So Unfair

Of all the things I could get for christmas, of all the ways to start my vacation, I get strep. STREP. No wonder this illness has been knocking me down like this. I've been useless since tuesday, and it's a darn good thing I went to the doctor this morning, because I'll be un-contagious just in time for christmas. If I had waited 'til tomorrow, I'd have to stay home, and wait until the day after to visit family. I wish I'd been more of a wimp and gone to the doctor the first or second day, or maybe if I had actually looked at my throat... When the doctor looked in there she got this look on her face like "oh my goodness" and she tells me "so you must be really miserable, your tonsils are huge and covered in pus."

I won't go on today, but I'll probably post again tomorrow, since I have nowhere to go unless I want to share my infection.

CJB

Just not fair

Yesterday, the day Ilizibith got on a plane to go see her mom, the start of my real vacation, I started feeling sick. It's infuriating, to be laid flat with this ridiculous christmas illness. I've had a wicked sore throat, headaches, body aches pretty much all over, and I've been slipping in and out of sleep most of the day. I can't believe this would happen now, when my friends are visiting for the holidays, when I just have a few things to do (like laundry) to set my whole apartment in relative order. It's not like I wanted to spend the whole day stuck in this apartment, trying to recover.

I really hope I'm better tomorrow.

CJB

And just like that, she was gone...

At 4:35 this morning, I was up and getting ready to take Izzi to the airport. I didn't have to get up that early, but sleep wasn't easy to come by. Her plane left at 7, and now she's in Bellevuee until the 1st of January. It's nice to have a little more time alone with my wife, but I'm just left wondering what I'll do with my time. 

I had a dream....

A bunny outlaw in the old west, jailed for crimes against upholstery and flooring. Bail set at 7 carrots. 

I wanted to share with you a picture of the newest member of my little family. Mango was supposed to be a christmas present, but came home with us early because she was on sale. Sandra got her for me and she's beautiful. She's a pied green peach-faced lovebird, and she's about 7 months old now. Her wings were clipped when we got her, and are still growing back, but she's getting better and better at flying every week. I'll be surprised if she's not flying around by the end of january.
Mango is a lot of fun, she makes funny sounds and almost sounds like she could talk. She likes to spend hours hanging out on my shoulder and my head, and I don't mind so much that she poops on me sometimes. It is annoying occasionally, but mostly I just don't let her hop up on my shoulder when we're going out. She's not very musical, but she does like to talk a lot. She's gotta be one of the best christmas presents ever!

hope all is well, and merry christmas

J 

Scammers

Wasn't that the name of Ron's Rat?
No, really, I'm talking about scammers. I got two different e-mails today for two different nigerian scams. The first one was the "UK Lottery" which I thought was just some sort of silly spam, until I noticed the mention of africa. Now I'm not an expert, but I'd think a legitimate lottery in the UK would be based in the UK. So I did a search, and there it was in the listing of known Nigerian scams. "The UK Lottery scam" which is just like most of the other scams. Before I go on, I'll mention the second e-mail, in which the hapless citizen explained to me how her husband had been a treasurer for some government office, and had been a freedom fighter within the bounds of his position, and had been killed by the government. She then went on to tell me about how he had set aside 20.7 million dollars gained off of interest which was to be hers, except that he hadn't finished some sort of legal processing which would for some reason require my signature and for which help I would recieve 20% of the total sum.

The way these scams work is they bait you with the idea of lots and lots of money and then try to convince you that you'll have to pay some upfront fees to get it. Some fools actually send them a couple thousand dollars believing that they will, in return, receive some hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some people reverse-scam them into giving enough information to help authorities catch them, but I just sent them e-mails expressing my disgust with what they do, and my hopes that they would get caught or at least would have to suffer lots and lots of poverty, hopefully due to being scammed out of their money by someone trickier than them.

Perhaps this seems harsh, but I think it would be no more than they deserve.

