I really haven't been paying lot of attention to Livejournal or Dreamwidth for some time. Things with my family have been really intense and work hasn't been much better and the last thing I want to do when I finally get home is deal with more people - even nice people who mostly seem to like me and don't expect me to drive them anywhere and don't complain to my supervisor if after being sick for two months, I take antibiotics which give me mild gas problems.

I'm really sorry! I love you all and miss you very much.

Right now, I have little bit of a problem and I am a little too emotional about it to be as sensible as necessary and, since I have never even been married, I don't have the first clue about how to go about it.

I thought I would throw it out there to the wisdom of my friends list because you guys know everything.

Earlier this evening, my brother's wife (the brother who is still relatively healthy for those of you keeping score) announced that she is moving out tomorrow and taking the kids and the bedroom set my mom bought them and leaving him with the house (that is worth less than the mortgage) and all of the unpaid bills she ran up.

He also gets to keep the overdrawn bank account.

He can't afford to hire an attorney and is in too much shock** to think about it right now but, his little sister has been working like a dog and has had precious little time to blow money on crap so she *can* afford to hire one.

I know that some of you have been through this. Do you have any ideas about what to look for? What to avoid?

Let me know.

**He really shouldn't be. We could all see this coming for miles. And told him so. And told him to hire a lawyer that we would pay for.


Hey, folks! It's that time again!

OTW needs your help.

I have really gone a while without looking at Journals and there are a few things I need to post about and read about. Now that I am blocked from it at work, I've lost track of the habit of checking because I get so distracted at home. I need to get back to doing that.
A complex, unusual and philosophically fascinating premise. Check.

Subtle but sensitive and heartbreaking performances. Jason Isaacs is brilliant. Check.

Interweaving plot lines that do not get fouled up with blindingly obvious continuity errors. Check.

No matter how little screen time a character has, they are all well thought out and clearly have complex motivations - even if we don't know what they are. Check.

Dialogue. It has that dialogue where the characters never really say what they mean and dance around it but you can see everything they are not saying. It is so hard to get that right and they have it right. Check.

Every episode better than the last. tonight's just about killed me. Check.

I have not been this invested in finding out how a show comes out since the first few episodes of the British version of "Life on Mars." (And let me tell you, so far - it is Life On Mars good.)

Why then. Why?!?!?!? Am I telling you not to watch this show?




It's on fucking fox.

It's too late for me. I managed to catch a few random seconds of the third ep and was forced to go back and watch the whole thing. I know the pain and misery I will face. I have lived it before.

Heed this lesson my children. Don't follow me into the abyss. I love you too much to let that happen.
Well, as of last Friday, my brother, Carl is out of the hospital. His biopsy was negative so no cancer. The odd tissue around his cyst did turn out to be a type of fast growing tumor tissue so they decided to put a shunt in his head and he is a bit lumpy now.

I suspect he will be wearing a lot of hats in the forseeable future. Still, my aunt has a friend who had to have a shunt put in 30 years ago to drain spinal fluid from her head and she had to have a really smelly bag attached to her wheelchair at all times. All in all, I would say a lumpy head is an improvement in the technology.

They sent him home with a large bag of medications that he will probably be on forever - though it is not impossible that his pituitary gland could heal up and they could take him off some of them eventually.

The most serious health problem he is facing right now is that his pituitary gland is no longer producing the hormone that tells you to stop peeing so that you don't become horribly dehydrated and die. It's funny how we take that sort of thing for granted. He has a nasal spray that he uses once a day that replaces that hormone. We have to watch him carefully to make sure his eyes aren't sinking back into his head and keep lots of Gatorade around.

My brother Pete has to take Gatorade with his MS medication, too. My mother feels like she is drowning in Gatorade.
I posted the other day about my brother Carl.

http://jackiekjono.livejournal.com/90933.html#comments

I just wanted to give an update.

