Got The Link From Jeneva

I shouldn't feel so warm and fuzzy about a computer generated thing but I'm kinda preening about what I got.

R	Relaxing
A	Ambitious
N	Nerdy
U	Useful
E	Enjoyable
L	Light

Name / Username:

Name Acronym Generator
From Go-Quiz.com

Technical Difficulties

The blog was semi-down yesterday when a chunk of the template somehow got deleted. The header and side bar were still there but the actual blog part went *pfft*. Elayne is my hero for figuring out what was going on and fixing it for me.

YAY ELAYNE!!!!

In other blog news I have changed the setting so that you have to do word verification to post. I'm very sorry about that, I hate it myself since it always takes me at least 3 tries to get through those sorts of things, but the spam blots have found me and, while they are very flattering as Elayne has said, I want to nip that in the bud.

May the Force Be with Y'all

Star Wars On a Banjo

I Finally Did It

I have committed public fanfic. Heh. The Hero 21 mailing list is having a drabble game and I couldn't resist. I'll post it over at WASIF to be picked over in a minute. Here is my FF.Net link if you'd rather go there:

http://www.fanfiction.net/u/780512/

It's a complete story even if it IS only 100 words so I feel like I've made some progress against the blahs.

Updates

1. Got the phone! If I didn't send you my number already and I know you and you want it email me.

Wow, a cell phone and a digital camera. What's next? Running water in the bathroom?

2. Got my first migraine in nearly 2 months and it is a vicious one. So much for getting anything done this weekend. *sigh* Dr. Deng and I were just celebrating how long it's been too. That'll teach me.

3. It bears repeating: I HATE codiene. Not only does it make me feel like I have the flu it gives me dreams I can live without. Since I slept all but about 6 hours out of the last 24 this is a major strike against it.

Call Waiting

We got flyers on Monday announcing a new discount deal with Sprint for hospital employees. I've been needing a cell phone since I spend an hour and a half every weekday on the interstate but I didn't want to pay through the nose for some techie toy that did everything but make coffee and just happened to also be a phone. Finally a simple plain phone at an affordable rate!

I ordered it late in the day on Tuesday and the dude said I'd be getting it yesterday. I thought that was an impressive turnaround and I guess I was right since I still don't have it.

As some of you know I have one phone line at home and when the telemarketers found a way around the do not call list I unplugged the phone. I only plug it in when I want to make a call. The only people getting my cell number are my boss and my friends.

I Need Coffee

Went to Orlando Saturday to get Katje and kid from the airport. After the usual excessive delays and other glitches we stayed overnight and then headed for Tampa to see Mandy. Then I realized I had completely and totally screwed up.

1. I did not put Mandy's address and phone number in my PDA.
2. When I printed out a map so I could find her apartment again I forgot to write the apartment number on it.

I had been there before so we wandered around the apartment complex for an hour in 100 degree heat while I tried to remember where they were until my brain finally started working and I thought to see if there might be a wireless signal in there we could leach off of long enough for me to retrieve that all important email. It worked. It turned out I had the right street to begin with but didn't think that they were that close to the entrance and drove right by.

We were shortly waking Mandy and Rowan up because

3. I forgot to call Mandy as promised before leaving Tampa so she would be awake and dressed when we got there.

But once all were together a good time was had. We didn't have enough time to go to the Dali museum as planned but we headed to Municipal Pier in St. Pete and had a wonderful lunch at the Columbia, an extremely good Cuban restaurant that has a solid wall of windows overlooking the bay. It's on the third floor so you can look down at pelicans and gulls flying by as well as look at all the pretty sail boats on the water.

We also spent time at the Pier's mini aquarium oohing over anemones and sea horses and other inhabitants of their big salt water tanks.

Mandy was nice enough to drive us out there and back since I hate the Franklin bridge.

Then it was a non-stop drive from their apartment to Welborn where Katje is going to be staying with an aunt until her apartment in Gainesville is ready, unpacking several hundred pounds of luggage, and then home way past my bedtime.

*Whew*

Lets do it again without* the various minor crisises and the need for the forced march back home at the end.

*Thank you Christina

The Guinea Pig Man

Peter Gurney 1938 - 2006 sounds like someone who was weird in a good way. It's a pity paper pushers had to put a damper on his fun at Great Ormond Street Hospital. We need more eccentrics not fewer.

Here's to Peter *Meeeep*

Yum!

There were two or three serious thoughtful things I was going to blog about this weekend and my brain felt like old jello (I HATE codeine) so instead I goofed off and directed the little bit of creative energy I had into food.

Friday at the grocery store I discovered the new Pillsbury Garlic Butter Crescent rolls. I took those and rolled them around crumpled up bacon and after cooking them according to the directions on the package put them back in for a minute under the broiler to melt Mozzarella cheese over them. It made a really nice and easy (if artery clogging) supper with a few left over.

Clean up was trowing away the piece of tinfoil I cooked them on and the paper plate I ate off of.

And the Fun Continues

Thanks to the cough syrup I had exceptionally weird dreams last night. Wish I could remember more than the bit where somebody's arm was drifting off into the air ala Hitchhiker's Guide but I jerked awake several times from them. They need to invent a dream recorder.

