howeird | Entries tagged with medical

Once again I worked from home till afternoon, once again the apartment inspector never showed up.

My big sister's husband turned 76 on November 10. Four days later he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which had already spread to other organs. Ben was the kind of guy who didn't let a little debilitating pain get in his way, so I'm not surprised he didn't see a doctor as soon as he had symptoms. When Ben was growing up, everyone who had cancer died, and as soon as he was diagnosed he gave up.

Yesterday my sister emailed that cannabis and hospital rest had helped, but this morning she wrote that they had overdone the morphine last night and he was not doing well. Email forwarded from a niece (there are three of them) said her dad said he "was done".

This afternoon sister emailed saying he passed away, the funeral would be Friday. In Israel, it's almost 8 am Friday as I write this.

It is a shock, but not a surprise.

Ben was an American, had been a master sgt in the Air Force for 15 years before moving to Seattle. He met my sister at a Jewish religion class at Hillel while she was in college, courted her that summer when she was cook at a camp for Jewish kids, and they were married a year after she graduated. Unlike my sister, he was not very religious, but he loved her, and agreed to her dream to move to Israel and make babies until most of the population was made up of their peace-loving children. Unfortunately, they took after their mother, and are your basic religious fanatics, most of them living in the Occupied Territories.

He was an electronics genius, he built the world's first operational Doppler radar by hand, from scratch. During his career with the Israeli water service (they are Israel's NOAA) he consulted with the University of Colorado, and meteorology departments in Italy, Russia and Israel on radar tracking for cloud seeding. He taught electronics and programming at universities in Ber Sheva and Haifa. All male Israeli residents are required to serve in the army until age 55, and he was drafted to be an ambulance driver (typical army stupidity) during the war in Lebanon. Eventually they made him the Israeli navy's main radar repairman.

He leaves behind two sons, three daughters and 27 grandchildren.

After the no-show inspection, I went for lunch at Togo's, it's on the way. At work we wrapped up the laser testing, apparently they nailed down the bug, but I'm not sure if the fix was implemented. The system works better than before, which is good. But data through the air can never be as reliable as data over a wire, so I'm not sold on this scheme.

At home I used the limitations of VPN to take two required health & safety classes which Corp HR insists are required by OSHA. The second class starts by saying OSHA only requires it for people who handle chemicals as part of their job, which is hardly anyone at this company. No one at my site. I passed both classes easily, but it was a total waste of time.

Had my 1-on-1 with the boss, he moved it from yesterday because stuff is piling up for the coming release and new products. I told him about the needlessly complex path to home ownership, and he shared his. Same deal, surprises being sprung which should have been handled up front, and way too many documents. He also built a house in Thailand, there was none of this crap over there.

Home by way of Lucky's because they have a Jewish food section. I had falafel in the freezer, but needed humus and tehina and pita. It took forever to find pita, and the only types they had were whole wheat and 8-grain. Compared to several hundred types of taco and tortilla wrappers.

Watched the Saints and Falcons flail around for the final half while enjoying my Ben Memorial dinner. He was fond of a shot of schnapps now and then, maybe I'll have a sip in his memory.

Two packages picked up from UPS, one was a rotary nose & ear hair trimmer. The kind which looks like a miniature hedge trimmer is useless. And 4 6-packs of Nike crew socks. Had to throw away a 2-week supply of Dickies brand, holes in the toes after the first wear on too many of them.

Two weeks from moving. Two more packing projects before the crunch:
- Pack up the camping equipment which is on shelves in the storage room
- Box everything in the office closet which is not in drawers
- Box up the blank CDs/DVDs and ink cartridges in the office credenza
(those last to really are just one project)
This weekend I'll also do a full backup of my RAID array. It has all the big stuff, photos, videos, docs.

Plans for tomorrow:
Call the apartment office and yell at them for the no-show.
With luck, escrow will close. If it does, celebrate.
Uke class #2

Current Mood: crazy
Current Location: Home

..and there were not many plans.

Shot up at 9, decided to make a real breakfast: French toast with Orowheat Health Nut bread, eggbeaters, lactose-free 2%, cinnamon, powdered sugar with a little margarine in the pan to make it crisp. Not as attractive as white bread, but much yummier.

Got the car washed, it is so nice to have the windows clean inside and out. I don't care if the car is shiny, as long as I can see out.

Broke down all the empty boxes from online purchases, and bungeed them. Not enough to haul to the dumpster, I tell myself. I lie, but why make the trip?

Watched some football. Jets vs. Patriots. Tom Terrific Brady sucked. Geno was adequate. Jets played like an NFL team for a change, Pats didn't.

Kaan had been voluntarily parking inside the cat carrier for the last 3 days, but when it came time to put him in there for the ride to Petco, he fought like mad. I had to upend the box and drop him in. Got there 15 minutes early, the guys at the front table gave me a "Group 1" tag, and said the line would form halfway to the back of the store, but I could see there already were 4 people ahead of me. Then they moved the tables and had us line up closer to the front of the store. At a little before 2, they handed each of is a clipboard with a form to fill out. Right at 2, another table was set up way at the back of the store, and we were told to wait till we were called. But we lined up back there anyway. All four pets ahead of me were dogs. All four weighed less than Kaan. It was pretty quick, since the dogs were all in shopping carts and just needed to be lifted out, held in place, and shot. The one in front of me also got some oral meds.

Kaan fought with all his might to stay in the crate, but these guys knew what they were doing and hauled him out, got him in position and gave him the shot in about 20 seconds. He ran back into the carrier when they were done.

Next stop, the first table, where they took my money ($22), gave me the rabies shot medallion, and a copy of the form with generic "things to look for after a vaccination" sheet.

Back home, just long enough to let Kaan out of the carrier and see that he wasn't mad at me. Watched a wee bit of the 49ers game, made sure it was recording on Tivo and headed for Starbucks to chat with Janice. This time it was mostly me talking, but next time she will be back from India, and will have lots to tell me.

Home, launched the recording of the game, 2xFFed past all the commercials, and as usual kept it in single FF so it was slow enough to see everything but the annoying announcers' voices are muted. 3xFFed past halftime BS. The game started slowly, eventually the 9ers came up to speed and owned the game, but they cruised through the 4th quarter, just not enough to lose.

Watched an episode of Restaurant Stakeout. I keep thinking it's time to stop recording this, because it has become formula, the restaurant always turns itself around. I want to see a failure now and then because you know there have to be some.

Wore the new shoes all day, I am liking how they feel with the new socks. But next time I think I'll order the crew length sox instead of the calf length. Speaking of sox, the team color for both the teams in the World Series is red. How will we tell the fans apart?

