dangerblog

At Work Way Too Early

And I am not a morning person...

A Lovely Lazy Weekend

Friday was a major milestone for me at work. I finally was able to release some of the work I have been doing. This doesn't relieve all the stress, but it sure does make a big dent. This is part of The Only Assignment Ever To Have a Deadline, and the deadline was moved up by a MONTH earlier this week, so I have still got a lot of work to do.

I actually considered doing some of it this weekend. I installed the programs I needed on my personal laptop, but when I started actually trying to do stuff, I left getting Out of Memory errors. My laptop only has half the memory my work machine does. So, unfortunately but kind of fortunately, I will not be able to do anything here this weekend in the way of work.

What I did instead was sit on the couch today and read an entire book. (Okay, I cheated and read two chapters before bed last night.) The book I read was "The Time Traveller's Wife", which seemed familiar to me at the store....I now see that it is on book lists on some other blogs (like Sarcomical).

I am still in a bit of a fog from it. It reminded me of "The Lovely Bones" in that it had an imaginative but improbable plot, but incredibly descriptive prose with really likeable characters. It was so compelling, I had a difficult time putting it down even to make food. I actually had to come back and read a few pages while my dinner microwaved for three minutes. It really affected me...I expect it to be in my thoughts for quite a while.

So now I guess I will turn on the television to see what is happening with Hurricane Jeanne. A lot of Dangerguy's family is in the path of the storm, so I will be watching and hoping it doesn't cause much damage.

And the Fun Starts Tuesday

So I went to the dentist this morning. I expected to have a couple of
cavities and to have some crown work, but now I am totally overwhelmed
by the amount of work that needs to be done. It all starts Tuesday,
with a visit to the oral surgeon to talk about removing my wisdom
teeth. Ouch. The only positive thing about getting them removed is
that I might get to eat smoothies three meals a day for a few days
there. And I might get a day or two off of work, but that might cause
more stress than it relieves. Argh.

Dreading the Dentist

I had a dentist appointment scheduled for October 7th, which gave me plenty of time to start flossing and stuff so that I didn't get into too much trouble with the dentist. Then the receptionist called today and asked if they could move it up to tomorrow morning, and I accepted. So the gig is up. Tomorrow is D-Day.

I have awful teeth. I think it is partially because I drank a hell of a lot more Pepsi and Mountain Dew when I was growing up than fluoridated water. And partially due to my continuing unwillingness to start flossing regularly.

I really do want my teeth to look pretty. I brush my teeth at least twice a day. I buy the latest coolest toothpaste. A few years ago I even bought myself an electric toothbrush (but I hate using it, so it lives under the sink now).

Knowing the state in which I stopped seeing my last dentist, I think I probably need at least 2 or 3 crowns. But for all I know, I have to get half my teeth replaced at this point.

*Gulp*

Cross your fingers for me and I will let you know how it goes.

I Was a Lazy Bum This Weekend

I had a pretty relaxing weekend, as planned. I did not leave the house at all on Saturday, but I did actually clean up all the stuff around the house that we had moved to make the house more functional during Ivan.

In all of my time not doing anything, I concluded that:

1) Bad Movies Are Better in Black and White
When we hooked up the extension cords so that we could watch a DVD during Ivan, apparently we knocked a cord out of the DVD player. The one that gives color. Before we realized that has happened, we watched half of Dogville and all of Word of Honor. Dogville was supposed to be all artsy and stuff, so the black and white pretty much fit it. And I think I liked the first half better than the second because of it (although the fact that the second half was pretty unpleasant in general may have added to this effect). And I'm not sure, but "Word of Honor" might have gone straight to DVD. And even it wasn't so bad in black and white. So I think I see a pattern here, and I think movie studios should think about using this little experiment when releasing their next crappy movie.

2) Going to the Grocery Store Is Not a Relaxing Experience On Sunday
Right after people get out of church on Sunday is not the best time to go to the grocery store. I usually find grocery shopping to be pretty relaxing. I see the same pharmacist, and deli guy, seafood guy and cashiers every week and it's nice to just mosey down the aisles and read labels at my leisure. I do not find it as relaxing when it is full of couples who act like they have never been to the grocery store before driving their cart slowly down the middle of the aisle. Or when people let their children run, screaming, through the store.

3) GMail Is Way Cool
Sarcomical was giving out GMail invites this weekend in exchange for haikus. Thanks to her, I am all signed up now and it ROCKS! It is really fast. I sent test messages from my primary account to gmail and back again and they were there before I even changed screens. And the "Conversation" idea is really cool. I was kind of skeptical about it because they were matching AdWords to the content of the messages and that seemed like a massive privacy invasion to me, but now I say, the product rocks, I will use it and probably others will as well.

On another note, I was thrilled when I walked outside this morning and felt the nice, cool fall air. I wore a summery outfit today since I believe it is the last day of summer. I can't WAIT to pull out all of my wool skirts and boots. I like my winter clothes so much more than my summer clothes. Yippee!

We Lived Through Ivan And Another Unexciting Friday

Yesterday about midday I would say Ivan really started kicking here. Not that it was really all that exciting. You might say I was just asking for "it" by rooting for stronger, more exciting gusts of wind. It turns out that all of the wishing and hoping did no good and that the storm was barely entertaining at all.

