Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Sunday, March 06, 2016

I had two projects to complete tonight by midnight in preparation for tomorrow’s Call of Cthulhu game

The game notes, which I finished about 2:30 pm (starting about 10 am with about a half-hour break at some point), and then a passage from a few years ago that was important that somehow never got transcribed because it was a very complex 15-minute snippet of a recording with very dense information, also related to the game. That got finished about 8:30 (that one small snippet took about an hour-and-a-half to transcribe). In the interim I went and visited with friends for about an hour-and-a-half, as A and I were supposed to do the Saturday grocery run, but he’s got some sort of crud and so we postponed it until tomorrow when he’s hopefully feeling better (or if not, it’s not a huge list, I can go do it before the game for them).

It was nice to finish, though, because that’s two items off my to-do list, plus another (I finally found my stamps, much later than needed!) I’m now about 30 experience points away from 50th level on Habitica as a result. :) After that was finished, I laid down for a half-hour ‘nap’, setting my alarm carefully and despite my tendency to go to sleep rather than nap, was hopeful of waking up and doing some things around here. But I just woke up and it was 12:30 am. I guess I was more tired than I had thought. My phone helpfully told me that Donald Trump won our state’s Republican caucus (not surprising, really, as I’m not sure they have a viable candidate to really put the brakes on his momentum, and that’s sad). Bernie Sanders won two states as well. (Our Democratic primary isn’t until May). I could have gone back to bed, but I thought I’d get up and write for a bit.

I have to admit, I haven’t felt up to major physical activity today. I’m not sick. But I’ve had a headache and muscle aches most of the day (the weather has been rainy and not particularly warm, and in fact kind of icky). I ate too much early in the day and didn’t take any of my medicine until I went over to my friends’ house (I just took all the bottles over there and filled up my pill reminder tray) and took my insulin then, too. My blood sugar, as a result, has been running higher than usual today, and I’ve felt out of sorts and tired. It’s not too bad right now, all things considered, about 170, but that’s the highest I’ve run in a while, at any time today. It was actually over 200 earlier, which is almost unheard for me of late--even my fasting sugars in the morning have been pretty much normal. I’m back on track, though, and once I take my bedtime insulin, should be doing better tomorrow, hopefully, as it is game day now that we’re back from hiatus and one of the NPCs (non-player characters) is trying to kill one of Brenda’s characters who had her committed, so best to be operating on all thrusters. Diabetes is somewhat hard to manage; there are so many things that affect blood sugar, from food, to medicine, to stress, to illness, and no matter how consistent you are, sometimes it doesn’t work well. And if you do get off on taking care of yourself, you can see changes for the worse pretty quickly. It’s not an easy illness to live with, and while I should be a pro at this by now, I’m not. I’m not sure anyone really is, to be honest, no matter how diligent--all of us have times when we feel bad. But it’s worse if you’re not diligent, of course, and that was my problem this morning, as I was focused on what I had to get finished and not taking care of myself. With diabetes, self-care really has to come first.

I am getting a little sleepy again now. I’m sitting here staring ahead at my diplomas. Really, some day, I should get them put into my name now. I changed my name in 1993--almost 23 years ago--and they’re still in my birth name, so whenever I need to copy them and send them somewhere I include a copy of my court papers. It costs about $50 for both diplomas to be put in my legal name. If it were just a matter of having a different last name, it would be one thing, as that’s common enough with women, but my entire name was changed (it was Lisa Kay Broadbent). I’ve almost made it as long with my new name as with the old, and that name seems foreign to me now. But if you’re looking for an old classmate or something, yeah, that’s probably me. Anyway, that’s low on my to-do list. Really, after I pay my car insurance and cell phone bill, I’m already tapped out again in terms of funds, and while I did pay my rent on time, get some groceries and gas, and the like, I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to get my hair cut (it was just going to be a basic hair cut at Supercuts, not a salon sort of thing) this weekend. Even though I’m operating within my budget, and got a raise (that’s offset by a biweekly payment on a debt), I’m still struggling. I still have too much debt (yes, my fault, of course). Next year may be far worse, given that my job is ending, and unemployment lasts about 6 months these days, and any severance will be eaten up with taxes and be fairly fleeting. I’ve stepped up the job search, but it’s hard to find a library job in this area, and I can’t move. At six month’s out, I may have to start looking beyond the library field entirely, which saddens me. I love being a librarian, and I’m good at it, and I’d like to continue with my career in that field. I’m not married to the idea of always being a medical librarian, but I would like to be working as a librarian somewhere in the area. If you hear of anything, let me know. My resume and curriculum vitae, along with my e-mail, are on the links on the sidebar. Meanwhile, I’ve got Indeed alerts and check the Kentucky state library job list every couple of days, as well as other job sites. I had such hopes for the University of Louisville/St. Joseph job, but it wasn’t apparently meant to be. I need to e-mail the supervisor of that position and see if she has any input for how I could have made my application stronger.

I’ll be very busy on Monday, between doctors’ appointments and working in scheduling. After that, it gets better. I may or may not be in scheduling other days of the week (we have I high clinic census and the person who is out may or may not be back Tuesday). But there aren’t any evening appointments or ones’ during the day, for that matter, to go to.

I am beginning to feel like my life, and this blog, is getting somewhat more boring than normal. Am I in a rut? Maybe it’s just that I’m not online that much with no home Internet. I’ll try to blog more new stories and not ramble about the minutiae of my day as much, and I also need to add more commentary when I do include links out to other stories. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll write more about libraries and librarianship. If I’m facing having to leave the profession, at least for a while, at the very least I can blog about it to keep it in my system. But on the other hand, I’m still blogging at least every couple of days, and considering I’ve been writing this blog for almost fifteen years, regularly, I think that’s pretty amazing, given how people drop them over time when they get busy or lose interest, or how more people share things on other social media sites like Facebook these days. So I’m still committed to blogging.

Anyway, I guess I’ll sign off for tonight. Hope you’re having a good weekend.

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