Dynomoose rants and rambles

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Grandma's visit.

Somebody love her shiny, red toenails!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

This says it all

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

It's good to be home

Persephone is hilarious.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

back again

I was offline for over a month and I have to say I got so much done. Joe kept nagging me to fix it (and eventually got his way) but I held off as long as I could.

I've been back since Friday and have wasted countless hours.

On the productive side, I'm downloading all the fonts I lost with the crash plus a few hundred more.

On the sad side, while I was gone an internet friend of mine died. Cesar was a pretty fun guy. He could be in a screaming, if-this-were-real-life-blood-would-be-spilled, fight with you on one thread and joking around with you on another. He was bright and funny and snarky and he shouldn't be dead. Everyone who thinks AIDS is a manageable, go-on-with-your-life kind of disease is deluding themselves. The medications alone are crippling and they don't always work. As was the case with Cesar.

It's funny how important people online become. I mean, they're just words on a screen, right? Honestly, I felt the loss of the three dead internet friends (Cesar, Tommy and James) more deeply than my own grandmother's death.

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Joe is LOVING his job. We're all loving being back home.

I've dripped a bunch of weight just by being back. Even though I actually like the food down here.

It is sad driving through the city and seeing all the destruction that, nearly two years later, is still everywhere, rotting. All because people can't afford to rebuild and the city doesn't bother tearing these structures down. I even still see the occasional Katrina Fridge.

Saint Bernard and Jefferson Parish both tore down abandoned buildings. In Orleans, Ray Nagin is too busy being an inept, divisive fuck-wit to actually put resources toward rebuilding and clean up. Companies are leaving in droves because rents and insurance rates are skyrocketing, crime is INSANE and all Nagin can do is blather on about his imagined white government conspiracy to drive all the black folks out of New Orleans. I swear, if Louisiana didn't have term limits, Nagin would turn this city into Detroit. He has so much in common with Colman Young, it's terrifying.

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Persephone's walking now and saying a few words. She's such a klutz, though. I keep finding new bruises on her face and body. Even had to take her favorite toy out of her play cage because most of her face bruises had a xylophone shape to them.

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The apartment is nice but waaaaaay over-priced. Luckily, there are so many more homes for sale here than there are buyers right now that, assuming we can get a mortgage, we'll be able to find a nice big house for lower payments than our current rent. That is the one and only advantage to post-levee-break Louisiana.Cheap real estate. Once we qualify, the big dilemma will be whether to get a place in the suburbs or Orleans Parish. Even with the crime and decay, there are advantages to Orleans. the International school there is one of the top schools in the country and, being a public school, you have to live there to attend. Plus New Orleans needs working non-criminals living there. If everyone who can afford to leaves the city, well, it WILL turn into Detroit.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Joe got the job

We're going HOME!
YAY!

Friday, November 24, 2006

Don't piss off the Russians

A break from the usual personal posts to share with you the most horribly cruel murder ever perpetrated.

The radioactive spy

· Discovery of polonium 210 sparks public health scare
· Foreign Office fears for British-Russian relations

Ian Cobain and Jeevan Vasagar
Saturday November 25, 2006
The Guardian

The mysterious death of a former Russian spy living in exile in London turned into an unprecedented public health scare yesterday when it emerged that he had been deliberately poisoned by a major dose of radioactive material.

Further traces of the substance were found at a sushi restaurant, at a central London hotel where Alexander Litvinenko met a number of people before falling ill, and at his home in the city.

He was killed by polonium 210, a rare radioactive isotope which is so toxic that there may never be a postmortem examination of Mr Litvinenko's body, for fear of causing further deaths.

Article continues
Police and security sources said they had never encountered such an extraordinary death. "Nothing like this has ever happened before," said one Whitehall source. "It is unprecedented, we are in uncharted territory." One priority last night was to establish who has access to polonium 210 anywhere in the world.

Government ministers meanwhile, are said to be "dreading" the possible repercussions of a public inquest into Mr Litvinenko's death, at which they expect his associates to make highly damning accusations against the Russian government.

Last night health officials were contacting up to 100 people, including doctors, nurses, hospital staff and relatives, who came into contact with the former spy during his three weeks of treatment at two London hospitals, so that each can be screened for signs of contamination.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) stressed that the risk to hospital staff was extremely low, as alpha radiation from the former agent's body would need to be breathed in, swallowed, or enter an open wound before causing harm. Normal hospital practices should have prevented this. Nor would anybody be at risk just because they had been close to Mr Litvinenko.

