posted from Bloggeroid
posted from Bloggeroid
posted from Bloggeroid
I had been using Bloggeroid to create posts, but it has now lost several on phone and tablet that I cannot retrieve. So I do not think I will be continuing to use Bloggeroid. I don't like the Blogger interface, either, and it also gives me errors when I try to publish posts, but those are recoverable and there's a second step that will push them through.
My chromebook also does not get along with the web blogger interface. Time to migrate this blog? Or is there a better Android app for interfacing with blogger without all the errors and lost posts?
I just finished Allegiant, by Veronica Roth, yesterday. I've heard a lot of people say they were disappointed by the ending of the Divergent series or that they felt it was too much a rip-off of the last Hunger Games book. I felt, however, that Ms. Roth retained her own voice and story to the end and did a very good job with the book. My only major issue with the book, honestly, is that there is as lack of differentiation between the inner "voices" of Tris and Tobias-sometimes I'd have to pay careful attention or I'd lose track of whose chapter it was, then get a little confused by something because I'd think I was reading about the other one, then something would be said or done that would fox that impression. Otherwise, if you're into fast-paced, gripping teen reads, you could definitely do worse than the Divergent trilogy. Read it before the movie hits theaters this spring.
So today I started Raising my Rainbow, by Lori Duron. I'm about a fifth of the way through already. I'm trying not to judge, but I'm wincing a lot right now at some of the "compromises" they're making. I'm just getting to the part where, and I'm sure this is not much of a spoiler since if you want to read the book you'll do enough research to find this much out first anyway, the author starts her blog. I'm sure from the little bit I've read so far that the Durons are great parents who have only become more accepting over time. Also, Duron is a great name. It sounds like Klingon nobility. Seriously.
Oh, OK, so I'm doing my part to keep Orange is the New Black on the bestseller list, too. I'm not even sure what to say about that one, except forget everything you watched on Netflix and prepare for a real, intensely personal look at real women in the real federal prison system. Very worth your time. Also learn how to make prison cheesecake!
Happy November,
Jack
posted from Bloggeroid
posted from Bloggeroid
Dear D,
I know that your road is a difficult one at times and that I don't always make it easier. You have been presented with unique gifts and challenges both, and you give back both in spades. As you near the birthday that takes you into your official teen years, though, there a are some things I would like to say.
Firstly, congratulations! You have made it through nearly thirteen years relatively unscathed.
Secondly, and most importantly, you should know that the things I do and say now may make you unhappy. My goal, however, is to raise you to be a good man, not to be a happy child. The modern world is full of grown-up happy children who are, deep down, frustrated and miserable adults. So I am sorry when I make you unhappy, but I'm trying to do right.
Thirdly, you must learn to let the past go. Remember, yes, and learn from things that happened, but do not obsess about bygones and let them consume your every thought. I know it's difficult when the thoughts chase themselves around your Aspergic, obsessive mind sometimes. Believe me, I do know. You nevertheless need to find a way in those moments to breathe and focus on something else, be it a song, a poem, a meditation, a coloring page, or a math problem.
Fourthly, and perhaps most difficult in the few years ahead as hormones race and other young teens tend to meanness, you need to love yourself. Find out what you find worthy in yourself. Embrace it and develop it. Find your inner strength and be proud of what you did do today instead of putting yourself down for the minor setbacks.
Finally, you must realize that you really are not a small child any longer. You need to understand that it is not appropriate to ask people for things unsolicited. That tantrums and eyerolls don't get you anywhere but your room. That violence against yourself or others will be treated as genuine threat, not something that can easily be contained by much larger adults. That you bear responsibility for your schoolwork.
D, you are bright and stormy both, but that can be just the weather for a rainbow, the promise of a new day and a new world. I want to believe in good things for you, but we've a lot of work to do to get there.
