Not what anyone had planned ...

I'm at work right now, preparing our New Year's
Day edition, and feeling both good and guilty
about it. We lost power at home again around 2
a.m. this morning, and except for a few brief
moments this afternoon, it's still off. Here at
work, though, we have power (for now) and I'm warm
while Mom, Dad and Nipper are bearing the cold. If
things don't improve, they may well have to come
into town in the shelter that's been set up.

More than 4,000 people are without power in our
area, and temperatures are going to get darn cold
tonight. If the ice can melt off the power lines
before it gets below freezing again today, maybe
there's a chance the power can be restored, and
stay on. But they're not giving a lot of hope for
that.

**Update since I attempted to post this earlier
tonight. It looks like we're heading for the
emergency shelter for at least the night.**

Happy new year.

Well, that sucked

Not long after I posted earlier today, the power went out, and just came back on about 10 minutes ago.

At least we know the lanterns Mom got for Christmas work.

Happy birthday

Yeah, it's my birthday. Don't make a big deal of it.

It's icy and gray out today, so there's not much going on. Here's a couple pix I took using Mom's digital (since she got me a memory card I can use for Christmas). They're not great, but it gives you an idea what it's like. These are both of my back yard.



Dad's here now, and we're going to have some dinner and open gifts. About all I've done today is lay on the couch watching TV and playing Diner Dash (which I got for Christmas from my brother). Tomorrow I have to work, putting out our New Year's Day edition, but we should be done by 7 p.m. Hopefully there won't be much additional ice or snow, but it hasn't really let up all day. So it should be fun getting there and back.

Happy new year, if I don't post before then.

Merry Christmas, happy holiday ...

Whatever it is you celebrate this time of year, I hope it's a good one for everyone.

It's been quiet around here today. I woke up with a headache around 5 o'clock this morning and it's taken me most of the day to get rid of it. So I've just been laying around, dozing and watching the movie marathon on Sci-Fi Channel. No walk for Nipper today, poor dog, but he stayed with me in bed most of the day. "Dr. Nipper," we call him. He always seems to know when you don't feel well and need a warm puppy next to you.

Tomorrow will probably be quiet as well. Just Mom, Dad and me at my house to open presents and have dinner. Although I'll probably be doing laundry, since that's what I'd planned on doing today. Got all my presents in but one, the one I ordered for Mom. Who knows where it is, since all the tracking info tells me is "carrier has been notified to pick up package." Thanks, Amazon.

Watching "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" right now. It still holds up, no matter how many times I've seen it.

Mission: Organization

So, thanks to Mom rearranging her bedroom and a night of TV reruns, I got into a bit of a cleaning fit in my bedroom tonight.

Well, I all I did was clean out a storage tower I have in my bedroom, which I hadn't really touched for about two years, judging from some of the stuff I found. I started by getting caught up on filing some photos in my photo storage boxes. Then I started on the tower, where I'd had the photo storage boxes, as well as my camera bag and equipment. And then I just started working my way down. I took out a bag of trash from it, and I got most of that stuff organized.

A week or so ago, I cleaned off the top of my desk (which I do about three or four times a year -- I'm not a neat freak by any means), and still had the trash from that, which I also took out tonight. I don't have to worry about cleaning OUT my desk, since the drawers fell apart years ago. It's really time to get rid of the old desk -- it was a Christmas or birthday present when I was 13 or 14 -- since it's really not that functional. I had some idea a few years ago of trying to do something with it -- make the space for drawers into storage shelves, but that was one of those things I've never gotten around to. I really don't need a desk, since I've got the laptop, and I really don't want one in my bedroom anymore anyway. But if I get rid of it now, I'll just end up throwing my stuff on the floor and probably never pick it up.

Maybe with some cold nights and more reruns, I'll get more organized and cleaned up. But tonight's a start, I guess.

Yay!

My surgeon's office called me at work this morning ... the bone scan looked fine. And I won't need an MRI followup!

But then when I got home there was a note reminding me that my one-year checkup on my kidney stone with the urologist is coming up in February.

Getting older sucks.

Tests done ... for now

Had the bone scan today, and that seemed to go well. Should be a day or two before I hear anything on it. My surgeon said to expect they'll recommend an MRI as followup, so I probably have one more round at the hospital coming.

You can tell you've been to the hospital a lot when the staff feels comfortable enough keep up their joking and teasing of one another even with you around, I guess. The guys in radiology here are kinda fun. It was Bryan's birthday, so there was some joking about that, and Jerry's kind of a cut up. He's from Texas and has that drawl and calls me things like "hon." But not in a bad way or anything. He's got a house on the creek on the other side of town, so we always compare how much water is at each other's place.

