Done last week (20090520-27)

[mdlbear]

0520 We
  * up 6:20; W=189.6; drugs, nose; coffee, C; teeth
    ! pleased about the weight
  * Water day! (every two weeks now)
  * 10:45 Colleen gets stitches out
  & Target with Colleen for mostly nighties, bras, T-shirts.
    No suitable shirts for me, but that's not unusual.
  & Made chicken salad for lunch.
  & Much less worried about $couple, at least for now.
  * pick up cleaned bedding   x(may be a good idea to re-dry at home)
  & Trader Joe's
  * Wed May 20  	0763  	Depart SEATTLE TACOMA WA (SEA) at 2:15 PM
    Arrive in SAN JOSE CA (SJC) at 4:25 PM
  & Good friends, good conversations, a little noodling
  * Bed ~12:15ish
  *- mention OSCon to Callie: http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon

0521 Th
  * up 6:27; W=190.6; drugs, nose, teeth; 
  * make sure C&N are up by 10ish
  * 3pm YD has a dentist appointment.  She can take the bus home
  * 3:30pm TGl concert at White Blossom
  * 8ish TGq rehearsal

0522 Fr
  * 10:00 take Colleen, Tessara over to con
  * BANK: make deposits (on the way back)
  * 0427 reserve Baycon rooms Fri 5/22 - Mon 5/25 (3 nights) 1-800-233-1234
    See http://baycon.org/2009/hotel.html#code  Hyatt Regency Santa Clara
    2 rooms: wheelchair acc; 2 beds.  both no down, no feathers.
  * firm up setlist for TGl enough to print
  & walk with G
  & to con; Callie solo in the Honda; me, N, and G in the van.
  ~ 3:30ish TGq rehearsal.
  * Baycon starts
  & rehearsal after dinner
  * 8pm TGq concert.  Got an additional 40min because the next act was stuck
    in traffic.  Kicked serious ass.

0523 Sa
  * home for laundry
  * print TG* songbook, set lyrics.  Incorporate notes
  * 8pm TGl concert
    Callie's voice gave out in mid-song; N pulled Landscapes from the set
    Recovered well with only one audience-audible trainwreck.

0534 Su
  * home for laundry
  * a couple of hours with G.  5-year-olds are very entertaining, but don't
    leave much time for thought.  In some cases this is a Good Thing.

0525 Mo
  * arrange for late checkout (2pm)
  * home for laundry, with most of my luggage
  * Talk with Jeff Bohnhoff about recording the Tempered Glass album.
    He can start this fall; we'll check back around the end of summer.
    => practice recording against a click track.
    => N. should practice recording against a scratch track or guitar.
  & two trips: most luggage (with Callie), swap cars, back for RollyCat


0526 Tu
  * up 6:20; W=190.6; drugs, nose; coffee, C
  * mail to Susan about mindfulness group (no bot, so probably not anyway)
  * pay PG&E bill, 
  * Check on Colleen's jury summons: group 145 (check back at noon)
  * Kat needs her DH account
  * set up dh accounts for callie, naomi 
  * set up custom dh groups
  & walk around Rose Garden with G, C, N
  * Talk to N about learning optimism.
    -> read Polyanna (the actual book, which is different from what you'd
       expect from the current meaning of the word: "glad game")
       http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=907846
  * N uncomfortable with JB for recording; let's [explore alternatives]
    (JB has an air of superiority/condescension that makes her uncomfortable;
     afraid he'll make it more like a rock album and less like folk.)
  x 5pm mindfulness group.  Will probably have to skip it.
  * paid Callie for April's TGl travel.  * Make sure it's covered (barely)
  * 5:30ish Tue May 26 	0455 	Depart SAN JOSE CA (SJC) at 7:20 PM
    Arrive in SEATTLE TACOMA WA (SEA) at 9:25 PM
  * 7ish Ash to airport for 8:30 flight
  . FLEX ACCOUNT!!!
    * 0526 locate and sort all statements

0527 We
  * up 6:25; W=189.6; drugs, nose, teeth; coffee, C
  * BANK: $200 cash from savings
  & putting the foot of Colleen's bed up helped her leg swelling a LOT
  * 11ish check http://www.sccsuperiorcourt.org/jury/juryinfo.html (145)
  * buy coffee, 0-odor spray (later found the missing spray bottle, of course)

It seems that during the last week I've been too busy or too wiped out or both to have posted any of my "done yesterday" posts. In some cases, like during Baycon, too busy even to make entries in the to.do file. Too busy to think, which can be a good thing at times.

