Mrs. Audio's thoughts and ramblings

We're here in the town of Rochelle visiting my family for the Christmas season. There's quite a bit of snow here, not so much with the ice as in Kansas. We stopped overnight near Des Moines and there was quite a bit of snow there too. When we got into Illinois, Dad called to tell us that they were taking G-ma to the hospital and so we met them there. Nothing to be alarmed about. She's just had a bad cough, and they wanted to keep an eye on her for a day or 2. Compared to some of the issues she's had, this is very small potatoes. We'll be here visiting until Sunday. It's so nice to take a few days off and just relax.

That is the question. Topeka Civic Theatre is having auditions tomorrow and Sunday for their next play. When I first remembered, I was pretty excited about it. Then I checked out a script from the box office yesterday and read it last night. The play is titled "Red Herring". The synopsis is as follows: 

Three love stories, a murder mystery, and a nuclear espionage plot converge in this comedy about marriage and other explosive devices. It's 1952. Americans are beginning to use words like "H-bomb" and the phrase "I Like Ike" in their daily dialogue. I Love Lucy is on Monday nights. Meanwhile, Senator Joe McCarthy's daughter just got engaged to a Soviet spy, and thick-skinned Boston homicide detective Maggie Pelletier has to find out who dumped the dead guy in the Harbor-or else lose out on a honeymoon in Havana. A blunt-nosed, sharp-eyed look at love and tying (and untying, and retying) the knot that at one moment borders on farce and the next honorably pays homage to all things noir.

After reading the script, I don't think I would feel comfortable playing in it (that is of course provided I won a role). The play has way too much sexual innuendo, affairs, etc, for my comfort. It's not a family play and I definitely would not feel comfortable having most of my friends and family, let alone a church pastor see me perform in it. Plus of the 2 parts I would be eligible for both have rather passionate kissing scenes which I would be uncomfortable with since I'm now married. And I'm only just now getting back into the acting scene.

Unfortunately the next play is "Cabaret" which isn't much better. Plus most of the female characters run around with naught but their undies on, and I just can't for that. I am waaaay too self conscious of my flaws. 

After that is "Macbeth" which I really want to be in. I was hoping to have a play or two under my belt for practice and to have a better chance of making it. There are only 9 female roles and I'll bet it's going to be a very popular one for auditions. It's auditions are not until March so I have a bit of time. Maybe I'll be able to find something before then, for a little seasoning. Get back in the game so to speak.

I loved the Hogfather and want more Discworld books to make it to film. I loved how they opened the movie with the Discworld on the backs of 4 elephants sitting atop the shell of Great A'Tuin. Death was great and I really enjoyed the portrayal of Susan who opens the story by reading the children a bedtime story; "And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy any more. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions." 

Death of Rats made a very brief cameo and the Raven didn't have as large a part as in the book either. The wizards were as comical as always and we did get a view of the Bloody Stupid Johnson designed washroom at Unseen University. I was a little disappointed that the Librarian was never mentioned, but I can't remember if he was in that book or not. Hex had an ++++out of cheese error++++. I got to see Nobby Nobs and Constable visit (I actually thought Dobby would be a bit uglier than he was presented). There are so many more characters that I wanted to see like C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Rincewind, the Librarian, the Witches (who obviously weren't in this particular story), Vetinari, and so many more. Now that I have a taste, I want more, more, MORE. 

If you would like to see the Hogfather it is on DVD, so check the stores or get in online it is well worth it. I checked IMDB.com and there are 3 Discworld videa goames, 2 books (Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters) that were made into animation. Aaaand, wait for it. . . The Colour of Magic is being filmed for TV. Terry Pratchett himself makes a cameo as an Astrozoologist. It's expeted release is next year in the UK. So hopefully we won't have to wait terribly long to see it.

The Hogfather has been made into a movie/mini-series! It will be aired tonight starting at 6pm on the Ion channel. Yeah, I'd never heard of that channel either, but the DVR is set to record 4 hours of Pratchett goodness made into film. *SQUEE* I'm so happy.

