Sunshine came out of the bathroom today and into our bedroom in utter agony. I’m a bit of a stoic and, actually, so is Sunshine. But even I could see this was not just female cramps or indigestion. I asked her, “Do you need to go to the hospital?” She answered without hesitation, “Yes.”

I drove Sunshine to the emergency room and her obvious distress put her on the fast track to being seen: But even so, from the time I got her signed in, to the time when her vitals were taken, to the minute or so that we waited for somebody to come fetch us, Sunshine lost consciousness while sitting in her wheelchair. I guess that 10 years of working in the medical industry (if not actually in the hospitals) prepared me better than average as to what was going on and what to expect: Quickly wheeled back to the nearest trauma bay, me describing symptoms and history, half a dozen people hooking up lines and leads, one doctor talking loudly to my unconscious wife. It was still all a bit surreal.

Within a minute, Sunshine was awake and responding. Fluid samples were obtained. Pain medication was administered. She was wheeled off to have an ultrasound, and (as I and the doctor had suspected) the results came back as a ruptured ovarian cyst: probably the most acutely painful thing a woman can ever experience (which was why Sunshine lost consciousness).

Anyway, after a while the pain subsided and Sunshine was able to go home… but not before she asked me to get a visual record of her heroic longanimity (note the tongue: phhhbbbt):

And this will be the first time Mom and Paul are hearing about this: They had left on a weekend vacation this morning shortly before all of this happened. The serious part of Sunshine’s ordeal was over too quickly to call them back as an emergency, and by the time the entire episode was over, Sunshine and I figured that we wouldn’t want to have them spending any more of their vacation worrying about us than necessary. So to all: Sunshine is all better now and will soon be running around the house doing cartwheels as per usual.

Sunshine and I went for a walk in the neighborhood with Puppy Gracie. It is usually such a nice place, but months without any significant rain have made everything green turn to an awful tan color. Mom says I should think that I could be stuck up north, but a pretty snowscape would look better than this. Sunshine stopped to have her photo taken with an orange tree. She reached up to touch an orange and it came off in her hand. Looking scandalized, Sunshine tried to find a place to put the orange back on the tree before somebody saw her stealing oranges. I explained to her that taking an orange was not a problem.

I took Sunshine out to lunch today. We split a giant ham calzone (actually, that is a medium one; the giant “family sized” one is twice the size) at a place called “Mark and Mindy’s” on Route 41. The price was good too: Only $7.50 with the ham topping.

My new camera finally arrived. It totally kicks ass (which is why it was back ordered for 3 weeks). It is a Sony Cybershot DSC-WX9: 16.2 megapixels and 1080i video recording. It has a cool panaromic photo feature (you just hold down the shutter and pan the camera around), HDR processing (takes 3 versions of the same photo in rapid succession at 3 different exposure levels and stitches them together to eliminate shadows/over-exposed areas), a neat “background defocus” tool that gives photos an “SLR” look, and even the ability to take photographs while shooting video simultaneously. Only $150 at Best Buy.

Oh: Geek note. I’ve given up using Google Chrome. First, having 3 browser tabs open would require about 500 megabytes of RAM (and my task manager always showed twice as many instances of Google Chrome being open as there were tabs open). Second, for some reason on my computer, Skype and Google Chrome hated each other and caused an actual BSOD whenever I used both at the same time. Third, all of a sudden Adobe Flash started crashing all the time and I said, “Enough is enough.” I switched back to Firefox.

… when I saw this chart: The top 100 movies of 2011… Blue is available for streaming download; yellow is unavailable.
Compare Netflix’s streaming selection to the next columns (Amazon, iTunes, and Vudu), and you can see what an utter ripoff Netflix streaming is.

p.s. Netflix streaming never had closed captioning either, and closed captioning would be nice for both Paul who has trouble hearing, and Sunshine who has trouble understanding. I checked Amazon and though they are cheaper than Netflix ($79 per year), they don’t have closed captioning, so I’ll pass on them as a replacement for Netflix. Does anybody know if iTunes streaming video has closed captioning? (Will it work on a PC computer? Or only on a Mac?)

The $4 million miniature airport and the computer-driven miniature cars got my interest, but the miniature couple shagging in the field of sunflowers was the point at which you realize that the attention to detail is why this is one of Hamburg’s top tourist attractions.

A good day for kitchen activities: Mom showed Sunshine how to bake her most excellent homemade brownies. After that, I came along and made kani maki sushi for everybody. All day long, Paul had a pot roast in the crock pot that made for an excellent dinner. (I was not sure Sunshine would go for pot roast, but she has declared it to be her most favorite dish ever.)

In the evening, I had Catholic School… Catechism. This evening I learned how to stay awake during boring sermons — a must for any true Catholic. I was serious when I said that the first hour-long presentation I had 2 weeks ago was very interesting. However tonight’s lecture was an hour-and-45-minute exegesis on the role of confession and absolution in Catholicism. It was one of those talks that could have been given in 10 or 15 minutes if certain assumptions about the intelligence of the audience had been made, if certain tangents had not been explored… forced to have been explored by repeated and rather tedious “what if” questions asked by one earnest lady in the back, and if the evening’s lecturer had simply been willing to speak Faster. Than. One. Word. Per. Second.

