I took Kris to the airport this morning.

We received a call from his sister yesterday that his father was having chest pains in church. He went into open-heart surgery 2 hours ago. Kris is flying back home today, and should be there when his father wakes up tonight.

I think I've managed to see Kris for 8 days this month. I think that's a new low water mark for us. I miss him.

When I dropped him off at the airport, I went around to park the car as he was checking in. Wade Hellner gave Kris his Southwest Rapid Rewards ticket, so he could fly out on a moments notice (thank you again, Wade!). Wade booked the ticket last night, which meant Kris couldn't check in online. So, I dropped him off, went to park the car, and then went inside to get that last 10 minutes with him before he spent the day travelling back east.

I think when we split at the "Ticketed passengers only beyond this point" spot, he assumed I left. I hadn't. I waited until he was through the line, turned the corner and walked to his gate. I managed to squeeze in an extra 4 minutes there. Even if he was 10+ yards away.

He didn't turn around to wave, though. Didn't know I was still there.

I miss you, Kris. Be safe. Love and prayers to your dad.

This had to be the worst weekend ever. And I mean ever. Kinda gross, too, so if you don't like reading about dry heaves and not-so-dry heaves, how about skipping to last Friday's entry?

Having just returned from Los Angeles and dealing somewhat with my condo and visiting (thankfully at Suzanne's request) Wook and Jon Hartzberg, I fed the dogs, ate some leftovers, and settled down to watch some tivo'd shows.

Around 11 pm, I started having that achy, sore, guess-what-you've-got-the-flu feeling. By 12:30, I was in the bathroom delivering the previously mentioned leftovers to the sewer system. With surprising ease, actually. I haven't vomited in a long time, maybe 10 years? But I don't ever remember being able to do the fake heave and have it trigger a real one.

Let it be known that I eat a lot of apples. When I'm at home, I have probably two a day. And with those apples, I eat a lot of peanut butter. Vitamin E, magnesium (important for day two of this exciting weekend), protein, what's not to love about peanut butter?

Tasting it coming back up.

The dry heaves started around 2:30, when the chicken leftovers wanted to come up, but couldn't quite make it back out of my intestines. Thankfully, they relented and came up. My intestinal tract was completely clear. At some point, when lying on the bathroom floor looking up, I thought about taking a picture of the bathroom from that particular vantage point. It would have made a nice addition to this post, but I couldn't get up to find the camera.

Ah well, at least I could go to sleep now that my stomach was empty.

But I didn't sleep well. I woke up at 3:16, 4:21, 5:38, 6:24, 7:37, 8:29, 9:30, 10:14 (you see where this is going right?), keeping the trend up until around 2:30 pm when I actually felt like getting out of bed.

As much as I wanted to do something with the day (strip wall paper, convert postnuke sites to drupal sites, finish an online rostering system, learn flash, read Reality Dysfunction), it wasn't going to happen. Instead, I watched all the tivo'd shows we had, and all the Alias DVDs we have that I hadn't watched yet. In told, 12 hours in a vegetative state, unable to do much other than wiggle my fingers to fast forward through the commercials.

The good thing of being unable to sleep on Friday night, was that I slept really, really well on Saturday night.

And woke up to a migraine at 10 am.

Up. Feed the dogs. Down a 800 mg ibuprofin. Back to bed to sleep off the blindness.

No such luck. I woke up at noon more blind than when I went back to bed. And really, really hungry. This time, I took a couple magnesium and B6 capsules (as a magnesium deficiency has been shown to be a contributor to migraines), had some juice, ate some toast and vegged for a couple hours hoping the pounding in my head would subside somewhat.

Fortunately, my eyes cleared up within the half hour (yay, Mg!). Unfortunately, Bella spent the whole freaking day with her whine, whine, whine, CHIRP! whine barking. I hate that whining. But the barking! Damned dog, stop the barking! Just shut up!

And Kris isn't expected home for another 5 hours. He's been gone since Friday afternoon on a ski trip. Did I mention that Jessica's breast cancer spread and she's on chemo? Or how about Kris' dad is heading in for triple bypass surgery? Yeah, found those out on Friday, too.

This has to be the worst weekend ever.

Conversation with Mike, about two weeks ago:

Mike: So, did you read that book I gave you?

Me: No, not yet.

Mike: Come on, it's been 6 months.

Me: I know. I haven't had time.

Mike: Find time.

Me: Yeah, yeah.

Mike: Okay, next trip you go on, take just that book. Don't take any magazines, just that book.

Me: What? I can't do that. I might get bored.

Mike: You won't get bored. Just that book.

Me: Okay, fine. I'll take just that book.

So, I went to Los Angeles today. Specifically, I went to Pasadena to attend the monthly Housing Association meeting. My condo has been flooded, and my property manager was getting nowhere with the Condo Complex property management company. I was hoping I could break the impasse and get things going on the roof repairs.

