications. But I guess when a person gets desperate enough, she or he will try just about anything. I'm determined that it just be a temporary measure though. Once I *finally* manage to get myself over the hump and back into a regular, healthy routine again (I know, I've been talking about it since I started blogging... But hey, it's a really, *really* big hump!!), I should finally be able to sleep better and get the depression under control without much (or any?!) help from meds. I just hope it doesn't take too much longer, 'cause this is getting tiresome!

That's Incredible!

2006-04-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Jeff emailed me a link to an awesome story, a clip from The Montel Williams Show. You have to check out Faith the Amazing Bi-Ped Dog! I added Faith's owner's book to my Amazon Wish List, and if I don't somehow magically already have it by my b-day (I kind of have a rule for myself and everyone close to me that you don't buy yourself "presents" when Christmas or your b-day is coming up, and mine is at the end of the month!), I will be buying it immediately to read. What a cool story! They have a website as well... Take a look and be amazed. I'm sure she'll be all over the talk show circuit before ya know it!
Is that the most adorable little thing you ever saw, or what??!

Where are we????

2006-04-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

Can anyone tell me what decade we're in?! I was born in the beginning of the decade called the 70s. Then there was the glorious, rockin' 80s. Followed by the dark and angst-ridden 90s. And now? Are we in the Zeroes? The "Os" (as in "Ohs")? Is it just me, or do we not refer to this decade with a title like we did in decades past? I guess the next decade will be the 10s? But where are we now?

I'm so confused.

Oh yeah, and HAPPY EASTER!

There's a reason I didn't stay in Portland!

2006-04-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

I went to school for a few years in Portland, OR. When I came back home (over a decade ago... so weird how fast time flies!!), several of my fellow students had decided to stay on and live in the area. A few tried to talk me into staying as well. The main reason I couldn't bring myself to stay looks something like this:
Problem is, this is today's forecast *here* at home in San Jose! Not only that, but it's pretty close to what the forecast has looked like for quite some time. I'm getting pretty sick of being soggy... Bring on the sunshine!!!

Tips for anyone going for laser hair removal

2006-04-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to get another laser hair removal treatment. This was my fifth (and hopefully last) underarm treatment, and the fourth out of fifth treatment on my lower legs (knees down). Though to me, it's pretty painful (increasingly so, as they up the power of the laser each time you treat the same area), it is well worth the ultimate goal of never having to shave again. And hopefully, more than likely, that's where I'll be once all is said and done.

Anyway, here are some of the things I've discovered to be helpful if you're about to go get laser hair removal treatment.**

-Don't tan ahead of time, let your skin get as light as possible before each treatment. The lighter your skin is (and the darker the hair is), the more effective the treatment will be. Also, the lighter your skin is, the less chance there is of any kind of rash or other reaction.

-Make sure you exfoliate well, and then shave with a new razor as close to treatment time as possible. Also be careful not to miss any areas they'll be zapping; as I discovered the hard way, any hair growth the laser hits ends up being significantly more painful that if it is closely shaved.

-Buy yourself some Sonacaine, or whatever recommended numbing gel you can find. It doesn't make you totally numb by any means, but it certainly seems to help some. Put it on 45 minutes to an hour before you will have your treatment, then wrap the areas with saran wrap. I personally love Glad Press & Seal... It clings like saran wrap is supposed to, without clinging all over your hands and everything else! It certainly works great for wrapping up your gelled-up body parts... Wait, I didn't mean that the way it might have sounded...

Saran-wrapped Shoo-Shoo (click to enlarge)

- If you have pain killers for chronic headaches or for whatever reason, I recommend taking a solid dose of them an hour or so before treatment. And if you want to have a shot of tequilla (or something similar) to top it off, I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea either. Though the treatment centers don't want you taking any pain meds ahead of time (I personally think they're just somewhat masochistic), I always do. For instance, this last time I took some Vicodin about an hour before, then took a shot of tequilla right before we left. Obviously I had someone drive me and pick me up. Some of the zaps still hurt like hell, but obviously would have even been much worse had I not had a little "help". ;)

- Ask for those little hand-squeezer thingies. I know my place has them, hopefully all of them do. They can help you get through the tougher spots a bit easier.

- You may want to engage the technician in a bit of conversation. It helps some to be distracted.

- I would certainly recommend you check into the place ahead of time, I'm a big fan of the BBB for making sure a place such as this has no lawsuits pending against them, unresolved complaints or whatever.

**This is not medical advice, just my own thoughts, stemming from my own observations. Follow the advice at your own risk!

BTW: Thank you very little to whatever party or parties contaminated me last week. I ended up spending my weekend suffering from a sore throat and upset stomach. I took Airborne most days when people were coughing up their lungs around me, but obviously didn't take enough. All the Airborne in the world may not have been enough to protect me from the hacking, snotty, sick people gracious enough to force me & everyone else to share their airborne germs at the office each day. Next time, "STAY THE F*** HOME, WILL YA??"

Sneezy Etiquette

2006-03-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

I've recently mentioned feeling somewhat neglected when I'm not "Blessed" after sneezing. And because I try to live by The Golden Rule, I also feel compelled to bless others who sneeze in my presence. However, I've noticed that sometimes I hesitate, as it's hard to know what the proper sneeze etiquette is in certain situations.

What do you do when someone sneezes multiple times? It seems strange, even awkward, to bless someone more than two times in a row. But what is the appropriate number of times to bless? Every other time? For up to three blesses? Lately I've trimmed it down to just blessing the first sneeze (especially since someone like my nephew, who lives in the same home as me, is liable to sneeze up to a dozen or more times in a row), and just hope that'll cover all subsequent sneezes.

What if you can't tell if someone is coughing or sneezing? I think I've been guilty of these kinds of coughs myself, as I'm pretty sure I recall being blessed at least once when I didn't really sneeze at all. I tend to err on the side of caution if I'm not sure. Though I feel rude if I don't bless someone who sneezes, the idea of blessing a non-sneeze seems more embarrassing.

The other one that always gets me usually occurs in the office/cubicle environment. It's when someone sneezes, but they're not right near you. They sound as if they could be a few cubes away... At what distance are you exempt from the courteous blessing? I always pause, hoping someone closer to the sneezer will bless him or her. I don't want to have to yell, "BLESS YOU" to know the sneezer hears me (or does it count somehow even if the person doesn't hear??)... Obviously I'm putting way too much thought into this. It certainly seems like it should be a simple thing, just doing the courteous thing and saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes. My overly-analytical mind has me confounded once again.

While we're on the subject of sneezing, since it's often related to illness: At work today I again was hearing hacking and sniffling around me... Not only from adults, but someone actually brought their sick *kid* into the office! I can just imagine it: the nurse probably called from school and said, "This kid is sick, get her out of here so she doesn't infect the whole school!" So what does Mom do... Bring her home so chance of infecting others is severely limited? Noooooo! That would be much too kind & considerate of those around her. No, she instead brings her kid into the office to make sure she still has ample opportunity to infect as many others as possible! Including Miss Fragile Immune System (that would be yours truly). Ugh. I can hear her blowing her snot-filled nose as we speak! Don't get me wrong, I understand it must be difficult to have to take time off for a sick kid, but still. Some things just need to take priority, and a sick kid staying home to rest, as well as staying away from those she can contaminate, is certainly one of those things!

Daisy Mae Productions Rules!

2006-03-22T12:19:00.002-08:00

Thanks to Daisy's new web-page designing endeavor, my blog has a whole new, personalized look! Didn't she make it look cool? I love it!

If you are interested in Daisy's services (Um, is it just me or does that sound dirty??), please make sure to get in touch with her. You can check out her stuff at

Hmmm. Now I'm gonna have to work on changing the colors on My Lists again, so I can still have some purple goin on! But please, relax and enjoy my new tropical environment!

Rebel Punk

2006-03-20T21:26:00.003-08:00

Recently I talked about the punk/mohawk situation at my old high school. Coincidentally, yesterday Jeff and I saw a couple punks at the donut shop/cafe where we often get breakfast on weekends.

As we'd been eating, I noticed three teenagers getting up from the table nearby. I saw that two of the three, apparently a couple, had mohawks. Don't ask me how I'd missed it before then, but I had. I think the usual tendency (at least for me) is to think that people bold enough to wear this kind of hairstyle are not only looking for & enjoying the attention it brings them (even though most often it seems to be negative attention), but are enjoying being seen as a rebels who break all the rules. So it seemed the sweetest thing in the world to not only see the threesome carefully clear the table of their dishes, but to see the guy with the mohawk go back with napkins to wipe their crumbs off the table. I had to nudge Jeff (he was reading the paper), to make sure he saw. He was almost as amused as I was. Too bad I didn't have my camera, though I'm not sure how I could have snuck a picture without being caught!

It may be a small thing, but stuff like that often just gives me a little renewed faith that things are often brighter than they seem.

Batman & Robin

2006-03-15T12:00:00.002-08:00

Okay, I know you must be sick to death of my telling work stories by now (and it's evidence of how exciting my life has been lately, for sure). But I just can't resist this one. I've been fighting the urge to tell of the other "celebrity voices" I tend to hear many days in the office, besides the aforementioned Alan Alda.

Since I have a crappy memory and haven't made notes like I should, only two come to mind. One is a guy who sounds just like Jeff Bridges (who's voice, to me, sounds about as appealing as fingernails scraping a chalkboard). The other is a guy who's voice I'm hearing today (and have heard several times before), who sounds to me just like Batman. The orignal, TV series guy. I was inspired to tell you about it today especially, because I heard him moments ago on the phone saying, "Mr. Madison, I have Robin on the line."

Yes, I am very easily amused. But to me it was too funny of a coincidence to pass up. Hopefully I'll manage to find something a tad more exciting to write about soon!

Hey... I just had an idea: What if I snuck up behind him and jumped, shouting, "BAM!!" "POW!!" "KAPLOOEY!!!"

X.Y.Z.

2006-03-14T12:25:00.000-08:00

Did you used to say that when you were a kid? In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, it stood for, "X-amine Your Zipper." When I went to the ladies room today, I discovered mine was needing "X-amination." Presumably since last time I'd been in the ladies room. Of course when something like that happens (Like when you discover that something's in your teeth, or a booger hanging out of your nose, not that *that's* ever happened to me of course!), you immediately try to remember who may have seen you in such a compromising postition. I think *perhaps* I got away with my blunder undetected, but there's really no way to be certain.

Also while in the office today, I sneezed, and no one blessed me... Twice. It may be a silly thing to be annoyed by, or just an opportunity to whine, but I can't help it: I hate when I sneeze and no one bothers to bless me!

In addition, I've been victim to certain painful tummy issues today. A side effect of "The Curse." Good times.

All in all I'd have to say it was not a great day, but at the same time, there are certainly a lot of worse things that could happen...

One very good thing to make note of: Spring is almost here! Wu-HOO!

Fun with song titles... (This is so Rad!)

2006-03-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

I got this from the fabulous Mr. Fabulous over at Pointless Drivel. And I *love* it.

Pick one musical group. Answer the questions with a song title. That said... on to the survey.

Group: The Eagles [Duh!]

1. Are you male or female: The Girl From Yesterday
2. Describe yourself: Out of Control
3. How do some people feel about you: Is it True?
4. How do you feel about yourself: One Day At A Time
5. Describe current relationship with boyfriend/ girlfriend: Love Will Keep Us Alive
6. Describe where you want to be: On the Border
7. Describe how you live: All Night Long
8. Describe how you love: The Best of My Love
9. What would you ask for if you had just one wish: No More Cloudy Days
10. Share a few words of Wisdom: Learn to be Still
11. Now say goodbye: Already Gone

A classic shot, for your enjoyment.

Home Sweet Home

2006-03-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

Argh.. I am just totally disgusted right now. I am actually feeling queasy. Today the drop-in center was almost totally filled up, so I'm stuck in the "quiet room". That title is kind of a joke, because most don't tend to be any more quiet here than when they're in the main part of the office. But the main difference is that it's even less private than the larger room. The cubes are like one large cube divided into fourths... just a divider wall on your left and right, and a small desk.

Anyhow. I've been getting grossed out all day by different people. Currently there is a guy across the room who is constantly snorting snotty snorts. I want to yell at him to blow his f-in nose already! And if that doesn't do the job, get the hell outta here, you're too sick to be here! Ugh. He's done it like a dozen times just since I started this paragraph. It is so disgusting!

Earlier today the guy on my left (thankfully he's apparently out to lunch at the moment) sneezed, and then was doing the same gross snorting sound for awhile. Before that, he was on the phone and kept propping his feet on the edge of his tiny desk... of course the bottoms of his shoes (and thank GOD he was wearing shoes!) were almost hanging over the edge of *my* desk... definitely too close for comfort. For anyone who may not know, I kind of have this foot phobia, which could easily be the topic of another post. But anyhow. This guy was also terribly loud on his call... thankfully it was a conference call and he wasn't talking the entire time. Hopefully he at least had his phone muted while he was doing his snorting!

And there was yet another person, a lady (perhaps not the proper term in her case), who was sniffing and sounding like she was suffering from a full-blown, severe cold. That seems to be the case almost every day that I'm here, at least one person sounds like they should be home instead of here, infecting everyone around them!

And speaking of home. My home system is to be brought to me tomorrow. And *hopefully* will be up & running by no later than Monday. I can not *wait* to be able to work from there instead of being surrounded by all these disgusting, germ-riddled, infection-filled people each day. Lord knows I get sick too easy as it is!

Speaking of which... Where's my Airborne????!

The Truth (And Lie) is Revealed!

2006-03-07T23:00:00.000-08:00

Well I think everyone who's gonna guess has guessed.

I must say I'm surprised that not one person guessed that option #3 was a lie. Even though you are all correct in not having guessed it, this may very well be the craziest thing that has ever happened to me. I will spare you most of the many details, but let's just say my sister (Lisa) and I met a friend of Glenn's, and we ended up going out to dinner with them a couple times during a week when the Eagles were doing some shows here in the Bay Area. The second time our friend Shawna came along too. And (the other reason I was surprised no one guessed this as a lie), as bad as our nickname may sound, it is actually quite innocent. Glenn is somewhat of a flirt, but is also a gentleman, and didn't seem to expect any kind of special "Rock star" treatment out of us... just company and conversation (he and his friends most definitely love to talk!). He and his friend Tommy, (also his road manager) have very kindly set us up with tickets to Eagles and solo Glenn Frey shows a few times since then... The first time we went backstage before the show to say hi, and as the door to Glenn's dressing room opened, he called out, "Well, if it isn't the famous *Neilsen sisters." Several months later, they put tickets at will-call for Jeff and I at a solo Glenn Frey show in Vegas (we called to let them know we were in town the same time they were). Though we weren't able to go backstage for that show, I sent back a couple bottles of wine as a "thank you" for the tickets (which were great seats, BTW)... Before the show was over, Glenn said he wanted to say hello to a couple people who had come to see him, and then said "I'd like to say hi to Sherri *Neilsen of The Famous *Neilsen sisters in San Jose." I almost peed myself. It was pretty cool.

Here are a couple shots from the nights we went out to dinner with Mr. Frey and his buddies. It's funny... I think he looks so happy it's like he's a fan of ours instead of the other way around!

Click to enlarge

* Name has been changed to protect the innocent!

So, as for the next truth: It's Option #1. This is the same one which got most people the last time I played this game... I did, in fact, play in a ragtime banjo band; complete with washboard and gutbucket! And I even played one half of the solo in Dueling Banjos! In case you are still having any doubt, I have scanned the evidence! In the one on the right, it's quite possible that I am actually playing my Dueling Banjos solo! HeeHee~

Click to enlarge

And of course that leaves the lie, option #2, which Ivy, Daisy, and Knows It All (of course, since she knows it all!) guessed. Since I couldn't think of a way to give a prize, I instead have also dug up and scanned a picture of what my hair actually *did* look like in high school (I figure seeing me like this is reward enough!)! I was actually the heavy-metal type with hair that was carefully sculptured and feathered back by Aqua-Net Extra-Super-Hold (it came in the white and pink bottle; that stuff was like lacquer!).

