What a weekend

Man, Saturday was probably the weirdest day I've ever seen, weather-wise. There were thunderstorms in the morning, with a tornado reported in the county to the east of us. Lightning struck a house in the town where I work, and also a utility pole at a restaraunt, toppling it over onto someone's car!

When I left for work around 1 p.m., it was raining at home. I got about halfway to town (where the weather always mysteriously changes) and hit ice. Within a few miles, I was on the scariest drive I've ever had -- the roads were covered with icy slush, and I almost slid off the road about three times in just a few miles. And I was going only about 30 mph.

When I got to work, my boss was standing in the doorway having a smoke, and he told me all this had started just about 45 minutes before I arrived. It looked like it had been snowing all morning! There wasn't a lot snow (in fact, most of it has melted off now), but it came down hard and it was windy, so it was pretty hazardous to be out for awhile. After work, I ended up crashing at a co-worker's house. But by the time I headed home Sunday morning, the highway was clean and dry. There were three cars that had slid off the road, though, so I'm glad I stayed in town. As tired as I was, I probably wouldn't have made it home OK.

I've had kind of an upset stomach and headache since yesterday afternoon, so I haven't gotten much done. But usually my Sundays after working a Saturday are kind of a waste because I'm pretty tired. So today is laundry day, and then probably a walk with the dog this afternoon, and that will probably be about it.

Blech

Haven't done much this weekend. I came down with a cold Friday, felt miserable at work, and have slept most of the time since then. I thought I was feeling better today, but early this afternoon started feeling like I was going to throw up, so I've spent the rest of the afternoon in bed. I did take poor Nipper out just a bit ago, since it's a pretty nice day. We wandered down by the creek for about 20 minutes, but it's kind of windy, so that's about all I could take. I did take a few minutes to look for signs of spring, and dang if there aren't about 10 or so daffodils coming up -- six that I planted on the hill and another four in the bed behind the garage. It's supposed to be in the 50s all week, so I'll bet there'll be more.

Yay for bacteria!

Just heard from the doctor's office ... it's just an infection!

Exhausted

That's how I feel after the last couple of days. Yesterday, I went in for a checkup on the kidney stone I had in December 2005. I had an X-ray first, and then about an hour later met with the urologist. He said there was no sign of any more stones, but I did have some blood in my urine (not enough to see), and since I'd never had any in previous samples, he did have some concern. So what I hoped would be just a "everything's fine, hope we don't have to see you again" type visit ends up with me disrobing and getting my kidneys viewed (don't aks for details).

He said there was an area that looked a bit inflamed, and I might just have a minor infeciton. But he wanted a couple more exams done just to make sure it's not something more serious. So he ordered a sonogram of my kidneys and an IVP (intravenous pyelogram, if you're into medical terms). That meant I had to "clean out" my intestines so they could get a good view. And by "cleaning out" the intestines, I mean "CLEANING OUT" the intestines. My water bill will probably be a good $15 higher just from Wednesday night. I also couldn't eat anything but clear liquids. So the only solid food I had all day was the banana I had at breakfast.

They did want me to have a full bladder for the IVP, so on the way to the hospital, I drank about a quart of water. In hindsight, that was probably too much. That was the second exam I had, and it took about an hour. By the time they were done, I felt like I was ready to burst. When the X-ray tech came back from showing the pics to a radiologist, she said "I bet you really have to go to the bathroom. You're bladder was really big!" Basicallly, the IVP is a series of X-rays tracking the progress of a dye through your renal system.

I had origianlly planned that after the exams, I'd head home and get ready for work. But by the time we got home, I had such a headache from not eating, not having my caffeine fix Wednesday, probably being a bit dehydrated, that I thought I'd take a short nap and try to get rid of it. I woke up about three hours later. Oops. I e-mailed my co-worker (who's sort of my supervisor) and explained why I wasn't there and said I'd be in for the afternoon. When he got back from lunch, I went up to him to apologize, and he told me "next time just give us a call when you get home and let us know." Uh, OK, so next time I ACCIDENTALLY oversleep I'm supposed to call beforehand and let you know? Genius.

Anyway, I'm feeling better tonight. I'm a little anxious about the results, but it's probably going to be nothing. Check back in a couple days and I'll probably know something.

Holy crap!

(Click for a larger image)

Mass relief

Tonight was my breast cancer support group. It's amazing how much of a stress reliever this is, even when it's not cancer that's got me stressed out.

It wasn't a great day at work today. I was a bit angry about the fact the guy who's my supervisor for some reason hasn't been having me read his pages (I do still have "copy editor" in my job tile as far as I know), and when I asked him about it, not only did I get a lame excuse, but he wouldn't even look me in the eye when I was trying to talk to him about it (I'm not the only person he does that to). How are you supposed to solve problems with someone like that?

Anyway, I wasn't in a great mood because of that today, but after I got to the meeting, it didn't take long for me to forget that. It's always great to just sit with these other women who have experienced the same kind of things I have ... and not even talk abou that common thing sometimes. I was in a much better mood when I got home.

