bye tacoma

we put the dogs in the kennel yesterday afternoon and the cats slept with us last night. i liked that. good cats. we got up at about 3. and we're leaving in about half an hour for seatac, for cleveland, for baltimore/washington. we'll get there at about 6 tonight, east coast time. dad's birthday is tomorrow. on sunday i'll go to church for the first time since the last time i was with my parents. i don't even know the last time kara went to church. (it's just unitarianism, not so threatening or unreasonable.) on monday we might go to baltimore or to washington, for a little daytrip. then on tuesday kara and i fly to atlanta and then back to seatac, to land close to noon, pacific time.

kara's a bit worried about the dogs, of course. the people at the kennel, though young of course, seem like they'd take good care of them. (everyone's so young these days!) we'll retrieve the dogs on tuesday afternoon. they'll be fine. they've got each other, and dags has his bear.

wish us a good trip!

fresh pic

because i know you must have sorely missed seeing them of late, here's a fresh pic each of stevie and dags, taken just 3 days ago. kara and i are flying to maryland the day after tomorrow, as it happens, to celebrate dad's birthday over a long weekend, and the dogs are going in a kennel for the very first time. we're a little nervous about that, we hope they won't wig out too much, but we've decided to let dagmar keep his bear with him, so we hope he'll be all right. (of course, the bear no longer has eyes or a nose, and he has large rents here and there, with stuffing jutting, but he's still remarkably intact.) i wish steve had a toy she liked as much, that gave her as much comfort, but she's not as materialistic as her brother.

fey

i can't help it. i love tina fey. she's just so damn cute! plus funny. and smart. i'm not at all a "saturday night live" watcher, haven't been for a few decades (though i've been known to check out "30 rock"), but i thought this was a funny bit. she does a good palin in my opinion.

lake of fire

we watched a quite long documentary yesterday called lake of fire. it's about abortion, shot in black & white. it has vivid images of abortion procedures, products of conception being suctioned from the uterus, including tiny and intact feet and hands, and not-quite-intact heads. (it's a good thing the film was in black & white, otherwise it would have been quite red.) it's about assassinations of abortion doctors, the maniacal pro-life groups. it has noam chomsky and alan dershowitz, and others, as voices (in my opinion, of course) of reason. it's about the question of when a fetus becomes a person - at conception? at one month? three months? birth? - but of course it doesn't answer the question. nor should it. it's a very evenhanded documentary, and roe, of roe v wade, is even in it, talking about how she has since changed her mind and become pro-life.

waking with cats

when i woke this morning i was lying on my back and yellow was lying on my chest. his rump was right under my chin, his back paws straddled my sternum, and his front paws were just caudad to my diaphragm. my right arm rested across my lower abdomen, my fingers almost touching my left iliac crest. and eliot lay on the bed with his back against my left hip. my left arm was at my side and his left hind leg was draped across my wrist. with my thumb and forefinger i stroked the fur on his chest and belly. the back of his head rested against my thigh.

of course i'd hauled eliot downstairs last evening, after kara had put the dogs in their crates. he's still afraid of walking past the dogs, even when they're crated. silly boy, he was trapped downstairs with us all night by his own irrational fear.

breaking silence

funny. i just haven't been interested in blogging lately. i might even give it up. i feel like nothing much is going on, though all the usual things are going on. things are good; i just don't have anything to say. i'll just say these things then:

i finished an alan hollinghurst novel called the swimming-pool library; it was sexy and well-written and a good story. in honor of the main character's sexual predilection, i submit this photo of british olympic triple-jumper phillips idowu.

the dogs got over their kennel cough and kara's taking them to the dog park this morning, but yellow's sniffly again. i listen to a lot of rufus wainwright; he makes me happy. and i think about writing but i don't write, yet. i think about exercising and i exercise a little. i mostly read and watch movies on the television, when i'm not working. work is fine.

my doctor switched me to paxil. i have social phobias. i feel fine.

bye english

we're getting, in the next month or two, new software for speech recognition. among the reasons, i believe, that our current speech recognition software isn't very good is that there has been a lack of conformity among the transcriptionists as far as formatting documents and correcting grammatical and other errors in dictation. the software can't "learn" unless it gets the same sort of input from all fronts. so, as i understand it, the policy in the early months of our use of this new software will be to generally not correct grammatical mistakes made by the software. (this could be an oversimplification, but it does seem to be the broad stroke.) there is a distinct worry among a few of us in the department that the quality of reports we produce in the near and far future will drop dramatically and painfully. at the moment i'm torn between fighting this and trying not to think about it. i worry anyway about the deterioration of the english language, what with text messages and other horrors, and this can only contribute to its downfall.

of course, we don't yet know exactly how terrible it's going to be, how restricted we will be in our powers to correct the errors the software will make (or, rather the dictators' errors the software will not correct). we soon will know, though. the good thing about this software is that it's supposed to increase productivity by 200% or more. but we'll just see what the cost will be.

anyway. the new qa position has finally been posted. i've decided not to apply for it. it's not what i want after all, after some months of mulling it all over. i've had enough of working closely with management and i'm ready to just be a worker again. i started a new piece of fiction this week, writing i mean, at long last, and this will be a focus in my life, rather than advancement up the management ladder.

best before

so it turns out that both dogs have kennel cough. kara took dags to the vet on wednesday, because he was coughing and spitting up. steve started coughing that day too. kara came back with cough suppressant and antibiotics for them both. and that very evening steve got something in her ear; she was holding her head at quite a tilt, the affected ear downward, and she was clearly uncomfortable. it seemed obvious that our warranty on the dogs had just expired.

the word planton wasn't even in my vocabulary before moving to this side of the country. a planton is a devilish thing, a thorn off this grassy weed. it has multiple tiny barbs and they burrow into fur quite effectively. the dogs are always covered with the bastards when they come inside from the backyard. and one got deep into steve's ear. and i mean deep. she was taken to the vet on thursday and was so jumpy that she had to be given anesthesia before the foreign body could be removed. so each dog got a vet trip this week. fair's fair.

needless to say, yesterday i went out bought a weed-killer product and this morning kara and i embarked on a herbicidal spree in the backyard. we don't want the animals victimized by this insidious plant. we will not stand.

in happier news, last weekend i went to goodwill and for 99 cents i bought this big green bear. dagmar loves it. since this photo was taken he has chewed out the bear's eyes, but has done little other damage. he likes to carry it around, suck on it, rest his head on it. it's a big pacifier for him.

dagmar's still coughing a little bit, and steve even less. it looks like we cought the kennel cough pretty early; that's lucky. but the dogs will have to stay away from daycare and the dog park for a couple of weeks, and that's a little sad. they like the dog park, at least, and when they come home from daycare they're nice and pooped. alas.

incidentally: dagmar = 74 pounds, steve = 52 pounds.

