The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

Also, while I'm griping about things, it would really be nice if blowing my nose didn't cause me to feel like I'm blowing my eardrums inside out at the same time. (I'm not, but it feels like that, and I wish the pressure in my ears would get itself sorted out.) The temptation to go out and chug a two-liter of Diet Coke in the hopes of fixing this with window-rattling belches is really overwhelming, if simultaneously uncouth. I hate residual symptoms from sick I had a week ago.

Oliver says Hi from under the phone table.

I joined the rest of the century and bought a Kindle, mainly because a lot of classic works are cheaper to own on Kindle (or outright free) and I can't go through life firing up Project Gutenberg every time I want to read something. I've got Letters to a Young Poet all cued up. I also have a stack of hard copies sitting around. (I was going through my Giant Big McLargeHuge List Of Ways To Blow Through My Disposable Income and realized I've already acquired several of the books thereon, in a very unintentional way. I am ridiculous. However, I did finally get my hands on 1493 and George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm thanks to my father's Christmas gift, thus proving that my father is occasionally good for something.)

I am a little steamed with the cleaning people at work. I do not like having my desk toys knocked over, though I can live with that. (Though, you know, if you're going to pretend to dust, you might actually remove dust from the desk.) I really do not like having my toys broken, and was mightily annoyed when I came in on Monday to find the samurai that dethorats gave me broken. Not badly broken - the kuwagata on his helmet had been knocked off, and thanks to the slings and arrows of the USPS, that was inevitable - but "where is the glue gun?" broken. The only reason I'm not complaining is that the kuwagata was already loose.

(TL;DR - DO NOT BREAK MY SAMURAI. I WILL KILL YOU WITH FIRE.)

Tomorrow, I dine wherever is reasonably priced in Bloomington. (I'm thinking Finch's, though I'm torn because I think their only low-carb options are salads and when it's this cold outside, I don't want salad.)

The monitor is behaving now (obv), but although I have things I want to write up and share, I'm afraid to do so lest the Green, Blurry Plague comes back. I may make a manful stab at it anyway.

So I had bloodwork done today, and amazingly the nurse was able to draw blood on the first jab, which I was really thankful for as they tend to poke my arms until I look like a junkie and then ask if they can write me a lab order. (I am, apparently, the only person who sees any correlation between my not missing work and my continuing to have a job.) The results should be in by tomorrow, and I am trying not to freak out about OH MY GOD DIABETES EBOLA AIDS*. Intellectually, I know how ridiculous I'm being, but I'm not going to be happy until I know, and that may not be until Thursday because they'll probably call the house phone when I'm at work.

Also, the insurance refused to pay for this particular round of meds, as they think I am some kind of CRAZED METFORMIN ADDICT** who keeps going through them at the speed of light. What happened was this: I was on a lower dose. After my bloodwork came back from my physical in February, my doctor wanted to increase the dosage, but didn't write me a new prescription, probably because she didn't want to inconvenience me, so I was just told to ask them to call in a refill when the time came. I am now going through a bottle every two weeks, because that's how long it lasts on the increased dosage, and the insurance is all like, "NO. SHE CANNOT REFILL THEM UNTIL THE 13th." Well, you know what, insurance, that's real nice, but I'm out NOW, so I told the tech at Lolgreens that I would pay out of pocket this time (there's not a huge difference in insured vs. uninsured costs for metformin, thank God) and they can fax my doctor if they need to.

The insurance should be grateful that I am not diabetic (...we think) or I would be burning their ears.

In unrelated news, Oliver is pissed off because I made him go into the bathroom, and is whining and banging against things, even though this approach has never caused me to let him out in the past.

Lolmom is v. unhappy, but was able to get a rental and also the keys from her car. No word on the state of her car.


*Yes, I know diabetes is not as bad as ebola or AIDS. I still don't want it, though.
**Actually, I don't think you can become addicted to metformin, unless your physiology is way off. Not that I advocate this kind of thing, but you can, literally, take huge amounts of the stuff as an overdose and survive.

THERE WAS HAIL YOU GUYS. It was kind of horrifying, since I was in the shitter and I didn't see what it was at first and the emergency siren went off and all I could hear was things knocking against the windows, so here I am trying to hurry things along and conclude my business (the meds were all "lololol @ l33") and thinking "ofux limbs are down on the house IT'S A GODDAMN TORNADO I need to be in the basement now we are probably going to die". No limbs appear to be down, but the hail was certainly having a grand old time. Now, of course, it's 75 and sunny. WELCOME TO SOUTHERN INDIANA~

The Easter report: X-chan came up from Tennessee on Saturday, and we mostly hung out and shot the shit. We had pizza and watched The Ten Commandments, which ate our entire evening, but we always have fun yelling advice to the characters. X-chan was hoping that The Robe would be canceled and Ben-Hur shown in its place, so that we could have a Charlton Heston double feature, but no luck there. Instead, she tortured Oliver by scooping him up and telling him she loved him; Oliver has forgotten her already, so responded by going "WHAT IS THIS HORRIBLE THING IT EATS ME!!!" and scrabbling to be let down. Oh, and we dyed eggs and did the traditional Army-green egg.