I love you very much,
Mom
This week, I'm in a little more pain than usual. On Friday, a pain/inflammation started in my upper abdomen. By Sunday, it was about a 7 and very tender, so I went to E/R. They diagnosed a stomach virus with inflamed lymph nodes and told me to eat small, bland meals and follow up with my clinic if it didn't improve or worsened. Follow with two days of hard work at work, then one day of hard labor at home in the yard when I was supposed to be resting, but there was a complaint about the yard, so we had to put in about 9 hours yesterday on top of 6 Sunday to have it done before a reinspection today or be faced with fines today.
Anyway, by the end of work Tuesday, let alone yesterday and today, moving has me out of breath. At this point, standing up or walking to the bathroom is too much. And the abdominal pain has increased to about an 8.5/10, and when it subsides a little is replaced by a deep, burning itch. Sooo... I don't know. But I have an appointment in two hours and I don't know if I am more afraid that they will tell me out is serious or "it's just a stomach bug, you'll get through it." Because I have never had gastroenteritis like this.
In just sitting in the break room ready to work and sorting out some thoughts. Yesterday was talk like a pirate day. No one dressed up with me, but I scored us some free krispy kremes, anyway. I'll take any excuse to run to work in costume.
This is interesting reading:
http://aweinstein.kinja.com/fuck-you-im-gen-y-and-i-dont-feel-special-or-entitl-1333588443
... OK, while you were reading that, I banged out 3 hours of my work day. Time compression, weeeee!
I'm in a blue funk today. I don't quite want to say depressed, because I feel that depression requires more commitment to one's mood. I'm just... Bluesy.
I'm eating lunch today, though, so maybe that's some kind personal achievement. I don't know.
Whatever, man. Thanks for reading. Time for a smoke, some orange is the new black, and then more work.
As I may have mentioned, I have a bit of a commute to work. My savior on the road is SiriusXM radio. My gently-used Hyundai came with XM, and especially when I leave work late and Showtime on Broadway is on channel 72, my car becomes a haven of solitude instead of the painful body trap it can be at times and which it seems especially to have been when I reach my destination and have to exit the damnable thing.
Anyway, what I have not had is a way to listen to the XM at home. Until today. I just upgraded my package to include internet radio, which includes listening through the website and the android app. Since I don't usually watch a lot of television unless I get an urge and start a whole streak/season of something, I think being able to catch up on some of the radio shows I miss while working will work out well for me.
I try not to shop at Walmart much. True, in my area it wins out on grocery prices, but in terms of employee relations... Well, I'd far and away rather give my shopping dollars to the Commissary (DeCA), Publix, or Winn-Dixie (the first two having better reputations and the third having a neutral reputation from what information I've found and generally better prices/variety in my area) than to Walmart. So I shop at those three places. Please don't email me and ask why I don't shop at grocery chain X. It's probably because it's not available here.
Anyway, there's a problem: I'm allergic to cinnamon. Every September through, I don't know, December sometime, Winn-Dixie, Publix, and a lot of other big grocery chains put out display after display of brooms that reek of cinnamon. A simple trip to the grocery store, should I forget that it's the season or should the grocer jump the gun and put them out in August (!), becomes a minefield, with me avoiding whole sections of the store and just sending Chris off to shop for meat, produce, spices, or whatever else is near yet another display of brooms.
So, with the grocers trying to kill me (no kidding, this is a tongue-swelling, breath-interfering phenomenon), I can (a) time all my shopping trips to coincide with base errands and do all my shopping at the commissary or (b) give up and shop at Walmart, as long as they haven't started with the cinnamon; it's not a thing I've experienced there in the past, though.
Either way, though, you guys with your brooms have lost thousands of dollars of my business. I realize it's a drop in your bucket, and I realize you're just carrying a product to sell, but staging them everywhere to scent the place is a real problem for some customers-couldn't they be isolated to a cabinet like flowers are?
It's been a full two weeks, so I've had plenty to blog about and then either not made the time to blog or not been able to gather my thoughts to do it. I'll be better, I swear (fun fact: the Minions from Despicable Me singing "I Swear" is one of the personalized ringtones I use. Song-coding the people who are calling is the most brilliant invention since the telephone itself).
