Sun. 02.20.05 - The view of the Las Vegas sky from our window at the Gold Coast Hotel during Punk Rock Bowling.
February 2005 Archives
Three weeks ago I came down with a scratchy, hoarse voice and a dry cough. I slept a lot, drank lots of liquids and tried to stay away from smokers.
My voice is back to normal, I only cough after being around smoke, but I am still exhausted. Exhausted to the point of not getting much done.
I had lots of grand plans for this weekend and very few of them materialized beyond 5 minutes. Now I want to go back to bed. Blah.
I alluded to it in this entry.
I got a call back in Sept. asking if I would go give blood to see if I was a match. I did. And I was.
On Dec. 9th, I went in for a full half day physicial. Blood. Heart. Chest. Urine. X-Ray. Multiple nice nurses and one cranky doctor. We were on. Scheduled for Mon. Jan. 3rd.
Then four days before Christmas it was called off. The transplant recipient had fallen out of remission. Donation cancelled.
Mon. Feb. 7th, I recieved a phone message from the NMDP saying that the donation was back on. More blood tests. More investment.
I returned home from Bowling on Monday evening, to find another message. We are off. Recipient is too ill to be a candidate for stem cell transplant.
Please pray for this leukemia patient, whose name I don't know.
Consider registering to be in the Marrow Donor pool. It is a gift.
Sun 02.20.05 - Bally's Hotel.
Fri 02.18.05 - We're here. Punk Rock Bowling. Ms. Jen and Liz Ortega.
Tomorrow morning we leave for the 7th Annual Punk Rock Bowling Tournament for three and a half days.
I will be blogging it from my Nokia 7610 camera phone to the new Barflies.net Bowling Blog.
;o)
Sun 02.13.05 - Small yellow flowers.
After months of telling myself I would do it, I did.
I have worked out a tweak or small re-design of the blackphoebe.com front page and have given this blog a new banner, as well as made all the sub-pages of the blog consistent with the site design, and I added the Category names to each post.
Check it out. What thinkest thou?
What started out as a scratchy voice last monday after a weekend at the Pala Casino for my Grandma's 85th birthday, has turned into a full fledged case of laryngitis and a dry cough if I try to talk. Other than no voice and an occasional dry cough cough, I feel fine. Bleh.
Some days I sound like a little frog and today is the toad voice day. Croak. Bleh.
When I am working too much during the week and then have to work the weekend at Alex's in the noise and smoke, I have been known to be hoarse for a day or two, but not a week. Punk Rock Bowling is this upcoming weekend. Bleh. If I can't speak now, how I am I going to navigate 3.5 days of smokey Vegas? Croak...
Sun. Feb. 6, 2005 - My cousin Lynn brought a basket of freshly picked Meyer Lemons from her garden to my Grandma Grace's 85th birthday dinner. My mom immediately sliced open one of the lemons and squeezed it on her calamari.
Thurs 02.10.05 - Sangre de Toro's 50th anniversary for the 2003 vintage has a gold plastic bull attached to the bottle rather than a black one.
Fri 02.04.05 - Karl Irish = Terrorist Threat... Or so says the San Diego Police Dept as they shutdown tonight's all ages punk show at 7pm because the show's flyer was considered a terrorist threat. Ridiculous! Karl Irish, the man who wears a flask belt full of 151 and a cowboy hat, a threat? Republican San Diego is insane. Need I say more?
Fri 02.04.05 - Diego says he will be # 1 at Bowling this year.
Photo of St. Brigid's Well &
the 12th Station of the Cross by Jen Hanen
According to Phil, it is 6 more weeks of winter. Today dawned bright, clear, and very windy. After the big winds of today and yesterday, SoCal will need more rain very soon...
According to the Weather Corner:
Groundhog Day has its roots in an ancient Celtic celebration called Imbolog. This date is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In an agrarian society that was very dependent on the weather, this was a time to celebrate having made it halfway through winter. The superstition arose that if the weather was fair on Imbolog, the second half of the winter would be cold and stormy, but if the weather was cold and overcast or stormy, the second half of the winter would be mild.In Christian times, Feb. 2 was celebrated as Candlemas, but the earlier Imbolog superstition continued. In Scotland they said, ``If Candlemas be bright and clear, there'll be two winters in the year'' and in England, they said, ``If Candlemas be sunny and warm, ye may mend your mittens and look for a storm.''
