The Neon Nurse's Charting

I woke up still alive, so that's a plus. I took some medicine, hoping to make the tiny bagpipes in my lungs stop squeaking. They mostly have, and air is going in and out again, unless I do something foolish and extravagant like try to walk from room to room.

Caro the Splendiferous Clone helped me pack up all the stuff needing to be mailed and took it away, which is a big load off my conscience.

I have started the task of going through ancient video cassettes, and I was tickled to find our family recording of the original Pee Wee Herman Show, an HBO broadcast of his stage show. I'm re-recording it onto DVD now. It's not the world's greatest copy, but it will do for now. (Looks like an official DVD will come out in July!)

A little while ago, when I was dosing myself with some more cough syrup, I spilled the little cup as I picked it up. Cowboy, our helpful senior dog, started to help me clean it up. True to its labeling, it made him cough. He thinks I am insane.

Amusing eBay item of the day:

I was a nerdy geek in school, so when I found this at the library sale I was delighted! Caro couldn't imagine anyone wanting it...but she's just blase from being an educator all these years:

Magnetism and Electricity for Grades 5 to 9, a Milliken Transparency-Duplicating book
Sigh. Kids today will never know the pleasure of sniffing the ditto fluid fumes off a freshly printed quiz or worksheet....

I intended to do more posting and email and such Wednesday, but it got a little busy--the public library threw a going away party for our librarian, and we HAD to go to that. (Yes, for other reasons than the free and very good food!)

Resting and going to bed early didn't do much for me. Yesterday I woke up with a sore throat that I tried hard to pretend was just the aftermath of an especially enthusiastic coughing fit. But now I must face the fact I've caught a Goin'-Round Bug. So today I will try hard to pretend there's no way it's trying to turn into a bout of bronchitis....

Before I stop for now, a friend asked me if I had THIS song to pass along on YouSendIt, back on Tune Tuesday.

http://download.yousendit.com/C0B0ADA33D02644A

Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London.mp3 (3 MB)

Since a song link is good for 7 days or 25 downloads, whichever comes first, thought I would give y'all the heads up!

Off to brew up some more hot tea now.

OK, I went strolling through my music files and I think I picked something strange, rare, unusual AND funny.

Steve Martin - Grandmother's Song.mp3

http://download.yousendit.com/BB88CD5D3342B824

I chose this one when I saw it because I was recently moved to sing it to one of my granddaughters, and she just STARED at me like I was INSANE. While her mom cracked up and rolled around on the floor. Ah, good times.

Well, here it is Monday. I have a ton of work to do and massive amounts of email and comments to catch up on. So why not start with some pointless blogging?

Posted mainly for my Colorado peeps:

Do you recognize this man??



The pic is from a 1948 Silver Spruce yearbook, for the college then known as Colorado A & M!

What other explanation could there be for finding out Merle Haggard has written, cut and made a video of an ANTI-WAR SONG!

Go to http://www.merlehaggard.com/ and see for yourself!

"Let's get out of Iraq and get back on the track
and let's rebuild America first."

The good old boys and gals might not be down with Pink, or the Dixie Chicks, or even Neil Young...but you know they are going to stop and think when it's Merle telling 'em.

I don't post about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome much, so people who haven't known me a long time might not know that's why I had to give up the nursing career some years back. There's debate about whether a person goes into remission or just gets used to their new state of being and adapts their activity level to fit. But either way, I get along okay, at maybe 75% on a good day of what I used to be able to do, so I just plug along and don't worry.

The results of a pretty good study got released last week, though. I read several articles, and this one was probably best:

Click here to read

This is pretty much what one school of thought in the CFS communities believed (back when I was reading them)--you start with a genetic pre-disposition. Run crossways of enough of the additive causes--severe viral disease, extreme stress, heavy and ongoing challenges to your immune system (CFS is way over-represented in health care and school workers), and bingo, your body gets all huffy and refuses to play nice any more!

Now if they will just get busy and find some meds or treatments or something!

We had a pretty jolly day today, all things considered. Caro got up early and went to an estate sale, but she only bought a few books because we are still in money-conservation mode. They suggested she come back later when things were priced to really go, and that time I went along too. So we got a big box of pretty decent stuff for $10. The most unusual book was an 1840 book of Doctrines and Disciplines of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It's not madly rare, but we might get as much as $50 for it, so that was nice.



