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| Friday December 29, 2006 | Posted at 10:01 pm | |
| Saddam Has Been Executed | ||
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About time... Should have been done 15 years ago... I imagine the phone conversation tonight between GW and GHW went something like this. "Daddy, daddy, it's me, GW, I finally got that som bitch! You know, that emmer effer you coulda/shoulda wiped from the face of the planet back when you wuz the president." |
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| Wednesday December 27, 2006 | Posted at 8:17 am | |
| Apparently the dog did not get the memo!! | ||
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Yeah, seems someone forgot to include Jake on the memo reminding the whole family that I AM ON VACATION!!! I am sure if he had gotten the memo, he would not have started barking the moment Michelle left the house this morning! That frickin dog of ours is a mix of Black Labrador and some kind of effen Rooster!! I swore at him for 10 minutes from the bedroom, eventually I got so wound up, it would be impossible for me to fall back to sleep. Yesterday, BP gave me a Northern Pike fish that I had caught a few years back which was mounted by a friend in taxidermy school. He needed fish for his class and I had caught this 33 incher ice fishing on Xmas day in 2003 (bottom of the page). I had totally forgotten about it, after all it was a decent sized Northern, but nothing great. BP's brother wound up with the fish through our friend and just recently gave it to BP to pass along to me. Long story short... I dragged my newly gotten fish, which Michelle just HATES, and waved it in front of the dog and proceeded to explain to him how this same friend could very easily stuff his Lab/Rooster ass as well! Maybe as a reinforcement, I can hang the mounted fish above his kennel door!! I haven't heard the dog make a sound in nearly an hour now... At least the kids can sleep in today!! If you ever need taxidermy work, I suggest Gene Plummer who runs Plummer's Taxidermy in Crandon, WI. He doesn't have a website or anything, but I did find this listing for his place. |
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| Sunday December 24, 2006 | Posted at 11:12 am | |
| Merry Christmas!! | ||
To all our visitors and stumbler-uponers, we hope that you have a very, very Merry Christmas!! I would be remiss in all my geek/nerd glory if i didn't remind you to get the kiddies around the old computer today and track Santa at the NORAD site!! |
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| Saturday December 23, 2006 | Posted at 11:12 am | |
| Leave me alone! I am on vacation!! | ||
Haha... I was off Friday and won't be back to work until January 2nd. I wanna see if I can get this posted between power blips... We got about 5 inches of heavy wet snow last night and the power has been blippin about every 20 minutes. This got me to purchase a UPS solution for BIG-ASS-DOG (my computer's name), the cable modem, the router, and whatever else I can put on there. Last night the power went out for about 45 minutes or so. The laptop still had plenty of juice to allow some game playing, but no Internet.  I'm thinking I might buy a small UPS system for the fish tank too. When the power went out, I had to scramble quick to get downstairs and get the return line out of the water. Otherwise a siphon gets created back down into the sump and that could mean a couple gallons of salt water would spill out. I have a one way water valve, but have never been able to get that rigged into the plumbing system on the tank. I managed to get this far and the power hasn't cut out, I think I will post it now. |
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| Monday December 18, 2006 | Posted at 2:12 pm | |
| Back Home!! | ||
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While it is fun to visit with family and see them all again, it is always nice when you can get back home! We made record time heading home up the back way through Appleton and all the skinny two-lane highways, thanks to no jerkin around and extra stops. While I could have used a couple stretch breaks to lessen the numbness in my legs, I just wanted to get home. About 3 hours after getting home I had to head into work to do some work on the company website. I assisted another co-worker with putting some changes he made up onto the site. This gave me the opportunity to do much needed server work, including patching all of those Micro$oft security holes! Neither one of us slept before we came to work and by the time we were done, we'd both be up 24 hours or so. It makes it much easier when you have someone else to help keep you awake. By 7 AM we were pretty much burnt and counting the minutes until reinforcements showed up. Looking back on that, it would have been nice if a couple people would have started an hour or two earlier, but whatever... We didn't stick around long to chit-chat with them this morning, we just wanted to go home and go to sleep. Now it is time to kick back and wait for our own little Christmas deal with the kids... I only need to finish out this week and then I can say screw work until next year. I added a new Poll in the right nav, a holiday specific question... |
