Survivor....

My survivor's pendant.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Edward and I have decided to publish his writing from the time when I was undergoing treatment "The Chronicles of Karen: You Are Always the Hero of Your Own Story" is a combination of updates to family and friends and Edward's exercise in creative writing about what we were going through. The "adventures" portion of the posting is all of the treatments and trails, re-imagined in a fantasy setting. They helped me get through treatment. All the messages, save the Introduction, were written in 2007.

To read the Chronicles please visit the Blog:
The Chronicles of Karen: Tales of a Breast Cancer Survivor
the-chronicles-of-karen.blogspot.com/

Gator Aid...

Yeah, that's an alligator... sitting in the middle of the road in front of the house. He's fine, just out for walkies.

Edward and I were sitting in the front room the other day when we both looked up to see an alligator nonchalantly walking across the front yard. Yes, the front yard. He was about 2.0-2.5 feet long. He must have decided to go for a stroll from the ditch in the back.


Now what? Edward ran to get his shoes on, and I went to get my camera. Someone has a little bit skewed priorities here, but we won't mention her name. We had to do something to get this guy back into the park before someone got hurt.



He bolted toward the street when I opened the front door. Doh. Didn't think about that, the noise spooked him. Believe people when they say that gators can move quick. This one sure did. Then he decided he would lay down and hide... in the middle of the street. I walked around him to the far side. He watched me the whole way. I was hoping that if he spooked again at least he would run toward the park. We didn't want to have to call animal control. They would have taken him away. We just wanted to see him back where he belonged.

I stood in the street ready to block traffic, should there be any, in my socks. Like I said, maybe I wasn't the brightest one here. Edward came out with his shoes on, and two brooms.


We, rather Edward, started herding him back towards the house. He, the gator, wasn't to keen on that idea and hissed the whole way. He wasn't about to be rushed. In fact, he acted like he wasn't going to do anything he, or she(?), didn't want to do. More then once he hunkered down, trying to get an angle on the brooms from which he could defend himself. Once he did get a hold of one of the brooms. Better that then an ankle, or an arm.









Eventually Edward got him to go under the back fence and off toward the ditch. We didn't open the gate, but watched him saunter down the top of the ditch and eventually down the side out of sight, as if he owned the place.



Perhaps he did, who were we to tell him otherwise.

DragonCon 2010: Out of Context

"I can not English today."

Even the best of us stumble every once and a while. This quote was from a linguist giving a talk on how to develop your own language when writing a novel or screenplay. He was having trouble with his native language... He explained the principles behind the International Phonetic Alphabet, a universal phonetic spelling symbology seen commonly in Wikipedia these days. He showed how using those simple (?) rules, you can learn to pronounce anything in any language, whether it was Japanese, Elvish, Korean, Na'vi, Tanzanian, Klingon... or English. It was a fascinating talk about how languages are constructed, starting from the basic building blocks of a language, the sounds and how they are made with your mouth, to putting those sounds together to make words, phrases and grammar. He used real world examples as well as fictional examples from our favorite movies and novels. A "conlang", or constructed language, also has to have a context, a logical reason for existing, that will make your language, and your story, come alive. With out that context, you'll simply have a bunch of nonsensical sounds and phrases that will make it difficult for anyone to learn your language.

That said, some of us still have trouble. Perhaps more of the convention attendees should have sat in on that talk...


"I can't wait to take off these f*in shoes and put on my combat boots."

"Ooo... I have ice boobies..."

"When he's in his Manties, he's unreliable."

"Midgets are my worst enemy. I trip over those things."

"Brown people should not go window shopping at gun shops in Tennessee, no matter how road weary."

"She was acting like a prepubescent 48-year-old."

"Did you see her in that muffin-top corset?"

"Important safety tip: Don't ride-share in the car carrying the magic brownies."

"The monsters in my sketches always come out preciously horrible. They make you want to give them tea and cookies."

"With a skirt that short, yeah, all they are looking at is your hair."

"If you don't know how something is going to work, call it nano-material"

"How do you disperse a crowd? Naked fat guys."

