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So, as I said, I keep forgetting about this website. No clue why, because I really loved LiveJournal -- I think it's because I got out of the habit of writing there when the Russians took it over and then got out of the habit of writing/blogging/journaling entirely.

But here we are.

So this is the summer of my discontent .. in specifically HEALTH discontent. Last spring I did a mammogram and they said something looked suspicious. (Don't worry, it's okay!)

They called me back, re-imaged, and did a biopsy. That came back with some cells looking abnormal, but not cancerous. But yeah .......
.......

They wanted to do more.

They set me up with surgery (with an awesome, very fun and positive surgeon) and I had that last week. Lab results came back as abnormal but not cancerous.

Thank god! (Or goddess, or however you name your personal deity. Or the universe at large for the non-religious.)

But so, I'm okay -- and I didn't realize how much this was a back-of-the-mind panic until yesterday, when I finally processed what I'd heard a half week before, that nothing is cancerous.

I am however at a higher risk for breast cancer. I'm worrying about the breast cancer future possibilities, and have appointments set up for that. They are going to go over this for me at my post-op and tell me where we go from here.

Separate from that though is in the meantime that I broke my arm/elbow, had surgery, and am now if the beginnings of Physical Therapy.

This started when I went to a Memorial Day event for my SCA group (medieval re-creation group) and got stuff out of the car, and my tent set up with a lot of help from other people. I go into the tent, unzip the back window flap, try to come back out of the tent, and trip over the little piece of fabric that sticks up at the front door of the tent. I fell flat like a log, thought I had broken my glasses (because I landed mostly on my face) and instead broke my arm just below the elbow. I've never before broken a bone like this.

It's taken me weeks to wrap my head around that I could have possibly broken something.

But ... here we are. I had surgery, have had follow-ups, and am now starting PT. I have a metal plate and some stuff that looks like scaffolding in my arm. They said I should recover the full range of motion, be able to bend my arm up all the way and almost straighten it to match the other arm (but probably not quite straight). I'm okay with that. The bending up is coming slower, but making improvement almost daily.

All the same, it kind of sucks.

And I didn't get to make any of our SCA event.

I'm going to try to be here more often. I tend to spend my late night watching you-tubes and that's not ideal. I need to do better.

Love you all; stay in touch.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Location: South Dakota

One flew east and one flew west and....

My mother learned this as "...one flew over the eagle's nest" in the 1920's in South Dakota. There's a butte called Eagle Nest Butte not far from where she lived at the time and she thought this is what the rhyme referred to.

I can't really tell you (or myself) why this floated out of my memory tonight. It just did.

I can tell you that I keep forgetting I have this site, and back in the day when I was on LJ, I used to post fairly regularly. I dumped out of LJ when the Russians bought it out, I didn't trust what they'd use any data they scaped for.

I need to start posting again. I apologize for not posting more often here.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: South Dakota

So I go to log in and Dreamwidth says I have the wrong password. I click keep me logged in, and Voila!! I'm here!

Some days I really don't understand computers.....

The entire reason for logging in was because I was trying to update my other blog, which is the one that is containing my political posts, and now hopefully my crafts. But in the process I checked the web address for this and decided I really didn't like the theme I'd chosen years ago. I now have a new one that fits me much better.

First, forgive any typos, because it's about midnight and I didn't expect to be typing at this time of night. Second, I keep for getting to post here. I used to use LiveJournal in the middle of the night but it's been ages now since I did that. And I've abandoned LJ years ago.

All that said, my family used to watch Blazing Saddles rather regularly, though it's been years since I've seen it. We had it on DVD, or actually probably on VHS. I'd have to really look through storage to be sure, but it was one of the best Mel Brooks movies ever made.

And again, all THAT said, here I am tonight, having packed for a weekend trip, while in the middle of helping a friend move (who's getting out of a bad marriage), and sitting up in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping but instead was looking for something to watch on TV. Usually by this time I've defaulted to YouTube, but tonight I watch the Big Bang Theory reruns and then that switches to another show I'm not interested in, so I go looking and find an old Twilight Zone on something called MeTV which runs really (REALLY!) old shows in black and white, especially in the middle of the night. And they are running the Twilight Zone which is one of the most solidly written shows of all time. Crap special effects of course, but it came out in the early 1960s, when there were no digital effects, was hardly even blue/green screen, and TV really had no budget for what little there was, of course, but there wasn't much even if you had funding. If you don't know the Twilight Zone, you are missing out on the best of the best which shows how you can make a compelling story without effects. Or with really bad ones.

