Things not to do at your bachelor(ette) party

Ladies,

Maybe it's just me--I am willing to accept that possibility.  People are different.  They should tailor their various functions to their needs and desires.  Tonight, I attended one of the most bizarre bachelorette parties I think I ever had, and it got me thinking about all of the weird wedding-related things I've seen in the last 5 years.

Tonight, I attended a bachelorette party where (I don't know how or why) all of the mothers were invited.  The mother of the bride was there.  The mother of the groom was there.  The mother of the maid of honor was there.  Bridesmaids' mothers, and even grandmothers, were there.  It felt more like a wedding shower than a bachelorette party, but all of the women there seemed to think it was cool to get drunk.  So I am sitting there watching middle-aged women being all, "we're such cool moms, we're at a bachelorette party!"  They're downing alcohol like no tomorrow, the bride and her friends think it's funny at first, but it took very little time before they started getting disgusted.  This is unfortunately happening at a Hard Rock Cafe, and the second a Go-Go's song comes on, moms are singing and dancing at the top of their lungs in the middle of the restaurant.  (OMG.)  One bridesmaid finally had to tell her mom to stop because she had several drinks already, was still drinking, and was planning to drive herself home right after dinner.  (The mom, of course, seemed to think she was too cool to leave at this point and wanted to stay the rest of the night--which moms had not been invited to--going bar hopping with the wedding girls.)

Lesson: If you think you're a cool mom, great.  Go drinking with your friends.  Your kids don't want to see that.  Be an even cooler mom and let your daughter hang out with the real cool people--her friends.  

I should note that for this same wedding, all male relatives were invited to the bachelor party too.  My husband went for the early evening activities, but left before things got too weird, apparently.  I later found out that both the father of the groom and the father of the bride stayed the entire party.  The FOB ended up having to escort around the groom because he was too smashed to walk.  They lost two of the groomsmen in Denver.  The next morning one of the groomsmen woke up in the groom's mother's house wearing a woman's tank top with no clue where his shirt was or how he ended up at the house or wearing what he was wearing.  

Lesson:  Seriously--this is how you want your bride's father to see you?  Really?

I attended one bachelor party (that should be a red flag already) where the bride had required the groom to invite her friends (ironically, I wasn't one of them).  See, the bride had a lot of friends, and apparently all of them needed to be in the wedding; the groom, for whatever reason, didn't wish to involve himself in the wedding plans.  She had 15 female friends she wanted in the wedding, plus her brother.  The groom wanted me, my husband, and a friend from high school who couldn't make it.  Result: Eight of her friends, plus me (so that I could walk with my husband) stood on her side of the wedding party.  Her brother, my husband, and her seven other friends stood on the groom's side.  (Yeah, the wedding party pictures were unique, to say the least.)  Her reasoning was that because her friends were on his side of the wedding, they should be invited to the the bachelor party; and even though I was a friend of the groom, my invite was to the bachelorette party (which I ditched to hang with the...er, guys).  We ate dinner, and then were supposed to hang out at Dave & Buster's for a while, but all of the bride's friends were underaged, so we had to wait for an old enough (25 years) cousin escort to get them in.  That was supposed to be the evening, but the best man (bride's brother) was a cool guy, and wanted to do a "real" bachelor party.  Somehow I find myself in a car calling my older brother for advice on strip clubs, we drive to one, the bride's friends are standing there grossed out, and everything is awkward.

Lesson:  If your bride is making attendance of her friends at your bachelor party mandatory, RUN. Don't plan adult activities for under-aged groups.  And for goodness sake, if you are the best man, ask someone beforehand where the good strip clubs are; avoid asking your cool female friend to hunt down the information for you on the spot, which generally can result in a lot of her family members calling the next day with awkward questions.  

Alula

The Sims 3 CRC Installation Error

File this one under total weirdness.  I went out and bought The Sims 3 as a celebration for getting a job; I have been a fan of Sims games since the beginning.  Mostly I don't play the game a lot.  I enjoy designing the houses and living spaces and then watching the people mill around in their perfect little word, filled with resources, like it's a digital ant farm or aquarium--very soothing.

When I bought the game, I tried to install it on my desktop that evening after spending all day backing up my laptop.  Mr. Borealis had been on me for a while to let him upgrade the system on my Dell Studio 15 from Vista to Win7, so I figured I wanted this done before installing my new game.  The problem was, while Mr. B worked on formatting my laptop and installing the new OS, I could not get Sims 3 to install on my Desktop due to a recurrent CRC error that stated the .exe file on the disk did not match the .cab file, and that the disk must be corrupted, and to contact the software vendor.

