John

Short Saturday post

Leave a Comment

This is getting to be a habit.  The short posts on Saturdays, I mean.  We had a nice leisurely morning.  I ran six miles (takes me forever to do that) while John mowed the lawn.  I got back in time to help him pull up dandelions in the front yard.  Ate a quick breakfast, took a quick shower, and then we went to DC to pick up his race packet and have lunch.  DC was mobbed, of course, since it’s the weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival, but we got a good parking space on the south side of the Mall, right at 12th St.  And then realized we had to walk to 4th and F to pick up the race packet.  Not the best planning.  Had lunch at Elephant and Castle (mobbed for lunch even though it was 2:30), and then headed home.  It was much later than we planned, but I guess that’s how it goes.  I went to Costco to pick up Roxy’s medicine and then bought new shoes from the Naturalizer outlet nearby.  I might still check out Nordstrom’s tomorrow since they carry Dansko and Sofft.  The Clarks outlet was disappointing.

A recap of my day is not the most exciting reading, but it’s all I can think of at the moment.  I’m tired and we’re getting up at 5:20 tomorrow morning.  I’m going to bed.

Oh, the cherry blossoms are all gone.  Not out here (there are lots of cherry trees still blooming around here), but in DC, they’re all green now.  I’m sure that’s a huge disappointment to the thousands of tourists in town this weekend.  It was a beautiful day, though, and DC looks great in spring.  The sky was almost a September blue.

Busy weekend ahead

1 Comment

Eventful, at least.

Okay, you got me, there’s only one event, but I have things to do!

I spent most of today finding out what I’ll need to be able to do everything this weekend.  I got shoe recommendations from my friends online and found stores that carry those brands, I talked to the vet about how to switch Roxy’s medication correctly so we (hopefully) avoid seizures, I picked up the new prescription from the vet, and I figured out how we’re going to get to DC and where I’ll watch the race with Erik and Margaret (who I’ll be emailing soon) and where we’ll meet up with John again for Sunday’s Cherry Blossom 10-miler.  So tomorrow, I’ll buy shoes, John will do homework, we’ll pick up Roxy’s new medication, and we’ll run down to DC to pick up John’s race packet.  Quick trip.  And we’ll drive, of course, not run.  That’s for Sunday.  And then, we’ll get up absurdly early Sunday morning (so I’m sleeping in tomorrow, but I will run at some point during the day), drive to the nearest metro stop, metro in to the race, have a late breakfast with our friends, and come back and finish our Sunday at home.  Hopefully being lazy.  And at some point, we’ll mow the lawn.  And maybe mulch a flower bed or two.  Or not.  That doesn’t sound very lazy.

Pardon me while I announce what is obvious by now.  John is running in the Cherry Blossom 10-miler Sunday morning, so anyone who reads this and is in the area is welcome to join me, help cheer on John, and then have something to eat.  I wish you were all nearby.

John walked in the door just a couple of minutes ago, almost too tired to hug me hello, so I’ve started the rice and I have to go stir up my stir-fry.  He needs to eat well and get plenty of sleep for the next couple of days.  That should happen every day, for both of us, but you all know how hard it is to make that happen.  We’re better about the eating well.  Not so good about the sleep.

