In 1976, I was in third grade when America celebrated her bicentennial. One aspect of that celebration was the minting of special bicentennial coins. Anticipating that such coins would eventually be collectable and worth more than face value, I gave some of each denomination to my mother about 5000 dollar yahoo borrowing and asker her to place them in our safety deposit box at the First National Bank in Riceville. When I was back in Riceville in September, my mother handed me this envelope on which she had inscribed my name 30 years ago and said, “These are yours.” While it was cool to be reminded of something I had completely forgotten about, I was disappointed to find that they are not worth much more than face value.
Transoceanic depth in this earth in this cenotaph
It’s been three weeks since Tina’s surgery and she is still recovering. Her mom, Jan, stayed with us for a couple of weeks and was a tremendous help, but we’re on our own again now. We’ve all gotten into a routine since she left, but we’ll be glad when Tina is back to full strength again. She’s frustrated with the speed of her recovery but glad that she already feels better now than she did before the surgery. She’s looking forward to an active spring and summer with our family.
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Vital Statistics
Bike odometer: 2523
Van odometer: 154411
Aches & pains: sciatica, tiny frostbite on elbow, lower back
Current reading: My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, Cross-platform GUI Programming with wxWidgets
Recent listening: Bucketheadland by Buckethead, The Complete Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould, Across A Crowded Room by Richard Thompson, Weird Al Yankovic
Recent viewing: The Illusionist, Hancock, Brainman, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Stay, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, Ravens at Steelers, Eagles at Cardinals, Fantastic Four, Battlestar Galactica, Monkey Shines, The Dark Knight, Mars Attacks
Recent playing: Chain Factor, Galcon
Recently accomplished: Cancelled Costco TV order, activated “new” Tivo, purchased new TV (again), Pinewood derby car for Graham, shopping, taking care of Tina
Imperative To Do:Â Freecycle, get rid of MacRenewal Macs, recover network functionality on old Tivo
The Day the Music Died
40 50 years ago today, Buddy Holly died in an airplane crash shortly after taking off from Mason City Airport following his last show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake. Holly’s final performance and death occurred in what would become my neighborhood 7 years later. As you can see below, I still have roots in the area. I’ve marked the spot of the crash as well as my hometown, my sister’s home and my brother’s home.
Netflix again
Back in 2003, we dropped cable TV in order to save money when I was unemployed. When my employment became stable again, I decided against monopolistic and customer-unfriendly Comcast and signed up with DirecTV. Part of the package included a dual-tuner Tivo with which I immediately fell in love. It didn’t take long before I had used up the 50 hours of available space and started to feel the pressure to watch my shows before they disappeared. As a result we dropped our Netflix subscription since we were watching Tivo all the time and never had time for DVDs.
2009 has brought the advent of the HD age to our household and things are changing in our content consumption. Before I purchased our new LCD TV at Costco, I promised myself that I would not spend a bunch of money after to make all our content HD. In fact, the main reason we got the TV was because of the Xbox. The impending HD switch-over was a consideration but not a big one because DirecTV provides our television content and they will continue to provide the same service for some time.
Birthday Interview Questions
Friday I’m going to start a tradition in the Ring household. I’ve had this idea for some time but I keep forgetting to do it. The idea is to hold an interview with someone on their birthday. On Friday, the interview will be with Thomas on the occasion of his 13th birthday. Hopefully, I’ll remember to continue this and I’ll use the same questions year after year. Here are the questions I have so far. Please add your suggestions in the comments.
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Bobby McFerrin
I read the news today, oh boy
Monday, January 26, 2009
- 0600:
- iPhone alarm wakes me with “Sonar”. I get out of bed, put on yesterday’s clothes and check Thomas’ room. His alarm clock is rumbling but he is not in his room. I wander around the house looking for him until I find him in bed with his Grandma. I wake him. I take my iPhone into the Big TV Room where I check mail, Twitter and Facebook.
You with your angel face
On this historical day our little family is going through a little bit of personal history. As I write this, Tina is in the operating room undergoing a hysterectomy. As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago Tina had what I described then as a “severe gynecological episode” which resulted in great loss of blood and a trip to the emergency room. After spending a night in the hospital and consulting with a new set of doctors, we concluded that her old doctor would no longer be treating her. For over a year she’s been having problems with irregular and lengthy menstrual cycles and her doctor insisted on treating her with hormones in the form of birth control pills. That treatment was ineffective and the ongoing condition resulted in frequent migraines, anemia, worsening a of her restless leg syndrome and a myriad of lesser symptoms. This all culminated in the middle of December when Tina’s period started and hasn’t stopped since. And so she is in the operating room now.
They are going to attempt to perform the procedure vaginally in order to reduce recovery time. However, if there are complications (details of which were explained to us but I cannot remember), they will make an incision for a laparotomy. They are equally prepared for either.
Tina’s mom arrived last night and will be helping out over the next week or so as Tina recovers. Since I’m working from home, I’ll also be able to help more than if I weren’t. We are lucky.
Update (13:00 PST): Tina is out of recovery and resting in her room. Pain medication is making her drowsy but she’ll probably be up for calls and visitors this evening. She’s in room 2406 at Adventist.
Update (14:00 PST):Â The doctor reported that the surgery went well. She called it an “assisted laparotomy”, I think. As I understand it, they made two small incisions to assist in the removal via vagina. Also, that last sentence is all kinds of wrong.