The Neon Nurse's Charting

You know how you can be sitting around in the house, and you hear a loud strange sound, even though the TV and the fan and the air conditioning is on, and you think, "Huh, that doesn't sound good...."?

In my case, recently, it could have been this:



The short version is that the Colorado National Guard guy's plane got an onboard fire during practice. The closest airport to him was Lamar's, which is a couple of miles from our house as the crop-duster flies. He tried to land, but slid off the runway a little. Luckily he was able to bail and got off with only a sprained ankle.

More here if you care in the slightest

I have been all busy and beelike today, which is why I am only FINALLY sitting down to read LJ and post a little at 10:30. Since we've finally had a few days in a row with no rain, I even did some mowing with the little lawn tractor. Nigel, the world's finest son-in-law, recently replaced the blades and the long, twisty, expensive belts that make them go 'round, and now it cuts very well!

Mike is trying to memorize all the songs on the soundtrack of the SpongeBob Squarepants movie.

"The best day ever's gonna last all night..." indeed.

It seems like days when I don't get around to posting something new are either the very good ones or their opposite numbers. Yesterday was one of the good kind, I'm happy to say. I got an email that our battery backup/surge protector was still under warranty, so they will replace it, and we also got the last two straggling rebate checks from BestBuy. Mike even had a good day, in which he was helpful, thrifty, hard-working, creative and any number of other good Scoutish things, even though he's not one.

In the evening, he and I watched The Tick, and then the rerun of Howard Dean guesting on The Daily Show. That was fun, two of my favorite famous guys joking seriously with each other!

Right now it is 101 degrees outside. Since Mike so virtuously cleaned and refilled his swimming pool (all by himself!) yesterday, I predict some floating in my near future, probably after the chore run and dinner....

Here we were yesterday evening, sitting around innocently enjoying the sound of the rain on our metal roof, when suddenly there was a loud SNAP. And not the modern kind that is meant as enthusiastic approval of a person and/or their actions.

The computers and all their friends and accessories instantly turned into doorstops. Before I could finish voicing the first obscenity I noticed something very odd. The lights and Mike's TV were still glowing along just fine.

'Oh,' I thought. 'The battery back-up/surge protector has done its job and possibly given its life to save our dear baby computers!'

So I worked my way back through the desk debris to where it sat, and sure enough, I couldn't get it to power back up. This was annoying, because I don't know about YOUR computer desk area, but mine always looks like the safety team came too late with the stuff-alanche warning signs.

Next annoyance: Wal-mart, the only store open in town, does not carry those battery back-up thingies. So we bought the biggest surge protector they had, went home, and completely deconstructed another huge chunk of my work area.

An hour and a half later, everything was fine...but the INTERNET!!! Horrors!!! I mucked about with it a while longer, but finally gave up and decided to call CenturyTel, to see if it was somehow a system wide glitch.

Only to find it was the PHONE LINE that was out. Which retrospectively explained quite a lot.

Caro drove to town to report the outage, and got some advice about what to try before the repair people came on MONDAY. But it involved messing with the box on the outside of the house, and since it was dark now, we just dealt as best we could with our withdrawal symptoms until bedtime.

As you can probably guess, the advice was typical for Customer Support--more or less right, although lacking enough in detail to make it slightly more of a trial and error extravaganza than it really needed to be. But the important part is we are BACK ON LINE. *sobs and clutches intarnets to chest*

Oh, well, at least I made some good progress towards rearranging my work area!

OK, now Mike and I have finished bleaching our hair. Mike looks like a copper kiwi (having started with near-black hair) and I have chunks and rows of cornsilk to goldenrod bits with shining pink scalp peeking through here and there. The first idea I was going for was that if I dyed the short result of my Mike-do, then let the medium brown grown up from underneath, it might have an interesting patchwork look.

Then I found a really old box of purple dye. That's why Mike got in on the bleaching. I think he might have to go again to get light enough for real purple hair. We'll see.

In other hilarity, I got one of the BEST EVAR emails from a Customer Service Department, in regards to the UK edition of Harry Potter 6 we've ordered.

"We are writing to you regarding your order for "Harry Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6)".

