Lhude sing goddam
Oct. 24th, 2005 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishSleet outside, all grey and cold and miserable. Time to break out the winter coat. I'm just glad I stopped to change into long pants this morning.
Still no computer; going to swing by PCLand (home of computer equipment and salespeople with iffy English; between me not being entirely sure what I want and not being entirely able to communicate it, this should be an Experience) after work.
I've been amusing myself by learning perl at work (again). It's incredibly useful for things like 'change these forty config files so that they point at a different server' or 'make twenty copies of this batch file with a slightly different filename for each.' It's also fun, in that way that developing new or long-forgotten abilities is, and the programs I've been writing are short enough that even the debugging is fun (that is, the things work properly after only a bit of hammering on).
Spent, um, weekend before last in Arkansas, at Pop's ninetieth birthday party. Pop's always been exceptionally healthy (despite a limp left over from polio when he was a baby), so seeing him at ninety, three days out of the hospital for a UTI and coughing a lot (the words 'congestive heart failure' were bandied about in low tones) was something of a shock. He seemed to be doing a lot better by the time Dad and I left on Sunday, though, so maybe he'll see ninety-one after all. And despite Pop's condition this trip to Helena was a lot less harsh than the one at Thanksgiving: partly because Gram's death finally hit me then and it's sunk in by now, but mostly because Susan's college-age kids (my cousins), Paul and Alice, were there. Paul's doing a largeish (semester-long? year-long?) project on technological innovations in utopian science fiction; I pointed him at Dispossessed and Trouble on Triton but I don't know if he'll have time to read them, and Alice was reading Lord of the Rings for the first time. So, y'know, peers. Nice to have.
I'm exceeding happy that I went to the party: among other things, I finally got a chance to tell Pop thanks for casually handing me his copy of the Foundation trilogy when I was about ten, and thus kickstarting me into the world of Real Grown-Up science fiction.
Still no computer; going to swing by PCLand (home of computer equipment and salespeople with iffy English; between me not being entirely sure what I want and not being entirely able to communicate it, this should be an Experience) after work.
I've been amusing myself by learning perl at work (again). It's incredibly useful for things like 'change these forty config files so that they point at a different server' or 'make twenty copies of this batch file with a slightly different filename for each.' It's also fun, in that way that developing new or long-forgotten abilities is, and the programs I've been writing are short enough that even the debugging is fun (that is, the things work properly after only a bit of hammering on).
Spent, um, weekend before last in Arkansas, at Pop's ninetieth birthday party. Pop's always been exceptionally healthy (despite a limp left over from polio when he was a baby), so seeing him at ninety, three days out of the hospital for a UTI and coughing a lot (the words 'congestive heart failure' were bandied about in low tones) was something of a shock. He seemed to be doing a lot better by the time Dad and I left on Sunday, though, so maybe he'll see ninety-one after all. And despite Pop's condition this trip to Helena was a lot less harsh than the one at Thanksgiving: partly because Gram's death finally hit me then and it's sunk in by now, but mostly because Susan's college-age kids (my cousins), Paul and Alice, were there. Paul's doing a largeish (semester-long? year-long?) project on technological innovations in utopian science fiction; I pointed him at Dispossessed and Trouble on Triton but I don't know if he'll have time to read them, and Alice was reading Lord of the Rings for the first time. So, y'know, peers. Nice to have.
I'm exceeding happy that I went to the party: among other things, I finally got a chance to tell Pop thanks for casually handing me his copy of the Foundation trilogy when I was about ten, and thus kickstarting me into the world of Real Grown-Up science fiction.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 10:09 pm (UTC)she can't stand for any amount of time because of the post-polio effects, so she can't work, so she's on welfare. she has medicaid so all her medical bills are covered, but she still has to *get* to the hospital somehow, and she can't afford a car that doesn't break down every other week (and also can't afford to have her car break down every other week), and even with being in subsudized housing, that only leaves her $400 a month to pay for everything else.
and she's stark's mom, so he can't talk to her about any of this without panicking (and she can't talk to him for more than five minutes at a time without laying down the guilt trip), so that means that when she calls him, i end up being the one who talks to her.
... that was more TMI than i was intending, sorry.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-20 06:03 pm (UTC)And no worries about the unexpected information flow. Heck, if I can't listen to my friends babble when they need to, what good am I?