Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Xebeth just called.

She’s okay — out of the ICU, unplugged from the various tubes, and working down the list that R made of people she had to call. She’s a little hoarse from the tube they had down her throat (though quite impressed at herself for being able to deep throat seventeen inches — I do love my friends…), and feeling a bit beat up and bruised, but she’s definitely pulled through.

So incredibly good to hear her voice.

To those of you who may have seen my first post about this and kept Xebeth in your thoughts — thank you. I know she’s in no hurry to go…but a little friendly support certainly can’t hurt. Thanks.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

Word from R as of about 4pm today is that Xebeth is “okay” — out of surgery and in the ICU. From the sound of it, while she’s not out of the woods, she’s not in immediate danger at the moment. Knowing Xebeth, she’s bound and determined to keep on kicking through pure willpower if nothing else.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to see her do it.

Originally published at eclecticism. You can comment here or there.

I haven’t mentioned this before — and debated even putting this post up — but Xebeth, who I recently reconnected with and has become an extremely dear friend to both Prairie and I, has been battling malignant hyperthermia for some time now.

The disease is rare and still very much an unknown, so the above link leads to a Google search rather than one particular source of information. In brief, though, it is a hereditary muscular disease most often triggered by a reaction to anesthetics. Most often, once discovered, the disease can be managed with careful monitoring during any surgical procedures that might require anesthesia, and the patient’s life expectancy is normal.

However, more rarely, the disease starts attacking the muscles without the anesthetic trigger, essentially burning them up from the inside. In this case, eventually the disease will attack the heart. Life expectancy with this form of MH is far shorter. NOTE: I now believe that this is probably not true. See this post for details.

Xebeth was confirmed to have the rarer and more dangerous form of MH a few months ago. The initial prognosis was in the five to ten year range, but after a biopsy of some of the affected tissue was performed, she was given roughly ten months to live.

In an effort to extend her time left with her friends, family, husband and children, Xebeth agreed to undergo a treatment process that might keep her around for a few years longer, hopefully for the next decade or so. However, the treatments are not pleasant — similar to chemotherapy, they introduce a ‘poison’ that attacks and kills the affected tissue — and run the risk of triggering an attack.

Her friend R has been by her side throughout the treatment process, trading off shifts with Xebeth’s husband Austin. R’s been doing a wonderful job of acting as an intermediary between Xebeth and Prairie and I, reading our e-mails to her and keeping us updated on Xebeth’s status.

About half an hour ago, R sent me a note saying that Xebeth had had a bad attack and is in surgery.

I’ve been keeping quiet about this situation for some time now, but at this point…well, Prairie and I are worried and scared, and I have to go to work ‘til ten in about twenty minutes, so likely won’t get any updates until late in the day. In the two visits to Seattle that Xebeth has been able to take since she and I got back in touch, she’s become very close to Prairie and I both — Prairie discovering a new friend, while I get to know the incredible woman that the first girl I ever dated has become. We both love her greatly, and would appreciate any thoughts or prayers you can contribute.

Update: We got confirmation that Xebeth had made it through surgery later in the day while I was at work, and this morning (Saturday the 22nd) got a phone call from Xebeth. She’s okay and out of immediate danger. Here’s hoping we can keep her around as long as possible.

I was supposed to get together with xementio today to take some pictures for her. I'd been looking forward to it, in part because I haven't tried any posed/modeling style shots, and had even managed to improvise a ghetto 'studio' in my living room that seemed to be producing halfway decent results when I found a couple 'volunteers' to test it with.

Unbeknownst to me, though, this was the day that xementio's cell phone decided to die, so she spent the day battling with it and eventually going to get it replaced...and, of course, since everyone keeps phone numbers in the cell phones these days, she didn't have mine available to find a way to call me to tell me what was going on.

I finally got ahold of her a little bit ago, but after her battles this morning, we've decided to try again some other day. A bit of a bummer, really -- since I didn't know what was going on, I've spent the day puttering around the apartment and watching a gorgeous summer day go by outside my windows while I was waiting. Not her fault at all, of course...just one more reason on my list of why I don't like cell phones.

