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songsofautumn
Jun. 19th, 2008
03:28 pm
There are a couple of updates to ongoing themes on this journal that I didn't make immediatly after they occured. Since I've gotten a lot done today already and am trying to burn the last little bit of work I'm going to bring things up to date. Aren't you all thrilled? :p
First, Rose's social skills class started a few weeks ago. She seems to be enjoying it a great deal. As for rather its doing any good or not, its way to early to tell. They've told me that it can take a few class semesters with some children to really see clear benefits. rose is not a severe case so we can hope for progress sooner perhaps. maybe. I'm just glad that we've gotten to the point where we are actually trying to do something for her rather than just put a label on what is going on.
Two, last week I finally saw the headache specialist. Long story short she started me on a different preventative program, giving me one drug to begin with and once I've had a chance to adjust to that adding a second one to compliment it. She also told me to take alleve in addition to the abortive medication and a antineasia medication at the onset of an episode. She believes that the three drugs in combination should work better to break a migraine if caught early enough. She also wants me to have a sleep study done. Its possible I have sleep apnea. Breathing issues when asleep could potentially be a trigger for migraine. Surprise, surprise, she also wants me to loose weight. Heh. Obviously I know it would be better for me to drop some, actually quite a bit, of poundage. I did not know though that heavier people suffer more migraines. I guess its added incentive for me to try to watch my weight. Getting out and excercize though, which would help a lot, is going to be far more difficult. That aside we are finally working towards trying to find a way to manage the migraines.
Jun. 16th, 2008
05:01 pm
Rusty Smash! Smash good!
I'm sure we've all had one of those days at work where by clockout time one is reduced to small words and the desire to break things by the sheer overwhelming stupidity and incompetance that one is surrounded with.
I like my job. I really do. This is in fact the first time in this new position that I've felt like this by the end of my shift. Which is good because some jobs I've had would have me at a lower simmer at the moment of walking through the door and by the time I headed home would leave stupid with rage on an almost daily basis (well, maybe thats a bit of an exageration considering that I am not a man prone to anger). So this job is doing well actually. Most of the people I work with, while not people I would be friends with are professional and pretty much competant. Its just today I seem to have to find the secret vain of stupidity that runs deep beneath the surface in every large corporation and have been forced to mine it prodigously.
Ok, rant over. go home. forget job until my next shift on Wednesday. By then I will have lost the feeling of banging my head against the brick wall of stupidity.
Jun. 9th, 2008
03:53 pm - Music Monday
A tribute of sorts to one of the most unappreciatted bands around. King's X has had a remarkable history of consistantly great song writing over a long career and outstanding live shows. Doug Pinnick is also the best bassist on the planet.
sadly I was not able to find many of the tracks that I would have prefered to share on youtube. This is still a impressive set of songs though it doesn't do full justice to the bands full range or history.
07:34 am
Saturday night we spent a lovely evening at <a href="http://www.playinthewoods.org/">A
Well, it was a joy to watch until the sky opened up. We had had rain most days during the week before. It had been flirting with rain all day before the show but seemed to clear up as evening approached. The clouds started being menacing as the show began but the rain seemed to be holding off. We got through the intermission dry. A few minutes after the play resumed the deluge began. We were hit by a real downpour which. They quickly shut the show down and had the audience clear out. (They have a generous rain policy and we will be able to get tickets for preformance latter in the year. ). And then it rained and rained. and then rained some more. straight through the night and then the whole of the next day. It would stop for a few minutes, like the storm was finally breaking up, and then start up again like all the spickets in the sky were opened on full. I've seen a lot of storms but I don't recall anything like this. it finally stopped sometime overnight. More than 24 hours of some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen. Thankfully we live on sandy soil that drains well and are on a bit of a high spot so our basement at least when I checked it yesterday evening was staying dry. A lot of homes didn't though. Fields have turned into shallow lakes. Rivers are out of their banks. There is water flowing in places that are nice and dry. And this is after a winter of record snowfall and a spring that remarkably wet as well. At least its good for the groundwater level.
(note to my sister: we ran into your friends Vickie and Bill at the play. just thought I would mention that.).