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
MNF or BASFA. If BASFA, I will bring some empty moon cake tins to auction.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

Work got a little bit interesting, there was a bug fix to check out on the older model machine, which I do happen to have one of. Still no word when I get my main machine back.

No lunch. Lunchtime was a UPS pickup, then off to the Safeway next to where the hearing test was going to be. Surgical strike shopping, though I did buy some Australian extra-sharp cheddar just because.

I was still way early for the hearing test, but had my Nexus and the Kindle app. Even though the booth was roomy and not claustrophobic, my breathing kind of interfered with the test. But the results were about the same as last time. The doctor gave me two pieces of advice:
1. Get the wax cleared out of your ears by a professional
2. Don't waste your $$ on hearing aids yet.( freq graf behind the cut )
Basically shows my hearing is crap above 4kHz but okay for the bulk of the vocal range, 250-1KHz. The drop at 1.5KHz is borderline "needs bionics".
X is left ear, O is right ear. The numbers up and down are dB. 0dB is what radio and TV stations are supposed to top off at. Every 3dB is double the loudness.

So, back to work, finished the bug I was checking and wrote it up, and then it was time to go home. But first a stop at Lucky's for one item Safeway didn't have. Almost parked for a while at the BatCave Starbucks, but there was too much stuff to do for the loan arranger.

Home, rounded up all the paperwork (electronwork?) which the loan people needed. Printed checks for their appraisal (which I'll try to drop off tomorrow) and for the termite inspection (which gets mailed). I am still waiting for HR to answer my fax asking for the employment verification form. I'll email them tomorrow if there's nothing before I leave for work.

Watched some TV, Bones grabbed me because Pretty Redhead. The Voice I could only take in small doses because their idea of a voice is mostly my idea of noise. But there's a sexy blonde on the panel who tried very hard to come out of the top of her dress.

Then the Olds, which they call news but there was nothing new.

UPS included NB sneakers from Zappos, which are going right back because by WIDE they meant the heel, not the toe box. :-( Too tight in front, slips like crazy in the back.

The whites are still in the dryer, and will probably stay there.

Made an appointment for Thursday morning to have Domino shot for rabies and de-matted.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Doctor at 3 to follow up on the elbow, BP and ear wax.
Call mobile home park, try for an interview spot Thursday afternoon (I have the day off for PTO)
Drop off the check and the loan offer agreement at the loan arranger's

Current Mood: pooped
Current Location: Home of the Weird

Though the nice lady at the manufactured homes office was definitely optical C₆H₁₂O₆. More on that later

Work continued to continue. Togo's for lunch, turkey & swiss. Automation Guy asked me to come to Kaiser with him to keep him company while he picked up his new glasses. And then he stopped in for a flu shot, the line was very short. I went along because I wanted to pick is brain about the automation script issue, and he made a suggestion which seems to have fixed the problem.

The one test case I scripted turned out to also take care of 6 others, and I also finished a 7th and tomorrow will do an 8th. After that they get tough.

After work I drove over to the office of Alliance Manufactured Homes and met with Marilee, who had taken my email and found some homes for sale on three of the parks. She said land rental is about $1k, and expect it to go up $30/yr. Which reminds me, she also suggested I confirm that the CU will do a mortgage on a home on leased land. As opposed to parked under a bridge, I suppose. She ran the numbers on them, and we're talking $800/mo at her financing's exorbitant 6.8% and $5k closing costs with $65k down. So $1800 with the land rental. That's only a 38% savings over my current rent - I was hoping for 50%.

We made an appointment to see two homes in one park on Sunday.

Home, watched the latest episode of Elementary, was happy they have backed away from the soap opera format they had been trending toward, but sad they continued to steal names of characters from the Holmes stories. Glad they didn't kill off Lucy Liu, and they finally let her do some martial arts choreography.

Am done listening to the news. Am especially done listening to all the Democratic reps for the Bay Area moaning about how the Bad Guys are Being Stupid. I want some action from them. We need a new Speaker, and not that Pelosi failure.

In other news, Putin is being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Between Snowden and Syria, he gets my vote. Maybe they can make Obama hand over his still-unearned one.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Manicure (?)
Pick up a package at UPS
No band rehearsal! We're done till next May. My 2 music stands and the expensive Baritone are in the patio storage room, the cheap baritone I'll take to a repair place Saturday and see if they will make if more playable.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Home

Last things first. Just watched Miley Cyrus' latest video for her song-like object called Wrecking Ball.
( Cut because I care )

I watched it because I saw on CNN where Cher of Miley's MTV awards shenanigans "her body looked like hell". I thought her body looked like heaven, and CNN said I could see it naked in her video, which is the best way to tell how a body's body is. And I am here to say Cher never looked half as good. Miley doesn't dance in the video, which is probably a good thing. The song is whiny and repetitious and more of a sound loop than a tune, but oddly enough her harsh singing voice sounds a lot like Cher's.

Aside from Miley, the video has issues. There are poor edits, major lip sync problems, continuity is sorely lacking and the images don't match the words. On the plus side, the videography is stellar, lighting is excellent. Makeup is a tiny bit overdone in the close-ups but fine in the long shots.

I wouldn't buy the CD or the DVD, but I'd sure watch more of her nakedness.

Started the day once again at the doctor's having my blood pressure checked. It was still high, but in a weird way. The first time the diastolic was okay but systolic was high. Second time it was reversed. I told the nurse the new meds put me to sleep, but she didn't pass that on to the doctor because tonight the doctor said to double the dosage. I won't be doing that.

It only took 5 minutes to run the test - it is supposed to take 20, they didn't do it right. That was enough time to go to the car wash, which the care sorely needed. Not that the car has sores.

Work was way too much fun today. After they took away my test machine, they had the gall to ask me for the test script I was using. This after running it more than 10,000 times and proving it had nothing to do with the customer's issue. First time I have ever raised my voice at this office. Unlike them, I document everything I do on the bug database, if they had bothered to actually read the bug docs they would see the script was right there.

Lunchtime was manicure time. Michelle was having allergy problems, and she got trapped into helping a wedding party who all wanted pedi/mani, so instead I was serviced by the very young-looking waif Tiffany. She did a very good job, and is pleasant to look at, but not the beauty queen Michelle is.

Since it was only a little jog way from on my way back to work, I went to the small Asian grocery on Lawrence to buy moon cakes (today is the day). They were almost all sold out, I think it was actually last night. Bought two tins at $20 each, one from SF and one from Sandy Eggo. At check-out each got its own re-usable shopping bag with the bakery's logo. I also bought a couple of pounds of longans, which will be devoured in the next couple of days.

Home after work, let the cats onto the patio for a bit. Watched football until it was time to leave for band practice.

