Archive for the ‘It’s all about me’ Category

It’s my birthday

Wednesday, August 31st, 2016

… and it’s been a good one. Good enough for me, anyway.

At work, I managed to solve some problems in code I’ve been developing for a new board. It still doesn’t work, but I keep telling people that clearing one set of problems and ending up with another is still progress. A lot of people don’t believe me when I say that, but it’s true.

This evening, Marion took me out for sushi at Namiko’s. Very good sushi, and we believe they have the best gyoza around. I stopped for ice cream at a candy/ice cream store that Eater Denver rated as one of the better ones in the metro area. After we returned home, we played a game of Scrabble. That wasn’t as much fun – the letters we drew weren’t cooperating to make words.

My thrilling life, right? It’s fine by me; I’ve never been much of an adrenaline junkie.

Not unexpected

Tuesday, July 12th, 2016

I’ve taken vocabulary tests before, and seen similar results to this one:

Vocabsize

Found at Feral Irishman.

Well, that was fun (not)

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2016

Today has not been the best day. It started when I got up – my normal practice is to weight myself and take my pulse and blood pressure right after waking. Today, my sphygmomanometer died. I pumped it up several times, and it displayed the falling pressure and the pulse indication, but it gave me an error each time, instead of the final results.

Driving to work, there’s a major intersection about 1/2 mile from the office, and the cross street is the major one, so I always have to wait for the light. This morning, just as I was braking to join the line of cars at the light, some idiot (I’m using an innocuous description to avoid the profanity that I used when this happened) zoomed past me and jinked into my lane to avoid having to wait behind a gravel truck. I had to brake so hard to avoid hitting him that everything loose in the car went flying. I’m just relieved that I hadn’t stopped to pick up coffee and burritos for the office this morning. When the light turned green, the idiot kept pace with the gravel truck, so that the light turned red before I was through the intersection. He remained ten miles per hour below the speed limit to the next light, calmly sailing through just after it had turned red, thus forcing me to wait for the next cycle.

Nothing much happened at work, apart from a BSOD at the end of the day, just as I was about to save a file I’d been working on.

Driving home, I noticed a heavy brake smell just after I got onto the highway. I didn’t think it was my car, because my on-ramp going home is just after the highway finishes a 7% downgrade that is several miles in length, but I have had some brake trouble recently, so I wasn’t certain. I got off at the next exit, and saw that a semi trailer several vehicles ahead of me had a smoking wheel, so that relieved me. However, just past the next intersection, the pickup in front of me got into the “right turn only” lane to go into the shopping center there. Then, he decided not to, but I had drawn almost even with him. Another flying interior braking event, and I’d avoided him. He got back into the traffic lane, then turned into the second entrance to the shopping center.

Later, and closer to home, I managed to avoid (without any trouble) driving behind a van with precariously-packed back section, and which also had back doors that were open and swinging. I did have a little trouble with a vehicle that decided to cut abruptly from behind it to in front of me, though.

No problems with dinner, but my bad knee has been acting up since then. Blargh.

Yes, there is a reason I’m linking this Dave Barry column

Saturday, May 7th, 2016

I just went through my second one yesterday. No problems, thank goodness.

In other health news, I’ve received a new CPAP that I’m calling “ET” because it phones home. I used it the night I got it, but the next night was the colonoscopy prep, and I didn’t really get any sleep then, so I had it unplugged. The next day, I received a phone call, a text, and an email saying that I needed to make sure it was turned on so it could upload my usage information.

Next week I’m getting a three-month updated set of blood tests done and scheduling a new sleep study. All of my medical procedures seem to be coming due at once.

Meh.

Tuesday, February 9th, 2016

I set up a doctor’s appointment for today, because I’ve had some symptoms that match with deep-vein thrombosis. The doctor didn’t think so. She thought it was most likely to be sciatica, but set up an ultrasound exam for me just in case.

Apparently, it’s both. I go back later today to discuss treatment options.

Today has not been the best day

Wednesday, January 13th, 2016

I’ve been feeling slightly under the weather for a few days, so I’ve been thinking that I’m coming down with something. Today, that was verified for me. I almost didn’t go in to work, but I didn’t think I was that bad, yet.

