My Life, as I know it, so far.

hi everyone ( peter)
i need to send a item to sue, the hammer dulcimer player who attended glimmerglass house
filks she was at detcon and i got her snail mail addy that bounced.
so i would like to email her to confirm her addy.

anyone got contact info for her. she lives in allen park mi. web searches are a bust.

thanks for the help
jan

hi friends,
i enjoyed reading everyones posts for the last week or so.

i missed Cinco de Mamo, 5/5/03 it has been 11 years since the breast cancer surgery. wow time flys.
back then all we had was email. i felt care for as i read everyone sending me mail of encouragement.
i often find people around me not believing it has been that long. a client insisted it was only 4 years, regardless of how tall their children have grown. When friends say " how A-R-E you" i have the " its been over 10 years, knock off the 'your not going to die?' talk"

last time i wrote, hubby had gotten back into motorola with the testing job he has held several times, it only lasted 3 months and he is still out of work,
the good news is that I have been working more. this is good for the bottom line.
well that is all i have for today.

maybe i will be back before 6 month goes by again.

hi everyone still on livejournal.

i got tired of email reminders saying someone had posted. they were posting a lot so my email was getting way too many of these messages. so i logged on to change my setting. Then I decided to see who was saying what.. I am glad i did. its great to hear from all of you.

after 10 months my hubby is finally back at work. same bat job , same bat contract house ( we like them) and same bat boss at motorola. I am sooooooooooooooo glad to have him out of the house. i love the man, there are benefits to having him around. our house is shaped in such a way where we are always around each other. Except when i am doing a massage. so there is a lot of i will or wont do that is you are not doing whatever till later.

next week is my last blast of famous fandom follys . I am fan guest at archon in st louis. courtesy of gary hanak, cat and bari greenberg. a true case of doing a favor getting a favor.
anyway i plan to have fun, i always do.

tomorrow i go to lake geneva. I met a woman couple of years ago . she and i were both in the wrong line at the movies. i asked her a questions about hair tinsel and we exchanged cards. this is the 4 the time i will be the massage therapist for a scrap booking convention. the pay is good, hotel is nice and there is a Spreckers restaurant next door, it works for me.

after all of that, my slate is clean. not much volunteering going on. no big projects, maybe i will log into live journal sooner that every 3 years.

hi everyone,

Thinking about CHICON?? concerned about cost?? Well, have i got a deal for you..
Aside from what the chicon conchair has to say below. I have been told that progress report 3 will have alternatives to parking at the hotel.

And of course as the filk coordinator i would appreciate knowing if your interested in participating with the programing.

so here is the news about a one day price break to get a CHICON Membership.

Chicon is offering a "cyber monday" sale. We will be reducing the cost of an attending membership by $15 and family memberships by $30. These rates are available through the website *only*.

The prices (for 24 hours) will be $180 for an attending and $510 for a family membership.


We have made a press release to that effect and John Scalzi should be mentioning it on his blog over the weekend. Please add your voice to the message by noting the sale through whatever social media outlets you frequent.

We are in a very important stretch in terms of getting memberships in...so I need everyone to lend a hand. Please do your best to get the message out. We have awesome things planned and our efforts will be MUCH easier if the membership pace picks up a bit.

Thanks everyone.


--
Dave McCarty - Chairman
Chicon 7 - the 70th World Science Fiction Convention
http://www.chicon.org/membership.php#rates

i had to show off the next new picture. i will have to see if i have a good picture of spot and saffron that would work on lj.

the picture was taken at the same time as my usual spot picture. this one he is on top of a 4 headed microphones the other one he was wrapped around one mic. I am glad i have these pics since those mics are not used as much.

next housefilk

a reminder to those locaL to chicago area... Housefilk , in mount prospect on sept 10 and dec 10th
respond to this if you want to be included on the list. now i will go send out a reminder to those already on the list.

hi everyone who still graces live journal.

