I should be asleep

But I'm not very tired, which is a little odd.  I was pretty active today, walking over 7500 steps, although I did not go to the Y and work out, mainly because I had some errands to run that had to be done today and while I could have gone to open swim after 8:15 pm, that's a little late.  I don't know about exercising that late.  Of course, it's a warm water pool and it's pretty relaxing, so maybe it'll be fine.  I'm definitely going to try to go to the gym Saturday for a much longer time, try the Nu-Step machines and the pool and try to figure out where the sauna is, as that's always nice to end with.  (I did see where the hot tub is. I've never been in one but it looked very inviting.

I was sharing things from my newsfeed on Facebook and apparently, I got share-silly because a pop-up window came up asking me if I was a robot; I had to check the box to continue.  I need to be doing more sharing on this page; I've hardly written anything all summer.  I'm going to take the 'habit' I have on my phone on Habitica (the app that's a productivity one but with avatars and roleplaying game trappings that I've used for years now) and make it a daily, meaning I'll be more likely to think to write.

There are several applications I'm using right now that I'm finding useful for my health, beyond the one that comes with my activity tracker or something like Samsung Health or Google Fit.  I highly recommend them:

Daylio -- This is a mood tracker that I've used now for over 1100 days (I know, I have entries for that many).  Given that I have Bipolar Disorder II, it's been really helpful in seeing how my mood varies.  I'm generally in the good category, so that's nice to see.  It allows you to track activities as well that might contribute to the mood.

PainScale -- This app allows you to track where and how intense your pain is, as well as a journal, keep track of treatments, triggers, and you can also track food to see if what you're eating is contributing.  It keeps track of the weather and activity factors as well.

Ate -- This one is in beta.  It's a visual food diary that has you take a picture of your meal and then answer a few questions that have to do with mindfulness--why did you eat, who did you eat with, where did you eat, etc., and rather than keeping track of nutrients and calories, it asks were you 'on path' or 'off path'.  It also calculates the time between eating.  So instead of working with minutiae, you're getting to the reasons why you eat and how mindfully.  I mentioned it to my therapist, actually, as in addition to cognitive-behavioural therapy she includes mindfulness. I'm seeing her about every three or four weeks.

Okay, I think I will try to go to sleep, maybe listen to some soothing music.  I've been listening to the collaborative album Ed Sheeran put out all day, and I've now got 'South of the Border' stuck in my head.  I like it, don't get me wrong, but it's too damn catchy.

Have a good night.

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!

Random things about this week

• Sunday we didn't actually play the game.  Brenda came over, and we talked and played The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game, which was quite fun.  We mostly visited and snacked.  Afterwards, I applied for the second time for a job that had been re-posted from the public library.  I'd love to work there, I'd love to do this particular job, it's a great branch to work in serving a diverse population, and yes, it would mean more money and better financial security.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that at the very least I'll get an interview.  Given my track record of getting nervous and tanking during interviews, cross your fingers again that I'll actually do well on that.  I've got a couple of books on questions to ask and answer and I'm thinking (at a co-worker's suggestion) of running through scenarios with YKWIA, who is a good critic.  The little dog apparently went into the bedroom and harrumphed as she laid down because I froze her out of my room with the fans on, YWKIA told me later.  She's older and gets cold easily.
• Monday:  I had to shoo a duck out of the driveway to go to work.  She was quacking in an annoyed fashion and walking up to the house when I left.  Work was busy.  I came home, was asleep by 8 or 8:30 pm, and woke up just long enough to take my medicine at midnight.
• Tuesday:  It was a good day at work.  Either Monday or Tuesday (I can't remember), there was a spectacular car wreck outside our building where someone ran the red light and one vehicle was literally on top of the other.  One person got out on their own, and (I think the one on top) had to be taken out.  Hope no one was seriously hurt.  I came home, had dinner, fed the dogs, and still fell asleep by 7:30 pm and woke up at midnight.  I'm not really sure why I was so tired.
• Wednesday: I started out the day by accidentally killing either a small rat or a baby opossum by turning on my car engine, which bothered me greatly, but thank goodness it wasn't the neighbour's cat.  It was another busy day at work.  There was a major accident at Alumni and Nicholasville Road that I avoided while taking a co-worker to her car at her boyfriend's workplace.  Despite all that (I do have driving anxiety, after all), I ventured back out and went to the church where the Bluegrass Orchid Society meets, only to wander aimlessly through a very large church wing trying to find it.  I finally ran into some nice ladies who were members of the church, one of whom had the phone number for the president of the society.  Apparently, their speaker came down with pneumonia and they couldn't come up with a replacement programme, so they cancelled it by letting the membership know by phone and posting it on their Facebook page (which I neglected to check, so that's on me).  They may reschedule that talk (on general orchid culture) to a later date.  There is one in May on orchids and viruses.  I may go to that. But kudos to me for speaking up and asking for directions, as I'm shy and don't usually do great at approaching strangers, even nice middle-aged and older women.  That night I checked my account, and I discovered that the treasurer for the state association for health science librarians to which I belong cashed my dues cheque a day early when she said she'd hold it, thereby over-draughting my account. :(  She must have forgotten.  I'm debating if I should mention it or not. I'm sure she would apologise, but it's not going to undo the damage.  The fee was twice the amount of the cheque, which at least was paid by the bank, so I guess that's a bright side. I almost never write cheques because it's harder to track when they'll come out.  I so should have mailed it in.
• Thursday:  I had a blood draw first thing in the morning and got up early for that.  YKWIA had me move the carcass out of the driveway before I left. I saw a former friend/co-worker there at the doctor's office and caught up with her on what's been going on our lives. Then I went to work and was in physical therapy almost all day learning how to do things so that I can fill in for a woman who's going on maternity leave.  It's a much slower pace but there's a lot of little things to do with many steps that require a good bit of work.  Then I went back upstairs for about a half an hour and caught up on my e-mail and checked out the last patient.  A co-worker went with me to the pharmacy to pick up some medicine YKWIA needed, and then she treated me to an excellent dinner at Planet Thai as a birthday treat.  It was absolutely wonderful.  I had fried tofu (which I adore, although every Thai restaurant I've been to does it differently) and three-flavour (I think that was what it was called) fish, in this case, salmon,  with a medium (3 on a scale of 5) spice.  It made my sinuses run, was very tasty, and was very filling.  Feliz' drunken noodles came in a huge order; I think 3/4 of it had to go home in a box.  We had a good time and talked a lot.  I feel like we're kindred souls.  I'm pretty jazzed from lots of Diet Pepsi, too.  I took her to her car and then stopped by the grocery for bananas.  Now I'm home and I've changed into comfy clothes.  I think I'll listen to some music before bed.
• Tomorrow should be a calm day at work, a catch-up day (I have about five issues to e-mail about).  I don't really have plans for tomorrow evening. It should be about 76 degrees tomorrow (it was close today), which is remarkable given that we had snow early this week, freeze warnings every night, and frost on the cars in the morning.  As far as my productivity at home, I think I'm falling asleep early to avoid the financial issues I'm having.  I should sit down and work on finances, as my bills are piling up and I'm really not sure what to do about it.  It's like everything's haemorrhaging out.  It's really my main subject of stress. I don't have enough to pay for the preparation of my tax forms, which are sitting at H&R Block, and next week is the deadline for filing--and let's not even get into what I actually owe for my taxes.  I don't get paid for two more weeks.  I'm not sure what to do.  Things are looking bleak.  Maybe YKWIA, who is quite sensible about the management of money, can help me get back on track in terms of planning.  I don't know.  That money could milk money from a walnut.

