The game was nice

We've had some downtime but it looks like we've got one, possibly two, adventures starting.  Also, three characters that have been in limbo have finally gotten out of the reality bubble they were in and are pursuing leads on a case. It involves a murder on a train (very popular--we had one already, and then there's the infamous 'Horror on the Orient Express' which we haven't gotten to.)  Our gamemaster has been presenting the stories mostly in order according to alphabet as a way to randomise, although certain adventures have to take place at certain times of the year or before another.)  I must remember how to play my character; it's been so long.  Somewhere I have a small notebook with her abilities; I'm pretty sure I know where it is.  Funny how I organise other people's stuff for a living but have trouble with my own.  It is nice to have a clean house though.  Clean, mind you, but not totally in place.  I should go through the closets and drawers and do a purge. Unfortunately Margaret doesn't have a character for that particular adventure.  But I'm sure we'll have something for her to participate in soon. Also, my character on the train is a cousin to one of hers, and they're both necromancers, so she'll get to see her in action.

I am tired, having gotten up at 3:30 am. I think I'll go on to bed.  Ever since I put the call in to Insight about the wonky cable access, it has worked fine.  Murphy's Law, I guess, but I'll keep the appointment just in case it will be an ongoing issue.

Good night.

It's hard to believe

that Autumn is almost over. The holiday season has started; December is just around the corner, and after that, a new year. Time seems to go by so much faster as you get older. I remember summer vacations seeming to last so long. Now summer passes in the blink of an eye. I suspect it only gets worse as you age.

The picture here is of a gingko leaf. There are lots of gingkos in Lexington because Henry Clay, the famous 19th century politician, had them brought over from China, or so I've heard. I think the trees are beautiful, but the female gingko's fruit smells horrible, and it's especially treacherous to walk on a sidewalk littered by them.

I also took a picture of the last roses of the year, which believe it or not are still blooming, although they've already grown large hips, too. I have no earthly idea why they came out different sizes; they were both taken with my phone.  Anyway, I thought I'd post them here.

So I'm up and on schedule

and pretty tired, having only had 3 1/2 hours of sleep on top of an 8-hour shift. But hopefully it will be a good day. I'm waiting a few minutes before calling a cab and then I'll be on my way.

I so wish I had a car though. I talked to a man the other day who worked at one of those buy-here pay-here places, which I'm generally pretty leery of. But he said they didn't put computers on the car to disable it in case of non-payment, and if something major happened like an engine or transmission blowing they'd replace the car. He said a good down payment would be $500, which is really doable. It might be worth checking out the company, I think.

My Internet seems to be up at the moment

I just got in from work and the first thing I did was fill the fish tank up so that I could turn the heater back on (it had gone down a little and I was afraid to leave too much of it exposed). The only problem is, I tried priming the pump, but I'm not getting any flow at all, and not even a sucking sound as usual when it is dry. I may have killed the pump somehow, or it may just have worn out; I've had it for years. Fortunately I live within walking distance of two pet stores.

I'll keep this brief; one, I don't know if the broadband connexion will be dropped again, and two, I have to get up very, very early (in the middle of the night, really) and I should go onto bed. But I wanted to write a little before doing that.

My Internet

and phone service (since it piggybacks on it) is going in and out for some reason. Insight will be over to fix it sometime Tuesday morning. So I'll try to blog, but if I don't, you know why. Thanks!

My coat! I found my coat!

I was going to empty the bags, but then I noticed a sky blue colour under one of them. There it was, yay. I also found two hats, a scarf/hood combination, and two mismatched gloves. :)

Well, I'm home

from Danville and from work tonight. It's cold and frosty outside, so I'm going to look for my coat before bed.

It was a good visit. We stopped in Danville to pick up my grandmother and my stepfather John's mother, and then we went to Stanford to my mom's house and had Thanksgiving dinner. The only things I couldn't eat were the stuffing, the turkey, and the ham (oh, and there were Southern-style beans, but my mom made me some with just butter, and she also cooked some fresh-caught fish for me). There were ten people altogether--my mom and John, their mothers, me, John's son Robert, John's granddaughter, her father, and his girlfriend and her son. The girl's mother died earlier this year or last, I can't remember which.

Oops, sorry, I must change the TV from the Meditation channel. A didgeridoo is playing, and they grate on my nerves, no matter how much I try to like them. I appreciate Aboriginal art and culture, but I can't abide that instrument; it sounds completely alien. I'm more of a bagpipes kind of girl.

