kistha

It's always interesting to go watch a rehearsal.

It always brings back similarities and differences and memories. Sitting in this gaggle of girls (twilight2000, scarlettina, winifred and myself) who all have a lot of performance experience (acting, lighting, singing, dancing, stage managing, marching band and "rock" band are just the ones I know for sure) it was even more apparent. None of us are Barbershop people, and I have no idea what the requirements are, but these are champions, and so I figured it was a pretty damn good example. But with us all together, we couldn't help but compare and contrast to what *we* had done. Although to be fair, it was mostly me, twilight2000 and scarlettina. It made even the repetition of the two songs they were having trouble with easy to go through. I did love the warm up vocalizations, and had a Sister Act 2 flashback.

Of course why you're really there (and what got you in the seat in the first place) is to go support, watch and cheer for a friend. mischief_wa was quite good (from what I could tell) and although the front needs to jell a bit more, they're doing just fine. One thing I don't know (and am curious about, mischief_wa) is how uniform they need to be in what they do. If everyone does the same motion, is it like chorus dancing or colorguard where everyone must be absolutely together or is there more personal interpretational leeway?

That group is serious about getting people to join them as well, with a very pushy (in a nice amusing way) recruitment lady. There was lots of fun while we were introduced to the chorus, and occasionally our 4 were very interactive. There was plenty of fun and laughs, and I think they'll do well with a few more screws tightened up. It's never good when people call it in, but if mischief_wa is right and a lot of people are, they are pretty damn fine calling it in - but I know that the judges will be much harsher than I. Just because it's exhibition doesn't mean you can't get egg on your face.

They ran a wee bit long, and because scarlettina was exhausted, we headed out right after the rehearsal was over just before ten. Dropping everyone off, I ended up with me and twilight2000 sitting in the car - this should not happen. Both twilight2000 and I get going and we just talk and talk and talk. Finally at one thirty we shut up and went our separate ways. I swear. We need an alarm. I feel pretty bad for twilight2000 since she had to get up this morning and has a long and annoying day ahead of her.

But in the end, it reinforced that I miss some kind of performing, and although I'm pretty sure I'm not a Barbershop candidate, it did put me in the mood to sing. I need practice for sure, and I miss the octave I've lost in the upper register. But then, I think of theater and dance.....

*sigh*

Anyone got ideas?

It's stopped and now it's all wet.

It must have been all that Banana Bread Power I had goin' on in the kitchen. (Gods knows it's plenty warm in here now.)

I only bake when I get a wild hair up my butt (or too many brown bananas in the freezer) and I pretty much only do cakes and quick breads. Usually it's my Mom's Banana Bread recipe. Usually, this means I'm also baking in bulk. For example today was 3 times the recipe.

This Christmas, rhienelleth got me a stand mixer.

I am soooooooo spoiled now.

This was so easy compared to doing it by hand. It was so fabulous. I can't even begin to explain!

The game night and D&D groups should be happy though....

So, for almost a week the kitchen sink faucet (a single handle with a pull out spout) suddenly had no water pressure.

dthon thought it was spout handle blocked with calcium deposits. I thought it was the faucet handle blowing out. We unhooked the hose from the spout handle, and discovered that it didn't have water pressure either. I felt vindicated, but there was a weird white thing in the hose. dthon thought it was a calcium deposit, I thought it was odd. So we soaked the hose and the spout handle in hot vinegar water for 2 hours without removing any hardware from the sink. No change.

Now, I thought I was right, but was afraid to have my first plumbing experience be replacing a whole faucet. My Mom assured me on a scale of 1-10 it was really only a 5.

I dithered. I didn't want to pay 283.00 for a whole new faucet in case I was wrong, and I really, really didn't want to replace it at all. dthon continued to advocate the something stuck in the hose/handle.

So, in compromise we spent 72.00 on a replacement hose by mail.

Last night I changed the hose. I got a crick in my neck, and water in my face. And everything went swimmingly with no leaks on the first try.

