Well, I finally have an arrival time

 5:30 AM

Aghh! I didn't get a call because they were so slammed today after the holiday (I'm assuming everyone was breaking bones over the holiday; that is usually the case with us.) I called as per directions after 1 pm but couldn't get the scheduler, then was on hold for 25 minutes on the main line before asking to be called. I tried the scheduler, Cheryl, again and got her, and she apologised and gave me the time and apologised for the delay. A few minutes later I got a cal from the general phone bank following up on my other call.

I have to take a shower tonight and use the wipes, then do the wipes in the morning. And I'm going to get up early, make coffee so we can put it in a thermos for my roommate so he can function somewhat there. He plans to sleep in the waiting room. He is not happy, but I am one of a handful of people he would get up in the middle of what he would consider the night to this for.

I suspect I was added onto the beginning of the day's schedule, on a day that the surgeon was not going to be there, as I know that I'm the only case of his that day's, so I'm thinking given that it was a holiday weekend he may be coming back from  vacation a little early to do that or something like that, which I appreciate.

Our ride is coming at 5 am [Thank you, Brenda!] I have to drink 20 oz. of Gatorade at 4:30 am, but the surgery scheduler said it was so early that it was fine if I did it before bed. I figure between the wipes and the coffee I'll be getting up by 3:30 am anyway so it's no issue. 

The only things I have to do now other than that are finish my laundry, both clothes and bed clothes, pack my backpack,  make sure things are charged, and I think that's it. Everything else is ready. I know what I'm wearing. I have all the paperwork anyone might need ready. I think I'm good to go. I also think that while the first load  of clothes are drying that I am going to take a nap. :)

Okay

The ROMTech rep came mostly without a hitch [although she did accidentally bring another bike], with the excption of the escape artist dog, who managed to get through a mostly closed door (which goes in, so in theory, barricaded them in), plus a dog gate, just as she was coming through the door to greet her, but fortunately she was nonplussed by him, as he is very friendly and I kept him from jumping up more than the one attempt. She reset the program, and we talked a bit, and then she left. The nice thing is that now I don't have to get on the bike again until Friday.

I'd already made coffee and fed the animals, made my bed,  made my to-do list, gotten dressed, etc. I was hurting a bit, so I took my morning meds, including the Tylenol. I've already attempted to wake my roommate once, but it looks like I'll have to do it again. We need to do some bills before I go tomorrow. I need to do some laundry today: my clothes, my bedclothes, and anything he might have. I have PT as well. I'll need to water the plants. I didn't manage to do that last time, and they languished another week and a half while I recovered to the point I could. I need to get the walker out to a more accessible place. I called about a debt, and I need to update that file and print it for my friend so he has all the necessary contact numbers and information in case anything happens to me. Again, just being practical. Then that'll be done.

I'm feeling pretty rested. I'm not experiencing many tics. I don't feel very anxious, as confirmed by my watch. I think I've got this.

I am really moving slowly this morning

I don't know if it's the cloudiness outside, or the fact I was so productive yesterday, or what, but I got up at 7:50 am, had breakfast, loaded the dishwasher, ran it, took my medicine, then went back to sleep for a little while, got up, did a few things around here, went back to bed, got a call from YKWIA to make plans for today, went to sleep, got a call from A, went back to sleep, got up, washed all the plastic and other dishes, including two big vases, and out of desperation made coffee, which I do not normally drink but thought that with enough half-and-half I'd try to cultivate since it's better than soda, since I do have other things to do today and just am not with it, apparently. Now I'm hot and sweaty from doing the dishes and I think I got more water on me than them, but they're all done. I still have to take out the trash and recyclables, as they're full, which I'll do before I go over to YKWIA's at 2 pm, and then I'll apply for that job this evening. Although I did go to bed at a decent hour, I didn't sleep well, accidentally set our four o'clock appointment today for AM, so woke up at 4 am, and then couldn't get back to sleep for a good long while. I don't know. But I'm going to try to keep on track. Next on my agenda, after I cool down under the little fan on my desk, will be to get a shower and get ready to go, then take out the trash, etc. I've got about an hour, so that should take up most of it. :)

So I've never really understood the appeal of coffee

Photo: Julius Schorzman (Creative Commons licence)

It's--okay. With cream, lots of cream, and a little sweetener. But I don't drink it much at all, usually when I'm poor and trying to maintain some level of caffeination, as it's free at work. But I have discovered that coffee (which I once said in a fit of emotion that it made me sleepy, when really I just wanted to go home from the game and didn't tell the truth, when offered a cup), in addition to giving a boost to mental acuity, also (at least with me) drives my appetite to almost nil, not merely an appetite suppressant, but like, an appetite annihilator. So I may have to start drinking some in the hopes of losing some weight. And here's another thing that might help with cravings:

Gaming: Tetris Play Weakens Cravings and Addiction By 20 Percent

Playing Tetris helps ward off cravings because it disrupts the mind from imagining food, drugs, or activities.

Tetris helped in warding off cravings because it disrupts the mind from imagining food, drugs, or activities. The next time you feel like grabbing sweets while on a strict diet play Tetris for at least three minutes instead.

I happen to still have an old Nintendo with Tetris, and Tetris on my phone. Hmmm....

Speaking of which, I've neither started bread or made macaroni and cheese, yet, because I've been busy blogging. So that's it for now, I'm going to go make food happen.

