Bloody Sunday

The reason is TMI, suffice to say I made a doctor's appointment for tomorrow morning. My PCP is out till Wednesday, so I'm seeing someone else in the same clinic. So much for having no plans for tomorrow.

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A quiet day. I slept straight through the morning, aided and abetted by not hitting the sack till 2 am. The change of bed sheets to non-microfiber may have helped. These sheets have been on the shelf so long they still have Pumpkin's fur on them. Pumpkin died in 2012.

My Hgl was below 120 this morning, another pleasant surprise.

Since I had no plans till late afternoon, I didn't get dressed till about 2 pm. Watered all the indoor plants, swapped the scraggly plant hanging in the office window for a more robust one on a stand in the livingroom, after pulling out a couple of pounds of dead leaves and branches. I'm not such a good indoor gardener.

Also set up the new ironing board in the bedroom and ironed all the shirts which needed it, even the ones hanging in the closet, not just the ones on the floor from the last laundry run. Spook was spooked by this, especially when I put all the shirts on the bed for easier access, and kept pulling them off the bed, She meeped at me each time I removed another shirt from her pile.

After I ran out of things to do online, it was time to look on the white board random to-do scrawls. Put on shoes and drove to the Walmart supermarket at the Mercado center,  with one thing on my list: paper towels. Before I got to that aisle (last one in the back) I picked up stuff which was on my internal list of "buy it if you see it". Laundry detergent packets, Lysol-like disinfectant spray, 1000mg timed release smaller-than-a-horse-pill Vitamin C, paper bowls, paper plates. Looking at the prices, the stack of 300 plates was significantly less expensive than the stack of 140^§ , "Stacker" kosher pickles (pre-sliced lengthwise, great for sandwiches). Two impulse buys: $1 Payday king size candy bars, 69¢ cans of corn^§§.

Home, plugged in the car even though I'd only used 1/4 battery, because there would be another trip later.

Put away all the things, except the corn and the paper plates. Opened the packaging for the plates, and went to stack some in the cabinet, and discovered ^§ they were too small. No wonder they were so much less expensive than the 140-plate stack.

^§§The corn was for Spook. The last time I had corn for dinner, I threw a couple of kernels on the floor, and she ate them. So I opened a can, poured about a dozen kernels into the dish which used to be for her treats before I decided she was eating only treats instead of real food, and set it down near her food tower. She looked at it briefly, then hopped up onto the bay window sill to guard the house from the oncoming Mongol hoards. So I popped them into the microwave for 30 seconds, and put the dish back. Still no interest.

4:30, headed to MV to meet Janice for coffee. She brought some DVDs I'd made for her of her adopted family in Fiji whose village was leveled by a cyclone last month, for me to copy for them. And a couple of prints of photos of a NYE party in Mexico she roped me into going to in 2000.

After, we went to the other side of the parking lot to check out the new spot which replaced the Bangkok Bistro. I'd never eaten at the Thai place because they were closed on Sundays, and that's the only day we met at that particular Starbucks. The new place was packed, with a gang of Asians hanging around outside. No menu visible from outside, or over the order counter, so J nabbed one from a customer. $13 for a bowl of ramen. Beet salad. Nothing on the menu I was interested in at those prices. No idea why it was so crowded. Wait, yes idea. There are no other places to eat except for a tired old Mexican joint for miles.

Home, looked at the white board again, grabbed the two sets of 7 seed pots, filled them with Miracle Grow, poked a hole in the middle of the soil of each one and dropped in a seed or three. I only had enough pea seeds for four or five, the rest got pincushion flower, white vines (from my baby sister) and marigolds. Put them back on the dining table and watered them. Spook supervised vocally throughout. Lately, she has wanted a say in everything I actively do.

Before dark, I went outside and watered all the outdoor plants, chatting with Lee as I did so. Also showed her the little bay laurel tree growing in the huge pot on the porch. She loves any plants which can be used to cook with. The sprig which crowblog sent to me from Aberdeen, WA has more than doubled in size already.

One of my FB friends posted an addictive meme: Remoe a single letter from a movie or show title, and describe the new plot. I contributed these:
One With The Wind - journey to a Zen master atop the highest peaks of Tibet
776 - King Egbert II of Kent defeats the Mercians and re-asserts himself as ruler of Kent.
Hoes of the Fisherman - either
- With the canceling of crab season, the fishermen must become farmers to live
- Marcus Lycus moves his House offshore
The Irates of Penzance - citizens of a small Cornish village rebel against the establishment.
The Rocky Horror Sow - A transvestite attempts an intra-species relationship, becomes meatloaf.
Someone else suggested:
Tar wars...the great beasts fight it out in prehistoric Los Angeles. Nobody wins.
To which I replied:
And of course there must be Tar Trek, The Next Generation. :-)

I could go one for days, I think. But I won't.

Another amusing discussion on FB is on someone else's pages, with a Democrat with a chip on his shoulder the size of New Jersey, who insists everyone hates Trump. I point out that if this was true, why is he winning all those elections? And the guy quotes me years-ago voter stats claiming the majority of voters are Democrats. To which I reply that if this was true, why are there more Republicans in the House and Senate than Democrats? Who elected them? He answers they only got 52% of the vote. I answered by asking how many points short of a majority is that? And he digs up stats for Presidential elections dating back to Harry Truman. My answer is "that was then, this is now." I would not even consider voting for Trump, but it angers me when people on my side are in denial.