So anyway, that's what's going on in my life.  It's just a little below average due to the financial woes, which will pass eventually, especially when I sit down and face them head on, which I will do tomorrow and this weekend, for I really don't have much choice.  Avoiding the situation further will only make it worse. :(  Otherwise work and personal life is going well.  So while my emotion tracker on my phone, Daylio, has been set at 'meh' a lot lately, it's not too terrible.  'Good' has to be just around the corner, and 'rad' days will happen, too. Let's try to avoid 'fugly'. :)

So, I've obviously been amiss at writing/blogging

I've been pretty much coming home, having a great meal, and relaxing a bit before bed, maybe listening to music, rather than getting on the computer. Sorry about that. But I've had to recharge well because we've had a lot (and I mean a lot) of patients come in this week, and it's been very, very busy. Today, though, I had an appointment and so I left at 1:30 pm. After the appointment, I made a couple of stops, came home, spent quite some time talking with a neighbour who is a co-worker's cousin and trying to organise a neighbourhood watch, and she told me about a meeting they're having on Monday nearby. Then I went in, ate a little something, and by 5 pm I was headed out to an appointment with my insurance agent, who likes his representatives to see clients at least once a year. That went well, I got a little refrigerator magnet out of it :), and then I stopped by the library to pick up a book I put on hold for YKWIA along with a couple for me.

Last night while looking up the said book on the library website, it reminded me to try using an application on my phone that they have partnered with, Libby, by Overdrive, which is a sort of one-stop shop for library e-Books and audiobooks. It was then that I discovered that there was one more, last, instalment of my beloved Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters, called The Painted Queen. It had been finished by another writer, I presume, as the credits are for both Peters and her. So I borrowed it in Kindle format. Here's hoping I have some time over the next two weeks to read it. Of course, I have all the others, mostly in paperback but the later ones are in hardback. So eventually I'll buy one.

Okay, I know it hasn't been exciting, but I really should turn in for bed. However, I may have some good news to share in the next few days, so be sure to stay tuned. Good night!

Speaking of mood

One of the applications I have on my phone is called Daylio.  It's a mood tracker  and I've used it for 100 days in a row as of today.  It is simple and allows you to rate the day using faces and icons for activities. It will back up to Google Drive,  too,  so I didn't lose anything when I changed phones.  I've found that overall I have good days,  although today was just  'meh'. Anyway,  if this is something you're interested in tracking,  I highly recommend it.

