Yay, I finished!

And it's only 11:30 pm, so getting up for an early movie and enjoying a Saturday morning before work may be doable. :)

Note to self for Saturday:

1. Take back some library books.
   
2. Go to movie/breakfast.
   
3. Go to Kroger and get a couple of things.
   
4. Stop by the pet store and get some feeder guppies or goldfish, something cheap to stock the tank with to see how they do.
   
5. Send out payments on my taxes.
   
6. Come home, get ready for work.
   
7. Set the DVR to record the opening WEG festivities, just in case it's interesting.
   
8. Go back, this time to the store.
   
9. Come home.
   
10. Transfer over the notes to the Kindle, etc. and get things ready to take to the game.
    
11. Sleep!
    

If I work and get the game notes done tonight

I can make the 9 am showing of Despicable Me at Movie Tavern tomorrow, where they serve breakfast and a movie for $10.50 total. I live very close and can just walk over. But I have to finish the notes and then there's the getting up early on a Saturday morning. The movie is supposed to be great and it's not showing anywhere else in Lexington presently. I've never been to Movie Tavern. It might be worth going, though. We'll see.


But I'm tempted to go just for the minions. :)

Well

My blood sugar is a little elevated this morning (248), probably due to the mead last night. I feel a little bleary (but not hung over--it was a very small glass of mead), and I overslept (I meant to get up at 7 am, but got up at 10:30).

So there probably won't be any extra time for anything but notes this morning. So I'm off to do that.

Up early

With the idea to work on game notes early in the week (well, earlier than Saturday, anyway). After days of rain there's not a cloud in the sky and it's quite sunny, although very cool.

I keep thinking it's Tuesday, when it's Wednesday. I lost time on Monday when I was feeling so awful and spent the day at home. The nice thing about this is pay day crept up on me and refilled my bank account whilst I was unsuspecting. :)

Yesterday's highlight was giving blood (I hadn't been contagious on Monday, after all, just full of fibromyalgia soreness and fatigue). It was a day to bleed, apparently. When the guy went to check my hematocrit it burst from my finger all over his lab coat. They still had to spin my blood to find out if I could give (it never just sinks in the copper sulfate solution--I guess it's a problem with being female). Anyway, the phlebotomist got the vein on the first try, I was done quickly, and chalked up yet another almost-universal-donor gift for life. They didn't have any of that blue co-ban without latex so she had to tape me up with gauze and regular tape, and I liked to never got that off later.

I've never given as often as I could, but mainly do it at bloodmobiles that come to work. (It's not that easy to get to the main centres on the buses. I've only donated once at a centre--it was at the old location, which was easier to get to, and it was September 11, 2001.) But I'm working on my fourth gallon. Of course, I started when I was 17, so I'm kind of slow. But I'm O+, so I get lots of reminders from the blood centre.

I'm also on the bone marrow donation registry, although if I ever go to insulin my diabetes will probably prevent me from donating there. But in the meantime I keep up my contact information should it be needed.

Okay, let's see what I can do about these notes. Time to transfer the recording to the computer for transcription.

In celebration of finishing the notes

and still having time to relax. :)

Good morning

I woke up today feeling a bit better physically and a lot better mentally. I want to get into the swing of the day with 'The Unicorn and the Wasp' (yes, it's Doctor Who), but instead I'm going to work on the notes for a bit. Angelica is going to come around noon and take me to get a few things. In the meantime, I must be diligent and get some work done before then.

Well, it's 1 am

Soon it will be 3 am instead of 2 am. I'm going to bed, having finished the game notes. Had a good day at work; I was a little too bouncy for my tastes, and managed to insert my foot into my mouth is a most spectacular way (twice), but survived without really offending anyone. And there was nummy Bean Curd Szechuan-style from Golden Wok. Will write more tomorrow. Good night.

Bleh

Despite working the truck last night (the cigarettes were not too bad; the cooler was), my neck was feeling halfway decent so I didn't take any pain medicine last night before I went to bed. I woke up several times throughout the night trying to get a good position, and now my neck hurts worse than it had been, along with my back, and I feel achy all over for that matter, because I did not get the best of sleep.

