Saturday, January 26
Ed was home sick yesterday (just a cold, not high blood pressure), so I went out after work with a few of my coworkers.
The plan (and I must stress that it was not my plan) was to go to Benihana's for karaoke. Two of my friends had been there before. It wasn't a bad idea to eat sushi and have a few drinks waiting for Sandra and Dawit to get up and entertain us. Unfortunately, a birthday party of 8-year-old girls beat them to the microphone. And no one was going to tell ten little girls they had to stop singing. After awhile, it became very painful to listen to so we decided to go somewhere else. But before we could leave, four little boys of about the same age commandeered the microphone to sing "Baby Got Back". If you don't already know, this is a pretty raunchy rap song about butts (lyrics here). Totally inappropriate for such young kids to be singing, but because they were so blonde and cute and doing the song so well with all the gansta moves, they had the rest of the crowd on their feet and laughing uproariously. I tried to take a picture of them with the lyrics on the screen behind their heads, but it didn't turn out.
Thursday, January 24
I've mentioned the Houston Heights home tours here several times. I may have mentioned that Ed, at one of the Heights Association meetings, volunteered us for consideration for a future tour. I believe I have not mentioned that we were selected for the spring tour this year. However, we have declined since we have so much we would want to do beforehand and since when we say "we", we mean "I" in light of Ed's current gimpiness. I will be doing all the painting, planting, etc. We are still in consideration for future years, though.
Also, current Ed bp is 157/101.
Also, possible bad news: I was driving to work today and noticed the "tail" from the "Armadillo House" (across from the Art Car Museum on Heights Boulevard) was sitting along the side of Yale St. So on the way home I took Heights, and noticed that the "Armadillo House" appears to be only a "house". I fear that this means that the "Armadillo House" is about to be torn down to make way for townhouses.
Wednesday, January 23
I am stuck in training this morning, but I can still ftp!
Monday, January 21
Ed's cousin Paul got called up two weeks ago to transport prisoners to Guantanamo Bay.
And I have lots of connections to local stories that have made national news: Enron, Andrea Yates, etc., but those stories take a little more time to tell than I have, and in the end they're probably not all that interesting.
I'm going to try to find time to post from work tomorrow.
Sunday, January 20
I did work on web stuff today, but had to take time out to watch the Steelers whip the Ravens in the AFC playoffs. All season long we have listened to WTAE Steelers radio coverage on the internet, and today was no exception. Even though we could see the game live, it's pretty fun to listen to Myron Cope, too.
To be notified automatically of batterman.org updates, subscribe to the mailing list by sending a blank e-mail to new-subscribe@batterman.org. You'll be prompted to respond to an e-mail from the list -- once you do that you're good to go. Every time any substantial changes are made, I'll e-mail the list as notification. You can unsubscribe at any time by sending a blank e-mail to new-unsubscribe@batterman.org.
Saturday, January 19
Here is a picture of Erica with Miranda's baby Maiyah. It looks like she's crying, but she wasn't. I think she's beginning a yawn.
Ed failed his blood pressure test again, but this time it was user (ID Ten T) error. He thought the new medicine he received on Monday replaced his old medicine, when in fact he was to take both.
I have been making some changes to batterman.org, now that I can. Last night I cleaned up the css, which had gotten whacked, added a couple of links, and added search capabilities. The search does not index this site, but does index the rest of the site. During indexing I found lots of broken links caused by the case-sensitivity of Linux. I think I've corrected them all.
I've also created a mailing list to alert people when there is something new to check out. I'll put a subscribe link up tomorrow.
Finally, I am working on some interactive features. The first, which I may be able to finish tomorrow, is a movie review site, where we can all review and rate movies we've seen. After that is working, I'll make the current book review page interactive as well.
Remember, if you want to add something to the site, it's important to get the latest version of existing files via ftp (not http) to work with!
Thursday, January 17
Today in the Galleria I found a marble rolling across the floor. I picked it up and brought it home.
Don't tell me I don't know how to make a little kitty happy.
Wednesday, January 16
We started a new Looking at Art series last night. The gallery was new - Gallery Sonja Roesch. The artist, Mario Reis, made paintings from river sludge. No, really, they were very good! And he was a very engaging speaker.
