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03 January 2007
The latest CNN poll
Illness, and the art of photo restoration
So my dad had major surgery yesterday - he had a blockage in his colon and abcesses, amongst other things. It was a last-minute deal and he was doing ok, but in ICU for the time being. They had to remove part of his colon and perform an ostomy, which I guess he'll have for quite a while. Not fun I'm sure
Anyway today I guess his oxygen levels were bad and he wasn't breathing that great - a lot of coughing, which just isn't good when you have a huge abdominal incision - so they put him on a ventilator. Anyway I went up there to visit and my mother was there of course, and seeing someone on a ventilator just isn't fun, because obviously they have a tube shoved down their windpipe and another down into their stomach, and they have to be totally sedated. We learned in EMT class that you can't intubate a person who is conscious, because of course having something stuck down your throat like that would cause instant panic and vomiting. So anyway, my dad was sedated but kept coming to just a little bit, so of course he would sort of jerk around, and his hands were tied down (because it would be an obvious reaction to pull the tube out if you woke up) so it just wasn't fun to watch. Anyway, I guess he's doing much better on the ventilator, or was when I left, and I told my mother she needed to leave too, because she seemed rather freaked out every time he moved.
So anyway, I guess he's on the ventilator for at least a couple days, until he starts to heal up and his lungs clear out, and then he'll be in the hospital for a few days if all goes well. Of course he's in terrible health as it is - three heart attacks and heading into the world of dementia - so who knows. I've never had a good relationship with him - in fact, he has done a lot of things that I would like him to apologize to me and others for, but I'm not too worried about it now. I just don't want my mother to go crazy (and my sister freaks out wayyyy too much about everything, so she isn't helping matters and I told her to just calm down a bit tonight.)
And I get freaked out too - in fact, this job at the hospital has turned me into a total hypochondriac. It is very disturbing to me, when we have patients come in with chest pain, or shortness of breath, or cancer of any sort, and they are close to my age. VERY disturbing. Because now every time I have the slightest bit of pain or tingle anywhere, I get nervous, knowing that there are quite a lot of people in their thirties that get seriously ill. If the stress doesn't kill me, my own imagination will.
So I've been seriously working on trying to get a litle healthier - I'm trying to eat FRUIT, which I'm not a huge fan of, and other such nice things, and less crap. Seriously, I probably eat more sugar in a month than most people do in a year. The fact that I take vitamins is probably the only reason I don't have scurvy or rickets or some other deficiency disease.
And at work they have a really good program for employees that allows us to use all the exercise equipment in the physical therapy department - which is brand new, and the equipment is very nice. So I am going to join that, which is 25 bucks a month, deducted right from the paycheck - not bad considering the convenience of it. Sticking with it is the challenge, because I've joined three different gyms and the longest I lasted was about six months. But I intend to this time. Ah, the idiocy of new year's resolutions.
Anyway, I had to go let my mother's shih-tzu Rosie out yesterday, and I had been wanting to scan some pictures that were at her house, so I grabbed a few boxes and brought them home. Many of them are REALLY old family portraits from my mother's side, mostly from Ireland and England, and I've been working on some photo restoration.
I'm not an expert, and I tried using Adobe Photoshop, but I got nowhere. It is an insane program, and to learn it would be along the lines of learning CAD, which I also tried desperately to learn once. So I used Picasa and a couple different paint programs to work on a few of them. My favorite is the one below, which you'll see as a "before" and "after" so that I can show off my incredible amateurish skill. Seriously, I impressed myself! This photo had tears in and a little water damage but was otherwise a very clear photograph and not in too terribly bad shape. Some of the others will require more work. But my goal is to get all of these old photos scanned and fixed up, so that they can be saved from further deterioration, and also I plan to get them printed and frame them. I did a little experimental framing with the one below - I took an existing, cheap frame that had a little ocean scene in it, and replaced that scene with the photo.