"When you clone a whole army from one guy, you should at least pick one that can hit the target."

"Smart bullets. The problem is eventually they start arguing with you."

"That's the biggest damned yoda I've ever seen. MegaYoda."

"He's like an SUV waiting for a rollover."

"It was an MC Escher, Chthulhu-style dungeon."

"Hello, Master. I have something I need to tell you." (at the very pregnant, I Dream of Jeannie).

"Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?" "I get that a LOT." (at the very cute, female stormtrooper with her helmet off).

"If I were a Tylenol or an Advil in this hotel, where would I be?"

"What's the difference between science and science fiction? Timing." - Lamar Anderson


Timing is everything......

Problem Solving....

I was up until 12:30 last night. Edward and I were trying to figure out if something in the front room was causing our lights to flicker. It had gotten so bad that Edward's UPS was shutting down his computer to project it. We were getting drop outs in power and had lights dimming or flashing off and on. It would do this for 10 minutes or so then quit. Then start again. We'd had the power company out twice and they said the power was clean coming into the house.

We figured out what was going on this morning by accident. We started by changing out some sockets around house, thinking they might be shorting out. The first was outside by AC unit. It looked a little rusted and not sealed, so we bought a new cover for it and installed that. While we were doing that we noticed the power line from the house to the outside part of the AC was cracked and rusted. Aha! We thought, we've found our problem. So we called an electrician to come out and replace the line. Oh, and while he was out here, could he see if he could track down why the lights were flickering.

He got out here late morning and started with the junction box in the garage to see if he could figure out why the lights were flickering. He put his hand on the breakers... "Nothing's warm". The house was built in 1979, so it had an old junction box. It doesn't have a single main breakers that will shut down the whole house. That wasn't required by code in 1979. There are five big breakers that need to be thrown to bring the whole house down. One for the AC, one for the range. Those and two others are for 220V. The one labeled "main lighting" will take down all the 110V in the house. Below that there are more breakers that will take down regions in the house. He poked and tested for a few minutes, then ZZziiitt! "Well, we're making progress." He said cheerfully. Edward and I just started laughing. He worked the main lighting breaker out of the box. Yup, there was the problem. One of the contacts on the breaker looked scored and pitted. Not good. That would explain why all the lights in the house would flicker at the same time. Luckily for us, there was a spare breaker of the size he needed right there in the box. So he switched out the breakers, and reconnected everything. Then he disabled the bad one and stuck it back in the place the spare had been, so that there weren't any live contacts exposed, and closed up the box. The lights haven't flickered since.

Next he fixed the power line to the AC. Turns out that was fine and would have been so for quite a while. The outer casing was cracked but there was steel under that what wasn't even close to leaking. The wires themselves were fine. He replaced the casing, threading the same wires through the new casing and reconnected it to the AC.

The lights have been solid ever since. What a relief. Electricity makes me nervous. Electricians scare me. They have a reputation for using you to "make their next boat payment". This guy was nice. He didn't try to sell us a new junction box, or anything else. Our office uses this company to do work in the building, so I had a recommendation form the office operations manager before I called him. It'll be about $200, maybe a little more. He left saying they'd send us a bill. We're glad its done. Both of us were worried about the AC getting damaged, or the microwave, the TV, the stereo, never mind that we were afraid it would start a fire if we couldn't find it. Turns out that what we called them out for wasn't what was causing the lights to flicker at all. I guess that's the way it works sometimes, the problem that wasn't a problem, gets the problem solved...

Mara's Little Adventure...

Edward called me at work this morning. "I think we need to take Mara in." Ok. What's she doing...? "Well, she was in the box for about a minute and didn't pee much." That's a bad sign. It usually indicates a UTI or something serious.

I called the Mobile Vet. "The Doctor's not in today. I can put you on the schedule for tomorrow." Not sure we wanted to wait that long. So I called our old vet. "How about 11:15?" Sounds good. So, I went home at 10:15, picked up Edward and Mara and off we went.