I want a new drug

11 Comments

My prediction about not getting a full night’s sleep last night came true, unfortunately.  Around 11pm, John nudged me awake because he heard Roxy start convulsing downstairs.  We rushed down there in time to get her seizure pillow (an old (and now disgusting) throw pillow) under her head.  John went to get stuff to clean up after her, and I sat down on the floor next to her to keep her head on the pillow and keep her flailing legs from driving her into a wall.  The seizure ended after 20 or 30 seconds, but her breathing was still really heavy (expected) and her legs still made occasional twitching motions, like she was trying to swim (she was on her side).  Within just a few seconds (maybe 10 or 15), she started convulsing again.  In only about 20 minutes, this happened again and again until she’d had a total of four, maybe five individual seizures, with those twitches and tremors in between each one.  At the start of the fourth one (or fifth – I couldn’t count that high last night), I left John with her and dashed upstairs to find my jeans and shoes.  If she can’t stop, the emergency vet is the only place to go.  After that last one, though, while I was on the phone with the emergency vet, she stopped.  We weren’t sure it was over, but after ten minutes or so, she got up and started her recovery routine (wander around the house and bump into things until she comes out of it).  The emergency vet suggested we bring her in, of course, but when I tried to get them to tell me what they could do, they couldn’t really say.  If she was convulsing and unable to stop, they could inject her with anti-seizure drugs, but only in that circumstance.  Otherwise, they’d just watch her and then call a neurologist in the morning.  We decided, since the seizures had stopped for the moment, that we could just watch her overnight and drop her at our normal vet in the morning(WAY more affordable) for observation during the day.  Which is what we did, and I’m glad, since she didn’t have any more seizures, I felt comfortable having her where I know they know her, and it only cost $23 for the day instead of the hundreds the emergency vet always charges.  Short story (too late, I know): she’s fine for now.  We did finally do a little more research into the cost of switching her medication to zonisamide, and here’s where Costco totally made my day.  Our vet had heard that Costco sold zonisamide for less money than other pharmacies (like CVS), so I finally called today.  We have several near us, so I picked one and called.  We’ll need 500 mg a day for Roxy (they come in 100mg capsules), so a month’s supply is 150 capsules.  The guy at the Costco pharmacy looked it up and told me it would cost about $30.  For 150 capsules.  My jaw dropped and the guy had to ask me if I was still there.  I voiced my disbelief (So formal.  🙂  I said, “Really?”), and he said that if we’re Costco members, it would only cost $27.  That was the first I’d heard that I don’t have to be a Costco member to use the pharmacy, but let’s not get sidetracked here.  I hung up the phone with the Costco guy and called CVS.  Maybe the medication came way down in price or something.  I asked CVS to price the same dosage, same number of capsules, and that pharmacist told me that 150 capsules of the generic brand would be $289.  To actually get the brand name, it would cost over $400. Seems a little unreal, right?  So I called a different Costco pharmacy.  The woman at this one got the same $30 price as the first Costco pharmacist, but agreed with me that it didn’t sound right.  She double- and triple-checked it, though, and came up with $30 as the price for 150 100mg capsules of zonisamide.  Roxy’s medication change just became affordable.  So now we have to figure how best to wean her off the phenobarbitol without an increase in the number, frequency, and intensity of her seizures.  But yay for Costco!

Also, yay for Curiosity!  Check out her award-winning stick-people drawings (here and here).  While I’m at it (finding good stuff online), I went through Steps 1 through 5 just reading this post. Of course, then there’s this.  Twisted and hilarious.

And now I really need to find something light to eat.  I’ve gone past really hungry and back into who needs food territory, but that doesn’t mean I should not eat at all.

Not as bad

2 Comments

Today was not as bad as yesterday.  Different, certainly.  And I kind of forced it to be better.  The day still started too early, and I was still on my feet all day, but after I collapsed into a chair during our lunch break, my coworker brought my sandwich to me, unasked, so I could spend the entire break off my feet.  He’s a nice guy. I had already decided not to run today (SO hot outside), so that automatically freed up some time once I got home, but unfortunately, about an hour of it was taken up by work stuff that came up during my commute.  (It kinda sucks when your whole team is spread out across all four time zones.  We all rely on each other, and that means we have to be available when the guy in Seattle needs help (for example).)  I’d planned to take the dogs to the dog park, but by the time I was free to go, it was almost sunset (when the dog park closes).  So that was out.  I spent some time with them in the yard, but it’s not the same.  (For them.  It’s about the same for me.)  Anyway, I forced my day to be better by making sure I had time to myself (and I ordered Indian (my favorite) for dinner).  I thought I’d make it Internet time, but it turned into TV time instead.  I watched a couple of shows John has never been interested in.  He gave up on Flashforward after the third episode (I should have), and he never even started Cougar Town.  Stupid name, but I like the show.

I’m having DVR priority issues again.  Why does every show I want to see come on Tuesdays at 10?  We record Southland and The Good Wife every week, and we want to keep up with V, but it comes on at the same time.  So annoying.  We’ll have to resort to hulu.com for V, I guess.  (Yes, we watch a lot of TV.  Someday, I’ll list our shows by night they get recorded, which is a mostly meaningless piece of information to me.  I don’t care when it’s on.  I just want to make sure it gets recorded so we can watch it later.  The DVR is the greatest invention EVER.)

