Had a great Cthulhu game

in which we all survived, thankfully, despite dealing with lots of Deep Ones and a Star Spawn. I'm posting mainly because I kind of dropped the laptop from about an inch or two above the floor and broke the transmitter for the wireless mouse, although it still works, just the end came off, but also wanted to check to make sure the computer itself works and can connect to the Internet. At the moment I'm connecting through my phone's hotspot, and it seems to be working pretty well. In fact, it seems faster than my cable connexion.

Next up is the show 'Salem', which we've been watching. So, I should go now. Hope you had a great weekend.

It was a good run while it lasted

I took out time out of my day's activities, around 6:52, to watch the Belmont as California Chrome attempted to complete the Triple Crown. Sadly, that didn't happen; instead Tonalist won, leaving California Chrome in a tie for fourth.

We haven't had a Triple Crown winner since 1978. Carter was President. Grease was the big movie of the year, and disco was in full swing. The last horse who accomplished this was Affirmed; he is buried nearby my home on the Darley Stud horse farm, which I have visited. I was 11 years old when he won the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont, and firmly in my horsey-girly phase, as a friend calls it. I particularly loved the books of Marguerite Henry, such as Black Gold, King of the Wind, Misty of Chincoteague, Stormy, Misty's Foal, Justin Morgan Had a Horse, and Brighty of the Grand Canyon. I was particularly taken with the story of Black Gold, winner of the 1924 Kentucky Derby, who wnen he was seven ran a race where he broke down yet still finished the race on three legs, leading to his euthanisation and burial at the New Orleans Fairgrounds. Black Gold never raced in the Preakness or Belmont, instead winning several state derbies. But he had spirit, and I suppose it is the spirit of horses I admire so much, even though, despite living in 'The Horse Capital of the World', I don't really have much experience with them and in fact have to avoid them because I'm terribly allergic to them. :)

Anyway, I'm sorry that California Chrome's dreams were dashed. But at least it was a safe race and I hope he continues to excellent things.

I came across this early this morning

I hope you enjoy watching this momma and baby reunite after workers save the calf, who fell into a well. Thanks to Vanessa Irvin Morris for sharing on Facebook. Given the dwindling numbers of elephants, I find it heartwarming that there are people who will do what they can to save these beautiful animals.

I feel like Sleeping Beauty

except without the prince, the fairies, and I'm pretty sure she didn't wake up with her hair sticking up and feeling slightly hung over.

See, I went to bed very late last night. It was almost 2 am. I couldn't sleep after the storms and 'The 100'. Then I got a call from an insomniac friend at 6 am asking if I could please fix his internet connexion, which had been down all night. So I did that (I just had to unplug and replug in the router). I went home and I tried to get a little more rest to no avail, and had just enough time to clean up in the sink without washing my hair. Now, I'm one of those people who simply must wash my hair every day, for it is fine and oily and it goes flat and awful when I leave it that long. I can't even wash it in the evening and have it look fine the whole next day. So I sort of fretted over my hair all day.

Despite the lack of sleep, work went well, and I was very busy. After work I paid my rent and signed my new lease. Then I came in and debated on going for a walk (I should have) before lying down for a half hour, thinking that it was early enough surely I wouldn't sleep the evening away. That was at 5:30. I got up at 10:45, so I got over five hours of sleep. Now I'm up for water and medicine. The way I feel, I think I'll be able to go back sleep some more.

So I feel like I wasted a perfectly good evening, but at least I got some rest. Tomorrow I'll be helping with some baking and a grocery run, so I'll need to be rested, and even though it's a slower clinic day on Fridays, it's my catch-up day for all sorts of things.

I have a confession to make

Remember the reminiscing I was doing the other day regarding old school computing? That is, my old Atari, in response to the video of kids reacting to the old ASCII system?

This coincided with a message from eBay saying I should change my account password due to a breach. Now, I've been on eBay about twice since I opened the account a few years ago, once to get something a friend was interested in, and once to replace a puzzle I accidentally broke of said friend's. But I do have an account, so I dutifully went to change my password.

I was still thinking about my old Atari 800XL, and so I typed it into eBay's search engine, and found several listings, all more expensive than I would have spent--about $100, which is what the system cost when my mom bought hers all those years ago. Then I happened upon a 600XL computer that was one model below mine, but takes the same cartridges, purportedly worked, and was about a third of the price of the others.

So I bid on it. And no one else did. And the next thing I knew, I'd won the auction. I also bid on a joystick, and won that one, as somewhere along the way I divested myself of my joysticks. But I kept my ROM packs, mostly games, about fifteen in all. There's something thrilling about getting down to the wire and bidding on something in 50 cent increments. So have to watch that! :) Today I received the computer (it came very quickly--it was Monday when I won the auction). Tonight I took it home and hooked it up to my bedroom TV and yay, it works. I tried a couple of ROM packs to make sure. So as soon as the joystick gets here, I can play the games I loved, such as Joust, Dig Dug, Centipede, Frogger, Gyruss, etc. So I logged back on to eBay and left very positive feedback to the seller, who was very reasonable, included the connectors I needed to get it hooked up, and got it to me very quickly.