Though I never did wear a mohawk, I'm pretty sure I remember that at least one person at my school did... There were definitely quite a few punks who wore their hair very high and spiky. I actually participated in a sit-in/protest on behalf of the punks one time. It even got coverage from the local news: The school wanted to ban hair styles more than three inches high (or was it four.. ? This is the 80s we're talking about here, after all!). As I recall, our sit-in worked, and the girl who the controversy started over kept her tall hairstyle. *Ah* the good ol' days!

Click to enlarge

Thanks for playing all, I hope to see some truths and lies from you as well!

Two Truths and a Lie

2006-03-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

I've been realizing that things around the blog lately have been pretty slow... So I'm thinking it's time to mix it up a little. Not only that, but since I've been feeling pretty down and uninspired, I'm having a hard time finding the creative flow it takes to come up with good storytelling... Even if I have often thought a lot about writing about recent events, when it comes down to sitting down and actually putting it down in black & white (or purple and purpler), I just come up empty.

ANYhoo. Fairly recently, Ellen took to playing a game on her show, called Two Lies and a Truth. And it reminded me of the game my coworkers and I played way back when I was new at this job, a kind of get-to-know-you thing we did over email. A lot more fun and less corny than a lot of the usual introductory stuff that goes on in corporations. For whatever reason, I like this version of the game better than Ellen's... And I figure this is something a little different than the usual "MeMes" (whatever the hell that means) so commonly found on blogs. Not that there's anything wrong with MeMes... but you get the picture!

So before I do any more digressing, let's get down to business:

#1: As a Preteen, I used to play one half of the solo of Dueling Banjos, onstage, in a banjo band.

#2: I wore a purple mohawk for two years of high school.

#3: Glenn Frey (of The Eagles) personally nicknamed my sister Lisa and I "The Famous [insert our last name here] Sisters."

Now obviously, if you know me well enough to already know which is the lie, please refrain from commenting. But as for anyone else reading, feel free to voice your guess in the comments, and I will reveal which is the lie in a few days or so. Please also feel free to steal the game for your own blog, as I'd love to read your own truths and lie, and to guess which is which!

More cubicle fun

2006-02-27T12:04:00.000-08:00

This guy's voice sounds just like Alan Alda (and this is just this his half of the conversation, as he was on a phone call... It's not really eavesdropping if his voice was clearly audible from across the room... right??):
"So you don't have an answer then..... No, 'I don't know', means you don't have an answer.... What you need to do is call her, not send an email. And once you get her on the phone you ask her to set up something this week. If she says this week is no good, you ask her when is good, and don't let her off the phone until she makes a commitment.... No, you aren't being too demanding, she needs to follow through with the action-item she took on."
...This went on & on for quite some time, but I will spare you any more than that. I did eventually wander over his direction just to check. He looks nothing like Alan Alda.

On the up side, there were guys sitting on either side of my cube who would periodically stretch, hard enough that they'd make that pleasant kind of groan that usually accompanies a good stretch. I love getting in a good one like that, but if I'm at work or some other public place, I typically try to hold in the groan. Maybe I should be just letting 'em rip.

Also, when I sneezed, the guy on my left said "gesundheit". I always thought I preferred "bless you", but I actually quite enjoyed the gesundheit . It may be the first one I ever received, come to think of it. I just discovered when I looked it up just now (to make sure I had the right spelling), that it actually does mean, "Bless you" in german. Am I the only person who didn't know that?? Anyhow. Getting any kind of "bless you" for a sneeze is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Even nicer when in an office/cubicle environment surrounded by strangers. Oh yeah, and the left-side guy also exclaimed "'Doh!" at one point when he was on the phone (not that I was eavesdropping, of course... I just couldn't help but overhear as he was right on the other side of the cube wall from me!).

These may seem like silly things to you. But to me it's nice to periodically have evidence of the fact that there are people around who actually can act human, be it just courteous or silly, in the midst of an environment which otherwise tends to be extremely boring. Not to mention an environment full of egotistical and/or bossy loudmouths! It just becomes a little more bearable when one is reminded there are also a few people who seem a little more normal!

Yay! I figured it out!

2006-02-21T17:50:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Google's Blogger Help Group, I was able to figure out the problem. They had a page which discussed the issue of sidebars appearing below posts in Internet Explorer. Of course, I still have to recommend that anyone using IE move onward and upward to better things, and download Mozilla Firefox to start using in place of IE (it's free of course, and *so* much better!). But if you haven't, and don't plan to anytime soon, you should now be able to see my sidebar as it's supposed to be anyway...

For anyone who happens to be interested or knows anyone else having this issue, I discovered that it apparently happened when I added my cute little "nutter" tiger from bunnyhero labs to the sidebar. As it turns out, when something too wide is added to the sidebar, IE just kicks the whole sidebar to the bottom of the page. It seems that Firefox and Netscape just automatically adjust it so this doesn't happen. But I was able to go into my template and figure out how to make nutter a little more narrow so he fits into the IE sidebar.

So, mystery is solved! Please let me know if you still have any problem seeing my sidebar at the top of the page as it should be!

Rude Awakening...

2006-02-21T00:07:00.001-08:00

....And yet another reason for me to hate Internet Explorer. Because for my readers who use it, my blog sidebar is all jacked up. I wish I would have realized it sooner, not that I yet have any idea how to fix it. The sidebar and blog look totally normal in Firefox. The first time someone mentioned something funny looking on my blog I just assumed it had to be a fluke since it looks normal to me everytime I see it. Then, since more recently two more people have told me the more specific problem they're seeing, I realized it had to be something else. Didn't take me long to figure out that Internet Explorer appears to be the culprit.

So for now, as I'm not sure how long it will take me to figure out how to get it to look right in IE, I will recommend what I know will instantaneously fix the problem from your side, which is to download and use Mozilla Firefox! There are lots of good reasons to get out of using IE, as it's got the worst reputation as far as security, and letting the most viruses and spy programs into your computer. And of course the fact that it's screwing up the way my blog looks is a good reason too! ;) Firefox is among the browsers with the least of these kinds of issues.

So I apologize if it's been a hassle for people to view my sidebar. Man and does that frustrate me! I work so hard on getting that the way I want it! So for now, if you don't start using Firefox, please just continue to scroll down and check out the sidebar periodically for a little while longer. And I will do my best to figure out what the hell happened and how to fix it. On that note, does anyone know about when the problem started?

Bloggified

2006-02-17T22:43:00.001-08:00

I know it's been too long yet again, but I actually did try to come on and post the other night, only to discover Blogger was in some kind of mood and wouldn't even let me save a draft. I've had all kinds of ideas for posts the last several days, but haven't managed to find time (except the other night when Blogger was apparently having issues)... And right now I'm babysitting the adorable child Nathan (I posted pictures of him back when he was only four months old; he's now a year and five mos.), and expecting his parents home any minute, so am not wanting to get too deep into any subject. Oh there's the garage door now. Just checking in, but hopefully will be back in the next day or so!
***THE NEXT NIGHT***
I am still having blog problems and can't even save a draft. But luckily my quick-thinking saved my last brief post (above) by copying/pasting it into an email to myself. Now I will try to just *post* without saving a draft (unheard of for me, as normally I'm pretty anal about saving drafts every few sentences)... Hopefully it will work, otherwise I'll be cut off from my fellow bloggers until I can get this issue fixed. I am finally sending an email to Blogger Help. I'd wondered if perhaps it was an overall Blogger issue, but after checking some of my regulars and seeing that they seem to be blogging without difficulty, I have come to the conclusion that Blogger just has an issue with me personally.

ANYhow. Sorry for the boring blather, but I don't want to waste too much energy or thought until I'm sure I'll even be able to post anything. Wish me luck!

People Watching

2006-02-08T12:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, technically it's people listening. But I'm at work, and just took my mp3 player/FM radio headphones off temporarily, then started getting distracted (Imagine that!) by some of the louder voices in cubicles which reside in this same room. Apparently they are on the phone.

One guy I would venture to guess is a salesman. You can usually tell by the obvious overconfidence in their voice. How can someone be so clueless to how annoyingly cocky they sound? Or is it just that they're so self-absorbed that they just don't care??! It is amazing to me that these people seem to think so much of themselves and that, in the same turn, they tend to think so many (or all) around them are so much less than they are. Where does this amazing grandiose sense of self come from? Were they incredibly spoiled as children, always getting everything they ever wanted, and inadvertently taught to think no one really matters anywhere near as much as they do? Or is it just some kind of brain malfunction... What is that called, narcissism? Like what serial killers have...?

Anyway, the other main voice that is catching my attention is of a nearby lady. She may be a sales rep herself, but with her it's harder to say for sure. Her voice is also tending to get pretty loud... Somewhat over-confident-sounding as well, but nowhere near as much as the other guy (he's much further away, yet his voice booms over this lady whose cube is close to mine). Anyway, she sounds perpetually annoyed, with little, sarcastic sounding, short laughs which end in snorts (think George Costanza).

Just observing. And taking time I totally do not have as I'm only here for a short shift and have tons to do. Story of my life, being driven by my distractions. And on that note, back to work!

Live Sign-Holders

2006-02-06T21:59:00.000-08:00

Do you have these people in your area? Seems to be the latest thing; at least around here: Live, human sign-holders. These poor guys (I think once or twice I've seen a girl) stand outside on the street, holding signs and waving them back and forth at passing traffic, to advertise nearby businesses. I have to wonder: Has this actually proven to be a successful form of advertisement? Because almost every time I see one of these people, I just feel sad for him or her. I certainly am not inspired to patronize the business being advertised! But maybe I shouldn't be sad for them... I guess it's possible that they could actually be enjoying themselves... Problem is, they almost always look miserable. There have been only a couple exceptions: There used to be this one guy I'd see on my way to work every morning advertising a coffee place. He had his headphones on and was obviously groovin' to whatever he was listening to, gettin' down and dancing and looking like he was totally enjoying himself. He also seemed to be using the opportunity to flirt with passing female motorists (nothing totally overt, just little looks or winks or smiles or whatever), which was pretty funny to me. The other guy I saw that looked somewhat of a positive mood was also wearing headphones and checking out chicks who were driving by... But he couldn't compare to the first guy as far as entertainment value goes. I would think headphones should be a requirement to do that job... Otherwise how could one avoid being bored out of his mind??!! I also think that they should never ever have to "perform" in anything less than nice weather. Talk about feeling bad for these guys... When it's raining or freezing cold out, it's especially sad to see these guys outside, waving their signs back and forth.

Click to enlarge

That's just my opinion, for whatever it's worth. I just hope these guys aren't working anywhere where it's actually cold!

Karma strikes again...

2006-02-02T21:54:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how one of my favorite new shows is My Name Is Earl, I should know better than to mess with Karma. You remember the two recent large spider sightings, I'm sure... And how I used the more recent sighting to scare the crap out of my sister's boyfriend, Jeremy? Well tonight as Lisa (sister), Jeremy and I were sitting calmly in the living room, watching a movie and minding our own business, the Nutty-dog suddenly lunged toward the wall behind me and slightly to my left. When I glanced back to check out what I assumed was something inncocent like a house mosquito (a.k.a, at least to us, as a "mosquito eater", though I'm pretty sure neither of those are the technical term), I caught a glimpse of a spider which made the other two look like newborn, preemie baby spiders. And this one wasn't just innocently hanging out in the corner like the other two... He was actually crawling up the wall... How he was managing to lug his gargantuan frame upward, I do not know. But he was so freakin huge... This time it (unfortunately) didn't even cross my mind to stop and take a picture... In fact the combination of the element of surprise and the sheer girth of this monstrosity caused me to instantly bound out of my chair and involuntarily emit a shreik of terror. And Jeremy wasn't even willing to go after this creature; he sat perfectly safe where he was across the room, and let Lisa do the dirty work! She, of course, used my shoe as the lethal weapon (unfortunately it had been sitting innocently nearby next to its mate), which as a result ended up half-covered in giant spider guts. I searched and searched online for a picture which resembles this thing, but unfortunately am unable to deliver. I didn't even know we had spiders that big in this area, let alone in our house!

Anyway, as for the karma, not only did I nearly have a coronary, and did have a bad case of the willies for some time after the incident, but I am still having flashbacks.... And am sure to continue to suffer from them, and to feel unsafe in my own home for days (if not months) to come.

I wish I knew *where* these giants are coming from, and even more than that, how to keep them out of our house!!

Funny how biases work...

2006-01-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

So today I'm at work, at the nearby "drop-in center" (still have yet to have been able to get things set up to work from home yet), and suddenly I hear what sounds like faint snoring. At first I just ignore it, thinking it's got to be someone who's not feeling well and/or is just somewhat of a heavy breather. But soon the sound becomes unmistakable. And continues to grow louder... I imagine some middle-aged to older guy falling asleep on his conference call, am mildly amused, and hope for his (and the rest of the people on the call's) sake, he remembered to mute his phone. But after several minutes of the snoring continuing to grow embarrassingly more loud (and increasing snickers from nearby cubicles), I decide it's time to investigate. By this time I myself haven't been able to resist a giggle or two, and am finding the situation pretty hilarious... But for some reason I'm terribly surprised when I discover that the culprit is actually a woman; leaning back in her chair, completely out, with her headset on. Not only am I surprised that it's a woman, but am even more surprised when I realize that my feelings about the scenario have changed... Instead of seeing the mental image I'd conjured up of some cocky-looking sales guy passed out in his chair, I suddenly feel sad for the woman I actually do find. I think how embarrassed I'd be if I suddenly awoke from being passed out at work, and how my mind would race, wondering if I'd done anything shameful while being incoherent.

I guess maybe it's just the idea of women being somehow more vulnerable than men that made my feelings change so dramatically... But I'm not totally sure. I just know that, while I was still somewhat amused, my overwhelming feeling had become wishing I could help her somehow... Yet because I didn't know her, I didn't feel I could/should do anything. Perhaps I felt bad just because I'm a woman and can more easily relate to the sensitivities of other women...? Anyhow, it's interesting, the way biases work.

By the way, she finally woke up (without any assistance) about a half-hour after she started, and assumedly went back to work hoping no one knew her little secret...

Good Ol' "Two-Buck Chuck"

2006-01-27T23:55:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've done much, if any, drunk blogging. But since Im up and feeling good and realizing I'm behind on blogging, I thought I ought to check in.

In case you aren't familiar, Two-Buck Chuck is slang for Trader Joe's two-dollar-a-bottle Charles Shaw wine. And wine is great for a quick buzz, as it's one of the lower calorie alcohols, and it sneaks up on ya pretty quick.

Just make sure to drink lots of water whenever you are consuming alcoholic beverages. To avoid hangovers. And of course DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE.

I told you I was buzzed! Or did I..... ?

Do you ever wonder...

2006-01-24T14:54:00.000-08:00

...if it's an insult when you pet cats, and they snuggle back and purr and act thrilled with the attention, but then rush to start cleaning themselves the moment you stop petting them?

I think it's funny, but can't help but feel a bit like I just got used and discarded by my feline friend.

By the way, this post was intended for the use, pondering and enrichment of kitty-friendly folks... Though I'm sure any cat-haters will have plenty of choice comments as well!

Last Hurrah

2006-01-17T23:26:00.000-08:00

Well I guess it's a good sign that I'm really tired and it's not even 11:30 pm. Though historically I can be really tired and still stay up, but these days I'm all about changing those habits.

As usual, I digress. Today was my first day back to work: Under Dr's recommendations, part time... Also per his (technically their) recommendations, I am to be working from home. But as I wait for my manager to work his way through the red tape needing to be conquered to be able to make that happen, I am working from the nearby Drop-In Center. That ten-minute drive certainly beats the 40+ minutes I was driving each way before, so I'm not complaining. Hopefully though, it won't take him too terribly long to make the work-from-home thing happen.

Hmm, I still haven't managed to make it to what I actually came here to talk about. I know, it's not like you're surprised by this. So this weekend was Jeff's best friend Candy's 40th b-day. We drove up to Sacramento to be there for it, and the celebration included both a dinner and a comedy show (which was hiLARious by the way, and I hope to post about that in more detail in the near future). We stayed in town overnight, and met back up with Candy the next morning, at the home she shares with her two kids and husband... She and the kids joined us for brunch at a place I remembered as having had one of the best breakfasts ever: Sutter Street Grill in Historic Folsom.

