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northsider's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 | | 4:57 am |
I Am Back On Line!
Yes, it's been a while. The computer situation in our household reached the point of being untenable. Thanks, however, to an understanding spouse -- one who understands that I truly mean it when I do things like clutch my hair and wail -- I'm now the proud owner of a refurbished but nonetheless spiffy Compaq laptop, complete with Vista operating system and wireless Internet access. So far it seems to be able to handle whatever the 'Net throws at it, so I'm cautiously optimistic that my lengthy cyber-silence is at an end. Convenient timing, too, since the Gathering is only a month away. Ugh... I do feel bad about being incommunicado for so long. Scratch that; I feel dreadful about it. What's worse, it seems that lately whoever has tried to reach me by phone has caught me at precise times when I can't talk, and then I proceed to get thoroughly distracted and don't call back. Kimberly and Doppleganger, I'm looking at you in particular. Mea culpa; please forgive me. I suck. As for RL in this neck of the woods, all's quite well. To summarize: -- Spring is progressing in a pleasant, if chilly, fashion. As I had expected, my transplanted peonies and roses have buds on them this year, and appear set to bloom. The bluebells are spreading apace (one even appeared among the transplanted hostas in the front planter) and the raspberries refuse to quit; I may bring them back yet. Fauna-wise, the rabbit population is down this year (the red fox seen making the rounds of the neighborhood last fall might have something to do with that). The ducks are back, though, noshing on the birdseed in the back yard then waddling next door to float their keesters in the neighbors' pool. Newcomers this year among the migratory visitors have been white-crowned sparrows, an indigo bunting, and a rose-breasted grosbeak. -- I have survived the eight-year-old's First Communion. He didn't flunk his catechism lessons, didn't get fired from CCD, didn't forget any of the drill on the big day. And his suit pants were only slightly too short. As for me, I wasn't the only mom reaching for the kleenex at the sight of all the little girls in their white dresses and little boys in their suits and ties. We had all the friends and family over for a house party afterward. And the following day, I slept all afternoon. -- Yes, there is life after 50. For my birthday last month, I had open house during the day for my grade-school-mom pals (with my AARP card displayed on the table for laughs), then dinner out with the family in the evening. A couple of nights later the moms took me out for margaritas at a new neighborhood joint. The moms also gifted me with bottles of beer, vodka, and single-malt scotch. I detect a pattern here. -- The Cubs are scaring me. -- The presidential primaries, on the other hand, are not. I've been disappointed lately in Clinton's campaign, but, looking at the big picture, I'm very pleased with the way things are shaking out. No candidate (or office holder) will ever be perfect, and the people of this nation will never be in complete agreement on any given issue. But the longer term's looking good for getting this unwieldy ship of state righted. Looking ahead, I expect the Obama-McCain debates to be, um, interesting. Those two have a history; they tried working together on ethics reform legislation a couple of years ago and ended up at very public odds, with McCain flying off the handle in typical fashion. If Obama manages to get McCain apoplectic in a debate setting, it's game over. | | Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 | | 12:57 pm |
The Behinder I Get
OK, what's the deal with me? I have tons of on-line-type stuff to do. Reading, writing, e-mailing, con organization, you name it. And I just can't get going on it. There always seems to be something in RL that needs to be done first, then before I know it, the schoolday -- and my time to myself -- is gone. And forget the evening/night on-line time I used to have. With the economy getting manic-depressive, so are the financial markets, and the husband need to keep his work programs up virtually constantly when he's not at the office/in the trading pit. I need an intervention. Or maybe I just need my own computer. (Although maybe the sheer fact that I'm posting on LJ right now is an indication that I'm breaking through my tech block. I can always hope.) In other news, yesterday was great fun for the husband and me. We both love watching election returns on election-day evenings, and last night was a good one. Close race for the Democrats, amusingly fractured race for the Republicans, and strong turnout across the country. Me likey. Here in my own little city precinct, turnout was likewise good for the day (over 50% despite less-than-ideal weather). Since I too