Anyway, it’s after nine and I need to head in the direction of bed.  Which reminds me…I’m expecting my sleep to be interrupted tonight.  John said Roxy had a seizure this morning before he left for work.  Normal length, and it was a cluster (one followed by another), and if she follows her pattern, she’s already a little overdue for the next one.   We’re still investigating switching her to a new medication.  We’re looking for other (cheaper) ways we can get it.

Oh, was that John’s car door?  He mentioned he might get out of class early tonight…

Yeah, not his car door.  A neighbor’s.  I’m tired and I need to go to bed, but I just started to browse through my regular sites and I miss having time to play on the Internet. Yes, I’ve said it before, and yes, I could have this evening if I’d skipped all the TV, but it’s too late now, and I’m tired.  So, Internet, I’m sorry I’m neglecting you.  Forgive me?

Stocking up on Easter candy

3 Comments

John has a weakness for Cadbury Creme Eggs.  Since Easter candy started showing up in stores, I’ve bought a handful every week for him.  I figured today would be the last day to get any (and Wegman’s was, for once, a disappointment – no Easter candy in sight!), so after the grocery store, I headed to CVS to add a few more to the stockpile.  An employee met me at the door, directed me to the candy aisle, and then helped me find the last Cadbury display.  John owes that guy.  His stash of creme eggs should last him quite a while.

We watched Up last night.  Such a good movie.  I don’t know what took us so long to see it.  I need to add all Pixar movies to my birthday list.  We have a couple (Toy Story, The Incredibles – love The Incredibles), but I’d like to have the others.  We’re watching Inkheart right now.  Well, we were watching it, but we took a break ’cause John’s mom called.  I’d never heard of it, but we noticed it on HBO yesterday, and it has Paul Bettany in it (we like him), so we recorded it.  It’s…entertaining.  Not good.  Kinda dumb brain candy.  Paul Bettany’s good in it.  🙂  Huh.  I just looked it up at imdb.com and found out that the woman playing Brendan Fraser’s wife was Colin Firth’s girlfriend in Love Actually.  The one who cheats on him.  Hate her.  Who would cheat on Colin Firth?  She must be stupid.  (And fictional.  What’s your point?)

Censoring myself

Leave a Comment

I discarded a post that went into detail about the annoying verbal habits of a coworker of mine.  SO annoying.  But that’s the sort of thing that can get me in trouble, work-wise, and I decided not to post it.  I’m applying the lessons I learned from Dooce.  Who was in town yesterday, incidentally, because she was invited to participate in a forum on workplace flexibility at the White House.  She planned an informal get-together last night, and much as I would have loved to be there to meet all these people I’ve been chatting with, the timing didn’t work out for me.  Sad.

You know, it’s hard to avoid writing about work sometimes.  I just deleted a couple of sentences about John’s work situation.

Well, since I can’t manage to think about much else, I’m going to quit.  We watched an episode of Castle tonight, but it took nearly two hours to get through it.  We took turns pausing it to vent about the day.  We do feel better, though, and we were able to finish the episode.  (Oh no for Beckett!)   I love that show.

Riley is dumb

2 Comments

Riley has shown this behavior before (probably last spring), but I think he’s getting dumber.  I took them for a walk this evening and on our way back, he attacked a fake bunny.  A ceramic bunny that didn’t look real.  At all.  And when I pulled him away from it, he charged the one right next to it.  FAKE BUNNIES.  Come on.

Today improved dramatically.  Once I headed home for work, anyway.  This morning, I was late picking up my coworker, Gabriel (not his real name) , because it foggy.  And rainy.  And DARK.  And traffic was kinda bad.  Then I couldn’t find his apartment, again because of the dark.  And the fog.  And the rain.  But we got to DC in good time (I think the fog (and the rain (and the dark)) kept everyone home.  Or it’s spring break around here.) and had plenty of time to get ready.  The day went fine, nothing major to report, and I’m very happy to be home.  Although I did wonder why I was getting more congested as the day wore on, and then I remembered that I didn’t take my medicine this morning.  Any of it.  Because it sits next to my bed and it’s usually the first thing I do in the morning, but it was really early and very DARK.  And I was trying to be quiet and leave the lights off and get ready in the hallway so John could sleep.  I was gone before his alarm went off (at 6am).  Too early?  Yes.

