Aha! Clear photos!

Of teeth :-)

On the waiting list

So after a very interesting appointment with the surgeon, Dom is now on the waiting list to have a lobectomy. The surgeon showed us the CT scan of Dominic's chest, which was fascinating. The cysts (lots of little ones) fill up about half to two thirds of the lower right lobe of Dominic's lung. We wrote down a list of questions to ask, and when we got all the answers it came down to a straight-forward (though not easy) choice: - do nothing, risk infections every time he gets a nasty bug, increased risk of lung cancer in mid life - lots of future stress - put Dom through a surgery, recovery period, and put ourselves through a huge amount of now-stress, but be able to pretty much forget about it within a month of the surgery Choosing now-stress and surgery is not an easy thing to do, but fingers crossed it's the right choice to make. I asked the surgeon what he'd do if it were his son (or grandson), and he was 100% positive that surgery was the way to go. His actual answer was something like "there's no hard data on any of this, but I am completely sure that surgery is the right choice. Not enough to report you to CYFS for neglect if you don't do it, but I'm entirely convinced..." I was reassured by two pieces of information: a) One of us gets to stay with Dom in hospital. We can't go in to the operating theatre, but we can be with Dom before and after. b) They don't have to go through any ribs - they can go between. If it all works out well, they may not have to separate any muscles. This means the recovery time is quite short - we should be able to go home after 3 or 4 days. So, we're on a waiting list which is full for the next 6 months, hoping for an operation in early summer. It's possible that another major case could be cancelled and we'd be called to come in the next day, but that's rather unlikely. We're hoping the operation isn't too close to his birthday or Christmas :-)

tooth again

slightly clearer?

first tooth!

So far it's pretty small, but plenty sharp!

Advice from Dream Nick

(as the King) "A lord should sleep with his wife four times a day, behind the backs of his mistresses, so his evenings are free for adventuring!" EDIT: From the comments, Debbie explains: How strange to find my dream quoted on Matt's blog. I'm not sure if it makes it more or less strange if I explain further. I'm putting this down to reading too much historical fiction and fantasy, and also being woken up in the wee hours of the morn by Dom so that I actually remember my weird dreams and then tell Matt about them. The dream was set in a quasi-fantasy Tudor kingdom that seemed to run largely on shagging (hat tip to Phillippa Greggory) and dark turnip magic (OK, I have no idea where that came from). Lots of people were disappearing from their homes with no trace left but a carved turnip effigy on the window frames. Witches used other larger turnips to control them as zombie-slaves. Later the bodies would show up all shrivelled like dried up turnips. It was actually really creepy. King Nick was trying to rally his knights (of whom Matt was one) to seek out the turnip witches and defeat them and their turnip zombie hordes. The knights complained that they were too busy and tired with their mistresses and wives to go out hunting turnip witches. Hence his advice. Yep, weird.

More Dom rocking

Following up Debbie's post, Dom has improved his rocking skills already!

Awesome youtube parody

I am enjoying a very good workshop - I'm just finished the task part a little early and am also enjoying some 'free time'.

Famous movie!

Our crazy little little movie Rolling Thunder now has over 740 views! I guess it pays to be on the home page of a cool site like DrivethruRPG :-)



Edit: We broke 1000! In less than 7 days!

Kitchen excitement!

Our new kitchen is now semi-functional! It still needs the walls finishing, the flooring done, a splash-guard thingy behind the sink/oven, and painting, but the cupboards are in and usable, the oven's wired in, and we have an insinkerator and dishwasher :-)

The old kitchen (can't seem to find a photo of the crockery cupboard end)




The new kitchen so far:







I'll note that it's surprising that I haven't put on any weight this week, what with eating patterns being disturbed and a tragic flat-tyre incident preventing me from biking to work!

Kiwinowrimo again

Has it really been a year already? I am signed up again to attempt kiwinowrimo, though I'm a little less confident about my ability to finish within the time frame this year. It's great motivation though, and I managed it last year! I don't know what I'm going to write yet - I suppose I have a week to think about it. Anyone else interested in giving it a go?

I done a crazy

Professor Schul-Mensch

This is just a shout-out to Fraser for these awesome photos he took of himself, for our short film. It was a shame that we only had a space to use one of them! Thanks also to Morgue, Frank, Adrexia and another party-person for the dead gamer photo :-)

Movie making fun!

Yesterday was awesome. We had a fantastic time filming with some really fun, creative people. And the film is looking pretty good too :-) Just waiting for a couple of photos from Fraser (they're uploading to his gmail account while he eats dinner), two little bits of voiceover to bump the volume up on, and we'll be all done.

I love making short films.

And, all going well, Debbie's new camera will arrive tomorrow. Yays!

EDIT: film now on youtube! Watch on Debbie's blog -

http://deb-onair.blogspot.com/2008/06/yay-movie-now-online.html

Making short films

This weekend Debbie and I are getting together with some fine folks to shoot some inserts for a short film we're making. It's a silly little piece on the history of dice which we're making for a competition. We knew the 48 hour film competition was a no-go for us this year, what with little Dom keeping us busy and tied to home, so we were very excited about the prospect of a longer term (2 week) contest which we could enter. The script is 90% piece to camera, with what I hope is a good number of jokes and puns thrown in. The inserts are mostly visual gags, with a line of dialogue here and there. I am looking forward to shooting today, and have decided not to wash my hair this morning as there are two separate shots which involve me having tomato sauce squirted over my face (injury by die, injury by playing card). I'll wash my hair after those shots, I think :-) The contest closes on Monday night, and submitting entries is done by posting them to Youtube and sending a link through to the contest organisers. So, I'll post the finished video on Monday!

