I’m a big ol geek!

Two things that will convince you that I’m a geek, if you weren’t already sure of it.

You can send your name to the moon! Take part in an experiment and have your name sent to space. I’ve already put my name in for this. Oh yeah. I may never physically experience space flight, but my name will make it out there!

I just recently found out that JMS, the creator and producer of Babylon 5, is publishing copies of ALL of his scripts for Babylon 5. So I purchased all of them for my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! DH will enjoy these too, so I don’t feel too badly about it.

Geek, Geek, Geek, I’m a big ol’ geek!

Back out of Whack

My back has been bothering me lately, and since I’m getting ready to go into my biz busy season, I figured that I ought to go ahead on and get it checked out. Its the lower back, and has been really tight and not quite spasming when I straighten up from bending over or twisting. Not good, right?

So I went to a chiropractor. He took xrays of my spine, and did a variation of an EMG of the muscles neck and back. In looking at the xrays, my spine is way out of whack. My neck looks very close to what it looked like when I had whiplash. The perils of working on a computer. My posture isn’t what it ought to be. So my back is messed up and hurts. I’ll be making regular trips to the chiropractor to get it jerked and put back into the alignment. I’m just glad they can take appointments that are before the regular business day starts.

Relaxing, with cat

So I’m sitting here in a comfy chair, with a cat and a computer on my lap. What more quintessentially geek thing is there than that? My feet are up, and the kitty is purring. Life is good.

Starting the busy season

I’ve started the summer season for my biz, and it is going to be busy. It started off with a very full weekend. We were at the Magnolia Festival this past Saturday, then out at Barbers on Sunday. I think I need a weekend to recover now. I was hopping all day Saturday. That’s a good thing! What a way to celebrate a birthday weekend. Whee!

quick update on the struck pedestrian

For those who are curious, I finally had the opportunity to talk to our neighbor about his friend who had been hit. He said the guy who had been hit is home in Pell City. He has stitches on his face, a fractured hip, and a messed up knee. For somebody who had been struck by a car, he came out a lot better than he could have. No matter the situation, I’m just glad that he wasn’t hurt worse than that.

Long day, full of stuff

For a Sunday, it was pretty full. DH and I went to church, then came home. One of my fellow office workers turned 50 today, and so I went in to the office and helped to decorate the premises. I made some balloon flamingos. They turned out ok. We’re all going to wear black tomorrow, and make sure we’re in early enough to be there when the co-worker gets there. It should be fun.

Then after I got home, DH and I took the motorcycle that is finally back from the shop and drove over to Ruffner Mountain to take some pictures. We walked around the enclosures where the rescued birds live, then hit the nature trail. I have some nice pictures. I’m still figuring out some of the settings, so I have to wait to see how the pictures look when they are displayed on a screen that is larger than the one on the back of the camera. But I think I’ll have some really good pictures out of it. We didn’t a have a long time there at the reserve, but it was a good time for us.

My older younger brother’s birthday is tomorrow, so we celebrated it this evening. We were supposed to meet at 6 at Surin in Crestline. DH and I were a bit detained. As were were walking out of the house, there was a commotion in the street. DH saw a van in the street taking off like a bat out of hell away from us, and there were a couple of guys there, one lying in the street, one hollering for help. DH had gone outside before me, and I was locking up the house, so all I saw was the guys in the street. The one who was mobile asked us to call for help, since his bud had just been hit with the van. DH called 911 and got help on the way. The one who had been hit was lying in the street, and not moving very much at all at first. Then he was asking about his surroundings and tried to get up a couple of times. we did our best to try to keep him from moving too much. It took about 10 or so minutes, but the fire and rescue folks showed up and started to get him checked out and on his way to the hospital. We were all glad that there was qualified emergency personnel there to take care of him. Then the police officer arrived and started to get some information on what happened. DH and I didn’t have much to add, but he got DH’s name and phone numbers. After all of that was taken care of and the guy was taken to the hospital, we left for dinner.

Dinner at Surin was good, and it was fun to eat with my brother and his girlfriend and my parents. But its been a yoyo day.

Oven element problems

We’re having problems with our stove right now. The baking element has gone out and we haven’t gotten it replaced yet. The stove is over 30 years old, and is an electric GE model. The broiler element is still working, though. And the range top works still, so we are looking at getting the oven fixed up to keep going.

We’ve been looking to see where we might find the appropriate part to replace the element. So DH has come up with the bright idea of taking out the damaged bake element and replacing it with the working broiler element, since both seem to be the same size. Do you know if this might be a good idea or not?

Happy Easter!

I hope that you’ve had a good day, everyone! Life is slowing down a tiny bit now. I hope you have had a lovely day and that tomorrow will bring you another lovely one.

