Prep the patient, stat!

Paul signed up for a GameFly subscription last week, and the first game arrived last night -- Trauma Center: Second Opinion.

It's a medical simulation in which you play an initially whiny Dr. Derek Stiles as he performs all manner of operations without apparent specialization in any one medical field. I say "initially whiny" because I'm hoping he grows up some later in the game. He's pretty pouty and incompetent early on.

In the, oh, 30 minutes or so I managed to devote to the Wii last night, I completed oh-so-complex operations such as removing a hemorrhaging benign tumor from one patient's pancreas and taking broken glass out of another patient's arm. Right before I went to bed, I used a laser to burn off some polyps in a rock singer's throat.

It doesn't take a real-life doctor to see how the game strays pretty far from reality. No surgeon would be allowed out of the waiting room if he sewed up stitches like they do in the game. Then the sutures glow red and pulsate -- which should be a strong indication that, hey, something's not right in there -- but you've got this magical antibiotic gel that glows green and solves nearly all medical conditions, internal and external.

Is the game fun? Yes -- sort of. But it's fairly morbid, too. I mean, I just don't see myself rushing home from the office every night so I can drain tumors and cut them out of people's stomachs.

Finally!

We may get snow flurries Friday morning. Or we may not. I mean, I shouldn't get my hopes up.

... Um, too late.

Walkin' in a kitten wonderland

It's almost Christmas, and for the first time since 2002, we have a Christmas tree.

Okay, it's not a real Christmas tree. Our Fraser fir in 2002 was beautiful, but despite daily waterings, the needles dried out superfast and we couldn't vacuum them out of the carpet. I think we were still picking them out of the rug the day we moved out of that apartment. Also, the smell of all things tree-related sets off my asthma, so my inhaler got a workout that year.

So it's a fake tree this year. But it's a really really convincing fake tree! Just ask the cats, who have managed to scale all seven and a half feet. We weren't able to get our star-shaped tree-topper to work last night, but I think we might be able to stick our youngest, Joe, up there instead. She seems to be making herself at home there.

We went all out when it came to decorations: lights, garlands, my childhood tree ornaments, and some beaded ornaments from Paul's great-grandmother. I made a prominent place for a bird's nest ornament Mom and Dad gave me the first Christmas Paul and I were married. They bought it in 1971 after some enterprising store clerks told them a bird's nest in a Christmas tree ensures good luck for the year to come.

That doesn't seem to necessarily spell good luck for the bird itself, though. It was the first ornament Joe knocked down last night, and I found her under the tree chewing off the bird's tail feathers. I know, I know -- what was I thinking putting a bird ornament in our Christmas tree when we have two cats? What was I thinking to put up a Christmas tree at all?

We've reintroduced them to the concept of the spray bottle, and while Fred seems to be fairly well-behaved regarding Christmas tree etiquette, Joe hasn't caught on yet. To her, there is no correlation between doing something she knows is wrong and being sprayed in the face with water. She gets all angsty -- at least as angsty as cats can get -- then goes back to doing the exact same thing she was doing before. Ah, kittenhood.

When I woke up this morning, they'd dragged a bell ornament, a music note, a fabric Little Red Riding Hood, and two beaded icicles around the dining room and den. However, when I got home from work today, everything was intact. Everything. Garland, ornaments, the whole bit.

Joe got a treat and the "good girl!" pat on the head.

... And now, as I post, I hear her climbing in the tree. It's strange, how cats work. When I come home from work, they're asleep. Their litterboxes are clean and their food bowls are full. And then, suddenly, they decide they have to poop right now! and eat right now! and, at least around here, climb the gorgeous Christmas tree right now!

Is this a preview of parenthood?

Wii!

Took a few days off from posting to take care of real-life things, like playing the Wii. Isn't that a good excuse? :-)

I'm also trying to beat Pokemon LeafGreen, although you don't really "beat" a game like Pokemon. You just beat all the trainers, then hang out breeding things and, hurm, "catching them all." I'm a grown woman, and I've gotta catch 'em all. Sigh.

Paul's playing Pokemon FireRed, the companion to LeafGreen. Although he's probably not as addicted as me, FireRed was to blame for us almost not getting a Wii. Where were we at midnight last Saturday? Not camping outside GameStop. Paul let his Pikachu get in the way of his Wii.

Come Sunday, there wasn't a Wii within 100 miles of our house. I know, because we drove to several stores and called many more. Disappointment set in ...

