Talking to Myself Again

Sierra Club Potluck and Emergency Room Visit

mood: nervous
music: Gypsy Guerrilla Band - Seneca/June Apple

(No, it wasn't food poisoning.)

Last night was the Fall Potluck of the Sangamon Valley Group, the local group of the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club. Dawn and I have both sent money to the national organization in years past, but I've been wanting to get involved with the local chapter. This seemed like a good opportunity, since we could bring along Lando rather that trying to find a babysitter.

The event started off a bit slowly. We went to the council ring nearest to the Lincoln Memorial Gardens Nature Center and found that we were the first ones there. However, there was a pile of firewood and a jug of water nearby for the campfire, so we figured we were at the right spot. Lando climbed up on the stone ledge and began walking/running around it, as he does whenever we come to a circle. (It seems likely he'll run track, unless he decides that ovals don't count.) Eventually, of course, he fell of of the stone ledge and onto the stone floor of the circle. Ouch! However, he caught himself pretty well and was okay.

A few minutes later, just as the first people started showing up, he tripped while running and sprawled onto the rock floor. Double ouch! This time it was several minutes before he finally calmed down.

There were a few problems with the evening. First, it was dark and cold. Second, nobody had brought matches with which to start the campfire! Someone eventually located an ancient book of matches in their car, and they managed to get the campfire going in just one try, so we finally had a bit of heat and light!

Eventually about 10 people showed up. Sustainable Springfield was putting on an event that same evening (a "tour of the first US Green Building Council Certified Silver LEED building in Springfield"), so it is likely that some people were there who would otherwise have been at the potluck.

Dawn had made broccoli cheese casserole and caramel brownies, both of which are excellent! We had a good time chatting with the Sierra Club members, talking about (among other things) "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and the Illinois Clean Car Bill. I bought a 2008 Sierra Club desk calendar (I'm always blown away by the photography in their calendars) and grabbed a membership form. (I also did the photography geek thing and took a group photo, which I'll try to post soon.)

Update: Here's a photo of the group:

When we got home about 8:30 or so, Dawn looked at Lando and saw that he had a huge bump on his forehead! Apparently, when he tripped and fell that second time, his head thumped pretty hard on the stone floor of the circle. We hadn't noticed it because it was so dark out there. That had been 2 hours earlier and he still had a big lump, so we decided to take him to the emergency room, just to be safe.

Lando went to the ER 3 times in his first 14 months of life, but we had managed to go 20 months without a repeat visit, so I guess we were due.

Lando was very good during the various examinations at the ER. He let them take his temperature with a thermometer in his mouth (hurray!). He let them check his pulse and blood pressure. He let the doctor look in his mouth, nose, and ears. He was perfect while they were examining him.

It was during the waiting time that he ran around like a madman! It was way past his bedtime, and when he gets tired, he gets hyper.

Eventually a doctor examined him and asked whether he had blacked out or vomited, etc. He said that the only way they could do a CAT scan would be by sedating Lando. Since he didn't show any signs of serious injury, it wasn't worth the risk of sedating him. The doctor said just to partially wake him at some point in the middle of night. If we could do that, then that would mean he was fine.

As a result, we got home well after 11:00 PM and Lando didn't go to sleep until well after midnight. Zzz.... Dawn checked on him about 3:30 AM and he was fine. Unfortunately he didn't sleep in this morning, waking up about 7:30. Zzz....

Goodbye Summer! Fall is Here

music: Clandestine - Miner's Lullaby

Well, the nice weather seems to have ended. Today was cold and rainy. Tomorrow is forecast to be cold and rainy. Wednesday is forecast to be cold and rainy. Thursday is forecast to be cold and rainy. Friday... well, you get the idea.

