| Oh Murphy, forgive me |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|11:38 pm] |
I don't know what I did but Murphy, he is pissed.
1) None of my tests this week could be called a success. Most were absolute failures. One or two, if you stretched the truth until it screamed and turned purple in the face, could at least be called useful.
2) Snow in April and me in a light weight fleece. Boston, I hear, is having a lovely spell of spring weather.
3) My main credit card account was closed on me. It worked yesterday. Today, nada. After about an hour on the phone with the nice automated system, I got a human and found out the account had been compromised in one of the recent grocery store credit fuckups. So now I may or may not have enough credit in my little backup card to cover a week at a decently nice hotel and a rental car. To make matters more fun, I'm supposed to drop the car off before the office opens on Saturday ... which means I'll spend tomorrow on the phone with Avis getting them to change which card they use.
4) I learn of the existence of these shoes ... http://www.dmusastore.com/pc-2190-11-3989-w.aspx . Trust me, the picture doesn't do them justice. They are all old lace and dusty roses. They are beautiful in a beat the shit of you with a delicate lace covered brass knuckle sort of way. Unfortunately, DM only does whole sizes and I am firmly a 7.5 in their sizing. I kept trying on the 7 & 8 and no, they just don't work. Its sad to see a grown woman cry over shoes that she doesn't even own.
5) While we'll probably get out early tomorrow due to lack of things to test, I can't find a reasonable flight home on Friday and will be stuck here until my scheduled departure time.
So Murphy, I'm listening. Your Law is all powerful. I haven't forgotten. Please forgive my crimes, whatever they may be, and don't work your Law on my return flight home. I don't want to be stuck in Houston ... really, I don't. |
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| persistant bugger |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|07:53 pm] |
I'm in Albuquerque. Its April in the desert so all I brought was a fleece and that was mainly for when I was inside the testing room (kept a balmy 58 degrees).
Yesterday it was a lovely bright 85 degrees with clear skies.
This morning, it snowed.
Snow ... in the desert... in mid-April.
Now it is cold and blustery and going to get colder when the sun goes down.
Anyone know a witch good at removing curses? Cause I can't believe global warming is out to get me that much. |
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| The good side of no Boy |
[Apr. 3rd, 2008|09:52 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
The Boy is off in Austin this week for work so I am left to my own devices.
This means I can have mushroom popovers, goat cheese and red wine for dinner and not have to justify myself to anyone. |
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| Spring! |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|07:21 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | chipper | ] |
My crocuses are up and blooming. My chives & oregano have started to peek through. Winter is almost done!
I say almost because they are calling for 2 to 4 inches of snow for us tonight but almost is better than not at all. |
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| WTF?!?! |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|09:12 am] |
Hey, Neal, is this a hoax or is my domain behind on its registration?
Dear Sir or Madam,
We are Beijing Erimut Network Information Technology Co., Ltd in China, which is the domain name registration centre here. A formal application from the company called ChengGuang Investment (China) Co.,Ltd is to register " joflasher" as their domain name and internet keyword on Mar 20th 2008. Since this involves your company name or trade mark, in no time do we inform you of this. Please contact us timely if a first registration is needed to protect the domain names and internet keywords.
Kind Regards
Erix.Wen
Tel: +86-10-62667420 ext.603
Fax: +86-10-62667460
Email: Erix.wen@erimut.com
Beijing Erimut Network Information Technology Co.,Ltd
Website:www.erimut.com |
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| I can take a hint, Bruno |
[Mar. 25th, 2008|09:37 pm] |
I just go email from Bruno, the coach from Boston Volleyball Association and the manager for my Monday league. It was an invitation to join the BVA Flight School. Flight School is BVA's jump training program and it has a reputation for being very hard core. Those who have gone through it have had some pretty impressive results.
Now I know my vertical sucks all sorts of things right now. I know I'm the weak point on my team in the advanced league. Not jumping means not hitting well and having an ineffectual block. However, the brace on my knee and the fact that I'm not jumping at all (instead of just having a short jump) probably should have told Bruno something was up.
Now is probably not the time to add two nights a week of jump training ... even though I would love to try getting through Flight School just to see if I could. |
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| So that's an anime convention, is it? |
[Mar. 25th, 2008|06:41 pm] |
Have to say, I am less than impressed with AnimeBoston. It seemed to be a lot less about doing things and a lot more about standing in lines. Everything had lines that were measured in hours. Everything. The panels (of which there were very few for the number of attendees there, which explains the lines), the main events, everything. I literally didn't go to a single event or panel because nothing justifies that sort of line to me. There seemed to be this perverse pleasure shown by the attendees over the lines. "I spent 4 hours in line to see the masquerade". Um, yeah, good for you. I'll pass, thanks.