While we were in town, we stopped at one of the hardware stores, Building Material Supply, because they were having a Grand ReOpening (after an extensive remodel) and giving away free hot dogs. Also they were having drawings for prizes. Sadly, I did not win the trip to Las Vegas, but I DID win a free can of WD-40, PLUS a RADIO shaped like a can of WD-40. How cool is that??

The best thing about today, though, is that 13 years ago I got a really GOOD present from my daughter Damaris -- my first grandchild!

I read somewhere recently that there is a new trend for baby showers and birthdays, to get the kid his or her name as a domain name. This seemed like a good plan to me, and since I have BOATLOADS of space on my host site, I decided to go hog wild and set him up with a subdomain there. Happily, even though it has been two years since last I set up a forwarded subdomain, I managed to do it with only one major error delaying me for a while.

You'd think after all these years I would be able to remember to spell 'neonnurse' with two middle Ns!

The past few days have been boring and yet full of tedious minor synapse destroying things I was duty-bound to see to...and it has all come to its dread mundanely evol nadir.

Mike is watching a Care Bears movie. And he made me watch some of it with him.

The painfully derivative hyper-cuteness, it burns.

Earlier, I HAD some topics to post humorously about. I am relatively sure I did....

Uh...today is our House-iversary, the clone and I. Yes, it was 22 years ago today we signed the papers and became proud owners of what would eventually be the House of 1,000 Unfinished Projects, aka the House of Unruly Fish.

Oh, and on the 26th it's my 8th eBay-versary. They were thoughty enough to send a card:



It reminded me I had been planning for some time to share a few photos from when I was selling some really old Sears and Wards catalogs.


Feast your eyes on Vincent Price hawking Christmas trees (check out the white flocked one!).



Gen-u-ine Beatles guitar--and that was big money back in 1964!



Woodgrain Breyers. The genuine old ones in that pattern, and the blue and gold ones of the same era, are worth a pretty penny to collectors, if you ever spot them at a yard sale!



Aluminum trees are too, especially the ones with pom-poms on the ends of the branches. And if you can score a revolving color wheel too? Cha-CHING!!

I had an idea for a little fun feature, Music Monday. But then I remembered that Mondays were always totally insane here. So I'm going to try Tune Tuesday instead!

I'm going to put up songs on YouSendIt.com--whatever I feel like passing on on any given Tuesday. When you click on the link, it takes you to a place where you can download it. The site says the link is good for 25 downloads--we'll see how that works out. (I guess I could put it up a second time if there was a lot of interest.)

Dave Barry/The Wrockers - Proofreading Woman

"Some men like a woman with a beautiful body,
Some men like a woman with a pretty face,
But I like a woman with a big vocabulary,
And every single little comma in place...."

Feel free to borrow my idea and make it a meme of your own!

I think perhaps I am not very good at estimating time needed per task. When I make plans to accomplish two or three tasks in a day, what usually happens is I am lucky to get half a task done. Which might explain the plethora of half-finished projects around here, come to think of it.

In the pic below, you can see where we were at shortly before we stopped for the day. That's the flower bed west of our front porch. The dried up plant stuff is old stalks of weeds and the phlox and stuff like that. The ceramic owl is back in the bathtub it shares with the fancy iris now. You can see a corner of it behind the lighthouse on the right, which is Mike's new Easter one.

The wall of stones is breached because Mike helpfully dug up some volunteer elms and transplanted them. The yellow irises started blooming today, which was kind of Easter-y. I ran out of steam for rolling the rocks back into place, so I just watered the garden and called it good. As you can tell by the flower bed full of weeds in the background by the propane tank, I have many, many more half-projects to do!



Benched for the season


Hey, do you like WOMBATS?
http://triggur.org/contagion/?src=neonnurse

We are plugging onwards for our jolly holiday weekend, in the two steps forward and one step back mode.

Yesterday I thought we could get a good early start on outdoorsy stuff, but I turned out to have more books to pack up and mail than I planned for. NOT that that's at all bad...it just gets no garden raking done. But when I went to town I did buy the boards for the swing seat, and I was all set to go out and work on it after dinner....

...but the drill's power pack had run down and I couldn't find the jigsaw ANYWHERE. By the time I *did* (in the kitchen under a stack of empty egg cartons, the logical place), it was dark. So we decided tomorrow would do fine.

