You ever have a point where your life is in complete shambles?!?! It is becoming so hard to focus on anything right now. I have homework staring me in the face, I have plenty of things going on at home that are stressing me out to no end. Work has maintained its level of constant insanity. All I want to do when I come home is curl up in a ball and crawl away. I just spent the last 20 min driving back and forth between buildings at work in a frantic state because we have some server issues and low and behold I get into a fender scratcher (no bending involved) because the roads were slick and I couldn’t stop. So now I am going to have to deal with insurance issues!

My life is horribly out of focus and I am not sure how to bring it back.

So, shore leave didn’t happen. I ended up being really sick on Friday night. By Saturday morning I was wiped out. It really kind of pissed me off. It’s not that I didn’t try and go, we got as far as the star bucks and I was just so exhausted that I was getting dizzy. Because of this, nothing really exciting happened this weekend. We are still keeping an eye on Charlie, of course. I may bump up the check up from 4 weeks to 2 just so we can be sure he is ok.

Well, a full week of treatment later and Charlie is feeling a lot better. Thanks to all who sent positive vibes and good mojo! He went in for his last fluid treatment on Saturday. I was sitting at home doing my homework and I had a moment of sadness as I was sitting there. No Charlie on the monitor, or under my desk. He wasn’t in the window mewing at the chipmunks, or trying to jump on my shoulders. The house felt very empty without him there. Thankfully around 4pm I went to pick him up and he was extremely happy to be home. He is now on a strict diet of the prescription K/D food. The good news about that is that he likes it.

Sunday we made a special trip out to DC to pick up a visitor to our Garrison. TK-0.5 made his rounds to our area and it was my job to pick him up and show him around for a day. For those who don’t know, the 501st has its own traveling trooper. It’s a 12 inch storm trooper doll that has been mailed, handed off, and driven around to visit all of the different Garrisons. He was last up in Maryland with Old Line Garrison. Bryan from OLG handed him off at the Hard Rock in DC. We took the little guy around a few extra sights in DC and then back home (before the rain hit us). On Monday I took him into work and then to the Pool place where he got to play a few tables before I handed him off to Lori. We’ll see him again this weekend at Shoreleave.

The forth of July was pretty good. We headed out to see Superman Returns. I really thought it was a damn good movie! They did such a wonderful job of bringing the old movies back in spirit and bringing us up to date with this one. Everything about this movie made me remember how much I loved the originals. Go see it!

After the movie was done we went back home and made some picnic lunch stuff and headed out to Fairfax city to watch the fireworks. After getting lost driving around the city and getting blocked because of downed trees from the storm, we finally found a good spot in a shopping center parking lot just behind the place they launch the fireworks from. We had a great view. Of course we got there insanely early so we had to kill some time. We sat and played cards, Amy got to work on her school stuff. Finally around 9pm they started the show. I think the best part was the finale when it looked like the launcher guy just flipped every switch on the board!

Like I said, this weekend is Shoreleave, so expect an update after then.

Well we just got home from another days worth of IV treatments. Charlie has become quite the mascot there. All of the Nurses love him and tell me how pretty he is and how laid back he has been. Usually when I come in he is curled up in the blanket that I bring in for him. It’s the blanket I have had since I was extremely small and the one we always curl up on the couch with, so it smells like home. The Doc says he is doing great, he even went poo today! He did bring up a little bit of a hairball, but in a way that’s good because that may have been the anomaly that the barium had stuck to in the x-rays.

The current plan is to continue treatment through Saturday and then some more blood work to check the levels that were so high from the last one. If everything goes well, we should be down to just a diet of the K/D prescription food and a follow up in a few weeks. I even got to see the bill for everything up to Saturday and I was very relieved. Right now he is curled up again on the monitor taking a much needed nap. We took a little romp outside while it was still nice. The picture is a current one as of about 5 minutes ago.

So as you know we got Charlie home last night. He was exhausted. He wanted to curl up on the monitor and sleep. Who can blame him? I moved his food and water into the bathroom area and for the night I closed the door to the bathroom and to my room and left the door between those two open. Around 2:40am he got up and headed in there. (I have been sleeping really light so I can keep an eye on him) He walked in and took a couple of sniffs at his food. Then I heard a light crunching sound. HE WAS EATING!!! He likes it! Hey Mikey!! After he ate something he came back up on the bed and purred like the little purr box he is.

Then this morning he got down and ate a bunch of the dry food and about ½ of the wet food I had put down! He did go back to the vet today, they want to give him another fluid treatment and keep an eye on him. They were extremely happy to hear that he ate something. I will be picking him up this evening so you can expect another update soon.

