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verushka70Wherein I babble about my sister's new baby, who is sick; the joy of finding Da Vinci's Inquest on another channel besides lame-ass WGN local; getting suckered into CBS's new vampire show Moonlight, when I should know better; and consequently getting suckered into Amazon Unbox because of Moonlight.
Well, my sister went into labor a week early with my next nephew (why are they all nephews? I don't know -- maybe because there were four of us girls, and only my brother, and Nature said, "Okay, that's quite enough; we must rectify this inequality in the next generation." Or something.)
So, that's the good news -- 10 fingers, 10 toes, born on Thursday. I think. I'm really bad with days now that I work nights and sleep days.
The bad news is, he didn't breathe right from the start, so they whisked him off to the NICU and intubated him. So he had a breathing tube, was on a ventilator, and has an arterial line going through his umbilicus (navel) as well as an IV in his foot. They at first werent't sure if it was a lung immaturity problem (which would be odd, given that he was already past 38 weeks gestation) or if it was an infection. Turns out he most likely swallowed/breathed meconium, that tarry shit (literally) that they aren't supposed to move from their bowels until after they're born. But some fetuses have a meconium bowel movement in utero, if stressed -- and apparently he was stressed. My sister, bonehead Type A anxiety-panic disorder freak that she is (and I say that being most definitely a bonehead Type B major depressive disorder freak myself) was having contractions on Tuesday but she went to work anyway.
Then she went to the hospital Wednesday around 1:30pm after her contractions were already coming 2 minutes apart, but she was only 3 cm dilated -- apparently, she'd been having them 2 minutes apart since like 10:30am Wednesday. Then she labored until they yanked him by C-section on Thursday because he was breech somehow. I still don't really have all the details because the medical staff & nurses were telling my sister everything in layman's terms, plus she has the whole hormonal post-partum, freaked-out/stressed-out, haven't taken my Zoloft since Tuesday thing going on -- so her thinking is just a little cloudy. When I talked to her, she was kind of perseverating. She only said about 10 sentences, but five of them were, "He's gonna be fine."
Which I'm sure was some kind of comforting mantra for her, but I know her, and I know her mind goes into that hamster-on-a-wheel useless, frenetic, repetitive thought, and I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. And of course you can't tell her anything, because she knows everything. And her husband -- well, he's supportive, but she wears the pants. So I doubt if he could insist she take the Zoloft and chill the fuck out because of her C-section incision, because she would just steam-roll right over him, like she does.
And, of course, I had to get sick on Thursday, to the tune of a 99.9 fever Friday (normal for me is 97.9 -- but supposedly, there's nothing wrong w/my thyroid. whatever.). So I couldn't go up to see her. But my mom did and one of my older sisters did. I'm worried but every time I've tried to call the hospital room in the last day and a half, it just rings and rings and no one answers. I think they shut it off and forgot to turn it back on. Or something.
Anyway, Friday they stepped-down the NICU care of the baby boy (I am told he is so cute!). And today he is on room air alone in his little NICU incubator, but he still has the arterial line and the IVs and they're pretty sure now it is an infection, so he's getting two antibiotics IV. My sister will go home from the hospital Monday, but they baby they will keep for 5-7 days, which will no doubt kill her.
I hope I am better by next Thursday so I can go up and see them. (Actually, I hope this freakin' cold is better by tomorrow night, because I have to work Sun/Mon/Tue nights, and if I have to work sick, it will suck; but I'm still in the probationary period, so I don't have much choice.)
So yay! new baby. Boo, sick baby. But he seems to be on the way to a complete recovery. We hope. I just hope my sister will chill the fuck out so her incision heals and she doesn't lose her milk.
~ ~ ~
In other news, I'm tickled to see that Da Vinci's Inquest, which got knocked down to once a week on my local WGN station, is now also being shown on the local ABC affiliate. It's still 2am, but since those are my work hours now, it's not hard to stay up for it -- and it's on Saturdays. So I'm watching it. I dunno how that happened, but it did.
And it's a Da Vinci's City Hall episode right now, although it's still listed in the TV listings as DVI -- but this is an episode after he's already mayor. So, yay! Getting my DVI fix. If only the entire series would get sold on DVD. So far, only 2 seasons are available on DVD -- and they're each 13 eps each. $40-odd bucks is a lot to pay for 13 episodes. So I'm kind of holding off yet.
~ ~ ~
Okay, I admit it: I have been sucked in -- I got sucked into Moonlight (the new CBS vampire show that supposedly had so much trouble in production over the summer). And because of Moonlight, I also got sucked into Amazon Unbox. I have watched every ep of Moonlight -- but not on television. How do you like them apples, CBS?
