First will answer my email.
Second my LJ comments.
Third check my Friends page.
Fourth Facebook catch-up.

Return phone calls when cough is better.

Work on cleaning up the disaster area here when I can walk around without losing my breath and coming close to fainting.

When I can drive again, take car in for regular service and evaluation of latest crankiness.

I'll get there.

Yeah, I know I need to exercise to lose weight, to read all of my postal mail, fix my chipped nail polish, be Suzy homemaker, catch up on all the news, whatever... (go away).

My doc told me he doesn't think I have fifth disease, but also doesn't think I'm in a lupus flare.

WHAT is causing this horrific bout of joint and muscle pain???

Ground truth: if it just *goes away*, I'm willing to withdraw the question...as long as it never comes back.

but happy new years to oneagain, goddessfarmer, and turil!

wishing each of you something you've wanted all along :)

riding log to come...

• 23:46 Mocha cheesecake has chocolate covered coffee beans. Maybe I should have ordered decaf to go with?
• 13:03 Mint mocha chip frappachino is very tasty. Yum. Pity no soy for skydancer.
• 16:34 Redmond Red Robin has Rosyln Lager. jw1776 is very happy.

Automatically copied from http://www.twitter.com/jenk3 via LoudTwitter cause it's easy :)

Tony Felich, local pastor I found, gave me some recommendations for reading when it comes to systematic theology and the like. I have copied his response to me from his blog:

1. Mongerism.com is an EXCELLENT site. I highly recommend it. Look under their main directory for "Emerging Church" or "Emergent" Church. There wyou will find analysis of what you seem to be seeing at your church. I think it's pretty dangerous stuff long term.

2. The best books I know for child-raising are "Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp (this is for raising young children, before teen years) and "Age of Opportunity" by Paul Tripp (for raising teens).

3. A must read that is theologically systematic and thoroughly biblical is J.I. Packer's "Knowing God". I can't recommend that book more highly. I also recommend "The Attributes of God" by A.W. Pink. Get yourself a good Systematic Theology book for reference purposes, like Reymond's Systematic Theology or Berkhof's Systematic (Berkhof also has a neat "mini systematic" based on his big one).

4. Honestly though, you need to be in a church that values and emphasizes these things. It's not to say there won't be problems at such a place...there is no perfect church (or next to perfect either), but the Scripture and study thereof must be primary for your growth in grace.

from my micro-blog...

• 11:49 Hanging @ the omaha zoo w LJ friend mavygreen/nicole & her boys. Haley loves the aquarium! :-) #
• 14:02 Haley had 2 butterflies land on her in the butterfly pavilion! #
• 15:41 Chugga chugga choo choo... Omaha zoo railroad! #

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Eddie was fantastic...I am collecting my thoughts and will post about it soon.

Interesting

I think my body really needs some protein right now and I'm not really sure what to tell it.

Over the course of the morning I ate oatmeal, fruit salad, and a vegan scone.

For lunch I had some really great Thai food. One small dish of eggplant and tofu in this delightfully sweet and spicy sauce and a second small dish of mostly broccoli and tomato with tofu in a spicy garlic sauce with rice.

Right now I'm munching on crackers and hummus which is hitting the spot... unfortunately it doesn't seem to be hitting my brain yet which is acting a little slow and silly.

One of my friends in my class is bringing me the Idiot's Guide to being vegan which will hopefully help me out a little. It's funny though, I don't even want animal based foods. This is day four and I think my taste buds have already adapted to my new diet. Fruits and veggies have so much more flavor now, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. And I feel really happy and relaxed, probably because I'm not ingesting the pain and sadness of animals who spend their entire short lives in American factory farms.

Nothing better than the sound of splop splop as a baby first crawls on the wood floor, and you know who it is though your back is turned.

Nothing better than the sneaky toddler coming downstairs with a water cup and you decide to stay calm, fill the cup, and after walking off with a drink, you turn your back. Suddenly, you feel an embrace around your left leg. Then you hear the pit pat pit pat of toddler feet run upstairs to bed.

Nothing better than a little girl on a swing who spots you smiling through the screened back door, and she smiles and runs to hug you.

Nothing better than the boy with big blue eyes who once kissed your belly goodnight months ago, but now kisses the baby right on the top of her bald head before running off to bed.

