Random things this morning

1. When you forget to take the trash bins to the kerb the night before, and the city is starting early due to the heat, it behoves you to get up at 5:00 AM to take the trash out and roll all three (trash, recycling, and yard waste, when in Lexington, have names, in order: Herbie, Rosiek and Lenny (for Lend a Hand). This is a somewhat perilous process in the dark, without anyone's knowledge, as you are also a klutz and liable to fall. But all went well. Still, at that point, you might as well stay up.
2. I have very short hair, but I have kept all my hair ties because they are extremely useful. I mainly use them to wrangle charging cords.  However, just now, I dealt with a sagging lumbar pillow that I have to adjust every single time I sit in the chair because the strap is stretched out by pulling it back and securing it with a hair tie. We'll see how it goes, but for now, it's at the perfect height for my back.
3. So far, I have used my extra time filing papers, mainly all the information the government sends me regarding my benefits. I know they're mostly duplicates of the notices they put on the portal, but still, some part of me thinks I should keep them. I also just had to change an asthma preventative inhaler that I've taken nightly for at least a decade (Breo Ellipta) because it's not covered by Medicaid. They cover Advair Diskus. Hopefully it will work as well. The pharmacist who works with my doctor helpfully advised me that the dosing is twice a day, though, so that was nice.  I spent 29 years with the same commercial medical insurance (UnitedHealthcare) when I was at Shriners. I knew my benefits intimately, and it was extremely good insurance: $150 deductible/$1500 out-of-pocket. Even though it was an HMO, it didn't require referrals as long as someone was in-network, and I never had issues with anyone being out-of-network in all that time. Since I've left, I've been covered by two Medicaid managed care organisations (Aetna Better Health of Kentucky and UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Kentucky), both of which use MedImpact for medications (all of them do, at least for our state) and then for two months I was on a assisted qualified health plan from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield where the state paid about $900 and I paid $500 for a $400-$500 deductible plan (medicine did not count like it did for my commercial plan, so I never hit it like I thought I would, or I would have gone for something cheaper, although medications were probably cheaper, and the first month of the doctors' visits were cheaper; the second month everything went up, including the premium, due to me pulling some retirement income out--to pay for the premiums and medical bills. It's been very hard to navigate all the changes. I'm highly literate, great with technology, and having been to university, an expert at red tape and bureaucracy (I always said I majored in red tape and minored in line waiting at the University of Kentucky); I  can't imagine how difficult it would be for someone without those advantages.
4. Today's agenda is fairly simple:
1. Work on as many chapters as I can, proofreading a talking book for the Kentucky Talking Book Library. I am woefully behind. I got chapter 3 done yesterday, which I was sent in April.  I got the whole book yesterday...fifteen chapters to go.  Life just has gotten in the way, and I should just buckle down now and get as much as I can get done while I'm off.
2. We need to put a large shop fan together to get some air moving in the house. It's a little oppressive out there, where the central heating went out last year. I am the only one with air conditioning in my room, and there have been other barriers to putting it in the rest of the house, so we've been relying on different types of fans and using my room as a cooling area for everyone occasionally.
3. I need to pick up some medicine at the UK pharmacy today.
4. My roommate's going over to friends' tonight, so it'll give me some chance to work on the book more. It's a true-crime murder mystery from the 1890s in northern Kentucky, so it's been pretty interesting, both from an historical and story point of view. 

Those are about all I can think of for now. That's a little rambling, I know. I'm just waking up, with no caffeine (I only drink soda on weekends, and I'm not a fan of coffee or tea; what can I say? It's terrible, I'm such an Anglophile and I hate tea.)

It's very quiet in the house

Just the sounds of my fans going above my head and nearby. We finally have some relief to the heat (it's been in the 90s with little to no rain for weeks), with rain in the forecast tomorrow, but I'm hot-natured, so even though it's in the 70s now both inside and out, I keep the fans on in my room whenever I'm there. But the quiet is nice. Sometimes it's good to only hear your own thoughts.

