Enemy of Entropy

Cold! Cold cold cold!

3 January 2008, 11:56 pm. 8 Comments. Filed under Home, Kvetching.

Our heat went out last night, so we woke up in a very, very cold house. I don’t care what you Yan­kees say, we had a hard freeze here, so it really was cold! There was snow on the car before we went to bed Tues­day night, and we had to get ice off the wind­shield to go see my pain spe­cial­ist today. I felt like I’d never be warm again despite wear­ing the pretty gloves and scarf Sam bought for me a while back.1

There was no response from the land­lord to email or many phone calls until late in the day. I hud­dled under the cov­ers most of the day, both to try to get warm and because my pain is always worse in cold weather. The land­lord even­tu­ally got some­one out to check the sys­tem late this evening.
Read on…

Tweets for 12-​​12-​​2007

12 December 2007, 10:01 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Tweets.

Fol­low Cyn at Twit­ter
 
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It Was a Lovely Day

12 November 2007, 10:30 pm. 7 Comments. Filed under Family, Home, Reading.

Please note: Yes, I am refer­ring to today, the 12th, which is my birth­day. Those close to me know that I gen­er­ally hate my birth­day, as it’s a reminder of mul­ti­ple mis­car­riages and other nasty things hap­pen­ing around this time sev­eral years in a row.

Sam and Katie man­aged to make #41 very nice, though.

Quotable Mug With Osho QuoteSam and I went out Sat­ur­day evening to Barnes & Noble, but I just couldn’t make a deci­sion. So many choices! We went over to Out­Write, too, which is always fun. I saw lots of adorable trin­kets there, and plenty of inter­est­ing read­ing and lis­ten­ing mate­r­ial, but still couldn’t make a choice. I really liked this mug, and it felt great in my hand, but I couldn’t find out if it’s microwave safe. (My favorite cof­fee cup was bro­ken recently, vic­tim of my unre­li­able grip. Thank you, fibro/​arthritis/​CMP!) Have any of you tried a Quotable mug? How did it hold up?

Oh! On the way home, we started to drive past Krispy Kreme and Sam had a sud­den need for donuts, so we popped in there to sat­isfy that. I’ve never done the drive-​​through there before, but things were really crowded in the store. The car line was long, too, but we had the advan­tage of pri­vacy and good com­pany while wait­ing in it.

We enjoyed being out, but I came home with­out hav­ing cho­sen any­thing but donut fill­ings. Sam threat­ened to pick for me if I didn’t make a choice on Sun­day. I have a lot of trou­ble spend­ing any money on myself, or ask­ing for presents, and he thought that’s why I hadn’t cho­sen anything.

So we went out again on Sun­day — leav­ing the house two days in a row is very unusual for me any more! I had finally decided on exactly what I wanted, and we tried to go get it, but found the place closed for Veteran’s Day. My man insisted on tak­ing me to Bor­ders and buy­ing Kim Harrison’s A Few Demons More, promis­ing that we’d also go to The Place again on Mon­day. Then he took me to Steak & Shake for din­ner, because when I saw the sign I had a seri­ous crav­ing for their mushroom-​​swiss burger. (Don’t bother with the new Por­to­bello mush­room burger, as you get far fewer mush­rooms that way!)

Katie and I (she’s home from school, sick) had a very nice, low-​​key day Mon­day, and Sam and I set out again after he got home. This time, success!

I asked for some­thing that prob­a­bly seems odd to most peo­ple — a non-​​resident library card so I can access the best library sys­tem in Geor­gia, Gwin­nett County Pub­lic Libraries. But I’d checked, and they have 95% of the books I’m really want­ing to read, and past expe­ri­ence says they’ll con­tinue to carry the fan­tasy and sci­ence fic­tion I love. They have a far bet­ter selec­tion of every­thing than Dekalb, where we live. (Okay, Gwin­nett has stopped car­ry­ing music CDs, because so many went miss­ing. Big deal.)

I wanted the card instead of a few books, because this way I can read all of them! And, in fact, we came home with nine books that have all been on my wish list for some time, and two or three graphic nov­els for Sam.

Now I have a whole pile of new-​​to-​​me books, and A Few Demons More! They’re all way too tempt­ing to a girl who still has home­work to do, includ­ing a SWOT analy­sis that’s due for my man­age­ment class this week.

Thanks to all of you for the birth­day wishes via Face­book, email, Twit­ter, LJ, etc. :-)

Rumbles from the Recliner

23 October 2007, 11:12 am. 1 Comment. Filed under Family, Health, Home, Music, Parenting, Reading.

Not from the grave, oh no, not yet!

It’s been too long to do a real “this is all that has hap­pened in my life.” Writ­ing it would exhaust me, and read­ing it would likely bore you. If you want to know about some­thing in par­tic­u­lar, please ask.

I’ll be post­ing a few things shortly that I had “ready to go” and just didn’t post, for what­ever reason.

