The Rogue Turtle

Sweet!

Go Conan!!

Heart Happenings

People at work have been asking me, "How's your dad doing?"
To which my reply is usually, "He's grumpy."
This may sound a bit strange, but it really is a good description right now.

To recap: My dad took a "stress test," which involves being on a treadmill for 10 minutes, and he failed it, so his doctor told him to get an angiogram to identify the problem. He went in for the angiogram the day before Father's Day, and even though all of us knew it is a routine and safe procedure, we were worried and nervous anyway. The results: he needed quadruple bypass surgery, as soon as possible. They scheduled it for the next Friday. Remember, we got scared for a mere angiogram, so you can imagine what my family was like after hearing all of this. The day of his surgery, we had to arrive at 5:30 am. The actual surgery began at 8am. The hospital offered us a private waiting room, which we took, but it made my mom a little nervous since the rooms are labeled as "Consultation rooms", and are also used in the event something goes wrong. The surgery was done relatively quickly - within 3 or 4 hours - and everything went well. Then the grumpiness began.

This isn't to say that he shouldn't be grumpy. He's had to change a lot of things, on doctor's orders. No smoking his pipe. No (or at least very little) salt. No driving for a few months, because he could strain or reopen his chest wound. A much healthier diet, with a lot less red meat. Regularly scheduled periods of exercise and rest. In addition, he's still got a lot of pain from the surgery. Given all that, I'd be grumpy too. So, when I tell people "He's grumpy," I don't mean to say that as a bad thing necessarily. It just happens to be the most accurate word for his current condition, and we all (especially my mom, who has to deal with the grumpy patient the most) hope he is able to adjust and feel better soon.

It's alive!

After having not been able to use my computer since early February, I have finally resurrected my computer - and hence, my email - from the depths of not-working-ness. I am therefore now able to experience the joyousness of bloghood, and am free to partake in its bloggy blogness. Has anyone figured out yet why I switched out of being an English major back at Berkeley? One natural side effect of not checking my email for five months was having lots of email (aka spam) to download when it finally started working. My primary email account had 1700 messages for me to download and delete. And delete. And delete. And that was just for the last month, since apparently sbcglobal deletes email older then that if you fail to remove it from their server by then. My other email account, which did not remove any of the old email, saved all of my spam for me, and had over 14000 emails. Yep. 14000. Needless to say, I am very, very grateful to have DSL rather then dial-up.

Anyway, since Todd is an irregular poster, I thought it might be a good idea to finally begin posting to the blog. After all, I named it, so I feel I have some responsibility to save it from the land of infrequently updated blogs. So, now there will be two irregular posters. May (insert preferred diety here) have mercy upon you all.

A new post and yet we're off again...

It's July already and I seemed to have missed all of June and most of May here but I'll try to better. Work has been very busy, we're working on getting 3 papers submitted this month before my boss goes out of town. Also we have a student intern who has to be kept busy so with all of that it's been exhausting; I put in a 12 hour day on Thursday. Now were off to Fresno for the 4th of July, Jeanine's dad had heart surgery last week and it went well but he's home recovering this weekend and so we're off to visit him and the rest of the family. We're taking Amtrak so as to avoid the horrible holiday traffic, it's longer than driving but more relaxing and it's nto very expensive. We'll be back Tuesday night. Oh, we also went to the SD County Fair tonight and had a good time. I finally bought a bonzai tree, misting, fountain mountain thingy that I've always wanted, it wasn't cheap but it should last as long as I take care if it. It looks cool but it's so heavy (although not that large) and I'm not sure where to put it. I'll have to set it up next week. Enjoy the 4th everyone!

And we're off...

Jeanine and I are off to not-so-sunny San Francisco on Wednesday. We'll be there through Sunday as I have a conference to attend up there. It's a mini-vacation as we'll have time to see friends and former co-workers and go to an A's game. The best part is all of my stuff is paid for by work and we get to stay at the Hilton downtown. I have to present a poster on Saturday which is like a grown-up's science fair project so I'm a bit nervous about that but it should go well. Be back Sunday night!

Ah, email scams...

So I finally got a Nigerian money scam email! Apparently I had a relative in Nigeria by the name of Mark Holscher who died in a car crash and left $7 million behind and I need to help this attorney get the money out of the country. I can't believe people still fall for this scam! So should I delete the email or screw with the guy? :)

What not to wear...

Here's a website, UglyDress, that I thought was quite amusing. Particularly for my sister Mary.