Cats

So we have an oil executive taking over a State Department that has been stripped of its senior career leadership at a time when the President picks fights with, of all people, the prime minister of fucking Australia. A President who strands green card holders at foreign airports on the pretense that he's making us safe, safe from the most vetted people who ever come into America. So, to play off a popular meme, here are some pictures of cats.

In this case, my cats. The black one here is Gonzo, he likes dogs. People, eh, if you've got a dog near you he might be cool. He purrs really loudly, louder than any cat I've ever had but he has about a four stroke limit most of the time when it comes to attention from people. Loves the dogs. Loves them. Makes kitty-biscuits on their tummies and pets himself on their legs.

Then there's Zippy, the big orange. Corinna says he's a Republican cat because he's a fat cat who only cares about his own pleasure. I think that selfish aspect is pretty universal to felines, and I'm pretty sure Zippy is smarter than to vote for Donald Trump if for no other reason than that Trump would obviously wage a war on catnip and offer to send federal troops to otherwise friendly countries where catnip is grown.

Then there's Bulldog. He's a non-voter if ever there was one. All he cares about is sitting on Mama and making sure the food bowl is never less than half full. He's into protest, too. If that food level gets to low, he will absolutely walk slowly in front of you and sing We Will Overcome until the Iamb's is forthcoming.

I'm sure this post will draw the ire of Republican types who don't like being called fat cats and who think Trump is doing good things. Though the things he's doing are mostly athwart of what the Republican Party has stood for since World War II. A Mexican border wall beyond FDR's wildest dreams that not only is impotent to prevent the migrants it's meant to keep out (because over half of them arrive by airplane)? That border wall, just to build it we'd have to build access roads to ship material and workers into what are now impassably rugged mountains. A smuggler (of people, narcotics, arms, terrorists, take your pick) will have little difficulty scaling or tunneling past the wall, and now you've given them turnkey infrastructure on the other side. Thanks for the handy road, there's a mate!

But I'm trying hard to restrain the amount of political ranting I do here. I know I won't convince anyone they're wrong, even when they're appallingly and if they gave it a moment's thought, obviously wrong. I won't even say Trump can't get anything right, he apparently delegated picking a Supreme Court nominee for the stolen seat (and whether you like Obama or not, appointing Scalia's replacement was his to do and Mitch McConnell can smoke a turd in hell for not even giving Garland a hearing). And as far as the balance of the court, Gorsuch is probably as good a replacement for Scalia as we're going to get, especially with a Republican President filling a stolen seat.

I was very, very skeptical of Obama when he took office. And despite my libertarian tendencies, he largely won me over. He used executive authority way too much, as did W., and if your guy is making the moves maybe it seems okay. Then comes the time you have to turn the keys to the Cheeto Benito. But overall, Obama was articulate, even tempered, didn't start any new wars (though he was unable to finish the old ones off really or to close Gitmo, or to quit the drone attacks). So maybe Trump can win me over in the end but don't wait under water.

Video EEG

So Mo has had seizures since an early age. She was around four years old when we realized this, she had a grand mal in front of her mother as I was on the way home from taking Em to a piano lesson. I came home to find the paramedics parked with lights going in front of my driveway. Fifteen or sixteen years later, it's still an issue.

So after many neurologists over many years we finally had one who had something new to say. Do a video EEG, maybe upwards of a week, three to seven days, hooked up to an EEG the whole time. Monitored on video the whole time. Shit glued to her head the whole time. In a hospital room the whole time. Off her meds to make sure she seizes, so they can figure out what parts of the brain are involved, how much she seizes and in what ways (grand mal, partial, absence, etc.)

Thanks to autism, this is a person with tactile issues. And stubborn, too, I really wondered if she'd tolerate the wires glued to her for so long. But she did. She did a lot of YouTube, a lot of adult coloring books, and so on. And she seized. Boy, oh boy, did she seize.

We haven't had the follow up visit with the doc, but what we know so far is she's not a candidate for the surgeries and implants the doc was hopeful about, it's really the whole brain. I'm not sure how convinced I am of some of the implant and surgery efficacy and safety so I guess that lets me off the hook for hard decisions. She's a somewhat better candidate for a nerve stimulator but from what we hear on that front the efficacy is iffy and slow and the risks are pretty frightening so we're not likely to pursue any of that at this point. I wasn't there at the time but the seizure that convinced them they had enough data to start putting her meds back in place, I guess it was a dramatic one. Oxygen, suction, after four days without her meds her brain went full on riot.

So I'm off the hook for hard decisions up to a point but then again, it's disappointing to find out there's still no silver bullet for this.

Go Chiefs!

So Pittsburgh is coming to Kansas City for the Divisional playoff game. I don't know that it bears any relation to reality, but the city's confidence seems to be really high.

