What Form Would Your Patronus Take? (With 10 Excellent Results & Pictures)

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In a few hours, I will be at Edisto Island, with no internets, and lots of beach. :-)

See y'all when I get back.

Well, now that I've shaken the Chief Technology Officers hand, I guess it's official: I am (or will be, depending on when they can dump the work on my desk) the Project Coordinator for him and the Manager in charge of our intranet/DevNet projects. I'll be moving off of the Help Desk soon, back into an office and out of this cube.

'Scuse me while I dance...

Gotta love a co-worker who doesn't call anyone to let us know that she's going to be late/out/whatever.

Even better, the cell phone number she gave us has been disconnected.

*headdesk*

Any of the following sound familiar...?

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

All that was written about a leader named George... King George, to be exact, 231 years ago when Americans declared their independence. Scary how it fits the current George, no?

Found on Keith R. A. DeCandido's LiveJournal

Just got a CNN.com breaking news email here at work that Bush just commuted Libby's sentence.

Yeah. Aren't we all SO FUCKING SURPRISED at this.

If you want to know why I don't watch wrestling anymore, look to the news for articles about the Benoit family. Vince may want us to forget, but I won't. I also can't forget the kid at Wildside who used steroids so he could get noticed by the WWE.

I'm not very coherent right now about this. I'm still in the reeling, flailing stages.

After 4 days and 2 1/2 hours back at work, I can say that this place definitely sucks the life out of you. :-p

Of course, the fact that I haven't slept well the last couple of nights probably isn't helping the matter, either. :-p

BUT, in good news, I'm writing! And some people even like what I'm writing, so I'm happy. :-)

For Guy Buckmaster, a marketing director in Clearwater, Florida, gaming with his six children began in the late 1990s with "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction."

I'd love to hear how they did that, since Diablo II came out in 2000 and the "Lord of Destruction" expansion came out in 2001...

From This article on CNN.com

HOME!!!!!!!!

More later. Got catching up with home to do.

I was looking in my home closet today, and I think what I need to do fairly soon is pull every stitch of clothing out of it, pile it on the bed, and try everything on. I've got a feeling that while the dresses will be OK, most of the pants are going to have to be donated and replaced, since my new stoma is about an inch higher on my abdomen than my old one and would be right on the waist band of them.

For most women, this would be a great thing. For me? Tiring to think about. :-p I'm not big on clothes, I'd wear jeans and T-Shirts all the time if I could.

Pain is because of cut muscles, the surgeon says. There's no magic cure, just rest and time. So I'm out of work another 2 weeks.

Note to self: Rice hurts like hell later, don't eat it. :-p

Steps forward and backwards... there is a lot more pain then there had been with any of the other abdominal surgeries, and I've been runing an low-grade fever off and on for the past few days. I'm tired, and tired of pain, and tired of not finding real comfortable ways to sit and stand. I'm worried that June 5th is going to get here and I'm going to be in no position to go back to work.

I'm doing better.

Yesterday I got everything done I needed to get my ostomy supplies delivered monthly to my door, which helped my state of mind a lot. So did the shower. ;-)

There are three huge, cute kittens here... Yin weighs 1 pound 9 ounces and still looks very bear-cub like. Yang (who just climbed Dad's chair into my lap) also weighs 1 pound 9 ounces, and seems to be trying to have 1 blue eye and 1 other colored eye, maybe yellow. Tao weighs 1 pound 11 ounces and is quite fuzzy.

I'll be doing some editing of the links on the side in a little while... replace the BCIR information with more relavent information.

Kinda short... I'm out of the hospital, but I'm a long way from being what I'd consider well. Me and this new external stoma are going to have to get to know each other a good bit better... I've gone from having a small stoma (the size of my upper thumb joint) under the skin to this huge thing sticking out above the skin. The ostomy nurse and the surgeon say it'll get smaller over the next six weeks, but I hate how it looks right now.