The real winner was the six hours waiting in line on Saturday to get the boy his pass. Wrap your mind around that one for a moment. Six hours, starting at around 10:30. By the time we were done, most of the panels he had expressed interest in were over and all we wanted to do was go back to the hotel room and sit down. I just can't grock how the organizers think this is okay in any way, shape or form. The real heart breaker was watching the 12 year old kid with his dad in front of me. He started out being so excited, pointing out all the cosplayers in line, bouncing around, talking about the anime he hoped to find in the dealer's room. I learned a lot about Naruto from that kid. They left with the kid in tears after 4 hours proved that one line just lead into another. I felt so bad for him and I really wanted to kick the con organizers in the knees over that one.
On the up side, the people attending were great. I got to meet ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) vr2lbast, who was a wonderful room mate with interesting stories to share over dinner, and katrinastrife, Utena seamstress extraordinaire. I also got to spend some time with amet and sephyelysian, who I really haven't seen since YaoiCon oh so many years ago. starherd, vr2lbast, Bast's friend and I shared a hotel room and we ended up with lots of people congregating there to discuss dollfies and read The Owl's Skull. If you haven't been exposed to the glory that is The Owl's Skull, do yourself a favor. Get together your best gang of literature nerds and read it out loud to one another. Trust me. Even though I was half asleep, it was still fricken hilarious.
There were a ton and a half of lovely costumes and all the people at the con seemed to be very polite. People asked before glomping and obviously appreciated others putting effort into their costumes. starherd and the Boy were both hits in their lovely costumes. starherd went in her full leather Loz outfit. She also made the Boy a wonderful Vincent costume, complete with The Claw (tm). Watch out, world, she's learned how to make foam armor and cast resin. I'll link in photos once I find a few.
The artist alley was fricken HUGE. The art show, on the other hand ... very tiny. Apparently the real art is all in the alley at AnimeBoston. I didn't show anything there. I still can't draw anime to save my life. Its really weird for me to be attending a con without an artist badge.
Ah, well. Apparently I don't have the proper temperament to enjoy anime conventions. I'll know better next time and just in case I forget, I have this nice entry to remind me. Now back to catching up with work work and dealing with the case of Con Crud I seem to have caught. |
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| Do you really need knees? |
[Mar. 13th, 2008|12:35 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | knees | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  exasperated | ] |
PT gave me permission to start riding & playing again as long as nothing hurt and the knee didn't swell. Great, I thought. I played in my league finals on Monday and rode on Tuesday.
Come therapy on Wednesday, I got read the riot act because my knee was swollen. Truthfully, I just couldn't see it. She had to break out a measuring tape to convince me that it was actually bigger than the "good" knee. Knees are all weird shaped anyways. I don't know how you're supposed to tell that one is slightly weirder than the other.
So therapy was a bust this week since she declared my knee to damaged to do anything on and instead put me under electrodes and ice for 30 minutes. She also took a permanent marker and drew a horizontal line across both of my knees. I'm supposed to measure at that line an hour after doing anything in order to find out if my knee has swollen since I'm too blind to see it.
Stupid game. Can I just order a replacement now? |
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| Hey Michele-lee & Selina |
[Feb. 27th, 2008|10:04 am] |
Spectrum put up some videos of the judging. Here's the page
Michele, your artwork is shown during the Unpublished video.Second video down, labeled 01:15. Your paintings go by about mid way through.
Selina, I saw one of yours go by right at the beginning on the video labeled 09:15 - Advertising Submissions. |
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| Frick Frick frick |
[Feb. 24th, 2008|07:27 am] |
I meant to post this yesterday and then I forgot.
Happy Birthday starherd |
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| Unusual visitor |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|09:57 am] |
This morning while getting dressed, I noticed that we had an odd visitor in our back yard. At first I thought it was our neighborhood grey fox hiding under the pine trees but then it got up.
I called the Boy over and we both agreed it was either the biggest damn coyote in the state or an escaped wolf or hybrid. That thing was as big as most of the deer around here. Fricken huge. It didn't look like any sort of domestic I've ever seen and it didn't carry itself like a dog does. For all the world, it looked like someone had super sized a coyote. I really wish I'd thought to grab a camera before it loped off.