I started looking online to find that many, many unfortunate game owners have had this problem, and EA Games either can't or won't fix it satisfactorily with a patch.  Their offered solution is to defrag your disk (which, let's face it, never works), to check for system updates, etc., etc.--"It must be user error, because we here at EA Games are gods."  There were more helpful solutions online from other users, and after trying it the EA Games way and failing to install 5 times, I was willing to try everything.  I tried installing as admin, popping the disc in and out repeatedly, clicking to ignore the error (resulted in a disk authentication error), copying the disk to the hard drive and attempting install from there--all to no avail.

Eventually, I begain to notice that the .exe file it was complaining about was not for the game itself, but for the EA Media Downloader.  So when the disc complained again, I opened up the install file and just deleted the contents of the Media Downloader folder because I hadn't planned to spend more money online.  I just wanted to play the game I had payed $50 to play.  TADA!!!!  After deleting that file, the game installs and plays perfectly.

Oddly enough, the game produced no errors when I tried to install it on my laptop.  Both machines were running Win7 at the time of installation, and both had well above the game requirements.  Several other users in online forums have reported similar anomalies, where the game seems to "like" certain machines and "not like" others for no apparent reason.

EA, get your act together.  Based on the input I read from other highly dissatisfied customers, your inability to patch this has led others to give the game horrible reviews, alter the game in ways that has affected the game performance to get it to even play, and even pirate the game to get what they paid for.  Is this the type of press you really want?

Alula

Blogger was down?

All,

Something was going on with Blogger at some point this week.  It deleted my most recent post (Pictures from my Illness) so I reposted it; it had posted before, as evidenced by the fact that it through on my feed reader.  It also deleted a comment that Fuzzy left somewhere--the comment was emailed to me but then mysteriously never appeared on the blog, and when I tried to go to moderate the comment I got a message that Blogger was running in "read only" mode for maintenance.

Bottom line--if anyone posted anything and it went missing, please repost it.  It was not maliciously removed; Blogger was just having some issues.

Alula

Musing--Freelancing?

Yesterday I got a phone call from my former academic advisor (for my MLS).  Somehow she was talking to someone who runs a museum/archive for one of the national parks and they need a website, can't hire a professional, and my name came up (lol!).  She called and left me a message asking how my job search is going, and if I would be willing to take a look at this particular client's website needs and how much I would charge.  I also keep getting emails from people I don't know either through my school listserv or saying "hey, I know (insert name here) and s/he said you might be able to give me advice on blogs/websites/digital collections".  It seems that librarians I know have recognized that I have an above average knowledge of these subjects relative to the field, and that I can also relate things in a language they understand.  It probably also doesn't hurt that I've been consulting for free--I did this for several classmates while they were building their capstone e-portfolios.  I'm also doing it for my brother now.  (Munchkin--I meant to tell you I met with my brother, we talked, and it went GREAT.  Your emotional intelligence astounds me, and your methods worked great despite my own social awkwardness.)

I'm kind of wondering if I should go freelance, at least until I either locate a "real" job or figure out if it's worth the time and effort.  Along this line, I started thinking about how Fuzzy (at one point) was talking about selling her business paperwork skills to crafters who may need help navigating these issues to run their businesses (I still think this is a fantastic idea).  I wonder if I could market my skills through our business and offer to build/manage/consult on client crafter websites?

Yes, I realize we still need to get our own website up and running.  At this point, it's mostly an issue of buying a domain name and figuring out if we want to host it separately.  This costs money, not a lot (maybe up to $15/yr on the domain and around $10/month on hosting), and I would be willing to front these costs for the business if my own financial outlook were slightly more certain.  I figure the website has been my arena, so it only makes sense that I would invest those startup costs and earn them back from online sales; that way if the website tanks due to my own ineptness, only my time/money investment, and not the business's, is lost.

I'm thinking this kind of "consulting" model could bring in more business for us by roping in crafters who already run their own sites.  Links between sites can really boost your search engine listing, so if we were to say "hey, we'll do some free consulting for you to improve your traffic and website navigability" in exchange for some friendly linking to each other's sites, everybody wins.

What does everyone think?

Alula

Oh Baby!

Oh baby!

This is a short narrative of how I remember the most exciting and terrifyong Tuesday of my life to date.

It started out just like any other normal work day, but this day was to be much different. I was scheduled to get out early at (2pm) so I could go have my twenty week ultrasound (I was actually 21 weeks 2 days but wanted to wait for hubby) where we were going to check out my little one to make sure everthing was going great and find out the sex.

The ultrasound was going great, we almost instanly found we were having a healthy baby boy, to which my husband jumped out of his chair and pumped his fist to that news. The tech let me know that after we did the abdominal she was going to do an "internal" one just to double check everything was great. The abdomial lasted another 25 minutes where our boy showed off for the camera while she measured him top to bottom.

