Happy Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in the US. To my Canadian readers, yes, we celebrated in October too. I like this whole double holiday thing! To my American readers, yes, Canadians celebrate it in October, not now. There are advantages to living in a semi-foreign country. Now if only I could get double work holidays I'd be set.

Things I am particularly thankful for this year:
Great friends.
New little babies : Natasha, Victoria, Lauren and the rest.
Having had the chance to know some fantastic people who aren't with us anymore.
Family. No matter how far apart we are, we're still family. Ohana.
New friends. Ohana once again guys, you know who you are!
Quiet time at home.
Loud Saturday nights at home.
Laughing until you can't breathe anymore.
My health (such as it is.... more on that later)
Learning. Sometimes teaching myself, sometimes in classes. On many subjects.
The tree outside our windows in the courtyard.
Fresh blankets from the dryer.
Resettable alarm clocks.


But how've we been?
Busy. Typical answer, I know, but our life is hectic. We literally don't know what to do when we're not running around like chickens with our heads cut off. As for the reference to my health above, I've been having a rough go of it. I've been fighting a migrane for 4+ weeks. I was fighting a nasty systemic infection and started a new antibiotic for it on Nov. 14th. Finished on the 20th. Seemed to have worked (fingers crossed). On Tuesday the 23rd, I broke out in full body hives. Seriously not good. Call my Dr. She's not in today. Decide this can't wait and drive 50 miles to my old Dr, who takes walk-ins. Discover that apparently I'm allergic to the antibiotic that I finished taking 3 days ago! Worked for the infection, just not for the rest of me I guess. Now I'm doped up on serious anithistamines, but that's a concern as they make my asthma worse. Can't win for losing I guess, but overall I'll take the hives to be rid of the infection. I can no longer feel my pulse with my eyeballs. This is good. So, in summary, not great, itchy head to toe, but going to survive.

I should run. Remember to be thankful for the things in your life.
Heather

Quote of the Day....

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things, they push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." -- Apple Computer commercial "Think Different"

I think this quote expresses some of what I was trying so ineloquently to express in my post on human spaceflight.

Welcome Natasha

Well, my little niece Natasha made her entrance in style at 3:30 am on November 10th. Welcome to the world little one and know you are loved. I can't wait until we can get home to see you and I'm working hard on your Noah's Sub... I'm close to finished with the current page! I'll post links to photos below....

http://www.eberhardt.ca/baby/natasha_day1.jpg
http://www.eberhardt.ca/baby/natasha_day2.jpg
http://www.eberhardt.ca/baby/natasha_day3.jpg
http://www.eberhardt.ca/baby/natasha_and_grandparents.jpg
http://www.eberhardt.ca/baby/natasha_and_alison.jpg
http://www.eberhardt.ca/baby/natasha_and_james.jpg
http://www.eberhardt.ca/baby/tired.jpg

Welcome!
Auntie Heather and Uncle Brian.

Time for another update... Warning: this one is long!

Life is hectic but good. We’re anxiously awaiting the birth of our new little niece or nephew who should make his/her entrance any day now. I can’t wait ‘til we get to go home to see her/him. I spent Friday night helping a friend make a pumpkin costume for her little 4 month old daughter. It was so much fun, and turned out well if I do say so myself.

We’ve gotten extremely busy with the gaming. A whole load of scenarios (over 35) retire at the end of the year. The new group that has started since September has decided that they want to get them ALL done. Yep, ALL of them. They are seriously hard core. We’re currently running one mod on Thursday nights and an average of 3 rounds on Saturdays. We did a bit of a Hallowe'en theme for Saturday and I had fun making little 'coffin cakes' and a whole graveyard scene as warning to the guys to play well! It’s a lot of fun, but quite a bit of work too. Brian’s been so good about prepping them all. As well, Brian is now writing for a new region, Bonemarch. It’s going to be a blast and they’d like him to write several mods so he’s having a lot of fun with it. The region isn’t really developed yet so he’s got a lot of freedom in how he decided to set things up. The ‘real life’ area for Bonemarch is Greece, so I think we might just have to do a little ‘road trip’ for a premier. Anyone else coming? And as for our hardcore gamers, they are awesome people too. We have a huge table that I love and bought a while ago. I've been slowly buying my good chairs two at a time to go with it since they're expensive. With the number of people we've been having out we've been borrowing chairs from neighbours etc. but getting by. I bought two more 'good chairs' recently and that helped. Well, the guys showed up on Saturday with two more chairs as a thank you for us hosting/running all the time. Awww... they are so awesome. You didn't have to guys, but thank you!

We start our sign language course tonight at the library. I’m sure it will all be review for Brian, but I’m hoping he remembers how much he enjoyed it. If he can spend the time now learning and improving, all the better for when he can work if he chooses to go into translation. I’m excited about it but I’m stuck working back in Inwood today and having to face that 50 mile drive with Long Island traffic in order to get home, eat and rush to class. It does NOT sound fun. Oh well, it’s just this once. I shouldn’t be back to Inwood for a while after this week .

I haven’t had much time for reading lately, but I did pick up the new David Weber book yesterday at the bookstore. It’s horrible space opera but I can’t seem to put them down! Mostly when I have down time I’ve been working on the cross-stitch for James and Alison (and baby to be!). I’m almost 3/8 finished. Doesn’t seem like a lot until you look at it and see just how much I’ve done. And the good news is that at least half of what remains to be done should stitch up really quickly! My digital camera is broken so I’ll have to borrow one from work again to get an updated photo posted to http://www.xvart.com/xsprojects.html And I have to look at buying a new digital camera. It really sucks that Sony wants almost as much to “try” to fix my existing one as it will cost to buy a new one. Now I have to decide if I get another Sony (since I have the memory cards) or if I go with something else that hopefully won’t break on me! I love the camera itself, so I'm not adverse to another Sony, just worried about getting burned again.

The US Presidential Election is tomorrow. In some respects, I can’t wait for it to be over and done with. Campaigning here goes on FOREVER. Seriously folks, it started over a year ago. Whether you’re pro-Kerry or pro-Bush, you have to be sick of it by now. Those who know me know my political leanings, and I don’t feel like ranting about them here right now, but I’ve got my fingers crossed. I hope it’s a clear, decisive victory tomorrow too. I really don’t want to see another case of president by appointment.


Back to work for me! I’m ‘observing’ training today, which means sitting here staring at a fuzzy grey screen for hours while the trainee works the microscope. I thought this test was the worst thing possible I could be asked to do at work. I was wrong. It’s much worse to have to watch someone else do it!