I'm also in a lot of pain... let's just say he opened me up enough to give a detailed report on the state of my ovaries, uterus, liver, and gallbladder, as well as the small intestine and keeping an eye on my urethas (the connections from the kidneys to the bladder). There's also new pain on the left side since that's where the stoma is (normally it's on the right side, but that's where all the scar tissue and stuff from all the infections was). And of course the arthritis in my back has yet to forgive me for spending hours on an operating table and 3 days in a bed that didn't have 1 inch memory foam on it.

So... I'm alive. I'm breathing. But I'm not happy yet, and this is going to be a slow process. I don't want to wallow in despair, but I'm feeling overwhelmed, because I have to call the insurance company and get started on figuring out how the fuck I get ostomy supplies. I have enough to last me a couple of weeks if I'm good, but...

Oh, and yeah, this stuff isn't necessarily cheap, either. I know Dad has to pay full price for his, and then eventually get slightly reimbursed by his insurance company.

AND the hospital is already screwing up my insurance by not having the right account number for me, even though I wrote it down twice when I was doing all the pre op stuff AND they made a goddamn copy of my card.

Oh, and the insurance company didn't pay for a bunch of lab tests last month to determine why I got the clots in December, and they won't pay for the ambulance ride, so I owe one place $540 and the other $600+.

Yeah. I'm stressed, and I'm overwhelmed, and I'm not coping real well yet. Bear with me, or don't.

No way to put this but bluntly:

I'm having surgery Friday the 18th to have my guts rearranged again. I had another abscess start Sunday, and have been on 2 antibiotics since Monday, and just had it drained an hour ago. The surgeon absolutely did not like what he saw in there, and said that if we waited, I ran the risk of it getting infected over and over, leading to the huge chances of dead tissue and lots of other bad things.

So, he'll go in Friday morning, take out the existing collar and valve, and make a new stoma on the left side for a standard Brooke's ileostomy. So, no more tight, low-slung clothing. Sorry, guys. ;-)

I'm with my parents right now, and will be out of work for another 3 weeks or so. I'm going to ask my folks to move the kittens here, into Dad's office, so I can keep socializing them. My guys will be OK, although I'll still go over there as often as possible.

I'll let ya'll know more when I have it.

Tao watching Shortcake eat. I don't think she believes that anyone would like that hard crunchy stuff.












Tao contemplates climbing Mt. Jenn-leg. Thankfully, her claws are small and the jeans are thick. ;-)














Yang checks out my sock feet.











Yin was sleepy last Saturday.

2 hour waits for 3 minute consults are pretty much gaurenteed to put me in a pissy mood.

However, it was all good news, so I'll forgive the hematologist. This time. ;-)

After taking 12 vials of blood last time, they did all their magic on it and determined that either my faulty heart beat or something left over from my multiple abdominal surgeries last year was the cause of the clots, and I can get off the Coumadin in June.

*would dance if I wasn't so tired*

THEY'VE FOUND AN EARTH-LIKE PLANET!!!

*bounces*

As an unapologetic space geek, this is awesome, incredible news. I can't tell you or make you understand how happy this makes me. :-)

Shortcake takes a well-deserved break from the kittens. I've managed to comb most of the tangles out of her fut, and her coat is really improving.













Yang and Yin practice getting into the perfect shape for their names. ;-)














Is there anything as cute and comfortable looking as a pile of sleeping kittens?

Some more pics from this weekend...



Shortcake was never too far away, and even grabbed a hold of Tao from time to time. ;-)











Here is Tao... you can see the smudge between the eyes and the pattern on her chest pretty clearly.
















Yang, chewing on his paw.










And here's Yin. She really, REALLY doesn't like to be away from her siblings or mom. She cried the whole time I had her out, so I didn't get a lot of good pictures.









Yin is the biggest at just over 13 ounces, Yang comes in second at 12 1/2 ounces, and Tao weighs a hair over 12 ounces. We think Yang may be albino, considering how pink his body is and how redly his eyes reflect the light.

Here's the gang... they're really exploring their cage a lot, except for Tao, who still likes to sleep. ;-)








This one is posted only because Tao is in the background going, "HEY!! GETOFFOFMEEEE!!!"










This morning I pulled Yang out, since he was the only one awake, and let him crawl around on a clean sheet on the floor. Shortcake was never too far away, and this picture shows just how small he still is... that's her back foot.














