cairistiona's place

Crawling out from under the blankies at last, I think. The bronchitis is better, though apparently nighttime coughing is A Thing with bronchitis. Last night I coughed almost non-stop for 2 hours before I finally managed to soothe things down with warm water and honey and a dose of Sudafed. Ugh. I'm sure I'm driving the family nuts with all the coughing.

I doubt I'll go back and comment on y'all's journals, but I did read them all, usually while I was on my phone, coughing and hacking in the recliner late at night.

Enough about all that...

( Guardians of the Galaxy looks good! )

( The Winter Soldier gag reel! )

( Who says there's no tears in baseball?? )

Gosh, I'm so woefully behind in... everything. I'm feeling better, though, so that of course means I have all kinds of laundry and cleaning and just *stuff* piled up waiting to be tackled. I made a good dent in All The Things on Sunday, but Monday I was reminded my stamina isn't *quite* there yet. >.<   Nothing dire, just that getting my Dad's weekly groceries yesterday left me a lot more wiped out than it normally does. So, today is a stay-home day where I'm going to take it a little easier and, fingers crossed, get caught up on some writing, which I haven't done since my surgery because Brain Fog. Ugh. It takes a while for anesthesia to make its way out of the body, and then of course there's the whole "body is sucking up energy for healing so, Brain, you're just gonna have to take a number" thing. And Brain meanwhile is bouncing around in my skull using up its precious energy resources blurting random things at me like, "ARAGORN WHAT ABOUT ARAGORN THERE'S NOT MUCH ARAGORN H/C OUT THERE WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY???????????"

or, "BOWEN!!! BOWEN AND HIS COWS AND GOBLINS AND FLORA AND OWEN ESTEL AND ALL THE BREE THINGS!!!!!!"

And, since seeing Captain America: Winter Soldier, my brain added another layer to the cacophonous chorus,

"BUCKBUCKYBUCKYBUCKYOMGPUPPYEYESDOSOMETHINGFORHIMHELP....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

*cough* Ahem. Yeah. That character has smacked me straight in the feels, and tumblr, YOU ARE NOT HELPING. Although it's a perfect diversion during brain fogginess, I must say. (I also may or may not have ordered the Ed Brubaker Captain America: Winter Soldier comics.... okay, yeah, I did. Found Vol 1 & 2 gently used online and they'll be coming in a week or so. I've not read a comic book in years, since I was a kid, really, so I'm looking forward to getting these and wallowing in Winter Soldier feels catching up on the Cap canon that the movies are more or less following.)

And then there's Domino, who has decided that he must sleep ON TOP OF ME every night. Eurgh. I know on paper that sounds so, "Awwww, sweet!!!" But he's heavier than he looks. And he kicks and twitches. So sleep has been a little disrupted. Which contributes to the Brain Fog.

But rest assured, I'm reading everything here at LJ, from comments left on mine to everyone else's posts. I'm not commenting in return much, which kills me, but eventually I'll get caught up with everything and get back to annoying everyone actually conversing with everyone again.

*hugs to all*

It must have known this was my favorite work of Shakespeare. *g*

On a more serious note, I discovered that there's a way in which to help in regards to the missing jetliner. TOMNOD.com is a site that is crowdsourcing the search for the plane. You can go to the site, and after the satellite map of part of the search area loads, search grid by grid for anything that might be the plane or a part of the plane, or a life raft, or an oil slick, or anything that looks unusual. I spent a couple of hours today going over about 300 image sections. I only found three items to tag--they were a cluster of bright white spots that looked brighter than wavecaps but not like a whale or a ship or fishing boat. Mostly I was struck by just how huge the area is. They're now saying the plane may have gone on flying for 4 hours after it disappeared, so the search radius is just enormous (2500 miles). What the people behind TOMNOD are hoping is that with literally millions of people checking the satellite photos, someone might spot something that will help locate the plane. There's some differences of opinion whether such crowdsourcing efforts are worth it, but it does help me feel like perhaps I've helped a little. The site is a little slow and sometimes gets overloaded, but once you get the map image loaded, it's a simple enough thing to tag anything you spot. (There's apparently some sort of algorithm that compiles those tags that are most used and compiles the data for the proper authorities.)

The site occasionally goes down while they upload new maps, so if you can't access it, try again in an hour.

Currently typing on the new Fellowes split keyboard! It seems much better than the one I returned; hey-ho, the space bar actually presses without having to pound it. What a concept!

The keys are quieter than my old one, but pretty much feel the same in almost every way.

I think we have a winner!

About the row of Sooper Speshul Keys:  There's one marked WWW that, not surprisingly, opens up Mozilla (or if Mozilla is already open, apparently defaults it to the home page. *makes note not to press that key when in the middle of an email or LJ post*). Another one is marked E-mail and it opens up Windows Mail, which I don't use and don't plan to, so that one's useless. Another is labelled "Search" and so far as I can tell, it does nothing, though I may have by pressing the button released a bunch of St. Bernards into the Alps.  Another says "Sleep"... and as advertised, puts my 'puter to sleep (oh how I wish it would put my teenager to sleep). And there are volume controls which also seem to work as advertised.

It doesn't look like I can reprogram them, so alas, no button for a calculator, the_winterwitch!

And another good thing... the layout is just like my old keyboard so I'm happily typing away as easily as before the old one deteriorated, and there's a tiny little ridge on the J and F keys. I was forever putting my hand in the wrong spot on that temporary keyboard, which had no handy little ridges, so everything I typed looked like some sort of Tolkien knock-off, made-up fantasy language. You know: tje rogjt jamd ;etters were a;; pff bu pme/    ("the right hand letters were all off by one.")  And praise be, the delete/insert keys are where they should be, arranged vertically instead of horizontally like on the temporary keyboard. I was forever trying to hit "home" and getting "insert" instead.

So yay! It appears I'm back in business.

My admittedlyvenerable computer keyboard is dying, i think. THe shift key is sticking and the space bar is only working intermittently,and an hour popping off keysand cleaning didn't fix it (and i think something importantmay havebrokenoff the spacebar key. *looksat tiny plastic bit with some dismay*).

I suppose unless i want all my text looking like hashtags on twitter mated witheecummings poetry, i best hie me to the store fora new onetoday.

(see what I mean? AUghhhh!!!!laklsjdjdsdfojiosdffjsdfdsjdf0)

I will vote tomorrow.

I hope my fellow Americans will, too.

That is all.

My mom is ill again, in the hospital since last Wednesday. It seemed like it was peritonitis to start with, and was getting better, but now yesterday and today she's worsened so it may be something different, although the doctor isn't sure what (the tests are now negative on bacterial infection, so "something else" is amiss).  I have no idea how the week will go, so if a day goes by without an Aragorn-a-Day pic, it's probably because things have gotten hectic, or dire, or better or... I really have no idea. As with so much of my mom's health issues, her situation is complex and confusing and hard to sort out, so I'm just taking things day by day and praying that they can at least make her more comfortable while they're figuring out the underlying problem. Right now she's pretty doggone miserable.

So, if I seem distracted or overly brief with my replies, you'll know a little why--I do check LJ and emails from my phone and from my Kindle at the hospital but it's tricky to type long replies on touchscreen keyboards.

Appreciate any prayers and good thoughts!

Isn't this the most beautiful cake?



You can order it at Cakes by Lisa in Florida, and I have no clue how much it would cost but I would guess... a lot!