So I had a gyn appt yesterday. I fibbed a little so I could take the fasting blood test that the general practitioner wanted at the same time. Hopefully that hour or so (and maybe a bag of chips) won't make too much of a difference.
The gyn is having me back in a few weeks to take a sample of my uterus linning since my periods have always been irregular and there's been lots of time between them sometimes.

She doesn't seem opposed to me having a hysterectomy. Which I think is the best long term plan. She said she figures that unless the ovaries are completely fucked up, they'll probably stay in. I'm not sure why, but I kinda want them out too. But we'll see what the tests show.

Meanwhile, I've got one hell of cold. It's knocking me out pretty damn well.

Need to help the baby find weekend clothes.

So on thursday a small herd of us are departing for CMA Samhain. As usual, K and the boys are not coming - I got *so* close to getting them to come, but there are several long term projects due in the next few weeks for the older boy, and he made almost no progress on them last weekend. :(

Today, Ben and Laura are coming over to help prepare. I don't think they'll be here long enough, but hopefully we'll get things at least well underway.

There's a lot to be done, and I just remember 3 more things to put on the list. :(

So, I've got a plan to make next week productive, even if I'm depressed. I'm gonna get laura to come over on monday afternoon to help me clean. On tuesday I'm gonna work out with Ben. On Wed I'm coming home straight after the breakfast meeting at work and trying to sleep. On thursday I'm gonna either have breakfast with donald, work out with ben, or both. On friday I'm meeting Ben and Nate at a washateria and we're gonna do a load or two of laundry, do some stretches and curls, and talk about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. :)

I was able to do some little things after meeting up with Ben, Donald, and Nate for breakfast. We unfortunately bored Donald with our talk of things that matter. He wears evangelical shirts, I would have thought talk of religion would have been something he could participate in. But either I was wrong about his interest, or his beliefs are so different that he wasn't comfortable putting in any input. I'll have to ask.

But I bought milk on the way home (we're out) and picked up a few random things around the house (probably not noticeable to anyone but me). But it's a start.

Depression is a weird thing. It affects motivation, but we're not sure how. I think it might do it by affecting the perception of time, at least partly. The way that you drown in the moment when your depressed isn't that different from the way that you live fully in the moment. It's just that you're miserable.

I started thinking about it because I realized that I must be really depressed twice today. Both times it was like a revelation, and the thought seemed fresh and new. But obviously, I've known I was depressed for a while, and the second time, a few minutes ago, I realized that I had already had that "revelation" earlier today (and last week at least once, and probably a bunch of times recently).

I guess the difference between drowning in the moment and living in the moment is that when you live in the moment, the moment continues to change. When you're depressed, you continuously relive the moment of giving up, when you feel the water swaddle you and it's not really cold anymore, even though it is. That which is outside of this moment needs to be extreme enough to penetrate the water - the depression dampens everything.

I used to think it didn't dampen the pain, but I doubt that now. It definitely dampens physical pain. I'm pretty sure my wrist is broken, and that's supposed to hurt somewhat significantly. But while I do realize it hurts, the pain can't penetrate the cold; I can't bring myself to care. I was angry the other day, but the water filled me, and the anger wasn't strong enough to be more than a minor irritation, even though I realized that I probably was actually angry.

I really need to file the car insurance claim for having been rear ended yesterday. But again, I'm forcing my way through the icy water.

Creating art has a sort of fire that can hold the ice at bay. But it's "useless" here, other than as a form of therapy.

I should see about going to the geico website and getting that claim filed. Writing here is kinda like art, it helps melt the ice. But damn, my wrist is starting to hurt.

So, I'm updating from the blackberry through the webpage. I'm at the Ford dealership on 610. I was on my way to get J from school - he's suspended again - and the car decided to pull it's "stop safely now" trick. Fortunately, it did so just before the dealerships exit. I nearly caused an accident swerving over to get off and into the dealership parking lot, but I got in safe. They've quickly looked and think it's related to the hybrid battery, wgich is fortunately under warrenty. Hrm, there doesn't appear to be a way to move the cursor back w/o erasing, so ya'll will just have to live with my typos. :p I'm currently waiting for BFSCR to come get me. They got a rather dry nature show on the TV. There are some nifty images, by the narators voice is making me fall asleep.

I almost grabbed a book on the way out of the house but thought that would be silly. He's here!

Because love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care
For people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way
Of caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves under pressure

I'm very surprised to not find a lot of stuff linking the song more concretely to the AIDs crisis.

Oh great, J is in trouble at school and I need to go get him.

OK, so my laptop still hasn't gotten looked at, so I set myself up an account or user profile, or whatever it's called, on K's laptop. It's running vista. I knew I would need to install programs, so I set myself up as an administrator.

I have since proceeded to modify my desktop. Today I dragged most of the icons to the trash can, en mass.

When K logged in, there were a lot of icons missing from her desktop. I hadn't emptied the trash, so I suggested that she log into my profile and restore the recycling bin. This did put all the icons on my desktop, but not on hers.

She said I shouldn't have clicked the checkbox to "link profiles" when I created the account, but I don't rememeber there being such a checkbox, and I can't imagine that I would have left it checked if I did see it.