We thought it would take both of us to get her there. Turns out she was better then we thought she would be. She was hiding under the bed when it was time to leave so Edward pulled her out. Then we wrapped her in a towel and I covered her head with it. She didn't realize what was going on until she was half way into the carrier and the door rattled. I could feel her tense up, but by that point all I had to do was put a hand on her behind and push. By the time she got untangled from the towel, we had the door latched. She was not a happy girl. But she didn't struggle or try to get out of the carrier like last time, and she didn't cry much at all on the way to the vet. She even started out of the carrier when we opened the door once we were in the examining room, instead of cowering in the back and having to be unceremoniously dumped out.

We kept telling her she wasn't going back to PetSmart, and we promised we'd take her back home just as soon as the doctor was finished with her. I don't think she believed us.

The doctor gave her a good look over, felt her bladder and said it felt a little thick, like she had an infection. She also took a blood sample to check her kidneys and other organ function. Then she sent us home with some antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory to help her feel better.

Grand total: $179.57. Vet trips ain't cheap.

We put her back in the carrier and took her home. She cried a little more this time and once tried to dig her way out of the carrier before we got here. When we opened the door we had to catch her and give her the first antibiotic. Luckily, she's not a hard cat to pill. Then she got the anti-inflammatory. Then she got some treats... We were both surprised that she didn't run and go hide under the bed again. She stayed out, had a few mouthfuls of dry food and rubbed on everything she got near. It was like she was marking everything to make sure it was all still hers. Or maybe, she was saying "I'm so glad to be home!" Like a frightened flier kissing the ground after a particularly rough flight.

We think this all may have been brought on by the rough last few days we've all had. During all the tree work, she was hiding under the beds. It was unnerving enough for us to listen to the thud, thud of heavy branches hitting the ground on top of the roar of the chain saws. Add to that visitors for two days earlier in the week. She hides then, too. It's entirely likely that she just hadn't been drinking enough. But we think we caught this early enough. While she's been hiding under the bed some, it hasn't been all the time. Last night she was on the bed and up on the bookcases, the only place in the whole house where she chases her own tail. I'm pretty sure she'll be OK... I hope so. 'Cause we don't like these little adventures any more then she does....

Legal Immigrants....

We were back over at the Kennedy Space Center this week. The weather and wave conditions had finally combined to give us flat seas and clear skies. The bathymetry survey that we had tried to conduct 3 weeks ago, but had to scrub due to engine failure, was finally on.

I got to go because, at the same time, we were making adjustments to the dune monitoring camera that we had installed back in April. That April day when we installed the camera was the day the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

The bathy survey took three days. The boat crew left early on Tuesday and started the survey before we got there on Tuesday evening. Wednesday was camera work day. So we were back on the Eagle 4 tower on the north edge of the Space Center property. Thursday, I was on site with Kara, who was monitoring the GPS base station and serving as NASA Security contact and weather watcher. I was finishing camera adjustments and helping with the base station, which wasn't much. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go out on the boat.

Wednesday evening we had dinner with Jon, a marine biologist at NASA in charge of numerous projects on the Space Center. Jon made us an offer Kara and I could not refuse... There was a load of sea turtle eggs arriving the next morning. Refugees from the Gulf of Mexico. Would we like to see them unload the next boxes?

A little background: The northern Gulf of Mexico beaches are nesting grounds for several species of endangered sea turtles. As part of a joint effort by NASA, FWS, FL FWCC, NPS and FedEx, turtle nests are being moved from the oiled or threatened beaches to the Kennedy Space Center, where the turtles are being released after they hatch. 30 nests arrived Thursday... more then 700 nests will be rescued. Most are loggerhead nests, but they including leatherback, green, and Kemp Ridley turtle nests as well.