Mom wasn't though. Whenever either one of is not home by a certain time, my dog, Nipper, gets anxious. I guess he was driving her a bit crazy tonight. Poor guy also has had a yeast infection in his ear for awhile now. I keep trying to keep it cleaned, but I don't always do a great job. Tonight, I tried a remedy found on the Internet -- vinegar and water -- and he must have some breaks in the skin inside his ear, because that just seemed to make it worse. He was constantly flapping and scratching at his ear for awhile. Guess I won't try that again.

Pizza Man!

I know it's too late for Sundance, and it will probably get lost in the end-of-the-year Oscars buzz, but here is my directorial debut:

Things are getting better

I've been pretty busy at work, but am feeling more comfortable with the new system we're on now. There's still a lot of frustration, though.

I think I might be trying to fight off the cold or flu or whatever Mom came down with. I haven't had a good night's sleep for several days, and feel pretty tired when I get home after work, so I haven't done much other than lay around on the couch.

Speaking of Mom, she got her own iBook this week. So I've done my part to convert a PC user to Mac. Ha! We will rule! It will just take a looooong time.

I did finally get a new bookshelf for my bedroom. It kind of matches the curio cabinet I got a couple years ago at Christmas from my family, so it's kind of nice. Frees up some floor space, now that I have my old desk out of the room, and it looks a bit neater. I'm not sure I'll need another cabinet, though. I got a 5-shelf cabinet and had planned on getting a 3-shelf one eventually, but I'm not sure I'd have stuff to put in it.

Not much else going on. It's cold. But then, it IS winter. Guess we got spoiled from the mild winters we've had the last couple years. That's about it, for now.

What a week

The week in Hell (OK, the three days, really) is over. I guess it wasn't that bad. Or at least I keep telling myself that.

This was the week where we switched to a new computer system in the newsroom. New hardware, new software, same old people. Yikes. We trained about an hour a day for about five days, after we went to press. That part went well. Then Wednesday, we went "live" with the new system for that day's paper. We were an hour and a half late going to press, which the software company's IT guys said was actually pretty good. Most papers are two or three hours late. And they were happy because we're an afternoon paper, so they didn't have to stay up until 3 a.m. for us.

There were other problems. Somehow one of the front-page stories lost its first half, so we had to reprint it the next day, and it took awhile to figure out how to recover the original story. Our managing editor, who set up the few templates and libraries we have to work with, forgot about setting them up for the stocks page, which is also the page for our obits and jumps from page 1. So we had to part of the page on InDesign, and part of it on Quark, and pre-press double-burned the plate. That's what we're still doing. The sports guys had a lot of trouble with their scoreboard page, too, with all the agate type.

Add to that the fact the reporters are dealing with training and new software, too, so our local story count is down, and just filling the paper has been a challenge. I think we're awful lucky nothing big has happened locally.

I had to go in today and do the Sunday lifestyle pages that I normally get done on Friday afternoon. What would normally take me a couple hourse took five!

Really, though, it does seem like we're doing well. Our sister papers in the company are also switching systems. We've heard that one of them -- sort of our rival, since we cover similar territory in circulation and news -- is having to take it much slower than we have. They have five people on the news copy desk and got five weeks worth of training. They are doing only one of two pages a day on the new system. Compare that to our paper, where, we have three people on the news desk putting out about 10 pages a day, and I think we're kicking some ass!

Next week, the other paginator will be back after taking a couple weeks when his wife had a baby, but he hasn't had any training on the new system. So it will still be rough for awhile. I've put in about 18 hours overtime this week. I'm going to need a break soon.

Goodbye, Vera

Word came by e-mail this morning that one of the members of my breast cancer support group died last night. She had suffered a stroke just before Christmas, which they initially thought had been brought on by all the chemo she was going through. But later, they found the cancer was in her brain. She had been under Hospice care this week, surrounded by her family.

She retired from an area school just this spring, where she had worked in the lunch room for many years. I remember her saying early last year they had told her that she would be on chemo the rest of her life. I think that was a big part of why she retired when she did. I sat at the same table with her at several of our meeting and got to know her a bit better than some of the others. She was a nice lady, and loved having her grandkids around (I think there was a first great-grandchild in there, too). She will be missed.

Otherwise today, it is snowy, but it's just a light snow for us. A bit of ice beforehand, but nothing big like the last one, at least not here. It sounds like southeastern Kansas and Oklahoma is getting it this time around. Keep warm if that's where you're at!

I'll be at work today, but hopefully will be home a bit early. We're going to try to get done an hour early tonight so the drivers have more time on the roads overnight.

This next week at work will be very interesting. We got some training on InCopy last week and started on InDesign yesterday and will finish that up on Monday. Then probably Tuesday afternoon, after that day's paper has gone to press, we'll switch out the computers and be up and running on new hardware and software for Wednesday's paper.