some where on this page you see a new icon picture drawn by my old friend Debbie. She drew this picture in 2008...yup 2008.. it has been sitting in my email for that long.
in the 4 years since she drew it, i have become better at saving stuff and attaching files, plus i think the computer age improvements has made it easier for people like me to do such stuff.

so i have been busy enough trying to keep my inbox below a reasonable count, keeping up with the projects that refresh themselfs, that i have not been on lj for some time. i still shun facebook, since i already have enough to keep up with, and i dont like the idea that people will get notices of my progress with any games i play.

plus i dont relish the idea of people from my way way past finding me.

however i now have a cool picture of me, and i know where to find it on the computer. that my friends is progress.

chicon 7

I have had a cheerful confirmation from Bobbie Dufault (Chicon 7 program chair) that she wants me to head up filk track. I am delighted to serve. I promise to allow you time to see other stuff, yet satisfy those who only want to filk.

Membership
in the PAST there has been elaborite pre-supporting membership programs which created many people who had earned a lower rate conversion to sell. This year Chicon, to the best of my memory, they decided to run the bid straight. So unless i am so completely wrong, if you did not vote your membership cost now is $175.00. this rate is good until september 30th 2011 then it goes up and then up. of course if you voted, your membership is $125.00 and will go up at appointed times. So if you know your going and you got the money, sign up soon. http://chicon.org/online-reg.php

Planning

I will be gathering a filk committee. are you interested?

I already have my good friend who will run sound for us.

I will need advice, if anyone knows how to do a skype conference with more than 2 people.

i need someone who is good at writing or editing.

i will need a strong second who will help anytime I get 'deer in the headlights' overwhelm.

Some of the decisions we will need to discuss will be are:
How many concerts will we have?
How do we decide who gets a concert?
What kind of special events shall we plan?
How do we get brenda and friends to recreate the "BETTER CHOICE ENDINGS" operetta ?
Do we want to do a song book?
strategies to get the best space.( larger than chicon 2000)


i am open to ideas, opinions,

come join me, we did have fun last time.

DUCKON

Xap has done a wonderful job creating the filk at DucKon this year. we have some good talent you have not seen in concert before and a few old friends. What i really appreciate about Xap is that she took the time and energy to learn, she respects the way we have done filk at DucKon so it will feel the same.
we have quite an interesting space with the obligatory post not quite in the middle. We have negotiated having the pizza in a convenient location (sorry no filk suite) and secured a good 'dead duck filk' space on sunday. you can expect the same hospitality that i bring to the filk room. The hotel has changed and we moved further north however i have found a giordano's (close enough to deliver) which has been the pizza standard for DucKon for many years. Many of you have told me "we need to get to DucKon sometime" Pre-reg $45 closes june 1st on line only. We would love to have you

for more than a week we have had the "weather hype" I love a good snow, the paralying kind that makes everything and everybody STOP. my wishes were answered that this storm got into the top 5. the 4th and 5th in the record book were in the 15" range and needed to be eliminated. this time we were hit head on, we were in the 'worst' zone. it is rare for our area to get the dead on hit. For a very long time any kind of storm would track north to milwaukee or south to indiana, or we would get snow yet the heaviest would be south of highway 80. usually i am rooting for big snow because we used to not get much snow at all. the last few years we have had no shortage of snow. we have only had one melt that cleared the snow. now we are probably stuck in this white stuff till May.

my hubby was able to make it home without being stuck on the road ways for hours. this was a nice change him being home before it got really bad.

i woke up around 400am ish to hear the power go off. i spent the rest of the night planning for the worst case of being with out power for at least a day. ( longest past power outage was 42 hours many years ago) so i was up early marveling at the snow still coming down, and the amazing drifts that were left for us.

for those of you who have not been to my house and understand how our breezway is structured. we have a ranch house. one side is a wide driveway and a double wide garage, on the other side is the house with 4 wide awning windows of 2 bedrooms. When you come to the front door you walk between the garage and the bedrooms in a breezeway. the breezway is a narrow (8 ft wide?) path with the side garage door on one side and the house front door on the other side and a glide bench sitting below the kitchen window at the end of the breezway. we have to go into the breeZway to get to the garage.

