O-Dark-Thirty

It's been a busy few weeks. First of all, Darling's surgery and recovery. Rough stuff. We muddle through. As our Youngest Son says, though, she doesn't really give herself time to heal, but launches forward into numerous tasks around the houses. Which brings me to the second point. Note that I said "houses" and you now know we are moving. We've lived in this same, wonderful house for almost eleven years, though we didn't move into the master bedroom until a year ago. It's a beautiful home in many ways but it's just too big for us. We want to reduce our bills, our taxes and our insurance, so we're moving to something (quite a bit) smaller. This means packing, packing, packing. Then moving. Then unpacking, unpacking, hey - we brought too much stuff. I have no illusions that we will pare what we have enough before we transfer it. I hope we do so after we move it all. The new place has a study, though. That's cool. Before we move there a...

If you're a gamer, then you know that I refer to the recently released Blizzard game Diablo 3, which came out last Tuesday at midnight. This game has been in development for years. Unlike The Avengers premier, I didn't stay up for the midnight launch. My youngest son did. Not only did he stay up for the launch , getting the game from a local game store at midnight, but he then stayed up for hours trying to logon and play the game. I guess he gave up about three in the morning and then slept for a few hours. He then was sick from school for Wednesday. Lack of sleep contributed to his health problem. By the time I managed to logon for a few minutes on Wednesday night he was far, far into the game. He has since finished D3 on Normal mode and is progressing with his monk through Hell, the second level of difficulty. After that he will no doubt play Nightmare and Inferno. Whether he plays a Hardcore character or not is still questionable. In Hardcore, when your character d...

I have become a big fan of the Steampunk genre. If I were more crafty, I'd probably be a big fan of creating devices also, like this amazing lightning gun reported on smartplanet ™. Ro b Flickenger, t he maker of the gun, shows how to make the gun on his blog post that he was inspired by the graphic novel Five Fist of Science . As I said, I'm a big fan of Steampunk now, and this book seems to be a terrific read, but at over $65 I'm not about to go and buy it. Feel free to use the link and read it yourself, though (yes, I am an affiliate!). Let me know what you think. My latest read in the genre were the first two books in The Magnificent Devices trilogy by Shelley Adina, which started with Lady of Devices and continued with Her Own Devices . I am fascinated by the author as well. I was curious when her next book was going to come out, so went to her web page, then to her blog. She's quite busy with appearances at different Steampunk conferences and expects...

Our pics coming soon Happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there. May your children heap well-deserved praise on you this day and continue to be a joy to you in the years to come! There is so much to cover that I probably won’t get it all in this post. That’s okay. I’ll need something for the seventeenth, which is when I'll post the travel story . Come back then. It's a good one. Darling is doing okay after the (final) surgery . She has amnesia. She does not recall her brother at the hospital on Thursday. That's okay. She was out of it and they were giving her pretty strong medications. She only vaguely remembers him bringing her home of Friday. That's odd, but perhaps residual medication is the explanation and no cause for consternation. Apparently Saturday is a bit of a blur for her, too. I wasn't here, but she had friends with her the entire time, so she was okay. Where I was and how that went is the next blog post. She thinks she is doing...

Some days I'm just tired. Today is one of those days. I have nothing enlightening to impart, no snappy patter, no amazing movie review. Not the most revealing Darling had surgery yesterday. Doctor Villa said it went really well. Since he is a wonderful plastic surgeon I expect Darling now has the breasts of a twenty-two year old Greta Garbo. I expect nothing less. Darling did come home with a drain tube on each side. It isn't the same shock as the first surgery and the drainage amounts are much less. Still, I am hoping that she will wait until next Thursday's appointment and let the nurse take the tubes out rather than do it herself. Once was enough for me . She's in a lot if pain but she's home. I'm not. She sent me home last night to get some rest. A storm came through at three in the morning and it was almost as if Ike had returned to visit us. I tossed and turned. I don't sleep well without Darling anyway and that just made it worse. I am s...

Sometimes I don't have much to say, so a blog post seems like a waste of time. I mean, does anyone really care how things are going with me? That's not a fair question, but there it is anyway. We all feel that way sometimes. Breakfast of Chumpions This is a tough week. I decided to drop by Mickey D's on the way to work and pick up a Numero Dos breakfast, large Coke. They gave me a stack of napkins. They must have watched me eat at some point. Y'know, the hash browns from that place absolutely soak the napkins with grease. If I was a healthy-type person I wouldn't even eat them. I will though. And … loving it. As I was leaving Mickey D's I made a left turn right after a big truck and almost moved directly to the far right lane. Good thing I didn't. There was this really nice car there that might have objected. It is a stress-filled week. I can't do anything without thinking about Friday Thursday (just informed that they changed th...

The movie "The Avengers" opens here in town tonight, at a midnight showing. How can I talk about anything else in a blog post? I'm too old to go to a midnight showing. You have to buy the tickets early, show up at the theater early, then start watching the movie at midnight. Two hours and twenty minutes later you have to drive home, get a little sleep and then go to work and function. I'm just too old. I'm totally doing it. One of my buddies is a Major in the reserves and he isn't going to be in town this weekend. This will be his only chance to see it. (That's my basic excuse.) My other buddy just thought it was a great idea. We actually bought the tickets Monday and the IMAX screen edition of the midnight showing was already sold out. I just want a good seat in the theater, even though it will be packed. I don't want to sit in the first few rows, where you have to scan left and right to see the entire screen. Ideally I'd like those ...

 SuperMoon comparison  When the moon becomes full this Saturday, May 5, 2012 at 11:35 p.m. EDT it will be the year's largest full moon. Scientifically this is because the full moon this month coincides with the perigee of the moon to the Earth, its closest approach. They call this the SuperMoon. Since the moon's close approach differs by about three percent, experts note that this is the nearest perigee of the year as well. They say the moon will be sixteen percent brighter than average. That's a lot. Conversely, the moon's apogee (furthest away) coincides with the full moon on November 28th this year, so that will be a much smaller moon. That's okay, too. I've always liked the moon. I'm not the only one who likes the moon. Sometimes when Darling doesn't think I'm listening I hear her whisper these words from a German children's game , and I know she's thinking of (and missing) her Mom. "Der Mond ist rund, der Mond ist...