Meh.

So now I've got the rest of the afternoon and evening entirely unplanned and unscheduled (save for a phone call with Prairie around 8-ish). Feeling cooped up and antsy, so getting out of the house for a while would be good...just not sure where to go and what to do. Feeling social, but don't have anybody to grab to be social with.

Yet again -- meh.

Ah, well. On the bright side, at least I know I can assemble a slapdash pseudo-studio, so that if anyone's ever brave enough, I can find out if I can manage to get any decent shots of them. You never know....

Prairie’s out of town for a week visiting her dad in California, so I’m a bachelor until Saturday sometime. Whee!

Of course, knowing me, that won’t mean much other than that I’ll be at my computer far too much over the next week. ;)

I should be out to bounce Saturday and Sunday night, though.

For now, I need to go catch a few more hours sleep before work needs me to be semi-conscious.

The unthinkable has happened --

Not only will I actually be out at the_vogue tonight, but I even know about it and have it somewhat planned far enough in advance to say something about it! From prior postings, I know I should see gothy_geek and anzu there...hopefully, I'll see a few others of you as well.

'Bout damn time.... ;)

Photos from Saturday night's show have been posted: The Scarlet F (some images NSFW)!

I make no claims as to perfection (though, thankfully, it's far better results than at last year's Cascadiacon), but overall, not too shabby...and hopefully over time, the results will continue to improve. Everyone's gotta start somewhere, right? ;)

After a few days of grumbling and plotting devious ways of kicking my manager (severely, repeatedly, in the shin), my schedule has been reworked so that there are no more conflicts. Well, not true — I’m going to have to skip school for one day — but no major conflicts.

So.

Upcoming things where I will be wandering around, camera in hand:

• Saturday, May 27: Northwest Folklife Festival

  Prairie and I will be wandering around during the day, I’ll be shooting more or less randomly. No set schedule or plan.

• Saturday, May 27: The Scarlet F

  At the request of the lovely anzu, primarily for the fashion show and burlesque bits, but apparently I’ll be able to shoot the whole thing. Fun! Given that this is an “in your face celebration of queer femininity and femme identity”, I’m debating as to whether wearing my “I’m just here to get laid” t-shirt would provoke laughs or beatings (and not those of the enjoyable type).

• Thursday, June 1: NSCC Career Link Prom

  Prairie’s teaching for Career Link, a G.E.D. program for students 16-21 who aren’t in high school. One of the things they do for the kids is throwing them a Prom, and I’ve been asked to act as a ‘roving photographer’ — no formal posed against a backdrop shots (as I understand), just candids throughout the evening.

• Friday, June 2: Jason Webley’s Eleven Saints EP Release Party

  Jason’s the one local artist that I’ve become a huge fan of since I moved to Seattle (see my Webely photos on Flickr or Webley posts on Eclecticism, for example). This is the release concert for his latest album, ‘Eleven Saints’. Seriously — if you’re not doing anything that evening, you should think about attending.

• Saturday, June 3: Camp Tomato 2006

  Also a Jason Webley event, this is the sequel to last year’s inaugural Camp Tomato. Expect an afternoon of picnics, silliness, games, and tomatoes.

• Friday, June 16: NSCC Career Link Graduation

  Along with Prom, I’ve also been asked to act as photographer for the Career Link graduation ceremonies. Nifty!

And that covers pretty much everything planned over the next few weeks. I’m hoping to be able to make it to some of the Seattle Pride festivities on Pride Weekend (June 24th-25th), but that will depend on my work schedule.

(Speaking of…did you know that we get two Pride Parades this year? I really wonder how well that’s going to go over….)

Memo to me:

Next time I'm trying to shoot at the club, remember to set the ISO to something more senstive than 200. Makes for pictures that aren't _nearly_ as blurry, and I'll get a lot more useable shots out of the evening.

Lord, I'm an idiot sometimes.

Thanks to xementio giving me a call, I wandered down to check out Confessional at the_vogue last night. Lots of pretty people out, and I got a few pictures during the evening (though not a ton). As there were some burlesque performances, said pictures do include some small amount of mostly-nudity.