Gee

There are 445 applications,  512 pictures,  and 2206 songs on my phone.  Wow.  Of course,  the music and pictures are on a MicroSD card,  not the phone's internal storage, which is an advantage of having an Android phone. When I got the new phone  I just had to transfer the physical card rather than the files. But still...maybe that's a little excessive?  But I do use most of it regularly. The latest application is called Serial Reader,  which delivers classic stories by daily 20 minute readings for free.  I've started with 'The Yellow Wallpaper'  by Charlotte Perkins Gilman,  niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

I have been up a half an hour

and in that time I've gotten my laundry together, including stripping the bed, packed my book bag with all the stuff I'm taking with me, checked my phone notifications, opened the blinds, got the last of the bread with some honey, got some caffeine, and in a minute I'm going to take my medicine and after that hop in the shower. All in all, I'm doing much better than yesterday, especially as I went to bed at 3:38 am, or at least that's the last I saw the time. Oh, I also removed an application I'd tried on my phone. I thought it was supposed to gently wake you up with light, and maybe it does that, but when the actual alarm happens, it sends light in a pulsating pattern through the flash, and it's practically seizure-inducing. It's called Glimmer; it's a nice concept but it's definitely not for me. I don't have epilepsy, but I get headaches around pulsing light, like copiers (which is why I always close the cover) and strobes. It is one of the reasons I've never been into clubbing. (That and I don't drink, and have social anxiety. Okay, there's lots of reasons for me to stay out of clubs.) :)

It looks like it'll be a bright, happy, if cold day (46 for the high). I'll be inside most of the time, though, except to take the trash and litter out and dump the mop bucket. If I can get all my work done, and we can watch the movie, then maybe I'll be home before or a little after dark, and can work on more books. That reminds me, I should take books over to YKWIA's, but I need another box, or it'll be too heavy to put them all in there. Hmmm...maybe I can temporarily put them into the grey totes I have. That's a thought. Ideally, I should just bring him to my place, I know, but I don't think that's going to happen. I know he'd rather me bring them to him. I wish we could do Thanksgiving over here in a way (his oven needs adjusting, which is putting the cooking time and temperature off), but I think my place is just too small to cook ten dishes for three people. Even using my table in the dining area (which is also where the microwave is) would not really work, I don't think, but I'd give it a try in a pinch. I have a kitchen island in the kitchen with a drop leaf, but it's hard for more than one person to work in there at a time with that leaf up, and the leaf goes towards the oven. Also, he hates cooking on electric. But we'll see. And I might get more pierogis for Thanksgiving, as A hasn't had any yet. The four cheese ones are still over there, but the feta/spinach ones are excellent.

Okay, I've eaten and had some caffeine. Time for meds and shower. Have a great day!!!

I'm feeling a little better today than I have in awhile

One of the challenges I took on through Habitica was to rate my emotions at least three times a day and then graph them every week, and at first I didn't take it very seriously, but I've been a little labile and more anxious of late, and when you have a mood disorder it really helps to pay attention to what's going on emotionally and what might be triggering it. I downloaded an application onto my phone called Daylio that allows you to pick from a scale of faces and what you were doing at the time (more than one, which is handy), and then it graphs the trends. It's free. I think it's helping.

I also, on a totally unrelated note, downloaded an application called Simple Metronome, not for any musical use, actually, but to read by. WHenever I read out loud in front of YKWIA, he says it sounds rushed and I trip over the words, because it's like my brain is moving quicker than my mouth. It's almost push of speech for reading. That's how I read in my head, for that matter, and I sometimes miss things because of that, as it's almost a skimming. When tested, I can focus and get the reading comprehension I need to, but if I'm not being tested, if I'm reading for pleasure, etc., then I just rush ahead. He pointed out that being a quick reader is not something to be particularly proud of; being a careful reader is better. This is an aspect of my attention-deficit disorder, we think. He suggested reading to a rhythm. I couldn't read and hit the beats at the same time, so he did the latter and I read out loud, and did much better. So he suggested I get a metronome to read by. So I got a nice simple one that allows you to change the rhythm and has a few different sounds, and it is helping.

In addition to work today, I went over to the University of Kentucky's Medical Library and took an hour-and-a-half webinar on Statistics for Librarians, sponsored by the Medical Library Association. I did well on the exercises and caught a few mistakes in the presentation (typos, mispeaking), and I really enjoyed it. It was very basic stuff, but I am terribly rusty, having just had two statistics classes in my life, years ago. The first was business and oeconomics statistics, which I hated, because the book was huge, I'm not good at oeconomics, and the teaching assistant's English was minimal, and it was a difficult class that needed some clarity of language. The whole book was word problems, which you would think I would do well in, as I'm very verbal, but actually I always did better with pure math equations and had trouble setting up world problems. I took this class because it fit my schedule better, which was a mistake--I think I wound up with a C. Later I took statistics for the humanities for my sociology degree, and that was better and more relevant, and so I understood and did better. But that, as I said, was years ago. I really enjoyed doing a class. I'm really thinking of taking a class on Coursera or watching some TED talks regularly. I feel I'm stagnating and just not mentally stimulated enough anymore.