Jane Provancha is the lead biologist on the project. She told us that initially, they didn't know how successful the project would be. So everyone involved kept things quiet. If moving the nests was unsuccessful, there would have been a lot of criticism of the effort. The nests are excavated 45 days after they are laid. This gives the embryos time for critical development, including attaching to their shell, orienting themselves and for their sex to be determined, which is a function of the nest temperature early in incubation. After that 45 day period, the next is carefully excavated. Each egg must be individually lifted out and placed in the styrofoam nest box. Then they are covered with sand. If the egg is turned over, the embryo will detached from the shell and die. If the box was rotated too quickly when being moved, the torque could detach the embryo from the shell. If the egg is jostled too much, the embryo might try to hatch prematurely, and die. If the temp for the nest becomes too hot or too cool, and they would loose the whole nest. There were many, many factors that could endanger the survival of the hatchlings.

FedEx donated the time and trucks for this project. They use a special critical care vehicle, climate controlled and stabilized, with special racks inside to hold the nest boxes. Currently two shipments of nest boxes are arriving weekly. But this is just the beginning of the hatching season. Soon they will be getting 3 to 4 shipments a week and in August they may get them 7 days a week.

The next boxes are begin kept in an old, previously unused, building on the Space Center grounds. The building is kept at 80-89°F. No pictures are allow for security reasons, and to not disturb the hatchlings. These photos are from NASA's website. My shutter finger was twitching the whole time, but I was good and didn't even get my camera out. Then someone handed me a NASA camera and I went to town, not that I could keep any of the shots. There is more information on the project click here.

When we got there, one of the tech showed us two boxes from a nest that had been rescued. During that night the eggs had hatched. Resting quietly in there temporary home where about 2 dozen three-inch long hatchlings. They had emerged from their shells, burrowed out of the sand were waiting for their chance to make a break for the ocean... which would require some help from the staff. They were covered with a black cloth to keep them quiet. Later that night they would be released somewhere on the Space Center's 100 miles of natural beaches, where other turtles lay their own nests every year. Wednesday night the staff had released 120 hatchlings.

I asked Jane what their survival rate was. In nature, 15-20% of a nest's hatchlings might survive to get to the water. Fewer then that survive to adulthood. These nest boxes are hatching at a rate of 85-95% survival.

No one is sure what will happen to these turtles. Like salmon, a sea turtle will return to the beach it was born on. These little guys were laid on a Gulf beach, born in a box, and will be released into the Atlantic. Jane couldn't tell us if they would someday return to the beaches of the Space Center, or somehow make their way back to the beaches in the Gulf. Researchers think that turtles imprint the magnetic signature of the beach where they originate from, but no one knows when that happens. Did they imprint the Gulf of Mexico, or will they imprint the Space Center? They aren't doing anything to track these turtles. They are simply being released when they hatch, with well wishes and hopes for a long life. No one knows if they will return to the Space Center to lay their eggs.

Maybe this year more of the hatchlings will survive to adulthood, because more of them made it to the water. Their chances of survival in the Gulf this year were estimated to be near zero. Thanks to the dedication of the biologists at NASA, FWS, FWCC, and NPS, as well as Fedex, all those hatchlings will make it to the water, clean water next to oil free beaches. After that, they are on their own. But at least this year, these little guys will have a fighting chance...



For More Information Visit...
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/turtles.html
For more pictures...
http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=27

The Joys of Home Ownership...

We've been dealing with a leaky side door to the garage, pretty much since we moved into the house. The first door frame and door itself, for us at least, pretty much rotted out a few years after we moved in. So, when we replaced the front door, we had the side door replaced at the same time. Several years after that we noticed the frame at the bottom of the door was soft. It, too, had rotted out. We had that repaired, and hoped we'd fixed the problem. In September of 2008, we had the door replaced again, not because of a problem, although it, too, had leaked, but to make it hurricane rated. Once again we struggled with a leaky door. We caulked it, we painted it, we sealed it to within an inch of it's life. To no avail. After all the rain we had last week, we noticed again that the door was leaking. So we started looking again for a cause. Again.