Actually, I just checked weather.com and they're forecasting no rain for tomorrow. That would be nice, because tomorrow evening we're planning on going to the Fall Potluck & Hike of the Sangamon Valley Group, the local chapter of the Sierra Club. We've never attended a meeting of the local chapter of the Sierra Club, but this seems like a particularly good opportunity to go, since we could bring along a 2-year-old without causing too much disruption, which means that we won't have to get a babysitter. Assuming that it doesn't get rained out, there will be a potluck picnic, hike, and campfire at the Lincoln Memorial Garden & Nature Center. (Incidentally, that's where Dawn & I were married back in September 2000, although it was at a different fire ring.)

Playgrounds, A Party, Parting with Toys, Weight Loss...

Only 2 weeks have passed and I'm already making another post to this blog! Will wonders never cease? Let's see, what's been happening for the last 2 weeks?

One thing that didn't happen was Erin Feis, the annual Irish festival held in Peoria on Aug 25-26 this year. Well, I'm sure it happened, but we didn't go. We hadn't been before, but were sort of planning on attending. However, it was going to be 90 degrees, 3 hours of driving, and we just didn't have the energy, so we skipped it. We'll have to catch Exorna and Bloomsday another time. Maybe next year!

The weather forecast for Aug 30 was for the first nice day we'd had in weeks, so I took the day off from work and we went to the park. Lando played on the swings and slides; Dawn offered encouragement; I took photos (naturally).

Labor Day weekend primarily involved 2 things: Gathering together Lando's old toys and toddler bed to give to Rosie & GM for their granddaughter; and going to Adam's "I finally got my Master's Degree" party. I took photos. (Of the party, not of the pile of stuff in the garage.)

Tuesday night I attended the monthly meeting of REALL, where we learned about the Electric Universe. (I'm still skeptical, naturally.)

Wednesday evening was very important -- the first session of the Fall semester of Funshop! Lando loves Funshop,and we enjoy it, too. I took photos (naturally).

Thursday afternoon I went to see Dr. Suhail to get her to confirm that my high blood pressure is under control. (It is. Huzzah!)

Oh! And this morning I weighed 251.6 pounds -- down 10.6 pounds from the 262.2 that I was when I began counting calories on Aug 14, 3.5 weeks ago. That works out to 3.1 pounds per week. Obviously I won't be able to maintain that rate for long, but I'll take it while I can get it! I'm using the Calorie Count Plus web site for tracking my weight and calories. It basically provides all of the features of the Weight Watchers web site, but it's free!

Also this morning, Lando and Dawn went to the playground and played with Rosie for about an hour. Actually, Lando spent most of the time demonstrating his Riverdance moves rather than playing on the swings and slides, but it was nice for him to have a chance to get out of the house!

Tomorrow, if the weather cooperates, we're going to try to go the the Traditional Music Festival at Lincoln's New Salem. The temperature should be fine, but there's a chance of rain (which we could really use). Oh, and I'll take photos (naturally).

Six Months in One Post! How Efficient!

Hey, you! Wake up! Yes, shocking though it may be, I am actually writing a new entry. My last entry was way back on November 24, but I really haven't written very consistently since June of last year! Yeesh! A lot of that has to do with the fact that, in July, I launched The Skeptic News, which I update almost daily. Well, I finally decided to start posting again, so earlier this month I sat down and "cleaned house," as it were, moving old entries to the archive and getting things ready. I also began reading the journals of others again for the first time in quite a while. (What happened to Squirrel Bait's journal? It seems to be gone. Wah!) Today I read that The Mighty Kymm has begun working her way through the Open Pages webring in search of dead journals to remove. Looks like I've begun reviving this thing just in the nick of time!

So, what has happened since November?

December: Visited Dad and my brother Ross down in Texas over Christmas. When I did this two years ago, it was cold and rainy the entire time I was there. This time was better -- it wasn't rainy. Actually it did warm up a bit the last day that I was there, but nothing like the 85 degrees it had been before I arrived.

January: Nothing memorable.

