another misAdventure

"We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan."

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Moving Day

Got mom moved into the nursing home today. She seems to be doing pretty well, so she may be able to regain her strength fairly quickly. Anyway, I got her recliner, TV, iPod, laptop, some clothes, and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff moved up today. I have a list of things to gather tomorrow before I take off for home.

While leaving the hospital today I passed my sister-in-law and her husband. She was checking into the hospital -- knocked down hard by a case of the flu and very dehydrated. I told her I wasn't really in town to visit her in the hospital. She often reads my blog, so by the time she sees this she'll obviously be out and back on her feet, so I can only say "Get well, Beth -- RETROACTIVELY!"

I had dinner tonight at Penny's Diner -- which is set up as a 50's style diner but I know it hasn't been there for more than about a year. I'd been eating too much fast food/fried food the past few days, so I was looking for something a bit better. Meatload, salad, mashed potatoes, green beans, and a roll, with my iced tea, and all less than $10. The potatoes were instant (instant disguished as home-made, peel-in potatoes, but the peel pieces were tiny and clearly part of the mix), but I don't mind instant potatoes anyway and as a whole the dinner was really good.

Penny's is a mini-chain, so I thought I'd Google it and link it's website (like I do so often). I didn't find a website (it looked like there were maybe 20-25 sites in the chain, but I did find that Bill Clinton had been in that very diner less than two weeks ago. Closing in on time for the Iowa caucuses, though I haven't gotten hit over the head with campaigning (but I'm also not watching much local TV).


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Monday, November 19, 2007

Strange Cheese

I'm in Iowa, so there's one thing I always have to do .... go to Nebraska!

Nebraska is completely made up. A fraud perpetrated by those in Omaha to make everyone else think they have a whole state behind them.

No, really, I drove over to Blair to get a Runza. The Runza in Blair is the closest one to Missouri Vally (probably the closest to Aurora as well).

As I was eating my Cheese Runza, I realized something was different. The cheese was not an American Cheese slice (as usual). It was a white cheese, and very melty and gooey. Almost like queso fresco. It may also have been mozzerella cheese, or maybe white American. Is there really any difference between those three? Anyway, it was different, and it was really good with the Runza.

Other than that, I've been taking care of some business for my mom. She's in the hospital now, doing better than she had been, and the plan is that she'll move up to the nursing home tomorrow. After that we'll see how things go and how long she'll need to be in the nursing home. So, tomorrow I'll get her stuff moved up there, take care of some banking, and hopefully drive back to Aurora on Wednesday.


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Friday, November 16, 2007

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

It's been a week when the things I could think of to blog about I couldn't really get motivated to blog about. This is kind of a forced update post.

I'll be out of town the first part of the week. I'm driving back to Missouri Valley on Sunday so I can help out my mom. The current thought is I'll head back to Aurora on Wednesday in time for Thanksgiving, but I'll play it by ear.

Ellen and I went to her inducted into Sigma Theta Tau honor society of nursing tonight, and then dinner afterward. Over dinner we agreed that the speaker at the induction ceremony didn't really go anywhere, comparing public nursing at the beginning of the 20th Century to that now at the beginning of the 21st Century. The talk didn't really go anywhere, but it did lead us to pondering when the Germ Theory of Disease was propagated and actually accepted by the public (conclusion: nurses 100 years ago had a lot of teaching to do).


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Sunday, November 11, 2007

Mice Are Jerks!

Our pastor told this story as part of the sermon today. I told Ellen later that the point of the sermon was "Mice are Jerks!".

In other news, I was stiff today from too much ladder climbing yesterday. I cleaned out the gutters, installed some gutter guards to try to lessen/eliminate leaf buildup since most of the leaves were still on our locust tree, and also got Halloween decorations taken up to the attic. So, a lot of climbing.

This afternoon Ellen and I went to Normal for Kathy's choir concert. The concert was fine, especially Kathy's choir. I get to nitpick other choirs -- the solists in the men's glee were flat and the arrangement of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" was one I didn't care for, but at least we didn't have bad scat singing from a lame show choir at this concert.

Tomorrow: D&D - maybe. So far I've only seen that we have three players and we need four.


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Friday, November 09, 2007

Dreams Come True

Last weekend I had a very vivid dream. One I then remembered well when I woke up, and can still remember now.

In it, I went to Payless Shoes and bought two pair of black shoes. One was a fairly bland pair of black work shoes like I usually wear (at least before I switched to pretty much always wearing white New Balance walking shoes). The other pair was a bit fancier -- shiny black slipons with a tassel, kind of like these. I took them to the checkout, and the dream ended.