was eager to get my hands on a ballot that very likely sported the name of the next president, I went straight down to the park fieldhouse to vote after dropping the eight-year-old off at school. Unfortunately, this meant that I left my cheatsheet for judicial elections at home. (Judgeships are elected positions in these parts, and being a non-legal type, I can't tell the players without a bar-association-recommendation scorecard.) Regarding the other, larger races, though, I knew who my candidates were, so that was no problem. I left my polling place happy. This may be the first time I've been content with all (well, both) of the Democratic choices on the primary ballot. I lean toward one, but if the other gets the nomination, it's OK by me. I'm sure it's because both candidates are head and shoulders above the Republican field, whose peculiar coalition from the bad old days of Ronald Reagan is finally succumbing to its internal strain. I suspect, however, that it's also because I feel like both candidates are neighbors -- and in a way, they are. Barack Obama lives on the South Side, and Hillary Clinton grew up just a couple of miles away from here in Park Ridge. In fact, we often get take-out pizza from the joint up on Oakton Avenue where she worked and hung out with her friends as a teenager. And oh yeah -- pitchers and catchers report this month. It's snowing like a sonofabitch right now, but so what? The guys start throwing the baseball down south in just a matter of days. | | Thursday, January 17th, 2008 | | 2:41 pm |
Bon Appetit
As I type this, one of the neighborhood hawks is dining on a pigeon in our back yard. An impressive sight. As for the yard, it looks as if someone stuffed an M-80 into a pillow and set it off in the grass. I'm thinking of going out there with a rake once the hawk has finished its lunch. I guess this means out backyard bird restaurant is going to get a star or three knocked off its rating by the local feathered cognoscenti. And in other news, as you all can see, I've already blown my New Year's resolution to post here more often. The short version of life around here is that the holidays were fast, furious, and plenty fun, and that I suck at New Year's resolutions. | | Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 | | 12:19 am |
Now, how does this "computer" thing work, again?
OK, kids, Ellen knows she's been a bad auntie lately. I haven't been around LJ in ages, I haven't been writing jack, and I'm way overdue for coffee dates, lunch dates, etc. with my pals who live in the area. My eyes glaze over when I even begin to think about getting caught up. Well, I can do this much now, anyway. It's past my bedtime, but I'm still awake. The house is quiet because the boys are asleep. (The secret: Kick the husband off the computer and make him read the bedtime story for a change.) I'm cracking open a beer, dammit, and just posting a flock of random, catch-up stuff. First off, I'm fine, and so is the family. In fact, things are going quite well. The seven-year-old is enjoying school, the husband's his usual curmudgeonly self, and I remain happy and healthy. My mother has settled in beautifully in her new place, and having her there is an unmitigated blessing, for her and for us. All is well in RL-land. I had a few hours of actual paying work today. Some people I used to work with gave me a financial document to edit. It was very clean, made for light work, and gave me a chance to reminisce a little with my former co-worker. If I could be guaranteed a work environment like that, I might consider re-entering the corporate world at some point... On second thought, no. During the years I was a financial editor, there were just too many days when I sorely wished I could go all Integra Hellsing on someone's ass. Raise your hand if you've wanted to do to a co-worker what she did in the latest chapter (not much of a spoiler since we all know she doesn't take any crap from anyone). Yeah, thought so. Thanksgiving was great. How can I not love a day when my husband and mother-in-law do all the cooking, I get to break out my fancy dinnerware and crystal, and there's Beaujolais Nouveau aplenty? Can anyone explain to me just WHERE in SWEET HELL November has gone? It was there a minute ago... The weather has gotten cold, and I've begun putting bird seed out. Before it turned cold, I was concerned about the migrating visitors getting enough to eat, and now I want to make sure the critters get enough chow to keep them warm. I'm sure I'm kidding myself, as the squirrels out there are getting fatter by the minute and the 'hood's roving gang of mourning doves are going to eat me out of house and home. I like to think that I'm helping the local wildlife stay healthy and content through the winter, though. And dang, but those little blighters are fun to watch. | | Thursday, November 1st, 2007 | | 3:15 am |
Spooks and candy and neighbors, oh my!
