Archive for July, 2008
It’s better than number 2 (har! I crack me up!) Anyway, what was the number one hit on the day you were born. On the day I chose to grace this world with my presence was Save the Last Dance for Me by the Drifters. For Boy it was Jump by Kris Kross. So whose number one hit serenaded you into the world?
Bran, being the sweet man he is, connected the card reader to his computer. Since he runs Linix (Ubuntu to be precise) it sees the reader as just another drive rather than hardware that needs to be installed. He copied the file of photographs on it and voila! The only editing I did was to make them a bit smaller. Ignore any mess and any glare. Click on the photo to see the larger view. First, here is the aquarium and the egg chair. That corner is where the computer desk used to be. I quite like seeing the tank there. Having it there also reduces the amount of ambient noise in the living room. Here is the corner where Boy’s chair will be going. This is a nice shot of our new, very comfortable couch. You see the space between the two parts? That’s where the height difference of the “fireplace” bottom makes the two not match up. Bran’s out with Boy right now. Among their errands is picking up gliders to lift up the parts that’s lower. Here’s a view from the dining room. It is so very comfortable. Here’s the table as it looks normally. It’s just like any other coffee table, right? Wrong! However, now I’m tired, the couch is here and just begging for the first nap to be napped on it.
It’s totally awesome! We have a living room! We can seat more than 4 people in our living room! We can seat more than four people in our living room even though we don’t have a chair yet! The couch fits beautifully. We have to get a some lifts for the front of my section of the couch because it’s positioned in front of the fireplace and there are tiles there that are higher than the floor so it slants forward. It’s not that you can tell when you sit on the couch, but it will affect how the bed opens out. Bran and Boy (but especially Bran) have done an enormous amount of work in the past few days getting the old furniture out, moving things around to accommodate the new furniture and cleaning. The house is looking fantastic because of all his hard work. Today alone they moved the old love seat outside, Bran drained the aquarium and they moved it into the dining room. It looks great there from here. Bran moved the egg chair (an oval rattan chair that hangs from a chain that is attached to a frame) into the dining room and moved my end table beside me. That’s only today. Yesterday Boy and Bran moved the corner computer desk (a really heavy bit of furniture) outside. Before that Bran spent time dismantling Boy’s old computer and crawling about there. This has been totally awesome because I’ve never had to really lift a finger other than to sit on furniture to see if it’s okay and comfortable. They even assembled the table while I slept. I mean, this is nice to begin with, but they dealt with large quantities of very firm Styrofoam packing. Styrofoam packing gives me the willies on a very life disrupting level. They managed to do the whole thing while I slept away the morning in the bedroom. Sure I was somewhat drugged up with codeine that Bran gave to me to help relieve the pain in my mouth, but it’s a still a credit to their consideration that I wasn’t woken by any of the work they did. I took some photos on Boy’s old digital camera, however the card reader isn’t recognized as an exterior drive so I need some installation software. I’ve written to SanDisk hoping they have some deeply hidden url where I can access it for their older readers. It would be nice if I could have that. If I can’t then I’ll see what I can do about taking photos with the big camera. I got a call from my boss. She called to tell me (because she won’t see me until next week sometime) that she really liked the month end and quarterly reports I did. She had only one request and that was for me to put “Programme Coordinator” under my name because that’s apparently what I am. It was somewhat of a surprise to me to hear that. I guess that’s why I’m not paid the big bucks. I just did a little tidying of my own. I cleared away a few things, swept the floor under them, and put away a few things. It’s a help and therefore something that Bran won’t need to do. Oh, shit. Rammstein is playing on the stereo. Because Boy was working with Bran and Bran doesn’t mind Rammstein, they plugged Boy’s MP3 player in. It’s not that I object to the music itself. It’s just that they’re a German band and sing exclusively in German. It’s hard for me to become attached to a song that I can’t understand. However, it’s head-bangy and Boy likes it. My little opal came in today. It’s got some gorgeous light to it. When I say “little” I mean little. I’m hoping to put it into an earring setting, but it’s going to take me a while to do that. In the nonce, I’ve got a lovely little opal. Yuck! The blister in my mouth broke and is draining. Let’s just say that old infection is one of the more disgusting things one can taste. If you haven’t ever had that happen, be glad. If you have, well, it sucks don’t it? (The grammar police will have a warrant out for me soon.) On that appetizing note… Ta-Ra