I had a delicious, cheeeeeesy omelet, but the kids had lunch instead of breakfast (by "kids" I mean both Candy's kids, and Jeff, the big kid!)... And there was raving all around about how delicious everything was. And as if that weren't enough, we also walked down the block to Snooks Candies to partake in a bit of dessert. Just enlarge the below picture to get an idea of how good the chocolate was... Mmmm-MMM!
After our visit, Jeff decided we should drive the last hundred miles or so it would take us to get to Reno. After all, it was the holiday weekend and the last weekend before I returned to work. So off we drove... It ended up being a good choice too, because Jeff won around $500 on the slots at El Dorado! And that's a net estimation... It would have been closer to $700 if you don't include the money we lost. I, as usual, didn't win a thing... People tend to think I'm lucky because of the radio contests I win with some regularity; but I always maintain that it's more of a learned skill than luck. When it comes to gambling, I never get a stinkin thing out of it... except maybe a mild form of entertainment (Mild because to me, losing money just ain't that much fun!). I was responsible for a loss of $60, and it only took me a couple of hours to do the damage! I'm pretty sure that's the most I ever have played (and of course lost) gambling, but since Jeff kept winning, he kept handing over more $$ for me to lose! Thankfully I cut myself off after the third twenty, even though he'd handed me another one by that time!
So all around, even though I was still feeling a little bit under the weather, it was a nice holiday weekend, and a fitting end to the end of my time off.

Oh, and one more thing: Congratulations to Secret Agent Josephine on the birth of her adorable baby girl!

Some Random Ramblings...

2006-01-08T16:57:00.000-08:00

Since I'm all about the random thoughts:

A tip for fellow germaphobes (as I'm fighting some kind of cold-like illness yet again, I'm on extra-high-alert when it comes to germy stuff... Not that it seems to help me... Though hopefully I would be getting sick even more often if I weren't trying so hard to be careful about it!). I saw a story once on Primetime Live or 20/20 or some such show, talking about how our kitchens are riddled with contagious bacterial germs. And the most disgusting, sickening, illness-causing-bacteria-filled item of all? The sponges we use to clean our dishes! Skeptical? Go ahead, put your nose up to your sponge right now and take a good sniff! Gross, huh?! So instead of throwing the thing away after just using it once, here is a better solution to disinfect it: Put it (damp) into a microwave-safe glass bowl, with a microwave safe lid (or plate, is what I usually use) on top, ajar, for 60 seconds. Careful when you remove it, because all three items will be scalding hot! But your sponge will no longer be stinky, and is now disinfected and ready for cleaning your dishes, germ-free!

~~~~~

We had some really stormy storms (especially for California!), a couple of them back to back, last week. My sister's BF put our Christmas tree out at the curb for pickup one night, and the next morning, it had disappeared, blown away to God-knows-where, never to be seen again. In addition, the tree my well-intentioned neighbor planted in front of the street sign around the corner was blown over as well! So the sign is no longer blocked (below is a picture of how it looked as it began to grow even bushier than the last time I posted a picture of it... You couldn't really see the sign at all when you drove past it! And one of how it looks now.), and people will now know when they are moving from one street to another. I imagine that the blown-over tree is still not picked up, a week later, because no one knows who planted it, and therefore the city is probably arguing over who's responsibility it is to pick it up! Oh, and I'm also including a picture of our back fence... In addition to the several neighborhood trees which were blown over, one of the sections of lattice which tops our fence was also blown out! I think that constitutes a real storm, even by most other states' standards! Click Pictures to Enlarge

~~~~~

When I was little, my thinking was so literal, certain things really baffled me. For instance: Musicals... I could never understand (even in movies I loved like Grease) why on earth they would just suddenly break into song. It seemed so unrealistic... How could they all know the words, and the same dance steps?? It always bothered me, and just seemed so wrong...

~~~~~

So now they have these toothbrushes with a tongue-scraper on the back. Though I have to admit I bought one (it was on sale!), I have to wonder: How is this scraper really any better than just brushing one's tongue?? Hasn't that worked so far? Anyone who is not already in this habit, who currently suffers from halitosis, is probably no more likely to start using the scraper than they were to brush their tongue in the first place! I guess it's just another thing I don't get.