The Romans learned of this tradition from the Celts, and eventually brought them to the area that became Germany. German immigrants brought these beliefs to Pennsylvania, and the tradition of predicting the weather became centered on the woodchuck, or groundhog.
About.com is kind enough give the low down on Imbolc:
Today marks Candlemas, the Festival of Lights, the Midwinter Festival. Known to Neopagans and ancient Celts as Imbolc (Gaelic origin, "in milk), a festival of the Maiden Goddess and a traditional time to bless agricultaral implements (especoially the Plough) and livestock.Neopagans celebrate the holiday with home blessings and lighting candles to welcome the coming of the light and the Goddess in Spring.
In Ireland, the day is the festival of St. Bridget, a holdover from celebrations oif the Celtic Goddess Brigid. Traditional "corn dollies" and "Bridget's crosses" are fashioned from straw.
Today, February 2nd, is also my father, Campbell Hanen's birthday. Happy Birthday, Cam!
I have loved Groundhog's Day for a number of years, as it is whimsical and bordering on downright silly. I like under-appreciated holidays that don't have the full weight of 8 weeks of marketing blitz behind it.
More from About.com's Landscape guy on the Origins of Groundhog's Day.
Sun. 01.30.05 - Nancy laughing in Joanna's mom's kitchen after Kristen's Baby Shower.
Sun. 01.30.05 - I always admire Matt's shoe and sock combos. He told me that he has a whole box of fun shoes. What a man!
Sun. 01.30.05 - My front door neighbors' Matt and April had a yard sale.
Is a day or two after Christmas 1997, when Uncle Richard, Aunt Doreen, and Grandpa Joseph dropped Erika and I, or maybe just me, off at Penn Station to take the train back to Boston. As we were unloading gear, Grandpa Joseph bops out of the Jeep and down to an adjacent convenience store without saying a word.
Uncle Richard got frustrated and went into the store to look for him, but no Grandpa Joseph. I peeped in, no Grandpa Joseph. Richard told us to go catch our train or we would miss it. I found out later that Grandpa Joseph just decided to have a looksee at the area around Madison Square Garden and came back to the car within 10 minutes or so. Spry at 87.
Spry until the last year or so. He passed late last week. The viewing and funeral were Sunday and yesterday in New York.
Erika told me today that it was open casket and that Grandpa Joseph was placed sitting up in the casket. I would guess that was so he could get his last looksee around.
Yuen-Wei Tsang, May the Lord Bless You.
I was just tripping down Internet Lane when I decided to run a Google Search on "LifeBlog Post".
Google turned up the following LifeBloggers:
Charlie
Loic
Barak
Anina
Heiko
Amiel
When one is using the LifeBlog software to post from one's phone to one's TypePad mo-blog, if you don't fill in the Title the default is "Lifeblog Post".
I searched 4 pages deep and saw no search link to Wasabi. This is sad, since our gang frequently uses the title of "Lifeblog Post."
On another LifeBlog tip, Roland commented to Ippi's post:
people are already doing this with Flickr (and others) and their blogs already the only "innovation" that LifeBlog brings to the party is the inclusion of SMS and MMS since nobody uses MMS, the inclusion of MMS is questionable and since lifeblog only works on Nokia phones, it probably won't take off
I must respectfully disagree here. As a person using both Flickr and LifeBlog, I would always choose LifeBlog over Flickr if I could post directly here to Black Phoebe via my Movable Type interface. I use Flickr here at BlackPhoebe as it is the easiest solution, but not my favorite. I don't like hosting my photos on another server, when I sent my photos up to flickr from my phone I can't rotate them until later when I get to a computer and log into flickr, etc. etc. etc.
With LifeBlog, I can rotate the photos from the phone, I can control my post's title, blog entry and tags from the phone. Even though I am a guest blogger at Wasabi, I have more control of my post later when I get to my computer than I do on how it is presented at Flickr.
Now, if only I could post to Movable Type from my Nokia 7610's onboard Lifeblog....