Busy Few Days
We're gearing up for Thanksgiving.
The eye infection came back, went away with the new drops, but the ophthalmologist checked my eye pressure today and figured out that the pressure's high enough in my eye, to qualify for glaucoma. We're staying with the drops to clear this stuff up, but then we're going to do a thorough check and make sure there's no nerve damage.
Nice thing was knowing that the infection didn't move into the eye itself, and the doc's pretty clear about it not really being something hidden. Instead, it's a combination of going cold turkey off the steroid drops (dropping from 4 a day to nothing) and, possibly, my reinfecting them by using my old antihistamine drops when my eyes got irritated after the last round, since this time BOTH eyes got it.
The biggest thing was that darkprism_fics and I managed to basically pull a Nanowrimo novel out of out novel. The amazing thing is that, besides one pulled scene, most of those words aren't ones we actually miss... *blinks mildly* We're both getting much better at honing the words down to just the story, and it's almost frightening.
It's also interesting to realize that we wrote this in April, and only now getting to go at it with all the knowledge we've accumulated since then. It's nice having a partner that learns as quickly as I do. I've been very fortunate, recently, to have lots of writing partners that want things right and solid as well as written.
We finished on Thursday and nearly fell over.
On Tuesday Isabel and George arrived after a safe flight, and Jet and I went down to Boulder to pick them up from the bus stop. They've been very understanding of my need to Finish the Big Edit, and they've been really having a lot of fun sharing our lives with us lately. That's been great.
On Wednesday was the cumulation of a bunch of effort myJohn's been doing for the Longmont project to end homelessness here in ten years. There is a youth theater organization called "Stage Fright", some members of which are in the various projects around the city to house those on lower incomes and who need a little support as they find their own way out of poverty. They put on a production Wednesday night, their interpretation of what relationships mean to the homeless. It was very emotionally powerful, if high school rough. John had worked with them for the last few months getting that together.
He's also been working with the Circles program, which is a national program of building communities to end poverty. It's an 18 month program and every participant is someone in poverty that wants to get out enough to start their own group, to go to the trouble of the meetings, and commit to the idea that they need and want the relationships provided to help them work out of the situation that they've found themselves in.
On one of the Sundays there was a motivational speaker who talked about decisions that successful people make in order to be successful. And one of the decisions is to choose the people that one is with. Not because they love you for who you are and accept you as you are, but people that really challenge you to be *better* than you have been and help make decisions that are better than you could make alone. I rather liked that idea, and it's one that the whole Circles champaign is about, getting people that need better decisions, good advice on how to improve their lives, the kinds of people that really want to help them.
It doesn't take that much from each of the mentors, which is nice. John just goes to meetings once a month, rather than every week, and he gets to form a real relationship with a real person and walk with them, be there for them, for a long time. He finds an enormous amount of satisfaction in that.
So I went to the play, and cheered them on, and it was good. Isabel and George went to see the set, meet the actors, and talk with folks the afternoon beforehand, and they took care of Jet while I got to see the play. That was wonderful of them.
Thursday was Jet's GT "Invention Convention".
Isabel asked him what "GT" meant, and he answered, very confidently, "Genetics and Talents."
*laughs and laughs*
Though he's on the right track in some ways. It's supposed to be the gifted and talented program, something extra to challenge the really smart kids, and several 100 of them all invented *something* and made a board up to explain what it was they did and why they did it, and, on Thursday night, they all got to show them off and try to explain things to lots of other kids and adults. Jet had a blast at it, and his partner, Ryan, had as much fun as they used their enormous cheese cutter to cut cheddar for crackers for anyone that wanted it. They had designed the whole thing, had a little help from John in building it, but it was really their idea, which was really cool.
That night Isabel and George took us out to dinner at Pinocchio's, one of the better Italian restaurants in Longmont, and it was in celebration of finishing the editing phase. That was really sweet of them, and we toasted the 'finished' (at least for now) novel. That was fun.
Today, I "took off". I had the eye doctor appointment first thing in the morning, then mailed some birthday socks, went to Best Buy to try and find a new headset (as I'd tripped over the wire of my old ones and broke them and use them every day), and then went back out with John to do that errand as Best Buy didn't open until 10. We dropped things off at a dozen places, got Isabel and George to the Soup Kitchen where they worked today, and we even got me a pint of Irish Cream when we happened by a drive-thru liquor store. I've never done that before, but the man behind the counter was nice about offering a cheaper version of Irish cream. Hey, at half the price, it was worth a try.
It was nice to be able to have John there to talk over all the points for and against two headsets and how I've been using them for the last few months. I loved just being able to bounce all that off of him and have it finally make sense.
We went to the grocery store after that. Feeding five mouths is fun, just takes a little more planning than just three, and we ended up with a teriyaki chicken dinner for everyone that everyone really liked. It's Jet's favorite and everyone else approved nicely as well. After that, and a pizza lunch, I went to take a nap and pretty much fell unconscious for two hours. I couldn't wake up when the alarm went off, and everyone else went to get Jet from the bus stop. That worked out all right, and I got up when he got home, and we played some Okami before I had to make dinner.
With four adults in the house, Jet is pretty happy. It doesn't hurt that he's going to get all of next week off, either, and will have plenty of attention while he's on vacation.
We'll probably figure out some adventures for the days off, too.
But it's kind of nice to be done with a Big Project, and take some time off.
I'm thankful for my family, for my in-laws, for my writing partner, for my ability to see, for what I can do still. I really enjoyed knitting the pair of socks and have a few more planned. Might even be able to post a picture soon, too.
I really want to be able to paint a little in the next few days and get some more paintings backed and ready for the show. That should be a good little project for the holidays around Turkey and making dinner for a dozen on Thursday.
Hope everyone in the US that celebrates Thanksgiving has a good one!!
