Tinka's Journal

2:25pm: L.A. Trip Part One
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10:24pm: And also
OMG, remember when I was bragging about not getting sick from flying or from DM being sick??? Well, I'm sick now! I have a cold! I feel ok except for coughing at night. Oh and my voice being completely gone for three days. It's mostly back now. Woooohooo. Still, no swine flu YET.

9:49pm: funny thing...
So, as you may know, I am in L.A. for two months to fix up my house to rent. I already have a tenant lined up so it's just a matter of making it ready.

Most of my stuff is either aready in storage or already in COS or has mysteriously disapeared. So my life at the moment is a cobbling together of random items.

I had my parents and brother and his BF over for dinner tonight. We sat at a huge table that I used to use as a desk with 2 dining chairs, a junky wooden IKEA chair, a plush swively desk chair and a tiny little vintage vanity chair.

We had a green salad served in a mixing bowl, chicken noodle soup made in a HUGE le cruset stock pot (not sure where it even came from but it was here when I arrived), fresh bread made in a crock pot insert in the oven, and chicken salad put together in a vintage green milk glass bowl I happened to have around. The 'rents brought some nice wines that I served in random mismatched wine glasses and even a couple of juice glasses.

We ate on my $1500 wedding china that I've used maybe five times prior to this
(I was married in 1992 and divorced in 2001).

And we had a great time. Just like you can make excellent pizza on a $5 Walmart pizza tray, you can have a great meal with a completely random set of dishes, furniture, and china. Who knew!?

2:47pm: A couple weeks ago we drove out in the Jeep with the cats from Colorado Springs to L.A. We took three days and stopped in Albuquerque and Phoenix. Here are some pics!

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8:24am: wtf?
I've lost ten pounds since I left Colorado but I still feel fat and my jeans are still tight. I'm sure some of it is "water" but not all damn ten pounds.

I'll make a real post with pics, etc. in a little while here.

9:18am: hey creamofweird
I'm having a yard sale and somehow selling quite a bit of "trash"! People like stuff that belongs at THE DUMP.

1:29pm: Why is Facebook filled with religous nuts?

12:30pm: Mini post, no pics- somehow this all went off without a hitch
I know you are used to me complaining about travel. I love going places but I can't stand the process. Nothing about travel makes sense and the people involved in the travel industry are useless and rude. Plus there are always some unforseen problems with weather or delays or getting lost or things not being where they're supposed ot be or closed or what have you.

This is a different kind of post!

I went to Dallas yesterday, just for one day. It's only an hour and 20 minute flight from COS so it's no biggie. I did have to leave the house at 4:30 AM, tho, which sucked. Not as bad as it could have tho cuz I have had insomnia for about a week and wake up multiple times during the night, unable to go back to sleep. Coincidentally, one of the times is at about 4am. So when the alarm went off, I was pretty much already up and ready to go.

The flight was packed- WTF? I guess first flight out on Monday morning is a popular one. I can't remember the last time I even had anyone sitting next to me on a flight let alone a full plane.
And check it out- they had wi-fi on the plane! I know you've heard about this but have you ever been on a plane with it?! Seeing how it was early (I can usually fall back asleep by 6am) and I had taken a xanax (one half to sleep the night before, and one half to fly in the morning) I chose to sleep instead of internet (I know, wtf, huh?). I bought this sort of dorky scarf with a hood thing at Target the other day and it was perfect for sleeping on the plane. Highly recommended.

Got to Dallas and it was raining. But it wasn't very cold- just in the high 50s/low 60s. The people at Alamo were really nice, which is very unsual for a rental car company (altho everyone in Dallas is nice- they love to take forever doing what they're doing and tell you their life story but they're nice). I found my way to the storage space, then to the studio, all in good time. Did the shoot (we rented this awesome loft there- I'll post pics at some point) and afterwards I even had time to stop off at my favorite chicken place in the whole world- Bubba's. Got some chicken and dinner rolls to go, got back to the airport, back on another packed plane (no wi-fi on this one, darn), read about five pages of a magazine and fell seleep again. Got home before DM was back from work, and had some nice hot chicken and rolls when he returned.

So that's my story. It's probably the only good travel story you'll ever get from me so enjoy it.

