I received my passport yesterday. Seeing as I just applied for it on the 8th and did a standard application (no rush) getting it so quickly was quite a surprise.

Now I can go to any cool IT conference in the world I want!

This morning I was looking up how to do some filtering in gmail (specifically – how to get it to stop ignoring square brackets, no luck, I don’t think it’s possible).

I did manage to wander around enough to learn something I really didn’t care to have taking up precious space in my brain. Paris Hilton’s shoe size.

I have no idea how I went to square brackets to Paris Hilton.

Thank you Internet.

(It’s a size 11 by the way, which is quite large, and the same as mine. You’re welcome.)

I applied for my passport yesterday. Watch out world!

The weather was gorgeous yesterday, sunny and mid 60s. I ended up opening the windows in my office.

This morning I looked out my window and just the tiniest bit of the sky as the sun rose was filled with a magnificent red. When I went out to get coffee I was able to see the sunrise in it’s full glory, the thin line of red sky with huge red sun and the rest of the sky full of clouds and rain. I wish I’d been in a position to take a proper photo. Seems like the clouds won though, very gloomy out now.

Mmmm coffee.

2008 marks me using Linux essentially full time on my desktop for six years. In spite of that, I’ve kept a dual boot system with Win2K then WinXP that entire time. For a while it was so I had a backup for things that didn’t work properly in Linux (cd burning was a pain for a while, I forget what else). In the past two years or so I’ve been able to solve every issue I needed Windows for, so I came to a point where these were my lingering reasons for keeping Windows.

These reasons are no longer good enough for me to continue to devote 40G of harddrive space to it, so tonight I finally rid myself of it. I now have a 40G /data partition on my desktop, and no more Windows. I feel so much cleaner now. Yay!

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.