medical whining; you have been warned.

the weather has been rainy and cool recently. this means: my left shoulder hurts. my back hurts. my wrists both hurt. my hips ache. my right ankle is twinging. the middle joints on all my fingers feel warm and slow. sleep seems like a good solution, however they frown upon that here at work.

i went to the restaurant where i know that jarrin's beautiful girlfriend works for lunch. first, because they have good lunches, and second, because jarrin had said that she was going to get a kitten, and i wanted to make sure that she knew about the kittens at my vet. they have a big old cage full of little tiny kittens out in the waiting room. they are way cute.

and since i can't have one right now, i want to make sure that someone gets them.

tonight is my last class for a little bit at planned parenthood of minnesota and south dakota. i'm volunteering there, in a program called neighboraid. what this is is that basically, i had twice weekly classes all through august, and now that i know so many new things, i get to go inflict knowledge on my friends, coworkers, and random people on the street. mwhahahaha.

not only was i catching a cold, i still have it. i am not a happy camper right now.

i had forgotten that that was what the last entry here wasa about.

today was a bit familiar seeming. i slept in, and then got a phone call from my dad, saying that he was halfway to the hospital, and that the ambulance was taking my mother there, and that he'd call back with more details after the doctor had seen my mother.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeek.

she's fine, and home again from the emergency room already. she had an ekg which looked fine, and they sent her home. it seems like it might have been a reaction to having run out of one of her meds and therefore having gone off of it suddenly. she is remembering to not do that again.

but it made for a too exciting day.

my dad was in the hospital, mostly in icu and some of the time in rehab last fall, from november sixth to january third. most of the time that he was in icu, he was in a drug induced coma.

this series from the startribune gives a really good feel for what it was like for me during that time. it's very familiar sounding, except my dad was at united hospital in st. paul. he didn't have ARDS (which is what the woman that the series is about had), but it's spot on, otherwise.

Breathless - Love and a grim diagnosis

aaaaaagh. i think i'm catching a cold.

oh, this is too funny and too true.

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Who needs to know the meaning of life?

i forgot to post a good thing last friday. hmm. last week's good thing is that i managed to snag a cyber savers ticket to toronto to go visit people there. it was great. i met the cats, the cats mostly liked me as much as they like anyone, and blotchy didn't even drool on me much. woohoo!

plus, i sat next to a really sweet woman on the plane who told me all about how she was going to go meet someone in person who she'd only ever met over the internet, and how worried she was about it. ellie, if you ever read this, i hope things with abraham went swimmingly, and that you are right now having a fabulous time.

i have started to listen to the perkigoth streaming radio station. i listen to the first stream. i am currently listening to machines of loving grace, butterfly wings, which is a song that i really love that i haven't heard in years.

don't place faith...
don't place faith...
don't place faith...

i recently came into possession of a lot of my paternal grandfather's (and grandmother's, and step-grandmother's) pictures. i am trying to sort them out and get them into albums and get them labelled, with the help of my parents and extended family.

labelling them and sorting them is a big job. especially since i don't know what to include and what to leave out. i mean, the three different views of the petunia bed at the house on garden in livonia are fascinating to me, but i bet that only a very small number of people are as interested in them as i am.

and even with as big of a job as it is, i wish i had more pictures. i don't have a lot of pictures of my grandmother, for example. this is mostly pictures of after my step-grandmother and my grandfather got married, at least the bunch that i'm sorting now.

you should take lots of pictures, and have people take lots of pictures of you. and then label them, so your grandchildren don't sit around wondering who those weird people in the old fashioned clothes are. trust me on that bit. :)

go read Two Views of the Moon. i'd post a bit of it here to tempt you, but, well, jo says please not to without permission, which i haven't at this point.

go read.

it's friday. in college, a friend and sometimes roommate of mine (hi, sam!) would hold shabbat on friday nights, and we'd all gather, and someone would do the candle blessing, and bless the bread, and then we'd eat the challah, and we'd all have to list one good thing that had happened to us that week.

we were only allowed to say that we hadn't been run over by a cushman very occasionally, and only if really absolutely nothing else good had happened.

i got to work at home on tuesday. that was probably the best thing this week, i think.

here is a picture of us at the elephant walk bed and breakfast, which is faboo. absolutely. the b and b website is located here. go. it's cool.

i have a little stuffed gargoyle on my desk at work. some days he growls at more people than other days. this has been an almost entirely growl-less week, but then i've been home one of the days, and off in the lab for a bunch of the rest of it. but that's quite all right by me.