Also, I never did get DM's sickness/swine flu. My sore throat lasted a couple days and that was it. I'll probably get it now from the airplane. There weren't any sick people on the flights as far as I could tell. So maybe I won't! I didn't take the Tamiflu or get the prescription filled. I guess I should go get it tho, in case I do get sick and there's a shortage or something.

6:54pm: What should I do?
So DM has been sick for two weeks. It could be the flu or it could be a cold. It started out with a sore throat, chills and low fever. Then the chills and fever went away and it turned into a bad cough and fatigue and body aches. He had a seasonal flu vaccine a couple weeks before but according to several sources, the only flu here is the swine flu. A friend of mine was actually tested and she does have swine flu. She is a lot sicker than DM has been. High fever, bad cough, sore throat and all the intestinal things that go with some cases of swine flu.

I have not been sick yet. But I woke up with a sore throat this morning. I do NOT want to get sick. Normally I don't really care. Obviously I don't like it and it always lasts an eternity for me- at least two weeks whenever I get a cold or flu- BUT on Monday I have to fly to Dallas at 6:00 am, do a photo shoot and fly back at 10:00pm and I really don't want to be deathly ill for that. I don't have a doctor here so I called DM's doctor who couldn't see me until January. Ummmmm, yea, I hope I'll be better THREE MONTHS from now. So I tracked down some urgent care centers- I just wanted to get a prescription for Tamiflu. I went to one who didn't take my insurance. I went to another one where the doctor had just gone to lunch and there were people ahead of me and the wait would be at least two hours. Finally I went to a third who did take my insurance and only made me wait 45 minutes to be seen, then another 45 minutes once they did a strep test and the doctor dealt with other patients. Ultimately I came away with a prescription for Tamiflu. Why you can't just get it over the counter, I don't know.

The doctor said that they usually only give it to people who have been sick a day or two and are sicker than me. OK. Ummmmmmmm. I've been sick less than half a day, shouldn't it work for me? And what't the point if you're already sick? Then he said it doesn't get rid of it, it only shortens it- on average from 8 days to 6 and a half. Hardly seems worth it and won't help me with my need to be well by Monday. Still, it is prescribed for people who are around sick people and don't want to get sick, as a preventative. So why won't it work on me? I'm only a little bit sick!

There are some unpleasant side effects and it's about $80 so I haven't gone to get it yet. I'm still trying to decide if (a) I'm really sick (b) I really have the flu (the doc said DM may only have a cold. If he doesn't have a high fever it's probably not swine flu and swine flu is all there is flu-wise) (c) if I want to deal with side effects and the lightening of my wallet by $80 if it's not even going to work or work in time.

So, what should I do?

3:25pm: Pic Post and new website/blog
So DM and I been working on this blog for like 3 years and FINALLY have it set up to where it's functional, decent looking, and full of posts (yay for DM being sick and having time to sit down and figure it all out). I'll still post more stuff here, but there will be different stuff there- including posts by dangermike. It's at www.oinkety.com and it's about our travels, restaurants we go to, and house and garden stuff. So go check it out and maybe even make some comments!

Anyhow here are some pics from this week.

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4:26pm: Autumn Pic Post
As you probably know, the weather here is crazy. It's been in the 70's for awhile and today it's 27 degrees. Supposed to be in the low 70s again next week for a day or two, so we'll see. Having a hard time getting my summer list done with this flakey weather! Anyhow, lots of pics behind the cut, including one that is not work safe.

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4:33pm: Like I don't have enough to worry about.
Cookie Puss got out AGAIN today. We had the door open for like 3 seconds while checking the mail. Our front door doesn't go outside, it goes to a little lobby area with stairs up to the other apartments. He must have run up there and we didn't see him. ANYHOW like an hour and a half later he was meowing at the front door. The problem is that the stairs go to the second floor, then there's a hallway and some more stairs in back down to the first floor, then another little hallway (where he escaped last time) then down to the basement. We didn't pick the poison up so it's still down there -I talked to the neighbor upstairs and there are indeed mice in this place. Of course, poison is no way to handle them for a variety of reasons, plus, I guess my cats aren't' doing their job of scaring them away, so....anyhow we WILL clean it up now, fuck the neighbors and their irrational fear of mice.