So I brought up Mel Brooks, which is really miles away from the Twilight Zone. But the episode that played is a western with a drunk in a bar who is currently being bullied but who once was a really good shot. And when he's been knocked down in the street, a peddler drops a gun where he can see it and reach for it. Everything unwinds from there. Although no one knows it now except for the saloon girl, once upon a time he'd been known as a gunman and people challenged him until he was challenged by a 16 year old and shot the kid dead. After that he crawled into a bottle.

But the point, and where I'm going with this, is -- that's the backstory of Gene Wilder's character in Blazing Saddles -- he shot a kid and became a drunk. He still can shoot if it's necessary. It's basically the same story as the one on Twilight Zone, thrown into a comedy movie instead of a half-hour drama.

Mel Brooks copped this storyline and then made it his own -- but Twilight Zone was the source material. This shows Mel Brooks knew his background and was able to recreate it into a completely new story, something that early watchers would have referenced but still would have appreciated in a comedy movie.

Mell Brooks was a genius at this, his Hitchcock parody is perfect at that. It's funny, but if you aren't a Hitchcock connoisseur you'll miss a lot of the parody -- I know I did because I'm not that familiar with Hitchcock movies. I can't remember the name of this movie, but I know I watched it years ago and I know it referenced at least both "The Birds" and "Vertigo" and I believe "Psycho".

I was happy to find the earlier source that the spoof done in Blazing Saddles was based on, because I never knew it was a parody of an earlier serious show and this just adds to the appreciation of the movie.

I keep forgetting I have this journal. I used to write on LJ and then fell out of the habit, partly moved on to other things, partly started to avoid LJ when the Russians took it over. I don't want them to have my information to datamine; after all they helped put Donald Trump into office.

Earlier today I ran into an article from Business Insider, coincidentally while I'm arguing with a friend that the actions of the mob a couple days ago was a failed attempt at a coup d'état. And she really is a friend, and intelligent, and no fan of the president, but she thinks because this was doomed to fail that it can't be called a coup. I and a couple others still hold it can be called at least an attempt at one by the Trump supporters who rioted,

I'm also not so sure it was doomed to fail. Or rather I think it would have failed in the long run, but I also think it could have delayed the certification of the vote enough to throw things into chaos, and as more info is coming out, that it's possible it might have done worse. There are reports of people in the Capitol who were looking for Mike Pence to kill him, and there is suspicion that the people with zip strips (which aren't actually zip strips, they're the plastic Flexcuffs that law enforcement uses in place of handcuffs when arresting people) were possibly looking to kidnap senators and representatives and hold them hostage to force the vote to go their way. (see slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/was-there-a-plan-for-hostages-or-killings-at-the-capitol.html)

The Business Insider article states that if this had been a developing nation, not the US, we'd easily be calling this a failed coup; off the record there are a handful of people among our allies in Europe who are pointing this out. (www.businessinsider.com/trump-attempted-coup-federal-law-enforcement-capitol-police-2021-1)

Especially damning is this quote from a NATO official:

One NATO source set the stage, using terms more commonly used to describe unrest in developing countries.

"The defeated president gives a speech to a group of supporters where he tells them he was robbed of the election, denounces his own administration's members and party as traitors, and tells his supporters to storm the building where the voting is being held," the NATO intelligence official said.

"The supporters, many dressed in military attire and waving revolutionary-style flags, then storm the building where the federal law-enforcement agencies controlled by the current president do not establish a security cordon, and the protesters quickly overwhelm the last line of police."

"The president then makes a public statement to the supporters attacking the Capitol that he loves them but doesn't really tell them to stop," the official said. "Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle."

That certainly sounds exactly like what played out the day of the riot, to the letter, especially the part about the president making a public statement telling his supporters that he loves them but not telling them to quit and go home.

Current Mood: angry

So a small handful of people from the old Animated Life forum have found me, and one person from my LJ journal. WOOT! I won't feel like I'm yelling into a vacuum now. Welcome, all of you!

It's going to take me awhile to get back into writing a journal entry. It's been so long since I used LiveJournal.

And I really need to rethink my icon choices. I have lots of snarky ones but not much in the way of positive ones and I need some to balance out the snark.

So many icons, so few spaces to put them in......

Apparently this is the new answer to LiveJournal. I quit LiveJournal after the Russians took it over -- what with Russian interference in the various western elections including that of the US, I'm completely not comfortable posting things where they have access to and control of anything I write. Especially now when I'm likely to occasionally veer off into politics. So no. Just no.

I haven't journaled for a very long time though. It's going to take some time to get used to again. I tried to set up a blog a couple times but that went nowhere. I should copy my couple of posts across from there probably.

Other than that, here I am. I like that I can have more icons than I did on LJ, but it took a long time to set them up this afternoon, I'm not sure about my choices yet, and I don't think I have my journal really designed the way I want either. It'll take a bit.