titansphere.com

Yesterday we had one hell of a thunderstorm, and I got stuck in the middle of it. I don’t often get scared in weather, but this had me stressed and worried.

On my way home from work the rain started coming down so hard it sounded like hail. Big, fat drops falling fast. The wind blew it sideways against the car and it was difficult to see even with the windshield wipers going as fast as possible. Lightning chanced about ever 2-3 minutes. I had to turn around two times for fallen trees, and in the air were branches and twigs and raining leaves as well.

By the time I got to NE Salem (I live in far west Salem) the street lights weren’t working and the water was so high that the curbs disappeared. Many of the streets were reduced to one lane either way, and in some spots cars were driving through water about midway up their bumpers. Since I have a partially electric vehicle (a Prius – see my flickr photos), I was considerably more nervous than the average car-owner about partially submersing my underbelly in water. On top of that, there was a 3-car accident in which none of the vehicles were drivable spread across about a block that all the traffic was snaking through. Buckets of water still falling from the sky. I spent 1/2 hour on roughly 1/2 mile of road as rush hour traffic tried to get home as quickly as possible. By the time I got further south to east Salem, the street lights were working and the rain and gathering water had subsided enough not to fear drowning via flash flood, and I made reasonable time back to my house that at the time I was very thankful was at the top of the hill.

Stressed and tired, I walked into my house about 2 hours after the end of my workday.

*sigh* I have a serious amount of broken shit at my house, and three glorious “fun-filled” days of trying to make it work. In no particular order:

• Our microwave doesn’t turn anymore. It heats, but unevenly, and makes a funny rattling noise of the motor trying to turn but not being successful. It’s not an old microwave so it should work. No one knows why it stopped turning. UPDATE 3: Handsome spent 3 hours cleaning and inspecting it today. No luck…it’s really broken. After an extensive search online, it sounds like the exact motor is impossible to find but a substitute for about $30 has worked in most cases.
• Our A/C is having the same friggin’ problem as last year, so I suspect it’s leaked all its puron somewhere, and I believe it might be all over the side of the house. This year, however, I’m calling someone new that won’t charge me almost $500 NOT to fix it. And I need to clean the air filter for the heating/cooling system.
• Our hot tub control panel isn’t working. I sent it in for repair, they sent it back, and it still didn’t work. They sent me a brand new control. IT still doesn’t work. The funny thing is, when I unplug the controls from the control box, the hot tub turns on to heat to its default hot-ness. When I plug it in, it stops but the control panel is “all on” (all the lights are on and the LED panel reads all 8s). No amount of resetting or button-pushing makes a difference. UPDATE: The main circuit panel is broken, not the topside controls. All I need to do is send that in, and return the replacement panel, and they will fix/replace it and send it back. UPDATE 3: I tried to take the circuit board out of the hot tub (with the power switch to “OFF”) and shocked the shit out of myself. I think perhaps flipping the breaker would be a good idea next try.
  
• Our garbage disposal stopped working on Eric’s birthday night and no one knows why or when. The motor turns on but the blades don’t spin, so I suspect someone put something disposal unfriendly down it and then conveniently failed to tell anyone. UPDATE 2: Fixed! I had to take it off the sink and jam a screwdriver into it, but on the bright side I now know (extensively) how the garbage disposal works!
• The right headlight on my Prius is out. It’s a high-density bulb that takes about an hour for someone to get to, but it’s under factory warranty still so Toyota will fix it for free. I just have to get it there. UPDATE: Fixed, and they adjusted the left one that has been too low since the August accident.
• One of the recessed lights in our vaulted ceiling is out. It’s hard to get to, even with a tall ladder. UPDATE 2: So I made this one sound harder and more difficult than it was. Four working lights!

Worse than Alone in the Dark. I know it’s hard. But Blindness was terrible.

It’s about a worldwide blindness epidemic where the afflicted see all white instead of all black. Julianne Moore stars as the only person immune to the disease.

At first, the blind few are quarantined, and armed guards are posted around an otherwise completely unsupervised hospital. Conditions get filthier and filthier as the three wards overcrowd with more blind. Moore’s character takes care of them, but she doesn’t make her sight public. Those who get too close to the “outside world” are shot and left for the blind to bury in the small front courtyard. Food is shipped in periodically and one ward takes control and requires payment in the form of money, valuables, and eventually women for food. All the while the ONLY seeing woman allows the blind dictator to rule! Finally she comes to her senses, stabs the man and burns down their ward, which burns down the hospital, which is when they find out that no guards exist anymore and they are free to roam a desolate, blind city; presumably world. She leads a few to her house to live safely and once they are relatively safe in her house, the first infected blind man regains his sight and the people rejoice, assuming their sight will also return. The End.

Sadly, much of the film is shot in low light, total blackness, or total whiteness, presumably to make the viewer feel blind, lost, helpless, and confused. However, it comes off more as poor videography at illogical times (i.e. when we’re following Moore’s character into the basement stock room of a grocery store. She can see; why are we listening to her rummage around in total blackness? Why didn’t she take a flashlight? They’re sure to be in abundance.)

Also, the director inserted random sexual scenes for no apparent reason. A lingering shot of naked woman lying on a bed. A hooker’s sexual engagement previous to her blindness. Blind women in the shower. Then, when the women are raped for food, he chooses to nearly black out the screen during the entire hellish night.

