How I spend my time these days

I really thought I'd be bored while I was off, but that hasn't been the case. Okay, all of this may seem boring. Each day I write out a to-do list of what I need to get done, need to remember to do, or actually do that day that I want 'credit' for. This is a look at my activities over the last few days, from Wednesday through Sunday. I had them on to-do lists on my Kindle Scribe. Each day, I write out the agenda to keep my day in some semblance of order and then tick off the tasks as I do them. Remarkably, Amazon's algorithm can (mostly) read my handwriting and transcribe it into text; I just had to clean it up a little. So I'm keeping busy with a lot of little stuff, plus some posting to Facebook and blogging here. That bike is taking a lot of it, and appointments, plus resting afterwards. I haven't spent all that much time doomscrolling. You'd be surprised at some of the things I'm doing at two weeks out from surgery, probably. I think I did dishes at week one. It is one of my main chores for ages (my roommate cooks, I clean up, for example) and my roommate was so overwhelmed by taking care of me, the animals, and everything else that once he and a friend got the dishwasher working again and he got the backlog taken care of, I was able to do the regular dishes again. If there are more than I can do in just a quick washup and I want to use the dishwasher, I just sit in a chair and do unload/load it. He'd be happy to do it, but it's taken a load off of him, as he's suddenly been having to do everything else of late. I cleaned the bathroom the other day and surprised him. As long as I don't have to stand too long (and I didn't scrub the tub or shower or anything, just hit the important things), I'm fine. Anyway, here we go, plus a page of my handwriting. I think Amazon did a pretty decent job of transcription. I'm mostly staying in my room in the air conditioning (I'm the only one in the house with it, and have been all summer--long story, although there are some pretty high-velocity fans).

Wednesday

• wake up at 7 am
• get dressed, get ready
• telehealth with Kelley
• water plants
• make bed
• update Google Calendar
• update wall calendar
• go to PT
• ROMTech #1
• ROMTech #2
• put on duvet cover
• pack return
• drop return @ post office
• text with K
• post PT update on Facebook
• puzzle |
• watch 'Desperate housewives'@ dinner
• take morning meds
• take eve meds
• take thyroid medicine
• rest as needed |||
• ice as needed |||
• take Tylenol as needed |||
• keep eye on blood sugar
• take insulin if needed
• do finances/balance ledger
• drink water |||| ||||
• wake D
• read email
• do PT exercises

Thursday

• wake up 7:30 am
• get water ||||/ ||||/ |
• take thyroid medicine
• take Tylenol |||
• email Dr Newland
• make bed
• clean bathroom
• wash dishes
• get dressed
• eat breakfast( banana)
• take morning meds
• keep eye on blood sugar
• take insulin if needed (not needed)
• take evening meds
• watch 'Desperate Housewives' @ dinner
• work on blog backlog
• ROMTech # 1
• ROMTech # 2
• ROMTech # 3
• rest as needed |
• ice as needed |
• update tomorrow PT time on calendars
• clean up 'landing area' in room
• take Maunjaro (ER had asked me to delay it till now)
• puzzle ||||
• turn on/off plant light
• listen to music (Shinedown, Ella Fitzgerald, Rag'n'Bone Man station)
• word game |||
• fix aromatherapy diffuser/run it
• do PT exercises
• read email

Friday

• wake up 7 am 
• get water ||||
• put up bags (plastic)
• put up salt + pepper
• put up cup
• put up bags (reusable)
• put up dish items
• put up toilet paper
• put up paper towels
• cut up damaged apples (bad cat!)
• make coffee
• wake roommate
• get dressed
• turn plant light on/off
• run aromatherapy diffuser
• make bed
• listen to music
• take thyroid medicine
• take Tylenol |||
• take morning meds
• keep an eye on blood glucose
• more items from walker to purse
• blog
• put Tylenol from store run away
• go to PT which = ROMTech #1
• turn off battery pack for white rose garland on bed
• read email
• ROMTech #2
• text with J
• care about driving YES!!!
• Call Br
• care Bo
• start car-oil light on
• order pizza
• can Br again
• call Bo again
• have Shabbos dinner
• unload dishwasher
• put away dishes
• load dishwasher
• run dishwasher
• do other dishes (very few)
• take evening meds
• put on new phone case
• put new charger together/try out

