i rule

every quarter at work, they give an award to whoever fixed the most bugs. last quarter that was me. i rule.

i got this the day before my birthday, which was nice. but also for my birthday i got a really horrendous bug/throat infection/god knows what, of which i haven't fully recovered from (i'm 98% there tho).

anyway, to what do i attribute my bug fu success? my quality work ethic? workaholic nature? well naturally those played a part, but no. the real reason is that i was the lead on an insanely f'd up project at work that lasted for months. which led to insane numbers of bugs being assigned to me.

so, don't worry, liz. you'll win next quarter. again.

ps. sorry to everyone for the last two posts. those really were too long. i don't think i'll get the urge to do something like that again, but if i get tempted, i'll try to stick my finger in a socket first or something.

road trippin, part two

and now, i bring you the continuing saga of the Great Road Trip of 2005:

saturday, 7/23
what'd we do for breakfast? I forget. but checked out of the sheraton, went over to see wilma real quick to let our ice paks hibernate in her freezer til monday morning (when we'd have to return to tucson to get lori). then we made the trek up to phoenix to visit my side of the family. arrived around 12 and called, as planned, when we got close to see if they wanted to go to outhouse steakback for lunch.

but naturally it couldn't be as simple as that. no, my mom started crying because they didn't have enough money to go to lunch and she was embarrassed. plus they were having trouble in general because my sister/brother-in-law's (katie/jake) check hadn't arrived yet (my parents share an apartment with them) and were having to cover all the expenses. of course she couldn't say that at first, she just hinted that there was trouble with katie and that she thought katie didn't want to come to lunch.

sidebar: my sister and my parents can create drama, confusion and conflicting versions of the truth like no one I know.

so when she said that there was 'trouble' and 'did I want katie to come', I said 'if katie coming means that people are going to have trouble behaving, then no, I don't want her to come. if you don't think there will be a problem, then yes, please tell her to come.' I know that may sound harsh but it's just a defense mechanism against further family angst.

anyway, whenever my family comes to visit or we visit them, we always try to treat them to whatever we're doing - movies, meals, whatever. because even though we're faaaaar from rich, we gots a lot more dough than they do because they (the four of them) are perpetually broke. the reasoning for that is another therapy session, but suffice to say that we expect to treat them. budget for it. so when my mom started crying, I said that I understood why she was upset, but not to worry about it because we'd cover it. she replied as expected with a statement about not expecting that, and of course I responded with, 'I know, it's ok.'

and so off we went to lunch, altho naturally outhouse steakback was closed so we ended up at a mimi's café a few blocks away. after that call with my mom, min and I were both pretty anxious about how lunch would go, but it was really good. min sat near my parents and i forget what insights she found. but for me, talking to katie and jake, i found out more about their trucking misadventures. apparently they did not quit their job, but are actively looking for other trucking jobs because they've realized that the company they're with is not as above board as they thought. and i respect them for trying to be responsible (it's a lot more than i'm used to hearing).

after lunch we went back to their apartment. they moved into it in january i believe, so it was the first time i'd seen it and…my god. it was packed to the gills with all their stuff. not to the ceiling, although in some places it was very close. but it spread out so that a narrow path between boxes, furniture and just STUFF was the only way to navigate from room to room. the place was tinyish, but each couple had their own bedroom/bathroom. as a bonus, in the last 2 weeks, katie & jake's bathroom has sported the occasional scorpion. that's right! zing! apparently this is grounds for breaking your lease in arizona, if the management doesn't take care of it (which he's refusing to) so hopefully they'll all be moving somewhere bigger and better soon. needless to say, this revelation made me paranoid during every visit to their place.

we chilled for a few hours, then after much debate, went to go see the fantastic 4 which was really a lot better than i expected. really good special fx and the story - not so bad. not gonna win any oscars but it was a good way to stay cool and you know, get out of Scorpion Apartment. after the movie…hmm. we probably had dinner somewhere, but i'm blanking on it.

afterwards min and i went back to our hotel, the hilton phoenix airport, which is apparently very new. it was nice but had horribly long hallways and of course we were most of the way down. good thing we were only staying for one night. we watched tv for a little while and ordered a very yummy and cheap quesadilla from room service, then crashed.

sunday, 7/24
woke up early (730) so min could go visit her niece wendy. another very long story that i don't want to tell today, but wendy is a sweet girl who because of a minor lapse in judgment involving alcohol, is in prison for vehicular manslaughter. consider this a very brief PSA to not drink and drive.

anyway, i was supposed to call my family and meet them for breakfast, but i remembered that they like to sleep in. so i lounged around a few hours then went over to their place. after another debating session that went on entirely too long, we went to mcgrath's.

mcgrath's will always hold a special place in my heart because i went to the original and original spinoff back in salem, oregon LIKE A BANDIT. the spinoff was in lancaster mall and being a teenager, naturally i was at the mall a lot. but i was also downtown a lot, where the original is, and that one was the best. breakfast, lunch, dinner, they had it all. super yummy and not too pricey. i've been to 3 or 4 mcgrath's since (other places in oregon, arizona), but unfortunately, none of those were as good as the original. they were fine -- better than denny's or anything like that! -- but not the same. oh well.

we had a very extended lunch, chatting away. dad asked me a lot about The Place Where I Work and the Big Project i've had this year because he still trolls for stamps (the philatelic kind) at The Place Where I Work's parent company website. while this may sound innocuous, it really bothered me because my dad has an addiction to stamps. the buying, selling, collection and obsession with stamps, especially from the far east. this addiction, in addition to some other lovely personality traits, led my parents down a path of financial devastation from which they will probably never fully recover. they lost their house, cars (still have one barely functioning car) and many other possessions. my dad almost lost my mom (she left him a few times but always returned) and i lost a lot of respect for both of them (mostly my dad).

that said, i'm also really good at denial. so i answered his questions and tried not to think about WHY he was asking. supposedly he's not buying stamps anymore, he just looks at them and catalogues information about them in his billions of stamp catalogs. which seems to me like an alcoholic spending all his time with his face pressed against the glass of a liquor store, but whatever. i try to stay out of it.

min came to mcgrath's after she was done visiting wendy. min was also lucky enough to hear the tail end of the aforementioned work-stamp conversation and gave me some annoyed looks. yeah, i know.

afterwards we went back to the apartment and hung out a little but then thought hey! let's go see another movie. isn't that the best way to kill time with people you feel emotionally unsettled with who also have an extremely cramped apartment? i know we all thought so. so we agreed to go see batman begins which, except for a couple of too-long philosophy-of-war monologues and blurry fight scenes, was actually pretty good. but before the movie, both my dad, and katie & jake wanted to take naps. and they did! but min, my mom and i went to the outlet mall right next to the theater and snagged min a bunch of really cheap but nice clothing.

the movie didn't get out til about 10pm so after that we just said our goodbyes and jetted down to tucson. on the way down, i got to find out some juicy tidbits about min's family, as related to the funeral proceedings. my favorites include the fact that pam (matt's mom), a longtime drug user who just finished her last rehab stint a month or so ago: a) was caught doing drugs at the viewing, b) those drugs were supplied by a longtime friend of pam and matt's - a woman whose son matt was friends with, but that son died at age 13 (so probably about 4-5 years ago if they were the same age) after his similar death-by-cop experience, c) pam didn't need any $ for the funeral at ALL. her we're-separated-but-still-living-together husband, rick, paid for it, and despite this, d) pam apparently gave her/min's brother louis shit for not sending her more $ than he did.

needless to say, things like this made the trip to tucson just fly by! we checked into the lovely 4 pts sheraton around midnight and promptly zonked out.

monday 7/25
woke up around 9am. wanna have breakfast at the good egg again? i sure do! and let's meet up with all the family except lori so we can avoid extra drama. i hear she doesn't have to check out of the hotel until 1pm, sweet! but wait, who's this calling on the phone, as we sit here, waiting for our large party to be seated at a table? and proclaiming how she has to be picked up right now (1015) because her hotel's checkout time is 1030?

you guessed it - my favorite sister-in-law. but min just called her back and said we couldn't pick her up until 1pm and pretty much left it at that. woo! go honey!

we had a very nice breakfast with everyone else (about 10 of us total), chatted quite a bit about not much in particular. but so much that it was almost 12 by the time we finished, and 1230 by the time we got over near lori so we just went ahead and picked her up early. good thing because it took about a half hour to pack her stuff back into the car between her trips back and forth to the room, plus complaining to the manager again about some random problem with her room, bill, or whatever.

by this time lori was pretty grumpy but we cheered her up by going to the aforementioned fabric store. sas fabrics i believe. their deal is a lot of the fabric is by the pound instead of by the yard. plus, they had craploads of fabrics. wow. so we helped deplete their supply, quite admirably i might add, and then started down the Road Entirely Too Traveled.

but before we got on i-10, we stopped for ice cream at the coldstone creamery. yum yum!

ok anyway, on the way to california, min and i swapped stories about MY side of the family. min had heard from my parents that they wanted katie & jake to get their own place and to stay with the trucking company. that k&j were driving them batty in some way (probably in part because they hadn't really lived up to the original agreement to support my parents, who are living just on my dad's disability checks).

however, k&j told me that mom & dad had prayed and god told them that they should quit the trucking company and get local trucking jobs. katie also told me that yeah they were looking for another place, but for all of them because of the scorpions (bleh). but katie also said that they didn't want to do that right away so that they could keep bringing in trucking $. you know, being financially responsible (about time).

