jeriendhal: (Grumpy)
When it comes to running and exercise my wife is her own worst enemy. So I'm tempted to suggest to her that she stop hanging out with herself and tell herself to fuck off when she puts herself down and maybe she and herself should start seeing other people.
jeriendhal: (Wazagan)
Just wanted to post a link my nine year-old daughter Georgia's donation page for the charity Love Without Boundaries which supports orphans and children needing expensive medical treatment in China. Their program helped Georgia and her own orphanage back before we adopted her, and in return she's going to attempt her first run/walk half-marathon in May of this year to raise at least $1,300 for them.

Please consider donating and/or posting a link to her page in your own journal to support her.

Thank you.
jeriendhal: (Wazagan)
Finally got the scans from my sister from "Front Page Detective" the magazine that featured my Dad in a story about finding illegal radio transmitters at Belmont Racetrack.



Sultry Cover is Sultry



That's my Dad, Raymond Leroy Day, in the upper right corner, demonstrating the gear the FCC confiscated.

More pulpy text behind the cut )
jeriendhal: (Muppets)
Vindicated!

Once upon a time in the 1950's my dad was an investigator for the FCC, hunting illegal radio transmitters (remember those?). One of those investigations involved hunting for a gang using radio transmitters at race tracks to transmit the results to compatriots doing off-track betting.

They caught the guys, and Dad actually got his picture in a "True Detective" style magazine showing off the gear they used. After Dad passed away, my mom SWORE she had given me the magazine as a memento. Then she promptly got peeved at me because I told her I couldn't find it.

So, ten years after Dad died and I supposedly lost the magazine, guess what she finally found in her files? Ha!
jeriendhal: (Wazagan)
Reasons I Love the Internet (#512 in a series)

To the kids over to visit with my mom and have lunch with her. After lunch she dug out my dad's old jewelry case, asking if I was interested in one of his old rings (I wasn't. I don't wear any jewelry aside from my wedding ring). However I was interested in one artifact that Dad had held onto from his days as a radio operator for the OSS. During WWII he was assigned to monitor radio transmissions from OSS agents in Sicily, operating out of a hotel room in Corsica (after it was recaptured by the Allies). After the war ended and he was sent home to be demobbed, he held onto the key fob from the hotel he worked out of, which had the hotel's name and address on it.[1]

Some searching with Google Street View on Mom's computer revealed that not only was the hotel still there, it was still operating under the same name. I'm tempted to go there some day and see if I can stay in the room Dad worked out of, just to see what it might have felt like to him.

[1] Hotel Napolean Bonapate Ile Rousse to be precise.
jeriendhal: (Muppets)
Georgia: (watching MST3K on YouTube with Daddy) "Why is everything in black and white?"

Daddy: "Well honey, this was before colors were invented. Everyone looked like that."

Mommy: "Daddy!"
jeriendhal: (Grumpy)
Just dealing with Stuff, including most of last week being eaten by Tom going through a very lengthy bout of stomach flu and having to do a lot of OT at work.

Sales have been better this month compared to April. if the end continues I'm hoping to be back to my usual 30 sales a month.

Muse is still being stubborn. I have a few ideas, but I'm just too tried or scatterbrained ot put them down. I need to set up a proper office area in the house so I can concentrate better, instead of trying to type on the laptop on a folding table. Did the first bit writing I've attempted for two weeks just this morning, trying to detail how Re-Education works in the FYS universe.

Oh, and a fellow who gave COtRV a nice review at Amazon also created a greatly expanded TV Tropes page for The Red Vixen Adventures.
jeriendhal: (Wazagan)
I'm the guy who writes all the furry stories, but it's my wife who wears the fursuit...


Lemee 'splain: My wife works for a county library system, and the particular branch she works at always has an annual Teddy Bear Picnic around May or so for the library's children patrons and their parents. So the head librarian for the children's section bought a teddy bear costume out of her own pocket for the annual picnic. Now that the old branch is currently being demolished and since they're stuck in a temporary location until the new library is completed late next year, there isn't room to store the suit, so now there's the beheaded body of the suit stored in the trunk of my wife's car for the next few months.

If I ever want to get a fursuit of my wazagan persona or one of my Red Vixen characters, I don't want hear any complaints from her. :)
jeriendhal: (Dies!)
Monday-Tuesday: Average. Hate work.