Then we were on to the dreaded interal wandy one... during this check the tech was making sure that something she saw on the abdominal one was all in her head. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't. The tech said is a very calm and collected voice, "Hmmm.... that's what I was afraid of... your cervix is just too thin." Then before our eyes she watched my cervix grow longer. It was fluctuating between 8mm and 2.6cm, which is just plain crazy. For a healthy pregnancy they want to see at least 3cm at all times until you approach 36 or so weeks.

The tech went quickly to inform my doctor of her unusual findings, and they gave me a room and an appointment even though the appointment portion of my visit wasn't scheduled till today. My doctor got on the phone with a high risk OB office in Denver and she let me know that I needed to go get a couple stitches to keep my cervix from opening and letting the little guy out.

I was driven to Denver that night and had an emergency operation performed on my cervix to save my pregnancy. The whole night and day were absolutely a blind siding. I'm now on bed reast at least until Tuesday when they can check out the stitches to make sure they are good.

I'll keep you all posted on the status of my stiuation, but until then just hope hard for my mental sake that I won't have to stay in bed until the kid is born.

~Minchkin

Technological Updates

The patch for the Nook is here!  The patch for the Nook is here!

(And there was much rejoicing!)

The new patch for the Nook came out yesterday, and that was my evening.  The patch installed flawlessly, and then I happily went about investigating and utilizing the new organizational tools for my collection.  Previous to this patch, one could not sort downloaded books by genre or self-organize them in any fashion because there were no folders within the library--everything was listed about willy-nilly, with only a few sorting options (sort by date, by title, etc.).

Now, I can search for things, I can put books onto "shelves", and I can sort my shelves.  Most importantly, the shelves work more like tags than discrete folders--I can list a Fantasy/Adventure story on both my "Fantasy" and "Adventure" shelves instead of just one or the other.  I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that shelves created in either "My Documents" or "My Library" carry over to each other!  HUZZAH!  I cannot express my joy as a librarian to be able to sit on my couch (and later my bed) creating categories for all of my books and then going through them and putting them into the newly created categories.  I can now find my Horrors, Manuals, Scientific Articles, Adventure, Romance, Work Related, School Related, Science Fiction, Cookbooks, Short Stories, etc., in discretely organized locations!  And I will say it again: HUZZAH!

The update also fiddled the power management (better battery life), page turn speed (noticeably faster), took the web browser out of beta (now official), and granted syncing of reading locations across the available apps, and password protection (prevents unauthorized purchases from the device and can be enabled to lock on idle).  Barnes & Noble, I have one further request for you: my shelves are still distinct to either the Documents or Library.  Can you patch this so that when I display content from the "Science Fiction" shelf, the content from both the Library and my Documents is shown together?

Also, I finally finished downloading the latest patch for World of Warcraft, and a video played where dragon popped out of the middle of Azeroth, causing much destruction (yes, I know all about Cataclysm and resulting natural disasters).  He's now perched atop the burning wreckage of Stormwind on my log in screen and I can't log in because it's Tuesday Update Time!  AHHH!  When is Azeroth scheduled to change for the new game content?  I am going to miss old Azeroth.  I hope I like the changes enough so as not to be put off by them.

Alula

Stunning news

So...

My sister is getting married!  She's been with her fiance for about 5 months, and I'm very happy for her.  I am a little concerned, because she seemingly hasn't been with this guy for a long time (She's had relationships in the past stretching for 1-2 years), but some people are just like that--they hit an age or a time when they just become ready for the whole marriage thing, and perhaps that's the way it is with her, and she's finally found the one.  I've never met her fiance; my mom really likes him, so I'm looking forward to meeting him.

(Just fyi about the above...I'm not sure how "out" this is supposed to be, so please hold off on spreading this news or congratulating her on any public social networking sites.)

Apparently I'm not allowed to tell my brother, because my sister and my mom are engaging in some sort of weird familial hazing revenge.  My sister is just going to "wear the ring around for a bit and let him figure it out for himself".  (For anyone who missed this section of my life, my brother waited until his girlfriend was in her third trimester to tell us she was pregnant.  He also neglected to tell us that he got married to her a while back.  My mom was very understandably hurt by the whole situation of not being told.)  My sister made a point of telling my mom first, and now, I am apparently asked not to tell my brother.  It's my sister's engagement, so I am honoring that request (to honor her engagement, and not because I believe in perpetuating an atmosphere of secrecy).

I am sick as all get out since Tuesday night; I think I caught a bad cold or the flu when I attended out-of-state class last weekend.

Alula

Frogs, Twisted Metal, and Maine

Update on frogs: the next day, two more frogs died.  I swapped out more of the water, and the last frog looked fine.  I was really hoping he was going to make  it.  Then, today, I discovered him dead.  I don't know what happened, but it is an incredibly sad moment for me; I've had those frogs since my early teen years.