That was today, which produced 50 mph winds starting about 3 am. Eventually it did calm down to merely breezy, and I was able to cut the wood, drill the holes and assemble a swing. Mostly. Except I can't find the rotary file piece for my drill to smooth down the edges of the boards like I want, and one original slat turned out to be made of bent wood, meaning the 2 1/2" bolts aren't long enough to hold their nuts. So the bench will probably not get done until Monday.

We decided to do an indoor task and finally set up the DVD/VHS recorder I bought as our family Christmas present. It went pretty well, all things considered, and we even found all the remotes and stuff. BUT. (There is always a but.) It turns out that there is some oddball techy difference between DVD-R disks (the kind we need) and DVD+R disks (the kind we bought). Of COURSE there would be.

So tomorrow we must go to the store and buy a traditional Easter solar powered garden lighthouse, two 3" bolts, and a pack of DVD-BLOODY DASH-R's.

And a gallon of milk. Since I foolishly failed to buy two when I was at the store yesterday. Which means we are out again.

Many years ago, when Damaris and Sterling were sweet wee tiny tots, my dad had a house-painting business. Since we were living with my folks at the time, I and a couple of my brothers were invited to participate in same.

I learned enough about painting to become very picky and snobby about how it should properly be done. One main important point is...not by me. Because although I am reasonably decent at it, I am also apparently homozygous for the glop-attractor gene.

Want proof? I am sitting here now with paint on all four limbs, my face, my glasses and possibly just a dab in my eye...AND I WASN'T EVEN THE ONE PAINTING!

Mike and I have gotten a good early start on the three day CleanUpFixUpPaintUp weekend. He spent quite a bit of time this past week finding the pieces of the yard swing and assembling it, and yesterday we picked out some paint for it.

He had papers down under it and everything, and we were all set to go once it stopped being 91 degrees outside. BUT I had forgotten the seat part of the disassembled swing had been on the ground during our recent lawn fire....

So Mike painted the frame while I took the burned and weather rotted slats off the seat. He's somewhat splattery himself now, but he has an excuse. All I was doing was stirring, showing him how to correctly get paint on one's implements of mass pigmentation, and then at the end closing the lid by banging on it with the pliers. Which is how the spray to the face part happened.

At least we were using the blue paint. It's a darn close match to the color I dyed my hair this afternoon.

This is one of those things I saved to post later, but happily it's just as good now, so no harm done. It's from Scott Adams' DilbertBlog, and it's kind of long, but I think it's worth it.

***

Recently there was a tennis tournament in Indian Wells. It’s one of the biggest tournaments not counting the four “Grand Slam” events. Because tennis is an individual sport, there are always great stories within the game. This year’s biggest story was James Blake’s comeback.

If you don’t follow the game, let me give you some background. Blake is the son of an African-American dad and an English mom. He was raised in Connecticut and had to wear a back brace for years when he was a kid. He took up tennis, excelled, and went to Harvard for two years before going pro. He looked promising, along with a number of other young Americans, but not top 10 material. He was most noted for his sex appeal and great personality.

I became a fan after watching him play Lleyton Hewitt a few years ago. After some calls that went against Hewitt, the Aussie singled out an African-American linesperson and complained to the chair umpire. Hewitt used a poor choice of words that led observers to think he was complaining of racial favoritism. Hewitt says he didn’t mean it that way, but nonetheless it became the story. And the media tried hard to get Blake to bite. They wanted him to complain about racism, maybe get a little mad about it. That’s good TV. But Blake didn’t take the bait. He politely pointed out that people say things in the heat of the moment, and whatever Hewitt said was Hewitt’s problem, not his. It seemed to me the perfect response. Sometimes trivializing is the best strategy.

Blake’s ranking bobbed up and down, peaking at 22 in the world. He shaved his dreadlocks and gave up his sex symbol image along with millions in potential endorsements. (I’m guessing his hair was prematurely thinning.) Then in 2004 he had the year from Hell. He ran into a tennis net post and broke his neck. Then he got a shingles virus in his face that paralyzed it on one side. Then his dad died.

There was some doubt that Blake would ever play tennis again. He watched the major tournaments from his couch and wondered about his future. In time, his body recovered, and he felt that he had been given a second chance. He grabbed it by the neck.

I don’t know what kind of training he did, but oh-my-god. I watched him play in person during the first week of the Indian Wells tournament and thought it couldn’t be the same guy. There was ferocity to his strokes. He wasn’t just hitting the ball, he was punishing it. His court speed was breathtaking. His shot selection was brilliant. His backhand, previously a weakness, had become a rocket.

