Rancid-Tea

Bird Feeders

admin — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:06:42 CST

Shortly after moving into our house, I decided to get a small thistle seed bird feeder, to attract birds to our yard. We had the feeder out and usually kept it full for almost a year, and attracted plenty of finches and sparrows.

I mentioned to my mother how it seemed like those were the only birds we got in the cities. I never saw cardinals, bluejays, chickadees, or nuthatches. She suggested I get a sunflower seed feeder, and said it would attract more birds. Since my parents have several feeders out year round, and plenty of birds to go with, I asked if they had any that they didn't use on account of squirrels and they gave me one that had been sitting out in the garage. We hung it up in our back yard and filled it with sunflower seeds and waited.

It has been two weeks, and now we have a variety of birds I didn't see before. Purple finches, way more gold finches, cardinals, and a mourning dove have all become frequent visitors.

With this success, I'm tempted to get a suet feeder, and make some vegan suet, as well as a humming bird feeder, and possibly a mixed seed feeder. I would also like to get a bird bath and see if that attracts even more birds.

Jaw Realignment, Step 1 continued

admin — Sat, 23 May 2009 11:20:17 CST

Okay, first in response to the couple of questions I've gotten, because my case is minor, the only adjustments needed during surgery will be to separate my upper jaw, slide it forward, and then anchor it in place with plates and screws. My jaws will only need to be held shut with very tight rubber bands, not wired shut.

In more severe cases, if your jaws are very different lengths, the surgeon may have to adjust both the upper and lower jaws, requiring the jaws to be wired shut, post op. If your jaws are canted, front to back, or side to side, a wedge of bone is permanently removed during the surgery, and again the jaws must be wired shut. Both of these operations are somewhat riskier than the basic operation I require, and can have a longer healing time.

Upon receiving my request for pre-approval, my insurance company refused the claim because my "malocclusion could be treated non-surgically." Which prompted me to call them, and ask "what if I already had orthodontics for this and it didn't fix it?" After a lot of back and forth between my new doctors and orhtodontist, my old orthodontist, and my health insurance company, they decided that it is, in fact, covered.

I have scheduled preliminary appointments with the new orthodontist but at the moment I don't have an appointment to get braces on yet. The earliest that could happen is in a few weeks.

Jaw Realignment - Step 1

admin — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:44:29 CST

If your bite is off and you have trouble chewing you might have a couple of options. Depending on the severity of your case, braces might be sufficient to get your teeth to line up. For me, that was not the case, so now I get to try the 'moderate' solution, which is to have part of my skull sawed off, moved and put back in a better place. This also involves braces (woot).

I had my consultation with an oral surgeon yesterday afternoon (during snowmageddon) and had some x-rays taken. I'm hoping to get digital copies that I can post. The surgeon said I had a pretty simple case, and he thought I would have good results, so I scheduled a consult with an orthodontist to get the first physical step underway: braces. Ugh.

I'm definitely excited at the prospect of being able to chew things like rice and pasta for the first time since I was a child. I will try to keep this process updated.

Twitter

admin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:16:14 CST

I've finally caved to peer pressure and started a twitter account. If you want to see random updates throughout the day (seriously it only makes sense if you have a twitter account) let me know and I'll give you my username. [...]

All Work and No Sleep Makes Me A Crazy Girl

admin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:28:42 CST

I've recently been on a project at work that has had me working long (and over) nights, weekends, and in the last week, I've had a stretch of 36 hours where I did not leave work and got less than 3 hours of sleep. I have now had my first shower at work, and was forced to go buy clean underthings in the middle of the day so I had something fresh to change into after the shower.

That said, I haven't had a ton of sleep in the last two weeks. I was *almost* caught up on Monday, after getting in some 30 hours of shut-eye over the weekend, but then immediately dove headlong into the week. My body finally gave out on me on Wednesday, and I started getting a cold. The project ramped down around the same time, so I'm back to working shorter shifts (especially since I had over 30 hours in for the week by the end of Wednesday).

Last night, in spite of the fact that I could have used the sleep, I went to the 331 Club to watch my co-worker's roommate play a set. I really enjoyed the music and had a really good time. It was a sort of spur of the moment decision, and my lack of sleep probably played into why I agreed to go, but it was nice to get past the moment of social awkwardness ("is she just inviting me to be nice??') and go. If you're into folk music at all, or just need something really relaxing to listen to, check out Brianna Lane.