It took 45 minutes to get back to work, with the walk to parking and then rush-hour traffic, but I came back and did my data entry so I wouldn't be behind because I said I would. I stayed till 5:30 pm, which gave me an extra half-hour, which is good, as I left a little early yesterday to take care of some things, when clinic was much slower. I also shelved a bunch of bound and unbound journals that were in the library today, and started pulling the book collection over two shelves over so I can integrate the newer books into the collection. I did stop after one shelving unit today because I was perspiring pretty heavily and didn't want to go to the class all stinky. Tomorrow I'll wear something not quite as dressy and cooler that I can really work in. I'd worn full-length pants and a button-up shirt today, with my Mary Janes and socks rather than sandals, mainly to look more professional for an academic setting--I am, after all, likely to apply for a job there if one comes up, so presentation can be important, even when you're not being interviewed. I'm lucky that my employer lets us wear Capris and sandals, so long as we're not working directly with patients or in a hazardous position, but I recognise that other institutions are more conservative. For example, I know the Lexington Public Library requires closed shoes, which makes sense, really. On the days I push around the book carts I tend to, so I don't hurt myself if I run over my foot with one. But I don't do that every day, just when I'm filling up the kids' books in the clinic, shelving, or adding books to the collection. Actually, Friday might be best to do the main shelf-moving, as I can wear jeans on Fridays. :)

I found out yesterday that one of my bosses is retiring soon, which made me sad, but I'm glad she's doing what's right for her. I don't know who my boss will be for the last three or four months, therefore.

Okay. I've eaten some burritos, listened to a Rob Thomas station on Pandora, blogged, spent some time with friends after work, and now I think I'm going to go do some reading. I'm trying to find some strategies to work on some issues, and so I've gotten some Kindle books and then also checked out a couple of physical books on the subject. That only really helps if you actually read the material, though. :)

So an uncaffeinated Rabid Librarian

is a sluggish Rabid Librarian, indeed. I had no caffeine this weekend, and I dragged all day. I don't even remember what I did Saturday, other than wish my aunt a happy birthday. YKWIA and I may have gone to the store, and I picked YKWIA and A from somewhere they'd gone to have a date out. Beyond that, I can't remember. And Sunday it took me 8 hours to do the cleaning I normally do in 2-3. (We visited a lot, too, and I did laundry, both mine and his, but still, it shouldn't have taken so long). I just couldn't seem to go any faster. Then we worked on something we'd planned to do, finished that, and it was too late to watch the Netflix movie, which I have kept with me, and maybe we can sometime this week. Our queue has dwindled quite a bit, and I'm considering cancelling the DVD plan. We didn't use it for awhile, and we have of late, but still, we average a movie a week at most. I'll think about it anyway. My streaming plan is going up by $2, and I think the DVd plan is about $8, so that would offset the increase. Every little bit helps. I just put my last $4 into the car as gas. I have 55 cents in the bank until late Wednesday/early Thursday. I'm just hoping that eighth of a tank of gas will last until then.

Anyway, I'm sorry, as a result of not having caffeine, I really didn't blog this weekend. Sorry abou that.

Last night I was itching quite a bit, but was so tired when I got home that I didn't register much other than I had some bumps on my abdomen. This morning I looked at it, and they are red spots with white, blister-like centres. There were two big ones, maybe two small ones forming. At first I thought maybe I'd gotten an infected injection site, but that's never happened, and I always use a new needle, etc. Now I did scratch myself accidentally with a needle, come to think of it, in that general area, but still, that wouldn't explain four places. Then I thought, maybe I'm having a outbreak of shingles. I have had chicken pox, I'd had a headache and was tired all weekend (but that could easily have been the lack of caffeine for both), and they were on one side of my stomach. But though they hurt when touched, they didn't hurt a lot, like shingle pain is normally described, but itched instead. Still, it could have been a mild case. But the more I investigated, the less likely that seemed--shingles are normally blisters appearing on a raised irregular red sort of shelf on the skin, going along the nerve. These were individual and spaced out. Really, the most likely thing is either folliculitis--an infection of the follicles, or some other skin infection. So instead of going to the doctor with something I'm pretty sure is minor, I'll just keep them clean, put some Neosporin ointment on them, and keep them covered with bandages, and I think we're good to go. That way in the unlikely chance they are shingles, I won't infect anyone (you can't catch shingles from another person, but in rare cases, you can have someone who hasn't been vaccinated or had chicken pox get that, as it is the same virus). I did check since I work in a children's hospital even though I'm not in direct patient care, and covering them is sufficient. So either way, it should be okay. Hopefully they'll clear up quickly.

I got an e-mail today saying that Kroger was reviewing my application. Yay! Hopefully I'll hear from them soon.

Tomorrow I take YKWIA to an appointment and hopefully get my allergy shots.

I took some of the recipes I'd found and put them in an Android phone application, and it's nice. It can be backed up to Dropbox and you can import them from web pages, although I've noticed it imports everything but the actual ingredients most of the time. Maybe it's not fully compatible with every cooking web site. But I've gone in an added those, and that's not too bad, especially as it gets the directions, which tend to be more of an issue.

Tonight I dug around in the pantry and found some Easy Mac, which I made in the microwave. It doesn't require anything other than the noodles, water, and powder pack. Now, this was one of the things I was given in a gift basket when I broke my ankle after being hit by a car...four years ago. It pretty much tasted like that, too. I did put about a half a teaspoon of butter in it and it made it creamier and mitigated the flavour a bit. But, hey, that was dinner.