Mr. B and I drove out to Emporia, Kansas, over the weekend to attend a class weekend.  He spent the three nights before the trip trying to fix up his car with his dad because there are several problems he's let go for a while (the catalytic converter, some small parts in need of replacing, and the noise it makes when he turns the wheel, just to name a few).  He managed to replace the small parts, but they didn't have time for the "big" stuff.  Mr. B's dad assured him the car would make the trip.  Then, getting dinner Saturday night, Mr. B fouled a U-turn into a field and something went CLA-CLUNK under the car.  Mr. B assured me we just hit a rock, but I was sure I felt something break in the wheel well next to my feet on the passenger side.  Then, driving back on Sunday, we make a pit stop and I see Mr. B looking under the car.  Then he's calling his dad.

Then I look under the car.  There's a twisted metal chunk hanging out from under the passenger side front wheel, and something dripping out of the engine.  His dad couldn't identify it (and still can't, beyond the fact that it was some kind of wheel/axle support--we think the clear fluid may have just been condensation of some sort), but told us that if the wheels were turning, it was probably okay.  We made it home.

I'm now hoping that Mr. B will somehow start taking care of problems with his car when they occur instead of waiting until the last possible moment.  (Fat chance, but I can wish.)

Mr. B is now applying for jobs in Maine, and I am finding myself kind of hoping he gets one.  Property is extremely cheap out there because the average yearly income is so low (like 3bed2bath on acreage with a river for 50K cheap).  It would disappointed me to have to leave my job here, but it's nice to dream of running away to a little farmhouse with a library job and time to write.  :)

Alula

Things that Make Me Happy

Mr. B is out of town, marking the first time since his illness that we have returned to a regular work schedule.  

Today, I got harassed outside the grocery store by someone who wanted me to sign a petition to bring medical marijuana dispensaries into town.  (Many issues with this, but I will spare you.  Suffice it to say that out of principle, I have little to no respect for individuals who break federal law, and find the blatant abuse of medical marijuana by people who do not have medical need disgusting.)

Anyways, I was passing by the frozen foods and all riled up about the damn hippie drug abusers who are able to organize to get themselves medical marijuana dispensaries, but can't be socially responsible enough to not break the law, because instead of pushing to pass a law to legalize recreational use, which might make sense, they're seeking to legalize medical use so they can continue to break the law with prescription drug abuse....*grumble, grumble*.  Illegal and illogical--what a combination.

Then I find Ben & Jerry's Magic Brownies, and it catches my eye for obvious reasons.  It's awesome.  Try it.  Black raspberry ice cream and brownies.  One of my new favorite things.

This is the book light my husband got me for my birthday (to go with the nook, which I was counting as a sort of early birthday present).  Also one of my new favorite things.  2 levels of brightness, fits great into the little pocket slot on the back of my Bronte nook cover.  I thought it was a little bulky at first, larger than I expected it would be, and the clip is kind of poorly designed.  The metal slide clip would probably shred a leather cover, but I guess it worked out okay where I put it on my nook cover, so that's a positive.  Blue lights on the back give it kind of a futuristic feel, spread out LEDs give a good glow on the book without needing repositioning, and it was very reasonably priced.  Love it!

Ritelite LPL792XLB 5-LED Computer and Book Light, Metal

Alula

Mr. Borealis -- Boy Genius

About two weeks ago the electricity in our downstairs bathroom and front courtyard stopped working.  We reset the breakers for those areas, but the lights and outlets still didn't work.  We tried resetting ALL the breakers hoping they were mislabeled, and it still didn't work.

Convinced we had fried wires and were about to shell out several hundred dollars to have the issue resolved, we did what we usually do with this sort of non-imminent home project: we ignored it.  We have another bathroom and a streetlight in front of our house.

Then, tonight, Mr. B gets antsy and needs to vacuum something (this weird habit is a post in and of itself, so I won't go into it here).  He goes into the guest room downstairs and tried to plug the vacuum into and outlet in the dark bathroom (off of the guest room), and I hear him cuss because he forgot the room no longer has power.  Then he walks out and a thoughtful expression passes his face.

I can almost see the light bulb appear above his head.  "I have a theory!"

He runs up the stairs with a glee not seen since Archimedes went streaking through the streets of Syracuse.  Then he runs back downstairs and into the guest room, and I hear "It worked!  It worked!"

As it turns out, our house continues to be a construction oddity--somehow, the safety outlet in the upstairs bathroom got tripped, thereby resulting in the total loss of power in the downstairs bathroom and front courtyard, even though the outlet and power upstairs still worked (heck if I know...).  When he reset the outlet upstairs, everything started working again.