Update: Post title changed because John felt “Riley’s an idiot” was too harsh.  🙂

How NOT to waste a Sunday afternoon

2 Comments

Hmm.  Well, that really depends on what you consider a waste of a Sunday.  And I think that entirely depends on what sort of weekend you’ve had or what kind of week is coming up.  For me, this Sunday, wasting the day would have meant doing nothing.  If you know me, you know that I consider doing nothing on a Sunday (or any day) to be one of the best ways to spend a day.  Normally.  But I have a very busy, somewhat stressful week coming up, with a long commute at either end of the work day and very little time to get stuff done.  Today, not wasting my Sunday meant being productive.  So I went to the grocery store (Wegman’s, of course) to stock up for the week ahead, went to Staples to buy a laptop bag for work, got my car cleaned out, paid the bills, filled out the census form, and did what little picking up was required to put the house back into the shape it was yesterday morning.  That part was easy; Jess and Chuck aren’t that messy.  And now I’m done with all of that and I can spend the rest of the day doing whatever I want.  I think.  And what is that?  I think it’s reading.

But first, I’ve seen a few movies recently.  John and I watched District 9 last weekend.  It was not at all what I expected, but that could have been because I didn’t see any previews or read anything about it before I saw it.  It was interesting, certainly, and gory enough for three movies, but I can’t say I want to see it again.  We watched Dean Spanley and then Stardust with Jess and Chuck last night.  I think I really liked Dean Spanley (it was not at all what I expected – took me completely by surprise when I started to see where it was going), and I think I’ll like it more when I can see it again.  Jess performed her magic to get our DVD player to play her Region 2 DVD, and we’re very impressed.  Stardust is one I already knew I loved.

I’m a little chilly, so I off to take a nice warm bath, read my book, and…I feel like there should be a third thing to keep the rhythm of the sentence going, but I can’t think of anything.  🙂  My goal for the evening is to not stress out about tomorrow.  I’m as prepared as I can be.

Cleaning up

6 Comments

So now the bathrooms are clean, the guest room beds are made, and upstairs is vacuumed.  I still need to clean the windows and dust.  At work (need I say it was another long day?), I basically cleaned out my entire desk.  I threw out what I could, but everything worth keeping is important enough to actually have with me in the training classroom.  So it all came home with me today.

I’m meeting Jess and Chuck around noon tomorrow in Chantilly, but there’s stuff I need to do first.  Sounds like I need a list.

  1. Lord & Taylor is having a shoe sale.  I could go on Sunday, though.
  2. Buy a laptop bag (for work) at Staples.  I’ve found the one I want.  That can wait until Sunday, too.
  3. Get my car washed, inside and out.  I think the place I go is closed on Sunday, so I have to do it tomorrow.  I’ll be carpooling next week, so my car should be in good shape.
  4. Dust.
  5. Clean the windows.
  6. Go to the grocery store.  I don’t even know what I need to get yet, but I won’t be able to feed Jess and Chuck if I don’t go.

At least I’m not traveling yet.  If this were the last weekend before all the travel, I’d be way more anxious and making many more lists.

My computer, thanks to John, is now running perfectly with its new hard drive and shiny new Fedora operating system.  And I get to use my pretty pink laptop with the nice keyboard.  (It’s really a pleasure to type on this keyboard.)

I think the condition of the house has been holding me back.  A half-clean house, so close to being mostly clean, makes me feel like I’m more in control of how and when I exercise, what I eat, and how I feel about myself.  You know?  If the house is clean, then I’m successful, and I have more energy and more enthusiasm for exercise.  But we still have too much clutter.  How do we get rid of all this crap?