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| Saturday December 16, 2006 | Posted at 10:12 am | |
| Sitting Poolside | ||
It's about 10:15 this morning... I plugged up the toilet so I figured that I would grab the laptop, camera phone, and let housekeeping deal with the "gift", hehe. Serves them right for having such weak crappers!! The trip down was fine, mostly uneventful, my left leg was numb the last 3 hours of the 4 hour trip. Ate at Applebee's last night, good chow, and good beverages! We're gonna chill out here for a while today and then head to the In-Law's shack for eats and gifting. |
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| Thursday December 14, 2006 | Posted at 9:12 pm | |
| Yearly Trip And Some Updates... | ||
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We're about to embark on the yearly trek to visit family in the southern half of the state. I missed out on all the fun last year with really crappy health! Remember the picture of me in the emergency room all jacked up on morphine? Knock on wood, this year I am feeling fine and dandy! Finally dumped Cellone! Those guys have the worst customer service in the whole world! I have been telling them, and occasionally you guys that I was going to dump their asses, well, the time is here! Alltel was having some great promotions going on for the holidays and we wanted that My Circle gimmick they got where you can call 10 peeps and they can call you with no hit against your minutes! Works out great for us!! Sammi has a few and we added family from down south and a few out of town friends. So Cellone, you suck and you lose my money!! Alltel, don't screw me over, haha. The cell stuff was a nice little segue into this... New cell service means new camera phone, haha. I took a few pictures and posted them.
Oh yeah... One last thing... A big huge thanks to all who responded about the early Christmas present post. It would seem that I have many more readers than I thought!! Michelle appreciated the support and messages. Don even posted some kind words and has his own list of peeps needing positive ju-ju be sent their way. |
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| Tuesday December 05, 2006 | Posted at 9:12 pm | |
| An Early Christmas Present!! | ||
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Normally I am such a scrooge about Xmas and all that stuff, but this year I am softening my stance a bit. You may be thinking, "Holy crap, ol' Paul is losing it" or wondering, why the deviation from the typical Yuletide hatred? Well, I got my Xmas present early this year... I didn't intend for it to be my Xmas present, but now that I have it, I realize that it is probably one of the very best Xmas presents ever!! I'm damn glad I didn't have to wait until December 25th!! At times it was a pretty tall order keeping my composure and not letting on to the fact that I was anxious as hell and just about to burst. Some days I was an intolerable bear! Some days I didn't even feel like I wanted to work, but I knew that it was a good way to stop my mind from the constant wandering and wondering. I even stepped up my blogging to keep me occupied... 15 posts last month; I don't think I ever posted that many times in a month, ever! Sleep. Not much of that. Even my business dealings were put off a little bit and some projects have been delayed as my focus wasn't there. As much as that last paragraph is all about me and my Xmas present, it wasn't about me at all... Oh sure, I'm making the Xmas present claim, but it is all about Michelle. Now I got you all thinking "he ain't losing it, he's lost it, emmer effer is talking about his Xmas present and now he says it's Michelle's deal..." Stay with me here... I learned something in the past six weeks... Maybe learned is not the right word. The last six weeks has been more of an epiphany. A realization of just how much being a cancer survivor can really suck some major butt. There's the seemingly endless doctors appointments throughout the year with adjustments to medications, chest x-rays, and blood work. Even the big yearly tests, with the HUGE cost of drugs that ARE NOT covered by health insurance! Those are the things we've gotten used to in the past two years since Michelle was diagnosed with follicular carcinoma and had a couple surgeries to remove her thyroid. We knew that given the size of the tumor and the fact that it had metastasized she stands a chance that it could return. We kept positive, all the time... This shit isn't coming back, plain and simple, stick it in your ear, cancer, your days are done here. We never gave a second thought to the question; what if the x-ray comes back and it isn't good? Simple answer: It will always