At Amazon.co.uk, we are always looking for ways to bring value to our
customers. We are, therefore, delighted to confirm that we have
reduced the price of Harry Potter 6 to just 8.99 (47% off) and that
all our customers, muggles and wizards alike, will benefit from this
reduction.

Please note that the book will not fit through a standard letter box,
so keep an eye out for our delivery owls.

Thank you for shopping at Amazon.co.uk, and stay alert for You-Know-Who."

I was sitting here at the computer when I noticed that it seemed DARKER than it ought for the time of day. Looking outside showed a really rather impressive build-up of rumbly clouds exactly the same steely blue lavender as the beauteous Dreamcloud. Whose windows were all down, necessitating a trip outside to remedy that problem. Once I had hobbled down the stairs I decided I might as well have a go at the main outside task I'd penciled in for today, cleaning the fish pond and filter.

Nearly got it all done before it started raining, too.

I think I had a point to this entry when I started it, but it's long gone now. Guess I'll go see if I can finish the pond without being struck by lightning.

A few hours shy of thirty years ago, I went to bed as the mother of an adorable toddler. By the time morning rolled around, I had a very fuzzy little son as well. (My first labor had been eight hours, and this one was two. Just as well we stopped there, or there might have been some sort of temporal displacement incident!)

So Big Sterling, all grown up as you have seen in recent pics, was due to come for a visit tomorrow, along with Grand-girlie Lexi. Unfortunately, he has been temporarily thwarted by a combination of personal pickup malfunction and repair person incompetence. So to the dissatisfaction of everyone, the visit is going to be a few days late.

I did not shave my head in woe. I *did* allow Mike to "help" me cut my hair.

It's a bit short now.



Fear not, I have a number of very fetching wigs to wear when I need to go to town and wish not to frighten small children. Strange small children, I mean. The ones in my family are used to me by now.

Speaking of the grands, I got Zach to laughing with a Harry Potter-verse joke I (think I) made up.

What do Dementors do just before they Kiss their victim?

Eat a DE-Mentos! Arr-arr!!

(Mentos are breath mints, for those of you who don't live in their sales territoty.)

I thought I had something else to post, but obviously without any hair to weigh them down, my thoughts can REALLY go skittering away! Oh, well....

That's kind of how the day's been going. Caro needed gas in her car, and the 3 cents off a gallon card lives in my purse, so we decided to go into town together to get a fill-up for her Nimbus '95. "We can go get the gas first," I said. "We have half an hour before the Post Office closes--it'll take five minutes."

Yeah. Five minutes before there was a pump free. But then, like a highly trained professional pit crew, we leapt into action, me swiping the cards and punching the buttons and Caro handling the hose. Which would have worked out great, but because it was still about 97 degrees out at 4:30, removing the hose handle enabled a back surge, providing Caro with exciting parting gifts of
new low-octane insoles and a free eyewash.

Luckily we had a bottle of water in the car which had been sitting there all afternoon and so was nice and warm. Caro is fine, and we even got to the post office on time, despite nearly getting squashed in the turn lane at the traffic light by an 18-wheeler who seemed to be having his own five minute type day.

Oh, and if you weren't sure, I'm back. Sunday I didn't manage to get back to doing much of anything, as my knees decided to go on a melt-down strike in protest of all the heavy algae scrubbing action I put them to earlier in the day. I DID manage to hobble to the cookout, and it was excellent. But my knees and I went to bed very early, since I had the trip to Denver scheduled and I had already rescheduled that doctor's appointment once.

It went fine. We had a good time, no problems, Mike is 1 1/2" taller and 7 pounds heavier, and will continue on his usual meds barring any untoward cuts in the programs that service special needs kids.

So all is reasonably well, except that I had a TON of things tabbed to read or reply to in my leisure evening hours, but my computer froze up and I lost them. Yeah, I can go through and collect them again, but I'm never SURE I re-found everything....

Is my five minutes over yet?

And now for something completely different....

My grand-goat Fifi. (Belongs to Marisa, who is goat-crazy the way her twin sister Morrissey is horse-crazy.)



No, there's no reason for posting it except I liked how the picture, which one of the girls took with my camera, came out.

Hmm. If you don't know the poem, that sounds like I came home twice....