I was going through a cookbook I had out from the library, and there was a great recipe for roasted peppers with baked eggs, and it had an ingredient I had never heard of--harissa. So I looked it up, and it's a paste made from chiles, spices, and olive oil, with some garlic and various other optional ingredients. It's North African. You put it in a jar and cover it with olive oil, then seal the jar, and it keeps for a month. Whenever you use it, you just put a little more oil over it. The spices were cumin seed, coriander seed, and caraway seed. You toast those, grind 'em up in a mortar and pestle (which I have) or coffee grinder (which I don't), and then put them in a food processor with the chiles (which have been soaked in hot water, with the stems and seeds removed, then you put in a little olive oil and process till you get the right consistence. Then you follow the procedure above with the jar and the olive oil. I think I'm going to try it.

So, the idea when I get paid is, along with all sorts of bills that I will pay, is to try to save money and eat healthier by cooking real food. So far I have some meals planned over the next two weeks, if I can afford the ingredients:

1. Whole wheat honey bread
2. Eggplant penne pasta
3. Potato leek soup
4. Salmon with blackberry-ginger sauce
5. Asparagus frittata
6. Roasted peppers with baked eggs (which requires the harissa)
7. Zucchini au gratin
8. Quinoa salad with avocado
9. Roasted onion and garlic potatoes
10. Slow-cooked beans (with fresh dry beans this time)
11. Lentil cashew pilaf

Breakfast will be Greek yoghurt with berries, or sometimes boiled eggs and toast. I want to get some carrots and celery and string cheese to snack on. Not every meal will be home-cooked. Some lunches might just be peanut butter and the no-sugar added spreadable fruit, with maybe soem popcorn or a piece of fruit. But I am going to try to cook more and eat more vegetables.

Okay, I'm still a bit hungry. I Think I'll have some multi-grain crackers and peanut butter, despite having already brushed and flossed my teeth. I also got all my pills put into their reminder box (I'd forgotten to do that last night, and didn't have what I needed today), stocked up my insulin so I have enough, have taken my nightly Lantus, and have stocked up on pen needles. I think I'll head on to bed soon. My computer did a bunch of updating when I first turned it on and only has about an hour's worth of charge now, so I"ll go plug the laptop up.

PS Hope you have a happy solstice (summer, or Litha, for the northern hemisphere, or winter for the southern) AND a happy full moon, as they coincide today, the first time since 1948, or so said one story I read. Also, if you're in the southwestern US, try to stay cool. THe heat wave is predicted to go up to 122 degrees in Phoenix, for example. That's insane. I used to live in the desert, and 110 was not that bad, really, but at 120 they start grounding planes because the rubber tyres start to melt. Remember, please think of your pets, whose bare paws can burn on hot asphalt and cement. I've been through some rough heat waves (over 65 days of over 100 degrees in Kansas, where there's enough humidity to make that horrible and a lot of people died throughout the midwest that year (1980)). Also, avoid throwing cigarette butts out of the car or anything else that could spark fires, as they're almost impossible to fight in those conditions. Good luck!

I use a music application on my phone called

Equalizer+, and one of the quirks of it is that if you play a new song, it tends to follow that song with the last playlist, album, or artist played before it. So I've been stuck for awhile on four songs, or more accurately, two versions of each of two different songs, and if I play one, it plays all. The songs are 'The Ballad of Accounting' (both the version by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, and the one by Battlefield Band, and 'Paint it, Black', the original by the Rolling Stones and and the cover by Ciara). They're two very different songs, but they both touch my emotions very strongly. The lyrics to the first are:

The Ballad of Accounting [Words and Music by Ewan MacColl]

In the morning we built the city
In the afternoon walked through its streets
Evening saw us leaving
We wandered through our days as if they would never end
All of us imagined we had endless time to spend
We hardly saw the crossroads
And small attention gave
To landmarks on the journey from the cradle to the grave,
cradle to the grave, cradle to the grave

Did you learn to dream in the morning?
Abandon dreams in the afternoon?
Wait without hope in the evening?
Did you stand there in the traces and let them feed you lies?
Did you trail along behind them wearing blinkers on your eyes?
Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?
Did you thank them for their scorn?
Did you ask for their forgiveness for the act of being born,
act of being born, act of being born?

Did you alter the face of the city?
Did you make any change in the world you found?
Or did you observe all the warnings?
Did you read the trespass notices, did you keep off the grass?
Did you shuffle off the pavement just to let your betters pass?
Did you learn to keep your mouth shut,
Were you seen and never heard?
Did you learn to be obedient and jump to at a word,
jump to at a word, jump to at a word?

Did you ever demand any answers?
The who, the what or the reason why?
Did you ever question the setup?
Did you stand aside and let them choose while you took second best?
Did you let them skim the cream off and then give to you the rest?
Did you settle for the shoddy?
Did you think it right
To let them rob you right and left and never make a fight,
never make a fight, never make a fight?

What did you learn in the morning?
How much did you know in the afternoon?
Were you content in the evening?
Did they teach you how to question when you were at the school?
Did the factory help you grow, were you the maker or the tool?
Did the place where you were living
Enrich your life and then
Did you reach some understanding of all your fellow men,
all your fellow men, all your fellow men?