Carl is still in the ICU and will stay there until at least Tuesday. He's stable but, he can't really get up without injuring himself and sometimes forgets that so he has to be very closely supervised. They have an aide in the room with him at all times and they have not resorted to tying him down which is nice because the hospital that our friend Kay was in while she was being treated for a brain tumor did keep her tied down and Carl was really upset by that at the time.

He seems less loopy now than he has been but talking hurts so it's hard to tell if there has been any brain damage. They haven't said anything about the likeliness of brain damage so it's probably okay on that front but, hard to tell from behavior at this point.

The tumor/cyst/whateverthehell is blocking spinal fluid from being able to drain. He has a shunt in his head now to drain off the excess. They did an MRI but, it was inconclusive. On Tuesday they will do exploratory surgery to biopsy it and see if they can get a clearer idea of what it is. I think at that time, they will also put in a more permanent shunt that will allow it to drain without lots of external tubes and wires.

Cubify

Feb. 9th, 2012 08:08 am
3-D Printing is here and is now (sort of) affordable for private consumers.

http://cubify.com/cube/index.aspx

Just think about the trademark/copyright trouble we are going to get into now. This site has only been up for a few weeks and they haven't gotten their community page working yet and have not had many comments on their blog but, I can't wait to see what this will look like.

Anyone planning to get one?

eta: Ooooh! And this one is cheaper and can do foam, wax or balsa wood

http://www.rolanddgn.com/Products/detail.html?id=100

e again ta: http://www.makerbot.com/
http://fv-poster.dreamwidth.org/103142.html?#cutid1

So here is the vid that was made for me me and just for me!!!! And it has with vampires and puppets and Puppet Vampires!!!

I love the song and clearly have to find more stuff by this band. I love the story. And the end credits kill me!

I love the jump cuts and the smoking bat and Lacy/MM!
It was 6 years ago today that my sister-in-law called the office to tell my mother that she was now a great-grandmother. Since my mother's eldest grandchild was 10 years old at the time, it was worrisome news.

What Marcene meant was that her shih tzu had just given birth unexpectedly to half labrador puppies - one of whom became our beloved George.

Some people think it is a bit odd that we spoil this guy as much as we do but, all of the energy that has gone into taking care of George would most likely have been spent snarking at each other and as a result my mother, my borthers and I get along better than we ever have.

I wish my Muffinboy many happy returns and hope that we go the next year without any broken bones.
So George and I were walking home from the dog park and we saw something that looked like a bag of leaves next to the sidewalk. There was a gal leaving the house next to the bag of leaves who walked right past it. I was about to do the same when George started sniffing at it worriedly.

As he circled the bag of leaves, I noticed that it smelled like it had been soaked in vodka. I also noticed that it was wearing pink fingernail polish, a short skirt, tights and open toed shoes.

So, not really a bag of leaves, then.

There is a frost advisory out for tonight so anyone caught passed out on the sidewalk is going to be facing some medical consequences.

I caught the gal who had just left the house as she was starting her car and asked her if she knew this girl who was passed out in front of her house. "Oh!", she said, "I thought that was a bag of leaves."

So Rachel (gal who lived there was named Rachel) and I with a little help from George managed to wake her up. George's contribution involved puppykisses.

Her name was Summer and her friend, John lived in the downstairs of the duplex. (Rachel lived upstairs.) She had driven there but, had thought that she should probably not be driving and decided to walk. Rachel and I congratulated her on her good sense in regard to this decision. John had been with her but, she didn't know where he was now.

I helped Summer sit down on the steps and while Rachel rang her downstairs neighbors doorbell, Summer puked her guts out on the sidewalk. The lights were on in his apartment but, nobody was home.

Summer thought John would be very angry with her for going home without him. We assured her that we didn't think John would want her to get frostbite or hypothermia and asked her where she lived which turned out to be a few blocks away. Rachel offered to give her a ride home. I offered to help but, Rachel suggested that I should probably just get George home.

