I did not expect that brick wall to pop out of nowhere.
Long story short, personal issues are causing me a lot of grief at the moment, but to quote Nanny Ogg, I aren’t dead. I don’t know when I will be back, though. Eventually, I’ll finish Part 5…
Category: flotsam
A bit of excitement.
Not the recommended kind, though.
I’ve been getting a lot of headaches, sometimes very migraine-like, lately. I’ve got a consult in with the neurologist for a week and a half from now, but for the moment, I’ve been taking Aleve at the first signs of a headache and resorting to the heavy guns (sumatriptan) if it doesn’t go away. If the headache wasn’t making me feel useless, the sumatriptan puts me out, or at least makes me very groggy. Hence, heavy guns.
So, I’m sitting there, scanning documents, when my head starts to hurt. Ah, I say, I have a headache, and reach for my backpack where I keep a bottle of naproxen sodium, which is generic Aleve. I count out two pills, put them in my mouth, and take a swig of my soda in order to swallow them. Insurance companies are all about avoiding responsibility for an expensive injury by using what we call “the squid defense†– shoot out a cloud of ink to try and confuse the person holding the responsible party to trial, so they can get away unscathed. Contact http://www.braininjurylawofseattle.com/ to get the best help in these cases! Your attorney should handle your first party coverages. Medical Payments Coverage and Uninsured or Underinsured Motorist Coverage. First party coverages are those coverages that you have on your own policy that you can use to maximize your recovery on your personal injury auto accident claim. There is no subrogation (payback) on auto Medical Payments Coverage in the state of Nevada. There is generally a right of subrogation on health insurance policies according to the Munley Law Philadelphia. Medical Payments Coverage can work with your health insurance coverage to reduce your exposure to medical bills and to take advantage of provider discounts on your health insurance policy. Subrogation liens of health insurance carriers. If your health insurance pays your accident-related medical bills, subrogation (payback) rights or liens of the health insurance carrier will generally be asserted. Some of these liens involve Federal ERISA law, and some don’t. There are many technical arguments that a personal injury attorneys can use to reduce these liens, even if ERISA is involved.
First pill goes down fine. Second pill? Not so much. I immediately cough badly (I think it tried to go down the windpipe), but after a moment, I speak, so I’m obviously not choking on a stupid pill. Hell of a way to end a life, eh? “Here lies katster, choked on a pill.”
Unfortunately, it felt like it was still lodged in my throat in a rather uncomfortable way. Some water, some tea, and some food seemed to make the pain die down, but it reappears randomly, sometimes feeling like it’s moved and is touching where my gag reflex is, or that it’s in the tube where my ear connects to my throat, or just stuck.
Everything I’ve read on the Internet says that it’s probably not actually a pill stuck there, but that my throat is mighty irritated because it left a scratch or a bruise in the throat when it did momentarily get stuck. I guess the nerves in your throat are particularly sensitive. I’ll keep an eye on it, and if it gets worse, I’ll go see a doctor. If it stays the same, I have an appointment with my primary care doctor on Tuesday.
But trust me, it’s not much fun to feel like there’s something lodged in your throat that you can’t get out.
…yeah, that was my day. How was yours?
(PS: Tombstone courtesy of Tombstone Builder and my own demented mind. If you can’t laugh at things…)
The West is Big, y’all
There’s something Kevin Standlee​ said in a File 770 thread (it’s about halfway through the comment) that I wanted to do a little expounding on. Family and folks who know the area I grew up, bear with me, as none of this is going to be all that unusual to you. What I am about to quote came up in a discussion about whether Spokane was close to Seattle.
In my experience, a lot of people who haven’t actually lived on the US west coast think everything here is in the same place. Disneyland is just outside of San Francisco. You can see the Space Needle from Portland. And obviously everything in the same state is within a few miles’ of everything else.
Kevin knows what he’s talking about — he and I grew up in the same general geographic area, although that area is about 150 miles in diameter around my hometown. My hometown is a small Western city that has the distinction of being one of six control cities on Interstate 5 (the other five are all major cities you’ve probably heard of).
From my hometown, it is approximately an hour and fifteen minutes to the nearest state university. The next one is about two hours fifteen minutes. The other state university in our third of the state is about three hours away over a mountain pass. And my alma mater, in a major metro region that holds most of the sports teams we root for in my little city, is about three hours away, if you’re pushing it and not stopping.
And we’re big enough to be a control city — that’s the one the signs point to as the next destination — on the major north/south artery of the West Coast.