I'm afraid I'm a bit of an old-fashioned video gamer. I still have an old Nintendo system, too, one with cartridges for Gauntlet and Gauntlet II. :)

That I'll probably keep, but there are other things in my house that I might do best to put on eBay. Things like Elvis records from the 60s in great condition, an old Game Boy system that I've never really used, a wallet that is too small for my phone these days. I could have my own online garage sale. This has possibilities....

Okay, it's almost 1:30 am. I got home late because I was waiting for a break in the weather, where it was storming. Time for bed--7 am comes early. Good night! May you dream of little pixelated protagonists saving the world from evil.

I must admit, I have a great affinity for

Hufflepuff:



Thanks to YKWIA for showing me this great Hufflepuff anthem. :) Check out their other videos, as they're quite good. There's one for Slytherin and Gryffindor with Ravenclaw on the way.

And just because you're good, I'll throw in a zombie Christmas carol:

This saddens me

Yale Study: 12 Percent of US Children Abused

A university research group arrived at the cumulative estimate of mistreated American children by examining the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File, which includes data on every child in the country with a confirmed report of maltreatment.

Case reports accumulated between 2004 and 2011 showed over 5.6 million children had experienced maltreatment during that specific seven-year span.

"Confirmed child maltreatment is dramatically underestimated in this country. Our findings show that it is far more prevalent than the 1 in 100 that is currently reported," Christopher Wildeman, an associate professor of sociology at Yale, a faculty fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the study's lead author, said in a news release.

It's actually 12.5% overall for 2011 rates according to the study. When broken up by ethnicity, they found black children experienced maltreatment at a rate of 20.9%, American Indians at 14.5%, Latinos 13%, white children at 10.7% all far ahead of Asian/Pacific Islanders, which was only 3.8%. Girls are more likely to be maltreated (13% vs. boys at 12%). They also found the risk for maltreatment is higher in the first years of life. The study was published in today's (June 2nd) issue of JAMA Pediatrics [Subscription only, but you can view the abstract]. Here's the citation:

Wildeman C, Emanuel N, Leventhal JM, Putnam-Hornstein E, Waldfogel J, Lee H. The Prevalence of Confirmed Maltreatment Among US Children, 2004 to 2011. JAMA Pediatr. Published online June 02, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.410.

Sleepy

I've walked 7742 steps today, which is 4.35 miles and burned 777 calories. Not bad for a weekend. I have also cleaned my friends' house (slowly, taking my time), did a couple of loads of my laundry (it's so nice to be caught up on that; I just have a small hamper each week), went to Lowe's and my friend got something but I found some glass shades which match my lamp pretty well to replace the one I broke. Then YKWIA and I watched some things that hurt my brain, including 'Mice Bikers from Mars' (although I liked 'Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys', as it had a lot of humour. Then we did a total turnabout and watched 'Salem', which just keeps getting more interesting. Now I'm home, the lampshades are on, my groceries are put away, but my laundry is going to wait till tomorrow, I'm afraid. It's sitting neatly in the dining room for now.

Okay, I'm going on to bed. Hope you had a nice weekend, and good luck in the coming week.

Well, it's a start

I decided to start small and walk for 15 minutes around my neighbourhood, listening to Abba's Gold album. It turned out to be .68 miles in 16:11 minutes, burning 171 calories, and going a max of 3.1 mph and average of 1.9 mph. Not bad for a woman who's nearly 300 lbs and has a knee that's bothering her right now. I've actually burned more calories today than I've eaten. And I added 2,000 steps to what I had already. I went ahead and put breakfast into the tracker, too. Now I'm hydrating. The weird thing is even though I perspired a bit and breathed a little heavy, my heart rate went down, but then I'd been back in the house for a couple of minutes before I took it, so maybe it just went through a cool-down in the last few minutes, as I did walk a little slower at the end. Oh, well.

We're not playing the Cthulhu game today. I called Brenda this morning to let her know, as I thought she might not have gotten the message I left on her voicemail last night, which was true. I'm going to stop by the grocery store for a couple of things and then go over and clean my friends' house, go do some errands with one of them, and then visit. I'm not sure if we'll watch 'Salem' tonight or later in the week. But at least this morning has been fairly restful.

Well, I must say

since going to the endocrinologist I have faithfully taken all of my diabetes medicine on time, as scheduled, and have been watching what I eat better. In those few days--

1. I have not had much of an appetite (one of the drugs shrinks the stomach so you don't eat as much)
2. I haave not had any of the side effects from the one drug that they put me back on at a lower dose (and hopefully won't)
3. My morning blood sugar values have dropped about 80-100 points
4. I've lost about 8 lbs (in three days, probably some of that is water weight, as I go up and down within 10 lbs pretty easily. But this happened last last time I was on that oral medication it stayed off for quite some time). I need to lose 30 to increase my insulin sensitivity and maybe decrease the insulin I'm taking.

So I'm hopeful. So hopeful I'm going to put some clothes on and go for a walk. :) At work they're doing a thing this month where we track our steps on a calendar and work our way up to 10,000. Since I'm tracking my steps anyway, and my Sunday steps usually are not many, I thought I'd take a short walk today and then try to build up throughout the month.