I watched them on CBS' web site Innertube first. Then I saw it was available on Amazon's Unbox thingy. So I caved and subscribed to the season, which was pretty stupid, I realized after I did so; the whole thing is going to be over $40, and I won't even get DVD extras with that. *frets*
However, I then ran into the Microsoft Windows Mediaplayer DRM and Amazon Unbox problem. That is, I can't watch them on anything other than my mom's PC, which is where I downloaded them. Don't get me wrong, the Unbox versions are high quality -- they look gorgeous, and none of that annoying visual or audio stutter of watching the flash video versions on CBS' Innertube (and also, no commercials).
But, what really sucks is I can't watch them on my Mac mini, even though the Mac and PC share a wireless network -- because there is no DRM-compliant version of Windows Media Player for the Mac, and Amazon Unbox only works in Windows.
(My mom's PC I just bought her for $299 from the evil empire of Wal-Mart -- she needed one; I was tired of sharing my Mac mini, especially after it became apparent what I really use it for is, um, as a media center, watching all kinds of movies and shows converted to AVI... and I plan to hook it up to my LCD HDTV, as soon as I buy a LCD HDTV, which I have not yet done. It's strange to be making money again after being broke for so many years after I got laid off and went back to school. It doesn't quite feel real yet.
Anyway, so I set my mom's PC up, transferred all her old files over from the old PC hard drive of her Dell that died -- mother board issue; they don't make 'em like they used to. So now she's back to Windows XP, which she's glad of because she never really "got" the Mac OS, although I don't see how freakin' hard that is, but for someone in their 60s, even minor changes to things freaks them out, so who am I to judge. She was outside her comfort zone so now she's back in, so whatever.)
So I am now trying to figure out a way to remotely control the PC and watch the Amazon Unbox Moonlight episodes I have from my Mac, over the wireless network, so I can watch them in my apartment, in a comfy place (like my bed, or my couch) rather than sitting upright in a wood straightback chair in a computer room/office that is in no way my preferred television watching environment.
I did try to remove the DRM stuff from the Windows Mediaplayer files of Moonlight episodes, but that didn't work -- I mean, I was able to remove the DRM license crap, but that did not make them any more viewable on my Mac -- even with VLC (which surprised me, because up until now, I hadn't run into ANYTHING that VLC couldn't play). So, I guess the next step is to just try to remote control the PC and watch the eps that way.
I wish I could move them onto something else, but whatever other video devices I want to use with the Unbox episodes must also be Windows Mediaplayer DRM compliant, or they won't play on other devices, either. Which is quite the pisser. I wonder if the episodes are on iTunes? I should've checked first before I did the Unbox thing -- it would suck to pay twice for something I already paid for and should be able to watch ANYWHERE I GODDAMN WANT TO now that I own them. Sigh.
But, you know, where there's hackers, there's hope. And there are always hackers. Yay.
Anyway, Moonlight started out really lame, I thought--ultra cliched. It's gotten somewhat better. I'm really just into it because (1) hello, vampires, one of my lifelong loves and fascinations (Forever Knight, BTVS, Angel...), and (B) the two male leads Alex O'Loughlin and Jason Dohring are fucking hotties. Jason I knew from Veronica Mars, which sadly was cancelled, but I loved his troubled, angsty, fucked-up portrayal of Logan. And I never saw this Alex O'Loughlin guy before this show Moonlight, but -- fuck me, he is hot. And for once, an actor they didn't force to wax his chest! Thank god.
I am so into this show I actually had a sex dream last night that I was in bed with both of them. Of course, I also dreamt that I and two of my nursing school classmates who now work with me at the same ER were using a bathroom that was under the orchestra pit of the opera house downtown, so, clearly my mind is strange. But what I found amusing about being in bed with both of them in the dream was that Jason was uncircumcised in my dream -- like a "Shar-Pei" as Charlotte once described her uncut boyfriend on Sex And The City. It didn't particularly bother me (in the dream -- nor would it in real life) -- but I was just slightly surprised in the dream when I took hold of it and it was rather more, uh, loosely fleshy than I had expected.
Life is weird, but dreams are often weirder.
Anyway, if nothing else, Moonlight is a wonderful piece of eye candy. It doesn't seem to stray too far from the vampire-guy-meets-feisty-human-girl-and-they-can't-truly-be-together trope that seems to have been so popular in virtually every vamp show of the 90s. But, hey. It's already had some slightly original gimmicks -- vampire blood used as a drug being pushed in exclusive LA club VIP lounges, for one, which I found amusing.
