For a goy

I make a mean latke,  whether potato with shallots or a cheese style that had lemon zest and had you separate the eggs and beat the whites before adding them to the mixture.

Today was fun.  We visited,  I helped rearrange some things in my friend's library,  and then I made the latkes,  which everyone enjoyed.  I doubled both recipes,  thankfully,  or there wouldn't have been enough.

I got a shirt from another friend as part of that package that says 'You are about to exceed the limits of my medication',  which I love. Thank you Tammy.

Okay,  I have to figure out my agenda/itinerary for tomorrow.  Hope you had a good holiday. 

A good day and evening

Work went well. I had to run out at lunch though for my insulin, which I'd almost forgotten to refill in time. And the doctor's office had put one box instead of two when they upped my prescription slightly, and the pharmacy caught that it would only have lasted about 12 days. I did leave the balance of my prescription in a refrigerator in a work kitchenette, so I have to be sure to remember it tomorrow.

I couldn't to the pharmacy after work because I had physical therapy, and by the time I'd have gotten out, they'd have closed. That was a very good session lasting from about 5:15 till about 6:45 pm. I did more steps than I had last time, and generally pushed myself to do a little better than before.

After that I checked in with friends to see if they needed anything, as one had called me while I was in PT. I ran by the grocery for some things for me and a couple for them and then went over to their place and watched 'House of Anubis' and did some computer troubleshooting. They gave me a lovely belated holiday gift, a blouse in a dark bluish purple that is one of my best colours. It is a sort of tunic (too short as a dress, but long for a blouse) and normal from the front but with pleats coming down the back that completely hides one's butt, which can be very useful for me. I'm looking forward to wearing it Monday (tomorrow is jeans day at work, and it's too dressy for jeans).

Now I'm home. Brandon had texted me, but I just got the message and it's a bit late to text back. I'll talk to him tomorrow, hopefully. I think I'll massage my feet a bit and head on to bed. I'm glad tomorrow's Friday--it's been a long, but good week. Good night.

Holiday cheer

Brandon's family and I had a gift exchange earlier. The fireman outfit was a great hit with the four-year-old. I'm not so sure about the bullhorn in terms of his parents' ears, but that's what aunties are for, right?

I got a movie I really love on DVD, The Princess Bride. I'm going to watch it tonight. I'll have to watch it with Brandon sometime--he hasn't seen it, which boggled my mind until I remembered he was something like four when it came out.

I also got a gift card to Amazon, which is running a special of 20 mp3 albums today for $1.99 or less. I found several of the albums had music I like, plus another one that I'd been wanting for awhile, so I've been downloading music this afternoon. I got quite an assortment:

• Motown's #1 Hits, vol. 1 (26 songs, 99 cents)
• Abba Gold (19 songs, 99 cents)
• Johnny Cash 16 Biggest Hits (16 songs, $1.99)
• Best of Simon and Garfunkel (20 songs, $1.99)
• The Very Best of Neil Diamond (23 songs, $5.99)

and just had to pay the balance of about $4. Not too shabby. That's 104 songs. Thanks, guys! If I'd downloaded all the songs separately (and some were only available on the albums), it would have been $101. So I think I did pretty well. :) Since I now have 14 albums on my Amazon Cloud Player and three singles, I finally downloaded the application for it onto the tablet so that I don't have to store the downloaded music on the device.

I also had a co-worker stop by with a gift from a couple of them, a nice outfit and a lovely-smelling candle.

It was nice to see everyone and have a bit of holiday cheer. Now I think I'm going to listen to some music and have some kugel. :)

I hope you are able to spend the holidays (whichever you celebrate) with loved ones this year. And have a wonderful new year!

Turns out today was reasonably quiet

Brenda had Mother's Day plans after all, so we didn't play the game today, although I went over and did some things over there and visited for awhile. I got a beautiful skirt as a (belated) birthday present. It will go with several of my tops, and it fits perfectly. I'm going to wear it tomorrow.