Trick-or-treating with a bunch of grade-schoolers is like being dragged behind a truck. If humankind could harness the energy of a dozen sugar-buzzed little kids, Big Oil would go poof. Mercifully, after an hour and a half of running to keep up with the kids and yelling the obligatory parent stuff -- "Take only one!" "Remember to say thank you!" "Stop at the corner!" "Wait for the grown-ups to catch up!" -- we ended up at the house of one of the neighborhood Moms Gang. She and her husband had their barbecue grill fired up in the driveway and a sandwich buffet set up in the garage. While the kids ran around the back yard like bats out of you-know-where, we grown-ups chowed, drank beer, and admired the classic coconut bra sported by one of the neighbor dads. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my neighborhood? | | Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 | | 6:57 am |
I'm still here...
...and it's good to know that cyberspace is still here too, even though I've been neglecting it, and with it all of you. My apologies. These days, I'm thoroughly distracted by real life. The school year began with a flurry of activities, meetings, and events for both kids and parents. By the time the school stuff settled down, it was time to get to work on moving my mom out of her condo and into a very nice assisted living place right down the street from us. Yesterday was her first day there, and she seems to be settling in there well. Oh yeah, and I got my other eye fixed last Wednesday, hooray! It's a trip trying to stick to an eye drop schedule while spending days moving furniture and running errands. September's calendar page looks like a page out of a football play book. October's page is worse. And, oh geez, Halloween is next week. The seven-year-old has his costume lined up already, thank goodness, but I still need to work on decorations and stock up on candy. I already got a couple of pumpkins, but they're sitting inside on the back porch. Just one day outside on the front porch was enough for the squirrels to chew a six-inch hole in one of them, so they'll have to stay inside till the last minute if we want to have jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. Today there will be more errands with Mom, and a trip to the grocery store that I've been putting off for about three days too long. Somehow, someway, I have to find my way back to geekdom, though. I haven't written anything in forever. The latest Gargoyles comic and Hellsing OVA sit unread and unwatched, respectively, in my closet. And I have a to-do list for the convention that's a mile long. All that will have to wait still longer, though. The seven-year-old just woke up early, and it's time to start the day. | | Thursday, October 11th, 2007 | | 11:09 pm |
Ready! Set!! ...Faceplant!!!
OK, so today I was going to get TONS done! I was going to get the new Gargoyles comic, I was going to go to a great junk sale, I was going to run out to Schaumburg to take a load of Mom's stuff to my aunt-in-law's resale shop, I was going to cull another load of stuff out of my mom's place in anticipation of her move to an assisted-living place in a couple of weeks. I might even have been able to squeeze in a little lunch at Mitsuwa along the way. And Bobby wakes up with a rotten head cold, and I'm stuck at home all day with him. *thumps head against wall* To top it all off, I found out this evening that my cataract surgery (on the other eye, so that once again I'll be seeing out of two eyes) has been postponed from tomorrow morning till next week because the hospital is missing a spare part from its ophthalmic surgery equipment. *thumps head against wall some more* Oh well. Maybe I can do tomorrow some of what I wanted to do today, now that I won't be tied up in Evanston all morning. I sure was looking forward to being able to see clearly out of my right eye in time for the weekend, though. | | Monday, October 8th, 2007 | | 4:18 am |
Life On the North Side
The husband and I yelled ourselves hoarse at Wrigley Field Saturday night to no avail; the Cubs lost and their season is over. I can't say that I'm too crushed over it, to be honest. It's not like four years ago, when they were SO close. And these NLDS games were certainly three games that I would not have expected to see this year, given the way these bums played last season and began this one. But it's never fun to see the Cubs' season end (at least, it hasn't been fun to see the last 99 seasons end). It's OK by me if the Diamondbacks go to the Series. Or the Rockies. I don't have anything against either team and I don't much care one way or the other. I'll be rooting for the Indians or Red Sox over them, though. So once again, we wait till next year. Will the Cubs finally make it to the Series on the centennial of their last appearance? It would be exquisitely fitting. As Jack Brickhouse once said, "Anybody can have a bad century." | | Sunday, September 30th, 2007 | | 4:28 pm |
An open letter...