Tonight, I went to Payless Shoes and bought two pair of black shoes.

OK, actually I took Ryan and got him a couple pair of black shoes. A pair of fairly plain black shoes for work, in exactly the style I usually buy (that would be these). And a pair of black sneakers for non-work-day wear. And, he and I went out for dinner since he and I were the only ones around -- Ellen at class, Kalen in Indy, Matt in Urbana (and, of course, Kathy in Normal).

Hopefully, I'll get some stuff done around the house and with my computer done tomorrow. Sunday, Ellen and I go to Kathy's choir concert in Normal. Monday night I think I'm playing D&D as a zero for Stuffed COWS.

Anyway, that's the promised update for tonight.

Usually I don't have dreams that are either so vivid or so oddly mundane. Actually, usually I don't remember my dreams at all, so maybe I dream about shoes every night.

Yes, I did have to search for a picture of the pair of shoes from my dream. Just because I wouldn't know how to describe them otherwise.


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Thursday, November 08, 2007

Tangled Dragon

Ha! My 9th level rogue killed a large blue dragon with only a Tanglefoot Bag!

Ah, there's nothing quite so fun, so cinematic as that.

Of course I'm talking about Dungeons and Dragons. There's also non-D&D stuff in this post -- so you can scroll down, Mom!

Kathy, Ryan, and I played Dungeons and Dragons last Saturday with three other friends, in a long, long delayed session. Matt was our judge.

The dragon was probably going to go down anyway, as Ryan could blast it with spells and Duc had a bow suited for dragon slaying. However, it was my turn, and I was only about 15 feet from the dragon, which was hovering over a crevasse. I didn't have anything I could really do to hurt it much, but I could hinder it a bit by getting it slightly tangled up. So, I threw the tanglefoot bag (basically, you can think of it as a bag of tar).

The dragon failed it's reflex saving throw, so it got its wings tangled. It couldn't fly any more! So it fell into the crevasse. And it took 56 points of damage (I'm not sure how far the fall was to know how many dice of damage that was). 56 points was not nearly enough to kill the dragon, but it was enough to force a massive damage fortitude saving throw. Which, again, the dragon failed. Dead dragon.

Maybe not David v. Goliath, but in a similar vein. Failing both saving throws was probably a 1 in 100 shot, or worse. It would have eventually fallen to the sorcerer (Ryan) and the archer with the dragon-bane bow (Duc), but this was a better story.

♦ ♦ ♦

It hasn't been quite so busy this week, so I'm catching up on some of the work things that need to get done, and even a couple at home. If I can clear the work tasks, then I can feel freer to not check on things on the weekend -- thus leaving some time to catch up at home.

One thing standing in my way a bit, and one thing I need to work on, is that my personal laptop suddenly decided to crap out on me last Friday night. I was in Excel/HeroForge editing my character sheet, and suddenly the laptop froze. It seems like it may be a power problem, but we'll see. At the very least, what I need to do next is take out the hard drive, make sure I can still access everything, and then get it backed up. Then I'll figure out what I'll need to do to deal with the power.

♦ ♦ ♦

In other news, Ryan got a job at the AMC Cantera 30 movie theater (after his gig as "Halloween Expert" at Party City). I'll put that here, because you'll never see it on his blog. So now three of my four kids will have worked that theater (four of five if I extend that to Narf -- and I will!).

And, hopefully Matt and Kalen will have a bit more luck after we got their resumes in better shape last night. Their resumes were way too generic, where both really have some specific skills that should have been played up better.

More tomorrow night - promise. I've been thinking of too many things to blog about, and then not getting it done. So, I'll try to at least get a quick note when I have those thoughts, and flesh it out later.


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Thursday, November 01, 2007

Leftovers

We've got leftover candy. We've got leftover pictures!

There were a few pictures on my camera that I didn't know were there (since I didn't take them). But, they're here, and I decided to share a few. Just because.

I have no idea when this one of Ellen and I was taken:




... but this one of Danielle and Jason (and Kathy's feet, I believe) claims to have been taken on the same day:



Finally, we have have this picture of Kalen and Cody:


... which is actually a better crop of this picture of Kalen and Cody and Harry:
Except if you crop it down, you don't know that it's taken beside Wrigley Field.


That's not all, but it's enough. The others are mostly redundant, and these are the best.

And so, AH HA! Beware if you leave pictures on my camera!

Heh heh.


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