Jun. 5th, 2008
08:11 am - memage
Memage, ganked from xraytheenforcer
Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.
blues-I love the older blues such as Robert Johnson, Son House and Charlie Patton and the early electric blues such as John Lee Hooker, Howlin Wolf, Lightning Hopkins and Muddy Waters. When I was younger I was chasing down the history of Rock. I had first started working through classic Rock and the 60's. I had a curiousity how the music developed. My interest lead me to a number of different musics but the blues are what caught my attention. The early blues is powerful stuff and reflects a approach to music that is radically different from the Western music tradition. It has its roots in West African music. It shaped and defined as part of the culture of the African American sharecroppers in the rural south living under some of the harshest and most brutal conditions imaginable. At its best its a beautiful music that speaks about life and pain in a way no other music can.
church-ah, church and I. that is a complex topic. in fact its a topic that deserves its own post to do it justice. Actually it would probably turn into a rant covering several posts and carrying more vitriole than most have ever seen out of me.. I've had an up and down relationship with the church that shaped much of my youth and young adulthood. I parted ways with church maybe 4 years back after one luducrious experience too many and have not been back since. I still retain an interest in church matters but I see the American Church, particularily the evengelical movement as something that reflects values that have very little to do with what christianity should be. Its something I'm quite bitter about and have cut my ties to the church pretty damned thoroughly. I will leave it at that because otherwise this will grow and consume not only this post but several more and probably keep me from getting any work done today.
modern rock-this is probably one that is no longer accurate. when I added that as an interest radiohead and pearl jam, NIN, and their peers might still have been considered modern rock. Now, while some of the groups that came prominance in the ninties as still relavent they certainly aren't modern. Sadly I've not really been able to keep up with music recently.
origami-I used to fold paper as a hobby. Haven't done it much in a couple of years (i think I needs to revise my interests at some point). Its still damn cool though.
Sluggy freelance-my 3rd favorite still on-going web-comic. not as fun as it was in its early days though.
Something Positive.-my 2nd favorite web-comic. wonderfully sick but also insightful and occasionally even moving. Its honest and hysterical. and twisted.
(my favorite web comic right now is, of course, XKCD)
star gazing-while I'm not really into astronomy, per se, i grew up spending hours at a time in my parent's back-yard looking at the stars and pondering life and such topics. One of the many reasons I love living where we do now is that we are out of the city and the light polution it brings. We can see the stars in all their glory from our back deck. One of these years I'm going to get a telescope.
Jun. 4th, 2008
03:13 pm
I've not been in a verbose mood lately. Hence the few posts. Not that there isn't anything to write about, its just that right now the words aren't following like they usually do.
Rose had her first Social Skills class yesterday. I guess it went well. With a intervention of this sort we won't really know if its beneficial or not for a while. Rose seemed to enjoying her time there though, which its at least a postive sign.
In other news I am pleasantly surprised to see Mr. Obama secure the democratic nomination for president. While I am cynical about American politics he strick me as a different breed from the political hacks and men born to wealth and privaledge that we are normally given to choose between when voting for president. His policies don't seem as liberal as he talks but at least he has progressive ideals and can articulate them well. He's got a chance to be an effective president, progressive president, something we have not had since at least LBJ (or given that Johnson's legacy is rather gunked up by Vietnam one might have to go back to Truman or even FDR). Even if he is far from perfect and the fact that he would want the presidency in the first place is a mark against him, if he wins in November I have confidence he would be a refreshing change.
Thats pretty much all thats noteworthy at the moment. Right now I just want to crawl under my desk and take a nap.
Jun. 2nd, 2008
07:30 am
Winter is long past and yet it seems able to reach acrost the seasons to find new ways to make life unpleasant, this time in the form of a horde of blood sucking fiends intent on tormenting our poor flesh. Its a plague of biblical proportions.
Living where we do withing a mile of wetlands to our east and a significant river to our north misquitoes are always a nuicances. This year though, due to the melt from a record shattering snowfall and a quite rainy spring, the conditions were prefect for the little bastards to procreate prodigously. In past years one would go outside this time of year and have to swat a few away. Now you step out the door and immediatly find any exposed flesh covered by the minature monstrosities. Bug spray is going to be a must even for the shortest trip out of doors for some time I am afraid.
May. 28th, 2008
07:20 am
Its one of those mornings. I woke up feeling like something that crawled out of great Cthulhu's arse. Not really sick, not even anything really specific, just one of those days when one wakes up and just isn't right. Sort of like a hangover without the headache but also without the plus of having gotten good and shit-faced, beat your brains out with a brick drunk. Now that I've been a work for almost a hour and a half and am starting to push into my day I'm feeling a bit better. That first hour or so though I was just way off.
In other news I'm making real progress in the basement. I'm hoping to have the framing done by the middle of the summer and if I push steadily may well be able to finish up sooner. of course thats just the framing. The comes the electrical work, the duct work, the insulation, hanging the dry wall with all that entails, painting, putting in the suspended cealing, carpeting and installing the moudling along with a host of smaller tasks that will need to be completed before we can think about using it as livable space. So an end is a long way off. Its would be nice to be done with one big component of the project though.
May. 27th, 2008
03:57 pm - Music Monday
ah, fuck its Tuesday.
For a long time after my ex left this I just could not listen to this song. With time and perspective its a reminder of what I have survived. I don't know if this is the meaning Mr Yorke was aiming for but it seems to so completely capture the feeling of that time, of the broken, cold reality, the longing for the a new beginning, the wounds heaped on wounds. Whatever the case its a beautiful piece of catharsis.
