Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Got my office (finally) just like I want it

So I had the parking in the back of the building on Monday and brought in another little bookshelf and the prints I won at auction, and the latter have been put on the wall.  Those, along with what I had, the plants, and the little radio/CD player, mean I have a bit of a jungle to de-stress my environment, can play music quietly, and overall counteract the more hectic parts of my job.

I'm very fortunate to have an office of my own (it's due to the reams of patient information I deal with and the phone calls I make to insurance), and it's a purple office, which is a plus, with lovely afternoon light.  I'm getting better at taking pictures without any patient information at all, I must say.  My desk itself has lots of cubbies to separate things, a computer, a scanner, and a calendar--very productive and not full of knick-knacks.

Here's what it looks like now:








Oops, got to go clock in.  I've been on my phone hotspot and I need to shut down and get going with my day.  Have a great day!


Monday, March 25, 2019

Yippee!!!

Got the card catalogue home from the old hospital attic with the help of friends and got it set up in the study and cleaned up. So happy! I've been bugging materials management for it for at least seven years and recently won it in a silent auction. It's nice to have a piece of my old library in the house.


Thursday, March 21, 2019

Up early again

This time I just got up at my ideal time (6:30 am) and I happen to get finished getting ready early and decided to come on in and have some quiet time before work.  The quiet time yesterday really helped me get through a day where I had two MRIs to schedule within 48 hours (one post-op), prepared for and went to our weekly admissions meeting, submitted several surgeries and checked a slew of others for pre-authorization requirements, and generally hit the ground running at 8:30 am and worked my butt off up to 5 pm, on a very crazy day.  Here's hoping today will be a little quieter,  I still have a lot to do (I always do, as there are lots of details in my job), but hopefully, I won't feel like I'm putting fires out all day.  On the other hand, I am handling the stress of my job much better, I think, beyond some stress eating, and I'm working on that.

I went and picked up the prints and the VCR/DVD yesterday.  The prints are still in the car, as I should get the back parking lot parking lottery either Friday or Monday, and I can bring them in and have maintenance hang them on my office wall.

Whoops, better go clock in.  I've been on my phone hotspot in the break room and chatting with a co-worker!

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

So I did the math

and this is actually true, putting things into perspective.  And of course, the death toll has risen since then.  Not sure where it originated from.  It was shared from a Facebook account for a Blair Thomas Greenem.


Happy Equinox!

In the northern hemisphere, where I live, today is the first day of Spring and also Ostara.  For folks in the southern hemisphere, happy Autumn.  But I, for one, and just glad it'll be getting warmer soon.  It's supposed to be in the 50s today but get colder for the next couple.  The weather this weekend is supposed to be sunny, which is very good, as I have to move a piece of furniture.

As you know, the hospital I work at moved both in terms of model and location a couple of years ago, and we were recently given the opportunity to bid on items at the old place we'd like in a silent auction.  I bid on four items, including one I've been bugging materials management about for about five years.  I'm going to pick up the small stuff today and the big one on Sunday with the help of a friend with a truck.  Here's my loot:

It's purple! And a garden...

This was above my desk at the old building.  It's a Ray Harm print of an indigo bunting.

Yes, I still have VHS tapes.  This VHS/DVD player should help with that.

And finally, I got my card catalogue!!! Whoopee!

I got up at an insane hour this morning

YKWIA is going with a friend for an important doctor's appointment, and it's very early, and it takes him a couple of hours to caffeinate and get ready to go anywhere, so I had to wake him up at 5 am, meaning I got up at 4:30 am and showered and then woke him up.  But the thing is, once I'm ready to go, I need to go.  I can't just piddle around the house.  Besides I needed caffeine, too.  So I left the house right before Kroger opened (our neighbourhood has one that is an 18-hour store), got some soda and something for breakfast, and then came on into work.  On the one hand, I'm going to be very tired at 5 pm.  On the other, it gives me a chance to truly wake up, take my medicine, eat breakfast, and get on my phone hotspot with my laptop and have some quiet time.  Also, I got a wonderful parking spot at the Orange Lot at the university this morning, as I got here by 6:30 and parked in the lane right in front of the bus stop about halfway down the front section.