Now that I've eaten something I've taken half a tablet, with the aim of working on the notes. I got a third of them done on Tuesday, and had great hopes for finishing them by Thursday or Friday until the neck thing happened. Still, I must push on, because the time change is tonight and I have one less hour before the game tonight. I think I can finish this morning. But my I fear bleary and not at my best. The weather change and the beginning of my allergies aren't helping either. We had a big front of thunderstorms go through yesterday.

Okay, I better get on those notes.

Well, I'm about a third of the way through the game note transcription

and I took out the trash, did dishes, did laundry, and spent some time on a massage cushion/heating pad to help my back/neck/shoulder relax. I'm going to go on to bed now. If I manage to do about as much on the notes as I did tonight I could have them done by Thursday or Friday at the latest, leaving me Saturday morning to do more laundry and clean the bathroom, hang the new shower liner, do the kitchen, and mop the floors. Wish me luck.

Also, I think I'm going to start setting the alarm for 7 am in the hopes of getting up at 8 so that I can actually have some time to ease into the day rather than the normal jump up and go. I think it would help my productivity at work. Plus, I can eat breakfast earlier and take my medicine, etc. before I get there, plus check the news and maybe blog, which I usually don't get to do until late at night. (I'm not allowed to blog from work.)

Okay, good night. It turned out to be a decent second-half-of-the-day after all. Hopefully tomorrow will be better at work. I think when it comes down to it, my reactions to things was the problem. Fortunately I wasn't bitchy or impolite. I was just down. I should be back to my old self tomorrow.

On my afternoon/evening off so far I have:

1. Taken a nap.
   
2. Researched a couple of things for a friend, including something that the public library couldn't find for him (but which I did, yay!) I think he likes having his own personal librarian.
   
3. Transferred over the game recording off the digital voice recorder to be transcribed.
   
4. Made coffee to fortify me.
   
5. Cooked some basmati rice and put it in the refrigerator for tomorrow's supper (tomorrow on the lunch menu is a spinach frittata and breakfast, so I'm looking forward to that).
   
6. Washed a sink full of dishes. I have a small drainer, so there are a few left. I'll let the wet ones dry for awhile and then if they haven't completely dried in an hour or two, I'll wipe them down and finish the others.
   
7. Put in a load of laundry in the laundry room under the leasing office. It should get me to Saturday morning, when I plan to do more, but I just have the money to do one tonight. Fortunately I'll have a repayment go through tonight, an automatic pay deposit go through tonight, and another on Wednesday night.
   

Now I need to work on the notes while the clothes are washing and drying. I'll take the trash out (not much, yay!) out when I go to change to the dryer. I'll try to go to bed around midnight or 1 am.

I'm glad to have the night off. I wasn't sure I would be since a co-worker was out sick over the weekend and it was up in the air as to when he would return. Tonight was truck night. I hope they did alright--I think it was just the two of them.

Okay, off to do notes, or at least get a good start on them.

I had oral surgery today to take a broken tooth out

and it went well. I guess I was in the office a total of 40 minutes and the procedure took 15. They thought they might have to cut it out in pieces because it had had a root canal, but they just had to drill a bit and make a couple of incisions and it came right out. I paid out of pocket for nitrous oxide (my insurance doesn't cover it) because I was nervous and it really helped me relax. The local anaesthetic has worn off and my jaw on the right side is just a little swollen. They have me on Percocet 5 for pain (I can't take Lortab; it makes me itch and a little manic) and a Z-pack of antibiotics. The latter is a little iffy. It contains azithromycin, a drug related to eurythromicin, which I can take, and clindomycin, which I'm allergic to. I've never had it before. So we'll see. In the meantime, I stocked up on soft foods (I have ice cream in my house for the first time since August of last year). Tomorrow we're supposed to get a snowstorm so I didn't want to get caught without food. I got some soup and pasta to get me through.

I didn't think to ask about using my CPAP after the oral surgery until after their office had closed, but I found a page online that were surgical directions from another practice that said that it was fine. I hope so, as I don't want a dry socket. I'm pretty sure that I used my CPAP right after my wisdom teeth were pulled, and that was a more serious surgery, as I had sedation and five teeth were extracted (I had another tooth that had issues at the time.)

