Head, shoulders knees and toes (knees and toes)

Ah, yoga.  I love how you make me all bendy and stretchy.  I think that with enough time and sweat, you might make me have a somewhat useful back again.  But I will settle for a happier neck in the meantime.

Last week I actually had sore muscles after yoga.  Two months of no yoga had left me with weak yoga muscles I guess.  Weak, and stiff.  Hefting a backpack up and down mountains all day does not make for a particularly flexible physique.

I wondered today if it would make sense for me to try a slightly higher level yoga class.  There are some things I can't really do because of my back, but with a lot of the others I'm ready to step up a bit.  I mean, I've been in a beginner class for four years now.  There are people in the class who have been there for a decade so it's not like moving up is a big deal to most.  I'm just pondering.

Tomorrow I hope to see (and ride!) my horse, so that takes care of Thursday night.  Which means that on Friday after work I'm going to be running around like a crazy woman, trying to get my backpack ready for the weekend.  Bets on what I'll leave out?

And it burns burns burns, the ring of fire

This is the last thing I saw before leaving for work this morning:

I have no legs, you guys!  I have no legs!

I can't believe you'd rather go to work than stay home with me.

You can imagine how hard it was to leave.

There was a fire drill at work today.  I missed it.  Or most of it, anyway.  Since I arranged with the boss and the manager to come in late until I'm over Lyme this time, I arrived at the office building after the alarm started going off.  It took me a while to find a parking spot, because security had for some reason blocked off two or three possible entrances to the parking area.  By the time I parked and got out, the alarm had been going off for five minutes or so and the building had been vacated.  I opted not to go in, find my yellow vest and helmet, and check on all "my" offices.  Screw it.  You want me to be a fire warden, you hold the fire drills when I'm actually there.

This equipment leads me to believe that they expect me to work, or be helpful or something.  Hmmm.

So I felt kind of guilty and kind of grumpy about that.  Also, after standing there in the parking lot with everybody else for several minutes, I realized that I was sunburning.  Frack!  I moved over into some shade, but my left ear and the left side of my neck were already red.  Stupid sun.

Probably everybody else was happy they held the fire drill on the first day in a while where it wasn't raining.

I spent my day laboriously creating accounts on various computers.  It's not so easy to do these days, especially without console access.  First you have to disable the password policy settings that make accounts lock as soon as you create them.  Then you create the account (probably 8 lines of commands), then you create a home directory, then you login as that user.  Then you reset the password policy.  Lots of typing.  Fun times!  While I was there I checked to make sure the other password policies were correct (in many cases:  no) and added some hosts to the allowed list.

I was actually happy to go to a doctor's office as an alternative to doing that all afternoon.  Having a relative stranger peer at my crotch, grope my chest, and discuss my sex life with me is preferable to the work I was doing.  Which should give you some idea of how much I enjoy the particular work I was doing in the office today.

This evening I alternated between reading log files (fascinating.  not.) and cooking chili.  JD or I (I've lost track) have had a hankering for my chili.  Our chilis do not resemble each other, so it's a very specific craving.  My officemate brought in a bunch of habaneros for me, and I used them in the chili.  Verdict:  excellent!  Even JD agreed that my chili was almost as good as his, which from him is high praise.  Generally  he won't even agree to call mine chili.  He feels that it is a stew, almost but not entirely unlike chili.  Tonight's however, was chili, and darn good chili.  I'm letting it cook down more until bedtime, as I like it to be closer to sludge than to soup.   I anticipate chili that will blow the top of your head off after it's had a chance to sit in the fridge for a day or two.

A heavy heart tonight

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself this evening.  My back is sore, I'm feeling kind of cruddy, and I filled out Pluto's annual insurance form where I had to put in writing that we're only walking anymore due to my health issues.

Then JD came upstairs to tell me that a family member died last night.  And there are all kinds of make-it-more-horrible details.  His ambulance was broadsided and flipped.  His wife was in the ambulance with him.  His heart was stopped for too long and family had to make the decision to pull the plug after his heart was started again.