I discovered this wonderful happenstance last night while watching YY's soap opera (Battlestar Galactica) with him on the Sci-Fi channel. While forwarding through the commercials - including previews for a Wizard of Oz spin-off series called the Tin-man, which looks twisted to say the least - I perceived the word Hogfather on the screen. Then came the excited shouts of, "Wait, wait, wait, go back, go back!" from an otherwise seeming tired wife. 

At first I thought that it was a preview for a major motion picture and was for once excited to go see a movie. Then I see it's been made for TV.  4 hours of happy Hogfather satire coming to an Ion channel near you. I at once said, "I want to see it." But YY was unsure if we got the Ion channel. My response: "but, I want to see it." (This was repeated several times). Upon which YY went ahead and scanned through the channels and indeed we do have the Ion channel. Oh happy joy! He forwarded on to when it would be playing and set it to record, apparently the Ion channel has a lot of paid programming and then some inspirational shows. . . and now the Hogfather :-). And now I am sharing with you the exciting news.

In the last 2 days I've played 2 games of Monopoly with my husband and another couple. First with my sister and brother-in-law and tonight with some friends from Florida visiting for the holiday. Both times YY won. Tonight he ended the game with all but 1 set of properties. He keeps saying that I played very well, but I still lost. I think we need to play a game of less strategy that I have a better chance of winning. I've never won a game of Monopoly. My brother Jeremy always wins. It's almost pointless to play against him. Oh well.

The nausea/tummy pain isn't quite as bad or as frequent, but it's still there. But I have been able to get out, do some shopping and some baking. I got all my turkey fixin's. I made up the brine so soak the bird in overnight, I also made cranberry sauce, stuffing (to be baked tomorrow) and 2 pumpkin pies. I used a different crust recipe this time and I wasn't very impressed when it came to rolling it out and getting it into the pan. Maybe I didn't have enough water in it, but it seemed to break very easily and was not at all easy to get in the pan. It'd better taste good. That's all I gotta say. Tomorrow I'll be cooking the bird, finishing the stuffing (which won't actually de stuffed into the bird) and making the gravy.

It started on Sunday morning. Maybe technically Saturday night. We had a party at our house for YY's sister and there was plenty of wine to partake of, especially my sister's homemade brews. She brought a bottle of plum wine and apple wine a.k.a. "trouble in a bottle" (it tastes so much like apple juice, you'd be finished with the bottle before you knew what hit you). We had quite a spread of food too including pretzels made by moi as well as deviled eggs. I apparently imbibed a little too freely of the wine and got sick. I think I was hung over Sunday morning (I was still quite nauseated), but aside from the alcoholic haze I still feel terrible. And it's been 2 whole days! My stomach is still achy and slightly nauseated. I don't have much of an appetite aside for bland and simple things like chicken broth and ramen. I also have hardly any energy. I stayed home from work yesterday, since I felt so crummy and I wanted to stay home today, but I figured I should at least try. Especially since I was scheduled to bleed cats most of the morning and it wouldn't be very kind to dump that and cleaning my rooms on the rest of the colony. So still feeling crummy I managed to make it through the morning and got my rooms cleaner, said hi to all my kitties (I think they missed me) and drew blood hourly for 3 hours from 4 cats. Then I went home. I couldn't last any longer, but didn't have to foist any hard labor on my colleagues (just my cats' pm meds) whom I'm sure are grateful. I decided to go ahead and go to the doctor, but that didn't help much. He gave me a Rx for an anti-nausea medicine and some samples of an acid reducer. He also told me to take some milk of magnesia in case it was mere constipation. And if I don't feel better within 3 days to come back. It could be some stomach virus that's been going around. I don't know, but I want it to go away. T-day is in 2 days and I've got turkey to purchase and prepare and pumpkin pies to make.

You gotta watch this. It's hilarious!