How my husband's brain arrives at Loss of Power Downstairs = Tripped Outlet Upstairs, I have no idea.  He claims someone must have told him of this weird configuration at some point, but I'm still a little baffled.

Thank goodness for illogical conclusions.

Alula

Who's getting Married?

Most of you know how bad I am about keeping up with my cell phone.  So today when I charged it at work I wasn't surprised to see I had new text messages accumulated from over the weekend.  One from Q.  One from...some number not stored.  Normally I would disregard, except for the content from the mystery number:

"Im engaged!"

Ah....CRAP.  Somebody out there cared enough to tell me about their impending lifelong prison sentence--I mean, marital bliss--and I didn't care enough to store the number in my phone.  Crap, crap, crap!  I sent one back: "Congrats!"  Then I set to work trying to figure out who the heck I knew, who wasn't in my phone, who could possibly be getting married.

The only person who came to mind was my brother's ex, the mother of my niece and nephew (she has switched cell phone numbers a few times).  Or maybe Fuzzy, if she changed her number and didn't tell me.  Or maybe DoHP, if she forgot to tell us a few things over the last few months or got drunk in Vegas.  I decided the BroEx was probably who it was, and then started freaking out, because the last 2 times she got married, a pregnancy was involved.  Then my mom texted me back that the number didn't belong to the BroEx, and she didn't receive the text message of fortune, ruling out family.

The search continued....Q could not identify the number, which ruled out quite a few friends..  Mr. B had not received the text, so that ruled out his family.

Then I got home and showed Mr. B the number, and I said, "Who do we know who switched cell numbers recently?"  And he said, "Well, I think my sister did a while back, but it can't be her--why would she text you and not me?"

Well, it's his sister--she got a new cell phone and number and forgot to store his number in it.  Getting married.  To her boyfriend of about two years (eh, maybe a year and a half would be closer).  This probably means another bridesmaid dress in my closet and weekend lost to doing cheesy wedding stuff.

But more importantly, this means I'M FREE.

FREE I TELL YOU!

My mother-in-law is about to be too busy planning a wedding to demand we hang out with her every weekend.  FREE! FREE! FREE!

Eleven of the last 14 weekends spent with the inlaws--NOT ANY MORE!  If I hit the jackpot on this one, she'll get pregnant and then I AM OFF THE HOOK.

Sister in law, I am this happy for me, but moreso, I am happy for you!



FREE!
Alula

A Wii Little Experiment

Hi Ladies!

A few weeks back, Mr. B and I attended his cousin's wedding in Oklahoma (there's yet another great inlaw story here, but that's another post entirely--in fact, between Q and I, that could be another blog entirely). The point is, we spent one night in a hotel in Oklahoma, and something neat happened.

Mr. B got an overview statement of all the hotel points he's raked up from having a job where he travels for a quarter to half the year, and we had enough points to "buy" a Wii Fit with them.

For anyone who hasn't heard of this device, it's a board that connects to the Wii and is intended for use with games (included with the purchase of the board). As the name implies, it's a workout device that comes with routines for Yoga, Strength, Aerobics, and Balance. There are also games like skii jumping, snow boarding, hula hooping, and others. The Wii Fit posts your progress with charts in the game, tracking your weight, how much time you spent working out, how your balance is, your "real age", and how many calories you burn in exercise, and other things. You can even customize your own workouts to target trouble areas.

I've been using the Wii Fit since we purchased it, and have already seen some weight loss (about 3 pounds, which isn't bad for a couple of weeks). And good golly, for just being a board, some of the exercises will make you hurt the next day--my arm muscles give me the most grief after workouts, while Mr. B complains he feels in more in his thighs.

Having struggled with my weight for a while now, I decided that this is something I can do. It's low impact and people at the gym don't have to watch my wiggly butt in sweats doing squats.

Riding the BMI line between overweight and obese, I finally decided to get Mr. B involved to make me do something about it. I've been using the Lose It! app since the start of this year, and showed him the chart of how much I weighed on January 1st, and then how much I gained when he got sick and went to the hospital. Since then, I've managed to get back to my start-of-the-year weight. I signed him up to get weekly email updates tracking my weight and what I'm eating (caloric intake), and he can see when I'm on the Wii Fit, for how long, and session activities.

He has similarly committed to working out with me to try to gain weight as per his doctor's orders, and is increasing the amount that he eats.

I don't know if anyone here has an interest in seeing my weekly caloric intake, but I'm hoping that I continue to see enough progress with the Wii Fit to be worthy of mention here. Hopefully it can get me back to swimsuit weight, and then I can start swimming laps like I did back in high school.

