Annoyingly, my laptop broke. I've narrowed it down to a broken video-chip and that might still fall under warranty (an extended one, due to known factory defect). Originally I planned to take it to the Apple Store this weekend, but Apple Stores during the weekend usually get a bit crowded. Current plan means going in as soon as I feel up to it (tomorrow maybe) and see if they can fix it.

For now, this means using my trusty little EEE for irc and (barely) browsing, and my phone a little. It feels very basic and simple.

It started snowing a few days ago, a fairly rare event judging from how the trains stopped going. On the other hand, that says more about the trains than the actual weather.

Nano enjoys the snow very much and randomly barks at it when she sees it falling. She loves rolling around in it, for some reason, sticking her nose in it and getting covered with snow. It sticks to her fur a lot, she needed a shower to get it all out. She looked like one of those cotton-ball-sheep :)

Today I ran some errands. I got prints from my lab-work and then headed to the pharmacy to pick up my medication. My MTX went up in dosage so I had to get new prepared syringes. I left my prescription there on Saturday and they told me then to pick it up on Tuesday / Wednesday. So I went today. Unfortunately, when I got there and after waiting for a bit, they told me they wouldn't give me more because I picked up my prescription two weeks ago already. I explained that I got a new prescription for a higher dosage right after I picked the other one up. The girl at first thought the prescription said 15mg (old dose) but upon closer look, it did indeed say 20mg. The note, made by the person accepting my prescription Saturday, said 15mg however -- someone screwed up. She did promise me to order it right away and to come back tomorrow. A bit annoying.

I then went to the supermarket around the corner to buy some fruit (tangerines and bananas) and some crackers. I happily listened to my music, feeling slightly annoyed by the pharmacy thing but also looking forward to some nice tangerines. When I got outside and checked my iPhone for the time, the screen had gone nuts. All the while my music played, but the screen won't display anything sensible.

I suspect tangerine-envy.

Tomorrow I'll go back to the store to have it repaired. I miss it already.

When I woke up from surgery, about half an hour after they sewed me up again, I felt nauseous. They gave me an injection of something which helped a little, though I did stay nauseous all the time in the hospital.

I have an anecdote there: I got this medication that didn't help so much, so one of the nurses (bless her) switched me to something else, and that worked great. This after exclaiming:

But this stuff relaxes your stomach! You don't have that anymore, I will give you something else.

The stuff I got after that worked great. The next time they wanted to give me that other stuff again, but I protested heavily and I got the other stuff again. They also turned down the epidural (took away one of the opiates) to help with the nausea.

It never went away completely.

Now that I've removed certain foods from my diet (wheat-products and milk) and have stopped taking the Plaquenil I have a lot less nausea. It hasn't gone away completely (yet), however, it has gone away a lot. Instead of mostly nauseous with some nausea-free hours, the reverse happens most of the time. I only have the last week or two to look at, so I won't yet do a little victory dance. It looks good, though, and that makes me happy.

Procrastinating from my Nanowrimo-novel (3471 words) I found Hugh Macleod's article ' don't worry about being an artist. just worry about getting the work made. '.

It reminded me of how I know some people that graduate in something or the other, and then say 'Oh, now I am a real \<insert random profession>'. When then asked what they really do then, they usually don't have an answer to that. But at least they can say 'I'm a \<insert random profession> now!.

Apart from these, a lot of people also seem to think that creativity (in any shape and form) requires talent. They don't really know what this talent actually means, but clearly some people have it and some don't. You get born with it, or maybe some fairy comes by at night and sprinkles it on you.

I don't believe in talent (or that evil cousin called 'luck'). I believe in (hard) work. I believe in doing. I believe that when you have an interest in a subject you need to dig in and put in the hours and hours of work to get 'good' or 'great' at it. Getting good / great requires work more than this vague talent. Sure, some people seem to do it more easily, however, most of these creative things take practice. And practice means work. It means failing and loving your failure because of the unexpected result. It means hating your failure and deciding you want to do the opposite. It means challenging yourself. It means stretching out to the borders of your sanity to see if you can, and then crossing it. It means stretching to the edges of your ability and finding you can go further than you thought you could go.

So I make this bold statement that you cannot be unless you do. You can call yourself a writer, an artist, a whatnot. But if you don't actually do it, then you just stuck a label on yourself. Ask yourself what you would like more.

This morning I got up and walked into the livingroom, finding Nano (looking smug) on the sofa with an empty chocolate-bar wrapper between her paws. I thought I had stored the bar away, 'cause I always do that. Not last night, unfortunately, so when I saw her looking at me and the leftovers of the wrapper, I freaked out a little. A call to the vet calmed me down (kudos to the other person on the line), as we calculated how much she had and what type. She had about half of the 'minimal toxic (not lethal)' dose, the vet said.

The vet told me to keep an eye on Nano, feed her some extra to dilute the chocolate somewhat and check to see if Nano drank enough. She drank a lot today, and spent some time on the sofa making small whining noises (I suspect a tummy ache) and seems otherwise fine.

This of course happens right after boyfriend suggested poisoning the dog in my Nanowrimo-novel.

A winter theme for my site.... Still want to edit / change a few minor things, but I love my little snowman.

Of course this means I have to go and make all seasons into a theme.... What have I done...

November lurks around the corner, so I had to join Nanowrimo again. I decided to try a different approach this year and have slowly outlined my planned novel. Initially I wanted to go for horror, with brutal murders and such (I blame this on watching the entire 'Friday the 13th' series, as well as 'Nightmare on Elmstreet', and ending it with 'Freddy vs Jason'), but my story seems to have converted more into a regular thriller with no supernatural murderer.