Today  I did many things but I did not go to the YMCA and do exercises in the pool like I meant to.  I haven't given up, I just had a lot to do today.  But I did have some time to myself and some relaxation time, as well as game notes and laundry and errands.

I went to the pharmacy today to get my roommate some medicine and see if they had my Lantus, as I started on my last pen of the pack.  Turns out they'd sent a request to my doctor's office for a refill and it had been denied.  The reason? They said they had never prescribed it.

Now, I have been on Lantus for a couple of years, Basaglar before that for a short time when it was on my insurance's formulary, and years of Lantus prior to that, including quite some time of it from this office, continuously up till this past month.  So obviously there has been a mistake. I'll have to call them on Monday.  I'm hoping I have enough to last me through Monday so we can get it taken care of, a pen only lasts a few days--I get 10 per refill, and they last about 3 days each.

On Habitica, the task/productivity 'game' I play, there was a reading challenge I took up to read a book called The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury.  Now I like Ray Bradbury, and it's actually a children's book, so I thought it would be good to read some fast-moving fiction. It's been such a struggle to read fiction (even non-fiction has its challenges), for several reasons.  For one thing, I think being on the Internet has made my attention span that of a gnat.  I've also apparently been a little off in how I use my bifocals, and it's hard for me to find a nice comfy place to read--I can't read in bed easily, and the comfy chairs are in the study (where my friend is often watching streaming stuff) or in his room.  Reading in bed requires lots of pillows, a folding lap desk, and a study pillow with a neck bolster.  I can read at the kitchen and study tables, when it is quiet, but the chairs are wooden and really need cushions after a while.  Still, I managed to read the whole book in a very short time, maybe an hour or an hour and a half (it's 145 pages long).  I enjoyed it--I knew all the various cultural ties to the practices of Halloween, but that was fine. And I'd figured out what happened to one of the characters.  I guess the only real thing I had a bit of an issue with it--not a lot, just a bit, were that there were no girls at all in the characters, and little to no character description or development, really.  But it is a product of 1972, and while Bradbury's writing deviates poetically from standard writing styles, he shares a common thread you find particularly in male writers of the time, and especially in science fiction writers, somewhat tilted towards action and away from characterization.  (Women, by contrast, tend to over-describe and have a lot of emoting going without driving the action forward at all)--a good writer balances both.  Still, his description of the settings and experiences are very good, and this story actually needs somewhat blank characters, as they represent certain timeframes of history in their costumes and with the exception of the one character from whose perspective the story is told,  there's no real personality among the children, and I guess there really doesn't need to be.  Anyway, I did enjoy the story, and it was a little chilling there at the end, so suitably Halloweenesque.

Later, we ate dinner from Subway with a friend, who had a couple of Pierce Brosnan 007 movies on, and then we returned home and I took up finishing the laundry.  I've done my clothes and I'm working on my friend's bedding right now. I'm going to do mine tomorrow.

Tomorrow I think I'll try to get up early.  I was supposed to do a couple of shelves, pulling off the books and dusting them.  I didn't, but I can today.  I did do the game notes, which were more timely.  If I could get that and my normal Sunday pre-game chores are done really early, I might still be able to go to the Y and do some exercises in the pool and work out in general for maybe an hour, total.  Then Monday I can go back for the low-impact pool class that I took this past week.  I did really well with everything (and have been in much less pain and been able to move and bend better as a result) except this thing where you put the foam dumbbells under your knees and then balance above them.  I need something to hold on and even so couldn't do it.  The instructor suggested getting a lighter pair of dumbbells (I had the heavy ones) next time.  People were really nice and non-judgmental, though, and I enjoyed it.  The instructor was very good.  We ended with a mindfulness exercise.  So it starts out easy, gets the heart pumping, puts you through all sorts of movement, but it isn't extremely intense--just right for my level of conditioning.

I  also need to run by the library while they're open and pick up a book on hold on the zero-waste home--I've been on the list for a while.  It must have been there when I picked up The Halloween Tree earlier, but I didn't realise it was in, so I didn't look.  I also checked out CDs by Sam Smith and Rush.