cleaner

well, the maids came this afternoon. i worked at home today and they came a little bit after 12:30, nearly half an hour early! they were 2 girls in their 20s, in jeans and matching light blue tee shirts. i suppose i was a bit surprised at how young they were. and one of them was showing a nearly obscene amount of buttcrack. (does this beg the questions: is any amount not obscene? and, if not, just how much would be too much? for myself, i didn't mind the view at all.) they were here for about 2 hours. it was a little weird for me, having girls i didn't know cleaning my house. it's kind of an awkward thing. i was upstairs working, typing away; they didn't clean upstairs. they cleaned the front room (which includes the living room and the dining room, i suppose, though it's all one room really), the kitchen, and the bathroom. yeah, it was strange, hearing them making cleaning sorts of noises down there, doing what they do. they didn't talk much. they were very polite to me. and they did good work. i was impressed. the house looks surprisingly good.

anyone want to come over? right now? while the house looks okay?

there's a bit of money yet on the gift card kara got me, so we'll schedule one more cleaning by this group. after that, though, we're thinking of partaking of the services of a coworker of kara's in the legal office - it's either her housecleaning business or her friend's housecleaning business - she works more cheaply and it's good to use local businesses, right?

meanwhile kara's taken dagmar to the vet, because he's been coughing and spitting up for the last 36 hours or so. it might be kennel cough, but we don't know yet. steve is just starting to cough too, so this could be a bit of a pain for us. we'll see.

bye truck

kara sold her truck yesterday. now we're down to 2 motor vehicles. someone had happened by the 1995 ford f-150 getting rather dusty in front of our house and rang our bell. after some months of deliberation she decided to sell. she hadn't driven it in maybe a couple of years and the battery was of course dead. and there were things in it that needed fixed - cracked windshield, detached rear-view mirror, etc - that she hadn't gotten around to fixing and probably wouldn't for some time. a tow truck had to come and cart it off, and when kara came back inside she was crying. that truck had taken her on her year-long trek across and around this grand country several years back, and i'm sure it's filled with rich memories. she took that trip all on her own, save for her cat wingo, her dog spock, and her dog max, all now deceased. and now the truck is gone as well. so it was kind of a sad evening last evening.

cool saturday

i've had a hard time finding something to read the last few days, since finishing ripley. i tried the newest nicola griffith but found i wasn't in the mood. i started an early nabokov but i was a little bored with it. i tried a graham greene but it didn't quite capture my interest. now i'm onto joyce carol oates, and i'm not sure about that one yet. i'm giving it a chance. i've had a good run, though, picking book after book that i'm interested in at least enough to finish. the run seemed to last many months, pretty lucky.

it's cool out today, cool but sunny. i like it. but we're taking it easy today, a lazy saturday. i'm folding laundry and soon i'll start chicken, black beans, corn, and salsa going in the slow cooker, and we're having that sort of day today.

by the way, to the speculum shirt yesterday on many errands i got no responses, but even so i think i'll wear it sparingly, as i can see the potential error in judgment with it.

on spec

so my speculum shirt arrived today. i came across it online last week, actually in the course of my regular workday, when i was searching google for a brand name of a certain vaginal speculum a gynecologic surgeon mentioned in a dictation. and by chance in my search i came across this shirt, and on impulse i got me one. sometimes i do that, those impulse buys, and i probably shouldn't. but i like tee shirts, don't i? and i'm interested in surgical equipment, aren't i? well, it arrived today and now i'm a little skeptical about the whole thing. is it in bad taste or somehow awful to have a speculum on a tee shirt? opinions?

and i have to say that i still question male gynecologists, a little bit. it seems like a creepy thing for a man to do. were i a woman, i totally would never go to a male ob/gyn.

i'm going to the mall tomorrow, because i'm going to get the oil changed in my hyundai at the sears that's attached to the mall, and i think i'll wear the shirt. i wonder if i'll get looks or questions, or if anyone will notice. it's just the mall, just mall people, right, so who cares?

dud of a dell

computer woes. yesterday as i turned on this here dell computer and logged on, i got a couple of error messages (rundll32.exe is not initializing; userinit.exe is not initializing) and then there were no desktop icons. not a one. there was no task bar at the bottom of the screen, no start button bottom left, no clock bottom right. and the quick-keys on my keyboard were not functioning. to access the internet and my email, i had to go through the task manager. thankfully, at least my famke wallpaper was intact. but i was rather worried for my computer as a whole. my spam blocker wasn't working. how did this happen? is it my fault? did i visit a contagious web page? my computer felt naked, exposed, vulnerable. at my dad's suggestion, via crosscountry email, i attempted to reinstall windows - fortunately i still have the cd-rom this infernal machine came with. but the computer would not let me reinstall the software, citing something called go back, apparently a norton product i installed some time ago as part of a firewall-type package. i'd thought norton was the way to go when it came to computer protection; it seems i was misled. it occurs to me that perhaps i shouldn't be using this computer at all now, shouldn't be posting on this inane little blog, shouldn't be checking email, shouldn't be visiting my usual buttcrack sites, as likely that little black box is wide open to further viral infections right now. i'm going to make a call this afternoon to a local computer shop, just a few blocks up 6th, perhaps unfortunately called last stop, and see if they can fix it all. otherwise, who knows? i certainly don't want to buy a whole new machine. this dell has been an irritant for a while, but i'm sure i don't want to deal with vista until i have to. next time, whenever next time may be, i might get me a pretty little apple.

just fine

it's weird how little seems to be going on and how satisfied with things i am. funny. i've been reading angela carter and enjoying her 10-cent words (i especially like "subfusc") and her paragraph set pieces. now i'm reading the 1st highsmith ripley book (the talented mr ripley) and kara's reading the 2nd (ripley under ground). i was perhaps inordinately impressed with the first 3 sentences of talented:

Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the Green Cage, heading his way. Tom walked faster. There was no doubt the man was after him.

my heart immediately started beating faster and i'm hooked. but i'm not doing any writing, though i'm collecting names for characters and thinking of doing nanowrimo this november. i'd like to write 2 or 3 stories before november, and perhaps expand one of them for that 50,000-word marathon. i'm not really exercising; in fact my right arm has been feeling rather strange the last several days, as if the connective tissue in there is atrophic. kara & i bought a memory foam plush mattress pillow a week ago or so and since putting it on the bed i've had neck pains and now this arm pain. we've since taken it off the bed, but kara liked it a lot, so maybe we'll cut it in half and let her use it. or something. my arm's getting better, i think, but it's still feeling a little odd. and we're planning on boycotting the upcoming olympics, because, you know, china, but that's not stopping us from admiring dara torres's 41-year old swimmer's body. abs abs abs.

kara and the dogs just got back from the dog park. i've got to find something for us for dinner now.

post cath

i was witness to 3 cardiac catheterization procedures today, 2 on middle-aged men and 1 on a young girl. it was busy in the cath lab; there was a lot going on, procedure after procedure after procedure. the first one i saw took about 40 minutes and the 2nd took about 3 hours. i was quite squeamish initially, until the first arc of pulsatile blood through the seldinger needle in the man's groin, but after that i was fine. there's something about blood, though, working around it, in its vicinity, that is somehow appealing to me. the wetness, the way it stains the blue cloth draping the patient's thigh. the vitality. i don't think i want to be an invasive cardiovascular technician (or at least i don't want to go to school for it), but there's something about blood.

