Category Archives: Ranting and Reflections

You know what, there are a balls to keep in the air all at once when you’re looking after someone and trying to work remotely. Wow – I mean, really – this ain’t easy! One of the things that’s been really annoying is this restriction for DHCP addresses on the cable modem. Part of thatContinue reading “keeping all the balls in the air”

The medications the docs have given Lela are working – a bit too well as we’re learning. They’re dropping her blood pressure pretty agressively, which has led to another scare last night. She got up about 1am to “use the facilities” and was doing fine for a minute or two, and then everything blacked out.Continue reading “low blood pressure”

Lela’s been doing better and better, but she took a spill today. She was in her bedroom this morning, walking with a cane, and the world just turned sideways on her. She’s not hurt, but darned annoyed. The nurse came today too (not related) and we boiled it down to low blood pressure being theContinue reading “a little bit of a spill today”

Today’s been a pretty quiet New Years day. Everyone was sort of worn out from the flood of family and food yesterday, so we were all slow in moving today, including Lela. I think the sheer volume of noise and people yesterday wore her out some. She also had trouble sleeping last night – theContinue reading “Quiet new years day”

What’s coming to Burlington, Iowa without a fish fry? Tom Stimpson (my grandmother’s nephew) got himself a new electric fryer, so of course we tried it out. There’s not much of a sense of scale here, however, so there is a LOT of food currently around the house. I think we’ll be eating fried catfishContinue reading “fish fry on new years eve”

I little bit of skapeti is planned for dinner tonight (yeah, John – that’s normally Spaghetti – but I spelled it wrong intentionally). Karen’s in the kitchen cooking up a sauce from scratch that smells like it’s going to be terrific. I did some chopping of the onions and garlic, and am currently engaged inContinue reading “Skapeti”

Karen and I flew into Burlington, Iowa today – not a bad flight at all really. We had to get up at a rather unholy hour, but the trip was smooth (bounce through St. Louis with a few hour layover) and uneventful. Unfortunately for us, the majority of the US was covered with clouds today,Continue reading “Iowa”

I spent some of this Christmas holiday (and break from work) playing Halo 2 on Legendary mode. Actually, I played it co-op in legendary mode with Dan, my Co-op player of thanksgivings and christmas’. I gotta tell you – that’s darn hard! We spent an hour with the game mostly handing us back our guts.Continue reading “Halo 2 on Legendary mode”

Nope, not snow. Chaos flurries. With my self-imposed electronic divorce, I didn’t hear that my grandmother was admitted to cardiac intesive care on December 22nd. As of today, she’s back home, but the prognosis isn’t very good. I’m going to talk to the doctor and get the full details, but there’s been some sort ofContinue reading “flurries of the holiday”

Aside from my little “Merry Christmas” note, I’m ending my self-imposed “unplugged”/computer exile for the holidays. It’s always a good thing to do I think – just disconnect thoroughly from everything for a little while. No cell phone, no email… I even avoided reading the RSS feeds. But now I’m back, albeit quietly. For whateverContinue reading “disconnect”