If I ever schedule three concerts in one week again, somebody please beat me unconscious with a clue-bat and tell them I'm indisposed. They went pretty well, but between rehearsals and taking care of Colleen there was essentially no time for socializing. Let alone work.

Colleen continues to need a lot of care; this was complicated by the fact that the hotel's "wheelchair-accessible" room wasn't particularly. I am very glad that we had gotten another room for the kids, though.

Remind me to stay out of Hyatt hotels whenever possible. Remind me that out-of-the-area travel is simply out of the question until Colleen's condition improves.

Only two walks, neither fast enough or long enough to provide any exercise to speak of.

It doesn't feel like I've had a vacation at all. The time I've spent working from home doesn't feel as though it's been particularly productive, either. Procrastination hasn't helped; now I have the May 31st deadline for my (2008) "flexible" health-care spending account looming, with a huge pile of receipts still to be processed. Motivation? What's that?

There have been a few bright spots: time with a 5-year-old girl, one fantastic concert and two pretty damned good ones, a little quiet time with my friends. Seeing Colleen back in her element: presiding over Wednesday Open House at the Starport, in her usual place in the lobby at Baycon.

Comments

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

With the exception of Las Vegas. Perhaps Reno might be as easy to do, I don't know.

But I do know Vegas had more adaptive wheelchair everything than any other place I ever dealt with, including Disney. And no, I'm really not happy knowing that - but having done it, I can recommend it.

[mdlbear]

It's not so much the wheelchair/scooter access as her other problems. If I hadn't been able to go home to do a full load of laundry every day; and fetch back a folding table, a commode, and a metric buttload of supplies, it would have been a disaster.

We might conceivably be able to manage someplace we can drive to, though bathroom breaks along the way would be difficult.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

That's why I tossed out Reno as a possible as well.

Yes, we packed all that stuff and drove to Las Vegas for a Thanksgiving. (We had a station wagon at that point with a luggage rack.)

Metric buttload of work. And I did all the transfers. Yup. Wee little me.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with the Hyatt, just out of curiousity? (Since I'm booked in June for the one here in Houston)

[mdlbear]

Lousy room layout, bathroom doors that neither lock nor close completely, low toilets in ostensibly-ADA rooms, no counters in the bathroom, no door on the closet, towel racks not reachable from the tub, toilets that clog too easily, ...

Outrageous food prices, slow elevators, extremely limited menu (at least for the con -- the regular menu is less limited but twice the price), extremely limited buffet (especially if you're celiac), clueless servers...

Freight elevators that can't be gotten to or from by someone on a scooter without an assistant to wrangle doors...

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much alien to my experience of Hyatts, having stayed in Way Too Many hotels. They've been uniformly nicely-laid out and well-maintained, all around nice hotels, amply equipped bathrooms, etc. Iaven't yet stayed at the one here, so I can't answer for Houston, and I'm a generic able-bodied person, so I don't know about ADA rooms or needing access to freight elevators. I've never had a problem with the toilet clogging at ANY hotel I've stayed in.

Outrageous Food Prices are pretty standard at most business hotels (Hyatt, Marriott, Hilton, etc. -- Hilton tends to be the priciest, IMHO) but service is usually pretty good, no worse than standard restaurant service and better than quite a few.

Menus for celiacs are almost universally limited, so I don't think it's particularly fair to hold them to that as a standard -- how good's the celiac menu at your local buffet?

I think your experience here is kind of an outlier.

[mdlbear]

They'd recently done a remodel that looks like an explosion in an Ikea store. Did I mention the sinks that are basically just slabs, where you can't avoid getting splashed when you turn on the faucet? And what that means when you do nasal irrigation?

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

So it's more "don't stay at THIS Hyatt" than Hyatt in general.

(I think having a scooter and some of the other issues is going to cause problems regardless when you travel -- you might want to exercise Google-Fu and look at some of the handicapped/physically challenges/whatever the current term is fora and see what they say about hotels and travelling.

[mdlbear]

Probably; no idea how widespread the fail is.

I'll vouch for the sinks

[capplor.livejournal.com]

They were wierd, and totally there fore looks rather than function. And rather tall for my smaller daughter to deal with.

And the bathroom doors were too easy to slam by mistake (for those of us who might be sharing the room and need a midnight run)

[septemberlilac.livejournal.com]

That type of sink is an abomination. I'm starting to feel grateful that the Hyatt lost my reservation and I ended up at the Executive Suites down the road. The inconvenience may have been worth it.

