Response from my boss . . .

From: Mark
To: Journey
Date: 09/30/2005 10:19 AM
Subject: RE: morbid sense of humor

1) Good! 2) True. 3) Yup and... Nope - Last Year's. 4) Why - Pics
available as soon as I can connect the camera to download them (cable at
home).

-----Original Message-----
From: Journey
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 8:40 AM
To: Mark
Subject: morbid sense of humor

1) That's great!

2) You have a morbid sense of humor.

3) It's mine, now. The prop, not the morbid sense of humor. Looks
like you might need the tag back, though.

4) I so need to break down and buy a digital camera. Some month when
I'm not flying to Denver, I guess.

Journey

It's mine now :)

Sitting on top of our five drawer filing cabinet, staring right down at my chair where I can't fail to miss it, is a large-ish stuffed dalmatian. Someone has put an actual dog collar on it, complete with an Arizona tag meaning its rabies vaccination is good through January 2005. There is a squeaky toy in front of it and a piece of rather chewed-looking denim in its mouth.

My office, shared with our network administrator, is on an electronic lock. A total of four people have the code, one of them in Phoenix. The key is in the safe in the Finance department.


I sent my boss an e-mail telling him it's mine now, and he has a morbid sense of humor, and I so need to break down and buy a digital camera.

I'm meeting his parents . . .

Spent Saturday with Pete. We couldn't do much, on account of my knee, but we enjoyed just spending the day together. We went to roller derby that night. I had a great deal of fun, and none of my friends developed a great antipathy to him while we were hanging out. Which, in the limited time, is about all I can really ask.

I'm meeting his parents. I'm half excited and half nervous. He bought the plane tickets today--I told him to jump on the fare if he found a good one and I'd get him my half. He reports his family as also excited . . . and a little weirded out. His mother asked him if she should be planning on one room or two.

I didn't ask how he answered her.

I get very frustrated with people who get married planning to "fix" the other person once the ink is dry. Pete isn't trying to fix me, and there's nothing I feel the need to "fix" about him. So we must be doing something right. First time in my life I've had this feeling. All of a sudden, I'm facing a possibility that all the things I've wanted for so long may actually happen . . . and it scares the hell out of me.

In the immortal words of Anita Blake, "I never said I was consistent."

Ow, part II.

Went to see the chiropractor today. As I expected, the knee that the dog bit is all out of whack. He adjusted it, and as I expected, it hurt like hell. Ow. Ow ow ow. But somehow, walking is much easier, despite that. I just don't have any desire to do much of it and am limping heavily.

Question #3

How do you dream?

Quote of the Week

"Dig a very deep hole; fill it slowly with bullshit . . . "

--Kendra Tarket

Reaching the Breaking Point

My boss threw me out of the office last night. I protested, but he wasn't taking no for an answer. When I got home, my roommate had cooked. When I got out of the shower, I discovered the dishwasher had magically unloaded itself and the dirty dishes had gotten into it.

I didn't go anywhere near a computer last night. I couldn't bear the thought. Instead, I found a very old sheet of carbon paper in the bottom of my toolbox and used it to transfer the poster I'd printed of the Surly Gurlies' logo to the black foam core. We'll have a go at painting it tonight or tomorrow.

And then, Kendra and I watched Earth Girls are Easy. Wow, Jeff Goldblum looked young. Mind you, he just gets better-looking with every passing year. On the flip side, is it just me, or has Gina Davis not aged in twenty years?

Back to figuring out why my image won't restore on this laptop. But Pete and I are going to run around a science museum for several hours on Saturday before roller derby, so at least I have things to look forward to.

A Pirate's Life for Me!

Roller derby starts this Saturday. Kendra and Pete, at the least, are going. I don't know about anybody else, but it's good to have hopes. I threatened last year, when Joanne and I agreed that I couldn't possibly play, because I'd break, that I would be her cheerleader instead. And so it has come to pass.

I have decided the Surly Gurlies' fans need to be more visible (obnoxious?). Especially since their first bout is against the Bruisers, who have a tremendous fanbase, being the first team. So while I was running around looking for arnica, I stopped by the party supply store in the Foothills Mall. And purchased:

• two red pom-poms
  
• two black pom-poms
  
• two eye patches
  
• two plastic cutlasses
  
• one piece of black foam core
  

I think I'm going to split the foam core in two. On one half, I'll just paint Joanne's number, or maybe her derby name and number. On the other half, I think I can do the Surlies' logo. It's finally on their website at a useful size; I ought to be able to enlarge it and print it in several sections, and then use that as a template for the sign.