More fun with food

 

1/2 a year old

Far out, Dominic is 6 months old today. Where did the time go?



2 weeks old

Coming soon

From sensational boyband "Boys Up the Rear" - Rollin' Rollin' Everybody loves you when you’re rollin’, rollin’ Got the GM, they in control and Gonna attack you with the kobolds and trolls and Can’t touch them with a 10’ pole and Now we’re in your neighbourhood disarming your traps Creepin’ through your window for a sneak attack Our wizard gonna zap you just after his nap And the cleric just gave me 6 hit points back So better watch out when we’re rollin’, rollin’ Looking for an amulet that has been stolen Got all our gear in our bag of holdin’ Gonna kill a dragon whose colour is golden Taking on a dragon ain’t nothing to me Cos our party is the deadliest you’ll ever see Make sure it’s distracted by some wizardry Then gonna backstab it just for the XP Suggested lyrics welcome :-)

24 Season One - finished

*No spoilers this time* So we saw the end of the season last night. We might have been able to watch it on Thursday if I hadn't let out a mega-sneeze just as Dominic was falling asleep, startling him into an over-tired awake state. It took us about an hour and a half to get him sleepy again (he thought he'd had a sleep, 'cos he had a lie down and nodded off. He doesn't yet seem to realise that he hasn't had a full sleep if he gets woken up early). I liked the last episode, and most of the penultimate one. It's a good end to the season. So, my recommendation? 24 season one is a very cool show, well worth watching, but beware of some clunky writing from episodes 13 through to about 22. Characters do very stupid things, there are elements that are hard to swallow, and it loses the tightness and drive of the early season. But it all ends satisfyingly, so it's probably worth pushing through to the end of the season. If you're slightly more pressed for time, just watch the first 12 episodes. They are pretty near flawless, IMO.

24 Season One: Ups and downs

So Debbie and I are 3 episodes from the end of 24 season one. We'd never seen any of it, but had been curious, so decided to get the dvd's from the video store and check them out. WARNING - SPOILERS! It's not exactly a new show (they're filming season 7 at the moment) so the spoilers here are probably old news to most of you. Please note that we won't see the end of the season until Saturday, in all likelihood. The First 12 Episodes What a fantastic show! A great premise, lots of tension, interesting characters, clever villains... all the ingredients of several well-made thriller movies rolled into half a season of a TV show. We were hooked, and loved pretty much all of the first half of the season! The difficult mid-season OK, so a lot of shows have a lull in the middle. This show had to change gears, from a rescue-the-family high-pressure chase to more of a solve-the-mystery, investigative mode. This wouldn't have been such a problem if they hadn't shoe-horned new plot set-ups by making several characters do incredibly stupid things. A sampler of stupidity: - lame amnesia subplot - trained federal agent disobeys orders and shoots witness - civilian stabs witness on camera in fit of lover's passion - Jack's daughter Kim develops Stockholm syndrome - Criminal brother of kidnapper refuses to let Kim leave his house because 'he doesn't trust her', so he wants her to stay there so he can go on to talk about and carry out a drug buy? - Jack's boss leaves him alone, at a site identified by his would-be assassin. Fails to send a car for him. Fails to check satellite images of the location. Fails to contact other agencies to find out what's there. The promising, then annoying, late season The major plot developments of episodes 19-21 were cool, and they got Jack into an interesting location and situation. It looked promising for a while - then all the resources of the CTU and DoD appeared to dissolve into plot-convenience, and the bad guys managed to get away from a high security facility by going through a giant, yet unmarked sewer system. There was no aerial surveillance. No satellite surveillance. No roadblocks. Terribly groan inducing. And they took their target, Jack, as a hostage, and shot the warden. Instead of, y'know, the other way around. I just hope the last 3 episodes pay off well.

In da car

Debz took these awesome photos while we were driving to the shops this weekend. Dom is in one of his cool new outfits - a superwarm onesie with polar fleece outer and cotton lining, with ears on the hood and matching booties which button on to the inside of the leg-cuffs with elastic loops.

I wish I had one :-)

Out visitin'

Dominic saw something interesting outside. Probably a branch moving in the wind, but you never know - it could have been a bird, a plane, even Superman. Well, perhaps not a plane...

Visiting parents

Are lovely. They say nice things about Dominic, buy him pressies and clothes, buy us nice dinner, and even do the dishes before they leave. They make occasional comments about the shocking state of the lawn (over a foot high in places!), but that's none too surprising. I weakly protested that I had mown part of the lawn within the last 2 weeks. I even pointed out which bit - it still looks good :-) There's also a patch of short grass between the front door and the driveway, worn down by 2 pairs of feet and stroller wheels. I promise I will mow the lawn soon. Where soon = sun + motivation + time combo.