G’s Place

Last night Brian proposed to me!!!

We’ve been living together for 6 years. And now we’re going to get married.

Here’s how it went down….we have “present night” every year. The kids and I don’t really do Christmas, and Brian is Jewish (but not real religious). So we do present night. Everyone has to be home for present night. I make latkes, we nom on those in the living room as everyone opens presents. My son got me a pink snuggie that I immediately put on.

I have wanted a snuggie for a long, long time.

Once we were all done with presents, Brian said, come here I have one thing. I had to wait to do this in front of the kids. Then he dropped to one knee and pulled out the ring. I said what are you doing! And he said I am asking you to marry me.

Of course I said yes!!! Come on, its Brian!!

So the date is 10/10/10. Because 101010 in binary is 42 in decimal. And 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

Oh yes, more geekiness will be revealed. We’ve rented a beach house in my hometown for the ceremony and reception. Hopefully it will be chill and a nice party.

More details soon! :)  Oh here’s the ring.

I know I haven’t posted here in a while, so I thought I’d do a keep-alive post today. I’m still busy with grad school, hopefully just this semester and next and I’ll be done.

We’ll be at the AANE art show on October 3rd - Brianna has three pictures in the show. One of them is called Tweeting and is complete with a fail whale! It is my favorite, so of course it is not hers.  The art show is part of AANE’s Asperger Syndrome Connections conference. But the art show is free to the public, so come by if you are in Boston that day.

AANE also has a new blog and a new Facebook page (search FB for Asperger’s Association of New England), so if you have Asperger’s or live with someone who does, you may want to check those out too.

Long time no post, well at least on this blog. I’ve been pretty active on my other blog (Adventures in Corporate Education).

For one of my classes during the spring, I made an elearning module about Executive Functioning deficits in adults. The audience for the module are people who may have to interact with adults who have problems with executive functioning.

Check out the module here.

Let me know if you have any comments.

Dear 1&1 Internet,

It’s not OK to tell paying customers that their domains will be inaccessible for 24 hours. It’s not OK not to send confirmation if you get an email about a support problem.

I am starting to think you can’t give me what I need. I think we may need to break up. Sorry.

Love,

-Gina

If you have been following my anguish on twitter, this post is designed to provide some context.

Saturday my brother got arrested. I won’t go into too much detail, but I will say I don’t understand why you would put someone in jail for 30 days for not paying a bill if they don’t have the money to pay it. It’s a long story that hit right on the nerve of the economics of poverty, and I just can’t get started on it right now.

Of course I couldn’t let my brother sit in jail for 30 days. So I sent him what he needed (which in the grand scheme of things was really not alot at all). I mean, if he stayed in jail he would lose his job, and he would learn how to be a real scam artist in the meantime.

I had to Western Union the money because I found out about 5 PM Sat, and everything else was closed. I figured I’d do a cash advance on one of my cards. I went to the Western Union site, and tried to get the transfer to go through on one of my cards, and it failed. I called and found out my cash advance amount wasn’t very high (I never thought of using it before!). So I tried a different card on the Western Union site, which also failed. I called that bank and they just increased my limit. Problem solved. Right?

Not really. The Western Union site sucks. Horrible lack of feedback to the user. After trying a few more times to make the transfer work I decided just to call Western Union. They told me my account had been suspended for suspected fraud because I had so many failed attempts on the website. I asked how to resolve it, and was told it would take a few weeks.

This is when I lost it, and basically barricaded myself in the bathroom. Which freaked everyone out, especially my aspie daughter (who told me later that I am not supposed to freak out. Yes I am allowed to freak out!!).

I pulled it together, and I decided I would just go to an ATM, pull out the money, and take the cash to a Western Union office. But I needed my pin. Of course I look on the website for info, and there was a place to reset my pin. Which I did. Off we went, in the middle of the snow storm, to take care of getting my brother out of jail.

The craziness continues. I tried to pull the money out of the ATM, and it wouldn’t give it to me. We thought maybe it was something to do with the access the machine had since it was in a grocery store. We went to the bank across the street. Same problem. By this time Brian had come up with a different solution, and we went to the Western Union office. But the combination of Western Union reporting suspected fraud on my account, me using a cash advance for the first time since I had the card, and me changing my pin caused the bank to put a hold on my card for fraud. sigh. I cleared it up after 2 phone call….

