Random Lunacy

Followup on Numfar and the mouse: Still no idea where she caught it... I was assuming she would become obsessed with the area of the house where she found it (as an example, she once found a spider in a particular corner of our bathroom and now every time she walks into that room she checks that spot first... as if it is the room's spider dispenser or something), but nothing seems out of the ordinary from her today. I still just keep thinking back to how happy and proud she was... and I'm so glad that sort of thing doesn't bother me, because I think she would have been absolutely crushed if I'd freaked out about her first real kill (since I don't think bugs and spiders count). She was definitely bringing it to me to show off so I could be proud and happy, too. But again, soooo glad it happened while I was still awake.

Today we had just a few errands to run and had planned on spending the day working on projects around the house. First, we headed over to kehf's place... she was giving away her elliptical trainer, which is something I've seriously wanted (for those days when it's just too cold/rainy/snowy to go walking outdoors and I don't have time to go to the gym). With a bit of help, we managed to get it into the back of our car and got it home and set up before lunchtime!

We grabbed lunch at our favorite spot, followed by a run out to Home Depot to pick up a few things, then decided to go for a nice 30-40 minute walk on the Marymoor Connector Trail since we were already down in Redmond. And of course, after we parked, we had to do a quick look around to see if there were any Geocaches nearby that we hadn't found yet. Turned out we'd parked about 50 feet from the start of a Difficulty 3 / Terrain 4 Multi-Cache (Difficulty and Terrain are on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the absolute hardest... and a Multi-Cache is a Geocache that has multiple waypoints with clues or information that eventually lead you to the final location). After a bit of dithering (because neither of us was particularly feeling like doing a D3/T4 today), we decided we could at least get started with it and work our way along the waypoints until it got too tough, then save what we'd figured out up to that point and finish it on another day. Ha!

I didn't keep close track of the time, but I think we were out there a bit over two hours... and for a great deal of it we were tromping through tall grass coated with a thick layer of fallen leaves, often hiding fallen trees and sloggy, muddy terrain. Probably the best workout I've had in ages, but wow... I am *sore* tonight, not to mention incredibly tired. We followed a lot of game trails to reach some of the waypoints, but also did a fair bit bushwhacking and climbing over fallen trees and branches and through thickets of shrubs and blackberries. And did I mention the mucky, muddy ground? Despite all that, it was pretty obvious that the terrain would be a whole lot worse at other times of the year (that area was actually a bit drier than it will be in the spring and there were relatively few blackberry brambles compared to how it will be later in the year). In the end, we managed to make our way over to the final location and found the cache! Yay! I love caches like this, where you actually feel like you earned every bit of the D/T rating to make the find. I still can't believe we did the whole thing today, though. Definitely not in our original plans.

And, even better, we did some detours along the way and found a few other caches and then got to go walking through "Doggie Disneyland" (aka the Marymoor Off-Leash Dog Park -- 40 acres of woods, fields and a dog's dream come true), which is probably one of my most favorite things to do. The place was hopping today, too, with dogs everywhere... running around, having the times of their lives and just being completely and utterly happy. All in all, it was a pretty good day.

ETA: Aha! I found a pretty good video about Marymoor Offleash Dog Park out on YouTube... just to give a bit of an idea of what it has too offer in its 40 acres.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

A week or so ago, I posted this on FB: "On Saturday, I made drop biscuits to go with our leftover beef and barley soup... this evening, I made sausage gravy to go with our leftover biscuits. It's the Circle of Dinner."

And I really love being able to do things like that... leftovers from one meal that work well as an addition to the next. In that case, it was even better than that, because the beef and barley soup happened due to having enough extra beef to make the soup, leftover from what was needed for a previous meal.

A few days ago, I realized we had a couple of bunches of kale in the fridge that really needed to be used... so I went looking for a new way to cook them and happened upon this recipe out at the Weight Watchers website (which currently kinda sucks when it comes to linking to recipes, so I've included it here under the cut): ( Potato-Kale Soup. )

Before I pulled out the immersion blender, I decided to give it a taste and... well, it was really bland. I had rackham give it a try and we debated what we could add to give it some pop. We put a few tablespoons of the soup into a couple of ramekins and tried adding spice blends, finally settling on hot curry. And it was pretty good! Not the best thing ever, but if I end up with a bunch of kale and some potatoes I need to use, I'd probably do it again.