Okay, I'm back. We had the meal early so my mom could enjoy the visit before she had to go to work in the early afternoon. We all visited for awhile after she left and then John brought us back to Danville. I talked with my grandmother quite awhile. My grandmother fried up a huge potato that fed both of us. (My cousin had brought her a 50-lb bag of them, plus a 25-lb bag of pinto beans, and she lives alone. She gave me some of the beans.) Later I started to fall asleep on the couch, so I went on to bed around 8 pm. That was when I realised I had made a horrible mistake--I had checked the CPAP humidifier before I left to make sure it wasn't on and heating the water (I didn't want to burn the house down) but it never occurred to me that I would need to take the machine with me to sleep at her house. It shows how much I go anywhere overnight. So I propped myself on the generous pillows and tried to make do, but I woke up ever couple of hours or so, and I slept fitfully at best. I tossed and turned, and stayed in bed until the sky started to get light, because I was too tired to read but couldn't sleep.

Once I got up, I checked my blood sugar. It was only 128! I'd remembered to take my Janumet the evening before (my mom, John, his mother, my grandmother, and I all have diabetes, so we talked at length about that, and it reminded me to take the pill). It really helped. I made a point to do so tonight even with work. My grandmother and I had some oatmeal and a little later John and Momma came by to get me. Once we got back to Lexington, I laid down and slept with the CPAP for about three hours, although I really had meant to finally do my laundry. That will have to wait until tomorrow, when I don't need to be to work until 2 pm and I have no notes to work on since we didn't play last week.

I guess that's all for now. I'm eating some vegetarian chili with cheese and tortilla chips. I was going to have a cheese sandwich, but the Havarti slices were mouldy despite being unopened and having a date for April of next year, so I guess I got a bad batch. Icky. Hope your holiday went well (assuming you celebrated it, anyway; I know some of you are from outside the States).

Remembering those who won't be sitting down with their families at the table today

Military families united by tragedies: Mom of suicidal Marine befriends wife of veteran charged with murder

It is essential that we provide care to our veterans, including the hidden menace of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and other psychological ills. It is the least we can do for their sacrifice, and we should also do it because it is the right thing to do. That's how to support our troops.

One section of the story I found chilling:

Months before his arrest, Windy recalled, a VA counselor told her to get used to having a broken husband.

"She told me, 'Your husband died in Iraq. You're either going to have to deal with that or move on,'" Windy said.

There must be more we can do to prepare these men and women for the horrors of war and to help them deal with the aftermath.

Well, I think I did a pretty decent job

There's still detail work, but the bedroom and bath are nice, the kitchen dishes haven't been done yet but they're in the dishwasher or stacked neatly in the sink for those that aren't dishwasher safe. I still need to do laundry, but I'll do that when I come back tomorrow before work. The printer box is gone. And no, I didn't find my coat. There were just boxes of books in the closet. I didn't touch the other stuff that came from the car, though--that's another day, so it may be there. The house looks lived in without being a disaster. I slept another couple of hours, so I'm not dead on my feet. I'm dressed and ready, and John just left Stanford, so he'll be here in about an hour.

Well, I'm up, if a bit groggy

I think I'll take about half an hour to wake up properly and then sort the laundry, start the laundry, attack the bathroom, then the kitchen, and then the living room, which is the most cluttered of all. It has things like the printer box (I kept it for a little while in case I had to return it) and the stuff that came out of the car. I'd like to get rid of the old printer that doesn't work, but I really can't throw that in the garbage; it needs to be recycled. Maybe Margaret can take me to the electronics recycling centre sometime soon. It has hazardous materials in it and shouldn't go in the dumpster. Maybe I can find room in a closet for now, although my closets are mostly full of books (rather than clothes). The bedroom's pretty much okay except for making the bed and clearing some old receipts, etc., from the top of the chest of drawers. I really shouldn't run the vacuum in the middle of the night (although I am going to run the dishwasher), but I can sweep the bathroom and kitchen, and maybe mop if there's time.

I know, it sounds like a big job. I kept the house really clean for about 6 months and then back in April I got sick and it just all went to hell. I have to pretty much do a major purge twice a year, since I'm such a pack rat. Now I have incentive, which will help for having the house nice for the ritual to Hekate next Monday. Wish me luck.

I won't be blogging tomorrow evening

as I will be away from the computer. Early tomorrow morning my stepfather is coming up to get me and take me to Stanford or Danville (I'm not sure which) so we can have Thanksgiving dinner before my mother goes to work at 2:30 (my mom's a nurse, and that often means working on holidays). I'm going to stay overnight at my grandmother's. She hasn't been doing so well lately. She's walking with a cane, severely diabetic, and has had some serious health issues. I want to make sure I get a chance to spend some time with her now. I'll come back Friday and work at 3:30.

