Member News

[Lauri D]

I waited until I was settled to make an update. Still in Durango, CO, wasn't gonna run back to CA! - unfortunately, second time isn't always a charm. It's a sad time for breaking up again but that's the way the cookie crumbles and I feel okay about it; all things considered, I have no regrets. After having gone through the moving here thing and also getting certified for work, I found a great place (sort of a suite - two rooms, so bed and "living" with Sheldon's tank) and private bath, share the kitchen and downstairs living room... all my housemates are interesting, will enjoy my cooking, good conversationalists, and love Sheldon.

[irukandji]

most literally a drive-by hooting to let
the FF family know that laddie boy has
FINALLY been approved for hormone
replacement therapy and is now actively
using testosterone, that holy grail for most
FtM (female to male) transmen... been a long
arduous trek thru all the hurdles and obstacles
one can only imagine in a pursuit such as this

but we're still standing...

ok one of us is leaning considerably, but both feet are still on the ground!

merry and happy and best of the seasons upcoming to all you folk...
i really miss this gang... stay safe and well

iruk

[Ensign Steve]

Just in time for Movember!

[Vivisectus]

Mrs Sectus is really quite ill. She wakes up in the middle of the night to vomit, and there is lot of blood in it. The doctor is pretty sure it is a stomach ulcer, but so far the medication is not helping much so we are going in for one of those stomach-camera tests.

I think it is burnout as much as anything else. We have both been working very hard on our business, and she carries the brunt of that, as my contribution happens mostly after the ole day job. I did warn her that it could happen, but I never was able to actually make her slow down. I wish I has tried harder now. I have never seen her so run down, and it worries me.

The kids don't notice much, as we don't really have defined domestic responsibilities and, frankly, little kids and teenagers tend to be far too obsessed with the small dramas of their own lives to notice these things until they become impossible to ignore.

It will turn out to be a simple thing that requires rest, no more booze, and a boring diet no doubt. But I do worry, and I have to worry on my own as all my inlaws are hypochondriacs, and my own family is worse as they all consider themselves experts on any disease going based on next to no experience and something they read on the internet.

Meanwhile nr3 daughter has decided school attendance is more or less optional, for extra. Interesting times!

[Dingfod]

I know Puck hasn't been a contributing member here for some time, but I thought some who knew her from HH and IIDB might want to know her husband died of cancer today.

[Vivisectus]

Pending further tests the verdict seems to be a stomach ulcer. She will need rest and a healthy diet, both of which I intend to provide.

[Lauri D]

New news: still in same place but employment didn't work out although I did it for six weeks or so. Wasn't a matter of qualification or performance = since I had already been working = but rather a matter of "non disclosure" of certain personal issues from twenty years ago that I paid an attorney a buttload to get expunged and apparently the FBI fingerprint scan didn't get the message. I can provide all the paperwork but it's a red tape kind of thing so, onward and upward.

Bright Side: Best shape of my life from hiking and climbing all over the place. Been a lot of places and seen a lot of things, but some of the Colorado stuff is truly magnificent.

Also on the Bright Side, my turtle just happens to be the cutest and most personable turtle ever (don't think about touching him near his mouth, not THAT personable). Also while I was in Telluride, my new "friend" outfitted him with a new filtration/pump/draining/refilling system that takes all of twenty minutes. Oh and he cleaned Sheldon with a toothbrush while he was at at it. I guess that's the mark of someone who really sort of likes you.

Down Side (can't bring myself to call it the Dark Side, although I guess it is); the depression still lurks, no matter how much I excercise, avoid the hooch, travel to places unknown, take care of my reptile baby, find reasons, read books, etc.

So here I am. I wish to be around more to discuss movies and books. Maybe in the Lifestyle section I will post something about my newfound fear of driving. How effed up is it for someone who LOVES driving to get a'skeered of it? Pretty effed up is what I say.

[ShottleBop]

I had a stress/echochardiogram last week that showed I probably have some blockage(s) in my coronary arteries. I go in on the 19th for an angiogram (and, my doctor adds, possible stentation or bypassification). I need to talk to him about the bypass thing--if he uses a heart-lung machine (instead of operating on a beating heart), that involves an increased risk of stroke, as well as of "pump-head"--and I can't afford that.

Still can't bring myself to start the statins that he prescribed for me. The more I try to steel myself to start even at a very low dose, the more trepidatious I become.* Just google "seneff statin".* Find her blog, Credible Evidence!."* In the links over to the right, three is a lnk to an abstract of a study--"Statin therapy decreases myocardial function as evaluated via strain imaging."* Well, shooooooot.* I've been told I have coronary artery disease BASED on strain imaging!* And now my doctor wants me to take a statin, which has been shown to DECREASE myocardial function?!!* *Ever feel like we live in Bizarro World?* Sigh.