Okay, I'm going to get ready for bed.  The laundry's still in the dryer, but at least I'll have my teeth brushed, etc.  Hope you're having a good weekend.

Just got home

It's nearly 2 am.  I worked a half day,  then took a friend who was having minor surgery to his procedure, got him home, left him with another friend while I went for medicine and food,  took that friend home,  and then came back and stayed until now,  watching a show or two with him and reading to him. My neck has worsened over the course of the day.  My feet hurt from all the walking I did today. But now I'm home,  in bed,  with CPAP on and ready to get some sleep.  Also,  something (insect,  spider,  bug of some sort)  has bitten me and my leg is red,  itchy,  painful, and very hard to the touch,  which is a bit concerning.  It looks worse than the picture below...but hopefully it won't get worse.  I'm going back over to my friends' house early tomorrow and then to the pharmacy for three days in a row,  and while I'm there I'll try to get some cream for the bite. I also have to take a friend to an appointment by 11. So I should sign off and get some sleep.  Good night.

I've been a little nauseous and dizzy for the last two hours

Which has made driving/riding in a car somewhat disconcerting, although I didn't get full-out motion sick. It was actually worse when I was still or if I were going 45 or over. Every now and again I have issues during my time of the month, which it is, and trust me, I'm ready for menopause, even with all its joys. I was beginning to think I'd skip this month, like I did in January, because I was four days late (that doesn't have the same terror to it that it did in my early 20s). But it worked out, since my iron was good for giving blood Thursday. :) But I'm feeling a little better now that I'm eating some burritos.

My friends are at their appointment and one will call me when they're finished. I've gone by the pharmacy and gotten the medicine for one of them, and lo, my medicine was also ready (I thought it would be next week), so I picked up those, too. Fortunately I hit my out-of-pocket maximum sometime in February, so all I have to pay for is my iron tablets, and I still have some money on my flexible spending card. Then I came back home, printed out something from my phone (I love being able to do that over the Wi-Fi network) that I'd edited on my phone from an e-mail YKWIA sent (again, love being able to do that), and am basically ready to go back out in about an hour. I'll need to take one or both of them to the grocery, and then take them to their respective places, and that's all I have planned for today with them. I still have the DVD from last week to watch with YKWIA; we'll probably do that sometime this weekend.

Hope yours is going well so far. I think I'm going to check out the news and Facebook and see what's going on in the world.

Today was my early day at work

and after that I went over to a my friends', drove over to the pharmacy, got a couple of medicines for them, and I also picked up mine. It took an hour and 50 minutes from the time I left work till the time I got back with the meds, and they were getting ready to go out to eat with family, so I came on home. I am now pretty tired--I've been up for twelve hours already and driving, especially in rush hour traffic, sucks the life out of me. Right now I'm eating bean burgers with Havarti cheese. After that my plans are to:

1. Take a 45 minute nap.
2. Hang a new shower liner in the bathroom.
3. Take the old, nasty liner out to the garbage (it really was beyond my cleaning ability).
4. Take out the recyclables (for they are many, and take up the whole container).
5. Watch something fun, either a DVD or Netflix.

That's it. But first, that nap. That'll take me to 7:30 pm or so, and so I should have time to do the rest. I'll probably write later.

I am supposed to be at work

I spent over an hour digging out the car and trying to get out of the space, but got stuck half-way out and half-way in, finally managing to dig around the tyres enough to get some traction and get (mostly) in. I've called my boss to let her know I'll be late. I'll be taking the bus, and the next one I can reasonably catch is in about 50 minutes, so I have a few minutes to catch my breath and get ready for the walk over there. It does mean I can't get the medications, but I'm going to check and see if the Fayette County Sheriff's Department is still running their Winter Care programme, where they'll go get them for you. If not, I'll have to try to get there by bus, meaning leaving work really early, because our pharmacy closes at 6 pm. I'll work it out somehow. Looks like I'll get to work about 10 am, or an hour-and-a-half late. But Gods willing, I'll hopefully get there. Okay, time to start walking.

