Year: 2007

Ralph said he wasn’t passing the meme, but it’s of the kind I find amusing. I’m currently reading “Tough Liberal”, a biography of Albert Shanker. (I don’t remember why I requested it, but I’m finding it interesting.)

page 161, 6th sentence: “Within the NEA there was also a strange anti-AFL-CIO coalition of conservative southerners who thought that unions were somehow un-American and African Americans and New Politics adherents who saw the AFL-CIO as reactionary.”

Hm. I’ll be interested to get there…I’m only on page 40.

A running list of site improvements, as I have time (ha!)

• Fix category nav to allow clicking on top level
• “Little icon” picture of me in the about section
• Overly long or duplicative summary display — change, don’t show, or at least fix the box edge
• Fallback for homepage when there isn’t a recent non-del.icio.us post
• Upgrade
• Double-check feeds (um, that looks like: fix full-feed option)
• Look at fun comment form options
• Figure out what’s up with date display on archive pages
• See if there’s a way to fix my prior use of (textile?) to turn it into HTML

What a lousy weekend. Yesterday C’s aching back went from, well, aching — which it had been since last weekend — into full-blown out-of-control pain. We went to the emergency room last night after I talked to the consulting nurse…but being a Saturday night, it was packed.  Nowhere for him to lay down, couldn’t get comfortable in the chairs, couldn’t stand up for too long, so after an hour we came home. This morning we went to the urgent care, which was amazing in comparison. We were 3rd in line when it opened, waited less than 15 minutes, the doc & nurse were both very helpful, and the physical therapy people are going to call & set up an appointment. Plus, yes, medication.  He’s not doing great, but he’s okay.  I think he’s finally asleep after not sleeping at all last night and hardly at all the night before.

Which was bad enough…but yesterday I also broke my glasses. The frames were a little bowed and I was trying to bend them back into shape. Instead, I broke off one earpiece. So I can’t see, unless I’m wearing my sunglasses.  And then I can’t see unless it’s fairly bright. My prescription expired in July, right after I got my sunglasses, and I used up this year’s benefit on, well, my sunglasses. So tomorrow I have to get an exam (which is still covered, thankfully) and a new pair of glasses, which isn’t. In the meantime, I’m doing a lot of squinting, and I have a headache.  I can use the computer because my eyesight goes wonky about an arm’s length away from my head.

Last night I drove C to the emergency room because at the time his leg was spasming…technically, legally: I should not have been.  My driver’s license even has an eyeglasses restriction. At least by the time we left he was doing well enough to do the driving; same thing this morning.  But it is all sort of ridiculous.  It would be funny if it wasn’t both painful and annoying.

There was a woman with an infant standing next to us in the emergency room last night — a woman with a sick baby who’d been there for at least two hours.  As C said when we left, seeing something like that makes you feel like whatever you’ve got, you’re not really doing all that bad.

I will (mostly) refrain from my usual health insurance rant, and merely note, again, that the American health care “system” is a travesty.

I just finished a small chunk of a fairly sizable project…while watching TV, which is one of those things (multitasking!) that I probably shouldn’t be doing.  And it’s almost my bedtime and I’ve spent the last 2 1/2 hours with the shiny-bright lights of the TV and the computer, so it’s certainly not going to be easy.  I’m hoping that I can wear myself out writing.

Last night I was leaving work on my bike, I got a block out and it started to rain.  I didn’t know if it was going to get better or worse, so I headed back and called C to have him pick me & my bike up in the truck.  Which was a bit of a bummer, although we did have a nice time going grocery shopping together.  And goodness knows I’m thankful that he’s around to come get me, and that we have a vehicle to transport my bike in if need be.  (Alternate plan, btw: bring the bike in the building and take the bus home.) This morning it was cloudy, not raining; I eyeballed the sky sceptically, wondering if I could ride. But I had an afternoon appointment, and I didn’t want to chance messing that up.  That turned out to be the right choice.  It started raining mid-day, at a few points quite hard, and only ever slowed down to a drizzle.  Right now the sound of rain on the roof is fighting with my keystrokes for dominance in an otherwise quiet house.

It’s a cozy sound.  Actually, they’re both cozy sounds.  I have positive emotions connected with typing, especially long bursts of prose.