You only needed to listen to the court sounds to know that Blake was heading deep into the tournament. When a tennis racket strikes a ball perfectly, it creates a sound wave that spectators can feel in their entire bodies. If you play tennis yourself, you can practically close your eyes and know who is winning.

Blake blasted through the field of world-class tennis players and found himself in an unlikely semi-final with a Spanish force of nature named Rafael Nadal. Nadal is the #2 player in the world. He hits with brutal topspin. It’s a relentless attack that less than a handful of elite players have been able to withstand in the past year.

Nadal brought his best, but Blake blew past with a combination of game and gamesmanship that surprised almost everyone, not the least Nadal himself.

Now it was time for the championship match against Roger Federer, the best player in the world. Correction – make that the best tennis player who has ever lived. That’s not just my opinion. He already has seven Grand Slam wins. If he stays healthy, many people expect him to hold every important record in tennis.

Against all odds, Blake blazed to a 4-1 first set advantage against the all-time greatest player on earth. It seemed as though nothing could stop him.

And then something happened. The momentum shifted. The rest of the match was all Federer. Blake seemed to fade away, settling for runner-up, but his effort that week was enough to put him in the top ten in the world.

At the trophy ceremony, Blake spoke to the crowd. He said that in 2004, when he was in the hospital with a broken neck, only one tennis player sent him a note to wish him well. It was Roger Federer.

I wanted Blake to win that match, yet somehow, by losing he found perfection.

I got tagged for this on Live Journal by the lovely and gracious Songdog!

List five things you've been reading lately, then tag off on people, if you are so inclined.

Read lately and finished:

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

This was recommended to me by my granddaughter Morrissey. It's basically these two authors' idea of the origin story of Peter Pan. I snagged a copy off Half.com because it sounded like something the clone might want for her middle school library.

It's really pretty good, fast-paced, with good characters and odd humor. I thought the ending could have been a little stronger, but overall I enjoyed it, and I think most kids who like to look at old favorite tales from a new angle would enjoy it.

A Feast For Crows by George R. R. Martin

I don't know if this should be considered one I read RECENTLY, but I definitely read it as fast as I could the moment it turned up. If you like the series, you understand why, if you don't, eh, just write me off as another one of those weirdos completely ga-ga for the Song of Ice and Fire series. I include it mainly because I didn't want to only list ONE completed book....

Books I have started recently:

Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon

I picked this one up last Sunday at the booksale, because my friend Dawnmipb was highly recommending her. I haven't gotten very far into it for several reasons. One...been REEEALY busy this past week. Two...the opening scene is a guy maundering along about how he's been left this house stuff full of rare books and historical artifacts and what is he EVER going to do?? and I am instantly screaming "ME! Call me! I will take it! ME-ME-ME! Don't you DARE dumpster it!!!!"

Fiction should not be bad for one's blood pressure rate.

Another problem is that although it has many funny and interesting bits so far, it's a rather THICK book and the print is thus smaller than usual. It's a bummer, but that's starting to be a problem for me. So I am thinking I may keep this one in here by my computer and read it in fits and starts when my computer is giving me fits and won't start my browser or other programs.

Xanadu 3 edited by Jane Yolen

Another one picked up at the booksale. This one is short stories and poems, handy for taking a five or ten minute break to prop my feet up. So far the stories have only been middlin', but there are some authors I have actually heard of and enjoyed before coming along, so I think it will turn out to be well worth my dollar purchase price.

A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett

This one came with a CD that had a song by the same name which I think is about the book. I've only read a few pages of the book...I got distracted by the usual Stuff and it got pushed aside. The song is quite good, though, and I have to say I LOVE the whole idea of Being Jimmy Buffett. "Hmm, think I'll take some spare time from touring and partying and write another book. And hey, I could just write a song about it while I'm at it, and record it, and people would probably enjoy them both twice as much. What the hell, it would be fun!"

Is that the life, or what?

Parent Management Training by Alan E. Kazdin

Another one that got pushed back. Mike's neurologist recommended this guy to me when I was consulting him, back when I was pretty much at the end of the old rope re Mike. This guy isn't on the talk show circuits or anything, and while his style is clear and accessible, it's probably not fluffy enough for him to ever get there. BUT he not only writes intelligently and understandably about "treatment for Oppositional, Aggressive, and Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents", he writes TEXTBOOKS on it. And papers on how to properly set up and administer scholarly studies. He knows his stuff! I should move this one up higher in the stacks and finish it.