I feel somewhat better

which may have something to do with having two shots in the butt today at the doctor's office--one an antibiotic, the other a steroid. I haven't had a shot in my butt since I was a kid, I think. Now I've got a Band-Aid on each cheek. :) Tomorrow I'm going to pick up some more medicine from the pharmacy. Although the good news is I don't have strep throat and my lungs are clear, I've gone into a sinus infection. So hopefully I'll be feeling better in general soon, maybe even before Thanksgiving, as I am going to help YKWIA with Thanksgiving dinner and then visit my mom on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. I'd like to be free of most of the symptoms by then, but I'll settle for as soon as possible, as I've been sick for fifteen days and am quite tired of it.

I went over to YKWIA's tonight to watch 'Grimm' with him, which was quite good, plus we visited for awhile and watched some of 'The Big Bang Theory'. Billy Bob Thornton can do creepy really well. Tomorrow I'm taking A to the pharmacy (and getting my stuff as well), taking him to the grocery, and maybe a few other places as we gather stuff for Thanksgiving. Like last year, the theme is French-style cooking, but we managed to convince YKWIA to cut back a little this year, as there are only the three of us. Last year it took A and myself an hour-and-a-half to wash the dishes that wouldn't fit in the dish washer only to find YKWIA asleep at the table, tired from all we had done that day. There's still a lot to do this year, and I'm not off on Wednesday. But hopefully we'll have a good time.

I also have to finish the game notes tomorrow. I have some of them done, but there's still more, and it's investigative work, so that takes longer to transcribe than down time or action scenes. But I think we only played for about three-and-a-half hours last time, so that's not too bad. I just haven't felt up to working on them since we last played.

Okay, I think I will get something to drink and then head on to bed. Good night!

I woke up this morning

with a horrible dream in which I went totally mad, waking up at 8:12 am (I have to be at work by 8:30.) I was a bit late, but I was a little ahead on my time so I think it will work out. Despite thinking it would be dreadfully dull on a light clinic day right after Christmas, it actually went fairly smoothly and I got a lot done. I was the only one in the library for the most part, as my office mates were gone. It was so quiet I could hear the copier in sleep mode from across the room. So I travelled around the hospital occasionally and played some music from my phone using a little speaker (it's called a Music Bullet) as I worked.

I chose a primary care dentist for my new DMO plan (it's like an HMO, only for dentists). Essentially, there are 34 dentists in our town who take the plan, many of them part of one practice. So I made that practice my PCD after calling and making an appointment. You see, on Christmas day I was eating a spring roll (yes, Chinese food, the one thing you can count to be open on Christmas, and Jin Jin is excellent). Anyway, a crown with the tooth inside came out of my mouth. Essentially it broke off at the gum line, meaning I'll probably have to have oral surgery, which is unfortunate to say the least. So I'm going to have them check out things and see what all needs to be done. The drawback to the DMO is the lack of participating providers/small pool of them. But there are two very good things, one being that it costs a mere $3 and some change per pay period, half of the PPO plan, and second, it doesn't have the limits that the PPO has, so if I need intensive stuff it will pay for it. It even partly covers adult orthodontia (which I don't really need at this point). The other doesn't. So I'm hoping I made the right choice in going with this plan. The appointment is safely after the new year, when my flexible spending account will be refilled, etc.

After work today I:
1. Went to the pharmacy, picked up a friend's medicine and paid for the medication they had put on hold for me when I couldn't pay before Christmas.
2. Actually went to the YMCA and discovered a recumbent bike that I used for a short but good introductory workout. I hope to start going regularly and extending the amount of time, variety of activities, and level of speed, etc.
3. Spent time with YKWIA and A, especially watching YouTube videos with YKWIA. I now know much more about apartments and customs of Japan, and unfortunately have watched an entire video devoted to bestiality in Colombia with donkeys. Yeah. I know. I think he takes a certain amount of pleasure in making my brain hurt.
4. Stopped by Taco Bell on the way home and ate.

