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Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in
Fenchurch's InsaneJournal:
| Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 | |
| 11:16 am | The Amazing, Ever-Expanding Laundry Room Sink Replacement Project (Crossposted from LJ, because I remembered to post it here too, for once!) To recap, for those joining our story mid-episode: ( it all started with a broken stopper in the laundry room sink. ) Long story slightly shorter, so far we've torn out the old cabinet/sink, put in a window, painted, put in a new light fixture, ripped out the old flooring, and replaced all the outlets and light switches with fancy new white ones (the old ones were that color optimistically referred to as "Ivory" but were really more of a dirty, dingy looking off-white, sort of like the old color of the walls). Honestly, even with just a bare concrete floor at this point, it *still* looks better than it used to! Today we'll be putting up the upper cabinets on the washer and dryer side of the room, and I'm pretty excited about it (and, okay, I'm sure you've realized by now that for the most part when I say "we" I mean ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} rackham and whatever friends we manage to talk into giving us a hand -- because aside from some of the painting, my shoulders still aren't up to this kind of work). I've been taking plenty of pictures, and as we get a bit closer to being done, I'll probably see about posting a few! Current Mood:  amused |
| Sunday, September 16th, 2007 | |
| 7:54 pm | Sunday Evening Musings Alas, I'm not watching the Emmy's, so I can't join in all the commenting... because, of course, even though the awards ceremony is being held here in the Pacific time zone, we won't get it until three hours after the rest of the country. Dumb, dumb, dumb. And even more stupid, why would anyone on the west coast bother watching? Since all the results are being discussed everywhere online already anyway, by the rest of the country who gets to watch it live. I'm pretty sure everyone has some type of food that they consider to be "poor food." I don't mean that in a derogatory way... it's just the sort of meal your parents were likely to serve when the money and fresh food supplies started running out before payday. My parents had a bit of an odd choice for "poor food": salmon patties with french fries and fry sauce. My mom would buy canned salmon on sale and keep it in the food storage, and we generally always had saltine crackers and eggs on hand... then it was just a matter of either using frozen french fries or making them from scratch if we had the potatoes. And, of course, fry sauce is just mayo and ketchup. I mention this, because it's what I fixed for dinner tonight... still yummy after all these years. But do you know how hard it is to find saltines without high fructose corn syrup?!? I know it's just a tiny amount, but sheesh, why do we need HFCS in saltine crackers?!?! We ended up running down to PCC Natural Food Market in Kirkland last night to pick up some organic saltines. In other news, I've got the freezer all stocked with Kashi frozen dinners (they were conveniently on sale at Safeway yesterday) and I picked up four tank tops yesterday at Target, to wear with some of rackham's button down shirts. I'm trying to get my fill of playing LOTRO, since it's fairly difficult to do one-handed, meaning it's likely to be a few weeks before I can do much with my characters there again. My cough finally seems to be subsiding, although it's hard to tell because I've been taking Mucinex-D at regular intervals (pleasebegonebyTuesdaypleasebegonebyTuesMy m-i-l was IM-ing with us earlier today from Cairns, having just left Brisbane (I believe my f-i-l is speaking at several different climate/pollution conferences around Australia and New Zealand, so they decided to make a huge vacation out of it). I'm so jealous... I would love to go back to Australia! I still need to decide if there's anything Australian I want them to pick up for me that I can't get mail order here in the US. It's been so long since we were there, that I'm beginning to forget all the fun things we found... and it's too early to have them snag some Christmas candy/chocolate. Anyway, she made a very good suggestion for the upcoming surgery trip, recommending taking along a towel and a bowl for use on the drive home after the surgery. I wouldn't have thought of that, but I suspect it might come in handy (given the way I tend to react to anesthetics). I'm really hoping that I'm so drugged up that I'll just sleep the whole way home, but I doubt I'll be that lucky. :-p |
| Friday, September 14th, 2007 | |
| 3:54 pm | Getting ready for surgery (Sorry to be spamming your flists today... I just have a lot to say!) I swear I've got about a Christmas level of anticipation for the surgery... I woke up early yesterday morning with that eager sort of feeling, having apparently convinced myself in my sleep that it was Tuesday. I was highly disappointed to realize I still had nearly a week to go before my appointment. ( This weekend is going to be filled with making preparations for the surgery... or, more accurately, for after the surgery. ) At this point, my biggest worry is that I haven't managed to quite shake the cough I picked up when I was in Louisville... if I'm still having lung issues when I go in for my Pre-Op appointment on Tuesday, they won't be doing the surgery on Wednesday which would really, really suck. Current Mood:  contemplative |