it was also interesting how separate from the cases the patients themselves were. they were unconscious, their faces mostly hidden from me. of course, i spent most of the time in the monitoring room, watching via fluoroscopy the catheters and wires, the occasional bloom of contrast dye revealing an array of coronary arteries. though i did meet 1 of the men prior to his procedure and i saw the girl, crying, before she was given anesthesia. but after they were under, the procedure didn't seem to be about them any more. it was about the catheters, the wires, the engagement of arteries, the occlusions, the anatomy, the deployment of stents. there was an immediate clinical distance, which disturbed me a little bit.

part of me, i think, is going to miss the blood.

seen it

i've been a poor blogger of late. it's been 12 days since my last post. perhaps there hasn't been any significant news. what have i been up to lately? transcribing medial reports, editing and correcting medical reports, reading mary gaitskill stories, listening to rufus, strolling through the dog park with kara and the beasts, watching horror movies on the tivo. same old, what what?

this week i watched not only saw but also saw 2 (on commercial television, hence probably heavily edited for content), so i'm rather proud of myself. i'd tried to watch saw on 2 previous occasions, unsuccessfully. now i'm ready, i believe, for saw 3, especially as i'm cultivating a crush on shawnee smith. but i'll probably have to wait until it's on commercial tv for me to be able to hack it. pun intended.

other news? dagmar and steve like figs. they like to pull them from the branches of the tree in our backyard. they tugged so hard on one branch today or yesterday that it broke, partially, bent sharply more like, stretching and pinning a probably-important electric cable that runs between our house and the house behind us. so this weekend, actually probably tomorrow afternoon after work, out will come my trusty reciprocating saw (it's a theme this week, i guess) and we'll do a touch of necessary pruning.

eliot's getting bathed and shaved tomorrow too. i think he'll be cheerier afterwards. he's a bit matty and skanky. and it's kinda hot around here.

oh! kara & i & some friends are going to see tacoma roller derby girls this saturday evening. that should be fun. monster chicks on skates, bashing one another about. and the day before that, 2 days from today, i'm going to watch probably at least 1 cardiac catheterization procedure at the hospital. maybe more than 1; i don't know how long such procedures take. i'm a little nervous about this, as expected, but somewhat braced now that the first 2 saw films are under my belt, as it were. if i can deal with the horrors of saw, perhaps i can watch a needle being pushed into someone's femoral artery under sterile conditions.

work, body

yesterday i started reading this book - body of work - and it's totally kicking my ass. in a very good way. it's the perfect book for me right now. (i nearly started reading the known world by edward p jones - maybe i'll read that next - but i'm rather glad i made this choice instead.) meditations on mortality from the human anatomy lab. it's a memoir by a 1st-year medical student-slash-poet, and it's structured by an account of her first dissection of a cadaver. as i say, i only started it yesterday, but it's already a grueling read. it's exhausting. there's so much in it. this woman can write like hell and i'm loving the way she describes the body she's opening up and exploring, and it's amazing.

at the moment i'm on chapter 3 and she's just opened the thoracic cavity and removed the lungs. the heart comes next. she talks about the act of cutting, the functions of the organs, and her own reflections on all of this. it's hard to read much of it at any given sitting, but it's fascinating to me.

overall, lately i've been feeling pretty good. i'm feeling less ambitious regarding my job, looking forward to working from home all the time. and i feel fine about that. and i'm looking forward to watching the cath procedure in 2 weeks. and reading this book also makes me feel better about my work, putting it in a contex, perhaps. i'd still like to watch other procedures, including an autopsy, but i don't know if or when that will be possible. but this book is so good, i'm already feeling almost fulfilled in that regard.

and it's sunny and in the 70s. and the 6th ave art walk is the day after tomorrow.

cath lab

on friday the 25th - 17 days from now - i'm going to do a job shadow in tacoma general's cardiac catheterization laboratory. it's only going to be for 4 hours, but i hope to get to watch at least 1 procedure. i'll be highly anxious about it - needles, blood - as the day draws nearer, but right now i'm quite excited. what a thrill!

if this goes well, i might investigate the possibility of watching other surgical procedures, from knee or shoulder arthroscopies to laparascopic cholecystectomies or appendectomies to carpal tunnel releases to open cholecystectomies or appendectomies to lumbar or cervical disk fusions to craniotomies to hip replacements to cesarean sections! my head's spinning.

is being a curious transcriptionist an adequate reason to spend this kind of quality time in an operating theater? it wouldn't surprise me if it isn't, but i shall attempt to find out, unless the cath experience makes me hurl.

oh - and i'm up this early because yellow was scratching at the back door and being annoying. then i couldn't get back to sleep. eh, i got up only 2 hours earlier than i needed to. not so bad, in the scheme of things. yawn.

pulp

i'm in a pulpy stage, i guess, reading-wise. there's nothing wrong with that. i just read this book in the last few days, and now i've started a lawrence block.

a few nights ago i had a dream that woke me in the middle of the night and compelled me to get up and scribble a few notes. it's possible that it could make a good story, but who knows? i've written a few paragraphs, but most of this past weekend was spent readying the house for the onslaught of the merry maids. and, unfortunately, i'm working in the office 3 days this week - today, tomorrow, and wednesday.

how i'm looking forward to working from home full-time! it will mean more time for writing and for exercise - that's what i'm telling myself now, at least. but still. what with all the flux the transcription department is currently in - the recent departure of our qa manager and the new voice-recognition software company we just signed a contract with (with a tentative go-live date in september) - i don't know when i'm going to be able to get out of these (supposedly temporary) qa duties and spend all my time at home. i just have to be patient, i suppose.

4th

so it's the 4th of july and we're all very happy about that. kara's just gone to her boss's house to do some filing (he's been in hawaii for a week and a half or so) and after she's back we'll both do some cleaning of our own house. kara got me a gift certificate for a professional housecleaning service for my birthday, but of course we have to make the place presentable before we can allow them to come over.

we're also trying a little experiment today. i've taken the baby/dog gates down, giving the dogs free reign of the house, including of course the upstairs, normally the cats' haven. we want all 4 animals to get along or at least not be terrified of each other all the time, and this is a step we're taking. we'll see how it goes.

i finished another charles bukowski book this morning. i don't know if i liked it. it was terrifically sexually graphic but not in the least erotic. but there were some good moments in the book, in which the character sort of philosophized about his chosen way of life. still, i don't know that i'd recommend the book.

meanwhile, my parents, sister, and brother-in-law are headed for star island this weekend. one day kara and i will make it there. one day.

and we're hoping dagmar and steve won't have adverse reactions to fireworks, as max most certainly did. poor old max.

old picture

some of what i'm talking about with my therapist (whom i'm only going to see every other week, for a while) involves my memory, how little i remember of my childhood, most of the years prior to high school. or maybe i just don't have a lot of information about those years? dad once said i don't remember my childhood because it was boring.

but it's not just my childhood i don't remember. i was trying to remember the name of the psychiatrist in seattle who prescribed me all those drugs about 8 years ago, when i was having panic attacks - dr lee? dr wu? - i remember the prozac and zoloft but it took kara to remind me that i was also, for a short time, on an antipsychotic. holy crap!

i remember movies and actors rather well - and my therapist said, well, those things are high-interest for you - but events of my own life? there are large patches that seem to be gone. and my own life, one might imagine, should be of interest to me.

