Saturday, February 25, 2006

Things in a uterus that look cute in a one-sie and those that don't.

So, my mother-in-law called yesterday. She was calling to tell us some important things:

1. She had surgery this week to see if there was anything wrong with her uterus. The history of them doing this is because she had breast cancer a few years ago and is on tamoxifen (a drug that is known to increase your chances of getting uterine cancer), so they were concerned when they did an ultrasound and her uterus appeared to be thicker than it should have been--a normal uterus is at a level 4 or 5, a cancerous one is at like 11 or 12. Hers was at like an 8. Anyhow, they did the surgery and found a large polyp. So, hopefully it's non-cancerous and everything is good.

2. Shawn's grandpa has been put in the alzheimer's unit at the old folk's home. Apparently his Aunt thinks this is ludicrous as he "doesn't have alzheimer's." Dude, as I said, the man has gone certifiably crazy within the last couple of years...but he is lucid enough to realize when he hasn't been getting his normal amount of junk mail, aka the clearing house sweepstakes mailings. But then, he does honestly believe that he has won and the check is in the mail...so, take from that what you will. Also, a funny side story: When my sister and I were little, she used to call it "old timer's disease", but then, I used to call cigarettes "secrets" when I was little because I couldn't hear the difference between the two words...and really, old timers and alzheimers are much closer than cigarettes and secrets.

and finally,
3. Shawn's sister may be pregnant. So congratulations are in order I suppose, although at this point they're apparently not sure if she really is pregnant or not. So, it appears that I now have to start stocking up on onsies as apparently it is now baby season.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Psycho Kitty on my iPod

'allo!

So, I.V. She licked off all the fur on her stomach back in like November or so. She continues to lick off all the furn on her stomach. We have now gone through testing for Food Allergies, generic hay fever, flea allergies (which she is apparently at least partially allergic to because her stomach looks much better for about the 2 weeks after the flea meds, and then is bald for the next two weeks), and finally, her vet has decided that she is probably, more than anything, just crazy. So, she's now on BuSpar. Which is pretty much Kitty Valium/Prozac. That's right, our cat is STRESSED. Stressed to the point where she licks her fur off. I liken it to people twirling their hair when they're nervous, or biting their nails. But the best part? We have to give her 2 pills a day. That's right, we get to stress out our cat 2 times a day for about 10 minutes each time because we're trying to get her over her stress. Kinda anti-intuitive.

Also, I finally did it, I finally bought myself an iPod nano. I now have 490 of my songs on the thing. In eight hours at work, I got through about 200. I also almost completely drained the battery as well (I had to go through and rate the songs as I was listening to them so that I can get rid of the ones that I really don't like and/or only listen to the ones that I REALLY like). Anyhow, I like it. Today was the first day in a long time that I didn't just look at the clock and go "Crap, it's only 1, what am I going to do for the next 4 hours?" So, if listening to music keeps me entertained, I'm all for it.

I got another "take 2 hours off of work" card. Which is good, I'm thinking that I'll use one in March and one in April, seeing as how there are no holidays in those months. And, that's about it for me.

More to come later when there's something more to talk about.

Monday, February 20, 2006

photos and dementia

I'm excited, are you? Our wedding album arrived late last week. WOO! I can now re-live our wedding. Actually, I'm right now listening to our first song. Which, incidentally enough, is actually coincidental. I actually just started Winamp and it happens to be the first song. But there you go.

Back to my album. The album looks much better than we thought it was going to. Mostly because the pictures of the pages that the photographer put on his website don't do the album justice. Now, just a few issues that I find interesting with the album (or rather, more with the pictures, not so much the album as an album can only be as good as the pictures):

1. The photographer never took a picture of Shawn and my immediate family together. But there are pictures of me with his family. It actually doesn't bother me too much. It was just a hassle for my mom because she then had to send out a photo of our immediate family (mom, dad, Dani, and me) AND a photo of the semi-new family (mom, dad, Shawn and me) in their annual Christmas letter.

2. For whatever reason, the photographer felt the need to add Shawn's dad to all the photos of the guys. So it kinda looks like Bob was part of the wedding party when he really wasn't. I only think this is odd because there are no photos of the girls with either my mom or Shawn's mom. Also, I don't think it would have seemed as weird if my dad had been in the photos as well, but he wasn't.

3. Matt and Dani were on my side and Jesse and Christina were on Shawn's side. We don't have any photos of just me, Dani and Matt, or just Shawn, Jesse and Christina.

But other than those slight oddities, everything is GREAT! WOOOO!

