So apparently now my friend

Brenda has the crud that's been working its way through our gaming group, so there's no game tomorrow. I hadn't finished the notes yet, and that gives me more time to work on them, which I will at least try to start this weekend, if not finish them.

Later today I'm going to go over to YKWIA's and we're going to try to finish up 'Trial & Error' episodes before they expire on Hulu. It's a cute little show. I think we have five more to watch, and they've a normal running time of 30 minutes, so without commercials they're fairly short.

Okay, I've had breakfast (cheese and blackberries), checked my blood sugar, taken my insulin and some of my oral meds [I need to refill my pill reminder box], and I'm listening to the countdown on the radio. But for some reason I'm putting off getting a shower and getting ready to go out, so I need to do that. Have a great day!

I spent an hour in the middle of the night lying in bed awake

So I'm not quite awake this morning. On the other hand, I have:

1. Given YKWIA a wake-up call, as a workman is coming today.
2. Taken all of my medicine and checked my blood sugar, including updating my diabetes log program, which draws it off my meter through Bluetooth (I haven't been doing that, and I'm much more compliant when I do).
3. Eaten breakfast.
4. Fed the fish and turned on the aquarium light.
5. Added the last of the potting soil to the window boxes, now that the soil has settled a bit.
6. Watered the plant, inside and out.
7. Checked the job boards, the librarian job list, the unemployment office's website, and UK for jobs.
8. Checked my e-mail.
9. Gone through my Facebook feed.
10. Listened to the radio.
11. Tracked a package.

The package is out for delivery with UPS right now. I need to work on that entertainment centre, so that may be the big project of the day. I'd like to wash the dishes (there are only about five). Later, I'm going to take a friend to the doctor (which is probably when the package delivery will be attempted).

I have to admit, though, between my allergies and sleepiness, I just want to take a nap, but then they'll certainly come with the package. If they knock, I won't hear them, most likely. If they ring the doorbell (yes, I live in an apartment, but have an actual doorbell), I probably won't get to the door in time. It's absolutely maddening.

Okay, I've been on the computer way too much today already. Time to do something useful.

This morning on the radio

the trivia question of the day was basically such-and-such percentage of women do this before a first date...with the obvious answer being 'shave/wax their legs' (yeah, even I, who haven't dated in ages, got that one), but there was a 10-year-old girl who called in, and while she didn't have 'the right' answer, it was an excellent one. Her answer: 'Have a backup plan'. That kid will go far.

I couldn't sleep most of last night. I think I woke up somewhere around 3 am, tossed and turned till 6 am, then slept till 6:30--and I hadn't gone to bed insanely early or anything. I did what I shouldn't have done--I went on Facebook. There is a group dedicated to the roleplaying game I play, and someone asked where people lived, and people form all over the world chimed in. I said I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, and someone replied that they lived a few miles away. The name sounded really familiar, but it wasn't anyone I knew. So I Googled him, and I'm 95% sure he is the director of the library I am sending an application to by Friday, as soon as I can get my transcripts for UK. Serendipity? I don't know, but hopefully he'll recognise my name and it'll spark some curiosity. :)

Then at 6:30 am I awoke to a raging thunderstorm, nearly leapt out of bed, got entangled in the covers and the CPAP hose, nearly fell, and then unplugged my phone as quickly as I could. I guess I still startle a little when thunder is nearby. I had a phobia for years (my baby book even says I screamed with thunder at 6 months old), and have actually been at a campsite that was struck by lightning. Everyone else felt it. I was in the full foetal position in a puddle on the ground. But over the years it's lessened, and I can listen to distant thunder and enjoy it, and I'm basically okay unless I'm outside (say, with an umbrella), or if it's REALLY loud.

So I went in to work early, and I have been consistently e-mailing all sorts of people today to let them know what books are available (my boss wants them divvied up by this week), showing others what's available, and telling people outside of the organisation that I need to change to my personal e-mail for things like book review proofing and working on collection development reviews. It's just really underscored that we're nearing the end.

After work, I went to my friend's house who is sick, got his card, went to the pharmacy, picked up his medicines, stopped by the store for sweetener, and basically crossed the town a couple of times in rush hour traffic on roads that haven't had rain in awhile that are really slick. I felt a certain sense of accomplishment that I didn't have an accident, and I didn't have much anxiety with the drive.

Now I'm home, I've had burritos for dinner (the last of them), and am hydrating and listening to music. I feel the need to be productive, and I'm not super sleepy or anything, but I am a bit tired. Tomorrow I'm going to sit with someone who's taking over one of my duties, today I helped someone with the audit I used to do, and Thursday we're supposed to have a representative of the unemployment office come and talk to those of us who are not going, which is good, because I need a little direction. I have been on unemployment before, when my hours were cut a few years into this job, but it's been over a decade and I'm sure things have changed. I do know where the office has moved, at least, and it's got resources that might help. But I'd also like to get my Internet connexion back on so that I can spend more time looking, and it would help A, too. Right now I have to use my phone (which is limited), the library, the laundry room, or over at my friend's physical therapy office, which has WiFi.