Wednesday: Ice storm drops a pine tree across the yards of my neighbor and I (we live in a row of townhouses). Fortunately it misses our roof, but it takes out my neighbor's gutters and poke several holes in her roof. On the plus side her son is contractor, so tree removal starts that afternoon.

Oh, and I miss another day's pay because I have to stay home with the kids.

Thursday: Come into work late because I had to put the kids on the bus. Find an email from my boss with a list of idiot mistakes I'd made last month that I had to correct. Miss listening to a conference call because I can't figure out how to log in until it's too late.

Friday: Rush to work after dropping off Tracy's car at the ship because it's making knocking noises. Find out we need to get her a new car. (9K engine repairs on a twelve year old car). Make more mistakes at work.

I wanna Do Over...
jeriendhal: (Wazagan)
Began very badly, with Thomas waking up t 12:30am and refusing to go back to sleep. I stayed up with him until 2:00am, when we got Tracy and Georgia up and just opened presents then. We gave Miss G a LEGO set, a replacement for the glass diamond paperweight from last year that she lost and a Spirograph set. We gave Thomas a PS2 Fat and Madden 2006 to go with it, which is exactly what he wanted. Then I went back to bed for a couple of hours and then spelled Tracy who slept until 8am. Then at 11:30 we headed down to my sister Rae's for Christmas with her, my mom and her daughters. Tom was amazing ly good given how exhausted he was, and kept it together until we got home at 6pm and he could go to bed.

Going to bed very soon.
jeriendhal: (Grumpy)
My muse is being an asshole this week and not talking to me. Usually I can pop my daily drabble out but I'm just looking at the prompts in front of me and staring blankly. Doesn't help that Tom's sleep schedule has gone to hell again and he's been waking up and Oh My God in the morning, so by the time evening rolls around my will to live write has just about had it.

Whine, whine, whine.
jeriendhal: (Dies!)
So, my son Thomas, who is autistic, is entering adolescence. In a normal child's life this is a difficult time. In Tom's, its been pretty upsetting. Especially at daycare this year, since he's been increasingly disinclined to listen to the teachers there and they have been increasingly unable to handle him (the personnel consists of three women, one who's pregnant, one who's 70+ years old, and have about twenty kids between them besides Thomas to look after.) Things came to a head Tuesday, when he started screaming and crying and banging doors open and shut, ending with him getting in a tug of war with the head of the center and then breaking a toilet seat.

So we needed to get a new daycare for him. Now. And just trying finding one that can handle an autistic 12 year old on short notice. His middle school will have an after-care program to watch him at the start of the year, but that left us with August to get through.

Fortunately [livejournal.com profile] moonshadowed's mother is already watching my brother-in-law's kids (who are in their teens or jsut a bit younger) and agreed to watch Tom and Miss G for us. I just have to spend a month shuttling them up to Reading Hanover, PA, drive to my work in Baltimore, MD, then pick them up in the evening.

Sadly, all that gas will still be cheaper than what we'd be paying the daycare...
jeriendhal: (Wazagan)
One fun (for certain values of fun) aspect of having a learning disabled child is their ability to lock on a subject like a pit bull on a man's wrist and never let it go. Take for example my son's interest in the classic ST:TNG pinball machine, fueled by an original table that my sister owns for the rec room down in her family's basement. He absolutely loves that thing, and when we make our annual visit around the holidays, he'd happily play it for hours rather than do something boring like open presents.

So recently a DLC video game called "Pinball Madness" became available, which translates classic tables into a hyper-accurate video game format. Including the ST:TNG table as an add-on. Which we recently bought for our PS3, since Thomas had been watching YouTube videos about the ST:TNG game and was obsessing about it again. Needless to say he's been overjoyed.

And I just realized that I have a pinball obsessed, autistic child named "Tommy." Facepalm
jeriendhal: (Grumpy)
Rascal was the second cat we acquired for our household, about a year after [livejournal.com profile] moonshadowed and I got married. Technically he was [livejournal.com profile] badasher's cat, adopted as a companion for his other cat, Max, who needed a distraction to keep from upsetting Tracy's cat, Sunny. In the end though he became ours mostly by default, and Steve left him with us when he moved out.

