Hospital!

Well, Saturday night and Sunday morning were enough to prove to me that I needed care that I could not give myself at home, so I went to the emergency room on Sunday afternoon and was admitted into the hospital that night and was just realeased 2 hours ago, so I am home again, feeling SO much better, but amazingly tired. I am therefore going to rest and update with more information on what was going on with me in the next day or two. :)

Tonsil update

I've been really sick for the past three days. Tonsillitis, but not the kind that can be treated by an antibiotic. So now I'm waiting it out, hoping it goes away soon! Pain reliever plus difficulty swallowing has made my stomach really...sensitive, shall we say? Right now I'm working on getting a small glass of water down and staying down. After that I will try to medicate myself. I'm starting to get rather dehydrated and think getting some fluids into my system is more important than trying to make myself comfortable. For whatever reason the pain is either more dull or I'm getting used to having it and can doze off even with half of my face and neck swollen, so water is priority #1.

My Harry Potter book arrived in the mail, so that's what has been helping me pass the time. Unfortunately it means that I dream Harry Potter. As much as I like Harry, that's kind of annoying. Anyway, that's the situation in a nutshell. I really look forward to getting well!

Not fun

I appear to have a rather inflamed tonsil right now. It hurts. A lot. So much so that I'm updating my blog at 3:00 AM instead of sleeping. I woke up with it yesterday, went to work for a couple of hours, then came home to take it easy and avoid getting my coworkers sick. I opted not to go to the walk in clinic, and I regret that. Right now I'm counting down the hours until it opens. 9:00 AM is only 6 hours away. Hopefully some hot tea and exhaustion will allow me to get some sleep in the meantime. Pain reliever so far seems to do nothing. This isn't fun!

I've been quiet!

I just realized today how long it has been since I last posted! I suppose two weeks is not my longest silence ever, but it's high time that I greet the world again.

I have recently become addicted to playing Final Fantasy XI. I am still getting used to playing it, and fortunately I have a much more experienced player helping me along. It is quite fun. *sigh* I'm such a nerd!

Things are going well at work. I finally have my own desk now, although I have to live with only one monitor for now, and have no idea when I'll get a second one like everyone else in the department has. I am starting to feel more and more comfortable with my job responsibilities, which is a good thing. I have a little bit less fear and paranoia every time my phone rings! I find that I like helping techs more than the average customer. Maybe it's because we can tell them what we see and work with them to fix the problem and can understand each other. Their issues are also a little bit more predictable and are usually not difficult to fix for them. I admit that I am still a little bit...on edge whenever I see that I'm getting a "commercial" call (business class, including hotels) since they can either be easy or really complicated. One thing I have learned is that if the gateway tells you that a device attached to it has failed even after resetting everything, there's nothing I can do from my desk to help! ;)

I saw the latest Harry Potter movie on Sunday night. They cancelled the evening service at church, so I went with a few friends to celebrate a birthday. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, and cannot wait until the last book comes out on Saturday. I have a few theories from book 6 that I am quite curious to discover whether I was on the right track with them or not.

My office redecorating project is making slow progress. I am using some curtains to recover the futon and have ripped the seams on one of the two panels, so I'm halfway through that part of it. Then I get to get everything ready to start sewing. I bought curtain rods to use and the sheer panels for the window just shipped today, so things are coming together, albeit slowly. Right now I have what has come so far set out in such a way that things look roughly like they will once I finish with everything. It probably won't take me more than a couple of months to finish everything! ;)

I should be an auntie in approximately 30 days! I still have quite a long way to go on the afghan I'm making for my niece, so I'm going to have to get moving on that. I am thinking I will deliver it in person in September, but at this rate I might be hard pressed to finish it by then.

I suppose that's my life right now in a nutshell. Time is flying by!

Violating their own policy

Someone brought the Net Authority Violations website to my attention today. I include the link so that my readers can read what it actually says. I read that one page, not even bothering to read the rest of their site, and reported their own site as violating internet acceptable use, for two of the five reasons they allow to submit.

They give three examples of seemingly innocent sites that are actually very bad. Example #1 I will not argue with. They say that pictures of unclothed babies shouldn't be posted. Quite frankly I would agree. No matter what our parents may put in our own photo albums, leave that off of the internet.