May. 22nd, 2008
12:56 pm
I guess it the running of the jackasses at Ran's today. Its made my day so much more enjoyable. *grumbles*
May. 20th, 2008
07:24 am
Lost a day of work yesterday due to another migraine. Took the medicine a while to kick in and by then it was to late in the day to head in for part of my shift. At least it allowed me to have a pleasant afternoon. they seem to come in bunches. I've really hoping that I get a reprieve for a while. I'm more than due one based off of my prior history.
It was a nice weekend prior to that though. On saturday we went into town to run a whole set of errands and then took the girls to see Prince Caspian. It was exactly what it was suppose to be, an enjoyable afternoon's entertainment. It made no pretense to being something more and by staying true to what it was was able to excel at it. Visually it was stunning. it certainly sucked the girls in. On the negative side it was obviously both blessed and cursed by the source material. It also felt a bit less fresh than it might have a decade back given the larger number of big budget fantasy films that have been made following the success of the lord of the rings. The territory has been tread a good many times now and while I still love to see fantasy getting its due on film its reached the point that the form needs to be taken up by people that aren't riffing on the example set by the LotR.
Sunday was a day a work day around the house in large part. Besides the usual yardwork, I finally made it back down into the basement. Was able to finish the framing on one side. Now I can start working down the other side and then along the long back wall. I really need to try to stay down most of a day sometime and push through a good chunk otherwise. This piecemeal shitte I've been doing will get the job done eventually, it will just take forever. I want to be able to get to the wiring and heating by the fall if I can. Brenna followed me down into the basement and basically sat there watching. She could have been up stairs playing but she wanted to watch me work. I can't imagine watching me pound nails would be that interesting for a 6 year old, but apparently to her it is.
May. 17th, 2008
08:38 pm
I used to think that Bush's presidency was lacking in any real accomplishments to offset the immense harm that he has caused. On further consideration I do have to acknowledge that he has managed to go almost 2 full terms in office without vomiting on any world leaders, something his father couldn't manage to do in his 1. I'm not sure how much that counts for but it remains the only positive I have yet been able to find.
May. 16th, 2008
07:03 am
I've been in the new job for a good 6 months now. Its feeling like a comfortable fit. I'm now reasonably competant, at least relative to my peers, with the skills we need to use on a daily basis. Unlike the old position being an actual adjuster means there are always new things to learn. Even at this lower level position I've still got a lot of improvement open to me before I start exhausting what it can teach me. I like the work overall and hope to be able to use it as a starting point to move off to more interesting things within the claims field. Of course nothing this company would be able to offer me resembles an ideal job for me but at this point in my life I'm at peace with that. Its decent, often interesting work, it pays well enough, and it has good prospects to be able to lead somewhere better eventually. So I stick it out. Maybe when the girls are older I will look at going back to school to try to find a career that is suits my interests and temperment better. That is for future that is still far over the horizon though.
On another note I couldn't be more thrilled that its finally friday. I'm really feeling the need for the weekend break, which waits only 7 hours from now.
And on yet another note we are pretty sure that Rose has inherited my migraine trait. This is not surprising given that my mother is a sufferer who in turn got it from her father along with both her siblings. I was hoping that I wouldn't pass this curse on by it appears that at least Rose got unlucky in the genetic crap shoot on this one.
May. 15th, 2008
10:21 am
Yesterday was a day off and I was looking forward to it. I had no great plans. Was thinking about doing a bit of work around the house. Mostly though I was expecting to get some reading done and let TV rot my brain.
I woke up not feeling all that great. So I got the girls to school and then laid down to get another hour or two of sleep in hopes of feeling better. Woke up from that with a migraine trying to split my head in two. Took my medication, which didn't work. So I got to spend until about 7 that evening suffering in bed before it finally backed off enough to let me rejoin my life (already in progress).
What I really hate about migraines is the feeling of having lost a day. its not just the pain, which is bad enough, its that I'm so out of it when they get bad enough that it feels almost like having lost time, like having a day stolen from me.
My appointment with the headache specialists is for next month. Really hoping that I can get some answers then or at least onto a path that can get me some help.
May. 12th, 2008
05:42 pm
REM remains one of my favorite bands. They played in a major roll in pulling music out of an area reigned over by hair bands and pop divas. In the meantime they produced a vast catalog of outstanding songs. While their late 80's and early 90's output produced a number of songs that are quite familiar their earlier career was at least as strong but has largely not leaked into the popular mindset in the same way.
A haunting ballad from earlier in the band's career.
"What we want and what we need has been confused, been confused" Wise words from a band who's lyrics are famous for being rather ambigous. From the album Document #% album, which not only showed that the band could not only rock but also was their breakthrough commercially.