Sorry for the red-eye, but Microsoft's Picture Editor is as complicated a graphics program as I can manage. :-p Anyways, here he is on wobbly legs.












A shot showing that he hasn't quite got walking down yet... one back leg or another never quite does the same as the rest. ;-)

I swear, if one of my co-workers says, "Oh, it doesn't matter," or "I don't care," or "You decide for us," one more time, I'm going to scream. I'm not getting paid to be their manager, and right now I'm really tired of being leaned on like one. Am I really so old and out of touch that I can't comprehend why people won't make a decision and take responsibility for it?

Here's all three of them snoozing together. Yang is practicing his camouflage.







Tao still has her eyes completely closed. She all about the sleeping. ;-) But, not to worry, she does wriggle about a good bit, and she's the first one I've heard purr.















Yang's eyes are partially open, hence the pitiful look here.














Yin's eyes were open last night. Figured that the fraidy-cat would want to be able to see the monsters coming after her. ;-)








The sisters snoozing together.












In other animal news, I heard an owl on my property for the first time last night.

I have KITTENS!!!



This is Shortcake, the young mother of three kittens born April 5th. She's medium hairred, incredibly sweet and affectionate, with a great purr.











This is Tao, a girl. You can't see much of it in this picture, but she has a white smudge on her face along with white paws. She's not a morning kitty. ;-) She's also the smallest of the three.












This is Yang, the boy, and the biggest by far. He's very curious and has already tried to climb out of the cage, even with his eyes still closed! He's going to be a huge white puffball when he grows up. ;-)









This is Yin, the other girl. She's quite a whiner, crying at everything, which makes Shortcake a bit frantic at times. She's also very long haired already.

I got this note yesterday morning...

Dear person I have been given to:

Please do not put your portable phone on your left ear. It makes me jumpy.

Love,

Your pacemaker

If you think you are free,
You are free.

If you think you are bound,
You are bound.

For the saying is true:
You are what you think.

-Ashtavakra Gita 1:11

Attention is living; inattention is dying.
The attentive never stop; the inattentive are dead already.

-Dhammapada 21, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

No kittens for me this time. :-(

Apparently the mother is very feral and mean, so they're going to give her to another animal worker instead of a volunteer.

Well, I decided to not mope, and to look for something new to do with some of my time. What do I love? Final Fantasy, cats, learning to cook, taking pictures, etc., etc....

Project Pet is an organization my parents did a lot of volunteer work before, and I have had pictures of some of our babies up here in the past. So I gave them an email, and they have a desperate need.

So, by the weekend, I will have a mother cat and her 7 (YIKES!) newborn babies in my house. They'll be in a room by themselves, with one of the cages my parents are going to bring over. I'll be able to work on my photography while I'm taking care of them.

So, yes, there will be spammage of pictures and stuff. And who knows, they might end up on CuteOverload or the Daily Kitten. ;-)

Bored now...

Need mental stimulation, and work just ain't cutting it.

Pretty bad when I'm craving two things I either can't have or never really enjoyed, simply because I'm desperate for a change.

Here's something that fits...

Darling, give me your absence tonight
Take the shade from the canvas and leave me the white
Let me sink in the silence that echoes inside
And don't bother leaving the light on
'Cause I suddenly feel like a different person
From the roots of my soul come a gentle coercion
And I ran my hand o'er a strange inversion
A vacancy that just did not belong
The child is gone
"The Child is Gone" - Fiona Apple

KADAJ FIGURE!!!!

*much wanting and lusting over*

And I LOVE the dirty look the Cloud figure is giving him... all, "Damnit, why doesn't she love me and want me?"

Which Heroes Hero are You? Your Result: Peter Petrelli   You're a dreamer who has lived in the shadow of your family and wants desperately to be your own person. Like Hiro, you feel the need to do something extraordinary with your life. You have dreamy eyes and great hair.
Isaac Mendez
Claire Bennett
Sylar
Hiro Nakamura
Nathan Petrelli
Matt Parkman
Nikki Sanders
Which Heroes Hero are You? Create a Quiz

ETA: Zip file is updated. Thanks to Janice, who sees things I don't. :-p

Rules:

1. Have your music library ready. When is it ever not ready?
2. Choose one (1) song from your music library whose title starts with the first letter (or number) of your screen name. I'll be using JLSigman
3. Repeat this process with each successive letter (or number) in your screen name until you run out of letters (or numbers).
4. Post up your results.
5.BONUS POINTS: Upload your mix (whether it's individual songs or a .zip of all the the songs) and include the mix in your post.