In other news, I think I'm going to start another blog devoted to ereaders. I've developed an unhealthy relationship with my nook (as in, it now joins me at work so I can read scientific articles from our library on it instead of the computer screen, I sleep with it, and I miss it when it's not around). I have found so many cool resources for ereaders in the last few weeks that I am going to try to organize them somehow. I also wrote to author Jennifer Roberson to inquire if she was going to release any of her Chronicles of the Cheysuli books in digital format, and she wrote me back less than 5 hours later (!) saying she was trying to do it--it's more in the hands of the publisher. (For anyone who hasn't read these books, there are 8 of them, they are a dynastic fantasy genre, and they are very good--you may have trouble finding them in a bookstore because they are older, but they are worth it to order from online.)

Alula

Everything in my life (including the kitchen sink)

What's new with me...?

Well, not too terribly much. I'm inundated with obligations, as usual. :)

I'm glad to hear that the business is moving along! Thanks for being the primary on this one, because I don't know if it would be humanly possible for me to take on more right now. I've been assigned room configuration for the Annual All-Hands Meeting at work next week (tables, chairs, setup, take down, A/V, etc., for all 40 participants). I'm still frantically trying to pull together a PhD advisory committee and application, and figure out funding. We've had funding cuts, and some additional drama at work, that has meant a higher up has decided to cut parts of the tuition funding option at work--I may be on my own for half, and up to all, of the tuition cost of school. Get this: after doing the math, I still make more money keeping my job and paying 10K of it to school than any other option (lottery aside). I'm mid-semester, taking 4 classes, and in another group project (yay.).

Mr. B's health is up and down, and we recently started to seriously investigate a move to the North West. Sure, I would lose my job, and the PhD option, but we've had some issues with family lately--his mother misses him. So we've spent the last 6 weekends in a row with them (not an exaggeration). She's upset about his health and puts him on a major guilt trip every time he says we're too busy (or we want to spend time together...alone). I'm trying to gently get her to understand that she's doing real harm to my marriage because we're straining to accommodate her needs. We need out, and we like the rain, so we figure Washington state might not be terrible, and as it turns out jobs in both our fields are plentiful there.

But enough of the serious: here's some fun and quirky.

Mr. B has recently discovered audio books, and likes to listen to them on his long commutes. We check them out from the online 2 week downloadables at our local library. He's now listened to Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, The Golden Compass, and a few others. We're discussing books together, a long-held dream that I never thought would be reality. We're considering an Audible account in the future, but right now the library is working out really well (FREE!).

We watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog at the last movie night, and it was truly AWESOME. Anyone who hasn't seen this 45-minute short film needs to. It's about an aspiring super villain and his bid to join the Evil League of Evil.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of getting our cats. They're a year and a few months old now, and having left their kitten years, they're now teenagers discovering who they really are. They've discovered that now that they are able to sit still long enough, watching birds out of the kitchen window is a really fun pursuit. And where they used to run themselves until they passed out wherever, they are now more selective in their sleeping habits, and discovering certain preferences for location and position:

My garden continues to grow. It survived despite a recent, near apocalyptic, hail storm. It hailed marble-sized hail for a solid ten minutes, and it looked like snow when it was done: everything was 3-6 inches deep in white. It pummeled one of my birdhouses to the point of actually breaking it (repairable). But the wind direction just barely saved my garden, and the peas are doing very well.

My niece was cast a Bell in a kid's version of Beauty and the Beast, and she remembered all of her lines (pretty good for a 7-year-old!).

My diet is back on track, and I've finally lost all of the hospital weight I put on during the first 4 months of the year--the Wii Mr. B got for his birthday is helping. I think I'm going to give myself a 6 month grace period to finish my yearly resolutions due to all of the craziness this year.

Oh, our kitchen sink disposal also needed replacing recently. It was old, and it sprung a leak and I didn't figure it out until after cleaning out the fridge and putting it all down the drain (messy).

Alula

Ulcers, Job Interviews, and Quiet Babies

He went off of his prednisone about two weeks ago, and weird symptoms have been popping up ever since. He sleeps 16+ hours a day and is still tired. He has no appetite but he's always thirsty. And he's really nauseas at night, and sometimes has to get up to vomit (sometimes more than once, and the anti-nausea medication doesn't help).

Worried? Yes, I am. The doctor thinks he has stomach ulcers. I think he may have an adrenal deficiency since stopping the pred. And for reasons of his untimely success, he's having trouble getting in to the doctor.

Today he has a job interview for a field economist position. He also got a call back for an examiner position with the government last Friday, and returned the call this morning. They want to fly him out of state for the final interview this coming Friday (this position is local to our state, but involves a good deal of travel to neighboring states--it's kind of the job he has now, but at the federal level instead of the state level). He also has a blood test this afternoon.