One of their many songs that have a lot of personal significance for me from a time in my life when I really did feel like I had to carry the weight of the world.
From Automatic For the People. Its an album that I have come back to many times in my life and each time finding new significance. This song song in particular hits my in the gut everytime I hear it and remains my favorite track of theirs.
08:46 am
Yesterday we spent most of the day rearranging our living room to make best use of the new couch. Our ex-couch was a sectional that we had sort of dividing the room in half. Just didn't work putting the new one in an approximation of the same place. It was screaming at us loadly and forcefully to be moved against a wall. Making this happen ment that we had to pretty much move every piece of furniture in the room. this of course included the bookshelves, which means taking off all books, moving the shelves and then putting the books back. The other joy was that the new home we wanted to give the TV did not have a cable jack anywhere in the vacinity. So we took it upon ourselves to install one. We found out after what turned out to be far more work than we thought to would be that with the way that wall sits over the foundation we just could not get the drill far enough back to punch a hole from the basement to the interior of the that wall. We ended up finally giving up and punching a hole in the floor right againt the wall. It works ok since the entertainment center conceals it. Still, I'm frustrated since we spent hours trying to find a way to install a jack. The great fun of the whole project was when I accidently drilled into a water line, bring on a great gush of water, a frantic run (by carrie) to the water shut off line, a rather large amount of profanity on my part along with repeated expressions of disbelief in exactly how lacking in inteligence I could be, and a unplanned trip into town to get the parts needed to fix my stupidty.
At the end of the day though the water was back up and running, the cable was through the floor and hooked up, all the furniture had found new homes and all the artwork had been rehung. All in all an accomplished day.
May. 8th, 2008
02:36 pm
Our new couch should arrive this afternoon. We've needed one for quite a while. The old one had been through several moves, put up with a good deal of beating from children and cats (who were convinced it was a scratching post) and was used (though in good condition apparently) when Carrie got it (which was before we were evening dating).
When we first heard about the tax rebate we were going to save a good chunk of it, if not the whole thing. We started discussing the deteriating condition of our sofa and decided that if we could find a decent one for the right price we would purchase it using those funds. Of course we found one we really like for a bit more tha we were going to spend but talked ourselves into it because we couldn't find anything else decent that was in the pall park price wise.
Now I loath the tax rebate. While it was presented as a economic stimulus the amount is simply to small to make that much of a difference. To me its a buy-off, an attempt to get the country to believe that our government is doing something about the current economic downturn (with money the government doesn't actually have to spend, neat trick that one) without actually taking the more difficult steps that would actually make a differnce. Basically, if they give us a bit of cash to make us feel better we might not be as bitter come November and not throw their sorry asses out.
Now, I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for taking the money anyway, but at least I'm taking the money and not be fooled in the least about what its intended to do. Booh for politicians trying to buy us off. yeah for new, exceedingly comfortable couches.
07:44 am
Our new harddrive arrived on Tuesday. After some tinkering by Carrie our computer lives again. New we just have to reinstall an metric fuckton of stuff, and then see if we can recover what we need from our old harddrive. Basically we are back up and running again, though.
Tuesday night I made the mistake of allowing myself to get sucked into following the election results until the wee hours when my brain decided that I had to fall asleep to avoid a catastrophic san check failure after hours of staring at the horror that is American politics. While to much consumption of American political media (though the horror was mediated by Keith Oberman, who is one of the few sane voices in mainstream news as well a rather noted witt, doing most of the talking) is harmful to one's mental state the results of the night were a relief to me. I had been dreading having to choose between Clinton or not voting because I could not stomach casting a ballot for douchebag of cosmic proportions that is John McCain. While Mr Obama is certainly another politician in my mind he's head and shoulders above anyone we've seen run for president in a long while. Seeing him finally in a position that almost locks up the nomination was encouraging.
Lately the Madison Library has become my best friend. The rising price of gas and food as well as a deliberate decision to try to handle our money better so as to have some savings has pretty much driven my budget for books into nothingness for the foreseeable future, a fact that brought me great sorrow (oh, the bitter tears) until I rediscovered this wonderful place that will let you borrow books, read them and then return them for no charge. Since then I've been consuming books like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
I was especially pleased to find that one of the Madison branch libraries has a very nice collection of graphic novels/comic book series collections. About a week ago, maybe a bit more I picked up the first couple of collections of Transmetropolitan, a series that I had recommended to me many times, but never was able to put down the cash to check out. Why the fuck I didn't is now beyond me. There are a few things that one reads/watches/listens to that one knows almost immediatly will burrow its way into ones thoughtscape and hang around there in one fashion or another for a long time. for me Transmet is now one of those works. Now if I can just find a way to own the series, but thats a concern for another time.
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