Got back last night and had time to catch up with my family, pets, messages, email, business and bloggy stuff. More or less kinda. I had tons of fun, but it's always good to get back home to one's own Good Old Friendly Bed and such.

Devra and I chatted through much of our 48 hours together, plus ate lots of yummy food and saw scenic sights. We got snowed on up on top of Pike's Peak. I took lots of pics and will probably get them up onto some kind of page for viewing (since there are so many) Real Soon Now.

One of the funniest things that happened was Thursday night. We finally, after a good hour and a half of driving around in more or less the direction of our hotel, chose a place to eat dinner and actually managed to locate the access driveway and a parking place way over on the side. As we were walking towards the door, a voice from a passing car called out, "Hey! Devra!"

It turned out to be Devra's friend who was in charge of the conference she flew out to attend (which started last night). Not only was this an amazing co-incidence, it was a fantastic stroke of luck, because the friend was expecting us for dinner! (The email she'd sent about it had arrived after Devra had already left.) So we deftly changed our plans and got directions.

The guest of honor was coming to dinner too, and Devra told me he is famous for making cool pottery things. As we drove along, I was telling Devra that I had only three minor connections to the whole pottery world: I know some of the famous makers of vintage stuff, I have a lot of bins of pottery fragments because someday I am going to take up making mosaics...and I was going to add that I know Jon Singer and enjoy reading his LJ entries about experimental pottery glazes, even though I do not understand them. But I didn't get to finish that last part because I got distracted.

So later on at our hostess's house, it was revealed Jon was going to be there for dinner too. Of course. That was shortly after the exciting part where the kitchen sink faucet exploded. I think our hostess (who I keep not calling by name because I can only remember Devra's nickname for her and I don't know if it's okay for general use) must have a tendency like mine to be a chaos attractor. Luckily no harm done that towels and a hastily summoned plumber couldn't cure. So pretty soon all of us, including John the GoH (who is an English guy and not Jon Singer), Jon's friend Lisa, the other two householders, and Sappho the cat) had a jolly dinner.

My knees held up much better than I expected them too, which makes me happy, and all in all it was a great mini-vacation!

Just a quick note before I shoop off to bed. Tomorrow I am going to drive up to Colorado Springs, because my old friend Devra (yeah, Guinn, THAT Devra!) has a semi-business convention there this weekend. So she's coming early and I'm going to do the native guide thing.

Anyway, if you don't hear anything from me until Saturday, that's why.

In brief news, today was a good one. I had x-rays and a check-up at the dentist, and was shocked to find...I don't need anything done! The ol' choppers are good to go for a while longer. Woo hoo!

Even better, the first of the rebate checks I wrote and snarled at them about came from Best Buy. This is about a month sooner than the rude Customer Disservice guy said they would, so perhaps that is a good sign!

This was one of our better surprises in the past, oh, sixteen months or so. Sterling drives a Big Truck, but he mostly drives it in the Midwest and East, so we don't get to see him much. That's what I get for failing to heed ol' Willie Nelson's advice re career counseling one's babies.



Happily, the company he drives for got an order to deliver a bunch of RV windshields to Arizona, and he had enough slack in his schedule to get to stop by on both legs of the trip for a couple of short mini-reunions. My fourth astonishingly beautiful and intelligent grandchild, who I also don't see nearly enough



was supposed to get to come along on this trip, but she picked up a stomach virus just before the departure date and for some reason Sterling didn't feel like making the long haul with a repetitively heaving six year old as Road Assistant.

Maybe next time. Which could happen fairly soon, because Sterling now has the seniority to request the occasional trips out West when his company has them available.

Unless he quits and changes companies. In which case I will just sigh and say, "That's okay, I'll just sit here in the dark...."

It is! Some writers and publishers are Not Happy that there is such a brisk trade in used books. There's an excellent summation of a recent panel at a sort of book trade convention, titled "The Used Book Debate at BEA"

http://bookstoretourism.blogspot.com/2005/06/used-book-debate-at-bea.html

Here are a few of the highlights I found interesting:

# Many consumers now feel that paying full price for a book is foolish when you can get it for cheaper. It's part of today's "bargain culture."

