Okie dokie so new neuro appointment went well.

Migraine front = he said stay the course with the Topomax course try to limit how many I get plan as that seems to work best for me.

MS front = after looking over the UCLA paperwork he agreed that MS is the best diagnosis (as opposed to NeuroSarc). So now then since I have been better OFF of the shots and had either worse MRIS on them or just was flat out sick on them here's where we are -
1. He's having me take a blood test to see if I am danger if we go with Tysabri. For my non MS'y friends you can read all about Tysabri on Wikipedia here. Of if you're lazy the short version is it is an IV, for those it works on, they consider it a miracle, of course worse case scenario has been death. Hence this new blood test.
2. There are now pills for MS. One is out now. He won't prescribe it because it is too risky. Once comes out next year and he would prescribe it because so far the risks with it seem low.

Since I am at the best I have been in awhile minus getting sore and tired easily if I push myself too much, he feels now is a good time to take the time to decide which course I'd like to go. He's also ordering a 3D MRI which he has warned me WILL BE WORSE than my last MRIS because it will be so much more detailed that those, but will give us a really good baseline to work with from now on.

To my MS'y friends on Tysabri - would you recommend it? If you had the choice would you wait for the pill coming out next year? Thoughts? Taking all of the input I can get in deciding.

Hi!
Yup, I am still alive. I do seem to be keeping with my post a month theme. I skim my friends list from time to time - more than once a month, I swear! I am just horrible at commenting and keeping up lately. Short attention span. Summer heat starting aka lazier. You know the drill.

Some minor updates. Monday I go see a new Neurologist. Now that I am all married and have insurance, the clinic I saw through UCLA cannot see me so, yeah. Just establishing myself as a patient. UCLA recommended him in my area of L.A. so I trust them. Online reviews aren't so great saying thing like wait time is 15-30 minutes, umm after that clinic that's nothing. Other reviews say they're glad they ignored the negative reviews, so we'll see.

Ahh the icon I used for this post was the last time I saw Keegan, Karina, mom, and Windy. They're not all flying out in September, but Keegan and Karina are! Yay! I cannot even begin to imagine how much he has changed in 5 years. This means September will be crazy for me. Weekend with them including Disneyland. One week later Batman Live! MS / My body will have me sleeping through October I bet.

That is all for now.

See you soon (a month?).

Love,
Me

Right so besides indies, old movies have become tied for my favorite genre. I mean really old. Teens and twenties old. I don't really have favorite actors or actresses beyond James Dean, never have but I recently added Buster Keaton to my non-existent list.

I even made it through the epic three+ hour Intolerance, when I had been sticking to silent movies that were no more than say 1 hour - 1 1/2 hours long.

Now way back in the 80s I remember my mom loved a movie, Metropolis. I did not watch it with her. Know why? I was a kid. Know what kids in the 80s really didn't want to do? Sit and read an old movie. Now that I am all grown up and love silent movies, it popped up in recommended for you lists so I thought to myself 'oh, I should watch that one, mom loved it'. It's even the 80s version she watched.

What's so special about the 80s version? Well see old, old, old movies often had issues. Unlike our digital world, they didn't have 10 million copies. They got damaged easily. They got lost. Etcetera. It's not uncommon to have to recreate scenes from photos. I recently watched Sadie Thompson, a pretty liberal film for its time, about a prostitute running away from her life. Scenes were lost. They'd taken pictures from the actress's private collection, recreated title cards, and did a pretty good job of recreating lost scenes, in between scenes that weren't. I get that happened and it means we can still see awesome movies that would be lost otherwise.

So with Metropolis they announce that the original had been cut down, despite the director really wanting it to be the full fim. Blah blah blah. So they'd put it together best they could to be the full film. Okay, bravo. I can totally appreciate that. Oh and they added color. Not totally thrilled with that, but eh, whatever, even some very crazy studios hand painted each frame back then in great detail or just sort of bulk painted some frame say red to represent fire, blue to be night, etc. So if they did some coloring, whatever.