The second stop was a show at the Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, "All Mod Cons" by Jeremy Blake, a digital still and animation installation that was fun.
Today we received a Christmas package from the UPS netherlands. I was surprised we actually got it, apparently unopened and none the worse for wear, after more than three weeks. I'm listening to my "CD Ranger" right now.
And as I was trying to communicate with UPS this morning from home, I had occasion to watch my neighbors go to work. My neighbors are plenty colorful, this I already new, but this morning was the first time I noticed the clowns heading out. Yes, the couple in the house to the right of David's are clowns, who leave for work at 9 like so many others, except in large shoes, gaudily striped shirts and wigs. And they both have long handkerchiefs hanging out of their pockets.
Monday, January 14
Ed's blood pressure is still high, so he got new medication and an appointment for Friday to decide if he can have surgery.
Project update: I have completed the table saw assembly. Have not begun shelves. It was so nice this weekend that I took the opportunity to work on refinishing Grandpa's desk. Also took down the outside Christmas lights, planted a few things, and pruned the bougainvillea, which was quite frozen in our cold spell a couple of weeks ago.
Thursday, January 10
Ed's surgery is canceled. He went in today to have his blood pressure checked, and it was high (not quite as high as before, but still high) despite being on medication. His doctor increased the medication and will wait until next week to see if he's stable enough to reschedule the surgery.
My company had layoffs today. I knew ahead of time, but I didn't know who. My friend Eby (whose weird Indian wedding reception we went to in November) was one of the victims.
Wednesday, January 9
I'm finally taking down the Christmas tree. Mind you, we didn't put it up until about a week before Christmas, and it really didn't lose needles, ever. But as I took the ornaments and lights off, the branches sorta started snapping off.
Dewey is quite disappointed that the tree was a temporary thing. You should have seen his little kitten eyes when we put it up. He played under it for two days, and when we started actually decorating it, his reaction was a "And you're putting toys on it, too?????" look. Surprisingly, he was quite good about the ornaments. Of course, only non-breakables went low, and all breakables had the hooks crimped around the branches, but still.....he was more interested in hiding under it than vandalism.
A silly thing going around the web the last few days is using museum search engines or even Google's image search to create "art galleries". Silly, yes. But I was surprised that a Doody search only produced a few images, that Howdy Doody was well down the list, and that someone named an image "Dino-Doody.gif". Aidan and Nico turn up more interesting results, including the "Time Series for Nico" on the NASA site.
Tuesday, January 8
Ed had an appointment today with his internist, who felt that the "uncontrolled hypertension" from yesterday was a temporary spike caused by his pain. He (Ed) mentioned to his doctor that the dial only went to 300 -- the doctor said yes, most people with blood pressure so high either are admitted or have strokes or brain aneurysms.
Yesterday during my daily coffee break at the mall I saw Tara Lipinsky practicing again. And on the same day, I spoke with David Hasselhoff's sister in the cafeteria. Diane (the name to which David's sister typically answers) stayed with Williams after we split, so while I see her from time to time in the elevator or lunch line, I don't work with her anymore. It was nice to see how she was doing -- I need to make more of an effort to visit people from Williams.
Monday, January 7
Ed is having surgery Friday to repair a torn rotator cuff. This is an injury from his August 2000 bike accident that suddenly got really painful (he can't move his right arm). Today he went in for his pre-op screening. He called me from the hospital to tell me they were wheeling him to the emergency room because his blood pressure was 234/117. He's never had high blood pressure, and they don't know what caused this. They were able to reduce it finally with IV drugs, and he got to come home. I wonder if it's from the pain.
Saturday, January 5, 2002!
If you aren't seeing this message, you are at the old location which I am no longer updating.
If you're wondering, I am alive and well. I've been trying to finish up some projects the last couple of weekends. First project was assembling a table saw. Second was installing a new hard drive and memory in my home computer. Third was finalizing the move of batterman.org to a new server (which involved getting a new hosting account, moving the files, changes the DNS entry with the registrar, canceling the old account, and reprogramming some of the dynamic pages). Fourth is a new design for this page for 2002. Fifth is build shelves in the garage to store all of the junk that should be in a basement.
I've completed projects 2 and 3, project one is nearly complete, and 4 and 5 are just twinkles in my eye. There's always tomorrow.
