Hey, my first blog from home! Came home to find that my dishwasher flaked on me (again!) and only half the dishes are clean, the rest have a crusty residue on the outside. *sigh* So, I have to rerun it tonight.

Adira is driving me nuts!!! I'll start posting some pictures soon. Her biggest problem is that she comes howling into the room where I'm at (most likely looking for attention). But she has some sort of ADHD; you start petting her, and she starts walking around making it like petting a moving target. The worst of it is when she does this at 3:00 AM. The first thing she did this AM was that she sneaked around me when I watered the plants. Then she ran around, stalling me from leaving for work.

On top of everything I've been through, my doctors are pretty sure that I have celiac disease. Basically means that you're allergic to wheat products. This allergy causes antibodies to attack the wheat products in your small intestine. Until product labelling becomes more specific, you're essentially screwed. The reason: Modified food starch (it could be modified corn or wheat starch), and is in A LOT of stuff. Also malt flavorings or colors is a "no-no". I miss drinking coke (it was my afternoon caffeine rush). I also miss just grabbing a burger when I felt like it. A burger without the bun IS NOT the same! Okay, I miss drinking a Guiness every now and then too!

So, I'm gradually accepting that conveince food is out, and making my foods at home. I still am searching for a decent bread recipe (so far everything I've tried tastes too heavy). I found an excellent apple cake recipe, that my co-workers couldn't tell there was no flour. I also have a peanut butter cookie that is very good (especially with a jelly spot on top). Tomorrow, I'm going to try a chocolate cookie recipe.

For someone that only baked cookies, pies, and cakes for special occasions, this transition is tough. The biggest problem is time - if I bake a loaf of bread, the breadmaker takes three hours, then a couple hours to cool. If I have a long day at work, I am forced to leave the bread in the maker to cool as soon as it's done. I think that contributes a bit to the early staleness. After all that, then the kitchen needs to be cleaned up from my latest "adventure". It is honestly hard to work up the energy to do all that after a long day at work.

Okay, enough babbling! The season ending of "24" is almost over. Unless something shocking happens in the next 15 minutes, it's been an okay season ending. Based on what happens before the commercial break, I think I have an idea of a cliffhanger....we'll see if I'm right!

Hey, my first blog from home! Came home to find that my dishwasher flaked on me (again!) and only half the dishes are clean, the rest have a crusty residue on the outside. *sigh* So, I have to rerun it tonight.

Adira is driving me nuts!!! I'll start posting some pictures soon. Her biggest problem is that she comes howling into the room where I'm at (most likely looking for attention). But she has some sort of ADHD; you start petting her, and she starts walking around making it like petting a moving target. The worst of it is when she does this at 3:00 AM. The first thing she did this AM was that she sneaked around me when I watered the plants. Then she ran around, stalling me from leaving for work.

On top of everything I've been through, my doctors are pretty sure that I have celiac disease. Basically means that you're allergic to wheat products. This allergy causes antibodies to attack the wheat products in your small intestine. Until product labelling becomes more specific, you're essentially screwed. The reason: Modified food starch (it could be modified corn or wheat starch), and is in A LOT. Also malt flavorings or colors is a "no-no". I miss drinking coke (it was my afternoon caffeine rush). I also miss just grabbing a burger when I felt like it. A burger without the bun IS NOT the same! Okay, I miss drinking a Guiness every now and then too!

So, I'm gradually accepting that conveince food is out, and making my foods at home. I still am searching for a decent bread recipe (so far everything I've tried tastes too heavy). I found an excellent apple cake recipe, that my co-workers couldn't tell there was no flour. I also have a peanut butter cookie that is very good (especially with a jelly spot on top). Tomorrow, I'm going to try a chocolate cookie recipe.

For someone that only baked cookies, pies, and cakes for special occasions, this transition is tough. The biggest problem is time - if I bake a loaf of bread, the breadmaker takes three hours, then a couple hours to cool. If I have a long day at work, I am forced to leave the bread in the maker to cool as soon as it's done. I think that contributes a bit to the early staleness. After all that, then the kitchen needs to be cleaned up from my latest "adventure". It is honestly hard to work up the energy to do all that after a long day at work.

Okay, enough babbling! The season ending of "24" is almost over. Unless something shocking happens in the next 15 minutes, it's been an okay season ending. Based on what happens before the commercial break, I think I have an idea of a cliffhanger....we'll see if I'm right!