Small accomplishments

2 Comments

I got up when John got up this morning, but with no intention of going to work early.  I’ve learned my lesson.  It was raining, so I couldn’t run, but I had a whole hour, so I read a little while eating my breakfast, and I CLEANED THE KITCHEN.  Not the whole kitchen, but the counters, sink, and stove.  So now, even though I still have a TON to do when I get home, I can at least walk in the door and see one clean corner of the house.  It’s better than nothing.

I must be crazy

Leave a Comment

Am I an optimist or an idiot?  I know which one I felt like this evening.  I had two days’ worth of evidence that going to work early was not going to mean I could leave early, but I decided to give it another try.  I was at work by 8am today.  Again.  It was almost 6pm before I left, and I worked through lunch.  (Like I usually do.)  So I’ve officially given up.  Or, according to Einstein, I’m insane. Of course, my schedule changes completely starting on Monday, so it hardly matters.

Man, that was negative.

My hard drive arrived yesterday (yay!), so I installed it when I got home.  That part was ridiculously easy.  It shouldn’t even be called an installation.  I unscrewed the old one and screwed the new one in.  Done.  Of course, I was still missing an operating system, but John downloaded Ubuntu for me last night and burned it to CD, so I popped it into the CD drive .  And ran into errors.  Pages and pages and constant scrolling of errors.  John came home, burned me a new CD, ran into more trouble, and has spent much of the evening trying to figure out why I can’t install Ubuntu on my laptop.  Eventually, he gave up.  I just watched him install Fedora instead.  I’m installing Linux; I really don’t care which version.

Heh.  John just named my computer Flyza Minnelli.  (Do you watch Modern Family?  You should.)

Late night, short post

2 Comments

That’s been happening a lot lately (short posts).  Sorry.  I spent my evening watching Gosford Park instead of playing on the internet.  I had a much easier time following what was happening (and who all the characters were) this time, and I liked it.  The first time I saw it, I was SO confused when it was over.  John remembers it as the most boring 4 hours he ever spent.  Clive Owen doesn’t do it for him, I guess.  I don’t always like him, but I do in this movie.

And here.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is fine, but Clive is all rumpled and scruffy and HOT.  I like.

I’m not a risk-taker

3 Comments

I went outside today.  For about 10 seconds.  John is trying to figure out why the airbag light is coming on in his car, so I stepped out into the driveway to see how it was going.  John said, “Um…” and pointed to the layer of pollen on the hood of the mustang.  Point taken.  I went back inside.  I just finished the third Dresden Files book, and I’m probably going to pick up the 4th next.  Mostly because I’m too lazy to put much thought into what I really want to read next.  And because I don’t think I can concentrate very well on anything that isn’t brain candy.  If I had another Dean Koontz novel, I’d probably read that, too.  Instead.  Whatever.  I’m staying inside today, and maybe, if John loves me, he’ll bring me egg-drop soup.

I’m defective

4 Comments

It’s a beautiful warm wonderful spring day.  And I’m afraid to go outside or open the window.  The tree pollen count is high and I’m as congested as can be.  My nose, my sinuses, my ears, my throat…can I get replacement, non-defective parts for every part of me above the shoulders?  I’ve taken a steamy bath, I’ve tried a neti pot (which wasn’t so bad, but didn’t help), and I’m already taking my medicine.  I’m trying Tylenol Cold on top of that.

I had plans today.  I was going to run, walk the dogs, take them to the dog park…not happening.  John is cleaning out the garage.  I’m working on being a little less miserable.

Baby fish mouth

4 Comments

I need to get over this major congestion/sore throat thing.  I don’t feel sick, I just need a new head.  Around 2am, I moved into the guest room so I could do all my tossing and turning and snoring and sniffling without keeping John awake all night.  To his credit, he did volunteer to be the one who slept in the other room, but I when I need to sleep propped up (like I do right now), I sleep better there (or on the couch), where I can pile all the pillows in the house into the corner of the bed and sit up comfortably all night.  Stupid allergies.

John is late getting home today.  He’s supposed to be working on a project for class, but he hasn’t been able to get some program to run, so he planned to meet with the guy who wrote the program after work today at 5:30.  Then the guy rescheduled to 6:30.  And John has no idea how long this meeting will take.