February: In the November 17, I mentioned putting together a plan to completely change what I do at work. We held meetings, we modified the plan, etc., and finally submitted it to the Agency Information Management Steering (AIMS) committee. They examined it, held meetings, modified it, etc., and finally submitted it to the senior managers. They examined it, etc., and in February they approved it. Bravo! Success! Or so I thought. In actuality, they sent it back to the AIMS committee, saying, in effect, "sounds good, but give us more details." My section's manager, the chairman of the AIMS committee, then went on vacation, which takes us to....

March: The section manager returns and announces that he's taken a position elsewhere and will be gone in a week. All work in the AIMS committee grinds to a halt, due the the lack of a chairman. As for today, June 26, that's where things still are.

April: Nothing particularly memorable. I did attend the Illinois Geographic Information Systems Association (ILGISA) "GIS in Illinois" conference on April 20-22, but there's not much of interest to say about it. Oh, and Dain had a 5th birthday party on the 26th. I abandoned my traditional strategy of "buy a toy that's noisy" in favor of "buy a toy that will scare Mary out of her wits." Specifically, I got him a nature kit (for collecting bugs and stuff) and a bunch of plastic bugs.

May: REALL held its annual elections. I had been the secretary-treasurer for the last year, but the newsletter editor was getting too busy, so we swapped jobs this year. I had resigned as newsletter editor of the local SCA group earlier, luckily! Also, on May 15 I went to Springfield Highland Games and Celtic Festival. It was fun, but I left early because it began to rain. There was also a little movie called Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I went to see it about a week after it opened, with the idea that I could avoid the massive crush of people and still see it before I learned the entire story. The movie was about what I expected -- not as good as the first two, but not a total bomb. The special effects were fabulous, of course, but there was virtually no character development and I had some problems with several plot points. I'd probably give it 3 stars.

Somewhere in there, Dad came up and visited for a couple of days. He finally bought a modern computer! He had an old Commodore Amiga 500 for years and years -- 1 meg of memory, no hard drive. One of the things he had to take into account when buying a new system is that he travels a lot, spending months at a time in a trailer Texas and Colorado. That means not a lot of room, and the system needs to be able to handle getting bumped around a bit. I recommended getting a laptop, and showed him some stuff from Gateway's web site. He finally got very nice one, which I think is probably about perfect for what he wants. Of course, there's a huge learning curve to get over! Plus, finding an Internet Service Provider that would have a local access number in Texas, Colorado, and a tiny town in southern Illinois was another challenge! After some false starts, however, it turned out that the solution was simple -- AOL! That has the added bonus of being about as "user friendly" as you can get. He's already been in contact with former neighbors, relatives, etc. As best as I can tell he likes it.

I also talked to Dawn this month, in our typical "once every 6 months" manner. We're still planning on taking a trip to Canada this summer, and I still haven't made any firm plans! Actually, we did settle on one thing -- the dates August 21-29. Now we just need to pick an itinerary and a mode of travel, preferably sometime before August 20.

July 4 Visit, REALL, Skeptic News

Yes, I am alive! True, I haven't posted a new update here since June 30, but I am in fact still among the living.

So, what have I been doing since June 30? Well, let's see. In early July, I went home for the Independence Day weekend, visiting my parents, my brother, and various friends. We had the traditional bonfire (although markedly smaller and less alarming than in previous years, due to wet wood), as well as the traditional live band, games of Magic, fireworks, and alcohol. (As per tradition, I abstained from the latter two, so that I could be available to drive the wounded to the hospital.) I videotaped the band, Diggles Dozen, which turned out reasonably well. They sounded pretty good, actually, if you ignored the fact that the sound system was intentionally set to distort everything and sound like crap. I'm not entirely sure what the attraction is in making things sound like crap, but at least they succeeded. It must be like modern art or something.

