Wow

Apparently 90,000 people were without power from the bad storms last night. My 'hood wasn't one of the ones affected; one of the benefits of living in a good 'hood, I guess! The power grid is always reliable, so the Chads and Trixies aren't made peevish.

I snapped a ton of pix of the sky after the storm, as it was surreal. Here's one...

The sky was actually yellow-orange, btw. It wasn't just the sunset; it was some weird storm-induced diffraction of light. Really weird stuff. And lightning every now and then. Wild skies.

Header

Many thanks to Corvina for the fab header redesign for the blog. It looks way sharper than what I had before!

Can You Drink from the World Cup?

Lordy, after the US's nail-biting squeaker of a win yesterday (seriously, that was one crazily intense game), to Italy's amazing/stunning defeat at the hands of the plucky Slovakia team, I don't know how much more drama I can take! There have been some incredibly exciting matches of late. So, who advances to the elimination rounds? (it's not done, yet) My favorites are in italics...

1. Uruguay
2. Mexico
3. Argentina
4. South Korea
5. United States
6. England
7. Germany
8. Ghana
9. Paraguay
10. Slovakia
11. Netherlands
12. Japan
    

There are a few more matches to sew up the remaining teams, as the remaining groups sort it out until the final 16 are reached. This afternoon, I'm watching doomed Cameroon (going nowhere, statistically) go up against Holland, just to watch them play again; they were a good team, but just didn't have it when they needed it. I also want to see the Dutch play again. For all of the talk of how great they are, I haven't been so impressed. I like watching the World Cup on the front end, sussing out the teams, seeing who the good teams are, versus the floppers and foulers. I really wanted to see more African teams advance (and I'm in a pickle with the US having to go up against Ghana Saturday -- I was really wanting Ghana to go further, but up against the US, I have to root for the US, because the US is such an underdog in soccer, and Ghana is a very, very good team that would totally stick it to the US if we're not careful).

Tomorrow has Portugal v. Brazil (10 a.m. EST) and Chile v. Spain (2:30 p.m. EST), among some other games. Both of those should be fucking sweet, if those teams play well. Normally I wouldn't root for Portugal, but going up against Number 1 Brazil, I totally am. Get'em!

Except that if Brazil manages to spank Portugal, AND Ivory Coast manages to clobber North Korea, then Ivory Coast could miraculously advance. The odds are very long for this, but I would like to see another African nation advance to the final 16.

Better Living Through Chemistry?

Still haven't gotten the test results back for Exene (or haven't heard, anyway). The meds she's on at the moment seem to have finally made a dent in whatever the hell she's got going on. She particularly liked the steroid (big shock; I said she'd be quaffing beers and getting a mullet in no time), and yesterday was the first day she'd been without a fever in five weeks. We'll see how the meds continue to work, and what happens when she's off them. Weird shit.

She's got a promising lead on a good job downtown, which, if/when this clicks (I don't want to jinx it; lord knows I don't want to), it'll make everything infinitely easier. Fucking FINALLY -- an end to the financial stalemate and a way forward.

We had some wicked storms pass through here last night. Even tornado warnings, which are rarities. The klaxon for the tornado warning really sounds like some crazy calliope, and when it sounded, B1 asked what it was, and I told him it was an Evil Clown Warning Siren, and he said "No, Daddy, it's a TORNADO SIREN." (in that classic little kid "My Dad is an Idiot" tone of voice).

I really need to record that klaxon. It is the most dreadful-sounding thing. I'll give it credit, however -- it's impossible to ignore, even if it really does make you think some insane clown is going to go after you.

I snapped a bunch of pix of the skies last night. The sunset was particularly cool, owing to a skyful of lightning and this swatch of sunlight at the horizon. Lots of people were on their balconies and roofs, snapping photographs at the incendiary sky. I just missed capturing a lightning stroke (it was just out of the frame of one of my sunset shots).

Oh, I scissored my left index finger last night -- I was cutting something and got distracted by SYTYCD for a second and cut my finger -- a nice, v-shaped slice. D'oh! My editing finger! Oh, noooooo! ; ) 

Tiramisu

You know you want some.

I used coconut rum, espresso, semisweet chocolate, and marble poundcake (and, of course, marscapone). I didn't plate it nicely, was too eager to dig into it, it's so good.

Mal-aria?

So, the ENT specialist did tests on Exene to see what the hell's wrong with her (where to start? I can think of a few key areas) and the results aren't back, yet. Meantime, they've got her taking Clindamycin and a six-day course of Cadista (methylprednisolone, a steroid) for the inflammation. She also had to quaff a barium smoothie tonight (mmm, banana-flavored barium beverage) for the CT scan tomorrow morning, just to check out that inflamed spleen. I'll be curious what the test results indicate, when they finally come in. The ENT hadn't entirely ruled out mono (wonder where she picked THAT up? Probably those sailors from Smolensk), saying that the original test used can often give false negatives. The ENT doc also thought maybe her tonsils have warehoused some particularly nasty bug that can't quite be dispatched or overcome, and she may have to get her tonsils taken out, assuming it is some kind of pathogen at work, here. Exene's under the delusion that tonsil removal can be an outpatient operation that won't require her getting knocked out, but I told her that it's very likely that it will, which predictably has her being obstinate and pig-headed. She's motivated to get them out, if that's the problem, but doesn't understand the procedure so much. I got mine taken out in the mid-70s, when I was a little kid. I remember getting that done at St. Elizabeth's, long, long ago, in my hometown. Anyway, we'll see what the deal is, and you'll know as soon as I do, just because it's weird.