 For YY's birthday I had the whole day planned. Saturday morning he went to the church to get the sound system ready for this morning (we held services at Topeka West this morning as we're currently between buildings). He came home a bit before noon and got cleaned up. Then for lunch I took him to HuHot Mongolian Barbecue, his favorite restaurant in T-town. My original plan was to take him to my masseuse after lunch, but she was in KC for the afternoon. So instead we went to the Kansas History Museum for a couple hours. I'd never been there, so it was a nice little trip. We left there around 4 and I took him to work so he could meet all my cats and play with the kittens. I think that was his favorite thing the whole day :-). We probably spent an hour with the kitties and then headed home. I was waiting to get a call back from my masseuse when she got back into town, cuz I still wanted YY to get a massage. I was thinking aI might have to cancel and called her phone to leave a message to that effect. A few minutes later she called back and YY was able to get his massage after all. He was so nervous, because it was his first ever real massage. It was really cute. After that I had one last stop on the agenda. Cafe Wa in Lawrence. The best sushi restaurant in northeast Kansas. He got 3 rolls which he loved and couldn't finish, and I had teriyaki chicken and one roll, just to be experimenty. We also got some sake which was pretty good, I drank most of it (thimble after thimbleful) and YY drove home, even though I was perfectly sober. It takes more than a bottle of sake to get me intoxicated :-). YY had a great day and all day today has been telling folks what he got to do for his birthday. Quite satisfying. :-)

All this week my nose and frontal sinues have been congested. I've been blowing my nose constantly. Sneezing. Runny nose.  I feel crummy. But I'm sure it's just allergies. It'll be nice when I'm back to normal. Hopefully that'll be soon. I despise feeling this way.

YY's birthday is next Friday. I was planning on surprising him with a full day of stuff on that Saturday, but because of how the church is moving along, he'll need to work all that day. So instead I've had to move everything up to tomorrow. I've got several things planned, one of which I had to reschedule for later than I had hoped, but I think it'll still be doable. I can't say what I'm doing yet, cuz I don't want him to find out. But I think he's gonna have a great day.

I may have failed to mention that we got 60 kittens in at work a couple weeks ago.  The cuteness factor was off the charts. In naming them we chose Harry Potter characters, breakfast cereals and a few Hillbilly names. For example in my room of 10 kittens I've got Draco (Malfoy), Luna Lovegood, Neville (Longbottom), Cho Chang, Cornelius (Fudge), Martha Mae, Betty Lou, Willis, Kimberly, and (Tom) Riddle. They'll be going on a study to compare several kitten diets to see which one is the best for brain development, vision, metabolism, and overall health. Part of it is also to get AAFCO approval for the updated Science Diet kitten food. Last week all the kittens had electroretinograms (ERG) - fancy retinal scans to determine a baseline vision. This week they've all been getting MRI's to determine baseline brain development. They were being monitored really closely while under anesthesia and everyone did great for the ERG's, but yesterday Rita Skeeter didn't make it through the last part of her MRI. There were 3 scans, the first one was less than a inute the second one 12minutes and the last one 5 minutes. She did fine for the first two and was still breathing and her heart was beating nice and regular when checked after the second scan. But she stopped breating about 2 minutes after the last scan was started and she was unable to be revived. Apparantly she may have had a cardiomyopathy because on necrospy she was found to have a pretty large heart. She was a pretty small kitten and her heart took up most of her chest. It was a sad day for all of us today when we found out. She will be missed.

And the rest of the week's not going to be much of a picnic either. It started out ok. I had been planning on fully sanitizing my rooms at work, but I had been assigned 2 more rooms that also needed to be cleaned. So, full sanitization did not happen. The morning didn't seem to be going too bad, although I needed to weigh my kittens and was late in getting that accomplished. Sometime around 11:30am it happened. Noone was around so it was pretty quiet in the building. I was working on vacuuming when all of a sudden everything goes crazy. My world seems to speed up, the smallest movement I make seems like I'm racing, everything seems to get really loud and my thoughts are screaming to me. I know what's going on, but it doesn't really help. I was having a panic attack. To look at me, you wouldn't have noticed anything was wrong. I don't think I've ever interacted with anyone while I've been having an attack so I don't know if they'd notice something from talking to me. While it's happening I feel like I've gone crazy, my perception of time and sound is totally skewed. Adrenaline is pumping through my body and I feel very weird and illogically frightened. It lasted for probably 10-15 minutes. It comes on suddenly, then builds and builds and then is gone. I now know what's going on when it happens so I tell myself to be calm, that it'll go away. But it sounds like I'm almost yelling inside my head. At times I'm practically screaming (in my head) "Please God make it go away, dear Jesus make it go away."