Awake

Me in my hotel room this afternoon, flushed from all that walking

Although the salmon and risotto was very good at dinner, it was much smaller in portion than some of the other, cheaper, things on the menu, so it didn't stay with me and I actually woke up in the middle of the night hungry. We ate at Park Grill again, and it was excellent. Like I said, it didn't keep me satisfied till morning though. Yesterday's meal of cheese curds, black bean burger, and fries was almost too much to eat by comparison.

I headed down to the lounge in the hopes that they'd still have some fruit down there, but apparently they take it up on the weekends, starting early Friday. Pooh! So I came back up and made a cup of (decaf) coffee in the Keurig in my room, the first time I've used a K-cup machine. Since I wasn't sure if you took off the foil or not (you don't), I viewed a review/demonstration video on YouTube. I always found them a little intimidating, so I've never used them, and of course, unless you have a reusable cup, the plastic ones are expensive and bad for the environment. But I think, despite the fact that I don't particularly like coffee, that it helped stave off some hunger for now, by filling my stomach with something. The Wi-Fi is still a bit temperamental here at the corner of the hotel, so I moved over to the bed from the desk and it's doing better; now I'm getting two bars.

Overall, my stay at Club Quarters at Wacker and Michigan has been very good, though, and the hotel staff have been very pleasant. Unlike my stay at the Marriott--UIC previously, I've had no trouble using the key card in the elevator. I always had to rely on strangers to get me up to my floor there, because I could never make the system work. I don't know if that was user error or a problem with their system, but anyway, it's working fine here.

Tomorrow we have a meeting that runs from 8 am to 1 pm, and I'm lucky to have a ride to the meeting thanks to a colleague who I met over dinner. We talked quite a bit through that, and then some more during and after the walk back to the hotel, and so she's going to give me a ride, since she has a car here. It does mean that since check-out is by noon, that I'll have to have everything ready to go and check out by 7 am, just like I would have if I'd taken the Pink Line train, but I don't have to carry three bags on the train and walking, either. I had planned to take the Blue Line back to O'Hare afterwards, but I'm not sure I'll have time. I may need to take a cab. If I stay for lunch, it'll be 1 pm, and my flight leaves at 3:52 or so. With O'Hare I definitely need to get there as early as possible to deal with security, etc. We'll see. Maybe I can share a cab with someone else going to the airport. But if not, I think I have enough cash on me to get me there.

I should probably try to go back to sleep. I have to get up in less than four hours. Good night.

Cats and coffee in one place

Behold America's One and Only Cat Café

Ladies and Gentlemen, have a look around America's very first cat café, which pet food brand Purina ONE is hosting as a pop-up on the Bowery tomorrow through Sunday. Just like its Asian and European counterparts, this Cat Café provides the opportunity to drink a latte while completely surrounded by cats.

The cats come from a local shelter and are offered up for adoption. So if you're in New York and love cats, be sure to catch this pop-up café while you can. :)

Odd story of the day...

Tonnes of nicked Nutella gives cops bellyache

Exactly what do you do with five tonnes of Nutella? This is the third strange heist in the area, the others being a trailer full of coffee a couple of weeks ago and several tonnes of Red Bull before that.

A nice afternoon

Today we had a catered lunch at work. For carnivores there was apparently excellent chicken with apricot sauce and pulled pork. Otherwise there was potato salad, a vegetable pasta salad, fruit, chips, cookies, brownies, and fruit bars, lemonade, and tea. I ate some potato salad and pasta salad, a tiny bit of fruit, and yes, did have a wonderfully rich chocolate brownie. I stopped by the cafeteria and got some eggs off the salad bar to have a little protein in my system. Despite the carbs, I did pretty well.

I was ahead on my time, so I left a half-hour early and rode home on the bus. I went to the library and got several books of various types. There's two graphic novels: Chiaroscuro: the Private Lives of Leonardo da Vinci, which I never managed to find the whole series when DC-Vertigo put it out; Graphic Classics: HP Lovecraft--yes, I've read the stories, but I'm always interested when they translate it into graphic form. Then there's John Oldale's A World of Curiosities: Suprising, Interesting, and Downright Unbelievable Facts from Every Nation on the Planet (I love trivia books); The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto (the Holocaust is an area of special interest for me); finally, Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: the Illustrated Edition. I read this book years ago (my mother was taking some college classes and had to do a report on it), but the illustrations make it worth a second-look.

I carried the books home somewhat awkwardly (the Brown book has a wrapper around it that would be easy to damage). A typical evening, there are boys playing football and basketball over near the court. I got in and was happily surprised to find a cheque from my flexible spending company. I was pretty sure I was overcharged the last time I went to Lexington Clinic, and lo, I was. I can put that in the bank tomorrow, yay! Then I went out and watered my pepper, which was looking a little peaked. After that I fixed dinner (I still have the lovely pole bean orecchiette that YKWIA made me. I had that and a garden burger patty. I may go back for seconds with the pasta. I'm also having a little coffee, something I rarely do. It's chocolate raspberry. I got some of those 'Mini-Moos' last time I went to the grocery, because I don't drink enough coffee to get half-and-half, but these store for awhile.

Yesterday I got my new issue of Victoria magazine, which I love to peruse. I didn't get a chance to look at it last night, so that will be something for this evening. Also, I am considering watching The Lorax, so I can send it back tomorrow. I think the next DVD on my list is Coraline, but I may see about getting something else in my queue. I've really been wanting to watch Priscilla, Queen of the Desert again, and unfortunately my copy is VHS and my VCR died. I also discovered just now that 'Airwolf' is available on streaming video. I really liked that show. It had helicopters, cellos, and Jan-Michael Vincent. :)

Okay, I think I'm going to do a quick sweep of the news, get some more coffee, and start doing some things. :)