Anyway, while I was out of town for that, I obviously couldn't update this journal. When I got back, I found that I had dropped out of the habit. And the longer I didn't update it, the more stuff I would need to write once I finally began again -- which caused me to put it off even further. In the meantime, I began to have an idea, which eventually lead to something which further delayed getting this updated.

One of my interests is organized skepticism. For those of you thinking, "What the heck is that?", here's a quick explanation. Some people believe in paranormal and pseudo-scientific subjects, such as UFOs, psychic powers, ESP, astrology, fortune telling, and so forth. Most of the people who don't believe in such things are content to laugh and go on with their lives. A few people, however, are sufficiently annoyed by such claims as to actually obsess about them, write articles complaining about them, and create entire web sites to complain about them some more. I'm one of those people.

I'm a member of (take a big breath) the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land (REALL, for short). We're a group of skeptics located here in central Illinois that get together monthly to complain to one another about the latest annoyingly weird claims being made. One of the things that I do is operate an unofficial web site for REALL. (For those of you who are interested, the site is located at "http://www.reall.org/".)

Well, back in early July I began to think about creating a new web site that would act as a "what's new page" for skeptic web sites. Whenever I located some recent update on a skeptic web site, I would create a link to it with a brief description. This would allow skeptics to come to one place to easily locate news. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. So, on July 26, the Skeptic News went online at "http://www.skepticnews.com/".

I post an update to the Skeptic News every morning. Since it went online two months ago, I've missed only two days, and that was simply because I was out of town. In short, I've been spending every morning posting updates to the Skeptic News instead of posting updates to this journal!

Of course, that's an over-simplification, but it's the only excuse I've got, so I'm sticking with it.

My Life by the Numbers

Yesterday: 237 pounds. I haven't walked since June 30. See what happens when I don't update my journal? I gain weight and stop exercising!

SCA Meeting

Yesterday was the first Thursday of the month, and that means the business meeting of the Shire of Swordcliff, the local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism. (I really need to put a glossary on my site, but in the meantime, the SCA is a group that re-creates the Medieval era.) We're going to be hosting Coronation in September, with about a thousand people expected to attend, so there's a bit of planning to do. Some people thought the meeting might go later than our usual two hours, so rather than meeting at the church (which closes at 9:00), we met at Gallina's Pizza. Despite starting 25 minutes late, we still managed to finish up 5 minutes before 9:00, so we could have just met at the church as normal.

There's just something about planning ahead that causes the forethought to be unnecessary.

Next time: My thoughts on the whole Monica Lewinsky thing. (Exciting, eh?)

My Life by the Numbers

Today: 232 pounds.

Errands, Tasks

Two consecutive entries; what a shocker!

Yesterday was my day for accomplishing stuff. In addition to completing several tasks at work, over my lunch hour I dropped off my laundry, then picked up the copies of The Martyr's Rede from Kinko's. After work I went to the post office, labeled, stamped, and mailed them, picked up my laundry, made a quick stop at the mall, went home and ate dinner, then watched Little Women -- and then the day was over! It was a productive day, but there isn't much to say about it.

When I synchronized my PalmPilot with Outlook, the program told me that I had added 27 tasks to my "To Do" list on that day. Ack! And again I say, ack!

My Life by the Numbers

Today: 235 pounds. Walked 2 miles in 27:59. Cool.

In April, I wrote 18 entries in this journal. In May, I only wrote 11. June will be better (I promise, Mary!).

I spent most of Saturday not working on the June issue of The Martyr's Rede, as well as not mowing the grass. That pretty much took up the whole day.