Everyone knows 'Paint It, Black', right? The Rolling Stones made it famous, and there's a great video on YouTube where they've got footage from the VietNam War, and I've always associated that song with the era. But Ciara made an interesting version, and her cover appeared on the soundtrack of The Last Witch Hunter, the Vin Diesel movie we watched yesterday. I had gotten the song through the library some time ago, when I was looking for the Rolling Stones' version (I wound up buying a collection of their songs, as it wasn't available through Freegal. (If you're not familiar with Freegal, check and see if your library subscribes. With a valid library card, you can download three songs a week, for free, to keep)). Anyway, I'll include it here, as you may not have heard it:

Paint It, Black [originally done by The Rolling Stones]

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors any more, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

I see a line of cars and they're all painted black
With flowers and my love both never to come back
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
Like a newborn baby, it just happens every day

I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door I must have it painted black
Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts
It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors any more, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

Hmm, hmm, hmm, ...

I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black

Yeah!

I think they're both powerful songs. The first really makes you question how you're living your life, whether you're living enough to be something other than a sheep. The second touches on depression, darkness, loss--very powerful emotions. And for whatever reason, every time I play anything else on my phone, it always seems to spit these out, too, so apparently I should be paying attention. :) [One other odd quirk to the program is that since my phone updated to Android Marshmallow, all the pictures suddenly got switched about. The individual songs are correctly paired with their covers, but not in the listing of playlists, albums, or artists. Weird. Hopefully that will sort out eventually.]

I think

I slept a grand total of one and a half hours last night, even though I went to bed at 10:30 pm. I couldn't breathe well at all, and I started coughing up stuff every time I laid down. I tried sleeping propped up. That didn't help. I changed CPAP masques and that did, a bit. But generally it was a miserable night, and I seriously considered going to the emergency room, but I figured I wasn't dizzy or starting to turn blue, so I was getting enough air. I considered the fact that I could have a cold, but it didn't feel like one at all. I don't feel sick, or have that feeling one gets with a virus. Everything is in my chest, which is tight, I'm wheezing and coughing, and I just feel like I can't get my breath, like something's standing on my chest, and I'm coughing up whitish gunk (which, at least, isn't green or ye;low). My nose has had a little congestion, but really nothing beyond my normal allergies. Today it cleared up for awhile starting about 9 am, but then worsened later in the afternoon and into the evening, especially when I was driving around doing errands with YKWIA after work. He urged me to call our doctor tomorrow and make an appointment. He has experience with asthma and has had some medical training and even worked in a hospital for years caring for patients, so I should listen to him when he says this is not normal. I'll call tomorrow.

Also today, T-Mobile released the Android Marshmallow 6.01 update for the Samsung Galaxy S5, and so I updated my operating system. For some reason my Day and Night Live wallpaper isn't showing up in Daydream mode anymore [their notes on their Google Play storefront state that Marshmallow is not yet supported for this, so hopefully it will be soon]. It was the one application I had that had special Daydream features. Some applications no longer have their normal icons, all of them ones that are partly on the SD card, instead showing just a little Android. I see applications are listed in internal and external storage,but not how to switch them like I could on Lollipop. [update: I figured that out later, and if you move the application back to internal storage, the icon pops back up]. On the other hand, things are much faster, even though I now have used 13 GB of 16 GB of my internal storage. Actually, even while updating, it specifically said it was optimising 320 applications. :) I don't have that many downloaded, though, so some are preloaded. And is it silly that while the update happened, I was amused by the little Android figure with its antennae twitching back and forth?

I'm listening to a Duran Duran station on Pandora.  I am breathing a little better with the CPAP on and the air conditioning running. I hope this clears up soon!

[2 am update: sorry for the previous errors, which are now hopefully taken care of. There are certain hazards to blogging on your phone quickly (I never learned to type quickly on a virtual keyboard, but rather learned to swipe along the more sophisticated Android keyboards, and so I can go pretty quickly, but sometimes autocorrect is not my friend). Proofreading while you're not really feeling your best is not conducive to good writing, either. Okay, I've had some water and done something that required being up in the middle of the night for someone. Now it's time to go back to bed. At least I was able to sleep for about two hours before I woke up in a coughing fit.]

I certainly found it so

Uninstalling Facebook app saves up to 20% of Android battery life: Facebook’s Android app negatively impacts performance and battery life, even when it’s only running in the background, users find

Frustrated by having to charge my Samsung Galaxy S5's battery by noon in order to have any juice by evening and preventing the phone from shutting itself down by dinnertime, I removed Facebook, Messenger, and a few other applications that I was using infrequently. The results? At the vvery least about 30%-50% or more battery at bedtime, and not having to charge during the day at all. I can still check social media through my Chrome browser. I rarely used Messenger, anyway, and it was a space hog as well. In fact, now that I removed those applications and backed up my photos from my SD card to the computer, I now have about a fourth of my internal storage and half of my SD card free again (several of the applications were partly stored on the SD card). And things are opening a lot faster. Yay!