So, brief run-down (let me explain! ... No, there is too much. Let me sum up.):
* Dad was in hospital, sepsis, multiple surgeries, most of the time in ICU, but has somehow gotten to go home already
* D has gone on an emotional roller coaster culminating in suspension from school after a bus fight
* I've been trying to ease back into reading more. This week I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. It's a decent piece of YA (older teen, some sexual content) lit, though the savvy adult reader may be able to predict most of the plot five or ten pages in. I'd recommend it to any teen looking for emotional stories or love stories as an intro to some of the tropes of the genre, anyway.
* I also read Joyland. Pick it up if you like ghost story mysteries.
* got sick. Had two bugs at once at one point.
* the rest is work stuff. More there later.
Good day, all!
I was going to take a quiet night and read, but after dinner, Chris randomly started dealing cards. We played a hand of garbage cards with no real objective, then decided we should get around to one of the card games we've had sitting on the shelf forever. We've been meaning to try both Quao, by Wiggity Bang, and Gubs, by Gamewright.
We broke out Quao first, and let me just say this: it's rated teen to adult on the box, and you can have a lot of fun with it with your older-but-less-than-teenaged kids as a family game - but I bet it's a lot more fun as an adults only party game. Either way, it's silly, almost ridiculous fun, and in the right crowd, I can see it getting a little raunchy.
After one full game of Quao, which D won, he was a little burnt out on cards, so Chris and I decided to tackle the slightly more complicated Gubs. It's rules-heavy and the first read-through was a little daunting, but once we got into playing, it wasn't especially difficult. It's a lot of fun and involves a little more strategy and planning than other games, and as luck would have it, we nearly ran all the way through the deck on our first playthrough (the length of the game is randomized by marker cards in the deck, and we hit the last marker on the penultimate card).
As game nights go, I don't know that I'd recommend these two games in combination, but I'd recommend Quao for lighthearted, wacky party fun, while I'd recommend Gubs for a quieter, more serious but still intense good time.
Warning: spoilers ahead if you somehow haven't seen Big.
We've all thought it. But I was listening to Big: the Musical last night, and I've been considering something that's always bothered me about that story: how do you just go back?
I mean, really, how do you live with an adult's authority and autonomy and experience an adult relationship and then... just live with 13 and middle/high school drama and parental authority and everything that comes with that?
I mean, I guess I see it, in some ways. You go back to the freedom of no bills and no decisions, you go back to another x years with your parents or grandparents or both around... There's a lot to gain, and your losses are temporary. And you go back to do it all with a bank of adult experience and knowledge, a huge advantage. But you're also set apart, aren't you? Isn't it hard to be the odd one out, the only teenager with your experiences?
I don't know, man. Maybe if I could do it all from then, I should, but would I? Probably not. And if I'd grown up suddenly then, would I go back? That's harder, but I still don't know.
I have Fibromyalgia. This involves sometimes near-crippling pain, fatigue, and other associated syndromes affecting my stomach and bowels and basically everything about the way I function. I have trouble some days staying awake on my feet or functioning through pain despite a great deal of prophylactic medication and a smaller amount of breakthrough medication for the worse times.
Well, I'm trying to do what's right. Exercise, they say, improves the condition of patients, and I'm in the gym at least a few days a week on top of my physically demanding job. I try to keep my diet reasonable; though I admit it hasn't been ideal, we don't really buy much junk for the house, so I'm hardly living on junk food, either. But I'm near collapse with a full-on symptom flare lately. I often can't get out of the car by myself. I have to lighten up at the gym where I was improving. Sometimes I can't lift my bag.
I work hard at not letting this take over my life, but sometimes... It feels like it does anyway.
Today, we were talking about adult subject matter, and for reasons that are but perhaps should not be related, the subject of Fraggle Rock came up. I started singing the theme song, which for those of you who don't get songs stick in your heads like I do, begins: "Dance your cares away/work is for another day..." implying that the Fraggles are more about fun than industry. The truth of this varies as we get to know our Fraggle friends, certainly, but by and large, I'd say it's an accurate description of Fraggle life - it's more about fun than work.
