Out! - UPDATED

My husband is having another surgery today - hopefully the last - due to an on the job injury two years ago. He’ll never fully have the use of his right arm again, but if the surgery goes well he’ll regain more use, and he won’t be in pain every day. So I’ll be away from the computer today and most of tomorrow. I have some timed posts set up, but obviously if your comments get kicked to the moderated queue it’ll be a day or two before I can get them out.

Update: The surgery went well, and while it’s too soon to know the level of permanent impairment but the doctor is taking a very positive attitude about it.  (He’s already lost 5% and has pins and assorted hardware in his wrist; today was his elbow.)  So we’re back home and I’m stepping and fetching.  Pharmacist, nurse, cook, waitress, valet, pillow fluffer and all around Girl Friday.  And blessed to be so. 

Memorial Day

Scott Ott takes a break from teh funny in his Memorial Day post. We had a BBQ on Saturday. Today we’re having a quiet day; including packing boxes of goodies to send to Iraq. Below the line is a repost of my 2006 Memorial Day post; nothing has changed and I don’t have anything new to say.
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Blackfive remembers Windy 25 and the other fallen soldiers of the 12th AVN BDE.

A lot of businesses are open today, which makes me sad. The troops who have fallen don’t need a memorial day. The day is for us. For our nation, our society. The failure to recognize that which is better than us, the ideals of loyalty, service, duty, and sacrifice, and those who choose to embody them, impoverishes us all.

Actual Reality

After a wonderful weekend (in which I received a copy of John Adams, the book on which the HBO miniseries was based, and a Lowe’s gift card along with my husband’s promise to paint our bedroom whatever color I select next weekend while I’m on retreat) I now have to throw myself into the icy water of actual reality.  No virtual fun for me, at least this morning - I have a huge stack of work to tackle.  I’ve declared RSS bankruptcy and marked hundreds of posts read, sight unseen.  I haven’t even checked the news.

I will be posting later this afternoon.

Workstation and walkstation

I’ve mentioned my new walkstation several times, and here it is, right in my messy office.

We attached an old 17 inch monitor to the treadmill. With a dual-monitor video card and wireless keyboard and mouse, it’s easy to switch between the workstation and the walkstation. A painted plywood box serves as a desk with a place to stash a notepad and pen, and raises the keyboard and mouse to the right height. It took a little practice, but I can now type accurately at up to 2mph - although I usually walk at 1.5mph, a comfortable stroll - and have been walking about 5 miles per day. As an added bonus, the walkstation is where the TV used to be.

You can see more photos of the setup here. I’m quite satisfied with my budget model compared to the $6500 version. There’s a small cloud of smug in here, but it’s not too thick and it’s rapidly dissipating.

17 inch monitor - $150
Wireless keyboard and mouse - $50
Dual monitor video card - $40
Burning 600+ calories a day without giving up any work time or breaking a sweat - Priceless

Updated - oddly enough, Instapundit just posted on this topic today and linked to this nify site with more info.

Life Without Television

I saw the post Bible Money Matters: Why I Love Life Without Television and had to smile. I’ve just started life without television. Or to be more accurate, life without a cable television bill.

No, I’m not stealing cable TV. (Although I was tempted to in the first few days after we requested the cutoff.) For the last several years, the mantra repeated at my house is, “There’s nothing on TV.” But we kept watching anyway. That’s not to say that there really was nothing on - I could almost always find something interesting on the History Channel, Discovery, or A&E. But there wasn’t much that was compelling enough to justify $600 a year in cash and hundreds of hours of lost productivity/family time. What really sealed the deal was when we learned that most of the things we were interested in were available online for free. Between that and Netflix - streaming and DVDs - we have more entertainment on tap than we will ever consume.

Not long after Hurricane Katrina, I bought a projector for work for about $600. I ended up not really needing it for work, so we spent about $100 at an art store and bought a full roll of canvas to make a 10′ screen. (The bare canvas is adequate, but a purchase of some reflective screen paint greatly improves picture and color quality for about another $100.) Our stereo speakers were already connected to our entertainment system, so we were all set. Then for Mother’s Day my husband bought me 6.1 surround sound, so we had a real home theater setup.