Ahoy, mateys! There be pissed-off Bruisers fans here! Egg the scurvy dogs on!

I wonder if the derby bear will come to cheer for the Surlies. :)

Ow.

My first workmen's comp claim ever. Of all the bizarre things, I was bitten by the dog at one of the group homes.

Looking back, here's what happened. The dog is a Dalmatian, and having had one of my own, I know they're very protective about their people. There were no staff there, but the Supervisor presumably let the residents know I was coming with the new computer. The resident answered the door, but did not step away from it to let me in. I started to go around her . . . and I think the dog cued on her body language and decided I should not come in.

So he bit me on the knee. Why is it always the knee? When Fil's vicious little brute put a toothmark in me, it was the knee then, too. I think they're aiming for the weak points--that's how you'd take down a larger animal. Bit clean through my jeans (boy am I glad I wasn't wearing shorts today). No blood, but abrasions and pretty massive bruises.

So . . . I got to spend the rest of my day running around to the clinic and then searching for arnica for the bruising. Which, mind you, I had to go to the local natural food store (which I despise) to get. I guess it's not mainstream enough to be in the pharmacies I tried, first. But it worked when we dropped a log on my leg and the chiropractor recommends it, so it was worth doing.

The fact that my primary reaction to this business was to be pissed that I wouldn't have four more hours to work in is probably indicative of something. Like the need for a vacation. I suspect I'll have to work Saturday before I leave for roller derby to make up for it. But I knew better than to go back when I was done at the clinic--it was very clear to me that my boss had kicked me out of the office for the day when he sent me off to get the knee looked it.

Fortunately, since this was a group home, I know the dog will be current on its vaccinations. They couldn't possibly have it around the residents if it weren't. Also fortunately, I have no particular fear of dogs. But I will no longer be in this home without staff present. Period.

Needless to say, elevating the knee leaves me typing at quite an odd angle. I wish I had a camera.

At the bottom of Fortuna's Wheel of IT Fortune

No, I'm not dead. Just exhausted.

Had a whole weekend off this week for the first time in a few weeks. Unfortunately, now I'm right back in the thick of things. We have a suite of Finance programs that we don't understand because they're highly customize and we quite literally inherited them. That blew up in my face today. I think I have missing data on the system I'm migrating, and after spending about seven hours trying to recover the licenses off that box, somehow, I finally had to declare the thing a paperweight.

Long weeks of too many hours. But there are bright spots. Amy was in town this weekend. It was fun to hang out with her and Kendra--we haven't done that in too long. And I met her friend Anna, who moved to Tucson to go to college.

Amy read cards for me and called the reading, "fluffy." Which is nice. I don't have anything dark and tragic in my life right now. She thinks I've found a good boy. I told him she could come to roller derby next weekend and meet him.

We had a visitor last night. A spider about three inches across from toe-tip to toe-tip. On the ceiling, where I couldn't swat him. Too big to be poisonous, but not a tarantula or a wolf spider, so I was at a loss. The cats chased him into the sofa, somewhere. (My roommate is avoiding it. Come to think of it, so am I). Brent thinks it might be a wind scorpion, which isn't actually a scorpion. It's a spider with pincers, but it doesn't bite and it's non-poisonous. Just 'fucking creepy.' Brent has now decided we will call this the 'FC' factor. I don't expect it will die here. The joke, I mean, not the spider.

My father invited Pete over for Thanksgiving. Keep in mind, they haven't met, yet. Pete, in turn, invited me with him when he goes home next month for his father's 50th birthday celebration. Kendra thinks if we can survive 14 hours in a car together each way, we're probably on the right track. I am amused.

But mostly, I am tired.

Monday Morning Laugh

From my counterpart in our Phoenix office, original source unknown:

There once was a girl named Bright,
Whose speed was much faster then light.
She set out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned the previous night.

Quote of the Week

"What I’ve been through would scare any self-respecting bacteria into extinction."

--Rudy Solis, in The Time of the Dark, by Barbara Hambly

Feet

So, after having been kicked out of my high heels for the duration by my chiropractor, I had to break down and buy really good flat sandals on Sunday. I bought a pair of Chacos, and after some initial concerns about breaking them in, I'm really very pleased with them.

I think I may just have the world's hardest-to-fit feet. I wear a women's six-and-a-half wide. I have high arches, and on Sunday I realized I also inherited my mother's narrow heels. No wonder I hate shoe-shopping.

Quote of the Week

"People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future."

--source unknown

Post-Adjustment Blues

Tuesday night, my neck twinged. It was a small pain, but it was in an area that signals a neck spasm coming on for me. So I paid attention to it.