Does anyone know how to put the icons back on her desktop en masse and "unlink" the profiles so I don't have to worry about random shit I do changing her profile?

After-Rapture Pet Care - I'm just not sure WTF to think of this...

Also, created a profile on K's laptop, from which I'm posting. Made Dr. Apt for tmw morning with new primary care doctor.

Need sleep.

I truncated this, but I received it on facebook. It's a general rebuttal to the "government can't do healthcare, they screw everything up!"

This morning you were awoken by your alarm clock (powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy). You then took a shower (in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility). After that, you turned on the TV (to one of the FCC regulated channels) to see what the national weather service (of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) determined the weather was going to be like (using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). You watched this while eating your breakfast of (US Department of Agriculture inspected) cereal and taking your blood pressure medication (which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration).

At the appropriate time (as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory), you get into your (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved) automobile and set out to work (on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation), possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel (of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency), paying in cash (legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank). On the way out the door you deposit any mail you have to be sent out (via the US Postal Service) and drop the kids off at (public) school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work (thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration), enjoying another two meals (which again do not kill you because of the USDA), you drive your (NHTSA) car back home (on the DOT roads), to your house (which has not burned down in your absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department).

You then log on to the internet (which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) and read this, the posting of which done on an electronic device regulated by the FCC and the content of which is protected by the First Amendment.

So, my laptop is dead. I will probably get a tiny little netbook type thing and put linux on it. They're only a few hundred bucks, so I can do it like next month if I'm careful about the eating out.

I'm working on the overall world - how does the world in my story land get the way it is. I've determined that I'll probably end up writting a collection of short fiction - some dialog in screenplay form, some short stories, maybe a few poems. I'd love to have laura illustrate some of them.

I was talking to diane and realized that there needs to be a big boom in houston (while the rest of the country falls apart) in the alt universe of my story taking place right about now. I'll have it go on for a few years, with the population really growing, and then have the hurricanes smash it up a bit. Although I rode around and a lot of areas are already fixed up from Ike. I think it's not quite been a year, so I'm thinking that we'll need to basically have a season with two major hurricanes, or some other calamity. Although if two hurricanes narrowly miss houston one year (one to one side, one to the other) while doing not-quite-as-much damage as Ike did each, it would probably cause the population contraction towards the city center and the high death toll that I'm looking for.

I think I'm off to reasearch previous hurricanes and floods and population levels in houston...

So I ordered ~ $75 worth of artwork today. Half of it was from deviant art, the other half from amazon. The theme was butterflies, for the kitchen.

I feel somewhat bad about it, but then I can tell myself that at least the stuff from deviant art counts as stimulating the economy right? (someone should find me studies that show if buying from small or big biz helps the economy more)

Anyway, here's a list of what I got from Deviant Art:
* Black and White Butterfly. J choose this one, over another black and white butterfly that was a clearer and more varied butterfly. I was impressed because I believe this print has better composition than the other one (which was a better technical shot)
* butterflies under the moon
* dameselfly photo is just so awesome. If I can find one under a CC license, the wings will become an awesome background image. :)
* the musical tree is the only one I got big, and it's for my room. It's just so awesome.
* I tried to remove Buhito from the shopping cart, but he just looked at me and I couldn't.
* hedgehog - a gift for the HoD womens

clicking the above links gives the artists more hits, which are always good on webpages. :)

I just decided I could afford to get the stuff that needs to be reviewed before it can be shipped on deviant art (that means I'm the first person to order prints of that particular item). this is what's in that box:
* rainbow flowers are cropped and not so obviously from fractal art in the print. But the colors should still be awesomely intense. :)
* bright butterfly/flower/fractal things
* I had to have one, normal butterfly in the batch. :P
* Space butterflies!
* black and white butterfly in a color print. :)
* monochrome butterflies in red
* and blue


From Amazon, got I Dali's Butterflies, Warhol's Butterflies, Hughe's Midsummer Eve, and something from a Josephine Wall called Enchanted Flute.

I'm trying to get a variety of artwork styles up around the house so the kids will be exposed to them and see what a variety can exist. I hope this is a decent amount of variety. We've got some art already up - a southwestern modern (I think) original piece from their old school, the awesome fantasy print that levi got me, a spray paint peice I got from a sidewalk vendor, and several prints cut out of calendars from Susan Sheldon Boulet. Oh, and Starry Night is up in the boys room, cuz the older boy said it was his favorite painting. :)

But I know that since they're both going to end up in the GT programs, they're not going to get much exposure to art. Because it's all academic grind. So I want to make sure they see it at home, since it's hard to get out to the museums and such.

Also, I'm getting restless, and redecorating the house is a way to simulate moving without actually going anywhere. :)

on my shit that would be cool for burning man or to reduce my electric bill kick:

* http://lionheart.net/fridge/descript.htm - rough icy ball instructions. I wonder if there's an alternative to the ammonia.

* http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/07/teens_invent_fr.php Using something called the peltier effect, but no instructions. while it may suck for car cooling, it might not be so bad for this. must see if I can get more info later.

* http://www.coolerado.com/tech-info/ - looks like a modification on a swamp cooler