However, I forgot that I hadn't turned the faucet handle off, so when I turned on the cold water, we found out it had pressure all right.

We hadn't attached it to the spout handle, and so like one of those old sprinkler modifying toys the hose went wild spraying water everywhere. I turned off the water toot-sweet, and it wasn't too bad. But we did have a streak of water on the ceiling from the sink to the opposite side of the room.

After we finished laughing our asses off, we cleaned up the water and attached the spout handle, and low and behold it's fixed!

I plumbed!

ETA - Turns out the white thing was supposed to be there, but some how it got damaged. The new hose had one, but it was further back and not irregular.

He's out and Mom should be able to see him soon. 5 1/2 hours later and a quadruple bypass later he's in the ICU for the next 24 hours.

The doc says it went really well, so we're headed out for a nap while they keep him sedated for a few hours until they are ready to pull the trach tube. Funny, he's also orange like an oompa loompa. (From the antibacterial paint)

It looks very good though.

Mom's feels likely that she can finally sleep now that he's out and doing very well.


Thanks for all the support, prayers and good wishes.

Love to you all.

A wise friend of ours pointed out that when our lives get difficult "We run silent and deep."

It's very true. While it may not be the best way to function, it's kind of a habit. And, things this last six months or so have been really, really shitty.

So, please don't feel that we don't want to see you or are not interested, we're just trying to get our shit together enough to believe that the next problem isn't right around the corner, and guaranteed. (If you've seen the SGA episode "Adrift" that's a lot like what it feels like. Quote: "What that was like a SECOND!")

While I'm nowhere near "optimistic" I have hopes that someday, in some future we may have an actual social life again.

Thank you all for your support and care - even if we haven't been around to get it in person.

Loves

So last weekend on Saturday dthon, argentyne and I made the crazy day run to Portland to see the Quest for Immortality Exhibit at the Portland Art Museum. dthon and I had to have the dog to the kennel in Monroe by 9AM, and then flew to argentyne's and were on the road just before 10. We hit Portland just before 1, and had lunch at BJ's.

Then it was to Powells where I managed to get out just over $200. I would have got out cheaper, but I had to go back in you see. *shakes head* Although what I got was well worth it. I also had someone take a picture of my hair while I was standing outside - he and I had a brief discussion about how he was likely to get hit one day. Had he gotten a *recognizable picture* we would have had harsher and longer words.

Then we moved parking lots, rested, read and then headed to the exhibit. Our tickets were for 6:30PM and the exhibit would be open until 2AM.

Other than some problems with argentyne's mom being late, and my Alias moment (ended up misdirected downstairs into the closed portion of the museum with another woman who decided "we look harmless" so we went behind the rope and down the stairs, and watched the suit get on the elevator totally ignoring us until I stopped him - who passed us off to the approaching security guard who directed us to the restrooms, and asked that we use the other stairs on our way out) waiting was pretty OK.

The exhibit was AMAZING. The average time was given out as one hour. We got out in 3. And I had the usual "what you are saying is more interesting then the audio" experience, but at least I wasn't followed around by a big crowd - which has happened at every other Egyptian exhibit I've been to. argentyne and I were followed about by a security guard for most of the exhibit, since we kept leaning in and around to examine the hieroglyphs more closely - which is ironic considering I saw a woman touching the large sarcophagus and "Oh, no don't touch" came out of my mouth. She seemed very put out, but it's a very worn stone sarcophagus, and I just couldn't help it even if it was one of the late pieces. There was some very late dynasty stuff shoved in with the rest of the very lovely 18-22 dynasty offerings. The advertised highlight of the exhibit was the "recreation of Amenhotep III's tomb." Yeah, not so much. It's not the fully illustrated text to start with (but is interesting because it is the first complete copy of the hours of the underworld) and then there were only a couple of isolated items in the 'tomb' and they were all pretty small and unimpressive. I was much more awed by the statue of Senmut and Neferura - something I never expected to see outside of getting to Cairo. They had an awesome set of coffin cases The Coffins of Paduamen which had excellent scribe work, and is excellently preserved (21 dynasty.) There was also the statue of Naktmin's Wife that is one of the most beautiful examples of wig and transparent linen carving I've seen (18 dynasty). It is gorgeous and you can see it in this highlight at First Center for the Visual Arts. The biggest surprise was a funerary gold mask, and jeweled net with gold plaques which I think are from the (relatively) recent discovery in the "Valley of the Golden Mummies". Anyway - I watched this get discovered on TV and Hawass was having a bit of a fit over the state of the net, so I was doubly stunned to see it out of Egypt. That man does not share well. To see some of the highlights yourself, see the different museums' web pages that housed the touring exhibit (Here are two to start you off Portland Art Museum and National Gallery of Art in DC - also has video tours!)