So anyway, here's the picture, before, after, and in the frame. The woman in the photo is Catherine Harvey, who was my great-great aunt and my favorite relative of all. She was born in 1899 and died in 1985, so I would suspect this is a later-teen portrait of her, putting it at around 1917 or so.
Anyway today I guess his oxygen levels were bad and he wasn't breathing that great - a lot of coughing, which just isn't good when you have a huge abdominal incision - so they put him on a ventilator. Anyway I went up there to visit and my mother was there of course, and seeing someone on a ventilator just isn't fun, because obviously they have a tube shoved down their windpipe and another down into their stomach, and they have to be totally sedated. We learned in EMT class that you can't intubate a person who is conscious, because of course having something stuck down your throat like that would cause instant panic and vomiting. So anyway, my dad was sedated but kept coming to just a little bit, so of course he would sort of jerk around, and his hands were tied down (because it would be an obvious reaction to pull the tube out if you woke up) so it just wasn't fun to watch. Anyway, I guess he's doing much better on the ventilator, or was when I left, and I told my mother she needed to leave too, because she seemed rather freaked out every time he moved.
So anyway, I guess he's on the ventilator for at least a couple days, until he starts to heal up and his lungs clear out, and then he'll be in the hospital for a few days if all goes well. Of course he's in terrible health as it is - three heart attacks and heading into the world of dementia - so who knows. I've never had a good relationship with him - in fact, he has done a lot of things that I would like him to apologize to me and others for, but I'm not too worried about it now. I just don't want my mother to go crazy (and my sister freaks out wayyyy too much about everything, so she isn't helping matters and I told her to just calm down a bit tonight.)
And I get freaked out too - in fact, this job at the hospital has turned me into a total hypochondriac. It is very disturbing to me, when we have patients come in with chest pain, or shortness of breath, or cancer of any sort, and they are close to my age. VERY disturbing. Because now every time I have the slightest bit of pain or tingle anywhere, I get nervous, knowing that there are quite a lot of people in their thirties that get seriously ill. If the stress doesn't kill me, my own imagination will.
So I've been seriously working on trying to get a litle healthier - I'm trying to eat FRUIT, which I'm not a huge fan of, and other such nice things, and less crap. Seriously, I probably eat more sugar in a month than most people do in a year. The fact that I take vitamins is probably the only reason I don't have scurvy or rickets or some other deficiency disease.
And at work they have a really good program for employees that allows us to use all the exercise equipment in the physical therapy department - which is brand new, and the equipment is very nice. So I am going to join that, which is 25 bucks a month, deducted right from the paycheck - not bad considering the convenience of it. Sticking with it is the challenge, because I've joined three different gyms and the longest I lasted was about six months. But I intend to this time. Ah, the idiocy of new year's resolutions.
Anyway, I had to go let my mother's shih-tzu Rosie out yesterday, and I had been wanting to scan some pictures that were at her house, so I grabbed a few boxes and brought them home. Many of them are REALLY old family portraits from my mother's side, mostly from Ireland and England, and I've been working on some photo restoration.
I'm not an expert, and I tried using Adobe Photoshop, but I got nowhere. It is an insane program, and to learn it would be along the lines of learning CAD, which I also tried desperately to learn once. So I used Picasa and a couple different paint programs to work on a few of them. My favorite is the one below, which you'll see as a "before" and "after" so that I can show off my incredible amateurish skill. Seriously, I impressed myself! This photo had tears in and a little water damage but was otherwise a very clear photograph and not in too terribly bad shape. Some of the others will require more work. But my goal is to get all of these old photos scanned and fixed up, so that they can be saved from further deterioration, and also I plan to get them printed and frame them. I did a little experimental framing with the one below - I took an existing, cheap frame that had a little ocean scene in it, and replaced that scene with the photo.
So anyway, here's the picture, before, after, and in the frame. The woman in the photo is Catherine Harvey, who was my great-great aunt and my favorite relative of all. She was born in 1899 and died in 1985, so I would suspect this is a later-teen portrait of her, putting it at around 1917 or so.