This time I remembered to glue in my teeth. Used the new old horn, and have to say it does not sound as good as the old new one, but the mouthpiece is better for high notes. It's really small but still a trombone/baritone one. My lips did not hurt tonight, I chalk it up for playing all summer. One more rehearsal and one more concert and we're done till next May.

Home by way of 99 Ranch, to see if they had an moon cakes, but they were closed. :-( Will try them tomorrow maybe.

Finished watching the game, except Tivo cut it off with 3 minutes left on the clock. After I told it to add an extra hour. This time it didn't matter.

Dinner was a hodge podge after digging out the freezer. I have about 4 lbs of ham in there, sliced, from last Thanksgiving. Or maybe it was Xmas. Found three frozen matzo balls which I didn't know were left. So I made matzo ball soup with ham bits. Also reheated a small serving of corned beef and stuffing. And had some ice cream.

Sold the OEM radio/CD fr5om the new Corolla on eBay to someone in Manteca. Looks like a resale business, actually. Only got $100 for it, which is a shame, but since I got it for free with the car, that is fine, we both win.

In other windfall news, in the mail today was a check from the state Controller, it was the refund for overpaid capital gains taxes. When Google bought Motorola Mobility they gave us a formula to compute how much $$ we had lost on Motorola and Motorola Mobility stock when those two companies split. I had sold all my MMI stock last year, and my cost basis was a guess. Google's formula said I had lost around $30k, when I had guessed $8k. Not the actual numbers, but a reasonable facsimile. The IRS allowed me to amend the return online, and the refund from them took less than a month. I got it May 8. California doesn't allow that, and they don't do direct deposit for revised returns. I had to mail it in and wait for a check. Amusingly, on the check stub it suggests the refund will be faster if it is sent online and direct deposited.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Deposit check
Moon cake?
Costco?
???

Current Mood: flirty
Current Location: Home

I think I woke up 6 times between 4:30 and 7 am. And then slept through the 7 o'clock alarm about 12 minutes. Been having some dreams which were interesting while I was having them, but I can't remember anything when I wake up except I know I laughed out loud at least once.

Got to work at a reasonable time, and now that I no longer live at the apartment from speed bump hell, the two speed bumps at work are nor such a BFD so I have been parking in the back lot where the rest of my team does, because it's a direct shot to the lab from the back door, and through the lab to our cubes.

The fun stuff today was this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiTZGA_-slA#action=share

Workers had installed the ceiling units a week or two ago, today a couple of Israelis installed the receivers on top of the cubical walls, and were aligning them when I left tonight. It's pretty ridiculous, because we already have the same speed network wired to our desk machines via USB. These still use cables from the receivers to the PCs, so it's pretty much a boondoggle.

In other news, engineering finally gave me the answer I was waiting for about a test case, and while it was not the answer I wanted, it was an answer. As a result, I had to nuke a test case instead of automating it, and file a lengthy bug so they could fix the documentation to show the wrong answer is now the official answer. In all honesty, the impact on the customer is almost zero. The part which is not zero is only a matter of philosophy and won't affect the end user in any way.

Spent some of my break time seeing if a weekend return to Morro Bay is feasible, and emailing links to my photos to the folks at the whale tour company.

In medical news, my diabetes doctor is putting me on U-500 insulin, which is 5x more powerful than the regular stuff. The theory is it only takes half an hour to kick in, and it lasts for 24 hours. Which for me probably means and hour to see results and gone in 12 hours. He is also prescribing a different syringe, because the U-500 doses are in ml and not insulin units. Frankly, the insulin syringe units are easier, 100 units is 1 ml. He has prescribed the dosages in .46 ml and .32 ml which would be 46 and 32 units on the insulin syringe. Multiply by 5 and that corresponds to the 230 units I take during the day and the 160 I take at bedtime. And here's the irony - the insulin is ready to be picked up today, but the syringes are on back-order.

I'll be sticking my finger a lot to see what it really does. And I stocked up on ice cream in case I "over-shoot".

Lunch today was Hometown Buffet, which has suddenly developed a salad bar which almost rivals Sizzler. I went there because I needed to stock up on next=door Rite Aid's generic benadryl spray and cream.

Two package pickups after work. At the apartment was what looked like a coffee table book box from Amazon, which turned out to be six pairs of reading glasses. At UPS was a USPS Priority Mail box which had the Nikon 16-85mm lens which is the complement to the 70-300 which I used on the whale trip. There were times wandering around town when I could have used it, and it would have been a good lens for taking pictures of people on the boat, but the boat was rocking too much (4 foot swells) to risk changing lenses. And I don't really want to carry two cameras (did that in college and in Peace Corps, it wasn't pretty).

News from Toyota, they think they can get my HOWEIRD plates re-issued from the DMV, they want me to send them the same form I sent to get the non-HOWEIRD replacements. Maybe as a dealership the DMV will do things which they won't do for Joe Slob Public. We'll see.

The Nexus 7 I ordered from Best Buy online when they said the store was out of stock was supposed to have shipped 8/7 but UPS didn't get it till today, delivery set for Friday. And now the stores have it in stock. I may just swing by the store tomorrow and pick one up, and refuse the UPS package when it arrives.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
1-on-1 (Should be interesting. Boss will have seen the whale pix - he's a friend on Flickr - and I've seen his White Sands/Yellowstone pix from his last week vacation)

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

Two nights ago I shot up 1/3 more long-term insulin than usual and in the morning my Hgl level was 112. Very close to Howard-normal. Last night I did it again, this morning it was 101. Nice. So I shot up my usual morning dose (half what I did at night) and took my meds, then went online for a bit. Opened the patio shades and saw Kaan had pooped next to the cat tree. Boo, hiss. Transferred that to one of the litterboxes and decided it was a hint - they needed changing. So I changed them.

The exertion met the morning insulin and threw me into mild insulin shock. That's actually kind of good news because it has been agens since my Hgl was uner control enough for that to happen. A piece of Scottish whiskey fudge brought me most of the way back, enough to drive to work. Early meeting this morning, no time for breakfast, but I survived. After the meeting I had a cup of noodles and was fine.

Last night also was night 2 of back twisty pain, one vicodin helped me sleep but did not dull the pain much. This morning there was still some pain left, and it let me know when I manipulated the litterboxes.

It has now faded, was gone by mid-afternoon.

After the meeting I looked for work to do, which took a lot of time because most of the bugs which are left require special setups which I don't have access to. 11:30 my alarm reminded me that CHM was having a brown bag talk by von Neumann's daughter which I did not want to miss. So hopped in the car and drove to MV for that, and was flabbergasted that the cafe was closed. So no lunch for me.