We stumbled out a little after 9:30, and I did the real Kamikaze drive home - so tired my eyes were having trouble focusing, plus I knew we had to get back since I had to take dthon to the airport for the Uber Computer Game Conference the next morning, and pick up Oba at the kennel. I was so tired I thought I was going to get sick before I got us all home. We made it though, intact and alive. Once we got home I fell into bed, and dthon said the snoring started less than 10 seconds later.

It was awesome - the exhibit's last site is in Huston at The Museum of Fine Arts starting in September. It might just be worth the plane flight, I don't know about it being worth spending time in TX though. :)

Hello all -

Just wanted to let everyone know that my current health issue has at least gotten down to manageable portions. While I sneeze a lot and am half stuffed up most of the time it's pretty functional. Of course, it isn't "Grass & Tree Season" yet, but I'm hoping that something will be in the works by then. Assuming I can find a doctor that will give me a price quote and find out where to get the gene testing done. My blood pressure had been slowly getting more normal, along with my pulse. My regular doctor seems to have turned me loose after making me come in and do blood work (AGAIN!) so they could test my blood sugar. I really want to find a good general MD, because I keep wanting to just go to specialists as needed since generalists just seem to take care of the immediate issue, then forgot about you. Hell, my sleep doc and my gynecologist seemed more on the ball with my myriad issues by far. I haven't checked the actual BP or heart rate lately but I'm going to try to get to it later today. I want to see if I'm back to normal. I can also add caffeine back into my diet which is v. nice since tacos & popcorn must have Coke. I have decided to try and cut out pop in general and am trying to replace it with Pellegrino and lemon juice when I can since my sugar levels were "borderline".

I figured while I was here I should explain (since it seems most people don't understand what I'm talking about and I always forget that not everyone hangs out in the weird ward of medical knowledge) why I'm concerned about allergy shots.

My family is rampant with autoimmune disease - my Mom, my brother, two of my cousins, and two of my aunts, and my Grandmother all had one (or in one cousin's case two) autoimmune diseases so you can see where I might be concerned. These are diseases where your own immune system turns on some portion of your body and while they have finally isolated the gene responsible; acquiring an autoimmune disease takes two things - the gene & some unidentified event that sets the immune system off. So, you can see why aggravating my immune system on a daily/weekly basis for years would make me a bit hesitant. I could conceivably lose my allergies and end up with Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's or Polymyositis which are only a few that others in my family already have.

Plus, 10 years ago or so, when I first had allergies, I wasn't allergic to cats or dogs but after living with cats for 7 out of those 10 years, I became allergic to them. (And FYI, I had arranged for the dog long before I found out I was now allergic.) I'm not sure that allergy shots would work. I know shots are different than just being casually exposed, but my immune system seems to want to get all excited about things I am around a lot: cats, dogs, grass, trees.... In a way allergies are a *tiny* version of an autoimmune disease - it is your immune system taking that one little dander and turning loose an army to deal with it. It's basically overkill, and that in a way is exactly what autoimmune diseases are - an overreaction to something that was once OK. Like your colon.

