Random Pictures
Some fairly random snaps from the last few months:
The upstairs remodel is slowly coming along. David, you can show Melissa where she'll be sleeping when she visits. (The drawers are waiting for better woodworking temperatures; we don't have a heated garage.)
The bathroom ... well, she'll be showering downstairs with the rest of us -- still no shower glass -- but it's pretty to look at (if you imagine away all the tools and grout containers and stuff).
This one's mostly for Kassia -- and for Cyn, if she happens by.
I don't know who this cat is, but he looks strangely familiar.
Normal Again
I hope. Emma survived school today, I more or less survived work, and Kristi should be home with Chipotle burritos any time now. :) The computer room is
finally mostly reassembled -- still a bit messy, but functional and bright and cheery -- and that means I can post pictures pretty much any time I feel like getting around to it. (Soooooon.) It also means the laptop will be getting lonely; I'm going to have to make a deliberate effort to take it out and warm it up occasionally. As soon as the weather warms up enough to Saturday-morning blog from the front porch by the fountain, that'll change.
Recent reading:
Scooter loaned me John Scalzi's
Old Man's War. Highly recommended; it's very (and very deliberately) Heinlein-esque, but in a
good way. Most of Heinlein's post-
Time Enough For Love work left me cold; this is the kind of book he could have, and should have, been writing:
Starship Troopers all growed up.
Boring Fact: back in the early 1990s Scalzi was the movie reviewer for the Fresno Bee. When he left to write for AOL, I wrote him a "thanks for all the great reviews" email, because he really was a reviewer I mostly agreed with.
Old Man's War contains oblique references to Fresno, Bakersfield and Modesto.
Recent movie:
Junebug. It was funny and sad and sweet, and recommended.
Sick Of It
Emma can't seem to shake whatever it is she's got. I spent the day home with her yesterday, again -- which actually worked out kinda well, since we were having the gas fireplace for upstairs installed and maple stair treads delivered. And she seemed to be doing okay during the morning, though still feverish. By the afternoon she was seriously cranky again.
When Kristi came home we scarfed down a quick dinner and then I went into work for a few hours. I didn't accomplish much, in all honesty; I was exhausted and headachey before I ever got to the car, much less the cubicle. Still, points for effort, right? And I may need to try the same thing again tonight.
Tip: when you're driving home from work late at night, don't listen to the same radio programming you normally listen to while lying in bed preparing to sleep. Bad idea.
On the bright side, the gas fireplace looks gorgeous, and if I could find the USB cable for the camera I'd show you a picture (it's in the mass of computer-room stuff on our bedroom floor; yeah, the computer room remains unfinished, surprise surprise). Soon.
Miracle Cure
Emma has been sick since Thursday night. She had a brief Saturday morning recovery, but by Saturday night her fever was back up over 102 degrees F.
(She's the world's worst patient, by the way. Nobody ever suffered as much as Emma suffers -- unless it's those forced to take care of her, particularly when it comes time to get some children's Tylenol in her while she screams at a pitch only dogs, and parents, and everyone within half a block can hear that it's
yucky and it's making her
barf and it's going to
kill her. But I digress.)
Today, because she was still feverish, we took her to urgent care. They checked her out, noted a tenderness in her abdomen, and recommended that we immediately take her to the ER at Children's Hospital to be checked for appendicitis. Yow.
We've been to the ER with Emma once before, when she was running a very high fever for an extended period. That time, the visit itself more or less cured her. This time, I hope, was no exception. By the time we got her into an examination room, she was chipper and joking around. The Tylenol at lunchtime probably had a fair amount to do with that, but still, you have to wonder what the doctors think when they see this almost-bouncy child taking up valuable time and space.
Anyway, the conclusion: she's got a virus. No appendectomy required, which pleases Emma, even though we spent the trip from urgent care to the ER telling her how cool it would be to have an appendix scar; remember "Madeline"? She showed some appetite for dinner, and then plunked down to watch a "Kim Possible" video from the library. I think she'll live.
Movie Time
Kristi was wired last night; didn't want to go to sleep, particularly since there was a sick kid in the middle of our bed. So we watched the rest of "De-Lovely", which we'd started a couple of nights before.
If you mashed together "All That Jazz" and "In and Out", you'd pretty much end up with "De-Lovely". If the combination of "All That Jazz" and "In and Out" doesn't sound like a particularly good movie to you, well, you're right. The fact that Kevin Kline in old-man makeup looks distractingly like Carl Reiner really didn't help much, either, since I kept waiting for Mel Brooks to show up and make the whole experience worthwhile.
I should note here that I very much like Kevin Kline's work. And, while I don't think Ashley Judd is one of our Great Actresses, she's competent and a pleasure to behold, even when made up to look like Dying Wife of Carl Reiner. Neither of these facts helps the movie at all.
Thankfully, this was a library loan, so I can't say it cost anything but the time invested in watching it. Still, we've got "Junebug" sitting on the kitchen counter from NetFlix, and I'd much rather have been watching that.
Long Time No See
The whole "Let's take the computer room apart to paint it and never put it back together" thing is getting old.
Really old. Emma's been sick the last couple of days, which hasn't helped; she missed school on Friday, and after a good morning, redeveloped her fever this afternoon. Hopefully she, and the house, and everything else, will be back to something approaching normal soon. Meantime, I'm still blogging (and doing everything else) from the laptop -- right now, on the kitchen table with Izzy curled up in my lap and Season 2 Buffy running in a small window.
Among the "everything else" I'm doing on the laptop is a complete rewrite of CDFFL. Scooter made a habit of hacking the site last year just for fun; this coming season, he's in for some surprises. It's going to be much more secure, and much more easily maintained and extended. As to what the extensions might be? Dunno. Possibly a forum in place of the never-really-took-off commissioner's blog from last season. Certainly some additional stats reporting. And it's going to look much,
much sweeter.
Also, I've got a really cool little ASP project for Worth1000 to work on. I've been doing some debugging there, just to get my feet wet again with the ASP/VBScript thing, but I think I may be ready to actually get going on the project, which I won't tell you about and you can't make me so don't even ask, 'kay? 'Kay.
Pi Day
I heard on NPR this morning that today is Pi Day (3.14). I think this is worth noting, because Kristi baked me a belated anniversary pumpkin pie last night; I had my first slice this morning for breakfast, 20 minutes or so before learning it was Pi Day.
Mmmm. Pi.
Recent Reads
I've finished "Wicked" and its sequel, "Son of a Witch," both by Gregory Maguire.
"Wicked" is a very fun, very adult twist on the "Wizard of Oz" stories, and I highly recommend it, both for its remarkable leading lady and for its exploration of the nature of good and evil.
"Son of a Witch" is a bit more problematic. Most of my dissatisfaction with it, in the end, comes from Maguire's apparent use of it to set up the third book of a trilogy, rather than wrap the story up. He leaves so much unfinished that it doesn't feel at all complete -- and if there's isn't a third book, I may have to hunt the guy down and throw a bucket of water on him.
Like Dandelions
They just keep popping up. This week, Lorie Dewhirst joins the ranks of
high school friends who pop up out of nowhere. Lorie, it turns out, is a fellow West employee -- though she had the good sense to work in Encino. She saw Glenn at a party, and he told her (more or less) where to find me.
At this rate, there won't be any reason to go to my reunion; I'll have been in touch with everyone important anyway.