He was young when we got him, less than a year old and still a catten. He was also perceived by everybody as being a bit of a dim bulb. We blamed it on a fever he got a few months after we adopted him, but honestly I think it was just a case of him not being as smart as Max, who was the undisputed Alpha Cat of the household, and also being a bit mouthier than the others, which made him seem terminally confused and worried. Ex:

Rascal: Meow, meow, Meow, MEOW!

Royce: What's that, Rascal? You say Timmy fell down into the well?

He was a gentle soul though, running from, rather than attacking, our bird Sadie when she dive bombed him, and putting up with sometimes rough handling from the kids without clawing them.

Eventually Sunny passed away and we adopted Salem, and then a couple of years later we lost Max to failing kidneys. After Steve moved out Rascal and Salem lived in mutual ignorance of each other, not really interacting unless they had the bad luck to pass near each other in the hall.

When Salem began ailing, Rascal became a bit of tub, since he was consuming the dry cat food Salem didn't want to eat. After Salem had to be put to sleep in December though, he slimmed back down to his own weight, and became a great deal more cuddly, actually sitting beside of behind us on the couch when we used the laptop, instead of his usual perch on the far end on an arm.

Last week, around Wednesday, he disappeared. We found him hiding under our bed, after figuring out that he hadn't touched his food bowl at all that day. After dragging him out from under there, he seemed to be in pain, so Thursday evening I took him to the vet. He was diagnosed with a blocked urinary tract and wasn't able to pee. The poor guy's abdomen felt like he'd swallowed a baseball. One catheter treatment later he was drained out, and the vet warned me she'd seen a bit of blood in the urine, which might mean a kidney stone.

He drank water when he got home, but still wasn't eating. Friday morning I left out wet food and some fresh chicken breast to encourage him, but when we came home in the evening he still hadn't touched them, nor had he used the cat box.

By the time I brought him back to the vet Saturday morning, he hadn't eaten for almost four days and hadn't drank any water in 36 hours. The vet said it was almost certainly kidney stones, given he'd become blocked again immediately. To fix it would involve an operation that, ignoring the fact we couldn't really afford it, may have killed Rascal outright, and would have at minimum left him in a lot of pain. So I called Tracy at home and we agreed to let him go.

He stopped purring halfway through the injection.

He was a good kitty.
jeriendhal: (Marty Greycoat)
Woke this morning and found our cat, Salem, just lying listless on the floor. I opened a can of wet cat food and instead of following me into the powder room (so he can eat in peace) he just ignored it. So I picked him up and set him in front of the bowl and closed the door.

Ten minutes later I checked on him. He hadn't touched the food, but his bowels had cut loose and he was laying in a puddle of his own waste. I cleaned him off with some wipes and he moved himself four feet over to the water bowl sitting at the top of the basement landing and has been sitting there for an hour and half now.

Going to make a call to the vet's in a couple of minutes. It's time. :(
jeriendhal: (Ears)
Travel: We were planning on doing Thanksgiving at home anyway, but after last weekend's trip to Cleveland we're doubly inclined to stay in today.

Dinner:

Brined Turkey
Stuffing with Chicken Livers
Country Mashed Potatoes
Gravy from drippings
Corn Pudding
Sweet Potato Casserole
Oven Roasted Brussel Sprouts
Biscuits
Apple Pie with French Vanilla Ice Cream
Pumpkin Pie
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Viewing: Since we no longer have cable, and never got an HD converter box, we'll be doing a Lord of the Rings, Extended Edition marathon in lieu of the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

Music: Can there be any other choice...?

jeriendhal: (Default)
So Friday, myself, [livejournal.com profile] moonshadowed, Thomas and Georgia, plus Tracy's mom and Aunt Donna, all piled into my minivan for a trip to Cleveland so Tracy could meet with a couple of online friends and run in a local half-marathon.

Things happened thusly:

1. About halfway down the PA Turnpike [1] my minivan jerked to the right a couple of times. My best guess at the time was that since we were going through a relatively high and rocky section that it was wind. Turned out it was my left rear tire about to blow out.

At 75mph

On the fucking turnpike.

Fortunately after the initial THUMPthudthudthudthud I was able to pull off safely onto the shoulder and change the tire, which was completely shredded. Doubly luckily a cop came along less than five minutes later to keep traffic from smashing me while I changed the time (and for once the time shop hadn't tightened on the nuts so hard I couldn't undo them myself).