Now I'm home and I'm online enjoying what may be the last night of regular cable Internet. Tomorrow the plan is to take in the cable box and modem and cancel my service. Then I need to call and cancel my Vonage account because it piggybacks on the cable. That will save me nearly $180 a month right there. Instead, I'll use my phone as a hotspot with the laptop and if need be the TV and Roku box. The tablet has a data plan of its own, and the Kindle is 3G. If using the laptop or streaming videos exceeds the 2.5 GB limit I have on the hotspot, I think I can go up to 4 GB for just $10 more, still saving a lot compared to cable. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. I have an antenna for the TV and get several network channels plus some nostalgia TV. I usually just watch the news at home, or maybe something like 'The Big Bang Theory', which is on CBS. I have a DVD/VCR recorder if I want to record something for later. I should be good to go.

Okay, getting sleepy. Hope you have a good night!

There was no game yesterday

as I was in a lot of pain and wasn't feeling well in general, and pretty much stayed in bed except for a brief foray or two for food and water and then finally the season finale of 'Witches of East End'. The only good thing about yesterday is that I got to read for a bit and actually finished a book I'd borrowed from a co-worker, a light mystery.

Today I managed to go to work and also did a bit of errand-running afterwards. I won't say I was incredibly productive, but I got things accomplished that needed to be done, even though I was a bit out of it and just not doing well. I don't really have the money to go to the doctor, and the last time I had this problem, they weren't particularly helpful anyway, either the specialist or physical therapy I was sent to. It just had to resolve on its own. I had a friend suggest and Ace wrap, which wasn't a bad idea but in reality I couldn't stand to have anything on my elbow for more than a few minutes. I did put some heat on it, and that helped. But I got to thinking, and it occurred to me that even though it had been diagnosed as tendonitis before, and that there was certainly some of that, it really felt like nerve pain, like when I had sciatica, just in my shoulder and elbow area. So I looked at my pharmacoepia of various prescriptions and found just a few gabapentin (Neurontin) left, which had be prescribed for neuropathy, but I'd felt my feet weren't really giving me problems and never went back to refill them. But it had gotten me through the sciatica. Gabapentin helps with nerve pain. So I took some ibuprofen to help with the anti-inflammatory aspect, took a gabapentin, and propped my arm up so it was in a position that was mostly comfortable, and went to sleep. That was about 9 pm. I woke up just a little while ago, and while my shoulder and elbow hurt somewhat, it's not nearly as sharp a pain as it was before. I think I found the answer. It seems like my nerves in that area were irritated somehow. I have enough to get me through a few days as prescribed. So we'll try that.

Speaking of medicine, I went to get a couple of crucial meds today (one if I go off of it, I have to ease back up to therapeutic levels slowly, or risk having my skin slough off; I try not to go off it), both for my bipolar disorder. I didn't have the money for anything else. I'm good on my insulin, but I was out of nearly everything else, including the two diabetes meds that are helping so much. People ask me why I use an independent pharmacy that is literally on the other side of town from where I live. They wonder why I don't just use a big chain, which would be more convenient. Well, there are two women in that pharmacy that I see regularly, I know by name, and they provide a personal level of service that chains can't. We were talking about the tendonitis and not going to the doctor because of the expense. I don't get paid until after Christmas, and I was about to give them most of the money I did have for those two meds, leaving me about $7 to last till the 26th for gas, etc. I signed for my meds and then the tech gave me my prescriptions and my cash, and told me she could put them on hold so that I could pay after Christmas. At that point the pharmacist asked if I were out of anything else. I told her, and the tech said she had them ready, and the pharmacist told her just to give me the rest and have me pay later. I felt very blessed. Now I have a little money for food and gas and might actually make it down to Danville around Christmas.

One other bit of good news. I weighed myself and I've dropped from 306 to 289 lbs since I changed CPAP machines. That's been in about a month and a half. Yay! Also, I finished breaking in the shoes and orthoses I got at the doctor's office the other day and they are definitely more comfortable than the ones I had. I think I could actually enjoy walking in these. Maybe I'll try to go to the Y sometime this week. They're doing some remodelling, so I'll have to work around that. But that could help me lose some more weight. I'd probably just walk on the treadmill and maybe go into the water--nothing to really do with my arms at the moment. I don't want to make the whole arm thing worse, especially as it is my dominant arm.