Okay, let's go see what news I can glean from the Web.


Thursday, March 14, 2019

It is 71 degrees and surprisingly sunny

But the wind is gusting up to 58 mph and the rain is coming. We're staying home after all tonight and will celebrate our friend's birthday tomorrow. The Herbie (trash bin) and Rosie (recycling bin) have been taken to the kerb but the recycling one keeps falling over. I chased a lasagna carton down the street earlier. The trash one has its top off, but everything's in a bag at least in that one.

I had a blood draw today with YKWIA. Our doctor does it two weeks before our appointments. It went quickly, so we ate at a Subway afterward, went and got some medicine from the pharmacy, went to the library, and we were still home by 6:20 or so. I took out the bins, fed the animals, and he let the dog outside. Not
W I'm lying down and stretching my back out some.

I'm hoping we don't lose electricity with the wind, but I'm charging thing up things now just in case. Earlier we were on the road and the traffic lights kept going off and back on. There are some questionable boughs in the maple trees out front as well. So here's hoping it will all be alright.

Take care!

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

And here is the orchid :)



Brenda also gave me the bag, which says 'Plant lady is the new cat lady.' :)  As I'm writing this, the kitten has discovered the orchid. I've moved it to the nightstand so it's in front of the window in an eastern exposure, and the leaves are rustling with the fans going on above.  I'll have to watch him.  Orchids aren't toxic to cats or anything, but I don't want him eating on them.  He's gotten so big--almost as big as the black cat, and he's absolutely adorable.  I guess he's eight months old now. :)

Here's one of the pictures I'd tried to publish

The crocuses have bloomed very nicely.


I've tried to blog using the mobile application several times lately

but it refuses to publish with an image attached no matter what I do. Maybe it's a glitch that will be fixed in an upcoming update.

Anyway, sorry I haven't physically gone to the computer and blogged instead.  I've been fairly busy as of late.

I've spent some time setting up the new phone and tablet.  The phone I've geared towards listening--things like Pandora, audiobooks, podcasts, music on the SD card, etc.  The tablet I've geared towards reading, especially Kindle and Project Gutenberg.

We haven't played the game in a while as one of the players is away visiting family in another state.  So the first weekend of this month YKWIA and I went to the Lexington Chamber Orchestra concert at Tates Creek Presbyterian Church and had a very good time.  Otherwise, it's been all about doing stuff around the house on the weekend and getting some relaxation in.  I haven't read much else, just a bit of The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman, and while I had to turn in The Labyrinth of Spirits (which, as a new book, was due in 2 weeks rather than 28 days), I got it as an Audible audiobook.  Today as I was waiting at a doctor's appointment I went through the book up to where I left off.  I was on chapter 19 (21 really, as it has a prologue, etc.), which sounds great but the thing has over 700 pages and while the chapters are short, there are over 170 of them!  I'm not sure I can listen to it at work and still focus on my paperwork like I can with music, but I have a device that plugs into the car cigarette lighter that syncs up with Bluetooth to my phone that allows me to play music and answer calls even though I have an old car (18 years old!) that doesn't normally have that functionality.  I can also play the audiobook through the device.

Brenda stopped by the other day with a wonderful orchid for me.  She'd found it at Kroger for $2, in a plastic pot and finished blooming, but healthy and there are about three plants in there.  It's a type I haven't had before with a very prominent pseudobulb on the bottom with leaves coming from them.  I've seen them in the store--they have rusty, spidery, small flowers in just clusters of them, and I've really wanted them.  I'm not sure what type it is, perhaps a miniature Cattleya or Dendrobium.