~~~~~

I happen to be a fairly big fan of reality TV. Within reason, anyhow (Shows like Who's Your Daddy? ...Now that's just crossing a line that was never meant to be crossed.). But Survivor, What Not To Wear, Family Plots, Intervention ?? Love it! Can't get enough of it! Especially now that I have TiVo. But before I digress too far, my question is this: Why is it that so many shows these days need to preview what's coming up before commercial, and then do a quick recap when they come back from commercial?! Do we really need to waste that much actual program time in favor of previews and recaps? I guess it's convenient for someone who happens to be just tuning in, but really: Is it necessary *every* commercial to take time which could otherwise be used to show us more interesting footage? Or is it just that there's so little good footage to scrape together that they really *have* to use up as much as possible in BS that repeats 4 or 5 times throughout the one episode. Anyway, I was just wondering.

~~~~~
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELVIS!

Happy Blog-Day To Me!

2006-01-05T07:54:00.000-08:00

Well it has been one year since my first post, as of today! Not only that, but this is my 101st post (not including My Lists, which I've been horrible about updating... Though I have a dozen or so drafts, I hardly ever finish and actually post them!), so I've hit a couple different milestones.

And there is even more to celebrate... Because my "long lost" sister Rene' has started a blog of her own! We are finally beginning to get back in touch, which is awesome, and so long overdue...

So yay for today! A little somethin' to celebrate, in case you need an excuse... Feel free to have a drink on me (er, uh... or for me)!

Somethin' Quick to Tide Us Over...

2006-01-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

...until I can manage to get a real post up. I learned this trick from Ivy the Goober (just posting a large picture when short on time/energy for a "real" post!)... Thanks Ivy!

Make that two pictures, to be fair to each of our two critters... And I know it's now way past Christmas, but you're talkin' to the Master Procrastinator after all... Thus the reason for the pics in lieu of a real post!

Nutty with her Christmas Kong!

Hobie about to destroy his favorite Christmas toy!

'Night!

Who Killed Santa???

2005-12-27T23:49:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed the Santas lying face-down on front lawns late at night? At first it was very perplexing, then someone a bit brainier than I explained to me that these things are the new blow-up Santas and snowmen (it's not as kinky as it sounds)... In case you have not seen them, they appear to be in the same family as the jumper/kiddie-trampoline-thingies which are sometimes rented out for kids' parties. Apparently now you can buy these decorations which are inflated by little motors like the jumpers. And when people turn them off along with their Christmas lights later at night, they deflate face down, looking pitiful and kinda dead. Interesting.

Click to enlarge

In other news, a relative of the evil-eyed spider Jeremy killed last week came to avenge the death of the first spider. I was in the living room talking to Jeff, and looked across and above him to the wall above the couch to see an even bigger monster than the last one! I froze, and my mouth dropped open as I pointed at the terrifying creature. As Jeff went digging around for a fly-swatter, I ran back to my room to grab my trusty camera so as to snap a photo to share with you. Of course I was quite paranoid as I tried to inch just close enough to get a couple shots... I kept imagining that the thing would freak out at the flash, suddenly leaping off the wall to attack me. Note that this guy has an even bigger, more brightly-glowing eyeball than the spider from kitchen! Where are these gigantic things coming from??! I've never seen any spider which at all compared to these things; at least not in our house! I decided they must have come from the Christmas tree Jeremy cut down in the hills (it was from a tree farm, don't worry!) and brought to grace our living room.

Click to enlarge

Speaking of Jeremy, I pulled a good one on him, knowing his terror of the eight-legged critters... I approached him with my camera the next day, as he lounged on the couch watching TV, and said, "There was another spider in here last night, even bigger than the one you killed... Right above this couch." As I showed him the image of the creature in my camera display, his eyes got quite large... "You guys got it, right??" he asked nervously... To which I replied, "well Jeff tried to get it, but then it dropped down into the couch." Man you shoulda seen him leap up from that couch! I cracked up as I told him not to worry, Jeff had pulled up the cushion and finished the spider off (it's true... He's saved me once again from yet another horrific beast... Mah heero!). Of course, wouldn't ya know it, now karma is getting me back for my hilarious little prank... I slept horribly last night, worrying that another relative of the spiders, even more gargantuaus and with even bigger, more brightly glowing eyes, might drop down on me at any moment. And now anytime I'm sitting on the couch (or really, anywhere in the house, for that matter... including now as I'm writing this!), I keep feeling the need to glance up to check the nearby walls and ceilings. When I mentioned the tree theory to Jeremy, he informed me that there was a tree-shaker at the Christmas tree farm, for the sole purpose of getting rid of such unwanted critters. However I still believe they must have come from the tree... I mean, look at the legs on those things! They must have had a good grip, and managed to have hung on to their home for dear life at the time of said shaking! I can only hope (and pray!) that these two were the only ones to make it into our house!

Santa Claus is Back in Town!

2005-12-23T20:04:00.000-08:00

(One of my favorite Christmas songs; the Elvis version, that is...) Cool, when I opened up my Winamp playlist just now, this is the song that happened to be randomly selected to play!

So here we are, just a couple days away. Officially I am finished with my Christmas shopping as of last night, but I'm about to run out to one particular establishment to get a couple last minute, small, "practical" gifts for Jeff. Come to think of it, I still need to get some stocking-stuffer stuff for him too. Hmm, guess I ought to take care of that tonight as well...

So there's a lot going on, even aside from Christmas stuff, and even in spite of the fact I'm not yet back at work. It's still hard not to feel somewhat shameful about that fact... Part of it has to do with the common american mindset that one just needs to "suck it up" or "shake it off".

Hmm, I began to ramble on about that whole depressing situation, but you know what? I don't want to. I'm sippin a 'rita that Jeremy (my sister Lisa's boyfriend) made for me, and thinking instead about some of the stuff that I love about Christmas. Getting stuff is, of course, always fun... But giving people stuff they really like, yet don't expect, is even more fun. I love that my natural inclination to procrastinate, combined with my night-owl tendencies, actually pays off when it comes to Christmas shopping. As in, I wait to shop in the mid/late evening, taking advantage of extended holiday hours, and virtually miss the typical crowds. And I love that I have someone I love to spend Christmas with... And more, in addition to "my someone", I have family and friends to spend it with. I even love that I have new friends in the bloggersphere, and I enjoy reading their stuff, and having my stuff read by them. I'm also grateful for my Faith, as there is certainly many a time when I wouldn't be able to get by without it. I'm so blessed to have full mobility (even if I don't use it to be mobile nearly enough); not just physically, but mentally as well. And to have music and a love of reading. What would I do without those two things to enjoy and to be passionate about in life?

Alright, I think that's enough sappiness for now. In case I don't see ya, have a wonderful, safe Christmas (or any other holiday you may be in the midst of celebrating). And one final thought to leave you with:

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night! (I guess that's two thoughts, but who's counting??)

Charlotte, is that you??

2005-12-19T15:08:00.000-08:00

Something caught my eye when I was in the kitchen a little while ago... I thought, Is that what I think it is?? (hoping it wasn't of course). But as it turned out (my zoom lens made the unwanted truth crystal clear):

Click to enlarge

I guess it's much too ugly to be Charlotte, after all. She was kinda pretty (for a spider, anyhow), gray, and built cool webs (It doesn't even look like this thing has a web). Wow, I had no idea how bad our paint job was until I saw this pic, or that we actually are due for a re-painting in the kitchen...

Hopefully Jeff will come save me from it like he did with the icky orange-ish/brown summer beetle-critters!

Update #1: Jeremy (my sister's boyfriend who just moved in) was immediately on a mission to kill the thing as soon as I showed him the picture... He hates spiders! "The Thing" is no more...

Update #2: Didn't notice this until I actually loaded the picture onto the computer and saw it full-size. This spider's eye is so big it is actually glowing from the flash! Like a person or an animal... How FREAKY is that??!! Too bad I didn't have this one in time for Halloween!

Whew

2005-12-15T23:12:00.000-08:00

Ya know, as much as I tend to feel I've already more than "paid my dues" in life, very often I feel I am also very blessed (or lucky, if you happen to be more comfortable with that word).

For example, there are the radio contests, which I've pretty much gotten down to an art. Basically I've found that with enough dedication (okay, obsessiveness), anyone can win them regularly. Over the last several years, I've gone to quite a few concerts, and it's usually for free... Not to mention all the other prizes (DVD player/stereo system, trip to San Diego, meeting certain rock stars, etc!)... And I know that isn't just luck, as several friends of mine (including Jeff) have started winning stuff pretty consistently as well, using my tips as guidance! I've actually decided I'd like to write a book on the subject to kick off my writing career, if I can ever manage to get it past the outline stage! But alas, I digress.

So the particular thing that inspired this post has nothing to do with a learned skill or practice. Quite the contrary. One of my worst habits is, well... My need for speed! Not that kind of speed, this kind:
(No, of course I didn't take that picture while driving, whaddya think I am, crazy??? And of course that's nowhere near my usual daytime driving speed. I mean, c'mon now! Alright, maybe it's *somewhere* in that vicinity...)

So anyway, tonight I was cruising home from Jeff's doing just under 85. I try to stay really aware of cops being around since I do tend to drive kinda fast... But tonight I apparently just flew right past this guy without even seeing him at all. I saw his lights behind me and my heart about stopped. You see, even with my tendency to try and go fast enough lift to off the ground when driving, I have been really blessed (lucky?), to have never once ever gotten a speeding ticket! Let me also partly qualify that by saying I was later than the usual age when I got my license, 24 years old, but still. That's over ten years of really getting off easy, as far as I can tell. I've been pulled over a total of four times including tonight, I think the last time was by this same guy (He came off really mean, "bad-cop" type of guy, but in the end still was "nice" enough not to write me up!)... And that other night I wasn't even speeding (small miracle, however I was slowing down a bit to exit onto the offramp), but totally almost merged over into his lane (almost killed him, by his account) before I realized he was cruising along right there in my blind spot. He pulled me over at the same exact location as tonight... though that night had a buddy with him (the "good-cop")... So back to tonight, as I'm about to slow down to get over for my exit, I see the lights a-flashin in my rear view mirror and immedately say aloud "Oh NO! Please God, don't let me get a ticket!" He (the cop, not God) pulls me over and angrily asks me why I flew right past him doing 85 miles per hour. I stop myself just short of saying "Because I had no idea you were there!", and instead say "Wow, I am so sorry, I just completely lost track of how fast I was going... It's been a long day, I was just looking forward to getting home" (I decided it was probably better not to tell him I'd actually had my cruise control set at just *under* 85 mph). I continue to apologize profusely, and when he asks if I have any warrants or am on parole, I exclaim (truthfully, mind you!) that I've never even had a speeding ticket. He snaps back, "Well you're about to have one............ If I ever catch you doing that again!"

*Whew* ...Thank you, God!!!

What can I ramble about???

2005-12-12T01:29:00.001-08:00

Well it feels like the holidays are just sneaking up... Ready or not, in less than two weeks, Christmas will be here! Of course I'm still not finished with my Christmas shopping. But I have a good chunk of it done, at least. When is the online shopping deadline, again??

Even more than the fall, this time of year tends to be difficult for me. Aside from the very short days and the cold, it's hard because I no longer have either of my parents to share it with. I lost my Mom ten years ago this January to cancer, and Dad died five years ago next April. I can't believe they've been gone so long!

As was true for fall, I am finding some comfort in the beauty to be found in the Season, specifically in taking pictures of the things I find joy in. So... I think instead of rambling on for days (both in your interest and in my own, since... surprise! It's past my bedtime), I will go ahead and just post a few of my latest pictures. I have been adding pictures to Flickr every few days as well, as I have about a zillion to add there. So if you like the ones you've seen so far, feel free to keep checking in there as well.

Our Tree

Our Tree and a nice Fire in the Fireplace

Tree, Fire, and NuttyJingle-Nut!

Sickie Central!

2005-12-06T01:27:00.000-08:00

This morning (technically yesterday morning) I woke up to discover that not only was I sicker than before, but that my sister's boyfriend and my nephew had both stayed here sick as well. My nephew was pukey like my sister had been, and my sister's beau was more bad cold like I seem to have. I got really bad earlier tonight, really achy and feverish and miserable (felt freezing cold and couldn't get warm, and also wondered if I was heading down the cookie-tossing road, as I was pretty nauseous), but then an hour or two ago I woke up from a couple hours of sound sleep, and my fever seemed to have broken. Jeff has been taking good care of me, and is the only one who hasn't caught anything from Sickie Central. I've been plying him with Vitamin C, Echinacia/Goldenseal, and Airborne, hoping to keep him from ending up like the rest of us!

I'm so glad I seem to be on the other side of the worst of it. *Whew*

Where on earth is the time going??!!

2005-12-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

Not that this is a original thing to say, but I can't believe how time is flying. I remember distinctly hearing my parents tell me as a, kid on several occasions, that time would just keep flying by more quickly the older I got. Of course they were right. It's hard when it feels so difficult to get almost anything done. My times of feeling inspired and/or motivated seem so few & far between, and then of course stuff happens like my getting sick... yes, again! I have some kind of cold/virus, and this one is worse than the last time (just before we went to Monterey a couple weeks ago). Of course, I'm grateful I'm not as bad as my sister (whom I live with) was: She was up all night Friday, losing her cookies, as well as anything & everything else which was in her tummy... And, uh, how do I put this without being too terribly graphic?... She was losing it in more ways than one... at the exact same time (poor girl!)! So at least I'm not going through that... But I'm still feeling pretty crappy. And it seems like there's so much I've been trying to do these days; trying to get my photos organized and my Flickr page together, trying to get some stuff posted for sale on eBay, trying to get my online Christmas shopping done, and of course trying to keep blogging (including rearranging and adding some new stuff to the sidebar), and keep somewhat current on my favorite blogs (checking in every day or two somehow seems to be tough to do for a procrastinator like myself). And in addition to all this, of course I'm still trying to get my to get my sleep and mood issues under control, which is a constant battle.

Anyhow, so far I have a couple groups of pictures up on Flickr (haven't even come close to getting all my fall leaves pics up there yet, but eventually there'll be a whole bunch of them, as well as all other types of pictures on there), and a few items on eBay. I'm workin on it... all of it, the best I can; one day at a time. Guess that's really the only way to do it!

Falling Into Winter

2005-11-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

This time of year has always been somewhat tough for me. I love sunshine, warmth and the outdoors (especially when I tend to be depressed & reclusive, it's easier to motivate myself to leave the house when it's sunny & warm out). However this year, I've kind of discovered photography as being somewhat therapeutic, and as a result have become very aware of the fall colors. I thought I should share some of the pictures I've taken... And as I've already mentioned, I'm putting together some photo pages on flickr as well. It's really nice to be able to find some deep appreciation in what I otherwise spend so much time seeing as cold, shortened, dreary days. I almost feel like the leaves are just more brilliant and beautiful than usual this fall, at least around here. I can't decide though, if it's really that, or that I just suddenly was paying more attention. It certainly seems like I'm suddenly seeing things through a photographer's eyes... I'm always thinking, "that would make a great picture"

So since I know I've been on quite the downer lately, and I hate feeling like there's a chance I could rub bad feelings off on anyone reading about all my depression & sleep issues, I'm glad to be able to post some pictures of the beautiful fall trees I've been seeing lately. I'm realizing (helped by other pics I see on blogs like Secret Agent Josephine's), that beauty can be seen in all kinds of things, not just where we usually expect to see it. Anyway it's late (what a shock), I started this post a few days ago and now my sleeping pill is kicking in. So let me post a few of the really nice pictures, and I will update with a link to my flickr pages in the next day or so.

If you click to enlarge, they should all be full size, in case you are so inclined to save any for your desktop. Enjoy!

Monterey Holiday

2005-11-27T23:10:00.000-08:00

So Jeff & I had decided a week or so ago that we'd head back down to Monterey to spend Thanksgiving there, as well as to cash in our rain check from our previous whale watching trip. A day or two before T-day, we both started coming down with colds, and almost cancelled... But then Thursday rolled around, and we both decided we felt good enough to make the drive (it's only about an hour and a half, after all). We went to the same resturaunt as last time, as they were serving special turkey dinners for the holiday. The meal was decent (not *quite* as fabulous as the lobster we'd had last time 'round)... But the dessert was pretty awesome. Neither Jeff nor I care too much for pumpkin pie typically, but as it came with our Thanksgiving meal, we decided to give it a shot. It tasted almost as wonderful as it looked (and as you can see, it looked pretty great).

We planned to go whale watching the following day, but when we awoke and looked outside, this is what we saw:
Of course the boat trip was cancelled, but we decided to head to the pier anyway, grab something to eat, and just hang out there for a bit. Ironically, just a little while after we got there, the sun came out and the day got pretty gorgeous, even if it was a little windy off and on.

Here are a couple shots of the entryway to the pier; one Thanksgiving night, and one the following morning:

Since it eventually became less overcast this visit, I was able to get some good pictures. Also, we did a little shopping. I must admit, Jeff was pretty patient in letting me have my way with my picture taking (I've started to go pretty picture-crazy lately, but more on that in a future post), and my shopping... Although to my credit, I am not much of a shopper normally, so that's not something he usually has to put up with!

Since I've been taking so many pictures lately that I love, I am planning on going to flickr or photobucket or somewhere to put up some pages just to dedicate to photos (any input on what the best site would be is welcome!). But in the meantime, here are a few of the highlights from Monterey:

Apparently this guy is wanted by the FBI or mob or someone... He really didn't want me getting his face in the shot!

A couple pics I'm throwing in just for Daisy:

And one for Mark, per his request

And last, but certainly not least, a few shots of me sporting the hat, sunglasses, earrings and shoes I purchased on our trip!

In other news: It obviously did not work out for me to make it to my Grandmother's funeral in Oregon. However, Jeff and I are going to try and go up in mid-late January. I need to make some calls and try to get it planned, so I will have more to update on that soon.

Also, my doctor decided I should have another month off, to work on getting my depression as well as sleep issues under control. So for now, the pressure is off. As always, there is more to share, but it's getting to be quite past my bedtime yet again. I will try to check in again in the next couple days.

Happy Turkey Day!

2005-11-24T23:13:00.000-08:00

Belated, to most anyone looking at this... However, I wanted to make it online today to be able to post an old favorite, sent to me every Thanksgiving for years from an old friend.
As always, there's soooo much to be thankful for. Including having a roof over my head, and having people in my life who love me, whom I love also.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

It is So past my bedtime!

2005-11-21T03:19:00.000-08:00

*Warning: Rambling, depressed, insomnia-laden post ahead*

