Wow. Too much talking. Bleah. I gather we're short some people, and it's the next-to-last day of the month so every rep and their dog are calling in.
We got *so* much done over the weekend. Cleaning, laundry, sorting, trashing... new shelves all along one wall of the dining room and now we could even use the table to eat at if we chose. And we have nice matching dishes now as well, too... real Noritake china from Paul's grandmother (thanks so much, Go-Go Mommy!). My blueberry dishes were diminishing rapidly.
Bed time. Zowie.
Not many calls, which is nice.
A mostly sunny day, which is *very* nice. Well, it was sunny for a while. Clouding over again, though.
Wishing I could just hop in the car with my family and drive up to Rainy River. Maybe Christmas. My parents are selling their property and moving, perhaps to Pinawa, Manitoba (about 2 hours drive east of Winnipeg) ... it may be one of my few chances to go there again. :o( I love it there, especially in the fall. And I miss my parents this time of year most of all.
Yesterday we went to Buffalo Grove for Thanksgiving with Donna, Gary and Robyn. The big news is Robyn and Jim are engaged to be married, with no date yet set, but they're looking at either late winter or spring. Their plan is to have a private ceremony somewhere sunny and far away... then to have a reception locally for family and friends. Sounds like a plan to me! :o) She has already bought her dress, which is really pretty... strapless and off white with beading around the top and hem, and SCADS of train. A veil and tiara. She seems very happy with it.
Ben's play is next week. I think I'm more nervous than he is. :o)
There is one fight practice this week... Thursday, the same day as the ONE and ONLY showing of Ben's play. I'm debating whether I ought to fight at Boar's Head; I was going to see how my stomach was after practicing Wednesday. I think I will attach a tasset high on my C-belt to cover that side of my stomach while I fight for a while, regardless (for non-fighters, I'm going to add additional protection to my stomach).
OK, time to pay attention to work. hugs!
So Country Florists will have fifty dozen flowers ready for me to pick up at 8am on Dec 4 for Boar's Head. That's going to be a lot of flowers. I can't picture how many that is, or how big... but I will soon have a very accurate picture indeed.
Missing friends and family again. :o( Owroo. But at least my stomach is feeling a bit better. I'll be done the antibiotics in a couple days, then we'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted.
I'm looking forward to Thursday. Day off, sleep in, visit Donna in Chicago. I work again on Friday, though it's expected to be a pretty light day. Paul and Ben will be heading back to Donna's to work around the house.
Our weekend was good. Jenny joined us from Minneapolis about 9:45 pm or so and we loaded her stuff into our truck and headed out. We got to Jeff and Amy's in Champaign IL late, maybe 2:30? And of course we stayed up and talked for a while, except for Ben.
Saturday, Ben and I headed out, Paul stayed home with Jeff, Amy went to work, and Jenny worked on her garb then came to the event in the late afternoon. The event itself was fun (but oh the site was dry!) and it was great to see friends again. It felt really good to be back in the world of SCA bardic... I've missed it a lot.
We're in the last few days before Boar's Head and things are getting done. Meeting tonight, and it could be the last one. There's one more scheduled just in case.
And there are NO fight practices this week.
Sigh... money is frustrating.
I wrote yesterday, but my machine ate it.
Wow... busy day. :o)
... stay away from radio-opaque dye. Gross and nasty, all in one. Ick!
Friday I was sick, and my side hurt. Saturday the sick feeling went away but the pain got worse; enough so that we went to emerg Sunday to rule out appendicitis. I didn't figure I was *that* sick but if it wasn't that, then why was my side so sore?
Hospital smells, hospital gown, cold Solies. Poke, prod, ouch. IV, blood tests, very cold Solies. "Here drink this radio-opaque dye..." yum. Did ya have to put ice in it? Shivering Solies, warm blanket, a little better. CT scan, "Here, I'm going to inject you with a radio-opaque dye." "But I already drank a whole whack of dye." "Yes, but this is different dye that goes in your bloodsteam rather than into your GI tract." "Oh yay." "And by the way, it might make you feel..." Sigh. Woozy Solies.
Ring around the clock-face, a pocket full of dye... (i.e. much later)
"Well doc?" "See it's like this. All your internal organs are fine. All your body fluids test normal. We know from the CT there's inflammation alongside the large intestine. See? That's why it hurts over here (poke, prod)." "OK, so *why* is the side of my large intestine inflamed?" "Um, could be bacterial except you don't have a fever and your white count is normal, so it's probably not that. Could be a virus."
They gave me a dose of antibiotics 'just in case' and a prescription for a painkiller. They recommended I see my own doc today, which I did. He asked a few questions, called them and got the radiologist's reports, and after reading it, said, "Hm, it says right here they saw "early diverticular changes" in your large intestine. Could be you have inflamed diverticulosis, maybe diverticulitis."
Well humph. Antibiotics, bland food, miss some work, can't fight for a while (ARGH!), feel crappy for a while (especially while that dye works it's way out of my system - bleah) and hope it doesn't happen again or they need to 'scope it.
Cheery, cheery, cheery.