Meet Abe!

admin — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 17:59:33 CST

My aunt lives next to a man who is not in the best of mental health. In fact, his house is what is classified as a 'garbage house' meaning there's trash piled up until there are actually just paths to get from the door to other places. This guy also ended up with over 30 cats, for reasons I don't care to explore here. My aunt diligently helped him to find home for his cats when the city finally got around to condemning the house and evicting him.

Abe

Ethan and I decided that we could squeeze one more animal into our home, so we adopted Abe, formerly Annie. So far he has mostly lived in the basement, with brief excursions upstairs to see our other cats, who have done remarkably well with this. There has been some hissing, but mostly just frightened regard from across the room. I'm hopeful that with several more 'visits' upstairs, Abe can be a permanent upstairs family member soon, and we can stop calling him 'basement cat.'

Frustration

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:04:42 CST

Over a year ago, I bought a Sansa MP3 player, and found it to be very cool. Around the same time (maybe at the same time, I don't remember now) I got an FM broadcaster to connect the player to my car so that I can listen to tunes on the drive to and from work, without annoying commercials. Since buying it, the FM broadcaster has slowly been torn apart--by me. Every once in awhile I forget my player is in my lap, and then I stand up to get out of the car, and give the broadcaster a good jolt. It was reduced to just a little block of circuit boards and a screen, but still, it played on.

Tonight it finally gave up the ghost, when I ripped the circuit boards right off of the charger, leaving two sad little wire stumps... Moral of this story: don't rip your stuff apart by making the same mistake over and over again.

Seeing as I can't handle sitting through a single commercial break while also dealing with traffic, and my car has what we will call 'reduced radio capacity' I've already ordered a new broadcaster / charger which has a cradle for my MP3 player and hopefully will not get yanked on over and over again. Hopefully.

Moroccan Stew

admin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:39:25 CST

A long time ago, my friend Steph found us this recipe for Moroccan Stew with quinoa. It's a really tasty and hearty meal with ingredients anyone could find in a local grocery store (our local Rainbow Foods stores have quinoa in the bulk section) and it's surprisingly easy to make. We usually double the quinoa portion of the recipe: Moroccan Stew with Quinoa at epicurious [...]

Wii Fit

admin — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:53:28 CST

I've been wanting a Wii Fit basically since we got our Wii back in July. I had seen them in stores before, but as soon as we got the Wii, I stopped seeing them.

Yesterday Ethan and I were out shopping for some suits (cause hey, suit + guy = very nice) and we spotted a Best Buy. We stopped in just to see (this has become a habit for us lately) and lo and behold they had both a small pile of Wii consoles and just a few Wii Fits. Woo hoo!

My arms were already sore from Wii Boxing with Westy on Friday, and now my legs are super sore from... lunges, running, attempting to ski, and several other activities. It is uber fun. If you have a Wii (if not, you should get one) and you can find a copy of Wii Fit, it's totally worth it. If I get good at the strength exercises, I might even invest in some ankle and wrist weights.

Long Week

admin — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 11:05:10 CST

Last weekend I went up to my parents' cabin with two of my friends, and we had a lot of fun and overindulged quite a bit. While I definitely felt relaxed by Monday morning, I still felt tired, and then proceeded to feel tired the entire week.

I keep thinking of things I'd like to do, if I had more free time, and then reminding myself they'll never get done. For instance, my quilt I started my Jr year in High School... It only needs to be quilted and bound, but I can't actually do quilting (not with my sewing machine) and I was unsuccessful last time I looked for someone who can. My mom has a coworker who does it, but when I asked my mom to ask her... she told me to just call a sewing shop, and they weren't very helpful. It's not like I wasn't going to pay her coworker, so I don't know what the fuss was all about that she couldn't just give me her number. If I ever finish that quilt, I can start a new one! It's not like we need quilts or anything, but for some reason I really enjoy doing the top. After that I lose steam, and then have a semi-completed quilt with all the materials just sitting around... for years. Oh well, at least I know my weaknesses.