It's amazing

What cleaning up phone apps can do for your battery life.  I was up to 300 apps total.  I took off many I don't use much,  and also Facebook and Messenger (I don't really use the latest,  and can use my browser for the former.)  Instead of having to charge my phone at midday (which is good,  as I ran off today without my charger),  I got home at 10:30 and it was holding at about 50%. Not bad.

So far...

EILIR -- Level 19 Mage
• Member since Dec 16, 2015
• Last logged in Jan 15, 2016

Stats
• Health: 45/50
• Mana: 116/117
• Gold: 44
• Level: 19
• Experience: 207/420

Attributes
• Strength: 21
  • Level: 9
  • Allocated: 3
  • Buffs: 9
• Intelligence: 43.5
  • Level: 9
  • Equipment: 15
  • Class Bonus: 7.5
  • Allocated: 3
  • Buffs: 9
• Constitution: 21
  • Level: 9
  • Allocated: 3
  • Buffs: 9
• Perception: 34.5
  • Level: 9
  • Equipment: 9
  • Class Bonus: 4.5
  • Allocated: 3
  • Buffs: 9

Achievements
• Streaker: Has performed a 21-day streak on a Daily 19 Perfect Days
• Completed all active Dailies on 19 days. With this achievement you get a +level/2 buff to all attributes for the next day. Levels greater than 100 don't have any additional effects on buffs.

Well, that's everything, except

exercising and doing the notes, the latter of which I'm about to at least get a start on. As far as the exercise goes, I have walked 8,245 steps today, which works out to 4.37 mi, and 85 minutes of activity, according to my phone, burning 795 calories. That's better than 10-15 minutes on the complex bike, so I'm going to consider that my exercise for the day. Perhaps tomorrow I'll bike. Tomorrow I'm going over to my friends' house, do laundry, and visit with them, maybe work on moving the books YKWIA wants accomplished.

I'm doing much better lately--even today, without the normal routine--of taking my medication and checking my blood sugar when I'm supposed to. Dr. Humphries had asked me to keep track of both on a paper and then snap a picture of it on my phone and e-mail it to her weekly. Next Monday will be the first full week. I'm using three applications on my phone to keep track and encourage myself to do what I'm supposed to do:

• On Track, which allows me to keep my medication and glucose logs daily.
• Clock (the basic Android Clock program), to set an alarm for 9:00 pm for taking my nightly Lantus, which is the hardest to remember (I used to have an application called MediSafe, which was good, which could remind me to take my medicine whenever it was supposed to by a shaking pill bottle sound, but it became annoying after awhile. After all, I take my other meds at mealtimes, so there was not always a set 'time' that was good, and I just have to remember, take this when I eat. But the Lantus is hard, because it isn't taken at meals.
• Habitica (formerly HabitRPG), which is a habit-forming helper that uses an avatar with hit points and experience, all the things you'd see in a role-playing game, and you keep the avatar alive and increase its stats and inventory by accomplishing to-dos, daily tasks, and regular habits. Each one is designated easy, moderate, hard, etc., giving you a different set of points based on that. You can use experience points to get items such as armour, weapons, etc. It's pretty fun. Basically, I set it up so I can either tell it I took my meds or forgot to (which adds or subtracts points, respectively), whether I cleaned house today, or worked on the notes, e-mailed my doctor, those sorts of things, by a certain day. I really like it--I've tried other habit trackers, but given my gaming background, this one really resonates. I'm three experience points away from level 3 just after a few days. You can also use it on the computer by following the link above.

Okay. I never actually ate lunch, but I just had dinner. I guess I was busy working and wasn't all that hungry. Time to move over to the laptop and work on the notes.

Trying out a new keyboard for my phone

Called Ginger Keyboard and it includes a spell checker,  so I'm curious as how it performs. It uses swiping just like the other keyboards I've used--I never did get the  hang of just typing with a finger,  and I find swiping much quicker.

It's supposed to be a glorious day, weather-wise

Sunny, 62 degrees at present but supposed to climb to 80. This morning, in the hour I've been up, I have:

1. Filled up my medicine reminder box
2. Tweaked the application on my phone that reminds me to take my medicine to update new medication and which doctors prescribe them
3. Taken all my meds
4. Tested my blood sugar
5. Weighed myself--eek!
6. Put various things into S Health, the application that keeps track of my steps, food, exercise, etc.
7. Eaten some yoghurt and blackberries for breakfast
8. Drunk a full glass of water
9. Perused the news

I am now ready to go take a shower, get dressed, feed the fish, and go out into the bright sunshiny day. I'm going to take the laptop over to my friends' house in case there's any time to work on game notes. The grocery run is the only thing I think that's on the agenda right now otherwise, and maybe catching up on the 'Salem' episode from last week if they haven't watched it already. I may go on a walk with A, as he's offered to go with me. We'll see. I'll wear my sandals but bring my walking shoes, too. I'll wait till tomorrow to do laundry over there.

Okay, time to get ready!

Is it me

or is today going by very sloooowly???

We've got several of our doctors out on a mission trip this week, so the clinic is pretty slow, meaning I have fewer charges to put in. So although I used the time to catch up with library stuff, time seemed to drag. After work I grabbed something to eat at home and tried to use my banking application with much frustration. I don't know if there's a glitch now that I'm running the higher operating system on my phone, or what, but it was very annoying. I was finally able to do what I was trying to do, but only with great effort and circumventing a screen or two.