Other news:

Shawn's mom told me the other day (Friday) that his grandfather was taken to the hospital the week before. Apparently he was found on the floor at his Semi-Assisted Living apartment. He was put in a wheelchair and wheeled around for a while, but apparently wasn't acting "normal" so they took him to the hospital, where he had been for the week. According to whatever brain scans they did, his brain is shrunken in the front and back and there is no overt cause (like blood clots).

Shawn's aunt, believes that his brain has shrunken because of the hard liquor he drank for half of his life. Now then, I did some research about this because while I realize that alcoholism or alcohol dependence does effect physical characteristics, I was not aware of any brain shrinkage.

I did not find any information intimating that alcoholism does in fact cause brain shrinkage later in life (apparently there is minor brain shrinkage in teenagers because of binge drinking, but it is more immediate).

I did, however, find out that dementia (alzheimer's) does cause brain shrinkage (so does aging naturally). So, I'm going out on a limb and saying that Shawn's grandpa has some form of dementia. Corroborating evidence: He only puts his dishes in the dishwasher on the "rinse" cycle because he "can't see bacteria, therefore they do not exist", enjoys driving the wrong way on one way streets at 3 in the morning perfectly sober because he just realized that he's 6 months late on getting his emissions checked, and the week before they took him to the hospital, he was found walking around the apartment complex butt-ass naked... Not to mention the fact that he started forgetting names 2 summers ago.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Bat-Shit Crazy and Lima Beans

So, I have some exciting news to share with the world...or for the possible 3 of you who read this blog.

First: There was a bat flying around the office this morning. God only knows how that thing got into the office. We're on the 12th floor so that pretty much rules out that it came in on the ground floor, we have doors that go to some balconies, but we're not allowed to open them, so it didn't get in that way. The only logical explanation is A) someone brought it into the building and up to the 12th floor because they knew it would create great amusment for me for about an hour this morning, or B) there's a hole in the fresh air vent to the outside so it came in that way. I like to think that it's the former, rather than the latter, but what do I know?

So anyhow, it starts out with people around my cubicle screaming, and laughing, and laughing screaming. You know, the things that girls do when they see a mouse, or a cricket or something that they're scared of, but know that their fear is stupid so they try to laugh it off. Anyhow, this happens and then there is a mass stampede into Lynne's little office and a door slamming. And, out of the corner of my eye, I see something float by at about head height by my cubicle entrance. I think it's a bird, so I get up to follow it figuring that I'll catch it and take it outside. That's when I find out it's one of the Mexican Free-tailed bats come back from it's winter stay in Mexico. Anyhow, I go along the coridor and notice a bunch of offices with doors closed. It's because "they don't want to get rabies." Whatever, where's your sense of adventure, people!? So anyhow, the poor little thing eventually falls on to Johnny's desk probably from shear exhaustion, but I would like to think it's from laughing at all the people trying to get away from it (because come on, the thing is like the size of a hamster with wings). Anyhow, John or Johnny puts a box over it and some how gets the flaps closed. So, I helped tape up the box so that the little bat wouldn't get away, again.

Good news, the little guy was still alive by the time that John and Mike let it go outside. It faired better than the other bat on the floor last week (first time I heard about it was today)--that poor little guy spent the night roosting right in front of an air-conditioning vent and died.

AND on to the other half of my title (Lima Beans):

Lon and Daniella finally did it. They're finally going to have a baby! WOOHOO! Daniella brought the sonagram picture to girl's night last night. She found out she was pregnant while back in Venezuela for her sister's wedding, so her family got to be with her when she found out. So, CONGRATULATIONS Daniella!

And that's all from me, I shall go eat my hotdog that my hubby has loving prepared for me...great Valentine's day dinner, eh?

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Olympians and other things

So, we watched some of the Olympics last night. We watched the "boring" sports (NOTE: WE find it boring, I'm sure other people find it riveting. I am sorry if that is offensive to you, in which case, go fly a kite). The "boring" sports include such events as nordic combined 20k and speed skating 1500. Both events can probably be likened to NASCAR. You start to watch it because you're hoping someone will crash and burn only to be sorely dissappointed that you only really accomplished killing 2 hours of time. It was also anti-climatic as I had gone online earlier in the day to try to figure out the NBC schedule of events and therefore learned which events had already been finished, and who won (Georg Hettick in Nordic, Chad Hedrick in Speed Skating). We watched a little of the pairs ice skating, which was entertaining, at least to the point that we were like "man, if these people competed in Skating with the Celebrities, Jenner would get his ass kicked." The choreography seemed different from seasons past...more synchronized spinning, less jumping. It probably has something to do with the new scoring system they have in place to prevent a repeat of 4 years ago when the Canadians skated a 'perfect' program but were scored lower than the Russians by the French judge.