Actually, I did come up with something else to do. The Three Musketeers is finally out on video! No, not that one; the good one! Back in the mid-1970s, there was a version of The Three Musketeers made with Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Racquel Welch, etc. A few weeks after it was released, the "sequel", The Four Musketeers, was released. Actually, it wasn't a sequel at all; it was simply the second half of the story! It was originally going to be all one movie, but they just had too much footage, so they decided to split it into two. The movie(s) follow the original novel rather closely, and as it happens, in the book there is a fairly natural break in the story right at that point, so breaking the movie up wasn't very difficult. (My information about the original novel comes from my brother, as I've never read it.) In any case, it's an excellent movie, and I had been looking for it for quite some time, but it wasn't available. The other day, when I was in Suncoast (the bane of my existence; whenever I go in there I wind up much poorer), while paying for some DVDs, I saw The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers on display there at the register! I quickly snatched them up and watched them over the weekend. If you like period pieces, this is great stuff!

Sunday afternoon I finally sat down to work on The Martyr's Rede. Swordcliff has a new officer position, Archery Marshal, so one of the first things I wanted to do was update the officer listing in the template file. However, for whatever reason, Microsoft Publisher insisted on crashing every time I attempted to add an image of the badge of the Archery Marshal to the officer list. After fighting with it for over an hour, I hit upon a brilliant idea -- concede the point and produce the issue without the graphic. After that, things went significantly more quickly.

Of course, I still ended up making my traditional post-midnight trip to Kinko's to drop off the issue for copying.

My Life by the Numbers

Saturday: 235 pounds. Bother.

Sunday: 236 pounds. Hey!

Today: 236.5 pounds. Ack!

Mother's Day Gift, MtG, SCA, Moving Computers

"So," I hear you asking, "why haven't updated this page since Tuesday?" I might say that it's because Wednesday night was gaming night and Thursday night was SCA meeting night and last night I just didn't get around to it. However, since I just today finally bought a Mother's Day gift for my mom, I suspect the real reason is that I'm simply an evil, evil person.

So on with the spiel.

Tuesday night, I called Ross and reminded him that Sunday was Mother's Day. One would think that I would also do something about that myself, but one would be naïve.

Wednesday night, as I said, was our traditional weekly "get together and lose at Magic" night. Actually, it was a little different this time. After playing one multi-player game (in which I basically did nothing but play lands and ask Adam and David how much damage they were doing to me), we played a little mini tournament. With six players, there wasn't really a good way to do it. We didn't really have enough time to play round robin (each player plays against each other player), so we did some bizarre double elimination bracket format. I wound up on top of the winners bracket, and Mary wound up on top of the losers bracket, so then she and I played against each other and she wound up winning. At that point it was late, it was pouring down rain, and Bob needed a ride home, so off we went. After I got to thinking about it, however, I realized that Mary and I probably should have played again, since we had both lost the same number of duels at that point. (Did you follow all of that? Neither did I, and I was there!) Oh well. When all was said and done, I think it would have taken the same amount of time just to play round robin!

Also on Wednesday night, I failed to get anything for Mom for Mother's Day.

Thursday night was the local SCA meeting. For those of you who don't know, the SCA is the Society for Creative Anachronism, a non-profit group that dresses up in medieval clothing to hold tournaments and feasts. If you ever see some people out in the park whacking each other over the head with sticks, it's probably us. (If it isn't, call 911.) Anyway, due to constantly being out of town on business trips, this was the first meeting I had been able to attend since February. That isn't a good thing, considering that I'm the editor of the group's newsletter. Anyway, we're busily planning an event that we'll be holding in September -- coronation. The new "king" and "queen" of the Middle Kingdom will be crowned there, so we're expecting something on the order of a thousand people to be showing up.

Also on Thursday night, I failed to get a Mother's Day gift for Mom.

Friday I spent pretty much the entire workday in the Bureau of Water GIS room moving computers around. They're bringing in an instructor to teach a class in a couple of weeks and they wanted to rearrange everything. This meant shutting down all of the hardware, disconnecting everything, moving it out of the way so that the maintenance people could move the partition walls, desks, and tables, then reconnecting everything and getting it all talking to the network again. Not my idea of fun, and certainly more physical activity than I get in a typical workday. I went home quite beat on Friday night -- which explains in part why I didn't quite get around to posting a new entry here that night!

