twcs

I spent most of the last week helping my sister write the following:
http://www.legacy.com/TheDay/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=124960255

Had a job interview today - well, actually, three sequential interviews at one company.  I have no idea how they went.  I never do.  They didn't feel like bomb interviews so I'm thinking that maybe they'll call back and ask me up to interview at their drilling operation, which is where I'd be working.  They look like a great place to work (though I thought that about the jerks who just laid me off too).  Geez, I'm SO CHEERFUL at the moment.  Sour milk is probably better company right now, to be honest.

I've lost enough enough weight from not being able to eat after the attack of the "ulcerettes"  (borborygmus in 7 part harmony???) that I had to go buy a new suit yesterday - after putting on my old one and having the skirt fall down after zipping it up.  Just what I wanted to do - spend more money while being laid off.

It's actually not all that bad, to be absolutely truthful (pain in the butt, those truth bits, just when I want to soak the meladrama for all it's worth...).  The lawyer for the estate said last friday not to worry about money in case the bank account got to empty before  found a new job.  So that big worry is no longer really a worry.  I knew the estate was substantial - I didn't know it was THAT substantial (and the funds that would be available if I needed them would be from just the currently-liquid portion of the estate - I won't have an idea of the total worth for many months yet since there are 5 different trusts that have to be consolidated down to two.  The legal paperwork I've been going through over the last week and a half has been rather intense...

So just to keep life dull and boring, my oldest kitty decided to get sick and not keep anything down for many days last week, including water, so the weekend was spent, stuffing pills down his throat, force feeding him and sticking an IV into him to keep him hydrated (I'm an old hand at doing the IV bags of lactated Ringer's on cats - long story, let's skip it for now).  Well he's eating gain and not barfing anymore even without drugs - which is good - but he still needs hydration, so after dinner it's IV time again.

And right now, I'm in the middle of an optical migraine.  Well, at least I don't get the headache migraine variety, which is a blessing.  But it's weird sitting around for an hour or so not being able to really see anything clearly.

I could really use some good news for a change.  Grump grump grump.
Okay, that's my ration for the pity pot for the day.

My mother landed in the hospital last night and died very early this morning - completely and totally unexpected.  She got dizzy, called the ambulance, and lost consciousness on the ride to the ER.  She never felt any pain and nor woke back up, which is a mercy.  Primary cause of death was internal abdomenal bleeding and the underlying cause was unsuspected and undiagnosed metasticized cancer.  We're going to be doing a repeat of what we did for my father when he died and bury mom at sea from off the former Helm family yacht,  which means I don't have to drop everything and rush out to Connecticut because the arrangements will take some time.  I'll have to go soon enough because of the estate paperwork and rescuing the remainder of my stuff out of my parents' house.  Now that will be horrific - cleaning 55 years of mess out of that big three story colonial.

My sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, was reasonable and civil on the phone when she called.  I can't decide which is more shocking: my mother dying suddenly or my sister being nice to me for the first time in 30 years.

I had a telephone interview today for the rig job in Arkansas.  It sounded like a lot of fun.  If I think about it too long, I get scared...

Oh my God - ARKANSAS???  I must be going crazy...

I'm losing track of how many applications I've sent out

Thursday I applied for more enviro jobs in California - but so far, no nibbles

Yesterday I applied for a rig job in Arkansas.  I would be surprised if I didn't get at least an interview.  Rig-side geology is a cake walk.

Today I applied for an R&D geophysics job in Vermont, which is just about the most improbable place you could imagine to find a geophysics job.  I suspect some kid from MIT or its ilk will get it.

Out of the batch, I'd like the one in Vermont.  I miss my mountains and I miss my snow.
The downside is that it would put my mother within easy driving distance.

If you type into your Google search bar "convert 140 grams to ounces"
you get: 

140 grams = 4.93835467 ounces

If you type "convert 140 grams to slugs" you get:

140 grams = 0.00959304722 slugs

If you type "convert 140 grams/cc to slugs/hogshead" you get:

140 (grams / cc) = 2 287.75894 slugs / hogsheads

If you type "convert 140 ft/sec to furlongs/fortnight" you get:

140 (feet / sec) = 256 581.818 furlongs / fortnight

and if you type "convert 140 pennyweight to stone" you get:

140 pennyweight = 0.0342857143 stone

but wait! There's more!  howabout conversions to the all import unit of mil!