"J-E-N-O-V-A (Final Fantasy VII)" by the Black Mages
"Loneliness" by Annie Lennox
"Sanctuary" by Hikaru Utada
"Invoke" by T.M.Revolution
"Gabriel" by Lamb
"Mary Mary (Stigmatic Mix)" by Chumbawamba
"Advent: One Winged Angel" by Nobuo Uematsu
"Not Enough" by Van Halen

And here's the download. It's a 55MB file, so procede with caution.

OMG OMG OMG OMG

Just found Myxer Tones.com, and I could get myself in trouble with text message fees. :-p It lets you make free ringtones from MP3s you have. So, what did I do first?

"Advent: One Winged Angel", of course. ;-)

And it started it at the perfect place, where the chorus comes in. :-p

*closes the webpage before she gets herself in trouble*

*cackling madly*

What Is Your Battle Cry?

Skulking on the hotel lobby, carrying a bladed baseball bat, cometh JLSigman! And she gives a cruel scream: "Vengeance and goo flow from my veins! I tear into the enemy until Satan himself emerges from the pit to thank me!"

Find out! Enter username: Are you a girl, or a guy ?

created by beatings : powered by monkeys

WARNING: Much nonsense, hilarity, and general manic behavior are about to be displayed.

HYDE and TM are HERE!! *smooches both*

So my new boss, who is technically my old old boss and is about to be my new boss (and no, I won't get fooled again), calls me into his office to hand out the pay raise and bonus info. He hands me a letter, which basically states, "Congrats, you're pay is going up [eh]%, so you're now making [a few hundred more a year than before]. You will also find your bonus, which will be [HOLY SHIT OMGZ] before taxes."

So I will take HOLYSHITOMGZ after taxes and pay off the computer I bought in September, then go get my eyes checked for the first time in a couple of years (bad me, I know), get some new supportive undergarments, sock a good bit into savings, and then buy some books.

Boss unit also informed me that my title would be changing from Help Desk Administrator, which I already knew, but not to PC Support Technician. "That is so 90's." (YES, he really said that~!) Instead, they're working it out with HR to call me a Technical Support Analyst. Sounds good, anyways. ;-)

Then I get home and HYDE AND TM ARE WAITING FOR ME! *smooches them again* There is also probably the most hilarious mailing I have ever gotten, which had on the front, "God told me to give you this loan" and a couple of paragraphs about a prophecy and a holy handkerchief inside for answering prayers if I give them money. I wish I was making this up. ;-)

So, I am good. I don't know what all to do with this good, because it doesn't happen often, but I will try to be good with my good.

My japanese name is 石丸 Ishimaru (round stone) 美晴 Miharu (beautiful clear sky).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Right now, I'm at the "I want to be doing anything but this, anywhere but here" stage.

Unfortunately, I cannot take much of any pay cut right now, considering my outstanding medical bills and stupid credit card debt.

*whaps self for getting self into this position*

As free human beings we can use our unique intelligence to try to understand ourselves and our world. But if we are prevented from using our creative potential, we are deprived of one of the basic characteristics of a human being.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Maybe that's why I'm all about the rage right now... work is most definitely preventing this.

I had no idea Amazon.com took checks! I could be in trouble... ;-) Today I bought 3 CDs:

Faith by Hyde
Verticle Infinity by T.M.Revolution
and Momentary Lapse of Reason by Pink Floyd, to replace my disk that got broken years ago.

Got my federal refund, which I promptly sent most of to my credit card company, so they'll quit calling me at 8:30am on Sundays. :-p

State will hopefully be here by Tuesday.

Any pay raise or bonus should be in the next couple of weeks.

I pay off the car in May.