If you have a few spare moments, send some good thoughts for Charlie. He didn’t have that great of a night. Yesterday the doc gave him a shot that was supposed to relax his stomach and maybe make him want to eat. We got him about 4 different kinds of food. He liked licking up the gravy but didn’t want to eat anything. Last night about 1am he threw up again and once more at 3am. After that I took him in and laid down with him on the couch. At around 8am this morning we took him in to have a Barium X-ray done. This way that can track along his digestive track and see if something is blocking it. This is being done right now. That procedure alone costs around $450. I don’t know what I am going to do if it’s any worse.

Please send him some good thoughts.

****Update**** 2:00pm EST
Just got off the phone with the Doc and he says that the Barium is traveling through like normal. They are taking X-rays every hour (Instead of every 30 min) and the next one is due in about 20 min. He said that it’s just entering the intestines and so far so good (at least as far as travel goes). He did mention that Charlie was a bit dehydrated, but I kind of expected that. I will keep you posted.

*** Update *** 7:23pm
Ok, it’s been a rough day. We have Charlie home now and I had a good talk with the doc. A few actually. You see I went straight there after work and they said they still needed to do the second series of blood work. The X-rays showed the barium moving all the way through his whole track. (I anticipate an interesting run to the litter box soon). The Doc did make note of an area with residual barium near the front of the stomach. He said this may (MAY!) be the barium attached to some sort of foreign body. It could be a string or something else, they weren’t 100% sure it was anything at all. They still needed another hour for the blood work so I went home.

This would be the point where I went in the back room and just let out a good cry. I am not afraid to admit it. I needed it after fighting it back all day with all of the repeated news. I have had Charlie for 8 years and he has such an amazing personality. He can tell when we are sad and comes to comfort us. He is always there for a good conversation. He will sit there on my monitor and watch me game or blog or whatever, just knowing that he is near.

We went back to pick him up at 6pm. The blood work was back and the news was mixed. On the plus side, it looks like there may be another cause for the vomiting and the loss of appetite that may not be a foreign body. The down side is that the test that was run was to measure the different chemicals in the body that indicate how his organs are working. The 2 chemicals that were off the charts are directly related to his kidneys. This could be an early acute kidney failure. There is a good side to this as well (how many sides are there?) The doc is really certain that we can help this. We are taking him back tomorrow for another round of fluid treatment and we have some special food specifically designed for this situation. (And Charlie even expressed an interest in it!)

We are home now and keeping a close eye on our Mister Charlie. I will update tomorrow with his condition.

I just took a few moments to reflect back and realize what a super busy weekend I just had! It all started with a great blast from the past as one of my really good friends came to visit from California. She was really here for a conference but we took the time to re-connect. I picked her up at the airport and we stopped by to pick up Amy after she had gotten off work. Andrew was spending the night over at his friend’s house so we headed downtown. I think I should take the time to mention that my friend and I were high school friends and while we have talked online and such for the past few years, we hadn’t actually seen each other since high school. (For you math geeks, that’s 14 years). We had a great time. Chatting about old times, talking about what we are doing now etc. I think Amy and I got home at close to 12:30.

At 1:40am Saturday morning I got a phone call from my nephew Noah. Keep in mind that I just got to sleep at like 1am. So I pry myself awake and grab the phone in time to see the “New Voicemail” light. I check it and it’s just the usual:

“Hey Uncle Stephen. It’s Noah, give me a call when you get this.”

Yeah, I am not going to call anyone back at 1:40am so I toss the phone back down and role over thinking it was all done. Oh how wrong I was. It’s so very appropriate that my phone rings with the song of Yakkity Sax. It’s Noah again.

“Hello?” I mumbled someone un-intelligibly.

“Uncle Stephen, are you asleep?” You could hear him suppress a giggle at this point

“I’m not now Noah, what’s up?”

“Mom had the baby, it’s a girl!” He was so very excited

Another interjection here, my sister was pregnant (obviously she’s not anymore). They had been trying for a while and the whole thing was touch and go for a while. I know, for Noah, this was a very exciting thing as he didn’t have a sister and they were all excited about the new arrival. Here is the problem. I talked with my sister later on Saturday and learned that the baby was born at 6pm. That’s pacific time, which would be 9pm eastern time. Yet, here we are back at 1:40am, close to 4 hours later.

“Noah, it’s almost 2am, give your mom a hug for me and I will call her later on” mumble mumble mumble

“What’s the matter Uncle Stephen, you don’t like phone calls this late?” Giggles are no longer suppressed.

“I will get you back for this, good bye Noah”

The next morning I wake up and am sitting on the couch surfing the Tivo. (This is my usual routine when I wake up on a weekend). It wasn’t until I was up for a long while that I turned to Amy and said, with a very curious look on my face.