now, in the past we have had snow drift to the front door, making it interesting to get out of the house. I have played with some wind patterns breaks to get the fall leaves to collect other than by the front door. this time i had a brilliant thought. Put empty cat litter buckets on the sidewalk so the drifting snow would have somewhere to swirl and it worked. We were able to open our door and shovel the 3 ft drift that was in front of the garage side door. ( yea, it would have been nice to avoid that, maybe another time) there was a lovely drift that went almost all the way across the entire house peaked at more than 3 feet deep. my neighbor said she took a picture for me.


around 1030am the sun came out and i started the big dig. I and to the garage then hubby opened the garage door, manual style since we did not have power yet. The blessing of this snow is its low water content. the top was fluffy and easy to shave off the top, then when you got to the last foot, it had packed a bit and was much more dense. We were not working very long and the power came back on. This meant that i could use the electric snow blower given to me by <lj user="dave_ifversen">. this is a 'snow blower that could'. i plowed a path to the street, measuring the snow as i went. the lowest was 12 " and the highest was 20".. i swear that we get more snow than our neighbors. I think it is being the last house on the block and the wind patterns. This little snow blower looks like it would fall apart if you gave it a good kick, yet it is a little work horse. (THANKS DAVE) hubby and i worked for 3 hours and toward the end the neighbor with the gas powered snowblower and the love of outside helped finish it off.
today the snow plow came through again and got the last 1/3 of the street so there is hope the mail man can reach the mail box.

then i was pleasantly surprised by the newspaper delivery. a bag that looked like sundays holding yesterdays AND todays paper. i need to find his address and send that man a thank you note.

I went inside, had lunch and took a nice nap with kittys between my legs and on my lap.

thanks everyone for sharing your story.

catching up on reading lj i see that i need to flip a few more setting to let me know when birthdays are.
I tend to be good friends with people born at this time of the year. its a Pisces/Scorpio thing. so when i realized that my sisters birthday is on friday i thought... whose birthday am i forgetting about??

QNofhrt has been a wonderful friend. hope your enjoying some of your treasured scotch today. carolf i think has a birtthday sometime around now although i am not sure when it is.

ladymonegreen and katie roper all share a birthday with qnofhrt! what a nice little gathering the 3 of you make.

a very happy birthday to you all.

now if anyone is willing to help teach me how to make these names in to linky names i am willing to try, especially if it is easy to remember. lord knows if i will ever find that page to change how many messages i see.

some time back something changed and my lj ended up only showing 10 posts per page. i found this annoying. i realized that other peoples journals had more entrys per page than i did and i knew there was a way.

in the past i have sought computer help from pensnuggles or jersha, as you can see i have yet learned the easy way to put their name in lj linky typing. yet after following past advice jersha and finding success in making a change to my journal, i thought " I CAN DO THIS!" after a few attempts to find the secret behind the scenes web page of live journal setting, i was almost ready to ask for help. then while watching the movie "green zone" with matt damon. I could GIVE him a massage and probably pay for the privilege .... where was i?? oh right yes lj settings. i did it! i found the page! i reset my lj page to read 25 entrys which is much better than 10.

i feel very accomplished

I have been thinking about this for a while, considering, pondering, considering what it will be like to have another mouth to feed. these thoughts got escalated when i went to the local frequent reptile show.

the good thing about the show is that i can finally get a rat of the proper size with which to feed Spot. I looked longingly at all the baby snakes. of course, if i would give in to the temptation and get another mouth to feed then it would have to be different than Spot. Still i would choose a Ball Python. Balls are plentyful and are so good natured.

As i looked around the first time i went to the show, I was taken aback with the prices. $150.00 is was the lowest i saw for a BAll. sure you could spend $50.00 for a burmese python which grows into a huge snake. Then i looked at all the different morphs. the prices went up to $4000.00. some of the morphs did not even have the marking common to a Ball Python. there were other interesting variations that mostly were expensive for my budjet. i saw snakes with markings like Spot, only darker. i started to talk to the breeders about what exactly i was looking at in all those small cases. i quickly learned that females get better $$$ and males are your bargain. I was beginning to believe i would need to spend $200 for a snake.