my mom is the baby in this photo. but i had to ask her to identify for me several of the other people here.

sunny

kara and i spent about 6 hours today working together on some legal transcription. three kids testified, as did their mother, regarding a domestic violence situation. kara's boss is defending the husband, and he seems to have a decent case. the kids, aged 8, 6, and 6, were obviously coached prior to their testimonies, and not very thoroughly, and their mother showed herself to be not quite the brightest bulb. but it was fun for us, listening to the testimony and getting it all on paper (or, rather, the computer monitor). and it'll mean another couple hundred bucks for us, probably. a day pretty well spent.

and after that, we took a little walk in the evening and then watched the recent film about the little sparrow, edith piaf, la vie en rose, which i thought was quite good. the actress playing piaf as an adult, who i believe won an oscar for her performance, was indeed wonderful.

anyway. it's about 8 pm now, which totally means bedtime for us. i work tomorrow, and kara has to spend time working on the final for her current course at kaplan. other than that, not too much is going on here today. the cats are a little lonely upstairs and the dogs are generally well behaved. it's been a warm and sunny day in tacoma.

status quo

i'm still coughing. it's been 4 or 5 or 6 weeks now. kara says i should see my doctor, and i probably should. my throat doesn't really hurt, but sometimes during a coughing fit my sternum aches a bit. i'm going to spend the vast majority of this weekend in bed, i do believe.

i saw a new therapist the other day, on tuesday. she seems quite nice. of course, i suppose she's supposed to seem quite nice, and be someone i'm comfortable talking to. but so far it's good. we talked about a great deal of things in that first session - my career goals and ambitions (and lack thereof), my lack of discipline and decision-making skills, my writing, my wife, my father. i'm going back this coming monday, the 23rd, after work. i hope my insurance covers a good chunk of these sessions, as this woman is expensive.

of course, my problems seem rather tame and unimportant in the scheme of things. it's not as if i've suffered such a calamitous life. things are basically good. i have a good marriage and a job i usually like okay and that pays me just fine. i have a fixed-rate mortgage. i'm keeping up on my bills. i have not-insignificant credit card debt but i'm chipping away at that. i'm just a little freaky about a few little emotional things, and confused about some other things, that all. my problems, to me, feel very privileged. but still. things could always be better.

tomorrow is the transcription department's qa manager's last day on the job. as i believe i've said, she's the 3rd qa manager we've had in as many years. we can't seem to keep one happy enough to stay longer than a year. i've been thinking about applying for the position, but now, especially after talking with my therapist the other day, i'm considerably less sure that that's something i want. i don't think i'm really management material. at the moment i'm leaning toward maintaining my current position as a transcriptionist and working on my discipline as far as writing and exercising.

not happening

incidentally, the happening - with marky mark and zooey - which we saw on friday, just wasn't happening for us. we tried to like it. we wanted to like it. we like night. i've liked all his films, except for lady in the water, which wasn't awful but just really not up to his standards. but the happening just plain sucked. bad acting, bad writing. the story didn't come together. it was embarrasing.

i hate to say it, but i recommend staying away.

don and nadine

i pushed my way through this delillo in 2 days, which is quite fast for me. i liked it, i suppose in spite of myself, because i was frequently confused about which character was which - i eventually read it as if differentiating the characters didn't matter, and everyone in it was a sort or everyman or everywoman, suffering aftereffects of the 9/11 attacks.

since then, i started reading this gordimer, someone i haven't read in several years. the conservationist has long been a favorite novel of mine, and it's one of hers. this newer one, about an ecologist with thyroid cancer, quarantined because he's emitting radioactivity after his radiation treatment, is so far very beautiful in its style and tone. it also seems more a novel of ideas than of character or story, but sometimes those sorts of books i like a lot.

this is why i like writers like nicholas mosley. intellectual rather than emotional novelists. curious, perhaps, because that's not the sort of writing i'm interested in attempting myself. yet it's a genre i admire greatly.

it's high time i throw myself back into the fray of writing. i don't quite know what it is i'm waiting for any more.

not my doom

i have determined one more way i don't want to die. the bubonic plague. thanks, really, but no thanks. there are a few ways i can think of in which i wouldn't necessarily mind taking my leave of this life, but the old black death sure ain't one of them.

this morning i finished reading connie willis's doomsday book and it was excellent. a bit of time travel, a bit of medieval history, a bit of snow and rain, a bit of the academic life, a bit of influenza, and a bit of plague. jolly good fun, and set at christmastime to boot. her descriptions of the agonies of plague victims in the last chapters are almost too vivid, and the book was difficult to put down. i like her stuff a lot, especially this one and passage, which i read a few years back.

anyway. as of this morning i'm onto another doubtlessly cheery book, don delillo's contribution to the 9/11 subgenre, falling man.

years and crimes and help to come

it happens that may is a month of birthdays in my family (my sister, my aunt, my mom, and i were born in may), and june and july are for anniversaries. my parents hit the 42-year mark yesterday, so wild congratulations go out to them. their longevity is admirable, so i have to give them kudos. kara and i have made it to 6 years, as of last sunday. we'll celebrate tomorrow in our low-key way, seeing night's the happening (actually going out to a movie!) and having dinner, probably at the 6 olives (just a coincidence, those 6s). as the traditionally modern gift for 6 years of marriage is wood, i'm getting kara a nice piece of that. (ahem. no sexual innuendo intended.) otherwise i won't be more specific regarding that in this space right now, as i haven't actually given it to her yet. and my sister and her husband celebrate 14 years (i'm pretty sure) on july 1.

and hey - who says life here in tacoma isn't exciting? why, the very nudie bar kara and i (and a friend) patronized just last month has been in the news lately. it was raided by the feds on june 2, on charges including racketeering and prostitution. and in april, the month before we were there, unbeknownst to us, an alleged shooter was arrested on the site. okay, so fox's isn't technically in tacoma; it's in parkland, but still, it's real close. and we were there! how about that?

but that's not all! kara learned yesterday that this alleged shooter is now a client of her boss! her boss is going to defend the guy! kara has met several of her boss's clients, but it's probably not likely that she'll meet this particular one. he's in maximum security lockdown at the moment. still, it will be interesting if we get to hear his side of the story.

incidentally, she really likes her new job. she's getting along well with her boss, whose name is mike. the work is new and challenging and it does seem to suit her. so we're all very happy about that. and i did a little legal transcription for mike over the weekend and enjoyed that, though i haven't been paid for it yet.

alas, no prostitution was solicted from us while we were at fox's (nor were we racketeered), but we did see, back in a vip-looking area, a "dancer" bouncing up and down on the lap a client for an extremely long period of time. from our vantage point, sitting in our cheap chairs around a small round table, we could not tell if the sex was simulated or actual, but it did go on for a good while. the woman had stamina. another "dancer" (i use quotes because these women hardly danced while onstage) squatted before us at our table and chatted with us with some degree of enthusiasm about her work; i wonder if she was one of the prostitutes. none of us bought a lap dance or anything of the kind that evening, probably mostly because the women weren't all that alluring. i wonder if an illicit offer would have been made to me (or us). hm. food for thought.

incidentally, racketeering originally meant "organized conspiracy to commit extortion." now apparently its meaning is more complicated, but before today i didn't know what it meant at all. i just knew it was just something mobsters did.

and i'm not sure what kind of news this is, but i have my first appointment with a shrink next tuesday afternoon. we will discuss my anxiety, depression, social phobias, etc. actually i'm looking forward to this, because when i was in therapy before, good things came from it.

we have a nominee

hooray for the senator from illinois!