This happened just a bit before lunch, by the time I saw another person it was over and I had to go weigh my kittens and was then able to have a quick lunch. For the rest of the day, I've been kind of in a haze. I was able to get the rest of my work done, but I was pretty much worthless for helping anyone else. Noone at work had any clue what had happened to me. And I was too embarrassed to say anything, for fear that they'd worry about me having more attacks or that I was faking it or something.

I've only had a handful of panic attacks in my lifetime. The first one I can remember as a child of about 12 or 13. It happened in the middle of the night as I had gotten up to go to the bathroom. I had no idea what was going on, and the crazy feelings were rather scary. It soon passed and I went back to bed. I think I tried to explain what happened to my mom, but she may have thought I was dreaming or something. It happened several more times as a child at night, then they seemed to just stop. The last one I had was probably 4 or 5 years ago. It happened when I was at work one night at the Emergency Clinic. Once again noone was around and thankfully the phone didn't ring during the episode, but while it was going on it was a bit frightening. Even though I know what's happening it's still almost terrifying. I have no idea what causes them, there doesn't seem to be any real trigger and since they're very few and far between, I don't notice any pattern to them. I can certainly tell you that I don't like them. Not one bit.

Last Sunday (the 9th) was our 1st wedding anniversary. To celebrate we took a road trip. We both took Friday off from work and headed out on Thursday evening. We had decided to go visit my family in Rochelle, IL and visiting Chicago. Thursday night we had decided to stay in Des Moines. We got there around midnight and it was rainy out. We got into our hotel room and lo and behold it was a smoking room, unbeknownst to us. The room reeked. And the hotel was full. There was one other room available and it too was smoking. The room also had not been cleaned properly. There was an 1/8" of dust on top of the TV closet/armoire thing and the ice bucket had a dirty liner, water and something floating in it. To top it off the window leaked. So our stay at the Des Moines Embassy Suites was very unsatisfactory. They offer breakfast in the morning and even that wasn't very good. The eggs were bland, the french toast sticks were stale, the fruit wasn't ripe. Granted that I didn't go through the made-for-you omelet line, but if they hadn't had the belgian waffle maker we would have gone hungry.

On the road again we got to Chicago around 5pm. On Friday. What should have been a 5 minute drive to our hotel (another Embassy Suites) became half an hour. And Mr. Audio had to pee. We finally found our hotel, but missed the entrance to the parking garage. He couldn't take it any longer and hopped out to find a bathroom while I slid over to the driver's side and drove around the block to get back to the garage entrance where he hopped back in the car. Then it took another 5 minutes at least to find a parking spot. That garage is also shared by AMC theatres, so movie goers park there and it was Friday evening. Our stay in Chicago was much better than in Des moines. The staff were very corteous and helpful. Our room was nice and clean and the breakfast was good too. And we had a room on the very top floor, it was cool. What's really funny is that there was a convention going on at the hotel. What kind of convention, you may ask? A trans-gender convention. Oh yeah. There were some reeaaally ugly "women" all over the place. There were even doctors and therapists and specialists there. What's really ironic is that we honeymooned in Trinidad, CO; the sex-change capital of the world. Of course we didn't know about this until after we'd made all the reservations and bought the train tickets. The train stops in Trinidad mid-morning, that's how we picked it. I'm wondering if this is going to become some sort of running gag. Every year we run into a bunch of "it's", as Mr A. calls them. 

While in Chicago we took a walk down part of the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave). And we took a carriage ride. I'd always wanted to do that, it's so romantic. Then we stopped for dinner at a local fast food/sit down italian restaurant called Go Roma. You order the food at the front counter and then they bring it to your table. The food was fast and it was pretty good too. There's too many Italians in Chicago for a restaurant to make bad italian food and stay in business. Then we took a taxi down to Navy Pier, rode the giant Ferris Wheel and took a half hour harbor cruise. It was a really fun night. The next morning we walked from our hotel room to the Sears tower. It was farther than Mr. Audio thought. He was dripping by the time we found it, I hadn't even broken a sweat. It was probably only a 1-2 mile walk. Along the way I say a woman coming out of cafe with a netted in stroller containing 2 cats. We happen to have a couple of those strollers at work for transported kitties, but I had never seen one used in public before. It was pretty funny. Mr Audio had never been to Chicago before and he really enjoyed the Sears Tower. We took a toaxi back to the hotel and then headed on our way to Rochelle, which is about an hour and a half west of Chicago (back in the direction we had come). 