“Noah called last night?” The memory of this flooding back

“Yeah, your sister had the baby” Amy says this like I am crazy and don’t remember the last 12 hours. (She is probably right)

I made the mental note to call her later in the day after things have calmed down for them and then turned back to the Tivo and un-paused the Myth-busters episode. After the episode Amy and I went down and got some Chai and I came back to finish up my homework. Thankfully all my homework assignments lately have been writing papers. And we all know how much I enjoy writing. It wasn’t long until my paper had practically written itself and I was done. I had a few hours to kill off so I went down to a local pub where they do a weekly poker tourney. I have a few friends from work that go there to play. I had made plans for the evening so I knew I wouldn’t be staying long. They do a “freeroll” tourney where you can win gift certificates and such so I wouldn’t be loosing money.

I got in and sat with some of the guys from work. I am the type of player that likes to joke around. Probably too much of watching the celebrity poker tourneys. I just like to have fun, it is a social game after all. The game started at 4pm and I knew I needed to leave around 5ish. There was a point where I was pretty short stacked, but I have always learned that it’s possible to come back. I did. The sad thing is that I was purposely playing sloppy. I knew I wasn’t staying so I made some bad calls. Some of them worked out to my favor, the rest made for good comedy. Around 5:20pm I was doing decently, but needed to get going so I was dealt my hands and just left them face down. When the guy across the table raised, I threw my chips in and went all in. He flips over and had an Ace King. I flip over and sure enough, King Queen. (I swear, I didn’t look prior to that) The flop came out with a King and some other crap cards. The whole run was crap save for the king and I lost to his Ace kicker. But it was still fun. I grabbed my stuff and said good bye to folks on my way out the door.

I called up my friend again and asked if she wanted to hang out this evening. Amy and I had already talked about it, she was going to be out with her friends practically all day so she was fine with it. Only this time I had an extra plan in mind.

The friend that was in town was one of the girls in high school that I had always had a crush on. We joke and flirt online all the time but nothing had ever become of it. But, now was my chance to do something that I never got the chance to do back in high school. I threw what I needed in my bag and headed off to the metro. There was a big storm and lots of traffic, they even had one of the freeways blocked off. This wasn’t going to stop me though, I had waited 14 years to do this. I took the metro to downtown and walked through the rain to her hotel. She opened the door to her room and invited me in. I was so excited and nervous all at the same time. I walked in and set my bag down on the chair while she sat down on the couch. I reached in the back and pulled out what I needed and joined her on the couch.

“Will you FINALLY sign my yearbook!”

I am not sure what you were thinking, little potty brains. She was a really good friend all those years ago but she had never signed my yearbook. I had always given her crap about it so I thought it would be fun to have her sign it now. We spent the evening going from front to back through the yearbook. She knew about nearly everyone. After that we grabbed some food and met up with Paul at a pool place. I smoked him on two games and then it was time to call it a night.

The rest of the weekend went as usual, with one major exception. Charlie is sick. We have been keeping a close eye on him all weekend. He did some throwing up on Friday, and hasn’t really eaten much, if at all on Saturday and Sunday. He drinks water and is still pretty alert. And he isn’t peeing anything but pee at this point. But we are really worried about him. We have an appointment today with the vet so we can get him properly checked out. Poor little guy. Please send him your happy thoughts and I will post an update about him as soon as I have more news!

The Big News!!!!

Every year a contest is held to find the best Star Wars Fan Film. Every year the bar gets raised on the quality and style of film. What started with the old “Hey look what I can do with Photoshop and a light saber” has turned into such greats as “George Lucas in love” and “Pink 5”. This year is no exception. There are a number of great films out there. One of them, though, stands above the rest. This is probably due to the fact that I am a little biased about it. You see, I am in it!

“When a team of cheese ball television executives pitch Lucas some “terrific” ideas for his upcoming Star Wars series, we get a glimpse into the director’s dark side.”

VOTE FOR IT NOW!!!!!
http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/pitching_lucas
More on this later, I gotta run!

Overall this was a pretty light weekend. On Saturday we managed to get away and see X-men III. Andrew was nice enough to hold down the fort at home seeing as how he already saw the movie while we were in Vegas. (This also works out as paying for 3 people at a movie gets pricey) The movie was good. Not great, but good. I will say this, if you haven’t seen it yet and are planning to, stay until after the credits. If you leave, you will be missing something important! On the way home we did the standard stop at the comic shop and picked up the weeklies. Then it was home for a relaxing time chilling and watching some TV.

Sunday was, of course, father’s day. I was woken up (all be it somewhat late) when Amy and Andrew came in with Starbucks sandwiches, Morning Chai, and a few gift bags! Andrew picked out a T-shirt and shorts with a few sayings on them. Amy found me a star wars scout figure from EPIII, some IBC and (though she might have had influence from Andrew) a handheld baseball game. I spent the rest of the morning (and early afternoon) lounging while my slaves did my bidding loving girlfriend and son took care of housework. I cleared off some of my favorite shows that were waiting for me on the Tivo. Around 3:30 I began to prepare for my tournament.