Ran out of ambien today, and am nervous about my pending return-to-work date (Nov 28). But on to the most serious of the issues: I received a voicemail from my birth-mother today (you may or may not know that I was adopted at 6 mos. old, and that I've been acquainted with, but fell out of touch with, most of the members of my biological family), whom I haven't heard from in years (more my choice than hers, and a loooong story), who sounded very sad and serious, and who told me she's in Eugene (last I heard, she and my younger sister still lived in Portland; while her mother/my grandmother, my birth-father, and my brother all lived in Eugene). Uh-oh. Someone is either very sick or has died. I called her back at the provided phone number, and was informed that my Grandma died. On Thursday. When I asked, I was also told that she's been in declining health for some time, was in the hospital for the last week of her life, and that the service is Tuesday. As in, day after tomorrow, or I suppose technically *tomorrow* at this point.

Wow. Tons of varied feelings about all this, of course. It was also my choice (or lack of feeling like I had a choice, more accurately) to fall out of touch with my Grandma. While she was a loving woman with a big heart, she was also very manipulative, and couldn't hold a conversation without filling it with guilt-trips. I mean, it was so bad I didn't even used to open some of her letters, because I just couldn't take it... it was so draining. So there's a part of me that feels it's my choice, I'm the only one to blame that I wasn't in touch and didn't know she was ill, and wasn't "around" to know that she'd passed away. On the other hand, I feel like someone should have called me and given me the opportunity to see her, knowing she was ill. Or at least could have let me know right away when she died, so I'd have a little more time to try and make the service. My initial reaction was that I'd make arrangements and just get there anyhow, especially since I'm not working at the moment... But I quickly realized this will be difficult if not virtually impossible, with this little amount of time to plan. I'm trying to figure out what to do... Should I still plan a visit to the family in a few weeks? Does it make sense to do it that way, when I haven't even been in touch? It seems so cliche' and shallow to go visit because Grandma died, when I always knew this was something that would happen if I stayed out of the loop for too long.

Oh, and wow, my sister sure gave me some other big news too... About my brother. My genius, conservative, always-has-it-together brother, who's four and-a-half years my senior, and who I also haven't spoken with in several years. Though we all expected him to be retiring around age 45 - 50 because of his early success in the computer industry and extremely high intelligence level; tonight I learned that he lost everything due to an addiction to meth. Which apparently he's now recovered from, but he still has very little in the way of worldly possessions... And he now makes his living teaching a motorcycle safety course! That's almost as hard to imagine as him being addicted to a controlled substance!

Anyway, I think I've spilled more personal stuff in the last few posts than in all the rest of my blogging combined. It's kinda freakin me out, but on the other hand, what do I have to lose??

And with that, I should sign off, and at least attempt to get some sleep. It's my third night on the hated c-pap, which I finally managed to get rented... I don't even want the f-in thing, and yet have to pay $300 out of pocket just so insurance will consider surgery. The up-side, though, is that hopefully this contraption will determine whether surgery is the right choice for treatment of my apnea. It is seriously taking some getting used to, but that's why they recommend trying it for at least a month. The flip side is that I will probably never get totally used to it (I'm way too light of a sleeper, and need to toss and turn some; virtually impossible with this thing strapped to my face), which is why surgery is a more sensible, long-term option if the c-pap actually ends up helping me breathe (which, according to the overnight sleep-study I took using one, it does).

Didn't I say I was gonna shut up a long paragraph ago? Hopefully tomorrow will be a better, more-rested day.

I Spent the Night with Paul McCartney!

2005-11-16T23:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I did!! Okay, not the entire night... I didn't wake up with him the next morning or anything! Oh, and, Jeff was there too... and so were a few other people... Maybe more than a few. I guess technically it was about 15,000 or so other people! All of us together saw Sir Paul at the Pavillion in San Jose on Monday night [Make that *last* Monday night... I started this post a week ago!]. What a show! I am just in awe that he is such an icon, and yet seems very humble, even grateful for his fans. I've been to quite a few concerts over the years, and this is the very first time I've seen an artist have the house lights turned up after each song, so he could see his fans, acknowledge them, and thank them in such a personal way... This is especially amazing considering that Paul McCartney is one of the (if not *the*) most famous and influental musicians alive. It's also incredible that the guy is 63 years old, and still looks and sounds great!

A Few highlights:
~Though I've heard a little criticism of the fact that Paul chose to do quite a bit of talking between songs, I found it very personable and interesting. For instance: Did you know that the song Blackbird was written for the Human Rights struggle black women were going through back in the sixties? And that he and George Harrison were *trying* to steal the melody from a Bach song (he said he & George were only a few notes into it before messing it up!)??

~One of my all-time favorite love songs is Maybe I'm Amazed. Every time I hear it, it gives me chills, and I always find myself marveling over how passionate Paul's love was/is for Linda. Despite this, and despite the fact that I've been somewhat of an emotional wreck lately (see last post!), I was completely taken by surprise when this song started up and I immediately found myself pretty much bawling. *Sigh* ...I still get teary every time I think of Paul performing it. How incredible it was to get to see such a desperately loving and real song performed live! Later in the show, Paul asked everyone to take a moment to remember those who are no longer with us: George, John, and Linda... The applause was thundering, and lasted for some time.

~The show was even educational: Paul told us when he wrote his new song, English Garden, he'd been excited to find a opportunity to use the word, "Peradventure." Honestly, to me, learning the meaning of the word was almost disappointing, because it sounds much more exciting than its definition actually is:
per·ad·ven·ture (pûrd-vnchr, pr-)
adv. Archaic
Perhaps; perchance.
n.
Chance or uncertainty; doubt.
adv :
by chance; "perhaps she will call tomorrow"; "we may possibly run into them at the concert"; "it may peradventure be thought that there never was such a time" [syn: possibly, perchance, perhaps, maybe, mayhap]

On the other hand, it was pretty cool to be taught a new word (it's new to me anyhow) by that particular teacher.

~Intro for Good Day Sunshine: Paul talked about the first Space Shuttle mission which had been piloted by a woman (Eileen Collins), and how on the day the crew awoke to prepare their return to earth, this song was played for them. That is pretty cool, and Paul was honored to have a song of his chosen to wake up the Shuttle crew... so much so that he went to NASA and suggested he time a concert so that he could perform the song live for the next shuttle crew (this just happened the other day, *after* the concert I saw)!

~Live and Let Die... All I can say is, WOW!! I've never even cared too much for that song, but it kicked ASS in concert! Right where it picks up from the slow into the fast part of the song, there is a *huge* explosion with flames coming from the stage... The first time it happened I jumped clean out of my seat and involuntarily let out a yelp (technically I suppose it was more like a scream)... Jeff laughed and said he had planned on warning me but then forgot (yeah, right! HeeHee). Anyhow, I'll never hear this song quite the same way again.

I realized something the night of the show: This is the first time in my life it hasn't even occured to me (at least it hadn't until now) to find the idea of referring to someone by a title like "Sir" annoying. Normally anything along those lines just strikes me as incredibly pretentious... But somehow, for Sir Paul, it just works.

Well I could certainly go on & on... But I will spare you... Right after I include just one other cool story . As the show was ending, around the 4th encore, Jeff and I went running (well I did the closest thing to a run I could for both my off-balance state, and the heeled boots I was wearing!) for the lobby to get ourselves a shirt and a program, respectively. Unfortunately, as soon as I'd made it up the many, many stairs and out to the t-shirt stand, I realized something was missing: My purse! Oh my gosh... In my rush to beat the crowd out of there, I forgot what is usually the most basic thing that I never, ever leave behind! I asked Jeff if he could please run back to the seats to grab it, if it was even still there... Which of course it turned out not to be (luckily only $20 was inside, but unfortunately so was my license and Visa Check Card!). Thankfully Jeff found me in line and was able to lend me the money to get my shirt! He grabbed his program, and after determining that no one had turned in my purse to lost and found, we made our way outside, where it had started drizzling. Man, was I bummed at this point, mourning the loss of the one purse I usually carry everywhere (I know you remember it, Daisy!), wondering if someone was already trying to use my Visa before I was able to cancel it, etc. After walking a small portion of the hike back to the car, and feeling blisters forming on my feet, I was even more bummed, and was getting quite snippy with Jeff... I know, it doesn't sound like such a cool story just yet, but here's where it gets cooler: As we were both trudging along and getting progressively more annoyed with each other, I glanced down the street we were crossing at the moment, where Hotel DeAnza is located (the Beatles stayed there many years ago, on their first visit to the SF Bay Area), and noticed a very large bus parked in the middle of the street, completely blocking off any potential traffic. Jeff was pretty focused on getting back to the car, but the bus caught my attention, as did the roped-off path between it and the Hotel, and the crowd hovering outside the ropes... I said, "Hey! Who do you think might be on that bus??", to Jeff. We detoured and walked over... I told Jeff he may want to break out his camera phone so that I could take a picture of he and Paul (I should mention here that the Beatles are Jeff's all-time favorite band on the planet, and Paul is his all-time favorite artist), if the opportunity arose. It didn't, but sure enough, just moments later, Paul and his posse emerged from the bus and walked straight into the hotel lobby. He turned around and waved and said hello to the waiting fans quickly, as they all cheered, and Jeff managed to catch the below picture of Paul's back. Oh well, at least *we* saw the front of him! And it was pretty cool, even if he didn't stop to visit with his fans... I was a little disappointed at first about that, especially in light of how sweet and personable he seemed from the stage... But then again, all ya have to do is think about what happened to John Lennon to get an idea why Paul may not be into getting too touchy-feely with his fans... Not to mention that being 63 years old, it was very possibly past his bedtime by then!! Jeff edited the shot on the right to highlight Sir Paul himself! (Click to enlarge)

Pics from my camera phone at the show didn't exactly turn out stellar, but here's a couple of the least crappy ones, in case you are interested.

Oh, and by the way, arena security located my purse in the Men's room around 3am (I kept calling, and that was when they finally said they had it), less $20, but still including my Visa check card and my driver's license, thank God! I went back and picked it up the next day (technically the same day, I suppose). So there did turn out to be a happy ending... My favorite kind!!!

I'm Coming Out!

2005-11-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's not that kind of coming out! But it's something I've hesitated to post about for months. I'm sick of feeling compelled to talk about it though, only to be too scared to actually do it. So, here goes:

I am chronically depressed (have been for years, at times much worse than others of course), and have been trying different meds to control it for the last several months. Alright, so maybe this isn't coming as a total shock to anyone... But it's been killing me to feel like I can't talk about this, because it's played such a huge part in my sleep issues and my ability to function lately. Sorry if you were hoping for more juicy gossip when I said I was coming out!! HeeHee

Anyhow: Quite a few months ago had I finally relented to try medication for my depression. This was far from an easy decision, as I tend to be skeptical -- even paranoid -- about drugs & doctors in general. But I'd become pretty desperate. I think I've blogged before about the fact that I was in fairly decent shape in the not-too-distant past... Once I let that go, my emotional state declined steadily, as did my sleep issues (those things tend to go hand-in-hand, after all). And it became a vicious cycle, which progressively became worse. Though I'd tried and tried to get it back together, and get back on a workout schedule to improve my sleep & mood, it had become too much of a challenge because of how lethargic and depressed I'd become. So... I finally gave in, and decided to give the meds a shot. I first tried Lexapro for a few months, but experienced a few side effects, and my doc (my regular Dr had prescribed it) decided I should try something else... So we tried Cymbalta. Boy if only I'd known then what I know now, I would have stuck with the Lexapro! I really have a hard time remembering exactly what those issues had been, especially compared to all the Cymbalta side effects. One of the biggest issues I had with this new drug was almost immediately gaining 15 - 20 lbs... Having already gained 10 - 15 since slipping out of my workout habit, this side effect in itself didn't exactly do much to improve my mood! But even aside from that problem, the goal of the drug was never quite reached; though my mood may have improved some initially, it was counteracted by 1) how much more out of shape I continued to become ~and~ 2) How much worse my sleep and energy level became (the other main side effect I experienced... again, these things are obviously related).

So... fast forward to my LOA. After being into it a few weeks, doing a bunch of research online, and giving it plenty of thought, I realized benefits I may be getting (if there even really were any!) were far outweighed (no pun intended, heehee) by the problems I was having. Next time I went and saw my regular doctor, I told him I wanted off of this stuff. Since I'd been on Effexor about a decade ago, remembered I'd slept great on it, and couldn't remember any real problems (aside from what would happen if I ever missed a dose... back to that in a minute), my Doc decided I should try that one again. He told me to taper off Cymbalta for a week or so (ha! What a joke! back to that in a minute as well), and then start on Effexor, which he of course wrote me a prescription for. However, the very next day I had an appointment with my sleep doc to follow up my sleep study, and to get a prescription for the C-pap. He seemed to think Effexor may harm my sleep more than help it, as it's apparently known as a stimulant (never mind the fact that one of the only things I remember clearly about being on it before was how great I'd slept!), and thought it would be better for me to get on Remeron, which is something he thought should aid my sleep. Sleep Doc also hoped Remeron could end up replacing the Ambien I've been taking (Have I mentioned before that I also started taking sleeping pills a couple months back? Also reluctantly and also out of desperation, of course!). He told me to finish coming off the Cymbalta, then after starting the Remeron for a few days, to start my trial with the "sleep machine".

Of course coming off the Cymbalta turned out to be a lot more of a huge pain in the ass than anyone seemed to realize it would. Yikes! When I'd been on Effexor years ago, and I'd missed a dose once or twice, what happened as a result pretty much freaked me out... It's like a combination of dizziness, and a feeling like there are mild electrical shock-type impulses coursing through your brain... I'm not sure how else to describe it. But when that had happened, I'd become really scared of how dependent it seemed I was on the drug, and that's why I'd stopped taking it. As it turns out, it doesn't seem the dizziness & electrical impulses (I've heard one person describe it as something feeling like it's misfiring in the brain... which seems a pretty accurate description as well) from Effexor had been nearly as severe as how it's felt to come off the Cymbalta... Even though I've tapered off much more gradually than the Dr had suggested! The last couple days after I was done taking it altogether (through yesterday) were especially difficult... Ugh.

So where was I? A week or so ago, as I was working on getting off the Cymbalta, I decided I'd better do a little research on Remeron before switching to it. What I found in reading up on patients' feedback was that virtually everyone taking it gained weight... and that many also experienced being sluggish throughout the day. Hello?! Those two side effects are the last things I need to happen to me at this stage of the game. I was so frustrated when I read that I thought, Screw this... I'm done with antidepressants! But then I was told about yet another drug, called Celexa. Did some research on this one, and found out a couple people I knew were either on it or had friends on it, and results apparently were quite positive... It also seems this is one of the least likely antidepressants to have weight gain as a side effect. So, long story longer (dang, I had no idea I'd end up being so long-winded about all this; sorry!)... As of last night, Celexa is what I'm now trying. And I'm finally feeling a lot less dizzy/electrified today, though those feelings aren't completely gone yet. It's good to at least be able to get up and walk around without feeling like I could fall over at any moment.

*Sigh* Well I feel somewhat better after getting that off my chest... though a bit nervous about people officially knowing "I have issues" ...HeeHee.. Kinda silly really, 'cause it's not like you didn't already have that figured out! Seriously though, feeling down so often lately has certainly made it difficult to get much of anything done, let alone making me feel like sharing what's going on with my life! Thanks for listening.

Just for You, Kimber-ry!

2005-11-06T03:23:00.000-08:00

When we saw this sign floating around on a sushi boat at our favorite japanese restaraunt the other night, I had to grab it and take a picture. I know a certain someone will especially appreciate it...

Anyone for some jarapeno???

Sorry it's a tad bit blurry, I was trying to be discreet & get the shot with my phone as quickly & slyly as possible!

Bloggerland Updates!

2005-11-01T23:31:00.000-08:00

As of yesterday I am *finally* caught up reading my favorite bloggers again! Some highlights:

~ Dooce's hubby is now at home (a.k.a. not working), and she's supporting her family via her blog! Using ads, which apparently many of her readers are not happy about (I sent her an email to tell her I support her fully... After all, why not make your living doing what you love whenever possible??!)

~ Secret Agent Josephine is becoming quite pregnant! She recently found out "it's a girl"!

~ Mark has a new lady-friend, and things seem to be going well. He's luckily avoided the worst of recent hurricanes, but has gotten some great pics of the stormy weather.

~ Daisy has some great Tricks up her sleeve these days, as well as some great stories and pics for Treats (as always)! She recently had her blog "compromised" by some loose lips in her family, but thankfully decided to stick it out, and is letting the chips fall where they may! Us readers are certainly greatful for her courage!

~ Little Star is gettin' hitched! Or I suppose she is hitched by now! What a surprise!!

~ Knows It All just had her bachelorette party... In New York (how awesome)! She'll be gettin' hitched herself before much longer!

~ And last, but far from least, Thrusher is treating her neighbors to a glimpse of our american culture by sharing Halloween with them. And is having parades thrown in her honor. What a life!

Me? I had my first decent chunk of solid sleep last night in quite some time. I have yet to get my C-pap (had a small "complication" to this process that I'm not going into right now; but nothing serious, don't worry!). Should be getting that going in the next couple days. Hopefully it'll do what it's supposed to, and won't distract me from sleep instead of helping! I have a couple posts in draft form (okay, really I have like a dozen in draft form, but a couple I've started just in the last couple days!), hopefully will be getting at least one of them up tomorrow!

All is well in Blog-Land. Now I can go catch up on some TiVo (also something I have to post about soon!). Nighty Night!

Not Too Shabby

2005-11-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

...Does this mean I should be putting ads on my site? Not sure if this is per year, or what... Thanks Mark, for the cool link (somehow I already forgot where I got the math test from, and can't seem to figure it out!).

My blog is worth $3,951.78.
How much is your blog worth?

I'm kinda Shocked!

2005-10-31T08:15:00.000-08:00

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 7/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Of course I did guess about half of them!

A Night & Day in Monterey

2005-10-27T23:59:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, Jeff & I decided to head down to Monterey for an overnight trip. We were going on a Whale Watching excursion the following morning, which is something we've both always wanted to do.

We first headed to an awesome dinner Friday night on the wharf, at Old Fisherman's Grotto. Holy Moly, that was some good stuff: Some of the best calamari I've ever had. The lobster was as fresh as is possible to be (I mean fresh as possible without still breathing... or do lobsters breathe, technically?), and of course it was absolutely delicious. Wowee. Here we are preparing to dive in (we split the lobster, so as not to get too stuffed!).

