Scrappy Blog

Yesterday was my revved-up "I’m gonna accomplish something!" day.  So I set out to pull the carpet from the third bedroom (which we use as an exercise room)… a job which required clearing up rest of house so there was room to put furniture from that room, moving said furniture, then starting the dusty, gross task of pulling out carpet that’s got at least 15 years worth of dirt, spills, mildew, etc ground down into it.

Midway through the task, there’s a popping noise from somewhere, and a few of the household lights get brighter while whole swaths of the rest of the house go dark.  And a bit of a burnt smell.  Oh, dear.

The circuit that supports the internet connection seems to be dead, so after doing the standard checks (crawl through attic looking for anything smoking or burning, check box for blown breakers or signs of damage, go through house cataloging what’s affected and looking for signs of damage), I used the phone to google for an electrician with weekend hours.  Found a pleasant company with good BBB ratings and arranged for someone to come out.

Before the electrician got here, a Reliant truck came cruising down the street.  Seems the problem was some fairly serious incident at the transformer, not at my house. One phase of our two-phase power was out.  The burning smell was probably something in my house reacting badly to the unbalanced power (the remaining phase was running slightly hot at 140 v instead of the 110-120 we expect). It took them over six hours to repair it. 

Meanwhile my electrician appeared, did due diligence to make sure the house wouldn’t burn down, and while he was out there we discussed several other things I’ve needed to do for the house.  He wrote up a contract for us for bringing the circuit box and ground wire up to code, installing a whole-house surge protector, and dropping a couple new circuits into key areas of the house… we will do that work next week.  So it wasn’t such a waste of his time or ours.

That’s our excitement for the week, I guess.  Today I will finish the carpet job…

The hospital where I work has a large indoor atrium area, with a central fountain, big sunroof, scattered tables and chairs, guy playing the piano, etc.  A pleasant place to pause if I have a little time between meetings.

So today I was sitting at one of the tables, with my back to the fountain.  I hear a woman behind me, bitching at her kids:  "Don’t play in the fountain!  I told you not to play in the fountain!"  *splash*  "See, I told you you shouldn’t play in the fountain or you’ll fall in and start bleeding like that man did!"

So I spin around to see that an elderly gentleman has tripped on the edge of the fountain and fallen in.  And lazy Mom – in addition to not bothering to restrain her own children – hasn’t made a move to help him.

So of course a half-dozen others of us did help him, got him out of the fountain and into a wheelchair and down to the ER to be checked out (and given something dry to wear) and got staff in to clean up the puddles of water, and so on.  And the whole time I’m involved with this (staying around long enough to ensure the cleanup was complete, so no one else slipped in the water), whinyMom was there in the background, berating her brats.

I’m sure they’ll turn out wonderfully. In sociopath terms, that is. 
 

One of the dishes I make in advance and heat up during the week is this sort of florentine-ish stew – chunks of chicken, browned with some masala spices, then stewed with onion, mushroom, spinach, cream cheese, and chicken broth.  It all comes together into this savory, creamy sauce which is very tasty over a pile of egg noodles.

But you know, when it’s just come out of the fridge to be reheated, it looks less smooth and creamy and more… gloppish.  Green and gloppish.  And when I drop a big scoop of it into the bowl it sort of falls with a hearty glorp. 

It really does look like the generic green gloopy food you might include as the horror cafeteria item in some real-life or cartoon comedy….

Looks like we’ll be going to the Netherlands for Thanksgiving week.  Anyone know of any fun stuff to do in Groningen (the uni town) or in Amsterdam (in Winter)?  Would we need a vehicle?  How about good places to stay in Amsterdam?

Hey, I haven’t posted in weeks.  This seemed like a conversation-starter.  Less boring than work, street reconstruction, fence-building, housework, and the other sorts of things that seem to occupy my time lately.

I dreamed last night that a strange cat had kittens in my bedroom closet.  They were really cute kittens.  I spent the entire dream scrambling around trying to find appropriate food and drink and so on for Momma-cat, who I figured must be starving to death if she’d been trapped in my closet having kittens without anyone knowing.

Oh, and   and   had their triplets last night!

Their names are:
Tadpole
Teddy-bear
Jim-Ben

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise….

Early this AM, someone at my employer emailed a solicitation to sign a political email petition.  To a large usergroup – not the whole institution but to a mailing list that included a fair number of directors and VPs.

Yup, you know what happened.

A half dozen emails saying "please remove me from this mailing list" appeared, before the first "please stop hitting reply all to ask to be removed" started appearing. 

You know the routine.

I’m happy to say that the guy who maintains the email list caught the whole thing within 20 emails.  Killed the list, so no further posts could be sent.  Then a few hours later a email went out from the powers-that-be which very publicly spanked the individual who had started the whole thing for (1) using a user group list inappropriately, and (2) sending a politically-oriented email at work.  There was a strong implication that such behavior can be considered a firing offense.

Competence and a politics-free workplace: Perhaps that’s why Methodist was ranked #7 on Fortune’s "Best Places to Work" report this year?

Receipts I have sitting around for things I planted in the garden (as best I remember…)

Documentation… boring

Whew, I haven’t posted in a while!  My thoughts these days seem to fit better into the one-line format that is twitter/facebook.

But…

I just accepted a new job.  This is a Good Thing as the old job went away in August and I’ve been scraping along with short-term contract work since then.  

I will be working with Methodist Hospital System* in a new department that basically helps clinical staff – particularly physicians – work effectively with IT.  Down the road is a big planned electronic medical record implementation; in the meantime there’s a slew of interesting projects involving automating standard computerized order sets in the hospital, setting up "single-sign-on" systems, and so on.  They’re actually paying me a tad more than I made at my last job and the benefits are clearly better.  And hopefully working for a massive hospital system will be a bit more stable than working for a startup!

I go in tomorrow to do all the paperwork, get my ID photo taken (resisting a friend’s suggestion to wear a Santa hat in the photo) and do the employee health thing (shot records, etc).  I officially start work on the 22nd December!

*assuming I can pass their drug test this time… I’ve been avoiding poppy seeds most carefully in anticipation

From ciaracat 

If you saw me in a police car, what would you think I got arrested for? Answer, then if you want, post to your own journal and see how many crimes you get accused of.

(No fair looking at other comments first.)

By way of

1. Stop talking about politics for a moment.
2. Post a reasonably sized picture in your LJ, not under a cut tag, of something pleasant – something that has nothing to do with politics .
3. Include these instructions, and share the love.

Last week I constructed this rope-wrapped pole to let the beasties climb something indoors. Here you see Gracie has found the top while Judy watches from below.

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