...to the New York National League baseball club. Dear Mets: *PTHBBBBBBBBB!* Sincerely, Every Cubs fan old enough to remember 1969 | | Saturday, September 29th, 2007 | | 3:09 am |
Who are these guys...
...and what have they done with the Cubs? I have to admit, I'm seriously impressed with Lou Pinella now. To take a team like last year's and somehow get their motley cans into the playoffs, that's some honest-to-goodness managerial skill. Nonetheless, I'm not terribly hopeful about my guys' chances in the playoffs. Yes, they have the weakest record of all the NL post-season teams. Yes, they've been streaky and inconsistent all year long, with a pitching staff that has a tendency to self-destruct and bats that tend to fall silent at times. But that's not what's really dooming them. Oh, no. The real reason they're going to tank in the playoffs is that my husband and I are jinxing them this year like we've never jinxed them before in our lives: We have not just playoff, but WORLD SERIES, tickets in hand.How'd we manage that? Long story involving the husband going in on some season tickets this year with a group of guys, and the partner of his friend's trading firm not being able to use the post-season tickets, and, "Hey Kenn and Ellen, do you guys want them?" So there they are, sitting on the dining room table. Printed with the Cubs logo and the words "World Series" side-by-side. Even if the inevitable befalls us and we don't use them, we're getting the little bastards framed. Now excuse me, I have to go get myself some smelling salts. | | Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 | | 10:31 am |
I'm back...
Physically, anyway. I still don't quite have my head in the game RL-wise, and in the area of cyber-matters I'm still drifting somewhere off the shore of Bora Bora. And I'm not even sure where Bora Bora is. But it was a great vacation. A good ending to a summer that, well, had its moments. I'll say it again -- if the stuff that goes wrong with me physically can be fixed as easily and well as my problems were/are, I'll take it. But I'm still frosted that I missed the Gathering. The day before we left for Wisconsin, the 7-year-old, my mother-in-law, and I went to the ballgame. Not only was the weather perfect, not only did the Cubs win, but we also saw a nifty air show from the Wrigley Field grandstand. The precision flying teams were out practicing for that weekend's lakefront air show, so there were some fancy-shmancy fly-bys, including one with afterburners gunned at exactly the right time to make everyone at the ballpark jump three feet in the air, players and spectators alike. At one point I had to write "jets" in one of the squares on my scorecard because I'd missed a play on the field while gawking at the Blue Angels. We met up with the husband after the game and all had dinner together at a local beer garden. We were getting ready to leave when in walked one of my cousins and her husband. Mom-in-law took Kiddo home, and the four of us delinquents had a couple of brews together. Good times. Door County was its usual gorgeous self, except that the area was suffering from a drought this summer, which was disturbing. It was a shame to see rows of parched corn in the fields. It rained while we were there, however, enough to restore some of the green to the meadows. The seven-year-old had a ball, especially the final weekend, when some other little kids came to visit their grandmother across the road and he had some playmates for a while. So now the kiddo's back in school (today's his second day of second grade), the husband's back at work, and I once again have my daily 5-6-hour window for doing things like getting reacquainted with the computer. I tried to get caught up on everyone's LJs, but it was like trying to empty Lake Michigan with Bobby's sand shovel. So to everyone whose LJ I failed to read and/or failed to comment on, my apologies. I strongly encourage you to post here and let me know what's been rocking your world lately, and I'll be happy to respond. | | Saturday, August 18th, 2007 | | 2:05 am |
Hello, I Must Be Going
For only two weeks, though. Tomorrow the boys and I are off on our annual vacation on the Lake Michigan shore of Door County, Wisconsin. Two weeks of beach and woods and fried perch and cheese curds. Bring it on. (The husband will have slightly less time than that up north, seeing as he must hop in the car in the early morning darkness on Monday and drive back to Chicago in time for the start of the trading day. He schedules his vacation for this time every year because the entire world is gone fishing. Wouldn't you know it, this year the financial markets choose this time to scream "Goodbye, cruel world" and hurl themselves off a cliff. The husband, you see, is an options trader, and the nature of his business is such that, when the markets are hitting the fan and flying at random, his firm makes enough money to keep the lights on for another year. Or three. Despite the opportunity inherent in blood running down La Salle Street, though, we do hope that the markets settle down, or at least fall into catatonic shock, early into next week so that the husband can rejoin us quickly.) I won't have Internet access while on vacation, so I'll be silent here until Labor Day or thereabouts. The seven-year-old begins school the day after the holiday, so I'll be on my daytimes-to-myself schedule then once again and will resume making my rounds of cyberspace -- especially now that I can read the computer screen not only without magnifying goggles, but without reading glasses even, because my eye doctor and Modern Medicine kick ass. | | Sunday, August 12th, 2007 | | 4:54 pm |