The eye infection came back, went away with the new drops, but the ophthalmologist checked my eye pressure today and figured out that the pressure's high enough in my eye, to qualify for glaucoma. We're staying with the drops to clear this stuff up, but then we're going to do a thorough check and make sure there's no nerve damage.
Nice thing was knowing that the infection didn't move into the eye itself, and the doc's pretty clear about it not really being something hidden. Instead, it's a combination of going cold turkey off the steroid drops (dropping from 4 a day to nothing) and, possibly, my reinfecting them by using my old antihistamine drops when my eyes got irritated after the last round, since this time BOTH eyes got it.
The biggest thing was that darkprism_fics and I managed to basically pull a Nanowrimo novel out of out novel. The amazing thing is that, besides one pulled scene, most of those words aren't ones we actually miss... *blinks mildly* We're both getting much better at honing the words down to just the story, and it's almost frightening.
It's also interesting to realize that we wrote this in April, and only now getting to go at it with all the knowledge we've accumulated since then. It's nice having a partner that learns as quickly as I do. I've been very fortunate, recently, to have lots of writing partners that want things right and solid as well as written.
We finished on Thursday and nearly fell over.
On Tuesday Isabel and George arrived after a safe flight, and Jet and I went down to Boulder to pick them up from the bus stop. They've been very understanding of my need to Finish the Big Edit, and they've been really having a lot of fun sharing our lives with us lately. That's been great.
On Wednesday was the cumulation of a bunch of effort myJohn's been doing for the Longmont project to end homelessness here in ten years. There is a youth theater organization called "Stage Fright", some members of which are in the various projects around the city to house those on lower incomes and who need a little support as they find their own way out of poverty. They put on a production Wednesday night, their interpretation of what relationships mean to the homeless. It was very emotionally powerful, if high school rough. John had worked with them for the last few months getting that together.
He's also been working with the Circles program, which is a national program of building communities to end poverty. It's an 18 month program and every participant is someone in poverty that wants to get out enough to start their own group, to go to the trouble of the meetings, and commit to the idea that they need and want the relationships provided to help them work out of the situation that they've found themselves in.
On one of the Sundays there was a motivational speaker who talked about decisions that successful people make in order to be successful. And one of the decisions is to choose the people that one is with. Not because they love you for who you are and accept you as you are, but people that really challenge you to be *better* than you have been and help make decisions that are better than you could make alone. I rather liked that idea, and it's one that the whole Circles champaign is about, getting people that need better decisions, good advice on how to improve their lives, the kinds of people that really want to help them.
It doesn't take that much from each of the mentors, which is nice. John just goes to meetings once a month, rather than every week, and he gets to form a real relationship with a real person and walk with them, be there for them, for a long time. He finds an enormous amount of satisfaction in that.
So I went to the play, and cheered them on, and it was good. Isabel and George went to see the set, meet the actors, and talk with folks the afternoon beforehand, and they took care of Jet while I got to see the play. That was wonderful of them.
Thursday was Jet's GT "Invention Convention".
Isabel asked him what "GT" meant, and he answered, very confidently, "Genetics and Talents."
*laughs and laughs*
Though he's on the right track in some ways. It's supposed to be the gifted and talented program, something extra to challenge the really smart kids, and several 100 of them all invented *something* and made a board up to explain what it was they did and why they did it, and, on Thursday night, they all got to show them off and try to explain things to lots of other kids and adults. Jet had a blast at it, and his partner, Ryan, had as much fun as they used their enormous cheese cutter to cut cheddar for crackers for anyone that wanted it. They had designed the whole thing, had a little help from John in building it, but it was really their idea, which was really cool.
That night Isabel and George took us out to dinner at Pinocchio's, one of the better Italian restaurants in Longmont, and it was in celebration of finishing the editing phase. That was really sweet of them, and we toasted the 'finished' (at least for now) novel. That was fun.
Today, I "took off". I had the eye doctor appointment first thing in the morning, then mailed some birthday socks, went to Best Buy to try and find a new headset (as I'd tripped over the wire of my old ones and broke them and use them every day), and then went back out with John to do that errand as Best Buy didn't open until 10. We dropped things off at a dozen places, got Isabel and George to the Soup Kitchen where they worked today, and we even got me a pint of Irish Cream when we happened by a drive-thru liquor store. I've never done that before, but the man behind the counter was nice about offering a cheaper version of Irish cream. Hey, at half the price, it was worth a try.
It was nice to be able to have John there to talk over all the points for and against two headsets and how I've been using them for the last few months. I loved just being able to bounce all that off of him and have it finally make sense.
We went to the grocery store after that. Feeding five mouths is fun, just takes a little more planning than just three, and we ended up with a teriyaki chicken dinner for everyone that everyone really liked. It's Jet's favorite and everyone else approved nicely as well. After that, and a pizza lunch, I went to take a nap and pretty much fell unconscious for two hours. I couldn't wake up when the alarm went off, and everyone else went to get Jet from the bus stop. That worked out all right, and I got up when he got home, and we played some Okami before I had to make dinner.
With four adults in the house, Jet is pretty happy. It doesn't hurt that he's going to get all of next week off, either, and will have plenty of attention while he's on vacation.
We'll probably figure out some adventures for the days off, too.
But it's kind of nice to be done with a Big Project, and take some time off.
I'm thankful for my family, for my in-laws, for my writing partner, for my ability to see, for what I can do still. I really enjoyed knitting the pair of socks and have a few more planned. Might even be able to post a picture soon, too.
I really want to be able to paint a little in the next few days and get some more paintings backed and ready for the show. That should be a good little project for the holidays around Turkey and making dinner for a dozen on Thursday.
Hope everyone in the US that celebrates Thanksgiving has a good one!!