Seismic Twitch

We’ve had a spate of very interesting weather up here lately. We’ve had some wonderful, nature-smashing storms with thunder, lightning, hail, driving rain, wild wind and tornadoes. Yesterday we lost power for 8 hours because of branches blown down from trees. And it wasn’t just our house/neighbourhood. It was all over the city. Anywhere there were large, mature trees, there were blown down branches and downed power lines. There were also damaged cars and buildings. Tornadoes were sighted north and west of the city so we were on a tornado watch for most of yesterday.

I’m doing cross stitch. I’ve made a present for a co-worker who is pregnant and due in October. I have to find three little frames for the a,b,c I stitched up for her nursery. I’m now working on the horoscope signs of Bran, Boy and myself to frame up and put up in our living room.

Work is going well. I’ve been allowed access to the CSC information site. This means that I can access information about the men and women referred to the Reporting Centre. We have to have that information because if an offender is going to spend time in the Centre we have to know what we might have to watch out for. This also gives me access to a secure email system so I can easily communicate with parole officers. On Tuesday I’ll be inputting the month end reports for our residents.

I’ve become very attached to You Tube. I’ve been watching all kinds of true crime shows. Many of the shows I’d never seen before. One channel that is featured prominently in this genre is Investigation Discovery. I don’t know where that channel originates. I’d like to think that if I got cable again that I could get it from the USA. What makes me doubt that is that is that the announcers always have an English accent. That’s not the norm on American networks. Right now, as I type, I’m watching “World’s Wildest Police Videos” hosted by former Sheriff John Binnel (sp).

I got a haircut a couple of weeks ago. It had grown out to the point of nearly being able to be tied back. In order to keep it out of my face I had to wear a headband. I liked it, but it was hard to keep off the nape of my neck. This meant that the coming summer was going to be a whole lot warmer then I like. So I got it all cut off…well, not all, but it’s darned short.

Bran’s truck cost us a whole shit pile of money. We thought he was having transmission issues (which would have been okay because that’s covered on a 3 year warranty from our purchase last year). The repair guys said that it was probably the tires and alignment. The said tires were dangerously worn. So we replaced them. If you buy a vehicle, I recommend a car or small SUV that takes regular tires. They’re a whole lot less expensive. I’m not sure, but I think the issues we thought were the transmission have been resolved…at least for now.

That’s about it for now. I have to start looking for clothes for work.

Since it’s been a while since my late post I thought I’d use bullets to update you on my life as it is right now (and has been for the past couple of weeks):