In other news, I was sick for a long time, all last week, but since monday I've been feeling great. My daughter, on the other hand, threw up this morning, and hopefully isn't at the start of some detestable illness. I hope all is well with you

J

ants

I was rather productive today. I mounted a paper towel holder and a handi-vac charging base on the wall. S's new shark is a handy vac indeed. I baked bread, including a foccacia I made up, and I made some beef stroganoff, or something like it. Actually, it was like making a beef veloute and putting in some sauteed beef strips and green peppers and putting it over shells.
Today in class I made lobster bisque. I often thought that sounded really good. I think shrimp bisque would be better. Lobster bisque was good, but not nearly worth all the trouble of making it. I liked eating it all the same, but the cream of broccoli I made was better.
This thanksgiving I'm looking forward to making croissant pudding and maybe a strawberry chiffon pie. I'm not sure, but I think I might top the strawberry chiffon with a choco-meringue. That would be pretty fun. My wife is going to make a soft, fluffy pumpkin pie.
I hope someone makes dinner to go with all this desert.

J

Better late than...

I haven't bothered for so long to update, I doubt anyone will take the time to look and see if I ever do again, but that's ok.

Life has been fast paced, and that's about all I can say about it. I don't really have much time to see many of my friends, it's all spending time with family, except when I'm at school. Tonight, for halloween I get to take my daughter around the neighborhood to go trick-or-treating. They're also going to have some sort of trunk or treat which I don't really support, because it takes most of the effort and most of the fun out of trick-or-treating. My daughter was already promised by my wife (who will be at work) that she gets to go. Oh well, I'll live. There are a few things that have upset me this halloween though.
one: the costume parties started about two weeks before halloween. I know this isn't much of a problem if you go out and buy a costume, but my family has long had a tradition of making our own unique costumes. I, for instance, am a tube of Colgate (tm) toothpaste. That basically includes what ammounts to a very long pillowcase with the colgate graphic sewn in in red fabric, and yellow and blue embroidery, with a lampshade on my head. My daughter is a witch, and her costume was sewn by my sister who lived up in helper. We did get the costume in time for her first halloween party, but the hat was to be made from the scraps, and so could only be started after the costume was delivered. She had a different hat which didn't match and so she just didn't wear it, and had to tell everyone what she was, since she really was just a girl in a dress with a cape. No broomstick, no hat.
Two: it's time to pick up my little girl

voice recognition

After reading some things on chapmaster.com I thought I would give us a shot. I have been training my voice recognition software and I thought it would see how well it could recognize my voice for a diary entry. The dreams last night were rather distressing and actually freaked me out of bit . I was taking care of a bunch of children they want my children do they were all living together in a house where I lived as well so I guess it was like living working in an orphanage of some sort I don't know it was strange but here's the free car was taking this little girl for a ride on the bus. She was always a very scared little girl and I worried about her. She was standing near the end of the car it was a train car shoes standing by the doors of the end. Shoes looking outside and shoes noticeably frightened. I look to assign to see what was bothering him so much, and wouldn't surprise that quickly turned to fear I saw a little girl on the outside of the door staring in at the little girl who was in my care.

Soon this little girl which hiatus seems to be a ghost left the door and wouldn't back to where she came from. Then shoes suddenly replaced by a little boy. He was hanging on to the outside of the door and was greedily looking into this little girl I was taken care of. He was still they are staring when the train stopped and we had to walk past him and almost through him to leave between. We started quickly walking home and he followed us and soon it seemed to more and more little child ghosts were following us as we tried to make our way home.

Eventually we were able to get home. It was a large building and there were lots of kids there. The yard outside is attractive but became very eerie as more and more child ghosts walked into the lawn. They came and stood at the doors, floated up to the windows they surrounded the house home watching this little girl. I felt a very sorry for her and wanted to protect her but what can I do. Their ghosts, you can't fight ghosts. It was about that time that I woke up, my heart pounding, hardly willing to open my eyes. It's been a long time since I've had nightmares, it's been a long time since anything has scared me like that.

