Torrefaction

I see the dentist at 8 am tomorrow to have my temporary crown pulled off and my permanent crown put in.  Hopefully this will mean I can start chewing on that side of my mouth again and give the cavity on the other side of my choppers a rest.  Maybe I'll even go have a different "pain-free" dentist fill the cavity finally, since the guy who did the crown didn't have time, and didn't have a novocaine alternative, and seemed to be perfectly ok with me going 2 weeks unable to chew properly. Not that this has prevented me from keeping up my usual ridiculously high caloric intake.  Sigh.

Anyway, am scared of dentist.  No wanna go dentist.  No likey dentist.  

Posted by alchemist at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Corel's selling the newest version of Painter (IX.5, they're calling it.  Shouldn't that be IX.V?) for $200 through the end of May, marked down from its usual $450 or so.  You get the full version for the upgrade price.  Painter is the caddilac of natural-media paint tools so if you're into that you should check it out.  Just remember it goes back up to full price on June 1.

On an unrelated note, what does this say about my laziness?  I got a frozen "seafood scampi" dinner (Stouffer's, I think).  It wasn't bad - decent noodles & sauce, pretty ok shrimp, and bad little scallops--tough and really fishy smelling.  After eating one I thought "ok, I'll just toss the other 4 scallops and just eat the shrimp and noodles."  Then I thought "I don't want the scallops in the kitchen trash making the whole place smell like fish!"  So, rather than have to take the trash out after tossing them, I just went ahead and ate the rubbery little beasties.  Soooo lazy.

Posted by alchemist at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, the new basement bathroom was finished a few months ago.  We decided to do without a tub, because we have a decent bathtub in the upstairs bathroom.  Of course I wanted a family-size jacuzzi as well as a shower, but we don't have that big of a house or that much money, so we ended up with a nice normal-size bathroom with a BIG walk-in shower with a built-in bench, so I can sit down to shave my legs. Ahhhhh.

A week after the downstairs bathroom was finished, the bathtub upstairs decided to spring a leak in the outflow pipe, pouring cups of water down the wall of the NEW bathroom.  Houses and cars enjoy screwing with their owners.  So the bathtub has been unusable while we noodled around figuring out if our skills were up to doing the plumbing job ourselves.  We finally decided that they weren't, so we had a plumber out yesterday morning and he replaced the outflow pipe and took care of a couple of other things and all is well now.  Price: four hundred and fifty samoleans.

While that was going on, I broke off a hunk of one of my back molars, by eating a cracker.  That tooth has been mostly made of metal filling material for 20+ years now.  The remaining enamel was mostly icky gray color due to staining from the metal.  Apparently I got a fresh cavity in there someplace, and so part of the enamel just cracked off. Those of you in your late 30's and up already know what this means, right?  Oh yes, I get to have a crown! 

A crown, for those of you lucky enough not to know this yet, is basically a prosthetic tooth.  They saw the old busted tooth down to the gum line, and then they mold what's left and then stick a temporary crown in there.  After a couple weeks of not chweing on the temporary crown (which begs the question, why stick it in there? It's my back molar, nobody can see it) the new, permanent crown is ready, and they pull out the temporary and glue in the permanent one. 

Dental work always sucks, but I really drew the short straw yesterday.  My regular dentist takes that day off, so I went to someone else.  He was nice enough, but when I said "I don't get numb with novocaine" he didn't have an alternate drug like my regular dentist; he just gave me SEVEN shots of the stuff.  Even then I wasn't totally numb and since a crown involves drilling away pretty much your entire tooth, well, OW. But that was the easy part. 

See...I have a thing about folks putting stuff in my mouth.  For certain fun activities, I've learned to work with the concept, but for the dentist...well, I'm still not very ok with it.  Breathing, for me, is a fundamental form of self-expression.  It's important to me.  It's important to my subconscious, which doesn't listen when I explain to it that the rubbery tooth molding glop filling my mouth is a good thing, and that four minutes of keeping my jaw clamped tight around it isn't really very long at all.  You know you're having a bad day when the single thing you can be proud of is that you merely retched and drooled on yourself in front of total strangers, rather than vomiting on yourself in front of total strangers.

And then I got to write them a check for (after insurance) five hundred and seventy bucks.

Posted by alchemist at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My favorite PC game of all time was The Longest Journey.  It came out several years ago, and I was completely immersed in it until it eventually ended.  It was one of the only games I'd played that really had "girl appeal" -- it followed the adventures of art student April Ryan as she travelled between two worlds, trying to save them both.  Complex plot, deep characterization, gorgeous visuals, not-too-challenging puzzles--loved it, loved it, loved it. 