Heroes
I've been thinking that this has been a summer of things going wrong with me and getting fixed. It occurred to me Friday, however, that it would be more to the point to say that this has been a summer of heroes for me. The team of doctors who took an oddball infection in my neck in June and converted it from a potentially life-threatening situation to just another casualty of modern antibiotics were truly heroic to my family and me, as were the small army of nurses who ably carried out their marching orders. The latest addition to the pantheon now is my eye doctor. She's well trained in the care and maintenance of eyes, and this includes the performance of minute surgical procedures on those organs. She performed one of those procedures on my left eye Friday morning -- a routine, 15-minute procedure to rid me of the cataract that had formed in that eye. It was relatively minor surgery; the husband dropped me off at the hospital on his way to work, and I was home by lunchtime. But the fact remains that what this doctor did was to give me back my eyesight. You may have noticed that I haven't been around here lately. That was because reading and typing had become such a chore. I had to wear a magnifying visor just to see the letters on the keyboard, let alone the ones on the screen. I stopped reading my favorite geek forums, my friends' Live Journals, almost everything I enjoyed on line, because it had gotten so difficult. My doctor had told me that this kind of cataract deteriorated quickly, and she was right. I had stopped driving, stopped IM'ing, stopped signing onto AOL altogether. I practically counted the minutes until my surgery on Friday. I didn't have general anesthesia for the surgery, but the "twilight" I was put into had me good and buzzed. I remember very little of the procedure, and what I do remember was amazingly innocuous considering it involved roadwork on the surface of my eye. I felt almost nothing, and the recovery period involves extremely little in the way of altering my normal routine. Specifically, for the next couple of weeks I'm on a prescription eye drop schedule, I can't touch or rub my eye, and I have to wear a clear eye shield at night so that I don't rub my eye in my sleep. However, when I removed the gauze patch from my eye after I got home, I nearly wept with joy. All my life I've had sharp eyesight. That began to change with the onset of middle age, of course, and my need for reading glasses grew. But cataracts are different. They give one the impression of looking at the world through a frosted pane of glass, and the frost was increasing by the week for me. Intellectually, I knew that my condition was temporary, and easily fixed. Emotionally, though, I couldn't avoid feeling dismay when I realized I could no longer read a newspaper or magazine even with my glasses. Once the left eye is healed completely, in about a month, we'll turn our attention to the right eye. As it is now, I can't read these words here with my right eye; it's all fuzz. For my left eye, however, it's as if the clock has been turned back by years. Everything is crystal clear once again. So I'm back. Just in time to go on vacation, to be sure; we'll be in Wisconsin from the 18th to the day before Labor Day. But I'll be posting once again, and reading what you all are posting yourselves. And I'll be enjoying every bit of it. | | Friday, June 22nd, 2007 | | 1:51 pm |
Relaxing Weekend
A little too relaxing. This, of course, was the long weekend I was going to spend in Pigeon Forge, at the Gathering. Too bad my lymph nodes had other plans. I'm not at all happy to be missing the convention, but my antibiotics make me just drowsy enough that I know I wouldn't handle the pace well at this point. Thanks, everyone, for sending good thoughts and wishes my way. I appreciate it very much. You're all terrific. | | Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 | | 7:22 am |
Life Number Four
