I haven’t been writing much these past few months.

The truth is I’ve been going through a very rough time lately. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I don’t like posting when I’m depressed because my posts end up filled with negativity. In this case it’s that coupled with the problems I’m going through not being things I want to share with everyone on the internet who happens to read my site.

So over the next few months the public posts I make will be less about my life specifics as I try to sort out what I’m doing with it. I need to ramble about this in my head and in private journals some before talking about where I come out with it all.

Wish me luck, and here’s hoping 2008 will be significantly better than 2007.

Michael came home from the hospital 10 days ago, on Saturday the 15th. Michael discusses the surgery and the recovery over on his blog in greater detail than I could. His recovery has been pretty remarkable, he needed my help getting around for the first couple days, but has since graduated to a cane which allows him to pretty much move around the house freely and not require my help for most tasks. There are regular in-home nurse and physical therapy visits and my primary duty now is regular pharmacy visits to pick up prescriptions and other medications and supplements that he needs to take. He had an appointment with the surgeon this past week that I drove him to, and in the next few weeks he’ll need regular bloodwork done that he’ll need to leave the house for.

My boss has been extraordinarily helpful. He put me on project work these past few weeks so I had a lot of flexibility when it came to my hours. It still hasn’t been easy, I tend to deal better with set schedules and in my struggle to spend enough time focused on work (concentration has been hard) and be available for Michael I’ve skipped going to the gym these past few weeks and don’t feel fantastic about that. I feel tired too, which I expect is just from a messed up schedule, even with near-full cooking and cleaning responsibilities right now (which Michael and I usually share) I don’t think I’m actually doing more than normal, since I cut back considerably on f/oss stuff outside of work for the time being and haven’t been doing much outside the house this month.

I did skip out the other night to see Golden Compass with Nita, her sister and brother in law, and mct who is back in the area visiting for the holidays. I’d seen the movie a couple weeks before with another friend, but I enjoyed it so it was worth seeing again. Mostly it was great to spend some time out with friends and have time to catch up.

And now it’s Christmas! Last night Michael and I watched Stardust, which I’d fallen in love with when I saw it in the theaters a few months back. I also enjoyed a bottle of Delirium Noel which is now easily one of my favorite Christmas ales, no surprise, since Delirium Tremens is my favorite beer! I do love those pink elephants. As for today, as usual, we didn’t really do gifts except for for the cats, and since we had so much going on we skipped the Christmas tree and only have a few lights up and very limited decorations in general. The cats enjoyed their toys and treats we gave them this morning. I also made some banana bread, which looks and smells quite good if I do say so myself, will try a slice soon. For dinner I have some salmon burgers and shrimp with cocktail sauce I picked up from Whole Foods a couple days back, along with some sparling cider (as Michael can’t drink alcohol yet). The rest of the day? Will probably have a fire in the fireplace, putter around online a bit, watch some movies and enjoy the day (and check email and hope my phone doesn’t ring, as I’m on call today for work).

Merry Christmas!

Today is Caligula’s 4th birthday!

Michael’s been doing physical therapy at the hospital, yesterday when I arrived to visit him he was sitting up in a chair next to his bed and told me that they had him walking earlier in the day, and later in the afternoon they had him up walking again with a walker to the door of the room. Very impressive for just a couple days after replacing an entire hip joint! He was running a bit of a fever Tuesday and Wednesday, but they said it’s not too unusual after such a major surgery and it’s gone down now. I think we’re looking at either a Friday or Saturday release date.

One of the things that quickly became obvious following this surgery and the instructions Michael was given about hip care and recover was that I’d need to bring one of the futon couches/beds downstairs. They come apart, so last night instead of sleeping like I should have been, I was up sorting out how difficult it would be to take apart. I got pretty far last night and when I was finally too tired to do anything else I went to bed. This morning I got it mostly put back together downstairs, I stopped at the tricky logistical problem of connecting two major pieces together and tightening everything up before it collapses. Yeah, I might need some help with that bit, but I’m lucky to have a few local friends who have offered to drop by if I need any help :) I also finally got around to doing things like sorting mail and doing dishes that I’ve simply been too exhausted to do these past couple days. Getting that stuff sorted made me feel better, but I’d really like to get the house cleaned completely prior to Michael coming home.