After playing The Longest Journey, I kept hoping that there would be another game like it.  I hoped in vain. There are other adventure games out there, but nothing that hooked me the same way.  So imagine my delight years later when the very week I get my new PC, the sequel arrives!  I've been playing it while I recover from the icky cold I caught last week and it's fabulous.  This time you start off in the life of another young gal, but April Ryan's in this game as well.  If you've played the first game, the second one is that much cooler--right now I'm playing the part where Zoe, the heroine, is wandering around April's old stomping grounds in Newport, but everything's changed in the intervening 10 years.  At the moment, I'm trying to get into a locked room in a derelict hotel.  The first room I went into had a girl lying on the bed with a mechanical flower thingy attached to her face.  Now she's following me around in a daze, scaring the crap out of me, while I try to hide from the guard who's coming up the stairs.

Mere words cannot express how cool this game is!  Head over to www.dreamfall.com to check it out.

Posted by alchemist at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Frequently, when I tell people we hope to adopt a baby from China, they'll respond with a version of this statement:

"Oh, that's great!  Chinese babies are soooo cute!" 

Variants range from the fairly innocuous to the egregious.

"My friend adopted a little girl from China and she is just so adorable!"

"Oh, they're so cute!  I want one too!" 

"Those girls are just like little China dolls!"

"Yeah, she won't look like you, but how could you NOT want one when they're so darling?"
 

So, what's the right way to respond to this?

1. "That's right - we don't want one of those ugly American babies!"

2. "Sure, they're cute when they're little, but once they get big, they'll bite your foot right off!"

Posted by alchemist at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My friend's receiving her M.S. in Clinical Psych tomorrow - I'm going to see her walk for it.  This will be my first-ever commencement.  When I got my B.A. my folks were in Europe, and I'm not a big ceremony person anyway (I got married at court, thank you very much), so I skipped it.  And my M.A....well, I didn't get my M.A.  I left grad school after 2 year's worth of M.A. work and an additional year toward an M.F.A. in poetry (yup, that's right, poetry).  If I had finished the paper I was writing on "Dissolution of the Narrative Self in Edgar Allen Poe" and passed a French test, I would have my M.A., but by the time I was leaving school in 1993 academics had become pretty meaningless to me.  And I sucked at French.

I wasn't cut out for grad school...I like hard work, and to study in order to further my work.  And I enjoy abstract knowledge - I read history, psychology, and science for fun.  But when the work IS the getting of abstract knowledge...well, then it's just a drag.  When I moved to Chicago I figured I'd make a living as an editor or proofreader, but after a couple of weeks in the city I discovered that people would pay me just to type on a computer.  Like, $15 an hour to put addresses into a spreadsheet.  How crazy is that?  I've loved computers since I was a kid playing "adventure" on the campus mainframe...I never imagined that I could get paid for my hobby.

So, my original life plan was to get my PhD and become a lit professor.  I didn't really expect I'd find anyone to marry, since I have a quirk or two and had generally been unlucky in love.  But I was determined to have a baby eventually...I figured I'd get some friendly fellow to knock me up if I reached 35 without a steady boyfriend.   The way it's really worked out, I've been with my husband 10 years this month (married for 6.5 of those years), but I don't have an advanced degree, I've become a monster of corporate coggery, and I'm infertile.  So it's all backwards.  I'm happier this way, I think, and certainly wealthier than expected, but confused.

Moving along to the shrunken heads...my friend is going to be a therapist.  Already is, actually, because part of her program involves a practicum, where you do the job with supervision from older wiser types.  I figure she should have something whimsical to take the edge off when she's had a bad day at the office.  I couldn't find any good shrunken heads on the internet (nothing affordable and not gross/made of goat skin, that is) so I decided to make her some.  These are about 3" across and they're made of crayola model magic clay, plus beads and yarn.  There's a largeish wood bead in the center of the head with beading wire strung through it and out the top of the head so they can hang from a hook. The "hair" is just knotted around the wire after the head is dry and then the knot is glued down to the head with glue-all. Model magic dries in 24 hours, no baking or any of that crap...nifty!  Kiddie art supplies are always more fun than the grown up equivalents.

I'm gonna have to make some more of these so I can keep 'em for myself. 

Posted by alchemist at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I want to make it clear - I think that it’s FABULOUS that Illinois goes the extra few miles to make sure we’re providing a good home for a child.  However, it’s still a pain in the butt!  My brother’s in Indiana and their home study was way simpler.

We chose our home study agency because compared to some others we talked to, they require less paper up front, they do more of the writing for you, and they cost less.  When time is of the essence, hearing that we have to write our autobiographies just as part of applying is not encouraging.  Our agency was more into questionnaires, forms, and talking to us and taking notes, and their fees are reasonable.

So:

HSA=home study agency,

IAA=international adoption agency.  Really I could make this just “AA” but people would come here from google looking for something else and be mad.

SW=social worker

FUN: this is where we have EXTRA FUN trying to fulfill the requirement.

