If you can say a prayer…

If you can say a prayer, please say one today for my co-worker, Josh. He’s 26, he and his wife just had their first baby last week, and Josh went into cardiac arrest this morning. He is in ICU right now.

He’s been fighting some sort of viral infection near his heart for the last few weeks and been in and out of the ER, but even with the medication they gave him, he still went into cardiac arrest this morning.

Update at 12:30 PM Monday:
Josh woke up. He didn’t know where he was or what happened, but he tried to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, so they had to restrain him. He’s a big guy – over 6′5″ and played college basketball, and is still pretty fit and muscular, so it was a feat for them to get him back in bed. They took him off the respirator, and have some kind of ‘Pick-thingy’ in him (they said it is like an IV that goes straight into the heart), but that’s all the info they had for us at this time. They don’t know why he went into cardiac arrest yet.

His wife is a little thing, barely 5′3″ and still has the incision from her Caesarean last week, but she was able to maneuver him into a position where she could perform CPR until the paramedics got there, and they said that saved his life. The doctors said he would not have made it if she hadn’t performed CPR.

Update Monday at 1:45 PM:
More on Josh – He has short term memory loss. He can remember his wife and his immediate family, but he can’t tell you how old he is, when he was born, or most anything else. The doctors feel that this is temporary. He was greatly upset by the catheter, and the doctors agreed to remove it, and he has been able to get up to use the restroom, but only with assistance. Still, the fact that he did this even with help to stand and walk is a good sign, we are told.

Jennifer Ray
http://www.jenaray.com/

July reviews are live at CK2S Kwips & Kritiques!

This was a great month for reading for me! I enjoyed some wonderful books and added some new authors to my favorites list. AND I got to interview Lora Leigh for CK2S Kwips & Kritiques!
You can read the interview here: http://www.ck2skwipsandkritiques.com/interview_loraleigh.html

Jennifer Ray
http://www.jenaray.com/

Claiming the Courtesan by Anna Campbell

Fortune’s Fool by Bianca D’Arc, Eva Gale, Cassidy Kent, and Selah March

Patience by CH Admirand

Show Me by Jaci Burton

The Vampire Queen’s Servant by Joey W Hill

En Series, Book 2: Enticed by Kathleen Dante

Voyeur by Lacey Alexander

Hard and Fast by Lisa Renee Jones

The Breeds, Book 3: Tanner’s Scheme by Lora Leigh

Let Me Love You by Mary Wine

Watch Me by Shelley Bradley

Companion Series, Book 4: One With the Night by Susan Squires

Why do I love my Vonage phone service?

Oh, let me count the reasons.

1. I pay $25 per month for unlimited phone calls, no long distance fees within the US and some countries outside the US.
2. They email me my voice mails in a .wav format. They transcribe the text to the body of the email now, too. The .wav file comes with the service, the transcription is 25 cents per voice mail and is an option you can enable or disable according to your preference.
3. V-Me. Love this. It is new and comes with my service at no extra charge. If enabled, you get a web address for your phone line. Callers go to the web page, enter their phone number and click submit. Vonage rings their phone, then your phone, and connects the call. Because my Vonage service initiates the call, the caller doesn’t incur any long distance charges on their phone line, no matter who they have. Of course, if they use a cell phone they might still be charged minutes but no long distance if they use the web tool to call me

Disadvantage: It is internet based, and you must have an internet line for this to work. Dial-up won’t do it, you need an ‘always-on’ connection. And if your internet connection goes out for any reason, then your home phone does too. For me, the very low monthly fee offsets the infrequent inconvenience of losing the home phone when the internet has gone out. I think that’s happened to me maybe 3 times in the last year, and one of those times was during a storm when the power went out, so I don’t count it. And I had my cell phone handy each of those times.

I’ve been with Vonage almost 2 years now, I think. I am very happy with the service and highly recommend it.

Jennifer Ray
http://www.jenaray.com/

Trust

So I’m blogging today about Trust, with a capital T. We all know that whatever you post on the internet, whether in a blog, messageboard, Yahoo or Google group or email isn’t guaranteed privacy. But there is an inherent trust you give the people or group you communicate with that your words will be kept to the forum they were intended for and that they will not be used against another person erroneously.

My trust was recently broken. Someone I would have called an internet friend posted words from a private email publicly. Now what I had written privately wasn’t anything that I am ashamed or worried to have public, but that isn’t the point. The private email was posted without my permission, without forewarning (or without notice afterwards, for that matter – I found it accidentally), and was used against another friend, although my words were in support of that person.

I’ll not engage in communication of any type with this person again. No matter how innocuous the conversation may seem, they have now broken a trust with me.

The really ironic part of this is that person once emailed me something very private that they need kept so. You would think they wouldn’t betray my trust this way, knowing the information I have. They really should count themselves lucky I’m not the kind of person who would use such information against them in retaliation. Another person might not do the same.

Anyway, just a reminder to all to never email or post anything you wouldn’t want forwarded elsewhere. You never know where it might end up.

Jennifer Ray
http://www.jenaray.com/