One more reason why our cats are strictly indoor pets. |
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| movie meme |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|09:20 am] |
Picked up from just about everywhere now ...
1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Fill in the film title once it's guessed.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.
( Mememememememe ) |
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| Well, that's disappointing |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|12:55 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | knees | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | moody | ] |
My physical therapy evaluation was this morning. The therapist went over my MRI report and then spent almost an hour manipulating my legs.
The resulting conversation went something like this:
PT - "Well, the good news is that your ACL isn't completely torn. The bad news is that your ACL isn't completely torn."
Me - "How can that be bad?"
PT - "Because if it were completely torn, the doctors would go straight to surgery, which would be my recommendation. You've done significant damage to that ligament. Its very stretched out. The other three are being overly stretched due to that. This tibia translation here? That's bad. It means that you've already stretched out this ligament here. This is a recipe for torn meniscus or arthritis or one of the other ligaments tearing. The only good news is that the meniscus are still intact and that your leg muscles are already in good shape."
Me - "The doctor I saw said it wasn't that bad."
PT - "Yeah, that has me confused too. Are you sure the doctor knew what sort of activities you do? Because his recommendations look like what you'd give to a couch potato, not an athlete."
Me- "Yeah, I told him what all I do."
PT - "Well, I guess he just wants an honest attempt a therapy first. Don't worry, though. They send everyone for physical therapy before knee surgery so our time together won't be wasted effort."
After a bit more research, I figured out that the "Doctor" I saw was really a nurse practitioner. Normally this wouldn't be an issue except one of my teammates warned me that the Orthopedics NP was incompetent and messed up her diagnosis six ways to Sunday. Time to go see an actual doctor, I guess.
So now I'm not permitted to do anything for the next three weeks outside of riding the stationary bike at a low setting. After three weeks, I have to wear a mechanical knee brace for anything that involves jumping, turning, running or twisting ... basically everything. And if we don't do surgery, then I should get really comfortable with that brace cause I'll be wearing it forever. Fuck. |
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| Bees knees |
[Feb. 19th, 2008|02:44 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | knees | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
I just got off of the phone with the orthopedist. I didn't do any real damage to my right knee. I've just managed to irritate the previous ACL damage, which in turn is irritating all the muscles around it. So now I get to do PT and I'll be good as new in a few weeks.
Lets hear a "yay" for no surgery. |
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| DUDE! |
[Feb. 18th, 2008|10:07 am] |
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MRIs are the Coolest Thing EVER! I spent a good hour going through my CD going "eewww, neat!" Of course, I have no clue what I'm looking at if it isn't bone but still ... man, I want an MRI of my entire body right now. |
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| Get ready, get set, CON! |
[Feb. 13th, 2008|04:23 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | art | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  determined | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Aggressive Driving mix | ] |
I'm slowly but surely preparing for Boskone. Small paintings are done. Matting has started. My new prints are on their way. I'll finish it all up on Friday which I'm taking off from work in order to stay sane.
On the down side, I won't be able to attend on Saturday. I have an MRI scheduled for my knee. On the up side, the doctors think I'll just need physical therapy to strengthen it instead of surgery. I like this plan. |
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| Dark & Dirty |
[Feb. 11th, 2008|08:39 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | art | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  productive | ] |
This thing has been sitting on my desk since last Halloween. I just couldn't figure out what to do with it.
( still unicorns, more or less ) |
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| Quicky Art |
[Feb. 9th, 2008|04:52 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | art | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | productive | ] |
I'm desperately trying to get some little pieces done before Boskone next week. Here's the first one off the easel.
( Here there be unicorns ) |
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| This week could end at any time now! |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|01:15 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | bitchy | ] |
This week officially sucks.
1, Midori died.
2, I messed up my knee at volleyball on Monday by trying to do a 180 while diving. Doctors are talking sprained ligament or a meniscus tear. This is the same knee that I did ACL damage to eight years ago, so its not exactly pristine to begin with. Either one will bench me for a few weeks if its minor and god knows how long if I need surgery (very doubtful since I'm able to walk on it). I have an appointment with a specialist next week and until then, I've got a compression brace on it and I'm not allowed to do jack-all.
2.5, While checking out the knee, the doctors x-rayed it and found fluid around the kneecap (prepatellar bursitis). While less of a worry than #2, it still needs to be addressed.
On top of these big things has been a never ending stream of little annoyances. My waffle iron died (yes, the new one). My car needs to be worked on. Bugs have been found in code I wrote almost two years ago that need fixing.
So week, be done now, m'kay? |
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anxious
cold