Project 365: Week 43

I only have one picture this week and it's a repeat of last week:



Yup.  We ended up here AGAIN.  He was resting over the weekend, played in church Sunday against my better judgment, and then kept telling me how tired he was on the ride home.  He called me at work on Monday and told me he was having the same symptoms again and we needed to go to the ER.  So I took him there, he was re-admitted and had another stent put in on Tuesday.  This makes six in all (collect the set!).  He is back home and resting again.  Had one bad low blood pressure episode where he literally FELL ON HIS FACE but he seems to be doing much better now.  Ever seen a 275 lb man drop like a stone?  That'll get your heart rate going...

(He had the first two stents in 2000 and 2002 on our anniversary.  Now, it's my birthday.  I gave him the hairy eyeball and told him if there was a message in there, I'd really just prefer if he said it rather than trying to make me guess through charades :P.  Seriously, dude, let me teach you how to knit or something instead, okay?)

Now that we are hopefully past the medical version of Groundhog Day, I'm back at work and concentrating on school assignments.  I will hopefully be able to take more pictures and, you know, COMMENT on other people's pics since y'all have been kind enough to comment on mine.  Ah, normality (or as close as I can get)!  How I crave thee!

Oh...and proof that Munchkin is still alive despite dropping the SU's Bluetooth into the kitty water bowl last week:

Project 365 - Week 42

Well, I was going to post last week but the Cyber Hermit household had a bit of an emergency so I am posting more of a highlights reel:

Background:  one of the instructors where the SU works knows the bass player for Journey.  The SU let him and several of the crew come in and fly the simulators last Monday.  As a thank you, we got tickets and backstage meet and greet passes for the Journey/Pat Benatar/Loverboy concert.  The seats were very good - 5 rows up from the stage.

Loverboy was the opening act and, wow, they suck.  You know if a band is doing their big song 30 minutes after they hit the stage that there is a reason they are the opening act.  If any of y'all remember Mike Reno, he still wears the stupid bandanna on his head.  He also has gained some weight and came out wearing something that I *swear* was jeggings.  The whole half-hour was like watching Spinal Tap: The Live Show! The only thing they needed was a "Hello, Cleveland!"  At the end of their set, Reno dramatically whipped off his bandanna, *wrung out the sweat* and then tossed into the audience.  Ewwwwwwww...

Pat Benatar can still sing like nobody's business.  Unlike Loverboy and their "never met an 80's cliche I didn't like" ethos, she has aged very gracefully but still puts on a great show.  She did a lot of her big hits and also tossed in some others such as an interesting rendition of "Ring of Fire" which I liked a lot.  Her husband and guitar player is extremely talented and has a wonderful sense of what is just right for a song.  Unlike...

Neal Schon - also known as Captain Meedley  Holy crap, that guy never met an overdone guitar solo he didn't like and he had a lot of them.  The guy who took over from Steve Perry (Arnel Pineda) is very good.  Close your eyes and you'd think it was Steve Perry.  But, man, the dude is snack-size!  Seriously, if he tops out much over five feet, I'd be surprised.  He's got a lot of energy, though, and really works the crowd.  It was fun to watch him.

So that was the good in our week.



This was the not-so-good (and how sad is it that I found this pic under a website of things to do in my town!).  The Spousal Unit looked at me Saturday night and said, "I think we need to go to the hospital."  Long story short, the man had new blockages that were about eighty percent closed and added three shiny new stents to his previous collection of two.  Way to be an overachiever, hon! :P

He is home and has been resting since Tuesday.  He's supposed to go back to work on Monday but has cautioned people he is not feeling like he can just jump in and arm wrestle the government the way he usually does.  (I've told him to tell people I will hurt them if they try to push him.  Grrr...).

Small notes:  diet is still going well.  I'm just shy of 30 pounds down as of Friday.  The only bummer is that I seem to be having some weird acne issues that I haven't had in a long time.  Bleah.  I have some stuff from the doctor that I am hoping will clear it up.  I did also get to buy some new clothes (the SU's birthday present to me) which I hope to post some pictures of soon.  I have gone from 18/20 or 20/22 to 16's and 14/16.  So, yay me :).