Then I watched it. Yup I am a snob... I wished I'd found the original instead. I am a huge huge 80s music fan, I am. I have an 80s music folder where as I have no other decade folder. BUT, they added an 80s soundtrack to a 1927 movie about the year 2026. Um, ugh. I don't care that it had awesome people like Freddie Mercury. It just doesn't feel right. It was distracting. The colorization felt wonky. All of it combined dropped it down a star or two, I had to turn the volume down to finally just get rid of the music. Am glad it's a longer version. I think I might have to watch the original though. Longer version the director want but ruined by trying to make it "cool" or original cut by studio morons would would have ruined the story some but still in all of it's glory without all of the 80s attempt to make it "better"? Ugh.

Yup I am a snob. I vote leave well enough alone. If there is missing footage you can add in and fix, go for it, don't REDO it to how you think it should LOOK today (or in the 80s or whenever). Jerks. Might as well have just done a remake.

So Ann Romney is trending on Twitter, I clicked.

The usual woman stuff. Vote for Romney because he has a wife! She has MS so being a mom and political wife is even tougher. She's a mom so you must love her. It proves Mitt knows women issues. Or the other side, she doesn't work so she doesn't know you, blah blah blah. Here's my take - Big whoop. I am a woman, a wife, I have MS, and I don't work. So? Has nothing to do with whether or not Brian can make that building right or design that plant. I wish all political figures would stop saying if someone knows a woman, especially one like me, then I should be stupid enough to stop looking at THEM and their stand on issues and look at the WOMAN! Condescending assholes.

Then again I am in the middle of a two day migraine, have been tingly for a week, and they just picked a stupid week to be -- well so extra stupid. I have a low tolerance right now. I'm MS'y, Migraine'y, and crampy. I am woman... not gonna roar just gonna call them out instead.

So I'm doing the family tree thing. At some point it gets confusing because everyone names everyone after everyone else (seriously did they think you'd get in trouble if you didn't name your daughter some variation of Anna or Maria or Elizabeth / your son after you or your brother or your brother's kids?). Some records seem pretty clear that they ARE this family but they contradict the very things they said on past records, etc. Somehow I ended up accepting one of those that seems it cannot be right and had a double record of one of the men thanks to that, so I am trying to clean it up and figure out which part of that line is right. In my search I found a newspaper article with the name of of the figures involved that starts out with the following:

"... charged with having murdered and then dismembered and boiled the remains of his wife in order to leave him free to marry.... a seventeen-year old girl..."

Umm, wow. News sure was exciting in the 1800s. The good news is that I am pretty sure that no matter which facts are right about this person that I goofed on, pretty sure it is not the dude in this article. The bad news is he could very well still end up in my tree somewhere. While this part of the family wasn't really known to be in that state, they did end up there somehow as my grandma was there and they had at least one or two with that very name. It won't surprise me either way -- finding him connected to us or not.

Either way some interesting historical reading. They wrote the dude's wife's name totally wrong when charging him, jury had already been sworn in and heard evidence, defense moved to have them find him not guilty, his lawyers wanted to claim they couldn't re-enter charges with the name now written correctly or it'd be double jeopardy.

I'm not into trends, so I figured I'd post again before the usual month is up to confuse you all.

I got a free copy of Family Tree Maker for Mac 2 via Amazon Vine. It includes a free 6 month Ancestry.com account. I've turned into a grown up doing grown up things thanks to it... AKA yeah, I'm actually building my family tree and looking into my ancestors. It's addictive. In the software version I've been building a possibly accurate version based on other people's family trees online. On the ancestry site I'm building the this should be as accurate as can be version using the info I KNEW was true then info that has things like censuses and ship records, etc to back it up. I say as accurate as can be because the info on things seems to change from official record to official record even when you're like 99.9% sure it must be the same family.

I have plans for the end of September now! Been waiting forever for Batman Live to get to the States and now they are here. Tickets go on sale Friday. Got into the pre-sale. Yay! Brian better watch out. I may get revenge for all of those times I heard "I want my iPad" or where is my "iPhone" or "when do I get to see Avatar". And September is still a long ways off.

Currently reading two books: The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom - Super cute so far. It's about Price Charming... Well all of 'em. Seems the bards were lazy when they called Cinderella Prince "Charming", Rapunzel's Prince "Charming", and Snow White's Prince "Charming". They all had names and those names weren't Charming. Oh and they weren't quite the guys we read about. This is their stories after they're rejected by the princesses.