PLUS: I still don't know where (or whether) I'll be working come January 2.

[thedoc]

Dec. 10 EBay messaged me on my 14 year anniversary, a lot has changed since then, not always for the better.

[thedoc]

Shottlebop, there's always a 2nd opinion, I had several recomendations for open-heart surgery to replace the Mitral Valve except there was nothing really wrong with the valve just the left ventrical was out of shape and pulling it out of line. My current cardiologist has me on medication that is working without surgery, I'm not saying you don't need surgery but another opinion wouldn't hurt.

BTW, I've had regular echochardiograms, a trans esophageal echochardiogram, (the Dr. had to put me under for that), heart catheterization, heart biopsy, and an ablation for extra heart beats, so I've had a little experience with coronary problems, I've learned more that I ever wanted to know. I was awake for the biopsy, that was interesting.

If your arteries are blocked you could always call 'Roto-Rooter'.

[ShottleBop]

I got a stent for Hanukkah! The angiogram revealed a near-total blockage of one of my coronary arteries, which has now been opened up (via angioplasty) and stented. I am resting (comfortably, now that they've let me off my back) in the hospital tonight.

[huntress]

Mmkay. What's news for me for y'all?

I have another master's degree courtesy of mother Air Force, I got promoted again, I'm still with Mich (10 years in April, when we plan to get hitched), and I'm in Izmir without her right now and will be for another 15 months. I've spent an inordinate amount of time in Italy in the past year, much of which was in lovely Ferrara, but a few weeks of which were in Latina, the ugliest burg in the country, although those visits did let me pop through Rome a couple of times. Nice place, liv.

I'm working for NATO out here and will return to USAFA to teach at the end of this stint.

Lessee...Mich and I bought a retirement pad in Black Forest (Colorado Springs) about three years ago, and our menagerie has expanded to four cats and two dogs, one of which is still Maxwell and the other of which is Coffee (the cute name resemblance is entirely an accident), a brindle pibble.

I work for NATO here, but I have altogether too much free time (there is no such thing), and have purchased too many hand-knotted Turkish carpets and too much hand-carved furniture, but Mich is pretty happy about it because this means we won't be living with my bachelor furniture forever, after all.

d

[erimir]

So I actually got a job about a month ago.

It's ok. I'm doing SEO link building, so I spend my days on the internet, which is much preferable to something like retail. It doesn't pay that great, but it'll pay the bills while I wait to hear back from universities for the computational linguistics programs I applied to.

[S.Vashti]

My dad finally died, thank dog. We will be having a party in his name, a byob, sometime later. But no funeral, no memorial. He's been in the hospital since Wednesday, asleep on morphine and other painkillers, but gosh he sure would have wanted a quicker death.

What a wonderful man he was. I'm so happy and relieved he's no longer in pain.

And funny... he was even joking with us on Wednesday evening when he finally got enough painkillers to be rational. I love him so much, and I am pleased he no longer needs to fight the pain.

He really missed his ponytail when chemo made him lose all his hair. He looked like Willy Nelson, at least when he didn't shave.

[Shelli]

Well, so far this new year isn't starting off any better than last year did...

Started out with a bang with my father-in-law passing away on New Years Day.

I ended up at the doctor's today which will be followed shortly with a visit to the urologist for an ultrasound of my bladder and kidneys so that they can try to ascertain wtf is causing all the blood. I'm a little worried about that but trying not to be.

I did step on my own grave after all when we went to my father-in-laws funeral... our plot is right next to his parent's plot.

Don't worry though, I'll come back to visit y'all.

ETA: However! The nurse at the doctor's office today had on the COOLEST smock ... monkeys! Colorful and MONKEYS!

+ =

[Vivisectus]

I am scheduled to have my spine de-lumpified on the 14th of feb. With a bit of luck I will be able to get back into the garden the month after!

[ThreeLawsSafe]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

I am scheduled to have my spine de-lumpified on the 14th of feb. With a bit of luck I will be able to get back into the garden the month after!

Wishing you all the best with your surgery, Vivisectus. May you have a happy Valentines day despite it all!

[ThreeLawsSafe]

I would imagine the vast majority of folks on here will be glad to know that this is my last post to these forums. I wish you all the best!

[SR71]

TLS, I'm not really spiking the ball over it. I liked some of your stuff. It's not like you've been ostracized or anything, and respondents on contentious issues you've been involved in haven't been blatantly insulting. I doubt too many members will be taking victory laps, but can't really say for sure. Nothing prevents you from poasting moar if you decide to change your mind.

[Vivisectus]

Well that was a lot easier than I thought! I have just weeded out my own garden without much discomfort. The discomfort of a micro-discectomy turns out to be on a level with having a wisdom-tooth out, only in your back. The benefit is almost instantaneous. Bless modern surgical methods!

