Never Enough Health Updates Department

St. Thea, my partner, is recovering nicely from kidney stone surgery. Yes, surgery--they couldn't get at the stones with ultrasound, so they had to cut a hole though her back into her kidney and then guide a laser probe into the hole, to blast at the stones. She's still in remarkable pain but it's manageable--far more so than the stones were. One of the stones was about 2 cm (0.79 inch) big and so wasn't about to pass on its own. As far as we know, a lot of her pain that we chalked up to endometriosis or IBS might've been the stones, all along.

It figures, though, that we got snow the day that we were told the ultrasound wouldn't work and on the day we went to the hospital for the surgery.

As for myself, I got a case of the crud. I'll try not to cough on the blog.

Way Enough Custody Setbacks Department

You might've heard that Rev. Magdalen--Rachel Bevilacqua, the mother whose child was taken from her in part due to her involvement in the Church of the SubGenius--won her custody battle.

More accurately, she won round one; the father is appealing and managed to get the judge to issue a stay against the order to release Magdalen's child back to her. More details on Rev. Modemac's wiki.

Never Enough Global Warming First Blood Department

"Never Enough"!? I take that back--this is too much to start with. A damn shame it will only get worse. I wonder how long until Seattle's underwater?

Never Enough Yuletide Sneers Department

Courtesy of WFMU's Beware Of the Blog:

Christmas is an inherited holiday about a theoretical peace for all of humanity. There is no national or social necessity to believe in this. However, we can present it as a holiday of actual domestic national peace... If we make visible the blessings of this actual peace, along with its foundations and requirements, then "Christmas" doubtless can be a high point in the course of the political year. Both according to popular custom and popular view, the Christmas holiday can justifiably be seen as a festival of the nation.

And some might wonder why I don't approve of this "War On Christmas" myself, humbug I may well be. I still prefer celebrating Y'all amongst the 273 different holidays celebrated between Thanksgiving and the New Year.

Me, I was thinking of playing Krampus this year. Life got ahead of me.

Oh, and if you must get a "live" tree next year, keep it watered. (Also courtesy WFMU)