I also started to think about what i would like. I learned that "pastel" is a common variety that breeders really dont need extra males. August would be a good time to find deals since the clutches were hatched and the breeder knew what snakes they has and wanted to sell. so i wandered off and thought next august, that would do...


of course you know where this is leading to.

at the last table i slowed, and saw him. since the bin was marked at $75.00 i was intrigued. i asked to hold him, and started to ask the same questions about keeping him with Spot who was larger? when i started to ask about what does he eat, how often? i realized this was totally impulse.. yet i knew i would be taking him home. do you take credit? NO... Hey didnt i get cash for the housecall last night? and look here it is in my purse.

i dont know how breeders get the names for the type of traits. a pastel is not soft shades. The ones i saw have a denser pattern and a lot of yellow.

Saffron weighs about 3 oz and maybe a foot long. balled up in my hand he is about the size of a billiard ball. He was hatched in september. his colors are a background of the typical ball python brown with a dense pattern of rich yellow "et"s with tiny hints of red that really show up in bright light. each "et" starts at his side and wraps across the top of his back. and has 23 "et's" along his side in a very close pattern. He has almost equal yellow and brown colors.

i wish i could give you a picture, yet my technology is such that i need to finish the roll of film i have and get it developed then figure out how to down load the picture. of course i need to take the pictures first. Where did i put that camera.


I did get Spot a good sized rat. he ate it right away, so he is happy. he did meet saffron, the both hid their heads.

typical snakes.

i will be putting saffron in a small container inside the warmth of Spots cage till i know they are ok with each other.

here i am not sleeping with the cpap actually now it is a bipap. the pressure is set for me to get enough oxygen for the off time i might sleep on my back. result -- i have enough pressure on my nose that my nostrils physically inflate. i get a narrow window and if i dont fall asleep in that window i just cant. of course i have selected the past 2 weeks to work with this bipap. The past 2 weeks have not been serene.

so again i find myself saying " does that even sound like me????" in response to report of what someone said that i said.

Could it be, that the person who reports what i said, what my intentions are, have such a creative mind that i cannot even recognize what they are even talking about, much less realize how they are misinterpreting what i said???

and when does it become lying? or even slander??

how does one defend their reputation when there is so much untruth.

when i was a teenage my best friend told me she liked me because i was so truthful. how do you deal with people who have no interest in the truth???

had extra time to make food one sunday night. The freezer had ground lamb rather than steaks.
i reached for a box o pasta and cheese to put the cooked lamb into...
and came out with a box of Naan bread mix.

The icebox had pasta sauce with a few neck bones leftover from the pre duckon dinner. i had a scrap of onion and a bag of shredded cheese. I thought PIZZA! all i needed was some vegetable.. which a half a bag of spinach provided.

it turned out the naan has yeast, yet it only required 1/2 hour to rise. so like totillas the naan was flattened, cooked in a pan, loaded up with sauce, lamb, spinach, onion topped with cheese and we had good eating!

since hubby is on medicine for hypertension we avoid pizza. i used to take a cheap pizza mix chicken white meat with barbeque sauce and rosemary and onion, put it on the cheap pizza with more cheese to hold it together.. WAYYYY TOO MUCH SALT.

so the naan seemed a good alternative.

tell me about your "don't know what to make".. creative moments....

THANK YOU for a great con.

sorry i am not spell checking.

i appreciate reading the DucKon comments and posts, DO make sure i see your pictures i may use them for filk fund cds.

I love to delight people, Talis is so easy to delight. i helped her see her first racoon, blue jay, pop-up thunderstorm complete with rainbow.

I was telling her about how i love the deep tones of the bass so i decided to play the blake hodges song "my love was like the moon" after i talked over the song she said "dearest jan..." which i took as "shut up and let me listen" she ended up hearing it 2 more times and on the day she was heading home she was singing it to herself with the guitar.

i am amazed how people can do that. listen to a song and start playing it on the guitar, i guess i can do the equivalent with body work.