Nothing better than the sweet gingerbread of a long haired girl who gently and quietly helps you out any time she can because God just made her like that.

Nothing better than the eleven year old boy who is learning about "cool" but who hugs you before bedtime, and as a game refuses to let go.

Wow, and they're all in bed now asleep. I have to keep myself from weeping, not from saddness, but from overwhelming joy and humility. I do not deserve this blessing, a house full of children who actually love me. I am one of the laziest, grumpiest, most distracted,most selfish, most forgetful mommies. They still gush sweetness to me. I don't deserve it one bit.

Yesterday was a long day. I got up and went to work. I had a few classes that I don't care for. (Like the one with the down syndrome kindergartener in it.) Then I relaxed after school and got some cards and letters finished.
I went out to Walgreens and picked up a few gift cards and then I went to see my old high schoolers graduation. It was really emotional. I miss those kids. I took a few pictures, and then I spent some time meeting parents.
By the time I got home it was really late. I was exhausted physically but I needed time to unwind. I ended up getting up really early to feed the monster and I went back to bed. Up again at 10:30. I decided to go see Steven.
I hate visiting him in jail but he needs some support. He gets out Jne 3rd. I cannot wait to hang out with him. I managed to drop by the grocery store and I am going to make shish-kabobs for dinner tomorrow night.
Tomorrow I am having lunch with an old coworker of mine. His treat! We are just going to fudruckers but I am totally ok with that. I think Kim and I may be going to a movie after that but I have no idea what we are going to see.
This whole thing was discombobulated but I wanted to update because I have been lax in my journal lately.

• 10:03 looks like skippy's list must use postal mail now too. discovered fedex and pob military base addresses don't work /headdesk #
• 10:03 @jdbean whats what? #
• 17:00 Ya know, City of Heroes players are, on the whole, far more polite and helpful than World of Warcraft players. #
• 18:27 @jdbean gotcha #
• 18:27 @jdbean i use twirl. there is also a firefox addon, but i can't get it to work #
• 18:29 ah....now i got twitterfox working #
• 18:42 need to try styling author comments for skippy's list. yay fun, don't break the site... #
• 20:04 looks like we get a choice of comment threading or highlighted author comments. guess we'll stick with threading #
• 20:07 i'll stick with twhirl. twitterfox makes firefox lag out too much #

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We've taken Bailey in the car whenever we can, because she loves it. This includes Saturday errands, which, for the past few Saturdays, has included a stop at the bank to deposit checks. Our bank keeps DumDum pops for kids (and occasionally for grown-ups), and dog bones for dogs. Bailey now knows that when we go to the bank, she gets a biscuit out of the noisy tube thing. This is a lot of fun for everyone. Here we are all waiting for the magic of vacuum tubes.

I watched the Preakness today - how exciting! Big Brown won by 5 1/4 lengths and we have a shot at the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years.

This be exciting stuff!

*manic laugh* My "quick look" report is already nearly 30 pages, and I still have a few more worth to write. Granted, there are a lot of pictures and about 9 of those pages don't really count, but still. I think I'm certifiably insane. At least I drew the line at actually trying to do the math to figure out what metabolic loads the people were generating and I'm just making general comparisons to results of prior tests with known metabolic loads.

But hey, maybe I'll get another "good job!" certificate with a shiny sticker on it for my trouble. I'm definitely overdue for another one of those - the last one is dated 2/07.

Edit 10:20 PM: Oh, fuck me. I made the same mistake as last time I did this, forgetting a unit conversion in one formula that's in half a dozen places in all of my several-hundred MB each Excel files. *headdesk* I just wrote a macro to go through all the files and fix it, so I guess I'll leave that running overnight and come back in the morning to clean up the plots and redo a whole bunch of numbers and pictures that I spent a bunch of time on today. *cry*

Edit 11:40 PM: Well, actually, that wasn't as bad as I feared. The macro got all the files done in half an hour, and I realized I could have "good enough" numbers for the tables by just manually multiplying everything by the missed conversion factor. I got several of the plots quickly replaced, too, but I'm mentally and physically done for tonight. I'll have to work all day tomorrow, too (until my movie date in the late afternoon, anyway).

Okay, here's a fun one, weatherwise.

