| Sunday, December 28th, 2008 |
| 7:57 pm |
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| Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 |
| 3:41 pm |
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| Monday, November 14th, 2005 |
| 1:03 pm |
Disney
Unfortunately I had a rather bad time as I was (and still am) in a lot of pain and discomfort from my recent hospital stay. This was only excaberated by a nightmarishly horrific 18 hour train trip from D.C. to Orlando. It was VERY cold, the bathroom stank up the car with a nauseating blend of human waste and chemicals, there was an obnoxiously loud "friendly" drunk person, the seats were amazingly uncomfortable, the train jolted pretty much constantly when it wasn't stopped at some podunk station in the middle of nowhere or, as far as I could tell, for no particular reason whatsoever (2am idled for 45 minutes). It also started out over an hour late. After that I was laid up my room the first 3 days of our 7 day vacation. Dispirited The train trip was so bad we threw away our return tickets and flew back instead. Luckily everything else was very pleasant. Our room was great, the van we rented was fantastic and our trips to the parks were mostly great fun although hard on my back. We did most of the usual park and shopping things, our one special event being Halloween night at the Magic Kingdom. The special parade and fireworks were great and it was nice to see all the regular kids and grown ups in costumes. My sweetie in her costume:  |
| Friday, October 28th, 2005 |
| 1:32 pm |
Rambling
Heading to Orlando tonight for a week at Disney World and surrounding attractions. We're taking the train which will be a new experience for me. I've ridden on subways but never on a long train trip, at least that I can recall. Not real happy about being away for week, would much rather hermit (is that a verb?) in my house but oh well. Speaking of our house, we dropped the price but still no interest. As far as I know the one we want is still available but they dropped their price too so I doubt we'll get it. Had a follow doctor's appointment yesterday. Fasting blood sugar level: 100. Apparently this is in the normal range and there's no sign of diabetes which is an IMMENSE relief to me. I weigh 383 pounds. Several months ago it was over 400. As the nurse said to me yesterday: "getting sick is the best diet". 183 pounds to my goal weight. It's 2 weeks today since I had a soda, pop, soda pop, cola or whatever you call it wherever you are. I've had a really nasty taste in my mouth since I was in the hospital. Sometimes very metallic/bitter and sometimes very salty/bitter. Sometimes it goes away altogether. Not sure if it's an aftereffect of being sick or something to do with my change in diet. A LOT less junk and a lot more fruits and vegetables. I think I might also be in withdrawal from the pain medicine they gave me. Something like "delaudit" which apparently is related to laudinum/heroine/morphine. Also healthwise I've been having these little jabbing pains in the general area where the kidney stone was and where the procedures were done. Realistically it's probably just some remnant tenderness but I'm very terrified it's another stone/infection. Work's been really stressful but I got my major portion of a big project finished today. Delivered and installed a new server to my project's HQ building. I work on a government contract as a netadmin and maintain our office domain but our webserver is required to be physically located in the main building. Arranging for all the permissions, firewalls and ports to be correctly configured and arranging the physical space have been very stressful. Amazingly the move and installation went very smoothly and when I got back to my office all the connections worked properly. I was almost weeping with relief. There are still some setup and configuration issues with our new website before it's pushed live but they're not my problem, and just getting the move done is a major, major milestone. I think I'll be much more relaxed in Florida because of it. |
| Monday, October 24th, 2005 |
| 3:02 pm |
Kidney Stones Suck
Briefly: 10/15 wake up in terrible pain, rush to hospital, kidney stones/infected kidney. By 5 the surgeon was there to put a tube past the blockage. Procedure done, lot of soreness and discomfort, stay the night check out next day after being cautioned about high blood sugar (oh joy). 10/21 back to hospital for scheduled follow up, tube out (with a scare that it might go back) stone gone, Todd sore but recovering slowly and needing lots of rest. More details available if folks want. I feel mostly better now. Some soreness from the (various) IVs and in other places too. Especially irriating is lower back pain and numb/tingly thighs (possible pinched nerve?). So, time to change my life I guess. So far no sodas in 10 days, lots more water and lots less junk. We'll see if I can keep it up long term. ps: Don't get kidney stones, they hurt a lot. |
| Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 |
| 9:44 am |
Open House
I think we have missed the real estate party boat. Only 2 people visited our open house last Sunday. Not the end of the world, but still depressing since we had decided to move anyway and found a place we really fell in love with. It seems like houses are still going for lots of money, just not nearly as fast. I blame Greenspan for raising interest rates. Couldn't you have waited 3 more months?! I imagine most people don't care about arcane real estate issues but lately they've taken on a more personal signifigance for me. On the plus side our current place is the cleanest its ever been, and even more amazing we've been able to keep it that way for over 3 weeks now. :) |
| Wednesday, October 5th, 2005 |
| 11:41 am |
Why have all morning radio shows switched to talking about last night's TV shows? It's very irritating to me since I almost never watch TV. Nothing much going on on the house front. Our ad on the Washington Post website is messed up. Says we have 2 full baths instead of 1 full and 2 half. Figmentatious thinks maybe the program adds them together somehow. Also our listing only comes up if you search for condos and not townhouses. No headaches recently which is a relief. I was going to write some other stuff but I started this post this morning and now I've forgotten what it was. |
| Friday, September 30th, 2005 |
| 1:23 pm |
Nice Day
It's so beautiful outside today, I can't believe I came back to my office. Since I did have to get back to work I couldn't really nap even though there were some comfy-looking grassy areas. I saw two hawks while walking. One was perched high in tree and the other was soaring up high above. I stood and watched for a few minutes and eventually the first one took wing and they both soared above the trees, screeching. The bright sunshine from above shown somewhat through their wings and made them appear to glow. I'm not sure what type they were although I don't think they were red-tailed hawks. Probably some local common variety, but still really cool. Standing with my head tilted back made it stop hurting for a bit, but the pounding came back when I started moving again. |
