feeling better

Thank goodness I am feeling better today. No diarrhea, though still bloody and gassy down there. I spent most of the day resting quietly, watching movies. etc.

I watched Helen Mirren in The Queen and it was a good little quiet and well made film. I can see why it was up for a bunch of Academy Awards. And she was first rate in her role.

Tomorrow I hope to go Christmas shopping. Dan could use some hand tools, so I will probably go to Sears fort those. Steven wants a game for his Wii, and so far Sam's Club has everyone else beat by $5, so I will probably go there for the game.

You could not pay me to go shopping on Black Friday; I have heard too many horror stories from friends who go. Today some poor Wal-Mart employee was freaking trampled to death by a mob out on Long Island. How can televisions on sale become more important than a human life?

best wine I've ever had

Dan took me to the Quarter Bistro in Ann Arbor earlier this month, and we had the best wine I've ever tasted.

I wanted to keep a record of it so here we go:

Merryvale Starmont 2006 Chardonnay Napa Valley

it can be ordered at:
http://www.merryvale.com

thankfullness and wishes

I am, of course, thankful for my family (including the pets). I love them more than words can say.

I hate my job, but given this terrible economy, I am glad that I am working. And that I have benefits. And the ability to have a plentiful meal today - which is so much more than so many other people have right now.

I am thankful we can pay the bills, and keep up with the mortgage.

I am thankful for the Detroit Red Wings - one bright and shining thing for this area right now.

I wish the economy could be better. I wish everyone who wants a job with decent pay and benefits could have one. I wish all families could have a roof over their heads and three square meals a day. I wish all terrorists could find their humanity, and stop attacking the innocent. I wish people could stop prejudice against people for the color of their skin, they way they choose to worship God (or not worship at all, if that is their choice), what sort of genital they have, and what the people do with their genitals in private provided that they do no non consensual harm to others, and for what people weigh.

On a personal level, I wish for less stress in my life. And more time for myself, for activities like creative writing and photography.

India terror attacks

My heart goes out to those who have been wounded, and to those who have lost family members.

What a terrible crime; and a terrible tragedy for all of the victims and their families.

At least the Indian Americans I know all have families elsewhere in the country than Mombei. It is horrible just seeing the footage on the television and Internet; I cannot imagine how much worse it would be if I knew friends had family there.

(And I obviously cannot imagine how terrible it would be to be in that city right now, or to have people there).

How can people act in such ways? To attack a hospital for women and children? Every religion I am aware of is very protective to children in particular - especially the Muslim faith, if it does turn out that these particular terrorists are Muslims. If so, they have broken greatly with the teachings of their religion - and given how cosmopolitan Mombei is, they have probably killed plenty of innocent Muslim civilians (along with people of many other religions) in their attacks.

Horrible, just horrible.

sick for Thanksgiving

On Tuesday I was eating a lunch before heading into work. I had made nachos and cheese. I was eating, and something crunched really funny. I spat it out and it was a shard of broken glass. I do not know if it came from the chips or from the bag of shredded cheese, or since both had already been opened somehow got into one or the other here at home. Needless to say, I threw out what was on my plat along with what was left of both the chips and the cheese.

I rinsed out my mouth several times and brushed my teeth several times and rinsed out my mouth again.

My stomach felt upset, but I do not know if any glass actually got down in there, or if it got upset because I was so upset. And I did not know if it would be better to throw up or not, so I held it down, even though I felt like throwing up.

So I hoped for the best.

This afternoon I started having bloody diarrhea.

I do not know if it is from possible glass, or just stress diarrhea over how bad work has been combined with stress from finding broken glass in my food. It was the first time I have gone since eating that meal, so I suppose either or both is possible.

Not fun.

snowy day

Over the last week or so we have been lucky to have temperatures above freezing, so the ground has frozen. We have had snow this season, but it has been melting as it lands. Today, with the frozen ground, it is sticking.

No sign of any road clearing equipment yet. It looks pretty slippery out there, and the cars are driving very slowly.

With the economic problems in this area, they will not be doing as much road clearing this year. They had a huge article on the front page of the local paper a couple of weeks back saying they do not have enough money to pay for salt or man power for proper road clearing.

It makes me very glad that I have four wheel drive - though even that does nothing on icy roads.

Of all days, I have to go into work early today. They are making everyone in my department go through civility training. Which is fine and good, and I really hope that it works! But it will not address management at all, so far as I know, and that is also a part of the problems of the poisonous atmosphere.