Also, YKWIA introduced me to the sequel to the series 'Avatar: the Last Airbender', which is called 'The Legend of Korra'. We went through the 'Explore Republic City' section of the site and it was great. It comes on Saturdays at 11; I'll have to try to catch it or at least record it for watching later. The first five episodes are available on Nick.com's site.

Which makes me also want to go back and watch the full series of 'Avatar' (but never that awful movie where they seemed to get it all wrong). It's available on Netflix, so I think I'm going to treat myself to a little every day until I catch up. That's sixty-one episodes. I only saw part of the 'Book of Water' (season 1). And in the meantime, 'Korra' seems intriguing. Right now I just recorded 'Once Upon a Time', which I'm behind on, and right now it's 'Sherlock: The Hound of the Baskervilles'. I guess I'll have to wait until season 2 comes to Netflix since I missed the one with Irene Adler last week. Ah, well, such is life.

For now, though, I do believe I'm going to do a bit of reading. Oh, that reminds me. Do you have a smartphone or tablet, and are you a patron of the Lexington Public Library? Check out their new mobile application lexpublib2go. I've used it to look up books, renew an item, and check my account, as well as browse the e-books. And it does even more than that. It works on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian and J2ME, which is pretty equal opportunity. They even have a QR code you can scan that will take you to the right source for your device.

A somewhat materialist post-holiday post

These came for me today from Barnes & Noble.

Yeah, I know, I'm an Amazon girl, but I had a gift card. The one on the right is my present from Brenda--Stephen R Donaldson's Against All Things Ending. The one on the left is a book I really like that I'm reading on the Kindle, but I decided I wanted a hard copy of it as well, and since I needed to round out the order to get free shipping, I decided I'd get that. It's Gary Corby's The Pericles Commission. The purple thing, by the way, is my Kindle in its cover. The dog is Tugger, the DOCLINE mascot. I got that for being one of the first to apply for a grant. :)

All in all it's been a very satisfying gift-receiving season. I got:

• Walden and Other Writings, by Henry David Thoreau (in actual book form)
  
• Against All Endings, by Stephen R Donaldson (also in actual book form)
  
• A personal-sized blender that does smoothies, salsa, etc. and comes with two sizes of tops, two blades, and some cups for drinking the smoothies out of. Since I do not own a blender, this could be very useful. Hmmm...dacquris...
  
• A (purple) velvet pant and jacket set
  

That's it. And for once I was able to give people a little better presents than, say, the pretty rocks I did one year. I'm happy.

By the way

the National Geographic DVD-ROMs were everything I could hope for. I will savour each issue. (See accompanying tweets on the Twitter gadget down and left). Thanks YKWIA and A for the great (and much appreciated) Yule present!

I have been a little too tired to blog lately, sorry

Last night a friend cooked dinner for his husband and myself, which was really nice (I cooked for him on Chanukah, he cooked for me on the solstice, my holiday, so that worked out rather well). He is a wonderful cook. We visited for quite some time and I helped him with a few things, and I didn't get home until somewhere around 1 am.

Sunday I had only had about three hours of sleep because I'd been keyed up by upgrading to Windows 7 (my computer has half the memory needed for optimal performance and a graphics card that doesn't actually translate the Aero translucent windows effects, plus since I was going from XP straight to 7 I had to do a clean install, transferring my files and settings to an external hard drive and then letting it erase all the information on the internal one. So you can see I was a little concerned. But it all worked out, and things are going pretty well. I would like to upgrade my memory to 1 GB (I'm at 512 MB now) and upgrade my graphics card, too, but that is for another day. Actually, my stepfather might have some lying around; he builds computers for people, and usually has the latest thing in his own, so he's got a room full of parts. :) Anyway, I played the game, I had fun, but we played till almost 10:30 pm and I was wiped out afterwards.