# Used books encourage readers to try new authors and books they may not read otherwise.

# Used books help to keep authors' careers afloat by sustaining their audiences and even creating new ones.

# An author's books may be out of print, but the used book market keeps them circulating.

# The largest retailer of used books in the U.S. is Goodwill Industries.

# Fifty percent of new books are sold at non-bookstores like Wal-Mart and Cosco.

# Many authors feel that since a book is their intellectual property, they should be compensated again if the book is resold.

# Bookselling is the only industry where the person who created the product wants additional payment if the actual item is resold. This is not the case in the auto or housing industries, for example.

# The sale of used books could force more authors into self-publishing as a way to retain higher royalties.

# Most readers have an emotional investment in their books and don't want to throw them away. They've been taught that books have innate value, therefore they'd rather give them away to a friend or donate them to an organization.

# Textbook publishers have reacted against used book sales by boosting their costs, thus increasing the demand for used textbooks all the more -- a vicious cycle.

***

Feel free to discuss. :)

It's been another busy week around here. Visits from the long lost, appointments to be gotten to, Caro's first week of her summer reading program, all on top of the usual weird stuff....

Yesterday I went to a meeting with some of our local Democrats to meet some of our NON-local Democrats, all of us from Colorado's 4th Congressional District. It is, as many CDs tend to be, a big, funny-shaped area; it includes most of the Eastern flat part of the state but also Estes Park (gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Forest/Park) and some of the smaller communities just OUTSIDE Boulder, a famous Hotbed of Liberalism.

I am very sorry to say that our 4th CD Rep is Marilyn Musgrave, best known for sponsoring the Federal Marriage Amendment. So what this new group, the 4CDC, is being formed to do, basically, is support Anybody But Marilyn in the 2006 elections.

We had a productive meeting where we bounced ideas off each other and came up with what I think are some very workable ideas. I'm looking forward to trying them out!

So as long as I'm being political, there's a petition going around some of my friends might like to sign. (Thanks to for the heads up!)


Click on Howard to sign!

And to save folks the trouble of asking...do I think Howard could have phrased a few of his recent off the cuff remarks better? Probably. Do I think we need more and not less of leaders who truthfully say what they really think without worrying whether people will like it or not? Oh HELL yeah!

# posted by Susan : 8:01 PM

Do not be alarmed. My lack of posting since Sunday night was not caused by me sulking due to the almost unanimous resounding silence regarding what *I* thought was an UnUtterably Cool New Hobby (fly-powered paper airplanes).

It's just that we had a string of the usual busy, strange, and/or time-glomping events going on, some of which I will post about later. Most likely. But right now I'm all tired, after catching up on reading about a day and 3/4 of email and LJ.

In local news, yes, where I live IS a center collection point of strange unexplainable events. In the latest one, Lamar is going to be come a world headquarters for scientific study of cosmic rays. Really.

http://www.lamardaily.com/Stories/0,1413,121~7979~2910317,00.html

Excerpts:

A key component of Southeast Colorado's success was to persuade hundreds of local landowners to allow Auger scientists to place detector tanks on their land. Tanks are about four to five feet tall, 12 feet in diameter and are filled with ultrapure water. Incoming cosmic ray particles interact with water in the tanks, emitting small bursts of light which can be detected by special electronic equipment.

The article later mentions the need to develop a tank that can endure the occasional sub-zero temps we get here, but no word on how they might guard against roaming cattle using them for back-scratching posts.

The observatory will be one of only two in the world, and should provide a significant tourist attraction to Southeast Colorado.

This I can't wait to see....

It will take a couple of years for serious construction to unfold, said Harton. The funding for the project is somewhat complex because there are around 60 universities and 20 nations involved, and the budget for the project will be in the tens of millions of dollars. Harton said that he will push for a meeting of the full Auger Collaboration in southeast Colorado, hopefully as soon as next summer. Around 300 scientists from around the world typically attend the collaboration meetings, which last for several days, making the project a boon to local lodging and restaurant businesses.

Science groupies, come on down!!! Caro and I were speculating tonight about the likely riots once the scientists figure out there are only a couple of even halfway decent restaurants in town.... Oooh, maybe they will try to feed them at the college cafeteria!!!

All in all, this project should provide more entertainment that the fly-planes could imagine in their wildest insect-exploiting DREAMS! I can hardly wait!