140 furlongs = 1 108 800 000 mil

It gets even better!!!!

140 ((cubic feet) / sec) = 0.294515402 (cubic furlongs) / week

this of course leads me to convert these most common of force:

1 pound force = 5.09468454 × 10⁹ (stone furlong) / (fortnight squared)

though it seems that the pressure of these conversions is getting out of hand:

1 psi = 1.61399606 × 10¹⁴ stone / (hand (fortnight squared))

Google is obviously populated by my kind of nerd  ;-)

Two and a half weeks and no job yet.  The only upside is that my boss guilted the management into three weeks more pay - so there's a little more leeway before having to decide what to do with the house.  I'm going to miss working for David.  He's definitely one of the best bosses I've had.  The whole office is laid off including David too.  He's flying out to Qatar  in a couple of weeks to pick up some temporary drill rig work.

My favorite headhunter isn't working right now.  He's got cancer and just had surgery.  Bummer.

There look to be a lot of enviro jobs in the Bay Area.  Despite my dislike of field-work level enviro work, I started sending out resumes.  I may break down and take some temporary work mud logging.  I hate mud logging

Don't know why but I've been thinking about Cealhmain all day and how much I miss him.  Maybe it's because tomorrow is the 12th anniversary of Neal's and Brendan's murder.

I've been so grumpy lately that Sean got me flowers yesterday.  How did I ever get so lucky to find a guy like him?

I got approached to write something for a proposed CA "natural philosophy" anthology along the lines of my earlier essay on the nature of medieval art and science.  Of course, the ego said yes before the common sense could catch up...

Crap.
<sarcasm> I so glad I'm such an optimist -  why, the glass is half full!  </sarcasm>

Today the glass is definitely [greater than or equal to] half-empty.  I'm in such a lousy mood.

So let's play "good news, bad news"!  (barfola!)
The Bad News:
The people who own the company I work for decided to close the Houston office.  I and everyone else in the office has been laid off.  If I can't find employment within 8 weeks, we will probably lose the house.

This beautiful house is the one thing that could keep me in Texas.  I emptied my life savings to buy this house.  I love my house.  It's big, really really big.  Every bedroom has a walk-in closet. You could hold a small fighter practice in the living room.  I look out over the lake from my living room, bedroom and porch.  If Sean gets home before 6:30, we throw our beautiful hand-built all-wood tandem kayak in the water.  I have pecan trees in my yard.  The fishing is awesome.  Sometimes I wake up early to fish before  work.  It's on a double lot.  You could hold BART practice in my yard.   I would really miss my house if I can't find a job with a salary that would let me to meet the mortgage payment or if I took a position outside of the Houston area.

If I don't have any offers by March 1, the house will be for sale.

If the geothermal funding in the stimulus package survives Congress intact, my former boss at the lab will hire me back.  Sean could walk straight into ISU's PhD program in biochemistry - that's a given.  They want him - they told him that already.

The downside is that Sean doesn't like Idaho nor does he like the Mormon-dominated culture (and he's from a Mormon family)!  Neither of us are fond of the SCA in Artemisia and would probably stop playing if we moved back there.  And, of course, we would have to sell our wonderful house on Lake Conroe in Texas.

The Good News:
The doctor types are mostly happy with me.  We have nailed the elevated morning blood sugar problem.  I probably don't have pre-diabetes.  What's going on is called "Dawn Phenomenon."  Since I don't have diabetes, suffering from Dawn Phenomenon is not a concern.  And I can now start putting foods on the verbotten list back into my diet - only not too fast.  I had chocolate on my birthday and survived.  I can now drink more than one cup of decaff a day.  I also survived dairy products in small quantities last week.  And I can eat onions again.

The flip side is that the fat situation has not improved.  My liver is still unhappy with me.  My primary doctor wants me to lose some more weight because that might actually get the liver to work a bit better.  And health insurance is now up on the air unless Sean can get us both enrolled on the Texas A&M.  This would be a bad time to be without health insurance or to have insurance that excludes pre-existing conditions.  I'm holding off on getting some tests done because of the uncertainty in the insurance department - and that sucks big time.