Ah well.

rough at work lately

I have not been posting much lately. I have been really stressed out because of work, and all of my energy seems to be taken up by by working, worrying about working, and it seems like all I can do most days to get out of bed, eat, wash, and go to work. I am a mess, and my doctor actually wants to put me on medication for anxiety.

And with today's terrible economy, I cannot walk away from a job with full benefits, no matter how poisonous that job is.

Sometimes life sucks, or parts of life can suck, and my work life sucks royally right now.

On the other hand, Dan has been very kind and supportive, and has been trying to spend time with me, as he knows that cheers me up. Friday we went to one of my favorite places to eat, The Earle in Ann Arbor - a romantic place with great food and live jazz. And on my off week he took me to the Quarter Bistro in Ann Arbor, where we had the best wine I have ever had and good food.

http://www.theearle.com

http://www.thequarterbistro.com

The children are, as always, a light and delight in my life. I cannot even express how much I love them, there are simply not words that strong.

A big thank you to Veterans

If you have served in the armed forces, I just wish to thank you. You have risked death, mental illness, and permanent physical disability in the service of us all.

I would especially like to thank the courageous men and women who served in World War II. You literally saved the world - not just for the Allied countries, but for each and every one of us, in all countries. You saved the people in Germany and Japan just as much as you saved the people in Canada, America, and England. Without you, the monsters would have won. Thank you. There are literally no words of thanks strong enough to express the gratitude I feel towards you.

yuck

It is a terrible way to start the day by cleaning up doggy diarrhea.

Saline Craft Fair

Yesterday we braved the cold and the winds to visit the huge Saline Craft Fair, one of the biggest in the area.

Some of the many marvelous things we saw:
handwoven Amish rugs
antique china or silver teapots turned into beautiful lamps
old wine bottles turned into lamps
hand sewn silk kimonos for children
all sorts of pottery and glass work
gorgeous quilts

first snow

Today we got our first snow of the year in the form of a slow and gentle winter mix. So far none of it is sticking to the ground (thankfully).

We are making homemade beef and barley and vegetable soup for dinner. I love barley soup, and this will go very well with the cold weather. It will hot and hearty. We will have a loaf of Italian bread to go with it.

I am actually starting to plan out Thanksgiving dinner to take advantage of sales on baking ingredients and the like at the grocery store. I have to figure out which recipes to make, take inventory of what we already have, and then next weekend I will the the store and buy the ingredients. I am thinking bread (we should already have all of those ingredients, other than honey - I used the last of the honey up a couple of weeks ago), fudges (Dan and I both have a different favorite recipe), a couple of pies, a couple of different kinds of cookies, and a cherry-marshmallow-cake that the kids love. We will not pick up the turkey breast and main dinner stuff until closer to the holiday to save some room in the freezer.

NaNoWriMo short story part I

Sam Harris smelled the mineral scent of blood and the overpowering stench of voided bowels. No - not voided, he corrected his thought. Ripped apart, spilled and shredded across the floor and walls of the alley. It had taken a moment to recognize the remains of a human being, a fellow man, strewn about and covered with a thick blanket of buzzing flies. It was something worse than any nightmare.

In all of his years in the military, and helping the police investigate violent crimes he had never imagined anything so bad; had never thought a human body could be shredded into little scraps, like a bit of newspaper ripped up for kindling - that those bits of human remains could be strewn about like the food and drink at a sangria party, staining the floor and walls of the cul-de-sac.For a long moment he thought he would vomit. He could feel a scalding sensation in the back of this throat and could taste the bile in his mouth. He could not help but give out a quiet moan of horror.

What could have done this? Who could have done this? How and why could this even happen?And then he snapped awake, as someone shook him. He found himself looking into the bright blue eyes of his wife, Viola. In her soft voice she quietly said, "It is time for you to tell me what you saw on your mission."

Hands shaking, he reached for a match and a cigar. He had seen that look in his wife's eyes before; he knew the quiet determination in her heart. He must tell her the story he had not entirely told anyone, but he needed a few moments to calm himself before he could even begin.

Finally, with a deep sigh, he began to tell Viola his story. He told her of the communication from the command, requesting his aid, even though he had been retired for some three years. Viola knew all of this, she had read the communiques herself, and advised him when they has arrived. But she waited patiently as he gathered this thoughts to continue his account.

He told her of the shipboard journey to the port between the mouths of the two great desert rivers, upon a distant sea. He told her of the boat that took him up one of the rivers to the ancient capitol, newly conquered by the Empire, and very uneasy. He told her of the chill of the desert night, the villages upon the shores, and the smell of the cooking fires of the heavily gowned and veiled women. He explained how the old temples to gods and goddesses unknown in the Empire shone in the moonlight upon the banks.