[Dragar]

So after months and months of trying to get a job as a researcher in cosmology, I eventually gave up. There's just too much competition for little old me. So I'm out of academia, much to most of the faculty's surprise (and to some extent, my own).

In Februrary of 2012, I left Edinburgh and departed Scotland for the lands of south England, where I did a shit ton of job interviews and train rides with just some clothes and my guitar travelling around with me. That's why I haven't been around much.

I stayed with family and friends all over, and in a hostel for a few days, and in the last five weeks I don't think I've slept in the same bed for more than five days in a row, and usually more like two to three nights in one place at a time.

However, I managed to get a job, in Oxford. I'm now going to be a working for a very small company working on discovering new drugs computationally. It's a small team in Oxford (like, a dozen across the country, with half of that in Oxford), made up of biologists and chemists and mathematicians and chemists, and now a cosmologist (me!). The local manager is a neuroscientist. I'll be mostly programming for a while until I start understanding what's going on, and then I'll be a researcher again (I hope! And so I'm assured!).

So now most of my stuff is scattered across the south coast of England, including my beloved guitar which I need to reaquire somehow from my Aunt's. The rest is at my parent's house in Yorkshire (where I'm typing this).

My computer is too big to take down on the train, so I need to work out how to ship it down.

And on Saturday I move into a houseshare with three people I've met once.

I start work a week on Tuesday.

I know basically nobody, I've no real clue what work will be like, I've lived the last four years in my own place and now I'll be living with strangers, and I'll be without most of my stuff.

And right now, I miss my life Scotland.

[Doctor X]

I will take good care of your stereo.

--J.D.

[chunksmediocrites]

Qingdai, myself, and our seven-year-old son Shadow all went to the Oregon / Washington coasts for a week and just returned.
Our first night of vacation was in a yurt at Nehalem Bay State Park, in Oregon. For those of you who have not explored the world of yurt camping, here's what they look like in Oregon. The center of the ceiling is about 12' high, with a 2' wide plastic bubble/ skylight in the center. The plusses to yurts are that if you are too lazy to pitch a tent and too thrifty/ urbanized/ poor to have some sort of RV motor-home, yurts are a pretty kick-ass way to camp. The minuses to yurts are that they are used by others and may be maintained to various degrees; heaters in the yurts may work okay, or may barely work and then your 12' ceiling in the center starts to feel like a design flaw. And it turns out camping in a yurt in heavy rain and high wind is like camping inside a drum. The other thing we figured out is that our small child dictates when we can sleep, because he is an evil creature who will demand the sleep and demand the awake and basically is well on his way to a career as dictator.

Okay, back to Nehalem Bay. On the way to the campsite we bought a dozen live oysters for dinner. We got there and it was uncharacteristically mild and sunny. We had hot-dogs for lunch on a little propane grill we brought. The beach was not far away, and was beautiful; Shadow had a blast on the beach, playing chase with the waves and digging and generally covering every surface with sand. Dinner was the oysters, which I over-cooked a little, but overall it was a good afternoon. Shadow managed to wake up very early in the morning, which made it a little rougher, and it started raining, but still pretty good. Hot showers with high shower heads at the campground (I'm nearly 6'5", so a high shower head is a nice deal for me). I had picked up some of the (few decades) old Jack Flanders radio adventures in audiobook format, which Shadow loved the crap out of, and Qindai chuckled at because of the woo factor as the protagonist ventured into spirituality and metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Qingdai also had found a Pokemon Ranger game for his DS which he also was super into and we used as a reward, cudgel, and distraction.

Day two we went up to a little hotel that Caligulette and her husband run, in Long Beach, Washington. The bridge across the Columbia is on the way, and had Qingdai white-knuckling it- quite long and at points quite high. It was great to see Caligulette and Joe Six-pack (I think that was his nom-de-forum here) and their kids, and it was a very cute little place built in the 50's and updated and added onto over the years. The room was great, and it was wonderful to see. Long Beach has Marsh's Free Museum, which features the macabre mummified Jake the Alligator Man, and mostly has some historical items pressed against some walls to make room for what appears to be where every sea-side tourist trap trinket goes to die. The plus side was one of the cashiers was dressed steampunk-adventurer casual and sported very nice sideburns.

The town also had a huge banner across main street announcing the upcoming Loyalty Days celebration, because nothing says fun like patriotic fervor drummed up in the 1950's as a McCarthy-ite response to the whipped-up panic at covert communism lurking in your citizenry. Nationalism display activated, citizen!

The beach itself in Long Beach was in sharp contrast to the beach in Nehalem Bay, as the weather had turned dark and rainy, and 40mph winds made it less fun; as well this is a huge long flat sand-spit basically running north from the mouth of the Columbia River, and a massive navigation hazard historically as well as today. The beach had a lot of trash, and is open to vehicles who can drive up and down it as they like, so it was a little depressing. There is a boardwalk along the dunes, that had a juvenile gray whale skeleton mounted for display at one point.