Saturday

• wake up 7 am
• take thyroid med
• take Tylenol |||
• put trash bag in container
• launder clothes
• make coffee
• wake roommate
• get dressed
• caffeinate
• listen to Shinedown
• ROMTech# 1
• check email
• check Facebook
• breakfast (apple slices)
• keep an eye on blood sugar
• take morning insulin (both types 20 units)
• turn plant light on/off
• let dogs out/in (carefully)
• rest/elevate leg after exercise
• clean houseeshoes
• run aromatherapy infuser
• take morning meds
• have lunch (baked potato)
• take nap
• read 'Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes'
• ROMTech# 2
• clean out left bedside table drawers
• check Havdalah time.
• ROMTech# 3
• blog Rabbi Kleinbaum's drash
• puzzle
• fold laundry
• put laundry way
• call Chandler pharmacy and cancel insulin autofill
• switch over to Ella Fitzgerald for music
• elevate leg ||
• put on cover screen protector
• do PT exercises
• watch 'Desperate Housewives' @ dinner (sandwich)

Sunday

• wake up 630 am
• take thyroid medicine
• scan news/email/Facebook
• caffeinate
• make coffee
• wake roommate
• listen to Shinedown
• finances
• rest 930-10 an
• turn on/off plant light
• ROMTech #1
• rest/stretch 1030-1230
• take Tylenol
• clean air conditioner filters
• keep an eye on blood sugar
• eat breakfast (banana)
• make bed
• get dressed
• do PT exercises
• ROMTech #2
• take morning meds
• puzzle ||
• ROMtech #3
• listen to audiobook ('Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?')
• ROMTech #4
• eat lunch (sandwich/apple)
• dinner (fish, rice, salad, watermelon)
• watch 'Desperate Housewives' @ dinner
• ROMTech #5
• unload dishwasher
• load dishwasher
• run dishwasher
• wash dishes in sink
• leave pot to soak
• clean stove
• listen to Ella Fitzgerald on speaker via computer
• charge phone, watch, earbuds, speaker
• take eve meds
• take pain med 'cause pain = couldn't sleep

There you go. That's my life in minutiae right now. Is it boring? Oddly, no. Should it be? I'm not sure. I'm starting to have blocks of time I can fill with other things. Audiobooks are looking like a plan. I'm open to other suggestions, as well. :) Today, for example, I have no appointments, and I am only going to do the bike three times, and wait to start until a little later in the day, maybe noon.

Since I'm off work and have time...

From Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Book II, number IV:

Why should any of these things that happen externally, so much distract thee? Give thyself leisure to learn some good thing, and cease roving and wandering to and fro. Thou must also take heed of another kind of wandering, for they are idle in their actions, who toll and labour in this ife, and have no certain scope to which to direct all their motions and desires.

Sometimes we get caught up way to much in making it through life without actually living, including improving our own lives and our minds. I'm certainly guilty of that. I often find myself too tired to do anything that enriches my soul, even reading or hobbies. I think it's important to spend time with yourself, cogitating, or simply being, but I need to make more of an effort to do so, even if I have to set aside time in my schedule to do so. I think many of us are in the same boat, don't you? It's so hard to stand still in modern society. Too much information, too little time, and we are looked down as idle if we sit and think or otherwise enrich ourselves with study or art. It's very sad.

I know all this, but it's so hard to do it. It's definitely something I've been giving some thought to lately. And in an effort to keep afloat, I recently put in for a part-time job, which will really help me, but take away even more time. I really need to rethink how I spend time entirely, and reduce the distractions that keep me from really living.

