Americanuck

Sock Zombie and Nutmeg meet

Originally uploaded by Americanuck

I got my Sock Zombie a while back and totally neglected posting the photos I took of him, her? I dunno which there be no zombie genitalia.

Aww ain’t it cute?

Had another attack tonight afer a nice healthy dinner of chicken, veggies and brown rice. Go figure. It was mercifully short, maybe 45 minutes in total with the worst of it maybe 20 minutes in length. I was rocking back and forth, got up to go to the bathroom and all of a sudden it eased and then went. I almost felt like dancing. It is amazing how much of a relief it is when it’s gone.

I got my blood test results yesterday. The Doc’s office called me Monday afternoon saying I needed to come in to discuss them. I was shall we say a tad nervous. I didn’t know what they were going to say. It turns out that I have way better than the average person’s cholesterol, crazy good in fact and my blood sugar and all that stuff is perfectly in the normal range. However… my liver enzymes were in the mid to upper 200’s when they should be less then 36 to be considered normal. Before sharing that result my doctor asked how I was feeling. I told him I felt fine (apart from a bit of tenderness). He had thought from those levels I would be in constant pain so he sounded surprised. He asked when my ultrasound would be (June 2) and said I needed to keep an eye on things until then to see what we’re dealing with. He said it was possible the last attack either was the passing of a stone or just irritated the gallbladder (and liver) and then fell back in. He says if it gets bad I need to get to the hospital and be put on fluids to give the gallbladder a rest. If anything gets stuck I will see signs like turning yellow or clay coloured stools (oh how colourful!)

Of course without the ultrasound nothing is official, and no treatment is forthcoming. It is just a waiting game. I went almost 2 weeks without one, the time between the last two was 5 days so I guess that is good right? I will sure be glad when all this is over with.

I have very mixed feelings about movie sequels. If I really love a movie and leave wanting more, part of me hopes that someone will figure out a way to bring back beloved characters and sweep me away with another great storyline and part of me wishes that they will just leave it alone already and try to come up with another original idea. The latter part of me tends to have a louder voice.

I have to admit there have been a few sequels in my opinion that have either expanded nicely on the first or surpassed it (see The Empire Strikes Back.) Then there is Ocean’s Twelve. I’m sorry George Clooney, I really am but that movie is sitting stinking up my DVD shelf as we speak. I didn’t watch it in the theatre but some perverse side of me MADE me buy the DVD (albeit from the discount bin) despite the vitriolic response that the movie wrung from even the kindest of reviewer. I did see Ocean’s Thirteen and though it was still a bit of a self indulgence-fest I will let it go, it was a fun revisit and some eyecandy.

Anyway, like I said, sequels can range from the very good to what the hell were they thinking. A few years back a cute CGI movie was being promoted called Shrek. It was coming from a studio trying to compete with the likes of Pixar and appeared to have a good dose of adult humour mixed into a movie that I could take my kids to. Score. I went, I saw, I loved. I approached Shrek 2 with some caution as I was hoping they didn’t ruin the characters for me and found to my delight that they managed to find a good story and add Antonio Banderas for good measure. His Puss in Boots slayed me.

The problem arose when I started to see Shrek characters whoring for many different products including a minivan (!?!) that my sequel suck-o-meter started going off. This was what seemed like MONTHS in advance of the actual movie premiere and by the time it was released I was so sick of the characters that I didn’t even try to watch the movie. Still haven’t.  I don’t get the marketing folks these days. I know sucking the teat of any popular movie dry is the thing to do these days and maybe it is the younger folks that get all in a twizz about this stuff but man, they are pissing and turning me off.

Imagine my *surprise* to see the ever so scary Burger King, um King on a poster at the local restaurant all dressed up like Indiana Jones. Or flipping through my Entertainment Weekly (my fave magazine of all time) to see the smiling (!?!) face of Harrison Ford as said Indiana Jones looking back up at me, hawking Dr. Pepper. Dare I say ding ding ding goes the meter? Come on people I love me some Indiana Jones. I LOVED Raiders of the Lost Ark and warmly embraced The Last Crusade . How could I not? Harrison AND Sean in one movie and it was cute! and Funny! and Adventurous (and only kind of ruined with the “You chose wisely” shtick of a Pepsi Commercial with the old dude from the Cave.) You notice I did leave out the Temple of Doom? Yeah. Hated that one. Still, I love me some Indy.

So what I’m saying is cool it with all this product placement and for Pete’s sake, please please please don’t have Indiana driving a Mini-van next okthxbye.

Today was my 20th Mother’s Day ever. It is hard to believe sometimes that I’ve been a Mom for so long and yet I can almost not remember what it was like not being one. For so long even when I was a Mom I spent more time making Mother’s Day nice for my Mom. These days things are different, I have people around me reminding me that I’m a pretty important Mom myself. It’s nice.

Today we all slept in and when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed Tom offered to run over to the local Tim Horton’s to pick us up some breakfast to go. We learned a few years ago to not even try to go OUT for breakfast on Mother’s Day, it is impossible to get service. I’m all over their breakfast biscuits so I was game!

I had barely finished breakfast when Chris ran into his room and came out with his present for me.. a really cool digital picture frame. I spent the next hour or so picking out pictures to load on a memory card and it is now playing a slide show of some of my favourite family photos across the room.

A little while later Tom brought out the presents from him and Sean.

(note the extreme concentration tongue projection in the above picture while I read my card)

The first gift was a photo book called “Pretty in Pink…Why it is good to be a Girl” by Bob Elsdale featuring two things I love, all that is pink and a whole bunch of cute piglet photos.

The second part of my present were DVDs, Season three of Sex and the City and Season One of The Sopranos. SCORE! Ok so maybe “The Beave’s” Mom wouldn’t have appreciated a little Sex and Violence for Mother’s Day but then again I’ve never claimed to be June Cleaver…

For dinner, we had take out from our local Chinese restaurant. Chinese Food hasn’t bothered my…well whatever it is, so it has risen to the top of my food preferences of late. I hesitate to say I have Gall bladder problems until I know for sure, but I sure as hell am going to be avoiding every single thing that I think or have read that could set it off if I do!

I hope all you Mothers out there had as nice a day as I did.

One of the talented Graphic Artists at Tom’s station did caricatures of the Staff from the Graphics Dept. Tom hasn’t been in the Graphics Dept (except to cover the odd shift) since last summer. He’s on contract covering for one of the Technical Directors who is on a year leave of absence, but officially, he is still one of the gang.

Tom sent it to me yesterday and when I opened it up I almost spat out my coffee laughing. The expression on his face is perfect! The artist used a security photo of Tom that was taken when he went to the station originally for his interview. He used to shave his head completely back in those days. I don’t have that photo to use as a comparison, so I had to go find a photo I had from back in those days.

The drawings of the other people are great too but I didn’t want to post them on the blog here without their permission. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to post Tom’s though. Tom had told the Artist that the picture would be up on the blog within 24 hours. How right he was!