Odd Bird, Good Duck...

So, my sister in law Liz has RA, has had the fuller blown symptoms of it since around the time she had her son, almost 5 years (interestingly, her symptoms virtually disappeared while she was pregnant with him, go figure)

This past Wednesday she was "on" The Doctors. The clip they play of her "story" is about half way through. 



Naturally, we, who've been around her while she's been dealing with this know there's so much more to the story(like the reason why they actually used her as the person for the clip in the show) Its still really cool when you know someone who was on tv XD.

Granted I don't know how every person watching HGTV right now might've reacted, but I'm dancing in my seat over it.

House Hunters has in the last year or so started having same sex couples on the show, without trying to pretend that they're just room-mates. The episode thats currently airing is a couple of guys, who've been together for about 8 years, and they're buying a house together, cause they're getting married soon and want to have their new house settled before then.

They said it, and the network didn't break from the shock.

In other news, in a discussion with my father the other night, he said he believes you're born the way you are, and the world just needs to learn to accept it. What he really thinks is that everyone's a bit Bi, and you just like one more than the other. Given that my father once told me I could bring anyone home but a black boy(back before I realized I was Bi, and it was assumed I'd only bring home boys) I don't think I ever really expected to hear that from him.

It's probably been longer, spread out over the last year and a half or so, since mom's been having someone in to clean grand-moms trailer and trying to thin out the stuff that grand-mom has.

After Grand-mom fell back in November and ended up in the hospital and then the rehab/nursing home, we(mostly mom) have been dealing with the miles and miles of red tape and scrounging through grand-moms paperwork to get them the information they require to do sometimes the simplest of things...

So naturally, the majority of the contents of grand-moms trailer sat untouched until the last couple of weeks when mom told the lady who owns the trailer park where it's parked that grand-mom couldn't afford the rent on it, and mom would not pay it. Long story short, we spent last week speed packing a trailer. At one point mom laughed and said she pitied me and my brothers, when my parents are gone and we have to clear out their place when comparing the size of grand-moms trailer (16' x 48') to our house (2'000+ sq'). I told her that at least when that happens, my brothers are more likely to be interested in keeping some of the things in your house, unlike your brother seems with his mothers.

Last weekend was spent mostly over at my grandmothers trailer packing up things and cleaning up the place. We left it smelling a lot less like an old ladies house which, while the old lady smell isn't a bad thing, its not what someone wants to smell coming into a house they might buy. Hopefully the lady who owns the lot that was going to buy the place will give mom more than her original offer, since now they don't have to clear anything out before they either fix it up or sell it to the next person, which, who knows, we'll see.

Now the fun is in sorting through all the stuff we quickly packed up, cleaning what needs cleaned and trying to figure out what who wants to keep and what needs sold on to help pay off things that need paid off and such.

We've found some interesting things, so far mostly papers, since those are the things we've had to locate for information needed. I found a report card of my grandmothers from 1929 when she was in the 4th grade, and also one that was my mothers brothers report card from some year in high school. We found the marriage certificate of my grandmothers parents from 1906, which is now over 100 years old as well as the certificate for my grandfathers confirmation from the early 1930's not to mention all the photos that we're still finding tucked in random places.

Needless to say, we're going to be busy for the next month or so, going through all these things and trying to get things sent on their way, wherever their way might be.

I had to get blood-work done today, since it's about the only day this week I'll be able so the results are back before my appointment next Monday. This combined with not sleeping well last night, and it being fasting blood-work, getting up late and having to wait till I was showered, dressed and chased mom to get dressed, I didn't eat until almost 2pm, can you blame me for dozing off while waiting for dinner to be done?

Anyway, that's not who doesn't care. the people who's name is on the group I ordered the volume 1 of Sailor moon from, they're the one's who don't care. I sent a wordy-ier message to them through the feedback thingy on Amazon, stating How I've already returned the book and Amazon refunded me my money. I explained how I just wanted to bring to their attention that this happened, and how they might need to tighten their quality control.

Their response? "this item was "fulfilled by amazon" so you have to go talk to them"

So basically they told me to kiss off, just in a polite kind of way.