Yet another day where we didn't end up doing anything like what I thought we were going to, yet a pretty good one all the same. I got some stuff done, found a $100 paperback in a box of books I was listing (Barboza, hitman true crime bio) and had fun watching the first episode of Storm Stories' Hurricane Week with Mike (and later Queer As Folk with Caro). I dropped a lighthouse on my toe, which hurt a lot so I had to make a new batch of Green Stuff, and I dispatched five mice (so far today) in our never ending battle for truth, justice and no mouse poop in the towel cabinets and dog food can.

One of our plans this summer is to do more inexpensive fun family stuff together. I have stumbled across a stunningly apropos resource HERE:

http://www.flypower.com/index.html

Go. Look. Be stunned like me.

For those who are click-away wary, I'll give you the short version. This web page will sell you a kit to make two teeny paper airplanes, which you power by catching flies and gluing them to...something which lets the flies fly the planes around.

OK, probably at least someone reading that said, "Oh! Cruelty to flies!" If you really are upset, I apologize. But since I do my dead level best to kill them by the thousand all summer long, living in the country in a fly-permeable house as I do, I would be a hypocrite to act like I treasure their little speck of bio-animation like my own here in the beautiful circle of life.

Also from what I read on the instruction pages, you can clip off the bit of paper they are attached to and set them free when you are done with your Fly Air Show, if you want.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Plus also, every time there was some pre-shadowing of the characters coming up in the "next" Swars movie, I heard a voice-over in my mind saying, "Meanwhile, on a small farm on Corell, a little boy named Han was growing up."

And then a grinning Snoopy promising to tie it all together in Chapter 4.

Well, Revenge of the Sith finally managed to find its way to our little backwater, so we adults put our heads together as to the best way to work this out. Mike does not like even remotely scary movies, so he was a non-starter, and Damaris wanted to vet it for appropriateness for the girlies, who ARE pretty tough minded and yet only eight.

I figured I was only going to want to see it once, like I and II, so I might as well watch it the onct on the big screen, and Caro thought likewise. Therefore Nigel volunteered to be the grown-up and stay with the kids.

I'm still a little uncertain as to what the heck people think is going to be given away by a review of III, but no worries, I won't go into specifics.

It didn't suck as much as I imagined it was going to. Caro said to me, incredulously, "It DIDN'T?" and I smirked, "I can imagine an awful lot." Lots of it was very very pretty or cool looking, which proves my choice to view it big screen was the right move. But it would take some big-time luring to get me to watch it again...probably something like watching it with a bunch of fans at a con or party so we could throw out zingers to our hearts content.

That's my final assessment--probably the finest MST3K fodder ever made.

One of my Live Journal friends shared a story whe wrote WAY a long time ago (1991!) found by her sister during a closet decluttering. It was adorable, and made me think of some of my daughter's early work.

Damaris, who is 31 now, didn't write things down much, but some of her stories were so memorable that they became family legend. There was a Weekly Reader series about a character named Morris the Moose, and she actually wrote a parody when she was about 6 or 7.

"Morris the Pickle wanted candy. He went to the wrong store. 'This is a pickle store,' said the man. They ate him. The end.'

I also remember something about The Horse that Came Out of Space, but sadly, no details survive in my brain.

The writing came out because we used to play those 'make up a story' games. I was under the impression that it would help build their little imaginations. Why I thought they needed any building, I have no idea.

I remember one such time, when I started the story off with something about a little bird that fell out of his nest, right at our feet. He looked up at us and cheeped sadly, I said. "What would you do next, Damaris?" I asked.

She gave me a Look and calmly said, "I'd squish him."

I decided to take this as a sign that she did not care for the sweet and emotionally manipulative style of fiction usually considered proper for little girls. If the other possibility, about her being a future serial killer, turned out to be closer to the truth, surely I would see additional indications soon enough.

Since neither of her brothers ever came to me with complaints about being blackmailed into digging mysterious holes in the fields around our house, I think it's all okay.

Still keeping an eye on those grand-girlies, though. You know how some things skip a generation.

