Suzanne Calling

I'll bet you all were expecting more posts from me, now that I am out on disability. To be honest, I thought the same. However, the first few days of rest and relaxation were truly that. I had no idea how worn out I'd become over the past few months. I have been a lazy ass, with my butt parked on the couch for many hours. I've been sleeping a lot, but the sleep is erratic. I was up until 5am the other morning, and then went back to sleep once I got the boys off to school. Today is the first day where I don't feel like I've been run over by a mack truck. Monday is my first visit to Nurse M since going on leave. She and I haven't specifically put a time frame on this leave. We've both agreed that I need to get off the vicodin. Small problem there is that the pain has been WORSE since I've been off from work. Time will tell whether I am crazy to think I'm going back...

How many of you blog out there? Really. Blog more than once a week, month, year, presidential administration? Have you noticed the dynamic of the various blog sites? MySpace -Most people have under three blog entries, and those were posted within the first month of joining the site. The purpose of MySpace is to have a 'bulletin board' on the net like you probably had on your dorm room door. Everyone leaves comments, some of your friends send you a bulletin every day and if you're over 30, you're not hip. I have a MySpace page, and I am so uncool. It's been over a year since I started it and I have less than a dozen comments. Why do I have it? For the bands, dude. That's probably the best thing about MySpace-bands create pages and keep you up to date about their concert tours and albums. The one feature that they have that I love is that you can filter who reads an entry. Then again, no one is on there to WRITE anything, especially if they can't use...

Whenever we have a teacher conference with a new teacher for Gameboy, there is no small measure of trepidation. He's a smart kid, but he is a handful for anyone. The best laid plans of meeting with teachers before the school year started did not go as planned. Instead, we met the teacher that used to run the program that he was to be enrolled. Tonight, I met up with the teacher that has him for half of the day and was pleasantly surprised. It was similar to the meetings we had with his teacher for the previous two years. We talked about how much his intelligence impressed her. She told me how he was a rapt listener in class, remembered EVERYTHING she taught and had insightful answers for the questions she posed. For instance, the students are currently reading 'The Skin I'm In,' a book about a young girl with poor self image. The girl speaks of her mother, but the mother does not really have a role in the book. Ms. O asked the students what the character though...

From the annals of great late night TV, we bring you Kenny Everett. A little backstory: Back in the late 70's and early 80's, Saturday Night Life was the best thing going on TV. The original cast was the original NBC "must see TV". As a young teen, too young to be going out on a Saturday night (not that I had anywhere to go, anyway), I of course had to watch. Being the night owl that I was (and still am), I'd invariably watch Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. After that show was over, NBC had this wonderful nugget from across the pond. The Thames production "Kenny Everett Video Show". It was another wonderful import. We had Benny Hill and Monty Python. This was more topical humor. It was a rare week that I wasn't there laughing for the entire program. While I can tell you some of the ideas of the sketches he presented, this one stood out in vivid memory for 27 or so years. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did as a teen.

I've been a member of Imagestation for a few years now. It's been a good site, I use them to host pictures that I occasionally post on message boards, as well as allow friends far and wide to view. Another person hosts about a thousand pictures of mine on her site as well, but I feel like that is rude-since we aren't in contact anymore. (It's a good thing she had them, I lost a lot of pictures in the hard drive crash) Imagestation announced that they will be shutting down. They suggest that users port everything over to Shutterfly, but I'm not thrilled with their site. This leads me to find a different site to host my pictures. But which one? The front runner is Flikr . I notice a lot of the bloggers I read use them and it seems so easy to use. However, no one I know IRL seems to have it. Shutterfly has not impressed. I noticed Da Mooch has Fotki, which I'd never heard of prior to him linking me pictures of the new house he and da wife are building. ...

I have a day off. Lately, that means I've taken ill in some fashion. That probably would explain the aura I've got right now. Damn, it's almost 6pm, and I thought I'd escaped it this time! It's making typing interesting for sure. Disability begins next week. My boss contacted HR today and they are FedEx ing the forms. The call went out to Nurse M. Apparently, the practice charges 25 dollars for these forms to be filled out. Instead, she gave me her fax number to complete them and return to my employer. An indication of how much she likes me: she told me to do it this way so I don't have to pay the 25 bucks! Hmm, I think I need to bring a batch of brownies or cookies to my next appointment. As far as work goes, I feel bad. I've been hoarding my vacation time to use in the first 8 days of my time off. The company counts sick days in the payroll budget for the store, but not vacation pay. This sucks-not only does someone have to come in to cover ...

Lately, I've been reminiscing about my childhood and events shared with my parents. For two people who worked full time (plus), they each made efforts to do things while we kids were off from school. A sampling: The restaurant mom worked in was closed Monday nights. For a time, she'd pick up a bartending/bookkeeping job on Mondays at a bar in Baldwin. Summer was different, she'd be home Mondays (and many a Thursday, too). We'd have dinner out at the picnic table on the patio and at least one of those nights, after dinner, we'd head down to Newbridge pool for a swim. The green flies were abundant (the pool is right on the canals leading to the Great South Bay), but the breeze off the bay made even the hottest summer night quite pleasant. Mom would sneak in her white wine spritzer and camp out under on of the canopies with all the towels with her cigarette in hand. She'd finish the smoke and a drink, then she'd come join us in the pool. She loved it. ...