We got to Grandma's house around 6pm and ate dinner with G-ma, my parents and my brother and sister-in-law. It was a nice family dinner. The next day was Sunday our anniversary and G-ma's 82nd birthday. We stayed Saturday night at the Rochelle's Comfort Inn & Suites, which happened to be the biggest room we had stayed in yet. It was an apartment. I kid you not. It had a full kitchen with full sized fridge, dishwasher, trash compactor stove and oven; living room, dining room, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and a balcony that went the entire length of the place. It was a $200 a night room which we got for about $80. And it was sweet. Sunday morning we met up with the family again at church and got to visit with the pastor who married us. He and his wife were pleasantly surprised to see us. It was so nice. For lunch we had a picnic with my brother & sis-in-law and some of their buddies, then headed back to G-ma's house to say bye to the rest of the family before heading back to T-town. The next day we remembered that we still had our wedding cake topper in the freezer. So I took it out to thaw so we could have it for dessert (tradition you know). It wasn't that bad (it had been vacuum sealed by some friends of ours), but it definitely wasn't as tasty as it had originally been. 

We've been working in the basement today. Mr. Audio and a friend have been putting up new sheet rock and I finally got the rest of the wallpaper border residue off the walls. And I made a batch of pretzels for the boys. I've also been doing some much needed laundry. There's still one small section of drywall to install and mud, then it'll need to be sanded smooth, primed and painted. Of course we still need to decide on what color we're going to put down there. 

Next weekend is our 1st anniversary. I'm taking Friday off, so I'll have a 3 day work week. Sweet! And I'll miss the team building meeting/exercises *oh darn*.  We're thinking of taking a road trip to Illinois and visiting some of my family in the process. We'll leave Thursday evening and take a nice leisurely drive. Unfortunately we'll have to be back in Topeka on Sunday, cuz I'll have to go back to work on Monday morning bright and early.

3 day weekend! WooHoo! I'm so excited. Why? Because I don't have to work on Monday. Yay!

Since my last post, I've gotten another year older. That's right, my birthday was last Saturday (the 25th) and I am now 28. For my birthday, Mr Audio and I went first to Family Sports Center and rode go-karts. I had never been go-karting before. It was a lot of fun. Then we came home, took a quick shower and got ready for dinner. My dear hubby had made reservations for Chez Yasu the only french restaraunt in town. It's owned and run by a husband and wife, the wife I think is French and the husband/chef is Japanese. I'd never been there, but I've been wanting to go there for a long time. The food was amazing. I think we're going to try to make reservations for Valentine's day, it'll be so romantic. DH also gave me some new Wustoff knives and a new digital cooking thermometer (I melted my last one *sad face*). My sis gave me a cool little single serving tea set. I got flowers and chocolates from the lovely homeofmyown and a few hours later from my sister-in-law (I was pleasantly surprised by both deliveries of which the same guy made saying "it's busy here today"). And my co-worker took me out for a belated birthday lunch today (payday today :-) ). All in all, I'd have to say that 28 is shaping up to be a good age.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are supposed to be my easy days at work. Days where I don't have to do quite as much cleaning. THe problem is that Monday they moved a bunch of cats around emptying 2 rooms on the tour path. Those rooms will eventually have kittens in them, so the rooms needed to be sanitized. There's actually 4 rooms that needed to be sanitized, but only 2 that had been occupied. So yesterday morning I emptied the rooms of furniture and vacuumed all the dirt/litter/hair. I didn't get finished with that stuff until it was about lunch time. After lunch I went to try and tackle the sanitizing (I had one girl helping me for about an hour until she had to go work on an assignment). This included spraying all the horizontal surfaces with disinfectant and allowing them to sit while we worked on cleaning the windows (with professional equipment, telescopic squeegee and window sponge even). There's a ton of glass in the new building and I think it took me almost 2 hours just to get the windows done. Then I had to wipe down the surfaces that had been sprayed and run the floor scrubbing machine (which I hate). I didn't get finished until close to 3:30 and I still had evening meds to give, so I didn't get out of there until almost 4.  And I only got half of the rooms done. Very frustrating. They need a cleaning crew to come in every 2-4 weeks to sanitize the rooms. It just takes way too long for us to do them. And even if we do manage to get the cleaning done, then we have no time to work with the kitties.