So here's the BEFORE -
(click on them for larger images)
(click on them for larger images)
And AFTER -
and my experimental framing -
and my experimental framing -
02 January 2007
The green, green grass of January
It's just so ironic! There are all these news items about terrible storms plowing through the lower midwest, dumping foot after foot of snow, and accompanied by pictures like this -
Well for the first time ever since I have lived in the U.P., we have reached a new year without snow. Here is a picture of a gloomy morning, yesterday out my front window -
Well for the first time ever since I have lived in the U.P., we have reached a new year without snow. Here is a picture of a gloomy morning, yesterday out my front window -
Yes, some of that grass IS green. And people here are going nuts without their beloved, nasty snow. Yes, it's hurting the local economy and spoiling people's weekend fun, but I love it. I feel like the news commentator guy in the movie Airplane! who turns to the camera and says "I say LET 'em crash!"
I spent most of my afternoon sitting in the waiting room as my dad had major surgery at the hospital/my workplace. He had a major bowel obstruction with large abcesses, and potentially cancer, although that won't be decided until later in the week. Anyway, he has an ostomy, which he will have for at least a couple months, and is in intensive care. Apparently they were going to put him on a ventilator but he did fine without one for the time being. Anyway, he will probably be in the hospital for at least another week.
I hate such situations, not only because of the obvious, but because whenever anyone asked why I was there and I told them, they were pressed into doing the "oh no, is everything ok?" with that worried thing going on with their face. Well, I don't deal well with such things as having people do that to me, so I was rather glad to leave after a miserable four hours of sitting in uncomfortable chairs and reading year-old magazines. Don't I sound sympathetic! Well I am, but I really feel quite useless sitting in a waiting room like that, and didn't see him at all anyway. Anyway, he is doing fine tonight.
Two more days off! It's been so long that I know not what to do with myself.
I spent most of my afternoon sitting in the waiting room as my dad had major surgery at the hospital/my workplace. He had a major bowel obstruction with large abcesses, and potentially cancer, although that won't be decided until later in the week. Anyway, he has an ostomy, which he will have for at least a couple months, and is in intensive care. Apparently they were going to put him on a ventilator but he did fine without one for the time being. Anyway, he will probably be in the hospital for at least another week.
I hate such situations, not only because of the obvious, but because whenever anyone asked why I was there and I told them, they were pressed into doing the "oh no, is everything ok?" with that worried thing going on with their face. Well, I don't deal well with such things as having people do that to me, so I was rather glad to leave after a miserable four hours of sitting in uncomfortable chairs and reading year-old magazines. Don't I sound sympathetic! Well I am, but I really feel quite useless sitting in a waiting room like that, and didn't see him at all anyway. Anyway, he is doing fine tonight.
Two more days off! It's been so long that I know not what to do with myself.
01 January 2007
My hopes and fears for 2007. ILLUSTRATED
Over the past 34 trips around the sun, I have had many different experiences on the first day of each new year. Some were planned out in great detail to make for an extraordinary event; I don't remember any as being that extraordinary. Many years I have been either unceremonious or working; this year was an example of both. Although I only worked until 11, and had invites to go to a couple different local-flavor bars, I decided I was not in the mood for a disappointment, and really didn't want to ring in the new year while drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon in hospital scrubs. (Sorry to offend anyone - but the bars in this neck of the woods are, to the last one, AWFUL.)
There were various years where I did have fun - one such festivity almost involved me "coming out" at the Shamrock in Marquette, several years before I finally did it for real. Another more distant New Year ring-in involved the death of my grandmother at about an hour after midnight. So to me, celebrating New Year's Eve is sort of like being a chicken in a cockfight - you either die, or you win but now you're missing an eye and a foot. Well, maybe not so bad as that.
I came home and switched on my enormous 80s console tv, and started looking for Dick Clark. Was he on? There was a show entitled "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve" or whatever, and I saw several glimpses of Ryan Seacrest (or one of those cookie-cutter boy-hosts,) but not the big Dick. That was my only reason for even turning on the tv - I wanted to see if he has gotten over the stroke, which would mean that he is still young-ish as ever, which would make me feel like I'm not getting really old. Does that make sense? God, I hope not.