*phew* I may actually come out of this alive. :-p

Went to Drugs.com to see more about Coumadin, since my dose has been increased again because my blood's not quite thing enough. Found out this interesting bit of information... "Avoid eating cranberries, drinking cranberry juice, or taking cranberry herbal products"

You mean the juice I drink every morning. *headdesk*

Pick your favorite wrestling news site, and you'll read that Mike Awesome killed himself Saturday.

What a shame. I really, really liked him. Gone waaay too young.

I hope he has found peace.

Well, what all did I do today?

#2 - Went to Wal-Mart and picked up some Purina Cat Chow senior formula (Goldeneye is 9 1/2, the twins are 7 1/2). So far, they seem to like it, we'll see how it reacts to Sweet Thing's sensitive digestive track. :-p

#4 - Good grief, there was food scattered for yards. :-p

#7 - And I'm getting a decent amount back, close to $1000. The state will go straight into savings, the federal will get mostly thrown at my credit card.

#12 - Well, I didn't bake it, but I created it... last week I made these little cheesecake things out of a Paula Dean cookbook, and still had some leftover. So I bought a graham cracker crust (note to self, do not buy the Wal-Mart brand ever again, it crumbled to dust) and some chocolate pudding, lined the bottom with the leftover cheesecake things, and poured the pudding on top. Got rave reviews from my parents. :-)

And added #14 - Take a shower and wash my hair. That can be a chore. ;-)

Let's see... so far I've done:

#1 - Got the groceries, new mouse, new sweats, and added a new clock radio/CD player. My old one was at least 15 years old, and the volume was screwed up. This one is much better. ;-)

#3 - Kept a little of the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack, but not much, as well as some new Overclock Remix and Anime Remix stuff.

#8 - Holy incredible stories, Batman! What amazing, painful, wonderful writing.

#9 - I've been neglecting that game as of late, so I'm glad I got this done.

#10 - Gave up. Bosses with instant-kill spells annoy me, especially when said bosses are impossible to kill before they whip the spell out. I'll come back to it another time.

Added #13, the laundry. Washed, dried, and put up. Tried to do #2, but the only bags of food they had were the $17 ones, and I don't have that much money. :-p

(kicks Blogger for forcing me to upgrade to a rather crappy GUI new version and do all kinds of new sign-up and sign-in crap)

Anyways...

Here's what I need to do this weekend... I'm being very Virgo, making lists and all. Beside, when my horoscope says, "Organize your information, sort through your files and clean out your messy closets. But do it with style, for you now get to be as weird as you wish by indulging your need to rearrange your living space. Don't worry about involving others; this isn't about anyone else. An early spring cleaning always makes you feel better.", I should probably listen. ;-)

1) Go grocery shopping (going to Wal-Mart, need a new mouse and some new sweats for working out)
2) Buy cat food (Eukanuba senior brand)
3) Finish listening to all the music I downloaded yesterday (no offense to "Silent Hill" fans, but the music is muchly overrated IMO)
4) Vaccuum the home office (Goldeneye and Sweet Thing were chasing each other around last night and overturned one of the food bowls)
5) Vaccuum the living room
6) Vaccuum my bedroom
7) Get my tax crap together and file my taxes so I can get my credit card company off of my ass
8) Watch the rest of disk 2 of seasons 2 of "Angel"
9) Level up my Aardwolf character, Refinnej, to at least level 131.
10) Decide if I'm going to finish up Vagrant Story, or if I'm going to give up for now.
11) Decide if I can put up with the horrifyingly bad music in Phantasy Star II or if I should just try another one of the RPGs in that Sega collection.
12) Bake something

I think that was everything I needed to do...

Nothing earth-shattering to this post. Just wanted to make a quick, random comment that music fucking rules.

Carry on.

This is the best thing lately. Now I can access my home computer from work. hehehehehehe... I so sneaky...

Quick rant because I'm hormonal and pissed off...

HEY NETFLIX!! How FUCKING HARD is it to actually look at the fucking DVDs before you put them in the white sleeves and send them out?? HELLO? I wanted season 2 disk 2, the white sleeve said season 2 disk 2, the DVD inside CLEARLY SAID DISK 1.