So far it's been a pretty good week, though. I'm taking Thursday, Christmas Eve, off from the hospital so I can go visit my family (it was either that or New Year's Eve, and Christmas Eve there's a lot less traffic). I'm working 9 am to 4 pm on Christmas itself at the store, which is fine. It'll probably be really slow except for people looking for batteries. :) It usually is, anyway. Then I'm working Saturday night because the truck is delayed until then due to the holiday.

It looks like my mom's present might make it before Christmas after all. I've been tracking it and it's travelled from New York to Lexington, so it just needs to make the trip 45 minutes away to Stanford. Yay.

I paid bills tonight--cable, cell phone, and electric. Two of them were double bills, and I'll pay the rest tomorrow after I get paid. I got my pay statement today from the store (and other people got cheques, but they are dated for tomorrow, so theoretically they can't cash them until then). My direct deposit should go in tonight sometime, and I already know what it will be, so that's nice. That'll leave me about $100 to get through till New Year's, when I get paid at both places and pay my rent. It's nice to not be down to the wire, though. Granted, I need to be saving and paying down debt, but I really wanted to do a little more during the holidays than in past years because I'm in a better position to do so. I'll work on the other starting in January.

I've looked for work pants online and at several stores without success (who knew it would be this hard?) but Brenda, who's a seamstress/costumer, suggested that I look for the pants in the men's section, since I'm pretty much up and down in terms of my waist and hips. She said to try the bigger sizes in a relaxed fit. Those sorts of pants are common for men and cheaper, too. That's the plan, although I'm not sure when I'll have the opportunity to go looking next. Maybe Saturday morning or Monday afternoon? The buses don't run on Friday at all, and nothing's open but places like us and Walgreens. :)

We ordered Chinese tonight at work and I got Bean Curd (Tofu) Szechuan style and a couple of veggie egg rolls. Here is my fortune: 'Pick a path with heart.' The learn Chinese thing on the back is for potato, which is apparently 'ma ling shu'.

I've been putting a few things back on the computer such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash Player, and some of my Real Arcade games. Two of my favourites have been retired, so there's no re-downloading for Real Arcade's new system--Get Medieval and Moon Tycoon. The ones I transferred won't open on their own, so I have apparently lost them, which is unfortunate. The others translated over, though. I might be able to find the retired ones online as stand-alone games somewhere, I don't know.

Okay, I've been starring news items to share, but I'll leave that for later. They found the Auschwitz sign, for example, cut into three pieces. It just made me cringe, but at least they recovered it.

I'll try to write more tomorrow and certainly Thursday night, when I'm off. Thanks for reading.

My grandmother has renal cancer

My mother just called me to let me know. She's had a cyst on her kidney causing bleeding for awhile now, and they just about had to beg the doctor to send her for testing. She has more tests at the end of the month to determine if it is in the muscle. They'll no doubt take her kidney later on and treat her from there.

So that's another reason to get home for Christmas and see everyone. I just got home from shopping and I've got a little something for everyone but A, but I can get his on Monday. I also found a belt (it was $30!) that reverses between black and brown, but no luck on the work pants. I think I'll have to shop online. I found a pair of dress shoes with a heel to keep my podiatrist happy but I can still walk on them; that way I have something to wear to job interviews other than my boy's boots. :)

I saw someone I used to be friends with at the library, and another friend and his wife out at Lane Bryant. He had that 'trapped male' look you find with guys in a women's clothing shop. :)

I really haven't eaten much all day (I had a peanut butter sandwich this morning and a couple of pretzels for lunch). So I'm waiting for dinner to be delivered and get something more filling inside me.

I also got some fish food and a couple of aquarium plants that were in this gel and so they didn't need to be actually immersed in water. You just wash off the gel if it's going in an aquarium or keep the gel on if it's in a terrarium. Nifty!