Speaking of laundry, I haven't done mine since YKWIA's been sick--I usually do it over there, and so I'm running low on some essentials. I may have to break down and use the laundry room, which costs $3 a load, when I get paid.

I kind of feel like I'm starting to crash. Maybe I'll rest for just a bit. I know, I tell myself that, and I'll probably be done in for the night. But I'll try to get up in about 30-45 minutes and at least water the plants and do some things here.

But just in case, good night. ;)

A productive yet beautiful day

I don't think we quite made it into the 60s this afternoon, but it came very close, anyway. This morning I went to the pharmacy and got some medicine. Then I took a friend by his tax preparer, a woman who works out not too far from my apartment. While he was in there, I sat in the car, parked there on the street, and listened further into my audiobook. I stopped by Tire Discounters and they topped off the nitrogen in my tyres, and then we stopped over by my apartment so I could pick up something. We went back to his house, where I installed their housewarming gift (ten years late, but hey...), and then we made a grocery list, and headed over to the Euclid Kroger, where we parked on the roof and shopped, going down the escalator on the way down and the large elevator for the carts on the way back up. We put the groceries away, and then YKWIA watched some videos on YouTube and the movie we had out from the Netflix DVD queue--Inception, which I very much enjoyed. I didn't find it difficult to follow at all, and it seemed fairly consistent within itself. YKWIA and I agreed that the ending, which was deliberately shot to leave a question in the mind of the viewer, nevertheless is not ambiguous at all, given very clear clues to indicate whether the ending takes place in dream and reality. Anyway, I really liked it. The next one up is technically Lucy, but that is not actually released until Tuesday, which is the day Inception should arrive back at Netflix, so it may bump to the next one, Maleficent.

After the movie, we watched a few more YouTube videos, and then I headed home. Now I'm listening to the radio and just hanging out at home, trying to fix a sticking keyboard. (The Y and U are depressing at the same time, and sometimes the H or 7. I have an ergonomic keyboard, and unlike regular ones, apparently you can't just pop off a key to fix it. Usually the more I type, the better it gets. But I'm doing a lot of backspacing as a result.) I'm burning a lavender and cedar wood candle because my apartment smells like the cigarette that's seeping in through the bathroom somehow from upstairs. It's so strong I sprayed some lavender room and body mist in there. I hope it helps. I hate cigarette smoke. At least it's not cigar smoke. That makes me physically ill and when I'm near someone smoking a cigar I want to just puke on them. Of course, I feel the same way about people who wear strong musk perfume. :)

I also heard from my mother tonight right after the movie ended, and we chatted for awhile, mostly about our shared klutziness (she hurt a finger badly recently). I told her about my upcoming trip and a little bit about work.

Tomorrow we're not playing the Call of Cthulhu game because Brenda has a Society for Creative Anachronism Shire function instead. But I'm going over later than normal to my friends' house and doing the normal housework and then I think YKWIA has some things in mind to do, but I haven't been let in on the plan yet.

I don't have anything particularly exciting lined up this week at work or after. There's class on Wednesday, of course. The week after I'm off work for Presidents' Day, class, and a doctor's appointment.

Okay, I think I'll work on something for awhile, then maybe do some reading or book-listening before bed. I have several 14-day books due on Monday, non-fiction ones, and I'd like to go through them before I return them. Good night, if I don't write again tonight.

One more tonight...

Don't you love it when you have a song in your head (in this case, Ed Sheeran's 'Sing') and so you turn on the radio and it's actually playing. I guess I'm a radio psychic! :)

By the way, I finally got a pair of Atari joysticks to go along with an Atari 600 XL computer I found on eBay, and they work, and this afternoon before I went over to my friends' house, I played Dig Dug, Gyruss, and Q*Bert. :) Ready Player One indeed! And I love the Gyruss music, even though it's old-style computing music and a kind of plinky. And after all, it is Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor:



But then, I wish my phone's version of Tetris had the original theme. :)



(It's called 'Korobeiniki'.)

Ha, ha!

I've gotten the bed rails with those books down, plus the bookshelf cleared off and moved. When I took it out of its place, there was a fortune cookie fortune underneath it that said, 'All the effort you are making will ultimately pay off.' I hope so. I still have the entertainment centre to go, but I'm going to wait until after 'Supernatural' is off (I'm recording it), in case I have to move the cable box around. Ugh. It's a good time to take a break, anyway, as my back is now bothering me. But at least I have the radio to listen to.

It amazes me just how terribly efficient the recycling centre guys are

The only wait I had was that they had to make a copy of the sheet you put your name, address, and initials on. But the unloading, like last time, was incredibly quick. I didn't get anything to eat because I wasn't particularly hungry yet. I'm running the dishes now. I'm going to wait a little while before taking the trash and recyclables out; I've been listening to Rick Dees' countdown of popular music since it began, and we're in the top 5 now. So I'm going to take about a half-hour break since I've been going pretty strong for nearly eight hours, and then take them out, finish in the bathroom, etc., and move on to the rest.