I got up early and went out to Best Buy, which is near the oral surgeon, and returned the graphics card and got another one that was better and fits in the AGP slot. I figure since the current card is in that slot, I may have better luck. This card supports not only Windows 7 but also dual displays and HD. So it should work for awhile, assuming I get it going. I looked at memory but I wasn't sure if they would work because they were rated by speed of the processor and I couldn't remember what I have. I checked although the computer has a speed of 2.67 gigahertz, the memory speed is 533 megahertz. I'll have to do a little research and see what's available for that. Some geeky guy came up to me (not an employee) bragging about how he had 4 GB of memory in his computer and that he loved this stuff. I'm not sure but I think he was hitting on me. He definitely didn't attract me, and I kept the conversation short and decided to go before I missed my bus.

I then took the bus (to the next stop, but it kept me from having to walk over the New Circle bridge) and had Long John Silver's fish and chips with cheese curds and a milkshake. I figured if I was going to be on soft food for awhile, I'd live it up beforehand, and I had to make sure I ate before surgery (that's a switch, I know, but I wasn't being sedated and they didn't want my blood sugar to drop). The guy who made my milkshake made too much so he brought not only the mug (with whipped cream and cherry on top) but the rest of the cup that goes in the mixer. All in all it made two and a three quarters mugs of milkshake. :) Okay, I know, I didn't really need a milkshake, but it helped settle my nerves a little.

I still had about an hour before the procedure and so I went to K-mart, which is just a couple of buildings away from the surgery centre. There I used some of the money I'd gotten from the return of the graphics card to buy three towel sets (my friends will rejoice; they've kidded me for years for owning pretty much one towel), a screwdriver set (mine have evaporated, and I don't want to use a multi-tool on the new graphics card), and a new shower liner (mine is five or six years old and needs to go on to shower liner heaven). Oh, and I bought a dispenser for hand soap. The towels were just $2.99 and then $2.49 for the hand towels and washcloths, all in all I spent $43. I did look at bedding but I didn't see any I liked. (Although I see Martha Stewart was replaced by Jaclyn Smith). So I had a huge bag to carry around. I went ahead and put the graphics card in there, too. By the end of the day I had my gauze/post-surgery kit in there, and a library book they'd put on hold for me (one of the Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher). Then of course I also had my medicine and then in separate bags the food and drinks I'd purchased at the pharmacy.

By the time I got home I was ready to take some Percocet (before the numbing wore off completely) and sleep a bit. I got into the comfy chair and had a massage (there's a massaging cushion I keep on it) and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Then some friends called to check up on me and afterwards I moved to the bed and the CPAP machine. So I've had a four-hour nap. But I feel refreshed.

I have several things to work on (notes, the fish tank, and the house) and I've taken off tomorrow from both jobs in case I have much swelling or any aftereffects. If I'm doing okay I'll try to get that stuff done. I'd love to go see The Lovely Bones but I'm not sure I want to get out in the snow tomorrow, and it's not like I can eat popcorn or anything. :) I may just hole up here and do what I can, whatever I feel up to. I might even get to read a little. I've not completed one book since the beginning of the year, and January is almost gone. I have a Charlaine Harris book out from the library that needs to go back next Monday and it's very popular so I can't just renew it. I need to read that before the Jim Butcher one.

Okay, this has been a very long post. I'm going to see what I want to do now. I'm not used to having an evening to myself. I don't feel like doing much physical (and I took another Percocet because the first wore off), so I'm a little relaxed and sleepy (even my feet feel better), so it might mean watching TV (which I never do) and then later working on the game notes for awhile. Oh, and I should check my RSS reader; it's probably got a lot of news in it. But just in case I don't blog anymore tonight, have a great night. And there's that graphics card....

Yes!

I finished the notes by 11 pm even with a two-hour nap and I have enough time to get a decent night's sleep. Go me!

Things are much better today

I was stressed about the game notes until I talked to the game master; I still have to finish them tonight so that they'll be ready for tomorrow, but I'm half-way through and can probably wrap them up by midnight, so I'll actually get some rest. I just took a two-hour nap to try to make up for getting up so early this morning (I had to be at work at 8 am and tried to get up at 4:30 to get things done, so I woke up and snoozed for about three hours). I don't know why it's so hard for me to wake up, even when I'm well rested. Anyway, I feel refreshed and ready to go back to typing.