Speaking of which, it's almost spring, and I read with interest that the Bluegrass Orchid Society was having their first meeting of the year tonight, with a talk on Dendrobium species and their care, but I had the doctor's appointment and then we had planned on going over to a friend's house for his birthday.  He is battling cancer, and had gone out with his brother and sister-in-law, and was just too tired to get together tonight, so we'll go see him tomorrow.  So by the time we got home, it was too late to change plans and go to the meeting.  I would have loved to have taken the new orchid, though, and get an identification, but oh, well.

I fed the animals and then YKWIA went to the computer and was watching some weird, twisted soap opera he discovered on YouTube, while I went to my room to lie down for just a bit, and the cats came with me, the one purring on my belly and the other at my feet.  I wound up falling asleep for two and a half hours.  I got up and did the dishes, plugged in the electronics to charge tonight, and then decided to write a bit.  But I can tell sleep is coming fast.  I didn't sleep the best last night, kept waking up in fact, and woke up at 4:30 am to pee and almost just got up for the day.  I toyed with the idea of going and getting another bookcase for my office since I had the appointment and therefore parking in back of the hospital, but that would have meant going to the storage unit in the dark wee hours of the night, and I thought that wouldn't be particularly prudent.  So I decided to go back to sleep, and it's good that I had the parking, as I woke up at 7:16 am, and had to be at work by 8:30 am.  I was about 15 minutes early, but if I'd had to ride the bus this morning that would not have happened.

Work has been very busy and I've done really well with productivity and while it can be frustrating, I'm plugging on.  The other day I was able to pull off a minor miracle to get a family's MRI scheduled next day, with the help of my co-worker who does the authorizations, and my boss let me come in at an ungodly hour of the morning so I could call first thing.  It was touch and go for a while (I got pulled out of a meeting because the family got there and the university had accidentally scheduled a sibling instead, so they were being told there was no appointment made).  I'm working on some difficult surgeries, and I have three denials I have to work on for a single case agreement tomorrow.  That's when you ask the insurance company to treat your out-of-network status as if it were in-network for that one case only.  I've had one other case I tried it on, and it worked, so it's worth a try, and it works better, in my opinion than an appeal.  But I don't have much experience in it.

I had applied to the Lexington Public Library in February for a library programming position, but I haven't heard anything, so I'm assuming I didn't get it.  LPL does usually send an e-mail, and I haven't received that yet, but it's been a month or so since the position closed so it's not looking good. :(

Tomorrow I'm at work until 3 pm again as I have a blood draw at 4 pm.  My family doctor always does a blood draw two weeks ahead of the main appointment.  Kudos to my boss, who let me off for a total of four appointments this month, although they're all after 3:30 pm at least.  It was five but I rescheduled my appointment with the ophthalmologist to April.  My endocrinologist is next Monday; it had already been rescheduled by them from January since she wasn't going to be in that day, and when I tried to reschedule, it was going to be August!  So that one had to stay.  I need to reschedule one I missed during my bout with the respiratory virus in January, and I have made an optometrist appointment for an exam on the first weekend of April.  Yay for weekend appointments.  I'm switching dentists and need to get the ball rolling on that, too.  But all my appointments were clustering in March and so I'll wait on that till maybe May, I think.  Then I can have the second cleaning of the year in November.  I did have the DMO plan for Aetna, which paid more fully for services but had a very limited range of providers (mainly Aspen Dental).  I switched back to the PPO, which costs a little more but has many dentists so I could go to one I've been to before and liked, one that YKWIA goes to.  The reason?  Aspen called me up one day insisting I pay a bill I didn't know about before they turned me over to collections. When I asked how much I owed, it was $1.  Yes, you read that right, $1.  I paid it there over the phone, but it kind of ticked me off that they would do that, threaten to send me to collections over such a trivial amount when I'd never even been billed.  Anyway, I like Dr Kleier, although she doesn't have the later hours they did.  So I'll have to wait to go there.

Okay, I guess I should head to bed.  6 am comes early, and with the time change, it's a struggle.  Good night!