Through the morning I sat on my big chair in front of the window, watching the trees sway. It was raining all day, but not so much that you couldn't see in the distance. The trees I could see hundreds of yards away were really going, but it seemed like the ones closer to the house hardly moved at all.

And then around noon, as we started making our lunch, the power flickered for a few moments and then finally went off and stayed off. Dangerguy was in the midst of making a hot turkey and cheese. After the power stayed off for a minute or two, he went to the basement to start the generator and was then able to finish making his lunch. He hooked up a small television in the kitchen, and we sat and watched the progression of the storm courtesy of Skywatch Doppler Radar One Million while we ate our sandwiches.

In the afternoon I moved back to my chair, but instead of watching the trees, I read a magazine and took small naps and stuck my head up to look at the storm only if it sounded like "a good one". When I turned on the TV, the newscasters seemed highly relieved that only a few small emergencies remained. We were very lucky.

The rain stopped just in time for dinner, and I cooked dinner on the propane grill. Dangerguy started up the generator again so that we could watch the news and a movie and run the refrigerator. The generator was a very smart purchase; we had no idea how long the power would be out, but it was nice to know that we could have some comforts (as well as necessities like refrigeration!) in the meantime.

I returned to work today, and came home this evening to start putting everything back where it goes. I actually made little progress on that end before I flopped and started watching some of the DVDs that Dangerguy had rented in anticipation of a lot of time at home this weekend.

I finished "Dogville" tonight after dinner. What a bizarre movie. Not just the absence of scenery, but the stilted dialogue, the fairy tale style narration and the plot that was almost a fable....it's been over an hour since it ended and I still don't know whether I liked it or not. Very, very strange movie.

I have no plans for the weekend other than continuing to put things back where they belong now that there are no more hurricanes lined up around here. I am not very good at relaxing generally, but it is the end of a very stressful week, so I need to just give up and flop.

Good Night!

Hurricane Ivan Is on the Way

Dangerguy and I are off work today and maybe tomorrow because of Hurricane Ivan. We've got a lot of rain right now and a few gusts of wind, but it won't really pick up until this afternoon. Until then, we've been watching the news mostly.

The news is a terrific comedy. There have only been 3 other hurricanes around here in the past 100 years, so the news crew is pretty unexperienced. All they know is that they need to have a bunch of people standing outside in the rain and wind. These people were not actually told what to say before they put them on the air.

"As you can see now the wind is starting to blow, and all of the toads in the area are taking cover."

Dangerguy invented a drinking game. Everytime they say "Doppler One Million" (One MILLION!) everyone has to take a shot. If we were actually playing that game we would be WASTED right now.

If anything exciting happens, I'll post photos, but so far, not much going on.

At the Grocery Store

There were no kites at the grocery store tonight, unfortunately.

Additionally there was also no:

Bananas

Decent peanut butter (JIF)

Drinking water or spring water, only distilled (and barely any of that)

D Batteries

Lighters

Non-frou-frou bread. Thankfully, I only eat frou-frou bread so I was not bothered by this.

From what I could tell, toilet paper, bread, milk, and water were top priority for grocery shoppers tonight. I have never been here for a snow storm, which I imagine would be much worse from a grocery perspective, because Southerners really can't handle snow.

I eat pretty simple food, so I am not at all concerned about being stuck here and forced to eat saltines and baked beans all week if that were to happen. Which it's not. Hopefully it will be fun to watch and not cause a lot of damage.

Posted on September 14, 2004 at 09:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thanks to Everyone

I want to thank everyone for their support while Oscar was sick. Your
kind words really helped me. I've been pretty quiet on here because I'm
still a little dazed and depressed.

We are preparing now for hurricane Ivan, which probably won't still be a
hurricane by the time it gets here, but still could cause some damage.
Dangerguy got a generator yesterday, which hopefully we won't have to
use. It will likely come in handy at some point as wild the weather has
been for the last few years. I'm hoping there's enough of the
necessities, like milk and red bull, at the grocery store tonight.

The storm is the main topic of conversation at work. I wonder how much
worker productivity is lost during a storm like this. It's really hard
to concentrate on work when there's a new landfall prediction, like,
every 5 minutes for a storm zooming along at 8 mph.

Speaking of which...hmm...I wonder where it is now.....

Posted on September 14, 2004 at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

12 September 2004

Oscar Passed Away Today

After his last antibiotic shot at 8 AM this morning, we unhooked him from his IV and let Oscar relax and just be a normal cat for a while. He visited all his favorite sinks in the house and finally laid down in our bedroom and rested. He couldn't hardly walk, he couldn't eat and had a hard time even drinking water. Dangerguy and I took him to the vet around 5:30 today. It was the hardest decision I have ever had to make.

Dangerguy was absolutely wonderful through the entire thing. He took Oscar to and from the vet many times, and did all his shots, and managed his IV line, and gave him love and kisses when I just wanted to escape. I don't know how I would have made it through this week without him.

Posted on September 12, 2004 at 08:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack