My day today:

+ Woke up 20 minutes earlier than my alarm, rested and ready to go. Spent the morning cleaning and packing.
- My mom came down and asked 'when are you leaving?' and I said 'half an hour'. And she said 'Doesn't your flight leave in an hour and a half?' Oops.
- I rush out the door in a frantic haze, worried I am forgetting things and stressed out. On the way there, I realize I have forgotten things.
- While rushing to the airport (an hour away), a giant rock hits the windshield on the passenger side. Pulling into the airport, I hear glass crack against glass and watch the split spider up the windshield.
- I arrive at the airport 40 minutes before my flight. I find all but two of Continental's self check-in kiosks down and 5 people with a dozen pieces of luggage between them waiting in line while 3 of the customer service people are on the phone. I panic a little.
+ I finally reach a customer service guy and find that my panic is misplaced
- because they have cancelled my flight. And there is no more room on anything getting to Lubbock today. Or Amarillo. I call my dad and he comes back to get me.
- I am a LITTLE UPSET.
- By the time I get back in the car, the windshield crack is another 3 inches long. Seriously.
+ My dad offers to take me to lunch to cheer me up. I ask to stop at the JC Penney outlet store and look for a cheap carryon. I find one I like in the clearance and returned section, but it's clearly been used and is kind of beat up. It's $15. I determine I will pay $10 for it. The cashier says she can mark it down to $12. I hem and haw and look so pathetic that when my dad asks me what I want to do and I say 'I want to be on an airplane to Texas!' the cashier takes pity on me and marks it at $9. I WIN.
+ Chipotle for lunch.
+ Gas for $3.31!
- The crack is now 6 inches long and climbing up the windshield.
-+ I spend 20 minutes on the phone with the windshield guy who wants to get us in on Monday. My parents leave (in the car) for a week on Sunday. He squeezes us in for Friday at 1. I realize that between my mom's sinus surgery, my flight, my /other/ flight, my mom's sinus check-up, we are driving to Columbus every single day this week.
- My dad decides on a whim to buy a MiFi spot for my mom (who is mourning the lack of my PC card, which we pass back and forth during the week, while I'm gone, because I'm taking it with me). They do not have it in stock. They can't check at the other store in town because one is /retail/ and the other is /corporate/, although the guy does call for us. But no one answers. Ever.
+ We drive to the other AT&T store and they have it in stock, hooray! Wireless internet for all!
+ Also there's a cookie store.
- We stop at KMart to pick up some distilled water and baking soda and a Suzie Q for my mom. Kmart does not have Suzie Qs (WTF), and in fact the lady I asked for direction doesn't even know what one is. I hike MILES around the store trying to follow her directions to things that are not Suzie Qs, but Little Debbie snacks. BLAH.
- We make yet /another/ stop to pick up a Suzie Q at the gas station. At least here I know where they are shelved.
- I'm at home. Repacking. And being not in Texas.

Today:

- Help mom pick out new glasses
- Have yummy burritos @ Chipotle for lunch
- Maybe buy some new summer shoes
- Take the parents to see Super 8 (even my mom says 'maybe I will like that. scary is okay sometimes')
- Swing by the library to learn how to get audio books on my iPod in anticipation of the 22 hour drive I'm taking in two weeks

Sounds like a good day to me!

Today I bought a one-way ticket to Texas for June 22. A few days after, we'll be returning in a big red truck full of all the things Rob owns.

And then he will live in Ohio.

I have no idea how one deals with living in the same town. But I am ridiculously excited to find out!

Tags: moving, rob

My officemate is playing this with some other university employees on Wednesday nights.

I'm kinda jealous.

Some days I really love being a librarian.

I've been going back and forth on buying Dance of Dragons when it comes out. I'm not much of a book buyer. I prefer to library. I'm not sure whether I want to own these books yet, but if I do I'll almost certainly get them paperback. But gosh, I don't want to wait 6 months on a library waitlist.

Then today it dawned on me.

I can order it. I can get it for our popular reading collection. And it will be mailed to me here, anywhere from a few days before to a few days after the release date.

And I will have my hands on it before anyone else.

And I can read it. Right then.

Job perks don't get a lot better than this.

Tags: library

My dad had a tube change today and is returning home having had no infection!

