Entry tags:
Better Than Yesterday
Another sleepless night, every time I went horizontal a symphony struck up the rumble and wheeze overture in my upper chest. Sitting up and coughing a little cleared it up. Passed a bit of time reading Pratchett's Reaper Man, which is getting more entertaining. Sometime close to my usual wake-up time, the orchestra calmed down enough to sleep, for an hour at a time. Each hour had its own dream, and it only took a trip to the loo and some nose blowing to be ready to sleep again. Did this till about 11. Showered, dressed, went to take my usual meds but I was feeling a bit lightheaded. Hgl was down to 80, so I made a sandwich for breakfast. Usually I would have some ice cream to bring the levels up, but I was out of all the usual sugary stuff. The sandwich was peanut butter & jelly, but the jelly was sugar free. Then I took my meds, went online for a bit. Then I got up my courage, piled the 4 used litterbox refills onto a cart, wheeled it to the garbage chute and dumped them. Then checked my mail. Back at the apartment I was exhausted.
Lunch was home made chicken soup. I am so glad I made a ton of it and froze 2-bowl servings last month.
Went online, checked my work email, answered a couple of messages. Saw that the engineers admitted I had found a bug last week, but it was too risky to fix, considering there was an easy work-around. Also saw email from yesterday from Oleg, who is on my team and lives in the next building, offering to go shopping for me if I needed. :-)
Found out on FB that one of my favorite local actors had passed away last week. I met Jim Mantell in 1986 when we were part of the Claypipers Theater troupe. They cast the show 4-deep, because the actors all lived in the Bay Area but the theater was in Drytown, a 3 hour drive into Gold Country. We rehearsed casts A and B on Mon & Wed and casts C and D on Tues & Thurs. Performances went all summer with a BBQ, rehearsal and show on Saturdays, plus one on those Sundays which had a Monday holiday following them. Everyone put in their vacation times, and one of the the data-heads drew up a calendar which gave everyone at least one performance a month, but not more than two. Jim was my favorite villain, and I was lucky enough to be in the same rehearsal cast and do at least two shows with him. I don't think we ever were in another show together (probably because I mostly did musicals and he never did), but I worked tech or stage manager on shows he was in, and saw quite a few others. He retired from lawyering about 5 years ago, but was still acting up until a couple of months ago. The FB announcement said he died at his sister's home Dec. 27, of cancer.
At about 3:30 I got brave again and went grocery shopping. I have to remind myself that it's not a good idea to take the expressway during rush hour because the geniuses who designed it put the commuter lane on the right, so single-passenger vehicles entering the road have to fight to get to the second lane, and fight again to get into the commute lane just in time to exit. I need to spend some quality time with Google Maps and find easier stores to get to.
I had a list, and actually bought everything on it, and nothing not on it. I bought at least 2 of everything, and spent about $100. I even remembered to bring my own cloth bags, which got me a $3 refund. They had nice big limes and full sized naval oranges for the first time in months.
Home, it took two trips to bring everything upstairs, and that required about 3 minutes of recovery time. Put everything away, with cats yelling at me because they think it's time to feed them, even though they had plenty of food in their bowls.
Watched some Science Channel TV, and now know what Higgs' boson is. Before, I thought it was a nautical term.
Found a few good photos of Jim and scanned them in for my FB theater friends.
VPNed to work and upgraded my test machine to today's build.
Made dinner from what I'd bought this afternoon. Fed the cats their treats.
Checked online for an obit for Jim, but no luck yet. However, did find this snippet:
The death of James Mantell brought a sadness into the little Belfast tavern, and the shadow it cast over the billiard-table stage was never lifted.
which would have been an apt description, had Jim lived in Belfast. I think he was Irish. The quote is from Robert Mantell's Romance By Clarence Joseph Bulliet, circa 1920.
The upper respiritory thing is still there, but as long as I am sitting, there isn't much coughing. But when there is, that stitch in my side hurts. If I manage to sleep tonight I'll go to work tomorrow.
Lunch was home made chicken soup. I am so glad I made a ton of it and froze 2-bowl servings last month.
Went online, checked my work email, answered a couple of messages. Saw that the engineers admitted I had found a bug last week, but it was too risky to fix, considering there was an easy work-around. Also saw email from yesterday from Oleg, who is on my team and lives in the next building, offering to go shopping for me if I needed. :-)
Found out on FB that one of my favorite local actors had passed away last week. I met Jim Mantell in 1986 when we were part of the Claypipers Theater troupe. They cast the show 4-deep, because the actors all lived in the Bay Area but the theater was in Drytown, a 3 hour drive into Gold Country. We rehearsed casts A and B on Mon & Wed and casts C and D on Tues & Thurs. Performances went all summer with a BBQ, rehearsal and show on Saturdays, plus one on those Sundays which had a Monday holiday following them. Everyone put in their vacation times, and one of the the data-heads drew up a calendar which gave everyone at least one performance a month, but not more than two. Jim was my favorite villain, and I was lucky enough to be in the same rehearsal cast and do at least two shows with him. I don't think we ever were in another show together (probably because I mostly did musicals and he never did), but I worked tech or stage manager on shows he was in, and saw quite a few others. He retired from lawyering about 5 years ago, but was still acting up until a couple of months ago. The FB announcement said he died at his sister's home Dec. 27, of cancer.
At about 3:30 I got brave again and went grocery shopping. I have to remind myself that it's not a good idea to take the expressway during rush hour because the geniuses who designed it put the commuter lane on the right, so single-passenger vehicles entering the road have to fight to get to the second lane, and fight again to get into the commute lane just in time to exit. I need to spend some quality time with Google Maps and find easier stores to get to.
I had a list, and actually bought everything on it, and nothing not on it. I bought at least 2 of everything, and spent about $100. I even remembered to bring my own cloth bags, which got me a $3 refund. They had nice big limes and full sized naval oranges for the first time in months.
Home, it took two trips to bring everything upstairs, and that required about 3 minutes of recovery time. Put everything away, with cats yelling at me because they think it's time to feed them, even though they had plenty of food in their bowls.
Watched some Science Channel TV, and now know what Higgs' boson is. Before, I thought it was a nautical term.
Found a few good photos of Jim and scanned them in for my FB theater friends.
VPNed to work and upgraded my test machine to today's build.
Made dinner from what I'd bought this afternoon. Fed the cats their treats.
Checked online for an obit for Jim, but no luck yet. However, did find this snippet:
The death of James Mantell brought a sadness into the little Belfast tavern, and the shadow it cast over the billiard-table stage was never lifted.
which would have been an apt description, had Jim lived in Belfast. I think he was Irish. The quote is from Robert Mantell's Romance By Clarence Joseph Bulliet, circa 1920.
The upper respiritory thing is still there, but as long as I am sitting, there isn't much coughing. But when there is, that stitch in my side hurts. If I manage to sleep tonight I'll go to work tomorrow.