I think the highlight of the night was watching ET after everything on NBC had aired. The lady was talking with Tonya Harding. Let's just say that she has really let herself go. It was difficult to believe it was even the same woman. I think Tonya Harding died from a freak accident after Fox's smash hit of the Celebrity Boxing where Harding beat the crap out of that one chick with the wierd nose that Clinton had relations with...Paula something or other. I think ET got this great idea to interview Tonya because of the Olympics, found out she died, but that's not good TV, so they hired this other lady that looks like she could POSSIBLY be Tonya to pretend that she was indeed Tonya. Anyhow, they did a bad job on prepping the imposter because she seemed to have no recolection of hiring a thug to whack another skater's knees.

Also, in other news, our wedding photographer emailed me on Saturday morning to let us know that our album was finally done. We shall be receiving it sometime around Thursday or Friday. Happy Day.

Also, since Sarah reads this occasionally, HAPPY BELATED (by a day) BIRTHDAY SARAH! But to be fair, I did text you on Saturday.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

10 things that may or may not have anything to do with this post

Just what my poor, poor, sad mind thinks about throughout the day...although I will say that most of these only really pertain to today.

1. As I was driving to work, I thought about how my dentist appointment was canceled for today. I'm not so much pissed about the fact that it was canceled, just the fact that it was canceled and I made the appointment like 2 weeks ago...don't they have rules about this stuff--if you're going to take a vacation, you need to get it in the books at least 2 weeks in advance? I don't know, maybe that's just me because I worked in retail.

2. Saw the wierd guy again today. The wierd guy is some guy who works on a different floor than I do, but every once in a while when I get to work early, I see him leaving the men's bathroom with a newspaper. Now then, why would a guy from a different floor use the bathroom on our floor and be carrying a newspaper. Yeah, I think he's "making stinky poops" as Mrs. Poochie would say. Which I must say, if this is the case, he would be the first guy in the history of every male I know that would actually use a public restroom to do a doodie...Most guys would rather die from their intestines exploding than use a public restroom for that.

3. Meetings take up a lot of time. I was in meeting for about 4 hours today. I guess it is a good thing that my dentist appointment was canceled, I would have missed it.

4. I hate getting up early in the morning, it makes me tired.

5. Why do I never leave enough time to get to the doctor's office on time? I only was 5 minutes late so that was good, but I was driving like a madman on the highway.

6. I hate going to the doctor--mostly because I never go when I'm sick, I go to have various tests re-done because all of my tests come back abnormal. And as such, I always think they're going to find something horribly wrong with me, which makes me nervous which makes my blood pressure, pulse and temperature go up, so they think that all these "normal" readings are way too high and so they always tell me to "calm down, exercise, and we think you may be sick"

7. Got my potassium blood tests redone. The girl that took my blood is a damn good blood-drawer-person. It only took about 30 seconds. The first time I got blood drawn, it took about 30 minutes and they had to do both arms, and they couldn't find a vein, and it hurt quite a bit. The second time I got blood drawn took about 10 minutes because the lady barely missed a vein, but it didn't hurt. And this time? This time was grand! 30 seconds, I kid you not, and it only hurt a little bit. I think I may have to find out who this girl is and send her flowers. Although I did give her a compliment, I believe I said something like "Damn! you're good!" when she told me I could leave. She seemed to like it--she had a big grin on her face and laughed...I think that's a good sign, right?

8. I've noticed this down here in Texas, when I say something that uses a "non" cuss word (aka cuss words they say on TV), people seem to think it's funny or cute. The vet loved it when I said that we refer to our cat as "itchy, bitchy, hivey, I.V." The blood-drawing-tech laughed when I said "Damn"...wierdos...granted, I remember when one of my co-workers in Colorado learned that I listen to Guttermouth. He was just pissed because he was always watching himself to make sure he didn't cuss in front of me...and then found out I listen to music about "Lucky the luckiest donkey" --a donkey in a donkey show in Mexico.

9. I like teleworking into work. But I wouldn't be able to telework in all the time because my cats seem to like it when I get home early/stay home alone so then I have to deal with them trying to sit on my lap to get petted, or rubbing their chins on my hands while I'm typing, or trying to catch the little mouse pointer on the screen. Not to mention that my monitor at work is a brand new 19" slim panel and therefore I have to scroll all over the place on my laptop to find things on my desktop.

10. I've finally decided that I'm going to buy an I-pod Nano. I may even be nice and get Shawn one for Valentine's day.

And there you go ladies and gentlemen(oh, who am I kidding? Dani and Mom are the only ones that read this), The top ten thoughts that ran through my head today.

Also, this year will be the 25th anniversary of the "Memorial Day Flood" in Austin. That flood killed 13 people and caused $36 million in damages.