I was pleased to have a successful seated dinner party. Feeding 12 people can be a challenge, hearing laughter and 40 references to "spotted dick" food was fun, having a cake for Scott for his birthday was an honor. making the space for shy people to visit comfortably : priceless.

being able to get so many hugs and kisses was great, i really need to keep doing that.

taking Talis to the shrine of lady of the underpass. i was surprised to see how much stuff was there. and i am glad there was a picture of what it looked like. We all were reverent as Talis sung her songs in front of the shrine.

best personal laugh : waiting for our pizza at Edwardos, after explaining how my filk second jerusha is a lawful excellent and that i am chaotic neutral. Scott bang his elbow in the close quarters wall. while he is flayling in discomfort asking why they call it a funny bone, and i am laughing uncontrollably saying it is funny to others, scott says " CHAOTIC NEUTRAL MY ASS!! YOUR CHAOTIC EVIL!!! " which causes me to laugh even harder.

then it was fun to tease Talis about why she gets along with Becca and jerusha so well is because they can see eye to eye. hearing that becca took talis running in the hallways is why i love her so much, she just knows how to have fun.

Having a beautiful day to take a sail boat out on the lake. The Windy is a 4 mast sail ship and for $25 you can have a hour ride from navy pier and see the skyline from the water. it is cooler on the lake so going on a warmer day makes it perfect on the water. next time bring a hat. hopefully we will all get to see talis pulling the ropes for the sail. since i love boats this is one of my favorite things to do in chicago. it is worth staying a day at a con in order to do this. so plan your time and let me know, we can go together!

having the sound system working well for Talis request concert. i was a nervous nelly when the sound was so poor for opening ceremonies. I would not let the concert go on until things were fixed. when the concert finally started, there were 100 people in the audience. i left for my first opportunity to go to my room ( about 11pm) i could hear Talis sing through the hallway and i knew all was good.

sometime in the last few years my filk second Jerusha and i have been looking at each other with astonishment when we see filk room full. Filk panels at 11am full. Tea with Talis, Full. Sunday miss labeled open filk at noon full. this year i was astonished that the filk circle, which got started 2 hours late, after the last concerts, went until 300 in the morning! and we had 40 people at the dead duck sing!

in the past we would not get the numbers for a afternoon open filk. So we did not offer the space. Now there is eveidence that a room for filking whenever could be used.

i am a foodie. i found the store with the cheese and olives 3 days before the con. so watching the olives and cheese disappear was delightful. having purchased lunchmeat for the release party, it was heartwarming that to see that disappear too. basically the only food i took home were the nuts. you guys ate EVERYTHING!! that lets me know i can bring more next year!!!!

I had a lot more helpers this year. xap , xapling1 and xapling 2 were always near by and ready to help. becca, bonnie and jane were right there to make the tea party a blast. and Jerusha last year as duckon filk second was also of big help keeping things running smoothly.

i understand that there were a lot of satisyfing music moments. when i slid by confrence room C I was able to hear sexybass play "humline" and see people react.

and having tom go along with my singing the phone book idea, It worked out well, i do hope a video shows up sometime. let me know, ok?

there were so many more, so many new to duckon people.

thank you for your support, for attending, for everything

jan

sometimes i get a little flak for not posting much. this is for you.

tonights post is brought to you by not sleeping.

reasons for not sleeping in no special order:

watching the "greys anontomy " season finally right before i went to bed. That alone is enough to keep me up.
having too much caffine in the form i love, coke and chocolate. One day i can handle it, yet it has been a couple of days and it catches up with me.

it is hot, well not cool enough.. the water bed is a nice 84 degrees, which is great when the high of the day is 50 degrees and it is windy and damp.
yet when the over night low is 70 it changes your perspective.
i spent all day in the hotel with the "get it all done" con com meeting for duckon. we were in a hot little room, yet it was cooler than outside and someone got a fan from the hotel that was blowing in my direction. The two program coordinators were plotting to steal my Kathleen Slone purple necklace.

