Tale of a Shooting Star…

So, I broke down and called to make a doctor’s appointment today. I’ve been having pain in my left hip joint on and off for a couple of weeks. I’m fairly sure it’s bursitis (swollen bursa sacs in the joint – the bursae help lubricate the joint, I think), as I was diagnosed with that back in high school. I’ve had problems in the past on the 4-hour car ride to my parents’ house and it used to set in around hour 3. The doctor told me before that I could take a mega-dose of four 200mg tablets of ibuprofen before the ride to help keep the pain at bay. I figured I had it licked when I didn’t have any pain on the way up to Connecticut.

The past couple of days were okay, until… youch! There it was, starting before lunch and lasting most of the day. Now, you have to understand that I have three strikes against me for developing a problem in my hips. I’m a side sleeper (yes, I know I should sleep with a pillow between my knees, but that kinda hinders the snuggling process a tad :wink:), I cross my legs when I sit – left over right AND I’m a computer programmer by day and a stitcher by night, so I sit on my behind all day.

Anyway, we’ll see what the doctor says. I’m sure I need more exercise, but when I have trouble just standing up at times, it’s tough to make myself walk normally and DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) is right out. I’m glad that I was able to get in with the P.A. on Friday. I like her a lot, as she helped me deal with my migraines by getting me into physical therapy for my neck and shoulders and giving me the prescription that will knock out the bad ones once they’ve started.

But, I digress. And I need to get off of the computer for the night. Those models aren’t going to stitch themselves (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it :lol:)!

There’s nothing much to report. We drove to southern New Jersey on Saturday afternoon to visit with Terry’s parents. We got home around 10:00 PM, watching some T.V. and went to sleep.

I did several loads of laundry today whilst model stitching for hours. There’s a lot more of that to come, as there are several parts to my current assignment and at just under 33% completeion right now, I’m think that I’m a bit behind at the moment. I have a feeling that this coming Labor Day weekend will be a marathon stitching weekend. With any luck, I can complete another 33% of the project. Completion of all parts is too much to hope for, even in an extended weekend. I’d be hurting after a true marathon stitch like that!

As usual, I can’t share my progress with you. Sorry! Someday I’ll be able to post pictures, but in the meantime, you’ll have to be complacent with my vague updates. LOL.

I have to chuckle to myself at the recent posts on other stitcher’s blogs about trying to get back to a rotation. I’ve truly given up on that for the rest of the year, I believe. It’s pretty much emergency and deadline stitching at this point, with the model project taking priority, then a small baby sampler due at the end of September (which I don’t have a prayer of finishing in time). After that, it will be the Christmas Ornament exchange from the Stitching Bloggers Exchanges board. And then two gifts for Christmas time. Plus I’ll have to finish all of the ornaments I’ve stitched this year into a giftable form. That will be a marathon finishing weekend. 😉

So, yeah, any sort of rotation or stitching for myself is completely out of the window until 2006. It’s already been a couple of months since I’ve finished stitching anything for myself anyway, so I’m used to it by now! This seems to be how every fall progresses for me since I’ve gotten back into hard core stitching. 🙄

In the hospital the relatives gathered in the waiting room, where their family member lay gravely ill.

Finally, the doctor came in looking tired and somber. “I’m afraid I’m the bearer of bad news,” he said as he surveyed the worried faces. “The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant. It’s an experimental procedure, very risky but it is the only hope. Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the brain yourselves.”

The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a great length of time, someone asked, “Well, how much does a brain cost?”

The doctor quickly responded, “$5,000 for a male brain, and $200 for a female brain.”

The moment turned awkward. Men in the room tried not to smile, avoiding eye contact with the women, but some actually smirked.

A man unable to control his curiosity, blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, “Why is the male brain so much more?”

The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, “It’s just standard pricing procedure. We have to mark down the price of the female brains, because they’ve actually been used.”

We’ve finally managed to get someone out to take down the 4 trees (2 are completely dead; 3 could have hit the house) we’ve been trying to get rid of for a year. The two poplars are the dead ones, of course. The other two are hickory and oak, so should make some nice firewood for someone, hopefully.

One of the two guys climbed the hickory tree to cut it in segments because it’s just feet from the shed and the house. That was scary to watch, since I looked out the window just after he cut off the first large segment and he was clinging to the tree, waiting for it to stop swaying. He was really far up (ended up going even further) and it wasn’t a terribly wide tree. 😯

They felled each of the two tall trees along the driveway with just one cut a piece. What a thud those made hitting the ground! It’s a unique sound, with sound waves resonating through the wood to create one tone at the same time that the ground resonates with another tone. I can’t even explain it much less begin to reproduce it.