In Canada, November 11th is "Remembrance Day", the day commemorating the Canadians who died in the First and Second Worls Wars and the Korean War. In the US, this day is called "Veteran's Day", and the dead of those wars as well as of all other wars are honoured, or more appropriately, honored.
While I was looking for a site on this I ran across this site about Thanksgiving.
As with any site I cite here, use your discretion and good sense... I dunno if they're backed up by fact or not. :o)
Photos from the reception will only be on that site till Nov 27, so if you want to order any, you ought to do so soon. I think pics are $10 each, regardless of size.
I Saw a T-Shirt Today…
... it said, "Instant human, just add coffee"
Paul had to get up in the middle of the night and go to work. I didn't sleep as well after he left as I usually do when he is there, so I'm tired today. I imagine he's even *more* so.
My day is dragging. The light is dull, the sky is cloudy and the air is dry. Bleah!
And no fight practice tonight, and we can't go tomorrow either because it's Ben's parent-teacher meeting night. I'll *never* be able to get in armour again. Arrrrrrgh!!
...is not as easy as it sounds. Since hot drinks make my rosacea worse, Paul bought me a "cold" coffee-maker. You take a bunch of coffee grinds (one pound) and a bunch of water (9 cups), and put in a what is essentially a bucket, then let it sit for 10 hours. After the time has elapsed, you take the cork out of the hole in the bottom of the bucket and let the fluid drain though a filter and out into a container. The fluid is coffee concentrate, and in order to drink it, you dilute it by half or more. I tried it for the first time today (we made concentrate over the weekend) and I put too much concentrate in my cup... so I've been thinning out the same cup of cold coffee all day. Kinda bleah. :o)
Studying tonight for a LOMA test I'm taking tomorrow at work. LOMA is "Life Office Management Association", and this course is a basic annuities course to prep me for training on variable annuities. Once I have been trained, then I have the opportunity to be promoted to "the variable line" which means I can take calls about either fixed or variable annuities. While I doubt this will mean a raise, it will give me more flexibility in volunteering for extra hours, since right now I can only cover fixed shifts, and after I will be able to cover either fixed or variable shifts. It won't be a big change for now except in the calls I take.
Eventually though, it opens other doors for me, like 'Issue Resolution'. I have been doing a little of this and basically it's after-the-fact problem solving. When something tanks for whatever reason, someone has to try and fix it, and that's what I'm hoping to be able to get into, in the medium term. Longer term, I'm thinking of looking for patterns in why things tank, and solving those problems, so fewer issues result.
At least, that's the plan for now. We'll see what actually happens! :o)
Paying bills. Looking in particular at the letter we got from the apartment complex, telling us how much our rent is going to increase. Eep! So thinking about options. Snarg.
No fight practice today - AGAIN. Abelard and I were the only two that showed up, except for the guy with the key. He brought his armour but wasn't intending to fight, and he was clearly hoping no-one else wanted to fight either. So WE came home and spent an hour out front of our buildling, doing some drills. Fun and much better than nothing, but still not helm time. Dagnabbit.
Need something to read? Try anything by Steven Brust.
Need an investment? Buy a house in Oak Creek or Wawautosa and rent it to us.
Hugs.
So. Tull. Neither awful nor fabulous.
Paul was unimpressed by the lighting, which was noticably shoddy in a couple places. Like the spot operator missed his person. Lots. You know Paul used to do theatre lighting, right? So he knows a thing or two and can see mistakes more readily than someone without that experience. I saw there were problems a couple times, but it didn't leap out at me the way it did for him.
I was unimpressed by the audio balance: Ian Anderson's vocals were frequently inaudible. Paul opined that they may have done their sound checks without taking the muffling effect of a theatre full of people's bodies into account. One whole range of sound was swallowed. And we were puzzled by the choice of material; I mean, I know they have something like 40 years worth of stuff to choose from, but they focussed almost entirely on Aqualung and one other album, which I can't recall at the moment. The acoustic set wasn't really *acoustic*, they played electric bass and keyboard, and they mic'ed it sufficiently that it was LOUD... and Anderson's vocals disappeared. The electric set was better balanced, and the band seemed more comfortable.
But the Thai was really good. :o)
Date night tonight... dinner out at a favourite Thai place and then Jethro Tull live. Aww yeah!
Fight practice last night was cancelled. That's not so bad except we didn't hear about it till midafternoon, and we had planned our week around it.
We owe Paul's mother dinner at her place (we're thinking grilling some kabobs) and we have to get that scheduled. We got the pictures chosen from the reception. The package comes with 80 photos... well it really comes with one album with 10 pages, two sides per page. They can fit one to four pictures per page, depending on the size you want. So 80 is the most we can get without paying extra.
Tull tonight. Nothing Friday. Moot Saturday, to Matt's Saturday night for Army of Darkness. Sunday fight practice.
Whee.
Bush and Kerry are both here today, in downtown Milwaukee; one about four blocks in one direction, the other a couple blocks in the other. Traffic downtown is an absolute hash. It *should* be cleared out by the time Paul and I are heading home... hoping.
My LU paper is done and handed in.
I took care of a bunch of bills today, which feels like progress, though I hate paying for things with cheques.
I have the sleeves basted into place on the grey underdress.
Progress. :o)