be good so, no worries. I can't even begin to imagine how Michelle felt after that phone call when they told her that her chest x-ray showed spots on her lymph nodes and that she would need to come in for a CT scan. I know how bad I felt after she called me at work and told me, I could only imagine what was happening in her mind. I wanted to race home as fast as I could and be with her, just like that day a few years back when in the doctor's office, he informed us that the tumor they removed earlier that week was malignant and that she would require a second operation to remove the remainder of her thyroid. Michelle assured me she was ok, and I had to assure her that of course it was ok, just some stupid spots... About a week later, CT scan was done and we got the results... They were just stupid spots, nothing to worry about. I am telling you, that is so much easier said than done! I am no cancer expert, but I know this much, the lymphatic system is often times where cancer will reoccur and spread from. I used to work with this great lady, Jan... She was one of those unfortunate few that got crapped on and lost her job with QuadraMed. Jan is a breast cancer survivor and the only person I felt comfortable talking to about this. Who better to ask! She knows it all! A good resource for the "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt" deal... She was the voice of reason and kept me thinking positively too. It really sucks that she had to experience cancer, but as it turns out, she has been a really big help to me!! I felt a bit foolish for letting that whole deal with the x-ray get me so out of sorts. Hey, things are looking up! We found out that the two injections that the insurance company doesn't cover no longer costs $3,000. Nope, now they cost $1,650! I asked Michelle if that was per injection or for both, haha, it was for both. Worked out not so bad because last year, after shelling out $3,000 for them, Michelle signed up for a program at work where you can have money taken from your paycheck, pre-tax, and put into a medical spending account. This year she had $1100 taken out. So while we had to eat that $1,650, it didn't hit quite so hard. Forward on a few days and Michelle gets another scan of her thyroid, or specifically, the area where her thyroid used to be and everything is cool. The following week she had to drive to the hospital 4 out of the 5 weekdays, and be there first thing in the morning. Friday was scan day, this was the radioiodine scan. She pops a pill containing radioactive iodine a day or two before the scan. They scan her and look for hot spots or glowing stuff. More waiting after the scan, nothing is ever quick. The next week Michelle and the kids were heading down to visit her Mom and spend Thanksgiving week with her family. She missed the doctor's office call on Monday because she was sleeping and by the time she called them back they were gone. Michelle and the kids were leaving the next day after she grabbed a couple hours of sleep. She called the doctors office and asked for the nurse. When the nurse knew it was Michelle she told her to hold while she gets the doctor. Oh man, the nurse ALWAYS tells you when the scan is good, you only talk to the doctor when the news is generally not good... The news wasn't good. They found some glowing stuff in her abdomen and needed to do another CT scan. Michelle asked if she needed to come in right away or if it could be done the next week, he said that is could wait until next week. My phone rang at work... It's like deja vu, all over again... I wanna be with her, but I won't see her for nearly a week. I can't fathom how Michelle was able to continue on with the week at her family's house, with this on her mind. I guess it was probably a good thing as there is always a ton of stuff to do down there. I was more or less a wreck... Jan hit the nail right on the head with her e-mail after we got the good results on the first CT scan, she said, "Just keep the faith because something similar, unfortunately, will probably happen again". That is experience talking there! When I get something in my head I have a very hard time shaking it off, be it a song I can't remember the title to, work, writing code, or dealing with all of those frickin "what if" scenarios that kept jumping into my head. Who the hell are you and who invited you into my damn head!?! A frickin demon got into my melon and was really messin with me. I could be rebooting a server at work and suddenly, out of nowhere, I am thinking about some far out shit that I know I should not be thinking about. Smack myself upside the head and get out of the daydream, press the restart button, and go get a bottle of water thinking where the hell did that come from. The stupid spots on the lymph nodes were one thing, but glowing shit in my wife's abdomen was putting me in a state of mind I had never experienced before. I self prescribed a mixture of cocktails and goofballs a few of those nights between the stupid