Well...

I like this programme, and the ones where you can read off your fines, but our local library, Lexington (KY) Public Library eliminated fines altogether a couple of years ago and that has meant a great deal, they also automatically renew an item unless it has specifically been held by someone else. As someone (a trained librarian who worked for 20 years as a medical librarian) who always had trouble getting her books back on time, this has been a game-changer in how, and how often, I use the library.

US Libraries Accept Pictures of Cats for Book Fees

The library

Or, I should probably say more accurately, the room the library was in.

A sign

One of the dietary staff made. They aren't going, either--there is no cafeteria at the new facility.

My desk

No plants, nothing. Computer shut down. So many memories.

Twenty years, wow...

The following pictures are from when I started my job at the hospital vs. a few days ago. Twenty years gone by... The first is me at 30 (I started work right before my birthday), the second as I'm about to turn 50. At least it's been a good part of my life, the best, so far.

Me at 30

And now, at almost 50!

I am really tired of peanut butter and jam

And I really want pizza, but can't afford it, so I scarfed down two bananas a friend gave me because they were past the time he'd eat them, and I've made the rest of the mini farfalle with some jar sauce. Now I'm really burning up. I'll have to go over to the fan soon. I was trying to hang a picture above the TV, but that isn't working so well. It's a three-picture set, one large, two small, antique maps of the world. I can't seem to get it lined up just right. I may have to break out the level and stud finder, although I think the two hangers on the larger picture are too close together to both go in a stud, as they're 13 inches apart. We'll see.

After work (which went pretty well today, my last day in scheduling for the week, and I got the rest of my shipment of children's books while I was over there), I went over to a friend's house to help him out with a few things. Then I came home and discovered I'd lost power sometime today, and the filter on the fish tank was trying valiantly to get water up into it without success, so I took care of that, put some more water in the tank, cleaned the algae off the glass, pulled out a lot of Java moss and put it out on the geraniums as fertilizer, and generally cleaned up the tank, and I can actually see the fish now. I'm afraid I was being a bad fish mom.

I'm pretty tired, and hot. I'm going to go get in front of the fan now that I've eaten, and try not to fall asleep. I've toted the fan out here two evenings in a row, and toted it back. I don't feel like doing that tonight, really, nor do I feel like taking the laptop with me to bed, as it tends to hurt my back after awhile to type in bed. It's much better here on the dining table. Anyway, I may write some more in a little while, but just in case, good night.

Still up, heading to bed

It's after 1 am. I've been on Facebook and listening to music (I'm up to 'The Logical Song' by Supertramp). I took a picture and changed my Facebook and Blogger profile pictures. I so need a haircut! Good night, for real this time. :)

I've felt off lately

and YKWIA has noticed it too. I'm wondering if it's the Strattera I started a couple of weeks ago for attention-deficit disorder. I've been on it before, several years ago, without problem, but my mood has been somewhat depressed and blah of late. I don't know if it's my normal mood fluctuations, or if it is the medicine. I'll give it a little more time to see. I go back to my doctor in early September, and I haven't quite reached the therapeutic level yet in terms of ramping up the dose slowly. I'm close, but not there yet. So far I haven't really seen any really beneficial effects, but I'm not at the full 80 mg yet, either, of course.

Despite feeling off, I had a good day. We went out to Masala, the Indian restaurant for the buffet, and my friends picked up my meal, along with a scoop of Baskin-Robbins ice cream (pumpkin cheesecake) afterwards. Then we went to Barnes & Noble, which is in Hamburg (Masala is in Beaumont, so on opposite sides of town). I stayed in the car during that (my back was still bothering me, and the seat in the car is comfortable. Plus, I find it somewhat painful to go into bookstores when I have no money to spend). :) I accidentally left the ignition on accessory, and didn't notice because I'd turned the radio off, and the battery almost didn't start, so that was a little worrisome--but it did, on the third try, and I drove enough to get the battery back up to speed over the rest of the day. After Barnes & Noble, we went to Lowe's there in Hamburg (I had not been in that one before). After I took my friends home, A and I went and did the grocery run. After that, YKWIA and I watched an episode of 'Lost Girl' (we're in the second season, now). During that, Brenda called. Her son is getting married next month and she had forgotten that the second bridal shower was tomorrow, so she'll be going to that instead of the game. This put me off the hook for having the game notes finished by tomorrow, and it also means I can go over a little later in the day. Yay!