Oh, and I failed to get anything for Mom. (But you knew that, because at the start of this bit, I said that I finally got it done today. Weren't you paying attention?)

My Life by the Numbers

Wednesday: 238 pounds; 2 miles in 29:35.

Actually, it could have been faster, except that I had stopped briefly to talk to a man who was walking his dog. On the other hand, after that conversation, I walked faster to make up lost time, so perhaps it was an advantage!

Thursday: 237.5 pounds; didn't walk. I didn't get home until after midnight on Wednesday, and it was promising to rain, so I figured there wasn't any point in even pretending that I was going to get up at 6:00 AM to go walking.

Friday: 238 pounds; 2 miles in 29:19.

Today: 238 pounds; didn't walk. Hey, it's the weekend! Besides, I'm sore from Friday. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Open Pages, Shoes, TV, Web Gripes, REALL

The good news: The Mighty Kymm sent me e-mail notifying me that my site has been approved and is now a member of the Open Pages web ring. She also thanked me for including a link to her site!

The bad news: I had her name misspelled. *blush*

I bought some new shoes on Monday. As is my habit, I waited until my old shoes were falling apart to buy new ones. Part of my motivation was the suspicion that I was going to get a blister walking two miles every morning in my old shoes. Unfortunately, the new ones hurt my ankles somewhat when I walk. Hopefully they just need breaking in. I generally dislike buying shoes because, with size 15 feet, there isn't much of a selection for me. It seems to be better now than it was when I was growing up. I don't know if that's because shoe stores are carrying more large sizes or simply because I've learned which shoe stores tend to carry them. Tip: If you need large shoes, try the Foot Locker.

Monday night, after watching Ally McBeal, I watched most of a show on PBS about Alexander the Great. It was interesting, but somehow I couldn't really get into it -- perhaps because I kept yawning and wanting to go to bed, which I eventually did.

I received e-mail at work recently from someone working in a State Representative's office. He wanted to know whether we could set up a link from our web page to his. Bah! Politics! I wasn't sure how to respond to this one, so I passed the buck by bumping it on up the line to the Public Information Office and the Deputy Director. I prefer to call it "delegating authority."

<begin gripe>
I spent about half of the day at work doing something rather tedious. One of the departments put together some pages to add to our web site. Good. And they asked to have a "button" added for their department's pages. Not so good. It's a perfectly reasonable request, but that means the button also has to be added to the navigation bar -- which appears on the top of nearly every page of the site. Unfortunately, I don't quite have things automated to the point where I can change that just once and have the change automatically reflected on every page. That's on my list of ways to make it easier to stay caught up, which I will be getting to just as soon as I can get caught up. Anyway, the result was that I spent a good chunk of today getting this button added to the navigation bars on nearly every page of the site. Ugh. When it comes to technology, often people just don't know what they've asked for.
<end gripe>

Tonight was another meeting of REALL, the skeptics group I'm in. We held our annual elections, which traditionally means very few people show up. This time we had a relatively good turnout -- for an election meeting. I'm still the secretary/treasurer, David's still the chairman, and Bob is still the newsletter editor, but most of the other board positions changed hands. Hopefully we can re-energize the board with some new blood.

Funniest comment I heard today: A lady at work told me that her ten-year-old daughter asked her, "Are birth control pills chewable?" She told her daughter that, if she isn't at least old enough to swallow the pills, she probably shouldn't be taking them.

My Life by the Numbers

Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that this bit is inspired by/stolen from a regular feature of Diane Patterson's The Paperwork. Good idea, Diane!

Monday: 238.5 pounds; 2 miles in 30:03. Worm-dodging percentage: 99% (unofficial). Slug-dodging percentage: 50% (official).

The frustrating thing about slugs is, when they see you coming after they've almost made it across the road, they turn around and run back towards the other side -- right in front of you.

Today: 238 pounds; 2 miles in 30:03.