And then last night, I got to do one of my favorite things... I used it to make something else entirely. I cooked up some carrots and cauliflower, added some chopped up raw chicken breast and a little more curry, then dumped the leftover "Soup" in with it and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Oh my word, it was *perfect*. I would totally make that soup again, only not as a soup... but as a base for curries. I'm actually wondering how well it would freeze, so I'd have a quick and nearly ready-made dinner on hand.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

I am so incredibly glad to see the end of 2015. It had its good points, it really did... but overall, I'm going to remember it as the year I spent being sick and unable to think my way out of a wet paper bag. I mean, I'm grateful we eventually figured out the problem (a sinus infection that we now think I first picked up *LAST DECEMBER*), finally managed to get rid of it (despite the horrible side effects of the methods we used... nearly a month of heavy duty antibiotics and that wretched Prednisone) and I'm also very glad that I found an ENT who much prefers finding non-surgical methods for dealing with things... although if the workarounds don't manage to keep the infection from coming back, surgery is still a looming option (probably could class this as a positive, because it makes me VERY dedicated to using the other methods).

I also managed to beat the Sinus Infection From Hell just in time to be able to take my planned trip down to San Diego to see Star Wars: the Force Awakens with jawajames and his wife, as well as brightcupenny, sirrogue and about 70 other people. Christmas was a blast with my in-laws in Utah, but I could have done without the stomach flu that hit while I was there (I blame my nephews, who had started passing it around before I even got there), but after having been a different kind of sick through most of 2015, the change was almost refreshing!

I'm really looking forward to getting caught up on life. ( Okay, I decided to cut text this because it's just me whining about how much the year sucked. Really. You probably want to skip it. :-p )

I decided to take a quick look at the goals I set for 2015 and ( wow, did that ever fall apart. )

So, that's it. Whining over and here's to a much better year ahead!

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Had a really fun day! We went to rackham's brother's house for "Dinner" (which was more like a late lunch, but really was the last meal of the day) with him and his wife, as well as our friends gidgiddoni and tomte. Thanksgiving is always so much better with more people... and not just because it means the work for the cooking gets spread around!

I think I linked to all of our favorite recipes the other day, but I wanted to make sure to mention the Turkey Quiche again, in case you missed it. Absolutely the best use for leftovers I've ever found!

( See all the lovely food, under the cut. )

Hope all my American friends had a fantastic Thanksgiving... and all my BtVS friends had a fun Tie-Spike-to-a-Chair Day!

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

It occurred to me today that I hadn't posted a followup to my last entry... it's been, um, interesting. The side effects of both the antibiotic and the Prednisone were not fun, but it gave me just over two incredible weeks of feeling *normal*. And then the sinus infection came back, just like it had every other time I'd taken antibiotics (about a week to a week and a half after I finished them). I got to my followup appointment with the ENT and had a CT scan of my sinuses (which was the plan all along) and, sure enough, you could actually see the sinus infection on the scan... but the good news? It was nearly gone (as the ENT said, if we'd done a CT scan at my first appointment, we would have seen nearly the whole area clouded up on the scan). So, I've been back on the super-mega-antibiotics for one more week and they seem to have done the trick. The funny thing is, I'd thought I felt normal after taking them last time, but it's nothing compared to this. I honestly feel like I'm waking up after being asleep for a long time. It's been amazing.

The other thing we discovered from the CT scan (and the reason it was done in the first place) is what's likely at the root of the problem... and why I've been extremely prone to sinus infections my whole life.

First, a bit of an anatomy lesson (pulled from Wikipedia): The nasal conchae (or turbinates) are long, narrow and curled bone shelves in your sinuses that divide the nasal airway into groove like air passages and are responsible for forcing inhaled air to flow in a steady, regular pattern around the largest possible surface of cilia and climate-controlling tissue.