Finally, when the decision was made to demolish our church which had about 10′ of floodwaters from the 17th St. Canal break after Katrina, we received permission to salvage the screen. It meant swinging from the rafters on ladders placed in the baptistry (see the first pic in this post), but it was worth it because the screen was retractable. So we have a pretty nice setup for a minimal cost. Our original setup (with the canvas screen) cost less than $1000, and the costs of projectors has come down in the last three years. All we had to do was add a junky old computer (5 years old) that could access the internet, and run a network cable to the living room. At some point we’ll get a real media computer set up in there, but this works fine for now.

We have 8 zillion or so television shows and movies that are free and legally available via Hulu, ABC, NBC, CBS and Netflix, plus a large supply of movies available at the public library.  (Including that episode of KVille that we were in!) And we still can have “real” TV with the rabbit ears - see them on the right next to the television? - on TV or on the big screen in HD.

If you’re paying for basic cable with even one pay channel, you will almost certainly save enough in the first year to make a home theater like this a worthwhile investment, and after that, it’s gravy with the exception of having to buy a projector lamp from time to time. This can be a couple hundred dollars, and how often you need it varies, obviously, on how much you use your projector. Our has lasted over two years, and the warning that it’s reaching the end of its life has just started to be displayed.

I may have struggled a bit in the beginning since I was a news junkie who switched between CNN, Fox, MSNBC and CSPAN all day long, but I get enough news from the internet. I find I don’t miss having the “missing white woman of the day” stories and having the latest on Par-Brit-sey blared at me every hour on the hour. Bottom line - we’re watching less television. What we are watching tends to be things we enjoy more because we selected them deliberately instead of channel surfing and sticking with the least annoying option. Life without cable TV is pretty good. Try it for a few months and I think you’ll agree.

The End Is Near

The end of my computer problems, that is. My primary computer died last week, and the backup didn’t like my SATA hard drive, so we ended up scavenging parts from both just to have something that works. It was slow and buggy, and we had to reinstall Windows a few times because of video driver issues. Yesterday my husband surprised me with an ASUS M2V-MX SE mobo, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor, and a GE Force 7200 GS video card. So all that, along with 3 GB of RAM, and I’ll be back in business.

And I didn’t have to do the shopping. Lagniappe!

A Sudden Urge to Buy Life Insurance

I am loaded down with things that I don’t deserve.  I have a husband who kills bugs, takes out trash, pays the bills, knows me and loves me anyway, understands when to let me cry and when to offer a solution, has a great sense of humor and is a hard worker.  I have a daughter who is smart, talented, funny, beautiful, and very easy to be around in spite of the fact that she’s a teenager and these are supposed to be difficult times between us.  We have a home - small, but more than adequate to our needs and in pretty good condition, in a pleasant neighborhood.  I have a job that I like nearly all the time.  Our pets are healthy.  We’re living within our means and paying off old debts.  We have a variety of friends that are a joy to be around.  Our church is wonderful. More important than all those things, we have eternal life through Jesus Christ.  If we had nothing else, that would still be more than enough.

But just listing those things is inadequate.  I wish I could explain - how lately my daughter and I have laughed so much and just enjoyed each other’s company more than we ever have before.  How last night my husband was in the living room doing some work he’d brought home on his laptop, and I just watched him and felt this indescribable tenderness.  I have this hyper-awareness of how blessed I am and how grateful I am when I know - even though most people would describe me as a “good” person - what I’m like inside.

I try to rationalize these undeserved blessings.  Maybe it’s just our turn to be happy.  God knows we’ve had troubles in our past; maybe He’s just giving us a break after all that.  Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all; maybe it just is what it is.  But there’s a part of me that wonders if maybe this is the calm before the storm.

I have the feeling that I should be stockpiling these memories like a miser hoards cash.  I have a sudden urge to buy life insurance.

Presidents/PM To Arrive Monday

President To Arrive Monday
Police expect protests but few problems when the two-day North American Leaders Summit gets under way Monday in New Orleans.

It’s VIP duty as President Bush, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper get together to talk trade.

Evidently lunch at Commander’s is indicated, because my husband had to talk to some DHS and/or Secret Service types about the system he had worked on there - and also a visit to the new Mexican embassy, which he also worked on just a few weeks ago.  Evidently he really needs that mark of the beast he’s getting.

All I can think of is this is going to be one big traffic mess on the interstate and downtown.  I’m glad I work from a home office.

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