Mermaid Sirena’s Neighborhood

That's right...BUN tac toe! Created out of Sculpey Dough by lil ole me.

 

It recently went in an auction for $75.00.

All proceeds to go toward the Rabbit Message Forum I belong to, which assists with Rabbit Rescues around the world.

 

With everything that's been going on this year, I've gotten into a moody state of mind. It hasn't let up, and it's starting to affect the people around me. For that, I am truly sorry. I've been very snappish and short tempered.

To top it all off, I started my cycle last night. Three weeks ago is when my last one started. It ended 2 Saturdays ago and blew up with the whole ovarian cyst deal. Can't say my period isn't making me a little jumpy right now, even IF I'm notoriously short in between.

In addition to that, I have an appointment on Wednesday to see a gastroenterologist. I have to turn in a data notebook on Wednesday that is NO WHERE near put together. I'm turning in a field trip form that I'm hoping against hope will get approved because I've rescheduled it 3 times now. The state test is next week and my students are NOT ready for it. I just this morning got an email asking about a project I started and never finished years ago and the person wants it now...even if it isn't finished, which makes me feel Oh so freaking guilty!

OK, have to get dressed and go to work now

 

blah

For a friend

 

 

from this pic

 

What and where was Part I you ask? Well, that was back when I was pregnant with my son. A long tale for later. I've probably told it before.

Now, on to Part II

Last Saturday was the last day of my cycle. Hubby and I had a nice healthy romp in bed and at the end of it, I noted that I was cramping in my lower right abdomen. I just thought that he had stimulated additional cramps for the end of my cycle, and teased him about it before rolling over and going to sleep.

Sunday, it still hurt. I'm very tolerant of pain. I don't like taking pain medication and I tend to want to work through it and move on. On the worst days of my period, I take maybe 2 Midol for the discomfort. Well, on Sunday, I was taking 2 Midol every 4 hours for the pain. This frustrated me.

Then on Monday morning, I noticed that it STILL hurt. Again, throughout the day, I was taking Midol about every 4 hours when the pain hit again. Monday was a school holiday (Presidents' Day...yes, I'm shocked that we still take it off, too). Monday night, there was some blood...from the wrong place. Well, not that any place is a GOOD place to bleed, but at least in one place I would've written it off as an extended cycle.

I came out, looked some stuff up online (not a good idea, people, makes you even more nervous!) and thought, well, maybe it's my appendix or something? I told the hubby that I would be making an appointment for the doctor on the following afternoon.

Tuesday morning I woke up and the pain had extended across my entire lower abdomen. It was crippling pain. I told the DH and we decided that I would stay in bed (take meds, sleep), and he would take the kids in to school and make my appointment for me. The earliest he could get an appointment was 1 PM. I slept until around 12:30. I didn't eat anything, just in case surgery was in the cards and they fussed about fasting for 12 hours beforehand. They would be able to operate.

1 PM we went to the doctor's office. We waited over an hour before seeing the doc. After prodding my abdomen and talking for a few minutes, the decision was made to send me to the emergency room. He wanted me to have an ultrasound, a catscan, blood work, a urine analysis and ...um... I forget what else. To do that on an outpatient basis would take around 2-3 days. If I went to the emergency room, it would all get done that night. He actually had his receptionist call around to all the hospitals nearby (we live near 4 different hospitals), but the one downstairs from  his office was "moderately busy" and he has rights in the hospital, so we went with it.

It was 2:45 PM when I checked in at the ER. Hubby went to pick up the kids from school and get them settled with a friend who agreed to come over and sit with them during the ordeal. During the time he was gone (until 5:00), they had me do my paperwork and took my blood pressure and temperature...sending me back to the waiting room in between. I was still in the waiting room when he got back.

At 6:00 PM we went back to a room. I didn't even meet the doctor on duty at the time. The phlebotomist came to take my blood.

"Are you here to take my blood," I asked him. He told me he was. They needed 7 vials for all the tests they wanted to run. I warned him that I'm a hard stick. I told him that every other phlemotomist who has taken my blood has TOLD me to warn every other person who wants to take my blood that my veins dive! You might THINK you have a vein and as you put the needle in, it just won't be there. And then...you'll have to poke around (which HURTS!) They look good, they feel good, they give good blood for 1/4 of a vial and then the CLOSE SHOP! They refuse to give more. I told him that everyone else laughs it off and tells me that they're really good at. They all say, "Well, let me just see what you have here." I told him that everyone else has had to do a butterfly in the back of my hand. Regardless of whether it bruises more or supposedly hurts more, that is where my blood is happy to come out.

So, you can guess what he did. After all that explanation, he still thought he was hot shit with a needle and went at my inner arm. ...sigh... Before he was done, I got an "OH SHIT!" out of him ...not something you want to hear from someone with a needle digging around in your arm. I also had him literally sweating. In the end, he agreed that I'm a hard stick. :::roll eyes::: Yes, this is what I was telling you!

