Friday, November 02, 2007

Drama & Trauma


Dearest Friends, it has been a rather action-packed week, with dollops of drama and a wee bit of trauma. But fret not, all is relatively well...

For starters, Darling Daughter fell off a skittish horse last Sunday, and the meeting of her left shoulder with the ground resulted in a broken arm. To be specific, the poor thing is now sporting a proximal humerus fracture. Indeed, she recovered from the pain of the fall so quickly that initially we suspected only a bad strain or wrench. We only discovered the break after taking her to the doctor on Monday after she woke up a few times in the night complaining of discomfort. The doc sent us to the excellent BC Children's Hospital, where she was seen relatively quickly and efficiently - another set of full marks for BC's (Yanks take note) public health care system. Treatment is simple: sling to get the bones aligned, ibuprofen for the pain, plus follow-up visits to the ortho clinic to make sure the head knits with the shaft. Drama and trauma.

Help She Can't Swim - Hospital Drama (buy here or e-here)
An urgent, shouty (and y'all know I like shouty) guitar-synth gem from these Sarfeast English arty popsters.

Next up, Halloweeeeeen. My workplace actually goes whole hawg on the day, with a majority of folks actually dressing up. Our department's theme was "rock stars" and though I briefly considered going as Sufjan Stevens (not really), I finally settled on Ozzy Osbourne. I was in fine company; Alice Cooper made an appearance, as did the ghost of John Lennon. I enjoyed running around in an (even more) addled state (than usual), chewing on a rubber bat and shouting "SHARON!" at regular intervals. It's true, I have no shame. But even our CEO (who was dressed as a bug-eyed Roswell alien) seemed to approve heartily. Moreover, I'm proud to announce that at our afternoon costume judging, OzzyFiL came in second, just ahead of Alice, but behind a chicken from Human Resources. Lots of drama.

Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train (buy here)
Definitely off the rails. Oh yes. But if you want to see Halloween done right, visit Mentok.

And then there was today, when first thing in the morning a servery, switchy thingy keeled over at work, bringing absolutely everything to a grinding halt. No e-mail. No internet. No network drives. Nothing. Nada. Internet banking was unavailable. Folks couldn't pay their bills. As an additional result, two folks who work for me are having to come in Sunday to sort out that which they had hoped to do today. But it was an interesting anthropological experiment; bereft of electronica and computeralia, folks flapped aimlessly, pausing only to regularly prod their moribund Blackberries and desktops in the hopes of reviving them. Ye gods, we should just have done with it and implant the bloody electrodes in our brains (but only after they sort out decent backup). More drama, some trauma.

The Cure - Grinding Halt (buy here)
Aww, so nice to hear the boys at their angsty, gloomy best.

But finally, with no drama or trauma, my new header! Do you love it as much as I do? I hope so, because it's staying. It was a present from lovely, Dearest Tim Young. You see, in addition to being a podcast guru, a multitalented musician, and all-round generous chap, he's a Photoshop whizz. So when I asked him if he could modify a picture he'd sent me so that I could use it as a header, he came up instead with the wonderful image now flying proudly from my masthead. So, thank you, Dearest Tim!!

Tim Young - Gotta Go [Victor Scott Cover] (see it here)

11 comments:

Ed said...

You looked great! And always good to hear The Cure and Ozzy.

Ed

Girl said...

Poor girl though I bet her friends think she's cool.

And the suits having fun? Nice!!

Anonymous said...

poor lil thing. did she still get to trick or treat?

jag--when i was little i always wanted to break my leg so i could walk on crutches, coz i thought it would be cool. now i know better! : )

fil--how did people do any work before computers and whatnot? i just can't imagine! ;-)

davyh said...

Ouch! re. the arm, that's tough when you're little. We send London hugs. Tim - header - genius!

BTW 'The Empire Strikes Back' is screening on UK terrestrial TV tomorrow teatime. I seem to recall that 'she' is rather fanciable in that, thanks in no small measure to the words put in her mouth by Leigh Brackett...

cchang said...

What is it with bone fractures lately? Someone on my husband's soccer team broke his collar bone and I just found out I have a hairline fracture in my 1st metatarsal on my left foot. Gah! I hope she feels better soon.

The new header is awesome! And of course, I never get tired of seeing that Gotta Go video.

ally. said...

ooooooh i'm so jealous - that big header of yours, cor blimey
x

Mentok said...

Injured kids.. yikes, I know that panicky feeling, even when one knows rationally that it's nothing serious.

Of course you realize its all your fault. Letting her ride a horse! If only you kept her locked in her room (letting her out only to go to Sunday school, supervised) like a proper parent, none of this would have ever happened. ;-)

Lucky you having a Halloween friendly workplace. I'm so jealous!

That's very funny about the server outage. At the risk of dating myself, I must admit that in my first office job the only thing on my desk was a phone and a notepad. The secretaries had these fancy "word processor" thingies. We all went around asking ourselves "what did we ever do before the invention of the fax machine?"

I seem to recall that somehow we got quite a bit done, but in the same situation today I'm sure we'd be reduced to playing Hearts or Minesweeper even more than at present.

Sean Carmody said...

How is a chicken a rock star? Me feels you were ripped off!

Mr Rossy said...

Hey Fil, i hope your daughter's shoulder gets better asap, it's a real bummer breakin stuff, but these things tend to heal a whole lot quicker when your a wee nipper!

BTW
Nice header, good work Tim !!! I like the PIL vibe, i gotta sort mine out, Tim better be careful, he might have a qew of bloggers at his door.

Also, that ozzy pic is great, perfect opportunity to shout Sharon loudly and behave raucously at work if you ask me !!

Good stuff, also, you should listen to Tom Denney's side project from Help she can't swim.

I wrote something on him here
http://justgimmeindierock.blogspot.com/2007/09/brighton.html

Tim Young said...

All header requests gratefully accepted ... :)

Unknown said...

To Tim via FiL. Fantastic job you've done here.

Header request for The Vinyl Villian is hereby requested. Will donate suitable sum to charidee of your choice.