Example #2 is reason number one that they got a submission from me for their own site. This one I'm just going to quote. Paraphrasing won't do it justice.

If you read the bible (you should, it's great!) you know that dinosaurs never actually existed, and that God put those fossils and bones there to test our faith in Him. While the stories themselves may not contain any offensive material, the simple fact that they are about dinosaurs may cause a child to question his faith in the one true God. By blaspheming, this site is in violation of the Internet Acceptable Use Policy and should be added to our database.

The Bible never says that dinosaurs never existed. I don't recall the Bible ever referring to aardvarks, either, but we know they exist because...they exist. For anyone interested, Answers in Genesis has some good stuff about dinosaurs and the Bible. Quite frankly, the notion that God planted fossils and bones to test faith is silly. Could God have done that? Certainly. Would God have done that? No, I don't think so. God is not the author of confusion, and putting bones on the earth that don't belong to any animal that actually existed would be cause for confusion, would it not? I'll let Ken Ham argue the issue, however ;). I used the reason of blasphemy for reporting the site.

The third example has to do with pictures of farm animals. Again, paraphrasing would never do justice to this, so I quote:

But imagine that some of the photos of animals included the animal genitalia in plain sight. This is hardly something that young children should be looking at, and especially not to be associated with the joy of viewing a fun website. By associating a feeling of joy with animal genitalia, this website would be an extreme danger to children and should definitely be added to the Net Authority database as a bestiality offender.

Young children should also not be around dogs, either, if that is the case, or visit a farm or a zoo. I think it speaks for itself. I didn't report them for this, just found it...silly.

The second reason I reported them was the way they worded reason #5 for submitting offending sites: Bestiality (including interracial relationships). This I reported for being hateful material. That just ruffles my feathers, to say the least. To say that is to say that anyone who is not of my racial group is an animal, some other species, or otherwise sub-human. That, to me, is hateful.

Someone else who saw the website thought it was a joke. Perhaps it is a joke, but I think they are serious, and that is just sad. Good intentions, but highly impractical on some points and misled on others. So the site got a little reaction out of me...heh...

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July, all! Holidays in the middle of the week are great. They make the work week so much faster and easier to get through. Unfortunately I have to work this afternoon, but I am hoping that it will be slow. I also am making myself a to do list for the day:
1. Assemble casserole to be baked tomorrow
2. Take out garbage & recycling from all rooms
3. Put away clean dishes and load dirty dishes into dishwasher
4. Pay bills
5. Measure pillows to determine how much material I need to re-cover them
6. Sew buttons on shirt

Item #1 needs to get done today but can be done either before or after work. Items 2 & 3 really need to get done this morning because my roommate is coming home after a week-long vacation today and I don't know if she'll get here before I get home from work. Item #4 I think I might actually take with me to work and do there ;). Items 5 & 6 can wait if need be, but might as well do them today since I have the evening off and don't have any holiday plans. Exciting way to celebrate independence from those horrible British, isn't it? ;)

Family update

My mother sent me pictures today from my sister's baby shower yesterday. With about 7 weeks left before the due date, I am going to be an auntie before I know it! My mom included pictures of the stuff I took with me to California for my niece, and she wrapped it in a Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore bag, which was done on purpose, I am sure. You can always tell when gifts are for or from me around my house, since if Eeyore is on the bag or wrapping paper, I am somehow connected to it ;). I really need to get going on the second blanket I am making if I am going to finish it in time!

I don't know if I mentioned this before or not, but my oldest sister is moving to North Carolina this week. I am excited about that, since I will have immediate family much closer than I did before. She's actually going to be living very close to an aunt and uncle and one of our cousins, so where they are will be the greatest concentration of my family anywhere in the country. It also means that my immediate family is spread out quite a lot. My parents and my other sister (the one having the baby soon) will be the closest, and they are about 8 hours away by car. The drive from here to where my sister is moving is about 10 hours. This is the story of my family, however. By now only a handful of my family (parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins) actually live in the same area (or even state!) they grew up. I am not unique in that sense!

I have not heard anything lately about my grandmother, so I have no news on that front. I suppose given the circumstances, no news is definitely good news.