It's been a really sucky week so far.
 

Saw Brittain's Midsummer's Night Dream at the Houston Opera on Sunday.  The Puck wasn't as good as the one we saw in Salt Lake City.  Oh well...  The faerie costumes were weird.  Oberon had what looked like a rooster's comb on his head.  The hair on Puck was quite evocative of the Centarii on Babylon 5.  The music was perfect - and that forgives any number of weirdnesses.

I've been writing web apps all day for the Houston office of the company I work for.  I can't believe I'm writing PHP on a (~~~shudder~~~) Windows box.  I feel so, so, so DIRTY.  I'm going to have to go home, take a shower and curl up in bed with an O'Reilly book and my Linux box to recover from this horiffic experience.

Yep - got Sean's nose cold - and the opera is tomorrow.
Oh joy, oh rupture!

Survived practice last night.  Sore, tired, bruised, quite happy...
my arms are so out of shape
Met my deadline for today early
I think Sean gave me his nose cold so being done at work I will sneak home to hide in my cave and sleep until it's time to cook dinner
hope it's not a cold - want to go to the little event/big demo thingy tomorrow in College Station; tourney in the morning, scriptorium in the afternoon - who could ask for more???
Good opera on Sunday - Britain's Midsummer's Night Dream.  Acrobatics and contra-tenor-fu.  Life does not suck.  The nose better behave...

Sean is at some stupid linux meeting in College Station.  The food rules say no food within 3 hours of bed.  This means Sean's on his own for dinner (he's probably getting tired of eating all this bland underspiced healthy crap anyway...)

A whole half pound of portabella mushroom pieces, quarter pound green onions, minced garlic, all fried and caramelized in blasamic vinegar and olive oil...  mine, all mine!   Bwah hah hah hah hah....!  Damn that was good. 

Wish I had the money to do that more often.  Maybe I should start a mushroom farm...

Tomorrow night is lean cuisine at the office and then straight to fighter practice.  Friday night is salmon marinaded in the new Soy Veh hoisin sauce, broiled with almonds, fresh green beans and sweet potatoes.  I might even let Sean have a little.  The salmon was on sale so I got two pounds...there will be enough left over to make baked salmon salad for burritos for lunch next week.  If Sean is really good, he might get more than a little.


Baked salmon salad burritos:
Baked or broiled salmon leftovers
neuchatel cheese (3:1 salmon to neuchatel ratio by weight)
chopped green or red onions to taste
shredded radacchio, enough for some crunch
med grained rice (sushi rice if you can get it)
sweet japanese rice vinegar in the rice to taste
flour tortillas
(you can do wasabi if you want - it goes surprising well with the neuchatel cheese; unfortunately, it's still on the verboten list for me - so's ginger too, and a ginger sauce goes great with this too as an alternative to wasabi)

I worked all week-end and went to a business dinner in Houston last night.  Didn't get home until 11 PM.  Great talks at the dinner - basalt capped oil fields in India - in a formation I've done some work in.  Dairy fats still hate me.  I took a risk and had a dinner roll and put some real butter on it.  It was wonderful and I paid for the transgression at 4 AM when the pain woke me up.  It sucks to love things like butter and whole milk and yummy cheese and not be able to eat them right now.  The only bright side to not being able to eat fats is that I've lost a few pounds - but other than that, food sucks.

All of this overwork has a little upside.  There is nothing to do at work today except my expense report - and that's done.  I don't see my next pile of well logs until tomorrow morning.  So I will spend the rest of the day today doing my research paper judging for Kingdom A&S - and then I have my every-other-week torture by the massage therapist at 6 PM.  Such a hard day today...

I just received in my email the second of two research papers that I'm judging for Ansteorra's Kingdom A&S competition.  It's titled "Medieval Leather Decoration: Modern Examples of Historical Designs and Techniques."