I usually wake up when the light coming through my bedroom window gets bright enough, but this morning, I was actually awakened by notification sounds for a series of incoming emails. When I looked at them, I discovered that one of my favorite fan fiction authors, who has not been writing for some time because of family responsibilities, was recently diagnosed with cancer. I wish him well, and hopes he beats it.

Then, at work, my boss announced that she couldn’t keep the company going any longer. The customers and the money just aren’t there, and by going under without trying to run it out as far as possible, there’ll be an easier “landing,” and we’ll all be better off (apart from the no longer having jobs thing). It’s not really unexpected – we’ve been running close to the edge for some time, and we made a decision a few months ago on where to put our effort that was probably the wrong one. Even so, it was not what I wanted to hear on what I realized was the 30th anniversary of my original hire date – I’ve been with the company since January 13, 1986, which is almost half my life.

The boss offered to have a company lunch to celebrate my anniversary, but I wasn’t feeling well enough to eat lunch, and I went home and to bed.

All in all, I’ve had much better days.

It’s Thanksgiving

Friday, November 27th, 2015

… and I am thankful. I have my health, perhaps more than I ought to expect. I have friends, although I could always stand to have more of them. I have family – we don’t get together that often, but we’re still family. I have work that keeps me gainfully employed, and I have hobbies that I enjoy.

I also have problems with attention deficit and follow-through, apparently. I started this post yesterday, got distracted by fixing Thanksgiving dinner, and forgot all about this post for more than 24 hours. Ah, well.

Not Feeling Good

Thursday, October 29th, 2015

I normally have two hours of dance classes on Thursdays, but I came home after one hour tonight. I thought it was just my lunch not having settled well, but I had half a dozen people tell me about a “six hour stomach flu” that “is running around” or that they’ve had within the last week.

I figured, why push it? So, I skipped out on the second hour of classes, and it’s starting to look like that was a good decision.

Reminds me of the stupid things I did

Monday, August 10th, 2015

Here we have an individual throwing (and batting around) gasoline-soaked flaming tennis balls.

When I was younger, back in the days when beer and soft drink cans were still made of steel, rather than aluminum, it was possible to cut the tops and bottoms from two or three cans, tape them together to make a tube, and add one more can with several holes in one end and a single hole in the other to act as a combustion chamber. This was known as a “coke can cannon.” Squirt a little lighter fluid into the combustion chamber, shake it around to increase the amount of vapor, drop a tennis ball in the other end, and launch it by holding a match to the hole in the bottom of the combustion chamber.

If you “wet down” the tennis ball with lighter fluid before putting it into the tube, it would come out flaming, which looked cool if done at night.

Of course, you did have to worry about the combustion chamber exploding. I never had that happen, luckily, but I did once put a significant dent in the garage door when recoil caused the cannon to jump from my hand.

As I said, one of the stupid things I did when I was younger.

If dreams have meaning …

Thursday, May 14th, 2015

I’m not certain I want to know what this one means.

It was a strange and disjointed one. What I remember is walking through a city, then being in the dark, industrial-looking basement of a hotel with a couple friends. We wanted to go to the top floor, and I took the first elevator, while they decided to wait for the express elevator.

Since I was not on the express, my elevator car quickly got very crowded. A very short man who looked something like Pharrell Williams batted his eyes at me and tried to convince me that my t-shirt and jeans were actually women’s clothes, so I must therefore be a woman who was open to his advances. As if.

When I got off the elevator, it opened up on a large park. Hula music was coming from some unseen source, and a group of nuns were performing a hula dance. Nearby, a bunch of tourists in Hawaiian shirts were doing something like a Maori haka in time with the music. I moved over to some ruins, where I told a young boy clambering over them that he was about to step on some snakes, which had frilly growths on their heads that put me in mind of the seahorse that evolved to blend in with seaweed.

After that, I somehow acquired a ukulele, and tried to lead another group of tourists in performing Donovan’s song, “Happiness Runs,” as a round.

Then the alarm went off.