I’m alive

But life is insanely busy right now. I’m sorry that I haven’t updated anything in a while. Hopefully after the middle of the month, life will slow down a bit. I’ll update you about the yard, yes its a weird situation still; and get pictures uploaded after the middle of the month. Its bad when you measure your commitments in months.

Weird thing happened at our house today

DH’s car is still at the shop so he and I are still carpooling. When we got home from work today, there was a major change to our yard. We drove up and the front lawn was covered with wood chips and scrap. One landscape area was mown down to the ground. Another area had everything but the azalea removed, and the azalea was cut back so much it may not survive. Then the back yard had brush cut and removed. There’s a large pile of branches laying on the ground back there. The rosemary by the driveway was cut waaaaay back. There is now a big pile of leaves and debris in the driveway that wasn’t there when we left home this morning.

DH & I got out of the car and walked around the yard trying to see what exactly was done and wondering what the hell happened! One of the neighbor’s was in his driveway and DH went over to ask him if he saw what happened to our yard. Evidently there was a fairly large crew that came and worked in the yard. They cut plants down and chipped them and spread the chips over the front lawn. There must have been 3 truckloads of workers here today.

But the kicker is, we didn’t hire ANYONE to work in our yard. We haven’t had anyone else out to work in our yard for over a year. And the person we had hired the last time is still recovering from food poisoning that he came down with on Tuesday. We think that somebody else paid for a lawn company to come out and clean up their yard. And that company was at our house instead of where they should have been, doing stuff that we didn’t set up and removing some plants that we didn’t want removed. We’re going to have to rake up all that chipped wood before it kills off what grass there is in the front yard. This isn’t what we needed to come home to this afternoon.

Happy Groundhog Day

In Birmingham, Birmingham Bill saw his shadow. I guess we’re having 6 more weeks of what passes for winter here. Of course, my friends up north laugh at me when I tell them what our weather is, but for us here it still gets cold. Besides, no one here has any clue how to actually dress for the cold or drive when it snows. You are gambling with your life when you try to drive in the snow. There are too many folks who think they can drive normally and slam on the brakes at the last minute when the weather conditions are bad. They are the ones causing accidents for themselves and others.

Sleep silliness

More sleep silliness.

mai restz, let me show u dem

You can hear them coming

We live under the flight path for the short runway. And DH and I are aviation aficionados. This afternoon a P-51 Mustang has been flying around over us. I’d say he was doing touch and gos, but the flight path wasn’t regular enough over us to be straight touch and go. He would fly over us toward runway 36, but his landing gear wasn’t down. Then he would fly length wise above runway 6, but he was slower and had his gear down for it. There’s nothing like the growl of that radial engine!

Then a few minutes ago we saw an AT-6 fly over us. Its been a lovely day for flying. And a fun day to see what is going over our heads.

Edited 2-2-08 I was mistaken. The P-51 has an inline engine. But that Rolls is definitely distinctive! The P-51 flew over us again this morning.

2nd car update

The adjuster called DH back. She finally got in touch with the young man who hit him. That was a part of the hold up. The young man was out of town after the accident, and she couldn’t make a determination about the accident without taking his statement. They are going to pay for the repairs and not total the jeep, so DH is a happy camper. We are still a one car family, since they only will pay for a rental car while the repairs are being made, but not while one is waiting on parts to arrive from the manufacturer. It is quite inconvenient right now, since DH has several things he has to do this weekend, and I have obligations elsewhere as well. But soon we will be a multi vehicle family again and will be able to meet all our responsibilities without begging others for rides. DH just has to get the ball rolling on repairs!

Car update

Here’s an update on the car situation. DH’s car is still sitting in the parking lot of the service station. An appraiser from the kid’s insurance has looked at the jeep and figures it’ll take $1100.00 to fix the wheel and the body. He didn’t look at the axle to see if it was bent. He’s reported back to the claims adjuster, and now we’re waiting to see what Allstate does. We’re still a one car family right now, so things are interesting.

DH did manage to get his motorcycle up to Tennessee to the dealer to get it looked at. Friday his parents drove the trailer down from Huntsville, then he got the bike on the trailer. They drove back to Huntsville and dropped his mom off at their house. Then he and his dad drove to Waynesboro. They dropped off the bike and trailer ad drove back to Huntsville. I drove up to Huntsville after work and picked him up and we came back to Birmingham. Yes, there was lots of driving done on Friday. But this way the trips got done before the snow, which was the other deciding factor for DH’s parents. The warranty for the Ural is up in mid February, so we’re under a bit of a time crunch to get it looked at and serviced before the warranty runs out.

Hopefully we’ll know in the next day or two what will happen to the jeep. It’s a 1989 jeep wrangler with 192,000 miles on it. Its on the line between repair and replace. If it takes much longer to make the determination, we’ll not be happy campers.