Month: January 2007

Categories
Should We Talk About The Weather?

Snow day!

After quite a few near-misses, we’ve finally gotten some winter weather here. It’s not half a foot of solid ice or anything like that…but it’s bad enough. Because of all the near-misses, the highway department completely blew this one off, and didn’t start sanding streets and highways until it was already bad. It took me nearly two hours to get home because highway traffic wasn’t moving any faster than 35mph.
Highway 71 North, which is already one of the most treacherous highways in the state, if not this part of the country, was worse than usual – just trying to go in a straight line at not-unreasonable speeds, I was fishtailing all over the place – and I even had my trusty camera running! Check out the mildly scary video here.
Winter weather - western Arkansas - January 31, 2007
This is what my car looked like when I closed down the office and went outside today – it was around 2 in the afternoon. … Read more

Categories
Cooking With Code

Scribblings v4.0

After maybe a grand total of two and a half hours’ work, I’m pleased to introduce the new version of Scribblings, based on a WordPress theme called Fishy 1.0. As a certain Corellian smuggler captain once said, I’ve made a few modifications here and there. 😆
If anything doesn’t work, let me know. The thinking behind this latest template swap – seems like this is the third one in as many years – was to get the categories to show up correctly, and to escape some of the odd booboos that were creeping in with the WuCoco theme (though I quite liked that one). I’m not done with all of my souping-up just yet, but I kinda like the new skin. (Then again, I remember saying that before… 😉 )
Tuesday was a much-needed day of rest for me, so not much to report. I’m really thrilled about Wednesday’s 70% chance of sleet, ice and snow. 😯 Really thrilled.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Critters

Horse Power

I was immensely saddened to see that Barbaro didn’t make it. Not a total surprise, but still heartbreaking. I’m sure some folks wonder why his owners poured a fortune into saving him, but I completely understand. Almost better than I’d like to. It’s sad that he didn’t get a chance to add a few little Barbaros to the world, but of course he couldn’t be bred in the condition he was in.
I’ve had a roughly four or five day period where I’ve questioned my own breeding. Namely, the wife is in the hospital for the second time in a week, unable to keep liquid, food, or much of anything down. Even water would make her throw up. She’s coming home tonight (her mom is bringing her home after taking over for me at around 6pm tonight; we’d been in the ER since 11:00am) with yet another batch of prescriptions that are supposed to get her back on her feet and working again. At present, I have no idea where my offspring’s well being stands with regard to her ill health and the barrage of medications. I’ve spent much of the day bracing myself for very bad news.
One thing is for sure: the old tale about mood swings during pregnancy ain’t a lie. I’m going to have to find something to do, or friends to hang out with, within a reasonably close driving distance, and soon, or I’m convinced we’re gonna strangle each other with our bare hands. I’ve been advising the guys at Star Trek: Origins, a new fan film being made in Kentucky, but Kentucky is hardly a short drive away. (Though there have been nights recently where I’ve felt like I’d rather Olivia, Othello and Oberonbe in Kentucky…) Hopefully once we’re both back to normal health and I’m not staying home waiting on her hand and foot around the clock and can actually sleep, there might be some equilibrium restored. God, I hope so. If I can survive this, I’d like to think it’ll be a while before the kid can do anything to try my patience near as much. I’ve tried at all times to be understanding and compassionate, but I can only take so much abuse in return.
For some reason, Livejournal didn’t receive an entry I posted early this morning during one such sleepless interval, so here’s a link to it if you didn’t catch it. Why that happened, I’ve no idea. It’s kinda disjointed anyway, so maybe you folks are better off in that universe where the last entry was the picture of Oberon and Othello curled up asleep. To make it up to you, here’s a picture of all three of them, just moments ago, keeping the bed warm for Jan before she comes home.
I miss sleep.
(Reposting to make sure LJ crosspost still works.)… Read more