Number one began when I was born, of course. Number two began when I walked away from a rollover wreck on a German highway 27 years ago virtually unscathed. (Don't tell my mom; she still doesn't know.) The superb engineering of the Volkswagen in which I was riding allowed the vehicle to skid on its roof a good hundred feet without collapsing, and as a result we occupants suffered only minor injuries, if any. The Mercedes that had had a blowout at just the right moment to clip us in the rear likewise had skidded to a safe stop in the ditch. All ended well, but it was enough to make me take a good, long look at the very purpose of my being here. Number three began when I awoke from surgery 13 years ago after having gone to the hospital emergency room with absolutely awful abdominal pains. It was a ruptured diverticulum, and bowel resectioning was the solution. The surgeon was flabbergasted; young, healthy people like me shouldn't get things like that. But he had been able to take me apart and put me back together, and to this day my innards have been fine. If it hadn't been for modern medicine and my access to it, however, the infection would have spread within me, quickly and easily, and my story would have ended there. The Friday before last, I was awakened early in the morning by a large, horribly painful lump on the side of my neck. It was an infected lymph node that turned out to require eight days in the hospital to conquer. CAT scans, ultrasounds, surgery to drain the abscess, and carpet-bombing with antibiotics, all to keep the infection at bay -- the infection itself was easy enough to deal with, but left unchecked it could easily have spread to my bloodstream due to its location on my neck. Once again, if not for modern medicine, I'd likely be pushing up the daisies by now. And so begins life number four. I'd like to think that I have five more (at least), and that they'll be expended over a long time. In the meantime, though, I once again got close enough to the edge to peer over into the abyss. Now that I'm back home and recovering nicely, housework has never looked so good to me. | | Sunday, May 27th, 2007 | | 6:59 am |
Clarifying
Thanks, everyone, for your well-wishes. You're all so sweet. The fact is, thanks to modern medicine and technology, cataract surgery is very minor and extremely successful these days. I won't even have to wear patches over my eyes while they heal. My mother had the same surgery performed about 15 years ago, and she was delighted with how well she could see afterward -- even better than before her cataracts began developing. And here's the kicker: it turns out that the doctor who will be doing the surgery is a neighbor of ours. She lives on the next block down from us, and one of her kids is in my son's class at school. :) | | Thursday, May 24th, 2007 | | 5:50 pm |
Getting Old, Falling Apart, and Other Trivia
I need cataract surgery. On both eyes. >.< Yeah, I'm an old fart. In other news, con planning is coming along well. It looks like we have a hotel lined up, but I'm not going to post any details here until we sign on the dotted line. Gotta get in touch with all the folks who have kindly offered to help us out with G'08 (that includes a number of you reading this). Eye appointments this week threw me off track with that. | | Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 | | 9:37 am |
| | Monday, May 14th, 2007 | | 11:06 pm |
Busy, Busy, Busy
You know, I can really, really do without my kid ever having stomach flu again. Ever. Really. Seriously. *Sigh* That was last week. He's fine now, needless to say. And life made it up to me over the weekend when I got a chance to chat with Greg Weisman, who was in town for the Anime Central convention. Susan and I got together with him, and he gave us some great tips about running a Gathering. And, of course, he was his usual humorous, affable self. Good times. Tonight...I'm just plain beat. Mother's Day was great -- the husband took the grandmas and me out to dinner at one of our favorite local spots. Today I was just toast, though, but nevertheless had to clean the house because we had the grandmas and the brother-in-law, who had just returned from a vacation in Belgium, over for a cookout. More good times, but man oh man. Stick a fork in me. Looking forward to Bobby-at-school time tomorrow. Need to get caught up on a variety of geekage. | | Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 | | 9:22 am |
Now It Can Be Told
Now that it's been officially announced, I'm delighted to confirm that, yes, Susan Leonard and I are twisted enough to have volunteered to organize the 2008 Gathering here in Chicago. To those of you who are Gargoyles fans: Show up. You know you want to. To those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about: The Gathering is a small-scale anime-type fan convention that takes place over a long weekend. We talk about art, writing, animation, and comics; we ask Greg Weisman embarrassing questions about the personal habits of his characters, and we just geek out and have a good time. To all of you: Feel free to ask questions. I'll be happy to fill you in however I can at this very early stage of planning. |
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