Tonight I worked till a little after 10 pm and I'm home now (obviously, as I'm blogging). I really need to straighten up the house before John comes by, and I'm not sure when that will be. Plus, I need to do laundry. I am thinking of going on to bed and maybe getting a few hours' sleep and then working on it then. It's mostly just picking up stuff that's lying about. I tend to throw everything on the couch when I get home, and I'm terrible at keeping things in their place. Plus, I hang onto things I shouldn't, like printer boxes and recyclables (I have no way to really recycle at my apartment, and no car to take them somewhere like Good Foods Co-op.

Maybe I'll find my coat. :) I suspect it's in a box in the closet. Why I didn't put it on the coat rack, I don't know.

We had a potluck at work this afternoon. I brought fruit salad, something my family always enjoys for Thanksgiving. I used the cherry-heavy fruit cocktail, pineapple, mandarin oranges, with light whipped topping, plus shredded coconut on the side for anyone who wanted that. What I forgot were the bananas and apples, but when I brought the rest home I picked up some bananas from work so that I can put it in mine, anyway. I'll go ahead and mix the coconut in. (That's not part of my family tradition; I just like coconut in my fruit salad.) But we had all sorts of dishes and everyone had a good time.

Well, that's enough for now. I may blog in the morning. If not, and if you're celebrating, Happy Thanksgiving. :)

I was so sorry to hear

that an acquaintance lost his mother yesterday in a terrible car crash as she was doing some Thanksgiving shopping. It is always hard to deal with the death of a loved one, but it is especially hard as the holiday season commences. My sympathy goes out to Bobby. It is a reminder that we can lose someone very precious to us at any time, and should make the most of our relationships each day.

The magic of pop-up books has long delighted me

So it's very sad to hear that one of the driving forces behind today's pop-up industry has died--Waldo 'Wally' Hunt.

Pop-up books in the news (be sure to watch the video of an amazing alphabet book, ABC3D

Waldo Hunt dies at 88; entrepreneur revived the pop-up book as art form (He also amassed a collection of at least 4,000 antique and contemporary pop-up titles)

A shame

Remember the census worker found hanged in a rural area of Kentucky? The authorities have ruled it a suicide, although the man made it look like he was killed because he was a government worker. He had apparently taken out $600,000 in life insurance and his family would have been paid and extra $10,000 from the government if he were killed on the job. As it is, the policy is null due to the suicide. I don't know what factors drove him to take his life, but it's a shame that he did so, and that in doing so, robbed his family of security they might have had if he had died (eventually) in some other way.

How one man and his burro are changing lives (and you can help!)

Read more at the New York Times: Acclaimed Colombian Institution Has 4,800 Books and Ten Legs and learn how you can help.

Thanks to Buffy, who shared a post from Gargoyles loose in the library, who in turn got it from Jessamyn West.

:)

Earth Destroyed By Large Hadron Collider; Martian Questioned

I took today off and haven't gotten a blessed thing done all day but sleep and eat. I'm getting up now to go over to a friend's house to visit and watch 'Heroes' tonight. I really meant to clean the house and do laundry, but I wound up catching up on lots of sleep and generally getting nothing done. I am going to pay some bills before I leave though. Cleaning and laundry will have to wait till later tonight.

46 years ago today--the day after the Kennedy assassination--

'Doctor Who' premiered in its first iteration on the BBC in Britain, and brought a little hope into the world.

Nov. 23, 1963: Doctor Who Materializes on BBC

Let's celebrate with the original theme:



If you don't know about it, let me begin by saying that it's the longest running science fiction television show in the world. I first saw 'Doctor Who' back during the Tom Baker days on PBS. I saw just a bit of Peter Davison (whom I'd had a crush on back when he played Tristan on 'All Creatures Great and Small'). The various British series run by PBS in those days ('Omega Factor' was another) really fanned my sense of Anglophilism, and books like Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising sequence did as well.

I've seen several with David Tennant (who I think makes a very good Doctor). I sort of missed the Christopher Eccleston ones. I'd really like to get the DVDs. It's a shame some of the early 'Doctor Who's were lost. It would be horribly expensive to have a complete set, but I'd love to have one nonetheless.

The 11th Doctor is about to start his run. I wonder what they'll do when he runs out of regenerations? I'd hate to see the series close. But even if it did, it really has already lasted through my entire life and beyond, an era of its own and made many firsts. The music in the video above, for example was the first time a series theme was made entirely via electronic means. There have been several spinoffs, the most well-known probably 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' and 'Torchwood' (an anagramme of 'Doctor Who'). Even the TARDIS (the 1950s-style police call box in which he and his companions travel, short for 'Time and Relative Dimension in Space') has even entered the English language and it is more recognisable as itself than the model upon which it was based.

If you haven't watched Doctor Who, catch it on TV or on the BBC's channel on YouTube. You'll really enjoy it if you have any soul whatsoever.