i'm sure there's more juicy gossip i don't remember right now, because it's taken me too goddamn long to finish this post (work insanity). but really the whole visit just served to remind me Why I Stay Out Of My Family's Business. oh and Why Feigning Obliviousness Is A Great Way To Deal With Conflicting 'Truths'.

we had a pretty quiet ride back to california, really. except, that is, for every time we had to burst out with "bump!" or "curve!" for lori so she wouldn't wheeze and whimper after every time we encountered such items and she hadn't noticed they were impending.

stopped at many a truck stop. truck stops are one of my favorite parts of road trips. i don't know why. i don't know if it's the odd conglomeration of options (showers, arcades, icees, down-home country cooking, dvd rentals and miniaturized appliances) or the fact that being there just means that i'm on the road. and i love that road, man!

at one truck stop we picked up an audio book that looked interesting. don't ask me to tell you the name of it - WE ALREADY SOLD IT. but it was a mildly interesting thriller. the worst part was the narrator, who had this god-awful southern drawl. it was so bad we almost called it quits after a few seconds! but it softened a bit, and thankfully there were some other characters without the twang attack.

the best/worst part was the straight sex scene around disc 3. it started up and i said, 'if this goes on too long, i want to fast forward.' min said, 'well…' yea, we lasted about 30 seconds. so we fastforward a few chapters. still heaving. skipped some more. she's feeling his… FASTFORWARD!! then, i swear to god, the lead female goes to get chicken breasts from the freezer. i said, 'what kind of crazy straight sex ritual is this?' so we rewinded just a bit… no, she was just makin her man supper afterwards. twerp.

we rolled into badass rialto, calif around 11pm and discovered the inexplicable joy of yet another best western. though dark outside, its 3 stories+pool looked nice and new. min goes to check us in and upon return we find out that the room lori so carefully coordinated ahead of time (scent free, first floor, handicapped, etc) is not available. we have a 2nd floor room.

i'm fine with that. min's fine with that. but of course lori is not, so she goes back to intimidate the hotel employee, who could clearly care less, into giving her what she wants. this is a great way to end a full day of interstate driving, in case you wondered. when you're tired, can't wait to go to bed, you should try just hanging out by the car for 20 minutes or so and watching all the other hotel guests getting impatient at the increasingly long checkin line. however, this was an opportune time to point out to min that the short flight of stairs lori would have to climb is nothing compared to the 2 miles she has to walk each time she works at the farm in fremont (which she does 1-3 times a week). but i digress.

finally lori returns. turns out all the rooms on the first floor are smoking. trippy! our room is still on the 2nd floor and way down the hallway, but turns out there's an elevator! also no more handicapped rooms left so too bad for you and your faux needs. min gets to the room first and turns on the air. i arrive second and min says, 'don't show lori the AC' and points up to the vent near the ceiling. i've seen worse, but it was pretty dirty and surprisingly old looking. there wasn't really a lot we could do about it, but thankfully lori didn't notice (or didn't say anything, anyway).

no, lori got herself bringing all her shiite up, then busy going to the jacuzzi to ease her back. sure, fine, go. inbetween lori's trips, min pointed out how stained the carpet was. at first i didn't see it but then…i didn't want to take my shoes off. so except for the vent, stained carpet, cracks in the bathroom linoleum, the lamest ppv ever, and mirror placed behind the tv so you couldn't use it - that best western was great!

tuesday 7/26
i can't wait to get home. we got up around 9, packed up, and started looking for a place to have breakfast. stupid mcdonalds stopped their bagel sandwiches! so we tried burger king, i got some egg thing i thought i could tolerate on my upset stomach. sigh. finally we get on the road.

again, today was really pretty quiet overall i think. we remained mildly entertained by our audio book. no more weird chicken sex, thank god.

mid-afternoon we rolled into gilroy and stopped at mimi's café again, but just to pick up the receipt book that lori had accidentally left there on our first visit. oh and get muffins to go, heh. an hour or so later, we dropped lori off at her fabulous semi-permanent residence: the quality inn, sunnyvale. then we scurried home to unpack and see our critters. poor pearl, she's always a bit frazzled when we're gone for more than a day or two. but we just try to spoil her with extra love. she seems to take that ok.

that's it. now back to my usual not-so-much-drama-and-i'm-okay-with-that life. i do have things to report on since that trip (that i haven't posted, in attempt to wrap this novella up), like this, but i think we all deserve a break for now. :-p

road trippin, part one

since my computer died, I have a bit of somewhat guilt-free time at work while I have to redo some clearcase/related processes. wheee. thus I bring you my arizona road trip report, part one. apparently I've had a lot to say about this trip, so I'm breaking my recap into a couple posts.

wednesday 7/20
got the rental car, went to whole foods and got some snacks. back home to pack up snacks and the rental car. then went to get lori and all her stuff at the hotel…got all her stuff in, so was a relatively drama-free experience. everything seems rosy at the beginning. we leave sunnyvale about 230pm, heading for ontario. should get us in about 7-8pm but we have to stop every 2-3 hours for food, gas or other biological imperatives. stopped for an early dinner at mimi's café in gilroy (very yummy scallop dish). later stopped for gas in extremely hot and smelly coalinga (bovine hell). so it is that we arrive at the completely unimpressive best western ontario about 11pm.

min had some minor trouble with them confirming our AAA rate, but worked it out. also lori had called ahead to make sure the room was scent-free and conformed to whatever other medical specifications she had. unfortunately the hotel van was parked in the only handicapped parking next to our room. after some wrangling, she got them to move and I was lucky enough to get to move the car closer. incidentally lori had already moved all of her stuff over already on foot. but I digress.

the room itself was pretty damn basic, but clean enough. except for the bathroom which had a minor ant problem (hi baby! bet you're glad I didn't tell you that til now, eh?). I got rid of what I could that night and didn't see any more in the morning thank goodness.

thursday 7/21
had a mediocre continental breakfast at the hotel around 9am. went to get gas before we left town and took one curve, and then a few moments later, a bump a little too quickly. lori yelps, practically screams both times. apparently she has some kind of problem with her back. which we knew about. and we'd been trying to drive carefully but … well, sometimes the unexpected happens, especially when you're driving somewhere new. and you can't remember to announce (let alone notice) every bloody curve or bump in the road that could potentially be a problem. so min asks lori to calm down a little and not shout every time we encounter something like this. lori says she can't help reacting. blah blah blah. I SO don't want to be in the car.

after a few minutes, they work it out, we get gas and get on i-10 east in relative silence (music, little talking) for the next few hours. all I can say is it's a good thing I really like being a passenger on road trips. I just zone out, appreciating the scenery whether it's the peculiarities of a small town we're driving through, watching clouds move across distant mountains, or noticing how this one type of arizona cactus and its budding blossoms look like a little tiki god. there are hundreds of them and they're all providing me the teeniest bit of comic relief. also providing comic relief is lori, talking with the oxygen tank people in tucson, trying to arrange replacements and a wheelchair since we didn't have room for all that.

we roll into tucson around 7pm and check into our hotel (4 pts sheraton) briefly before going over to lori's hotel to drop her off. then min and i go back to our hotel and chill out the rest of the night. tried to get together with her sister wilma but she was at matt's viewing til almost 10pm so just agreed to see her the next morning at the funeral. anyway, our sheraton room was VERY comfy. a big luxurious bed, lots of room, very clean. and video games, so I get my yearly fix by kicking yoshi's ass until my eyes got too blurry to continue.

friday, 7/22
went to a place called the good egg for breakfast. min can't eat a lot so we split some not-too-shabby eggs benedict. funeral was at 10am. drove up to a ton of gangster-looking types hanging outside the funeral home chapel. apparently this group comprised several of matt and jr's friends, many of whom were wearing special tshirts they'd made, with matt's pic on it, saying 'you will not be forgotten' on the front and little hands praying on the back.

we went inside but didn't see anyone we knew right away. after a minute we found vanessa (min's neice), who let us know where the rest of the family was. apparently a friend of jr's had gotten pulled over en route so jr (and friend) were waiting to proceed until said friend finished with the cop. so while we waited, we stepped into the sanctuary. matt was about 50 feet in front of us and it was (in my opinion) unfortunately an open casket. I say unfortunate not because it made things 'too real', although sure, there was an element of that. no, it's because IT DIDN'T LOOK LIKE HIM. it had nothing to do with how he died -- I just didn't realize how much embalming could change how someone looked. min wanted to sit further away because this was weirding her out (rightly so) but other family members started balking so we moved up to the fourth row, maybe 15 feet away.

within a few minutes the service started, and that itself was very weird. mostly because it almost completely glossed over his extremely checkered past and instead focussed on his recent churchgoing ways (in between prison stints, that is). all I can think is that SuperMinister (who freely admitted to not really remembering matt - a nice touch, I thought) thought that this funeral was the perfect opportunity to bring all the gang attendees to the lord. during the 20 minute service/sermon, SuperMinister informed us at least 5 times that we should take this opportunity to reflect on the direction of our lives and accept jesus as our lord and savior, because if matt were able to speak, that's what he'd tell us. the hyper-christianity led lori and her husband aaron (who are jewish) to leave about halfway through. a bit drama queenish but I expect nothing less, really! SuperMinister also closed the service with a direct altar call via prayer. very classy.