Yesterday evening kind of made up for the day. I went out to Paisaino's with windandtherain and then we went to see Stardust. It turned out to be a really good movie. And now I want to read the book :-). 

Today was a bit better, although I was stuck in dentals most of the morning and wasn't able to get all my cleaning done until after lunch. But it did get done and I was able to weigh a couple rooms of cats. We also got new room assignments this afternoon (for tomorrow) and I think I'm gonna like these ones better. All three rooms are in one area, 1 quad (there are usually 4 rooms per quad, hence the name, but one of my rooms is extra big for retired kitties). And I have fewer cats that I have to medicate. It's just my retired guys now, and they're all really good. Before I was having to give laxatone to 2 kitties every day and a stool softener capsule twice a week and they hated it. I think the rest of the week will go much smoother. Although it'll be better once we all have our own vacuums. Right now we're having to share and there's been some vacuum stealing, which has not gone over well. 

Thankfully the weeks past the midpoint and Saturday's only 2 days away, during which I will relax and attend a bridal shower for homeofmyown. And Monday I will be getiing a much needed massage (this has been one crazy, stressful week). On a much happier note, the insurance check for Mr. Miagi came today. Woohoo! Now I need to schedule a time to get him fixed up.

We were talking about the insurance estimates for our cars this morning at work and some folks don't really want to get their cars fixed as it would cost more than the vehicle's worth. But they did want the money that was estimated to repair the damage. One girl called the insurance company and asked if that was possible. And apparantly in the state of Kansas they have to give the owner the choice of just taking the money or having the insurance company pay a body shop. So now, the insurance company is going to cut us all checks for our estimates to do with as we please. So know I can have TC Concepts repair my car for the $500 he estimated (and if it's a little more it won't be a problem) and then use the rest to whittle down a credit card. I'm glad now that I was parked in that lot. This money'll be a real blessing. Even if it'll take 3 weeks to get to us.

Somebody from the contractor's insurance company finally came on Thursday to look at all the cars that got oversprayed with paint. They looked over everybody's cars and then said they would send us all an estimate which we would give to a body shop to do the necessary repairs. We got the estimate in the mail on Saturday. If you recall I had my borther-in-law make me an estimate for what it would cost to repair and his estimate was $500. The insurance's estimate was $1300!! I was not expecting that at all. They're definitely not gonna just blow us off and do the cheapest thing possible. They're gonna do what really needs to be done and do it right and pay for it all. And the guy said that if the body shop thought it would be more that they would just need top call and talk to the insurance company, but that it would get taken care of. Pretty sweet, huh? Mr. Miagi's not gonna have spots once this gets taken care of. Now I just need to give the estimate to my brother-in-law (TC Concepts, he's awesome).

This is amazing!

One of my kitties at work is sick. Well not sick per se but more injured. He had a dental yesterday morning and when he came back to his room, the rest of the kitties were doing just fine. Maybe still a little slow from the anesthetic, but otherwise normal. But poor Junebug didn't look very good. He was moving fairly slow and his neck looked kind of swollen and his 3rd eyelids were raised up some. He looked like he felt like crap. So I took a closer look at him and he had air under his skin around his neck/chin (it felt crackly). What most likely happened was his trachea was damaged from the endotracheal tube and air was escaping from his windpipe. He was in an oxygen cage all last night. Today he's looking a little better and he's off the O2, but he's still in ICU. He's throat not as swollen as it was last night but you can still feel crackles all over his neck and some on his head. Poor little guy. He's such a sweetie too. He's staying the night in ICU again to keep him quiet but he might get to go back to his room tomorrow.