\o/

Tags: dad, family

I've been discovering a love of truly creepy book in the past year or so. I never would have thought I'd be a fan of Stephen King, but I've got to tell you, The Shining is one of the most interesting psychological books (in addition to one of the creepiest) I've ever read.

This spring I've picked up two of Shirley Jackson's novels after hearing several times that she's one of the best horror authors around. You might have read her short story "The Lottery" at some point in school. Her We've Always Lived in the Castle is an odd book with odd characters and a sense of atmosphere that most authors only hope to manage. It's more strange than outright creepy or terrifying, but definitely a haunting sort of book.

I've just started The Haunting of Hill House, which I hear is at the top of the list of truly creepy books. This is the book that the movie (The Haunting) with Liam Neeson, Owen Wilson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is based on. While I have some cheesey love for that movie (it's the first scary movie I remember really watching, with a friend in college, that led to a years-long tradition of midnight Blockbuster runs and ghost stories), I don't think you can by any means of the imagination call it a /good/ horror movie.

The book is proving much better. The second chapter begins with this fantastic description:

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humourous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of line and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

I should have turned back at the gate.

Tags: books

My mother just came down the stairs singing: "The storm is coming, the storm is coming! With the thunder and the lightening! Are you scared, or maybe frightened?"

Given the quality of both singing and lyrics, I had to answer "Yes."

Tags: family, mom

I am hanging out in gorgeous, sunny Texas for LOEX, which is a big library instruction conference. It's been a surprising amount of fun. Conferences generally mean stays in cushy hotels, and this is no exception - I'm at the Hilton, which used to the the Texas Hotel, which is where JFK SPENT HIS LAST NIGHT EVER. As a picture and plaque in my bathroom tells me.

Rooms here are $150 a night, and the concierges in the lobby greet you with a 'how're you doing?!' every time you come or go. They are excessively friendly and very Texan and it's adorable.

They also charge $10 a night for internet in my room. I feel that by the time I'm paying $150 a night I ought to get free internet at the least!

Fort Worth is interesting because, despite the fact that I've been in Texas a dozen times in the last few years, this is the first time I've gone 'whoa, I'm in Texas'. Fort Worth is very proud of its cowboys and its long horns. It's the first time I've really heard an accent consistently. And the first time I've noted a whole heap of 'y'alls'.

I've done a lot of walking downtown with a friend from another library, and it's gorgeous at night. 74 degrees, wide, clear skies, lots of pretty buildings in an interesting mix of modern and historical. They have a ton of pretty trees with spreading leaves that they string white lights in, and a lot of the buildings have light strung up their sides. It's a gorgeous place to walk.



The conference ends at 3:30 tonight but I'm staying another night so I have time to make it to the airport, so I think we're going to head to the Stockyards tonight. I'm in the mood to find something incredibly kitchy and Texan to buy.

I am not looking forward to going back to more rain and grey and cold tomorrow, I'll tell you that.

I took half a day off work on Thursday to spend the morning/afternoon with my dad before bringing him home just in time to head into work at 5. I got home from work Thursday night to find him sick and vomitting again, so after a bit of dithering my mom and I loaded up for another ER trip.

Fortunately, this one didn't end in a trip to Columbus. They got the vomitting and resulting cramping and shaking to calm down with meds in the ER and when his blood numbers came back good
(with no sign of infection or liver problems) they sent us home in the wee hours of the morning. Suffice it to say I did not go to work on Friday.

He's been home since. My aunt came down to see him on Friday and spent most of the day, and my brother and co (including adorable nephew) came down yesterday. I think he really enjoyed both visits, but they also wore him out. He's very tired, and my mom looks about ready to collapse.

I am at work today. I realized halfway through church that I was on the schedule, which I suppose is better than realizing it halfway through a Sunday nap.

The latest news is that they're going to avoid a second transplant for the time being and work with infectious disease doctors in an effort to figure out what's causing the infections and a regiment to prevent them. IDEK at this point.

Tags: dad, family

I'm pretty sure I only ever update this when I have something bad to report, which is terrible. Let me start with some happy things instead:

- My adorable nephew has turned two and is, indeed, adorable. ( Have some photographic proof. )

- We have hired another librarian in the general instruction/reference position, which will mean that 1) I will no longer be pulling 6+ hours at the reference desk in a day (this week for three days in a row) and 2) we can do some stuff we haven't been able to properly do before. I'm thrilled about the person we're hiring and cannot wait til she starts mid-June.