After all the years under Shottenheimer and Vermeil where the Chiefs made the post season and then immediately got knocked out (we went a bit further that one time with Joe Montana, but generally the playoffs haven't been kind to us), there seemed to be a sort of institutional pessimism that set in. Kind of like with the Royals all those dark years between 1986 and 2013, get kicked in the nuts often enough and you quit spreading your legs.

But this year, I was at the home & garden show and there were occasional screens with the wildcard games on, and people's attitudes were totally different. I heard more than one person basically say they didn't care who won the wild cards, you gotta play the best to get to the Super Bowl, bring it on.

I feel the same way myself, despite losing the greatest running back ever to play in a Chiefs uniform (and that's saying something, we've had some great running backs). So Pittsburgh is coming here, and we'll beat them. And we'll either go to New England or, much less likely, Houston will come here. Houston has a great defense, but I don't see them coming to Arrowhead and winning an AFC title. And as scary as Brady/Belichick is, if I'm the New England Patriots, I don't want to try and contain Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, even with home field.

Not a guarantee of course, but I really like the chances of the Chiefs to make it all the way to the Super Bowl this year. Green Bay, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, all of those teams are in trouble if they meet us in Houston in February.

Holidays

My nephew Austin got a real life lump of coal for Christmas. Except I don't think it was coal. It was black rocks found by a railroad track near a defunct power plant, so it could be coal but it was dark out when Corinna collected it.

I screwed up the holiday schedule, kinda. Actually, both my parents are so concerned with not having a scheduling conflict with other people's Christmas Day (or Thanksgiving Day, etc.) plans, they go to lengths to schedule everything not on the actual holiday. Which, having taken two little kids to multiple houses on the same holiday and parented through the meltdowns that over-tired kids have, I can dig it.

Back at Thanksgiving, Mom asked if we minded doing Christmas actually the Sunday before Christmas, a full week in advance. I said it was fine with me, as I rarely plan things that far in advance so I was pretty sure I didn't have any conflicts.

So then I was reminded at work that I'm supposed to burn my vacation days by the end of the year. By this time, Thanksgiving was a dim memory and I ended up planning our little Colorado Odyssey with Corinna.

I didn't even realize I'd scheduled a conflict until Em called me one day to ask about whether it would be a problem if she came late, she might have to work that Sunday. And I was like, Bath and Bodyworks is going to be open Christmas Day?

So we rescheduled to Christmas Eve day on account of me, I already had my Airbnb's booked, Corinna had gigs lined up, etc.

I didn't get to use my SB-800 speed lights at the holiday gatherings this year. Or as my wife refers to them, 'flashy thingies.' Sometimes I can get them out when she's out of the room but switching back and forth seemed like such a hassle this time. Available light photography in homes is a challenging one, though. The neuralizers aren't always enough, but they at least give you a fighting chance of getting a non-blurry nephew, and you don't have to go crazy with the ISO and accept the noise that goes with that.

With or without a strobe, shadows are always an issue. It's just that without a strobe the shadows are over eyes and such.

I got to play with Austin's Nerf gun a bit, I can definitely see why adults get into those. They're too much fun to just let kids play with them.

So then, as on Thanksgiving day, we really didn't have plans for Christmas Day itself. I took Mo to Rogue One and then to Jerry's Bait to watch the Chiefs beat the Broncos on their way to winning the AFC West for the first time in six years (seems longer).

So then on the way to my Dad's we went back and looked in daylight for coal by the train tracks. We got some more dark rocks, but we're not sure any of it is really coal. We haven't tried to set fire to it yet, which would probably be the most reliable test.

Dad's house didn't seem as loud this year. I think it was because it was nice enough outside that my nephews were running around outside. Or maybe it's because they're getting older, settling down a bit.

One of the funnest things we did was a white elephant gift exchange. Which actually, I got one of those baskets for grilling veggies on the Weber. One man's white elephant, I've been wanting one of those for a while, just never got around to buying one. I grill a lot, and Corinna is ever suggesting additional sides I could grill, but doing it straight on the rack of the grill is a pain with most veggies.

And as usual I bought scratchers tickets for everyone in memory of my late step-brother, Todd. Todd gave scratchers every year I can recall before his accident, and bizarrely, he'd end up winning on his tickets. We both smoked back then, and I remember being outside smoking with him one time and lecturing him on how stupid the lottery is, what a terrible thing it is to even participate in on so many levels. His answer was, 'What, you want another one?'

So $30 worth of scratchers tickets, that's my annual gambling budget, pass out a ticket to all the adults or borderline on adults. I don't recall anyone winning more than a free ticket, and we've been doing this since I was still married to the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster we've been divorced eleven years now.

So a good Christmas all around.