Ah well.

And it'll have a dog.

I found my old Polaroid camera which still had film in it. 7 shots left after I took this one.

And then ofcourse I took one with shakeitphoto of the real Polaroid. Maybe I should take another Polaroid of that. To infinity....

My mom commented recently about how many digital cameras I have. I have my trusty Canon Powershot A620, an older Canon Ixus 400 and a Minolta Dimage 5, plus ofcourse the Sony Ericsson K810i phone and my iPhone. She didn't notice The Other Cameras, all analogue. I have two Lomo LCA's (one old, it says 'USSR' and a newer one) with a macro, tunnelvision and fisheye lens and a colour-flash, a transparent actionsampler, a pop9, an orange supersampler, a Polaroid 600 and a Polaroid i-zone. I may still have forgotten some (my Kodak Brownie comes to mind). One might say I have too many cameras, and I cannot disagree there.

I loved and love making photos, of ordinary stuff, of strange things, of my dog. I'll make functional photos (of my garden) but I have a thing for the randomness of just shooting (the Lomo-philosophy, basically). Buying film and having it developed and cross-processed and all costs a lot of money (not to mention the nasty chemicals). As my main camera I've used a digital one since around 2002 (had one before, but didn't mainly use it), which has that 'instant' effect that I love. I've also absolutely loved my phone's camera, despite its lack in quality, or perhaps because of that. On my trip through Europe, years ago, I snapped a bunch of photos with my phone-camera and send them as a collage on a postcard.

Yesterday I browsed around and looked for a few iPhone-apps that would satisfy my 'funky' need. I had already downloaded and used QuadCamera which reminded me of my old actionsampler (and the supersampler). I also found CameraBag to add some effects to photos (some vignetting, adjustment in colour etc) as well as CameraKit. And ofcourse several Polaraid Apps of which I currently like ShakeItPhoto the most. The part of me that enjoyed my analogue cameras so much has awoken and bounces up and down, left and right, off the walls. I wonder how much sleep I'll get tonight...

I have no idea when my love for hats started, somewhere before my teen-years for sure. I never did really wear them, my head was usually too round to fit them properly. I wore baseball caps, and that was about it. For a very long time I wanted a black top-hat, almost like a magician's but a bit shorter. Too long seemed a bit impractical. For years I'd browse hat-stores every once in a while, and when I got internet I googled them. Up until this week I never found (perhaps I lacked the google-foo) the hat that I wanted. Either they were too high, or too expensive. I wouldn't dare to go out on the street with an expensive hat, so it had to cost a fair amount, not a ridiculous amount.

And this week, I found it. The perfect hat. With a feather. It arrived today and it is awesome. So very awesome. I never want to take it of again.

For a long time some (most) of my kitchencabinets have annoyed me. I cannot imagine why today, kitchen-makers still default to shelves for the bottom cabinets. Shelves below the waist, so if you want to get something out, you have to kneel down, and dive in. With my knees, often plagued by pains and swelling because of the RA, this quickly became such a painful event that I rather left everything on the counters than store it in the cabinet. Not precisely the most handy thing to do.

But no more! Today we fixed my two main cabinets with drawers. I could have replaced the front bit as well, having 'real' drawer-fronts, but I chose to use the old door instead, saving a bit of money along the way. The installation went smoothly and using the doors worked as expected. So now I have fancy drawers, instead of messy shelves. I still have to put all the stuff back, and probably move around a few things for easy access, however, I already feel thrilled about it. The access has become much easier, I don't have to lean over or around the door anymore and I don't have to sit on my knees either.

This will make it so much easier for me to access things. I still have to do the bit by the kitchen-sink (those yellow things), the cabinets there need replacing and I will replace them with similar ones as these. I already found a kitchen-sink-cabinet with a drawer and have eliminated enough stuff from under the kitchen-sink (only frequently used cleaning-supplies, the infrequent used supplies have their place in the hallway-closet) to have a pretty good idea that a drawer will also work. I think they come with one, at the bottom, but possibly also with another (half) one halfway. Either will work great!

Have already started saving for it, it'll take more time and money to get that bit done, but after that, I'll have redone the entire kitchen :)

Denzel is a couple of months old now. I took this (terrible) photo a few weeks ago at sister's birthday party. Somewhat over a week ago sister, her boyfriend and their two dogs went out with the dogs to play. They found a spot where another guy and his dog were playing (throwing a stick, bring it back). The dogs happily played together and the guy happily threw the stick. At some point he swings his arm back, ready to throw the stick and just as he swings it low, Denzel jumps in front of him and gets the stick full in his face, knocking him out. Sister cried, guy cried, emergency visit to vet. Denzel had blood coming out of his nose, his jaw swelled up and his eye got 'bloody' as well. Pretty bad all in all (combined with going KO). The vet thoroughly checked him out (and gave him medication) and sister had to wake up the dog every hour that night. He had a pretty bad concussion, and swelling / bruising, but should make a full recovery.

The good part about this story, apart from his recovery (it still happened recently, but I expect the worst has passed and hopefully he won't have any permanent damage): the guy paid for the veterinarian costs and kept in touch about Denzel's health. Last I heard they were going to visit him (or he would come around) to make sure the dog indeed got a bit better.

Can only imagine what that guy felt like, and certainly can relate to sister (a little bit, Nano has had minor incidents so far knock on wood). It shows some people still take their responsibility and don't hide behind 'but it was an accident!'. So, bravo, anonymous-guy!