I’m really tired of having to deal with this damned tooth, the abscess and the discomfort of it all. I’ve been wanting this thing taken care of for so long but because of the timing, condition of the infection and crap, I can’t get it fixed. I’m grumpy. Today was a relatively quiet day at work. I wrote up my quarterly report for Parole/CSC. Even though we’ve had several men get sent back despite being on the program, in at least one case they spent more time sober and drug free after being released than they had post-release ever before. Instead of trying to score immediately on getting out they managed to make it two weeks, a month, even two months. That’s something to be happy about because despite the failure, they succeeded in making the start. I’m also supervising a woman who lives with a man who’s abused her in the past. Being in the program means that there is someone calling on the weekend to ensure that she’s alright and there’s a place to go if she has to do an emergency flee away from home. She gets to be safe (her partner also knows these arrangements so he knows he’s also being monitored) and work on her own issues while being with someone she loves despite him beating the shit out of her in the past. I also wrote up one of the month end reports for one of the residents in the house. I’d never done that, but knowing how to do it, what’s required, the format and wording, means that the regular counsellor can take a few days off and not have to worry about reports not being done. All that really consists of is rewording old reports and making small changes to accommodate any changes that occurred. It’s not exciting but again, it’s experience working with Parole/CSC that will be invaluable in my future. I have tomorrow off. This old love seat/sofa bed is being moved out onto the lawn tomorrow morning (Bran and Boy are doing that) and then sometime during the day, our new sectional sofa (with hide-a-bed) and new table will be delivered to our house. Since the computer desk and chair left today (and the people who took them are very happy, offering their old stuff on Free Cycle as soon as they got home) and the area is cleaned up, the aquarium can be moved to where the desk was. it’s possible that the couch will fit across the tiling in front of the faux fireplace and make a different arrangement from what we had thought about. This might mean that we’ll be able to get yet another chair to be by the door. I guess we’ll see. Anyway, once things are set up, I’ll take a picture of it so you can see our stuff. Won’t that be thrilling for you? I knew it would. I guess I should head to bed. I am somewhat tired and Bran plans on being up early to do the furniture moving and I guess, move some other furniture around in anticipation of the new stuff. I’m not sure that I’m ready for bed though. Biff Naked is playing on Bran’s computer. It’s her album of poetry. It’s a good album, but not quite my thing. There is one of her poems where she wrote about a guy on a bus who grossed her out, how women are socialized to not tell men who are treating them poorly aren’t taught to stand up for herself. The poem right now is about body image. Part of it is about how the current image of beauty makes her feel weird about her own very nice body as you can see from this album cover: That’s it. I’m tired of typing and the baby finger on my left hand has a hang nail that’s giving me problems…yeah, I’m pathetic today. Ta-Ra
I wonder if I answered the questions accurately or just according to how I was feeling. I stole this one from April Cherrie’s blog. Oh, if you’re hungry and like oriental cooking don’t go there while you’re hungry. You’ll need to order in after reading her blog.
When I got back to work today I discovered that one of the men who had been caught with alcohol on his breath was back at the house. That was a good thing. He has been trying hard to make things work and the one slip resulted in a curfew cut and not much else. The one who was sent away (week before last) wasn’t sent back because of the breathalizer result. In fact, parole officers can’t send them back because of readings from the CRF. They’d have to read positive at the parole office, have the smell of alcohol on their breath, or have a positive pee test. They sent him back for other reasons. The positive breathalizer reading was merely the last straw. It’s a good thing to know. I also talked about how to see when things aren’t going well for the residents to try and help them either cope or find strategies to help themselves out of whatever they’re going through. Apparently it’s not easy to see. For more than 50% of the people who come through there, asking for help or admitting that things are out of control isn’t on the list of things to do. It’s really too bad, too. I mean, that’s what we’re all there for, to help them be successful. It’s hard for them to trust that we’re not there to make their lives harder. I had some really good laughs with my co-worker. He’s nuts and it suits me just fine. The sad thing is, though, that even though he’s a movie maniac (he has thousands of DVDs) he’d never seen Casablanca or The Big Sleep. He’d never heard of James Coco, David Ogden Stiers, Peter Falk, Sid Caesar or Eileen Brennan. That is an abysmal failure on the part of society. I can’t believe that one could go through life not having even heard of those people. Tomorrow I’m going to take in The Cheap Detective. At least then he’d be able to see a spoof of those movies. I made an unfortunate booboo when I set up the DVD machine to record my murder and mayhem tonight…or rather last night considering when I’m writing