It's like looking at the draft of the leatherwork CA I started to write too many years ago and wish I finished.  It's a paper I could have written given the reference set the author used.  It's refs I've never seen before and now MUST HAVE!!!  It's got holes that would be covered if only the author had my references.  The author clearly has access to a copy of Gunther Gall and should be roasted on a spit for getting fingers on a book I have only had the chance to see once and then only for a few hours; the author will die for this...  The research on period leather dye is seriously flawed - obviously the mensch who wrote this thing hasn't yet made enough period leather dye to know that certain statements in modern works on leather are dead wrong. The author completely neglected the subject of gilding and leather mache and should be stomped into the ground for the omission.  There are several grammatical misuses of commas.  Certain opinions/statements by the author are insufficiently supported.  The cursed author can spell (unlike me).  The chemistry is completely wrong wrong wrong, horribly wrong, miserably wrong...okay, may just a little wrong...  The photos are scrumptious!   I will murder the author and steal their research, which should be mine anyway.  I want a new apprentice. I am puke-green with envy.  I think I'm in love.

Ulcer-fu for much of yesterday evening and most of the day today.  Felt bad enough to skip going to fighter practice again last night.  Have another set of medical tests coming up.  Oh Joy... It'd be nice if the liver emzymes et al. improved.  It looks like the nocturnal gluclose rebound problem might finally be going away.  That would be really nice.  Not that it will give me a break from doing the daily home blood testing.  My fingers are like unto pin cushions and that's just from once a day.  How do diabetics manage it?  They have to do home blood testing three to eight times a day.  I can not even begin to imagine what that's like.  I am gaining an appreciation for why Cealhmain hated it so much.

The food database I bought a subscription for, mostly because it had BGL and BP/Pulse tracking built into it, just announced they're dropping the health parameters tracking facility.  I've gotten used to tracking every bite (the doctor types have me doing it - I wouldn't bother otherwise) and tracking all the daily health measurements too.  I'm ticked off the database is dropping the health parameter tracking right after they raised their prices too.  I've been trading messages with a couple of the diabetics on the database, swapping ideas of building our own web app to do nutrition/exercise/health parameter tracking.  Just another thing to do in my copious spare time...  

I think I broke the Kingdom of Artemisia order of precedence database this evening while catching up on the data entry.  Sean now has to fix it.  The upside is that the bozos in Artemisia have finally found a replacement for Sean (he's only been Wormwood Persuivant for 7 years now, and the last 11 months have been in Ansteorra...).  That's the good news.  The bad news in that's it's Conchobar from my old barony up in Artemisia...  We'll see whether he can do the job.  He's fallen down on previous service commitments in the past...  At least the order of precedence database  is staying for now physically on one of the servers we own here at the dogphilosophy.net/rocks4brains.com/bigroom.org - so if Conchobar does fall down on the job, we can pick it back up without too much trouble until some other poor sap can rescue it.

We already started planning this year's order of precedence April Fool's prank.  My neighbor up in Idaho, Barb, who is also the baroness of the group  in Idaho Falls,  will be talking to  Conchobar tomorrow at the event up there to make sure we will still be on schedule for this year's evil plot even if he's taken it over by then.  This one will be better than the "vivat" film clip from Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (Part 2) from the April Fool's order of precedence stunt in 2005.  Heh heh heh.  Gotta do something to keep the mind off the ulcer churn...

My bad...
I discovered today that there is a town in the Vorarlberg (that's one of the Staats of Austria) called (wait for it...wait for it....!)

EGG!

and there's another Egg in Austria, Egg-am-See in Kartner Staat!

And then the brain kicked into the high gear better known as left-handed-sinister-space-with-a twist-of-lime and started sorting through period German Vornamen (aka first names), and the best one to pop out was:

Gottfried

Okay, are you ready for this?  It's a shoo-in for a submission on the yearly April Fool's College of Arms letter of intent:

Name: Gottfried von Egg

all elements documentably period: it looks like Egg in the Vorarlberg existed in the 1200s (assuming my translation isn't all screwed up - I am quite rusty with the German at the moment) and Gottfried is a period German name

Armoury: sable, on a plate a bezant (plus whatever superfluous fru is necessary to get it to pass...)

So, who's doing the West's letters of intent these days?

OK, I'll try a live journal page for a while if that's the only way I have to read the LJ pages of certain friends.
grump
grump
grump

Yeah, so I'm grumpy...  What else is new?  I'm on the third rewrite of the report-that-won't-die, the ulcers are kicking up, I got a bad case of mouse elbow and now I gotta face Houston traffic.  You'd be grumpy too...