Okay, I should probably go back to bed. Good night.

What a busy day!

Listening to Of Monsters and Men, 'Dirty Paws'

Today I:

1. Woke up and wasn't groggy; morning blood sugar was only 145!
2. Went into work early
3. Worked half a day
4. Took a friend to an appointment
5. Got my insulin and pen needles from the pharmacy
6. Took my friend to pick up something that he'd ordered
7. Ate dinner with him
8. Took him to the grocery; also got glucose tablets and alcohol pads for me
9. Watched 'H2O: Just Add Water', an episode from season 3
10. Watched the first episode of 'Fringe'
11. Came home just now and am listening to music and relaxing after all that running around

So I overslept this morning

which isn't surprising, since I didn't get home till midnight and went to bed late (for me). Tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment to go to and it's really early, so I need to get up super early. Since that's the case, I think I'm going to go to bed early tonight.

I had a doctor's appointment today, a followup for my swelling ankles, and was able to get out of there early enough to get a friend from work and go by the pharmacy to pick up some more pen needles and Lantus, along with some stuff for my friends (we all use the same pharmacy). Then I watched some episodes, including the season one finale, of 'H2O: Just Add Water', which put me in a happy mood, something I needed after the rush-hour traffic.

I'm afraid that's all I have for now. I'm going to go relax and listen to some music. If I do stay awake, I'll check the news and see if there's anything to add. If I fall asleep, well, I hope you have a good night.

Been doing some more computer maintenance on the laptop

I scanned for viruses (yay, found none, which was a concern as it had been unprotected for awhile) and had a program analyse problems, and it found several thousand junk files and several hundred registry issues. I suspect it's because my friends had it and had some stuff on it, then took it off. The hard drive isn't fragmented, at least. The whole thing was running slow as molasses, especially during the antiviral scan, but now it's working like a charm. I just hope I didn't accidentally remove something important. :) Anyway, it seems to have helped. I'm in my trial period for the security program, but I'll probably go ahead and get a year's worth of protection before the month is up. I still have a few Office updates to do.

Tomorrow I'm off from work, although I have two appointments lined up that will take up most of the day. The first is that I'm going to the post office to apply for a passport and get a photo taken. I'm not actually planning a trip, but at some point I'd like to travel outside of the US (remarkably, I was an Air Force brat and never did so). The Medical Library Association meeting in 2015, for example, is in Canada, which now requires a passport or passport card for entry from the United States. I never could get through to the post office nearest me, so I'm going to Lexington's main post office on Nandino, but then my office, the Bluegrass station on Landsdowne, isn't particularly near me, either. :) Then I have an appointment with my doctor about my swelling ankles. Yeah, kind of boring, I know, but it's become a problem. I can't get into any of my shoes towards the end of the day except my adjustable sandals, and even then I push the envelope on those, with the velcro barely holding together sometimes on the ankle that was broken. I need a diuretic according to the podiatric surgeon. Tomorrow I also need to go by the pharmacy to pick that up and my short-acting insulin, as I only have a pen and a half left of that, and I want to make sure I have plenty for the weekend. I think I'll also stop by the Y and see about finally working out.

Tonight's plans are laundry, dishes, and well, that's about it. Maybe I should fill the fish tank, too; it's kind of low. I want to take a brief nap, but that worked so well last night. :) Of course, I'm not super tired like I was, so maybe I can do it.

A mix of good and bad today

On the bad side:

• My really heavy-duty electric stapler died at work. Not happy with this model. I've been through two now. Will be going with one that is a lower page-count for stapling but a different brand and a better warranty.
• I found out that the pharmacy made a mistake last time I got my Novolog Flexpen. The pen I had with me today was actually Novolog 70/30. Since I also take Lantus for long-acting insulin, they advised me against taking it (the 30 part of it is also a long-acting insulin). They had more on order and will have the right stuff tomorrow.
• I was really tired when I got home. I'd had a 3:45 appointment and it took till six to see the doctor. I got out of there at 6:30. I really needed to go to the restroom, but the workers were cleaning them. Good thing I live five minutes away.
• Not surprisingly, my blood sugar has been wonky today. I think it's time to give up carbs as much as possible. They've had free bagels at work the last few days and that's made it worse. I also really have to find a better way to remember all of my shots, to keep on schedule.