As my ENT explained it, there are three on each side of your face: the superior, median and inferior. He was able to show me on the CT scan that the median (aka the middle) on my left side is backward. So if my sinuses get aggravated at all, they'll swell up and because it's not going the same direction as the others, it will get stopped up very easily... meaning it gets easier for nasty things to build up. Apparently, this can be corrected with surgery, but my ENT would rather avoid that if possible... so, the solution we've come up with, now that we appear to have finally beaten the Sinus Infection From Hell (doing some serious knocking on wood over here), is to use OTC nasal spray to try to keep all the membranes constricted. Once we know I'm well and truly over this... the idea is that I'd only need to use the nasal spray when I notice I'm starting to have problems. I'm really hoping this works, because the idea of nasal surgery does not sound like fun times.

Anyway, I'm keeping fingers and toes crossed that we've finally kicked this thing for real this time... I've been varying degrees of sick for most of the year and it's interfered with so many things I've wanted to do.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

A month or two ago, I started recognizing the signs of an oncoming sinus/ear infection and did the smart thing... I got in to see my doctor (or rather, her substitute, since my doctor was still on maternity leave at the time) and she got me started on an antibiotic and it seemed to do the trick! I went about my merry way until a few weeks ago, when those signs popped up again, so back I went to the my doctor (who had returned from maternity leave by this point) and she decided to approach it as if it were the same infection, since this was only a few weeks after the first visit, and put me on a more aggressive antibiotic. And it seemed to help, for a few days at least. Last Friday and Saturday were fantastic! Probably the best I'd felt in a few weeks (good timing, because there was a big Geocaching event on the coast that weekend and we had a room reserved out there at our favorite getaway on the beach), but by the time we started heading home Sunday, I was getting increasingly miserable. Called my doctor's office again on Monday and had an appointment that afternoon... that was rather tough for me to get to, since I was just exhausted and feeling beyond crappy. This time, I had a fever and a full-blown raging sinus infection... Oh, yeah, and I was in the middle of an asthma attack and probably had been for awhile. I almost never have problems with asthma anymore and it was getting masked enough by other symptoms that it hadn't occurred to me that might be the problem... I was frankly quite relieved that it wasn't bronchitis.

So, now I'm on an even *more* aggressive antibiotic, a double-dose of Mucinex (it never would have occurred to me to do this, if my doctor hadn't told me to do it) and I'm using my inhaler a few times a day. I also ended up writing an email to classic Spike/Buffy fanfic writer Saber Shadowkitten yesterday to thank her... in her story "Humanitis," a newly human Spike gets a cold and is having trouble swallowing pills... and the solution is to put them in jam and swallow that. I swear, it's possibly one of the most useful things I've ever learned from reading any kind of fiction ever. Mucinex is very hard to swallow (it's big, tastes *awful* and is chalky, meaning it sticks to your tongue and throat) and my current antibiotic is horsepill sized. There's absolutely no way I'd be able to take any of it if I hadn't learned that little trick.

My fever broke yesterday (yay!! I was getting sick of feeling like I was freezing all the time, which is what usually happens when I have a fever) and the pain in my ears and sinuses has pretty much gone away, but my sinuses have gotten even more congested for some reason. I called the Pharmacist yesterday and he reiterated his suggestion from the day before to drink a LOT more fluid, telling me that this particular antibiotic can have a side effect of thickening mucus so that it doesn't drain as easily... which is why he recommended seriously increasing fluid intake, to offset it. He also said that I could try Sudafed, since it wouldn't cause any problems with anything else I'm taking.

Today has been a bit weird. I take my meds, use the inhaler and take some Sudafed and I've got about two hours or so where I feel somewhat approaching normal (or at least normal enough to do more than sleep or play solitaire), then the latter two start to wear off and I can't take more for a few hours, so I end up feeling crappy again and sounding like I'm trying to cough up a lung. But I *am* feeling better... when I think back to Monday, the difference is remarkable. I just have to keep reminding myself of that, because I still feel crappy enough that it's easy to think I'm not getting better.