spots on the lymph nodes x-ray and the results of the first CT scan. But I upped the dose significantly during the week after the glowing stuff. It was impossible for me to sleep unless I medicated that demon. The problem was that the goofballs stopped working about 3 or 4 in the morning. I would lay awake and wait for that alarm to go off so I could head to work, all the while, battling that effen demon. One morning I decided to get up early and walk on the treadmill and have done that a few times since. I put off the treadmill because of back pain, but I decided to walk again, pain or not. I don't walk as fast or jog in anymore. When Michelle returned from her trip, she had to return to work right away, she wasn't scheduled to have the CT scan on her abdomen until later that week, when she was on her four-day rotation off of work. It is a real pain in the ass trying to do anything in Rhinelander when working those 12 hour shifts. It would be almost another week before we had everything done and we knew what path we were going to be heading down! The demon subsided when I got my family back home. Subsided, but it didn't go away entirely, it was still a really crappy week for me. Work was not making things any easier. I kept trying to get a feel for how Michelle was doing, inside. I dunno, but I think she has taken some acting classes or she is just not letting her defenses down, which by the way, she is really good at! If she doesn't want you "in", you ain't getting in... Apparently, not even me. The job of the spouse, or significant other, of the cancer survivor is basically to act as a cheerleader; don't ever show that anything affects you because it may take away the positive ju-ju of the person who has to battle the bigger problem. You can't try to bust down those defenses, you need to let them do what works for them and be there for them, when they need you. If you hear negativity in any form you have to diffuse it, you have to find a way to make their negative into a positive. That can sometimes be a real challenge, but you do it, you do it for them. Michelle asked the radiologist to expedite the results of her CT scan to her doctor so that hopefully we wouldn't have to wait through the weekend. They did not, bastards... Michelle was going to see her doctor on Monday for an unrelated issue, so she would get the result then. Work for me has been crazy busy, typical for this time of year, plus they're mandating new working hours and stuff on us. I asked Michelle if she wanted me to come up to the hospital with her for her appointment, she said it wouldn't be necessary. She knew that if she called I would have been there inside of 10 minutes. My phone did ring at work... It was Michelle... No deja vu this time... Nope, instead, it was my Xmas present!! Michelle remains cancer free!! That was an awesome Xmas gift!! Sure, the selfish side of me says a case of good micro brews would be a cool deal, but shit, this was a billion times better. Normally Michelle and I don't exchange Xmas gifts; instead, we usually buy something for the house. This year we are looking at replacing the recliners in the basement or ditching the old dishwasher, but this year we scored a little something extra. This place here, this blog, this space for my words can be therapeutic at times. The satisfaction I get out of writing and posting this stuff is kind of cool; I really like stopping out here from time to time and dishing out some stuff. I love writing, but lack talent, creativity, and the grammatical skills to do any more then this here. I try to keep it light, funny, filled with weird stuff I find online or just weird things that happen to me. Rarely do I ever post about Michelle and almost never anything personal about the kids. I post stuff that I think my two to three readers might like to read or check out. Other times, like today, I let you all in a little further, perhaps further then you want to come in and quite possibly further then what my family likes. I am ever mindful of the fact that this is viewed by friends, family, co-workers, and sociopaths alike. I would never write something so personal like this about our family and post it without first getting the blessing from the boss. So, if you are reading this online, she approved... I for one am glad that she did. |
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| Tuesday December 05, 2006 | Posted at 7:12 pm | |
| I love these lights! | ||
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This was all the rage on the net last year... Now that we brought the xmas tree in and have it thawing out in the stand, it got me thinking about the season again. I thought y'all would enjoy the lights. I love the music too! Wizards In Winter from Trans-Siberian Orchestra is one cool ass tune! |
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Keep a tight one... (Thanks Jimmy)
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The Huml Family Organizational Unit
 March 12, 2010 :: 8:49 AM |