I am back. 

Between my health utterly and completely kicking my ass for the past few months, my blog getting repeatedly hacked (DAMN YOU, WORDPRESS!), and helping Brian get his new e-commerce site up and running, my poor blog has fallen by the wayside. It is time to remedy that.

Updates:

My fibro knocked me down farther than I thought it ever could. My pain levels were constantly 6-8 (or worse), even on a steady diet of tramadol and vicodin. My skin felt like I was burned all over... Brian couldn't even touch my arm, it hurt so bad. Clothes were a nightmare. Then about 2 weeks ago, after about 2 solid weeks of this, it started to gradually get better. Right now I feel better than I have in almost a year. Here's hoping it lasts for a while. I'm not counting on it, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. It's nice to be able to sleep for a change. :)

Will is going in for surgery on the 6th for his scoliosis. Yikes. I'm not sure what else to say about this one, except I'll keep everyone updated. Will wants me to document it, so I'll do my best. I promise no graphic pictures on the blog (at least none that aren't hidden behind links). I don't want to freak anyone out. Especially me. We'll have x-rays and maybe some animations of what's going to take place, but you won't be surprised by surgery pictures when you come to the blog. I'll do an update soon with what the procedure involves here in the next day or so.

The blog: In case you haven't noticed, the blog is .. slightly different. I've abandoned the idea of self-hosted wordpress, because I'm just not good enough to keep up with the hackers. I don't know why, but apparently my blog is a tasty target, and they've taken it out twice so far. I give up. They win. I've moved to Posterous, and will continue my blogging over here. I'm pretty sure the blog migrated in it's entirety, but if you notice anything weird or missing, let me know. 

And with that, I leave you with a picture of a cat in a box.

Meet Jason.

Just realized I was missing a few final updates, so I'll fill you in. Clyde went to go stay with his owner's cousin last Friday. He was a great dog to get to know; if I didn't already have a houseful of pets, he would have been an awesome dog to have. It was hard to have him here, though... Apollo didn't want him near us, and would park himself on the floor so he was between Clyde and us. I couldn't let Clyde off the leash in the house, because he thought cats were something to chase. If I'd had time, I could have trained him not to do it, but I knew he wasn't going to be here for long. I really enjoyed having him here, though. He was a gentleman, and just a super sweet dog. Good luck, Clyde and family! The swamp cooler was finally installed last week, and that made me VERY happy. The guys who came out (to replace the guy who couldn't be bothered to show up) were polite, professional, and wonderful to have here. The installed the cooler, fixed a few problems we didn't know we had (oops, broken water line), and were very reasonably priced. My recommendation, if you live in the area: AWR Maintenance are great handymen. We will definitely call them again. Great work, guys. The swamp cooler was really nice this past week. It got a bit warm around here. Of course, it's been cold and icky the past few days, but summer is on the way. We'll definitely get our money's worth out of this. Oh.. thanks, Mom and Dad, for paying for the installation. That was a big help. That's been our excitement here. My son and his wife came out for the weekend, which was very nice. We really had a nice visit, and it was very relaxing and fun. I'll post pictures of our drive up the Monument later; I still need to pull them off the little camera.

We're home, and the work has begun. I'm just an observer for this one, most of this is heavy lifting that I can't do. Brian's friend John and his son are here to help, so we can get the offloading work done a lot more quickly. I snapped a few pictures as they were starting:

I feel kind of left out, since I'm not any good for this kind of work. On the other hand, I get someone to do all the hard work while I sit inside on the computer and blog. I suppose that's not too bad. More destruction to come.

We're home, and the work has begun. I'm just an observer for this one, most of this is heavy lifting that I can't do. Brian's friend John and his son are here to help, so we can get the offloading work done a lot more quickly. I snapped a few pictures as they were starting:

I feel kind of left out, since I'm not any good for this kind of work. On the other hand, I get someone to do all the hard work while I sit inside on the computer and blog. I suppose that's not too bad. More destruction to come.