Today

I have: 

1. Washed the percolator and hand-washed dishes.
2. Emptied,  loaded,  and run the dishwasher. 
3. Made coffee for my roommate. 
4. Woken him up.
5. Stripped the bed and laundered the bedclothes in the washer. (They're in the dryer right now).
6. Sorted and folded laundry from yesterday. 
7. Woken my roommate. 
8. Let out the dogs several times. 
9. Listened to music.
10. Tightened a loose leg on the living room farm table. The dogs keep knocking into it as they play.
11. Mended two blouses. Why does my sewing kit,  which has 22 spools of thread,  not include navy? I even have chartreuse.  I have never worn chartreuse in my life. But at least those three years of home oeconomics/Future Homemakers of America membership paid off.
12. Taken my oral meds and insulin.
13. Taken items to the car.
14. Took books back to and picked up a hold from the library.
15. Gotten a new library card (my key one wouldn't scan anymore).
16. Taken items to my storage unit.
17. Retrieved the old game notebooks so I can look for something.
18. Went to the store for tea and soda.
19. Finally caffeinated/browsed the web.

Not bad so far.  Things also on my list today:

1. Water plants.
2. Clean bathroom.
3. Print something from the desktop.
4. Read.
5. Straighten up room.
6. Break down cardboard boxes and take them out to the recycling bin (also known as a Rosie here in Lexington).
7. Find the missing game-related information.
8. Zoom with my roommate to test something.
9. Dust some bookshelves.
10. Watch 'Midsomer Murders' during dinner.
11. Feed the dogs and cat in the evening.

Thursday [I was off] I:

1. Made coffee for my roommate.
2. Woke him up.
3. Let the dogs out several times. Fed the dogs and cat in the morning (I usually do evening).
4. Caffeinated and browsed the web.
5. Listened to music.
6. Took a friend out to the Indian restaurant (Masala) for his birthday.
7. Went to the store.
8. Watched 'Midsomer Murders' during dinner.
9. Cleaned the percolator and washed any plastics.
10. Took my meds (morning and night).

Friday [I was off] I:

1. Made coffee for my roommate.
2. Fed the dogs and cat [morning and evening] and let the dogs out several times.
3. Ran dishwasher.
4. Woke him up for class.
5. Caffeinated and browsed the web.
6. Listened to music.
7. Took a friend to get his hair cut.
8. Did a lot of laundry.
9. Picked up some meds.
10. Took expired meds to the pharmacy for disposal.
11. Cleaned the percolator and washed any plastics.
12. Took my meds (morning and night).

Saturday I:

1. Slept in.
2. Made coffee for my roommate.
3. Fed the dogs and cat [both morning and evening] and let the dogs out several times.
4. Ran the dishwasher.
5. Caffeinated and browsed the web.
6. Did a lot of laundry.
7. Make a bank deposit.
8. Trimmed my nails because I couldn't type anymore comfortably.
9. Took a shower.
10. Made banana nut bread.
11. Watched 'Midsomer Murders' during dinner.
12. Took my meds (morning and night).

Things for tomorrow (Labour Day]:

1. Make coffee for my roommate.
2. Run the dishwasher.
3. Caffeinate and browse the web.
4. Listen to music.
5. Pull out things in the utility room.
6. Get the vacuum out of the shed.
7. Move the dryer (with help).
8. Clean out the lint hose and exhaust. It never has been in all the time he's had the house, since about 2005, and the other day we were talking about appliance fires and thought perhaps it would be good. It's also why we're running the dishwasher in the morning rather than while we sleep.
9. Read.
10. Take a shower.
11. Watch 'Midsomer Murders' during dinner.
12. Feed the dogs and cat in the evening.
13. Let the dogs out often.
14. Launder the rest of my bedding.
15. Watch 'Meet the Robinsons' (maybe).

Not bad for my little vacation. Mind you, our air conditioning is out (for the second time this summer--the first time a dog chewed the wires; I suspect there's something wrong with the thermostat this time] and it's been 85°-95°F inside. We've all been very hot during the heatwave, which has had heat indices in the hundred-and-something range outside. Fortunately, we do have fans. Hopefully, we'll be able to afford to have it looked at and fixed soon.

Sigh

It's been a long while. I've posted almost 12,000 times on this blog for over 20 years, but I haven't felt like writing for some time. That makes me sad. I've gotten caught up with life and I'd been relying mostly on my phone for Internet interaction, and it was just harder to do that, for one.  I have a laptop though now AND I just got a folding table big enough to write, read, do crafts, etc., on, rather than having a computer on a stool and being uncomfortable in my chair because I had to put a leg on either side.

