I’m bored, bummed, and in a bad mood. Happy monday. In happier news, the hospital is kicking Mrs. Lockard to the curb today or tomorrow, which is a step in the right direction. She looks a million times better than last week (I spent saturday night with her.)
My Airport Extreme Base Station showed up on Saturday when nobody was at work. Thanks, guys. No word on when it will make a return appearance.
The two second-floor bedroom windows are scraped, glazed, primed and painted with gloss white. I’m going to have to hit them a second time before replacing the storm windows, but the house is looking less and less like it’s abandoned. I would have worked more yesterday but between the lack of sleep and high humidity, I made like a potato and sat on the couch for most of the evening.
ford v-8, frederick, 7.24.04
Album of the Day: Sparta, Porcelain. From the punk ashes of At The Drive-In, this band rises to rock you out. (The iTunes biography calls them emo, but I don’t know where the line between rock and emo is drawn these days.)
Thanks to everybody offering support to my lovely wife during the ’04 Lockard World Hospital Tour; between cards, calls, and online shout-outs, I think she must feel a lot less lonely.
Random Fun Links: Airport Express Tips. In case you have $129 laying around asking to be spent. | Tricks of the Trade from the man known as Defective Yeti. (The butcher tip is fascinating.) | Recycle your old computer. Office Depot and HP are running a free recycling program until early September. Save some environment.
It’s about quarter to eleven. I’m sitting in front of my computer drinking a cold Corona, nibbling on some corn chips, and I’m thankful for the Corona, the chips, and the ability to use the toilet when I want to.
I spent the last 24 hours with Mrs. Lockard in Georgetown, pulling a 24-hour shift while everybody else rested. Her family has been staying in the room as on-call nurses, providing companionship, making sure she gets immediate attention and getting the correct information from the various doctors who visit. My wife inherited a familiar stubborn streak from her parents, and comes by it honestly: Mrs. Lockard would hoist herself out of bed and crawl to the bathroom without aid, so somebody has to be there to keep an eye on her. Besides leveling her immune system, the chemo did a number on her memory recall, so she doesn’t remember what the doctors have told her from one minute to the next. So Jen started keeping The Book. The Book sees everything—from the embarassing to the important. It’s a record of her progress, of her climb out of the gutter and into the big ball return of life. Years from now, when this experience is a memory, the family will know how many times she ate popsicles and what color they were; how many bowel movements on a given day; or what goofy shit she said while hallucinating the first week. There are funny notes to each other in The Book, as well as lusty 4am ramblings about the primary care doctor. (He is pretty hot; I’d believe all this care was purely philanthropic if I didn’t actually witness the Lockard women ovulating when he enters the room.)
I saw a lot of Mrs Lockard this weekend (more than I wanted to, frankly—those gowns tend to fall open in the back) and I was nervous going into Saturday night. I’m not a fan of hospitals, doctors, needles, or machines that beep at four in the morning. I’ve only been there for a six-hour shift before this weekend, while others have put full weeks in at the hospital. So I feel unworthy to have been present for two huge leaps in her progress: I would much rather have one of her sisters been present for the first triumphant trip to the bathroom. Or Jen to have been there for the look on her mother’s face when they brought her first solid food in a month. I haven’t put the time in, and I know they could use those boosts more then me.
So I’m going to enjoy my chips and salsa, drink my Corona, and enjoy a trip to the bathroom this evening. If any of the family is reading this, know this: she had a good day.
Last year, I carved a pumpkin and put it out on our front doorstep with some others. They looked pretty good, if I do say so myself, and they lasted about a week and a half before the squirrels started munching on them. Fast forward eight months. One of them critters musta buried one of the seeds, because Jen pointed out a strange vine growing from beneath the cedar tree in the side yard. We couldn’t identify it, so we left it to see what would happen. Imagine our surprise when it continued to grow exponentially and start to bloom! Todd identified it as a pumpkin, and that’s what we’re going with unless it starts sprouting rutebegas or something. Two weeks ago, it had grown around the side of the house and out onto the front lawn—we had to wind it back on itself so I could mow—and I’d guess it’s probably about twenty feet long when stretched out. I hope it begins producing soon…
Meanwhile, I got another coat of paint on the front and east side of the house (the sides that got rolled, not sprayed) which means that next weekend I should be able to start on the windows. We, for better or for worse, have the original wooden double-hung sashes, and they are all showing wear from several years of neglect. Hopefully with new glazing, caulking and a coat of paint, they’ll last us another twenty years.
