Yearly Archives: 2006

Child’s Play 2006

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This year, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia finally finally finally got involved in Child’s Play and while I don’t honestly expect anyone to give me anything in exchange for this scrawly comic and whine-fest that I host, with the holidays coming and much stuff going on, the best present you-the-reader could give to me would be to give to them.

Why, you ask?

Well, as has been mentioned before, my husband has Cystic Fibrosis. (As does Lila’s husband Cole in the comic. Coincidence?) Nighthawk’s been treated at CHoP. He’s been hospitalized at CHoP. He’s become healthy again within their halls. And he’s been bored senseless in between.

Hospitals look scary when you first get there, especially where emergency rooms and stuff are involved, but really most of the time they are boring. Sometimes you’re so sick you don’t care. Other times, you’re so healthy that you can get up and wander around and make trouble scaring the nurses by drinking apple juice out of the plastic urinal bottles. In between, you’re too tired to get up (or not allowed because of IVs or tests or whatever), and you’ve already seen everything on TV (or can’t afford to have it on) and you filled up your coloring book and you can’t even hang out with the other kids because you’re contagious or they are or maybe they’re too sick to play. And when it’s over the holidays and your folks are strapped for cash because you’re in the hospital and they have to miss work and they have to pay ridiculous co-pays on the insurance and Philly isn’t anywhere close to where you actually live, and gas isn’t cheap, well, it sucks big time.

So if all you do this winter is buy one book, or one video game, or one movie that’s going to keep a bored and sick kid a little happier, well, you’ve done something that looks little but is actually very big.

(And you don’t have to give to CHoP — you could give to any Child’s Play hospital. Or to any other hospital that’s put a wish list up on Amazon. Or just to your local hospital. You know, whatever works for you.)

As for me, I have some money I’ve saved up for charity that I have to go spend now. Thanks!

Ohnorobot! comic search finally in place.

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So I finally got off my butt and added an Ohnorobot search to the site. (Note the addition of a new searchbox to the left.)

Of course, it needs your help to transcribe comics…. either by using the link you just saw, or by clicking a comic title in the archive and looking to see if it has a “Transcribe This Comic” button under the comic. (For the newest comics, click the “navigation links” link underneath the comic on the homepage.) If you see the transcribe button, go ahead and clicky-clicky!

(hint: some of the early comics have transcriptions in the alt tags for the images, as that’s how I’d originally planned to make the site searchable.)

Next up: I might actually advertise on Project Wonderful.

Oh, and it’d probably be good if I started Saturday’s comic.

A long day of hurry up and wait

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Doctor’s appointment A was supposed to start at 10:30, but started at 11:45. We drank bottles of Arizona and Sobe tea and played video games.

Appointment B was supposed to be at 1:30, but so was appointment C. We showed up for B at 12:45 and waited for the doctor to get back from lunch. Half the Tastycakes were eaten while we waited. This one was quick and uneventful; we were out by 1:20.

Appointment C was supposed to be at 1:30 but probably didn’t really start until an hour later. Armed with sodas, we waited that one out with more video games, met various new supporting staff members, completed half a dozen tasks and left there at around 3:55.

Appointment D was blood draws and there was no wait, but thanks to some confusion about a requested test we left there at 4:30.

We finally ate our first fully functional meal of the day at the hospital cafeteria at 4:45 or so, sat in horrific traffic from the city to King of Prussia mall, picked up our Final Fantasy III preorder and dragged our sorry tails in the door around 7pm.

It’s now almost 11:30 and I’ve accomplished almost nothing, except walking JessieDog and taking a brand new holy-hell-this-tastes-like-shit sinus medication. Soon I will sleep, then the work week starts back up tomorrow.

How I Spent My Weekend by kirabug

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Ack. So tired.

Friday night:

I don’t remember Friday night except to remember that it involved pizza. I think I spent most of it working on Saturday’s comic.

Saturday:

Got up, got some stuff done on the computer to check my web stats and such (we’re currently at an all-time readership high, btw. We’re getting close to 4000 unique sites per month. Hi!) and messed with some email, etc.

Did all that shower/eat morning stuff, then went on a walk with Nighthawk. Came back and tore all the dead flowers out of the garden, cleaned up the porch for winter and stuff like that. Took a shower to get all the muck off, ate some leftover pizza for dinner, then went food shopping.

After food shopping, and putting it all away, settled in to about a half hour of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, then off to bed.

Sunday: Slept until 11:00. Got up, did all that shower/eat morning stuff, then started the pumpkin pie baking process. I think the pumpkin I bought this year was too big. I got fifteen cups of pumpkin out of the cheese pumpkin I bought a few weeks ago. That’s just over seven pies worth of pumpkin.

Made up the mix for six of the seven pies (froze the extra pumpkin for next week), and baked four of the pies. Took a dinner break over at Texas Roadhouse, came back, took two of the pies to neighbors’ houses. (Patty traded me candy for pie!!) Baked the last two pies.

Baked the pumpkin pie seeds, cleaned up the kitchen, helped Nighthawk with the laundry, and sat down to write this.

I took pictures of the entire pie process today, including the seeds, and I’m seriously considering turning them into my own cookbook. I’m weird that way.

Now, sleep.