I do post a lot on Facebook, and that's for people I'm friends with, and almost all of them are people I know personally, with the exception of a few librarians.  I guess I feel safer there in some ways than over-sharing to the great world beyond.  I know, that hasn't stopped me in the past. But I'm 55 now and a little wiser than when I started.

So let's see...I think I last wrote in February.  We got a puppy then and she was so tiny at 8 weeks that she could go between the slats of the picket fence.  Now she's nine months old, and she's nearly 50 lbs.  She finally has a big girl bark, is very tall and long and lanky, and generally is getting very big.  My roommate thinks she's part Lab (that part is obvious, as she has webbed toes and Labrador waterproofing) and part Doberman, much like the dog he had when I first met him over 30 years ago.  I'm leaning towards part Great Dane with her build, but he is probably right.  She's a joy, very enthusiastic, loving, and a good companion to the other dog, who is a Lab/Pit cross and now much smaller than her.

Healthwise I'm dealing with ageing.  I've lost 50 lbs. since early November and 28 of that was from late December on.  (I was put on a different diuretic in November and I swear 20 lbs. came off because I am a sponge.)  I'm on medicine now called Ozempic for my diabetes, but it helps with weight loss and I'm doing pretty well on it, despite early side effects.  I just went up to the maintenance dose.

I do need to lose weight because I have chondromalacia, which is a loss of cartilage in the joint.  My knees are to the point of being bone-on-bone and I need a bilateral knee replacement, but I need to lose another 40 or so pounds.  They'd like my BMI to be under 40, but 45 is a hard stop and I'm 48 now.  So I need to work harder because I'm in a lot of pain and it's very difficult to walk very far.  I do have an ADA placard for out in the community.  I had one at the university but they only gave me a temporary one as they couldn't read my GP's handwriting. I had him redo it and resubmitted it, but they denied my request.  I have a couple of weeks to submit records, which I've requested, and perhaps I can get one on appeal.  You can't just park in a spot on campus without their specific hangtag, you see...my state-issued placard doesn't do a thing.  And they're pretty tough.  One of my former co-workers used a prosthetic leg and they made him send over records, and he finally got it. I've had it all summer, though, and it's been a godsend.  Without it I'm going to have to walk probably a quarter of a mile from my car to the bus stop and back, and that is very difficult and painful.

I'm also most likely going to have my gall bladder out soon. I go to a surgery consult the first week of September.  They'd found gallstones on an MRI of my liver but I was asymptomatic until I had fried fish and was in extreme distress for a week.  I'm a little leery of this. Even with the weight loss, I weigh about 280 lbs., so lots of visceral fat and higher mortality chances with any abdominal surgery.  Hopefully, it will be laparoscopic, as I don't want to miss much work.

Next week will mark the five-year anniversary since I moved in with my roommate.  All in all it's gone very well, surprisingly well, actually. Neither of us were particularly sure about the move and living together.

At work, headquarters took over my surgery and outpatient visit authorisations, leaving me without a position, but my boss (who's only been here a few months) really went to bat for me, and they did a lateral move into a position I've had before that is technically a few rungs down, but because of the way they did it, I didn't lose my pay, although I'm on the high end of the scale for this one.  I'm back in checkout.  One day before I moved I had a panic attack, because when I did it before, I was alone for the better part of a year, did the phone and e-mails, and generally had trouble keeping up.  Now there are two people at checkout (although my work buddy, who is very bubbly, is moving to registration, so they're trying to hire someone for the checkout position that's open), and one person who's job is to schedule phone and e-mail requests, letting me focus on the patients and families for the most part.  So it's actually been nice.  Not as much pressure and I get to interact with families and see the improvements in patients' lives. I do, being an introvert, get drained by too much interaction, but I also find it satisfying in this case.  So everything's going much better than it could have.

