rickvs

Today's the one-year anniversary of my father's death.

I've still got the Extended Director's Cut of his eulogy in the pipeline (and am scared to find out how many thousands of words I'm up to by now), but I'm not gonna finish it by midnight, so I'm marking the occasion with this anecdote instead:
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I've set up a webcam on Yahoo! Instant Messenger (nick: verminbury).

Abandon all hope etc. etc...

Short version: I didn't win the big car.

Longer version under the cut, including a couple of "buh?" moments at the event. But I had a good time :>
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I won another pair of hockey tickets. I shall be attending the Monday night game (Stars vs. Sharks) with my production manager, again. As part of the prize pack, I'm also gonna take part in a race using leetle Matchbox cars against 99 other listeners. Next Saturday, the winner of the race goes home with a 2007 Chevy Monte Carlo SS.

Me, I'm just hopin' they let me keep the Matchbox after I don't win the real car; I used to play with those as a kid ...and my mother still uses my old set as grandkid bait.

Does anybody know if Matchbox cars are still made from die-cast metal? (And assuming we have some choice over which car we race, anyone have an opinion over which models are faster?)

My new evening shift is working beautifully. I consistently get more done at night, and can take four-hour lunches without inconveniencing ...well, anybody. Our general manager has approved the hire of not one, but two new warm bodies, and the recently-promoted production manager continues to massage the workflow into increasingly efficient configurations. By the time our slow season ends (sometime after Ecks-mas), we should have the kinks worked out of the online work order system -- which isn't exactly paperless, but uses much less paper than the old one ...and also allows our salesfolk to check the status of their orders online, without having to interrupt anyone to ask about them.

At home, we finally got Rachal a new set of glasses ...even though we know her prescription will probably be changing again in the next few months. They've made a tremendous improvement in her ability to get around without falling over, and her use of the walker seems to have dwindled to nearly nothing. She still may have fibromyalgia, but is better able now to do her exercises, which should help her situation further.

In other news, I recently went to my first hockey game. Had a good time, and I understand that the refs don't wish to get hurt, but I was kinda intrigued by the (unwritten?) rule that if a fistfight starts, the participants are allowed to continue until either they deadlock, or one of them hits the ice. Surely it couldn't be that people attend hockey games just to watch fistfights? Nah; that's too cynical ...

More as it develops.

Rachal's had quite a lot of muscle aches since she was in the hospital last -- we figured they collectively represented all the times she'd been under the knife and/or laid up recently, and weren't too surpised that she was sent home with a walker. But some of them have been getting worse, and her primary care physician thinks she may have fibromyalgia. So we've rented a wheelchair for our trip to the Texas State Fair later today. The good news is, she's much clearer-headed, and she prefers being lucid and hurting to dull-witted and pain-free. Our insurance also covers several visits each from a nurse and a couple of different therapists, so she's learning useful exercises ...and therefore becoming more hopeful.

In other news, my new production manager is growing frustrated, despite making a lot of major improvements in our store. Have you seen those signs in auto shops that say, "Fast, good or cheap -- pick any two"? He's busy as a man in a space suit with three holes and two patches ...and for about the same reason. *His* boss has agreed to throw money at some of the problems, but doesn't quite grasp (or perhaps just doesn't agree), that not fully addressing one issue is causing a different issue to raise its ugly head. The production manager intends to throw more light on the situation by putting his own house in order (streamlining production), which should make it obvious to -- well, anyone ...where the remaining kinks in the process actually lie... assuming his evaluation is correct, and I think it is. More on that later, also. My switch to second shift seems to be helping -- I do get more done when I'm working alone, and I can take longer lunches with Rachal. Improvements all 'round :>

Rachal is enjoying this whole being-back-at-home concept.

It was worth carpooling to work with my production manager at 4am to play catch-up on Friday, because that meant I could leave at 4pm with a clear conscience when we were reminded (at the eleventh hour) of a 5 o'clock appointment with her primary care physician.

Saturday, she went to get a massage with our neighbor, and while she was gone I did some rearranging and cleaning -- so she can now actually get her walker around the entire apartment, excepting the bathroom. (It's nice to have two doors into our toilet, but did they each really have to be less than two feet wide?)

She still tires easily, and is not always mentally sharp even when her blood sugar is up, but I expect that to continue until her body absorbs the clot in her lung, which should return her oxygen saturation to its usual level.

I'll go in to work for a bit later on Sunday, and in the meanwhile do more cleaning ...and maybe laundry. Oh, and cuddling. Lots and lots of cuddling.

Thursday, Rachal had another checkup with her opthalmologist. Both optic nerves were swollen this time, and her vision had gotten slightly worse, so he scheduled another eye fenestration for the next day.

At my job, the other functional graphic artist (and now production manager) is out for hernia surgery, and our *other* other less-functional artist/production person apparently decided to resign by going AWOL. So this meant I spent Thursday night at the office, getting all of Friday's artwork done in order to bail out by 10:30 Friday morning. (I did sleep for over three hours on a couch upstairs, so I wasn't a complete zombie driving Rachal to her surgery).

Her left eye is the better one, and they'll avoid operating on it as long as they can. But each time they go back to her right eye to cut little venting slits for her spinal fluid, the surgery gets more difficult, as they must choose a different approach site to the sac around her optic nerve. This time, it was through her right eyelid, leaving four visible stitches and bloody tears leaking from the corners of her eye, like some image of the Madonna you'd read about in a tabloid.

At least venting the pressure from one eye seems to relieve the problem in both. We were really hoping that the lumbar-peritoneal shunt they did earlier would reduce the pressure systemwide, but that doesn't seem to be the way it's working out. The L-P shunt had to be removed, fixed, and reinstalled recently -- so at the moment Rachal's got external stitches at three different sites on her body (eyelid, lower back, flank), and can't really find a comfortable position to rest. Hydrocodone is her friend, but she doesn't wanna stay on it any longer than she has to.

Her mother has come to town to keep an eye on her, and may drag her back to her parents' for a while after Rachal's last medical appointment for the week. I'll keep y'all posted.

I've been sleeping at the hospital this past week, and working basically all the rest of the time. Nice for the paycheck, not so good for sleeping. Rachal started having back pain in addition to her headaches last weekend, and wound up back in the hospital on Sunday. After examining her and taking pictures of her head and torso, the doctor who installed her shunt opened her back up on Thursday, and on the theory it was leaking applied some sort of sealant to it. She came home Friday, and is resting semi-comfortably, while I .... head back to work.

I like my new production manager. I especially like that I don't have his job.

Anyone out there know if Neosporin is okay to use on a ball python? I'm visiting my sister immediately prior to her wedding, and she's snakesitting for a friend. The guest python got out a couple of weeks ago, and apparently tried to squeeze through a space that was too small -- it now has a long scrape along one side that seems to be scabbing over well enough, except I don't know how the healing process for snakes maps to what I'm used to seeing on humans. The python is still eating, and moving around without apparent discomfort, so we're not too worried ... but don't quite know if we should be doing anything else, and would welcome additional feedback.