also during the service they asked the attendees to share stories about matt. several relatives spoke, and it became clear that he really did earn the nickname smiley legitimately. apparently he had a habit of smiling a lot - with certain people - especially ones that he visited/called out of the blue, just to say hi and how it was going. while very sweet, it also made me sad. he must have had a real soft, good side to him that just got twisted and shadowed by the thrill-seeking side that perpetually landed him into trouble.

afterwards, we all went outside and drove over to the part of the facility where the actual cemetary was, to have another mini-service while they laid him in the ground. amazingly it wasn't too horribly hot - around 100 but a very nice breeze. it took a while for everyone to get over there, but in the meantime I got to see min's dad's plot. her mom's name is already on the other half of it, which is a little creepy but I was informed that it's relatively traditional for spouses to do that. anyway, once everyone arrived, matt's brother jr read a few words, then everyone said goodbye by placing flowers or dirt on the casket. also they released balloons into the air.

from there we went to wilma's house (min's sister) to have lunch and reminisce. it was pretty damn mellow and many people hung out for several hours. in the late afternoon min started feeling really sick and had to lay down for a while, but eventually felt well enough for us to go back to our room. if I remember right, she got a nap for a little bit and we also watched the interpreter (pretty good!) on pay per view. later we went out to dinner (mediocre mexican) with lori, aaron, wilma and min's mother. on the way there, saw the bargain sas fabric store that we would later visit on monday. :-D

part two coming soon...

survey says: i had downtime today!

What with funerals and computers crashing, I’m just now getting to this. So, a bit of fun before I post about all that (sometime over the next week or so).

1. What is your occupation? Product Content Developer
   
2. What color is your underwear? An extremely pale blue
   
3. What are you listening to right now? LizD and MichaelM typing, my stomach growling, and too-loud people in the conference room behind me.
   
4. What was the last thing you ate? Frosted mini wheats (breakfast)
   
5. Do you wish on stars? No, but I like to look at them.
   
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Mahogany, mahogany, mahogany!
   
7. How is the weather right now? Mildly warm.
   
8. Last person you spoke to on the phone? A helpdesk technician because my work computer is experiencing terminal errors
   
9. Do you like the person who (sent this to) you copied this from? Yes
   
10. How old are you today? 32.9589 years old
    
11. Favorite drink? Mango Fandango (Knudsen soda). Most common drink is water, but I wouldn’t normally call it a favorite.
    
12. Favorite sport to watch? Basketball, not that I watch anymore.
    
13. Have you ever dyed your hair? Nope. It changes color at its own whim.
    
14. Do you wear contacts or glasses? Glasses.
    
15. Pets? 2 kitties, muffie and dolce. And of course, pearl the wonderpuppy!
    
16. Favorite month? November I guess. Cooler weather, paid time off and yummy food.
    
17. Favorite food? Probably almost anything with carbs
    
18. What was the last movie you watched? Spiderman 2, last night. A mediocre but mildly entertaining movie.
    
19. Favorite day of the year? Christmas. Presents, good food and holiday stuff everywhere!
    
20. What do you do to vent anger? Glower. Alternately make snarky comments and avoid speaking.
    
21. Fall or Spring? Fall
    
22. Hugs or kisses? Smooches!
    
23. Cherry or Blueberry? Raspberry
    
24. Do you want your friends to blog you back? Good idea, but I’m not sure who’s left.
    
25. Who is most likely to respond? A ghost
    
26. Who is least likely to respond? Same answer.
    
27. Who do you live with? Min plus the critters listed above
    
28. When was the last time you cried? Really cried…wow. Several months ago? Don’t remember. But got misty at the funeral last Friday.
    
29. What is on the floor of your closet? Carpet. Also shoes and one corner dedicated to gift wrap and wrapping accessories
    
30. Who is the friend you have had the longest? Karen, from junior high, although we only email once every few years.
    
31. What did you do last night? Watched my computer tumble towards death. Enjoyed the evening at home (dinner, walking pearl, email, watching a movie)
    
32. Favorite smell? Um..
    
33. What inspires you most? People living life to the fullest. Oh, and really funny people. It inspires me to be even funnier.
    
34. What are you afraid of? A life without chocolate.
    
35. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers? Cheese please!
    
36. Favorite car? Normally I would say “none” because I don’t really think about it. But then I met Betty. Case closed.
    
37. Favorite dog breed? I have plenty I don’t like, but most of the rest, bring ‘em on!
    
38. Number of keys on your key ring? 5 – 3 for the house, 1 for the car, 1 for my bike lock
    
39. How many years at your current job? .86301 years
    
40. Favorite day of the week? Saturday or Sunday will do just fine!

Whew!

it's a family affair

as a reprieve from our own personal dramas, i now bring you drama from the unbearably hot streets of tucson, arizona: early wednesday morning, min's nephew matt was shot and killed by local police.

no i am not kidding.

i was ready to tell you all about it but min just sent me that article a little bit ago. and turns out some of the facts were wrong so see? link's even better than my version. although the article doesn't also mention that matt's mother, pam, also recently had a fire blaze through her apartment complex, demolishing most of her belongings, and that her husband rick recently lost his job. leaving them with no income at present.

min wasn't super close to matt, so she seems to be doing ok. (sidebar: she's doing a bit better, tube came out fine (by itself!), she's got more energy, just having some trouble eating). but we are going down to help support the rest of the local family, which is understandably pretty shook up. especially, it sounds like, his brother, who witnessed the event and has a similar history with the prison system, unfortunately.

funeral is next friday so i'll be taking off a few days while we trek down there. meantime i've got craploads of work to do so i probably won't be posting much for a while (like i've got tourettes now). if you feel so inclined, please send your well wishes/good thoughts to min's family, particularly his brother paul (JR) and mother pam.

now this is cryptic

the adventures of TerseMan

all i can say is i hope this guy uses paypal to send the "reward money". clearly this guy spends a lot of time at the keyboard. too much time, i suspect. and by enabling him to send money with a few keystrokes, paypal can help him continue his strange little life.

adventures of baroness min-chausen

yesterday min went to get her j-tube removed, both because she doesn't need it (yay!) and it was getting too cranky to stay there anymore.

ok fine. but a few seconds after WonderSurgeon starts pulling it out, min SCREAMS. for most people, says the doc, it just comes right out and doesn't hurt. but you know us queers, we gotta be different. apparently min wasn't really ready to let go just yet. WonderSurgeon says problem is most likely the swelling around the tube so it should be better next week, now that min's on antibiotics for it.

other than yesterday's excitement, min is doing relatively well. eating, overall, is going more smoothly both in terms of what options are and how well the food goes down. still having more trouble with the latter than she'd like, but at least once in a while - brace yourself - we can eat the same food.

i know that doesn't sound like an earth-shattering comment, but about two weeks ago, we prepared a meal together that we both subsequently ate. and that hasn't happened since..hmm.. maybe february or march. it's been quite a while, and it was fun. i kinda forgot how much so.

also i can tell she is doing better because in general she is more chatty and just happier. funny how not being in contant, almost unbearable pain will make you chipper. :-p so i'm happy for her and i'm happy for us.

and now for some randomness:
i can't believe this is news
badass science stickers
nietzschesaurus

the elves have spoken

i have been certified fit for duty in the areas of

• Code of Business Conduct
  
• What you need to know about E-mail

although i passed with flying colors, here are some things i learned before passing the exams:

• What E-mail Is (and Is Not!)
  
• It's never a good idea to send a funny e-mail to coworkers.
  
• E-mail messages are a virus's best friend.
  
• Don't send any message that you'd be embarrassed to see on the front page of the newspaper with your name on it.

and that last one is why i'm so glad i have such low standards. i don't care, plaster my wiseass messages all over the paper! i'll just laugh.

wearing the pants (and flowers)

after reading this, suddenly i'm remembering back when min and i were getting flowers for our commitment ceremony. early on the florist, filling out her standard wedding form, said, 'so who's the groom?' and i said, 'first of all, there is no groom. second, you can put down heather.'

the completely flustered and confused look on her face was priceless. we'd already told her it was us two girls gettin hitched, and we were standing right in front of her during this whole thing, but did that stop her from asking such a stupid question? noooo.

and actually she was totally cool. it was just her being straight, clueless and trapped in HeteroVision, i'm sure. but it was still fun to freak out The Straight Person for a minute. bwahaha.

so i've been a little busy

and haven't posted recently. but in case you were wondering, not only have i been kicking ass, i'm on fire. so much that this image got sent to me yesterday as proof:

so there you go.

bite my shiny metal blog entry

my coworker michael forwarded this piece of futurama awesomeness to me. i think he could tell i liked futurama by all the paraphenelia around my cube, but that's just a wild guess.

btw for the min's-health-status followers: min is doing fair. she got an infection in her surgery site, which now is high maintenance instead of low. but it seems to be healing ok so far, so she should be doing better (less pain, more mobile) in about a week. also doing a bit better on the food front, now she's starting to eat semi-solid food. yay! much easier for this non-cook to manage. :-)

mahogany love

this woman named "mahogany love" posted today on a list i'm on. her actual email was kind of sad. but her name...well i can't resist commenting. mostly because when i was in first grade, my best friend and i loved the word "mahogany" so much that we would just say it to each other and start giggling. apparently i thought it was funny enough to say to my parents too because to this day they'll bust out with "mahogany!" just to get me to laugh.