Well, I send wishes off to the stars and the ether for my new baby nephew. However, on cuteness alone, I think he'll pull through. Plus he was 8 lbs. 10 oz., so he's chunky enough to hold his own through the illness, I think; he should have enough brown fat to make it until he's done with the antibiotics. I just wish my sister wouldn't have gone to work that day. Like, why?? I don't get her. I really, really don't.
But then, I am currently wearing a T-shirt that says "Genius by birth -- slacker by choice" so that might explain it. No matter her commitment to her high school students, if it had been me, I'd have been like, No, I'm sorry, I'm having contractions, and I am probably having a baby soon, and therefore, my baby comes before everyone and everything else. But she's the ultra-achiever perfectionist. Always has been. She'll drive herself into the ground that way.
She had all these grandiose ideas about child-rearing, and I didn't have the heart to tell her, you know, you can't always schedule babies and children to do things the way you want; they kind of force you to do things on their time table. Because I figured she'd find that out eventually. I just didn't expect it to happen at birth in the form of the baby being in serious condition. Oh, I hope the little guy pulls through.
But, I mean, I think he will. Because they already took him off the vent, so he must be breathing okay on his own. I'm sure they do blood tests on him like every 4 hours to see what his blood gases are like, and they wouldn't have taken him off the vent (and kept him off) if it wasn't apparent from his blood that he was doing okay. So. We'll see. I'd say that I was going to pray, but I'm not sure there's a God, or that he would listen anyway. I just plan to sit down and think really hard about him getting well and going home to his parents and happy black lab dog who will no doubt guard him very well, tail wagging all the way.
Well, my sister went into labor a week early with my next nephew (why are they all nephews? I don't know -- maybe because there were four of us girls, and only my brother, and Nature said, "Okay, that's quite enough; we must rectify this inequality in the next generation." Or something.)
So, that's the good news -- 10 fingers, 10 toes, born on Thursday. I think. I'm really bad with days now that I work nights and sleep days.
The bad news is, he didn't breathe right from the start, so they whisked him off to the NICU and intubated him. So he had a breathing tube, was on a ventilator, and has an arterial line going through his umbilicus (navel) as well as an IV in his foot. They at first werent't sure if it was a lung immaturity problem (which would be odd, given that he was already past 38 weeks gestation) or if it was an infection. Turns out he most likely swallowed/breathed meconium, that tarry shit (literally) that they aren't supposed to move from their bowels until after they're born. But some fetuses have a meconium bowel movement in utero, if stressed -- and apparently he was stressed. My sister, bonehead Type A anxiety-panic disorder freak that she is (and I say that being most definitely a bonehead Type B major depressive disorder freak myself) was having contractions on Tuesday but she went to work anyway.
Then she went to the hospital Wednesday around 1:30pm after her contractions were already coming 2 minutes apart, but she was only 3 cm dilated -- apparently, she'd been having them 2 minutes apart since like 10:30am Wednesday. Then she labored until they yanked him by C-section on Thursday because he was breech somehow. I still don't really have all the details because the medical staff & nurses were telling my sister everything in layman's terms, plus she has the whole hormonal post-partum, freaked-out/stressed-out, haven't taken my Zoloft since Tuesday thing going on -- so her thinking is just a little cloudy. When I talked to her, she was kind of perseverating. She only said about 10 sentences, but five of them were, "He's gonna be fine."
Which I'm sure was some kind of comforting mantra for her, but I know her, and I know her mind goes into that hamster-on-a-wheel useless, frenetic, repetitive thought, and I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. And of course you can't tell her anything, because she knows everything. And her husband -- well, he's supportive, but she wears the pants. So I doubt if he could insist she take the Zoloft and chill the fuck out because of her C-section incision, because she would just steam-roll right over him, like she does.
And, of course, I had to get sick on Thursday, to the tune of a 99.9 fever Friday (normal for me is 97.9 -- but supposedly, there's nothing wrong w/my thyroid. whatever.). So I couldn't go up to see her. But my mom did and one of my older sisters did. I'm worried but every time I've tried to call the hospital room in the last day and a half, it just rings and rings and no one answers. I think they shut it off and forgot to turn it back on. Or something.
Anyway, Friday they stepped-down the NICU care of the baby boy (I am told he is so cute!). And today he is on room air alone in his little NICU incubator, but he still has the arterial line and the IVs and they're pretty sure now it is an infection, so he's getting two antibiotics IV. My sister will go home from the hospital Monday, but they baby they will keep for 5-7 days, which will no doubt kill her.
I hope I am better by next Thursday so I can go up and see them. (Actually, I hope this freakin' cold is better by tomorrow night, because I have to work Sun/Mon/Tue nights, and if I have to work sick, it will suck; but I'm still in the probationary period, so I don't have much choice.)