reading the results of the sleep study and realizing how low my oxygen level goes at times during the night, not all the time, yet funny though, it goes lower when i am in REM sleep.
so reading this report right before i went to bed starting making me aware that, although i can sleep i am struggling.

the REM sleep numbers were interesting. i slept for 449 minuets 44 of those minuets were REM sleep. now i dont know how this works. i always thought you had a little REM sleep before you woke up and that this is when you dream. if this is true it explains a lot.

i have always had long interesting dreams, which some of the time i am pretty aware i am dreaming and sometimes i can control the dream, or at least tell my self "no the car is not stolen, it is really in the garage and you are in bed" plus i remember a lot of my dreams.
now realizing that i am so low on oxygen when i am in REM makes me wonder if that effects my dreams or the quality, etc etc
so if my REM is signifintly longer than most. this totally validates my belief that i do dream longer.

and of course they recommend a cpap. I tried it before and it was really hard. i found i could not exhale. it makes breathing a bit difficult and hard to sleep. so instead of helping it made me more anxious. How is that for helpful?

i have since realized that there is a machine (BI-PAP) that will give you a space to exhale. i could live with this. and of course, wait for it, it is more expensive. my body likes the expensive stuff. my feet laugh at the sale rack of shoes. i could go on yet i think you have heard enough from me tonight.
The picture i chose is of me sleeping with the best cat i have ever had.

here i am again, looking for something. it drives me crazy and not it the manageable way.

i have had something on the table under some papers for some time now. i knew it was there, i thought about moving it, i considered where was the best place to keep it for long term. so today when i REALLY needed it. where is it?????? gone from the table, the papers are still there. it is not in the place where i thought of moving it to. not in any of the logical places where i thought it could end up. and of course if had put it in the place i was considering, it is right above the paper recycling which got recycled about 10 days ago. i cannot remember if i saw it before or after the recycling went out.

what bugs me is that part of the reason this happens, i let myself be distracted with audio books or listening to tv while i am doing other things like cleaning up, so i dont etch into my brain where i am putting things. the other is that my memory is just not as sharp as it used to be. in the past i could remember all the details of everything. now, who knows what happened when or how it happened. if i am totally engrossed by a project aka DucKon i have better memory about the details.

all in all, my problem is so minor i considered not sharing, yet writing about it helps me let it go and move on to more important stuff. accept that the object could be lost forever and deal with it.

thanks for listening

yes folks the Talis Kimberely request concert survey will be closing sunday evening.

get your preferences in by taking the survey

Talis will have 2 concerts at duckon, the request concert is on friday at 800 pm

take the survey now Unless your reading this on monday, then it too late, sorry

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6NL59BQ

thank you

we just got back from seeing the movie. it was blue with a lot of glow in the dark pretty colors, and reminded me of my favorite sea creatures. the 3d affects were cool and not in you face. after a while i forgot about it.

the plot worked for me. a couple of "why did'nt they? they could have? how come they?" moments during the movie and lots of discussion afterward, which is the only reason for joining a bunch (20) local fen in going to the first weekend of a hot movie.
of course it does give james cameron the money to do it again. oh yes do it again please.

i am not a picky moviegoer i like a lot as long as it is not too violent or horrorific, i will even see bad movies to see a favorite actor.

i got a few people calling me because i left you hanging after my last post.

i did get the heart ultrasound, they found no clots. i take this as good news overall. i probably went into A-Fib on sunday nov. 22 and they looked for clots on Wed. nov 25th. so we're talking 4 1/2 days of pooling blood in my ventrical chambers and my body had not yet clotted. of course i was on heprin starting monday night.
they did the cardio-version which puts me back into normal heart beat.

I was able to attend a lovely dinner held by the Number 1 daughter of the family we usually spend thanksgiving. IT was the first big party she held at her tiny apartment and the first time cooking a turkey ( it came out excellent!)