One of the nice things about working 8 hours at a stretch at the store is that you get a couple of ten-minute breaks and a twenty-minute lunch, and that breaks things up and makes it seem to go by quicker. Our truck came very early so I checked it in and did put a couple of boxes of cigarettes away before I left at 4 pm. Then it was back out into the cold (it was 14 degrees Fahrenheit when I left this morning, and 19 when I got back home this afternoon, but the wind chill was much less). Then I went straight to transcribing.

I didn't get a single thing I meant to do today done

and by the time I got to work I'd worked myself into a tizzy over the notes, etc. But my day improved after I got into the swing of working (it's hard for me to stay in a bad mood when I'm waiting on customers). And really, it's fine, I'll work on notes tonight and do laundry tomorrow night, go to bed early tomorrow night to make up for the lack of sleep tonight, and go from there. It's not worth being upset. I should have gotten things done earlier. But I was very productive at work despite my feet, which worsened over the shift, and I remained upbeat and cheerful. Plus, since it was a company holiday, I should get double time for my efforts, meaning it will be like I worked 16 hours instead of 8, or 6 more than I would have originally gotten credit for as scheduled.

So now I'm home and I'm resisting the comfy chair, even though I want to put my feet up, and I'm going to work on the notes for awhile. Wish me luck!

Hi and Happy New Year

I'm a little groggy despite not drinking last night, and I'm going into work an hour-and-a-half early, so I'm not sure if I'll get anything I wanted to do today done. So it's not an auspicious beginning to the year.

Yesterday was focussed on friendship and fun. I ended the year on an up-beat, going over to YKWIA's and visiting, eating fried tofu and vegetables, and watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, something I missed in the theatres. I loved it; it's my favourite of the movies so far, even with all the snogging, and of course I cried you-know-when (if you don't, go read the book--it's devastating both in the plot and for the reader/viewer). I'm considering re-reading the seventh book in preparation for the next two movies.

I had gone and gotten my rent money order, which I'll take in tomorrow when they're in the office and can give me a receipt, and I did manage to get home relatively early (9 pm) although not before dark as I had meant to. Then I pulled out my DVD for 'Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog' (I'd been listening to the soundtrack on my phone on the way home) and watched the whole thing. Then I listened to the musical commentary, which I hadn't listened to before, which was amusing, although I should have worked on notes, in retrospect. I then nestled into the comfy chair with the Snuggie and watched a bit of the evening news and then muted the TV and set my alarm to 10 minutes till midnight so I could watch the ball drop.

I must not have heard it the first time; it went off right at midnight just as the ball reached the down position and the 'happy new year' sign came on. I watched for a few more minutes, shut off the TV, and slept.

I eventually made it to bed. This morning I tried to get up around 9 but just felt sluggish. I guess the night before last's insomnia has really caught up with me.

Someone from work called me at 9:30 to see if I could come in at 2 instead of 3:30 this afternoon. Fine, it's not like I'm getting anything done, anyway. So I'm working 2-10 tonight and 8-4 tomorrow morning and I'll be lucky if I can get the notes finished on time.

So I'm starting off the new year a little annoyed with myself. Oh, well. I'll get it all done, even if I have to stay up tonight.

Happy New Year, though.

Bleary-eyed

Despite going to sleep at a fairly reasonable hour (about midnight or 12:30 am), I'm pretty groggy this morning and really just want to sleep in, but I have some things to do before work--mainly game notes, so I'm up. Tomorrow I need to go somewhere at 6 am, meaning I'll have to get up at 4:30. I can't put them off any longer. I wish I would just do a little over the week instead of at the end, but it's difficult to make time when you're working 12 hours a day or, on my days off, when you're trying to get everything else done, too.

I also need to pay some bills today online and check my library books. One is due soon, and I don't think it's able to be renewed, as it constantly is on hold. I did renew a book the other day using the phone number (859) 514-RENU. That was useful, easy to do, and kind of fun. I happened to be away from a computer and didn't want to get a fine.