We had to go to 2 Western Union offices before we found one who could do the transfer for us. Money sent to my dad. Problem solved — right?

Well, no. When my dad went to pick up the money at Winn Dixie, they would only let him have $1000, and told he had to come back in the morning for the balance. WHA??? Oh HELL no!! We paid some ungodly fee to Western Union to get my brother out of jail *tonight*. After a phone call telling off the people at Winn Dixie, we called Western Union who told us that my dad *should have been told* that he could get a check for the balance and take that to a different Western Union office.

Which is what he did. And got my brother out of jail. And my brother didn’t lose his job. whew.

One big crazy issue solved.

Yesterday, my son was driving my car and some girl on a cell phone veered into his lane. There was someone behind her and massive snow banks on his side, so even though he did his best to get out of the way but it was pretty much a head on collision. The other driver went to the hospital in an ambulance, my son went to the ER later. They just gave him drugs, I am not sure they really checked him out. That annoys me. But he seems ok. I think my car is totaled.

This crazy issue will take longer to resolve. We have been wanting a little truck — this just isn’t the time frame we wanted to do it in.

We also noticed dripping in the basement, and inside my daughter’s bedroom wall. We have a enormous ice dam. Last night we drove all over looking for a roof rake, but no one has one. This morning I got out the push broom and pulled lots of snow off the roof. I did it because I am alot taller than Brian, so I could reach more. It’s supposed to be warm for the next few days, so we’ll see what happens…

I think that crazy issue is solved. I may need to go brush more snow off the roof later, but at least we have a plan of how to attack it.

Plus I am working today. I have 3 things to finish up before my vacation can start. It’s been a crazy week so far…………..

I don’t know if it’s the economy, the upcoming change in US government, the impending solstice, or what….but change is in the air.

I have been feeling extremely homesick. I can’t figure out why, but I just want to be home.

I wonder what’s coming?

Wow it has been a crazy few weeks!

I need to clean up some things on this blog. I will be moving my grad school portfolio over to this domain. I want to upgrade this version of Wordpress but it’s going to be such an undertaking. Maybe over the holidays I will have time.

I’ve been missing lots of Autism stories, I have a lot to catch up on there!

Please bear with me, this space will be back up to snuff very soon.

A UK study finds that gene for autism is linked to the gene for genius. Makes sense to me.

I enjoyed this post that analyzed one of Jenny McCarthy’s media events to hype her new book. This post talks about the costs of autism treatment. Our work is providing treatment costs for children under 12 with an autism diagnosis. Not really helpful to me, but at least it’s a start.

This morning I woke up around 3 AM. Our cat Velvet (we always called him Velvie) was in the bathtub, acting strange. About a year ago he was diagnosed with some kidney issues. The vet told us to change his diet. We did that and Velvie seemed fine. He had lost a lot of weight, and now he could jump and pounce and kick the crap out of his brother.

So we didn’t think too much about the kidney thing, as he seemed very happy and stable.

Until about a week ago. He tried to go outside. Which he never ever does. Brianna is at home all the time because she almost broke her ankle, and Velvie drove her crazy with his crying this week. Then every time someone would turn on the water he’d hope on the sink and beg for a drink.

We were going to take him in Monday to see what was going on. But yesterday he started acting really bad, like he had a stroke. It got worse and worse and worse. He couldn’t walk. Couldn’t cry. Nothing.

We took him to the vet ER at Tuft’s. And they put him to sleep.

He was a good cat. He’d get up early in the mornings with me and look out the window while I did work on the computer. Then when I’d get in the shower, he’d get on my pillow and make lovey eyes at my boyfriend (his true owner). Velvie was so in love with Brian, it was a little disturbing. And he knew he was not supposed to be on my pillow. As soon as I would come in the room he’d jump down.

I also think he had sensory issues. He loved getting deep pressure pets, which calmed my daughter down so it was a good match.

Here is a picture from before he got so skinny:

More pictures of both the kitties are in this flickr set.

I’ll miss his company in the mornings.  I hope he didn’t suffer too much.

Claire Danes will be playing Temple Grandin in a movie about her life. It should be good - and probably pretty painful to watch I would guess.