This all probably wouldn't be that big a deal to me, but our lead page designer and his wife had thier baby early last week, so he is actually gone for all this. That puts me in the lead seat! Usuallly, that makes me pretty nervous, because I just don't do that job often enough to be real confident in it. But where he's gone for so long, it's given me time to be more comfortable in doing page 1 and essentially being in charge. Our managing editor has been busy all week building our page templates from scratch on the new system, so he's pretty much been out of it as far as the daily work goes. It also helps he's not a jerk in how he treats people and knows something about computers, too!

Game hangover

I woke up Saturday morning regretting how late I'd been up and what I'd been doing. I had a headache, had no energy and didn't want to get near what had caused it all. No, I hadn't been out drinking. I was just up real late playing Diner Dash. I got if for Christmas from my brother. I'd been playing the online version for awhile, but there's only so far you can get in the career mode, and it doesn't have all the stuff you can get in the endless shift mode. But it's easy to get carried away sometimes. I won't say how late I was up last Friday playing, but it was much later than I should have been up.

Not much else is going on. I'm trying to get back into a workout mode. I haven't really gained any weight, but I haven't lost any either. I've been doing well on taking lunches to work, but could probably cut down on the snacks. Cookies and hot chocolate every night probably don't help.

No more problems here with the weather and power outages, but there's still a lot of people across the region doing without. We got lucky here, I think. We might not next time.

Took my car in for an oil change, and found out I need new tires. Three of them, one of them badly. It's always something, ain't it?

That's all for now.

Livin like a refugee

I never thought I'd be a refugee. It's always other people in those situations, right? People who live where there's been a hurricane or earthquake or something. Well, yesterday, I was one of those people.

The massive snowstorm in the Plains missed us, but we got plenty of ice instead. It knocked out the power for a few hours Saturday, and then went off again at about 2 a.m. Sunday. I had hoped it would be back on by daylight or shortly after, but no such luck. I had to work at the paper yesterday, to get our New Year's Day edition out, and I felt glad to be where there was heat and light, but guilty about being there while Mom and Dad were stuck back here with no power.

I tried to keep Mom updated on what was going on whenever we heard something at work about when the power might be back, the shelter in town, etc., and each time I talked to her she sounded more and more tired. When we talked around 6 p.m., the power company spokesman was pretty confident the power would be on within a few hours in our town. But when I talked to Mom after the press was running at 7 p.m., she just sounded like she couldn't take much more. I asked if she and Dad would just like to come in to town anyway, and that what we did. I know when I was driving to work, just having the heater in the car was such a relief both physically and mentally. And I hadn't put up with the cold all day.

They got into town shortly after 8 p.m., and we went and got some hot food at Sonic, the first either of them had had in more than 24 hours, then headed to the shelter at the university. They had it set up in a few of the gyms and racquetball courts where the coliseum and health-type classes and recreational activities are. They even allowed pets! The local humane society loaned them some pet carriers, and they had us set up in a racquetball court near an exit, where we could easily take him out when needed. We were the only ones in that room, but there were a few other people from our town as well as a few travelers at the shelter. A unit of the National Guard stopped in sometime during the night as well. They've been out delivering fuel to areas without power so people can run their generators.

Oddly enough,I think I met more people from this town at the shelter than I have living here for four years (guess that says a lot about me, huh?). The county emergency services coordinator lives here, as does the president of the local Red Cross chapter, and an assistant to our congressman who works in his office out here, plus one of the campus policemen. And then there were the three older ladies the emergency services coordinator had convinced to come in out of the cold. All were pretty nice folks. And they all liked Nipper, too. He snuck out of the court a few times and had to go see everyone.

The cots weren't too bad, and I'm surprised how well I slept, once Nipper settled down. Since there weren't any other animals in there with us, we left him out of the carrier, and he wandered around a bit, not quite sure in that strange place how to tell us he needed to go out or that he was thirsty. But once we got all that figured out, he settled down on a blanket next to my cot, and we all fell asleep pretty fast. I was surprised when I woke up to use the bathroom and found it was almost 6 a.m.

We all started waking up about then, and Mom and Dad got some coffee at the main camp-out room, where they heard the power had come on at home around 10 p.m. and did stay on all night. That was the main concern, that it wouldn't stay on because of all the ice on the lines and the wind blowing them around. But when we got home, it was warm and everything was OK. We had lost a big branch off the old cottonwood Saturday, and one of the willow trees by the creek is down, but that seems to be the only damage here. Lots of other branches down around town, too.

I was still tired after we got home, despite sleeping pretty good, so I crawled into bed for a nap, and Mom stayed up to watch the Tournament of Roses parade, her tradition. Nipper is pretty bushed, too, and slept quite a bit.

The tree are still covered with ice, and just awhile ago, the sun came out and it was quite pretty. I took some pictures -- with film, so you'll have to wait to see them. I'm not really sure a picture can capture what we saw with the eye, however. Amazing how nature can be so brutal one day, and the next so beautiful.

Hopefully, that will be the big event of 2007. I'm off now for a piece of my birthday cake.

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.