I swear, I'm going to try Blockbuster for free very soon if this shit doesn't get any better...

(People of the not-female persuasion may want to turn away...)

Another reason why I loved being on hormones and not menstruating for 5+ years - PMS sucks ass. My brain is so hormone soaked I'm easily distracting by stupid shit, or even nothing at all. I've made a couple of really stupid mistakes at work that I normally wouldn't. I hate it.

Bush does "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"

I don't know how accurate it is, since I didn't watch the State of the Union, but this is awesome.

I get some newsletters from Beliefnet, and one of them had a "Which archangel are you?" No codes to paste, so I just C&P'd the text.

You are Raphael, Archangel of the East. Though not recognized by the Protestant Church, you are officially recognized as one of three archangels by the Catholic Church. In two books of apocrypha, you have prominent roles. In the Book of Tobit you heal a blind beggar and you serve as a guide for the prophet Tobias. In the Book of Enoch (10:4-8), you cast one of Satan's fallen angels, Azazel, into darkness. Gentle, compassionate, and skillful you are passionate about curing people's sicknesses and providing them with healthier lives. Those who seek emotional and physical healing look to you as their patron. You share an archangel feast day with Michael and Gabriel on September 29.

IT'S SNOWING!!!!!

And I don't have any goddamned batteries for my camera that work... ARG!

EDIT: OK, I tore the kitchen junk drawer apart and found a couple. Now I need to find the camera cable... found it!

EDIT2: Pics!
From the front porch, looking right towards the azalea bush.
From the front porch, looking straight ahead.
From the front porch, looking left over two of my neighbors' yards.
From the back porch, left to the mutantly huge azalea bush.
From the back porch, straight ahead between the pines to the swing set. You can see it's already coloring the ground and not melting.
From the back porch, slightly left. I was sorta trying to catch a bird in flight, and ended up with a really great shot of just how fat the snowflakes are.

And no, I'm not going to work. They haven't called it all the way off yet, but it's already iced my porches over, and I'm not taking any chances with idiot drivers who don't know how to handle this stuff.

EDIT3: After about 45 minutes or so of steady snow, it's now switched back over to ice pellets. Few more pics, taken 9:15am (others were taken about 8:15am).
Front porch, same angle as the second picture above.
Back porch, another shot of the mutant azalea bush, you can see the snow all around it
Snow sticking to my mutant azalea.

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Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?



Final Fantasy 7

Had a blood draw this morning to check my levels, and the news wasn't as good as it could have been. It's gotten low (too thick), so they're upping the Coumadin to 7.5mg three times a week, and 5mg the rest of the week.

But in good news, I've started to take advantage of the free gym here at work. Right now I'm just walking or biking for 20 minutes a day, but I hope to increase that eventually. I just have to balance it with the arthritis and pain thereof, since I can't take any anti-inflammatory drugs (like Advil) while I'm on the blood thinners.

You know the Bible 100%!

 

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Considering both my grandfather and my mother were Lutheran pastors, and how well I remember what I read, I'm not surprised...

What Fantasy Archetype Are you?
The Seasoned Veteran Friend You are the Seasoned Veteran Friend! You resemble Aragorn (Lord of The Rings), Merlin (Arthurian Legend), Han Solo (Star Wars), The Marquis (Neverwhere), Sirius Black (Harry Potter) and Chase (Wizard's First Rule). You are exceedingly loyal, tricky and hardy. You regularly pull the Unlikely Hero, Mentor and Pillor-of-Strength Love Interest out of trouble and into safety. Beware The Traitor, who will make your job intensely difficult. And don't coddle the Unlikely Hero too much, he has to learn how to fend for himself. Anyway, everyone admires you and your resourcefullness / reliability - good going!
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

I'm not normally one to embed, but this just has to get out to everyone possible. Olbermann make Bush his bitch.

So I'm sitting here at work, listening to music, and I'm wondering why my pacer seems to be slamming my heart a bit. It feels like when I'm at the clinic getting checked, when they put big magnets on my chest.

So then I look at the headphones.

Headphones use magnets.