... until Wednesday. Paul found out from one of the SA goons that we could score a Wii at Costco. And, since we weren't Costco members, one of the Memphis goons (who happened to graduate from the same high school as Paul), used his Costco membership to get us in. Finally, we had a Wii. Thank God. Paul was miserable for those four Wii-less days.

I think Paul feels guilty though that I don't have my own Wiimote and nunchuck. At 5:30 in the morning on Black Friday, he was camping outside Toys 'r' Us, then Circuit City, then GameStop to snag me a set. He came home empty-handed, but it's the thought that counts.

We'll probably invite Johanna and Matt over tonight for a Wiikend bash. But first, Paul and I need to escape the glow of the TV in favor of the real world. Something outside in the sunshine. But first I must pry his fingers off the Wiimote...

Six words. What will yours be?

Wired had an interesting article in its November issue in which the magazine asked prominent sci-fi/fantasy/horror authors to write a six-word short story.

Nanofic, step aside. Why say in 55 words what you can say in six?

For days, I've been pondering my perfect six-word story, something snarky and witty and concise. Editors know how to whittle things, right?

I snip here, there, never satisfied.

Hey, that's six words! Sure, it's a fairly lousy story, but it's six words nonetheless.

So, out with it. Write me a six-word story that'll set my world on fire.

Meeting Jimmy

Paul and I went Downtown tonight -- you know, our old stomping grounds before we moved back to the 'burbs. Ate a huge dinner and did a little shopping. We were just starting our 10-block trek to our car when a man hopped onto the curb next to us, barely out of the way of a passing car.

"Man, some rude drivers here," he said. Paul and I nodded. In the years I've worked downtown, I've seen everything, including a near-physical altercation between a Lexus driver and a school bus driver when neither refused to yield the right-of-way at a tight intersection.

"Oh, I'm sorry, are you guys from here?" asked the man walking next to us, slinging a backpack over one shoulder. "Yeah," we replied, assuring him we weren't offended. I sized him up out of the corner of my eye. He definitely wasn't one of the myriad panhandlers who make friendly (and occasionally pushy) conversation with passersby.

"I'm from New Orleans, and, man, we've got some bad drivers ... but most people are pretty friendly."

"You're from New Orleans?" I asked. I'd met a couple of N.O. residents post-Katrina, but their homes hadn't been in hard-hit areas and they were just in Memphis on vacation. "Did you move to Memphis after the hurricane?"

"No, I'm in Arkansas -- it's the fourth place we've lived."

His name was Jimmy, and he managed to distill the past year of his family's life into the next four blocks we walked together. His wife had been hurt in their house in the hurricane. The two of them, along with their 7- and 14-year-old daughters, were rescued off their roof. His wife spent three months recovering in a Houston hospital. Then they were transferred to housing in San Antonio. Then Austin.

And when the FEMA money and the Red Cross money slowed to a trickle, Jimmy moved his family to Arkansas to begin rebuilding a life. He'd spent a decade in the military, serving tours in the Persian Gulf and in Iraq. He had a bachelor's in business administration, which he put to use managing restaurants. And he'd just been hired to a restaurant on Beale Street called Alfred's.

But he still didn't have a car. Alfred's let him off work early tonight, and the person who drove him from West Memphis, Ark., to Memphis wasn't available to drive him back home. He'd tried getting a ride from police (they couldn't cross the state line), Greyhound (a $9 ticket), and the Red Cross office a few streets away (they were closed). He'd tried to walk over one bridge, but it's not open to pedestrians. He looked frustrated.

Paul and I exchanged a glance, and I dug a $10 out of my wallet. "I wasn't asking for help!" he said firmly. I could tell he was proud of his new Beale Street job, and I didn't intend to patronize. But I didn't see any sense in him walking eight miles just because his ride had left him in a lurch.

Jimmy asked our names again. "God bless you, Paul and Kate," he said, and we pointed him back in the direction of the Greyhound station.

I didn't say any of that to get a pat on the head. It's just that it's easy to forget there are still plenty of people out there trying to start over. Being in news, I know the stories change every day, and today's murder-for-hire will be forgotten in the wake of tomorrow's prostitution bust -- or whatever. Katrina was more than a year ago -- a lifetime in the news cycle.

Plenty has been said about those who lied about being in the hurricane so they could get government assistance. Even more has been said about those accused of schlepping their way along, relying on FEMA funds and refusing to look for work. But not much has been said of those who lost everything and yet have made some serious strides toward putting their lives back together, even if they're not there yet.