These are the steps we've finished, in not quite chronological order:

1. Fill out HSA application form.
2. Fill out HSA adoption applicant financial statement.  Make sure it matches IAA financial statement, which is formatted completely differently and includes different categories
3. Get HR at work to fill out HSA employment verification form letter.  Make sure it matches differently formatted IAA employment verification letter.  FUN:  My employer is smallish, so I went to a gal I know in HR, told her about the adoption, and promptly got everything I needed.  Hub’s employer is largeish, so he went to his management, who forwarded the form to the HR department, which is in another state.  HR filled the form in, putting “CANNOT DISCLOSE” in all the fields other than Hub’s job title, and sent it to HSA like that.  Hub had to get a new copy of the form from HSA, fax it to HR in the other state with another piece of paper okaying disclosure, and then wait until our SW told us it was ok
4. Go to infant/child CPR class.  Hear about numerous horrifying things that happen to infants and children.  Practice on plastic people with no arms or legs.
5. Go to daylong “Our Rainbow Families” class sponsored by HSA (this is coming up, so will report on that later). FUN: Hearing name of class inspires friends to ask questions ranging from "oh, you're adopting a gay baby?" to "does that mean they serve ice cream in the class?"
   
6. Get scanned fingerprints taken by Identix in  odd school-bus company lunchroom setting. Wait for Illinois State Police (ISP) to receive prints and produce our state clearance. (This is not to be confused with the local city clearance our IAA wants).  FUN:  Hub’s clearance arrives within 2 weeks.  Mine does not.  After another week I call Identix.  They are based in Springfield, IL, which has been hit by a tornado that very week, so their office is light-staffed and their phone system recommends calling...some other time.  Calling ISP nets me a “We don’t have any record of anyone with your name requesting a check” and wanting to know my tracking number, which the Identix scanner guy did not give me.  A week later, call Identix again, get through, nice lady looks up my tracking number and calls ISP for me, and whaddya know, the prints were processed just a couple of days before.  Receive clearance in mail about 4 days later.
7. Send ink fingerprint cards (also done by Identix at same appointment as above, but handed off to us) to FBI for federal criminal background check.  Wait 6 weeks for response.  Worry about whether other people could be using my fingers for crime while I sleep.  Receive clearance at last.
8. Pass another background check, this one fingerprint-free, showing that we have no record of child abuse (this was entirely handled by HSA so was easy).
9. Get medical forms filled in by doctor.  HSA was flexible about the forms and so we were able to give our SW a copy of our IAA medical form, with an addendum showing that we’d passed a TB test.
10. Write statement of guardianship - that is, who would raise the child in the event of our deaths.  This entailed actually talking this over together to make a decision (we are fortunate to have more than one excellent option) and then talking to the person in question.
11. Give SW a copy of everything we’ve got in the IAA dossier so far so everything matches up
12. Make house presentable for SW visit
13. Read gov’t website listing tons and tons of recall alerts.  Verify that none of the recall items are in our home.  This wasn’t so bad because we don’t have any baby stuff yet, so could check off whole categories quickly.
14. Feel bad that the stairs to the basement (where the study/future playroom is) don’t have a bannister at the moment, but don’t actually fix it.
15. Give IAA’s home study guide to SW
16. Fill out DCFS application...we're not applying for a foster license but many of the forms are the same.
    
17. Line up 3 personal references and pester them to make sure they don’t delay filling out the referral form when they recieve it (our HSA has them fill in a form rather than writing a free-form reference letter).
18. Fill out vast “basic information questionnaire” about our marriage & values & stuff.  FUN:  one question:  “how do you feel about your sex life?”
19. Find veterinarian for our ridiculously healthy cat, get rabies vaccination & certificate proving same.  (Happy thing: vet says that if he had to guess he’d figure the cat was about 4 years old...in fact, he’s 11)  Also get distemper vaccination, although not needed for HSA...my first kitty died of distemper.  I was about 3 and thought it meant she’d had a temper tantrum.  Which didn’t stop me from going right on having my own tantrums. FUN:  Ahab (the cat) didn’t mind getting a shot, but HATED being out of the house, in the car, etc.  Hub (who took care of the whole vet visit by himself; my hero!) felt guilty for days afterward and totally spoiled Ahab with petting.  On the plus side, it made Hub stop worrying about attaching to a child, since he’s got so much empathy for kitty.
20. Fill out DCFS vehicle insurance certification.
21. Install a smoke detector in basement.  Check batteries in upstairs smoke detector
22. Send I-600A form to us-cis.  Include cover letter saying there are two adults in the house, listing enclosures, and indicating that home study will follow.  Include filing fee plus my fingerprint fee plus hub’s fingerprint fee on a money order, even though the form says a personal check is ok.  SW assures us that a personal check is NOT ok and I believe her.  One month later, recieve reciept, yay!  (This just means I didn't f*&k up the form, not that they're processing it or anything...they need the finished HS for that)
    
23. Go to a total of five SW meetings - one for both of us, then just Hub, then just me, then both of us at the house, then one last one for both at the office.
24. Write a big check to HSA

Posted by alchemist at 06:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)