I've been working every day on a series of exercises to help keep my mind sharp.  There's Wordle and Latin Wordle, plus I'm studying languages on Duolingo.  I'm trying to brush up on my rusty Spanish, German, and Latin, plus I'm taking Irish and Welsh.  I was going to try to learn Modern Hebrew (I've studied Biblical Hebrew), but that wasn't going well, as the characters were very small, and it just wasn't clicking. I'm going to take my Biblical Hebrew and do some work on that instead and then go back to the modern after I get a grip on the ancient language.  But I'm getting through the ones I've studied before pretty quickly and understand more than I thought.  My grammar is actually still pretty good, it's just the vocabulary that I'm having to pick up again.  German is extremely easy, even though I haven't had it since 1985.  Latin is my most-studied language (5 semesters, including Mediaeval as well as the normal Classical, plus a little Humanist), so it's going well, although there are a lot of angry parrots in this one. (To be fair, Hebrew had a dove that liked warm wine--you can see why I was having trouble).  I've already used a little Spanish to check a person out at work without having to use the video interpreter, and I asked one of the in-person interpreters what the word for 'stickers' is and put it on my bulletin board because the kids love those.

Okay, I guess I'll sign off for now. I'm on vacation. No plans, not going anywhere, but I took the week off between now and Labor Day.  I'm hoping to get some rest and work on some new hobbies and actually do some reading.

And for some reason my neighbours are setting off fireworks for no discernable reason.

Tomorrow

at work they're having resident interviews for the coming year, and so our clinic has only a few patients and there are no surgeries. I found that out in a memo a few months ago and put it on my December calendar page so I'd remember to ask off for the day. I'll miss a building-wide potluck, but that's fine. It's nice to be on the mend (I'm still a little snotty and coughing, and wheezing in the mornings, anyway, but I feel much better. So tomorrow I need to clean and reorganise my room--do things like put the laundry away, make the bed, clean up some soil that's on the floor from when the kitten stole one of the succulents out of its pot--things I wasn't able to do while sick. I also need to wash some linens and see how much other laundry is in the house.

It's been a little quiet at work this week, and I've gotten caught up on everything except I do have to notify some families of upcoming imaging appointments, but by the time I finished today I had it so most were a little way out, so I can call on Monday. I set the autoresponse for e-mail and an alternative greeting for voicemail, and then I high-tailed it out of there about a half an hour early, as I'd worked a little over this week and didn't want to go into overtime. So...here I am, it's nearly 2 am. I've been spending time with my roommate, who has my crud, and making sure he's taken care of and that the animals have their treat. Earlier I checked on a friend (by phone) who is battling cancer and is now back home after being in the hospital/rehabilitation centre for a while. I think I can go do errands for him if needed this weekend--it'll be almost two weeks since I got sick--I just don't want to spread anything to him.

I took the following pictures today of the orchids in my bedroom; I think they're doing well. Both are 'bargain' orchids that had been marked down that just kept putting out more buds after the initial blooms fell off. The spikes on the other three are developing nicely. I don't remember what the colours will be, so it'll be a surprise.





Okay, I really should go to bed now. Have a great evening and a better tomorrow!

Yay! I'm off for two days!

Which means I:

1. get away from the office for a little while (I really had to drag myself to work today, which indicated it was time to get away, even for a short time, as I usually love being there.
2. can get the house in order before the fire department inspection on Thursday (which I didn't know would happen when it will when I asked of, but I knew it was looming)
3. can take care of some errands and make some phone calls
4. can prepare properly for class
5. can get my allergy shots properly this week
6. can go swimming in the pool
7. won't have to take time off to take a friend to an appointment
8. can blog more
9. might be able to install Windows 10 on my machines, depending on how the rollout goes

Things I want to do tomorrow before class:

1. Take a CD and some books to the library
2. Clean the apartment thoroughly
3. Water the plants, including the outside ones, one of which fell off its ledge yesterday, so I also need to sweep up the dirt
4. Prepare for class

A day of serpent mages and magic carpet rides

Okay, for anyone who has never played Call of Cthulhu or other tabletop roleplaying games, that probably sounds weird. But the game today involved trying to get innocents away from a serpent mage, who bugged out of there with them when he found we were dispatching his Children of Yig (giant snakes) fairly quickly. So we didn't manage to free the innocents yet, but we did escape a crowd of almost two hundred degenerate snake-human hybrid people who were out for our blood by using magic to turn ourselves invisible and then rode the air back to the plane crash site we'd started from. So it was an exciting game, and no one died. Since one of my characters is currently magically bonded to another, I have to be very careful or if one is injured or dies, so it goes with the other. Brenda has three characters on this adventure, so the stakes are high for her as well. But we're trying to save a 6 year old girl, an airline stewardess, and a German guy from having their genetic material used to try to elevate his serpent hybrids to a more civilised form. Yeah, you guessed right on what that means. It's an interesting adventure. It's called 'Final Flight'. The book is very small. I'm not sure who publishes it; I don't think this one is a Chaosium one. One of Brenda's characters owns and airline and so it was a natural fit with a plane crash in the Amazon and all. Of course, it's kind of funny that I'm playing in this adventure right before taking a plane ride myself. But at least we'll be nowhere near the jungle. :) Here's hoping for an uneventful couple of flights this week.