Interesting

Interesting read on the relationship between climate change, the earth's rotation, and how we measure time

Climate change is delaying world clocks' need for a 'negative leap second'

This morning

YKWIA came into my room (which is actually the living room, so you need to if you're going to come into the house or go to the kitchen to let the dogs out, which is what he was doing). He came over, noticed my always on display on my phone, and commented on it. I asked him what time it is. Eight, he said.

Now, my always on display is set to be on from 10:00 pm to 8:00 am, and it was still on. I look at my phone. It's seven. We only have one clock, not counting my thermometer/humidity gauge and my glucometer, that doesn't automatically set from Daylight Savings to Standard Time, and that's the stove. I told him it was seven. The stove says eight, he says. I explain that it has not been set back yet. But, he said, you said we gained an hour, and so it should be 9, right? I just shook my head. The concept of time, beyond light and dark and seasons, eludes him. He never knows what time it is, unless he has a digital clock somewhere that says it. Analogue clocks are difficult. I think it's part of his dyslexia. Anyway, I explained that it was really early and that yesterday it would have been 8, but now it's 7. I don't think it made much of a difference to him, and by that time, I figured I might as well get up.

I had a leisurely breakfast, took a nice shower, got dressed, read for a bit, visited with him for awhile, and I have:

1. Gotten my stuff off the kitchen table.
2. Cleaned the cat box.
3. Taken out the trash from all cans.
4. Run my summer clothes to the storage unit.
5. Gotten some bananas at Kroger.
6. Cleaned the toilet.

Now I need to water the plants, and since I did the notes last night, I'm pretty much ready for the game. I've caffeinated and taken my meds. I do need to do some laundry; he's in the shower right now, so I'll start after that. I think it'll be a difficult game. We're in ancient Rome with slightly under 24 hours to dismantle a cult of He Who Shall Not Be Named (not Voldemort, rather, Hastur) before the gates open up and all sorts of alien Cthulhoid entities cross over to the world and subjugate mankind. Wish us luck. Brenda has two characters, I have two characters, and YKWIA has two NPCs (non-player characters) on this one.

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!

Five hours later, and I'm just getting back home

The house, and all the anxiety it produces, will have to wait. I just got in. I have cleaned the litter there, taken out the trash and receptacles, helped cook, and cleaned up. Oh, and I went to the store because an ingredient was missing. I am now pooped. But we had a good time, and I lingered as a result, so I was avoiding the house, too. We sang 'Cows with Guns' and such. I don't think everyone would get the humour in that song at all.

Okay, I'm going to eat a little ice cream, cool off, and get ready for bed. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day (which is already planned out, as is Saturday.) Sigh.

Some food for thought

Hmmmm....

‘Time Crystals’ Could Upend Physicists’ Theory of Time

In February 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and, he worried, somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek had developed an apparent proof of “time crystals” — physical structures that move in a repeating pattern, like minute hands rounding clocks, without expending energy or ever winding down. Unlike clocks or any other known objects, time crystals derive their movement not from stored energy but from a break in the symmetry of time, enabling a special form of perpetual motion.

This is going to take a little time to get used to

It is pitch black outside, and was even as I got home, before 7 pm. Welcome to Standard Time, folks. Winter's just around the corner.

Different cultures view time differently, but there are indications this one has no real concept of time as we do

Amondawa tribe lacks abstract idea of time, study says

"We're really not saying these are a 'people without time' or 'outside time'," said Chris Sinha, a professor of psychology of language at the University of Portsmouth.

"Amondawa people, like any other people, can talk about events and sequences of events," he told BBC News.

"What we don't find is a notion of time as being independent of the events which are occuring; they don't have a notion of time which is something the events occur in."

The Amondawa language has no word for "time", or indeed of time periods such as "month" or "year".

The people do not refer to their ages, but rather assume different names in different stages of their lives or as they achieve different status within the community.

But perhaps most surprising is the team's suggestion that there is no "mapping" between concepts of time passage and movement through space.

