a little something I saw today

Sushi counter octopus

Wondering how I can kick this up a notch. 

My first impulse is to grill it but I worry that would only make it tough... or would it? 

Anyway, I don't yet have a grill set up here at Casa WereMonster. 

Can I put them under the broiler for a minute or add them into another sort of dish?  

Foggy afternoon

The fog rolled in a couple of hours ago and it has my neighborhood under a white blanket.

Tarima red wine

A gift from Tera.  It needed to breathe a bit after opening but I enjoyed it. BlackBerry notes. I can't identify much in the nose.

Christmas Eve at Casa WereMonster

We ended up staying in North Carolina for Christmas this year. We had been planning to visit my mother but bad weather (tornado warnings & violent storms) had her begging us not to come and, for better or worse, we chose the path of least resistance. There were no other standing invitations from family or friends this time around so it only made since to stay home and have a quiet holiday at Casa WereMonster. 

Vindication

After many phone calls and emails, MonsterMustDie finally had a long talk with someone at LunarPages. As it turns out, 1950.com and Weremonkey.com are paid for in full through 2017. Someone poached the websites through his old Comcast account and DirectNIC.com. We still don't have the websites back but they admit it was their error and the domains are still legally ours.

Where's Weremonkey?

A few years ago, I had every intention of using Weremonkey.com as a personal portfolio and blog site. Lunar pages made it difficult enough to use that I rarely looked at it or updated anything because every time I logged in, it meant an hour spent on the phone getting access to my site again. Following the fiasco with 1950.com, I tried to go into my long-neglected site and and couldn't get in. Then I just tried to see it online to view how out-of-date it might be and got an automatic page from TimeWarner cable saying there was no domain of that name. Then I got a pop up asking if I wanted to purchase weremonkey.com. *sigh*

I need to find an easier place to build a portfolio site.

very bad news about CasaWereMonster finance

I was planning to go to a MeetUp tonight but MonsterMustDie is having an apocalyptic day. So, he'll probably be drinking and I'll be monitoring him for irrational behavior.

He just lost his independent business and a $15000.00 sale to a website poacher, who might have snagged his domain illegally before the next ISP host payment on it was due. He's been involved in the possible sale of his little place on the internet, 1950.com, which he has been the proprietor of since the 1990s. There were several snags while dealing with the exchange of money and the domain with his ISP, LunarPages.com, that have caused the entire process of a couple of days to two+ weeks now. Looks like his account was sold by LunarPages to another host, much like banks sell accounts, I suppose. The account is due this week or next. He's not sure when because he did not get an alert about it. There was also trouble logging in because the new hosting company has his old, outdated email address and account information.

All this and he was planning to use any money from the sell of 1950.com on unavoidable expenses on the house - a new heater to replace the dinosaur downstairs, landscaping to replace or repair the desintegrating stone wall on the side of the house, etc.

Meanwhile, I am still out of work.

Things are looking up.

I'm watching "Monsters Inside Me" while drinking a citron honey tea  & gin hot toddy.

Mom was sounding much better when I spoke to her on the phone earlier today. Yay!  Her procedure yesterday was quite successful. They drained a lot of fluid away from her heart and her lungs are now starting to clear.

I went to an afternoon Toastmasters meeting today, where I met a few very nice people and promised I would be back soon to future meetings. I really need to work on my communications skills but everyone was very positive and encouraging. There was even a woman who was originally from Atlanta there.

Mother is still in the hospital

My mother is arguing about not getting her sleeping pills while she's in the hospital. She has generic Ambien and they gave her the name brand product. She insists she is not getting the proper medicine - because she refuses to believe the name brand is the same as the generic medicine. She is also demanding more pain medication. She can't have more pain meds than she is already getting because it would cause her heart to stop at this point.

These days, we never know if she will be coming home from the hospital. The time between hospital stays is becoming shorter with each crisis. 