So yay! new baby. Boo, sick baby. But he seems to be on the way to a complete recovery. We hope. I just hope my sister will chill the fuck out so her incision heals and she doesn't lose her milk.
~ ~ ~
In other news, I'm tickled to see that Da Vinci's Inquest, which got knocked down to once a week on my local WGN station, is now also being shown on the local ABC affiliate. It's still 2am, but since those are my work hours now, it's not hard to stay up for it -- and it's on Saturdays. So I'm watching it. I dunno how that happened, but it did.
And it's a Da Vinci's City Hall episode right now, although it's still listed in the TV listings as DVI -- but this is an episode after he's already mayor. So, yay! Getting my DVI fix. If only the entire series would get sold on DVD. So far, only 2 seasons are available on DVD -- and they're each 13 eps each. $40-odd bucks is a lot to pay for 13 episodes. So I'm kind of holding off yet.
~ ~ ~
Okay, I admit it: I have been sucked in -- I got sucked into Moonlight (the new CBS vampire show that supposedly had so much trouble in production over the summer). And because of Moonlight, I also got sucked into Amazon Unbox. I have watched every ep of Moonlight -- but not on television. How do you like them apples, CBS?
I watched them on CBS' web site Innertube first. Then I saw it was available on Amazon's Unbox thingy. So I caved and subscribed to the season, which was pretty stupid, I realized after I did so; the whole thing is going to be over $40, and I won't even get DVD extras with that. *frets*
However, I then ran into the Microsoft Windows Mediaplayer DRM and Amazon Unbox problem. That is, I can't watch them on anything other than my mom's PC, which is where I downloaded them. Don't get me wrong, the Unbox versions are high quality -- they look gorgeous, and none of that annoying visual or audio stutter of watching the flash video versions on CBS' Innertube (and also, no commercials).
But, what really sucks is I can't watch them on my Mac mini, even though the Mac and PC share a wireless network -- because there is no DRM-compliant version of Windows Media Player for the Mac, and Amazon Unbox only works in Windows.
(My mom's PC I just bought her for $299 from the evil empire of Wal-Mart -- she needed one; I was tired of sharing my Mac mini, especially after it became apparent what I really use it for is, um, as a media center, watching all kinds of movies and shows converted to AVI... and I plan to hook it up to my LCD HDTV, as soon as I buy a LCD HDTV, which I have not yet done. It's strange to be making money again after being broke for so many years after I got laid off and went back to school. It doesn't quite feel real yet.
Anyway, so I set my mom's PC up, transferred all her old files over from the old PC hard drive of her Dell that died -- mother board issue; they don't make 'em like they used to. So now she's back to Windows XP, which she's glad of because she never really "got" the Mac OS, although I don't see how freakin' hard that is, but for someone in their 60s, even minor changes to things freaks them out, so who am I to judge. She was outside her comfort zone so now she's back in, so whatever.)
So I am now trying to figure out a way to remotely control the PC and watch the Amazon Unbox Moonlight episodes I have from my Mac, over the wireless network, so I can watch them in my apartment, in a comfy place (like my bed, or my couch) rather than sitting upright in a wood straightback chair in a computer room/office that is in no way my preferred television watching environment.
I did try to remove the DRM stuff from the Windows Mediaplayer files of Moonlight episodes, but that didn't work -- I mean, I was able to remove the DRM license crap, but that did not make them any more viewable on my Mac -- even with VLC (which surprised me, because up until now, I hadn't run into ANYTHING that VLC couldn't play). So, I guess the next step is to just try to remote control the PC and watch the eps that way.
I wish I could move them onto something else, but whatever other video devices I want to use with the Unbox episodes must also be Windows Mediaplayer DRM compliant, or they won't play on other devices, either. Which is quite the pisser. I wonder if the episodes are on iTunes? I should've checked first before I did the Unbox thing -- it would suck to pay twice for something I already paid for and should be able to watch ANYWHERE I GODDAMN WANT TO now that I own them. Sigh.
But, you know, where there's hackers, there's hope. And there are always hackers. Yay.
Anyway, Moonlight started out really lame, I thought--ultra cliched. It's gotten somewhat better. I'm really just into it because (1) hello, vampires, one of my lifelong loves and fascinations (Forever Knight, BTVS, Angel...), and (B) the two male leads Alex O'Loughlin and Jason Dohring are fucking hotties. Jason I knew from Veronica Mars, which sadly was cancelled, but I loved his troubled, angsty, fucked-up portrayal of Logan. And I never saw this Alex O'Loughlin guy before this show Moonlight, but -- fuck me, he is hot. And for once, an actor they didn't force to wax his chest! Thank god.
