Phoenix Rising

Ooh! The new Batman Trailer is out!

I’m STILL directing my second episode of Dixie Stenberg…I’m on the FINAL few steps. Adding music, polishing my assistant director’s stuff, putting everything together and shipping it off for review.

Dixie is a show set in the 1940s (during and just after The War, y’see). The music and sound effects should reflect that to some extent. Yeah, the music…

Music is always the hardest part of directing an audio drama. I like how Decoder Ring Theatre does it…they don’t bother with mood music. Just interstitial stuff for scene transitions. But this show has had music for the first 45 episodes, I’m not about to change it for the last 5.

But finding emotionally compelling music that fits a particular type of scene is VERY difficult, when most (nay, perhaps all) of the music available is…much more upbeat than you’re looking for.

ARGH. Fucking music.

After 4 physical therapy appointments, my arm has significantly improved. At the first appt., the PT determined exactly what range of motion I was lacking. It was 15 degrees worse than my right arm in both extension and bending. What that means is, if my right arm could go to a 160 degree angle, my left arm could only go to 145 degrees when extending. And bending, it was like 30 and 45 or something like that. Now, it is significantly better. They haven’t measured, but I am pretty sure that the bending part is back to 100%, in that I can touch my chest with only a little tiny bit of pain, and that’s muscular (I know what that feels like). Extending still isn’t at 100%, but it’s probably at like 99%. As of 4PM today, I am able to crack it to loosen it up, which wasn’t the case for two weeks. I’m not sure that’s good for the elbow, but it feels better after I do it, so…

Seems like there are two major issues with the joint:

1> Muscular. If I hold my hand on the desk palm down (like when typing), the muscle that is dab smack on top of my forearm is VERY tight. As in, a HUGE knot of muscle. Well, smaller now that she’s working on it. That was the bending problem.

2> Ligament. It appears I may have stretched/torn/done something to the ligaments on the outside of my elbow to cause the extension to hurt so much.

So, to sum up, improving very quickly.

Bah, the Penguins lost to the fucking Canadiens. The 16th seeded (that’s out of 16 teams that made it to the playoffs) team. The Pens just handed pucks to Cammilleri, who would then shoot and score. Halak was pretty damned good in goal for the Habs too. Crosby and Malkin teamed up on the “SUCK THE MOST” team, and the rest of the Penguins just decided to watch how badly they would choke.

Bah.

Evidently, my family is interested in seeing who can injure themselves the worst.

Serena is a regular contributor to the purchase of band-aids, with regular cuts and scratches from a variety of sources (many of them the cat).

La femme in an effort to help with dealing with Snowmageddon (is that the current term these days?) got tendinitis in her elbow AND cut her hand on Easter Sunday.

So, to trump her, I mowed the lawn.

In our back yard, we have a hill that is about 6-7 feet tall…when I say hill, I mean rocky cliff. Well, grassy cliff. ANYWAY. My shoes are a little old, and don’t really have a lot of traction. If any. I pushed the lawnmower down the hill and let it go (turned off, of course). It stopped well outside the location I was coming down. Then I started walking down. And my feet slipped out from under me, and I landed firmly on my butt and elbow. My butt has sufficient padding to absorb this shock. My elbow? Ehn, not so much.

End result: hairline fracture of my left elbow (I guess the top of my radius? not sure which is which), which looked all the world like an inch long potato chip came off my bone.

That’s right, I broke my arm mowing the lawn.

*facepalm*scream in pain as elbow bends more than it wants*

Man oh man, that was harder than I remembered. Just got done with the first draft of Dixie 45, and, well, it was certainly a challenge. Of course, a lot of life issues got in the way, delaying the release somewhat. Particularly tonight, as I attempt to de-anger myself after the fuckheads in the Boy Scouts really set me off. Anyway, Draft 1 of Dixie 45 is out to the writer, previous director and my assistant director/co-director however you want to phrase it.

Some of you may be aware that my son is a member of the Boy Scouts of America. Recently they went on a trip to the Antietam National Battlefield. This has led to some … interesting developments that have thrown me for a little bit of a loop, and thus my posting.

On the way down, evidently there was some friction between Austin and his ‘friend’ Brendan. Some of you may remember Brendan as a boy Austin made friends with several years ago, until Austin threw a snowball at a sign and it splattered on Brendan, at which point they “broke up” for like 2 years. This year, they finally became friends again. Until this trip. They rode down in Brendan’s mom’s car, and the stories differ here, but in summary Austin and Brendan so annoyed the third boy in the car (who I consider to be an excellent boy) that this boy on his own decided to switch seats so he was in the middle so he didn’t have to put up with the two of them poking and prodding and annoying each other. On the way back, Austin got stuck in a completely different car, without any entertainment because everything was in Brendan’s Mom’s car, for 4 hours with kids who didn’t know him and who were reading/playing the DS or something like that. So, 4 hours of boredom on the way back.

The time at the campsite was evidently fun enough. They took a tour of the battlefield, and one of the troop’s adult leaders discussed the history of the battlefield and of the Civil War. Or as the speaker might have considered saying, The War of Northern Aggression. In other words, a very Confederate States of America viewpoint. I discussed the history lesson with Austin on the way home from the meeting tonight (more on that in a minute) and his understanding was that the North unilaterally declared war on the South because they didn’t like slavery.

Of course, it’s not that simple. In fact, according to CivilWar.com, April 12, 1861 was the first shot fired in the war. By General Pierre Beauregard, of the Confederate States of America Army. That’s right, the South fired first. 7 days later, Lincoln orders blockades of Southern ports, limiting their logistic support, thus severely damaging the CSA’s ability to fight the war, and in the end probably winning the war for the Union. Technically, the Union didn’t start aggressive action until Feb 22, 1862, when General Order #1 was enacted to have the Union Army begin offensive action against the CSA.