- Rob is in the process of a job hunt, which I am hoping and praying plops him in my lap in a permanent fashion by June.

- I'm headed to Texas for LOEX (a huge library and education conference) May 5, and it kills me that I'm going to be in the same state but still SO FAR AWAY. No state has any business being that big.

Now the unhappy things:

My dad is in the hospital again. It's wash, rinse, repeat: infection at his tube site settles into his blood, sends him septic, manifests as violent vomitting and shakes, high fevers. There's a middle-of-the-night emergency room run followed by the ambulance to Columbus. This time the infection was unrelated to a tube change and came seemingly out of nowhere.

In the short term, as always, it's manageable. They changed his tube a week early and pumped him full of antibiotics. He had a bit of a relapse after the change (which is worrying after two days of antibiotics - they're not sure how or why that happened), and will likely be in until tomorrow (the middle of the night ER run was Saturday/Sunday). But mostly he's doing fine.

In the long term, as always, it looks more dire. With every infection it becomes clearer that we're headed toward a second transplant. On the one hand, it's good that it's clear. It's easier on everyone's consciences I think. On the other hand-- well. 40/60. 54 years old in June. Potential complications. The press of depression and moodiness that sometimes erupts in panic attacks and other times drags into blank apathy. Strain and stress. Worry.

I don't really remember very much of this from when I was twelve. I don't remember most of that spring and summer at all. It's hard to watch my mom try to deal with this and my dad try not to. And it's a lot easier to believe your parents are immortal when you're twelve.

Next time I will try to stick to only happy things. Like maybe kittens. We do have some of those. I could take pictures.

Tags: dad, family, nephew

That sore throat I thought I kicked in the butt came back to laugh at me. I have been sick since last week, but flat out miserable for the last two days. Which makes it excellent timing for another Sunday at work and a student workshop to teach tonight.

I cannot hear out of my ears and my nose is rubbed raw. Worse, my head is muddled-cloudy and my concentration is crap. I am glad that I am fanatic about saving my instruction materials - I taught this workshop last spring, so it's just a matter of picking up the hand-outs and power point and running through it in my head again.

It is probably the only productive thing I will accomplish all day.

Tags: health woes

Sore throat kicked in the butt thanks to the magic of gargling saltwater! I laughed the first time someone told me to do that, but probably 75% of the time I wake up with a sore throat, if I gargle morning and night once or twice, it's gone within a day or two.

Woke up yesterday instead with a splitting headache that worked its way up from 'splitting' to 'one of the worst I can ever remember' on the way to work. I spent the first two hours at work at the ref desk (where there are lots and lots of windows and outside there is a bright sun and lots and lots of white snow) with my head bent trying to avoid both light and anything my eyes would focus on. My mom has perscription headache pills that are similar to migraine pills - lots of aspirin, caffiene - which usually knock any headache out in 30 minutes. I took two. The headache laughed and got stronger. It was not quite 'pain to the point of vomiting', but it came awful close several times.

I spent the next hour and a half dozing under my desk with one of these heated up and draped over my eyes. COMPLETE DARKNESS. HEAT. When I woke up it had subsided to a nasty little thing sitting behind my eyes just waiting for me to do something to let it flare up again. I went to lunch and read in the restaurant in sunglasses and took another pill. It finally subsided to barely-there in the afternoon, so I came home and took /another/ nap and hallelujah it was gone when I woke up.

I have nothing but sympathy for people who get these regularly. I would rather have almost any kind of sick than those sorts of headaches. They completely take away my ability to function - or even /be/ in certain places.

So now it is just some basic congestion and always, always this stupid neck.

In perhaps slightly more interesting news, I am a sneeze away from finishing A Game of Thrones, which is FANTASTIC, and I watched all the trailers last night and they are FANTASTIC and I'm afraid I might be a little obsessed. Hitting the last book is probably going to kill me.

And it's 10:30 AM and 4 degrees outside. AWESOME.

Time to do some laundry and cleaning before I hit work at 1. Perhaps today I will get some actual work /done/.

Tags: got, health woes

Most of the snow melted off in the past few days, so of course we needed another inch or two overnight. I've barely seen the grass since Thanksgiving, which is really strange for Ohio.