In all, I went to Meijer's, Target, Barnes & Noble, PetSmart, Marshall's, Gordman's, Best Buy, and Half-Price Books. Mind you, these are not next together like in a mall. I had to traverse crowded parking lots full of people definitely not in the holiday spirit as a pedestrian over probably a square mile. Whew! Billy and Julia would have probably taken me home, but I was still on the hunt for those work pants. I halfway wish I'd had, but I did get two presents after that, so I guess it wasn't too bad going back to get the bus, etc., and I didn't have to wait for a half-hour or anything to catch the Richmond Road bus out like I thought I would, so it all worked out.

I came home to find a couple of friends had sent me an Amazon gift card, yay! I called them to thank them and acted surprised (one of them told me to; I'd helped him navigate Amazon's site to order them). :) It was actually a surprise in that they came very speedily.

Okay, there's stuff to do, and those plants should go on into the aquarium. Have a good night.

Sorry about being incommunicado

Monday I spent most of the day in bed with a serious fibromyalgia flare up. The temperature had risen 30 degrees suddenly and the weather was cloudy, and I ached all over terribly and felt awful. I'm not complaining, though; I've had it for years and it only hits me at times like that--sudden temperature changes. I've missed work only about four times in nearly 13 years due to it; a lot of people are completely disabled by it. As long as I remain fairly active, the pain remains chronic but low-key. Tuesday I managed to get in to work despite a plunge in temperature; once my body had adjusted, the change was easier to deal with.

Yesterday I brought home my holiday present to myself, an external hard drive purchased so that I can move from Windows XP to Windows 7 (you can apparently not just upgrade, but have to do a clean install, unlike going from Vista to Windows 7). It was on backorder for several days and only arrived then. I've got things backed up but I'm going to wait until Saturday to attempt the procedure because by then I'll have the notes from the game transcribed and more time to deal with any issues as they arise. Also, I was pretty tired from doing a 12-hour day including truck. We got new uniforms; they're bright blue and black, but clingy, so I haven't decided how I like the change. Definitely I'm glad to pitch the maroon, though.

Tonight I came home from work and went straight to finding a present for my mother for the holiday. I knew what I wanted. It won't make it there in time for Christmas, but it should come a couple days after. It really was perfect though, and it was 73% off from the original price, something I couldn't guarantee would remain in effect if I'd wanted to get it for Mother's Day, etc. I think she'll really enjoy it. I did ship it directly to her. I got it through Amazon (I also found pants that might work for the gas station there, but I'm holding off on them until the Great Shopping Trip of 2009 this Saturday, when I'll troll through Hamburg's various shops the whole day.

Tonight I got a request for another PaperbackSwap book, so I've just printed the wrapper for it and am going to take it in, bubble envelope and all, and mail it from work tomorrow (they let us pay the postage for personal items and get a metered sticker; if I used stamps I'd have to mail it from the post office, I think, or at least some of them that are over a certain weight). I've got two coming to me, and one is a bit overdue, no doubt due to holiday shipping.

I got my bonus today at the gas station. Gross it was almost as much as what I netted for my regular pay. This next week will have fewer hours on it because I'm off Saturday for my hunting, um, shopping.

The thing with the double charge worked out okay. The store worked from their end, the bank worked from theirs, and I wound up with $0.74 in my account, then got paid the next morning, so it worked out well. My pay from the hospital should have hit the account already, too, tonight, so I've got a healthy balance, even with the purchase of my mom's gift.

The other day I went over to a friend's house and made him potato and cheese (separate, not together) latkes for Chanukah. They were great, we ate, and were stuffed. Although there was a rocky moment at one point, it was a great evening. We spent a lot of time visiting and watched five episodes of the 'Sarah Jane Adventures' that he'd gotten on DVD. I would love to have a picture of the chanukiyah alight, but my camera doesn't distinguish between the flames, but puts it all into one bright ball.

Well, that's enough for now. Time to go back to bed. I have to go to the pharmacy tomorrow on the way to work. Then I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping afterwards to go out with a couple of girl friends to eat and visit; I haven't seen one since the summer, as both our cars were down. Hers is fixed now, thankfully. I don't get a chance to have girl time very often; my closest friends are men.

Good night.