It was a pretty good interview, what I heard of it. The speakers in the back kept clipping.

Back to work, where I had a PB&J sandwich in the cooler, and chocolate milk. And mounds (the dark chocolate ones). And walnuts.

Found some work to do, also took a browser break to look at non-hybrid cars. Then Automation Guy invited me to the breakroom to chat while he had lunch. Mondays are wall to wall meetings for him.

Left at 6, drove to Courtesy Chevrolet through the insane San Thomas Expy traffic. What cretin decided the diamond lane should be the right-hand lane? And how many lobotomies were done to keep it that way?

"Mac" whose real name is Amir, had sent me info on internet prices for the Cruze. They don't have a hybrid but they have an "eco" high-MPG version which is close enough. He showed me the nav system, which is almost as good as Ford's, but the voice recognition sucked, was slow, and did not recognize anything I said. Good headroom for getting in and out of the car, and comfortable. But the instrument panel is a joke. All analog, the speedometer is on the right, behind the steering wheel, and the tachy is on the left behind the steering wheel. Odometer is tiny, bottom center behind the steering wheel. And all are labeled very small, like 8 pt. fonts.

I asked Amir about paying cash, and he told me those days are gone - it's better to get a loan and just pay it off to get the title. There are usually price breaks to get it financed.

I took a quick look at the Sonic, which has an electronic speedometer, same nav system, but it's ugly, especially the tiny headlight pairs.

Home, decided to blow off BASFA and have dolmathes and clam strips for dinner, watch some TiVo and play online. Part of that was looking at the Ford Focus, which can be tricked out with all the toys of the Fusion & C-max, without the inflated hybrid surcharge. I'll probably go back there tomorrow to check it out.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work - Automation Guy is teaching a 2-day class on tcl scripting
Ford - focus

Current Mood: hyper
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

But I should have started studying lines an hour or two ago. Just that some financial stuff came in which I had to deal with, and the the sucking sound of Facebook, and recording a voice message to my aunt & uncle in NYC (uncle has macular degeneration, and would rather hear my voice than read text). And then there was a reply to

lemmozine which I had only half-finished this morning. Oh, and I had to bring the laptop in and figure out why it had failed to VPN to work last time I was at *$'s. Worked fine, which meant finishing an installation of linux, which pretended to work but didn't.

So here I am, before midnight.

Morning started with a walk to the apartment office where I waited for way too long for two reps to explain something to a new renter which one could have done by herself. Picked up two packages. One is a remote for my camcorder, the other is a set of Bose earbuds.

Back to the apartment, it was now too late to install a VM on my work PC, so I got in the car and headed for Mountain View to be way early for my doctor's appointment, but after a block I turned around to get to the bathroom. Now I was only slightly early. Doctor gave me the exam I expected, and hindsight, she says, tells her last week I had a bladder infection, which triggered bacterial prostatitis, but now the bladder is fine and the prostate is mostly fine. Continue to take drugs, and get a blood test in a month to verify the prostate thing was transient.

Mountain View is lunch heaven, and I was feeling like wor won ton soup would go down well, so I had a huge bowl of that at Fu Lam Mum, which is also where I go for birthday lobster when I'm thinking straight. They have a super dim sum brigade, but this time I needed soup. Huge portion, I took home 5 juan tons.

The north end of MV has about 6 new eateries, including a Greek bakery on the corner which replaced a place called Neto, which was a bakery too, but seemed ashamed to pin down its ethnicity. I'm pretty sure it's the same staff, and all they did was change the sign and add a couple of Greek columns to the display behind the cash register. I bought some baklava and tiramisu, and headed to work

The project at work was to install a virtual machine on my PC with fedora linux, and install snmp bits. It took 4 tries to get fedora installed properly, the VirtualBox software from Oracle sucks the big one, and never asks for the OS. But won't run without it.

A little after 6, I bailed when it was clear I had succeeded with linux, but not with snmp.

Home, I did that stuff above, checked out the remote (it only works with my tape-based camcorder, not with the smaller lighter better memory-based one). Plugged in the earbuds and now I know why some people stay attached forever. Bose audio is excellent, it makes craptastic MP3 listenable.

Plans for tomorrow:
AM, go to the car audio place which installed the alarm and have them fix the trunk release, and install a backup camera. I had given them one to put in when the alarm went in, but it was junk and died months ago.

Work after that

Consonance by 8 pm.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Home

It was a better night last night, still feverish with mild chills but the main WTF symptoms were 90% gone. After I was done with work & dinner, I went to bed, around 7:30, slept till 11, when Kaan woke me up to play fetch. Seriously wanked sense of timing, kiddo. He only lasted three rounds and decided to switch to face-butting. It's lot more affectionate than it sounds, and he turns his purr up about 12 dB.

Back to sleep, maybe three wake-ups, but the last one was a surprise. Both cats were on the bed most of that time. What woke me was hearing about rain making problems for traffic. Huh? No rain here. Radio alarm is set to KOMO and they were seeing rain in Seattle. And it was 7:20. I had slept 20 minutes past the light going on and the alarm.

It took me a while to decide I was well enough for work, showered, took drugs, got dressed (pulled a shirt out of the laundry basket - maybe this weekend I'll hang up the rest of them), made a PNB&J sandwich to pack for breakfast and a banana and some other stuff.

Took a last trip to the loo, and the phone rang. My doctor is out this week, her backup was calling to follow up on my E. coli case, and said the antibiotic I was given was too weak and broad spectrum, so she sent a prescription for a better one to the pharmacy closest to work.

Got to work a little after 9, met with one of my team to show him what we were doing on the SNMP monitoring project, and sent him off to max out one of the test machines. 384 video streams, something like 60 programs with ads spliced into them at scheduled intervals, all of it mirrored.

Somewhere in there I drove to Kaiser, took 15 minutes to find a place to park (in the hospital garage, top floor). Their parking lot is horribly designed. And then 20 minutes in line. This is 11 am, not a peak time. But they only had 2 clerks on duty. There are 5 stations.

Back to work after an hour.

And when we were about to start a week-long test, boss says stop, we need to use that maxxed out machine for an entirely different test, which required me to get a jar file from one of the engineers which none of us in Test even knew existed but is in a customer's hands. And then write a batch file to fire it off every 5 minutes and save the results with a date-stamped file. That was the tough one because the date and time commands on the PC give the data in the usual human-readable format which contains illegal characters for file names.

Got that done just in time to go home.

A couple of stops along the way, first at Verizon to swap out the Moto HD piece of crap phone with the rejuvenated Samsung Galaxy S3. Turns out I could have done it myself - it just needed the SIM and SD cards pulled from one and put into the other. Last time the nice lady did the restore-from-Google thing too, but this time the guy was in a hurry. I don't know why, there were no other customers.