So between taking most of the day today for interviews and blood testing, and taking Friday to fly out of state for an interview, he's hitting a time crunch with his job. Next week isn't much better, but he *needs* to get in to the doctor if he's having some kind of complication here. I told him to call his doctor with the new symptoms--I'm hoping he actually does it.

Also, we attended the birthday party of our niece this weekend. It was held at one of those giant indoor playgrounds, which I remember as being totally awesome when I was a kid. The kids (probably around twenty of them) had a great time, and the whole family was there. I didn't want to let Mr. B come with me, but he had done nothing but sleep all weekend and he wanted to get out of the house. I insisted that indoor playgrounds were cess pools of bacteria and viruses, and I didn't want him going to one without an immune system. He insisted he would use a lot of hand sanitizer. So we went, and had a great time, and then halfway through the party I turn around and see this:

That's my husband. Holding my cousin's 9-month-old, cheerful, quiet, perfect baby that never cries. And they're both laughing and giggling and having a great time. Then my cousin comes back and takes the baby back from him, and he looks all forlorn until she leaves to go down the slide with her 3-year-old (also a very well-mannered, quiet, sweet child) and gives him back the baby. He's all smiles the rest of the day when he gets to play with the baby--he's tickling her chin and "booping" her nose and letting her hold onto his fingers so she can stand up and trying to get her to crawl to him.

Oh boy--not before the PhD, if ever. I swear, he does this just to get on my nerves.

Alula

Huh, that's strange

So, my desktop. A rather nice computer, built it myself, only about a year and a half old. It experienced unprovoked catastrophic harddrive failure.

My dad and I could not come up with any thing to do for it other than reinstall windows. But that was going far slower than windows installs should, so I'm off to look for upgrades. Maybe even Windows 7.  Totally not what I was planning on doing this weekend.

And yes, we tried the, use a different cable, use a different port, use a different mother board, thing and nothing recognises this drive. And of course it's my boot drive.

Living Dangerously

I'm down in Colorado Springs visiting my husband at work for the weekend. I'm going out of town next week to give a presentation in DC at AAG. Last night, we met with our friends down here in the Springs (you all know them--the ones that own the publishing company...?).

Anyways, we were talking about hitting the metaphorical wall in life, and how I have yet to hit said wall. According to my friend, when you hit the wall, you drop everything and have a critical fail. She believes I'm in trouble of hitting said wall with all the crap that's happening in my life. But here's the thing: I don't ever think I will hit the wall. I keep piling on school and work and hobbies and family, and the wall never appears. I just keep going, and part of me wishes that I would hit the wall, just so I know my limit--like where "enough" is, because I have never found "enough." And it's like all of this stuff happens to me--I sign up for classes and then lose half a semester taking care of my extremely ill husband, and I'm still going to come out of it passing all my classes. And writing half of a novel in the process. And hardly missing 10 hours of work, and receiving offers from researchers who now want to work with me in the future.

I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but does this seem normal? I feel like I've rolled in the crap heap of life over the last few months and I'm still coming out smelling (relatively) like roses. And it's not the first time it's happened, either...my first semester of grad school was probably worse what with the births, the deaths, the marriages, etc., and I still managed to get things done. I guess I'm feeling a little too powerful and sure of myself, and I want that wall: I want to know exactly where my limit is, because not knowing is scaring me.

How much crap can I take, exactly? I feel like I need to know, because once I do, it will be enough somehow--like getting full.

So, with regards to hitting this wall, and my seemingly destructive need to find my wall, my friend believes I have somehow channeled the "risk taking gene" that we hear about in various studies into doing the most seemingly productive tasks I can until they eat me alive. I'm like Eval Knieval, but because I'm physically fragile and have no physical addictions, I'm taking risks in loading up on academia. She thinks I'm zapping myself physically by trying to feed my need for risky behavior with as many productive activities as possible. Weirdly, this makes sense to me--it explains why I needed an MA, and then two MAs, and then working 30 hrs while getting those MAs, and now a PhD...Mr. Borealis has been telling me he's afraid I will double PhD, because it seems like something I would do.

It does seem like something I would do. Of course, my friend being a publisher, her solution is that I channel my risk taking by showing my writing to the world via her publishing company (who didn't see that one coming...?).

So anyways, I decided to see if any of you think this is plausible (that I'm secretly living out my need to live dangerously in the most geeky way possible), and to test the theory.