obviously i could have a lot more fun with this woman's name, but i don't have time or mental energy to do it justice. and i think it does quite well on its own, really.

return of the min!

min got home tonight, woo! she's hanging in there, doesn't seem to be too bad with her at-home pain meds (which only took ~5 phone calls to the doctor, ~10 calls to varying pharmacies, and 2.5 hours to fill at the pharmacy). right now she's watching a dvd and getting sleepy i think. hope.

tomorrow her sister lori starts her award-winning role of nurse, and i can't describe how grateful i am. i could have taken a few days off, and i would have been fine, but then i wouldn't have vacation later (we're hoping to take a bit, in a month or so when she's better). on top of that, lori used to be a bonafide nurse, so she'll do a much better job than me. and as an extra primo good bonus, she COOKS. and min will need lots of blending, cooking and food preparation over the next several weeks. i cook like, spaghetti. homemade soup? special fruit/fortified concoctions? um. yeah, you have the wrong heather.

in more personal news, i seem to have calmed the fuck down. sorry if i weirded anybody out with my earlier rants. i'll claim stress, stress and hormones as a defense strategy. oh, and stress. in any case, things seem to be calming down externally and internally, and whether that's permanent or fleeting, i don't care. i'll take the respite either way. i likes my sanity.

and i like bouncing. bounce bounce!

murphy's law

ack. probably because i just admitted to my evil twin, min just called me to say she's having a lot of trouble all of a sudden with pain, distension and nausea. the distension makes me think it's the food she's eaten, that it's not moving down correctly. they just have her on soups, yogurt, but still. today has seen her first non-IV nourishment post-surgery. ieeeee.

also i forgot to mention earlier that today min officially lost her job. they sent her a letter explaining why (inability to work? what gives?) and in an unexpected but pleasant twist, they will continue to pay her health benefits through the end of AUGUST. 3 extra months that we don't have to worry about, if it takes her that long to get another job. hopefully she'll be able to start looking for work in a month or so, after she's healed.

so, next time you're thinking of min, please send her an extra ray of positivity for tonight's struggles and for the challenges ahead.

all part of life's rich pageantry

min is doing a lot better, yay! she's still sleeping a lot but is having a lot less pain (5 out of 10) and been going for a couple of walks down the hall each day. she is still not up for talking really but i have been sending on everyone's well wishes and prayers to her, so keep 'em coming! at this point, we are guessing she might come home monday or tuesday but our next talk with the doctor will be telling. whenever that might occur - doc has been a tad awol.

in other news, i am in this weird place where i am both loving and hating (different) recent changes in myself. fyi, good + bad does not equal null. it equals self-induced torture.

and i can torture myself with the best of them, i tell you what. when i was younger i used to cut (still have some faint scars on one arm) and journal like a bandit because i was too shy or embarassed to talk out loud. i'm sane enough not to cut anymore, and i've developed enough charm (hah) to have acquired friends who let me yammer sometimes and don't call me an idiot (to my face anyway).

but maybe that's what i need - someone to tell me to step off. wake me up. give me a reality check. but in other ways, i feel recently my eyes have been reopened to the world. i guess what i'm saying is right now i'm not sure i trust my own judgement. i feel a little lost.

sleep, glorious sleep

just back from visiting min tonight. she is doing a bit better overall but still having a pretty difficult time. lori was with her all day until i got there about 6pm, and i'm so glad she was there to help her! apparently min even got up and walked down the hall a bit, woo! so that's good. but her pain was still pretty high (never below 7, usually 8-9). fortunately that special cocktail i mentioned yesterday got put on her regular pharmaceutical rotation, so i'm sure that's why she did better today.

after lori left, within about a half hour min started falling asleep. and proceeded to sleep, on and off (mostly on), for the next 4 hours or so. believe it or not, sleep's quite an accomplishment - her pain has been so unyielding that she's barely slept over the last 3 days. so i was very glad she zonked out!

but at the same time, it was weird because i'd been away from her all day, and after i get there she falls asleep. if she hadn't been in the hospital (or sick, because for a while this was happening at home,too), i'd say it was time for a marriage counselor. i know today's sleepfest was just because she felt happy and safe once i was sitting next to her, but i still felt pretty alone. thankfully my friends in tvland were good for passing the time and helping me ignore my true feelings. tv rocks! denial, i love it! wheee!

choose your own adventure

over the last week i have:

spent 42 hours in the same clothes
screamed and laughed at almost the same instant
admitted to truths that should remain hidden
lied to keep the status quo
reveled in fruits forbidden and permissable
felt, caused, and tried to alleviate pain
enjoyed and despised silence
taken the road well travelled
wanted the other road more than life itself

i've been:
reckless
responsible
cavalier
compassionate
selfish
selfless

and most importantly, i would imagine, is that i've been without much sleep in the last two days (45 minutes in total). in other words, all the above is true, but that doesn't mean i'm not being slightly melodramatic, either, due to lack of REM. sorry to be cryptic, but there are some things you just can't blog about in intimate detail about without avoiding interpersonal crises. and yes i know that by saying that, i leave myself open to having to deal with it later. later is fine. this is enough honesty for today.

on the other hand, maybe i'm just chickenshit. maybe someday i will be a little braver and say what i really feel instead of what i think or filtering it all first. on the other other hand, maybe i should just shut up.

ok enough. i need to go to bed. and since i crammed enough metaphor and angst into the beginning of this post, here's a more legible update:

min's surgery appears to have gone smoothly. however, her recovery is not so swell. insane amounts of pain and nausea, which began to get mildly, mildly under control this afternoon. tonight she got another special cocktail from the doctor that seemed to bring things down to a 7/10 for the first time in almost 2 days. so i'm hoping she will get some solid rest tonight. her sister lori is with her (i spent last night, woo) now thru 6pm thursday. that means i can go to work tomorrow for the whole day! ironic that it's the day we're doing an offsite of a purportedly quite silly nature. good thing i can be pretty damn silly. in any case, it promises to be a diversion and i do welcome that since i'm feeling the tiniest bit loopy.

that's my cue. head: hit pillow!

d-day is coming

so as i mentioned the other day, min's surgery has been scheduled. it's in just 3 days. wow.

i'm still a bit fuzzy on the complete details, but i can tell you that they are doing this and this and a similar thing to that last one up in her esophagus because of her achalasia. and yes that's a new term to both min and i and yes we gave our surgeon a hard time for giving us a hard time for not knowing it since no doctor had ever told her the technical name for that condition. :-p

anyway, i hear there will also be an external tube involved but that should be temporary. also because of the complexity they have to do it open (large incision) instead of laproscopic.

needless to say min is pretty freaked out. but she is handling it pretty well by not thinking about it too much. nice that after 9 years together (anniversary last week) that behavior of mine has rubbed off on her a little bit, heh. i mean, we are preparing and all, and trying to do some fun things to stay a little distracted (going to star wars in a few hours, woo!) but i know it's not very far towards the back of our minds.

so if you made it this far, please keep her in your thoughts for this tuesday morning and the rest of the week really. thanks to everyone who has sent well wishes so far, too.

living and breathing

about 1030am today i got a call from min. she said, "pearl's dying! get home as fast as you can so we can go to the vet!"

in case you were wondering, that's a great way to start a phone call.

normally it takes me 15-20 minutes to get home. today i made it home in 10. i would say that i, um, bended some laws, but i was still safe.

right before i got home, min called to see if i was close. yes. so she told me she'd be waiting on the sidewalk with pearl so we could just go to the vet. i pulled up and min has pearl, a limp little lump, wrapped in a towel. they get in the car and she tells me: pearl ate some of her (min's) pain medicine.

she'd already called the vet so they knew we were en route. they're only a few miles down the road so we got there pretty quick. they rushed her to the back and got her started on all those lovely medicines that make you vomit, plus monitoring her vitals.

while we waited for the doctor to come in, she told me more about what happened at the house. how pearl sneakily got into the medicine, the subsequent roster of symptoms particular to a dog dying (which she has seen many times, unfortunately, since she used to work at the SPCA), and her frantic dash about the house trying to get help for pearl and get ready to leave (was still in her PJ's).

a few minutes later, the doctor came to us and told us that they'd started the meds, etc. that her system was naturally a little depressed but they would be keeping a close watch on her and try to clear the BAD medicine from her body. learned that there is a medicine for counteracting the effect of opiates! interesting.

anyway, he said to call back about 130 to check her status, presuming they hadn't needed to call us first with a change for the worse. but when min called - yay! - she was doing LOTS better. heart rate up, she was more alert, and it seemed like she'd be able to go home tonight. yay! and apparently she'd gotten everything out of her system at home. so, icky for min to clean up, but glad it got out so fast, really. probably kept pearl from getting as sick as she could have.

i suppose i'm jinxing things by saying pearl's fine when she's not actually home yet, but...i'm just so happy she's alright. she is SO our little baby. our little pearl. i can't really deal with thinking about her dying, so i'm glad reality swerved away from that possibility relatively quickly. :-p got enough going on already, anyway.

min's surgery is scheduled. for reals, for trues. for may 31st and i'll write more about it later. not enough time or energy today.

for sale: integrity

this is just so wrong. not because INXS was some kind of awesome band that championed the environment, queer rights and things like that. no, just because back when they were cool, it was because they were quirky and raw in their intensity and lyrics. even though they were plastered everywhere and marketed to death, they didn't seem like they were for sale.