And it looks like I’m getting that opportunity today. The weather is horrible, the temperature is hovering at the freezing mark sleet and freezing rain has been accumulating for about an hour now. I spoke with Michael briefly this morning and we agreed that me taking the risk of driving to the hospital (which is about 25 minutes away, without traffic or bad weather) in this weather was a risk not worth taking. I’ll see if it clears up later, but for now I am going to work on getting the house all ready for him to come home. Oh and I will probably take a nap this afternoon, I’m still pretty tired, wasn’t able to sleep in late enough to make up for being up past 1AM last night.

Michael’s surgery was a success! There were some complications and the entire process took longer than expected – causing me to be at the hospital today for over 17 hours. I’m exhausted, just winding down now so I can sleep.

Timeline of the day:

4:30AM – Wake up, dressed, showered, packed, sorted out all we needed.
6:00AM – Arrive at the hospital and check-in.
7:00AM – I leave Michael so he can go get prepped and interviewed by a half dozen people prior to surgery.
7:45AM – I get called back into pre-op waiting area where Michael is already in a bed and half prepped for surgery. Turns out the equipment wasn’t properly sterilized and that has to be done before surgery can take place. Full sterilization takes about 2 hours.
11:00AM – We’re still waiting, they bumped 2 surgeries ahead of Michael’s due to having to wait for sterile equipment.
12:45PM – Finally they let us know that they’re about ready, I head back to the waiting area.
3:45PM – A nurse comes out to tell me that everything is OK, but it’s taking longer than expected.
4:30PM – Michael’s doctor comes out to tell me the surgery was completed, was a success, and to explain to me the complications – all of which we knew were risks going in and so they were properly prepared for. Told me that Michael would be in the recovery ward for about 1.5 hours.
6:45PM – I start getting anxious and ask an on-duty nurse to see if Michael is still in recovery. He is, she assured me they’d come to get me when they bring him down to his room.
7:30PM – Michael is brought to his room and I head down to be with him. We spend the next few hours together, watching the flurry of nurses come in and out of his room to handle things.
11:15PM – I finally leave the hospital to come home and tend to the animals and get some rest.

Visiting hours are from 11AM-8PM, so I’ll probably be spending that entire time tomorrow at the hospital. Hopefully he’ll be well enough to come home Wednesday or Thursday.

Going to sleep now.

Just about to leave for the hospital for Michael’s hip replacement surgery. Everything is expected to go well, I’ll update once he’s out.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the death of my father. I made it through most of the day OK, but I don’t think this anniversary is getting easier. I miss him.

Today I spent a bunch of time working on my Sparc on Debian. It went something like this. I don’t want to talk about it, except to say – hey the Rescue bit of the Debian Sparc Install CD works great (once I learned it existed), and I’m going to be better about running `silo` after making changes to /etc/silo.conf.

Stop laughing.

On Saturday I was looking for something to do, since I didn’t want to rake the leaves like I should have. I ended up heading up the street to the brand new Philadelphia Premium Outlets. I’m not much of a shopper, and even less of an outlet fanatic, so my trip was driven by boredom, curiosity and the need for some new pants and perhaps a new black skirt. Right, clothes shopping.

First of all – hello it’s DECEMBER and people are Christmas shopping! I got to the mall and it took me about 10 minutes to find a parking space – the lot was simply filled up, all the way to the edge all the way around the mall. I finally found one and walked to the mall. It’s a very nicely laid out outlet mall, open outdoor walkways and a very sensible plan, which even though it was chilly out, made for a fairly stress-free shopping trip. I went into a bunch of stores, really determined to complete my task. I tried on lots of clothes but nothing was clicking with me. I ended up wandering into KB Toys halfway through my shopping trip, the only toy store in the whole mall, and made my only purchase of the day. D’oh.

I couldn’t help it though, I’m a lousy clothes shopper by myself. But toys? Well how could I resist – these were the McFarlane 6″ Curse of the Were-Rabbit Action Figures! I was so excited when they were announced but then let things get away from me and never bought any. Even better? They were marked down considerably and I snagged the 3 I bought for only $4 each! Would have bought all the ones they had there but I was trying to behave myself, I really don’t need more toys.

And while on the subject of toys, I made one purchase in the vendor room at PhilCon this year, a Giant Microbe: Beer & Bread Yeast. He now lives on my monitor, have yet to name him though.

