Today I got about 6 solid hours of weeding in and my hands are feeling it. I know I should wear gloves, but the gloves make it harder to get a hold of things to pull out. Maybe if there were microfiber gardening gloves. Is there such a thing? I think I’ll have to look into that.
Also while at Costco I found a new motion sensor light to replace the one in the back yard that just decided that something was always moving. It was fairly inexpensive and came with bulbs but I put in compact fluorescents instead.
I don’t feel like I’ve done enough, just some errands and sit in meetings all day.
Since I’ve started a more sensible eating plan I’ve been losing some weight I should lose. This morning I was finally below 210. My plan? I eat when I’m hungry, not when I’m just ‘not full’. I don’t eat until I’m full, just comfortable. If I’m unsure I wait a little and eat more if I need to. So really, it’s just me paying attention to my body and not stuffing food into it.
Now I just have to work on the weeds tomorrow and do the cleaning I was supposed to do this week before Nicole gets home.
I was archiving things off my hard drive on to dvd and I was reaching for the disc folder so I didn’t just leave it laying around to collect dust, but that made the top of the tower of of jewel cases fall down, some with discs in them. As I was picking up the mess (and of course putting it right back in the tower) I saw two movies I had set aside for later.
The first was the mockumentary It’s All Gone Pete Tong. It’s about a DJ who goes deaf and tries to find a way to do what he loves. It isn’t consistently funny but that doesn’t matter since it’s all just really well done. It actually pulled me in as a story and I appreciated that. I loved watching his battles with cocaine. That’s probably one of the few times that sentence has existed.
The other was The Aristocrats. Which is probably the most concentrated verbal description about bodily fluids and sex acts I’ve ever experienced, all in the telling of a joke. My the end there is little that’s disgusting about it because you’re brain starts looking for the variations and how they approach the joke on your mental check list. This film must have been a nightmare to edit. Deciding on order and what to keep had to be difficult. Phyllis Diller has the best laugh. It was worth seeing her and Bob Saget in the special features for their full recorded bits. The mime in the special features did an act that made me feel sad, and not because I was watching a mime, it was just a strong performance. And then I also realized that we as people must get a lot of our cues from other people through hands since that’s most of what you get from the mime.
In the on-going Star Wars saga in writing, this takes place in the latest series which is about 35 years after Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode 4). As the second book of a 9 book series I really wasn’t expecting so much to happen. It seems wide open now, like anything could happen.
As for the author, I haven’t read Karen Traviss’ Republic Commando books but I’m looking forwward to them now. The story started a little slow but when it got moving you had to hold on with both hands. She has a special interest in writing about the Mandaloreans like Boba Fett and I think she handles those parts the best. The other parts aren’t far behind though.
I was going to go into spoilers, but I’m probably the only person I know who knows what’s going on in the stories by now.
I had my annual checkup with the allergist to discuss how my shots are going. I told him I didn’t think I was doing as well allergy wise as I was about a year ago when I was still on weekly shots. Around that time I was about to switch to once every two weeks, but we also decided to expand my three shots to four to get better dosages of some of the allergens. Once those acclimated I went to every other week but it appears I wasn’t ready for that yet.
So now I’m back to every week and I’ll be checked again in six months. Yesterday was my first day back with the weekly shot and I already feel better today than I normally do 8 days after my last shot so I think this is a good thing. Yay for getting better!
After consulting with the oncologist and being given the option of another more extreme surgery and 4 rounds of radiation a week for 4 weeks, we decided on the radiation. The surgery might change his gait and will take a few weeks to recover from and leaves the radiation as the only future option. The radiation has about the same success rate and leaves us with more options in case of future relapse. Grover starts his radiation therapy on October 10.
Yesterday when I got home Sage was refusing to put any weight on her front left leg and the left leg was pretty swollen. From what we can tell, she and Grover were rough-housing and she got hurt. Off to the emergency room with her since we thought it might be broken. They examined her and thought she might have hyper-extended the joint but x-rayed it just to be sure it wasn’t broken. There didn’t appear to be a break but a radiologist will examin eit on Friday. In the meantime they mummified her leg with the plastic bandage stuff so she can’t bend it and she has to wear that for two weeks and not be very active during that time. She was doped up from the sedative for the x-ray so she could barely stand with that thing on last night. This morning she can walk on it but it makes a lot of noise on the wood floor. It’s like she’s a walking drum stick and the floor is a giant drum.
Now that I’ve finished Children of Dune I better understand that Dune Messiah was a necessary story to tell first. Children of Dune takes place nine years after Dune Messiah.
I’ve been avoiding talking about this unless it’s been directly mentioned. Partially because I just didn’t want to be thinking about it so much, and partially because when I told people about it I wanted as much information as possible. But I’m done with that now. We know all we’re going to know and it’s easier if others know. Continue reading »
Finally I was in one place long enough to sit down and focus on Control Room, the al-Jazeera documentary dating to the start of the Iraq war. It is really interesting watching them try to get information and work hard to present a high quality news report. I like when they reason that the information given is crap because they know the area and know what is and isn’t possible. The best parts of the film though are when they are just sitting down and talking with their American counterparts and military information officers about the conflict and the middle east in general.
In America has been on loan to me for probably close to a year so I figured it was time I watched it. It’s a modern-day immigrant’s tale which is refreshing because I think we have a good idea how immigrants dealt in the 30s. The movie has a deeper feel, like it is based on a book, but that isn’t the case.
Another borrowed movie (same time) that I just finished watching is Crash. What a fantastic movie on all levels. I cared about every character and every story. It reminded me of Grand Canyon but more coherent and involving. I wanted it to keep going. Why isn’t there some 3-hour director’s cut for this?
How White and Nerdy Are You?