A nice birthday

I went to bed for an hour's nap three hours ago. I was so comfortable I had a hard time getting back out, and I suppose I probably should just have stayed in, but I wanted to blog and maybe do a little classwork.

Today I:

• Read some more of Club Dead. I'm enjoying re-reading them. I'm at the main cliffhanger right now. (There's apparently an upcoming television series based on the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries called 'True Blood', but it's on HBO and so I wouldn't get to see it. It's being done by the creator of 'Six Feet Under'. It stars Anna Paquin (Rogue from the X-Men movies), which I can't quite picture as Sookie, but then, you never know, it's Hollywood. I wasn't aware she was a Canadian-born actress who was raised in New Zealand before coming to Los Angeles as a teenager. She is the second-youngest Oscar winner, having won Best Supporting Actress at age 11 for The Piano, and the first Canadian actress to win in that category). Don't you love trivia?
  
• Ate at India Garden. It was a wonderful buffet. The naan was very fresh and buttery. As always, I really enjoyed what I think is korma (potatoes in a curried sauce). The only glitch in the day was that some of that curry wound up on a white sweater, and I may or may not have ruined it, but that's what I get for wearing white to an Indian restaurant. I stopped by the house and changed.
  
• Did some errands with friends and helped them dose their animals with flea and heartworm medicine.
  
• Napped off some of lunch.
  
• Talked to my mom and grandmother over the phone. My mom's ordered a mattress (remember my Christmas present? That apparently fell through so she's getting a new one) from Sears to be delivered next Wednesday. I'll be working, but she'll meet them that day, since she has a key to my apartment. She and my grandmother are well. I asked her about the insurance card for the car (I need a new one). She'll get it to me. We're going to have to change insurance by June because of my stepbrother's DUI. He's in jail for 97 days because he didn't pay his find and as a wonder my stepfather told him he wouldn't bail him out this time. Go, John! Robert is in his 20s and needs to learn about consequences. He was almost paralysed in one accident and yet he still chose to drink and drive. He's just lucky no one was hurt.
  
• Dropped something back over at my friends' house.
  
• Stopped by the store to get my schedule. I'll be working 19 hours this coming week.
  
• Took a co-worker home.
  
• Stopped by Walgreens to get some glucose test strips, some macaroni and cheese, and deodorant.
  
• Came back home, made said macaroni and cheese, drank V-8, and blogged--lots of blogging.
  
• Went to take a small nap (when left to my own devices for a day I sometimes stay up for three or four hours at a time, nap for an hour, then start the cycle again, actually sleeping maybe four or five hours at night plus a few hours during the day). Apparently I was more tired than I thought.
  

Now I'm going to head back to bed. I had thought about going to the gym today, doing some cleaning, working on class, calling D (who's home recovering from a hysterectomy) and watching some 'Secrets of Isis' (my birthday present from last year) But there's just so much time in a day. I'll have to make time to do those things, at the beginning and end of the days coming up. Tomorrow it's back to work at both jobs. I'm working Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday at the store. Good night.

My mother scared the daylights out of me yesterday

I'd gone out briefly and taken the chain off my door, because my mom comes over on Sunday mornings to crash at my place before heading home in an hour-long drive. She works 16-hour shifts over the weekend, so she's usually pretty tired. Normally I'm up and gone before she comes over, but yesterday I'd been up to take a friend home from work at 7 am and didn't have to be anywhere until 9, so I'd gone back to sleep. At 8:10 my second alarm went off and I'd just put it on snooze when I heard, 'Lisa' at the door to my bedroom. I never heard the front door open, and I nearly jumped out of bed.

We talked for a little while (I was a little late for that 9 o'clock deadline) and it was good to hear from her. I'm getting a mattress for Christmas, which is great and benefits us both. My current mattress, which is 20 years old, has bedsprings peeking through it in places. :) So here's to no more little scratches on my body. Yay!