I need someone to go clothes shopping with so I’ll behave myself.

I spent the weekend before last at Philcon, The Philadelphia Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Nita and her younger sister Dannette let me crash in their hotel room for the weekend, which was awesome of them. We arrived Friday night and I let them “dress me up” for the evening. The major reason behind my spur of the moment attendance at the con was generally feeling lousy about myself lately and not getting out enough – so what’s better for feeling lousy than dressing up and looking good at a con? I let them have their way with eye makeup and lipstick, and borrowed some of Nettie’s clothes. I am unconvinced that the makeup did me much good (or it could be my general loathing for makeup), but I did like the clothes. I should probably do some shopping soon, standard issue sysadmin t-shirt and jeans really aren’t doing much to make me feel fantastic about myself. After dressing me up (Nita has pictures, must nag her again for them), we had time to catch a couple panels, around midnight I went back up to the room to sleep while Nita and Nettie had other plans for the late night (which I skipped simply because I was tired).

Saturday was fun. It started out with breakfast buffet in at the hotel with some of the con organizers Nita knows. I quickly diverged from Nita and Nettie’s panel choices and went to a bunch on my own. I bumped into waltman (who I know from PLUG) sometime during the day and after hitting a few panels we snagged a local university professor he knows from his SciFi book club and the three of us went out for dinner at Nodding Head Brewery. I had one of their BPA (Bill Payer Ale) and some chicken fingers, which I enjoyed, it was a very nice little brewery. Upon arriving back at the hotel after dinner I wandered around for a bit, ended up bumping into Bill, a former co-worker of Michael’s whose house I’ve been to a couple of times. After chatting for a bit it was time for the Masquerade, where costumers in the community showcase their creations. Last year I wasn’t too into the Masquerade, so I didn’t have high hopes, but I was pleasantly surprised this year. Following the Masquerade was the musical guest for the con, Voltaire, which turned out to be one of the highlights of my weekend. His music is goth and morbid (which I can be very very into if the mood strikes, and it was striking that night), but he can geek out with the best of them and had a pile of SciFi inspired songs that, while sometimes perverse, were quite a lot of fun. It was really ashame the concert was only an hour long, especially when I learned he was prepared to play longer and the time slot for his show was just short. I’m really sorry I missed him play at Dracula’s Ball over Halloween, but the intimacy of the con show was great and lacked the hoards of goth fangirls that I’m sure generally accompany his shows. Of course Saturday was the night for con parties, but after a whole day of conning I was ready to hide in the hotel room. Events like this where I’m with a lot of people really exhaust me.

Sunday! I woke up before Nita and Nettie, who had stayed out past 4AM. I went to a couple panels before our 1PM hotel checkout time. In the early afternoon I ended up meeting Voltaire and buying one of his CDs, which he signed. Nita and I also got our pictures taken with him (Nita, I need piccys!). We caught some late lunch and the rest of the day was pretty much spent hanging out with people. I finally got to meet drkmage1016 in the gaming room at the con, Nita knows him from gaming and who I’ve known him just via LiveJournal for a couple years now. A bit embarrassingly, when I said “Hey, I know you…” he realized who I was and went ahead and introduced me to the rest of the table as some Linux guru, hah! I went ahead and mentioned that I’m the contact for PLUG now too, and that’s when one of their table mates turned around and took notice – it was none other than Eric S. Raymond. What an introduction! I knew he was at the con, he’s a local and I’ve seen him around town a bunch of times. So I ended up chatting with ESR, his wife, and a couple of folks who he spent the con with for a bit, and he said he might be willing to do a talk for PLUG in the near future, hurrah! Sunday wrapped up with Nita being invited to a dinner with a bunch of the con organizers, to which she was able to get Nettie and I invited to as well. By the time we had this dinner around 8PM I was beat from another full day of human interaction and didn’t talk much, but it was an enjoyable dinner anyway. After dinner a bunch of us piled into Nita’s car for the ride home, she ended up giving rides to a couple of people, including Mark Wolverton, who I had the pleasure of being squished next to in the back seat.

It was after 11 by the time we got back to Nita’s, and I was so tired that she let me crash in her spare bedroom. Thanks again Nita! Fun weekend, I’m really glad I decided to go.