seryn

Today didn't go well, but it was all stupid stuff.

I was irked with Simon because he constantly bails on plans to do things with me but made plans with a coworker. So I was going to go out for all three meals today. (See? I'd be getting Simon back because I'd get to do fun things and he would be excluded. Which seems fair since I was already being childish about it.) But I was thwarted.

( let the thwarting begin )

I completely failed to treat myself.

( Netflix lameness )

I found the smog test place I used last time. I printed the coupon.

[insert mental visual of *happy dance* here, because I fixed the be-damned printer and how hella useful has that been?!]

I didn't actually go and get the car tested, but I'm several steps closer. They want you to drive it for a while before having it tested, so it's kind of a hassle because I have to plan ahead and go somewhere with all my papers.

Gmail has re-enabled the imports. So I'm fetching my Opera-based incarnation's email now. That way if the Yahoo people actually follow through on their threat to cut everyone off, I won't be completely screwed. It wouldn't be a critical failure to lose my fic reviews, but it might make me sad.

I went to a new place for lunch. I had a cobb salad. Which I really enjoy normally, but this one was weird tasting. I liked the carrots in it but the salad itself was bland and then ridiculously salty and then bland and then cheesy... I couldn't figure out the problem until I got to the bottom and discovered there were chopped black olives in my dish. It had been diced and tossed before plating and they looked a lot like the bacon or the red edges of that red leaf lettuce. I dislike olives and they were not listed on the menu which had been seemingly explicit. My drink was excellent, but for $3, I kind of expect that in a non-alcoholic beverage.

I am slowly moving my mail to gmail. I remembered gmail having an import feature, but it's been disabled and is listed under "known issues". If you don't pay yahoo, you cannot forward mail or POP it. I might go look to see if there's another mail archive service. In the meantime I think I've grabbed everything that's pending from seryn's Yahoo Mail.

On the whole, despite being a gmail user for ages, I didn't think I was going to like using gmail for DW notifications because the subject lines don't keep things threaded like regular gmail conversations. However, the filters gmail has have already helped enormously. I don't have to manually archive my own comments. I can label them and mark them as read and have them archived automatically. Which might help me appear less narcissistic because I won't be tempted to reply to myself.

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I hate putting laundry away. It makes ellipticals at the gym seem fun in comparison.

Of course Simon now wants me to vacuum. Bleah.

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I skipped tai chi today. It's a really gruesome chi gong this month. The instructor only seems to know 4 chi gongs and the favorite one is the current one. It's got gobs of bending over, more reaching behind you than trying on 3 dozen bras during a lingerie sale, and you spend a lot of time reaching on the balls of your feet. It's too emeffing athletic. If I wanted athletic, I'd go to the Cardio-Super-Whup-Ass class (no idea what it's really called, but most of the people coming out look like they've been harmed by the experience) or I'd spend more time on the ellipticals. It's enough to make me want to find another gym. I pretty much hate the chi gong segment entirely even when it's a fun one--- the whole thing is supposed to be about energy channelling and frankly this isn't compatible with my energy work partially because the instructor doesn't actually believe in it and partially because they don't teach any grounding or framework but a lot of it is that it's just not how my energy goes. Every once in a while there will be something that meshes, but most of it is just like aerobics in the sense that it's useless handwaving.--- but the truly athletic chi gong makes skiving seem optimal. I wouldn't mind a class that just did 5 minutes of warm up and 15 minutes of tai chi. Actually if they could have that running continuously all day on a DVD or something in the stretching room, that would be awesomely useful.

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I spun more yarn today. I took myself out for lunch... and I think I'm going to stop going to that place, the fries have really gone downhill. I wasn't too useful today though. No idea what we're going to eat for dinner. Breakfast was box-o-soup, squash flavor.

I'm trying to decide between eating homemade strawberry banana pancakes (there was leftover batter) and going out for a cheeseburger.

It's $someone_elses_holiday this weekend, so even though we never eat out on weekends (last weekend was an exception and Simon hated it so it will be a long time in coming again) I'm sure to want to when everything is shut.

( tangent: thinking about majorities )

I'm about halfway through organizing my enormous stack of papers. That and returning my library book are the two tasks for today. If I went out for a cheeseburger, I'd be halfway to the library. If I ate pancakes at home, I could shred some while they were cooking.

I did something interesting, to me anyway, this morning. I made something that was a cross between a crepe and an omelet. It was thin like a crepe, but didn't have flour in it, like an omelet. I beat 2 large eggs with a tablespoon of milk and put them in a greased, pre-heated, non-stick 10" skillet and swirled it across the bottom and slightly up the sides. There's not enough egg to make the puffy style of omelet with this size pan, but 1 egg per person is more than enough egg for breakfast.

I got the official word that the gum surgery really did go much better than last time. Remember last time I wasn't allowed to brush for seemingly months? This time, 10 days... I'm even going back to the gym today. I could have gone yesterday but (see the following paragraph)....