Categories
Music Serious Stuff

Well, I suppose they are brothers after all…

So I took a look at the new Crowded House mini-site (link), and was stunned to see that Neil Finn now looks like…well…Tim, circa 3 or 4 years ago! (Well duh, I hear the crowd saying.) Moreso than usual, I mean. He looks almost exactly like him. (Of course, I seem to remember a while back being completely stunned when I opened the CD booklet for Imaginary Kingdom to see that Tim had gone from that one little shock of grey hair that he’s always had to this enormous mane of completely grey hair.) It’s somewhat curious that most of my pantheon of musical heroes are, across the board, steadily marching toward their mid-50s.
The upcoming Crowded House album has a title, Time On Earth. In other news, Intrada is taking orders for their limited edition (~3000 copies) release of the original 1968 session recordings for Alex North’s unused 2001: a space odyssey score – be sure to leave me a copy though.
With the above, plus the already-ordered final ELO remasters, and the upcoming Alan Parsons Project remasters, I keep telling myself that great music is a perfectly acceptable reason to be broke before the baby gets here. 😛 Dave mentioned over on Not News his feelings on 2007 being an embarrassment of music riches – I certainly hope he’s right on that count. It’s definitely shaping up that way. (It’s not for nothing that music reviews have been bumped back up to a weekly feature on theLogBook for this year.)
Veering completely off topic here, and not prompted by anything in particular, I’m wondering if anything is really being accomplished by the trend of the past few years of all but forcing-at-gunpoint bigoted celebrities to apologize for their actions and promise to change their ways. I understand that there’s an instructional element to this, that we want to make sure that hatred and bigotry aren’t cool just because they’re practiced by the likes of Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, that fellow from Grey’s Anatomy whose name escapes me… I understand we need to say that it’s not cool, and it’s not okay. But somewhere inside me is a little bite-sized bit of Libertarian wondering if it’s any better to “force” tolerance than it is to embrace ignorance. Does it change my world to hear that Michael Richards is sorry and is “seeking help”? Not really. I’m content for such people to stand as less-than-shining examples of ignorance, and proof that the fight is so very far from over, and there’s something just a little thought-police-ish about the enforcement of tolerance that makes it a bit creepy. Tolerance is good (though acceptance is better), but jamming it down people’s throats sets up a potential backlash that could do more damage to the fight for civil rights, gay rights, religious tolerance, etc. than somebody’s tirade to a comedy club audience or a police officer or a closed production set for a TV series – not exactly mass media venues.
By broadcasting these events and making them water cooler news, are we not giving the celebrity bigots more of a voice for their garbage than they would’ve had otherwise in any of these settings?… Read more

Categories
Home Base

Poopapotamus

Urgh. What a couple of days it’s been. Turns out that the wife probably did indeed have a stomach virus, because something’s been making me feel like crap, both figuratively and literally, for several days now. I left work early Friday and only reluctantly moved around today, though I’m feeling significantly better (but still craptacular). I’ve probably mentioned before the family code words for how much of a bathroom visit I’m in for, and over the course of the past 2-3 days, I’ve hunted for poopapotamus in Poopopolis repeatedly, as well as fighting the battle of Crappamattox, passing my craptitude test, and just plain sat on the captain’s chair making log entries. (All of which I’m sure you wanted to know.)
MobilePro 780c - you'd be amazed how much of the site is written on this these daysMuch of today was spent writing stuff on my Mobilepro and firing it across the network to the PC where most of the site is put together, so whenever I was finally able to leave the bathroom, I had some stuff I could plug into the site. It just wasn’t a pleasant atmosphere today in the house, two miserably sick people and one of ’em already uncomfortable because there’s an extra passenger on board. I just hope that passenger’s getting through this whole thing better than his/her parents are.
I’ve gotten my appetite back, though for the moment, eating anything still has pretty immediate results. Anyway, enough about my digestive system.
Can’t wait to see how compatible this state of existence is with the task of shoveling other creatures’ crap on Sunday…… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code

Scary stuff

So I’ve only been home for about an hour now, having gone from work straight to the hospital to meet my wife, who has barely been able to keep food, water, or even so much as a pill down all day. After a stupidly long wait in the ER (the nurses helpfully crossed her name off on the sign-in sheet, believe they’d already seen her, which increased our wait by something like half an hour), she was finally seen by a doctor, who decided that it’s most likely a stomach virus of some kind. She was given something to help her with the nausea (something which also pretty much knocks her out, and supposedly won’t have any harmful side-effects for her or the baby), and after taking that was finally able to keep a little food down. She and Olivia have gone to bed for the night; normally Oberon sleeps with them too but I’m keeping him with me for tonight. Woohoo! Boys’ night out!
This was really our first “emergency” so far, and I approached it with a polite but firm “get out of my way or I’ll get you out of my way” manner. I was a bit miffed by the goof-up with the sign-in sheet, but I think it was an honest mistake.
I saw Henry (from the station) and his son there too. Good Lord. I remember when that kid was a newborn, and haven’t seen him since. Now he’s inquisitive, wisecracking, and seems to be just dangerously smart. I’ll count myself lucky to have a kid like Skyler. They were there to see another family member, and I got to catch up on some station gossip. Remember folks, sweeps starts one week from tonight! 😆
As fond as I am of the current Scribblings WordPress theme, I came to the realization recently that, for all the word I’ve put into things like random header graphics, I’m gonna have to change it all up again. Stuff like “Spamatazoa” and “Baby Makes Three” are supposed to be subcategories, but they’re not showing up that way. Ah well. More changes on the way. I may just say “to hell with it” and use the same theme that’s in use for most of the other sections, but I kinda like that it’s apart from those – it’s allowed to be a bit more bloggy.
Anyway, back to point A…it’s amazing how a little critter made out of my DNA and probably about the size of a gumdrop is able to scare the hell outta me like this. It kinda makes me reel a bit to think what it’s going to be like when said critter is more baby-shaped than gumdrop-shaped.… Read more