So, today's weather is gorgeous. (Well, all right. Even for me, it's a bit hot near my apartment.) But here's what makes no sense.

I live 1-2 blocks from the water. The temperature at my flat is 96 degrees.

I drove to the freeway about 7-8 blocks from the water. The temperature just a few blocks away is 100 degrees.

I took the freeway about 15 miles inland. The temperature there (a place usually hotter by about 5 degrees) is 90 degrees with a bit of a breeze. (They've got the perfect weather.)

This? Makes no sense to me. Usually, it goes something like this:

By water = x
By freeway = x+2 [if anything]
Inland = x + (5,10)

Just finished up a great day @ the omaha zoo with navygreen & her boys. We had a blast! Saw the desert, rainforest, aquarium, butterfly pavilion, bears, apes, big cats, took a train ride & saw all manner of exotic animls. She took almost 300 pics, so i'm sure at least a few will be posted at some point. This one is bug hanging out with a giraffe statue. Thank you, nicole, for a great day! We couldn't have asked for better. Looking forward to our next trip west already!

I don't know how I did it, as I was in physical agony, but I did still get to go to see John Cleese at UCSB Thursday evening with dburr :)

Our friend happypickle was there, too, but I didn't drive him to or from the event. He and I both agreed I may as well not get in close, limited air-flow proximity (like in the car) to people who haven't already been exposed to whatever I am sick with, at least until I know what I've got...

My mom had driven me to Santa Barbara from my LA doctor's appt., but I still needed to do the 75 mile drive back home, and I was having trouble breathing, walking, and even just sitting. I was in a nightmare of joint pain, muscle pain, head pain, eye pain, fingertip and toe pain, shallow breathing, cough, chills, fever, dizziness, weakness, nausea...really in hell. Isn't my karma bill paid off YET??

But anyway, I couldn't let dburr miss John Cleese. Dburr had even prepaid for the tickets. Not to mention I didn't want to miss seeing John Cleese myself!
(for the extremely young and clueless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cleese)

The event was structured; he spoke for about twenty minutes, then we all saw the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", and then he spoke again and took some questions. He was amazing. Along with the rest of the audience, I laughed hard enough to probably even burn some calories (I live in hope of this, anyway).

I felt a bit bad about having to get out of my seat right after the movie, go stand near the closest wall, having him stare in my direction at least once, and yet not be able to ask a question or probably even have a pleasant expression on my face!

But I really enjoyed him. He was hilarious as always, and also shared some of his very interesting observations on life. I just had to get up, to stretch one leg that was in spasmodic pain, so that I would not make a spectacle of myself by screaming!

As it was, when we had first entered the lecture hall to go to our seats, and I could walk only EXTREMELY slowly, I was gasping for breath and some of the staffers ran to get me water and physically helped me to my seat and kept asking if I needed them to call 911! Drama, sigh. I am so tired of medical drama. (But I needed and appreciated the help. And probably should have gone with the 911, but that would not have been any fun at all).

Now for what I remember of what John Cleese said and did, and what photos I was able to find of him on the net (since my hands unfortunately hurt too much to use my digital camera that evening), if you want to read about it:

( Read more... )

If you are on my friends list, I want to know things about you. I don't care if we never talk, if you're more of a lurker, or if we already know everything about each other.

BE HONEST! Answer the questions in a comment, then repost on your own journal if you like.

Are you currently in a serious relationship?

What was your dream growing up?

What talent do you wish you had?

If I bought you a drink what would it be?

Favorite vegetable?

What was the last book you read?

What zodiac sign are you?

Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.

Worst Habit?

If you saw me walking down the street, would you offer me a ride?

What is your favorite sport?

Do you have a pessimistic or optimistic attitude?

What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?

Worst thing to ever happen to you?

Tell me one weird fact about you.

Do you have any pets?

What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?

What was your first impression of me?

Do you think clowns are cute or scary?

If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?

Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?

What color eyes do you have?

Ever been arrested?

White or red wine?

If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?

What's your favorite place to hang at?

Do you believe in ghosts?

Favorite thing to do in your spare time?

Do you swear a lot?

Biggest pet peeve?

In one word, how would you describe yourself?

Do you believe/appreciate romance?

Do you believe in God?

Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?