PS I found the camera I'd been looking for (don't know if I mentioned it, but I wanted to take some pictures and was looking for it like crazy. It turned out to be on my kitchen table under some hotel lotions someone had given me. I'd looked in the same spot a dozen times and missed it because it's in a black case, I guess. Anyway, you might actually get some pictures on here as a result.

Also, I'm having great luck with clocks. I think I mentioned that I received a large, square, mantle-style clock for my 10th anniversary at the hospital. It sets its time by longwave radio and it couldn't pick up the signal in the hospital, so now it's in my living room working fine. Well, my family clock, a pendulum clock from Japan with a horse on top that we always had when I was growing up, is on my dining room wall and I was having trouble getting it to continue running. I got out my level for the umpteenth time (my mom and I had talked about it) and it's working now. I've put pencil marks underneath so I can be sure and keep it in position should I knock into it, etc. That leaves the large old-fashioned alarm clock and my mother's small travel clock in my bedroom, the computer clock, the stove, the microwave (rarely set), and the phone. So, I think I'm good on being able to tell time at the house.

I guess that's all for now. I was in a really great mood today because I actually got to be early last night. I'm up later tonight but had some down time this evening.

Oh, and I HAVE THE BOOT OFF!!!! Yay! I'll probably wear it at the store for another week or so, but the doctor said I could transition off of it now. Yipee!!! My foot feels much better, just twinges a bit. I need to ask Dr Rooney when I can go to the gym and start a walking routine. I figure if I'm paying for it, I might as well use it, right?

What's black and blue and sore all over?

Me. Okay, the bruising hasn't properly set in yet, but there are the scrapes, the swelling, and general did-anyone-get-the-plate-on-the-bus-that-hit-me aches. No, no bus. I fell walking into work. I'd just left the grass, which was damp and had walked onto the blacktop when the damn surgical boot, which is hard plastic much like dress shoes on the bottom, skidded right under me and there I was, flat on my back with my broken right foot pleasantly cushioned but my left foot directly under my upper thigh, something I didn't think was possible, even when I have done yoga. My knee's the worst. At least I didn't hit my head. (I think. Like I said, I was stunned, and that lasted until about 3 in the afternoon.)

So the first part of my Monday, after the nice security guard who saw me helped me up and chased down my frozen fish meal, some change, and my cell phone (all of which went flying)--although so did a Fresca that rolled clear down the hill to the end of the parking lot, which I didn't chase after because I was still stunned, was spent filling out an incident report and filing it. Earlier in the morning I'd checked my finances and discovered I was going to overdraft by 19 cents, so I deposited a quarter (hey, I didn't have much on me) in the bank. Then this. On top of yesterday's fiasco (oh, yeah, I didn't tell you--two characters in the game are practically dead, a beloved NPC (non-player character) and one of mine who was on her very first mission. None of us thought to bring oxygen masques with us when repelling down a 400 ft deep oil derrick shaft. The NPC, who was in charge, continued despite our attempts to get her to come back up, and then fell. Mine climbed down the rest of the way to get her, but I didn't think fast enough and passed out myself. Both were revived, but they're in the hospital, both on a ventilator, and I don't think there's much hope.

So, the week's started out crappy. But it should get better from here. Tomorrow is my favourite Scorpio's birthday. I'll have to give him a belated gift...I was going to try to get him a subscription to a sports magazine he loves, but the price range was between $80 and $120 a year, depending on what payment plan you do and where you go to get it...way out of my league. I like A but gee, I have medical journals in the library that are less than that. So, it will have to be something else. And of course Wednesday is Halloween. I have to work at the store though so I don't know about wearing a costume to the library. If I paint my face, for example, I'd have to get all the makeup off and change. Plus I'm out of ideas for this year and strapped for money. Fortunately I get paid on Wednesday (most likely) and have food at home and gas in the car. Maybe I'll just wear black.

Well, that's all for now. No, wait, today's fortune cookie is: A good beginning is half done. I wonder if that counts for the opposite. Okay, that's it. Good night.