Sigh. It’s for my Sunshine that I suffer.

To be honest, I’m not sure Sunshine appreciates that I’m becoming a Catholic for her. She really doesn’t do church much. When I ask her to go to church with me, I can tell she really would prefer not to (usually by her, “No! Arggh! Oh alright.” answers to my invitations). But I figure that in the long run, for various reasons that Sunshine cannot see at this point (and I can only barely see myself), having me be a member of the Catholic church will be to our mutual benefit. Besides, I’m sure at some level, Sunshine appreciates the effort.

Mom and Paul (and Puppy Gracie) arrived back from Christmas vacation in New York. I put the silly little chair back in the mail to get my money back and went to WalMart and bought an inflatable mattress to put on the floor of my cramped little bedroom/office, now that Sunshine and I will be sleeping in there, returning the master bedroom to Mom and Paul.

I’m so happy to have Mom and Paul (and Puppy Gracie) back: Sunshine has 2 more people to communicate with. I feel a bit guilty that I did not anticipate the source of Sunshine’s homesickness would primarily be loneliness, and did not make an effort to make some friends here in Florida in the year I spent sitting around waiting for her to arrive. But I honestly had thought of it and realized, “What if the friends I find aren’t really compatible with my wife and I as a couple?” I figured that it would be better for us to seek out a new social circle as a couple, since we aren’t fully ‘traditional’ in our makeup due to our 17-year age difference and culture difference. But still, I bear responsibility for Sunshine’s discomfort, and I am glad that Mom and Paul are now here to help me out in that aspect.

Mom brought Sunshine a bunch of little gifts on her return, which were much appreciated. (Apparently the secret is to wrap the gifts and put a label that says “To Sunshine” on the outside, instead of just letting Sunshine pick out what she wants at the mall… much better effect that way.) Puppy Gracie of course is a gift in herself, being the cutest dog in the world. She walks into the room and Sunshine brightens up.

On Tuesday night, Uncle Bob took Mom, Paul, Sunshine and me to The Moose Club for some excellent (but slow-to-cook) hamburgers, and then off to The Eagles Club (which had no empty seats when we tried earlier at dinnertime) for drinks and dancing. I danced with Sunshine, and she definitely liked that too. I guess I will have to start rekindling my old terpischorean tendencies on a regular basis. (As will my mother, if she and Paul are going to join us on the dance floor: She and Paul got up to dance, and at the culmination of a rather daring boogie-woogie spin under Paul’s guidance, she went kerplunk right on her bottom. She laughed, but not before I had crapped my pants at the thought that she might have hurt herself. But she was fine, thankfully.)

On Wednesday, it was a beautiful day and we all (including Uncle Bob) went to the pool, which was rather full. Due to Aunt Alice spreading the word about Sunshine’s cookie-cooking party, and of course Mom’s constant tales about her daughter-in-law’s visa woes, everybody at the pool already knew of Sunshine and was very happy to finally meet her. On Wednesday evening, Mom took Sunshine into the kitchen and together they cooked chicken Cacciatore. The taste was great, but I’m not a fan of big tomato chunks. But it was great to see Sunshine bonding with Mom and becoming more comfortable here.

I sincerely think that one of the best things I could provide for Sunshine to keep her happy here is a friendly and loving mother-in-law and father-in-law to substitute for the family she left behind in The Philippines. It’s not perfect, but it is an excellent stepping stone. For the moment, living here in the house with my parents (and uncle next door) is actually the best thing for Sunshine’s happiness. Obviously we can’t stay here too long because it is so crowded and Mom and Paul can’t have any guests while we are here… but this household really does put training wheels on Sunshine’s American experience.

Great Newsweek cover story by conservative author Andrew Sullivan examining how Obama’s critics are attacking a straw man that they claim is President Obama but has no basis in reality. Below are some facts that Republicans have attempted to ignore, obscure, or even distort or simply change… facts that Obama will obviously be campaigning upon in the coming months.

On job creation:

“When Obama took office [in January 2009], the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. … No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course. … The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama’s big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn’t.”

On taxes:

“You’d think, listening to the Republican debates, that Obama has raised taxes. Again, this is not true. Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition.”

On debt:

“His spending record is also far better than his predecessor’s. Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms.”

On healthcare:

“The great conservative bugaboo, Obamacare, is also far more moderate than its critics have claimed. The Congressional Budget Office has projected it will reduce the deficit, not increase it dramatically, as Bush’s unfunded Medicare Prescription Drug benefit did. It is based on the individual mandate, an idea pioneered by the archconservative Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and, of course, Mitt Romney, in the past. It does not have a public option; it gives a huge new client base to the drug and insurance companies; its health-insurance exchanges were also pioneered by the right. It’s to the right of the Clintons’ monstrosity in 1993, and remarkably similar to Nixon’s 1974 proposal.”