( "Sorry for the inconvenience" )

So, once I wake up some more, I'll be talking to Amazon, cause apparently I have to take up that groups quality control with them.....?

I made this short video about something I'm working on, and I set it to upload while I was in the shower so I could post it quick once I was clean and dry again....

and it's still uploading now, an hour later and its only at 12%, and I really really need to get some sleep, so, hopefully it'll finish uploading by the time I get up at 9 and I can post it then.

stupid internet connection.

I have a nutritionist/dietitian person to help me work on losing weight, and I have my regular PCP.

It happened these last couple weeks that I had an appointment with my nutritionist/dietitian person one Monday, my PCP the next, and when I asked my PCP for a referral to an ENT, I managed to get an appointment for this Monday. For some reason, this amuses me.

On another note, I told the receptionist when I was checking out of my PCP's office last week that late morning/early afternoon works best for me.....

Since when is anything before 9 AM late morning?

Now I should really scoot off to bed, if I'm gonna get a decent amount of sleep.

So, as I said in my previous post, one of my great aunts passed away this weekend, and today was the funeral..well, technically yesterday as I'm writing this, but whatever.

The area that this aunt lived and is now buried happens to be in the same area where another one of my great aunts lives. while they were there for the funeral, my dad, and his siblings that were able to go to the funeral stopped in to visit this other aunt.

What amuses me to no end, is that my father's oldest sister sent me an e-mail to explain that my dad and her and their siblings, all took a picture with this aunt, and she'd like to have a copy of it. She also said that she'd told my father this, and that he said he would have me send it - because he's apparently invalid when it comes to e-mail... - and my aunt was sending me this note, just in case my father had not shared this information with me.

Safe to say my aunt knows my dad well, because he has in fact not said one word about her wanting the picture. who knows when I'll be able to get hold of the picture to mail it to her, but at least I can let her know I'll do it as soon as I can. I'm sure that she'll remind me at the party tomorrow night.

Now to crash and hope to wake up before noon...don'tcha just luuuuve colds and their evil sleep inducing powers?

As I approach the end of my current semester of classes I wonder what it is I'm going to do with myself. As with any student close to graduation, as I am, this is something that most anyone who knows is asking me.

While this can become annoying, as any question asked many times over will, it is something that needs to be answered.

This past Thursday during my break between afternoon and evening classes, my friend Val and I were given to the partial life story of a schoolmate we barely know.

I say partial because although we found out that he was adopted, about his adventures in China and the event that made his mother kick him out, the conversation was mostly about his plans on what he'd like to do with his education. If your interested, he wants to own a record company that keeps its artists clean, write books, and at least dabble in culinary arts. The record company is the main one he's aiming for though.

It's not that I don't know what I'd like to do with my education, its more knowing how to go about it. Having the dream and making it come true are two separate things.

I would love nothing more than to own my own book store. The designs and themes of this book store continually change in my mind with each new book that I read. I myself have a very active imagination, and thoroughly enjoy the worlds that the books I read take me into. I also happen to greatly feel that this active imagination and love of reading should be passed on to future generations. Much like many people campaign that children are spending too much time watching television and playing video games, I campaign that those same things drain imagination. Yes, imagination can be fed by these things, they give the brain more mental images to work with, but they also put children in a mindset of instant gratification.

That rant aside, basically what I would like to accomplish with the bookstore of my dreams is to pass the love of reading on to future generations. I also hope that I'd be able to encourage older generations that look at reading as a chore to see it as something that could become enjoyable.

I recently shared this dream with the members of my Biology class, because the teacher asked us to share what we'd like to do with our lives. When I shared this dream, I was given a very strong positive response. From one person being very tired of the "reign" of "big boss" book stores like Barnes & Nobles and Borders, to several being very excited at the idea of a small "mom and pop" type of book store.

Despite this positive response, I still doubt if I would be able to bring about such a thing as a small bookstore to life and have it thrive in the world of Barnes & Nobles, Borders, and Amazon.com. Besides the worry of how to accomplish a thriving shop in the face of such big names in books, there's also the worry of how to go about making even the beginning of such a thing happen, successful or not.

Well, enough worrying for one day. If I keep holding this post off to finish all the thoughts I have running around in my head about it, I'll never post anything.