I've been home for awhile and have been working on revising a document with my characters' pictures in it (mostly actors and actresses that YKWIA or I thought would match them well). I put it into a format his version of Word (XP) will read--he has no desire to upgrade to one with tabs and a ribbon, so the one he had from school still suffices for him. Here are the people that were picked:

• Zooey Deschanel
• Emilie de Ravin
• Lisa Edelstein
• Melina Kanakaredes
• Dana Delany
• Anne Hathaway
• Morena Baccarin
• Max Greenfield
• Kristanna Loken

There is one character that I cannot find a photograph for, but I found a very representative drawing that worked. She was originally modelled somewhat after Gillian Anderson, but had a couple of physical transformations that made her hair white, her eyes green, but otherwise she looks like an ancient Aegyptian. That's hard to find. :) But I found a portrait of a woman who looked right who had a headdress on so you couldn't see the colour of her hair. Oh, did I mention she is both a doctor and a necromancer? Oddly enough, we have another one of those, a male non-player character that started out as a player character (until she left). He is married to the latest of my characters, the one who looks like Kristanna Loken.

Anyway, I sent that on to him. I'll print out the newer pictures (I did some revisions, based on his input) and affix them to my character sheets. So that's been a fun couple of hours.

I think I'll do some reading now. I'm wanting to watch 'Galaxy Quest', but I don't feel like going out to the living room, and the little DVD player I have is out there, so it's either hook it up here to my ancient (circa 1990) TV, or take the fan, with its wonderful breeze, out there. :)

So far today I have

1. Woken up and showered/gotten ready.
2. Put that CD in the book drop (but wrapped in a bag to cushion it/keep it together).
3. Eaten breakfast (at McDonald's--I know, it's bad for you, but I didn't have much here, and their egg and cheese biscuits are yummy; plus I was parched).
4. Updated my laptop in preparation for the upgrade to Windows 10 (it took 17 updates--it's not connected all the time like the desktop is). But it's not running the compatibility report yet to say whether it will work.
5. Searched for an inexpensive solution to the Windows 10 incompatibility I'm having with the desktop (I think I solved it, but it took going to both Office Depot and Best Buy, the latter of which came through).
6. Mailed my mom's birthday card. I was able to buy a single stamp at The Mailroom, but my God they charge 59 cents, so it's a 10-cent markup per stamp. I hate to think how much the books cost.
7. Received replies from my aunts about some pictures I sent them that I scanned in. They were from 1981, when we were all much younger. They were happy to get them.
8. Switched tonight's lesson from the giant teaching notebook to the working notebook, and mapped out which parts I do and which parts my co-teacher does. I still have to read it thoroughly, but it's a start.

Next on the list is to work on the house, but I am going to take a short break first. I have about five or six hours before I need to go over and pick A up for class. Fortunately, he's off work today, too, so we won't have to work around his schedule.

I found this on Facebook and had to share

I edited slightly. It originally said 'sheephearders', which of course, isn't a word.

Despite the fact that I just watched 'Grimm'

and have been making fun of a friend with little time sense for thinking last night was Friday, I came home and proceeded to put together pictures for 'Throwback Thursday', and really, truly believed it was Thursday. Argh. So, yes, it's Friday (yay!), and even though it's not Thursday, I will share these anyway:

A rare picture of me laughing

Me, my paternal grandmother, and my mom, back in the early 1980s

A 'Throwback Thursday' picture

I think I'm about four. In the original picture, I'm holding a baby, a cousin, I think, who is about half my size.

A co-worker found this picture of me

and let me have it. It's from sometime soon after I started working in my present position at the hospital library, which is where this picture was taken. I'm apparently on crutches, it looks like, probably from an ankle sprain. I'd have been about 30-32 years old then. Overall, it's not a bad picture, although the glasses are definitely a little scary. And my hair hasn't been that long in years. Anyway, I thought I'd share it here.

This was pretty

I took a picture of the sunset through my bedroom window sheers and it looked  like fire outside. I'm happy it's not really flames, but I liked the effect.

Now YKWIA will like these...

I went as Great Cthulhu for Halloween at work a few years ago. Granted, I don't think my co-workers quite got it. The second picture with my arms out was particularly hard to do--the costume was originally a 'giant' and had a peephole at 'chest' height for the costume, but the head was done in crepe paper on a long dowel rod, which I generally held with my hands. I think I balanced it between my chest and chin for the picture. :) Okay, time to get back to work!

Found this when I was looking through pictures today

That's me from nearly 30 years ago, when I was sixteen, my senior picture from high school. :) [YKWIA insists I look like someone we knew in college who was insane in this picture, but I'm posting it anyway. :)]

When I was a kid

I thought I was terribly fat, I had thick glasses and read too much by most accounts, although I was quite active after school and on the weekends, playing with a small circle of friends, stealing away to the nearby lake, even venturing near the forbidden woods.

This is what I looked like at age 9 or 10. I found it last night and was struck by how unhappy I look. It's a very flat affect. I think I was depressed most of my life, even as a child, at least mildly. And my home life was not what I wanted it to be. Everyone in my family lived in their own little world. My mother and father never took vacations together, in fact we didn't take 'vacations' where we went anywhere to be tourists--we just went home to visit family in Kentucky from wherever we were, and that was nice. But my mom took me most times, my dad did once when she was recovering from oral surgery. We each had our hobbies (my father, radios; my mother, ceramics; me, reading) and so after dinner, the one time we were together and interacting, we each retreated to our own parts of the house to pursue them. I never realised that was abnormal until I was an adult. Maybe it would have been different if I'd had a sibling, I don't know.

