advancement of sorts

the dogs last saturday, after i swept a bit.

what's kind of exciting right now is that the current qa manager of our department is backing my proposal. there are 10 or so transcriptionists with a background in radiology transcription in our department. at the moment almost all of them are typing only radiology reports and emergency department reports. most seem resistant to learning more, though the goal is for them to be typing everything: emergency department reports, histories and physicals, inpatient consultations, operative notes, inpatient progress notes, discharge summaries, and clinic notes of various types. radiology transcription is going to be phased out; software is taking that over. and i'm going to be instrumental in training them. wow, huh? that's the current plan, anyway. i had a sit-down yesterday with the qa manager and she was quite agreeable, which i admit surprised me. some logistics need to be worked out yet; we need to talk with the manager of the department again and fine-tune some things. but i'm excited. this is a good opportunity and will be a good experience for me. it'll be a good challenge. wow again.

after people

we saw this show on the history channel yesterday called life after people. it was about what would happen to the earth over the months, years, decades, centuries if all the people on it suddenly disappeared. (died? were taken up by aliens? launched themselves into space? unknown; we're just gone.) how the flora and fauna would gradually retake the planet and human-made structures would fail and collapse. i've decided i would like to somehow live in new york city 100 or 150 years after all the other people have gone. i would like to bear witness to that kind of entropy on our major cities. maybe be like will smith in that new movie of his i haven't seen yet. oh well. it was an interesting show, anyway.

accidental, the

so yeah anyway, right, i'm reading this book and it's wonderful. it's so good, the writing, the language play, that i cannot seem to write any fiction myself while i'm immersed in it. i'm just at a loss. it's a story of a family - man, woman, boy, girl - whose lives are drastically affected by a mysterious young woman who has inserted herself into their lives. the point of view shifts from one family member to the next, focusing on how the young woman is changing their way of seeing the world. and it's beautifully written. gorgeous.

it does make me want to write, and i brim with ideas as i read, this book is an inspiration, but i have to get through it before i can really sit down and do anything of my own. it's overwhelming. i haven't read anything by ali smith before. she's crazy good.

i should finish the book this weekend. and then start reading something else.

raccoon, yellow, work, cold, birthday

last evening and the evening before last steve jumped up on our bed and growled and barked as she looked out the windows of the back door. this is not usual behavior for her, so kara got up and investigated. she took these pictures of a raccoon in our back yard and on the roofs of our garage and of our neighbors' houses. sorry the pictures aren't the best, but it was nighttime after all and kara was shooting blind. she was proud of steve for alerting us to the presence of this predator. cute little creature, though. needless to say we did not feed it. nor did we let the dogs out of the house while it was around.

in other news, though yellow seems to be responding well to the antibiotics, he has developed a limp. kara thinks it's due to some sort of discomfort in his left hip, though it is not tender to palpation. it's probably just a muscle strain of some sort and will work itself out in a few days. if he doesn't seem better in another day or two i'll call the vet again. those vets love us; we keep them in business.

today's my 3rd day of work after my week off, and it's been a smooth reentry. yesterday i talked for a minute with the head of the department, offering to assist the transcriptionists with radiology-transcription backgrounds to get more acclimated to typing a variety of reports and thus become more productive members of our little society. (at the moment most of them are resistant and afraid.) i hope she takes me up on it. i think i would be good at something like this; i would like to work more on the qa side of things.

it's very very clear and very very cold outside. yesterday i broke out my woolen winter hat.

tomorrow's kara's birthday, a birthday she shares with leadbelly, django reinhardt, jeanne moreau, rutger hauer, and of course mariska hargitay. happy birthday tomorrow! i think we're going out for dinner on friday to celebrate.

suture removal

here's steve yesterday, all 43 pounds of her. kara just left with her to get her stitches removed. it's been 2 weeks since they opened her up and took out her ovaries or uterus or whatever. i remember thinking, when we learned that the stitches would be in for 2 weeks, that those 2 weeks would feel like a long time when they were going on but that when they were over it would seem as if they passed quite quickly, and that's how it was.

she starts her remedial education course next week, on tuesday. kara goes back to work tomorrow and i go back sunday. eliot came downstairs and spent the night with us last night, and it had been several nights since he'd done that, so that was nice. and i slept pretty well.