Also American Silent Film because I am totally in a silent movie phase. Like to the point that Buster Keaton is now my second favorite actor of all time. So yeah, reading about the history of our movie industry during that time frame = yay. It's made me really dislike Thomas Edison though. I had no idea what a bully he was. Might as well have been a mobster, sheesh.

That's about it. Want to be crafty but eh, between allergy season and Lister being quite the handfull I am too lazy right now to do much of anything productive beyond cooking dinners and those are all crockpot, so worn out.

I realize I've not made a real entry in about a month, oopsie.

I am alive. Taking care of sick kitty = tiring. Constant weather warnings about "VERY HIGH POLLEN" = ah, thanks for explaining why my nose and ears feel wonky all of the damn time, grr. Yeah, so, I am alive. Just busy with home.

Lister has taken to spraying this week. We've tried uber cleaning his chosen spot. He only does this downstairs so we thinks it's due to asshole outside cat that no one likes and Brian has dubbed "Kitler" because has a marking that looks like a Hitler mustache. No one seems to know who he belongs to but he pees at people's doorsteps, tears up screen doors, slams into front doors trying to get in if you have pets, etc. Told you, he's an asshole cat. We like cats, but that one is a jerk. Lister didn't used to be bothered by it, but eh, he is on chemo, the feeding tube, Dutchie is always at the front door sniffing, waiting for him. Lister is bound to act different with all of the meds and changes. No amount of cleaning has worked to encourage him to stay away but aha! If we watch closely and see him heading to that spot, a can of air pointed at him is deterrent enough, we don't even have to spray it at him, he knows what that can sounds like and he hates it. Still we can't watch him 24/7 so let's hope he keeps the thoughts in his kitty brain.

What else? Umm Brian's work sent him San Francisco this week for a trade show. He was jazzed because he has a fantasy about living there so a day up there was heaven for him. And on iPad announcement day -- he's been waiting for retina display. So he got to order it. Now I get to hear how he wants his iPad now now now! And how he bets we can go see a demo at the Apple store (which is in a cool but location but with hellish parking) to play with it now. It's gonna be a long week, but as a payoff, I get his old iPad to use until it dies.

So that's about it. Allergy hell. Sick kitty still though aside from being naughty he's doing okay'ish. He has his sleepy moments but still has active moments too (chases the laser). We have to dish out his food in tiny spoon fulls or he pukes as his tummy meds no longer work well. Dutchie is extra cuddly and trying hard to avoid going near his tube as it makes her angry as it smells horrible or so she says with her hissing.

So hi, I'm alive and with my LJ record I'll type a similar update in a month or so. <3

My sister could use some sponsors for her MS Walk up in Portland.
If you'd like to help her out (any amount helps) click here.

Thankie!

Lister had his first dose of chemo today... one week earlier than originally planned. He's one tough kitty! He's not out of the woods by any way you look at this but the radiation made that evil lump go down by half (much better than expected -- as in it's no longer visible). So, yeah on the road to recovery, long process. Tough tough kitty.

Went to SS office to start legally changing my name today. Rather painless considering all of the gov't cuts etc lately. I expected it to be a nightmare. I got out of there soooo much faster than I expected and should have my new card in 2 weeks, yay! I don't think the DMV will go as smooth since they have about the same amount of lines for about 3 times as many people.

I got my UCLA medical records today. They cannot see me at the clinic I was going to now that I am insured though they did give me names of Neuros in my part of town who have UCLA privileges since I still want that to be my hospital if I need one. Some typos in the report (including ones I will take -- they made me 26 at one point, and ones I hate - they made me male right under female -- it's the name, throws everyone). No real surprises except maybe that they describe my lungs as "clear" when they weren't clear when we stopped Prednisone as we felt they were just as clear as they'd get. Maybe that's what they mean too. It seems to be saying my C1-C4 spine has damage, my older MRI reports only mentioned C2. And that cyst that takes up my whole sinus cavity that they all say is no big deal and will go away on its own -- welp still there, no wonder I always have sinus issues / allergy types of things going on.

Okay, that's enough of an update! I'm sick this week. Just typing this is wearing me out!

Lookie lookie! One of those book series I insisted you read now has an awesome video for the final book in the trilogy:



Buy the books on Amazon:
Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I

Perchance to Dream: Theatre Illuminata #2

So Silver Bright

Also the author, Lisa Mantchev is having a Contest to win Theatre Illuminata stuff here on LJ now!