On the good side:

• The doctor's office had a sample pen of normal Novolog in a Flexpen, so I do have my quick-acting insulin for the next day or so.
• The doctor realised he had to up the number of pens he'd written the prescription for to cover me for a month.
• I probably don't have a UTI. It could just be a factor of the diabetes. We're treating it, though, because I was drinking lots of cranberry juice, which can skew the test results, and have some pain in my back and lower abdomen.
• I found out that the mistaken $10,000 hospital bill has been corrected. I now owe nothing. Yay!
• It was payday, and our raise went into effect. It pretty much brings my pay back to where it was before those tax cuts were rescinded.

So, it was a mixed bag. But overall it was okay. Tomorrow is Friday and I'm very glad. I'll get my work done (and it's jeans day), go to the pharmacy, and beyond that I don't have plans. The weekend should be busy, but I don't have to do game notes, as they're already finished. Yay! Have a great night and a great end of the week. I'm going to take my nightly dose of Lantus and then head to bed, I think. Good night.

Just got home

I've worked, gone to the pharmacy, gone to physical therapy (and had a better session today than Tuesday, when all my muscles were tight and painful), taken a friend to the grocery for a few things and a bus pass, and eaten dinner with my friends. Now I'm home, in the process of becoming comfy, and it's so nice that there's just one more day till the weekend.

I made an appointment for tomorrow to have a couple of small things in the car fixed. One is that the cigarette lighter doesn't work (not a biggie; I don't smoke--but I can't charge a phone either). That's probably a fuse or something like that. The other is that the fan on the heater only works on high. That's probably a resistor. Neither are big fixes, so I'm going to leave work a little early, get it over there by 4:30, and have them look it over.

On Saturday I'm going over to T-Mobile's store to see if I can upgrade my phone. Mine has been a pain to text with (it runs a very old version of Android, Froyo, and the Swype keyboard stores all typos directly to the dictionary, then autocorrects to them later. Also, I have hardly any space on the phone for applications, as the ones that came with the phone bloat it to the point, if updated, that nothing else can go on. Applications like Facebook are getting huge these days. So wish me luck in finding a deal on one that will last me a couple of years that I can load with useful and not-so-useful applications and really use.

I've got to take a break before I do anything else

I just got home. It is freezing (23 degrees!) and windy. I've been running strong for seven hours, five of them out and about, and two of them on the phone with two different companies trying to sort out a mess with my flexible spending card.

First I worked on notes, getting them done early on a Saturday, which is better than normal, although I should transcribe them earlier in the week. And the batteries for the voice recorder are charging. Then someone I know from the pharmacy came and got me on his day off to take me in to work with them on the card issue. United Healthcare, which is not only my medical insurance company but also my flexible spending account company, was very helpful. Medco, which is my pharmacy insurance company, really was, well, not, although she at least admitted that she was out of her league and no one there knew what to do. It looked like I was going to have to pay $400 out of pocket and then get reimbursed. Then the pharmacy tech ran them through one at a time, and virtually all went through. Anything where I pay less than the normal co-pay, including my pen needles and one of my meds, declined, and they had been declining the whole thing. Still, it's crazy that they have to run ten meds through one at a time, especially as they get charged by the credit card companies for each transaction. So I'm not giving up, and I'll call the companies again this week. But it took two hours on the phone just to get to that point. In the end, I had to pay $60 for the things that wouldn't go through, which is far better, but the point is all those have gone through before and should continue to do so without problem. I am definitely going to let our human resources people know as well, in case others are having the same trouble.

The pharmacy was closing by that time, so we left and my ride, who had mailed that package for me, suggested trying the vegetarian oyster sauce at Good Food Co-op, but it was to no avail. At that point, I realised that I'd left my wallet and phone back at the pharmacy. Fortunately he had a key and I knew where it was, so he ran in and got it for me. Then he dropped me off at the Richmond Road Kroger so I could look for oyster sauce and do a little shopping. He was so great about taking me around.