Meanwhile, her personal assistant is being a very vigilant and loving care-giver. Being with Mom at the hospital, taking laundry to be done home, bringing clean clothes and cleaning her home. My sister-in-law was a bit concerned with the security involved with her having so much access to everything. I said, as long as she was not in charge of the checking account and credit cards, I had no concern whatsoever about this woman who is giving my mother the kind of care and attention she wants. It's really quite a God-send for now. Apparently one of the doctors took my sister-in-law aside to talk about how people too good to be true usually are. Since this is a woman who has a long history here with family who live in this area, it doesn't seem that she would want to burn anyone here. I told her that even if some things of value turned up missing in Mom's home, I was okay with that. The quality of care she is providing is worth more than anything sitting in a drawer somewhere in my mother's house.

Mother is back in the hospital

My sister-in-law phoned tonight to let me know that my mother is back in the hospital again. She's had fluid in her lungs for several days and they believe she has pneumonia now. Once again, she had too much trouble breathing and they brought her into the emergency room today. She is in CCU now with Adela, her care-giver, at her side. Some time late tonight, she will have her dialysis treatment at the hospital. I don't think they can do anything to clear the fluid from her lungs other than try to help her body do it. Hopefully, she will get some sleep tonight.

Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving dinner at Casa WereMonster included rotisserie chicken from EarthFare grocery, roasted fingerling potatoes & brussels sprouts, fresh brussels sprouts salad ala Mario Batali, and fresh baked baguette with goat cheese and lingon berry preserves. Not bad for a simple meal.

Today, we went to see Crimson Peak at the $2 cinema. Quite a good movie, though I admit the dialog in the first few minute of the screenplay could have been better. Still, it is surprising that it is already in the second run theaters now. It's a deeply Poe-Gothic tale and visual eye candy.  After the movie, we tried out another Blue restaurant in High Point - Lulu and Blu. MonsterMustDie had the gnochi and I had the mushroom flatbread. I think he got the better dish. Although he said the gnochi was perfectly cooked, it had too many peas in it. The flatbread was wonderfully crisp and light but the topping went too far on the tart side. The flavor shitaki mushrooms and arrugula were completely overrun by very tart goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes. Made my mouth pucker with every bite.

Excelsior

I am in love with the look of this packing material. The color and texture appeal to me. Don't know what I can do with it but I like it.

Falling into Winter

People screaming about the war against Christmas are the thing that make me want to completely avoid the Holiday season.  All the fighting that breaks out this time of year makes the annual decent into winter hard. This winter will be as hard as last year, as I've had to drop everything I spent a ultra-slow year building to spend a month in Georgia and now I will be starting over again from the ground up, probably after the first of the year. That means another empty winter with no friends, even less money than last year with depleted savings, and no pleasurable activities. It means I am a year further away from the level of activity I once had. The house and yard still need a lot of work and money infused into them. We still have a retaining wall to replace, a fence to build, and stumps to remove in the yard. The house still only has one room that is actually finished. 

There is one improvement. A lot of cleaning and clearing has been done. There are not boxes everywhere - they've mostly been placed downstairs next to the decrepit furnace and that is the domain of MonsterMustDie. There is actually furniture to sit on and books to read upstairs now.

The electric dishwasher that came with the house died last night. This is not an appliance we must have, so I will be hand-washing more. I really liked it best for those very hard to clean tools like strainers, collendars, graters and washable items with many small connected parts. Those bits just won't be quite as clean as they used to be now. The Microwave oven died at the end of September, when the number keypad stopped working. We threw it out after a service person told me the board controlling it was now an unreplaceable part. It seems like such a waste, considering it spent nearly 10 years in a box from the time it was new to the time we finally started using it here in this house. One year of active use and it's dead. The dishwasher is very old and it was probably long past it's lifespan. The biggest concern we have is the furnace downstairs. We were advised that it was already long-past its expected lifespan when we bought the house. MonsterMustDie says he does not have the budget to replace it now so we just have to hope it will make it through this winter. We had hoped to replace the HV/AC system the first year here but that is no longer on the current schedule. We will replace it when it dies and not before. As smaller appliances are dying, we won't be replacing them this year. The only thing I can imagine that we would absolutely have to deal with the loss of immediately would be the Furnace/AC, the water heater, and the refridgerator. I think we can live withouth all the other modern conveniences easlily enough.