iced

No, I didn't take the above picture. It is from WikiMedia Commons.

We moved into our house in the summer of 2003, and I still had the ice storm from 2002 fresh in my mind. One of the first things we did was to hire someone to trim the trees in the front yard so that they would survive the next ice storm and not damage the house, cars, etc. With that move, I figured I had covered any major issues we may experience in an ice storm.

On Monday night the power went out on the house for a few minutes, then went back on, then went off, then back on again. This pattern repeated for at least a half hour at random intervals. At this point I realized that there was one thing I really had not accounted for. I did not know what we were going to do if we didn't have electricity for a long period of time.

While our furnace uses natural gas, the fan on the furnace uses electric, so the house would be cold even if the furnace stayed lit. This could be good in that it might keep the food in the fridge from spoiling. It would also be bad, though, because it could cause our pipes to freeze and make life with a seventeen-month-old difficult. While I was lying in bed, I decided that if we lost electricity for an extended time, we would have to find a hotel room in whatever town in the area still had electricity and stay there until we were online again.

I think I overdramatized the situation in my mind because this is a situation I have not dealt with, so I do not really know all the things I am supposed to do if the power goes out. Fortunately, this time it wasn't an issue. I am very glad we don't live in St. Joseph.

achoouch

Over the weekend I have dealt with a cold. Because of this, I have been reminded about something that has been happening to me lately. At times when I am already feeling achy, strong sneezes make my shoulders and arms hurt pretty strongly. This has only started happening in the past year or two, but it is very noticeable.

It is not really avoidable either. If I hold in the sneeze, it still hurts. If I sneeze multiple times in a row it hurts more.

I started thinking this weekend that maybe I am not the only person to experience this, and maybe this is something that I should investigate. I did not find much definitive information, but I did find that I am not alone and that it probably has something to do with specific nerves getting jostled or pinched at the moment of the sneeze.

So, the question of the day is, is there anything strange about your sneezes? Do yours hurt? Do yours sound weird? Are you able to control whether you sneeze or not?

give it up

"Fate (or whatever it is) delights to produce a great capacity and then frustrate it. Beethoven went deaf. By our standards a mean joke; the monkey trick of a spiteful imbecile."- C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)

Someone at work whom I know rather well went to the hospital this week for pancreatitis. It is possible that he will not be allowed to drink any more, which is something that he likes to do in his recreation time. This wouldn't be a big deal to me, but to him I am sure it is. Note that I have no intention of making any value judgments about alcohol consumption here because I have a different purpose for this post.

It seems that when someone really likes something, that this puts that individual at a greater risk for losing that thing. I doubt many people would disagree with this. While I don't believe it was Beethoven's fault he went deaf, I have heard that music lovers are particularly susceptible to tinnitus because constant sound can impact hearing. People with a sweet tooth are more likely to develop diabetes later in life. Athletes often injure the parts of their bodies they most need to participate in their sport.

Probably the things that will do me in is my love for salt and red meat. I often crave salty foods and/or beef products (though I am not a fan of corned beef, interestingly enough). I am sure that there will be implications for this if I am not careful, though I do not know if they are as bad as having an inflamed pancreas. I expect that I will be told to trim salt and red meat from my diet some day, and I just hope that day is far in the future.

I presume, though I do not know this for sure, that God built our bodies so that we cannot handle large amounts of the things we like so that we don't make those things too important in our lives. I can't eat a steak and french fries every day if I want to be able to enjoy life beyond the age of fifty, since I do know it will eventually impact my quality of life. Even so, it would be normal for the person no longer allowed to partake in the source of their pleasure to question the wisdom of a God who creates something enjoyable then takes it away.

While I do not currently question God's wisdom in this matter, that could just be because I can still eat steak.

broken

I am hard on my stuff. I have fried multiple XBox controllers, power supplies, hard drives, and other components. Not only that, my spectacular record is even continuing as of late.

My laptop has been acting up over the last few months. I know what the issue is, and it is still usable. It just makes a loud beep when I start it, and one of the network adapters does not work. It is still under warranty until mid-January, so I have procrastinated in addressing this until last night. The warranty company agreed over the phone to have me ship the laptop to them to fix it. This will be the second issue for the laptop that I have needed to get fixed under warranty.

Since I need to back up the data on the laptop before shipping it out to be repaired, I started copying files to an external hard drive I bought a few months ago. It stopped working within a few hours of use.

I must have the opposite of the Midas touch with electronics. Everything I touch becomes worthless. I just wish my stuff would actually keep working like I expect it to.

take a cold shower

This is the time of the year when I start to notice that the house is not perfectly warm when I wake up. So to combat this, I like to hurry through my morning teeth brushing and shaving to get into my warm shower. It is one of the few of my typical morning rituals that I look forward to.

A couple of days ago I had a rude awakening when I hopped into the shower. The water was not cold, but it certainly was not warm enough to offset the temperature of the air around me. I turned the nob for the cold water all the way off, but the water still did not warm up. This was a disturbing turn of events since we just replaced our water heater a month ago.

Golden later noted that NJ had for a brief moment gotten to the water heater temperature control nob and twisted it. She was not sure what the temperature was supposed to be set to, so she could not just return it to its previous setting. Unfortunately, I don't know the right setting either.

So, until I determine that my morning shower is comfortable, I will be bumping the heat up on our water heater every day. It's a hassle, but it is worth the effort.

hair bands that i like

I know a few people are going to misread that title.

For years now I have had an urge that some would probably find shameful. It's actually a bit of a surprise that I am not embarrassed about it. Maybe I will be now that I am sharing it. I have a thing for hair clips, hair bands, and scrunchies.

For some reason, I find most of the devices designed for girls' hair incredibly entertaining. Give me a banana clip and a hair band (not the 80s rock version) and I can be enthralled for hours.

I think all of this is due to my fidgety nature. I also like fidgeting with office supplies like staple removers, rubber bands, and paper clips. The difference is that few people care if I am playing with a staple remover. Some might be uncomfortable seeing me play with a scrunchy.

The reason I was thinking about this is that Golden just got a couple of new hair clips a couple of days ago, and so I expect to be busy for the next couple of days.

no melancholy muse

Over the past week I have been in a melancholy mood. It isn't full-fledged depression or anything like that. My mood has just been a little more dreary than usual lately, and not even for many good reasons.

This isn't a post where I am asking people to feel bad for Dust. I'd prefer my readers wouldn't because it's part of that up and down process that most people go through. I just am always a bit confused about what to post about when I am in a funk. Few things sap my creative drive more than when I am little down, so I usually don't have the tenacity to put much effort into an involved monologue.

Another problem is that most of the ideas I come up with when I am in a mood are more cynical than I should be. I don't want to use this site as just an outlet for me to whine through because no one really wants to read that, except possibly in the condition that the whining is presented creatively.

This week it worked out that I had three ready-made topics to type about, so it there weren't any problems. I did not really have to put much thought into posting this week. Tonight I drew a blank, though. I am sure it is not obvious.