The difficulty came around 7:00 pm when my nurse was making sounds that i would stay in the hospital over night again. I said "NO NO NO! THE DOC SAID I COULD GO! I dont care if i get out of hear at 10:00 pm i am leaving" so he went off to check on things. They had been waiting for the coumdin to thin my blood to a 2.0 on the thinness scale. I did not reach 2.0 until 12/7/09, a full 2 week since i started taking it.
since my blood thinness was too thick ( greater chance of clots) ( for those who dont know clots = strokes) i needed to take lovenox and they needed to find a pharmacy that had it on the shelf since i needed 2 a day for 2 days. Now were talking 7:00pm on wednesday before thanksgiving. i think i am screwed since my regular pharmacy does not have it. Three nurses were calling around, with an extraordanary effort. Then i thought of my friend qnofhrt who said her pharmacy fills a record number of scrips, and was working that day. I called her and asked if she knew of the stock situation. She was pretty sure they had it, gave me the number of the store, and they were able to secure the drug for a whopping $70.00 with insurance for 4 doses.

This lovenex stuff is nasty/cool. the nurse came in with my first dose and a box about the size of a bread loaf with a sharps box and cd and litature on the drug. the needles are small and you shoot yourself in the fat area. When you done with the syringe you push it harder and a sheth pops up and covers the needle, then you put it into the fancy red sharps box. I have never seen such waste of packaging materials. The shot itself is sort of painless, then it starts to hurt and the area around the shot bruises a lot. i still have a lump where one of the shots went.

For the next few days i was a bit concerned nay panicked that i would slip back into A-Fib and have to repeat the whole process. i kept trying to tune in and feel my heart beat.
my massage schedule was rather full. I felt good and strong and less worried about a reacorence i realized that it would have been very difficult to give massage in A-Fib. I was proud of myself for insisting that i get converted ( small shock to the heart) in the hospital.

i have been a regular customer at the coumdin clinic. I learned that i could eat vegies with vitiman K, i just had to keep my levels even over a weeks time. when my blood thinness test said i had reached the magical number of 2.0, i was given a free pass to not return for a week.

the next medical adventure is a nucular stress test. when i scheduled it i learned that i need 2 days ( i picked friday/monday) 3 hours each day, fasting for 6 hours before the test. of course that tell you all of this after you find time that meets the criteria. at least the fasting isnt 12 hours since one appointment is at 7:45 am. we usually eat dinner at 8:00pm at least i will be fasting in my sleep.

today i still feel good. I am having the sort of day i was hoping for back in nov where i had free time and the energy to do stuff i had been putting off for a long while.
thanks for listening.

hi friends
i am extatic to report that they did the camera down the thoat, i had no blood clots, and they shocked my heart and thanks for the prayers, i went back into normal rythm and i can go home with some shots for the blood thinners and will be followed up over the weekend and such. yet after 3 full days in this place i am really to go.

happy turkey

hi friends,

on sunday i was not feeling well, when i burped or farted i felt better, i thought no worrys i have a bit of too much at the party on saturday.
sunday rolled around and i took water out of the too full water bed( carrying 5 gallons to the tub at a time. and took laundry to the basement then felt a definate tightness in the chest. I thought DAMN if i go to the hospital they will take forever to run tests and probabilbly keep me overnight. arrgghh. My sister recently had an extra heart beat and that is what they did to her. soooo
then i took my blood pressure it was 160 over 100+++ and i thought crap now i really need to go.

once at the hospital they found i was in atrial fibrillation or the cute name of atrial flutter. this is when the top of the heart does not have the electricty to pump there by not giving the lower chamber the signal to pump to the rest of the body. ( people live like this for years) the only causes that relate to me would be thyroid , sleep apnea or genetics.
well my mother did have a racing heart. and i am on thyroid meds, i was diagonosed with sleep apena and i have been doing well using a wedge pillow. when i tried the cpap i got so anxious that i was really wigged out.