Furthermore, one of the couples is Japanese and their long conversation in Japanese isn’t subtitled. The conversation rambles long enough that much of the content cannot be surmised.

Time is at the very best vague; I would guess somewhere between a few months and a year pass. However, none of the blind gain any skills throughout the movie; they all walk and function as if they’ve been blind mere minutes

The characters acted with complete idiocy and at times large plot holes or inconsistencies became blatantly obvious.

Needless to say, throughout the two-hour movie all of us were groaning and wishing it were over, stating multiple times that it is the worst movie we’ve seen. Thankfully we didn’t pay for it.

Okay, I added a BUNCH of new pictures to my flickr stream including scenes from:

• the remodeling/refurnishing we did this summer
• my leg injuries
• George being a crazy dog
• Eric’s graduation

Enjoy!

I went to a new doctor today because the old one made me feel like a number they were too busy to attend to rather than a name.

Dr. Block is my new favorite person. He put me in a walking boot today; he still isn’t sure it’s an actual fracture (more x-rays came back unconclusive) but we’re doing an MRI on Thursday and I’ll see him next week after the results come back to analyze. The boot is the solution whether it’s a fractured leg or just a severe bone bruise, so he hooked me up now and got me off those damn crutches that I’d been on for over 2 weeks. It’s just glorious; I’ve been impish and positively gleeful ever since. And I haven’t stayed put hardly at all – I just can’t stop chattering or walking around. Is it obvious how happy I am?!

At the Oktoberfest softball tournament (Sept. 14th), a guy slid into my right lower leg/ankle as I was tagging him at second base (he was called safe but was so out). It did the whole swollen and bruised and nasty thing as I expected, but it just hasn’t gotten better and I have a hard lump just above the inside of my ankle. I can’t walk more than 50-60 steps without stabbing, burning pain and the distinct feeling that walking is highly overrated.

By this time we should be seeing some serious improvement, so I got worried enough to go to the doctor. Guess what? I’ve been hobbling around on a fractured leg bone for almost three weeks! No wonder I’m in such pain. My doctor says it’s a very small hairline fracture but put me in a splint and on crutches until I can see an orthopedic doctor (next week). BOOOOOOOO!

2008 has been hell! Let’s recount:

• Two motor vehicle accidents (March and August)
• Strep throat (September)
• Crushed pinky finger (January)
• Broken leg (September)

UPDATE: It’s strep throat. I stayed home from work today to go to the doctor and get a shot of penicillin in my hip. Then I slept most of the day. Like I did yesterday when I got home from work instead of getting really excited that both the Packers and the Broncos won on Monday Night Football. Jen – this may exonerate you…I don’t know that you had strep.

I feel like poo. Hot poo. Yesterday I felt fine until the very end of the night when my throat started to hurt a little bit. Now it is quite painful to swallow. I have a sore throat only on the left side of my throat. My mucus and spit is stringy and thick. My left ear hurts. I have a headache. I feel like I’m sitting outside in the sun sometimes. It is hard for me to concentrate or be comfortable.

Booooooooo

Update: So, this is what happened. TJ and I were on our way home from work Monday (3-31) when he took a corner too fast. The right rear tire caught the gravel shoulder, which whipped us sideways and rolled the vehicle 3 times into a field. It landed on its wheels facing the other direction. None of the windows survived and the outside looks like crap (see the pictures on flickr), but the engine still runs minus a busted distributor cap and we might get rid of the seats and rims for some money as well. I’ve got a sore right shoulder and right side of my head, and my knees and left foot are bruised. Somebody was watching over us.

PS – E-hugs welcome.

UPDATE: Think I’m going to the hospital, things are getting worse in the swelling and internal bleeding parts. *sigh* There goes this evening.

I mentioned TJ and I are fixing his car. We go to put his new alternator in today and I smash the tip of my right pinkie finger between it and the car frame. This was around 5pm. It instantly swelled up and turned purple and hurt a WHOLE LOT. Like I can’t stand still so painful, so I’m pacing and trying to give TJ verbal assistance with the alternator installation. There’s definitely a broken blood vessel and now, at 9pm, it still throbs and hurts to think about touching anything with it. And forget about typing…putting that much pressure on it sends waves of pain up my arm.

Maybe its broken?

We are oh so close to getting TJ’s car operational. It’s now road legal – it has an Oregon title, registration and plates – and it only took about 1/2 hour at the DMV. Shocking, no? Furthermore, the brakes sound much better than they did the first time we took it out…I think they’d (c)rusted up a bit and just needed a little use to clean themselves some. I’m hoping this means we don’t have to replace them.

Our final challenge is the electrical system – I believe the alternator’s bad, which is causing the 6-month-old battery to lose its charge. So I spent the better portion of an hour bear hugging the engine of a Geo Metro in an attempt to get the final bolts off the alternator so we can go have it tested Monday after work without having to drag out the jumper cables to start the car. I’ve now really begun to appreciate a working electrical system. I’ve also gotten pretty quick at the jump start…let’s see, just today: twice to leave the house, twice at the DMV, and once at Les Schwab.

People look at you funny when you go directly for the hoods & jumper cables without even testing a normal startup.