I am the only person I know

who can twist an ankle trying to take off one's shoes. I don't think I did any damage, but it's the one foot that still hurts from when I had the stress fractures, and wow was it painful.

It's a beautiful day, considering it started out with rain. There's a nice breeze coming through the open windows, as well as happy sunlight. I was fortunate to get a ride to and from work today by two different co-workers, so I'm home a little earlier than I would be on the bus. Today was pretty decent, if a little hectic. I got some things crossed off my to-do lists (I have four lists, colour-coded, at work--one for the library, one for data entry, one for referrals, and one for personal/professional items outside of work. I'm getting it all finished one step at a time, but I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow. I suspect several people will be off tomorrow, as it's the last day of the Spring meet at the Keeneland race track. The Derby's coming up, of course, and people are gearing up for that.

Last night I wound up listening to the Old Time Radio application with a wartime (WWII) Sherlock Holmes story. It was entertaining. I love old radio shows. Then I listened to some music. I did really well until I put it over to classical, at which point I dozed off. But that was at nearly 10 pm, so not abnormally early. I accidentally found a channel (and I have no idea how to repeat it) with a jazz show on from a station in the south side of Chicago. It was very good. I got up at 11:30 to close the windows and take my medicine, then went to bed till about 7 am. I would have read on the Kindle for awhile but I went to do so and the poor thing's battery needed charging. I've been reading Kindle books on my SpringBoard instead. But I like the Kindle for the e-ink and also the text-to-speech. I like on the tablet how it will give me page numbers, whereas my version of the Kindle, the Kindle 2, doesn't do that. One other difference is that I find that on the tablet I download a book or two at one time, then remove it from the device. If I want to read something else, I have to page through all the different books, and I have almost 300 books. But on the Kindle, they're just on the device, all of them, and in nice little categories, so I can find them more easily. I don't always remember the title when trying to find one on the tablet. For example, I have several omnibus editions of various authors' works (such as Dickens, Hugo, Twain, Poe, Welles, Conan Doyle, Lovecraft, and Haggard, to name a few), and sometimes they're listed under 'Works of...' and sometimes 'Collected Works of...', etc. On the Kindle I just have them under their main genre. So there are good and bad points to each device.

Okay, I had some shrimp étouffée at work, an apple here, plus some lima beans. Time to go do something useful. I'll probably write later. YKWIA told me something that really was blogworthy, but I can't quite recall it. It'll come to me, or if not, I'll call him and find out. In the meantime, hope you're having a good week.

My apologies to Penguin Books (and thanks)

When I first got my Kindle, I checked on the Dresden Files series and the books weren't text-to-speech enabled. Now they are. I don't know if something changed, if there was a mistake, if I misread something, or my bitching helped, but the ones I've looked at are, now. Woo-hoo. I prefer the option. Also, I've had two books out from the library that I just haven't been able to progress with that I've broken down and gotten via Kindle: All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris (one of the Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries) and Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, one of the Dresden Files.

I also stopped by the library and got three CDs to listen to, and put a hold for Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. I figure stories that start out as books are normally better in that form than the motion pictures modelled after them; it seemed intriguing. (Conversely, stories that start out as movies are often better than their novel adaptations.)

I almost forgot to tune into WUKY 91.3 to listen to an old friend on 'Curtains @ 8'. He's playing music from his CD at Mia's downtown tomorrow night at 8 pm. If you like Irish music, you should come. The CD is I Bhfad ó Bhaile (Far From Home). I am somewhat amused by how Nick Lawrence, who has a rich radio voice, pronounces 'Liam'. 'Course, I pronounce it 'Bill', because that was the form of William he was using back then. :)

Anyway, that's where I'll be tomorrow, and I promise not to play in traffic this time!

A master storyteller, gone

Radio commentator Paul Harvey dead at 90

I loved Paul Harvey's 'The Rest of the Story' from the time I first heard it as a child. It was often thought-provoking and he was wonderful in his use of a phrase, a pregnant pause, always keeping you waiting for his story's 'punchline'. He was a consummate storyteller, and those are few and far between these days. His distinctive voice was comfortable and inviting.

NPR let me down this morning

On my way to work, they were reading the news over the radio about the scientists who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Two American citizens (one originally from Italy) and a Briton won. So far, good. Then they gave their institutional affiliations. The announcer proceeded to say that Martin J. Evans, the Briton, was from the University of Cardiff 'in England'.

Tsk. Tsk. Cardiff is in Wales. Contrary to some opinions, Wales and England are different countries, under one United Kingdom. Wales is like Scotland in that regard. No one ever seems to think Scotland is England. What gives with Wales?

Hopefully they corrected the story or at least it was just a momentary slip. The story on the website is correct, thankfully.

Oh, well, these things happen, especially on radio, which may or may not be recorded ahead of time. But considering that NPR is considered rather highbrow, it's something you expect them to get right. :)