On foreign policy:

“On foreign policy, the right-wing critiques have been the most unhinged. Romney accuses the president of apologizing for America, and others all but accuse him of treason and appeasement. Instead, Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death. If George Bush had taken out bin Laden, wiped out al Qaeda’s leadership, and gathered a treasure trove of real intelligence by a daring raid, he’d be on Mount Rushmore by now. But where Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted. Obama’s foreign policy, like Dwight Eisenhower’s or George H.W. Bush’s, eschews short-term political hits for long-term strategic advantage. It is forged by someone interested in advancing American interests—not asserting an ideology and enforcing it regardless of the consequences by force of arms. By hanging back a little, by “leading from behind” in Libya and elsewhere, Obama has made other countries actively seek America’s help and reappreciate our role. As an antidote to the bad feelings of the Iraq War, it has worked close to perfectly.”

In summary:

“Sure, Obama cannot regain the extraordinary promise of 2008. We’ve already elected the nation’s first black president and replaced a tongue-tied dauphin with a man of peerless eloquence. And he has certainly failed to end Washington’s brutal ideological polarization, as he pledged to do. But most Americans in polls rightly see him as less culpable for this impasse than the GOP. Obama has steadfastly refrained from waging the culture war, while the right has accused him of a “war against religion.” He has offered to cut entitlements (and has already cut Medicare), while the Republicans have refused to raise a single dollar of net revenue from anyone. Even the most austerity-driven government in Europe, the British Tories, are to the left of that. And it is this Republican intransigence—from the 2009 declaration by Rush Limbaugh that he wants Obama “to fail” to the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s admission that his primary objective is denying Obama a second term—that has been truly responsible for the deadlock. And the only way out of that deadlock is an electoral rout of the GOP, since the language of victory and defeat seems to be the only thing it understands.”

My fellow Americans: The next time that one of your British friends tells you that it is they who speak “proper” (or, as they will enunciate… “proe-puh”) English, hit them with this little tidbit of history:

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn’t yet diverged. What’s surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen’s English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.

Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles or the American colonies, was largely “rhotic.” Rhotic speakers pronounce the “R” sound in such words as “hard” and “winter,” while non-rhotic speakers do not. Today, however, non-rhotic speech is common throughout most of Britain. For example, most modern Brits would tell you it’s been a “hahd wintuh.”

It was around the time of the American Revolution that non-rhotic speech came into use among the upper class in southern England, in and around London. According to John Algeo in “The Cambridge History of the English Language” (Cambridge University Press, 2001), this shift occurred because people of low birth rank who had become wealthy during the Industrial Revolution were seeking ways to distinguish themselves from other commoners; they cultivated the prestigious non-rhotic pronunciation in order to demonstrate their new upper-class status.

The talent I admire most at this point in my life is the ability to play acoustic guitar… especially if you write your own acoustic guitar music… especially if you write your own great acoustic guitar music. I admire it so much that if you combine all those things together, I’ll forgive you for wearing a samurai headband and karate gi while you play.

Ewan Dobson is from Canada.

After the fact, I’ll throw in a second one especially for my dad… because I know he’ll love this one.

Sunshine and I are staying at my parents winter home here in Florida, hoping to get our own place soon now that I’m not paying for the rental house that we had in the Philippines anymore. But, in the meantime, with Mom and Paul returning next Monday, Sunshine and I have to move out of the master bedroom and start sharing my small office/bedroom… which pretty much only has room for the one twin bed and my desk. So instead of trying to cram ourselves onto a single twin bed, I decided to be clever and order this “unfolding” chair/bed thing from Amazon.com for me to sleep in while Sunshine would get the twin bed.

Sunshine had a good day today. We did not do anything special, but she got up early, made coffee, and got to work on cooking pork adobo for lunch. We had Uncle Bob over when that it was done being cooked. Ahh… the tastes of “home” are very a welcome thing. I missed Filipino food. Of course, a meal of starchy rice and high-fat-concentration pork (followed by more of Sunshine’s chocolate chip cookies from last night for dessert) is not something I can do every day. I guess the diet starts tomorrow.

I played Skyrim for a while this afternoon. You know, if you get all of your archery skills and bonuses, and sneak skills and bonuses maxed out, along with good archery magic equipment… when you combine that with triple sneak attack bonus plus 50% critical hits, you can sneak around and deal out 450 points of damage per arrow over a huge distance. I killed a dragon today with just 3 arrows.

Okay… that’s enough geekiness.

Tomorrow afternoon it is back to church and then a lasagna dinner. Sunshine and I are looking forward to that.

The temperature is dropping again. We’ve got the heater on to get the inside temperature above 75°.

Our order from one of the Pinoy Food websites showed up today. Sunshine got her order of stinkyfish and special vinegar so she can have her traditional Filipino breakfast now. ($25 for what would have cost $4 back home, once you add in shipping and handling.) It goes without saying that she will have to refry the stinkyfish outside on the grill, and eat it out on the back porch. If we get the smell from refried stinkyfish in the carpets and upholstery, my mother will kill us.

Oh… the chair/bed arrived today too.