| 11:23 am |
I have had a pounding headache on and off for about a week now. I think it might be my new sunglasses but it continues even when I don't wear them. I have been trying to get a get a cool pair of prescription shades for a while now and it's a real pain. I think I'm going to have ditch these and try again. A realtor brought some clients over to look at our house yesterday which cheered me up a little but I'm still in a pretty major funk. The cats helped with the showing by coughing up hairballs. :( The contract we put in on our dream house was rejected but we still might get it if we can sell ours quickly. The people we want to buy from didn't like the "we have to sell our house first" contingency, which is understandable but very frustrating. We're going to look at different places with our agent tomorrow, something I'm not too thrilled about. In spite of all that it's a beautiful day out and I think I'm going to go for a walk. Maybe I can find a quiet grassy spot to lie down and take a nap. Oh I meant to add I've become hooked on the panda cams: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/ |
| Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 |
| 2:19 pm |
Open House Review
It sounds like we had a modest showing of about 6 couples or groups, several of them simply nosy neighbors. We were listed late in the weekend so that might have affected people planning to see it. We may have another open house in 2 or 3 weeks if there doesn't seem to be much interest. Also the contract on the house we want in Rockville was rejected so that's disappointing. They didn't want it to be contingent on selling our current house. Hopefully we'll unload ours quickly and be able to make a new offer but I'm not counting on it. At least our current place is nice and squeaky clean. Somebody should start a pool on how long we can keep it that way. |
| Thursday, September 22nd, 2005 |
| 12:41 pm |
Open House
The sign is up, the contractors are doing a fantastic job, the cleaning crew should arrive tomorrow and by Sunday I won't recognize the place I've lived for the last 8 years. Our agent is having an open house on Sunday from 1 to 4 pm if anybody wants to come look at it. We will be out watching The Corpse Bride I hope, followed by an evening dinner with my parents for my and figmentatious' birthdays from back in August. I'm still a bit of a stunned trout over how quickly things are going. |
| Friday, September 16th, 2005 |
| 10:18 am |
12 Babes of Xmas
Leiacat posted that she'd been nominated for the 12 Babes of Xmas so I voted for her and Chite and I nominated: EzredshoesFigmentatiousMommyrexUilosWerewulfZoetrope88The most beautiful LJ users I know. :) Heptadecagram thinks it's demeaning, I think it's just for fun. There's contact information on the nominations page if you want to accept or decline. In other news, our house is a disaster and we're listing it for sale in less than week, wheee! For those who don't know Figmentatious' job is likely moving to Rockville and since I already work in Rockville we figured it made a lot of sense to live there. Especially with the price of gas and all these days. We've found a really knockout townhouse in a development called King Farm that's walking distance to the Shady Grove Metro station. Somewhere along the way we turned into grownups so we'll actually be hiring movers as opposed to hitting all friends up for help. Maybe we'll get lawn chairs and have people over to watch other people get paid to lift heavy things. And as usual not enough sleep and to much stress all around. |
| Thursday, September 8th, 2005 |
| 3:30 pm |
Back from Dragoncon
Had a pretty good time although I was sick with some crud all the way down and all weekend and all the way back. Better now thanks to a nasty dose of something called Zmax. The con itself was good. Didn't get to see nearly enough of the independant film festival they have every year but what we did see was most excellent. As usual there were an amazing amount of fantastic costumes but NOT as usual I wasn't really up to taking pictures on account of above mentioned crud. As soon the fan galleries start going up on the official site I'll put up a link. We shopped way too much and I now have a 2nd light saber, because, well, you know I NEEDED 2. :) Also I got the little piece to hook them together so as soon as I get another red blade I can do the whole "Darth Maul" look. Right now I've got one red, one blue, and two green blades so I can pretend to be some unknown good jedi who liked to fight with a light pole staff. |
| Wednesday, August 31st, 2005 |
| 10:36 am |
Moving Stuff
Yay! We packed more stuff last night. Now if only we knew if we're actually moving. :) |
| Tuesday, August 30th, 2005 |
| 9:37 am |
I Hate Waiting
I can't stand waiting to find out if we'll be moving. I feel like I'm going nuts. Bah. Plus I've got a bunch of car stuff to take care of today. On the other hand we'll be going to Dragoncon on Thursday, something I'm really looking forward to. Current Mood: Impatient |
| Friday, August 26th, 2005 |
| 1:39 pm |
Grrr
Sometimes one wishes ones friends would exercise the least little bit of discretion. Grrrrr. Oh well, life goes on. :) |
| Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005 |
| 9:34 am |
Trying to find a floor lamp
I saw the coolest floor lamp at the Expo design store in Rockville probably 5 or 6 years ago and I haven't seen one like it since. It was about six feet tall with a silver base and a thin shaft. The light fixture was a cylinder about four inches in diameter and about sixteen or eighteen inches high with the lower third being silver and the upper two thirds being a white glass shade. The exceptionally cool part was that in the lower part of the fixture there were three sliding rods that went straight through the cylinder. Each rod controlled a different color so if you pushed say, the top rod in and left the other two out the light would get redder. If you pushed the middle rod in the light got bluer, and if you pushed the bottom rod in the light got yellower. The three rods were about six or eight inches long and moved very smoothly so you could mix the light into whatever color you wanted. It was really expensive, at least $1,500.00, and I've never seen a lamp like it since. The people at the Expo store don't remember it but I don't think they were there when I saw it. I've searched online, A LOT, with no luck. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Have you seen one like it or do you know who makes them? |
| Friday, August 19th, 2005 |
| 11:13 am |
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