So I look at that child now, and how it all affected her, and I wish I could go back in time and tell her it will be okay, and that someday she'll feel better.

It began with a duck

More precisely, a large female duck swimming in our pool. Those of us who saw her were a bit bemused, although a little concerned that she was drinking the pool water. I had noticed her because I was walking back and forth to the laundry room doing my laundry this morning (see, I didn't manage to get up at an ungodly hour Tuesday, but the more sedate 7 am worked Wednesday).

Anyway, there was the duck. The sky was cloudy, but not remarkable, that is until I got to the bus stop. As I waited, a horribly dark cloud formation crept above us, with strange bands of light and dark. I've never seen the like. It was very eerie. I snapped a somewhat fuzzy picture that still shows you what it looked like:

The strangest thing was that I was surrounded by five other people, none of which seemed intrigued by the clouds or darkening sky. They just chatted away. Now in their defence, they were from Africa and South Asia. Maybe they haven't been here long enough to realise that it was weird. Fortunately the bus arrived just as the heavens started to open up.

Unfortunately, I had to get off the bus. The umbrella was nearly useless. Cars were going around something I couldn't see, slowing traffic to a near halt, meaning I had to stand there getting wet longer. I realised when I went home later and they were putting on the finishing touches that one of the grey light poles split and fell into the road. There was a lot of thunder and lightning. I had to take my shoes off and go across the road, walking through about six inches of water there at the corner. I got in, carrying my shoes and umbrella, with a soaked backpack that's still wet in places. All in all, I did pretty well--just my feet and some on my back, and then my entire right sleeve were soaked.

One of the regulars on the bus, a retired Vietnam veteran, was going to ride it back around, thinking it would be a short thundershower. I doubt that helped. I'd looked at my phone and seen the storm coming in from the north; there was a wide band coming from the north that was all red and pink on the radar.

Despite a rocky start to the day, I got quite a bit accomplished. No one was getting off at the same time I was tonight, so I figured I'd be riding the bus home, but I did get a ride when someone went out for food for people in her department. So that worked out nicely.

The most important thing to remember today was to call my mother. It's her birthday. We talked for awhile. She was in Nicholasville; they'd gone out to eat and were at the store loading something into the car. She'd gotten my card and seemed quite happy. I'm glad she had a good birthday. We talked about family for a bit and then signed off. Then I took a 'nap'. Yeah, I know.

Now I have gotten up to take my Lantus, fix a thank you note for a co-worker who was very kind to me during the time-of-no-money (I love having a collection of cards for every occasion), and get ready for tomorrow.

I am thinking it is time to change when I eat at work, as I don't have enough time between breakfast and lunch for my blood sugar to register anything but high. I think if I ate an hour later it would be better.

Okay, I'm going to take my insulin and go to bed. I hope you have a good night. Tomorrow game notes are on the agenda, as I have some stuff to do on Saturday involving re-shelving books (so good to be a personal librarian--must put it on my résumé at some point--I've cared for a collection larger than my own, or the hospital's for about two decades now.) Does it count if you get paid in love and affection?

I looked in the mirror

earlier and of course everything's so swollen on that one side that I look a bit like I have the mumps. So of course we're having pictures made for our name badges at work on Thursday or Friday. I'm thinking Friday is the way to go, and hope this has gone down a bit by then.

I'm up (mostly) and ready to go to the pharmacy. I didn't sleep well as you can imagine. I feel very blah. But I'm going to do what I can today. I've got some interlibrary loans to do and I'm actually behind on the data entry, since I came home from the doctor's office yesterday. Hopefully I'll be able to focus okay.

Okay, the blouse makes me look like a tomato and I need to get my hair cut

but here is a picture taken of me at the Christmas Party for the hospital.

I wore an outfit given to me by my mother. She tends to give me items in colours she likes, such as red and gold, both of which look bad on me. But I needed something dressy and that was it. But this year she actually gave me a blouse that is purple and black velvet with a tie-back sash and flared velvet pants. It's in my favourite colours, ones that look good on me. It's an outfit I would have chosen for myself. Yay! I wore it today for the first time. It's a little dressy for work, but I wanted to wear it anyway.

I also went to my new nurse practitioner today. All the medicines seem fine except I really can't tell that much difference now that I'm off of my Provigil in terms of concentration. We're going to try Strattera instead. It's not a stimulant, so she can prescribe it, but it's actually for ADHD. Provigil is for sleep apnea, which I do have, but also has a secondary effect of increasing focus, but I just don't think it worked out for me; I've been on it for a couple of years and friends say I still have a lot of issues focussing, although it did improve a little.

PS Happiness is finding a can of vegetarian chili when you're hungry and had no idea it was in the cabinet. Yay!