Now, before you think that this is a rant on teaching the value of work over play to children, I want you to consider the other inhabitants of Fraggle Rock, the Doozers. The Doozers are not only given screen time on the show, but the whole next verse of the theme song. "Work your cares away/dancing's for another day..." These miniscule, hardworking creatures slave away at elaborate constructions all the time while the Fraggles dance.
Now, if they're all happy with their lifestyles, so what? You ask. Well, maybe. But then, in addition to their steady diet of radishes, the Fraggles love to snack on the Doozers' buildings! Yes, "Doozer sticks" are among the carefree Fraggles' favorite foods, and the Fraggles are willing to snap them out of buildings as carelessly as we might tear the corner from a gingerbread house on Christmas.
Now suddenly what we have looks more like the story of the grasshopper and the ant as retold in "A Bug's Life." Of course the Fraggles are carefree and don't work. They take radishes from the Gorg garden and Doozer sticks from the Doozers. Meanwhile, everyone else around them works, from the trash heap to the Doozers to the Gorg.
Come to think of it, maybe the lessons Fraggle Rock taught are on the money. Work is a sucker's bet; be the one taking advantage of the worker and not the one slaving away, and you'll have a better time in life.
It's funny, but we use "green" to refer to people when we mean different things. For one, people are green when they're sick. Yesterday, I started out more of a pink sick, flushed and feverish, but I guess I was greenish by day's end. I was definitely pale, and yellow and nauseous if not all the way to green. I had to leave work in the morning, slept five hours yesterday and another twelve last night.
People are also green when they are inexperienced or new at something. There are lots of trainees at work who are a bit green, and considering how long it's been since I picked up a keyboard, I'm a green programmer, too. So that seems to be a theme right now. Hang in there, guys! We'll learn, and it will be awesome!
People are also green when they're envious of others. I try not to live there. But sometimes, I think, we all get it, and deal in different ways. We get competitive, or we try to "keep up with the Joneses" - our consumer economy has long depended on our small envies. Still, when larger ones rear their ugly heads, we need to deal with them without throwing ourselves into debt or doing other things outside our own best interests because friends and rivals seem better off.
We apply "green" to people for different reasons, and no one really enjoys being green for long no matter which green we're talking about.
However, taking care of yourself correctly cures all these green ills. If you're sick, rest and fluids are key (consult your doctor, this does not construe actual medical advice but is Mom's best folk wisdom on the matter, etc.). If you're new, work hard on learning and gaining experience, and allow rest breaks to focus on other things. If you're jealous, try to focus on what's going well for you, not what you need and want but don't or can't have. That way lies madness, debt, second jobs, and more madness.
So, we have a young kitten named Jellybean. She's about twelve or thirteen weeks old, and we had her spayed today. Poor Jellybean is crated for the night so she doesn't get hurt while she's still groggy from the anesthesia. She's still too groggy to stand straight, and I'm a little surprised they sent her home - when I called the vet at first, they said they wouldn't if she was still very groggy. I guess she must have been very sedated indeed the first time I called to check on her.
Anyhow, we went to the store once I got home from work this evening, and I must have had a terrible allergic reaction to something. Somewhere near the marshmallows and gluten free things, I started to get stuffed up, and by the time we got to the snack food, I was hardly breathing. We decided I needed allergy pills and went to that aisle instead. Chris ripped open a bottle and got me three out and I crunched the darned things because I needed them to work quickly (note to everyone: crunched/chewed diphenhydramine not only tastes like you'd expect but also burns like fire in your probably already-swollen throat).
The only thing I know I react to like that is cinnamon, and I didn't smell any. So now I'm all hopped up on generic pink allergy pills, and I'm not even 100% sure what triggered the reaction. Well, here's hoping it's not an entirely new allergy.