So George and Rachel are Big Damn Heroes and I got away with not doing too much of anything or having anyone puke in my car.

YAY!

Luther

Oct. 12th, 2011 11:13 pm
Okay. If anyone has not yet seen Luther, you need to watch it.

It's a little like Life on Mars but, played straight. It features a detective with some fascinatingly complicated moral choices played by an actor (Idris Elba) who can go through 25 distinct facial expressions in three seconds and they all make sense and lots of other really cool stuff that would be very very spoilery and I don't want to spoil you because it is wonderful.

And season one is available for $9.99 on itunes.

You really can't go wrong here.

The only thing it's missing is Angus MacFayden. Deejay - if they have a season three, you have to get your boy on this show.
http://talitha78.dreamwidth.org/223312.html

Talitha made me this vid and it is beautiful. If you have not already done so, you should see it.

If you have already done so, you should see it again.

I knew this would be a good Fiona/Michael song the first time I heard the lyric, "You flash some fang and I bat my lashes."

But, I really loved what Talitha brought to it. I love the sense of movement. I love the way she makes use of the moth metaphors in the song. I love the way she uses light and fire. It's such a bright show and she really brought it down to the level of intimate darkness that the song really needed.

Thank you so much for this vid. It has been a lovely thing to have in the midst of the worst beginning of the school year ever. I never thought we would top the Kinderstreet transition in 2004 when I was working 18 hour days for 5 months and a little kid called in at 8:00 pm on the very first day and threatened to kill me. We managed it this year.
Does anyone else find it odd that the CIA is now advertising for agents on top forty morning radio shows?

http://www.geeknewscentral.com/2011/03/06/the-cia-is-hiring-what-can-you-expect/

I would have thought that spies would prefer the testosterone-laden 70's guitar stuff - or at least adult contemporary.
http://mplskids.mpls.k12.mn.us/employment_opportunities.html

Work has been kind of crazy for the past few weeks - so crazy that I haven't even managed to come up with a good rec post for the awesome Burn Notice vid that Talitha78 made for me.

Part of the problem is that we have been drowning in waitlists because we simply do not have enough staff to meet the demand for after school child care.

This would be a great opportunity for anyone you know who lives near Minneapolis, has 60 semester or 90 quarter credits toward a degree of any kind, can pass a criminal background check and drug screen, and - this is important - can be trusted around children.

If you know anyone who fits the bill and is looking for work, feel free to send them over.
People have been curious.

I finally got in to see the doctor for foot follow up and everything is healing nicely and still in the correct position.

I am now able to forgo crutches on occassion but, need to keep the boot on for another month.

I left out the part about how I have already been putting a little weight on it from time to time or that I haven't been wearing the big clunky boot to bed and I sure as heck didn't tell him I had been dancing on it less than a week after the injury.

Of course, had he not been having a 20 minute conversation in the hallway outside the exam room about the wonders of India before coming back to me, we might have had time to discuss such matters but, as it is, everything is fine, anyway.

VVC!

Aug. 15th, 2011 07:16 pm
We are home. Vividcon was awesome.

We are tired and hungry.
He has gone from My Sweetest Muffinboy to That Fucking Bastard.

I now have a broken foot and orders to not put any weight on it at all for at least a week.

No club Vivid dancing for me.
*cries*
For those who haven't seen it, the latest round of mansplaining on the internet.

http://skepchick.org/2011/07/frequently-answered-questions/
Tehre was a special pet event at teh Apple store the other day and you could have pictures of your dog taken by a professinoal pet photographer. the sitting was free but, you pay for the prints if you like them.

The first three are my little angel who was actually kind of a bastard that evening but, we won't go into it.

Feel free too marvel at the cuteness.

I thinkI may have to make an icon out of one of these.


http://sarahbethphotography.com/photocart/index.php?do=photocart&viewGallery=1166#image=16539
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