(here's a little article from salon. i like salon.)

i say: obama & richardson in 2008!

half-2009

june june june. the year is half done. astonishing. today i learned that our qa manager is leaving. she's only been there for a year. the department is having a hell of a time keeping someone in that position. i wonder if i'll apply for the job. i might just.

i'm not feeling enthusiastic about the biology class i signed up for last week. i'm not saying i'm not going to go through with it, because i haven't made a decision about that yet, but it's certainly a thought that's crossed my mind. i just don't know if i want the hassle.

i saw my doctor again on friday, as it'd been 3 weeks since i started prozac. i feel much better, but he suggested i return to counseling, due to my social phobias, and other things. i'm thinking about that too. i kind of liked being in counseling before, so i'll probably make that call.

otherwise, not too much is going on, other than time rushing by. i'm still coughing, and now kara is too.

weekend

this is what i did this holiday weekend. at tcc i took a math assessment test and placed at the college math level, which i suppose is okay, seeing as how i never took even a math class in college and hadn't done a math problem since 1989. i just haven't lost any ground, i guess, since graduating from high school, though i haven't gained any either. i spoke with a rather dizzy academic advisor and signed up for an intro to biology class - it starts on june 23. monday and wednesday evenings, with a lab on wednesdays after class, so i won't be getting home until after 10 pm. that could be rough on me. i also acquired an application to do a job shadow in the cath lab at the hospital. for that, mostly i just need to prove that i've had all my shots.

yellow came back from the vet pretty darn stoned. one of his molars had to be removed because it was so decayed, but i think the experience has only brought us closer together. and i thought he'd be woozy and sleepy from the anesthesia but he was high as a kite. he walked in circles, back and forth, quickly, wobbly, and brushed against and sniffed everything as if it were new. and since then twice a day i grab him up and hold his limbs while kara opens his mouth and gives him pain meds and antibiotics. well, he's out of his pain meds now, so i hope he doesn't have any more pain. he has a couple more days of antibiotics, but he's taking them well.

over this weekend i coughed a lot. my sore throat is intractable. i'm on nyquil, dayquil, and lozenges. oatmeal and coffee feel good on my throat, as does ice cream.

i mowed our front lawn. it looks nicer now. and i read a very bad novel: end of story by peter abraham. sorry, but it was just bad. i'm onto connie willis now, and she's good. i've liked her books.

we watched a documentary about a real american hero: desmond doss, the conscientous objector. that was very moving, and a fitting program for memorial day weekend. and we watched cloverfield, about a space alien or something rampaging new york city. i liked it a lot more than kara did. we also watched the diving bell and the butterfly, a true story about a guy who suffered a debilitating stroke and was almost completely paralyzed. it was good but kinda slow, though what should we have expected in a movie about a guy who can't move?

yesterday i worked. i typed some medical reports. of course, now that i'm signed up for a class and everything, taking steps toward becoming a cardiovascular tech or whatever, i feel more content to stay where i am, as a transcriptionist and a would-be writer. i'd be happier as an actual writer, but the point is, i'm not sure any more that i want to bother with school. my job now is okay - at least today it is. but i'll take this biology class and see if i get hooked. i thought about signing up for a class for the fall term already, but i might hold off on that until i see how i deal with this biology thing, and with witnessing a catheterization procedure.

this job shadow deal multicare has seems kinda cool. i wonder if i could get in to see other surgical procedures through this program.

today i'm off. i'm taking it easy today, trying not to think too much about anything.

thursday morning

kara's new job is going well. this will be her 9th day at it. she's already interviewing clients, gathering information from them, confirming their stories. she's drafting legal documents and filing them. she's arranging her office. she likes it. and it's possible i'll get to do some legal transcription on the side.

i'm going to call multicare's volunteer services this afternoon, see if i can watch a cardiac catheterization, maybe get a feel about whether i could do something like that for a living - as an invasive cardiovascular technologist. after that i'm going to tacoma community college and see if i can hook myself up with a basic biology class to take over the summer.

but before that happens i have to work for a few hours. and before that happens i have to take yellow to the vet to have his teeth cleaned under anesthesia. poor yellow with his schmutzy molars. he's hungry; neither cat has eaten since last night. when i get home i'll feed eliot, anyway.

oh, and last friday, the 16th, kara and i and a friend went to a strip club here in tacoma called fox's. the experience was largely disappointing. the dancers just don't dance. they just sort of walk around the little stage, pose pathetically, jiggle their glutes, and press their breasts together. it was depressing. one of the girls came to our table and talked with us for a while, fielded our questions; she was the only one there with anything resembling pep. but still she didn't dance. it's hard to imagine that this is what most guys want to see. just nudity? that's enough? we might have to wait a few years for the tides in the stripping world to change. or maybe we'll seek out a genuine burlesque show. i think there's probably something in seattle worth checking out.

otherwise ... i'm fighting a sore throat. i've had it for 3 or 4 days. it's not getting better or worse. i've got sugar-free lemon-flavor lozenges.

and the grass in our front lawn is about a foot tall. i mowed about a month ago, i guess. if the weather clears up this weekend, and if it's not hot like it was last weekend, i'll attack the grass with our salvaged mower. it's not a very good mower, though. it was left behind by the previous owner of the house we lived in before this one.

wake up #37

well poo. it's my birthday. again.

here's a stupid joke, but one i like:
why is 6 afraid of 7?
because 7 8 9.

i'm 37 today. to me, 37 seems significantly older than 36. see, the 6 has its center of gravity low and to the left. it's hanging back, in a way, holding onto the past, solid and comfortable. in contrast, the 7 juts like a spear into the future, high and to the right (though not politically, at least in my case), thrusting me forward, into the unknown.

paris blues (1961)

my mood lightened considerably over the weekend while watching this movie. it's a little light on story, sure, but it's terrific seeing gorgeous young paul newman, joanne woodward, and sidney poitier play some cool jazz. they're fun to watch and it's just a fun little riff. it's also wonderful seeing louis armstrong playing his horn and laughing his laugh and mopping his face. if you like any of these actors (well, satchel-mouth wasn't really an actor, but he's probably the happiest person you'll ever see) or if you like jazz at all or if you like paris, this is the film.

but it's not to be confused with paris, texas (1984) or paris france (1994), which are also excellent films, but in extremely different ways.

proz

finished the wideman, on to mamet, for whatever that's worth. the wideman was a little overwrought but it got its point across. it was strong.

i went to see my doctor on friday. my lipid levels are as wonky as ever, but he didn't focus on that. mostly he just talked to me, about my job and my not sleeping and my inability to make decisions about anything, and i walked away with a prescription for fluoxetine. how about that? it wasn't what i was expecting. i hadn't been thinking of myself as particularly depressed. funny, though, the fact that he thought prozac would help me kind of brought me down.