The weather has improved for the trip in terms of temperatures, being in the 50s and 60s here and the 40s and 50s in Chicago. It may be raining here on the day I come back, but that should be okay. I have a lot to do before I leave. Tomorrow I'm going to pay some bills and start getting everything together I need to, as well as working on the house. I hate to leave on vacation with the house a mess, and it definitely is, although I did do four loads of laundry at my friends' house today while I helped them get their house ready for the game, so at least that's taken care of, and I'm doing a load of dishes in the dishwasher right now.

So now I'm listening to some Loreena McKennitt and considering that while I shouldn't be all that sleepy, as we're an hour ahead with Daylight Savings Time now, so even though it's after 10 pm my body should think it's nine, I am, indeed, sleepy. So I may turn in soon, and then start anew tomorrow, going to work and getting things ready for my absence, and then going to the library to turn in a book and renew some. Then I need to straighten up around here.

Okay, I think I'll check the news before I go to bed. If I don't write anymore tonight, have a wonderful evening.

So I've been up for about and hour-and-a-half

and I've got the house looking decent, if not actually clean and happy. I'm waiting for the bank to open. Once it's 9 am, I'll take the books by the library (the branch opens at 9:30, and one was due yesterday), get what I need at the bank, pay my rent, check with the pharmacy regarding the new medicine, and then try to run the rest of my errands, which can only be done if I can find things really cheap, as I have very little I can spend. I was thinking of looking for cards, the belt, and the present for my co-worker at Gabriel Brothers. As far as lights for the tree go, I may just use the ones I have in the windows right now--they're long enough between the two strands and multicoloured, which I like. The strands on the little Charlie Brown tree are too small, and one is, well, odd, sort of little mulitcoloured flames, and I've never seen that style before or since. I usually put it on the tree at work, but I didn't do lights on it this year.

This is the first morning in awhile that we've had frost on the windows. I've already been out, to take out the trash and recyclables and also a fan that died. Some time ago I'd let my friends have my old fan, and they're letting me have it back since I sleep to it, even in the winter. So last night I slept much better than I had in about three weeks.

In case you haven't guessed, due to my long list of things to do, I'm off today. I've carefully built up enough personal time off to have enough time for the holidays and a few more days, and today there's no clinic or surgery, as we have a seminar the doctors, residents, and other staff go to. I don't attend the lecture usually, and things would have been very quiet for most of my work, so my bosses let me have the day off. I'll also take three days at Christmas (two of which are our holidays, but the 26th is not, but it's a Friday, so why not have a five-day weekend?), but I'm just taking January 1st off, I think, not that Friday. Next week, however, sounds like it will be very, very busy. So I'm going to try to enjoy things as best I can while I'm off.

Okay, the bank's almost open. Time to get this show on the road.

So I am feeling

Less nervous about scheduling and am a little more confident in what I'm doing this week as opposed to last week,  where I felt drained and stressed.  And it was a very busy week,  but I mostly stayed on top of things and juggled my library and revenue cycle duties pretty well. Thursday and Friday I can take care of those two areas in greater depth,  plus I have some meetings to go to.  Tomorrow I have to leave early to take a friend to an appointment as well.  But I am an hour-and-a-half ahead on my time,  so I won't have to dip into my personal time off much. 

I've been trying to build it up due to the impending holidays,  and barring getting sicker or something like that,  I should be on track for two days at Thanksgiving,  three at Christmas (we have Christmas Eve off in addition to Christmas Day.  It seemed a good plan to take that Friday off as well).  Of course,  there is also New Year's. So that is six days.  With the next pay period I'll have about eight days saved. By the end of the year there will be about two more.

I am still sick,  but hanging in there.  I am tired of blowing my nose,  which is very irritated.  Even with the medication,  which I am almost out of,  it has not been fun.  But if I can get better without it going into a sinus infection or bronchitis,  I will be quite happy.