Wednesday morning, I was fine, but toward the afternoon and evening, I noticed an ache building steadily to pain in exactly the wrong places. I was so concerned I even took a muscle relaxant left over from the last neck spasm before I went to bed.

I woke up and was no better. So I took a double dose of naproxen and started checking my health insurance for chiropractors. The good news is, I found one close to my office. The better news is, when I sat down at my desk this morning and turned my head to look at my monitor . . . I figured out exactly what had been tweaking my neck. I have now re-arranged my desk so my keyboard and monitor are straight forward. This is a very strange configuration to me.

So I went to the chiropractor. I told my boss, "I can't afford to go to the chiropractor. But really, I can't afford not to."

I'm fairly pleased by this chiropractor. He has a sense of humor, and I feel like he knows what he's doing. In fact, almost scarily so. At one point, he was tugging on my right foot during the assessment and looked at me and said, "When did you sprain your ankle, and why didn't you mention it when I asked about your medical history?"

The answer was 2003, and I never saw a doctor for it so I didn't even think to mention it.

So what's wrong with me? My everything. Which I knew already. The way the chiropractor put it is that there's not any one big thing screwing up my body. Instead, I have a lot of little things each a little bit wrong. Stuff I've collected over the years. A minor fender bender that tweaked my neck. Whatever I did to a wrist when I was 15, that took cortisone shots and never really healed right. Sprained ankles (I think I've done both of them). I've had trouble with my SI joint (the pelvic joint where the base of the spine and the hips all mesh in together) for years, so anything else out of whack will make me favor that, again. Etc.

Interestingly, he thinks part of my problem is my growth spurt. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I grew probably four or five inches in a very short time. I thought this was normal, but I guess not. Based on the areas where I have trouble, he made this guess. He sees it mostly in tall women, but I told him that for my family, I am tall, and he seemed to think that could account for it. I guess I grew so fast that something in my upper spine didn't catch up with itself. That figures into the neck spasms. The fact that I spend hours in front of a computer each day doesn't help this, of course.

After the adjustment, I could tell my neck would not spasm. This is the major thing. I can also tell that everything in my body is in a much more useful place, and I have far more range of motion in a lot of places than I did when I went in. I also feel like I've been hit by a mack truck. I ache all over, including odd spots in my knees and wrists. This is all normal for me after the first couple chiropractic adjustments. Or the day after a massage, for that matter.

The chiropractor said about 15% of people have this hit-by-a-truck reaction to the first couple adjustments. I hadn't realized it was so low. Leave it to me to be one of the "lucky" ones. At least I know the drill. Drink lots of water and don't spare the naproxen.

Instinct

The folks that say humans have bred all their instincts out . . . I officially don't believe 'em.

Kendra and I went out to the hot tub tonight (my neck hurts like hell). As we walked back I heard a sound that my brain identified as a sprinkler going off, or maybe a broken water pipe. Every hair on the back of my neck rose. Kendra took half a step back, and that was when I finally saw the rattlesnake.

It was in a pool of shadow, about eight feet from our stairs, and Kendra says she saw it before it rattled. Me, exhausted ninny that I am, I was looking up at the moonset. It was only a baby--about the width of a garden hose, and I'm guessing around two or two-and-a-half feet long. We were maybe eight or ten feet away, ourselves. We backed off, and it started coming toward us, so we went off into the parking lot. It headed for the other end of the patio and we went on up the stairs.

This is the closest I've been to a rattlesnake in my life, but only by about two feet. The other time, I was hiking, and my hiking partner and I stood fifteen feet off and threw rocks near it until it decided to take a nap somewhere else. It's not the experience itself that freaked me out, really. It's not even the fact that it was maybe fifty feet from our front door. The creepy thing for me was that feeling of the hair rising on the back of my head, and even though my conscious mind kept identifying that sound as something else, some part of my brain already knew it was a rattlesnake and was reacting as such.

Ye frickin' gods, 12-hour shifts suck.

8AM-8PM. No lunch. On the plus side, that's not only the current project, that also includes crisis time. I got in this morning and someone asked me if "they'd told me about the computer, yet." Copy room computer wouldn't boot. Catastrophic hard drive failure. So I had to do a rebuild from scratch on one of our machines with more customization than most, in addition to the imaging project.

Something's got the coyotes outside my house all stirred up. I wonder what.

I scanned all my notes from a Rites of Spring workshop on Monday. A couple people were interested enough that it was worth going to the trouble. Of course, since they have to get posted in my other journal, there is the question of photo-hosting. I may post bits and pieces of the scans here, if I can keep the bandwidth down, and then link. I think the site will allow remote loading, anyway. So if pieces of my notebook start showing up with no real explanations, that's what's going on.