I like it, mostly. I could do without the freezing rain and slush we've had lately, but the /snow/ I like. Especially today. It's that wet sort of snow that clings to everything - trees, leaves, the sides of houses, the blades of grass. Driving through the span of woods just below my house was unbelievably gorgeous. If I'd had a camera in my car I might have risked stopping for pictures. It's hard to describe how magical it looks.

Of course, in town it's all grey slush and slippery roads, but still.

Woke up this morning with an extremely sore throat, which I'm sure is punishment for writing a plot involving sickness. IT'S STILL FUN THOUGH. Neck is still problematic (yesterday makes it 6 weeks exactly), but the worst of the pain seems to be easing, leaving me instead with dull aching stiffness across the back. The worst part is that somewhere I've picked up jaw clenching too, which makes my jaw and neck ache all day. Really sick of this.

But at least it's pretty outside.

Tags: health woes, snow

My church friend/massage therapist worked on my neck for half an hour last night, and it was wonderful. She didn't massage so much as pick out particular points in my back to dig her thumbs into and hold, as well as a few other things. It was an odd sensation - as soon as she touched a point, I could /tell/ that was the spot.

I felt much better almost immediately. The muscles still ached, but it was as if she'd shut off a pressure valve. The pain is mostly on my right side, and she said that it felt as if I were two different people from one side of my body to the other, and that the tension was set deep into the muscles.

And then I went to sleep. When I woke up this morning, it hurt worse than yesterday. I felt bruised and stiff all down my back. Now, after a hot shower and being awake for a few hours, most of that has has gone away. What has come back, though, is a particular angle where if I turn my head in a certain way to the right, it shoots stabbing pain up my neck.

That's the pain I started with - it subsided a bit and instead spread all across my shoulders and up my neck. I haven't had this single-spot-stabby-thing since I think Friday. So I'm not sure if she sort of unwound the tension backwards and it just needs more work or what.

I prefer the single-spot-stabby-thing, because I can sort of avoid it, and it doesn't cause that whole back/neck/achey tension (she asked if it was a like a toothache - that is an excellent description. Dull, always there, always hurting, feels like it /shouldn't/ bother you 24/7 because the actual pain isn't that bad, but you can't stop feeling it so it /does/). I can sit at my desk and do work without constantly feeling the pain when it's this one spot. I can bend my head forward and backward completely with almost no pain or stiffness. And this one-spot pain has historically come with fewer headaches.

She offered to work on it again, so I'll probably ask her to this weekend if it's still bothering me, or if it gets worse. Also, I can now take the anti-inflammatories the doctor prescribed, so maybe that will help.

My blood pressure this morning: 110/67

I also discovered that my resting pulse rate varies from the high 80s down to 63. I am thrilled about this. CONCRETE EVIDENCE THAT I EXERCISE!

I really do not know what I did to my neck to deserve this, but I think it has punished me /enough/ now.

The headaches, at least, seem to have gone away. And my mother uncovered the fact that a family friend used to be a massage therapist and she has said that if I meet her at the church at 6:30 she wil rub my neck for me and I might die of joy if it helps.

Of /joy/.

I had half a day off work today, so I used it to go to the doctor.

I went in for neck pain and came out with a prescription for high blood pressure.

The visit went like this:

I went in and the nurse came in and took my blood pressure.Wow, she said. That's really high. Are you usually high? Nope. In fact, it's usually low. Have you been having headaches? Yes, actually, I have. I thought they were weather-related.

She took it again and still found it really high.

So the doctor comes in and says wow, that's really high. He checks my history and notes that it is not usually. He writes me a prescription for Levatol and tells me to stop taking birth control because it may be raising it (so added bonus: I can look forward to a lot of pain in a few weeks). He discusses the possible side effects and how to take the drug. He wants me to keep a record of blood pressure morning and evening and call him in a week with the numbers. If it goes down, we might stop the drug and see what happens. I should avoid salt. He wants to run blood tests.

He turns to go and I ask, so, do you think the neck is related to the blood pressure? OH YEAH MAYBE THAT IS WHAT I CAME IN FOR. So he finally checks it and tells me that yes, it's very tense and it could be related to the tension (much like the headaches). After I finally point out that it has been lingering for three weeks and I have about two inches of pain-free mobility in any direction, he finally gives me a prescription for an anti-inflamatory that I'm not to take for at least two days. Take tylenol for the pain, he says.