The girl is enjoy­ing life as a teen, or as much as any teen can. I wouldn’t want to go through those ups and downs again! She’s always my most pre­cious, beau­ti­ful God­dess gift baby, even if she will be 17 this week. That’s our “big thing” right now.

She con­tin­ues to amaze me with her cre­ativ­ity. She’s the head pho­tog­ra­pher (or what­ever they call it there) for the year­book, which has had her run­ning around to all man­ner of events for which there must be pho­tos! Now! Yes­ter­day! Couldn’t they hold Home­com­ing in July? Come ON peo­ple! And she loves it. She com­pletely filled her 1GB com­pact flash card with live pho­tos from Fri­day night’s foot­ball game, then had to switch to her smaller, older card and be very judi­cious in her shots to fin­ish the game. She obvi­ously needs a much big­ger card!

Yes, she uses her own equip­ment. Her cam­era is head and shoul­ders above the qual­ity of those the year­book staff owns, even the few dig­i­tals. That makes sense, con­sid­er­ing the expense of them, the time it takes to really learn to use a dig­i­tal SLR prop­erly, etc. Most of what they have are point-​​and-​​shoot 35mm film cam­eras, which aren’t such big a deal if a stu­dent loses or dam­ages them.

Sam is still work­ing at the same place, help­ing peo­ple with com­put­ers and net­work­ing and phones and so on — even A/​V equip­ment at times. If you can plug it in, his depart­ment is the one every­body calls first for help. I’m sur­prised jan­i­tors don’t show up with vac­uum cleaner com­plaints some­times (and I don’t know that it hasn’t hap­pened at some time at the past).

The help­ing peo­ple part is, of course, the most impor­tant thing. He loves it, he does it well, and he finds wells of patience that must come from Some­where Else.

I’m reg­is­ter­ing for fall classes (DeVry is on an odd sched­ule, but you may have noticed that). We’re look­ing for a place to move to, but not find­ing what we can afford where we want to live. I sup­pose that’s an eter­nal lament, isn’t it?

I’m still a gimp, and now have a (man­ual) wheel­chair of my own. I really need a ramp for the front entrance of the house, but I’ve delayed try­ing to have one put in here since we want to move.

We’re still in limbo with Social Secu­rity. In Geor­gia, the wait to have your case heard by an admin­is­tra­tive law judge is (accord­ing to the SSA office near me) about 36 months, aver­age. That’s the level I’m at now.

It’s damned frus­trat­ing not to be work­ing, not to be able to work. I don’t want to be on dis­abil­ity or need it! I want to find a job I can do for a decent wage!

But I’ve had yet more icky health stuff, so… Sam and Katie are more of a bless­ing than I can say, cer­tainly far more than I deserve.

I really want music. I mean, to make it. Noth­ing else seems to be able to replace hav­ing a piano (not a lit­tle key­board) in my home. That’s when I sing the most, as I accom­pany myself. (I don’t play all that well, so I don’t play in front of any­one else.) I was think­ing of tak­ing a new vocal class Elise Witt is offer­ing, but it con­flicts with a fam­ily commitment.

I’m re-​​reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Cross­wicks Jour­nals and poetry as I mourn her pass­ing. Yes, there will be a sep­a­rate post about that, but for now, I’ll leave you with a tiny quote from her:

I learn my lessons slowly, sel­dom once for all. Con­tin­u­ally they have to be learned and re-​​learned, not with solem­nity, but with awe and laugh­ter and joy.

Namaste,
Cyn

Can you make citizens’ arrests for “‘unimaginably stupid’ conduct”?

22 April 2007, 5:13 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Family, News.

From the Car­roll County Times of West­min­ster, Maryland:

Accord­ing to The Sacra­mento Bee, a fam­ily in El Dorado, Calif., is in trou­ble after spend­ing a fam­ily out­ing mak­ing pipe bombs and then test­ing them.… Accord­ing to the Bee, Justin Lee Brown, 29, was arrested on sus­pi­cion of sev­eral felonies. He, his girl­friend and their two sons, ages 6 and 8, had one of the more inter­est­ing fam­ily out­ings ever.… When asked about the activ­ity, Brown said he learned how to make bombs from friends and “decided to try it so he could show it to his kids.” … Brown is in jail and Tiffany Dean, the mom, is being inves­ti­gated for what deputies call “unimag­in­ably stu­pid” conduct.

I’m hold­ing my breath, hop­ing that no asso­ci­a­tion with the pagan com­mu­nity or Spi­ral Scouts will come to light. That’s what came to mind first, hon­estly. If it had hap­pened in Alabama instead of Cal­i­for­nia, though, I’d be rea­son­ably safe in assum­ing some degree of rela­tion to Dean and Brown. I’ve never regret­ted mov­ing to Geor­gia — specif­i­cally, to metro Atlanta. I’d be quite happy to move else­where, but as this story shows, you can find red­necks anywhere.

 

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