So, the history lesson is flat out lies. During the meeting tonight, they’re discussing the trip, and how it was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War (at least the bloodiest in the north, sayeth Wikipedia). The tactical victor of this battle is unclear, but the strategic victory was clearly that of the Union, as Lee retreated back to Virginia to lick his wounds and regroup. Lincoln used this ‘victory’ as political motivation to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. None of this is discussed in the meeting, but is given here for context. The Troop Leader, the adult in charge of the Troop, the big cheese, says as an aside, “The wrong side won.” In the context of the discussion, it’s my belief that that he was referring to the whole war, not this specific battle. In either case, it seems to indicate to me an agreement with the Confederates, not the Union.

In summary, the adults on the trip lied about who started the war and the troop leader is sympathetic to slave-owners.

I perhaps over-generously emailed the Adult Troop Leader, and asked him to clarify his remarks. I expect he will fail to justify them in a way that I find at all agreeable. In which case this last meeting was the last Boy Scout event Austin will attend.

1> Sleep is going well…not as well as I had hoped, but better than it was. I’m able to get up earlier, stay awake better (although not flawlessly). Random points out quite correctly that the CPAP is not a cure-all for the sleep problems I have, but it’s better than, say, NOT having it.

2> Pendant is interesting. Jeffrey is no doubt a little miffed that I’m already behind on my first episode, but there have been some ameliorating factors, to wit:

3> Austin just spent the weekend barfing his guts out. We took him to the hospital yesterday at 5PM, he got home at 11PM, after having fluids applied through an IV. This helped immensely, although he’s still not quite eating at full bore yet.

4> Work is busy as hell. I think my boss is trying to train me to his way of thinking. I’m not sure I want to live in that headspace, it’s very focused on a certain skillset I’m not sure I’m interested in having. But were I to move on to another larger company (say, one that starts with “Goo”) in a QA position, what I’m learning would be valuable.

5> My in-laws were in over Easter weekend, which of course is when both kids had this stomach thing (although Serena didn’t have it nearly as bad as Austin). So, while la femme took Austin to the hospital, I had to cook Easter dinner and pretend to be nice to the in-laws while we ate without those two. Blech.

6> In the middle of the year 2000, I acquired a TiVo in a contest where you had to write an essay and if you were one of ten people picked per day, you got a free TiVo. Of course, you had to pay for the service, but the $250 buy-in was taken care of. Well, that TiVo is STILL KICKING. I had to call tech support to address a channel line-up issue tonight, and the guy was all ‘Holy crap, series 1? Dude, have you seen the new shit?’ (he didn’t use those words, but I could tell). I say that and I could be lying, as it’s failing to do a necessary task right now as part of the tech support incident I just mentioned. (ah, while I was typing this, it finished).

7> I have a lot of creative ideas kicking around in my head, none of which will probably come to fruition. There’s a Seminar short for Pendant, there’s a Mini-Series for Pendant, there’s a web game idea which would require months to years of programming to get to the level of complexity I desire, there’s a vague idea for a book (which will absolutely never happen), there’s a vague idea for an online D&D game in the Ptolus universe. I could go on, but I won’t.

8> Austin’s doing Boy Scouts and actually being motivated to do it. I still object strongly to a lot of their philosophy (for instance, the boy Must Practice Religion, and No Gays Allowed). But if he sticks with it through to Eagle Scout, it will no doubt be good for him.

9> The pets are doing pet-ly things. The cat seems to be interested in jumping like 3 feet in the air to get at reflections from the plant light, and the dog is intent upon wreaking puppylike havoc wherever he can.

10> La femme is the same as always. She’s trying out her newest hobby, cooking, which has led to some…interesting meals. She doesn’t start small. Her biggest dish so far in terms of complexity is probably beef bulgoki, a Korean dish like a burrito made in a lettuce leaf instead of a tortilla.

Anyway, that’s where it’s at right now.

For those of you following the continuing saga of the sleepytiger, I got my report when I got to the 2nd sleep study where they attached a mask to my nose and pumped air into my face. Here are the highlights from the report:

italics are from the first sleep center visit
normal text is my thoughts on the subject.

Patient slept for 354 minutes out of 442 minutes in bed for a sleep efficiency of 80%.
Certainly felt worse than that.

This consisted of 21% stage I, 68% stage II, 0% stage III, 0% stage IV, and 12% stage REM sleep
No wonder I’m tired, III and IV are the parts that make you NOT TIRED.

The REM Latency was prolonged at 159 minutes
IT TOOK ME THREE HOURS to get REM sleep? HOLY CRAP! OK 2.5 hours, whatever.

The respiratory channels recorded a total of 489 apneas and hypopneas with an overall Apnea Hypopnea index of 82.9 per hour.
30 is considered severe. I have just under 83. Yeah, that pretty much explains it all.

…oxyhemoglobin saturation to a nadir of 86%
Not bad, says the guy at the second sleep study. Seems pretty good to me, too.

So, after the second appointment, where I was hooked up to a mask, I have this to say:

DUDE. Yeah, this mask thing will fucking help bigtime. I didn’t have a chance to get a whole night’s sleep with the mask set correctly, but based on his chart, I had about 2 hours of really effective mask usage. And I was so much more awake today than usual. I expect that once I get it set right at home, I’ll be able to get my plan moving.

Not that any of you freaks read my posts on my actual site, but I’m changing hosts from godaddy.com, which limits me too much to dreamhosts, which theoretically does not have these limits.  This may result in strange behaviors over the next two weeks.  Or maybe not.