seattle, yesterday

we lunched at an irish restaurant (fado) and admired the waitstaff in their black skirts and dresses.

we went to elliott bay, where i recognized several people with whom i worked during my 4-month stint there 8 years ago. (8 years?!) i got something of a queasy feeling, thinking of these people still working this bookstore job, this relatively dead-end and low-paying job, for so many years. but then i remembered that once it was my plan to remain a bookseller for ages on end, to make that my life. but i changed my mind, grew out of it, or something. i don't want to do that now; i'm still not ready for a return to customer service. i didn't talk to any of my old colleagues; what would i say? plus, after such time i wouldn't expect to be recognized myself.

we went to a peepshow (the lusty lady). we got into a booth together and fed the window quarters. a very cute petite blonde woman posed and slunk and slapped for us, and waved goodbye each time the window rolled down. we were there probably less than 10 minutes.

we went to deja vu and spent an hour, an hour and a half. it was the middle of the afternoon on a wednesday. one woman stood out from the rest - her body was like a ballerina's. well, maybe not quite, but near enough. she had impressive definition and she moved very well. several other women approached us and chatted a little, offered us couch dances, which we declined. a couple of those women seemed very high. we wished the dancers danced more than posed and slunk, and we wished the music were less loud so we could hear each other better.

there's a deja vu somewhere in tacoma too, and there's a place called foxes, and we might check them out one of these days. it had been something like 6 years since i'd been to a strip club, and i was nervous beforehand, worrying over the ethics. but once we were inside it was fine; we were in that world, different from this one, and it didn't seem like a bad thing. though it would have been even better if some of the women looked like they were having a half-decent time.

it was a long day for us, and a long day for the dogs to be crated. still, shortly after we came home i was fed up with them and in a foul mood, and i didn't sleep much last night. i have some sort of insomnia i think.

etc

per christa in portland, look, here's this and other sketches by these funny gentlemen. i confess to having been hoodwinked into believing it was real; though i'm glad to be wrong on this point, for the good of the world. all is swell. and senator clinton won in michigan, sort of. anyway. back to work. oh, yeah, never mind, i'm still on vacation.

front fell off

this link was sent me by my mom, and i set it here for all. i laughed until i cried, sincerely, as funny as it's not. apparently the front fell off a british oil tanker just outside an environment of western australia. bam, splash, dump. it's very pythonesque but chilling in that i don't believe it's a joke. it sounds like a joke, but i don't think it's a joke. this man probably makes a decent amount of money a year.

anyway. we're headed up to seattle for the day, for a little of this and a little of that. the roads may be icy but we'll brave them. the elliott bay book company is on the agenda, among other things. we'll hope our front doesn't fall off as we go beyond the environment.

status quo

my interview this morning told me that i have it good where i am, as far as transcription goes. an hourly wage in this game is a rare thing; usually compensation is purely based on productivity, at 8 cents or 9 cents or 10 cents a line. an hourly wage seems like a gold mine in this business. so if i'm going to keep on typing these medical reports for a living, i'd best stick with good old multicare.

doesn't feel like monday

we're taking the cats to the vet today. eliot needs a booster shot of some sort and yellow's been sniffly for far too long. we'll probably come home with antibiotics for him; he loves taking medicine (sarcasm). i'm supposed to bring a sample of eliot's fecal material but it's difficult to differentiate his from yellow's; i've yet to catch eliot in the act of shitting. he's sneaky.

for contrast, the dogs went through a day or so of gross incontinence (mostly urinary but some fecal), perhaps related to their surgeries, but that passed. dagmar's sutures seem to have been absorbed into his system. steve's incision has been a bit reddish (it's so long, they must have done a hysterectomy; i should ask today to see the transcription of the op note) but i think it's all right. (but how do i know? i'm not a doctor; i'm just smart enough to be one.) it's hard to keep them still. they want to play.

kara got me an hp photosmart for christmas and i've been messing with it. it's more complicated than it seems to need to be. to print a photo i first have to put it in a separate database of photos; i don't think i can just print it directly from my pictures. anyway. i'm still messing with it. maybe next christmas we'll actually produce christmas cards and send them out. that would be weird.

also weird: kara and i bought plants yesterday and planted them in the back yard. we're hoping we got some sturdy groundcover and we're hoping the dogs don't dig them up immediately. and we're hoping it's not too bizarre a time of year to be thinking about gardening. isn't it january?