When I came out of Kroger, the bus had just gone by, and wouldn't be back in over an hour, so I went over to Subway, because I hadn't eaten since 8 am and it was 2:30. I'm still used to checking my blood sugar and giving myself an insulin injection in public, but I think I do it fairly discretely.

Then I waited at the bus stop with several people including a woman who complained about how rude Southerners were, but was fairly, well, odd (read possibly mentally ill) and frankly wouldn't have been happy anywhere she lived, by the sound of it. She should go back to wherever she came from, in my opinion.

I stopped by the library briefly and then walked home, carrying many things and generally freezing. The one thing I had considered doing, but forgot to do at Kroger, and that's probably just as well, because it would have been a waste of money, was play the Powerball, which had the highest jackpot tonight in its history. I sure wasn't going to walk down to the Circle K station laden as I was. So now I'm in, I'm warm, and I'm thinking of taking a nap. This early in the afternoon I doubt I'll stay asleep for hours on end. Maybe. I still have a lot to do, of course. But all the absolutely vital-had-to-do-it-today stuff is done, although the laundry really does have to be done before Monday.

It took nearly an hour and three alarms

(Listening to Natalie Merchant's 'The Living')

to get me up from an almost 12-hour sleep. I was up briefly at 2, and took my Neurontin (I'd taken my insulin before I'd gone to bed, it just was too early for the other). And somewhere around 10 there was a phone call. But otherwise I slept. The Neurontin is working wonders with the foot pain, and I got some distilled water so my humidifier on my CPAP could run, so I was set and comfy. I realise now that when I was sleeping so much in the past, I wasn't really sleeping that much in all that time, because of the pain. It was keeping me in this light, dreamless sleep where I woke up all the time. Now I'm sleeping much better, dreaming again, and although I'm not quite sure where the need for the long sleep came from, it was nice to get. I'm not groggy like I used to be upon waking, either, although I'm a little congested and coughing. I've noticed I've been having some trouble breathing very deeply lately, so I'm going to ask them to check me out at my appointment Tuesday. I haven't felt sick or anything, nothing beyond the ubiquitous allergies. But it may be my asthma kicking in. I had an actual episode during the dog attack where I needed my inhaler, and that happens something like three or four times a year, my asthma is so mild. I really have trouble breathing if I bend over, but I think that's just because I'm fat.

I am not up early enough to do any laundry, so that will have to wait until tomorrow. Fortunately it is jeans day and I have just enough clean clothes to manage that. As far as tomorrow goes, we're going to try to iron out the problem with my pharmacy and flexible spending card not meshing, and the guy I know who works there is actually going to come pick me up and take me across town to the pharmacy so we can talk to the company together and then bring me back, saving me maybe three or four hours on the buses, which I really appreciate. At some point tomorrow, I'm also going to go by the grocery and get, if I can find it, vegetarian oyster sauce for a friend, as well as some groceries for me. I also need to stop by the library briefly.

Today we're supposed to have clouds followed by a rain-snow mix later in the day that should cause things to be, well, miserable in terms of getting out and the commute home. I've got a ride, thankfully. My aim today is to catalogue as many books as possible. I did 45 the other day, and I've done 149 in the last few days. It's not full-blown cataloguing--I'm using LibraryThing, where you type in or scan the ISBN and it populates it from other sources. I then put in the tags and the National Library of Medicine classification number, for that is what we use on our shelves. So it's basically copy cataloguing with a little additional work.

It's been a long week, and I think people are ready for Friday. Our accrediting agency was at the hospital for three days doing a survey, and I gather it went well. They never came to the library, but I was ready with my codes and acronyms for dealing with crisis situations, as well as what we as the library could do in the case of computer or utility failure, so I felt fairly confident if they were to come in. In the fifteen years I've been there, I don't remember a surveyor asking about the library, but it could always happen.

Speaking of work, I should probably start getting ready. Hope you have a great end of the week.