Then to Walgreen's, for a new lancet injector (the Rite Aide one didn't work, and the One Touch doesn't take BD lancets) and I took a clue from

hsifyppah's recent post and bought some larger guage lancets too.

Home, Velveeta and shells for dinner. Watched some of the "news". Reset to factory the two Moto phones.

My lunch cooler still had the sandwich in it. There were muffins for breakfast and I had cup-o-noodles in the break room for lunch, watching two ping pong doubles games. They have announced another tournament, and way too many engineers are fanatic players.

The one new pill I took this morning cleared up 90% of my remaining symptoms. The second one this evening is doing its job too.

Plans for tomorrow:
Elegant stuff like changing the litterboxes
Buying bread & frozen dinners
Read
Sell two moto phones on eBay

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Home of the Weird

Slept a bit better last night, not as many wake-ups. Kaan woke me up at 8:30 to play fetch. Message on Kaiser's site from the late night doctor, the infection is E. coli. Yikes! But the antibiotic he gave me is good for that. He said if I am having abdominal discomfort and trouble peeing, to go to the ER. I'm not feeling that sick. I'll give it one more night.

Worked from home, there was a script to run which was very time-consuming, lots of reboots and delays built in. I would run it until there was a delay, then I'd either take a nap or sit in the recliner. Domino was on my lap a lot. When I was in bed, both cats were there too. Domino is finally coming to not fear Kaan, and is doing better coexisting. There is still a ways to go, though.

Called the ClickAway people to find out why I had not heard from them about the Samsung phone repair. They said they were just waiting for the part to arrive, no ETA. About 45 minutes later they called to say it was done. Coincidence? I went to pick it up, their estimate was right on. Camera image looks much better. Took the phone home, popped in the extended battery (which is what was in the Amazon locker), charged it, and fired it up. Something which amuses me is these devices will work fine without a SIM as long as they have a wi-fi connection. They just can't make phone calls (except 911). It took a couple of hours to slurp up updates to the apps which are on it. If I'm still vertical tomorrow I'll take it to Verizon to have them swap out service from the Motorola HD. The moto phone has been a PIA, its touch screen is more like a hit-it-with-a-hammer screen. And its camera sucks.

Anyhow, finished the script, made it a little prettier with some tricks I learned after I'd written the first rev. Also set up to help with a test the boss gave someone else to do in my absence. If I'm in the office tomorrow I can help.

Plans for tomorrow:
Play it by ear. If I have a rough night, I'm going to the ER. Otherwise, work.

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

Last night was pretty bad. So bad both cats spent most of the night on the bed. I took photos using the webcam app on the phone, but very bummed that they went to neverland. The folder the app says they went to doesn't exist. :-(

Chills made me put on a t-shirt, which got soaked after an hour. Put a towel on the pillow, which helped. Was up six or 7 times to pee, and drink more water.

The alarm woke me at 7, I connected the VPN and emailed the gang that I would be working/sleeping from home. Put on sweat pants and changed t-shirts and went back to bed. Did some actual work on automation scripts, and about 3:30 got permission to borrow someone's test machine to run a stress test which passed, and let me close a bug.

Lunch started with the thought of macaroni, but I'm out, and way low on past shells too. Found an ancient packet of Uncle Ben's Parmesan rice, cooked it up, and attempted to eat it. It tasted like petroleum product. Threw it away, had a banana in lactose-free whipped cream.

Brigadoon music director emailed us some piano parts for a particularly difficult section of mostly "ah". I put those on the web site and updated the index file.

Meanwhile, the producer sent email saying he had set up a Yahoo group for us, which would link to the Dropbox files. No thanks, Yahoo is a spam magnet.

Back to bed, read the ending to Octavia Butler's Kindred. What a crock. She went for the most violent possible ending, totally unjustified. The book begins with a teaser where the heroine has just had her arm amputated. In the final pages we are told why, and it is something she just pulled out of her ass. Or rather, out of dozens of "what if you teleported into a wall" sci-fi con panels. Without setting it up in a way to be remotely defensible. Her writing is okay, but I never had trouble putting the book down when I had to. Another FAIL about the ending is the heroine could easily have carried the proof she had of a family relationship, proof which would have made for a happy ending, but the thought never occurs to her. Exedrin, sleeping pills, a knife and shampoo yes. Family bible, no.

The book was not good enough for me to lose any sleep over, so I went to sleep. Woke up at 6:30, fever of 100.6. Took Tylenol and decided to take the second antibiotic of the day as well. Parked on the recliner with a damp washcloth on my forehead, Domino climbed onto my lap then onto the top of the recliner. Also took two Anacin.

At about 7, I got dressed and in 15 minutes was on my way to rehearsals, feeling about 80%. It was a music rehearsal, so no lengthy standing. Singing makes things better. And I figured if something went wrong, there were friends around to help.

It was an intense rehearsal, music I had not looked at yet, and had not highlighted my part either. Music director has a nasty habit of stopping abruptly when he hears something wrong, but he makes up for it later by letting us sing things through all the way. We had a new, young accompanist who was brilliant. She had obviously practiced a lot - the piano part is torture. The men were let loose early, so instead of going straight home I went to the 7-11 near the apartment to pick up something from the Amazon locker there. Neat idea, they deliver to the locker, no need to mess with apartment offices which close early. I punched in the code they gave me and it didn't work. It wanted 7 character, they only gave me 6.

Will try again tomorrow. Maybe there's a trick.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep
WFH
Call Click Away to find out why they haven't called me about the Samsung phone repair

Current Mood: drained
Current Location: Newest Furball Hall

As I have posted many times before, I am all in favor of professional athletes taking any drugs they want which will enhance their performance. Heck, I am all in favor of anyone taking any drugs they want, whenever. All the war on drugs does is raise the price of drugs and escalate the violence around their distribution. We have adequate laws in place for being intoxicated in public, driving while drugged, etc.

This whole media circus over drugs in sports is ridiculous. Barry Bonds was a skinny guy who was a great outfielder, golden glove winner, and maybe he saw how bulked up his dad was when they were both Giants, but regardless, he knew he would have to put on muscle weight to do what outfielders are expected to do - hit homers. So he did what it took, and took what he did, and busted the home run records. Babe Ruth bulked up on hot dogs and beer, and it killed him. There's no asterix next to his name because beer is legal. Well actually no, it wasn't. Ruth played from 1914-1935, prohibition was in force 1920 to 1933.