The large, VERY dead poplar at the front shattered into myriad pieces everytime they cut off a major segment. What a mess to cleanup! Terry said that he saw one of the guys scoop something out of the first part they cut and put it into another tree. I asked them later when they took a lunch break what it was, turns out there were baby squirrels in the tree! Hopefully, the mother will come back for them.

For just two men working on four trees, they went pretty quickly (less than 6 hours). I have to say that I’m rather impressed. Definitely not an easy job. I feel like such a … girl. 😆 The owner will be back to grind out the stumps and settle the bill another day. I already transferred the funds out of savings, so I really don’t care. He was able to give us some advice on relatively fast growing, but hardy and strong, trees to plant as replacements.

I had to lock poor Phoebe pup in our bedroom for a good bit of the time they were here. She was having a conniption with all of the noise of the trees coming down and the chipping. I felt bad about that, but it kept her from barking, for the most part. Combine a barking dog with Terry on a conference call with consultants on speakerphone and it just doesn’t work. The round ball of sound energy waves that come out of her mouth and assault my eardrums when she’s close to me and at just the right position is quite amazing. I guess today is an audibly enriched day. 😉

The landscape of my front yard is so changed now. It seems barren and empty and … *gasp* … sunny! Makes me want to cry, actually. 😥 *sniff* I’m very attached to my trees (and my privacy!) and it’s been a long, upsetting saga with this lot since day 1. We started with the only fully wooded lot in the development. I sat and cried my eyes out when they first cleared it to start building. And now we’re having to take down half of the trees that they left in the front. We paid a $5K premium for a wooded lot, another $4K charge to clear it for building and now another $1K to clear more of it. *sigh* Next will be probably be another $1K to install new trees. Maybe more, since I’m going to want something bigger than just the little puny starter trees that will take 15+ years to create reasonable shade and privacy. *bigger sigh*

Gosh, am I whiney or what? Sorry about that! I feel like I run the risk of sounding like Eeyore sometimes. Honestly, though, life is good, in general. I’m thankful for what I have, including the money to be able to remove my beloved trees and the ability to replace them.

On the first day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the
door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I
will give you a life span of twenty years.”

“The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and
I’ll give you back the other ten.”

So God agreed.

On the second day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain
people, do monkey tricks, make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty
year life span.”

The monkey said, “How boring, monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t
think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?”

And God agreed.

On the third day God created the cow. God said, “You must go to the
field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have
calves and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life
span of sixty years.”

The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for
sixty years. Let me have twenty and I’ll give back the other forty.”

And God agreed again.

On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play,
marry, and enjoy your life. I’ll give you twenty years. ”

Man said, “What? Only twenty years! Tell you what, I’ll take my
twenty, and the forty the cow gave back and the ten the monkey gave
back and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?”

“Okay,” said God, “You’ve got a deal.”

So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and enjoy
ourselves; for the next forty years we slave in the sun to support
our family; for the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain
the grandchildren; and for the last ten years we sit on the front
porch and bark at everyone.

Life has now been explained to you.

Well, I finally found an answer. It took a while, but I finally found Mr. Unky via the back door that is Can Hed Comix. This was his free comic strip that is also currently unavailable. Sounds like the guy had a rough time trying to keep Unkymoods afloat.

Here’s what Mr. Unky (a.k.a. Marc Lutz) had to say:

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Hi there.
Remember me? I’m the guy who created Can Hed Comix a long while ago, and I used to post the comic strips on this web site. Well, I’m back, and I have news for those of you who are interested. Here’s the nutshell version.

UnkyMoods.com is no longer in existence. It had a good run. It made people happy. Ultimately, the hosting issues and the overall programming issues made me unhappy, and that’s just not proper. It’s either going to fade away for good, or I’m going to sell it. Any takers?

Ducks In Lodi is about to celebrate its one-year anniversary with the Lodi News-Sentinel. It has gone from being published twice a month (or every other week) to being published weekly. Huzzah for the quackers!

Can Hed Comix is still in existence, but only drawn when I have the time and inspiration. I’ll be working on setting up the archives of the old stuff for you die-hard fans.

That’s about it. More soon!

– Marc, 11:18 PM

I can sure sympathize with you, Marc! I can only imagine the kind of bandwidth needs Unkymoods had. If you had an email address somewhere (and I will go digging for one after posting this), I would like to write and talk to you about your experience with Unkymoods. I’d like to explore what possibilities might lie ahead for such a great service. Maybe sell the mood sets off to blog owners at a certain set price? Or find someone with unlimited bandwidth (this would unfortunately not be me) to take over? Or find a way to fund it with advertising? Or something?

If you happen to read this, please contact me at jenna at magees dot net (I’m sure you can form this into a reasonable email address 🙂 ).