I was going to read for a bit.  Turns out I left my Kindle wireless connexion on several days ago,  so it's charging.  Yes,  I know,  this is where real,  physical books have an advantage. So instead I am listening to music and debating on whether it's too late in the day for a nap.  :) Or, I could just pick one of the many books I have on sixteen bookshelves and read.  I have several out from the library I need to get to,  as well.  :)

I watched three episodes

of 'Haven' tonight, including one that was excellent that had a Groundhog Day premiss. I'm in season 2. YKWIA is on season 4. Hopefully I'll catch up before long. But I'm enjoying watching it with him. It has plenty of quirkiness, mystery, likable characters, and it keeps my interest with every episode. But now I'm home. I can't say I got a huge amount done around the house today, although I did get some things accomplished. But what I did get was a nice break from work and life and I feel better as a result. Tomorrow it's back to work, etc. Maybe I can continue to work on the house some on Saturday. I think this is a more-than-one-day-job for sure. :)

A rare daytime weekday post

because I'm off today! [I don't blog at work, after all.] I couldn't remember the last time I'd just come straight home from work (I think it was the Monday before last, or maybe the one before that), and I got to do that last night, although then there was the whole picture thing, but I had also decided to ask for today off to deal with all the stuff at home of which I haven't been able to take care. I had a doctor's appointment this morning at 8 am with my ankle surgeon/podiatrist, and with all the heavy rain and traffic I was running late, but so was he, so it all worked out. My feet are doing well, I'm having no problems, and I got to pick out a pair of shoes good for diabetics that should be available in 2-4 weeks for me to pick up. So I came back through the driving rain, went to the new Richmond Road McDonald's (much easier to get in and out of than the old one, but a little odd, as you enter on one side and drive all around the building to get to the drive through. I got a couple of egg and cheese biscuits, came home, took my medicine and ate, listened to the radio, and now I've got to work out a plan for dealing with the house, as I have about six hours before I have to go over to a friend's to take him to an appointment. In the meantime, it's a rainy, cool day, and I think I'm going to open the windows, turn on all the lights (because it is rather dark in here without the sun out), and get going.

I am off work today, yay!

So far I have:
1. Slept in till 9:30, a full hour after I'm normally at my desk, yay!
2. Paid two bills that were actually due yesterday but since it was Sunday, they wouldn't credit them anyway till today.
3. Escalated a case with eBay where a seller never sent me the item and has not responded to my attempts to contact them (and got a refund!)
4. Eaten breakfast (Veggie sausage, egg, and cheese on an English muffin.)
5. Charged my glucometer (I had it charging last night and it didn't work for some reason, so I had t do it again,)
6. Checked out Facebook and taken three quizzes (I am supposedly supposed to live in Los Angeles--which I went to in the 1970s and didn't care for--and I came out as Captain Jack Harkness for 'Doctor Who' companion. Can't remember the other one, as I am writing the commentaries later in the day.)
7. Checked my e-mail (Mostly the normal stuff. I love that on my computer I have the ninjas theme for Gmail, though. It's very cheery.)
8. Checked the news (Lots of violence, see later post on gun violence.)

So now it's on to other things. What I'd like to do today:

• Get my hair cut. (I did, but she didn't really take off as much as I asked her too; it's been barely trimmed.)
• Get into the pool. (See later post on that.)
• Maybe go to Lane Bryant. (Decided to go to Meijer and check out sandals instead, to no avail.)
• Go to the library and return a couple of books. (Did that.)
• Listen to music. (Of Monsters and Men's My Head is an Animal.)
• Watch some of those things on the DVR and DVDs that I haven't yet. (Thinking about 'Sherlock', but haven't yet).

In other words, do what in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy they used to call 'pleasurable adult activities' and relax. :) Oh, and maybe get a jump on the game notes. We had a good game, then watched 'Witches of East End' and 'Salem'. But I was tired and a little hormonal last night when I got home, so I went straight to bed.

Okay, off the computer and time to do something fun. Enjoy your day!

(PS: I also napped on and off throughout the day, keeping off my knee, which hurts, but not as bad as it usually does. Oddly enough, the left knee is really hurting, a sharp pain when I move it. Perhaps I hurt it at the same time, only not as badly, and it's starting to act up, or, perhaps it's just working harder since I'm putting most of my weight on to it instead of the right knee. Hurts either way.)