First Draft In 30 Days by Karen S. Wiesner

This one was given to me by Dawnmipb because it didn't quite suit her working style and I was interested to see it. I got partway into it and then got sucked into my own writing project (which you all know about already). I thought there were some good ideas there, though, and I am going to give the program another try, maybe this summer.

Book I bought to read and haven't dared to let myself start yet:

Legends II by various

This is ANOTHER rec by Dawnmipb. I bought it because I already have the first Legends and I'm a completist in some ways. There is another George R. R. Martin novella in it, set in his Ice and Fire-verse, and I want to read it. Maybe I will in this next theoretically more peaceful week.

***

I usually don't tag with these things because I have too big a Flist and don't want to make anyone feel bad by being skipped. So if you want to do it, go for it!

...you are TOTALLY missing out!

Today he is making notes on a book he wants to write, so he won't forget any of his good ideas:

"-The dog-maysteres Tale: the dog-mayster (talle, curtel of greene), his dogge, and his companiounes do fynde an olde wool-quaye that semeth to be havnted by a foule spectre – one of them has those fancie new eye-lenses, the which she doth frequentli misplace – eventuallie they fynde that yt is John Gowere who maketh the appearaunce and similitude of a hauntynge in ordre to kepe the quaye closid, for he disliketh the noyse of woole shipmentes when he writeth hys lame poemes. They do counfounde hys plannes and he sayth “Cest conseil avreit eu success, si non pur l’interference de voz jeuenez meddleurs!” "

You don't have to be a history or lit major to get the jokes, either (although i'm sure you get MORE of them that way). My own grasp of these fields is very self-taught scattershot, and *I* still think this guy is a brilliant genius!

http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/

One of the comic strips I get via email is called Agnes, about an odd little girl (so I can relate, eh?). In a recent strip, she came up with a brilliant concept. You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning with a stiff neck or tingly arm because you got into a weird sleeping position? Here is the explanation for a day when you just can't quite seem to get with the program mentally:

"I slept on my brain wrong."

That is going to be my meta-excuse from here on out.

No, no actual car accidents have befallen me or mine, don't worry!

I a little less than an hour I will be marking the true return of spring. You will find me shuffling along the rows of many books on tables at the Friends of the Library sale, picking out books to hand off to my minions (insert Evil Laugh here) who will be boxing and guarding them until we haul the booty home. After we pay, yeah.

So the last few days have been busier than usual, getting ready for this and other shindigs.

Friday was our County Assembly, where the Prowers County Democrats get together to vote about what we will hand off to the state Dems. We did this at a yummy gourmet spaghetti dinner. I happened to get to sit at a small table with Dan Slater, the first Vice Chair of the Colorado Dems, and we all had a fine old time talking smack about various Colorado Republican politicians. Such as our current governor, about whom I said, "If he was ever found beat to death in a dumpster in an alley, there would be 500,000 suspects in the police lineup."

I was also happy that my big ol' plate of deep dish brownies sold for $30 in the fund-raising auction. It's a fun tradition--the attendees bid on the desserts people bring, but then share them around with everyone else.

Oh, yeah, and I was chosen to be a delegate to the state convention in May. Woo hoo!

So I came home Friday, and soon crashed into bed to prepare for Saturday. That was when I drove to La Junta for a training session for the Judicial Review Board.

It was presented by a woman with mad l33t sk1llz in putting on trainings. Fast paced, excellent handouts and Powerpoint, just enough funny to keep you engaged, a delicious free lunch AND we got out early!

I'd had a general idea before about how judges get to be, and stay, judges, but NOW I know the gory details! Did you know in some states they run for office and campaign just like any other politician? (A minority of the states, not here in Colorado or other right-thinking places.)

Did you know they had to pass a law in Texas that judges could not keep a Rolodex on their bench? Why? Because they were using them to check and see if people in the cases before them were campaign contributors!!! (And I don't think it was so they could recuse themselves in situations of conflict of interest, either!)

So what I and the others on the assorted Judicial Review Boards will be doing is looking at results of surveys sent out, reading statements from the public, assessing judges at work in court and later interviewing them. Then we write up our review, which will recommend retention (or NOT!), and it will go into the Blue Book which gets mailed to voters before each election. And then the voters decide whether to keep these guys on the bench for another 4 (County) or 6 (District) years.

Checks and balances, baby. That's how we do it here in the wild, wild West.