Like anyone here's going to have a problem with that. ;)

Best shot of the night: the always-lovely aylagriffin in a great rubber nurse's outfit.

( Helloooooooooooo, Nurse! )

And even better, I wasn't totally wiped out for class this morning, even after not leaving the club until 1am. This is a good thing, as it means I might be a little more likely to head out on the occasional school night (since my job is doing wonderfully at interfering with my weekends).

This probably isn't going to last very long, but I shaved. I look about 20-21 now, roughly.

( Me without the face fuzz )

The fuzz will be growing back in...as fast as it grows. I just got curious, and it's been a few years since I tried this.

And it'll be a few before I try again.

This should be fun — I get to pretend to be a “real” photographer in a couple weeks! ;)

anzu was kind enough to ask me if I’d be interested in shooting the upcoming Scarlet F Show that she’s involved in. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to at first (I’ve already marked off a lot of weekends over the summer to get them off from work so that I could go shooting), but it turns out that the show’s on a day that I’ve already asked to have off (for the NW Folklife festival). Good timing!

I’ve been hoping an opportunity like this might come along for a while — while I had a lot of fun shooting the CascadiaCon fashion show last year, the camera just wasn’t quite up to the task. Now that my tools have improved, I’m looking forward to seeing what I can get from the show.

( Here's the show details... )

Wow. Tim, whom I’ve known for a few years now, left an incredible compliment on one of the photos I posted a couple days ago. I’m reposting it here because I’m floored, and I want to make sure it doesn’t disappear into the void. That, and it’s good for my ego. ;)

Speaking as a professional amateur photographer (or would that be amateur professional?) I must comment on the quality of your work. The fact of the matter is it just keeps getting better and better. Who knew you had such an artistic eye? I always had you pegged as a computer geek that wanted to be a photographer which I found rather funny considering I’m a photographer that want’s to be a computer geek.

And don’t for one second think (or be lead to believe) that the shiny new camera has anything to do with it. It does not. Not any more than a new set of pots and pans would suddenly make you a great cook. They may make you want to spend more time in the kitchen as I’m sure the new camera makes you want to go out and take more pictures but the underlying talent, the artistic eye, was there long ago.

And its that eye of which I speak. There comes a time in every photographers life where they make a switch they stop looking at things with standard vision and start looking at things the way camera would. Camera vision is what my friend called it when he was talking to me so many years ago.

The best way I know how to explain it is when you are learning another language. For a long time when people speak to you in the new language you hear what they say and your brain translates it to english for you. But there comes a time where when you hear the new language it doesn’t need to be translated in your brain, you just know it. And its on that day when you can proudly say, I speak two languages.

Camera vision is like that, you stop thinking about the shot and just take it. And as it was once said to me, I now say say it to you.

You have Camera vision.

And it shows.

Again — wow. Thanks, Tim.

Contrary to what I'd posted earlier, I did get to make it out to the_vogue after all for some birthday weekend fun. Much with the friends, fun and flirting, of course.

One of the best bits: many moons ago, I'd dinked around a bit and created a mashup of Depeche Mode's "Flexible," "Just Can't Get Enough," and Prince's "1999" that I called Just Can't Get Flexible in 1999. I'd been dying to hear it on a club system for ages, and last night Evan was kind enough to put it on so that I could bounce around to it. Much fun (for me, at least...he played it early enough that it wouldn't disrupt the night too much if others just thought it was horrendous, so I was the only one on the floor).

Even better: he liked it enough to ask for a copy. Sweet!

Happy birthday to me,
I'm now thirty-three,
I should have better words here,
but I suck at poetry.

No big birthday plans, unfortunately. What with school in the mornings during the week, I'm not going to be heading out tonight, and my boss was kind enough to schedule me until 10pm on Friday and Saturday, so there will be no going out this weekend, either (when I wouldn't even get to the club until around 11pm at the earliest after a 10 hour workday, it takes some of the fun out of the evening).

So...at some point, there may be a small delayed birthday thing. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that there won't, given how I tend to let things slip my mind. We'll just have to see....