A couple other thoughts. I live in Sacramento now. A friend and I once drove from Portland to Sacto, getting out of the car once. It took us eight hours. Another time, I had to drive to pick up somebody in Los Angeles — the Hollywood area, to be precise. Mom and I left Sacto at 4:30 AM. We stopped for gas once and breakfast once, but we still didn’t make it to his place until 11:30 AM.
One last thought. California numbers its freeway exits by miles travelled, starting with 1 at the southern end for N/S roads and the western end for E/W roads.
The actual little town I grew up in, just south of the minor city I describe here, is exits 667 and 668 on Interstate 5. At that point, there’s still another hundred odd miles to the Oregon border.
The West Coast is big, y’all.
Hanging out at the twenty four hour diner
Saturday night and I’m doing my usual thing, hanging out at the local Denny’s with good friends and … well, maybe not *good* food, but decent. Of course, when I was a kid, Denny’s was sorta my idea of fine dining, so it’s amusing that I type that.
Anyway. Trying to think of things to write about and get my brain gathered, and I also really need to put a bunch of effort into finding a job. That’s the plan for Monday, I think. Of course, there’s also a lot of other things on my mind. But the job thing is the most pressing.
I should write more about that. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight is for friends and geeking out and all sorts of crazy bits of conversation.
…and the next table over is taking a selfie. Hilarious. I have also been informed of the existence of a selfie stick.
That’s enough for now. I’m putting these scribbles away before the laptop dies.
Is anybody there?
I’m hardly expecting much in the way of a response, but for my own notes, mind telling me if you see this post? Part of the reason I want to know is that I’m going to try revamping this blog, and it would be nice to have a baseline, and part of the reason is simply because I’m lonely and struggling.
Hopefully I can spend some time thinking tomorrow and work out a small plan for 2015.
That is all. Please say hi.
The future is now
So I got a new hard drive for Christmas. It astounds me that something smaller than a standard paperback novel holds 1 terabyte of data. Even more astounding, it cost less than half of the six gigabyte drive I bought in 1998.
The future is now, and it’s truly awesome.
There are times I really hate Christmas
No kid should ever have to write a letter like this to Santa Claus. Never.
(Seen in local postal annex.)
Funny sticker
Eating my morning snack of a banana, and this sticker made me laugh
Too much good stuff
I found this in the grocery store last night.
Me: I’m afraid to look at how many calories that has.
Jill: (flipping package over): Servings per package: 12. Calories: 200. Calories from fat: 90.
Me: Yeesh! That’s one-sixth of one cup per serving.
So I guess if you really like Reese’s, this might be worth it. Just keep in mind, one cup is more than half your RDA.
I can’t be this old
A display in the Walmart near the house.
My sister said, “I don’t remember the first one.”
I said, “I’m sorry, Mario, but our princess is in another castle.”
C is for Cookie
This made me fall over laughing. Sesame Street was good times as a kid and I loved Cookie the best. So I’m all for him getting the hosting gig on SNL.
Ode to a Banana
See the humble banana.
Bright yellow, with a bit of green at the tip.
As a kid, I would put the sticker on my forehead
And wear it there all day.
I am an adult now;
I must put up my childish ways.
My sticker will go with the peel.
But a banana
Handy fruit in a carrying case
Is good for a mid-morning snack.
Been meaning to share
This is an abandoned car in the parking garage I park in.
most awesome birthday weekend ever
So yeah, this weekend went really well. If I had to ring in the start of another lap around the sun, this is about the way I want to do it. Bear with me, for long kat is long.
It started at work Friday, where there was cake. We do this for birthdays at work recently, but one of my co-workers made sure there was cake for me. It was supremely good cake, too.
Saturday started out a bit meh, as I had to go do schoolwork in the morning, but once I was done with that, I headed out to Folsom, stopping along the way to treat myself to In-and-Out for a hamburger as my celebratory birthday weekend. Yum.
Then, at Folsom, we had a party. It was supposedly for those not going to SF the following night to have fun, but they decided to let me come and celebrate my birthday. One of our Wrimos even baked me a cake. This was sweet.
And then to top it off, Saturday was also the 112th Big Game, which I was fairly certain Stanford was going to win. But my Bears somehow came out of nowhere, had the score close at halftime, and then proceeded to first pull away, and then let Stanford back into it before sealing the deal with an interception. It was Cal Cardiac Football at its finest, and so I got a nice surprise gift — an Axe. It was pretty funny because I was so not writing at the party, but listening to my game, and towards the end, the feed started cutting in and out, which made it hard to follow. The feed cut out just as Toby Gerhart tried to win the game for Stanford, and didn’t come back up until I heard the word “INTERCEPTION!” in my headphones and was trying to figure out what had just happened and whether that meant my Bears had won the game.