How odd--let's do the time warp again

My alarm clock somehow got changed so it is about one hour ahead of every other clock in the house, so I accidentally got up at 4 am instead of 5 am. I wasn't sure I believed it, as my radio-controlled clock--which never updates to daylight savings time like it's supposed to, actually has the same time as all the others. So apparently somewhere along the way it did. My backup watch said 3:25 when I checked, and my watch said 4:25, so things not affected by automatic daylight savings changes agreed. I moved the other watch up in line with everything else, went to the official US government time page, and by that time it was, indeed 4:30. So now I have forty minutes to kill before leaving for the first bus. :) I'm ready except for putting my shoes on. Gee.

Maybe I should keep my alarm clock set the not-quite determined time ahead. I'll get more done in the mornings, probably. But I'd probably just adjust to the time in my head eventually.

It feels like Saturday

Which is why I was getting out the candles and preparing for Earth Hour. Umm...that's tomorrow. So is Purple Day. I'll blog about both then. Gee. I'm losing it. Oh, well, I guess my heart's in the right place, anyway.

I feel more awake than usual for a Monday

Mainly because I got so much rest on Saturday, and then when I came home from the game last night, I changed clothes, took my contacts out, set my alarm, and went straight to bed. As a result, I feel rather refreshed.

Today should be busy at work (most Mondays are). Then I have some more to do around the house, including laundry (yes, still working on it). I have some cardboard boxes that need to go out, too, that I've been hanging on to (one for good reason, as the thing it came in had a return for 14 days, and that just passed on Friday. But now there's no reason to keep them, and they're fairly awkward for packing, kind of flat and wide, although sturdy. Oh, well, someone can swipe them from the Rosie container if they really want to use them.

Okay, that's all for now. Time to go to work. Hope you had a good weekend, and have a good day. I can't believe it's already the end of August. It seems like just last week that I was complaining about sub-zero temperatures, and yesterday it was scorching ones. I think time speeds up the older you get. When I was a kid, summers were almost endless. Now they go in a blink of an eye. It really should be the other way around, because you appreciate time as you get older.

Shoe crisis averted...whew!

Listening to: Three Days Grace 'Never Too Late' (embedding disabled)
Reading: Detection by Gaslight: 14 Victorian Detective Stories, edited by Douglas G Greene

No, the shoes weren't mine. But if they had not been found, I would have been getting up at 6 am and probably would have been late for work. Don't ask, I'd only have to kill you.

So I came home, took a shower, and had spa Lisa time, especially working some lotion into my feet. They feel much better. It was quite a long day, and I spent a good part of it in the car, mostly sitting waiting for my passengers to come back out of various buildings. Fortunately I mostly found parking in the shade and there was a breeze. But after about three hours I was starting to feel like a dog abandoned in a car.

It's also been an odd day. This afternoon I looked at the clock, thought it said 2:30 pm, and so I signed off my computer, turned off my desk lights, and headed out the door. I was halfway out the building when I passed a clock that said 1:30. I thought, oh, that one's wrong. Then I passed another. At this point I realised I did indeed have an hour more to work and turned back to the library, preparing to call my errant clock into maintenance. Then I got back to my desk and lo, the clock was right. I just had momentarily lost the capability of telling time. But it was a beautiful, gorgeous day outside, the type you hate to spend inside, and apparently someone was thinking very strong thoughts that I should leave work early. :) But I stuck it out and then went through a series of events that led to the shoe crisis.

I'm glad to be home. I'm going to sleep now.

I received my 10th anniversary gift from work today

It's a clock, 9 or 10 inches square with a maple finish, that sets itself by long-wave radio from an atomic clock in Colorado. The only drawback is that I wasn't getting a good signal at my desk, even near a window. When I took it home, however, it worked fine. Guess there was too much interference from the structure and the computers at work. Still, it looks nice at home, and I need another clock there anyway.

It's hard to believe I've been there 10 years. Actually, it's almost 11; it will be come March.

Anyway, it's a nice gizmo. I'm glad it's working okay now.

Yay!