To give a short moral on my adventure of buying a used iBook is this: NEVER buy the machine without a System disk. (Also, don't buy from ditzes who automatically login and forget their admin password!!) I spent a few hours reading up on how to get around my situtation. The fustrating part was that when booted into single user mode, and was at root, I could not get the passwd command to work. It'd sit there and think about it for about 30 seconds, then return me to the command line without anything happening!

I finally found a solution, though not ideal, worked. Booting into single user mode (again), I was able to delete the .AppleSetupDone file and change the name of the netinfo file. So when I restarted, it acted like a fresh system install, and I was able to setup a new admin account. Finally, I could install the software for my new scanner, printer, etc. as well as set the toolbar the way I wanted.

The bad news of all this is that there were a couple files on the old desktop that I kinda wanted. I could go into the hard drive and see the Desktop Folder of the old user, but I have no access privs to that folder. WTF!?!?! Okay, fine, I'll enable root user, and get to it that way. For some reason, I could enable root user in the NetInfo Manager, but I'd log out, and couldn't see any other users, so I couldn't log in as root. I guess I'll eventually figure it out - I spent too much gray matter just trying to get admin privs working.

Riding the elevators today has caused short episodes of pain. Perhaps it was because I was fortunate to be able to ride from the first floor to the sixth floor instead of stopping on every floor. Kind of a pain (literally), but I'm about to go to staff meeting, which will keep me out of the elevators for at least the next 90 minutes.

But before I run off to meeting, Will they find the Lost Dutchman mine? My Dad is a big believer in the mine, he must have about 15 books on the Superstition Mountains and the mine. He currently lives about an hour drive from the mountain, is retired, but has not made a trek out there since I was about nine or ten years old. I think the myth will not die easy - even if they do find some evidence of a mine out there.

Okay, this is something that has been something I've thought a lot about this year. Religion. I was born into a family of Catholics, was babtized (in my grandfather's gown that still exists), but did not regularily attend church. Both my parents had Catholic teaching forced down their throats by being dragged to church every Sunday, sent to one of the various Catholic schools in Chicago, and they individually decided that their children would be raised to discover religion on their own. (A strong point of contention by my Dad's family, but they eventually accepted it).

As a scientist, I tend to think of things as step by step. My biggest problem with religion is where did God come from? If he made this world, did he make other worlds too? (Astronomy is discovering more and more planets outside our system, and I believe that eventually there will be some form of life discovered on one of them.) Our religious teachings say that we are unique, and that God is watching over us. For a universe that is a big as we think that is, I find it very difficult to swallow. And I'm not even going to mention a virgin birth....perhaps later.

I strongly object to hardline values such as "gay marriage is wrong because God says it is." I read an article in the Arizona Republic this morning that reinforced this idea: Officer found support as a prision hostage, but not a gay person. I followed the prision hostage standoff like many people did, and this is the first time I read that she was gay. I still think she's a hero, and all the people who agreed wtih me then, but then changed their minds because she lives with a woman need to take a serious look at their beliefs. In some respects, it reminds me of the terrible story of Pat Tilman, and how we all believed he was a hero who died doing his best....only to find out weeks later that he was shot by his own men. I think we need to believe in heros, people who in a crisis situtation dig deeper than they thought they could do, and come out being a better person in the end. If the hero is flawed, then they quickly fade into the background. I don't think the fact that the prision guard is gay is a flaw - just how she is. With the growing momentum to ban gay marriage, and partner benefits in Arizona, I hope this one prision guard can find it in herself to become a hero again (for a different reason).

Okay, back and better than ever! Instead of obsessing about every finite detail of my pain, this blog will discuss pain issues, but also general things in life.

I admit that this February was a hard time. I spent a lot of time thinking about how much time I've lost in the last 10 years because of my pain, and I can never get that back. Then I turned 29, and with no viable prospects for a serious committment, and the possibility of having a child seem as if it'll never happen. But then I eventually accepted it - I still would like a serious committment from a man, but I think I can live with spoiling my nephew and my best friends baby (due December!)

Okay, it hasn't been easy - they say nothing in life worth having isn't. I probably went though more hell than most, and I'M STILL HERE! I think I finally realized that, and am trying to move on. It is not easy when every morning you have a wake up call of face pain beating on the side of my head. But if I can get up, the pain will decrease, and I can move about and start my day.

So look for things to come, some more stories about surviving pain, about interesting things in Arizona, etc.

:) Jenn