And then there was Sunday. Oh god, what can I say about Sunday? Besides the fact that San Francisco is probably my most favorite city on the planet and I love any chance I get to visit, the Night of Writing Dangerously was way more fun than I was expecting. It started simply:
It’s about 5:40 in the evening. The scene, a round table in a ballroom high above California Street in San Francisco. Seated there are seven people from Sacramento: myself, Richard, his wife Jennifer, Jenny, Candace, Temperance, and Stephanie. There’s some idle chitchatting about where people are and stuff like that. In front of the room, the bell is introduced — you come ring the bell when you’ve become a winner at NaNoWriMo (that is, hit the 50k mark). And that’s when the following happened:
Temperance: “So, Kat, you going to hit 50k tonight?”
me: “You’re kidding, right? I’m nowhere close.”
Temperance: “You’re in the forties, no?”
me: “Well, yeah, a bit over 43k.”
Temperance: “There you go. You can hit 50k tonight.”
me: “I’m not so sure about this idea.”
Temperance: “Look, how many words do you have?”
me: “About forty-three five.”
Temperance: “That’s about 6500 words. We’ll not count this hour. But six — we’ll not count seven — eight, nine, ten. That’s four hours. You only have to write about 1500 words an hour.”
Rest of table: “Yeah, c’mon, Kat, you can do it.”
me: “Okay, fine, you all. I’ll try.”
me (thought): This is going to be impossible and I’m going to fail and feel rotten at the end of it. Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Table: *cheering*
So I spend most of the evening sitting and writing frantically, although there were several breaks to take advantage of the candy pile and the hosted bar (too bad I don’t drink, but there was plenty of ginger ale and soda) and eat something resembling dinner. Oh yeah, and there were the most crazy donuts I’ve ever had with toppings like Cocoa Puffs and Nilla Wafers and Oreo cookies and Butterfingers and …the list goes on and on. Also, I went and took my author photo.
But most of the time I was writing. It was a write-a-thon after all. And after frantically typing all evening, writing a grand total of 6,481 words — a personal NaNo daily best — this happened.
Later that evening, about 10:15 PM:
Jason (peering over my shoulder): “So did you make it?”
me: “Give me a second, I just put it in the wordcounter.”
NaNo website: *loading*
Everybody: *waits*
NaNo website: katster has 50,182 words.
me: “Wait, what, I made it? I made it!”
Table (and Jason): “Go ring that bell!”
me: “Give me a second to recover and bask in my glory.”
*moment*
me: “Alright, now I’m going to go find Sarah [the coordinator of this glorious event] and let her know that I made it before I ring the bell so she doesn’t have to come frantically running.” [Backstory: People had been ringing the bell all evening, leaving poor Sarah frantically running to the stage. I felt bad, so I wanted to make sure she didn’t have to run.]
*By sheer random coincidence, Sarah walks by at just that moment*
me: “Hey Sarah! Just to warn you, I hit 50k!”
…and so I nicely followed Sarah to the podium where I grasped that bell and rung it just about as hard as anybody had that evening.
And the rest of the night I wore a crown on top of my Cal hat and a manic grin. Kinda like this:
me, after it’s all said and done. Photo by my friend Richard
All in all, the best birthday weekend ever. Thanks to everybody who helped me make it to the Night of Writing Dangerously — cards should go out next week.
And no, I don’t know how I’m going to top this next year.
gray
I’m sitting here at the computer trying to figure out something to tell you all. I figure I ought to post in the middle of the day because it might get more comments, but that’ll be for another time. Tonight, it nears midnight, and I have a deadline.
The biggest thing I want to talk about, I’ve promised somebody I would wait until the right time, and the right time is not now. It will take patience, and some waiting. Waiting is.
Got my H1N1 flu shot today. One less worry. Also dropped a class. Also, one less worry.
Things have gotten a bit better since the implosion that was earlier this month, but I still get shaky every time I look at my precarious financial situation. I guess I ought to be happy I have a job, even if it’s only part-time and doesn’t pay overly well. But it’s hard to reconcile that with sitting down with budget numbers and wondering just where you’re going to come up with spare money for things like regular maintenance of the car and clothing and replacing the laptop and saving to move out. Add in the really stupid mistake, and yeah…it’s no wonder I end up in a minor panic when I look at my finances.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful that I have enough of a job to mostly afford my bills and wonderful and outstanding parents, but … as the clock ticks down to the thirty-first rotation around the sun, I can’t help but think that it wasn’t supposed to be this way.