Now, back to writing the draft of my policy paper...

Oh, wait!

Cat!  Sleeping cat!  Snoring cat!  Soon-to-be-dead cat because:

Can't tell what this is?  Move in a little closer:

It's the Spousal Unit's bluetooth headset that he has been searching for - and now playing the part of a submarine at the bottom of the cats' water bowl.  Yeah...someone is a dead cat.

Issues. We all got 'em. (Some of us even have subscriptions)

It's nice and quiet in the office right now.  That will probably end in the next few minutes *g* but I thought I would take a few moments and try to update since my goal is to become semi-regular at this blog thing!

The Spousal Unit and I continue to move forward, stumbling sometimes but still together.  I received a very polite slap upside the head from a good friend about setting up an initial counseling appointment.  I keep meaning to do so, however, I will admit that I have let work and school continually push that task down the line into the "do later" column.  I have promised I will call the two provided names this week and figure out who I want to set up the appointment with.  The only requirement the SU has put forth is whichever one we use has to be okay with cursing (you can take the man out of the Navy, but...).

The SU agreeing to go is good.  It's agreement more on the side of "if you want to go/think we need to go, I'll go" but I'll take it.  It's better than outright refusal.  The only thing I really wonder about is how open and honest he will be.  When I've asked him that, I get a variety of answers.  Most of them seem to revolve around some convoluted version of "I'll try"; his walls have walls by this point.  He has said some things to me that have just broken my heart because I know that is not how other me, God or our friends see him.  But to hear him talk about how he sees himself...is just heart-wrenchingly painful.  My hope is that with working his sobriety and continued pastoral and other counseling, he will be able to start being honest about the things that truly, truly bother him or that are hard to deal with for him; that he'll be able to start putting that stuff in the garbage pile and rebuild his self-image the way God sees him.  And rebuild his relationship with God while he is at it.

Yeah...nothing too big :P.

I see my first new advisee today and then the appointments slowly start ramping up (please see pics of boxes o'students in Project 365 post below :)).  I've advised in the past - some planned, some impromptu - so I should be okay with it and will learn more of the ins and outs of this particular program as I go.  Having things to do is good, yes?

My main thought at this point is I'm almost halfway through the semester.  This semester continues to feel like an albatross around my neck for some reason.  It might be because I'm having to deal with a finance course and that is not my bailiwick.  At all.  When the instructor asked us to introduce ourselves and what we wanted to get out of this course, I said that finance was like a foreign language to me and I wanted to become more proficient than being able to ask where the bathroom is :). 

I think I'm grasping enough and I was able to create my annotated bibliography for my literature review and pull out necessary threads to make a coherent paper but it *feels* harder than other semesters have - even the semester I took Research Methods.  I spent three hours Saturday (8am-11am) and three hours Sunday (6am-9am) working on the lit review so I can try and have the rough done by this week and start on the policy paper.  Both are not due until the week of Thanksgiving but there are several analytic essays *also* coming down the pike and it makes me all Kermit the Frog:

And, finally:

Dear Providers of My Doctor's Office Supplement/Diet Program  -

I would like to make a suggestion.  When confronted by the first supplement of the day, perhaps one should not have to look at a drink that is the color of a urine sample that bodes no good for the donor.

Just a thought...
TCH

Project 365 - Week 40

Well, unfortunately, I only have one day's worth of pictures this week.  However, when you look at them, you may understand why:

As part of my new and improved job duties, I am now the proud owner of 250 advisees with more to follow in the future.  Between *that*, the blast e-mail that went out telling all these folk to contact me to set up advising appointments, trying to write a comprehensive (and *good*) analytical essay on the failing economy of Detroit, and now working on a lit review and a policy paper, I think I'm pretty lucky I've remembered my name by today!

(and I didn't get any chance to knit, either!  Suuuuuuuck!)