Gee. Tylenol for pain. I hadn't thought of that.

Then they took my blood and she poked me with a needle three times. :(

It is not that I am pissy about the blood pressure medicine or even that I don't see how the neck could be related to the sudden and unexpected jump in my blood pressure so much as it is intensely frustrating to go in for something that is both painful and interferring with neccessary things like sleep and have it almost ignored. If you think they are related, /explain/ that to me. And for the love of all that is holy, please assume that I have enough common sense to try /tylenol/ when I am in pain.

You know what tylenol does for this pain? NOTHING. It is as if I am taking /sugar pills/.

I am grouchy because I slept terribly and I hurt. My neck hurts, my head hurts, my arm hurts where she jabbed me with a needle. I woke up probably 6 times throughout the night and every time had difficulty falling asleep again. I am tired of hurting.

Tags: health, sick

teza says that food porn demands pictures. So have some.



The first batch I made is in the front here. You can see how they are delicious, but not as light as the second batch. Also not as prettily golden brown, I think because the first recipe didn't call for an egg glaze.



And there's the second batch in front, looking delicious and light and golden brown and just begging to be eaten with a bit of butter and some tea, preferably while warm, so the blueberries go POP in your mouth and are all fantastically juicy...

Maybe I'll go have another one.

Tags: cooking

After much drama, including the discovery that my house no longer contains cream of tartar or a flour sifter (I borrowed the former from the aunt and improvised the latter using a tiny wire mesh strainer thing in a method that was exceedingly tedious), I have made scones! I tried two different recipes: Basic British Scones and World's Best Scones! From Scotland to the Savoy to the U.S..

I wanted scones like the ones I had in Scotland, not the ones you buy in Starbucks. Both of these are more similar to British scones, but the second lives up to its name. I'm not sure if the recipe is really that superior or if I just got better at sconing - they're apparently picky about how and how much their dough is handled - but the second batch was lighter and more delicious. Both are pretty good, though. I think it may have to do with the fact that the second doesn't ask you to knead the dough or to roll it out and cut circles (you make balls instead), which means the dough is handled less. I also froze the butter and grated it in per review suggestions, which was easier. Both recipes got delicious blueberries added - I used frozen, because otherwise they burst and get all goopy.

I got about a dozen scones out of each recipe. Some are for my aunt, who's never had scones and was intrigued about the experiment. About 6 are staying here for me and my dad, and the rest will go to church for Bible Study tomorrow.

I like scones. And if I keep the rest of the frozen blueberries and pick up some cream of tartar (which in my opinion we ought to have on hand /anyway/), it's a baking project I can make with things on hand at almost any time. They weren't time consuming or difficult to make once I got the hang of it. Will probably make again!

Also? My scones aren't /triangle/. Hmph.

Happy note: my dad is home and on antibiotics. He appears to be feeling well, though tired.

Tags: cooking, recipes

Thanks to everyone who had kind words or thoughts or prayers for my dad.

Latest update is that he is cautiously holding down broths and jellos and they're trying him on solids like crackers today. If he holds it down and his fever drops, they're likely to send him home on antibiotics tonight.

It's not so much that this individual episode is a concern as it is that we now have a pattern - infection and hospital stay - from the last three tube changes. My dad has had a tube in his side for about a decade, and I can probably count on both hands the number of times he's had infection and a hospital stay - three of them are in the last sixth months. I don't know what that means or bodes, but I'm pretty sure it's not good.

In whiney personal news, my shoulder still hurts and somehow I twisted it in some fashion today that it's shooting pain up my neck and across the back of both shoulders any time I lean my neck back or my head from side to side. So basically, if I move my head. I am trying not to move my head. It's not terribly successful. I'm trying not to take the heavier meds (norco) I'd taken 3 times previous because they not only make me incrediably high, but also gave me a nasty hangover headache the day after that lasted basically all day.

It hurts enough that I dug out one of my last 3 vicodin from my finger, though. They tend to make me lightheaded at worst. We'll see if it helps. I have plans for stir fry and scones today, and I want to be able to cook. Also, I'd hoped to pick up around the house a bit and do some laundry to ease my mom's 'coming home from the hospital' stress.

Tags: dad, family, health woes