Got the results of the MRI today

And it wasn't good. My medial meniscus is, to use the surgeon's term, 'shredded'. It will not get better with time or physical therapy according to him. Plus, I do have some arthritis. He said that if I were older he'd recommend a knee replacement, and that may be down the road anyway. But he definitely wants to do an arthroscopic partial meniscectomy. So we've gone ahead and scheduled that, with the proviso that I can find someone to drive me there and home. The surgeon's going out of the country for a bit, so it'll be near the end of the month. The idea, barring complications, is that I should be able to have the surgery on Friday, recover over the weekend, and drive by Monday or Tuesday, so long as I'm not on any narcotics, and most people take those for only about 72 hours, according to the nurse educator there. I'm usually very sparing with those anyway, and normally don't go through the full prescription, so here's hoping I'll be fine and driving and not miss work. I shouldn't have to have a walker or such, and hopefully the three steps that were so much trouble after my ankle surgery won't be an issue, as I can be weight-bearing as soon as I can tolerate it. Here is a video that demonstrates what they basically do:



I'm going to double check with our agent, but I think I basically shot myself in the foot (figuratively) with AFLAC, because when I went down on the floor to do the cleaning in May, I did twist some and immediately had pain, so that was what did it, but I thought maybe I'd just sprained my knee a little, and was able to walk, so I didn't seek medical attention via the emergency room or even my regular physician when the week began until it was obvious it wasn't getting any better. I think there's a time limit, something like 72 hours, to do so. I injured myself on May 17th and didn't go to the doctor until June 10th and the specialist till June 24th. So even though I have an injury that would normally be covered, has resulted in an MRI and will need surgery, I don't think I meet the requirements due to the time limit. Drat. But I'll double check to be sure. And my hospital coverage doesn't kick in because this will be done in an ambulatory surgical centre. Oh, well. It would have been nice. This is exactly why I pay premiums each pay period.

Okay, even though I just got home a little while ago and finally ate dinner, I'm going to go on to bed. A friend has an appointment tomorrow and I have to get him there by 7 am. He is not a morning person, so I'm going to go over around 6 am (meaning I should get up by 5 am) and hopefully help him get going. The nice thing is then I'll go into work, put in a full day, and I'm off both Friday, the Fourth of July, and Monday, so it'll be a four-day weekend. That's all the vacation I can manage, especially with the surgery coming up, but it's something. Unfortunately, the knee issue is going to keep me from going downtown to the Fourth of July festival during the day Friday, but I'll head over to the hospital where I work to watch the fireworks from the country club across the street that evening. We can park in our parking lot with our badges, rather than out on the street, and the front lawn is a great place to catch the fireworks. The weather is supposed to be great, with no chance of rain and cooler than the heat we've been having.

There was a lovely rainbow earlier, but unfortunately

I didn't manage to get a snapshot of it, given that I was driving at the time. Today I took a friend to an appointment and after a torturous commute home through construction, stuck semis, horrible traffic, etc. (it took about an hour and a half total), we brought home some Long John Silver's and I ate with my friends. Then I helped with something that needed to be done there while the rain came down, and then I headed home as it was clearing and a very wide rainbow popped up in the east.

Tomorrow I'm off work. I took off because our clinic census was low due to a conference that several of the doctors are going to, and I decided to clean house and get my car worked on. The car's check engine light has come on again, even after putting in some fuel injector cleaner into the gas for a half of a tank (it had gone out but then popped back on). Also, the air conditioner/heater/defrost fan isn't doing anything when I turn it on, and given the noise it made for awhile, I'd say the motor is kaput. We'll see. I hope they're both easy fixes. The plan is to go over to Mitch's Auto Repair tomorrow by 8 am, drop off the car, and then head home by bus. I need to look up bus times tonight. Then there will be much cleaning, straightening, and organising of the house. My hope is to get it in good shape tomorrow, unlike the five weeks of spring cleaning I did last year, which involved organising and getting books up on shelves and the like. This time the house is basically okay, it just needs some things put away in their places, a good once over with broom, mop, and vacuum, that sort of thing. Then hopefully I can get back and get the car by the time they close tomorrow, get a book of stamps for YKWIA, and then head over there for 'The 100' at 9 pm. We'll see. The car is the most important, since they're only open on weekdays and it'll be easier to take care of on a day off, which I take very rarely.

It's raining again, a gentle, happy rain, the type that's good for the window boxes. :) I'm reading a book on readers' advisory services today, so I think I'm going to go get my Kindle and curl up with it. Good night.

Despite moderate rain

and me getting a bit wet sitting in the car with the window down, the fireworks went off without a hitch, and were quite spectacular. They always put on a good show at Idle Hour. I actually saw a bit of four different professional displays, and perhaps a fifth, or it was an amateur display with really good fireworks. I tried to take a video of ours, but it was mostly through the windshield, which was wet, and didn't do it justice.