But of course, ABC doesn't allow for us central-timers to feel part of the ceremony - it's only 11 here when they ring in the holiday, and so we have to just do a pretend ball-drop at midnight, which is when I got home. And, my god, that show is just awful. Are people really that ridiculous anymore? The performers were either people I had never heard of, or MEATLOAF, who should just retire. And when I heard something about Fergie hosting a party in Hollywood, I turned the channel. I don't want to see ex-royals grinding with Ludacris. Next the Duchess of York will be showing HER hoo-hah while exiting a limo. Change of topic.
Anyway, I got to thinking of what the new year might/should/won't entail, and started putting together some predictions. Being the psychic that I am not (I did predict Steve Carrell's rise in popularity, however) I thought I would take a smack at what I hope happens, what I hope DOESN'T happen, and what is just inevitable. With pictures.
Here we go.
1. The end of the dictatorship
Yeah, I know. He'll still be here. But now he's got some compa-tishin from the Con-griss. And no matter what, I just don't think he'll be able to get his war drums beating again. Rumsfeld's gone; Saddam's dead (and people didn't care much - they just wanted the opportunity to see a real hangin'); and people are just fed up. So maybe the opposition will be able to voice opinions freely again without getting a mouth-smack or put on the "do not fly" list.
2. Europe Will Get Cooler.
No, not because of global warming, because that wouldn't make sense. To most people. But anyhoo...The European Union now has more people, more trade, and more money than the United States. And come on - they have a lot of coolness - think IKEA!! So, since the "freedom fries" bullshit has died down, maybe people over here will pay more attention to what they are getting right over there. Which leads me to
3. Gay Rights
Now that the republicans and the christian right have trampled on the constitutions of most of the states by banning same-sex unions of all sorts (and constitutions were made to PROTECT rights, not take them away,) there is no direction to go but up. Really. And if people would pay more attention to the world around them, they would realize what fools we have been. Because if I wanted to, I could grab me a feller, hop in the car and drive 3 hours to Canada and go get hitched, and it would be legal, at least there. Even though the homophobes got their way for a while, the rainbow flags and gay cowboys are looming ever closer, and it won't take long for those in the middle to recall such past eras as segregation and prohibition, that just didn't work out.
4. The Next President Will either Have an Afro or a French Manicure.
You gotta face it - Hillary bashing has lost its groove, because she's basically proven herself to be pretty level-headed. And this Obama guy is seemingly invincible - a Tiger Woods who can give a Kennedy-like speech.
but sorry,Condi........
1+1 doesn't always equal two. I really think that she MUST be computer-generated, because the combination of black/female/republican just doesn't seem to compute, does it? She's like a tuna-and-cool-whip-on-banana-bread sandwich. A combination that nobody really asks for at the deli, am I right?
5. PLEASE - no more MUFFINTOP!
The combination of tight, low-rise jeans and a touch of abdominal fat cannot possibly be considered sexy to anyone. In fact, this is what comes to mind for me when I think of a classic muffintop -
-which is just hideously wrong. So hopefully the fad of women's jeans that button at the clitoris will die out. That also leads me to hope the following:
6. NO MORE MEN IN WOMEN'S JEANS
Okay, that photo is probably a chick. I had trouble googling for men in capri pants, so maybe that's a good sign. The closest thing I could find was this -
which is disgusting too, but at least there's no embroidery.
7. RAMPANT VIRAL DISEASES WILL DESTROY WEDDINGS (just like the gays marryin')
I just thought this was a funny image. But SARS is skeery.
8. I WILL FINALLY FIGURE OUT THE IPOD CRAZE
Seriously, it's just a fancy walkman, isn't it? Why the fuss? Or am I just jealous that I don't have one? No, no, no - not when I see something like this-
An ipod cozy. Suddenly it makes sense to me. Okay, I am a little bit jealous.
So that's some predictions - I've run out of ideas and pictures for today.
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