It’s Your Shift. Saturday evening I drove down to Georgetown to take an overnight shift with Jen’s Mom, who has been making slow, steady progress since her unscheduled helicopter delivery two weeks ago. Besides looking better, Mrs. Lockard is coherent, able to respond to questions, and her memory is improving. She’s still battling the aftereffects of the chemotherapy, but the difference in her condition since last weekend is remarkable.
The accomodations for visitors are pretty decent on the bone cancer ward. They have provided a lopsided, squeaky pull-out bed for the family which guarantees the need for a chiropractor. The coffee from the vending machine in the basement seems to be brewed from pure cane sugar (but man, that’ll wake your ass up for the drive home) and the selection of sugary treats is a welcome relief after the circuitous route through the hospital from the single unlocked entrance door to the ward.
However, I have to put all these minor complaints aside and give thanks to the hospital for letting the family stay with her at all. I think having company in that lonely place has brightened (and probably shortened) the recovery period for Mrs. Lockard, and that’s a small price to pay.
I took Jen out to dinner on Wednesday not only because we had nothing to eat in the house, but because we needed to debrief over alcoholic beverages after a week of absurdity featuring various family members. Last night the hilarity continued, to the point where my blood pressure rose above stroke level. Suffice it to say that some people need to work on their own responsibility, accountability, and consistency issues before they start lecturing other people. Got that, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?
Airport Update. Because I like to tinker with stuff and take it apart, I cracked the case on my Base Station this morning to troubleshoot the problem. Apparently there are three main causes for failure: blown capacitors in the power supply (by most accounts the most prevalent), corrupted firmware, or a bad WaveLan Card. (Essentially the Base Station is a tiny computer motherboard with a PCMCIA wireless card soldered on.) From what the troubleshooting information says, I don’t have blown capacitors, and the reset should have taken care of bad firmware, so my thinking is that it’s the card. I’m going to ask a coworker with a laptop to help me run a diagnostic on the card (Lucent never made a diagnostic for OSX and their support is spotty) this afternoon, and we’ll see if we can figure out what the story is.
Today is Jen’s birthday. She spent the night at the hospital with her mother, who is still doing poorly, and is heading home today for a much-needed break. Throw her some love today—she could use it.
Song Of The Day: Shake Your Blood, Probot & Lemmy Kilmeister. This song makes me want to go out and drive fast all over somebody else’s lawn.
That Big Bag Of Money. Because I live to torture myself, I went looking online for Scout parts today. The expensive list goes something like this:
| Body Tub – fiberglas | $3,100 |
| Front fenders (outer) fiberglas | $560 |
| Front fenders (inner) fiberglas | $580 |
| Hood – fiberglas | $410 |
| Doors – Fiberglas | $1,700 |
| Tailgate – Fiberglas | $410 |
| Windshield – Fiberglas | $460 |
| TOTAL (gulp) | $7220 |
I’d like to buy fiberglas because it’s going to last much longer than steel ever would, and repairs would be easy as well. There is a chance I could salvage and repair my doors, hood, and the spare windshield sitting in my garage, but all that work is out of the question until I can repair/replace the garage and start fresh again. I’m also increasingly afraid that I’m not going to be able to get a new Scout tub much longer, given their relative scarcity. In the meantime, I need to find a dry place to store Chewbacca out of the elements while I gather the parts. So the main job will be to save up for the tub and have it delivered. Then, if the rebuilding program is still in effect, I’ll send out the 304 for an overhaul.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Jen got back from the hospital late last night, after spending most of the day with her mother. Mrs. Lockard is in a holding pattern right now, alternately being fed intravenously and pumped full of antibiotics to stave off the infection in her intestines. She’s horribly photosensitive right now, which means all the lights in her room are off and visitors sit in the dark, and she’s in and out of lucidity from the pain medication—which means she’s often hallucinating or talking nonsense. I fixed my wife a big tall drink and she decompressed over a bowl of fresh guacamole, which seemed to make her belly happy and put her mind at ease. We both hit the rack at midnight and slept through the first two hours of the alarm clock this morning.