We were in a room without a remote for the little television. I know that seems petty, but it would've helped take my mind off of the pain a bit. Instead, I played solitaire on my phone. I tried to sleep, but was too uncomfortable. Just laying there seemed to make me focus more on the pain. And...I still hadn't eaten anything. We had to go through a shift change around 7 PM. We kept the little curtain open in our room to remind people we existed, but no one stopped in. 

Around 9:30 PM I was wheeled back to the cat scan room. I had to wait in line there, too...on my bed. That was my first cat scan ever. It was pretty freaky being rolled in and out of that big machine, holding my breath.

When I got back to the other room, they had found a remote for the hubby. He handed it to me and I flipped through all the channels, not finding anything to catch my attention. I was too distracted. I don't even remember what he settled on watching after handing it back.

At around 11:30, the doctor came in. She told me that what she believes happened is that an ovarian cyst burst inside of me. Because it has burst, they can't remove it. I just have to reabsorb it into my body. oh goody... She prescribed pain medication and sent me home on 2 days of bed rest. Hubby had me stay home on Friday, as well, to recover over the weekend.

And that...is that.  

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts

• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

• $252 billion for income-transfer payments. This includes $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don't pay income tax.

Just about 270 billion that won't stimulate a damn thing.

So basically we have democrat politicians' 40 year wet dream for new permanent government spending being rushed through congress to "stimulate" the economy, authored by the same dumbasses responsible for the conditions that allowed the economy to get into the condition it's in, and opposed by the same dumbasses who are complaining about spending but who went through tax money like a drunken Hilton in the mall with daddy's credit card.

All that and it's going to be signed into law by the guy who ran on a platform of "change" but who hired every slick ass, Persian Bazaar snake oil salesman available, including the king of the heap, Tom Daschule, to be in his cabinet. Yeah...that's some change there, boy.

Way to keep up that Chicago tradition Mr President.

peace,
Aielman

Copied from my somewhat nerdly and quite literary neighbor Duck

Well...I downloaded Windows 7 Beta when it became available. Got it with relative ease along with 3 keys for installation.

The install itself went flawlessly. The 64 bit OS looks great and seems to run great on my wife's core 2 duo machine with 4 G of ram.

There's just one small, but fairly significant problem for my install...it cannot seem to hold a valid IP address, which makes it impossible to get on the network.

It's a truly odd problem as well. The system gets a valid DHCP address at logon and connects to the internet fine. But as soon as you try to use it to get a remote resource or go on the web, it is unable to make connection for more than a few seconds, if at all. Running the troubleshooter, it first tells you that it cannot find the gateway, and then after several minutes, that it does not have a valid IP to get on the web (it ends up with an APIPA address).

So of course my first instinct is that there is a driver issue. That in itself is odd because I was initially using a Marvell Yukon Gig NIC that is probably the second most commonly used network card on desktop machines behind the Intel Pro. So it's almost inconceivable that Microsoft would neglect to include a valid driver. But just in case, I downloaded the latest driver on another machine and then installed it...but to no avail.

So then I purchased a new dlink 530T, their most commonly used gigabit NIC, and installed first the 64 bit Vista drivers (Windows 7 is meant to be 100% compatible with all Vista drivers) and then the Windows 2008 driver, but the same problem occurred. It would get an IP...and then it would lose it. Then, from 5 to 20 minutes later, it would again get a valid IP.

Thinking it may be a bum install, I formated the drive and reloaded from scratch but the same thing happened. So...just to be sure, I re-downloaded the image and tried it...but again...same problem.

I also tried 3 different sources of DHCP addresses, just to be sure it wasn't a problem communicating from the server, but nada.

But wait...try hardcoding the IP you might reply. Alas...I did so, but it still didn't work. It again couldn't see the gateway.

It's all very disappointing. Everyone else seems to be having a great experience with the beta...but not I, which is a shame.

Oh well...Back to XP 64 bit if I can't find a fix in the next 24 hours.

peace,
Aielman

Let this be a lesson in why you want to proof-read anything you put on a webpage if you're selling something from it...

 

 

Went looking for a new firewall yesterday for my home, as we're going to be adding a couple of additional computers that the children will be using. Since they won't be directly supervised while using them a good portion of the time, I've invested in a content filter and I wanted to get a firewall appliance as well. Now I know Checkpoint makes a quality appliance as we use them in the rather large enterprise I manage at work. So I thought I'd check one of my favorite discount sites to see if they might have a refurb or something for sale.

 

Lo and behold, I came upon this little gem. Listed at $149 was this enterprise class appliance...something that was really much more than I need, but less than half the price of the class of device I was looking for. So after checking around to make sure it was the deal I thought it was, I immediately purchased it.

 

Today I decided to check the website to see how the order was progressing and found item in the picture. It seems they've discovered their error and the device is now "out of stock" but set for the correct price point...$1029.

 

I fairly certain that they will honor the price as they're a reputable company, so I'm feeling pretty good about the purchase and thought I'd share. Check those sites carefully...you never know what gem you might find.

 

peace,

Aielman

I've completely forgotten about my blog in the past seven days. Sorry about that! Cleaning and birthday parties took over. I'll try to remember to write something of value this evening.