So the work day was alright except for wanting to put my head down and sleep and I happily made my way home with plans to walk in the door, feed the cats, and go to bed. Then I got a flat tire about 10 mins from home.

In the rain.

I was lucky enough to be near a convenience store with an air pump but not to be able to make it one more block to the Dodge dealership so I was on my own. Especially since I pulled out the insurance packet to get the roadside assistance number and found out that I only had it on the truck and I was driving the van.

I had to figure out where the spare was, how to get it out, find the jack, walk to a nearby Tractor Supply to buy a wrench so I could get the dang thing open, figure out where the jack went, how to get the hub cap off etc. Exhausted, with bronchitis, in the rain.

When I actually had to use my foot to put most of my weight on the lug wrench and still couldn't budge it I was about ready to cry. And I was cursing the sorry ass so called men who came and went in their pickup trucks from both stores the whole half hour to 45 minutes I was fighting with it.

Then just as I gave up and started toward the pay phone to call my cousin who lives nearly half an hour away a guy asked if I needed help. Big Burly mechanic dude (with wedding ring) who got the lug nuts off and put the spare on for me too.

Thank you God and thank you Sir Knight. There are still some men around, shame they seem to be taken.

The tire tore all to pieces so God was watching there too. It could have blown out on the interstate but waited until just after I got off to go pretty gently.

8 days until I see Katje and 9 until I see Mandy. I'm looking forward to our mini-vacation now more than ever.

*hack* *ahem* Lovely Day

So I had my regularly scheduled every 4 to 6 months appointment with my Endocrinologist who is also my GP this morning. First the good news: My BP has settled back down to high normal now that I'm not taking Day-quill so that's good for another month until something else sets it off. My thyroid levels were "normal".

The bad news: I don't have a particularly stubborn cold I have viral bronchitis which according to Dr. R can stick around for up to two months. Yay. He did give me a 'script for codeine cough syrup and as much as I hate how it feels to be stoned on codeine by taking very small sips every hour or so instead of a spoonful at the recommended intervals it has kept me from hacking my lungs out today but still functional otherwise. At least until an hour ago when I took a full dose so it would work overnight and right now I'm very stoned. Urg. But hey I'm conducting a scientific experiement: I'm watching the second half of the Bob Dylan bio on PBS right now and despite my expectations he does not sound better if I'm in an altered state.

More bad news, Dr. R. doesn't want to put me on a different BP med because the next step would be beta blockers and that would severely worsen my asthma. He just wants me to continue trying COQ10 and working on building up my physical fitness. *sigh* I'm an American and I demand quick fixes. Now!

At least I got to eat lunch at Bento, my favorite restaurant, before I went back to work. Chicken Yakatori with steamed cabbage and rice and green beans and a small helping of seasame noodles. I could seriously eat there every day of the week.

The first task was to stop at the bank on the way in to cash the petty cash checks for this month and I got a teller who seemed to be rather put out that I would disturb her afternoon and force her to actually work and greated my attempts at small talk with the sort of nose in the air cold shoulder that a Hell's Angel might expect if he stopped by the Debutant's Ball. I really hacked her off when I had to correct her twice because she's new and also doesn't pay attention. When I told her I wanted the money mostly in 10s and 5s and she handed me a stack of mostly twenties it should not have surprised her when I handed half of them back and asked for 10s instead. It's called petty cash for a reason.

Then after a stop at the store to pickup ingredients for the Occupational Therapists' cooking group and some cleaner I got to spend a solid hour trying to get permanent marker off a $600 rolling dry erase board after some kids were left unattended and bored. When I say permanent I don't simply mean magic marker, I mean the stuff that is designed to mark equipment and withstand normal daily cleaning. The markers we use to write "Property Of..." on the ice pack covers and the transfer boards. The stuff mothers probably use to mark their kids underwear with before shipping them off to camp as an alternative to killing the little darlings.

I have tried Dry Erase Board Cleaner, rubbing alcohol, orange oil, stove cleaner, and finally concentrated Simple Green. A half a bottle of Simple Green got 75% of the stuff off. Enough that one side is usable for the most part. If anybody has a suggestion for something that will get off the marker without removing the surface of the board please share it.

I don't remember right now if I posted about the day of the three computers last week but short version is that my hard drive died, the replacement didn't work, and the new computer keeps coming up with missing stuff I need to do my job. As of today I still do not have the ability to print to one of the four printers I need.

Nobody needs 4 printers? Oh, yeah? I have a label printer of my very own and I'm linked in one way or another to a black and white printer and a color printer I share with my office mate as well as a printer in the outpatient clinic which is hooked into the corporate network. The black and white printer is faster and cheaper to use than the color printer, I need the color printer for flyers, banners, cards, and graphs, and one of the things that I have to print out to compile a monthly report will only print to a "network printer". We do not have a network printer in our office because they will only hook up a certain model to the corporate network and it costs something like 3 times what a regular printer costs so we get to walk to one of the three or four network printers scattered around the building instead.

Time to shut up and pass out now I think.