The media circus around Lance Armstrong is ridiculous. I don't care what he was on, he won those races. The Tour de France is no walk in the park, and while drugs may help build muscle, they don't build the kind of determination and guts it takes to win a 21 day-long bicycle race which includes mountain passes and a variety of winding roads. Seven times! After recovering from stage 3 cancer.

And I don't care if he lied about it. The Livestrong organization he founded in 2002 has helped cancer programs to the tune of about $30 million a year. I'd lie if it would do that kind of good.

I think what the media is doing to him is criminal. Lives will probably be lost as a result of this media hounding.

Current Mood: angry
Current Location: Home

They let me out of the sleep clinic at about a quarter to 6 am, and it was VERY cold outside, 45 or so. That woke me up. Drove home, the apartment still smelled like chicken soup, so I took out a container and heated a bowl of it for breakfast. Yum! But first I took a shower to get the glops of gel out of my hair, chest and legs. Took my Hgl reading, it was 94 (I had not eaten much for dinner) and I also took my meds.

Was borderline thinking of going to work, but common sense set in, and I went to bed. Domino is completely freaking out. I tell her when I'm going to be gone overnight, but she never listens.

One nice thing about the new apt is the bedroom window is about half as wide as the one in the old apt, so the blackout curtains really do black out 99% of the light. And they are a lovely caramel colored silk.

It was superb to be on my new soft mattress with the fairly new queen sized faux down pillows and 400 count sheets and a lovely mid weight comforter. I slept till the lights went on at 7, along with KOMO. Listened to the Typical Seattle weather and traffic reports, turned off the radio & lights and slept till 9:30.

Was at work by 10:30, not much to do, still waiting for a new build.

Lunch was at Denny's I wanted to see the hobbit menu. I had the hobbit hole breakfast with an side of shire sausage.

Tasted far better than it looked. Those two things in the foreground are English muffins with sunny-side-up eggs cooked into them and topped with cheese. The hash browns are covered in cheddar and bacon. The sausage was pretty good, too.

Back to no-work, then straight home.

Looked at the Boskone art invite, and they will let me buy only one panel, which means 10 photos of the size I displayed at Chicon7. So I signed up for one panel, also bought a full membership (I won't be going, but they ought to require at least a supporting membership for mail-in artists, but they don't offer a supporting membership). I looked through my Worldcon pix, and picked out 6 which are fannish, added two from a previous show, and ordered several of the Endeavor piggyback event from Costco, of which I will pick two, or maybe three - and ditch an older NASA Ames photo from the older set, and have those mounted. Plenty of time, the con is in February. Boston is not a place I want to be in mid-winter.

Got the CD of my knee's X-ray and MRI images, but they are in a format which need to be viewed from a special piece of software, also on the CD. Not intuitive. At first I thought there was one image from each, but there's a "play" button, and maybe a dozen MRI shots from two orientations. They had to be print-screened and slapped into Paint to be useful.

It came with a 6-page write up which is much more detailed than what the doctor provided. I posted some of those on FB as works of modern art. I like this one the best:

My WWII veteran uncle in NYC emailed that he and my aunt were able to get to DC this weekend for a reunion of the Vietnam era version of his 39th combat infantry battalion, which had invited him. He is one of very few remaining WWII members, and they treated him like the hero he is. He was surprised and touched at the very warm reception, and he said my aunt got the same from the wives. I love how he describes the final day sitting in the hotel lobby chatting and answering questions like he was holding court. Every time Uncle opens his mouth he's holding court, I can visualize the scene clearly. :-)

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Treat myself to a birthday dinner. Lobster, probably.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Location: Home of the Weird

Had a rude awakening at 4 am which kept me on the porcelain throne for 45 minutes. I knew I should have taken both Immodium pills yesterday. :-(

When the alarm went on at 7 I was in no way prepared to open my eyes. KOMO was telling me that the weather was wet and chilly, which was a bit disorienting because that was the same prediction on last night's news down here in CA.

I was at work before 9, I think. Or maybe a minute after, feeling okay, but wearing cutoffs because the knee injection was at noon.

Got a lot done at work with research, writing test cases and plunking them into the database. Then off to Kaiser, glad I was there 30 minutes early because I still needed the facilities. :-(

I was called at the crack of 12:03, the very attractive PA played with my knee for a bit then swabbed part of it with something more brown than iodine (Betadine?), sprayed some icy cold anesthetic, and did the needle thing. The needle itself was painless, and it looked like the syringe held about 1000ml. My knee felt like there was about 3x that much inside it. Pressure? Not so much as just feeling.

No after-effects, I was able to stand, walk, just as poorly as ever. She said it will take about 2 weeks for the full effect. While I was there, I asked how I could get copies of the MRI images, and she said I had to go to the department where it was done and fill out a privacy form. They may need me to provide a blank CD.

So I hiked to the other end of the clinic, about 1/4 mile, to the MRI department and the nice lady handed me a slip which said to go to Medical Records next door to where I'd had the shot. :-(

It was a 15-minute wait in Medical Records, there were only 2 people ahead of me, but both appeared to be on Alzheimer's drugs. The kind that cause, not cure, it.

Filled out the form, the nice lady said they would mail a CD to me, and send me a bill for $10. Fine. MRI and X-rays, both the images and the reports. Kewl.

Kaiser put me close enough to go to a Stevens Creek shopping plaza with lots of places to eat bad food, I chose Panda Express. Very disappointing bait & switch, there were no panda dishes on the menu. There was a lot of eye candy though, which helped.

Back to work, boss said I needed to get all the test cases done by the end of the day, because he was going to take the server down tomorrow to do some major upgrades. "No problem", I said, "I have nothing else on my plate except some pickles."

Got that done, and also worked a little with the integration head on finding a test tool we need for the new feature.

Started fading, told the boss I was going home for a nap and would log in from home when I woke up. Went home at 4, slept till 6, tried to log in, but the stupid VPN software said my PC was not registered. BS, I had logged in last week. Re-registered, it still wouldn't let me in, claimed I didn't have anti-virus software running. But I do, a newer version of the same thing we use in the office. Sent IT a nastygram. No immediate reply.

I did manage to listen to a webinar they recorded which I had missed earlier in the week. It could have been interesting, but instead of being an engineering thing it was marketingspeak, so I tuned it out and read my email instead.

Dinner was a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich on whole wheat, followed by a melted cheese sandwich with yellow cheese product, string cheese and goat brie. And my world famous lime seltzer.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Home

Much work writing test cases for a moving target feature. Should wrap up tomorrow. Maybe. Depends on when I will be allowed to drive after the steroid shot in my knee.

Lunch at Home Town Buffet, where I am suddenly a senior (they lowered it from 65 to 60).