We had lamb, gnocchi with herbs, and green beans almandine for dinner. Lolmom was delighted with her Easter surprises (X-chan got her a bunny-themed oven mitt and hotpad, which she thought were too cute to use, and a tea caddy filled with Twining's; I got her a springform pan, which we needed after the church jacked hers, some spring-themed cookie cutters, and a Chocolate Bunny Of Unusual Size, which I picked up in St. Louis and hid from her for about a month. (Victory!)

And then Monday crapped all over me with a series of minor annoyances, including the inability of the entire Evansville area to pull its head out of its collective ass on the driving front, being locked out of my work computer account for an hour and being on hold with IT for most of that hour, and dropping lunch on my shirt. The rest of the week will, hopefully, shape up.

Everything is exponentially better in my beautiful hometown, Bloomington, including the odds that I wouldn't have to go to work tomorrow if I were living there at present, because the Icepocalypse cometh to central Indiana. From what I hear, they're not predicting an Icepocalypse '11 for us down in the Evansville area (sorry for rubbing it in, the_dark_snack and rest of the Indy crew), but it is windy as shit currently and every time something smacks against the house I keep worrying that the Undead Zombie Tree is finally going to snap and eat some brains, or that the car will get hurt (NOOOOOO), or that the Internets will go out which would SUCK since we just got the computer back. People have been making noises about OMG THE TEMPERATURE WILL PLUMMET 20 DEGREES AND EVERYTHING IS GOING TO ICE OVER, but I'm frankly not sure about that. (According to weather.com, it's just going to plummet 30 degrees and we're not supposed to get hammered that bad, but the weatherman is always a pathological liar so your guess is as good as mine on that one.)

Oliver is in the bathroom, where he spends the night until we are SURE that he is house-trained and won't destroy everything in sight, and the sounds of things banging against the house are freaking him out; I can hear him trying to get out of the bathroom in a FUCKIN' DOORS, HOW DO THEY WORK? manner. I feel really bad for the little guy, but I know if I let him out and let him sleep in the bed with me, he's going to get it in his head that all he has to do is act sufficiently distressed to be let out of the bathroom. Also, I sleep with my door closed, and I don't want my nice warm bed covered in cat byproducts, kthx. (Also also, whilst kittens are adorable, I don't want to play with them at two in the morning when I could be getting another three hours of sleep.) Poor kit.

I need to get back on the wagon as far as minimal levels of functioning go. Goddammit, l33, don't be a useless waste of space.

1.) We're having computer trouble. The computer refused to turn back on after being unplugged on 31 December. (How ominous.) It was in the shop for a week, I picked it up on Monday, and it still refuses to turn back on despite claims that it worked just fine in the shop. Well, this is well and good but the computer does not live at the shop, it lives at our house, and I cannot get it to turn on there. We've established that this is not a powerstrip issue. I don't know if it's the cord that hooks the tower to the power source, but otherwise I don't know what the hell to do; we've called the shop several times and they're worse than useless. I then called them today on my break, meaning that I listened to the phone ring 18 times and was then on hold for ten minutes before I gave up and hung up the phone which was probably their diabolical plan. (Yes, these were the same people who fixed it in 2009. We gave them another chance. Their last.) I wound up renewing my PLAC (which I had wanted to do anyway, though not quite this soon) because having some sort of regular Internet access is important to me and we're not getting it at home obv. I don't know when I'll be BACK back, gaiz, so don't expect lengthy missives.

2.) Work proceeds apace. I can now generate invoices. Sort of.

3.) Cat is doing much better now that he's feeling better and is free of parasites (and the diarrhea that the anti-parasite medicine gave him). We finally settled on a name for him: Oliver (as in Twist). It occurred to me only belatedly that I had stolen the name of one of forgottensanity's kittens. Srry Cat, but it fit. He does have a good personality and likes to play with balls in the dining room, also has figured out that lolmom and I do not eat meat-flavored kibble and keeps making plays for our food.

4.) I just feel really tired and depressed a lot right now and most of my evenings are spent waiting for it to be bedtime. I'm trying to goose myself out of this but like anything else it is hard.