Okay, he just called (7:20), and he still has no idea how long this will take.  We decided that if he’s not on the road by 8, he should get himself a sandwich (they’re at Panera), and I’ll figure out dinner on my own.

What AM I doing?  I just spent 20 minutes condensing compiling combining meshing (what the hell is the word I’m looking for?) CONSOLIDATING (there it is!) my work bookmarks and home bookmarks, and I’m not done ’cause now I’m organizing them.  Yes.  I separate my books into fiction and nonfiction and then alphabetize them, and then for extra fun, I organize my browser bookmarks by type of site (work, blog, reference, shopping, etc) and alphabet.  I bet no one’s having more fun on a Friday night than me.  🙂  And if I needed a clearer indication that there is something wrong with me, it’s that I’m not starving right now.  I’m barely hungry.  I had a bowl of frosted flakes with a banana sliced up in it for breakfast around 8 this morning and one of those Smart Ones frozen pasta meals for lunch about 1pm.  That’s it.  Wait, I had half a bagel around 3.  But still.  I’m usually hungrier than this.  Of course, the more I think about it, the hungrier I’m getting.

I just heard from John (8:20), and he’s finally on his way home.  So dinner can wait for him.  Pizza it is.

Allergies suck. And blow.

Leave a Comment

Who likes to get to work early and then work late?  I do!  (Brown noser.)  And my throat hurts.  I’m pretty certain I can blame this on allergies and the change in the weather.  But it SUCKS.  So much.  And even when the ibuprofen is working and my throat only hurts a tiny bit, it hurts a lot when I sneeze.

Enough of that.  I spent about half of today reminding myself that it wasn’t Friday.  I thought yesterday was Thursday, too.  But tomorrow really IS Friday, and that’s nothing but good.  John is running the error checking/scanning thing I couldn’t find the other day on my poor broken laptop, but it looks like it froze in the middle of it.  So much for that.

(My throat hurts when I yawn.  What’s up with that?)

I have nothing internet-y to share with you today.  I’m sorry.  What with getting to work early and then staying late (and actually working the whole time) and then making dinner and spending some quality TV time with John, I haven’t had time to play on the good old interwebs today.  My plan for the next 12 hours is to take my medicine, go to bed with water and ibuprofen nearby, prop myself up on several pillows, and hopefully wake up tomorrow morning with a relatively clear head and non-scratchy throat so I can run.  It’s been several days.  Oh, the humidifier.  Can’t forget to set up the humidifier.

Good news!  Tomorrow’s pollen forecast is low.  Hope it stays that way.  I don’t want to have another of those springs.

Computer hell

4 Comments

Okay, that’s an exaggeration.  It’s not THAT bad.  I have several computer options besides my own laptop.  Could be worse.  Anyway, as I think I mentioned yesterday, my computer crashed on me twice last night.  It did it again this morning, and then one more time when I booted using Ubuntu to see if it was a Windows problem.  Clearly not.  And Ubuntu gave me a message that said my hard drive is failing and it has bad sectors.  That’s what I remember, anyway.  I can’t say for sure because it crashed.

I tried to run a scandisk thing John told me about, but I couldn’t find it, so I called Dell Technical Support.  It took me a while to get through to a person, but once I did, she was very nice.  She told me that I’d already done most of the troubleshooting she was going to suggest (I told John.  He said, “You’re welcome.”), so the next thing to do is run Dell’s built-in diagnostic tool.  She told me how to do that, told me that it might take a while, and suggested I call back once it’s done and I can see what errors are found.  If no errors appear, I need to look at the operating system again.

I hung up the phone and ran the test.  I got an error almost immediately about not being able to detect the microphone board, but I’m pretty sure that’s not my problem.  The next error came under the “Hard Drives” heading.  It said,

Msg: Error Code 2000-0146

Msg: Unit 1: DST Log contains previous error(s).

My first thought was “HOLY SHIT!  Daylight Saving Time is screwing with my hard drive!”  And just this afternoon I was gushing about how much I love Daylight Saving Time and all that lovely warm sunlight in the early evenings.  Traitor.