2. Finally got to the hotel around 4:30pm to find it being rapidly occupied by a fish fancier convention. I didn't even know you could have conventions about that. Though if you're going to have it anywhere I guess Cleveland is the place.

3. First night of sleep didn't actually happen due to a variety of circumstances. Fortunately I managed to nap in the morning while Tracy dragged the kids to the hotel's swimming pool.

4. Saturday (after my nap) we picked up Tracy's race packet and visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Only saw the first floor of exhibits, due to Tom going into sensory overload and Tracy's mom feeling ragged out and annoyed because they didn't have an items related to a really obscure rocker she wanted to see.

5. Sunday was Race Day. Most long races Tracy has done started at 7am or so, for some stupid reason this one began at 9am, which meant I had to drop her off and rush back to help her mom and Aunt pack up and check out before returning to the race course with them. I left them in the car with the kids while I met Tracy, since it was a half-mile walk from the parking lot to the race course.

6. Despite having the flu earlier in the week and still getting over a case of bronchitis, Tracy managed to finish with a time of 3:07 and ahead of at least nine people in a field of a thousand.

7. Then it was time to drive home. Didn't get back to our house until about 8:30pm after dropping off Grandmom and Aunt Donna. Thomas started losing his biscuit the last couple of hours, but given how much driving we'd done over the past three days I wasn't going to blame him.

8. Back to worrrrrrrk.


[1] And who's idea was it to make a state so damned large?
jeriendhal: (Red Vixen)
Rolas and Mel's daughter doesn't even have a name yet and she's already demanding that I write about her. So she can complain about how boring Aunt Salli's planet is and how Aunt Ali is fun but a bit scary and how her dad can't possibly have been a pirate because that would mean he's actually done something interesting.

Oh God, that means Rolas is my dad. [1] And Mel my mom. Except now now I'm imaging Mom in one of the Red Vixen's outfits and AHHH, THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!


[1] Dad was the most dull quiet person you can imagine. Who was in the OSS in World War 2, then worked as investigator for the FCC which led to him riding a Navy blimp up and down the Baja Coast in the 50's to find illegal radio transmitters and bust a gambling ring at a horse track.

But aside from that he was completely normal.
jeriendhal: (Default)
So my niece Tracy got married on Saturday. Georgia was in attendance as her flower girl, and did remarkably well given that she's only six and very bouncy. She went down the aisle with reasonable dignity, scattering petals and standing mostly still with the bridesmaids during the rest of the ceremony (it didn't hurt that they all were telling her how cute looking she was every five minutes prior to things starting.)

[livejournal.com profile] moonshadowed didn't get to see most of the proceedings, unfortunately. We had Thomas with us as well, and we'd had to leave at 1:30 to get to the church on time for Georgia to get changed into her dress before the ceremony (we live in Columbia, MD and the ceremony was at Fort Belvior, VA on the army base itself). Things didn't get going until 4:30, and by that point Thomas' ability to stay still and quiet was exhausted, so Tracy (my wife, not the bride) had to take him back out to the van to chill out and not interrupt things. After photos were done we headed over to the reception and partied until Thomas started melting down at about 8:30pm. After that we drove home and got in about 9:45 and sent both kids to bed.

It was an exhausting day, but fun.
jeriendhal: (Whatever)
1. [livejournal.com profile] chaypeta is doing one of those "Make a randomized list of your characters and then write answers to the prompts" memes. Except the meme is 100 items long and she's doing full panel cartoons of them. She's on Day Three right now (which is slightly naughty). Check them out at the Terinu website (and tell her she needs to post stuff to LJ again!)

2. Going to take my daughter to the rehearsal for my niece's wedding tonight (she's the Flower Girl). It's not even my wedding and I've been getting a return of the heart pain stress that dent me to the hospital last December just from running around buying dress shoes and otherwise preparing. Can't wait for Saturday to be over.

3. Plowing with more determination than skill through Shadow of the Red Vixen, with one character down and bleeding, the other floundering, and the end nowhere in sight. While that percolates I'm also trying to move forward on Wazaga's gift story.

4. I've also applied to be an MiB for Steve Jackson Games which will hopefully get me enough participation credits that I can actually get games without straining our budget.

5. Oh, and my DeviantArt membership ran out, so I'm stuck with ads again. Wah.

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