Strange Dreams

This is one that I just had to get down on record. Once again I dreamed I was back in the military, but it was so much stranger than any of my other dreams about that. I was married, but I was sharing a room with another guy. I also had my nephews staying with me for a while, and their friends came over occasionally, for no apparent reason. This all made it much harder for me to keep my living space clean, which could get me into a lot of trouble, because the twins are not very neat and tidy people. There was some wierd moments of travelling and vacationing with the family that I can't explain with any sort of continuity, so we'll get to the end really quick. I was trying and trying to come up with my regular duty uniform, get properly dressed and show up for PT, and I eventually decided if I was going to find anything I'd have to clean up the mess. This of course would also help me keep out of trouble. Eventually I found the right clothes, but here comes the really wierd part.
We were at war. Ok, that isn't quite so wierd, but get this. We were at war with DWARVES. Not the lord of the rings type, oh no, just little diminuitive people. A whole race of people 2-3 feet shorter than you or me. Their official uniforms were, I swear, designed to make them seem cute and unthreatening. Their political leaders were dressed like the seven dwarves in Snow White, their soldiers were dressed like Santa's Elves. They were a fully advanced, even starfaring race, but when they fought they attacked us with weapons mainly made of stone. Big boulders would roll through our ranks, a hail of stones would fly at us from their, I dunno, slingshot platoons? And then, this is the REALLY wierd part. Then I started seeing these guys on talk shows, talking about the war and what big bullies we are. I saw them on the news getting very (comically) upset (they're little people, remember) at our political and military leaders, pointing fingers and gesturing in an ongoing barrage of accusations when I'm pretty sure it was them who started the war.
Then the monologue starts. A voiceover starts going about how they came to debates, our news, our talk shows, creating a whole media circus to develop public sympathy for their cause. But it was all a great big play, and they were only actors on stage and screen, because they didn't want peace, they had already won. How could we win against a race that had advanced to spaceflight with technology that was based on using rocks? How could we win a ground battle against a people who could use the very ground we stood on against us?

And so we lost, in the middle of this bizzare media circus, to a race of dwarves. Vertically challenged people took over.

Thank heavens it was only a dream. I'll never look at those small people the same way again.

it's been a long time

I haven't been online in a long time because internet access hasn't fit into my budget. I am only online now because someone in a nearby apartment, or perhaps the office, has a wireless network with open access, which means I can hop online through this wireless network card. I will offer to pay them monthly for my borrowed access, but I haven't been able to figure out whose it is yet. I wonder if they'll figure out I'm on here this week.

Anyways, now that I'm married, life's a lot better. My wife and I live in a relatively small apartment, we have a bunny and I still have my fish. The bunny's name is Nibbles. I had a nice bowl of oatmeal this morning after coming home from a morning shift at work I didn't have to be there for.

I am the lead evening prep cook at Ottavio's in AF, and once or twice a week I also work mornings to cover someone for a day off. Today I was going to cover for the morning lead, but he was supposed to be off this weekend, so he's working this morning. I found all this out after getting up at 6:40 am to show up for his 7 am shift. He showed up around 7:30 and asked "didn't J talk to you?" So I left and came home.

My bunny is a lot more social than the bunnies that lived with us when I was growing up, I guess it's because I let it out of the cage a lot and feed it mostly from my hand, well, my wife's hand more than mine but feeding by hand most of the time. Nibbles likes to explore the apartment and find places he's not supposed to get into and hide under furniture, or sometimes he just likes to run fast across the apartment and hop up on the couch. Usually when he hops up on my lap it's because he wants food, but he'll let me scoop him up in my hands pretty much any time unless he's trying to hide. I like that he lets me pick him up and hold him, he's so soft and likes to be petted on the back and scratched on the back of his neck. He's light brown on his back, ears and face, with white circles around his eyes and an off-white belly and sides.

I've been having a lot of dreams about being back in the military or back in school. I don't know why I dream about the military so much. Most of the time, I'm happy to be back for about 3 hours, until I get into the usual army bullcrap, and then I'm trying to escape or figure out why in the world I ended up back in that nonsense. I hope that never happens. The school dreams often involve zombies or lions or wierd dangerous stuff like that.

My wife just got up, she's sharing an apple with our bunny. He loves apples. I think he loves the peel better than the meat though. wierd eh? he likes eating banana peels too. I don't think it's bad for him, but I guess it could be. I hope he knows what's good for him, because the book only said "all fruits are good, and most vegetables" it specified which veggies not to feed him, but said nothing about any fruit parts that are bad.

Raw potatoes are bad, tomatoes are bad, most commercial lettuce will make him bloated because of the chemicals, and they are supposed to like apples best. It says nothing about banana peels. Maybe I'll find an online forum and ask.