I am off tomorrow, and I'm going over to a friend's in the morning. I'm not sure what is planned quite yet. I'm going to take the small amount of laundry that isn't hand-washable over with me. Hopefully it will be fun.

My need to celebrate the Fourth properly finally satisfied, I think I'm going to wind down and head to bed. The plan tomorrow is to get up early enough to do a few things around the house before I go over there. 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 long but rather pleasant day

Listening to: 'Fire on the Mountain' by Rob Thomas (from Cradlesong)

Things were somewhat slow at work today, so it was a catch-up day for a few things. I texted with a friend later in the day for awhile, and then went to another friend's house and watched a couple of episodes of 'Castle' with him (including a really good Halloween one). Then we ate some food from Subway (this time I actually got a 6 inch, rather than a footlong, and felt much better). We watched a couple of episodes of 'Waiting for God' while we ate, then we did some projects around the house. I got home about 11 pm. Tomorrow I have to stop by my doctor's office for a blood draw, rather than a full appointment, so I shouldn't be too late for work. I have some things coming tomorrow from Amazon that I'm excited about. I'm going to go over to a friend's house for a little bit. I still haven't decided whether to ask off for Friday. I'll see how I feel about it tomorrow. It would be nice to have a day to catch up on things at home.

I'm afraid I'm fading, so I'll sign off of here and say good night. Oh, and happy spring/vernal equinox/Ostara. (Or autumnal equinox if you're in the southern hemisphere). :)

Today I:

• Started working on a project involving selecting and rating various resources.
• Started working up a list of books to buy for the library come April 1st, when our vendor runs a special in which the discount is significantly higher than normal.
• Caught up on my data entry.
• Looked up some good books on reference. I mainly deal with medical issues, especially pediatric orthopaedics, so my general reference is a bit rusty, as my classes were in 1992-93, before the Web really got going to today's standards in terms of resources. So I'd like a refresher. I'm considering getting one from Amazon. Another, which is fairly expensive, can be checked out from the University of Kentucky's Education Library.
• Discovered that my phone, which of course signs into my account through Google, is ever so helpful as to tell me how many minutes it will take to any place I search for on the web, even if I'm searching at home or work. In this case, it was the Education Library. But it's also told me how long it would take to get to various doctors' offices that I call because part of my non-librarian duties is to get referrals from primary care physicians when required.
• Talked to my mother, checked on everyone, and caught up with what's going on with them.
• Went over to my friends' house. Had wonderful Chinese food. Jin Jin may be as good or even better than one I've loved for years, Great Wall. I had kung pao tofu. Yummy.
• Did some grocery shopping at both Good Foods Co-op and Kroger. [Good Foods had both celeriac and vegetable bouillon cubes (well, more like rectangular solids), both of which have been hard to find at Kroger of late.]
• Watched an episode of 'Waiting for God'. It was great. I do like the show immensely. Tom and Diana are wonderful characters.
• Came on home about 11 pm, and I should probably go to bed soon. Last night I was up till 1 am on the Internet ordering some gifts for a friend for no particular special occasion.

So it's been a full day. I decided not to take tomorrow off after all, but I think I may take Friday off instead; the weather's supposed to be better and it'll make for a three-day weekend. There were a few advantages to doing a midweek break, but I still think Friday will be better overall. And barring any emergencies, I should have the day to myself.

Okay, on that note, I think I'll go on to sleep. I'm already in bed, typing on the laptop. :) So I'll put it away and hopefully wake up a little earlier than I did this morning (it was about 7:45, and while I made it to work on time, I wasn't sure that was going to be the case). Tomorrow I must remember to pick a book on hold up from the public library called Doktor Glass. Good night.

Although we don't get off for President's Day

It was going to be fairly slow around work, and since I haven't had a day off since I went back, and my house looks positively like a tornado went through it (I'm not exaggerating), I took off. So here's the agenda for the day:

1. Sleep in. Slept till almost 9:30.
2. Feed fish.
3. Eat breakfast.
4. Make an agenda.
5. Check the news. The whole thing with Pistorius is sad. Now they're talking of a bloody cricket bat and steroids. And the guy who apparently smacked a toddler on an aeroplane in front of a bunch of people using a racial slur is a major jerk who needs an attitude adjustment. Perhaps the fact that he is out of a job will do that.
6. Shower and dress. Still using the shower chair, by the way, although I stood briefly the other day.
7. Get some caffeinated drinks. Circle K has a special of Diet Sunkist 3 for $3. Nice. That should keep me going for a couple of days.
8. Look for a black bra at Gabriel Brothers. Captured one. Also found a series of nesting boxes that look like books that were pretty neat.
9. Load dishes into dishwasher and run.
10. Gather up the various trash and recyclables to be taken out.
11. Take a break for a midday nap, since you don't get those anymore.
12. Do hand dishes.
13. Clean kitchen counters.
14. Pull out the plethora of plastic grocery bags to be recycled.
15. Move mixer and blender above refrigerator.
16. Rearrange plastic containers; get rid of old ones or ones missing lids/bottoms.
17. Get rid of most of the glass jars you're hoarding. And those old glass Airwick things. Recycle.
18. Rearrange freezer. Fill blue ice trays. Get rid of old ones you don't use.
19. Straighten up kitchen island.
20. Straighten up the area around the computer.
21. Clean the bathroom.
22. Take trash and recyclables out.
23. Take out evil sack of mildewed towels from the bathroom flooding incidents while I was off with my injury.
24. Do something fun. This was your day off, remember? Watched 'Downton Abbey', and then I read and listened to music. :)

I also talked to Brandon on the phone for a little while, which was nice. We usually just text back and forth, but sometimes it's just easier to speak on the phone.

Only Josh Hanagarne

[The World's Strongest Librarian] could make me laugh uproariously about his swelling man bits and horrific vacation, 'cause he just wrote it that funny. Go over and visit him and add your worst vacation. Maybe he'll feel better.

My worst vacation was my honeymoon (a pagan gathering). I:

1. Nearly died in a car that stalled crossing a six-lane highway.
   
2. Had the Ku Klux Klan trying to break into the campsite because the Farrars and Isaac Bonewits had shown up at an Atlanta shop and said the witches were meeting at the Fairgrounds.
   
3. Had a Georgia State Trooper guarding said camp due to the KKK threats.
   
4. Had dogs running through the camp, either the KKK's or the local pagans with guns', I'm not sure which.
   
5. Had several of my friends chant 'Lisa's got to pee' while standing in such a way that said Georgia State Trooper would not see me doing my business, since we were nowhere near a port-a-potty.
   
6. Went through the some of the worst storms in the Atlanta area, including having the campsite struck by lightning and (brontophobi me) winding up in the foetal position in a puddle of water whilst attempting to save the beanie weenies.
   
7. Guarded the camp, convincing (along with my fellows) some random motorist to take the weirdo who was trying to catch lightning bugs to read his watch by who was also carrying a sword and called Kentucky one of those 'long states'.
   
8. Froze the day after the storm when at midsummer it went from 90 degrees to 50 during our visit to the Atlanta Zoo.
   
9. Nearly died something like five times on the trip all total.
   
10. Began to have the horrible realisation that I had just married my ex-husband, and all that would entail.
    

Yep. That was 20 years ago next month. Strange times. It was also my last official vacation, I think.

Well, they were two hours late

But the carpet does look so much better. I decided that since it's 81 degrees, I just didn't feel like going out just for laundry money. I'll stop by the bank tomorrow on my way to work. Instead I watched TV (amazing, yes), of all things Star Trek: Next Generation [they have this thing on BBCAmerica where they have ST:TNG, X-Files, and Doctor Who every weekday]. I remembered the other two really well, but not this Star Trek episode ('Remember Me'), so it was nice to watch it again. Oddly enough, this evening LOGO is having a major amount of Absolutely Fabulous. :)

The house is cleaner. I have eaten. I had a Morningstar Tomato Basil burger and a lovely salad. I think I'm going to go take a small nap while the light is streaming through the windows. Then it'll be back to working on the various projects. I couldn't take the recyclables out earlier because I was waiting for the guys to come, and I didn't manage to work on either notes or the book review while waiting. I did get the dishes done, and the I took the trash out as soon as they left when I went to get a soda after getting a shower.

I've enjoyed being off today. Granted, I wish they'd come when they were supposed to, but other than that, it's been a really nice day.

For having had four days off

I am inexplicably tired. My foot has been hurting again badly for days. I bailed on a friend as we watched 'The Guild' earlier because I was tired and hungry and wanted to get home before dark. Now I've eaten, I've blogged, and I'm seriously thinking of going to bed early. I never did do my laundry. I think that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Anyway, it was nice being off, spending time with friends, and eating out at the Indian restaurant.