this. I forgot to turn the cable box on and set it to A&E. So the DVD recorded 2 hours of no signal. I hate that. The only good thing is that I know they’re going to rebroadcast the programs sometime in the future. I have Thursday off so I can get any reruns that I don’t already have. My mouth hurts. I can hardly wait until all this dental work is done and out of my hair (so to speak). The tooth itself hurts this time. The dentist told me the tooth would be sensitive and pained because of the work she did. The blister at the side in my gums is still there as well. That means that the infection is still there. I have a very distinct feeling that I’m going to be using that prescription she gave me for another round of antibiotics. The couch is leaving the house tomorrow and the La-Z-Boy left today in the hands of some people who wanted it. Bran advertised the computer desk on Free-Cycle tonight. I hope that it goes soon. this means that the fish tank will move and some more space will open up. It’s also possible that the couch might fit in front of the genuine-real-fake-and-tacky fireplace. That’s about it from here. Ta-Ra
That’s what it was. It was a day. Yep. Boy has a new laptop that will be able to handle any gaming he wants to do. This means that his old cpu will be turned into a server for all of us to do our backups onto. We’ll be getting rid of his desk and moving the aquarium to where his desk it. We should also be able to get one (or both) of the wooden chairs into the dining room and out of the living room. There might even be enough room for another chair. We’ll have to see. The house is a bit of a mess right now, but Wednesday (originally I typed that it was tomorrow, but in my eagerness to get the new furniture here I keep mentally skipping ahead a day) the old couch will be going away to a new home. The La-Z-Boy chair will also be going sometime soon I hope, but we’ve not heard from the person who wanted it. If they don’t call by tomorrow then we’re going to give it to the second person who wanted it. The desk will be going on the person who claims it on Free-Cycle. I hope to get stuff out of here before the couch and table arrive. It’s easier to clean up a mess if some of the mess goes away before the new mess arrives. Today I made stuffed mushrooms. We’ll all die of heart disease because of this I’m sure. Anyway, I took the stems off and cubed them up fairly small. Then I cleared out that little soft skirt thing and took out the gills of the cap. Today I fried the stems with some scallions in butter. After it was cool I added parmisan cheese. I stuffed that into the caps, added melted butter to each cap and put them in the oven too cook for about 1/2 hour. We ate them with some fried chicken that Bran cooked. I’m wondering how many people there will be at work when I get there. It seems like every time I leave, even for a day, a few of the guys do something stupid and then end up in the company of the RCMP and then the CSC. I hope the rest are still there. That’s been my day. I work tomorrow and Wednesday so I end up missing the murder and mayhem tomorrow. I just checked with Bran. It’s ok that I set up the DVD recorder for that so I can watch it when I get home…and probably on Wednesday because it’s hard to watch 6 hours of anything straight through. Ta-Ra PS: I don’t feel like trying to find a tag so there isn’t one today.
We lost two more guys to booze this weekend. Two blew over .000. One swears that he didn’t drink, but the machine isn’t broken. The other admitted he had some beer but instead of waiting for the cops to come he ran. So any chance of having his PO just give him shit and send him back, he’s now UAL and will definitely go back to prison when he’s caught. That sucks big time. So in the past two weeks we’ve lost 3 guys to having to call the RDO because of drinking. We have to prove to the guys now that the machine is working by blowing a reading ourselves. That’s thanks to a drama queen and twit-shit-disturber who works hard to get people all worked up. The place doesn’t need that drama and he’s actually stuffing his nose into what isn’t his business. Shit head. Otherwise it was an extremely quiet shift. There were only two people around for lunch and one of them was asleep. For supper there was only me and one resident. There was tons of leftover food. mean, it was meant to feed 10 people. Lunch was fried bologna, mac and cheese and broccoli salad. Supper was chili, corn bread and a tossed salad. Sadly for me I bit down on a very crisp and thick piece of bacon in the salad. It was much like biting on a rock. My newly drilled and temporarily filled tooth is now sore. I’m very conscious that it’s there. I’m trying to figure out what to eat now. Eating cold things hurts the tooth. Eating solids hurts the tooth. I don’t really want clam chowder. I’m going to be prepping the mushrooms tonight for tomorrow’s stuffed mushrooms. We got crab meat and butter yesterday, Bran picked up some lemons today. With all that the mushrooms will be stuffed with sauteed mushroom stems, crab meat, onion, garlic, some butter and lemon juice. Then they’ll get baked and that sounds a whole lot like supper. Now I’m tired. I need to get the mushrooms prepped, figure out something to eat and then go to bed because of that tiredness. Ta-Ra
Because she gets all testy when I don’t directly link to her, Raincoaster had this on her blog today. Check out the sunglasses quiz just under this one.
|