its wenesday and here is sit still on a heparin and cardrzem drip, heparin thins the blood so the clots which are likely to be hanging out in the lower chambers of the heart. and the cardrzem is getting my heart rate which was pretty high to around 90, when they get the heart rate down to 70 they can take me off the cardrzem drip. the heparin drip when the coumadin levels reach 2 and they give it to me at night, which means another night in the hospital.

there is a chance i will get a test today a ultra sound of the heart to check for clots and then they can shock my heart and hope it will restore the rythm. other wise it is get off the iv drugs and take a couple self injected stuff over the next couple of days.
i give my self a 30% chance of leaving here today.








the postiive end of this sitting in the hospital all week sure beats having a heart attack or worse having a stroke. plus this week was pretty open week work wise.

july 23 2009

we took our friends out to a late breakfast, got the car packed and we were on our final leg.
this is were some people would put in the total mileage of the trip. the mileage predictor say 1391 miles from our house to yellowstone,  yet we did turn around a lot and did not go to yellowstone directly.

we got home to some very lonely cats. although they were well taken care of by friends, it is just not the same as our being home. the pile of newspapers and mail was huge and took almost a week to sort through.   the phone messages were not as long as would usually have, i must have done a good job of getting the word out we were going.  Because we got home in the middle of the afternoon, we had energy to unpack, sort, sift and put away all those treasures that will show up around christmas.

i have since put together pictures, maps, brochures of the trip. i  am willing to show anyone who is interested in taking the time to see them.

thanks for tuning in and reading about our adventures.

july 21/22 2009

another wonderful day with music mutt and chriosinger. this day we went to downtown Minneapolis and visited the Science Museum.   the museum is along the water on one side and the street that held the ramp to the parking garage, hid it very well, more lessons in turning around. We were welcome to find a large lot, open spaces, and a busy museum.

this is where i look at my notes and realize that i did not record much. so my memory is weak.
there was an exhibit that was on the human body in a CSI fashion. they had a wand with a tiny camera that i was able to see in detail the small wart like growth i have on one finger. 
the amazing trait of the people of minneapolis is that the museum had several exhibits that had small removable parts. like a vortex complete with little steel balls. AND  ALL THE PARTS WERE STILL WITH THE EXHIBIT!!!  you just dont see that sort of thing at a chicago musuem.

once we caught up with chiro singer and musicmutt, we went to dinner, and then to a bar/pub  were there was a folk circle.  I got to spend some time with chirosinger's Mom and saw chasophonic and bonnie. It was great to hear music from friends.

The next day it was time to head southeast, we said our goodbuys and were on the road again.
when in this part of wisconsin i MUST stop at
Ehlenbach jct of I90-94 hwy. V (exit 126) deforest wi 53532  www,ehlenbachcheese.com
this is the modern day store of what i remember cheese shops were from the '60s.
the room is filled with deli cases and my favorite is the veg havtari and the blueberry havtari, and the horshradish cheese of any varitey is wonderful. they have a lot of cold pack flavors too and a kitchy souvieneers section..it just has everything a person could want to take home after a long trip. ( we will not talk about how stuffed the car was with everything else.)

We arrived at our friends house in what seemed like a very short time, they live in milton near janesville wi.  hubby and i decided that rather than push ourselfs to make it home in one day from minneapolis we would stop at our friends and stay the night.
we met  t + b when we move in together before we got married. we became friends quickly and dragged them to cons and playing d+d.  We had lots to catch up on and enjoyed our stay.
 

july 20 2009

Miles driven  zero, chirosinger did the driving.

It was a wonderful day visiting with chirosinger  Musicmutt works behind the scenes at the Mall of America. Well sometimes he is with customers.  He works at the aquarium at the Mall.  We found him before he got off work and got a tour behind the scenes or rather above the huge tank that is the aquarium.  The aquarium has one of those slow moving people mover that goes through and under the huge tank.  My first experience of being "under" the fish was the restaurant  "rainforest cafe"  Then the ultimate experience of a moving path under the water, was in Atlanta,  their tank was the biggest i have ever seen.
the Mall of America was pretty big and reminded me of Atlanta.

went back to the house and had a lovely evening and meal.