which clearly they are. thus, the wrongness. i know this isn't the lamest thing in the world, but it's still LAME.

geeks rule

lately it feels like there has been a minor exodus from our department, and it feels a little surreal. one person is transitioning to another role (still in our department, but they will be doing totally different stuff), one person left for another department altogether, and one is leaving to freelance.

i was musing on this yesterday (after the announcement bout the freelancer) and wondering WTF? then it occurred to me: the one thing all these people have in common apparently is that they like to write more than they like battling with technology, tools and/or code. which is actually a great deal of what our daily work lives are about. we're not knee-deep in the code like web developers, but sometimes we really have to muck around to figure what the hell we need to do to address the Issue of The Moment.

thing is, i like all that. working in the code, figuring shit out. don't like the problems of course, but troubleshooting can be interesting. i really like being on our little SWAT team. i like being helpful and i like being one of the resident geeks. but i guess that's why i'm still here and not leaving so that i can write pages and pages of content inside word docs instead of an average one sentence every month directly into the code.

i guess this is all just another way to say: geeks rule!

and in other news, yes we saw the surgeon earlier this week. but i don't want to talk about it yet because it was kind of scary. we have a followup appointment next week where we should nail down exactly what should be happening (instead of scary things that could happen but we really don't know for sure yet). :-p

task 1 complete!

got an appointment with the GI surgeon for next tuesday, yay! and after that we can schedule the actual surgery. no waiting for a psych consult, yadda yadda. we're getting her in so fast because apparently the surgeon (who i'll call dr. f to keep the trend) and dr. t are good buds.

anyway, think good thoughts for getting the surgery scheduled quickly, too. i'm sure it will still be several weeks until the surgery, but that's better than 2 MONTHS (the normal wait time what with their pre-surgery rituals) to even get the surgeon appointment and then many weeks more for the actual surgery.

meantime min's been doing worse the last week. BUT she got some different meds yesterday and they seem to be helping the pain a little bit more. hopefully that trend will continue!

meantime part deux: thank god the main code delivery for our Big Project at work is DONE. in related news, i think i'm going to explode if (in my near future) i have to spend more than 2 full days in a row looking at a spreadsheet with 30 tabs and at least 30 rows per tab. 5 tabs are enough to manage on a daily basis, thanks (stupid metrics).

progress (sort of)

it's official: the last botox shot min got is not helping enough. she still can hardly eat, and even when she does gets really bad pain or outright attacks. her daily level of pain is just too high - not livable or workable long term.

the last option she has, and it's supposed to be a pretty good one, is gastric bypass surgery. yes, the same one that millions of people are using to lose weight. in this case they're just doing it to bypass her 98% uncooperative stomach and duodenum. which should cut down significantly on the pain, etc.

she'll lose more weight, yea. in the scheme of things we really don't care about that, though. she's already losing plenty (10 pounds last week, and i am not exaggerating). on the upside maybe the dietician they're forcing her to see for the surgery can help her figure out a more workable eating/supplement plan.

surgery isn't scheduled yet. surgeon has annoying but understandable pre-appt rituals we must navigate. so in the meantime, i guess wish us good luck in getting this scheduled asap!

i now return you to your regularly scheduled workaholism (and my own).

a river to skate away on

last night i went ice skating for the second time in my life. liz very graciously let me borrow some skates and saved me from potential ankle trauma from rink skates. she also gave me a few pointers which i'm sure enabled me to not fall the ENTIRE TIME. i was very impressed with myself. especially since i definitely fell a LOT during my virgin skating session so many years ago, in a land far, far away.

actually calling that first skate a virgin skate is not a bad idea because it was also the first time i touched another woman's breasts and realized that was The Life For Me. before you get some wacky ice porn movie going in your head, let me tell you what really happened:

feb 1995. nashville. me and 10 of my closest BU dorm-mates decided to go ice skating. among them was my friend tami. very much a dyke. and very much was i crushed out on her, being the babydyke that i was (out for less than 2 months).

tami was from wisconsin which meant that she was the best ice skater in our bunch. she gave me and i think another friend some lessons, skating around with us almost the whole time. at one point it was just tami and me though. we're skating, she's on my left, holding my hand. i wobble, almost falling, and my right arm oh-so-ungracefully flailed to the left in an attempt to hold on.

i got stabilized. i also got the delicious sensation of tami's breast in my hot little hand. i didn't grab hard or anything - just cupped her for a second, and that steadied me.

steadied on the outside that is. immediately i was 10x more jittery on the inside (already crazy because a) i was trying to skate and b) tami was helping me do that) because OH MY GOD. i knew what it felt like to touch another woman that you were attracted to. and i knew that there was no going back. yep, i'm a dyke! end of story.

that story, anyway. :-) that story's the first thing i think of when someone talks about ice skating. if i start skating more regularly now (and i might), i'm sure that will fade away, but i hope not.

we cambria, we saw, we conquered

late february we escaped our worldly troubles for a brief time and traveled down to cambria, a quiet little town on the coast of southern california. and it's only taken me three months to get the pictures all prettied up for y'all. i'm fast, i tell you.

enjoy the silence

blogging silence usually means either work or home life are pretty busy. or both. for most of the last week or so, it's been both. we're trying to wrap up development for a Big Project at work plus my little group is now a SWAT team (we have patches to prove it!) so those two things keep things perking along quite frenetically.

for home busy-ness, min got her botox shot on friday. the actual procedure was not tooo bad...but it took a lot longer than normal...apparently he had to do much more manipulation than normal and this left her insanely sore instead of just really really sore. really rough weekend but then the last few days were getting better.

until last night. last night she tried to eat more normal food (e.g., chicken and rice instead of cream of wheat). within 15 minutes she was having a "dry" attack (no vomiting but same amount of pain as if she was). we tried the usual remedies for abating an attack, called the amazing dr. t an hour later for more ideas, but nothing worked. so! in to the hospital we go again.

it'd been, hmm, maybe a month since we'd been? they changed their triage and patient shuffling procedures. haven't decided if it's good or bad overall. good: a doctor AND nurse triage instead of just a nurse. and our favorite ER doc (the most compassionate and friendly one), dr. fox, was triaging. so he knew exactly what to do for min and said he'd have her medicine ordered and ready for her by the time she got back there. and when she finally DID get to a room, we got them in about 10 minutes. yay!

bad: now they're splitting the ER exam room areas up by type of patient. half is for non-urgent, half for those that need monitoring/privacy. min fell into the latter category and because a) we got there earlier in the evening (930pm instead of 2am) and b) they had 3 ambulances come in after we did, she had to wait in the lobby for over 2 hours before she got any meds. normally when we go in it's maybe an hour until she gets something (15 minutes waiting in lobby, 15 waiting for/talking to doc, 30 minutes for meds to arrive).

i'm sure it was just shitty timing and that the ambulatories were much more important, but that didn't make the Waiting any less difficult. grr.

i got a little more sleep than normal (for an ER night) but i'm still exhausted today. at least i can pray to the gods of mocha-infused frappiness and get my own yummy, caffeinated deliverance.

twistin the night away

as some of you may know, i got my undergrad degree (after many years of school-hopping) at the university of montana. montana is not a very queer-friendly place in general, but missoula is a little pocket of relative liberalism. made it a little easier for us to be out and not worry so much (like we did in other parts of MT).

anyway, there was a small lambda group at UM when we left - maybe 30 people - in 1998. but it sounds like things have really improved because the kaimin (who i wrote for briefly) has reported 700 attendees at their queer prom. how sweet is that? rock!

flibbetygibbit

i was sleepy all day at work today. my ass was seriously dragging - no amount of walking, tunes, sugar or teasing liz was keeping me uber-alert.

that is, until i caved in and went to starbucks around 3pm. i know it's probably an illusion, but from the first moment that sweet frappaccino hits my mouth, i feel caffiene zooming through my veins like a freight truck. sweet lady mocha frapp.

anyway, since i had that so late in the day NOW i'm uber-alert. this is giving me a chance to work on some marketing for launcharoo, which isn't all bad. but it's a tad boring too.

so good thing i found liz and andrea's old geocities sites. hah! adorable! i love it. it really brings me back to my own humble beginnings. this is an archive of the original geocities site, back when i used to care about the old site. i just keep it up because it gets a lot of traffic which then bounces to my main site. and like liz & andrea's sites, it's kind of cool to have a testimonial to the early days (both of coding and of partnership). it's also a testament to bad design, but i'm past that now. i think.

that said, if anyone teases me about how fluffy it is, i'll kick your ass. :-D

and now for something completely obnoxious

lately i've had the worst time thinking about things that are completely inappropriate. my work-safe (unless you work with me - in which case, start going LALALALA) example is the "Idea Wall".

the Idea Wall is a place where employees can share their ideas to make the company's products better, introduce new products, etc. it is literally a gigantic piece of paper (maybe 12' x5') taped to the wall. people have taped their ideas (including pictures) and scribbled all over this paper, such that it is pretty crowded already even though it's only been up for a month, tops.

the inappropriateness? every time i see it, i want to tear it down, rip it up, smash it into a ball and throw it into the garbage. the Wall evokes my deep-rooted cynicism of the corporate world in two ways: 1) this is a way for us to all appear happy/productive while having corporate interests at heart and 2) because these submissions are anonymous, i think that eventually this is a way for some executive to take credit for an underling's idea. and to both of these ideas i just want to say *#@?%!