After the feast, and after wandering around a bit (it was cold, but not nearly as cold as I'd expected; of course cold to me is undoubtedly balmy warm in comparison to cold in the Midwest and East... I'm aware that I'm completely spoiled by having been raised in mild, sunny CA), we headed back to the hotel fairly early to get some rest, knowing we'd be getting up really early the following morning. We were the first ones to arrive at the dock (a small miracle, since I was half of the party involved in getting us there!).

On our way out of the harbor, we passed by some large rocks with tons of sea lions lying about. Here are a few of them... If you click the picture to enlarge, and check out the couple at the far right, they appear to be arguing about something! I wonder what it is... ?

So, what typically is roughly a three hour journey (sing it: "a three hour tour...") turned into five hours of searching for whales. Never did find 'em... The closest we came was rushing to catch up to another whale watching boat because they had just spotted a group (pod? herd? gaggle??) of humpbacks. The whales had just submerged before we arrived on the scene, and we waited and watched, holding our breath; apparently humpbacks surface to take a breath about every six to nine minutes. Unfortunately they decided to swim out of sight to come up for air.

So it actually turned out pretty ideal that we didn't see any whales, because we ended up seeing some other cool critters, and the trip is basically guaranteed: That is, no whale sightings, and you get a free trip at a future date of your choice... No matter how many other animals are sighted. After a few hours we started worrying that we would see a flash of a fin, and that would be our sighting.

Besides the sea lions that were the most common non-winged creature (we saw quite a few pelicans, tons of gulls, a couple albatross, and other sea birds as well), we saw a few otters, a jellyfish here and there, and even a glimpse of the reclusive Harbor Porpoise. Best of all, we got right up next to some Risso's dolphins.

Again, it was fairly cold, but much more bearable than I'd expected. Foggy, which is perhaps why there were no whale sightings. I look forward to another trip. Sure would love to see the giant Blue Whale! Hopefully next time.

So when we came back on shore, there were plenty of guys on the pier, gutting fish they'd just caught... I know this is a gnarly picture, but I had to take it (and had to show you), because if you enlarge the one on the right and look closely, you can see the tail of a fish this guy swallowed, apparently just before he bought the farm himself. Gross, but interesting nonetheless.

Also once back on the wharf, we had a few more great critter sightings... They were easier to catch on camera once we were on land and not bobbing around. Below left is the closest shot I could manage to get of an otter (we noticed every time we spotted one floating on its back eating, there was a scavenging gull nearby, trying to get what it could of the otter's scraps (Remember Finding Nemo? The "Mine! Mine! Mine!" comes to mind!).

Then there were the harbor seals. Wow, how cool and cute they were! At one point when we glimpsed over the pier, we saw a bunch of them (surrounded by gulls of course) waiting for scraps some more guys were tossing down from where they were gutting fish they'd caught. We were able to walk down underneath and get super close to the seals. Besides the above picture, I was also able to take a good video cli p. Aren't they adorable??

After I made a new friend, we left the wharf, and did the famous 17 mile drive. I would have a ton more pictures to share, but the weather just wasn't that cooperative, so there just isn't much in the way of great scenic shots. Though it was foggy, and visibility was poor for our whale watching trip, we still had a lot of fun. We'll definitely do it again, hopefully on a day where there's a bit more sun & a bit less fog!

Sleep Study III - Attack of the Killer C-Paps

2005-10-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

Well it's probably pretty clear that my sleep pattern hasn't improved much, if the time stamp on this post is any indication... Well it has improved a little I think... but any improvement has been disrupted by my 3rd sleep study, which took place last night. This test was specifically to try out the C-pap. It of course sucked pretty bad (no pun intended... well I guess technically it blew air into me rather than sucking it out of me... No I suppose sucking air out of me wouldn't be helpful at all, especially for the purpose of helping me rest. Unless maybeI wanted to rest permanently... But wait a sec, I appear to be digressing...); surprisingly, I did get some sleep for an hour or two a couple different times during the night/morning. I find out more specifically how well it went (how many hours I slept, how deep my sleep went, how well the machine helped, if at all) tomorrow when I go in for my follow up appt. with the Sleep Doc.

So I won't bore you with another round of pictures showing my latest round of tape rashes... This tech actually seemed to be more cautions and took much longer attaching all the electrodes to me with less adhesive stuff (that's a technical term, stuff), and my reactions this time are actually quite less severe than in Study I or II. No, I'll do much better than tape rash pics this time. Because this time I actually remembered to bring my camera along for the ride, and got some great (if horribly ugly) pics of myself being all hooked up to electrodes, as well as two versions of THE MASK (the things I do for you people! ):

Dont' I look thrilled???

A couple different things, besides the obvious, were pretty frustrating. The girl who was my technician was very sweet (not the frustrating part, of course... I'm gettin to it). I'm sure she was just trying to do her job when, after finishing hooking me up to everything around midnight, said, "Okay, time to turn the TV off". To which I of course replied, "Actually, I'm a little wound up under the circumstances. Watching the TV helps me get relaxed and sleepy." She said, "Well I really need you to sleep to get data. I can leave the TV on, but you can't watch it." I responded, "Hmm, well watching it is how I get sleepy". She said it would be better if she turned it off, even if I just laid there with my eyes open for awhile. But of course an hour later when I was still lying there not sleeping, she came back and said, "Okay, I'll go ahead and turn the TV on." It didn't take me much longer to fall asleep after that. She had also warned me that she'd need to record some data with me sleeping on my back, and would have to come wake me at some point in the night to have me lay on my back if I hadn't yet... I told her that even though I normally couldn't sleep on my back, I'd do my best. Around 3am she did come wake me, and of course I laid awake for about another hour before she again came in to tell me to go ahead and lay however I was comfortable. Of course by this time I was too awake to fall back asleep for another couple hours. At least she was kind enough to go ahead and let me sleep until 7:30 after I finally did fall back asleep. I know that sounds sarcastic, but actually I'm being serious! Last time the tech woke me between 6 and 6:30, when they're supposed to wake the patient to basically kick them out of the sleep clinic... But this time she told me she'd just not had the heart to wake me so early after it'd taken me so long to get back to sleep.

Anyhow. Finally updating, but of course up way too late to do it. Just can't seem to have it all.

Tagged, by Thrusher & Little Star

2005-10-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

Okay I'm finally getting around to this... So much for posting more consistently now that I'm on a LOA! But better late than never, hopefully!

Fun with your archives. The rules:
1. Go into your archive
2. Find your 23rd post
3. Find the fifth sentence (closest to)
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog with these instructions
5. Tag five other people to do the same.

My 23rd Post, 5th sentence:

Just returned from the Toronto (Duran Duran show) trip with Dana a couple nights ago.

...Hmm, what to say about this except for it fits into my typical "groupie-ish" mindset of being into seeing as many good concerts as possible; and of trying to win (& encourage all my friends to win) contests to see them. :)

Unfortunately I believe anyone who reads my blog with any regularity has already been tagged with this... So if you're reading and you haven't already done this, go for it!

I'll start with the bad news...

2005-10-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

...'cause I've always been the kind of person who likes to "save the best for last". I am still having pretty major sleep issues, which is the main reason I've still hardly been seen in Blogger-Land the last month or two. (In fact, though I was tempted to first get caught up on reading my favorite blogs, I decided I needed to start by posting an update... for anyone who may still be checking in to see if I'm still alive!)

And Now for the GOOD NEWS....
Starting end of last week, I'm on a leave of absence, most likely for at least a month! I feel kinda funny even writing it, as it doesn't feel 100% "good"... In fact I feel terribly guilty for the havoc my absence will be sure to inflict on my coworkers. And thanks to Dear Old Dad's guilt trips back when we were growing up, to this day I never, ever really feel like I deserve time off for any kind of illness, or even for most emergencies. Anyhow. The whole point of the time off is to get evaluated and tested... yes, even with a CPap, to rule it out as a viable treatment at the very least. Hopefully we will get to the bottom of the major cause or causes of my recent sleeplessness, and will end up with a solid plan for how to improve it... Whether or not that plan should include surgery, hopefully we will figure out along the way. I'm so exhausted, still, that I have a hard time putting a lot of hope in anything anymore (well also because of several recent disappointments, like the surgeon visit, where I thought I had an answer, only to find it wasn't necessarily a solution after all).

I guess, even in spite of the guilty feelings, I am mostly just relieved to have a little break. And I hope, hope HOPE in the midst of the time off and trying to do whatever is necessary to improve my rest & health, I can figure out a next step that will be something other than having to return to my current job. I know without a doubt that the stress there is at least contributing to my difficulty sleeping.

If you happen to be "the praying kind", I would really appreciate a little prayer or two in the near future... I can use all the help I can get! Thanks in advance for that, and/or for positive thoughts, and all that other good stuff too. Hopefully this next month I'll also manage to get back into the habit of reading my favorite blogs, and writing more on my own blog!

Like a Surgeon...

2005-09-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

Arrgh! I'm exhausted and PMSey and about at my wits' end. I hate that I've hardly even managed to read my usual blogs lately, let alone post on my own blog. I miss having at least some energy some of the time... And the surgeon today just frustrated me all the more. Beware, conspiracy theorist's rant ahead: Why is it that more & more prescription drugs are coming out to treat different diseases & ailments all the time, yet americans seem to just get sicker & sicker: More cancer, more asthma, more diabetes, more depression, more obesity... On & on & on! Something sure does smell funny about it all!

So anyway, the surgeon isn't so gung-ho about the idea of my getting the apnea surgery. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. If I really don't need it, of course I wouldn't want to get any kind of surgery. However: 1, He wants me to do the C-Pap for a month to 6 weeks (or at least "pretend" to try it for that amount of time, so that my insurance company will think I've tried other options besides surgery... Never mind that both he and my sleep doc acknowledge that I seem like an especially poor candidate for the C-pap, and that it would likely hinder my sleep more than help it!)..., and 2, since I have difficulty breathing through my nose, he wants me to try a new prescription, "Flonase" (nasal spray, for anyone who may not know) for a month to 6 weeks as well. This at the same time as diagnosing me with a deviated septum. I've always suspected I've had this issue, or something similar, as my nostrils are narrow, one especially so (thankfully this is only really noticable if you look up my nose instead of right at it... not that you really wanted to know the intimate details of my nostrils), and for years I've often gotten stuffy and have had a hard time breathing through my nose. This is also something that could be treated with surgery, and to me is a much more positive idea than the thought of being stuck on a prescription nasal spray the rest of my life.

I was pretty bummed when I left this guy's office, prescriptions in hand, with his recommendation to come back after being sufficiently nasal-sprayed, and after spending a month + of my nights strapped to this sleeping apparatus by the face. Being full of the emotional messiness that so often accompanies me this time of the month, it was all I could do not to burst into tears when the doctor's assistant talked to me about the possibilities of where I could get my trusty C-pap rental (in the end, she didn't even give me a definite answer to this question). I'm sooo tired already, I can only imagine what I'd be like after another month of even less sleep. After trying to gather my scattered, emotion-ridden thoughts, I decided I need to call the sleep doc again, and ask him whether he can help me run through all the other possibilities of why I have such a hard time sleeping lately. It's been suggested to me that my symptoms sound like they could have something to do with either a thyroid problem, or diabetes. There has to be some kind of logical explanation... I just hope we can figure it out before too much longer, and figure out how the hell to fix it!

BTW, you got lucky, you got a much-shortened version of my rant, cuz I'm too tired to go on any longer about my conspiracy theories involving western medicine. 'Night.

Zombified

2005-09-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

Dang. I don't ever remember a time in my life when I've so consistently felt utterly exhausted. I've begun to think maybe there's something more severely wrong with me than just mild sleep apnea, as lately I can hardly ever seem to get through the day without having to break away from my desk and take a little nap (when I was younger I was *never* able to sleep during the day... ever!)... I sit in front of my monitor at work and go cross-eyed, nearly nodding off, over & over again. It's so strange. Actually, it pretty much sucks. Especially when I've begun to make progress in getting back into a workout habit.. Now it feels like this huge, cliff-mountain wall is in front of me, with jagged peaks that I must scale in order to keep going forward.

Anyhow. I have an appt with the sleep surgeon in a week or so... And I told my boss I'll be taking time off probably the end of next month to get surgery. I guess I'll ask the surgeon about other health possiblities too, just in case... Though Jeff feels pretty certain that apnea thing is mainly what's wrong with me; he's been through the same kind of stuff before. At his worst stage of apnea, he says he was pretty much like I am now (that was before I met him). I just keep trying to look forward and believe it's gonna get better. It has to, at some point!

Slacker!!

2005-09-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

The other day I was flipping through channels, and came across one of my favorite 80s classics, Back to the Future. The principal in the movie, Mr. Strickland, is always suspicious of everyone. His insult of choice is to call Marty and the other students "Slacker". It got me realizing, that's how I've been feeling about myself lately. Whether it's doing laundry, working out, keeping up with emails, or even reading my usual blogs-- let alone blogging myself-- lately it seems like a huge effort to get anything done.

If I'm to step back and just try to really see everything that's been going on my life recently, it becomes obvious that the fact of the matter is that 1, I've been sleeping terribly lately... And 2, that's been causing me to be either a zombie or a stress-case (or both!) much of the time. In fact, in the last few days, I've made the decision to move forward and get evaluated for surgery for my sleep apnea. I even called one of the surgeons my sleep doc recommended today, and made the appointment to go over my options. Not only will this hopefully give me what I need to finally start getting some good rest, but it will also allow me a much-needed break from my job, which is increasingly discouraging and depressing lately. Most mornings nowadays, it's all I can do to drag my ass out of bed; not just because of my lack of sleep... and not just due to the fact that my ass has become pretty large as of late, either!

One of the things that's of course been on my mind, like on everyone's, is the ongoing situation in New Orleans. I've been feeling guilty about the fact that I haven't managed to blog about it and express my sadness and concern. At least I've managed to make a couple of donations to two of my favorite charities, Red Cross and World Vision. One thing I will risk saying (it's a risk because it seems pretty likely that I'm very much in the minority as far as people's very passionate opinions go) is that I don't believe that Bush is nearly as much to blame as most everyone else seems to think. I'm not saying the guy has handled things perfectly by any means; but it just seems like it's this huge trend to blame him for everything that goes wrong in this country. It's like blaming a football team's quarterback when they are having a crappy season. It takes a lot more than one player to screw up a whole team. Anyhow, enough said about that. I hope it's all over sooner than everyone is expecting. And I hope we start to see more unity and compassion, and less chaos and blame, as things move forward where the recovery is concerned. Isn't there enough negativity and ugliness to overcome without finding ways to add to it? The families and those working to help them will certainty be in my prayers.

One positive thing in my life is that I have managed to slowly begin getting myself back in the habit of working out again. Boy it is a lot more challenging than I remember though. Meaning that back when I was running and working out regularly (many, many moons ago), it might have been somewhat of a struggle to get myself going in the first place... But once I was going, I felt great. Nowadays it is often so hard to keep going, to keep myself from giving up halfway or two-thirds of the way through my workout... It really hits home how out of shape I've become. It's tough not to become overwhelmed by the frustration... But I'm trying hard to focus on the fact that at least I'm working out again. Trying to remember that it's always slow going at first, but with persistence and dedication, I can and will get back in shape again. I just have to keep reminding myself of that. Also, once I've had surgery and have healed from it, it should be a lot less of a struggle to find the energy to get myself going in the first place.

Well, as is so often is the case, there's plenty more I could go on about... But it seems I've already rambled on enough for one night. And besides, I haven't been to see my regular bloggers in several days, so I want to check in with all of them while I'm still somewhat awake! Ta-ta for now.

Google Satellite Pics

2005-08-30T23:57:00.000-07:00

I have to drop a quick note about the coolest thing an old friend of mine hooked me up with tonight... Google Earth. You have to check this out... You can go anywhere on earth and zoom in from above! Admittedly though, lots of places don't come in clear... Apparently the more well-known cities are the ones where you tend to be able zoom in and see stuff close up. Check it out, here is my house! Even with my car in the driveway! Is that just rad or what??! Not real-time, as I looked this up at night and the picture is in the daytime, but still recent enough. I could play with this for hours... In fact I have to drag myself away now so I can get ready for bed.

See if you can locate your place and other locations you know of... Good clean fun, for hours on end!!

Faster Than a Speeding Superball!

2005-08-29T23:48:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago I went to a friend/coworker's new house to see it, as well as her new, adorable little chihuahua puppy, "Zoe". I took about 50-thousand pics trying to get a good shot of her, and while most turned out a many-varied version of these (she was an incredibly hyperactive little thing, didn't want to sit still for more than a millisecond or so)...

...I finally managed to get a few good ones of her! Isn't she just abso-freakin-lutely precious????!!

So I know it's been *forever*, and this is a pretty short post when I have so much time to make up for... But since my internet finally got back up, things have been alternatively busy and crazy... and sometimes both at once too. Plus it's getting kinda late (shocker, I know), and I'm trying *hard* to get back into a habit of a decent, or at least semi-decent, bedtime. That means ending this now to get ready for nitey-nite. I will really make an effort to catch up and get some more stuff down in the next couple days!

You Can Still Rock In America!

2005-08-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 14, 2005On Sunday evening Jeff, and our friends Dana and Brian, and I went to the San Mateo County Fair to see Night Ranger. It was a great show… But before the concert we went and munched out on a bunch of “health-food” one would only typically find at the fair: I was on a fried-food diet for the occasion… come to think of it I guess all of us pretty much were! First, I spotted the famous (or "infamous" depending on how you look at it), Hot Dog on a Stick booth... They have one of the most awesome food creations of all time: Cheese on a Stick!!! MMM, I'm starting to drool, just thinking about it! So I had to grab one of those, then grabbed some fries and some fried zucchini (to balance it out, because it's important to get your veggies, ya know?!) from another, nearby booth. I sat down and munched with everyone, then before I was done Jeff brought a funnel cake back to the table, topped with chocolate sauce, powdered sugar, and whipped cream!!! My oh my. Like Daisy said (as she also has a recent fair story), It's a good thing the fair only comes once a year!! Got so full I wasn't able to try the deep fried oreos or deep fried twinkies! Maybe next year...