I found myself poking around old blog entries (fall 2003) while looking for something that Shelley’s recent post reminded me of. (Mmmmm, now that’s an awkward sentence.) I’ve been keeping a diary of one sort or another since 1984 or thereabouts; before junior high school.  But this last 6 years is the first time in my life that I had a journal that I could search for or browse like this.  At some point several years ago, I started re-reading old paper diaries.  I don’t remember why.  Maybe I was trying to find a way to archive them.  (I have a large Rubbermaid tub full of diaries and letters.  It’s VERY heavy.)  Anyway, I found it so depressing and painful that I had to stop.  I couldn’t read about my feelings from being a preteen and a teenager.  (Kermit & Elizabeth are the only two readers of this who’ve known me that long, and who can attest to my…craziness.  Kermit, I’m sorry I was such a b*tch when we were 13.)

I didn’t have that reaction reading the old blog entries.  Maybe it’s the self-censorship that I exercise in my blog.  There’s a lot of pain and drama that I’ve kept walled off from this space, for whatever reasons.  Maybe I got lucky with the time I picked. Or heck, maybe I’m just better at seeing my past self(ves) and accepting them/me.

But it was nice; good memories, for the most part.  I’m noticing, though, that I used to post a lot of very short entries, just dashing off a quick thought or two.  (My current template, with the excerpt/summary at the top, looks really stupid on those.  I need to figure out a fix.  Round tuit, anyone?) Hmmm, yeah. That sounds sorta familiar.

Also, fall 2003 is when I switched from Blogger (!) to Movable Type (!!!) and when I turned on comments for the first time. Whoa. Time flies when you’re….

Or something.

I’m feeling remarkably scatterbrained tonight. Trying to read, watching The West Wing, thinking about the outline I need to prep for a presentation in a couple of weeks, running through another presentation I have to give tomorrow, procrastinating on two different volunteer web design projects. (Not to mention laundry, dishes, and so on.) So, yeah, scattered.

Dunno why I’m blogging about it, either. I can’t focus, so I write.

Not that I’m really writing either.

At least I got to ride today.  Hella cold, and dark on the way back, but lovely nonetheless.  The new trail is almost done…so almost done that with a bit of squirrelling around, I was able to take my new and future route today.  It’s nice not having to deal with traffic, and so very beautiful.

When I got in this morning, my odometer read 900 miles.  (That’s since April, when I bought my cyclocomputer.) I had been hoping, earlier this year, that I’d log 1000 miles this year.  I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m happy to have gotten this far.

I was chatting with another cyclist one day last week and asked him about riding in the rain with glasses. (He was wearing glasses.) He said that a cap with a long brim helped.  So maybe I’ll try that, although I’ll also need a new pair of rain pants.  I gave mine away a couple of weeks ago to a co-worker, to encourage her to get out and ride, and because they didn’t fit me anymore.

Nothing fits anymore.  I think I have 5 work outfits, and two of them are short-sleeved dresses that honestly, aren’t appropriate for November.  But I wear them anyway.  Although yesterday I did pick up a new skirt and blouse; the skirt was 3 sizes smaller than the pants I bought for my job interview a year ago. (And it’s just super-cute, with a sort of faux-suede texture.) I bought new jeans a couple of weeks ago, 2 sizes smaller than the jeans that were too small at the beginning of the year. I need to ditch half-a-dozen more blouses, but I’m afraid to because I don’t (yet) have anything to replace them with.  Mysteriously, I can’t find the black pants I bought at Value Village a while ago, which has nothing to do with weight loss but in my current situation is insanely annoying.

I have, as of today, lost 37 pounds.  My loss has tapered off over the last few weeks; I’m thinking about doing a few days of rigorous calorie-counting, as that always seems to get me back on track.  But in any case, that puts me in the “normal” BMI category.  I have 7 pounds left to the number I set as my goal back in May, which was intended to get me well inside normal, even at this slower rate I’m well set to get there by the beginning of 2008, which is a month ahead of my goal.

On a scatterbrained day, when I’m tempted to have just one more cookie, it helps to remind myself of this, and how I got here.

This is why I write when I can’t focus.  Eventually, if I just let the words rattle on, something happens.  Even if it’s not interesting or useful to anybody but me. 🙂

Now it’s off to bed.