Then there's the aquarium. It needs some water added so the fishies do well. My group of fire platies are still going strong, despite a tendency to have high nitrates. I still want to get a couple of golden snails and maybe some catfish, but I don't know if the scaleless ones will do okay with nitrates. I guess there's one way to try.

Okay, if I'm going to do stuff, I should go do it. Have a great weekend.

Shortest note session ever

It only took me a little over an hour to distill five hours' worth of game play down into the essentials. That means I can get some sleep before going over to my friend's house, but I'm afraid I'll oversleep again, putting me behind on game preparations. I think I'll set the new alarm clock, my cell phone, and the large manual alarm clock of doom.

If I sound anxious, well, the last 24 hours have been very anxious ones. Last night when I left work, the computer said I was $100 short. I fretted over where that money could have gone, and didn't sleep well. This morning I found out the money was there all along, but I'd hit the wrong button on the cash register and that had caused the discrepancy.

I applied for a great job last night (at the last minute) and was still upset from the cash shortage, and I wrote a very generic, not great cover letter. I'm good at résumés, but I really suck at cover letters and put off things because marketing myself is something that does not come easily to me. I had the résumé finished two weeks ago. Because I put it off, the application went through at 12:01, technically putting it past the deadline, so I may have just shot myself in the foot once again.

It's a really good job at the local university, a full-time medical reference librarian position with faculty status. I know several of the people who work there, including the director, so hopefully the ho-hum cover letter will be offset by that. Wish me luck. I could really use it.

After work today I went and got some medicine, came home and caught up on the news, and slept for a couple of hours, and talked to YKWIA on the phone for awhile, so I feel better now. I was just feeling like I didn't have enough time in the world to do everything I need to do, but I'm finished with all for now. But tomorrow starts very early, so I guess I'll lay down for awhile and see if I can get some rest. Good night.

That wasn't too bad

About five hours' worth of game time condensed down to about two hours of note-transcribing since most of it was a huge battle, and I just had to hit the highlights. Funny how the investigative part of things makes the notes much more intensive, but the really exciting, intense part of the game can be kind of glossed over in many respects. Well, I'm going to go on to bed. I'll get about seven hours' sleep all total, so that's pretty good. Have a good night.

I really hate it

when I lay down for 'just a few minutes' and wake up to find several hours have passed, when I need to have used that time for other things, like notes. The only reason I woke up at all is the game master called to see when I was coming over tomorrow. I slept over four hours. Grrr....

Well, at least I won't be terribly sleep-deprived on a Saturday night...that's better than I often get. Now if I can only finish the notes in time to get over to the house by bus by 8 am (meaning I have to catch the bus by 6:40). Gack. Fortunately last time we spent a lot of time fighting off a biker gang/avatar of he-who-should-not-be-named (no, not Voldemort, but rather something that would eat Voldemort for breakfast), and there's no reason for a blow-by-blow, so that should help.

A better day than expected

When I went to work at the store last night, I looked at the schedule more closely than I had when it first came out, and realised that the new manager had *scheduled me for 10 hours by myself*. Come on, a girl's got to pee at some point, not to mention there's no way to take federally-mandated breaks when you're the only person there. So contrary to my usual passivity, I called him. The district manager had apparently been under the delusion that we had single coverage on Saturdays (Sundays often, yes, but Saturdays?), so that's what he'd scheduled. I explained that this was not the case. He got one of the other women to come in a couple of hours early and the new guy to come in for four hours, so I was only alone for four hours total, broken up into two periods, so that wasn't bad. Of course, most of the propane exchanges did happen when I was alone.

As it turned out, although it was relatively steady, things were not as busy as they could have been, and with help around I was able to take my designated breaks, which helped out whenever I started flagging a bit. So even after working 10 1/2 hours, I am not as exhausted as I could have been, which is good, seeing as I still have notes to finish (although I did work on them earlier in the week for a change). Plus, my ankle wasn't too bad, either; it is swollen and does hurt, but not as badly as it has been, even after standing for that amount of time.

Yay.

Okay, I'm going to take it easy for about forty-five minutes and then start work on the rest of the notes. I may write later depending on how that goes. If not, good night.