i don't know if it's what i need. i don't know if any good will come from it. and i won't know, for a few weeks yet. i've only taken 2 pills so far, one yesterday, one today.

several things

i've several things to report today. first and foremost. kara got a new j-o-b. oh she's been looking for years, trying to get out of multicare, and she's finally done it. mostly. she got hired on as a legal assistant (or legal clerk?) for a defense attorney here in tacoma. she'll be working on the waterfront! she's going to learn a buttload, i am certain. among her varied duties will be interviewing clients, which will include alleged murderers. wow! how cool is that? i'm really very proud of her for landing this job. anyway, that's a 20-hour a week gig, maybe sometimes more, maybe sometimes less. so she's actually keeping her multicare legal-clerk job, but she'll be drastically cutting her hours (to 10 or 15 a week, probably), so that will make that situation considerably more palatable. plus she'll have stories for me about the killers and rapists and other violent offenders with whom she will be interacting. (i'm sure there might be some filing and clerical-type stuff she'll have to do as well, but that's part of the package.) it's really wonderful news. she starts that job on may 12, a week from today.

two. my dream of becoming a diener is stalling. i talked to one of multicare's pathologists as well as an autopsy technician ("autopsy technician," "autopsy assistant," and "diener" apparently all mean the same thing, but "diener" is considered derogatory, though i still like it) for pierce county last week. it's true that there's no formal training required to get started doing this macabre work, but job openings are quite rare. the multicare pathologist said he would call me the next time he does an autopsy, and i'll get to watch. unfortunately, multicare performs maybe 5 or 10 autopsies a year (most are sent to the county), so who knows when the next one will be? and if it's months down the road, who knows if he'll remember to contact me? in the meantime, however, there's little i can do to become a more attractive candidate.

three. maybe i'll get another bachelor's degree. in biology. and do whatever spawns from that. it's something i'm looking into.

four. maybe i'll become an invasive cardiovascular technician, and assist with cardiac catheterizations and even open-heart surgeries. of course we all know of my distaste for needles, and for flowing blood, so this on the surface sounds like a silly notion. still, i think the heart is a mighty cool little machine, and there's an informational session about the associate's degree program next week that i might attend, just for scuz.

five. i finished the yellow house (about van vogh and gauguin) and read factotum (a novel by charles bukowski). all told, 3 struggling artists, sort of. both books were good, actually, in extremely different ways. i'd never read bukowski before and he's very raw. but i liked the book. and yesterday i started reading brothers & keepers, a memoir by john edgar wideman and so far it's very good too, though i'm only on page 8.

six. my own writing stalled a little bit over the weekend, with my despondency over the diener news and glee over kara's achievement, but i'll get back into that this week.

seven. on friday i got a new driver's license, as my old one expires next week, and in the new photo i look like i just got goosed. yowza. also i look huge, so we're getting serious again about diet & exercise. at the moment we have low-fat burritos in the oven. actually, i think they're ready now.

eight. may 2nd was my sister jennifer's birthday, may 3rd was my aunt mollie's, and tomorrow is mom's. so happy birthday, blues and rothwell. many happy returns.

portrait

just a nice portrait of steve, taken by kara on the 22nd of this month, plastered here only because i think it's quite a good shot. she's 5/6 of a year old. and i don't think i have much else to say this morning. i haven't gotten to talk to a pathologist yet, but perhaps i will this coming week. my writing is going okay; i started something new, again, this weekend, and i'm trying to veer out of my comfort zone a little. we'll see how long i can keep that going. and i'm reading nonfiction for a change, a book about van gogh and gauguin sharing a house and painting at the end of 1888, such a painstakingly detailed account of their day-to-day lives. of course, reading about painters makes me think of creating visual things, or at least poetry, rather than prose, but i do think fiction is where i need to focus now. anyway. i have a short while before i need to start work, so i think i'll get back to my other writing, or just have breakfast.

man as boob

so i read through this 89-page novella rather quickly, if not furtively. i've had it on my shelf for a while, from a period when i was buying up all the philip roth i could find. (my favorite novel of his is still the human stain and i still don't see what the big deal is about american pastoral.) and this one, the breast, i put off reading for years, because it just sounded bizarre and offensive. a man turns into a 155-pound disembodied breast, a low-brow and grossly sexist homage to kafka's "the metamorphosis"? and now that i've read it, i still don't know what to think. the writing is, of course, good, and i like how roth describes the inexplicable transformation as "an endocrinologic catastrophe unlike any the endocrinologists had ever known before." the breast cannot move or see, so he relies on doctors, nurses, his shrink, his father, and his girlfriend to tell him he's strapped to a hammock in a hospital room; but he can hear and speak, and his nipple, of course, is quite sensitive to touch. so the book seems to be have half about the breast's denial of the entire situation (trying to convince himself he's insane) and half about his scheming to get women to touch, lick, and fuck his hypersensitive nipple. of course it could well be that there are finer meanings i'm missing; john gardner seemed to like the book a lot, whatever that's worth. i don't know. me, i'm moving on.

54 years of cinema

tivo's nice. i like it. but i suppose it's ultimately dangerous in the hands of a person such as myself.

over the last few days i watched high noon again, for maybe the 3rd time altogether. it's a movie i like a lot, though i still feel the ending was a bit abrupt. i want more of a denouemont. still, gary cooper is so totally the man. the fistfight between him and lloyd bridges was nicely edited, i thought. i should look for more movies by this director, fred zinnemann. i have a man for all seasons and the search set up to be recorded in the next couple of weeks - i've seen neither of those before. he also did julia (a full 25 years after high noon - wow), which i haven't seen in a long time, with jane fonda and vanessa redgrave (still the sexiest woman in the world - see venus, a 2006 movie [29 years after julia] starring peter o'toole) - i also want to see isadora (1968) but it's not currently on dvd. and julia for some reason (probably thematically?) reminds me of reds, another movie i haven't seen in a while but remember liking (though not fully understanding, because of my lack of education at the time about that political era). all these i'm adding to gimme, because i sure can be a materialistic prick sometimes.

my birthday, after all, is next month. whopping 37.

and sometimes i just want to watch all of lee j cobb's movies. i like him a lot too, but have only seen a few of his movies. what of his should i look for, aside from the wonderful 12 angry men?

give me your answer do

i went to college with this fellow, mike daisey; we were in a fiction-writing class together, when i was a senior and he a sophomore. at the time i thought he and i were the most promising writers in the class. so we've taken different paths. he's turned into a spalding-gray-esque monologuist/performer who gets reviewed in the new york times and i do medical transcription in tacoma and half-heartedly aspire to peel off the faces of dead people as a diener. according to the daisey article linked above, mike hasn't had the easiest time of it. and i never wanted to perform in front of people. shit no. our connexion is the writing, though he does autobiographical stuff and i'm trying to make stuff up, when i'm writing at all. so who knows? why this guy's discipline and success get my goat and mailman's doesn't, i don't know. that's actually a bit curious, perhaps.

anyway. i'm trying to get in to talk with one of multicare's pathologists this week or next week. maybe i'll get a chance to see if i have the stomach for this gruesome work.