I've been trying to figure out why I've been getting zapped with these infections so much this year and I have a theory: rackham started his new job in downtown Seattle at the first of the year and commutes by bus. I suspect he's picking up these things and bringing them home to me, without ever getting sick himself. Apparently, another friend whose husband works at the same office (and commutes on the same bus) has a really similar sounding cold right now... which just makes me even more sure my theory is right.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

So, last year I wrote about how Numfar goes on guard duty whenever I take a shower (and even got a photo of her doing it). She's pretty much always done it, and kept up the habit when we moved to the new house... there are a few times when she gives up her post: if the bathroom door is closed or if she knows rackham is in the other room or, as we recently found out, if she knows the bedroom door is closed, then she'll hop up on the ledge right next to the shower and chatter at me the whole time.

So, you can imagine my surprise this morning when I left both doors open and Rackham had headed off to work... and Numfar had hopped up next to the shower with her back to the door to chatter at me. My first thought was to wonder if Rackham had come back home for some reason, or perhaps he was ill and hadn't actually left this morning (I quickly ruled out the thought that there might be a stranger in the house... Numfar is so stranger-phobic that she would have been glaring at the door and growling if that were the case). Then I got out of the shower and saw exactly why she felt we were secure:

( Photo behind the cut. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

So, I don't post for months and now I get all chatty. :-p

We picked up a rotisserie chicken from Costco the other day, which meant we had the makings for several meals: drumsticks or drumsticks and thighs the first night along with Costco's quinoa salad, curried chicken salad the next night (sometimes I do a gorgonzola chicken salad instead) with leftovers for lunch the next day and possibly the day after and then I strip the carcass (saving any remaining meat for soup later) and toss it in the crockpot with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, peppercorns and a bay leaf... cover it with water and let it simmer all day (or all night, depending on when it gets started). Usually there's enough to make soup that night and have leftover stock to go in the freezer for later. Costco rotisserie chicken is the BEST.

Tonight's soup turned out so well, I decided I'd better write it down before I forgot what I'd put in it... because I definitely want to try that one again! Still not sure what to call it, but for now it shall be known as:

( Spicy Chicken Corn Soup )

This particular combination came about because we had cobs of corn from our produce delivery that needed to be used... and, of course, I also needed to use up the garlic scapes, so they were added in place of garlic. It was VERY zesty and if I was making it to share with other people, I'd probably add less of the Southwest Seasoning next time. It might also have been good with a bit of cilantro at the end, but we didn't have any on hand.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Last night I checked my phone before heading to bed and noticed I had a text message from my sister-in-law (rackham's twin sister) that said, simply: "Would you tell your husband there's a creeper in the treehouse."

I knew pretty much immediately what it was about, since our nieces play Minecraft on our server... but I also had this brief *blink*blink* moment where my brain sort of balked at the sheer silliness of it all. Heh.

The creeper was taken care of BTW, and Rackham made sure there were enough torches around that it shouldn't happen again.

So, last night I was scrolling through Facebook before heading to bed and saw a post from Brandon Sanderson saying he'd just found out about a WoT short that was going to be airing on FXX overnight. It took a bit of searching (because I had no clue where FXX even was on our lineup... it's a fairly obscure channel) but I found it in the listing and set the DVR to record it, since it was airing at 1:30 in the morning.

Brandon Sanderson's guess was that it was something thrown together by the network in order to retain rights to the material in case they decide to do something real with it later... and I pretty much have to agree. The whole thing was a bit less than 20 minutes of the prologue for the first book in the series and was essentially just a dialogue between Lews Therin Telamon and Ishamael, who was played by Billy Zane (yes, really). Lews Therin's family is shown now and then, but it's mostly just the two of them, walking around an empty set made to look like a grand palace without any furniture. The small bit of special effects used were awful (as in, they looked like they belonged in something from the 80s) and the costumes looked like they just grabbed whatever fit the actors and didn't pay a lot of attention to continuity of style (Lews Therin had a sort of Edwardian look about him, Ishamael looked more medieval and some of the kids looked like they were wearing clothes from the early 1990s).

All in all, it wasn't horrible... and certainly nowhere near as bad as the "Fantastic Four" movie from 1994 that was made for the same reason (to retain rights). I'm kinda glad I managed to record it when it aired... but I'm rather amused that it isn't listed anywhere on IMDb.

ETA: I should point out that the title didn't even contain the WoT name... it was simply Winter Dragon, and apparently the rights were set to expire this Wednesday. It sort of makes me wonder if this thing was thrown together in the last few weeks.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.