We're supposed to get serious storms tomorrow at some point, and the high'll be around 92 degrees. Yowza. Hot stuff, comin' through!

I got fuck-all for sleep last night, so I should be way sleepy, but for some reason, I'm not. I had some of my homemade tiramisu earlier this evening; maybe that's the culprit. I should post a picture of it, so you can see it and covet it. It's sooo good.

*Snicker*

Okay, seeing these two paired on the marquee, I had to laugh.

Second Best Foot Forward

Exene

Curious things are afoot with Exene. She's been sick on and off since February, which I haven't mentioned too much. Her symptoms are fever, night sweats, swollen lymph glands, and most recently, swollen spleen. She'd gone to the doctor a few times over the past few months, getting antibiotics, but nothing worked, the fevers (often around 102 degrees F) persisted. Symptoms have been gradually worsening (in my view -- first fever, then tonsilitis, then night sweats, then fatigue, then swollen lymph glands, then swollen spleen).

Not sure what it is, but she's got five of eight symptoms for lymphoma. She's getting a CT scan this week, and is seeing an ear, nose, and throat specialist (and infectious disease specialist) at the recommendation of our GP, who was concerned with the swollen spleen (which is the newest symptom). Either she's a victim of stregoneria, some novel infection (she's been tested several times, no strep, no mono, no other routine pathogens implicated), or else it's lymphoma. She's pretty blasé about it at the moment, but we'll see where she's at once this whatever-it-is gets diagnosed.

She also appears to have broken one of her toes -- she says somebody stepped on her foot on the El, and one of her little toes was all swollen and looked broken. Needless to say, she's not done much running of late.

Also, she's interviewing for a good position today; I hope she gets it, as it'll make everything else far easier in this dreadful economic (and household) situation!

Sigh

Spain smoked Honduras today (2 - 0; and Portugal flayed North Korea, 7 - 0). Spain's soccer play was really lovely to watch -- just good stuff. They should have won 10 - 0, just from the number of attempts that should have yieled goals, but beyond that, they played beautiful soccer, the loveliest I've seen so far in the World Cup. The Swiss played a strong (but futile) match against Chile, losing to them (barely) but still showing serious strength.

I'm bummed out today. Got the "How in the hell am I ever gonna make it as a writer" blues in a big way. I won't give up, I never give up (on writing, anyway), but it's frustrating just how hard it is to get noticed, how arbitrary and connection-driven it is. I really should have played the game in my youth -- I would send stories out when I was 18 and 19, but I should have entered the Iowa Writer's Workshop, get the connections one apparently totally needs to get seen. The editorial firewall is still so hard to get past. All I focused on was writing well (or at least as well as I could), when I guess I should've properly positioned myself and played the game more on the front end. Now I'm a 40-year-old writer, not even a "young writer" anymore. WTF? Bleah. Sucks. At least my boys'll have all of the writing I've done, so when I'm gone, maybe they can make hay out of it. And maybe THEN people will enjoy the work. Hah. By the time I eventually die, I'll have written so much stuff, at the rate that I go. It'll be a library's worth of unread fiction.

I'm keenly feeling just how shitty this economy is. Unless you work in some kind of boutique industry that serves the wealthy, you're really fucked in the Great Recession. God, do I ever need to find a good job to escape the Asylum before the walls come down. The main reason I sweat it is because I want the boys to be better off than their dad was, and I worry that in the far-more socially rigid America that is the unspoken reality we face, I've done them a disservice by not being a captain of industry...

Social Immobility in America

Sigh. I see my writing so much as me creating cultural capital -- creating something from nothing, something of value. But until I can make it work for me, it's nothing. Just a big pile of nothing. I want to help my boys any way I can, help them deal with the bullshit of "the game" that our society foists on us all -- certainly, I'm more attentive and supportive to them than I ever got. I am looking at what they enjoy, and what they're good at, and I try to encourage them to test their limits and explore. I don't want my sweet boys to be casualties in the "new economy" (that is, the medievalization of the American economy -- which is really the US becoming a de facto banana republic).

The Longest Day

Happy First Day of Summer, motherfuckers! It's all downhill from here! Winter's right around the corner. It's funny, because over the weekend, I remember thinking "Wow, what a long fucking day." and not even associating it with the Summer Solstice. And here we are, on THE longest day of the year...

Scene from "The Longest Day"

Now you can play along!

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to me! ; )

Off to watch the Slovaks take on Paraguay in the World Cup. Go, Slovakia!