Anyway, Night Ranger was awesome; they have all the original members, except for the keyboardist... And he used to be Great White's keyboardist, Michael Lardie... The guys seemed to really be enjoying themselves and doing a lot of screwing around and having fun. They played pieces of songs from the Beatles, Journey ("Na-Na" songs: Hey Jude and Lovin, Touchin, Squeezin), and The Eagles too! And to honor Michael, they also played Once Bitten, Twice Shy! At the end, Jack Blades (one of the original lead singers and bass player) said, "We slaughtered your song, didn't we??!" to Michael... But it actually sounded pretty good. All and all they sounded great... Jeff is totally into Jeff Watson, one of the two lead guitarists (Brad Gillis is the other), and considers him one of the most underrated guitarists in the rock world. Kelly Keagy is the drummer and the other lead singer... He sings what has to be their most famous song, Sister Christian.

Though we were sitting right next to the VIP section, there was only a thin rope dividing it... So of course when I saw a good opportunity, I snuck down and got really close to the stage. Got some great pics though! I almost deleted the one I accidently took of the crowd, until I noticed something seemed, uh... out of place. I realized the guy on the bottom right is actually doing the Live Long and Prosper (a.k.a. Spock) sign! Just when ya think you've seen it all! HeeHee

In other news, it's only supposed to take a total of a week (I guess literally it's more like a week and a day) to get my phone up (tomorrow, allegedly, it will be working again), and another day or two longer before my DSL is working... I'm doing everything possible to expedite the process, believe you me. Hopefully I'll at least have dial-up by tomorrow night so I won't have to keep relying on whatever free time I can find at work, or the rare occasion when I have access to Jeff's laptop to get online!

The DSL Drama Continues...

2005-08-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

Well the only reason I'm even on now is because Jeff brought his laptop over and managed to snag a stray wireless signal from somewhere... for the moment anyway.

Over the last few days, between Jeff and myself, we've probably spent six hours (or more!) on the phone having SBC Yahoo & Vonage pass the buck back and forth. Now it seems to be more Vonage's fault... But it also seems very likely that both parties hold some responsibility... Yesterday afternoon we were finally told by SBC that an order had been placed to disconnect my phone line! Without which, of course, I have no DSL line. By whom was the order placed?? They can't say... because the department which could (supposedly) answer that question had gone home for the weekend by the time they had determined that someone had ordered my line to be shut down. UGH!!

So did Vonage make an error in what they told SBC when they called to make arrangements to take over my landline phone service? Or is SBC trying to get revenge because of my switch over to Vonage?? Hard to say exactly WTF the story is... I can only say that I'm getting horrible customer service from both sides, and a very difficult time getting any straight answers on what happened, or how to fix it. (Daisy, I should have known that Vonage was at least a big part of the problem from the moment you commented your crazy hillbilly faith-healer neighbor was trying to peddle it!!)

For now, of course, my main priority is to do whatever is needed (be it call and hound, threaten and intimidate every employee at both SBC/Yahoo and Vonage) to get my service back up... Once that's done I'll very likely ditch Vonage, and will also look for any possible alternatives to SBC... Though for "traditional" landline phone service, I don't know of any other company to turn to in this area.

It is seriously a huge pain not to be able to be online; to catch up on all my favorite blogs... not to mention even being able to check email, or look stuff up whenever I have the whim to do so (weather, info about some news or other story I see on TV, etc). I *hate* it!! But once we get down to the bottom of this, I will make sure I get some free service out of it, at the very least!!!!!

HELP! I've been totally cut off from civilization!!!

2005-08-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe not *completely* cut off. I mean, thank God for cell phones and multiple land-lines in my house, or I would have been! Oh yeah, and also for a job where I have constant access to the internet, otherwise I would most certainly not even be able to lament to you at this very moment (I'm on my lunch break, of course!).

So, where shall I start?? Awhile back, after realizing once again how much I've been getting *reamed* with paying for my landline phone service, and after doing a little consumer report-type research, I concluded it was time for me to switch over to Vonage, which is one of several companies who route your landline through your DSL (*much* less expensive than the standard way). I love their commercials, they always crack me up, so I decided to go with them. A couple weeks ago, their service took effect, and everything seemed fine. That is, up until last night when I got home and I couldn't get online, which also ended up meaning I couldn't use my phone (since it's now dependent on the DSL connection). So... of course it was another thrilling Customer Service experience... After using my mobile phone to dial up the Help line on the back of my SBC Yahoo DSL guide, I was in turn referred to about 3 or 4 other #s (one at a time, of course... meaning each number I called told me I needed to call somewhere else), then transferred to yet another... only to be told by the guy on that line that I needed to talk to Vonage. Thankfully at least it was late enough by that time that I didn't have to do much holding (earlier in the evening my sister Lisa and I had been running around doing errands, during which our friend Shawna called to ask if we could meet up for a drink & some appetizers, which we did... so by the time I got home & started my calling it was around 10pm). At least the guy at Vonage walked me through some steps unplugging & re-plugging different cords and cables from both my router and my DSL modem... and through different things on my computer... but of course ended up concluding that the issue was not anything to do with Vonage, but with my Yahoo SBC DSL. They told me my IP address was private, and SBC Yahoo needed to give me a public one... Okay, whatever you say buddy. So back to Yahoo SBC I went, and this time the guy there at least walked me through some more computer stuff, and in the end said I was now on a public IP address... Which meant, he of course told me, I needed to call Vonage back and have them get my phone going again. By this time I was most definitely frustrated, not to mention a bit tipsy... I'd gotten a little buzz with the wine drank (drunk?) during our little outing earlier, and because I'd been having so much fun after arriving home, I'd decided to keep it going with some wine I'd gotten from Trader Joe's the previous weekend. Unfortunately this, combined with being pretty tired by this point, meant that I didn't have the clarity of mind to realize that the guy *should* have made sure I could connect to the internet before sending back to Vonage... So you can see what's coming next. After getting back on the phone with another Vonage guy (by now on my sister's landline, as my cell phone had had all the juice sucked out of it by this point), I was informed that I was *still* on a "private" IP address... ARGH.

By this time it was after midnight, and I just couldn't bear to deal with it anymore. I called and whined to Jeff, asking him why he wasn't there to take care of this for me??!! He's an IT guy, and since June has lived about a 1/2 hour's drive away from me... Which kinda sucks, *especially* during times such as this!! But he thinks it's even possible that some kind of virus has polluted everything (God, I HOPE that's not it!!), and that it's definitely not my Vonage.. Which I am sure is correct, since even when taking their router out of the equation, I can't get online.

*Whew* ...Exciting, I know. But it's amazing how dependent we become on modern day technology. I dread going home and not being able to get online. But I do need to sign off for now, as it's now the end of the work day (no I haven't been typing this all afternoon, just here & there!), and I need to meet Jeff by my house for sushi.. YUM. Then he's gonna come over and hopefully go beat up the Big Bad SBC Yahoo people! Wish me luck!

Dear Wrong-Number-Callers Who Catch Me at Work:

2005-08-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

Please, don't be sorry for "disturbing" me! It actually makes my day when you turn out to be someone I *don't* have to deal with!!!! Call back any time! Honest!

Have a lovely day.
~ShooShoo

Adventures With Hobie & Nutty

2005-08-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

I've written about our two goofy animals before, and just about Nutty at least once before as well... She's almost always good for some amusement, and the two of them together are usually sure to provide some entertainment... Well unless you're actually trying to watch a movie or concentrate on something, and then it can sometimes be distracting. But for the most part, their relationship is just really funny. Recently I got some good pictures of them playing and being both "vicious" & "lovey" to each other...

One of these days I'll have to get some good action shots (or video, even better) of Hobie when he boxes Peanut's face around. It's pretty hilarious.

This weekend I had the place to myself (well the part of the weekend that Jeff wasn't over, anyhow... it was nice for us to have the place to ourselves too), as Lisa and her new beau were off to Tahoe, and Brian is away at camp. Sunday as I was relaxing and catching up on some reality TV in the livingroom, Hobie was lounging and bathing himself under our dining room table. Nutty snuck up on him, and when she pounced he jumped up & back, right into the picture Lisa recently had purchased to put over our couch, which was, at the time, leaning against the nearby wall, and which of course then fell forward into the corner of the table. Oops! Oh well, just one of the hazards of owning two crazy animals.

Just look how innocent PeaNutty looks when she's asleep. Who would ever think she was capable of such destruction??!!

Redecorating

2005-08-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

When I first chose a Blogger template, I had to go with what I liked best out of the limited, standard choices they offer. And even though I didn't really think the coloring necessarily fit me, it seemed more me than all the rest of the templates... I know *nothing* about html, editing and that kind of thing, but after (finally) managing to learn how to do links, and pictures & stuff, I figured maybe if I played around with it enough I could figure out how to change colors too! It's taken weeks for me to finally get it close to how I want it. Im sure I'll continue to tweak it here & there, because I'm anal and a perfectionist and I can never usually leave something the way I fix it the first time... But it's pretty close to how it's gonna be, for awhile at least. Purple is much more my style than pink... Hope ya like it!

No Pain, No Gain!!!

2005-08-05T16:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening I received my fifth laser-hair removal treatment... The third for my underarms (I've also had two done on my lower legs so far; they estimate 3-5x per area to get the hair permanently removed). This time I was way better prepared than last time; I managed to get some pain pills, and took one well in advance. I'd learned my lesson last time, when I got my second treatment on my lower legs... which by the way are quite a bit more more sensitive then the underarms.

Last time I had *planned* on being as prepared as possible, in order to endure as little pain as possible. But I screwed up in a few different ways. First off, you're not supposed to come in during a particular time of the month, as one tends to be extra-sensitive during that time (in more ways than one!). When scheduling this appointment, I'd obviously miscalculated. I was smack in the middle of PMS. Secondly, I ran late... I tend to have that problem just about everywhere I go. I was almost fifteen minutes late, but had made an appointment for a microdermabrasion ahead of the laser hair removal. So I'd figured I'd apply the numbing gel (which seems to do very little, but ya figure anything is better than nothing!), drive over, take the pain killer I had saved just for that occasion, do my microderm treatment, then be nice & loopy just in time for the laser treatment. Well being as late as I turned out to be, I had to reschedule for the microdermabrasion... which meant going straight in for the zapping (they were short-handed, so there was no way around this)! I popped my pill right when I got there, but I don't think it really had any impact on me until after I was done, unfortunately. When I was on the table, I started a "mind over matter" mantra, as I knew from having been through this already that it would be fairly painful. They hadn't told me when I'd first signed up that for each treatment, the laser is set at a higher level than the last (and is therefore progressively more painful). A friend of mine who's gotten a tattoo removed through laser treatment informed me that's how the way it worked with her removal... and when I checked with the wonderfully helpful technician, she confirmed that it was true for the hair removal treatment as well. Something to be able to continually look forward to! So as I lay on the table last time, listening to the crackling sound of the laser as it shot through my skin and follicles and trying not to jump off the table, I tried to envision different things in a feeble attempt to distract myself from the pain. What ended up popping into my head was Patrick Swayze in Road House... When he has to get stitches for a cut he gets in a barfight, and the doctor prepares to give him a local anesthetic for pain, he tells her, "No thanks". When she questions him, he says, "Pain don't hurt." HA! I was thinking to myself... Maybe in the movies, but I bet the real Patrick Swayze (much as I adore him) would be cringing if this were happening to him right now. He'd probably bawl if he got stitches in real life without anesthetic!! This consoled me just a little as I imagined it... And when the technician had me turn over to do the backs of my legs, I noticed on a nearby cart one of those little hand-grip exerciser thingies... I asked, "What's that for?" To which she replied, "Oh, people like to squeeze that to help with the pain" Hey, thanks for letting me know about that, lady!! Sheesh! I grabbed it so I'd have something to squeeze besides my own hands. My hand and arm muscles were actually sore the next day from being so tense! And of course I started feeling great right after I got dropped off at home (I'd even planned ahead and arranged getting a ride, having wanted to make sure I covered all the bases).

Anyhow, the thing that gets me through the treatment most is the thought that one day when it's over, I won't have to ever shave again!!!! I can't even begin to tell you how much that idea *thrills* me! I've always thought of shaving as a huge pain in the ass... And it takes me forever because Im so paranoid about cutting myself! I have a thing about blood, after all. But the pain really isn't *that* horrible. It's not good... But it's over pretty quick, at least. And as far as I'm concerned, it's well worth it to not have to hassle with shaving. I already do much less than I used to... And tonight I realized I'm actually doing a form of public service as well: I saw some lady at Trader Joe's in a tank top of all things, blatantly lifting her arm up to play with her hair, and she had gobs of long black hair under there!! UGH... Gross! So this way I know that even if someday I lose my marbles and turn into a crazy, tree-huggin hippy, I won't be able to grow pit-hair, even if I try!

Smart People Can Do Stupid Things Too!

2005-08-01T21:03:00.000-07:00

So this morning I'm doing my usual, rush-out-of-the-house routine... This basically consists of me running outside to start my car and put Hobie and his food out (he stays in the garage at night), then rushing back in to get my morning fruit (usually an apple, which gets eaten on the way to work along with a protein bar), give Nutty her supplement (she has bad joints in her hind legs), then a treat to reward her for eating it... then rushing back out through the garage to get in my now warmed-up car, to speed off toward work. Usually when I run out the first time and start the car, I'll hit the auto-window button to get some fresh air flowing inside... Only today, I must have hit the "lock" button instead of the window button... That's right: I locked my keys in the car. You would think there's still nothing to worry about at this point, as someone as well-prepared as myself is sure to have a spare key... I was a girl scout, after all! And, as a matter of fact, I *do* have a spare... The thing is, the spare doesn't do ya much good if it just happens to be in your bag, which is currently locked inside the car. Mind you, I'm virtually always running late when I leave the house... and the car is running. And, though I tend to be well-prepared in many such scenarios, I also happen to be pretty cheap. Which equals not having AAA for my insurance. I suppose I should think about switching over... This is the second time I've done this. Well third if you count the time my back window was open enough for me to *barely* squeak my arm in enough to unlock the car. And at least the car wasn't running the other time!

Where was I? So after calling to let my "team lead" know what's going on (not to inform him "I'm gonna be late" since he's certainly already expecting that... but by telling him of my dilemma, he at least knows I'm likely to be later than usual!), I get out a wire coat hanger to do what I can through the window, which is cracked open about an inch. Like I said, I'm cheap... so you know there's no way I'm calling a tow-truck before at least making a diligent effort to break in myself! But though I had a fairly wild youth, car theft was never part of my repertoire... which turns out to be somewhat unfortunate in this case. I am having no luck whatsoever... When suddenly our gardeners pull up in their little truck. I wonder if it's possible that I could be so lucky as for them to have a slim jim stashed somewhere...??! As the first of the two men approaches, I carefully try to ask him if he happens to have the infamous tool. I'm pretty sure from past experience that their English is uh, limited, however am hoping I'll still manage to get my question across. He takes a look at me with my hanger in one hand, and needle-nose pliers in the other, and then at my still-running car... Then excitedly says something assumedly along the lines of the affirmative, while turning back towards his coworker to ask him something in Spanish. Instead of going back to the truck, gentleman #2 approaches and takes the hanger from me... I try to tell him I have pliers if he needs them, but he's already got the hanger in the window and is trying to get it hooked around the lock. After he struggles for a couple minutes, still having not acknowledged my mentioning the pliers, I figure he's either not hearing me (gentleman #1 is already busy weed-whacking at this point) or not understanding me... So I finally tap him on the shoulder to show him the pliers. His eyes light up, and he takes them from me to tweak the edge of the hanger with them... Then he expertly guides it back down the inside of the window to the lock and, in mere moments.... Pop! Up it comes! I actually shrieked I was so excited! Though I have to admit, it already was hovering in the back of my mind, "How does he know how to do that so well??!" I was so grateful, I was tempted to give him a hug, but instead gushed several "THANK YOU!"s and jumped into my car to take off.

This is certainly not the first time I've done something so mindless... only the most recent of many such instances. And while I don't exactly consider myself a genius, I do okay in the area of brains, as far as I can tell. I just get so absent-minded & scatterbrained! I suppose that could be because I don't seem to be very focused... My thoughts tend to wander and rabbit-trail all over the place (if you know me or you've read much of my blog, you're saying "Do ya think??!")... and it often causes me grief when I really need to be focused on something.

Anyhow, lucky for me, there is evidence all around that smart people--even the smartest of people--have similar issues. I mean, look at Einstein, even! But one thing I've been wanting to blog about for awhile has to do with this very phenomenon... This neighbor of mine is a great guy, a family man, thoughtful, and quite intelligent. He was laid off quite some time ago, and spent about a year just living off his package and investments, spending time with his family, etc. One of the things he decided to do in his spare time was plant some trees. Not just in his own yard, but in public places such as the median of the road around the corner from here. Very environmentally conscious and kind to the planet, don't you think? I do too... The thing is, he managed to plant one of his trees smack dab in front of the sign that lets people know the street they're on is changing to a different street. I pass this sign on my way home just about every day, sometimes several times a day... And almost every time, though it's been well over a year now, it still makes me chuckle. It's pretty bad (and this was taken after he recently trimmed the tree to make the sign a little more visible), see for yourself!

And one more thing, since I heard this story just this morning, and it fits here so perfectly... Though I don't know this woman personally and therefore have no idea of her intelligence level... I'm just saying it's possible she's not a complete idiot... Right? Poor thing, they printed her name, age, and everything but her weight & street address!
Driver Chases Car After Falling Out

Jul 30, 11:11 PM (ET)
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Opening up your door while driving isn't a good idea, especially on a busy highway.

Robbin Doolin, 31, of the Kansas City suburb of Grandview, learned that Friday morning when she leaned out her fast-moving car to spit.

She went tumbling out onto U.S. 71 in Kansas City, and to the amazement of other drivers, she hopped up and chased her car as it careened down an embankment toward a construction site.

Doolin was recovering Friday night at a hospital, where she was treated for injuries to her leg, arm and head.

"It's certainly not prudent to open your car door on a highway, especially when you're not wearing a seat belt," said Capt. Rich Lockhart, a police spokesman.

Lockhart said the woman was embarrassed about the accident.

Her explanation to officers: "I leaned out to spit and I leaned too far."

Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com

The Mystery of Dreams

2005-08-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