I've been quiet again this week, what with the cold and all. On the whole, I am happier not to be posting because I am pleasantly zoning out rather than not posting because I am freaking out. :)

I'm just about back to as normal as I ever get, so I hope to accomplish a few things this weekend. Mostly indoor things, as the weather is expected to be cloudy and stormy the next few days. This is sad for the kiddos, because we THOUGHT we were going to get a window of a few nice warm ones, and we all worked hard yesterday clearing off an area of the patio to set up a small swimming pool. Oh, well, could be worse. We could have pre-paid for swimming lessons and be forced to force our young ones into the icy waters of the municipal pool all next week!

After we had eaten dinner yesterday and it was finally definitely too cold for even my hardy descendants to splash around in the patio pool, I sat outside and pulled a few weeds while watching the kids dash around playing games at random. It's exhausting just to watch! They play hide and seek for about 4 1/2 minutes, then jump on the bikes to race around the yard and road and driveway, then suddenly stop that in favor of the swings and a jump rope.

But it's not all pointless burning off excess energy. Zach noticed the lid of the sandbox had blown into the field across the street, so they all swarmed over to fetch it back. Cowboy the cattle dog went along to supervise, and on the way back he somehow landed funny jumping the ditch (he's almost 10, as best as we can tell) and twisted his left front foot, which made him yelp pitifully. The kids all swarmed to see what was wrong, while I called from the porch (still being pretty lame myself), hoping he could hobble to where I was. But oooowww, oooowwww, no, he insisted.

So Zach and one of the twins picked him up, one front, one rear, and toted him home. I wish I'd had my camera. Not because the kids looked so cute struggling along with a 40+ pound dog half and half in their arms, although they did. But the look on Cowboy's face of uncomfortable yet self-satisfied entitlement just KILLED me. He just hung there in their double grip like a prince in a strange sort of sedan chair, minus the chair. And of course once he got to the house and we looked him over he was FINE, and maybe limped once or twice more the whole evening. Silly old pup.

"Someone's gettin' a letter...." is a code phrase Damaris came up with. It means, in general, "Uh-oh, Mom is so mad she's actually going to DO something!"

Don't know if I mentioned it here before, but when Damaris decided to make the plunge to be a Jr. Partner in NeonHearts.com, part of the arrangements were to help her get a new computer. As we have done quite a few times in the past, we got an eMachines unit through Best Buy. It was a real bargain, a full bundle for well under $500 (after rebates) including the shipping.

There was shipping because this time we didn't happen to be near one of their stores. But what the hey, life is all about new experiences, right? Yeah, right.

What you get at a Best Buy store when you buy an item that has rebates is yards and yards of register tapes and receipts. For an online sale, it seems you need to print off the needed stuff. OK, doable. Except for in the way it was NOT and the pop-up saying "Order Receipt" wouldn't print. But I compared the page it was popping up FROM and saw there was no problem, as the info on the page called "Order Details" was IDENTICAL except for the bits of Best Buy ads and links around the edge.

Lexmark and eMachines, who were providing 3 of the 6 (!!!) rebates offered on this bundle agreed with my assessment. Oddly, Best Buy did not.

I got a series of three letters claiming I had not sent them anything to prove I had actually, you know, bought the computer. (Except that Order Details page which had the full total receipt on it which I guess they did not recognize because of not reading it. Or something.)

I called the number in the first letter, jumped through all the hoops and ran through all the voice mail mazes and finally got to talk to a very snotty young man who was no help whatsoever. Then I tried the web page, which at least got me a poorly spelled but sincere paragraph stuck in the middle of the boiler plate reply. But again no help.

So today I cleared my desk, cranked my knuckles and got down to it. And now in a few days three Rebate Office people will get a Snarkfest of a cover letter, assorted requested inclusions, a copy of the Order Details and Order Receipt pages with an invitation to explain what the difference could possibly be in the two identical relevant sections, plus a copy of the even more snarkful letter being sent out to assorted Corporate Customer Care honchos as listed on the web site.

In THAT letter, the Honchos were not only asked to explain why one arrangement of data is required, yet its exact duplicate is not acceptable, but also what they intend to do to recompense me for the time, expense and stress it caused me to have to deal with this. AND to name me ONE REASON we should not cut up our Best Buy cards and never darken their doors again.

I'll let you know how it all comes out.