From my doctor's visit Tuesday, the X-ray turned out fine, except they did see a bit of arthritis showing up. I'm guessing it's in my upper back, because I do feel some pain there once in awhile around the shoulder blades, and when the weather turns cold real fast, it feels like it's seeped into my bones there.

All my blood work looked OK, too, although the doc noted one slight abnormality that she said probably indicates my bone marrow is still recovering somewhat from the hit it took during chemo. Amazing, since it's been over a year since my last one that made my white blood cell counts plummet!

Same old story

Overworked and overtired. That's how I feel after a week of being even more shorthanded at work than we normally are. My co-worker's wife is doing OK now though, thankfully (no baby yet, though), and he should be back to the office tomorrow. Since I worked for him Saturday, I should be able to take Monday off. And hopefully get this Saturday off, which I was supposed to work.

I don't necessarily think things will get better once we get through this month, though. Next month, we have a major system upgrade coming. We'll be getting a bunch of new hardware (not page desigers, though; we do get a big memory upgrade), moving up to OSX, InDesign/InCopy, Illustrator, etc. (We're moving up from OS 9 and Quark 3.2, by the way). The bosses are talking like this will be the solution to all our problems. But I see a bunch of headaches while we learn the software, deal with software conflicts, bugs, etc. All while already being shorthanded.

Anyway, on to other things. My back is feeling much, much better. There's still just a slight twinge if I move wrong, but that's about it. It's probably time I get back into some exercise. Walking the dog seems to be OK. We went for long walks Saturday and today, since it was so nice and I'm doing OK. Nipper is too, although I noticed yesterday as we got home he seemed to be limping just a bit.

Mom got a digital camera, and she's been playing with it a bit. Maybe she'll let me have a pic or two to post here. She got a couple nice ones of the Christmas lights on the house the other day.

I haven't even started my Christmas shopping, but I have some good ideas. And for the first time in the four years I've been in this house, we went with an artificial (one Mom's had for awhile) instead of a real tree. I would love to have a real one again this year, but the budget's just a bit tight this year.

Haven't started my Christmas cards, yet, either. Maybe that's a simple task for tonight.

That's about it for now.

More poking and pictures

Well, it's another round of doctor's appointments for me. Yesterday, I saw my surgeon for a regular checkup, and she ordered a bone scan because of the back pain I've been having. Sunday, it was really bad. It was pretty stiff when I got up, so I tried some stretching and a bit of exercise, since movement seems to help it, but I guess I overdid it or something because I spent the rest of the day in bed or on the couch with the heating pad. It got better through the day Monday, and feels pretty good now, but I'm going to take it easy a couple more days at least so I don't reinjure it.

Then today I had my port flushed and a chest x-ray, both routine since I have a followup visit with my oncologist next Tuesday. My bone scan was scheduled for Thursday, so she would have seen the results by then, but I had to reschedule it today because my co-worker's wife started having contractions late this morning, and she's not due until next month. So we're not sure whether he'll be able to come in the rest of the week, and our new managing editor is going back to Iowa on Thursday to bring back a bunch of stuff, I guess so when his wife and kid (+1 on the way) move here there won't be so much stuff. That would have left just one person to put together the paper until awful close to deadline. So I got the scan rescheduled for next Wednesday. We'll still be short handed next week because my co-worker was scheduled to take the week off anyway, but it won't leave just one person on the desk.

It's time like these that prove we really need another copy editor/paginator (full time) on the desk. We've been told since May that the paper was going to hire someone, and it was offered to an intern we had this summer, but since then, about every time I've asked or been told something about that position, the story has changed. A couple months ago, we suddenly couldn't afford the position unless we got money from the parent company for the "youth publication" we have planned. Well, we got the money, but then it was about a month before anything new came about on the copy editor position. And now they're looking for someone who can do copy editing "a couple days a week" and report the rest of the time. Not sure I'm too happy with that arrangement.

And it's going to be hectic the rest of the year, probably, what with everyone who works (or can work) the desk on vacation one week or another -- except for me. I still have a couple days vacation left, but I'll probably just end up losing them. That usually happens every year, although much less so this year. I've never used all my time because I just never could afford to go anywhere or do anything, and just hanging around the house didn't sound like much of a vacation.

Anyway, enough griping. Things are much better this year than last, so I should be thankful. I mean, just for starters, my head stays a lot warmer with a full head of hair!