Computer History Museum after work to hear one legendary games programmer interview another legendary games programmer. I've heard of their games, but not them. They gave shout-outs to game makers in the audience, including the guy who wrote Pong (who was seated a couple of chairs away from me), and Woz. In the opening intros by the CHM CEO, he gave a shout-out to

johnnyeponymous, who I happen to know is in Toronto at the moment.

It was interesting in snippets, but I kept wanting to slap them both upside the head and pull their clip-in mikes from where they had clipped them - to the middle of their chests - to their collars. Both of them kept hitting their mikes when they gestured, and the mikes were so far away from their mouths there was a lot of feedback as the idiot audio person upped the amplitude to make up for the low volume. I could hardly ever hear the interviewer, he had his mike clipped on upside-down, and his posture was miserable - he was bent over halfway all the time, which pressed the mike into his shirt.

There is a huge projection screen above and behind the stage, which simply showed the two guys' names the whole time. On would think they would show some clips from the interviewee's more famous games. Sonic Hedgehog, for instance.

Home, decided to start browsing my 2012 photos for candidates for the 2013 calendar. I stopped at 40, though I am sure I have a hundred more calendar-worthy shots. You can see them here and help me choose by telling me your faves. Have to narrow it down to 13 - 12 plus the cover.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Steroid shot at noon
The rest of the day? Play it by knee.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: Home

Work was somewhat busy, 9 am team meeting so the Belgium guys could be on the call, but one left early. Maybe still in vacation mode.

Did some automation, and also had my brain picked about Windows Transfer and one of our new automation apps which meeds to be run as Administrator on Windows 7, but not on XP. The story is that after I got a new laptop to replace the one which kept blue-screening on me, boss realized the almost everyone else was still using a 2007 XP model, and approved the whole team to upgrade. The new machines are much better for the kind of work we do, and since I was the first one to upgrade, I'm the go-to person for any growing pains. There really aren't many.

Lunchtime I went to Fry's to buy stuff for two home projects. Number 1 was to get back the full speed of my Internet connection by moving the router into the office, and running a long Ethernet cable from the cable modem in the livingroom. I bought a 50-foot roll and a 100-foot roll, and two 6-foot pieces of cable "concealer" - those humps which run across the floor so you don't trip over the wire. You might trip over the hump, but you won't pull the cable out.

Number 2 was buying a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) and that was something of an adventure. First of all, Fry's moved them from the first aisle by the entrance to way deep into the store, but not near the PC cases and power supplies where I expected them. One of their minions led me to them, and hung around for a long time not being able to answer any of my questions but still hoping to get a commission. After he finally bailed, I found the one I'd seen online on sale, and as I was wheeling it out a very smarmy guy in a suit, who had been told by the minion that there was a commission to be made, tried to "help" me, but I was already gone. I'm all in favor of letting someone get a commission if they actually help me, but that never happens at Fry's, and the commission thing means a delay while they write it up at their local station and another delay as the cashier has to process the extra piece of paper. No thanks.

What made the choice difficult is they only carry two brands, they were out of stock of all the models of one brand, and the other brand had three kinds to choose from, with inconsistent features. ( Geek TMI here )

Home after work, watched the 49ers clobber Arizona, which makes the second time this month a SF team has trounced a Cardinals team. :-)

( More geeky TMI )
So now everything is how I want it, I think. I am not 100% sure the backup outlets are the ones I guessed. After I finish this I will run a test.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (lots of new automation procedures to write. Okay, two.)
Home
Shower
Pack some toiletries and a dose of insulin, and my Kindle. And a T-shirt and shorts which will do for PJs
Drive to the sleep clinic near El Camino Hospital in Mountan view for an overnight sleep study.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Home

This morning was the "shake-out", which was amusing. My company did it up royally, starting with an announcement to duck & cover at 10:18 am, a few minutes later my boss came around to check on us (he's one of the first responders). After a few minutes I got back up into my chair, because after two quakes I know that anything that was going to fall on my in that place would have done so. Then the Person With A Clipboard came by, and just as she was telling me the drill wasn't over, the announcement came that the drill was over. Bwahaha.

Then my cell phone rang, and it was the company's automaton violating my privacy by asking if my family had an emergency plan. They should not be calling my personal phone, and that question is none of their business. It is clear the company does not have a viable emergency plan beyond duck & cover. And that's not a good thing to do if you're in the lab.

Spent an hour watching a video loop, to confirm that it is defective at the loop point, which means some tests I had marked as failed had actually passed. We didn't have the equipment to really know for sure until yesterday.

Lunchtime I went home for packages. Two at the office - a box of seltzer cartridges (which did not need to be sent needing delivery confirmation) and a HUGE box from my little sister which turned out to be 95% packing peanuts and 5% bubble-wrapped old framed family photos. UPS could have used a box 1/4 the size, and just bubble wrap. At the apartment door was another package, a new seltzer siphon. Twice the capacity of the old one, but still only uses one gas cartridge.

Went top Togo's for lunch, then back to work and got a wee bit farther with the automation project. It was very warm this afternoon, 80's.

Home, tuned in the 49er-Seahawks game and found myself rooting for Seattle. It was one of those frustrating defensive battles, neither QB had shown up for work and they both mostly relied on their runners. Boring. Seattle should have won, but they shot themselves in the foot two times too many. I flipped to the baseball game a couple of times, but it was already 1-6, the Not-Giants, so I stopped doing that after a while.

Dinner was hot dogs and corn on the cob. Domino sat on the floor in front of me, staring at me the whole time, even though there was nothing I usually would give her. Well, I do know she loves corn, but there wasn't enough, and on the cob is too messy.

Fired up the PC and attacked a long-delayed project. I had already made a first Photoshop batch pass of the 200 slides I had Costco scan for me back before I moved. Tonight I put them into subject folders (there were a lot of pictures from Tel Aviv beach which didn't belong in the set), did some more work on the ones which needed it, then burned a DVD for one of my Peace Corps buddies whose wedding photos were on it.

In the mail was my sample ballot, I knew they had received my change of address which I faxed from work when someone from that county department looked me up on LinkedIn.

Plans for tomorrow:
Fasting blood test @ Kaiser
Work
MRI @ Kaiser 9 pm
Figure out what to wear for weekend trip to San Diego. I don't plan on taking anything except the camera, 2 lenses, 2 batteries and a folding backpack. The phone will be my internet connection.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: Home

At work a tad bit early, spent the morning researching and trying to apply some new stuff to automation, but it didn't work. Not enough info or examples. Automation Guy says he has never done what I am trying to do.