It's 9:10 and I'm ready for work except for putting my shoes on. I've been having a hard time getting up before about 9:25 (bad when you have to be at work at 10), so I've been very rushed in the mornings. Today I can really wake up a little slowly whilst my brain comes online. I did the set-my-clock-ahead-at-a-random-time trick to fool myself (normally after I figure out the time difference, I start calculating it when I'm half asleep, but it works for awhile when I first start). So even though it's gloomy outside, I'm awake. I'm hoping that falling back from Daylight Savings Time will help, too. I think we do that this weekend. [Correction, that's next week, due to changes in the system.]

I checked and my direct deposit has gone through. It's like magical elves (or if this were Harry Potter, goblins) come and fill my coffers at night. I love direct deposit. I really should do it with the gas station, too. After all, it'll soon be 2 years since I started there. According to my boss, I have a following of regulars. Several people did ask me why I was off, too. It's nice to be appreciated. I think the gas station job does four things for me: 1) keeps me afloat financially by filling in the gaps of my other job, 2) forces me to deal in pleasantries with a constantly-changing stream of people who are very different in demeanor, 3) keeps me on my toes and active, and 4) fulfills my need to help people (a reason I'm a librarian, too).

Well, I'm going to get my shoes on and go into work, getting some money along the way. Hope you have a good day. And for those of you in southern California...I've heard a lot of people here say that even though we've been in a drought and need the rain, we wish you were getting some of it instead. They're thinking about you--and so am I. A co-worker (well, briefly a co-worker, he lasted a week if that) said he wasn't sorry for all these rich people losing their homes, especially since they built in a fire zone. But it's not just rich people--and one thing about fire, it's a great equaliser, without regard for social status or wealth. And it's just as devastating to lose your home regardless of who you are, what you do, or how much you have. And it's hard to find a place in the suburbs of Los Angeles that isn't in a fire zone. At least when I lived there, I was in the desert. But I was also 80-90 miles from LA. That's a bit much for a commute. Anyway, I hope they get some relief soon.

I guess i'm just that mellow

You Are Sunset

Even though you still may be young, you already feel like you've accomplished a lot in life. And you feel free to pave your own path now, and you're not even sure where it will take you. Maybe you'll pursue higher education in a subject you enjoy - or travel the world for a few years. Either way, you approach life with a relaxed, open attitude. And that will take you far!

What Time Of Day Are You?

I have a list of things to blog about

unfortunately, I don't have it here, but there's quite a bit of library-related stuff I've come across, so I'll try to get to them sometime this week.

My workweek continues to be pretty full. Tomorrow I work between the two jobs from 10-8, then Friday is 10-2:30 and 5-10, Saturday 12-10, Monday 10-8, and Wednesday 10-8. (Thursday and Tuesday are my normal 10-2:30 at the hospital). Whew! But the money's helpful.

Yesterday my boss at the hospital called me in to look over my performance appraisal. I got the maximum raise, 3.5%. The only thing I got downgraded on had to do with that verbal warning about the Internet policy when I apparently blogged something offensive at work. I really wish I knew what that was all about--the only thing I can think of is where I quoted someone else whose assertion I didn't even agree with. Oh, well. It just annoys me, because it's the section on integrity and ethics, which I've always scored really well on. I guess what matters is that I'm getting my raise.

Today's weather was really quite nice, although it got a little chilly this evening. But it really seemed like a sunny, spring day, and tomorrow is supposed to get into the 50s, and so be even better. I expect we'll have a lot of car washes tomorrow, along with huge amounts of Powerball tickets, since it's up to $120 million for tomorrow's draw. Monday's big seller was money orders, as most people had to get their rent in by the 5th.

Finally, I have to remember to change my clocks by setting them ahead at 2 am Sunday March 11th. Starting this year the change happens on the second Sunday in March, rather than the first one of April. I remember when it was at the end of April--it seems to creep up over the years.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll post real library stuff soon. In the meantime, not much is happening in my life and I thought I'd share what little there is with you all.