Let me back up about 10 months, to a day after another particularly heavy rain and standing water inside the door. We started inspecting it and we discovered that there is no caulking behind the hinges. The door opens out, so the hinges are on the outside, in the elements. It probably opens out because of some building code requiring it to do so. All the side garage doors in the neighborhood do. Being that the bottom hinge is only 18 inches off the ground and gets wet during heavy rain from the south, and water was running behind the hinge, and into the door frame. We caulked behind all the hinges, and hoped that we had caught it in time. All we probably did was seal in the moisture, and seal the fate of the door frame.

Thursday, Edward started looking at the door again, trying to find where it was leaking. Again the bottom of the frame was soft, so he got out the box cutter and started pealing old caulk, which pulled off the paint, and revealed wet, rotten wood. The bottom 12 inches of the door frame, on both sides, was completely rotted out. Again. It wasn't like we'd been ignoring the problem. We'd caulked, we'd sealed, we'd painted. Everything would seem to be fine. We'd even get that south rain again and it would be dry, but maybe it just wasn't leaking enough to show.

We called the handyman that had done the work for us. Could he please come out and have a look? It was going to need repair and fast. One, we had a break in the weather. After a week of rain, we weren't supposed to get any for a few days. Two, I'm supposed to go out of town next week. I like to be here when we have work done on the house. Edward and I tag team the people we hire to make sure they know we're watching and do the work right. That is the theory at least.

Our handyman came out the next morning and looked at the door frame. Yeah, it needed to be done and he thought he could do it that afternoon. Great. How about doing the work free of charge? He'd always said he stood by his work. OK, here's his chance to prove it. We told him that we'd found no caulk behind the hinges. He gave us a some an dance about needing a gutter to keep the rain from splashing onto the door. Or maybe, I thought, if the hinge had been sealed correctly, it wouldn't have leaked and rotted. None-the-less, if it had been done right, it wouldn't have rotted in less then 2 years. He agreed to do the work at no charge. I figure he thought the same thing.

He had another job that morning, but returned at about 4:00 to do the work. It took about 2 hours. He had to cut out the bad wood, high enough to reach wood that was still good. Then he had to fit in new door jam, a specific pre-made piece, add a 1x1 inch trim piece, caulk it in, and restall the weather striping. He did a passable job. We wanted to be sure the joints were flush. They were... for the most part. The door frame boards was primed already, but he covered the trim piece with caulk. "Painted" with caulk, he said, that'll seal it. Yeah, maybe.

After dinner we did a little extra work. We sanded the joined frame flush on the handle side and touched up the caulking a little bit. The hinge side was more of a problem, since we couldn't get the sander in the space. Oh, and when the handyman left, there was still no caulk behind the bottom hinge. There was before we finished with. His attention to detail does seem to be lacking a little bit. We learned that after the last work he did for us.

This morning I got up and primed the entire door frame. Four hours later, the first coat of paint, and five hours after that, a second coat of paint. We also sealed the door frame where the locks go in with an expanding foam that is supposed to be water tight. I can't imagine where this door would leak again. I've thought that before, only to have it leak again. Tomorrow morning we'll reinstall the weather stripping and cross our fingers.

We'd done all the things we were supposed to do when we hired him. We got recommendations, we checked his license, and we checked work he'd already done. The first work he did for us we were happy with. The second job, not as much. By the time this came up, we had already decided not to use him again. The only reason we did for this was because he agreed to do the work for free. He stood behind his work. I'll give him that. If he'd insisted on charging us, we would have hired someone else. Today he was next door, doing some work for our neighbor. She's been happy with him. That's OK with me. But we won't have him out again.

So now we wait for a strong southern rain. It might be next week, it might be next month. The door didn't leak every time it rained, nor every time it rain from the south. Who knows if we've got it this time. We caulked everything we could think of, short of caulking the door itself shut, or bricking the thing up entirely and putting in a window, which with our luck would leak as well. At least we caught it before it has gone any further. Or more importantly, before the carpenter ants or the termites found it. That only would have made a bad situation worse.

Maintenance is one of the many joys of home ownership. It requires constant vigilance. We'll keep our eyes on this door and in six months, leak or no leak, we'll probably caulk and paint it again.