Toward Nancy’s end, my Nana got very very sick. When I got back from Savannah on Sunday, it was confirmed that she had lung cancer. On Thursday, hospice came. Just a bit ago she passed away. They said it was very peaceful.
Category Archives: Personal Blog
Entries from my personal journal
Kentucky High School Athletics (what a weird post from me!)
Kentucky High School Athletics are probably the last thing I’m worried about, but I figure other people might be interested.
Basically, there was this big to-do recently over high school athletics in Kentucky, and whether or not public and private high school sports teams should be seperated (not allowing private schools to participate in the same state championships as public schools). There was also some issue about the transition from grade school to high school and corresponding sports teams.
As I said, I’m not really following it, so I am quite fuzzy on the details, but some amendments to some bill were made and it’s going to the House tomorrow, so if you’re interested in this sort of thing, this was the email buzzing around work today…
Edit Edit: Okay, I figured out what is going on. It was KHSAA that wanted to make it so private schools can’t participate in state tournaments. There was also some deal that the student had to commit to what high school they were going to by the 5th grade to be able to participate, is kind of ridiculous, yes?. This amendment that is going through will make it illegal for KHSAA to do this. The amendment is tacked on to some bill that doesn’t seem related at all, as per typical legislation it seems. Apparently all the uproar is mostly to do with football (St. X and Trinity always making it to state sort of deal), but KHSAA can’t just pinpoint one sport, so they were trying to do it to all of them.
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“HB 532, An Act Relating to Athletic Activities
This is an Action Alert to insure that our children are not unfairly penalized because of their parents’ choice of school. We urge you to contact your State Representative to ask them to concur in House Bill 532, an act relating to athletic activities, sponsored by Representative Mike Cherry as amended in the Senate.
HB 532 passed the Senate Friday, March 24, 2006 with an amendment offered by Senator Tim Shaughnessy. The amendment:
1) Insured that the Kentucky High School Athletic Association (KHSAA) cannot exclude non-public schools from participating in the state championships; and
2) Requires any rule that restricts the eligibility of a student to participate in high school athletics based on the geographical boundary or the grade school that the student attended to be approved by the General Assembly.
This amendment will insure that no child will be unfairly excluded from school athletic activities because a parent exercised their constitutional right to choose a school for their child without approval of the General Assembly.
Please call 1-800-372-7181 today and leave a message for your State Representative to vote to concur on HB 532 as amended. This vote will take place on Wednesday, March 29, 2006. Time is short. CALL TODAY.
Harry Borders
Executive Director
Kentucky League for Educational Alternatives (KLEA)
1042 Burlington Lane
Frankfort, KY 40601
502-875-8010
hborders (at) kleaonline.org ”
Note, I altered that email address so the guy there won’t get spammed from my website
Nancy died this morning.
FYI
For those of you interested and who don’t see the comments on my actual website, my brother found out where that Lex Luthor cake picture is from.
It’s from the 1978 published “Super Dictionary”, as seen here on Amazon.
And indeed, that exact image is one of the customer images. Mysteries solved!
New Art! And Random Pictures
New Art!
https://www.wertle.com/gallery/v/art/finished/sneakydragons.jpg.html
That’s the first chunk-o-art I’ve hacked out in awhile. It felt rather good. Meanwhile, I was going through my dump directory on my website, preparing to clear it out, but I keep running across brilliant little gems that I just can’t throw away. Check some of these out…
I actually don’t remember where I found this, or where it came from, or what it is even from. But it speaks for itself.
There is a perfect word to describe the expression on Nikko’s face, but I can’t come up with it.
It was only this past Halloween that I carved Dinogirl (from the LKJJ Trailer) into a pumpkin, and I totally forgot about it!
Okay, that’s enough of that, but I might share a few more another time.
Store store store
I put a Store up on the site! There is not much there at the moment, but I do have my betta magnets and decals up.
In other news, I have been horrible about keeping my journal entries categorized. I will fix this for the future!
Also, February is practically over. What happened there?
Site Update!
Oh-ho, what is this? Could it be a site update? Indeed!
It doesn’t look very different, and so this update is probably not exciting to anyone but me, but my site as been shifted and nudged and moved about.
I’ve left some old stuff up temporarily, emphasis on temporarily. I’m still not happy with how it is shaping up, but then again, that’s the way of things. I’ve spent so much time building websites for other people, and making them all sleek and nifty and tight-coded, but coming back to this beast is rough. It’s impossible to build upon an already existing thing and make it as clean and tight as building from scratch.
Oh well, I will just equate this to my messy room. Explore and enjoy!
UGGGH!!!!
I used to be really really fond of Newsbruiser, until I tried to integrate it into my site.
It is really not the fault of a the program, it is very good. One problem is that my hosting provider does not support server side includes, and the other problem is that I should have KNOWN better!! I just didn’t think about it at the time that I might want to someday integrate my python-based blog into my php-based website.
Maria, you remember when we were trying to explain about different programming languages, and how they don’t work together? This is a fine example.
Every time I get ready to launch my new site update, I reach this one bump, and I go through the same steps trying to solve it, until I FINALLY reach the step where I plan to code an RSS reader on my front page to read from my blog, and then I realize how stupid and redundant that is, start to cry, and cast off the whole ordeal.
Then after some time I forget what the problem was, and try and do it again.
I really want to try and avoid having to get new blogging software, just because I don’t want to deal with it. If it comes down to a last resort, I’ll end up doing the RSS reader (grah!!), however, if anyone knows of any magical way to make Python and PHP talk to each other? Please let me know. Thanks.
EDIT: Last resort it is
Just when I was starting to bounce back
I got an unpleasant phone call tonight.
My brother and I grew up with the kids next door, and subsequently their parents helped raise us just as much as our parents raised them, and we grew that “family-friend” bond. I hate the term “family-friend,” because it sounds too distant from what it really is. I also dislike the phrase “second mother,” because even though it is attempting to express the closeness, it fails at identifying the correct relationship. I will just say Nancy.
Five or so years ago, Nancy was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a very hard time of it, and there were many times when we thought she was nearing her end. Nancy is an extremely positive and strong-willed woman, however, and overcame her condition, going through not one but two bone marrow transplants, and Graft-vs-Host disease at that (Graft-vs-Host is when the infection-fighting cells from the donated marrow see the body as foreign, and start attacking it). It was a mighty struggle, but she overcame it. She is still rather spirited, but has to occasionally rely on a walker to get around.
Recently, Nancy has had a couple falls. I attributed them to her usual weakness acquired from her cancer bout, and I think everyone else did too. Then she started suddenly losing vision in one eye. A visit to the hospital informed her that they had found a lesion in her brain, but at the time they knew nothing more than that.
Tonight my dad called to tell me that Nancy has been diagnosed with brain cancer. It was heartbreaking to me. It just seems so unfair for it to happen to a woman who has been through so much. My dad expects the worst (but, my dad always expects the worst, he’s sort of been conditioned to from when he was a respiratory therapist working in ER and ICU). I’m really not sure what to think or how to feel or what to expect. Maria has been very helpful, as cancer is less horrifying when you know how it works and what is going on, and she gave me an idea of the right questions to ask.
It is just a heavy thing on my mind right now, so if you can give prayers and send positive thoughts for Nancy, please do so, yes? Thank you
Flashie!
This animation brings me great joy. I saw a clip of it on Cold Hard Flash awhile back, but the full toon wasn’t up yet.