Review, Part Deux. I’m into chapter two of the CSS book, and I’m finding it slower going. My previous comment on having a strong CSS background holds twice as firm now—there’s a lot of good information here, but you’d better know your stuff before you sit down. There’s a lot of stuff I was aware of but had not used yet, such as descendant selectors, which is going to take time to learn. I’m thinking that a companion book is in order for more of the basic-level stuff.
Yesterday Jen and I traveled to Georgetown Hospital to see her mother, who has been moved to the bone marrow ward (although she has no bone marrow of her own, nor white blood cells, this is the best place for her to be right now) and is still touch-and-go. She looks small, and pale, and very tired, but still has a funny sense of humor about a very bleak situation.
before/after, catonsville, 8.8.04
Today I stuck around the house to catch up on yardwork; the place had a run-down air to it after two weeks of neglected mowing. I tried out our $5 weed whacker and my $.25 clippers, taking all the trees in my reach to task. One massive pile of brush later, the yard looks much better. I also got the fourth side of the house painted, which makes the place look complete.
Jen drove to the LP City last night after work to see her Mom, and got about ten minutes in with her before they threw her on a medevac chopper to Georgetown University Hospital. Mrs. Lockard is resting now, but things continue to seesaw between Bad and Nearly As Bad.
I bought the Eric Meyer book at Border’s this morning, paying the extra $15 just to have it now (quite a penalty, when Amazon is throwing in free shipping), but so far it’s pretty decent. I’d recommend having a good grasp of CSS before you start, as there’s stuff in the first chapter he’s hitting you with that you may or may not be familiar with. (The book assumes you have a working grasp of CSS and its properties, but haven’t really made the leap to CSS layout.) I’m halfway through the first chapter, and it’s a good study so far.
Unable to join Jen for what was planned as an overnight stay, I accepted the invitation of a couple guys at work to mountain bike last night, which meant I had to dust off Andre The Giant and try to locate all of my biking gear. We rode a reasonably easy trail up at Loch Raven, which predictably kicked my out-of-shape butt three ways to Sunday. (not to mention it feels like I’ve been kicked by a horse back there.) But it did feel good to get outside and ride again.
dry cleaners, catonsville, 7.28.04 (soon to be demolished)
Things with Jen’s Mom don’t look good. Given that she’s battled back against cancer for 10 years, we’ll wait to see what actually happens, but I’ve been told by all parties this is the worst it’s ever been. Then again, getting a straight answer out of any Lockard besides the one I married is sort of like trying to find water in the desert, so who knows what’s happening.
The List. (The wednesday edition.)
- A New Mattress. (Our current big-people mattress ties Jen’s back into knots. Somewhere around a grand, most likely.)
- A dishwasher. (Because it’s 2004, and contemplating a lifetime of dirty dishes requires gallons of vodka. $300, plus kitchen-wrangling)
- A dehumidifier. (Our basement is possibly the second largest swamp on the east coast besides Florida. $130, give or take.)
- Air Conditioning. (Summer in Maryland is ok. Until August, when it becomes the Ninth Circle Of Hell. $3,000+, depending on the size of the unit.)
- Floor refinishing in the living room. (It would be great to have this done before next summer.)
- Fixing Jen’s iPod. (Somewhere around $70, I think.)
As with everything else, this list is in a state of constant flux. I’ll just keep adding to and amending it as life keeps throwing curveballs at us.
No word on Jen’s Mom yet, but our friends Nate and Kristen are at the hospital right now, hopefully having success with the birth of their first child. So send some love out their way as well.