Enemy of Entropy

Maybe It Isn’t the Flu

6 March 2010, 11:50 pm. No Comments. Filed under Family, Fun, Health, Reading, Relationships.

Katie seems to be feel­ing a bit bet­ter. She slept through most of the day, and just got up a few min­utes ago (right at the end of my and Sam’s date) feel­ing like she could eat some­thing. Solid food, even! That’s progress. Since she didn’t have any antivi­rals, I don’t think this was really the flu. She should still be much sicker if it was. I’m not at all unhappy about that. Read on…

An Update Instead of a Book Review!

27 July 2009, 6:25 pm. 2 Comments. Filed under Health.

Cur­rent Mood:Surprised emoticon Surprised

I looked back at my recent entries and real­ized that it’s been a really long time since I posted much of any­thing sub­stan­tive. I’m com­ing out of a long period of being nearly zom­biefied thanks to one of my med­ica­tions. I didn’t real­ize that was hap­pen­ing, as I’d been on that drug for years with­out that prob­lem. Appar­ently, the prob­lem was a com­bi­na­tion of my dosage being increased last fall and inter­ac­tion with other meds. Unfor­tu­nately, I found this out because of an irre­spon­si­ble doc­tor who refused to see me as sched­uled when I was due for refills, and wouldn’t give me refills with­out see­ing me. Crash­ing off the max­i­mum dose caused insom­nia and seizures.

Yes, seizures. Some­thing I have never expe­ri­enced before, and I really didn’t need to add yet another square to my per­sonal Symp­toms Bingo Card. I fell right out of the bed dur­ing one bad seizure last week. We have a captain’s bed designed for a water mat­tress, but have a reg­u­lar mat­tress and box springs on top, so the whole thing is much higher than most beds. I have to use a step­stool to get in and out of bed. So falling out was much more painful than falling out of most beds. Hit­ting my fore­heard on the wheel­chair and whacked my chin but good on the lapdesk didn’t help. I have no idea what I hit with my right fore­arm, but it still looks like a per­son bit me. My left arm has funky bruis­ing and a cut, both knees are bruised and car­pet burned, and my torso is also bruised and sore. Lots of fun! Now my chin is actu­ally black, mak­ing me want to wash my face every time I see a mir­ror. I’ve never been able to feel the swelling in a bruise as dis­tinctly as this one, either.

I’ve seen a new doc­tor, who switched me to a bet­ter med­ica­tion. It’s help­ing to slow down the seizures, but I’m still hav­ing some. I’m still sleep­ing a lot less than I was, which is good. What isn’t good is that I’m hav­ing trou­ble sleep­ing well, period. Hope­fully that will go away soon.

Social Secu­rity is still mess­ing around with my case and hasn’t paid out a dime yet, or sent me a Medicare card. If you ever have trou­ble with the SSA, don’t even bother try­ing to find any­one to take respon­si­bil­ity for straight­en­ing any­thing out. Just go straight to your Sen­a­tor or Representative’s office. I’d been try­ing to get a straight answer from some­body, any­body, in the whole orga­ni­za­tion for about a month with­out luck. Less than 48 hours after con­tact­ing a Senator’s office, I got a mes­sage that my file is at the Bal­ti­more pay­ment office, that they have all the infor­ma­tion they need to pay out the claim, and that we should see money very soon now.

I was really hop­ing to get the Medicare thing started in time to maybe have a pow­ered mobil­ity device before Dragon Con, which would let me go and enjoy the con for the first time in years. The last time I went, we rented a scooter, so if the money comes through before the con I sup­pose we might try that again.

In more fun news, we fin­ished watch­ing Torch­wood: Chil­dren of Earth last night. Talk about depress­ing! Gwen and Rhys were the only ones who came out of that as heroes. And now I read that there’s going to be a fourth sea­son? Who the heck will be in it?

I’ve slowed down on read­ing books, par­tially because I can actu­ally do some other things for a change. The house is slowly improv­ing! I’m hop­ing we can even enter­tain again before long.

I haven’t been keep­ing up with most people’s Live­Jour­nals or any­thing else, so if there’s some­thing I should have seen, I’d appre­ci­ate a poke in the com­ments here.

Review: The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance, edited by Trisha Telep

22 June 2009, 11:18 pm. 3 Comments. Filed under Reading.

The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance The Mam­moth Book of Para­nor­mal Romance by Trisha Telep


My review


rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
I’m extremely sur­prised by how much I enjoyed this anthol­ogy! I picked it up intend­ing to just read the sto­ries by authors I know I like—Kelley Arm­strong, Ilona Andrews, Car­rie Vaughn, Holly Lisle, Jeaniene Frost, Maria V. Sny­der. I had never heard of some of the other authors. A few names I remem­bered see­ing in other antholo­gies and not enjoy­ing their work.

I did, how­ever, delib­er­ately put myself in a tol­er­ant mind­set: this is a book of romance sto­ries. It wouldn’t be fair to judge them as any­thing else.

That worked rather bet­ter than it has in the past. I still got a lit­tle annoyed at hav­ing so much of each story ded­i­cated to cou­ples (and all het/​mono cou­ples, at that!) rather than some intrigu­ing world ideas, but man­aged to stay on track.

In the end, I only skipped one story—I just don’t like the Weather War­dens stuff at all. I found a cou­ple of oth­ers sub­stan­dard, but all in all, Telep chose very well. I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend this book to any­one who enjoys para­nor­mal romance (maybe even those who usu­ally stick to just romance), and most urban fan­tasy fans.

View all my reviews.

Cur­rent Mood: (calm) calm

Miscellany

30 January 2009, 12:02 am. 9 Comments. Filed under Links.

I lost track of who orig­i­nally linked to what, so I can’t credit them prop­erly. But thank you to who­ever they all were, anyway!

Filed under “another rea­son I’m proud to be a home­schooler”: Cal­i­for­nia court rules that pri­vate school can oust les­bian stu­dents. I do under­stand that it’s a pri­vate reli­gious school, and that their denom­i­na­tion doesn’t approve of homo­sex­u­al­ity. On the other hand, the girls’ par­ents chose to send them to that school, not the girls them­selves. And demand­ing that every­body in the school be het­ero­sex­ual makes every bit as much sense as demand­ing that they all be right-​​handed! (It also sounds like the school went WAY the hell over­board in inter­pret­ing the “evidence.”)

Can I get an “Amen”?! End­ing Weight Bias: The Eas­i­est Way to Tackle Obe­sity in America

This is news? Read­ers build vivid men­tal sim­u­la­tions of nar­ra­tive sit­u­a­tions, brain scans sug­gest

Not Good News: Mer­cury found in kids’ foods — and in pretty much any­thing else that con­tains HFCS. I’m con­fi­dent of my abil­ity to kick the soda habit, but totally avoid­ing HFCS pretty much means avoid­ing all processed foods. GAH!

This is so cool! Implants Tap the Think­ing Brain

No sur­prise to me, at least: Watch out. The Inter­net will cut you

Real­ity check: Sorry, you don’t have a 200 IQ

Another no-​​brainer: Video Games May Hin­der Relationships

Cur­rent Mood: (sore) sore

Books & Cute Photo

26 June 2008, 9:29 pm. 3 Comments. Filed under Geekery, Reading.

Totally unre­lated to any­thing else: Squee! (Thanks, AMQ!)

For some odd rea­son, I got this weird notion about track­ing down as many of the books I’ve read as pos­si­ble. No, I don’t know why.
Read on…

 

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