The last couple of months I've been really busy. Had my 50th and we managed a party one week before the date. Turned out perfect, we had it at a park and the weather was just right, not cold or hot, just comfortable and there was a beautiful lake view there. Little tribute to my Mom with yellow roses on the tables, they were her favorite. My sister did the decorations, made Mom's macaroni salad and brought a big chocolate cake! She also gave me an HD TV for a present. That was literally a jawdropper of a gift! There were about 14 guests, mostly my friends from chorus. We got so busy chatting that I forgot to ask if we could sing something for my sister, she's only heard them sing Happy Birthday, which of course they sang again for me.

On my actual birthday I was in Appleton, WI at Harmony Inc.'s Int'l Contest and Convention. It was the day of the chorus competitions and Randy got the whole place to sing Happy Birthday to me! That's a memory I'll treasure for years to come, that about 1,000 people sang to me for my 50th! Randy said she knew the MC (and the MC was a bass, which Randy is too). We found a fab Italian restaurant a few blocks down the street. I also acted as the chorus' delegate for the meeting and learned what is coming up and in the works for Harmony. I did attend a class for section leaders. I also watched the finals of the quartet competition and all of the chorus competition.

Since then our chorus has done 2 Holiday shows, within one week, which we did last year too and both times it wiped me out. I am just now coming down with the cold Don has had for about a week. Zicam is a big help. There are other performances at retirement and convalescent homes, but I only signed up for the shows, the fibro hits hard and fast of late. I want to take a leave of absence, but Randy is worried I won't come back. She wants me to just drop being the asst. section leader. I'm going to talk to Lisa about it, I'm her assistant and she would have to find someone else. To me it seems logical that I am doing too much if it doesn't take much to push me into fatigue. I have given up SCA because it was hard for me to do the camping and to maintain a persona. I wanted to hang with the bards, but wasn't really a bard myself; I didn't feel like there was a place where I fit.

I also did NaNoWriMo n November and finally finished over the 50,000 words, although it wasn't all from the novel I wanted to work on, since my muse deserted me after one plot twist. I did most of my niece's story and also threw in my sci fi spy story. It was hard because Randy didn't want to see me sitting around at the convention, etc. That was a change, since normally she's very supportive of my writing. But she had bought my All Events Pass and wanted me to take advantage of the opportunity. It was an amazing time!

About 2 weeks ago on Saturday our Skittle girl went missing. She's always such a bright spirit and the house seemed too quiet. Don felt terrible, because he had let her out, but that could have been any one of us. We continued to try calling her over the next few days, I know I felt like she was out there and that hearing us would give her the heart to try and get home. Randy was afraid she was giving up late that Sunday night, so we went outside and sent her love and energy. After that we both felt better. On Monday we began calling the shelters. She and Don had the neighborhood plastered with signs! Randy actually went to one shelter, because one cat sounded as if it might be her. However, it turned out that the cat was a male. She came back home and was about to check one more time in the garage, when Skittle came flying around the corner of the garages! We think she got shut in somewhere and couldn't get out until Monday. She had a scuff on one ear where the fur was worn off, but otherwise not a mark on her. Thank you God! She was as happy to see us as we were to have her back! She was torn between getting pets from Randy & I and eating as fast as she could gobble. The only one who wasn't upset over her going missing was Tyler and she has been snarling at Skittle even more than usual. Too bad Skittle is so observant of cat etiquette, because she could knock Tyler into next week if she wanted to and Tyler deserves it!

I hate when technology is stupid! I just wrote an entire post and lost it. The options I had were Save Now and Post. I wanted to edit, so I went back a page and that only went to my blog's main page. Dam!

I did complete the 2 week SBD initial phase and lost about 8 lbs. This past week I seem to have regained 6, so I was really bummed out. I ate my feelings, 2 extra pcs. of KFC chicken, an extra roll, a peanut butter and SF jam sandwich and 2 snack-size Hershey bars worth. Not one of my more mature responses. I WILL lose this weight somehow. I discovered that often I am undereating; many days my calories were in the 650-850 range, when I should be around 1200-1500 a day. Maybe I need to figure things out beforehand, to make sure I get everything I need.

I have been writing, yay! This third children's story is for my sweet niece, Taylor. The two I wrote for a chorus member are on a bad external drive, I may have to pay to get them off. I was so happy about moving all that stuff off the laptop, too! I think that anytime it's something important, I'm just going to have to store it online as well. If I run out of room, I can always set up another account somewhere.

Well, here it is after noon and I'm still up. I think I'll go eat some breakfast and then go to bed. Yes, I am backwards; I'm an ELN (Extreme Late Nighter) who sleeps in the day.