Thanksgiving is a good time to remember all we've got. I've got a home, a husband, and my health. I even have niceties most people don't -- I'm posting this from my laptop, and my husband is watching ESPN on digital cable. I'm ashamed how much he and I take for granted, but I'm sure we're not the only ones.

Maybe Jimmy was the universe's way of kicking me in the butt. If he can lose his house, all his clothes and belongings, watch his wife spend months in the hospital, and still have the presence of mind to find a place to live and a way to support his family, then I really have no right to complain about needing to mop the floor or the lack of intelligent programming on TV.

... Just food for thought.

Big metal death machines

Annoying: Being cut off in stop-and-go traffic.
More annoying: Being waved at by the offending driver.

Insult, meet injury.

... But at least I made it to work in one piece. More than I can say for these tractor-trailers that were blown off the road in Arkansas by high winds this morning.

There are days when telecommuting seems so attractive, but then I'd start missing The Closet. I'd end up sitting in my bedroom closet, typing on the laptop, waiting on the ceiling to start leaking toilet water. (And, anyway, my bedroom closet is bigger than my office, so it wouldn't feel like the real thing.)

Speaking of driving and telecommuting, I called a real estate developer this morning about one of his projects. Fantastic guy. I really appreciated him talking to me. Our conversation started something like this:

"Kate! Hey! Um, hang on a second ..." I hear him tapping away on a keyboard. He's back a minute later, laughing. "You know, I'm driving down the highway at 60 miles an hour, I've got a keyboard in my lap, a pretzel in one hand, and I'm talking to you on a cell phone in the other."

But he's a nice guy, so I'm sure he'd never cut off other drivers and wave at them.

This post now exists in the vast expanses of cyberspace

Well, I went to the meeting about blogs last night. What hath you to say about that, anon? Actually, it was fairly informative, from the How-To-Start-A-Professional-Blog standpoint. But it was frustrating that I was the only one in the room with a personal blog, and it was doubly frustrating that the attendees ran the gamut from tech-savvy to, well, not at all tech-savvy.

I nodded when she reminded the group that everything posted on a blog is out there for the world to see, and I cringed when she said some personal blogs are self-indulgent, moment-by-moment accounts of a person's life. Lord knows that, while I do post about the topics that interest me, I avoid telling you all about every thing that happens every day. That'd be pretty boring, no?

Oh, and I'm quite pleased with my page view count (and my uniques!) after hearing hers. ^_^

Sigh. One problem with posting first thing in the morning before going to work, as I've been doing recently, is that I have to stop to do mundane things, like find food and make tea. But if I don't, I'll be dragging when I get to work. Stupid time (or lack thereof).

I'll try to post tonight...

Decisions, decisions: The meeting edition

I (potentially) have a Society of Professional Journalists meeting after work today, with iDiva's Leanne Kleinmann discussing the whozits and whatzits of blogging. I presume she'll be talking about workplace blogging, et al. Interesting topic, although I avoid work-related discussion like the plague -- first of all, I feel it prudent to keep specific work-related issues to myself (ooh, even when I really, really need to vent), and secondly, I'm trying to broaden the disconnect between work life and home life when possible.

Anyway, meeting after work. Topic: blogging. And I'm not sure I'm going to go. It's not that I don't want to be there. It's just that I tend to work late anyway, and on the rare occasion I do leave work before 6 p.m., I don't want to spend my extra time in a meeting! Sigh. I'll decide after looking at my afternoon workload.

The meeting I'd really like to attend is the American Copy Editors Society conference in Miami in April. Think I can pull it off?

It's all cold and dark and raining outside. I'd vote for going back to bed, but Paul's already cooked soy chicken patties for breakfast. Man, I love those things.

TSO Concert surprise

Paul late last week surprised me with tickets to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert last night.

It was fabulous.

Oh, I can hear you now -- "Christmas music before Thanksgiving? Wha-?" But, come on, Walgreens had booted its Halloween candy out at 1 a.m. Nov. 1 in favor of singing Christmas chihuahua dolls and Russell Stover chocolate-covered marshmallow Santas. Recall that the Halloween candy came out early too; on Aug. 6, in fact, I posted photographic evidence of a fun-size candy bar invasion.

So, in short, no. It was not too early for Christmas music. They played the entire Christmas Eve & Other Stories show, along with several pieces from Beethoven's Last Night and a couple from The Lost Christmas Eve. If you haven't heard these guys, you're missing out. Megadeth meets classical, et al., fo' real.

Directions? What directions?

Our super-special, 12-setting showerhead has served us well for most of our married life, but it has sprung a leak. So my crack-plumber husband (who, incidentally, also has plumber's crack because he has no butt and his pants fall down) has purchased us another showerhead that promises to be even more special because it has a built-in misting feature.