Lunch at Gombei, an alleged Japanese restaurant across the street from Kaiser, with zero Japanese staff. The tempura shrimp arrived covered with tartar sauce. The teriyaki beef was grilled beef cut into tiny pieces with some weak teriyaki-ish sauce ladled onto it. The tempura was on top of the salad. Despite the bizarre presentation, it tasted fine.

I went to the big Kaiser clinic near work instead of the tiny one in Mountain View where my regular doctor lives because (a) she didn't have any open appointments till Thursday and (b) it's a long drive. And I also wanted a second opinion. My knees - especially my right knee - have been bothering me. Right knee has been too painful to sleep with, especially nights we had a show. My regular doc says arthritis, but I think it's more than that.

Today's doctor is a very pretty, young blonde Russian woman. Her legs don't work at all, which kind of put my knee problems in perspective. She has chairs strategically placed in the office to grab onto so she doesn't have to put on the arm-cuff crutches which were next to her desk. For the most part, she sat at her desk.

She said it's arthritis. But my right knee is swollen and warm, and may also have fluid building up. She totally ruled out torn meniscus or anything like that. She was surprised I had not had my knees X-rayed, so she sent me to the lab for that and sent in a referral for me to the orthopedic department. Turns out she is an expert on sleep disorders, and she figured out I have sleep apnea. But not from being old and fat. She looked into my mouth, and said the shape of my palate shows I have had this problem since childhood. That's very possible, I was rarely able to stay awake in class, and used to sleep till noon on Sundays.

So she also referred me to a sleep lab, one which does a much more thorough job than the cattle call I went to a few months ago. She thinks with tuning I could learn to live with a CPAP. I think she's wrong. But there are other solutions.

Before X-ray I went to the pharmacy down the hall and waited for prescriptions. It was a long wait. One was for vicodin, to take a small dose at bedtime for the knee pain. Another was for Ambien, to take to help me get to sleep when I get to the sleep lab (in a couple of weeks). One was for a topical anesthetic to rub on my knee, but the pharmacy was out of stock and it wasn't covered, so I said forget it. And one was for what the doc said was prescription strength Tylenol, but it turned out to be OTC. It was a long wait because the doc has to fax over a signed document for the two narcotics (which I saw her do from the office) and then the pharmacy has to either lose them, or match them with the wrong prescription.

Drugs in hand, I went to the elevators, and saw they were setting up to give flu shots. Hmmm.

The X-ray lab is next door at the hospital, so they armbanded me since technically I was being admitted to the hospital. As soon as I sat down in the very full waiting room a tech took me back to have the pictures taken. First was standing, both knees from the front, then lying on left my side, then my right side, then on my tummy.

That done, I walked back to the clinic side, went back to the 3rd floor, and got a flu shot. While I was in the elevator, the sleep lab called to say they were putting me in the pipeline for an appointment, and to confirm which lab was closest to me. It's not at Kaiser, it's outsourced.

Back to work by 5. Not much work to do, actually. Got a call from Orthopedics, and set up an appointment for Thursday morning.

Home, thought about Starbucks, but spent the evening soaking my remaining acrylic nails in acetone, and peeled them all off. Applied clear nail polish/strengthener to them, and will wait a week or two before having them done again.

Listened to the 9th inning of the Giants' game on the drive home, and watched the 7th and 9th innings of the A's game. Both were a cardiologist's delight, both won by the right team.

Spent some time on FB looking at all the photos cast members were posting. I must have succeeded in being cast curmudgeon, because there were none of me.

I think I mentioned that two of the dancers knew someone I'd had a crush on the last time I'd played that theater. I don't think I mentioned that I finally figured out how to spell her new (married) last name, and we're FB friends now. She went from being an opera singer and 2-time Miss California runner-up (well, top 5 actually) to having three children, which started her on the path to founding a baby buggy detailing company. Talk about a career change! Her branch is here. Nice photo of her.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Starbucks
Do more unpacking.

Current Mood: done
Current Location: Home

"Dayquil by day, Nyquil by night" was the mantra when I was an over-worked under-paid front line phone tech support contractor. No work = no pay. This time it was for Anything Goes plus all the packing I have been doing in the show's off-hours. This morning I was not quite awake when I boxed up all the T-shirts, jeans shorts and sweatshirts which were on the racks in the bedroom. This evening's amusement was packing some pillows, which were in those "space bags". They had been vacuum sealed many months ago, but were about 3/4 back to their normal size. I re-vacuumed them, put them in a box, taped the box closed and while I was watching the Ravens make a miracle come-back against the Patriots, I heard a pop behind me. It was the pillows re-expanding and bending the boxes.

The show was pretty low-energy all around, which is what comes from the combination of a very late cast party for many last night, matinée doldrums, and an all-seniors full house. There was some tremendous applause and cheering at the end of each act, but not a lot of laughter during the show. And of course this is the show they chose to video. :-(

Green room talk confirmed my analysis that all the dance numbers are way too long. I think the cheers are more for the dancers' stamina than anything else.

After the show we meet and greet, and we got a lot of compliments on our voices. People had a good time, which is what matters most.

Anyhow, the last 3 days have been spent drinking lots of liquids, sucking on a lot of cough drops and consuming the recommended dosages of Dayquil. Tonight I've taken half a 24-hour Claritin™. We'll see what it does.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Lunchtime: sign in to the new apartment, get the keys, plan what goes where.
Work
Home, collect the cat food/water/litterbox, etc and bring them and Domino to the new place. She will be parked in one of the bathrooms overnight and during the move Tuesday.
Pack some more.
Try to sleep

Current Mood: exanimate
Current Location: Home of the Lost

Over on the other side of the pond, one of my cousins has MS. She is very pretty and articulate and speaks all over Europe to promote the rights of "invisible malady" victims. The Sun did a very nice spread where they talked to several people with MS and one person whose mother has it, and while it is dumbed down for their reqaders, it's still pretty good. The hook they used was Ozzie Osborne's son having been just diagnosed.

Check it out here

Profile

howard stateman

Howeird's Place

Navigation

September 2022

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Base style: Heads Up by momijizuakmori
Theme: A Brighter View by zaluzianskya and skylark_photos

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated May. 22nd, 2025 10:34 am

Writing Wrongs

Annoying The Neighbors Since 1950

Entries tagged with medical

Not One of My Better Days

Kind of boring when everything goes as planned...

Eh?

No Humping Today

What a wreck

Surprises come in odd packages

Rough Start

No, I am not procrastinating

Better Drugs is better drugs

Not so bad but not so good

Getting Better, Sorta

Obligatory Lance Armstrong Post

To Sleep

A Shot, Not In The Dark

In Short

Got Stuff Done

Day of Thor

Second Opinion

Have drugs, will perform

People with MS featured in The Sun