Now, I have no idea if Cookie Puss even went into the basement or not. It's quite a trek. But he did have 90 minutes to get down there, get back up the two flights of stairs, then back across the hallway and down the front stairs. Cookie Puss is not the brightest bulb in the pack. Seriously. It would surprise me a little if that's what he did. Plus even if he got down there, I am not sure if he would have eaten the poison. He didn't eat it last time. Also there was still a lot left when I looked after he came back. Why can't the internet tell me how much he'd need to eat in order for it to hurt or kill him? Cuz seriously, if he did eat any, he didn't eat very much.

I tried to make him vomit with hydrogen peroxide which didn't work last time and didn't work this time. By the time I was done with that it had been two and a half hours since he escaped. I think that's too long to even get anything out if he did throw up. I didn't want to take him to the vet again because again, I think it's too late and also he was sick and out of it for like two days last time and for no reason.

If I change my mind tomorrow, I can probably take him in and they can probably give him some treatments (this is according to the internet- fortunately the box of the poison was still there so we know what it is).

5:03pm: well, what do you think?
I already asked facebook this, but I'll ask here, too. Should I get a flu shot?
I hate being sick and I'm going to be traveling a lot this fall and winter. OTOH, I hate big pharma and suspect this is all just a money making ploy and that it doesn't really work. What do you think?

7:22pm: Is summer already over?
Yes it is. And also, it snowed here today. Well, not RIGHT here but just a few miles away, north of town. Yea. Bah. I haven't finished my summer list yet but I think this snow thing is just flukey cuz the forecast calls for it to be in the 70s again next week. Normally it doesn't snow until Halloween here so I think we may have a few weeks left to get it done. Behind the cut will be THE LIST and also some pics from the past week.

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9:30pm: Picture Post
dangermike, the cats and I went to Dallas last week to move the PK studio. We took tons of pictures but about half of them mysteriously disappeared. I have no idea how, why, or where. I thought I loaded them all onto the netbook before erasing the cards. Lots of them from the same time are here and then others I remember taking are gone- I took them minutes apart with the same camera. All I can think is that some of them got overwritten when I loaded them to the netbook? Without asking me? Thats so unlike windows. Windows usually asks you that stuff like ten times. Anyhow they were of lots of signs, food, cats, etc. The usual. I can go back and take some of the sign ones cuz it wasn't too far from here and we do plan to go back down that way when we have more time and don't have the cats with us. There were also some of a cool broken down old town. But (a) I don't really take those kinds of pictures very well and (b) there is already SO MUCH of that stuff floating around that it's no big loss. But there were some cuuuuuute ones of the cats in the studio in Dallas and now since we don't have that studio anymore and don't plan to take the cats to Dallas again I guess you'll never get to see them. I'm sure there's lots of other stuff I can't remember shooting, too (altho do I take pictures of things other than food, signs, and animals?). Bah. But don't worry, there are lots of others of signs, food, and the cats that survived! Here we go! There are 47 images so, as usual, they're behind a cut.

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10:31pm: Pics and Commentary under the cut!
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12:03am: I'm pretty happy
Cuz Cookie Puss peed!

6:52pm: Pic Post- this one is particularly food-ish
Under the cut:
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4:59pm: The Summer List
This is probably pretty boring for all you guys but I want to remember it and have it for next year so I'm putting it behind a cut.
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6:33pm: pic post
Thank you all for the laptop recommendations! I'm going to check them all out and I'll let you know what I get!
Meanwhile, here are some pics:
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11:00am: Ok now I'm serious
I need to get a laptop. Or a netbook. It needs to be smallish and lightweight. I prefer intel to anything else. I also don't really want windows vista. A builtin webcam would be cool, too. There are a million of these things out there. What should I get? I also don't want spend much more than $500, preferably even less so anyone who says "get a mac" will forever be banned from commenting. . I've heard bad things about the netbooks which is why I don't have one yet. Opinions? Ideas.

3:21pm: Family Vacation Pics (the end)
Lots o' pics under the cut.
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5:18pm: Family Vacation Day 4 and 5
More pics!
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8:42pm: Family Vacation Day 3
Lots O Pics
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6:09pm: Family Vacation
My parents, my brother, his kids, and my brother's girlfriend came out to Colorado last week and we did some stuff.
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