that's just one inappropriate idea. the rest i'm not sharing because, well, they're inappropriate.

i think i need a vacation.

she runs away

i'll never forget the first time i heard this song. min had uploaded it on the iBook and i was riding caltrain on my way to my contract job at thomson. i think it's the first time i ever imagined a whole story so clearly just based on a song. not the story being told by the song - one that just unfolded in my mind. i don't want to butcher the retelling of it here (besides i've only got rebase time :-), but it was a cool short story if i do say so myself. i wrote it all down right then and there, but later lost it in one of the many Great iBook Crashes of 2004.

anyway, that song just came up in the itunes, and i thought i'd take a moment to share. it's not like it's the best song ever, but for some reason it inspired me that day, and now whenever i hear it, i remember that moment. which is a big deal for me what with my lovely memory. :-p

workin for the weekend

this last week was difficult. busy at work, several appointments for min and blue cross drama because they're refusing to pay for her upcoming shot. that will probably get worked out but only because we're appealing it.

so i was really looking forward to this weekend, if only to have a break from one responsibility (daytime job) for a while. like always, the weekend is the time i catch up on all the errands/housework i didn't have time for during the week.

but it's also a chance to spend more time with my baby since i literally don't have to go away for 10 hours or so saturday and sunday! and even though she had a really bad attack wednesday, her new pain medicine (which we got friday night) is already helping a bit more (since then she's mostly kept her pain to a 5-7 instead of a relatively constant 7-8). yay! and for the first time in, hmm, a month? she had 3 meals today. not full meals, mind you. it's still a big deal. and she's been much more alert today - even went out with me on a short errand - another sign of her feeling betterish. yay! hopefully this will help keep her more comfortable until the 15th.

a side benefit to the hardly eating, obviously, is that she's lost a lot of weight in the last year. most of it since christmas. we've both lost weight, which is nice, but i'd rather be heavier than to have gone through all this. :-p

anyway, just wanted to follow up with a slightly more cheerful post since today was a relatively good day. spent a lot of it watching our latest addiction, 24 on netflix. damn that show is good! if you haven't watched it, you gotta check it out. i really don't know if we can adjust to watching it on tv and waiting a whole week inbetween episodes once we catch up to the current season. damn.

surreal

lately i've had the weird sensation of being single again. i get up by myself, take care of the puppy, keep the car and drive to work by myself, rock out to all the channels that would normally drive my baby crazy.

when i'm at work i feel "single" almost all the time. sure, i have this undercurrent, this subconscious connection to min that's with me as i breathe in and out and is comforting. but that's it - it's subconscious. very rarely do i think about it too much because i am SO focused on work. that's me - i'm a task-oriented kind of girl. have been since birth - ask my sister, it used to drive her crazy. i think it drives min crazy once in a while too.

and besides, as i've said before, i like to work. as stupid as it may sound, i really like the Work Me. Work Me has most of her shit together; Home Me tries but, in my opinion, pales in comparison to Work Me.

anyway. adding to the disconnectedness is the fact that min isn't getting online as much lately since she's still having a pretty hard time. her test on Wednesday did NOT go well - triggered an awful, heart-stopping attack. yes, sometimes her heart stops and so does her breathing. those are fun ones.

so because of these joyrides, she's usually not up for talking a bunch and has been sleeping a lot both during the day AND when i get home. which means i end up alone in the evening a lot…trying to entertain the puppy and myself, doing a bit of housework, maybe "relaxing" by reading my email or watching tv.

again, just like being single.

interspersed are moments of feeling very married. cuddling for a few minutes as one of us lumbers into bed, giggling together over something adorable the puppy's doing in front of us, feeling the warmth of her hand on my thigh as we're driving towards the doctor's office, going to get her evening pills together, maybe even a little argument, for argument's sake, because we're human. but it feels rare and odd. like i'm living someone else's life right now. a weird mixture of present and past tense.

while there were certainly fun things about being single, i really have no desire to go back to that state. i presume this is a snapshot and things will go back to "normal" after min gets her botox shot in a few weeks. but for the moment, i feel a little surreal.

good morning, sunshine!

actually i said good morning to the moon, today. needed to be up at 445 this morning because min's getting a test done at stanford. i forget the name of it but it's checking for a special kind of cyst on her pancreas that causes hyper acid production. and believe me, she's got acid-a-plenty. the nexium helps a LOT with that (she's on 4x the regular dosage) but she still has trouble not burning holes into her stomach. thus, the test to see if she has the rare cyst.

anyway! so i had to be up by 445, but that didn't stop me from waking up at 230 and NOT GETTING BACK TO SLEEP. min was having trouble sleeping (a regular occurence for her) so she went out to the living room to watch some tv. i woke up a little but then i realized i was hungry. and not like, oh i feel a little hungry but i'll just ignore it, roll over and go back to sleep. no. my stomach said OH MY GOD YOU NEED TO EAT NOW. NOW NOW NOW OR I'M GOING TO EXPLODE BECAUSE YOU NEVER FEED ME, EVER EVER EVER! i tried ignoring it for about 45 minutes...drinking water...trying a million sleeping positions... no dice. ugh.

on the upside, by the time i caved in and had a fun size cup of pudding, it was only an hour or so til i was supposed to get up, so i just went out and watched when harry met sally with min. who fell asleep in 5 minutes. not me! i knew i was up for the day, but it's been years since i've seen that and i enjoyed it for the 80's feel good predictable yet touching romantic comedy that it was.

and now that my rebase is done, i'll just say what's been said a million times: thank the drumming goddesses for starbucks.

oh and ps. min got her new botox shot scheduled, yay! on tax day, no less. appropriate since this has been a taxing experience (sorry, i couldn't resist). means she'll have to be on disability an extra week (it's later than we wanted) but i don't care. i just want this to be over and done with. as i imagine min does. ;-p

to prove my point

yesterday i joined a new project in clearwaste that took almost TWO HOURS to complete. how much of that time did i goof off? maybe 10 minutes. that's right: the other 101.5 minutes i was working. damn work ethic!

that 111.5 minutes was a record for me, incidentally. previously the longest one i'd seen was an hour. but liz beat me - hers was 116 minutes. i think she was just trying to show off tho.

clearcase rules

i've used several version control programs (source safe, perforce, cvs, clearcase) and at my current job, clearcase rules the day. i say rules because dealing with it in one way or another must take up a third of my day, and that's a lot of time for one little application. only other one that comes close is outlook and that's because email is well, you know. like crack.

anyway, i've recently come to realize that for all the aggravation, despair and clear waste of time that clearcase brings into my work day, it also brings me this: a chance to goof off guilt-free. because we track our time down to the nanosecond and while i'm working on one of the usual clearcase tasks that has to run in the background (rebase, joining a project, etc), my time is "accounted for".

thing is, i actually like to work. it feels weird to goof off in the office. so 95% of the time, i'm multitasking on other work. i get lots of shit done at once, and that's great. great for me, great for mr. brady, yadda. but once in a while i do take these opportunities for freedom (that's what they are!) to talk here, read my email, give liz a hard time, whatever. :-D

the point of all this is: i think i've decided that i don't mind if clearcase sticks around, even though i think as a version control app, it's pretty fucked up. i'm all about taking the guilt-free things whenever i can get them. that is, when i'm not guilting myself into working anyway.

aww

i kind of glossed over me and min's anniversary last week because there was a lot of chaos on that day. we'd planned to celebrate this past weekend but min still wasn't up for much, although we did go out for lunch in a lame kind of way (@whole foods before shopping there). i'm not complaining, mind you. just stating the facts. i was kinda out of it this weekend (and today) too what with my little ovaries going apeshit.

anyway. so imagine my surprise when today i get a call from the receptionist that i have a package. wtf? turns out my baby ordered me some flowers in an adorable bunny container! and you know how we love the bunnies. and tons and tons of flowers!

so if you get around to reading this, thanks baby! if anyone else reads this besides me, then please burst forth with a little smile. just a little one. if you have trouble, it looks like this:

you just saved $2489.35

i never used to pay attention to how much i "saved" on prescriptions because i have insurance. probably because i've been on the same few things for a long time - old news. but in the last year min has probably tried at least 30 new medications in an effort to keep her health under control, and a couple of times we've had to pay for the name brand of things and the regular copay (10-25) got scaled up to close to $75. bleh.

anyway, so yesterday her aforementioned-totally-kick-ass pain specialist dr. s adjusted her meds a bit. we go to pick them up at walgreens, i pay my $30 for the two rxes, then casually glance at the "you just saved" field for them. holy shit. one of them we "only" saved around $400, but the other one - JFC. 2500 smackers.

thank god for DP benefits. she has her own insurance for the prescriptions, but it really kicks in on the hospital visits. we both have blue cross so between the two i don't think we've had to pay anything for her escapades the last few months.

min is going on disability again. realized that she just is not going to be able to work until we get things under control. it's going to be hard on us financially but we'll work things out like we always do. i don't care if we have to move into a hole. she's been making things worse by working so hard. i'm actually grateful that she's doing this. i just hope that dr. t can work some magic and get her back to a relatively normal life instead of having to struggle through every second.

and of course i'm exhausted. i feel bad about complaining since i'm not having near the trouble min is, but there it is. i'm not horrendously tired and burnt out now, but i can see it coming and it makes me anxious, especially since i know the next month or so at work is going to be insane.