So, I'm doing OK on the health front - and other than that our lives are still pretty much in hell - we're working through it though, and I hope that we'll become more social sometime soon. We are getting away over my birthday in February off to Whistler with my family for at least part of the week, and hopefully we can unwind and become more able to deal with all the shit that is going on. Unless of course it turns into a family nightmare adventure, in which case I may explode.

I hope everyone else's 2007 is going much better than mine!

"Let me explain, no there is too much let me sum up..."

• Power went out Thursday at around midnight and because our phone is cable, we lost that too.



• Surprisingly none of the fifty bazillion trees fell on our house, or anyone else's during the actual storm. Although one did block the road for about 3 hours in the wee morning I was the first one out the "hole".



• Friday morning husband left as scheduled for work, no power, got dropped off in Bellevue and headed out to Seattle to deal with the current hellish issue.



• I went to the clinic to discover everyone else had been called to not come in. I spent a couple of hours calling and canceling appointments, then headed to Seattle to meet with the hubby.



• I spent over two hours going maybe 3 miles on Lake City Way.



• Got home temp was in the high 50's, bundled up, read and made plans to weather out the rest of the power outage.



• Saturday, came in canceled more appointments. Average house temp - 48



• Then we went Xmas shopping.



• Picked the place with the smallest line to eat - had to eat on a bench on the other side of the mall.



• Made remarkable progress with the holiday shopping.



• Decide that "White & Nerdy" was responsible for all of the Rockstar parking I got, everywhere we went, including the Mall.



• Wonder if the fridge is a total loss yet.



• Get pulled over for my tabs, which apparently were due last MARCH. Surprisingly, no ticket. You should get this story in person, it's funny. It includes the line "It's OK I won't shoot you."



• Sunday, still no power



• Went and got gifts for work holiday party.



• Had fun at party, depression fest otherwise.



• Night temp dropped to 30's in places



• Monday, went to work as usual, husband stayed they had power.



• We didn't, but then as I was canceling and heating the shelter, it came on.



• We didn't stay all day, I was out at 12:30 after rescheduling everyone I could get a hold of.



• Bought tabs. Yes indeedy.



• Picked up the husband @2PM went to Seattle dealt with ongoing hellish issue.



• Hit the "You don't get to be the only one to be a whinny bitchy 5 year old" point.



• Came home, and unbelievably we have power.



• Even more shockingly, the gas heater started on it's own, and we didn't have to reset the pilot light, so it was warm!



• Everything in the fridge/freezer was a loss. All of it. Craptastic.



• Good news, the downstairs full size freezer stayed frozen!

So, I'm catching up on LJ, and getting a bit more balanced and less hostile, cranky and outright bitchy.I seriously feel for anyone who is still without power. It sucks. Oh, but I still have no phone, so it's cell or nothing.

Next winter:
I will not save money by not getting the fireplace cleaned since "it's optional".
I will continue to keep such a large supply of candles handy.
I will listen to my instincts next time (if we have no fire) and abandon the upper house and live in the basement, freakishly it is warmer there.

Luck to all without power!

Yesterday I was mid post, mid reformatting, mid IM and mid phone consultation when a massive headache put me down.

And I mean DOWN.

It was all I could do to throw up, strip, and fall down. I didn't move except to call argentyne and cancel dinner and TV until 8:30PM

So the one day where we closed (and yes, it was the easiest snow day we had but I'm grateful) I didn't get anything done.

Computer is still f*cking down and I think soon it's going to have to go visit the guru. 4 attempts to reformat, and it falls apart right when it would normally be loading the desktop. At least I got a brief miracle and managed to get all of my stuff off the computer. It decided to load after the Nth try to repair and failing the three tries at getting past the administrative password - then the husband convinced me I should reformat *now* and not wait for it to break again. Humpfh. Still cranky about that.

Oba didn't get her run, and I still don't have my computer. Which is really annoying since there are some Holiday shopping things I'd like to be doing damn it!


This weekend is looking mighty busy, which is disappointing since I want to hook up with the wonderful trenchwench sometime before next year. Maybe we can squeeze her in late Saturday or mid Sunday. *pout*

Is this week over yet?