I helped with a couple of projects [one quick, one tedious yet necessary] over at my friends' house, visited for awhile, watched 'Hart of Dixie' with YKWIA, found a book that had gone missing, helped right a shelf of books that tried to collapse--that sort of thing. But finally I am home and it's only a little after 10:30 but I am ready for some rest and a brand new day. There were several things I found interesting in the news, but I'll have to blog about them later, I'm afraid. But you have a great night.

I've been mostly relaxing

this evening, when I should have been working on the house. I didn't exactly crash, but I did take a nap, using a new application that was free through Amazon today that uses your phone as a measure of how well you're sleeping. It was interesting. I don't think I'd use it every night, but it does give some insight into how much you toss and turn, etc. It's called Sleep, and the unlock key for the paid version is available for free, along with a bundle of various applications worth $140. Just follow the link from the Amazon App Store. I got a few of them. Some had been the free application of the day in the past, so I already had them.

There seems to be a small war going on in my apartment building, one which I plan to stay well clear of. There was a collection of different-coloured sticky notes taped together haphazardly on the front door this morning with all sorts of masking tape, with some sort of missive (I didn't read it, as I was heading to work and was in a hurry) of how dogs bark and it was addressed to whomever complained to the leasing office. There is an apartment with two small dogs who go off at the least bit of noise, something new for our apartment building, as it's always been rather quiet. Now I am a dog person, but I admit, it annoys me. There are other dogs in the building, but you would never know it. But these guys go off the moment someone enters the building. So while I didn't complain, I can understand why someone might have. And we've recently had one of those general 'clean up after your dog' reminders sent out from the leasing office, to be ignored if you don't have pets or clean up after them. So I do wonder if there is anything else going on. Anyway, the sticky notes were gone when I got home today, and I got the impression that they were perhaps taken down by the office, so the person who put it up isn't getting any points as a good tenant, and while I can't be certain it was that apartment, surely the leasing office knew who the complaint was against. When I had a dog, she did not bark. Period. I was very lucky in that regard. And when my friends seriously considering finding another home for one of their dogs, who would probably love to be an only dog, I did not take her because she has a high, shrill bark and goes off easily. I don't mind people having pets at all, but I don't think it's right to assume the rest of the world is wrong because they don't like your pet's barking. The sticky note collection spoke volumes about the pet owner, and it seemed very immature. We're an apartment complex of mostly working people. There aren't a lot of students or the like. Noise isn't generally tolerated. Loud parties do not happen; our courtesy officers are also police officers and will give citations. But more to the point, people are mostly considerate. I turn down my music, for example, if my windows are down, the moment I turn into our parking lot with the car. I don't play the TV or music loud. I think it's reasonable to expect some quiet, especially at night. Now I will say the dogs don't bark constantly--only when someone is going in and out of the building, and that's good, at least. But we'll see if this escalates. My impression though is that the pet owner will probably not be here that long with that attitude.

Sorry for the absence

I'd like to say I've been really busy, and I have been, really, but the last few days are sort of a blur of activities that I really can't comment on because I don't remember the order or substance of all of it. I did get everything on the new year's list finished except the fish tanks. I'll try to do that this week. But I did two weeks of notes (although the game was called this week), the book review (right under the wire). I got all four loads of laundry done and the bedroom looks much better, although I have a few things to do, like take the air mattress that had been in a tote that now houses summer clothes and put it in the car trunk so that if I'm stranded at my friends', I can sleep on that. I also need to dig out my old CPAP and put it in there, as I can't really sleep well without one. I do this each winter, and I'm a little late this time but the cold snap we're experiencing is really the first taste of winter since the snow on Halloween.

This is the first night in days when I didn't feel like heading straight to bed, or (when I was procrastinating the book review and notes) playing solitaire on the computer for just long enough to get sleepy. Yes, I know, not the best use of time, especially when there are other things to do, but it was relaxing.

I hope you've had a good start to 2015. Mine's going pretty well. My main resolution for the year is to try to manage my medication well. I've plugged it all into a medication reminder application on my phone. You can 'take' them individually or shake your phone to take all at once. Considering I take seven injections of three different medicines, plus six tablets once a day, and two tablets twice a day, for a total of ten tablets a day, and one inhaler as needed, this will hopefully help. I take different meds around 8 am, 9 am, noon, 4 pm, and bedtime, so that varies a lot, too. The application is called MediSafe, and it isn't obnoxious or anything; it notifies you with either pop-ups or notifications with the sound of a pill bottle shaking. So far I'm struggling (it is easy to just tell it you took something to get it out of the way), but it'll keep track of things and even things like refill times, prescribers, and if you designate it, a medication buddy who receives info to make sure you're complying. And yes, it's free.

Okay, I should probably sign off. Fortunately the 3 GB hotspot is working pretty well as far as not getting too much being used with each session. I think this will do well. But I don't want to spend too much time at any given time throughout the month. But I can use my phone, which has unlimited data, for most things, including blogging, but it's easier to use the laptop for long posts (without having to deal with autocorrect, for one). :) Anyway, have a good night.