bleh.

blurry

while i wait for a rebase to finish, let me tell you about yesterday. yesterday i celebrated:

• 8 years of marriage to Min
  
• pearl's 1 year birthday
  
• a plethora of technical issues with work tools
  
• another last-minute trip to the ER for one of Min's attacks

Ok maybe i didn't "celebrate" the last two. #3 is actually fairly common. #4 is not as common as it used to be, thank the drumming goddesses. it's not any less exhausting though. and happened just in time for my annual review at work, at 9am so i didn't even get to think about sleeping in like usual (after an attack night). that's why starbucks is my friend and i'm so grateful that my baby gave me a gift card for valentines. i'm feeling less blurry by the minute as the caffiene and sugar attempt to zoom through my veins. today they're just kind of ambling in.

she has another appointment with dr. t next friday, and i sure as fuck hope he says she gets another botox shot to try to keep her duodenum from clenching shut and causing these attacks. because if this represents "as good as it gets" for her, then that just sucks so much that i don't even have the energy to talk about it. meantime her new pain specialist doc (another great guy with a longass name, so we call him "dr. s") has been really fabulous. they are still figuring out the best combination of meds for her, but just thank god thank GOD she has him too. wait, i meant to thank the scent-free shamanic vegetarian potluck-happy drumming goddesses. my bad.

well i suppose that's enough TMI for now. rebase almost done. back to the grind.

i did it all for the nookie

this morning's musing: is there a greater incidence of lesbian sex after watching the l word? i'm willing to bet yes, but obviously this is based on personal experience. :-D

i just need to figure out how to research this properly. hmmm. feel free to send me your ideas, my dear imaginary readers.

and obviously, i've decided that for all its shortcomings, that damn show is just fine with me as long as it keeps serving up the hot, fresh canoodling.

and the winner is

to answer my friend andrea, it looks like the next state to ban gay marriage will be indiana. morons.

do you ever

find yourself thinking about That Thing that you know you shouldn't think about, then realize that even remembering that you shouldn't think about it makes you start thinking about it even more?

sometimes i hate my brain.

just so you know

i haven't dropped off the face of the earth. in the last two weeks i have:

• been to the hospital for Min Adventures!
  
• gone on a brief vacation to cambria in a place that looked nicer than it really was
  
• been in more meetings than you can shake a stick at (and more to look forward to)
  
• rediscovered my love/hate relationship with the l word

i imagine i'll start posting more regularly again soon, but there's the short short version. :-)

survey says: we like to buy things!

found an interesting report today about gay brand loyalty and spending habits. i really want to know what the mix was (% men vs women vs everyone else). anyway, apparently we're going to have $610 BILLION DOLLARS to spend in 2005. i must be getting a better rebate than i thought.

oh also: shut up, chris shelton. wake up and smell the dinero.

stupidity: priceless

oh yeah baby. stupid client comments. i'm gonna do something like this with all my CS stuff from FreakOne someday... or maybe something better! here's my favorite one:

client: these wet proofs look great, really high quality and expensive looking.
me: yeah, they look professional.
client: hmm, can you print them on lower quality paper as if you've printed them inhouse and then staple them together?
me: yes i can, but it'll be more expensive - almost double the price.
client: i know but we're having budget cut backs and at least they'll look cheap.

it's a gay world after all

wanna live somewhere that's queer 24/7 but isn't in the US? you should move to The Gay Kingdom. it's a small gay world, after all, but that's not stopping some aussies from telling the UN where to get off. something in me wants to make fun of this, but i think this is somewhere between cool and ridiculous and i'm having trouble getting a grip on my wit. time to hit a starbucks methinks.

thanks again to the fab gabriel for this one!

and i can thank myself for getting the "it's a small world" song in my head. open itunes, dammit, open!!

happy holidaze

bug fix has ended. what does that mean? that means i've had a few minutes to call my own. so without further ado, i offer you the very red holiday pics.

christmas



toikey day

shut up and talk

an "announcements only, no discussions allowed" list that i'm on has been rampant with discussions lately, and it's really getting on my nerves. a lot of women out there are getting worked up and apparently feel that their opinions must be shared with the whole list, despite guidelines forbidding just that. the latest rant has been of an ageist nature -- arguing whether a local community group is ageist or not because its gatherings are only for women over a certain age.

this eventually led to a friend of mine posting for an event and jokingly making a comment the event being age-inclusive. apparently people must have flamed her, because she just posted a PC apology to the list saying she didn't mean to offend anyone or make light of age-related concerns.

all i have to say is SHUT the HELL up! i don't actually care how you feel about restrictive groups. if i wanted to know, i'd talk to you on the related list that IS for discussions. stop yammering!

and lighten up a little, people. LBJ doesn't like it when you make people feel bad for having a little TOTALLY INNOCUOUS fun. criminy.

ok i feel better now. :-D

freakin sweet!

do you heart family guy? well get your mouse finger clickin and check out this trippy yet far too brief screen read from an upcoming episode of family guy. that's right - in case you didn't know, it's coming back! get ready for some badass stewie action, baby!!

thanks to the fabulous gabriel for bringing this to my attention!

wishful thinking part deux

while i have a moment waiting for a process to finish on my machine...

min's at home now, hopefully sleeping. procedure got done a lot quicker than expected, mostly because the staff at dr. t's office are clueless (didn't tell us the right amount of time). but in this case, that's just fine! shorter is good.

in the good yet bad department, attempting to give her the injection triggered another attack. :-( bad because it's horrible to go through (and this one sounds like it was a real whopper), good because it lets them know that again, this was the right spot to take care of!

this also means she'll have more pain (than originally expected) for the next few days, but at least she's still on disability thru that period. and hopefully this will be the last really bad attack! *crosses fingers*

wishful thinking

min's getting her second GI shot today. theoretically, right this second. please keep her in your thoughts today. stay tuned!

all's well that ends well

despite my paranoia yesterday, our baby pearl did not come back from the groomer looking like death warmed over. yay! in fact, she looks adorable. apparently she did not have to get totally buzzed, altho she has probly a 1/8th inch of fur over most of her body. her tail is still very long and poofy tho AND her head is relatively normal (plenty of fur around her ears AND muzzle). still - it always takes me a while to recognize her whenever she comes back from the groomer. i keep thinking, you're cute, but who are you?

i gotta clear out the digicam so i can show you all the difference in how she looks. yet another thing to do.. :-p

in case you're wondering what the AND is all about...well...all i can say is that AND was a Very Important Word at our company indoctrination yesterday. AND i have a feeling we'll hear more about that in future company missives because AND covers so much territory (good AND bad). AND who doesn't want that delicious mix?

well isn't that special?

<rant>
ever have one of those days where nothing you do is right? that's what almost every minute of this last week has been like. and to cement my position as a loser:

this morning i took our beloved pearl in to get groomed. we have had some trouble with her fur matting a) because it's gotten too long and b) min's taken all of my time/attention and neither of us has had the energy to groom her appropriately. we were going to ask nikki (sweet, dog-grooming daughter of our sweet backyard neighbor penny) to yes, cut her hair short, but to do the best she can to clear out the mattes.

but no. what does nikki exclaim, in a sad little voice, as soon as she scoops pearl up? "oh no! look at you!" and proceeds to tell me that our little baby is going to have to get shaved. shaved. bereft of her hair like a cancer patient or one of those freaky hairless cats.

we went back and forth for a while, me trying to figure out a way that wouldn't have to happen, but also not torture pearl trying to get the mattes out. nikki says she'll try, but is pretty sure that she'll have to shave her and then we'll use sweaters (which thankfully we already have) to keep her warm til her fur grows in.

i wanted to die. i was embarassed and frustrated that pearl had gotten like that so quickly (she got groomed just over a month ago), sad on pearl's behalf of what she was going to have to go through (today and while her fur grows back) and depressed because clearly this indicated that i was a shitty mom.

call me a martyr if you want, i probably am. but i guess it just felt like the last straw in what has already been a hard week, nevermind the last month. i want to go climb into a hole. i'm sure i just need a vacation or some major psychotropics to make me not give a fuck that i'm letting people down. we'll see which comes first.
</rant>

now i'm off to get cracking on my weird work day. do a bit this morning, going home at lunch to give min the car and then i'm off to a company meeting the rest of the day. at least i'll be getting paid to sit and nod. ;-p

lifestyles of the sick and famous

right now i feel famous for being sick. not me - min. people keep asking me about her, and it's totally normal and i really appreciate people caring enough to ask! seriously, if you are one of those folks, don't feel like you should stop asking. it's just a little trippy that the thing i've been hearing most frequently is "so how's min doing?"

well, min's doing pretty good...now. and yes, that is a relative term because she's still fighting not to have an attack and keeping the pain at a level she can handle without, you know, wanting to kill herself. she got some new meds late last week, and those have kept her out of the hospital/doctor's office for 5 days in a row, yay!

hey i'm shooting for more than 3 days in a row. in the last month (today marks the 1 month anniversary of her attack marathon) she's had an attack an average of every 3 days, sometimes more. because we can't afford to pay for constant trips to the ER/doctor, we've probably only gone to the doctor an average of once a week (but sometimes more). i've been working a portion of almost every weekend to make up the time i keep losing from regular hours, jetting off to take her in. yippee skippee.

i won't bore you, imaginary reader, with any more gory details, but suffice to say she's finally decided to go on disability until she gets her second shot, scheduled for this friday. but after this shot, she should be good to go. well, about 50% better to go, and that's the goal for now. i'm just glad she's at home resting and starting to feel a little bit better. i think a month of unbearable agony is a month too long for anyone. and besides i'm sick of having to talk to those weird security guys at the ER booth so they'll let me in. :-p

you are non-employee #3003

amidst all my non-work related hullabaloo (more on that soon), i'm having a technical problem at work. hardly an anomaly, i know. anyway, so i call help desk to see what the status is of my ticket, and they tell me the name of the person assigned to it and to get in touch with them. ok fine.

so i look them up on the intranet, and of course since i'm not sure how my problem is going to be solved, i'm curious what this person's job title is. i'm expecting support technician, help desk support, something like that. natural, yes?

no. his title is "non-employee". how very nice. i have an employee reject coming to help me.

the one time i miss law & order

and this happens. damn!

although frankly, this sounds like a cop out, if you'll pardon the pun, since her character leaves the show at the end of that episode. at least i can be looking for lots of subtext when i watch reruns though.