Our son Shadow had lots of fun playing with Caligulette's son and Joe Six-pack's son, who are both only a little older, and we had a very good time visiting with Cali and Joe. Joe also turned us on to a place that had really good Cioppino (Italian Seafood Soup).

After two nights in Long Beach, we traveled down to South Beach State Park, in Oregon, just south of Newport. We stayed in yurts there, and noticed that the heavy rains and a surprisingly heavy and wet snow the week before had damaged about 20% of the trees in the area, leaving big piles of damage throughout the campsite and along the roads. The weather had gotten distinctly rainy and windy, so cooking a camp stew in the wind and rain was a bit of a struggle, but on the plus side we were all cold and tired enough to eat whatever hot food I managed to cook on the constantly expiring propane stove (the wind would blow out the flame), and after realizing we had run out of propane and it was necessary for me to go back into town and pick up more.

That night and the next, the wind was loud, as was the rain; the second night the wind would gust at an angle to catch the edge of the external flaps that were bungeed down over the windows, creating a staccato sound effect like "BAMP-BAMP-BAMP-PAMP-PAM" every five minutes or so, and the shape and thin and sound-reflective interior of the yurt making it especially unpleasant. The beach was okay but the weather again was not particularly nice, the wind and rain strong, the campground a little dowdy, over-used, and less well maintained, and we were definitely looking forward to getting out of there.

The first day there we went to visit the Oregon Undersea Gardens, a tourist attraction but kind of cool as you go to the lower part of a ship in the port with windows all around, and an enclosed sea environment full of starfish, crabs, rockfish, wolf eels, and a sturgeon, and hourly a diver goes down and a host has them show off the many different creatures living there. Shadow liked it a lot. We also visited the Wax Works, an unsurprisingly cheesy wax museum.

We also visited a pub in the Rogue Brewery, and had a great meal, and Qingdai felt a little better after an infusion of beer. The food was better than some of the tourist and camp food we'd been eating of late. To get to the pub you meander through the huge brewing operation and then finally finally find your way in.

After leaving the campground on the second day, we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which we had visited some years earlier with Shadow. It is still impressive, with a great outdoor section, nice interactive sections for kids, with tide pools; tons of jellyfish, anemones, crabs, and huge underwater plexiglass tunnels through separate shark, rockfish, and halibut habitats; and a ton of educational resources and information.

The last two days we stayed at the Whaler hotel in Newport, just above Nye Beach, where we mostly relaxed and stayed mellow, Shadow got to enjoy the bright and shiny of cable television, we swam in their indoor pool and hot tub, and we began to pine for home. We ate at Nana's Irish Pub which was good, with genuinely friendly staff, but the coolest place was La Maison Bakery and Cafe, where the owners had done a lot of work to create an exquisite interior, with a beautiful display case, period chairs, box ceilings, and amazing pastries, cakes, good coffee, and a bread display I liked as well.

We visited the Ripley's Believe it or not Museum, which is even cheesier than you might imagine, and even more poorly lit and and featuring a mini-theater where you can watch episodes of the Ripley's tv show. Ew.We also saw sea lions basking on a small dock at the port, which was kind of cool, though I am sure the local fishermen and fisherwomen are a little less thrilled.

Nye Beach was also really nice and relaxing, though by the last day I think we were all looking forward to going home and sleeping in our own beds. Shadow had started ti demonstrate a behavior where he would be worn out and then fixate on some object and want to attach to it (ice in his glass, or pieces of charred, wet, driftwood on the beach), with obsessive focus and distress at the thought of not being able to carry, keep, or otherwise possess this thing right here right now. We managed to mostly work through that, and the last morning we had our continental breakfast, stopped at a seafood stand for a dozen live oysters and a whole crab to bring home to share with friends, and then drove home through heavy rain, wind, and in the mountains a little snow.

And now we are home. Pics to follow in the next few days I think.

[Legs]

I don't know where to start.

I guess I'll start with Widget having lung cancer that he survived but it nearly killed me.

Lost my Dad in December, actually the same day as Widget was diagnosed.

HorseGirl is fine though, going off to University in the fall, which makes me incredibly old

Having to put down two of our kittehs

Adopting the cutest chihuahua in the world, Clarice, and then due to Widget's illness and the economy, deciding to sell our house and move to a condo - no pets of course, so she is with friends now and has a new mommy.

I guess that's about it Just felt like popping in to whine

[ravenscape]

I've had a good recovery from my total knee replacement surgery, and am starting to feel grumpy about other (minor) medical inconveniences. I think I'll schedule a 60K mile checkup with my regular doctor.

And I return to work on Monday after 9 weeks of loafing around watching my knee slowly deflate among other things.