I had a dream about cutie-pie Hal Sparks last night... Not *that* kind of dream (I swear!!), but it *was* a dream where the crush went both ways; which was, of course, really cool... But it was weird, Hal was more like his character Michael on Queer as Folk... Boyish, a tiny bit shy, and yes, even gay... But he liked me anyway (apparently in my dream I had the power and ability to convert a gay man! C'mon, I'm sure it could happen!) Mainly we were just hanging out at his mom's place (also like Queer as Folk, except his mom was a different lady) and being goofy and even cuddly on the couch. I don't think we even kissed... But we were just total buddies, really close friends, and really comfortable with each other. Pretty funny, 'cause I hardly ever remember my dreams...

The only thing that sucks about a dream like this is waking up and realizing that it wasn't real... It almost felt like I lost someone I was close to! Especially since through the course of the morning I kept feeling like I had recently really been with him, and then suddenly I'd remember it was only a dream. Weird, huh?! And yet, maybe not so weird, when ya really think about it... With the amount of loss I've had in my life, I suppose it's just a way for me to do a little processing of some grief that just isn't all the way worked through yet. After all, significant losses leave a hole that can never totally be filled... The people (or even "things", if it's a career, special relationship that changes, etc) who are gone are gone forever. It's actually kinda cool to think that even if we aren't very good at dealing with grief or other difficult types of reality in "real" (conscious) life, we have a way of dealing with it (at least somewhat) in our sleep!

Variety Rocks!

2005-08-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

This new San Francisco radio station, 95.7 "MAX FM" is so RAD! I love a station that doesn't repeat any songs throughout the day (most stations overplay the S**T out of stuff), but below is an idea of their variety (their tagline is "70s, 80s, and whatever we feel like!"). This is a sample of just some of the songs I've heard today:
Abba - Dancing Queen
Bon Jovi - Dead or Alive
Journey - Faithfully
The Gap Band - You Dropped a Bomb on Me
Jefferson Airplaine - Change
Billy Joel - My Life
The Cranberries - Dreams
Little River Band - Reminiscing
ZZ Top - La Grange
Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
REO Speedwagon - Keep On Loving You
Alanis Morrisette - Ironic
Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane
The Ohio Players - Love Roller Coaster
The Eagles - Already Gone ...AWW YEAH
The Police - Wrapped Around Your Finger
Black Crowes - She Talks to Angels
Quiet Riot - Cum On Feel the Noise
GooGoo Dolls - Name
Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart ...Do you *love* it?? It was all I could do not to bust out & start singing at the top of my lungs right there at work! HeeHee ...I would have if I was in my car or at home, I'll tell ya that right now!
Honky Tonk Woman - Rolling Stones
Nu Shooz - I Can't Wait
Pat Benatar - We Belong
Van "Hagar" - Finish What Ya Started
Evanescence - My Immortal
Eddie Money - Two Tickets to Paradise
Guns 'N' Roses - Sweet Child o' Mine

I just *love* about 90-95% of what they play, and don't mind most of the rest... Besides that, they have "J. Peterman" doing their TV and radio commercial voice-overs! How cool is that?! YOU can even listen online! Check them out here!

Wasps Nests, Sleep Studies, and Summer Night-Walks

2005-07-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

'Tis the season for wasps nests, apparently, or hornets-nests or whatever they are. It's really funny: After taking pictures of wasps that have been building a nest in our patio table umbrella pole, and preparing to blog about it, I saw that Daisy Mae was already posting about the same thing! Well, in her ceiling instead of in an umbrella pole, which I'd think is decidedly worse... Especially since she's allergic! Anyhow. Here's a few shots of our new "pets" and their new little home. It seems they're not as territorial as one would expect... I noticed them out there a couple months or so ago, and before I remembered to tell Lisa about them, she'd moved the table and umbrella from the side to the center of our deck... Apparently not disturbing the little buggers at all! I'd assumed they must have gone away after that, but then a day or two later I saw them again. The other thing is I've gotten pretty close to try and get some good shots, and they don't seem to mind at all! And of course as time goes on, there are more & more of them... I noticed today that the hive/nest is leaking out of the little opening in the pole, so the nest is now partially outside of it as well! I almost feel like I'm growing attached to the little critters.. I'm sure I only say that 'cause no one has been stung as of yet. I'm sure their days are numbered; we can't let them go on living there forever... I'm sure it just isn't safe! Right??

So last night I had my second sleep-study. This one went way better than the first one... For one thing, I actually slept! It seems that it makes much more sense to go see a doctor who's actually a specialist in sleep disorders to get signed up for such a study. As I wrote about before, this Dr was much more attentive and full of questions, took notes, and even drew diagrams of surgery options for me. And the nurse who hooked me up last night watched me toss & turn for about an hour before coming in and offering me a sleeping pill. Normally I hate taking sleeping pills because I always wake up groggy... But in a case like this, I was happy to make an exception.. and it obviously worked! Though I'd told them I'd had a reaction to the tape last time, and he said he was using special stuff this time, I still had a reaction once again... Perhaps even worse than the last time. It really looks a lot worse than it is though. It only itches a little, periodically. And last time it went away in a little over a day, so hopefully this time around will be about the same. Obviously I have very sensitive skin... I guess 'cause I'm such a whitie! Anyhow, I go see the sleep doc on Wednesday to talk over my results and possible treatments for my apnea. I already suspect I'm going to want surgery, rather than being dependent on a sleep-machine for the rest of my life. But first I'd like to lose a few pounds to see how much of a difference I can make on my own, and so that the surgery, should I get it, will be more likely to be successful. My one regret about last night is that I didn't think to bring a camera with me.. DUH! As the nurse was getting the zillions of wires taped all over my head, face & body, it suddenly occurred to me what a funny picture I would make. I mentioned something about it, and he said people bring cameras all the time for that. Sheesh! I can't believe I didn't think of it! If I ever do that again, I'll make sure to bring a camera and get a good picture!

Tonight is another gorgeous summer night... Much more so lately, since the heat wave we've been having has passed.. Though admittedly, this summer has been much more mild than any I remember in quite some time. I took the Nutty-dog for nice walk, and kept looking up at the sky... Even though San Jose is pretty big as cities go, you can see a lot more stars here than in just about any city. The reason for that is because we have yellow street lights. They switched over to those some 15 years or so ago, due to the observatory that sits on nearby Mt. Hamilton... Apparently the yellow street lights make it dimmer, so the night stars, etc, are much more visible than with the standard, white street lights. Pretty cool, even if you still have to go up into the hills to really see tons of stars.

Pretty exciting weekend so far, huh? I really ought to take it more easy at my age... Hello? Anyone there?! Damn, put ya to sleep again!!

I'm about as Excited as a Fox in a Henhouse!

2005-07-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

I'm so stoked that Thrusher is actually posting again! She always has such great stories & pictures... No pressure, Miss Thrusher, I'm just SO glad to see ya back, however long it lasts this time around!

Have ya ever had one of those days where you spend about 10% of your work day actually working, and about 90% of it just screwing around online??!!

*I* never have, of course. I was just wondering if anyone else had.

Oh, and by the way, while I was busily, hard at work today, I just happened upon this old messageboard thread... A bunch of people posted their favorite southern expressions...a lot of them are hilarious. I always found the one "slicker than snot on a doorknob" pretty freakin funny. And then again, as I've mentioned before, I am pretty easily amused!

Runnin' With the Shadows of the Night!

2005-07-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

Just got back from seeing Pat Benatar at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga... What a GREAT show she put on. Well I must admit, tho' the Winery is an absolutely beautiful venue, and nice and small and intimate, the down side is that it's in hoity-toity-land, and relatively in the same neighborhood with richy-mansion-style homes: Which equals music that's not nearly loud enough (Admittedly, I am a rocker and prefer it pretty loud, but this was so quiet you could clearly hear conversations around you... and that ends up drowning out the music! It shouldn't be *that* quiet unless you're in a bar; if even then!), and a curfew that's way too early. I had been a little worried about how Pat would sound, since I'd seen her on some award show or special live on TV a year or two back, and her voice had been cracking all over the place. Thankfully though, that must have just been a bad night for her. Though she had to sing a bit lower for a few of what used to be her highest notes, and she sang Shadows of the Night in a lower key, she still sounded awesome. And how cool is it that she's still married to her guitarist after all these years?! That's gotta be some kind of a record for a rock & roll couple. Another "always wanted to see" show to check off my list!

I went to the show with Shawna, and last night when we'd made plans to go, we finally talked out and resolved the leftover "crap" from what went down the last day of our recent Vegas trip. It ended on such a negative note, I think I may have made it sound like it was just a crappy trip altogether, which definitely is not true. For one thing, the trip was a freebie: My sister won it from a local radio station, and we got to stay at Lake Las Vegas Resort, which was really nice... It was about 15 miles away from the strip, but more mellow and relaxing. And that's definitely what we were ready for anyway, after spending the first night getting crazy on the strip! Here's a view from the balcony of our suite:...And here are a few other highlights:
We started off that Friday night with dinner at the Rain Forest Cafe at the MGM. While there, Shawna (always with an eye for the cuties) spotted a hottie-dad sitting at the table behind Lisa... It was pretty funny, she tried to be sly and snap a picture of him while pretending to take it of Lisa (his wife and kid had their backs to us), but he totally caught on and posed, as you can see... Shawna got embarrased and tried to chicken out, by really taking it of Lisa, but luckily the cutie-patootie still made it clearly into the background (click on the pic to enlarge and you will get a better view of him behind Lisa)... HeeHee!

After dinner we walked across the street to the New York New York: I told the girls that the *one* place I wanted to hit while we were in town was this great little Piano Bar there that Thrusher had introduced me to when we'd met up in Vegas a few years ago.
So that's where we went next, and after singing some great 80s classics along with the piano guys & the rest of the crowd, and having someone spill about a gallon of red wine down the front of my blouse (yes, big fat bummer, but I pretty much forgot about it after a little more booze and song!), we moved on upstairs to Coyote Ugly. What a trip that place was... The music was totally rockin though (but with a dance beat thrown in; it worked!) and it didn't suck like the movie did at all! That's us there... I would be the drunk girl (who's eyes are practically pointing in two different directions by that point!) on the left. After that, we spent about an hour trying to remember where the hell we parked our rental car. Which was good since it gave Lisa plenty of extra time to get good & sober; she was driving us back to the resort.

The next day, after sleeping in (wayyyy in... duh!), was totally mellow & relaxing. We'd gotten even more freebies when we'd checked in; gift certificates for a few places at MonteLago Village Resort (which Lake Las Vegas Resort is a part of), including one for wine, and another for an incredibly delicious dinner at an Italian place called Luna Rossa. I highly recommend it if you ever find yourself at this resort!
Oh yes, and I highly recommend The Bar at Times Square (the piano bar in the NY NY) as well. Make sure you check it out, next time you're in Vegas!

Shadow of the night, indeed. I've been blogging for over an hour & 1/2... time to get ready for bed. 'Night!

Just Thinkin...

2005-07-25T00:09:00.000-07:00

Need to get to bed here soon... I was just sitting out back thinking, watching Nutty doing her usual walking around the edge of the pool: Peering into the water, stepping her front paws out onto the ledge that divides the pool from the jacuzzi and drinking the water. There's a bird out there singing still, even as I type this (I just turned off the fan to listen and it still hasn't stopped)... Do you think it's confused about what time it is?? Kinda funny.

Sometimes thinking too much can get me in a pretty low place. But today I went for a swim and played w/Nutty, who actually braved her way into stepping her front paws onto (into) the first step! Then, as if showing off her newfound bravery, she did it several more times. Maybe one of these days she'll actually be ready to come swim with me, who knows?! Tonight Jeff came over & we watched "The Jacket", very intense, but good movie... then we watched Family Plots, which I'd taped while the movie was going. I'm pretty tired, but feeling grateful for all that I have. Which is so much more than I think I realize, most of the time.

Back to work tomorrow... well today, technically. Better get my butt to bed. And I guess the rest of me too, while I'm at it!

Alone

2005-07-23T01:38:00.000-07:00

Desolate soul

empty

alone.

Thinking back

times of humiliation

trying to fit in

to be accepted

to be loved.

So much easier

to disappear.

Not needing anyone

Better off alone.

By myself

with only the thoughts racing

in my head.

Heart encompassed

by a hardened shell

no one's getting in.

Not now.

Maybe someday

I'll know how to take part

and be with others

without losing myself.

The World According to ShooShoo

2005-07-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

*Sigh*

My brain has been on overload lately. Not that it's usually quiet. But lately there's just been so much... I've been pretty down, admittedly. It hasn't helped that I was sick this week, not that I mind missing work so much. And the leftover Vegas drama, while in a better place than it was, is still not totally resolved. I have such a hard time knowing what's up & what's down in these kinds of situations. Whether it's drama with Jeff, or with friends or family... It's so frustrating because at my age, it seems I should have a better idea of what's right or wrong, or at least what's healthy or unhealthy. But sometimes I still can't seem to figure it out. At what age do things (responsibilities) start to become clear, exactly?

I think one of the things that's really bothering me is this site/situation I came across while doing my usual blog-surfing. Depending on who you are, you may not know that I was adopted when I was 6 mos. old. Several years back, a book called Primal Wound was recommended to me, and it was a huge eye-opener. Very validating, and helped me understand a lot about myself that I'd never been able to get a grip on before. Anyway, I found it so upsetting that this person, who was so kind and was trying to do the best she could for her child, was taken advantage of by a so-called professional. Not only that, but the "professional" profited, and continues to profit, from her deceit. I put a review into amazon for this woman(the adoptive mother)'s book, but I have a feeling it won't be long before someone complains and it is taken down.

Anyhow, I'm afraid I'm saying too much... I typically don't like to get *too* deep here, but lately this is just where I'm at. Not to mention having had a couple beers (always have been a lightweight) is making me a little bolder than usual.

No worries, I'll get over it, I always do eventually. Hopefully one of these days I'll actually get through it!

Swimmin'

2005-07-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

I'm ashamed to say it, but though we have a pool, I've rarely used it over the last couple years... In fact Saturday was the first time I went in all year... Seems crazy, I know. But the main reason why I hesitate every year is because the water is often pretty chilly for awhile after the weather gets warm. We don't heat the pool (haven't since the first year or so after my parents had it built; around the mid-late 70s!) because it just costs too friggin' much. And Dad never allowed us to get a cover for it, because he was afraid it wouldn't get taken off enough, and therefore it would cause algae to build up. Lisa and I just haven't gotten around to getting one since Dad died in '01.

Anyhow. So Saturday I'd just had it with the heat, and decided I was goin' for it, no matter what. When I dove in, I was pleasantly surpised: Absolutely perfectly refreshing, not the least bit of a "BRRR" at all. Then I started playing with Peanut, who was having fun chasing me around the outer edge of the pool, and I couldn't manage to drag myself out until I started to become somewhat pruny. By that time, my nephew Brian was in the water also... And he picked up playing with PeaNutty where I'd left off. It's pretty sad that she won't come in with us, because she actually loves to swim (whenever I take her walking at a nearby park trail that also has a creek, she loves getting in and swimming after sticks I'll throw for her). I'm pretty sure she's scared to go in our pool because she was traumatized by this jerk who was helping to watch our place/pets for us when we went on vacation and Peanut was just a pup. Apparently when our friend dropped by to check in, she found Nutty hovering, shivering wet in the corner of our backyard... When she asked this guy what happened, he said Peanut was in trouble for something, so he'd thrown her in the water. She won't trust anyone too close to the pool ever since. Nice goin, Einstein.

So anyway. I digress, surprise surprise. I got a few cute pics of Bri & Nutty playing, and of Nutty watching Brian swim.

You may be wondering why I don't use my pool to get the workouts I've been wanting/needing. And if you are, I would have to answer that that is a very good question! Besides having been chicken that the water would be too cold, I don't have a good answer. But I plan to spend a lot more time in the water now that I finally broke it in!

More Fun With Biker Shorts!

2005-07-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, I suppose it would be safest if we just made spandex pants illegal in general; at least as outerwear, or until someone invents a modified version which is less, uh, graphic!!

Check out Knows it All's response to my Men in Spandex picture!!

Boy, and I thought *I* had a problem with denial... What is that person thinking wearing those pants??!! And if it seemed totally necessary (for whatever God-only-knows reason), must the shirt be tucked in??!!!!!

Why Spandex Pants on Men Should Be Illegal

2005-07-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

I don't really recommend them for women either, but...

Disclaimer: I have loaded the image as small as possible intentionally, to protect the emotional and physical (especially if you just ate) well-being of those who view it. CLICK TO ENLARGE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
Now, that just ain't right!

Thought you might be interested in knowing...

2005-07-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

...This morning I had a hard time finding the jeans I wanted to wear (that is, one of the two pairs that still fit okay; and that's only because I bought them recently). Why couldn't I find them, you ask? Was it because they were in the laundry? Because I'd left them at someone else's house? Because they'd accidently made their way under the bed, or some other hidden place they didn't belong??

No, the reason it took me so long to find them is because I'd actually folded them and put them in the drawer *where they belong*... I think it's safe to say my bedroom has become so cluttered that I'm due to dedicate a little time toward getting it straightened up! Ugh!

ShooShoo

Please Watch "Animal Witness: The Michael Vick Case"

A talented ventriloquist?!?!?

Speaking of pets...

Vote for Nutty!

A new slideshow... I love my scanner! :)

The Cardinal Target Rule

Happy New Year! ;)

My Christmas slideshow

Christmas Ass

He Said...

My Own Personal Horror Show

Almost there...

As usual...

Heavenly Raviolis

Just doin' it!

Here's to you, Mate!

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger (..... ??)

Tagged by Thrusher, etc

That's Incredible... Part II

It's really happening!

Still here... for now!

Thank God for Three Day Weekends!

Ramble On...

Cute

Born this day, 36 years ago...

Gettin' Springy Wit' It

Musical Meds

That's Incredible!

Where are we????

There's a reason I didn't stay in Portland!

Tips for anyone going for laser hair removal

Sneezy Etiquette

Daisy Mae Productions Rules!

Rebel Punk

Batman & Robin

X.Y.Z.

Fun with song titles... (This is so Rad!)

Home Sweet Home

The Truth (And Lie) is Revealed!

Two Truths and a Lie

More cubicle fun

Yay! I figured it out!

Rude Awakening...

Bloggified

People Watching

Live Sign-Holders

Karma strikes again...

Funny how biases work...

Good Ol' "Two-Buck Chuck"

Do you ever wonder...

Last Hurrah

Some Random Ramblings...

Happy Blog-Day To Me!

Somethin' Quick to Tide Us Over...

Who Killed Santa???

Santa Claus is Back in Town!

Charlotte, is that you??

*Whew*

What can I ramble about???

Sickie Central!

Where on earth is the time going??!!

Falling Into Winter

Monterey Holiday

Happy Turkey Day!

It is *So* past my bedtime!

I Spent the Night with Paul McCartney!

I'm Coming Out!

Just for You, Kimber-ry!

Bloggerland Updates!

Not Too Shabby

I'm kinda Shocked!

A Night & Day in Monterey

Sleep Study III - Attack of the Killer C-Paps

Tagged, by Thrusher & Little Star

I'll start with the bad news...

Like a Surgeon...

Zombified

Slacker!!

Google Satellite Pics

Whew

It is So past my bedtime!