I took along the book, The Reality Dysfunction, that Mike suggested over a year ago that I read (that I bought six months ago and hadn't read yet). When I sat down on the plane, I pulled out the book and started reading.

And stopped only to take care of business, reading every moment I could. Waiting for Cynthia, read the book. Waiting in the car for the lunatic to return, read the book. Waiting at the stoplight, out came the book. Suzannne went to the bathroom, out came the book.

Curse you, Mike! It's a good book! I'm hooked!

This past Sunday, Mike, Kris, Bella, Rossi, Annie and I went to Water Dog Lake in Belmont. It's a nice little hike: about a mile up to the lake, maybe 1/2 mile around the lake, and a mile back. When we head up with Annie and Bella, they walk/run an extra 2+ miles, so it's good exercise for them. Bella tends to get lost in the reeds, but, eh, she's a hunting dog, and she's hunting.

So, we wandered up to the lake and Kris went off with Annie. I went off with Bella. And Mike went off with Rossi. As Rossi is a water dog, it was fitting that she should head into the water. So she did. Which worked well for Mike, as he was recovering from the flu that had him out for a week, and could stand around and watch her romp in the water.

I was not so lucky with Bella. She took off for the underbrush, and I needed to follow her. Up the canyon walls we went. Over the creek. Up the hill. Down the hill. Back over the creek. Through the reeds. Over the fallen trees. Into the mud. Out of the mud.

Yeah.

Given the sheer number of trees I had to scramble over, under, around and through, I was unsurprised when I arrived home with scratches on my arms. What did surprise me (and admittedly freaked me out) was the scratch on my right elbow.

Or not so scratch: I found a tick embedded into my right elbow when I removed my shirt.

On went the rest of my clothes. Out the door sans shoes I ran, four doors down to Kate & Mike's: tick remover, alcohol and tweazers in hand. Kate doused the fucker in kerosene and popped it out. She did a great job getting most of the head out.

Once I was at the Bergeron-Gull house, the tick was kinda cool. I wish I had taken a picture of the thing. But I had left the house in a panic, so the camera was left behind. And Mike was a little big grossed out at my fascination, too. Heh.

I pulled 3 ticks off Bella, and none off Annie. I think the chasing-of-the-Bella was where I got my tick. Stupid dog.

I have elbow pictures around here somewhere. My elbow totally swelled around the tick bite. There was a small black thingy (about the size of the pointy end of a pin or needle) left in my elbow. The only reason I found it was because my body rejected it and spit it out today. I have a 3/32" blood blister at the bite spot, and a 1/4" red circle around it. I have no stiffness or flu-symptoms, so hopefully I'll be tick-disease free. We'll see. Quite the adventure for the week.

What is worse than getting lost in the details?

Never starting because you're overwhelmed by the project.

Or starting, and stopping because one small, small detail stops you.

Back in college, a roommate of mine commented she didn't know anyone who had more self-help books than I did. I read science fiction, science fiction fantasy (think trolls and hobbits and wizards and magic), and self-help books. I never read the relationship ones, but I did read a lot of the "I'm fucked up, how can I unfuck myself up?" books. I hadn't noticed that I read a lot of self-help books (though it was obvious to anyone looking at my books), and needed this smack up-side the head.

And because of that roommate, I stopped reading self-help books. She had made the comment as an accusation ("What kind of nitwit reads this shit?"), thereby causing me to stop looking outside for help and to start looking inside.

I had many more years to go before I could say I was happy. And I had many friends that helped me along the way. I knew the day was closer, though, when my childhood friend Jessica told me she liked me better now (where now was many years after college) than before because I didn't hate myself anymore.

A small comment, made casually, that also had a profound effect on my life.

Jess is good like that.

With the help of Jenny, Jess, Yosufi, Bob, Wook, Mom, Kris, Bharat, Lisa, Mark, Mike and others, I've learned to accept myself, to realize what I like and don't like about myself, to focus on the good stuff (because chances are, I'm completely exaggerating the bad stuff). I'm sure I'll die disliking some parts of me (did I mention my short legs?), but I won't die hating all of me.

And that's a good thing.

Actually, that insight was a little much. I wouldn't have thought that not writing because I had a bunch of pictures to include in my Ticked Off post, and I was tired of downloading the images to my harddrive, resizing them, putting two borders around them, uploading them to the server and including them in the post. I want to have a nice streamlined approach to posting images; I've reached my pain-point with my current process. It sucks.

And pictures are nice.

So, technology to the rescue. (Or as Bharat once pointed out to me about the two of us: we use technology to make life easier for ourselves. Usually because we're lazy.)

What a silly reason not to write: I haven't been writing because I wanted pictures in my blogs, and posting them is a pain in the ass with my current process. Because I couldn't do everything, I did nothing. Lost in the details.

Another thing to fix.