However, the agency said it could not assess the level of risk to the public who had visited locations which had been contaminated with the substance. Professor Roger Cox, director of the HPA's centre for radiological, chemical and environmental hazards, said there was insufficient information to make such an assessment. Last night police were refusing to say how much of the substance was found at the hotel and restaurant, or at Mr Litvinenko's house in Muswell Hill, north London.

Radiation from the polonium was first detected in Mr Litvinenko's urine hours before he died on Thursday night. There is no antidote to the substance, however, and the HPA said that such a large dose would always kill once ingested. Scientists are now trying to use computer models, based on analysis of Mr Litvinenko's urine, and the apparent damage to his organs over the last three weeks, to work out when he may have been poisoned.

While Scotland Yard say they are treating his death as suspicious, they are not describing their investigation as a murder inquiry. One possibility being considered is that Mr Litvinenko deliberately poisoned himself.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Yard's Counter Terrorism Command, which is conducting the investigation, said: "We continue to carry out a thorough investigation. We will trace possible witnesses, examine Mr Litvinenko's movements at relevant times, including when he first became ill, and identify people he met. There will also be an extensive examination of CCTV footage."

Enemies of the Russian president Vladimir Putin immediately pointed the finger of blame at the Russian leader, insisting the poisoning bore all the hallmarks of an assassination by Mr Litvinenko's former colleagues from the FSB, a successor to the KGB.

Mr Litvinenko fled to Britain six years ago after revealing an alleged a plot to murder Boris Berezovsky, a multi-millionaire businessman also in exile in the UK.

On November 1, he met Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic, at a sushi restaurant. Mr Scaramella showed him two emails, seen by the Guardian, which warned "Russian intelligence officers speak more and more about necessity to use force" against critics of Russia including Mr Berezovsky and Mr Litvinenko.

Yesterday Mr Litvinenko's associates, many of them employees of Mr Berezovsky, produced a statement which they said was made by Mr Litvinenko last Tuesday, in which the former agent blamed Mr Putin for his impending death.

"The howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," he is said to have declared. "May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people."

The Russian president sought to brush aside such claims yesterday, telling a press conference: "There is no ground for speculation of this kind. A death of a man is always a tragedy and I deplore this and send my condolences to the family."

Far from seizing upon Mr Litvinenko's death as an opportunity to criticise the Kremlin, however, there was deep concern in Whitehall that the affair could damage relations between the two countries, despite the efforts of both governments to prevent that happening.

In particular, senior Foreign Office officials are known to be anxious that anti-Putin associates of the former spy will see the inquest into his death as an opportunity to make embarrassing allegations about the Russian government.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Man...

I had to turn on comment moderation because of the PSYCHO! flooding my guestbook.

No news about anything or anyone that actually matters.

Monday, November 20, 2006

We have all survived Persephone's first birthday weekend!

On Friday (her actual birthday), we took her to Build-a-Bear in the mall for her first annual birthday bear. She was pretty into it right up until the stuffing machine, where the noise combined with her tiredness to give her a moment of freaked-outedness. She calmed down pretty fast but was disinterested for the rest of the process so we had to pick out the bear's outfit ourselves (red hat and dress).
By the time we got to Macy's she was out so we snuck over to the spa and had my hideously bushy eyebrows waxed (seven dolla, made me hollain pain).

Her party on Saturday went well though the words of my Grandma Schorer kept ringing in my head, "always keep house as if you're expecting company." Getting the apartment clean and decorated was uber-stressful. People seemed to enjoy themselves. Persephone must have been a little overwhelmed by all the attention and hubbub because she barely participated in opening her numerous presents, which is most unlike her paper-ripping-fiend self and she was actually dainty with her little cake. We barely even had to wipe her down afterwards! Photos were taken but I've not had time or energy to prep them yet, so they'll have to wait for another day.

Today we took her to the bookstore to buy her, you guessed it, a book. Nursery Rhymes. Mommy was good and didn't buy herself a thing. Then we hit the craft store (craft stores in New Jersey SUCK), where my super-shopper mother couldn't even find a single item she wanted to buy.

Now baby and Grandmother are peacefully sleeping. Daddy is munching on chips and Mommy is about ready to pass out.

Oh, one thing did happen Friday morning that could spell very good news for the family. That college called! They're flying Joe down to New Orleans for an interview on the 6th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a position they've opened up months early because they liked his resume.
Fingers are crossed.
Toes are crossed.
This would be perfect. Good school at HOME and a position where Joe could really shine.

If you think of it, please cross things for us!