The most recent chemo wasn't doing the job. (It took them a while to figure it out because hospital A would only look at hospital B's scans if they were snail-mailed on a CD, even though they could be accessed online.  'Sakes.)  The remaining options all have nasty side effects and won't cure Mom anyway.  So, she's stopped treatment.  Quality of ( Read more... )

Today we went to the Badger Steam & Gas Engine Club's annual show.  Z and K were there for the whole day; I went for just the afternoon.

This year's...um...special guest engines?...were Rumelys, like the ones shown here.  I arrived just in time for the parade ( Read more... )

...was last weekend.  Z and C couldn't make it, but head-injury D spent at least as much time at the con as I did.  Saw others we knew there as well, and got in a few games of Dominion before heading over to listen to one of the many bands ( Read more... )

Despite luggage-packing fails, rotary-cutter injuries, and a bleary-eyed drive to the hotel (at 6pm on a Thursday), Teslacon was fun.  I missed a lot of things I'd intended to go to, but the company was excellent.  I only made it to one panel, but it was a good one, on lesser-known great women of the Victorian era ( Read more... )

...more squash soup.  This time with carrot juice instead of apple cider, plus bacon, onion, garam masala, fenugreek, and salt.  The immersion blender does a nice job of pureeing bacon.  Bacon puree is definitely a concept worth exploring further.  Housemate informs me that the soup goes well with the mess-o-fry that I did a couple days earlier ( ( Read more... )

• went to friend's house near Baraboo for part of a weekend...dug holes and set twenty fenceposts for a dog run, but did not get much writing done.  The ground was very soft, so the digging went fast.  But I was stupid and wore shorts into a poison ivy zone.  There is a "poison ivy wash" one can get at Walgreen's...$34/tube, but it really does remove ( Read more... )

The Prestige (a.k.a. That's an Awful Lot of Top Hats) is on IFC tonight, so I'm re-watching.  It's one of my favorite movies:  devotion, obsession, and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla.  And it's a movie that stands up to re-watching, because there's plenty that's missed the first time through:  misdirection used to tell a story about people who live ( Read more... )

After talking with people and thinking it over some more, I contacted Lord B. and brought up the potential legal issues of me making cookies for tea room.  I didn't want to leave him hanging, so I offered to procure store-bought (or bakery-baked) tea treats on his behalf, if needed.  It isn't needed; they have things well in hand ( Read more... )

I need to talk to Lord B. again, to make sure the idea of me making cookies won't be tripped up by any technical details.  For starters, this is not a professional kitchen - I'd looked at the WI rules for food prep when I was considering a farmer's market table, and I don't think I could legally prepare commercial items in my kitchen.  It's a ( Read more... )

My reaction to excessive work seems to be to pile on the non-work "fun" deadlines.  It's a questionable (and potentially exhausting) coping mechanism, but it does keep me from wallowing, doing too much overtime, or being quite as irked by the ham-handed methods used to address "work-life balance" at my place of employment ( Read more... )