When I get home from the office, he grabs the showerhead off the counter as if it is a shiny, new, red bike on Christmas morning. The last time I saw him this excited was ... well, okay, it was the last time he bought a coconut cream pie. For real.

I, on the other hand, don't feel much like doing the New Showerhead Happy Dance. I've been gone 13 hours -- editing the paper, plus performing my once-monthly duties as a magazine proofer. I'm operating on five and a half hours of sleep. And I haven't eaten in 15 hours, since 6 a.m. (Actually, I had a can of Diet Dr. Pepper and a stick of Ice Breakers gum today, which means I'm still eating better than most runway models.)

"Ooh ooh, take a shower!" he orders me.

"I don't want to take a shower," I reply.

"But it'll relax you. Come on ... I'm gonna go install it."

I follow him. He fumbles with the theft-deterrent plastic that's keeping him from his new showerhead. It finally flies open, sending the packaging toward me and the instructions to the floor.

I read over the extensive list of features, and something catches my eye.

"It says here you need pipe tape," I tell him.

"We don't need pipe tape," he shoots back, snappishly. "I'm getting my doctorate in high-pressure water systems."

I can't argue with that -- and I'm too tired to try, anyway. So I flop on the couch in the den while he bumbles around the shower. I would ask him to read the directions, but hey, why bother -- the boy's getting his doctorate in high-pressure water systems, and is therefore an expert in showerhead installation.

And, then, he emerges. "Hey, there was pipe tape already up there!" he says triumphantly.

Then his voice drops low.

"... but there's this extra part ..."

They put the Party in "Party Politics"

Well, it's Election Day. Finally. Months of finger-pointing ads are wearing thin on my patience, and I'm ready for my TV (radio, newspaper, all other media) to be released from the clutches of political panhandling.

I'm at home -- for a few minutes at least -- before heading out to a post-election shindig, camera in hand. I'm not sure the paper will be able to use any of my photos, but I thought it would be a shame to miss out on being in the thick of things on such a big night. I mean, the big elections happen once every two years, and this year is more interesting than most.

The big race: Bob Corker vs. Harold Ford Jr. I'll save my commentary until I get home tonight (or, more likely, tomorrow morning). In the meantime, you can check out the infamous Playboy RNC ad and my favorite HFJ commercial. Two 30-second spots. If you don't have one whole minute to spare, choose to watch the RNC ad. That's some quality mud-slingin' there.

Favorite line: "Canada can take care of North Korea. They're not busy!"

Did I mention I'll be glad when these aren't on TV anymore?

Anyway, I asked Rosalind if she wanted to go to one headquarters while I went to the other. She chose Ford, so I'm off to Corker's local HQ. Ferox Femina has promised to meet me there.

So I'm outta here. Wish me luck -- I'm not exactly the world's greatest photographer. I'll give a post-party rundown tomorrow. In the meantime, what do you think of that RNC ad?

Say it, don't spray it

I leave work pretty late sometimes, and, as I've mentioned before, I don't work in the safest neighborhood in the world.

When I'm the last one out of the building, which is often enough to warrant a mention, I scan the alley with the security camera and do my best not to fumble my keys when I deadbolt the lock. I keep a finger on the car alarm button. I walk quickly and keep an eye out.

But earlier this week, there was a strange SUV in the lot. The camera couldn't see over the SUV, and I didn't know what was on the other side. Sigh. So instead of keeping a finger on the car alarm, I opened my pocket knife and carried it menacingly.

Nothing was on the other side of the SUV.

I thought it about time to reconsider the pepper spray issue. So I popped open the Tennessee Code and searched for mace, pepper spray, and self-defense. The law only mentions pepper spray as it pertains to law enforcement. As for citizens, one may use self-defense to protect life or property in imminent danger, as long as the self-defense is not "deadly force."

Well, question answered. Time to buy some pepper spray.

I found a self-defense place in Memphis with an online store as well as a brick-and-mortar presence. And, man, they have Everything. Cell phone stun gun? Check. Mace-loaded hand weights? Got that too. They even have cool things like voice changers and spyglasses.

What caught my eye, though, was the "stunning ring." An onyx-set ring loaded with pepper spray. Now that's some serious defense there. I don't think I'd wear it though. Knowing me, I'd get a little trigger-happy when somebody rubbed me the wrong way.

... But it sure is fun to dream. :)

Sigh

I lost my post. Completely. Stupid laptop.

... I'll try again later.