Plans for tomorrow:
Doctor at 10:30 (leave by 10)
Online job search (maybe the LA recruiter will get back to me. Or the Dolby recruiter)
The usual online stuff
Maybe take the copter to Baylands
No basfa for the foreseeable future, as the group has chosen to rule out all the possible meeting places I can get to without a nasty rush hour commute. But that's okay, because:
- For the longest time the meeting locations have been inconvenient to lots of other members
- The usual suspects have mostly stopped paying attention to the meeting in progress in favor of their own conversations. I don't enjoy using my STAGE VOICE to be heard over a mere 25 people.

No Spoilers, No TMI

After the usual morning stuff, it was off to MV Kaiser. Got there half an hour early, an adorable nurse/aide came out in about 5 minutes, took me into the catacombs to take my vitals. BP was a little high, so she had me sit still for 10 minutes while she went elsewhere, and came back to take the BP with me standing up. Much better reading.
 
Then it was back to the waiting area for another 15 minutes, until an exam room was free. She verified all my info, including asking if I was being battered at home, or knew anyone at home who was being mistreated. I told her Spook ignores me, but that's about all. And she's off to do other things again.

Back in 15 minutes to have me do some lab stuff.

10:30 appointment, doc showed up at about 11. She got the lab results as we were going over symptoms. Inconclusive, but verified Something™ was wrong. She sent me to the lab to have them do more tests on what they already had, with the promise to call tomorrow with The Plan. It will either be meds, a CAT scan (she did not invite Spook), or none of the above. The symptom which triggered this has almost disappeared tonight, and was much reduced this morning (hence the inconclusive quickie lab results).

Later this afternoon, the labs were posted on the web site, and they seem to point to meds. Under the company-paid plan, CT scans were $20, with Medicare they are $210. :-(

While I was en route, Janice called & left voicemail. Her Win10 PC was stuck on a black screen and wouldn't show the desktop. She tried all the usual and some of the unusual fixes, and nada. MV Kaiser is not far from her place, so I went over and was stumped. Pulling the plug on the PC and putting it back in solved the problem. Turns out the piece of crap HP micro tower has a "feature" that it never completely powers off when you give it a software or power button shutdown. It keeps everything in memory. We didn't have time to check her power settings, could be it's defaulting to hibernate on shutdown.

Home, the garbage had been collected so I pulled in the bin for that, but the recycle bin was still full with a stack of flattened boxes bundled beside it. Those guys didn't show up till almost 3 pm, used to be both bins were collected by 10 am.

In the mail was a catalog from Kaiser printed on cheap newsprint, listing everything covered by Medicare. They had sent a glossy version of that when I first applied.

Delivered late in the day were some spare parts for the copter.

Copied 3 DVDs for Janice's Fiji family. It took a while to figure out how to use the new CD printer feature on the Epson all-in-1, even though I've used it before.

I didn't leave the house again, probably won't get to fly till Thursday. Ultrasound tomorrow afternoon, Social Security visit Wednesday. They want to see me in person to verify I am able to work, which makes sense since I *am* on Medicare and diabetes means I am a disabled person. In my case my disability at this point only requires an employer to allow me snack breaks and a place to recover from any insulin overdoses. The latter usually amounts to 15 minutes in the break room/cafeteria/sofa with 300 of my favorite calories. SS also wants a form filled out showing the places I have looked for work in the past 2 weeks. I don't think I'll list them all.

Went to take a nap, it was really only a 90-minute lie-down, no sleep. Spent some time on the porch admiring the roses, especially the ones starting to bud.  Walked around to the carport and checked the tomatoes, there is one already on the vine. Lots of blossoms on all 3 plants, also a few insect holes on some of the lower leaves. The green peas are all doing okay.

Grabbed the clippers and cut back the rosemary sprawl by about 1/3. Overfilled a gallon baggie. Cut a lot of mint, all the stems with bigger leaves and a few smaller ones which were threatening the lavender plant. Filled a gallon baggie with that too. And boy did my hands smell great!

I posted about that on FB, my two stateside sisters were impressed, so I filled a ziplock sandwich bag with each for each of them, and used my.usps.com to print labels. Stuffed them into small flat rate boxes, and will drop them off at the PO tomorrow.

Oh yeah, also when I was at the doc's, a recruiter called with what sounded like the perfect job at YouTube (aka Google). Until she mentioned it was part time, on call, in San Bruno which is not where Google's Youtube office is located, AFAIK. She later emailed the description, and it sounds like they are looking for an intern. I referred her to one of the guys who was laid off. He will be all WTF.

Noticed a post on FB about the Contact convention art show. They had one, the organizer never got back to me after I'd let her know I had stuff if she wanted. No big loss. It used to be held at NASA, so I could claim credit for exhibiting my work there, but now it's in a tiny boutique hotel, and they have decided to skip a year next year.

Plans for tomorrow:
Drink plenty of filtered water. Maybe check the filter, it's been in there for more than a year.
Expecting the doctor's call or email
Ultrasound at 2:45. Need to leave here at 1 to get parking, probably.
Maybe after, I'll check out the Brown Bear restaurant recently opened across the street. Or the Specialty's, ditto.