| 3:53 pm | That Career thing I've been meaning to post this for a few days now and kept putting it off... 1. Go to Careercruising.com. 2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark. 3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions. 4. Post the top results: ( Top 40 with comments... ) Oh, and an addendum to my last post... I've been listening to the radio this afternoon and during the news at the top of the hour the newsreader kept talking about the President visiting Marines at (and I'm spelling this sort of phonetically) kwan-TEE-ko. It took a few minutes to realize she meant Quantico. The sad part is that no one seems to have bothered to correct her pronunciation, because it hasn't changed all afternoon. I actually feel a bit embarrassed for her. Current Mood: chipper |
| 3:51 pm | Spoonerisms, they'll get you every time... A headline out at KING 5 News this morning: "Bit pulls in Mount Baker attack to be euthanized." Not a funny story, but I still couldn't help giggling at it. ( And, in case they actually catch on to their error, a screenshot of the page, under the cut. ) And for a few more editorial errors... we have a small local (and free) weekly paper called the Kirkland Reporter. Just in doing a brief skim through last week's edition, I found one place where they spelled the word "beach" as "beack" and the headline "Dunn's death blaimed on blood clot." Okay, forget needing a good proofreader/editor... do they not even bother using a spellchecker?!?! Sheesh. Current Mood: amused |
| Friday, August 24th, 2007 | |
| 8:24 am | Surgery - Yay! So, I mentioned that I'd gone to see an orthopaedic surgeon over on the other side of the state... there's a pair of them in Colfax (which is, quite literally, in the middle of wheat fields -- you really have to want to go to Colfax to get there) who specialize in the sort of shoulder injury I sustained in the car accident (for those who may have stumbled across my LJ recently, Rackham and I were in a fairly nasty car accident at the end of December 2005 (I've got links, if you're interested, to several entries about it in my memories, including the entry I made the night of the accident)). The ortho I was seeing here locally was actually quite good, but his specialties are knees and hips... and since he couldn't see anything obvious in the MRI of my shoulder, he'd switched to what I call the Hunt & Poke method of diagnosis (which I understand is a perfectly legitimate way to do it, just not my favorite -- basically, sticking a needle into the shoulder joint and injecting cortisone, then moving to a new location if that doesn't help... once you find the place it helps, then that's where the problem is). So, on the recommendation of my step-dad the physical therapist, I made an appointment with one of the orthopaedic surgeons in Colfax (I should point out that there are plenty of good orthos here in our area, it's just that these guys are among the best at treating this type of injury... good enough that they can stay in Colfax and have people come to them). ( My visit with the orthpaedic surgeon and a bit of info about what's wrong with my shoulder behind the cut. ) It seems like I remember someone on my LJ flist mentioning having had shoulder surgery... was it Ayinhara? Anyway, mostly I'm curious about anyone who might have had experience with anything like this... so far, the few people I've talked to who've had similar surgeries have all raved about how effective it was (and warned me it's going to be painful afterward, but really... I highly doubt it'll be more painful than a broken shoulder/acromion process). Current Mood: content |
| Monday, August 6th, 2007 | |
| 9:07 pm | But everyone is doing it... Since it seems to be the thing to do, here's where you can find me on three of the other popular LJ-style blogsites: LiveJournal (my main journal site) GreatestJournal JournalFen Like many others, I'm not planning on leaving LJ (especially since I have a permanent account -- purchased long enough ago that it's paid for itself, thankfully), but I accept the idea that LJ may leave me. Until then, the other journals are going to end up being mostly a reflection of that one. Current Mood:  calm |
| Sunday, August 5th, 2007 | |
| 6:07 pm | Looking for a good quality screencap Does anyone know where I can get a really good screencap of the Angel drawing Spike made for his punching bag in, I think, "Chosen"? I was just thinking it would be an excellent addition to the pictures on the August pages of the official BtVS calendar... Current Mood:  curious |
| Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 | |
| 3:45 pm | Sheesh. LiveJournal is down *again*?!?! ETA: Huh. Apparently, LJ's server farm is in the middle of a power outage. At least that's the rumor. EATA: And, it's made SlashDot! Current Mood:  annoyed |
| Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 | |
| 2:13 pm | Side effect of Potterdammerung? So, what happened? Did rampant HP spoilage crash LiveJournal? Current Mood: curious |
| Thursday, July 12th, 2007 | |
| 11:10 pm | A lovely summer day About 20 degrees cooler than yesterday, yay! It literally felt like an oven outside yesterday... even though it was only about 97 (and I can hear my Arizona friends laughing now), that's just not a temperature we see around here very often. Today, I barely had to run the air conditioning. ( I'm going to Dragon*Con!!! ) In Numfar news... on Monday we took her back in to our regular vet to get the first booster on her vaccinations. Our vet seemed to be of the opinion that the vet who'd worked on her at the Humane Society was very clearly on crack, although of course he didn't put it in those exact terms. She's got some nasty scar tissue from the spaying... he checked up on it again during this visit and thinks that it should clear up a bit more eventually and that it's not herniated (which was his main worry). Oh, yeah, and I finally remembered to ask him how old he thought she was... and learned that several of our assumptions (based on the Humane Society's info sheet) were completely wrong and my guess of