You know what?  My life is fine.  My back is fine.  Pluto's fine.

I'm just going to go cuddle a cat now.

We went over the mountains to Grandma's house

We drove over to Grandma's house to see family which had come a very long way to see Grandma.  But they also agreed to see us.

On the way over we stopped at a convenience store for caffeine.  I couldn't resist looking around, as I now picture myself resupplying for a hike every time I go into a convenience store.

I think it's telling that a something-tini is right next to the Menage a Trois.  Tinis will get you in trouble every time.

Also the tiny Sta-Puft boy Bimbo scout treats looked enticing.  In whichever language.

Our weekend together immediately started driving JD nuts.

Okay not really.

Soon we were surrounded by family, some of whom were unfairly cute.

Is anyone else picturing him breaking hearts in about fifteen years?

And some who were unfairly cute and dangerously comfortable with technology.

Allow me to instruct you on the finer workings of an iPad.

I can also help you out with your iPhone settings.  Some adults have trouble with them.  It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Notice her turning her uncle into a goober with one flick of a helicopter.

We had a fabulous time.  The kids are definitely in the "I am so cute that you can't look away, and well behaved enough that you don't want to" stage.  Despite my Lyme-induced slackitude, I also enjoyed some grown up conversation time with the grown ups.

And then, we had to come home because we have paycheck addictions.

Yeah, that's what I think about that.

Any minute now

Gracious but I'm tired.  Not Lyme tired.  Just tired tired.  It's the end of the week, and I finished up by wrangling a dog and a cat at the vet's office.  And I have stuff I need to do to get ready for the weekend.  Writing stuff, organizing stuff, yadda yadda.  I really want to go to bed though.

Can you believe the look that cat gave me?  She wanted me dead from sarcasm.  (And that was BEFORE she saw any veterinary professionals.)  Beauty, as usual, was everybody's favorite.  There's something about her that makes every vet tech, client, and patient of the canine persuasion come over to say hi.

I wish I could show you a better picture of this puppy with one blue eye and one brown eye.  Puppy could not get enough of Beauty.

So we did that and then I came home and fed everybody and surfed Amazon for free books to put on my new Kindle!  So exciting.  Extra exciting that my library does online lending so I can just go to a website to find books to read and they download themselves automatically.

I got ye olde cheapy model with the ads on it

I love the part where you charge it once a month or so.  I've been reading on my iPhone happily enough, but I use up 5-10% of its battery charge if I use it to read before bed.  It's the backlighting that does it.  Plus, with the Kindle I won't be tempted to check my email before going to sleep.

And, here's what my brain feels like right now:

Kept in the dark and fed on manure (or a rotting log in this case)

Okay any minute now I'm going to leap up and do all the stuff I need to do.  Any minute.  Right now.  As soon as I rest a little bit more.

I'm happy to report that I have now had two days in a row with no fever when I checked in the morning.  Which is awesome.  Every other time I've had Lyme disease, that fever hung in there for weeks and months.  I'm definitely getting the feeling that I'm gonna whup it this time.  As opposed to the reverse, which is what usually happens.  I just need to stay out of the sun for another three weeks.  No problem.  I mean, it's not like this is the nicest time of the year to be outside here or anything.  Or like I have a backpacking trip planned.  Or like there's a horse who'd like me to come see him before it turns dark until March.

Anyway, I'm off to do the stuff I have to do.

Any minute now.

Non-nerds should not read this.

Last night's blogging failure was caused by lightning and pee.  Not my pee.  But by the time the lightning was over it was a bit late to turn the computer back on, and by the time we dealt with the pee situation we were all a bit frazzled.[1]

Anyway.  On to today.

I've been once again experiencing that mysterious psychic bond between caller and callee that allows people to call me only when I have left my desk and have my cell phone ringer off.  My boss and I have a variant of this bond which enables him to try to find me in my office whenever I have stepped out.  For my part, whenever I go to his office I find him on the phone.  I'm sure this all makes sense, somehow.