distant deaths

we had a bit of sad news today. kara's aunt called at about 6 this morning to let us know that kara's sister melani died (in texas). she was in her 50s and had hepatitis; apparently she was a bit of a drinker and her death is not much of a surprise. kara hadn't seen her in many years but they reconnected by phone a couple of years ago. and my mom's best friend also passed away this past week, on tuesday the 15th (in colorado), of complications of copd. her passing also was not a shock, but no less upsetting or cause for reflection.

mailman, pullman

i finished mailman's novel the other day and am on to philip pullman. because the movie's coming out on dvd in a few weeks, and it has daniel craig in it. but anyway - the witch's trinity was very good, especially in its historic detail. that was the main thing, as it was with mailman's first one. she does good research and incorporates that research into her fiction very well, and it was more seamless in this one than the last one. best of all, as it's cool as all get-out that someone i went to college with has been published by random house, reading her inspired me to get back into writing after a few months off. i started a new story this past week. i'm not much for research, so i'm setting my story in the here and now.

but reading isn't the sum total of my life these days. neither is writing, not hardly - my writing habits still leave plenty to be desired (note that i'm blogging right now instead of writing in the few minutes i have before starting work). i've also been wrestling with career choices (though for now i'm sticking with medical transcription, i'm considering pursuing another bachelor's degree, etc, to become a medical examiner's assistant [?!]), still eating mostly low-fat and soft foods, irrigating with a syringe the holes in my mouth where my wisdom teeth once were, attending transcription conferences, watching too much tv, exercising a wee bit (my thighs are sore from doing squats, if you can believe that), and chillin' with the spouse.

can't wait

you've just got to love this boy, don't you? just plain got to. only 285 more days. and so much more can go wrong.

i'm usually quite the npr listener but they're in the midst of a pledge drive at the moment and i don't drive very often these days (mostly i listen to the radio in my car) and in the house i've had cds going rather than the radio of late. so perhaps i'm not as up on george's current foibles as i might be.

i should tighten up, though, because kara and i are going to a taping of wait wait at the end of june! we'll want to be able to call out correct answers, won't we?

just about a couple of books

one week later and i'm pages away from finishing another novel. reading another novel, that is. paul auster is far glibber than dickens, so i get through his books relatively quickly. i'm finding that although his novels' beginnings tend to be especially admirable, the middles are a bit meandering and the ends are a bit thrown together. still, those beginnings, those initial 20 or 40 pages, are something to behold. i think my favorite of his is the book of illusions, and kara's is the music of chance.

i think next i'll read my friend mailman's 2nd novel, the witch's trinity. she was kind enough to send me an advance copy several months ago and i feel i should probably have read it right away, but usually once i acquire a book it has to sit on the shelf and mature, in a sense, before i can pick it up and give it a read. is that weird? regardles, that's probably part of the reason i didn't choose always right away.

98.26%

me oh my. i am 15 pages away from completing bleak house. i have been plowing away at this massive tome for 2 full months. i'm not a fast reader but i like to think i absorb well what i do read. with this book i did flounder some among the myriad characters and plot threads, and i'm not sure these last few pages will answer all the questions i have, but i imagine that is okay. i will finish the book tonight.

what's next? i'm leaning toward nicola griffith's new one, always, which i got in the mail yesterday. i might want something more candy-like, though. something sweeter and lighter. i'll do some poking around my shelves and see what i find.

meanwhile, i'm reveling a bit in this achievement. i enjoyed the book. i liked the characters and i liked the story. perhaps esther was a touch too perfect in her sweetness and goodness and skimpole a tad too - i don't know - i so badly wanted to smack him several times over.

boys

i haven't posted any pet pictures in a while, so here are a couple. this is dagmar yesterday, courtesy of kara, and eliot today, courtesy of me. they're good boys. dagmar's a lumbering galoot who likes to plop all 60-odd pounds of himself on top of us when we're in bed. he licks our faces, which we usually don't mind. though i don't like it when he licks my glasses and kara doesn't like it when he licks her neck. sometimes after the dogs are crated for the night i find eliot and carry him downstairs to he can spend some quality time with us as we slink off to sleep. he enjoys our attention for a while but then, i guess when we quit paying attention to him (as we're sleeping) he gets restless. but he's afraid of walking through the room where the dogs are crated, even though they're locked up. poor little boy.

jenny boylan

my old college writing teacher is so famous. and i knew her before she was a she. i'm a bit upset that i never caught her appearances on "oprah," but, you know, i don't watch a lot of oprah. or larry king, for that matter. still. it's exciting to see her in the news, in such a positive way. yay jenny!

i regret to admit that i haven't read her first memoir, she's not there, though i'll be sure to get her new memoir, i'm looking through you (when it's out in paper). my favorites of her books remain remind me to murder you later and the planets.

clean cat, snow, pipes, pain

i had eliot washed & shaved today. it's pretty clear from his behavior that he feels a lot better when shorn. plus he's nicer for me to touch, smooth & clean.

it's snowing like crazy, at least in a pacific northwest sense. it's been snowing for about 5 or 6 hours in a row. there's snow on vehicles and on the grass, but it's not sticking to the roads yet. when i went to pick up eliot, visibility was all but nil. lots of boneheads are driving without their lights on. the roads are a little slippery but they're not too bad. oh, i can handle a car in the snow all right.

next door to the groomer is that pet stuff store i like, lucky dog outfitters (i wish they had a website i could link, but they don't), a dangerous place indeed. i got the dogs some woolen toys (such as this one). they really like woolen toys. i also got them each - wait for it - a cow's trachea! it's the hip new dog chew toy, apparently. the place also had pig hearts, dried, but i am going to wait until next time to get them those. tomorrow? we'll see how they like these windpipes first.

i still have some pain in my mouth, but i'm running out of vicodin. (we called for more pills and i was prescribed vicodin instead of percocet.) i'm actively rationing my pain meds now, trying to take only 2 a day. i hope the pain goes away soon. my postoperative visit with the surgeon is a week from today. i don't want to ask for more drugs, but i suppose i could.

reassociation

i'm back to work today, after a total of 5 days off. it actually feels like i've been off much longer. it didn't take long for me, spending all day in bed and on a narcotic pain medication, to become dissociated from my real life. after only one full day there was quite a distance between me and transcription, between me and my life goals (such as they are). i've been lucky in my postoperative course. none of the horror stories i have heard about wisdom tooth removal have been applicable in my case. i've had virtually no swelling, and no bruising. there's been some pain, but really it's more of an ache, duller than pain, as well as a strange sensation, either of the sutures being there or of the teeth not being there. kara got in my mouth with a flashlight the other day and said, wow, your teeth are plumb gone.

so i don't know how i feel about going back to work. it had to happen, sooner or later. i suppose i was starting to get bored with that in-bed-all-day lifestyle, so i suppose i'm ready to restart things. i'm still not eating solid foods; i'm not actually sure when i can do that again. i'm tiring of these soft things and ready for a bit of variety, but i don't want to bust open anything in my mouth, do i?