At 4pm the Pokerstars bloggers tournament started up and I jumped into the thick of it! Playing for real stakes is so much more apparent in these games and I was doing awesome! If I had crap I folded and when I had good hands I won. I judged the others play based on betting patterns (just as the great Chris Fergeson instructed) and watched to see if someone really had something or if they were pulling legs. I was almost always 1k above the average for the tourney. One of my favorite hands had to be the Ac 6c I was dealt. After a number of calls and folds I raise the pot and two guys call me on it. The flop comes out as a 5s 6d 6s. The first guy bets out 100 and I raise him an extra 100, the third guy folds and the first calls me again. The turn card comes out and sure enough it’s the 6h. This gives me four 6’s and an Ace. The first guy checks and, knowing only 2 hands could beat me at this point, I go all in. (Only a royal flush and a straight flush can beat four of a kind) Sure enough, he folds. It was very exciting.

At one point in the tournament I was up to $7,262 in chips. This amount had me in the top 100 leader board. I was on top of the world for the moment. Then, of course, the god of fate steps in at 5:17pm on June 18th 2006. The power for the house goes out. No, wait, it’s worse than that. The power for the entire neighborhood goes out.

Fate hates me.

The front office has no explanation as to why the power went out. They couldn’t get a hold of the power company (probably because they were the only ones calling). The power stayed out until around 6:15pm. I was able to get back on and find that I was completely kicked from the tournament. After having my “Hand history” e-mailed to me, I found out why I was un-able to re-join. Apparently because I had lost connection, the computer took over for me and posted all blinds and ante’s but then folded at first chance. This continued until 6:02pm. My last “hand” (even though I wasn’t there) I had 157 chips and posted the ante, I was big blind and apparently went all-in. I was delt a 5s and 8c and promptly fold my way out of the tourney. With out playing for almost an hour and only folding away my hands, I managed to finish in 372nd place out of over 2200 players. Overall, that’s not too shabby! I really think I could have done pretty well if I had stayed in.

After spending 30 min trying to get an admin to tell me why I couldn’t come back in, I finally gave up and left to take a drive and cool my head. I got really pissed off. (I think I was scaring Amy) I called and talked to my dad for pretty much the whole drive and was able to collect myself and calm down. The rest of the evening was un-eventful. I did manage to get back on and watch the end of the tourney. The last 2 guys battled it out and ended just after 10:30pm. I hugged Amy and Andrew, said thanks for my fathers day, and headed to bed.

Now to find a way to get back at fate.

So here I am, it’s 11pm and I just got done playing some on line poker. I am still not brave enough to start putting in real money so I am at the “play money” tables on . Of course the downside to this is that when people are playing with play money, they tend to act like it’s play money. They get crazy on a starting hand of 4 7 off suit. Well, I thought I had found a good table and things were looking good for me, I was up about 700 chips. Low and behold I get a Queen 6 off suit. It’s not great, but enough to make me want to see the flop. (it is only play money after all). Sure enough I get another 6 on the flop. I raise a bit and it’s enough to get some of the others to fold out. When it’s not a sure thing I only raise a little. Just enough to say “I have a pretty good hand.” Well, the guy across the table calls me. Turn card comes out as a queen. I now have 2 pair of the highest cards on the table. I raise a good amount. He raises me back. I raise him again and he calls. River card is a 9. I Raise again, a lot, and he calls it. I show my 2 pair, he shows me his one pair.

Most of these on line places have a chat block. I hardly see people use it, but sometimes it’s nice to get a chatty table. After the hand I type in

me:“I tried to warn you”
him: “I know”

Fast forward to later in the game. I get a jack 6 off suit. Again, enough to get on the board. I am tall stacked at the moment so why not. Flop shows 3 heart cards, and I have jack of hearts. I call, so as to not be aggressive. Sure enough the turn is a queen of hearts. High card out there was an ace, but no one was betting like they had aces. So I raise. Same guy raises my raise. How here I am looking at an ace high flush, I have the jack in my hand and the queen is out there. I am going over in my head “could he have a pair of aces? Even if he had a three of a kind I beat that. I call him and the river comes out. Was a spade of something. I raise, he raises me again. Ok, so these on line places don’t give you long to think so here I am trying to figure him out. His raise means if I call I am All-In. I sigh and take the chance. The cards come up and guess what he has………

King of hearts.

We both have flushes. My jack is whats holding me up, his king brings him the pot. After the hand clears, the chat lights up with a message from him.

Him: “I tried to warn you… 🙂
me: “I Know… ):”