Today, Mr. B and I went horse back riding. I'm not supposed to do this because of my weak and easily dislocated joints. The last time I was on a horse was when I was like 16 (we won't count Santorini, because that was technically a donkey), and I fell off and hooked my left leg in the stirrup and got dragged for 20 feet, ripping up the knee surgery I had done 7 months earlier. After a 3 hour ride, my butt feels like it's been attacked by a crazed nun with a ruler the size of a two-by-four, and my body feels sore and weak all over, but I had a great time (pictures to come). My horse tripped and did a chest dive into the ground (and I got it on VIDEO!!!) and I didn't fall off (the horse and I were both fine). Aside from the horn on the saddle punching me in the stomach and the bruises on my hands from grabbing the saddle, it didn't even give me a rise. There was seriously no adrenaline. The event rattled the guide and my husband, and I didn't even get butterflies.

I am beginning to believe there's something to the theory that my ability to judge risky situations, or the way I respond to them, has become non-typical in the last few years. I'm wondering if I hit the wall, would I even feel it?

Alula

This is Not Tom...

One of my fellow library nerds shared this with me. It's similar to the impossible quiz, but the answers will make sense, and you will need to collaborate with people to get the answers (unless you are freakishly endowed with your mental capacity and pop culture knowledge).

Read and article about THISISNOTTOM.COM here.

And try to solve the riddle here.

What's my age again?

Yesterday my supervisor found out I'm 25 when I was explaining about Mr. B's health problems lately. For Q, and anyone else who might consider feeding him, his little foray into pizza over the weekend (not to mention when I came home and found him gorging on sugary cereal last night) has him in a serious nose dive again. He was doing alright on Friday, and we thought he was making decent recovery on Saturday, and then Sunday he couldn't keep anything down. Last night he got up twice, and I suspect the kiddie cereal was the cause.

So anyways, I was giving my supervisor a heads up that if the situation got worse (because my husband has no self control), and accidentally made a dating statement: "He had to be hospitalized for this condition in 2003, right before we graduated high school."

My supervisor's eyes shot open and he said, "You graduated high school in 2003? Good God you're young!"

I shrugged, and raised my shoulders. "Sorry."

I had a moment of panic, because I've encountered age-related discrimination in academia before; my advisors have always told me I'm too young to pursue a Master's, let alone a second Master's...let alone to consider a PhD. Obviously I don't have the life experience to formulate my own ideas for research, right? Mostly it's the other students, and not the professors (to whom everyone is young); many of the 30-somethings get shocked looks when they find out I'm "so young." I'm too young, apparently, to have a well-regarded industry job. I'm too young to have had an 8 year relationship with my husband. Too young to own a house. I try to dress older when I go to work, because while my supervisor is a really cool guy (btw, I found out when processing some paperwork for a conference we're attending in April that he's in his mid 50s), I've generally found that the research field is similar to academia, and I was afraid that if the age thing got out, I might be subconsciously overlooked for things like conferences, hardcore research, and getting my opinion asked.

To clarify, my supervisor isn't the issue. He knows I'm able, which is why we are presenting our research together. It's the other researchers, some of whom I don't know as well. My supervisor came right back at me with: "Let me rephrase that--Good God, I'm old!"

We both laughed, and the conversation moved on. But it kind of got me thinking about how weird age perception is, because I have never once considered myself too young to be doing the things I'm doing. I've set the right age for me to have kids (if ever) after 30, which I am hearing from classmates in their 40s is "too old", while Munchkin plans to have kids now, and she's younger than me. My sister (age 23) graduated from high school a year early, is getting her PhD now, and is still effectively living with my parents. Q was apparently ready to own a house and get married before bothering to get through high school. I'm beginning to believe that age-related milestones are more loosely fitted for our generation than for previous generations. I'm curious to hear others thoughts on this: what are you ready to be doing in your life? What have you been told you were too young for? Or conversely, too old for?

Alula

Return of the Evil Pharmacist

Since I'm in a ranting mood tonight, I also wanted to post an update on the Evil Pharmacist (read initial post here).

I resolved my issues by contacting corporate, who contacted the store, who were not able to confirm or deny that anything looked fishy with the computer records given that everyone has different insurance. They "handled the issue with the pharmacist at the store level" and apologized for her rudeness, and sent me store vouchers to use.

I still transferred my prescriptions to a different branch (same store, because we get gas discount points on those pricey meds).

Last week I went to pick up my prescriptions. Surprise--guess who had transferred stores, and now works at my new location. And guess who could not get the insurance to work for my inhaler, but encouraged me to get a coupon from online and "keep my receipt".

EVIL PHARMACIST IS STALKING ME.

You know how you have those moments in life, where you could swear someone is scripting it, because this kind of bull only happens on television?

Alula

Walmart Fabric Department

Hey Ladies,

Walmart is pulling its fabric departments at the beginning of the new year. Its a financial disaster for me, I get 90% of my fabric there because of the prices. I'm not sure how much it will help but if you thing this is a bad move for Walmart, here is a link to a petition.

http://www.petitiononline.com/savefab/petition.html

Thanks!