Long Reach of 9/11

Lung Problems for 9/11 Rescuers More Widespread

Providing long-range monitoring and treatment to these responders is essential. The long-term effects could include malignancies and other crippling lung diseases. In others, apparently the problems seem to resolve. Let's hope the latter is the case in most.

My cat is sneezing in quick succession

I wonder if he's allergic to ME? It would make us even.

Yes, he's still alive. Things have improved some and I have been spending money on other things than my pet's demise. I know it is only a matter of time. And he's getting thinner, despite eating like a horse. He doesn't have much room to be thinner, either. So, it really is time. I'll do it soon.

Nothing else to report. I came in from work and I'm settling in for a bit and playing on the computer until I go get a friend from work in about an hour. Then I definitely plan on sleeping. 'Night.

How very sad

Deadly Blaze Likely Caused by Candles

Six children, ages 3-14 died. The mother and three siblings survived, but were injured. They had been without power since May.

Too much labour

not enough fun. What an odd holiday.

Well, he died doing what he loved best, and it was very, very quick

Death of a Crocodile Hunter

which is some comfort now that the lively well-known Australian's antics finally came to an end with a stingray attack. Although I didn't really watch his shows, I had to admire his ability to juggle deadly animals and keep up such a commentary as was his trademark. You could tell he loved his work, and despite the apparent lack of sense, he took it seriously and with great care. His death was one of those things where the odds were really infinitesimal it would happen, and yet it did. Steve Irwin lived life to the fullest, and it's shocking that his life was stopped so abruptly--but it was a life doing what he loved, and there's a lot to be said for that. His family is in my thoughts.

Art imitates life...

And in a record, two characters from our game were disabled before they could even be sent on their first mission, as their plane was struck by lightning (and the wrath of Nyarlohotep, the Crawling Chaos), to plummet to the ground in a spectacular crash that was, actually, the result of random dice rolls. Both characters barely survived. It sucks to piss off a Dark God, but hey, that's what Guardians of the Light tend to do.

Meanwhile, another character fought the Colour Out of Space and managed to shred it at great cost to herself--her statistics now have heavy minuses, ranging from Strength and Constitution to her very appearance, as it dessicated and tried to simulataneously burn and freeze her.

You just have to love Call of Cthulhu.

Anyway, the game master has to be happy; three different characters--one for each player, actually, disabled in one game. And I very much think he killed off an non-player character on the ground during the plane crash. He's crafty that way.

Other than the game I haven't really had much of a holiday...I worked most of Saturday and then got called in for an hour or so Sunday when no one else showed up. Today I'm pulling part of a shift for one of those someone's, who is now no longer working at the gas station. Tomorrow, between both jobs, I'm working 11 hours. Gah.

Well, that's all for now. Hope you are having a better holiday, for those folks in the US, and for everyone else, I wish you a good day.

Well I finally got the fireworks I thought I'd missed

and I got out of work just in time to go over to the hospital to watch them. Idle Hour Country Club usually has their display on July 4th, but it rained then this year, so it was bumped to today. We knew at the hospital because security and Idle Hour keep in touch over it, so we can handle parking issues. There weren't a lot of people there, though, since it wasn't as publicised, which made it nice for getting back onto Richmond Road. The display itself was fun, a nice blend of big clovers and smaller fireworks, with lots of shapes and colours.

So now I'm here, eating dinner, enjoying some music and having electricity this weekend. I think I may sit on my massaging cushion and do some reading, after I take care of the animals.

Have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Some good library feeds

recommended by various Chatty Librarians:

Librarian's Guide to Etiquette: http://libetiquette.blogspot.com/
Unshelved: http://www.overduemedia.com/ (syndicated here)
Library Link of the Day: http://www.tk421.net/librarylink/
LII New This Week: http://lii.org/
LIS Career News: http://liscareer.blogspot.com/
ALA Press Releases: http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=News
Musings of a Medical Librarian Maven: http://medicallibrarianmaven.wordpress.com/
Information Literacy: http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/
Kept-up Academic Librarian: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/
ACRLog: http://acrlblog.org/
Librarian.net http://www.librarian.net
TameTheWeb.com http://www.TameTheWeb.com
WalkingPaper.org http://www.WalkingPaper.org

plus a blogroll with lots of feeds:
http://court1824.googlepages.com/bloglines

a directory of higher education feeds:
http://court1824.googlepages.com/bloglines

and a non-library one:
Post Secret http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

I know the national news has moved on

but here in Lexington we still have our flags at half-mast, the funerals are just beginning, and a pall of mourning hangs over the town in response to the crash of the plane at our airport earlier in the week. Local coverage continues, and the Herald-Leader has an excellent overview, including profiles of those aboard in a sort of memorial page, so if you are still interested, there's an excellent resource.

The crash and its aftereffects have featured highly on every front page of the paper since the accident. Today's photo was of the wife of an off-duty pilot who had been travelling to his next assignment, carrying her 16-month-old son, who was wearing his dad's pilot wings & epaulets on his tiny white shirt. For whatever reason--I seem to tear up at the least thing these days--that one photo brought tears to my eyes. He'd kept touching his dad's uniform, his mom said--as if looking for the father he'd never see again.

So, just as the tragedy is still real to the relatives who are left behind, we as a city continue to see images and profiles of the people we--and most were living in Lexington or surrounding counties--lost, and it's still real for us, too. As they work to figure out what series of events led to this--and it's generally not a single cause, but a conjunction of several, I'm sure even it will fade from the news. But, the sense of tragedy will remain. I've noticed that Lexington doesn't let go of its losses. The paper still prints follow ups to the story earlier this summer of the pregnant woman killed by falling concrete. People want to remember and celebrate the lives around them. That's one of the nice qualities about the city. I remember a former friend from New Jersey making fun of us for having things like car crashes on the evening news--he thought they were minor and would never had made it onto New York City's airwaves. But for us, it is news, it is a life lost, a reminder of the sweetness and transitory nature of life. And it makes me glad that I live somewhere that cares.

Frou frou but interesting

Lexington Couple Transforms a Basement into a Paris Streetscape