[kshandra]

Freight elevators that can't be gotten to or from by someone on a scooter without an assistant to wrangle doors...

This was true of the main-bank elevators as well. Not sure if an adjustment to the timing on the doors is even possible, but probably worth mentioning to the staff.

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

The room design in this particular hotel is "post-modern" in the sense of a work of art I saw once at the architectural book store on Fourth Street in Berkeley, called "Postmodern Bookshelf". The "shelf" attached to the wall, was tiny, triangular, and sloped downward at a 30-degree angle. This Hyatt has the sort of room that looks refreshingly different and trendy in magazine photos, and is constantly irritating in actual practice. I have never stayed in a less usable hotel room. The BayCon committee made many snarky comments about the room design.

And I failed in my plan to have actual conversations with you and Colleen at BayCon. Feh.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I will be more than happy to clue-bat you upside the head if you try to book three concerts in a week again.

[mdlbear]

/me grins. Figured you would be. Especially if you're in two of them...

And I'm sure Colleen would be delighted to help.

No-Clues Anonymous?

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should get up some sort of Clue-Bat Club. I could have used one or two whacks myself this past week.

I had planned to at least not go INTO BayCon short of sleep (this has been a problem at several cons over the past few years). But I've been dealing with my mother's health issues for one thing. Then I found out on short notice that a nephew was coming to visit (Thursday through Tuesday). OK, this can be managed. Then I found out on VERY short notice that the other nephew was ALSO coming (Saturday through Tuesday). More significant scrambling needed to accomodate two. Result? Short on sleep going in.

Now, with Cons one traditional way to make up for being short on sleep is to blow off any activities scheduled for the morning. Nope. First nephew really wants to get there by 10 AM. Every day. And stay late. And commuting to the con, while much cheaper, takes a bit more time away from sleep. I wound up with under 4 hours sleep per night during the con after starting out short on sleep. The best laid plans....

And not helping was the decision to go ahead with the Blood Donation on Saturday. Now, I really LIKE to donate at cons (especially near holidays) - it's a very good "We're a caring community" thing for SF fans to do and BayCon in particular has been a tradition for me. But while an extra Double-Red donation may have made BayCon look a little better, postponing the donation a week would not really have hurt the Blood Bank.

So yeah, having a few people around with Clue-Bats to help those of us that need it? Sounds like a good idea.

[afree87.livejournal.com]

Hey, check your email!!

[mdlbear]

Um... why? Do I know you?

My email is currently loaded with spam, and stuff from people I don't know often gets ignored or deleted by acccident.

[afree87.livejournal.com]

I sent you an email about a domain you own, rdna.org, and how it relates interestingly to Geocities getting shut down and the need for new hosting of a certain website you probably appreciate.

[mdlbear]

I don't appear to have that in my email archive; it probably got deleted by accident. Could you post it here or, if it's private, send it as an LJ message?

rdna.org is pretty dated at this point; it looks like the last time I updated the page was 2005. I should probably do some maintenance, shouldn't I?

As far as I know, though, I have no links to geocities. Which site are you referring to, and are you trying to tell me you're looking for hosting?

[afree87.livejournal.com]

Alright, I'll just spell it out here then. I'm talking about http://www.geocities.com/mikerdna/ which needs to be rehosted soon, because it can't be on Geocities anymore :)

I was hoping you could get in touch with Mike about moving his site to the rdna.org domain.

[mdlbear]

Has Mike weighed in on the subject? I'd be perfectly willing to let him use, e.g., mike.rdna.org.

[hlglne.livejournal.com]

Hi, this is helgaleena healingline, another RDNA druid coming out of the woodwork to ask you to contact Mike about his invaluable resource. You can also get hold of the rest of the gang over at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RDNAtalk/

TIA
helgaleena, White Rabbit Grove

[mdlbear]

Has Mike weighed in on the subject? I'd be perfectly willing to let him use, e.g., mike.rdna.org

Is there any way to access the yahoo groups archive without joining the group? I'd like to see some of the other discussion, but have no particular interest in joining a web-based discussion forum that I wouldn't have time to keep up with.

[afree87.livejournal.com]

You can join the group without receiving any e-mail. But the public view is probably disabled to prevent spam.

I am pretty sure Mike would be fine with whatever works best for you-- just send an email to mikerdna@hotmail.com to lend him a hand. Thanks for responding to our bothering :)