I find my belt fascinating. I deliberately bought one with holes all the way up, so it would fit no matter what size I am. It's way too long at my natural waist--what they call a "high-rise" pant, now. A at a mid-rise waist, it fits nicely. At a low-rise (what's really popular right now), I can only fasten it on the outside hole or two. The hazards of having an hourglass figure.

This week's weigh-in: 179 lbs. I saw some members of my dad's band (the rock band, not the bluegrass band) at my parents' Labor Day barbecue. A couple of them were quite vocal about how much weight I've lost and how good I look. They hadn't seen me since December. It felt nice.

In other news, my company's 25th anniversary party has been canceled so that the funds set aside for the celebration can be donated to relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Sadly, I'm so tired that the first thing that popped into my head was that was good--I'd accidentally double-booked myself for that and my sister's roller derby bout.

Heat stroke and TMI

Did you read the subject line? You've been warned.

I had a big, empty day last Sunday, and nothing to do in it. So I decided I'd go hiking. The nice thing about Tucson is, if you want to escape the heat, you can drive for an hour and do it. Catch is, I didn't feel like driving for an hour. So I decided I'd go back to the Sabino Canyon area and hike up Bear Canyon. Bear Canyon has water flowing year-round, so it's always about ten degrees cooler hiking along the canyon than anywhere else at this elevation.

I could have taken the tram back to about two tenths of a mile from where the trail first crosses water, but it was only about a mile and a half back there, and I'd hiked it before. I decided I'd just go on foot. And this is where the debacle began. I think I was parked in the other parking area the last time I did this hike. The trail I took cut through white rock, which is highly reflective of the sun and heat.

I was wearing sun screen and had three liters of water with me, and yet, very soon, I was really feeling less than chipper. I think it's time for new hiking boots, because the heel cup on the left one was loose and I could feel a blister coming up. By the time I reached the first water crossing, my heart was pounding, I'd used 2/3 of my water, and my limbs were leaden. I thought I was going to trip over the gravel on the trail.

I stopped at the second or third water crossing and found a shady spot where I could sit down on a rock. I ate both my snacks and sat for twenty minutes. I'd have taken a nap, but I kept feeling like something was watching me. I could have been hallucinating. It's certainly the best explanation. But the thing I was hallucinating had a definite geographical position, and I'd been handed a flyer warning about "problem" mountain lions (i.e. mountain lion sightings in daytime, of mountain lions which displayed no fear of humans). So I figured better safe than sorry.

I took off my shirt, soaked it in the river, and wrung it out over my head a number of times. Put it back on, soaking wet. Then I soaked my hair in the river, and then my hat and put that back on. Then I stepped into water up over the tops of my hiking boots. I know that makes some people cringe, but my hiking socks are meant to function wet or dry, and it's like built-in swamp cooling for your feet. It actually made the boots more comfortable, because the loose heel cup swelled a little (confirming my analysis that it's time for new boots).

I ran out of water about a mile from the parking lot, but that was fine--I bought some when I reached the visitor's center. The hike back was far more comfortable; I was in no danger. I even noticed the little lizards crossing my path and some of the spectacular views. With all the rain we've had this season, the desert is positively lush. And the prickly pear fruit was about perfectly ripe, which means it was this rich, red color. I really have to invest in a decent digital camera so I can show y'all this stuff.

I did not get sunburned. I did get blisters. And when I got home, I discovered I'd been starting my period (early) and hadn't known it, which is probably why conditions I've hiked in a hundred times before unexpectedly decided to kick my butt. I feel off-kilter and listless enough at that time in my cycle, without adding hiking in 100-degree heat. I was still pretty strange all through Monday, but by Tuesday, I was feeling better.

Altogether, this is the closest I've ever been to heat stroke in my life. Even knowing exactly what was going on and taking the appropriate measures to treat it, it was pretty damn spooky.

Greek Philosophy

Kit got me started reading this webcomic. Evil, evil man.

http://www.ghastlycomic.com/d/20020120.html

No Greeks were harmed in the making of this punchline.

Quote of the Week

"Death means nothing to men like me. It's the event that proves them right."

--Monsieur Tarrou, in The Plague, by Albert Camus

Flood and Shock, Plague and Pestilence, Fire and War

A long title for a short thought.

The sentiment I keep seeing/hearing (in the media, reported by the media, and from people in the office and on the street) with regards to the situation in New Orleans is, "How can this be happening? This is America!"


How is that an excuse? Why did so many people think we were exempt?