Finally, Some News That Would Make Robert Fulghum Proud and Some That is Making Catholics Cringe

Remember that great book, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? Well here is a medical blog entry that upholds one of its premises. Napping Makes You Smarter! Who knew? I do remember that when I was in 1st Grade a family friend took care of me after school and she wanted to do the right thing, so she would try and get me to practice my printing and spelling. It would just put me in the worst mood! I complained to my mom and she asked the sweet lady not to push me. See, if I'd just taken a nap, it would have been all better. I think I should write and tell her so. Yes, her name is Iris; she has outlived my mother by more that 20 years and I still write her when I can. So, she did get me to write, and spell well, after all!

A few years after that, while I was in 3rd grade, my mom came into possession of a 6th grade reader, because she worked for the church and, by extension, the parochial school I attended. I started reading it with perfect comprehension and my love for reading was born. Not much longer after that I began running out of reading materials, but not before I read all the way through the sex education book my mom had bought to read to me. She had paperclipped the more explicit pages together, but I read those too. Soon she had to declare even the Reader's Digest Condensed Books in our book cupboard okay for me to read. She would caution me, after a trip to the library, to ration my reading, but once I got started I couldn't stop.

Speaking of sex education at a young age, Fox 25 News in Boston announced that the city has a problem with a billboard too close to the Catholic School in Dorchester. You can see the piece they did on it here...Condom Billboard Placement Leaves Residents Shaking Heads. I have mixed thoughts on this one. For one thing, the last I heard the Catholic Church was still not condoning birth control, but these kids will have to face that reality sooner or later. With kids experimenting with sex earlier and earlier, maybe it's not such a bad idea. The lady who runs the nearby daycare center says she doesn't want to have to explain it to her 8 year old son, though. And, obviously the Church has some clout, because the last thing the reporter says is that the billboard will be gone by the time school starts!

Mini-brainstorm

I had a brainstorm yesterday. Nothing earth-shaking, but it solves a problem in the household. When I have my laptop in the living room, I need the light on to see the keyboard, but using the overhead light bothers Randy and the only lamp in the room is next to the couch she stretches out on. I have been waiting to get to Borders, because the chorus gave me a $20 gift card as my 'retiring president' gift, but today we decided to go to the mall, because Randy got a little massager that was perfect for doing acupressure points, but it had stopped working before 2 days had gone by and she wanted to return it. (Wait for it, I'm gonna connect these in a minute! ;) Today is her birthday and I wanted to get her a gift. Anyway, I also realized that Borders and Waldenbooks are the same company, so I went to the one in the mall and got...Tah-Dah...a book light, a well as another Pern book by Anne and Todd McCaffrey. The book light clips neatly on the laptop, the LED should never burn out and it uses AAA batteries. I can see what I need to without turning the overhead light on, we save electricity and Randy will be happy that it isn't shining in her eyes! Oh, and her gift is very cool, I found a commuter mug that plugs into the lighter socket! She will love it, if the bottom of the mug fits well into the cup holder; which it looks like is should!

Went to CVS. You may have read my previous rant on that subject; things have improved some, although the one pharmacist continues to make things more difficult when he can. Anyway, I now have become chatty with the pharmacy asst. whom we have nicknamed 'Fishface' (although not to her face) and I mentioned that I will be transferring to Medi-Cal once the SSI kicks in and asked if the RX coverage is better. Turns out they only cover 6 RXs a month and the rest have to be done as TARs (Treatment Authorization Releases)! Eek, that will be 6 or more TARs for my Dr. to write up. I thought this was going to be better and now come to find out it may be harder to get the meds I need! I will try and not stress out about this until I have confirmed this as a fact and see if my Dr. is bothered by it. I'm sure she has other patients on Medi-Cal.

Yesterday I actually got my annual letter written. I always have great intentions of writing to my friends and family more often, but it rarely ever happens. Huh, kind of like my novel writing. Right now I am waiting until I get the desk in my room, because I feel very self-conscious about talking to the computer in front of Don & Randy. Silly, I know, but there it is, it's a problem. I have emailed the link (I publish it online for my web-savvy friends and family) to a bunch of people and now have to sit down and figure out whose emails have become defunct and whether or not I have alternate contact info for them. Next I begin printing it and mailing it out to those holdouts who still use snail mail. That reminds me...I need to add to that letter that my cell phone is not working right and I need people's phone numbers. Dang, I loved having all my numbers in the cell phone, because I used to have to carry a sheet of my most often called numbers. We'll see what kind of a settlement I get; I may just replace the stupid thing. I also saw a cute little Dell laptop (the Dell XPS M1210, to be precise) at the mall that I want to check out, it is way smaller, which would be an advantage; this one is heavy and bulkier than my old ThinkPad, which surprised me. Oh the plans I have for that money! I'm guessing/hoping that it will be around $9,000. I'll have a whopper tithe, most of which will go to the little Costa Mesa church I had to give up going to when the drive became too much.

Tomorrow I plan to start the South Beach plan. I only have to give up bread and potatoes and after 2 weeks whole grain bread is allowed. Yams are allowed, but the baked potato will now be relegated to an infrequent treat, sigh. Tonight we are going to D&B's with Eben, since it is his birthday this week also. Must go check my email now.

TTFN