I’ve got a new toy to play with…

…and even better, I’ve got it in time for Norwescon next weekend!

So excited.

anzu (if you see this, busy girl): Want me to try my hand at shooting your part of the fashion show again? Results should be quite a bit better than the ones I got at CascadiaCon, since I’ll actually have a tool up for the task this time.

There’s also an extremely good chance I’ll be out at the_vogue tonight to play with the new toy a bit and get some practice shooting in low light situations.

Happydance!

Well, one of you asked, at least. I just like to sooth my ego by pretending that more people might care.

Prairie and I won’t be coming out to play tonight (‘sokay, though, since all the “cool kids” are likely to be at Sisters of Mercy, who, unfortunately, I’m missing), as I work late tonight and early tomorrow.

However, since there is a pressing need to get OUT OF THE GODDAMN HOUSE, we’ll be heading down to the_vogue tomorrow night for the fetish night.

Hopefully, more excursions out into the world will be coming soon.

My girlfriend rocks.

( Check out the early birthday present she got me! )

( 30 Year Reunion for German Travelers )

Also: I’m (slowly…I’m not quite two weeks through so far) working on scanning and uploading all of my pictures from the 1991 trip. Unfortunately, I took very poor notes of what I was taking pictures of, and after fifteen years, my memory of everything is…well…damn near nonexistant. So, should anyone recognize any places or people (…ahem…missdotwarner…), feel free to add comments or tags to help fill me in!

---

Other bits:

• Winter quarter is over and done with. No official grades yet, but I’m about 98% positive of an A in ENG101 and a S (Satisfactory? It’s a pass/fail class, I’m on the passing side) in MAT097. Yay me.

• With the end of the quarter, I might pop my head up here a bit more often for a bit. Then Spring quarter will start, and we’ll just have to see what happens then.

  • Speaking of, I really need to register for what classes I’m going to take in the Spring quarter. That’s part of this week’s plan….

• I’ll be taking the summer off from school. While I’ll still be working, I’ll have much more free time for general goofing off. This is a good thing.

• Prairie (lasciviousturtl, though she’s yet to actually do anything with the page) is about to leave one job, as she got offered a permanent faculty position at NSCC. This is a very good thing for her, both career wise and for general peace of mind. Yay Prairie!

Those are the key points at the moment. More to come…eventually. In theory.

Some random little updates, as I’ve actually found a few minutes without anything pressing going on right this minute.

I actually managed to make it out to socialize Saturday night, heading out to the_vogue for a while for gothy_geek’s birthday. lasciviousturtl sent along a piece of cake (though she was too beat to come out and play), and much fun was had with the birthday girl, her date Marty, anzu, newwavegirlie, kramera, rainfromheaven, and invoke_thee, spent a few minutes chatting with benevolentia, and — in what was a major surprise — ran into Kate, one of my favorite. People. Evar. All in all, definitely a good night.

Had a random encounter with gravesme at work, when he and Aaron (?…damn my misfunctional memory) stopped by on a quest for toys and ended up departing with a nice 24mm f/2.4 lens for his camera. Yes. I’m jealous.

Of course, I’d need a camera to attach it to before a nice lens would do me any good.

And speaking of…

Might anyone be interested in an old but still quite functional (if not terribly speedy) Mac? Specifically, a 350Mhz blue and white G3? Mine’s been sitting in a closet since I moved, and I’m seriously considering doing a quick nuke-and-pave and seeing how much money I can get for it (if any). Not sure how much I can reasonably expect for it…I’ll worry about that later. In theory, though, any money gained from offloading it would be put towards getting myself a new camera (and I’ve even dropped my goals from the very-nice-but-pricey D70s to the still-quite-nice-and-more-affordable D50).

Of course, should anyone just be getting tired of me whining about wanting a new camera and feel like donating to the cause, I wouldn’t complain about that, either. ;)

And I think that that’s about everything for now.

Oh — I might be heading out to the pillow fight at Westlake tomorrow evening to take some pictures (assuming there are enough people there to make it interesting). Depends on whether I’ve got my homework done or not. ;)