oh - and we're on vacation. we have this week off. over saturday and sunday i rearranged the furniture & clutter in my office here. i like it better now; the room seems bigger. tomorrow i have a phone interview with another transcription company (don't ask me why; if i leave multicare i would probably quit transcription; i filled out an application online when i was feeling goofy and they called me several times; if i don't interview i would only upset them) and wednesday we're going to seattle. shopping, lunch, strip clubs? that's all we have planned for the week so far. i'm back at work a week from yesterday.

snow

there was snow on the ground when i got up at around 2 o'clock, and there's snow on the ground now. not terribly much, a quarter of an inch, half an inch? i woke up at about 12:30 from a bad dream and couldn't get back to sleep. i dreamed that kara died, that i woke up beside her and her mouth and eyes were filled with flies. it wasn't nice. and then i was awake and thinking about what i would do then. i don't even want to write about this, for fear i'll actually have to deal with it. the image was too vivid to shut out. what would i do immediately, and what would i do in the coming weeks and months? all of our stuff, the dogs? terrible things to think about. anyway. the snow won't last. i don't think it's precipitating at all right now, but it's going to be in the low 40s today, and it will probably rain. i have to leave for work in about 3 hours and i don't know what i'm going to do in the meantime.

emasculated

the dogs came through yesterday's surgeries fine. steve's incision is perhaps 7 or 8 cm long and she was pretty groggy last night. dagmar came home with an enormous elizabethan collar and was obviously very uncomfortable. he was dopey too, but it was unclear if his refusal to walk was due to the aftereffects of his anesthesia or his intense desire to lick his wound. well, i'm sure it was both. he would take a few steps and then collapse, swiveling to lick. kara was worried about them and wanted to leave them out during the night, not put them in their crate. this lasted perhaps 2 or 3 hours after we fell asleep, when dagmar got restless. both dogs needed to pee and he was crawling about the bed and batting us about with his collar, so kara buckled and put them in the crates. last night was the first night they were in separate crates, and with that they did fine, though their grogginess might be a factor there. they have 4 days' worth of pain pills, and that doesn't seem like much to me. dagmar will wear the collar until he doesn't seem to want to lick the spot where his balls once were. steve's stitches come out in 2 weeks, which seems like a long way away. she's signed up for a new class in less than 2 weeks, so we might have to reschedule her with the school. dagmar's sutures are absorbable. he's being really pathetic. last night when we got them home we didn't know whether to laugh or cry at his pathos. poor boy.

oophorectomy etc

here are some obligatory dog snaps, taken earlier this morning, as they're getting snipped today. we dropped them off at the vet a couple of hours ago and will pick them up in another couple of hours. i imagine they'll come through the surgery okay, but of course there are always risks. general anesthesia, sharp knives. dagmar will lose his balls and i'm not sure what will happen to steve. hysterectomy? tubal ligation? what do they do with bitches?

... i just looked up spay and it means to surgically remove ovaries, so i guess that's what they do. oophorectomy. also the dogs will get microchipped, so if they get lost maybe they'll be found. we have the better part of the day without dogs. we were talking about how quiet it is in the house without them, and i like it. kara doesn't. alas.

after we dropped off the dogs we went to the grocery store across the street from the vet and got some cereal and popcorn and other things. we were looking at the nutritional content of different cereals, comparing and contrasting. it was fairly early and there were few people in the store, but for a while there it was as if there was no one else there at all. it was just us in the store and there was no one else in the world. it was kind of a nice moment. if that makes any sense.

when we got home we moved some furniture around, as kara wanted to use the tv table as her desk and her desk as the tv table. so we made the switch. that was a bit labor intensive but we got it done. and she has a paper to write this weekend, and i'm starting story #3. actually i've already written about a page.

and we're feeling good about senator obama's success in iowa. we hope he continues to do well.

... & real pain for my sham friends

happy new year!

there's a generous mimosa on the desk here. kara's at work already, and i'm working on my story, transferring the notes i made on a hard copy yesterday. later i'll get a coffee and reread it yet again. i slept through most of the fireworks in the neighborhood last night, though i read a while after kara dropped off. thankfully the dogs don't seem to be afraid of such pops, not as max was (good old max). nothing seems to rattle dagmar and steve, except for eliot.

anyway. onward!