Walk on the ocean

It only took 3 months but I've finally got pix from our October Mendocino trip posted! only reason they're done is my baby finessed them while I had to pull a weekend shift at work. i just had to web-size 'em and post witty comments. Enjoy!

pearl's lil bro

while i'm waiting for one stupid tool to work, and another to finish updating so i can work, i thought i'd take a moment to share the pix i got this morning of pearl's newest brother: smooch! no, we don't have a new puppy, but a friend of a friend just got a puppy from the breeder we used, with the same parents! kind of amazing how different he looks. but adorable. =)

• smooch on the prowl
  
• smooch getting ready for a night on the town
  

hee?

got it! this is only partially funny, but here's a good way to kill an hour or two:
http://www.blogmechanics.com/bob/results.html

it's the bob awards! Best Of Blogs that is, and damn if there aren't some great ones i just added to my bloglines account. stuff for mommies, queers, humor, sex, overall kickass blogs, you name it. happy reading!

gi fun, redux

another day, another last-second scramble to a medical facility of some flavor. everything's better today, but yesterday afternoon min had another attack. christ! because of the medicine she's on, and hopefully the procedure she just had, the last two (monday, yesterday) have been calmer. calmer because they only involved excrutiating pain and not the other lovely symptoms i'll leave out because i already feel a bit nauseous today.

this time tho her attack was during business hours and not on a holiday, so the doc said to come in instead of going right to the ER. i'm sure we waited a shorter time there than if we'd gone to the ER, but it felt like forever. dr. t gave her some new meds to try cutting down the spasms, but by the time we were able to get the stupid rx filled, she was feeling a lot better. i guess the good part about that is, this attack was much much shorter than any of her other ones and she didn't even have to get doped up to stop it! wheee!

she is back at work today. i think she's a bit crazy but i can't say i wouldn't have done the same thing. damn that work ethic!

i'll try to post something fun soon to balance out all this seriousness. i am living in my own medical reality show, yes, but that doesn't mean i don't have plenty of silliness in my day. i'll try to make sure some of that creeps in here soon. :-)

and now, the min report

min seems to be doing ok after her procedure. moderate pain still of course, but is already having an easier time swallowing her food, yay! she is staying home today to rest, thank god. she wanted to go in to work because they're such sticklers about her time, and of course because of the $, but between my pushing and her own pain (she just had an attack on monday night!), she's still pretty out of it.

however, dr. t is really cranking to get her second procedure done within the next month, so hopefully she'll be gi attack-free before the end of february, yay! and thanks to everyone who sent prayers and well wishes. :-)

this is a dooce-free zone

if you like to blog about work, you should check out the new blogger's bill of rights. me, i don't got much work angst now (unlike LYD, poor (but funny) soul) so it's not a big deal to me presently.

of course, if i had been blogging while at my previous employer.... let's just say i would have cared about enforcing this a whoooole hell of a lot. the shit that went down there, my god.

happy happy joy joy

min just got her procedure for the 19th bumped up to wednesday - two days from now!! yay! hopefully this should relieve a good deal of her suffering. the doc has told her it may not help a lot, that the 2nd procedure should help more, but still... we'll take any improvement we can!

btw the procedure, strangely enough, is to inject botox into part of her GI tract. this one is going in her esophagus, the second one will go closer to her small intestine. this supposedly relaxes the muscles there (the ones that keep jamming shut and causing her attacks) for up to 18 months. down the road, if that goes well, they'll do surgery and make things permanent. interesting isn't it? in kind of a "wish i was watching a show about this, not personally living it" kind of way.

anyway, keep her in your thoughts for wednesday!

merry new year!

hope you all had a happy new year and whatever holidays you celebrate this time of the year! and best wishes to all of you in 2005!

as for myself, it's been pretty crazy the last 3 weeks. min and i drove down to arizona to visit with her family, then my parents came back with us and spent a week here. all the family stuff was fine - a little tension/drama as expected, but not too bad.

however, min started having more gi attacks -- a total of 3 since the 23rd -- so it's been a little stressful to say the least. however, as of saturday night she's broken her attack-every-3-days cycle, yay! and she is back at work today, little trooper that she is. please keep her in your thoughts/prayers. it's just a little over 2 weeks until her first procedure that's supposed to help with this stuff.

2004 was a pretty wild year. min's illness pounced on the scene, i went thru job angst and finally landed somewhere better, i had surgery on my arm (hopefully the last one i'll need), survived the usual amount of family/relationship issues (both sides, thank you) and we got blessed with our little pearl. other than the health of our little family, i'd say everything's ended up just peachy. or maybe mango-y because i likes that mango fandango.

how about you?

sometimes i don't know why i bother

and that's the short short short version to cover today the last week life as i know it.

dear chris: put the fear of god into my dad

i'm not sure if this is for real, but it's freaking hilarious:

kids' christmas letters to christopher walken

get your fresh, hot, almost-equal rights

on january first, AB205 goes into effect for all of california's registered domestic partners. this new law gives us most but not all of the state rights as hetero couples in CA, and still none of the federal rights, but dammit it's one step closer, so give a baby whoopNholler!

you can read a coherent, clickable breakdown of the rights/responsibilities here.

Calling all lgbtqii folks

That was the subject line on a message that just came through for a list I'm on. All I have to say is, WTF?!?

I know it starts off with Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, then i guess Queer (as if for some reason that didn't incorporate the former), but...ii ?? introverted idiots? innovative ideologists?

i think this is taking diversity a teeeeensy bit too far.

that old black magic called family

i admit it. i'm a sucker for a glimmer of family bliss. that's why i'm shelling out for my parents to come visit me at christmas, even though there is likely to be Drama, although likely nowhere near the likes of this last turkey day. they're poor, they're in horrible health, and with each holiday i wonder if this could be the Last Chance to see them. especially my dad.

the thing is, i used to have an amazing relationship with my parents. they were seriously my best friends for many years. moving around more than a jitterbug in a warp core will do that to you. then when i came out to them, my sister was suddenly the Good Sheep. it's taken a few years, but they've gotten to know min and i think love her, and accept who i am, too. there was lots of Drama for other reasons that i don't want to get into today, but most of those have been worked out, it seems, and we are mostly on the road to Happyville as a family.

but that's the thing. it's not constant, and during any visit, something will pop up to remind someone of The Reason You Keep Pissing Me Off/Make Me Want To Avoid You Like The Plague. maybe this is just the human condition. you make me mad, you apologize, we move on. at least that's what we tell ourselves, until the next fuckup. and there's always another fuckup because we are human.

well, here's one for hoping this visit goes better than all the previous ones. i actually do have good hopes for it. then again, i always start out that way.

happy holidays!

today is our group's holiday potluck/white elephant exchange, and i'm feeling festive. so get your chris' on !!

stay tuned for more pics...christmas or otherwise. :-)

maimed for love

i was recently maimed for love as part of cheese-slicing incident. i was trying to hack a gigantic block of cheese (for my baby and the kitties - that's the love part) when the knife slipped and sliced off part of my finger. i didn't go get stitches because it sliced sideways ... nothing to stitch up. luckily (i guess) because of my stupid skin condition we had plenty of gauze and tape so my baby wrapped it up reel gud. i've actually graduated to a gigantic bandaid today. hopefully that's where i can stay because the uber-finger was awfully cumbersome.

but still, it's fun to say i was maimed for love. oh and boy did i have fun secretly flipping people off yesterday. ;-)

extra props to liz for speedy sidekick action.

religion rears its lovely head

my friend liz has been going through family angst because of a recent decision to pursue lesbian parenthood. i ranted a bit about what love REALLY is, but it got me thinking:

i don't know about anyone else, but as for me, being queer has made me stick to those traits i was taught about even closer than in my blindly hetero days. why? because i, too, feel the constant lens of judgement peering down at my life by all the straight, christian members of my family. i don't dare fuck up my relationship or act in any way unethical and jeopardize my life because that would mean i'm a godless lesbian heathen who gets what she deserves. call that internalized homophobia if you want, but i think living a life built around love ain't so shoddy.

and yes, i DO try to live that way just because i think it happens to be the right thing to do and that makes me happy, too. the societal influence is just that - an influence.

ok that's enough for now. i feel awfully worked up for someone who's supposed to be loving. :-) time to work.