I called Dell Technical Support back and read the message to a new very nice woman.  She told me I need to replace my hard drive.  Yeah, I get that, but what does it mean? I repeated my Daylight Saving Time theory to her.  She laughed.  Then she apologized for laughing.  (I forgave her.  I laughed, too.)  And then she told me that it means one of the disks on the drive is damaged.  It either can’t read or can’t write.  (Poor illiterate disk.)

Since then, I’ve googled the error message and found out that while I can probably manage to use this hard drive for a little while (I can try to make it stop using the bad sectors), it’s on its way to total failure, so I might as well replace it.  It’s not that expensive.  And DST stands for Drive Shelf Test.  Whatever that is.

So I need a new hard drive.  In the meantime, I have options.  But I’ll miss my pretty pink laptop.

ETA: This mustard is awesome!

Now with more inanity!

2 Comments

Some days I wish something interesting would happen to me so I could write about it.  Most of the time I’m just as glad nothing did.  I don’t need excitement.   I just need to know I can come home every day.  (That sounds so sad.  I need a lot of other things, too, but we’re not talking about that right now.  Read into that what you will.)

Jess (pyromaniac in disguise) wrote some good stuff today.  (“Wrote some good stuff.”  I have a way with words.)

If you know your classic paintings, you may enjoy this video.  You’ll probably enjoy it even if you don’t know that many, if I may use myself as an example.  I found it courtesy of this post from The Bloggess.  There’s a lot of other good stuff in that post, too.

I’m happy to provide links to interesting things, but I can’t let that be all I do.  That would be boring for me.  Of course, right now I am boring to me.  Mm.  Boring is no good.  Smoothies are good.  (As are non sequiturs.)

Thank the whatever from high atop the thing for autosave!  My computer crashed (for the second time tonight) and I was convinced I’d lost this post.  But no, WordPress has an autosave function, and I don’t have to start over.  Which is good, since I don’t have the energy to redo even this less-than-stellar entry.

And with that, I think I’ll hurry up and post this before I crash again.  But what caused the crash(es)?  Hard drive?  Windows installation?  Wish I knew.  Too bad I’m not married to a computer fixer-upper/programmer/family tech-support guru.  Which reminds me…this is very funny.  ‘Cause it’s true.

Wet dogs

Leave a Comment

It’s been raining off and on all day (mostly on), so during a break this afternoon, I let the dogs out to play.  They were amusing themselves, sniffing around, eating dirt, and I went back to my book.  A little later I realized I was hearing rain hit the windows pretty hard and I remembered the dogs were still outside.  I rushed over to the sliding glass doors and found two soggy dogs huddled up against the door, trying to get under the overhang.  Adorable.  They’re in now, mostly dry, and being a little clingy.

I’ve already shelved my new books (I had to move about a shelf’s worth of books all over the house, one shelf at a time), and now I’m relaxing.  I think John just gave up on his projects for the day, so we’re going to cuddle up and watch TV.  And skip dinner.  We had a big lunch with Jess and Chuck after the book sale.

Lest you think I only blog about convulsing dogs…

4 Comments

…(’cause it sure feels like that sometimes)…I’ll write about something else.   Like how disgustingly good it feels to run when you’re in the third or fourth or fifth mile and you’ve gotten past the REALLY tight calves and you’re running slightly downhill and “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie starts to play and you’re singing along (through the panting) and you know you’re  hungry, but it’s not that long before John will be home and you can hug him (I can hug him – nobody gave you permission), but maybe not until after the shower ’cause no one appreciates a sweaty hug (and did I mention that my fifth mile is mostly downhill and I was flying?), and then we’ll grill hot dogs for dinner.  ‘Cause it’s spring!  Close enough, anyway.  It was 63 degrees out when I left the house to run this evening.

I finished The Road the other day (Sunday, I think).  I know Mom and Dad thought it was the most depressing thing they’ve ever read, but I liked it.  Yes, it was a bit (a lot) depressing, but that doesn’t make it a bad book.  I definitely want to see the movie.  And now I’m re-reading Bel Canto.  I love it.  It’s beautiful, it’s lyrical, and all of a sudden I feel like I’m in a Frank Sinatra song (“You’re much to much, and just too very very to ever be in Webster’s dictionary”).  Anyway, I love it.