*headdesk*

Got there about 15 minutes early, despite my pulling into the wrong parking lot twice (there's about a ton of little doctor's office around the hospital, and a complete lack of street numbers on most of them). Filled out the paperwork and waited.

Not too long afterwards, they call me in to put my pacemaker through it's paces. The nurse puts a ring with a magnet in it over the pacemaker so the computer can read it, then she jacks my heart rate up to 100 for several minutes, then she purposely mis-fires the leads a couple of times. "Oh, most people don't feel anything." Well, I am not most people, and feel the two misfires VERY much. Not so much as pain, as just a very weird sensation that goes from my chest to my throat.

When that bit of torture is finally done, I go back to the waiting room to wait for a room to come available. Then it's move into the room and wait some more. A young female nurse comes in to get the info for my chart, then takes my blood pressure. She gives me a weird look and says, "I'm not hearing this right, let me get someone else in here." So I wait, and eventually an older female nurse comes in and tries again. "Do you normally have low blood pressure? It's 95 over 60." I answer yes, so she goes out and the previous nurse comes back in, and it's time for an EKG. It takes longer to put all the stickies on than it does to do the test, then it's time to rip them all off again. (sigh)

More waiting, then a nurse comes and says the doctor wants a chest X-ray, too. So off to the X-ray room for a couple of those. Then back to the room to wait.

About 4pm (appointment was at 2:30) I see Dr. Baugh, and we chat, he says I look great, he picks a bit of suture that's sticking out of the mostly-healed incision, he says he'll see me in a year.

Thankfully, this all was considered a post-operative follow-up visit, so I didn't have to pay a thing. I'll be getting a schedule in the mail of when to have my pacemaker phone their system, and when to come in for more checks.

Less stress in my life already... I'll be getting a full paycheck from work Friday. I was worried I'd get little or nothing, since the stupid hospital doctor's office took 10 fucking days to fill out 5 lines of a two-page form. :-p

I also cooked this weekend! Go me! ;-) A simple meat and cheese pie-like dish from off the BisQuick box, but still.

Back at work today... some things have changed, most have not. It's always interesting to see a place with new eyes, after being gone for a long time.

I go to the cardiologist in about 45 minutes... should be nothing. I keep saying that. :-p

Bush has said he will announce his new blueprint for the war in Iraq "sometime next week."

Well, the guy who thumbed his nose at his daddy is dead, so whatcha wanna bet it's time for us to leave? :-p

4 entries in a row! Let's see if I can make this a habit...

After beating the incredibly disappointing .hack//G.U. early this week, I decided what I needed was to go visit old friends. So I grabbed my copy of Final Fantasy VIII and got reacquainted with the gang. I don't think I've actually played it through to the end since I had it for the PC 5 or so years ago. It's a wonderful story with a very unique playing style that is frowned upon by way too many people.

Up next is Vagrant Story, which I understand is set in the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. I hated Tactics but consider XII the game of the year, so we'll see where this one falls.

Some people you just have to thank in person. So today, when I passed by the Urgent Care on my way to the post office, I thought, "I need to go tell Dr. Wingo he saved my life."

So I did. I went in, asked for him, went back to the nurse's station, and shook his hand. He was surprised to hear I ended up with a pacemaker. We chatted for a minute, then he had to get back to his work. I also talked to the nurse who put the IV line in my arm, which lasted for way longer than it had any right to.

Good works deserve rewards.

After the past few days where the temperature never got below the mid 50's, it's actually fairly cold outside now. The climate changes are getting more pronounced... Mom has gold finches a couple steps removed from full mating color, and it's JANUARY.

A hope for the new year...

By this invocation of peace may peace bring peace!
With this peace the dreadful I now appease,
with this peace the cruel I now appease,
with this peace all evil I now appease,
so that peace may prevail, happiness prevail!
May everything for us be peaceful!

-Athara Veda

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

*punts 2006 out the door*

A couple small resolutions...

1) Stress less about money. It's impossible to never stress about it, but it doesn't need to be something I think about every single day.

2) Cook more. Now that I have a working range and oven, I need to get into the habit of cooking things on the weekend I can eat off of during the week. This will help with the money stress, since I won't be so tempted to eat out for lunch all the time.

Enjoy the day!