hour

one moment i'm lying in a reclined dentist's chair in the middle of a medium-sized room, covered with a blanket, surrounded by staff/nurses. the surgeon himself is inserting the iv in my right cubital fossa but i hardly notice because i'm telling these women about how we keep our cats feeling safe from our dogs (hey - they asked!). (we use baby gates - we have 3 of them in use.)

and the very next moment i'm in a different medium-sized room, in a different chair, not reclined, asking a woman (maybe someone from the previous room, but i'm not sure), the only other person in the room, if i can have the fragments of my teeth. it's hard for me to make myself understood because my mouth is full of gauze. she tells me, not unkindly, that this is the 3rd time i've asked this question and no, i can't have them; they've been disposed of.

then i see kara and am helped up out of the chair. with assistance i walk to the car. on the drive home i giggle about the lost time and the goofiness of the whole situation. where did my mind go during that hour? for it was about an hour that i lost. i wish i could get a recording of that, where it went, what i experienced, somehow.

percocet makes me a little nauseated (i have yet to eat anything this morning) and seems to give me some chills. but right now i don't have any pain. i can feel the sutures in my mouth. and i had gauze pads in my mouth all day yesterday as tamponades, but by the evening the bleeding had stopped for the most part. no swelling as of yet, and no bruises.

loss of wisdom

the time is nigh: my 4 wisdom teeth come out tomorrow morning. (the only really impacted one is the left lower; and that's the one that's in contact with the mandibular nerve, so its removal will be the riskiest part of the procedure - i could conceivably have permanent loss of sensation.) my appointment is at 9:30. kara is off today & tomorrow, and she went to the store this morning to pick up cream of wheat and soups and apple sauce and yogurt and ice cream. tomorrow she'll come with me to the surgeon's office and drive me home, as likely i'll be a touch loopy afterwards. i think she's looking forward to caring for me, to ministering to my needs. of course the only thing i'm really worried about for tomorrow is the insertion of the iv line for the sedation. silly me and my needle phobia. but at my colonoscopy last summer, that bit, as well as the rest of the procedure, went smoothly, so i'm sure as can be that this will too. kara's working saturday and sunday, but i have 20 tablets of percocet, several movies tivo'd, and about 150 pages of bleak house to get me through the weekend. i reckon i'll be fine.

found in translation

so here's my friday morning post, very popular indeed, in spanish. how about this? i like how it looks. i'm read round the world. i really should learn spanish. hm. is this indeed spanish? i should admit that i'm not even sure. (though i do know a little german. he's sitting right over there.)

72

i just checked this blog's stats, and apparently blue fancies got 72 hits yesterday, which is about 7 times its usual daily hits. golly. i guess it was all because of rufus. and, because i know you're all as excited about rufus as i am, here's a link to photos of rufus (with some fans i totally don't kn0w) the night we saw him, and if you scroll down, maybe halfway, you can see a bit of what i wrote in this space yesterday. someone copied and pasted me, or something. is that allowed? are there rules about this? not that i'm upset - should i be flattered? - but it's weird. anyway.

lungs

well, rufus has got a pair. he was just plain tremendous last night when we saw him up in seattle, at the paramount. it was just he on stage there, on his own, singing, alternating between the piano and the guitar, accompaning himself. if you don't know from rufus, treat yourself here. just one song, as a wee taste: here's lyrics, here's a video. (alas, we did not shoot this video - our seats were not that good and he was not wearing that red shirt but rather a superb vintagey sweater.) he was astonishing up there. and throughout the concert (which lasted an hour and a half) i thought about poetry, writing it. i don't have the delivery system he has, that voice, the music, so he has an advantage there. but all the same, i was thinking about it. really doing it. and i still am. i was inspired.

still, it's frustrating if not infuriating to keep going around and around in my mind - long fiction, short fiction, poems - coming to no decisions, writing nothing - and i haven't really written a poem since, i don't know, 1991? but that's where i'm leaning right now anyway. (poetry - the least commercially viable form of writing out there! sounds like a fit for me. actually, kara thinks i have a knack for writing jingles and should go into advertising. hey?)

anyway. rufus wainwright was wonderful. i would definitely see him perform again. (he's playing in portland tonight, and part of me is tempted to shoot on down there.) (incidentally, he said that the night before he'd been hanging out with and singing for jake and reese [are they together or are they not?] in hollywood!)

okay then. let's calm. i'm something like 66.90% of the way through bleak house. i admit i'm getting a little twisted up in the myriad characters and situations, but it's still a heck of a ride. and now i'm going to exercise a bit, and then have a shower, and then prepare my 2007 taxes and get them over with for another year.

penis and testicles

i came across these images in the course of my job-related research today, and i liked them. for that reason and that reason alone i share them with all who visit my little portion of the internet universe. the male genitalia are more complex than i sometimes realize. (who knew a testicle had an appendix? and who knew what a raphe was?) go figure. and today i typed a disporportionate number of urologic operative notes that these images helped me complete to my own satisfaction. i hope you find them as informative and enthralling as i do.

in other news, the dogs have not been eating and have been acting lethargic and mopey for the last couple of weeks. dagmar (who has a penis but no testicles) was the worse off of the two, so kara took him to the vet yesterday. she was sold some expensive canned food, which both dogs seem to like. today they're eating and have much more energy than they have in the last couple of weeks. previously we'd been feeding them iams dry puppy food, at which lately they have been turning up their noses. dagmar had blood drawn and the vet called today to say his lab values are within normal limits. so maybe they're just finicky? we'll have to find some sort of balance, i suppose. it'll get worked out.

other other news: kara and i are going to seattle to see rufus wainwright (her newest crush) on thursday, and next monday i'm returning to my quality assurance duties in the office. so these are exciting times to be sure, pictures of male genitalia notwithstanding.

54.36%

as of this morning i'm on page 468 of dickens's bleak house, over the halfway mark, and about 60 pages ago one of the characters spontaneously combusted! kaboom! i'm not saying which one, because that would spoil things for future bleak house readers. but i admit it surprised me. i wasn't expecting something like that to happen in a book such as this. i wonder if spontaneous combustion was a new phenomenon, er, i mean urban legend, back when this was written.

and i forgot to mention, not that anyone cares really, but my qa responsibilities in the department have been (temporarily?) taken away from me. it was nothing i did, as far as i know, though paranoia has been known to strike. no, it's because the department as a whole is behind on our minutes - there are too many as-yet-untranscribed minutes of dictation - and we need to catch up. so i've been home typing all week - day 5 is about to start for me. i haven't done straight transcription for 5 days in a row since early august. i haven't stayed home working all week since early august. and i'm finding i rather like it, which also surprised me a bit.

i don't know if i'm going back to work in the office next week, or the week after, or, really, ever. it is my opinion that our current qa manager ought to be handling the flagged reports (as it is technically her job) and not need my help with them, though if she does need my help i won't be complaining, because i still like that kind of work. but being at home all day and typing is good too, at least for the time being.

oh - and the dogs did not go back to daycare yesterday, but they're going tomorrow. and i'm off tomorrow, so i have the whole day without them! yay! though i am going to the dentist for a final cleaning tomorrow morning - the 2nd half of my mouth, the right half - before my oral surgery in 2 weeks. smaller yay.