I am so into this show I actually had a sex dream last night that I was in bed with both of them. Of course, I also dreamt that I and two of my nursing school classmates who now work with me at the same ER were using a bathroom that was under the orchestra pit of the opera house downtown, so, clearly my mind is strange. But what I found amusing about being in bed with both of them in the dream was that Jason was uncircumcised in my dream -- like a "Shar-Pei" as Charlotte once described her uncut boyfriend on Sex And The City. It didn't particularly bother me (in the dream -- nor would it in real life) -- but I was just slightly surprised in the dream when I took hold of it and it was rather more, uh, loosely fleshy than I had expected.
Life is weird, but dreams are often weirder.
Anyway, if nothing else, Moonlight is a wonderful piece of eye candy. It doesn't seem to stray too far from the vampire-guy-meets-feisty-human-girl-and-they-can't-truly-be-together trope that seems to have been so popular in virtually every vamp show of the 90s. But, hey. It's already had some slightly original gimmicks -- vampire blood used as a drug being pushed in exclusive LA club VIP lounges, for one, which I found amusing.
Well, I send wishes off to the stars and the ether for my new baby nephew. However, on cuteness alone, I think he'll pull through. Plus he was 8 lbs. 10 oz., so he's chunky enough to hold his own through the illness, I think; he should have enough brown fat to make it until he's done with the antibiotics. I just wish my sister wouldn't have gone to work that day. Like, why?? I don't get her. I really, really don't.
But then, I am currently wearing a T-shirt that says "Genius by birth -- slacker by choice" so that might explain it. No matter her commitment to her high school students, if it had been me, I'd have been like, No, I'm sorry, I'm having contractions, and I am probably having a baby soon, and therefore, my baby comes before everyone and everything else. But she's the ultra-achiever perfectionist. Always has been. She'll drive herself into the ground that way.
She had all these grandiose ideas about child-rearing, and I didn't have the heart to tell her, you know, you can't always schedule babies and children to do things the way you want; they kind of force you to do things on their time table. Because I figured she'd find that out eventually. I just didn't expect it to happen at birth in the form of the baby being in serious condition. Oh, I hope the little guy pulls through.
But, I mean, I think he will. Because they already took him off the vent, so he must be breathing okay on his own. I'm sure they do blood tests on him like every 4 hours to see what his blood gases are like, and they wouldn't have taken him off the vent (and kept him off) if it wasn't apparent from his blood that he was doing okay. So. We'll see. I'd say that I was going to pray, but I'm not sure there's a God, or that he would listen anyway. I just plan to sit down and think really hard about him getting well and going home to his parents and happy black lab dog who will no doubt guard him very well, tail wagging all the way.
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no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 05:21 am (UTC)anyways. interesting journal, i wish you and your family the best of luck with your new baby nephew... (who, in the vain of this comment... i figure i might mention, is ALSO uncircumcised, i bet)
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 06:20 pm (UTC)It wasn't the uncut aspect that surprised me -- it was that Jason Dohring was uncut that I found surprising, he being a young American actor and all! I just know that the US has the highest proportion of circumdised men in the world and always has -- although it has been decreasing in the past decade, from what I've read.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-12 02:38 pm (UTC)I tried Moonlight, and while I like the actor, the girl annoys me. So, no Moonlight. It's one of those shows that I can take or leave and I mostly leave. I'd rather watch Blood Ties.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 06:13 pm (UTC)What I like about Moonlight is that he gets angstier as the show goes on. (Which was why I so loved Forever Knight: the angst!) And if you dislike this girl, you should see the one they originally cast -- at least the current one has chemistry with the lead. (And she has vamp cred; she was a vamp in Underworld.) And she's improved. She's much more hands-on and less damsel-in-distress than she was initially.
Ironically, Alex O'Loughlin was also in The Invisible--as the juvy thief-turned-killer girl's paroled boyfriend. WAY different role! He seems more versatile than I thought. (Plus his Aussie accent is entertaining.)
Actually, the Invisible was a surprisingly good movie. I expected to have to endure it jusf for CKR but I got sucked into it. Plus I liked the locations (Pacific northwest) and the soundtrack. And CKR of course!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 07:11 pm (UTC)It's a shame, too, because since they moved SGA to 10, I'm just wasting time until it comes on because there's nothing I like at 8 or 9 o'clock unless you count Dog Whisperer, which I can watch at other times since it repeats quite often on National Geographic channel.
Angsty or not, I've got to have a character who has someone interesting to play off of, so I'll give Moonlight a miss unless they get him a guy to hang out with and get rid of the girl and predictable plots.