With a deeper sigh Sam told her of arriving at the city late at night, of being escorted to the officers' quarters, of being awoken at dawn with the news of another murder of an Empire soldier. Without even eating a meal in the city or being debriefed by the command, he was on his way to a native quarter of the city, where he found hell in an alley.

driving home, election night

Late night, early winter.
Moon shines.
Stars shine.
Two large meteors flash overhead.
Beauty.
Joy.
A mountain climbed.
A great man's Dream come true.

election day sunset

Bands of color blanket the sky
Shell pink, gray, salmon
Glowing.
The forested hills of the arboretum
Like an orange and red and bronze bonfire
Glowing
Under that sky.
Moon rising.
Hearts rising
Hope rising.

election day!!!

If my precinct is anything to go by, we will have a record turnout for voters in both in terms of percent voting and in numbers voting. I live in a very rural township - and I had to wait over an hour in lines to vote. Thank goodness they moved our district from the tiny township hall (which we shared with another precinct) to a church's pole barn (which we had by ourselves). As it was, people were out the door and the line zigzagged back and forth across the gymnasium floor once you got inside. We use those forms where you fill in the bubble for the candidates you want - like you would with a standardized test for school. At the end, you feed it into a machine which tabulates the results and stores the ballots. So no voting machines, and plenty of little booth area and tables to vote at, so the line actually moved very quickly for the number of people who had shown up.

Even if we had had to wait outside, the weather is perfect here in Michigan today.Watching the news, states without early voting (like here in Michigan) have endless lines snaking out of buildings and into parking lots and streets. In Virginia they have these lines that look to have hundreds of people (if not thousands), standing outside waiting to get into their polling places, in a pouring rain.

The election workers at our precinct said that they had more than twice the number of voters this morning than they have ever had in a previous election at the same time of day.

I really hope that the new President and Congress - regardless of which party they represent - will expand early voting to the rest of the country so as to avoid the horrible lines braving horrible weather, as they are in Virginia this morning. Heck, here in Michigan it could have been heavy snow rather than heavy rain.

And is anyone else happy as heck that the endless negative political ads will be off of our televisions sometime tonight or tomorrow?

moving along

I have been moving along in my effort to get caught up with my book blog. I have made eighteen entries in three days, and think I will get close to being caught up, if not completely caught up, by the end of the week (which is my goal). you can find it at http://duchym.livejournal.com/

I have gone from two sacks of books read and unblogged down to one sack.

Today the weather is crazy. I was woken up by thunder, when the sky was not even very cloudy. then it started hailing and pouring rain - and the sky still wasn't even very cloudy.

It is supposed to clear up for Election Day tomorrow. We are supposed to have a perfect day - seventy and sunny.

Which is good. We do not have early voting in this state, other than absentee ballot, and you have to have a reason to vote absentee. So if there are long lines tomorrow, at least people will not have to stand outside in rain, hail, or snow.

I think that this is the first election in my lifetime where I have wanted to vote. In all of the other elections I have been voting against someone rather than for someone. Well, I am still voting against someone - the policies of George Bush which have so damaged the country. I am voting against Caribou Barbie, because no one that ignorant and that stupid should ever be close to nuclear bomb codes. While I still have great respect for McCain for his lifetime of service for the country, I am voting against his negative campaign and the Klan rally atmosphere at Republican rallies. But for the first time I am voting for someone - a man who calls for positive change, who calls for a coming together rather than the usual party divisiveness. A man who calls for hope in these dark times. Yes - I am voting for Barrack Obama, and I am so happy to be able to vote for someone so intelligent and articulate, who promises to bring my nation back to the path of sanity, a return to being a shining beacon of light and hope on a hill top. this election has given me hope for my beloved country for the first time in years.

I am voting tomorrow. Are you?

Fall Back

This was a great weekend. Friday was Halloween, today is Fall Back - the day when daylight savings times ends, and we can all get an extra hour of blessed sleep! I love both of those days, and am delighted that they occurred on the same weekend.

I have one week before my next week off. So this week (in addition to going to work) my goal will be catching up with my book blog, so that on my week off I can concentrate on finishing/writing a couple of short stories for NaNoWriMo. I know I cannot do a novel length manuscript, but I have a partially written short horror story I would like to finish, and ideas for three more short stories.

Tonight will be the last night I can work with someone I have worked with for nearly twenty years. I am really depressed for myself, but delighted for her, as she will be transferring out to Tucson and getting a nice promotion. No more winter driving for her, and a cushy Monday through Friday day shift job and a good raise.