her age upon seeing her for the first time was actually pretty good. Yes, ladies and gents, we have ourselves a kitten! Our vet checked her teeth and said that she's only about four months old... *maybe* as much as five months old (since she still doesn't have all of her adult teeth). Counting back, that means the people who brought her to the Humane Society got her when she was eight weeks old... so they had to know exactly how old she was when they brought her in and apparently felt they needed to make stuff up. And finally, if anyone is interested, the coconut husk garden mulch I was talking about yesterday is The Original Mulch Block, which is possibly the most boring and UNoriginal name they could have come up with. However, I'm absolutely loving this stuff... and I'm also inordinately pleased with myself for managing to take the whole project slowly. I worked on it again today and spread another three blocks of the stuff on the flower bed and then stopped. Yeah, it doesn't seem like that should be an issue, but I usually have a problem working on things in stages... once I start on something, I really do like to just work on it straight through until it's done, however long that takes and however much it wears me out. So, I've ended up with the slightly odd situation of feeling like I've really accomplished something when I manage to make myself not finish a project. :-p And the flower bed isn't looking half-bad, either! Current Mood:  accomplished |
| Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 | |
| 11:59 pm | Passionfruit! Stupid things! No more cedar! Last Friday, I found some passionfruit at a local grocery store for a not-completely-hideously-high price... and, of course, that means only one thing: cheesecake!!! So, rackham made cheesecake on Sunday evening and we've been indulging in a slice every night since then, with wonderful fresh passionfruit pulp squeezed over the top. Yum!The last few days a few things have cropped up that have made me want to smack my head on the desk a few times, because obviously my brain hasn't been working (warning, this is all rather boring and somewhat embarrassing, but I figure if I share, maybe I'll be inspired to use my brain a bit more often in the future). ( Stupid thing #1: Yes, the brand of shampoo really does matter. ) ( Stupid thing #2: Hey, did you know Outlook has its own junkmail folder? ) And, finally, I found the coolest stuff up at Top Foods recently, in their garden department... it's a garden mulch made from shredded coconut husks! It looks quite a bit like regular bark mulch but is much more lightweight (it has to be rehydrated after you spread it) and comes in a compact little cube wrapped in plastic, so it's easy to transport. Even better, it's not cedar!!! No more worrying about itchy eyes, swollen eyes, swollen throat, or having my lungs seize up. Yay! Current Mood: sleepy |
| Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 | |
| 8:55 pm | Hot, soon to be hazy, day of summer Happy Independence Day!!! We've had a fun day at home... did a little bit of work in the yard this morning, before the temperatures got too high (and yes, here in the Seattle area that means anything above about 75F) then ran out to Trader Joe's to pick up a few last minute things for tonight's dinner with taradaktyl and her family... it was so nice, because there was almost no one on the road! Bonus!( The good, the bad and the ugly of our broken air conditioner. ) And now for something that's likely to be a regular occurence: ( Under the cut, to spare my flist ) Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Sunday, July 1st, 2007 | |
| 11:20 am | New Cat! Before I get on with recounting the day's activities, I need to bring up something I haven't mentioned about our blind cat Polly, even though I probably should have written about it two months ago or so. At the time it was too tough to talk about, and then I put it off because I hadn't said anything and it had been so long it seemed a bit awkward. Back in May, the day before I left on my trip down to California, Polly passed away of kidney failure. We were expecting it, really, but it was still hard when it finally happened. I think leaving on such an extended trip right afterward was probably a good thing, overall... by the time I got home, I'd dealt with missing her and I didn't really ever have to deal with the pangs of being somewhere that was "her space" without her there. For about the past week, we've been on the lookout for a new cat. We miss having two cats around and Zoë has been showing definite signs of being lonely -- she and Polly must have been interacting much more than we ever thought... because as far as we knew, all Polly ever did was hiss at Zoë, who began to treat such a thing as just Polly's way of saying "Hi!!" Apparently they were covertly speaking to one another in the secret silent cat language the whole time. We've been definitely looking for an adult cat, since we didn't want a kitten (they're cute and cuddly and a whole lot of work), although trying to find one on the younger side. So today we headed to the Seattle Humane Society Adoption Center (which is, rather strangely if you know the area, located in Bellevue (i.e. NOT Seattle)). ( Introducing Numfar! (Pic behind the cut, too) ) Current Mood: chipper |
| Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 | |
| 5:15 pm | Hello again I didn't plan on ever really using this journal, but enough of my friends are on IJ now that I figured I'd better at least post *something*. I will say that it does look like a decent alternative to LJ, in case things ever go horribly wrong over there... and I may see about updating both (although I have a hard enough time remembering to update my LJ alone, just less remembering to post over here as well). Current Mood: cheerful |