I went to a talk with my friend Xiomara yesterday.  The whole point of the talk was to depress us about the state of computer security.  I think it was effective.  The speaker (Rob Lee from SANS) made the point that our defenses are, and have always been, perimeter oriented.  However, the realistic know that you basically can't keep people out if you are connected to a network.  If there is ANY way for information to get in and out, sooner or later a determined attacker will get in.  (My personal goals regarding this are a) don't be the low-hanging fruit, b) keep good backups so that you can restore your system after an intrusion is detected, and c) don't stress out about it because stress does not help.  I'm actually surprised at how few incidents we have compared to how many computers and users we have.  Or maybe our attackers are just that good, and we haven't noticed them.  No way to know for sure, really.)  Okay, so that was point one.  His second point was that you need security INSIDE the perimeter.  I agree on this point.  Intrusion detection systems at the perimeter are a good thing, and necessary.  But intelligent software watching the traffic within the network is now needed as well.  If you care about being infected.  If not, be on your merry way, and do not touch my computers.  (Also, I put tcp wrapper restrictions on computers within my network to try to limit damage from infection.  Of course very few services are wrapped compared to all the ports that are open on a given computer.  But it helps.)

I did think it telling that his entire presentation (regarding the Stuxnet attack) was ENTIRELY about Windows.  No Linux, no OSX, just Windows.  So while I did take away his intended message, I also took away this one:  "Windows is bad."  Of course, I already felt that way.  The statistics for how long it takes a Windows machine to be come infected if exposed to unfiltered traffic on the network are shocking.  So are the statistics about the percentage of computers infected with one or more forms of malware worldwide.  There's a fun survival time website you can look at for yourself, but according to the Internet Storm Center, the current survival time (of an uninfected Windows box) is about 150 minutes.  That is actually orders of magnitude better then five years ago, so yay!  I can't find the map I'm looking for that has infection rates around the world, but I did find this fun interactive one at Panda Security.  It lists the rates much lower than Rob Lee did in his talk, which might be interesting or might reflect different sources of information.

So, anyway, I'm not as depressed by the talk as I might have been before.  Maybe I'm jaded?

[1] Beauty chose last night as her annual "pee on our bed" night, just as JD was getting undressed to get into bed.  We weren't best pleased.

LymeAid and other beverages

Sigh.  Still tired.  And I turned out to have gotten a sunburn yesterday after all.  Just the back of my neck was burned.  Today I covered up everything but my face, which was shaded by my hat and also the edges of my windbreaker hood whenever I wasn't under trees.  You'll note that I was wearing an oversize black windbreaker while it was nearly 80 degrees out.  And I think I might have still burned a little of my chin and nose.

It's starting to look like I'm not going to be able to go backpacking in two weeks.  I'm super pissed.  DeLee and I haven't gotten out on a trip since May, as far as I can remember.   If I feel well enough it's going to kill me to stay indoors because of my stupid photosensitivity.   I'm hoping for either A) torrential rain, or B) a severe cold snap.  I wouldn't burn in the rain, and I could bundle up in a cold snap.  Although I'm not sure DeLee would like to hike in the rain.

I'm awaiting Amazon's press release (or whatever they call it these days) tomorrow so I can figure out if I'm buying the current version of the Kindle or whatever it is they're announcing.  However I visited the library tonight to pick up more books.  I'm tired of rereading old copies of Backpacker to help me get to sleep at night.

Speaking of which, I tried melatonin last night and I slept like a veritable baby.  On a bed of feathers.  And not those pokey feathers either, the nice soft ones.  I had JD pick some up at the store for me and I'm doing it again tonight.  It turns out you *can* buy sleep that good.

I found out this morning that there's a fellow in California who is making Lyme supplements containing all the herbs and stuff one would normally take (cat's claw, resveratrol, andrographis, et al) in one capsule.  He calls it Lyme-Aid which makes me chuckle because it sounds like a summery beverage.  Yuks aside I'm planning to get some because I wouldn't mind taking fewer pills every morning.