• Remember how proud I was that I put together the Ikea dresser and chiffonier? Maybe I forgot to post about it, but I did do that and I was proud of my l337 skillz with the screw driver and whatchamacallit key thing. I got a sore wrist from doing that. The reward of feeling good about putting together the furniture was superseded by the growing discomfort in my right wrist. Gradually I was unable to do much because any twisting of my wrist brought sharp pangs in my wrist. So off I went to the doctor. I was worried that I suddenly developed arthritis in that joint. The good thing is that it wasn’t arthritis. The bad thing is that I’d created tendinitis in my wrist. I was told that I should up my intake of ibuprofen (which would also necessitate a new and stronger anti-acid medication) and/or get a wrist splint. The splint thing is to keep the wrist from twisting, thus allowing the tendons to rest and ergo the swelling to reduce. I chose the splint alone. It will take my wrist longer to heal, but I won’t have to take stronger medications. It’s a semi-win-win situation.
• Work is a bit screwy at the moment. We’re still waiting on the security clearance for the staff who is going to take the full time night position. This means that we have some issues with filling her spot until she’s able to be trained and get working. We also lost one of the part-time staff. She got her degree and has started working at a job she’s enjoying very much. So we’ve been down for her time as well. Today is my weekend. While I grant that I had all day yesterday after I finished my overnight shift training a new staff, I had to recover from a week of overnights to shift my sleep pattern so that I can work 2 evening shifts and then move my body to day shifts for the remainder of the week. Yeah.
• The house is still for sale. There have been three or four tours through, once last Tuesday while I slept the day away. Bran asked them to be quiet since I was on overnight shift and would be sleeping. I didn’t hear them at all and didn’t wake until about 5 pm. Yay!
• I still like my Ute and like driving it.
• The weather was hot for a while. It was not only hot, but it was wickedly humid. Stepping outside of the house, work or my Ute was like stepping into a bowl of hot soup. I drank so much water and yet was hardly going to the bathroom because I was sweating it all away. Work was hard. The upper floors aren’t air conditioned so doing room and building checks were torture. Happily for staff we get to spend at least part of our day in air conditioned comfort. Many of our residents work in construction so they didn’t get a break except when they were on main floor./li>
• We got one of those portable air conditioners and it’s installed in the living room. It truly has been a saving grace for us. We have three desk top computers in the living room and the conditioner has kept the space livable. Too bad the cool air doesn’t reach the bedrooms (even with fans encouraging it on its way). We’re now getting more livable temperatures. We do expect Monday to be hot again, but nothing like it had been and it’s only for one day. I can survive that.
• My fancy light-up keyboard, the one I was so happy to have, was incompatible with my computer. That made me sad. It stopped the computer from completing the start-up routine. I don’t know how it did it though. We took the computer in and they confirmed that everything was working right. Bran brought it home and started plugging in things to see what was holding up production. It turned out to be my favourite peripheral. Damn. I’m using Bran’s cordless keyboard now. It’s smaller than my light-up keyboard and I can remove it from the drawer without worrying about cords, but it’s not the same.
• Today I did a manual update of my WordPress. It drives me crazy that I can’t get an automatic update to work. It wouldn’t be so bad if it would work just once, or if it would stop telling me the update failed and I should attempt it again. I mean, it’s updated. That should disappear. I guess next time (by my calculations that should be sometime later this week) they come out with another update, if I don’t try to do the automatic update, maybe that message will disappear.
• Along with the update I upped my security with a plugin called Secure WordPress and will hopefully reduce the spam making it into my spam filter with SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam that will work along with Askimet. I doubt I get enough traffic to attract anyone who could hack into my blog, but hey, it can’t hurt, right?
• We haven’t gone to see the last Harry Potter movie. I haven’t seen part 1 of it yet so we can’t until I do. Well, it’s also possible that I won’t see it in the theatre considering my rather profound dislike of crowds and people in general. I might just wait until it comes out on video and then watch the entire series. I am rather sad that the story is ending and has ended in the books. They were fun reads and the movies were fun to watch. It’s a good thing I like repeats or else it would be more tragic.
• We haven’t managed to get our spit together to get out of town for a picnic and photo session yet. We had wanted to do so a week or two back (on a Sunday) but the weather was less than cooperative and insisted on raining. While all of our DSLRs are water resistant, they are not water proof. We are also limited in the number of lenses that are water resistant as well. This means no rainy day photos outside. I tried to get pics of the kitty, but she wouldn’t be still enough to get any decent shots. She’s rather camera shy with me.
• I went out and was social on Wednesday. That was the day we went out for “drinks” (mine was ginger ale since I had to work later that night) to say farewell to the staff I spoke about earlier who got a job she enjoys. We all sat around and munched on snackies, drank our drinks and talked shop in a way we can’t at work. It was quite a bit of fun. I gave her (the staff who was leaving) a ride home afterwards. When I got home (round about 10) Bran was beginning to get worried since I don’t usually stay away from home that long.
• Bran got a surprise in the mail this month. It came on a day when he was feeling grumpy and out of sorts. Some time before the lock-out of Canada Post workers I’d ordered the latest Dominic Deegan book. Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire is one of Bran’s favourite on-line comics. We have the other books the artist/writer/creator, Mookie, has published. When I saw the new book was out I ordered it for Bran and didn’t tell him. So when it came I just handed him the envelope and told him it was his. It cheered him up a lot. That made me happy.
• I want Dairy Queen. Specifically I want a Turtle Pecan Cluster Blizzard with cheese cake. Failing that a small or medium cone will suffice.
• If it weren’t for the fact that I’d end up with a sore back I would be hiding away from the world today. There are a lot of things I could be doing, but I have no wish to leave the house, let alone bed. But since I would get a sore back/hips/ribs if I laid in bed as long as I’d like I’ll make do and embed myself into my spot on the couch.
• I have two sore knuckles. They are somewhat bruised from the splint. They ram into the splint when I try to do things the splint is designed to prevent the motion of doing…like working with a mouse. I tried using Bran’s tablet. It worked like a track pad on a laptop but was larger. It worked fairly well, too. The problem I had with it was that my finger tips would dry out and the tablet wouldn’t be able to “feel” what I was doing. I felt like I was slowly polishing my finger prints off. So now when I have to do a large amount of mouse work (like playing minesweeper) or when I have to type a lot, I take the splint off. I still can’t mouse for long periods of time, but it’s getting better.
• I finally have my Rosetta Stone French lessons. I might have mentioned them before, I can’t remember and a quick scan of my previous entries doesn’t reveal anything of note. I decided some time ago to increase my ability in Canada’s other official language. Since buying all the lessons from Rosetta Stone is as cheap as taking a single semester class of basic French at university, I decided on the one I can do at my leisure. I should probably go to one of those teacher stores and pick up books and such to teach myself the grammar and such. Oh, and a becherel would probably be useful too. I’m sure I spelt it wrong, but a becherel is a book containing conjugations of various verbs. I can’t use the discs at work but I could do the work in written French. Being semi- or fully- bilingual would mean that getting a job with the feds would be much easier. So far I’ve learned things like: he drinks, she drinks, they drink, she reads, he reads, they read, he wears pants, she wears a skirt, he buys a hat and she buys a dress. Thrilling, yes? My biggest challenge still appears to be the “eu” sound. Dad spent a significant amount of time trying to help me get the sound of those two letters correct when I was in high school. I think, if I recall correctly, I managed to get it right enough times he was satisfied. I could be wrong. It’s equally possible that he simply ceded defeat in the face of my anglophone accent.
• Boy hasn’t shaved for a while. I can tell because he’s got sideburns with a tacky and sparse beard. I still grow a better moustache than he does despite it his protestations to the contrary.

I believe that’s it. I sit and wonder what else there is to say, and frankly, there’s nothing.

• I’m still missing the right shift key once in a while and hit the up arrow. This causes some consternation when I begin typing in a sentence above where I’m actually working.
• I think the cat is allergic to herself since she’s the one creating the most dust.
• My wireless mouse appears to have caused my computer to get “an error message” last night. Hopefully the first fix Microsoft suggested will work because the second surely won’t. It involves a properties tab that doesn’t exist in my world.
• I still really like V-8 juice
• Puffy summer clouds are appearing in the sky.
• On the walk home from work today I could actually feel the warmth of the sun on my face through the chill of the morning.
• The car needs to have the bearings packed. We can’t drive it until it goes to the shop and gets that done.
• I’m going to lay down for another hour.