The stuff I ranted about late last week in a locked post is still going on and there hasn't been a lot of progress. I'm no longer even angry about it, I'm mostly resigned because there's no possible way to sustain that level of anger without becoming ill from it. And I don't want to talk about it openly in public so Simon can.

I was really upset about the April Fool's stuff this year. I have an example which I didn't see until yesterday. Franklin Habit, whose blog, The Panopticon, I stopped reading because it was infrequently updated and frequently dull, and even more often filled with baby crud. I figured an openly gay man without children of his own might be able to resist baby crud, but when his niece was born, it was all baby all the time and he seemed to never knit anything else. Then he started doing this historical baby crud. Which made me think he was a bad knitter because no one would deliberately resurrect those patterns. They were ugly 200 years ago, they're even more ugly now that we have a choice, and it's still just about babies. Why on Earth would I keep reading that? But his 4/1/11 post, from the recommended for me tag in G-Reader, says knitting has palled for him and he's not as interested in finding new projects as he once was. I read that and was mentally nodding because that's how I feel a lot of the time, and certainly when I was still volunteering I didn't knit anything of my own. (Some of my interest is coming back though.) Franklin said a lot of his time has been taken up by his new hobby, NASCAR. I didn't catch on to it being a joke until then. Astonishingly what clued me in to it being a joke wasn't a gay man living in Chicago being interested in NASCAR, it was that a knitter would stop knitting to watch it. There isn't a lot of TV that's more knitting-friendly than auto racing. Maybe televised amateur golf would be more knitting-friendly but no one watches that. I still don't get why this is amusing though. I really don't understand why people feel this need to lie because of the date. It's not like it's an excuse. Or it isn't to me, because I'm holding it against people who lied to me.

I have a big pile of receipts to sort through today, and I really want a nap. I've also got an un-imaginable amount of laundry to do.

Oh, one more food thing. Peet's Coffee coffee costs about the same per pound as Longbottom Coffee coffee but really suffers in comparison. Yuck. I bought some because I didn't know how long it would take to receive my shipment and I ordered at the very last minute before the surgery. It takes 4 scoops of P coffee to make the 2-cup size pot I normally make (my cups are real cups) compared to the 2 scoops I normally use of the L coffee and the P coffee tastes a lot harsher and more burnt even so. Even actual cream doesn't completely rescue it.

Yesterday I spent some time watching Alain de Botton videos. I so enjoyed the lecture "On Pessimism" that I wanted more. His speaking style reminds me of David Sedaris in a number of ways. I wish de Botton's books read more like that though. I know I'm a lazy reader, but I also know that I enjoy de Botton's philosophy, so you'd think one would overcome the other. It actually does, just not the way I'd prefer, the way where my brain slovenly slouches off to linger slumped upon a lumpy and beaten sofa while slurping sugary soda from a warm two-liter bottle half filled with saliva and burping unpleasantly enough to scare away friends who might rescue it.

I've been really productive today. I dropped Simon off at the train, went out for breakfast (it was mediocre, but I was able to park at the grocery store, and just once parking adds value), then I bought ingredients for curry.

It's just now 11am and I have plenty of time to go to the gym before knitting group. I am dreading knitting group because I will have to interact with V2 and V3 who mistreated me last week after pretending they wanted to be friends. I'd like it if the things I lent out came back so I could be quit of this even though that's completely unfair to the group since V2 and V3 are unreliable.

( Media stuff. )

Are there diagrams of ergonomic sleeping positions? ( sleeping )

Also, if people have opinions about how to fix shoulder pain, I could use hearing about it. I'm considering acupuncture (know someone good who speaks English and who isn't creepy whose offices I can get to), cortisone shot (doctor offered that after feeling the tendon crackle all along my collar bone, saying to rest it and see but call if it still hurts in a month.), and "I'm an old lady, there's nothing I can do about it if it doesn't just magically get better on its own."

ETA. Definitely not having acupuncture. It's impossible to imagine myself being able to tolerate that much human contact.

I need to post stuff to my community.

Old. I'm getting old. Today when I was making stew, I realized if I'd showered afterward instead, I wouldn't need to shower twice. Plus I could use some habit-forming help so I'm investigating Remember The Milk. Simon desperately needs this kind of help since his mental queue of tasks gets derailed by breathing.

I'm maintaining that 5 pound weight loss from the all liquid diet. Not the recommended way, but you know, whatever works. I get really ridiculously hungry about 30 minutes after I get home from the gym. So I've been stocking yogurt. Today's yogurt has apple juice, cottage cheese, and black pepper. It's so good. I'm going to buy mango next time I'm at the store. I could see banana-mango-yogurt being satisfying enough to count as an entire lunch.

If they made almond "milk" yogurt, I bet Simon would eat it. The soy yogurt is disgusting though.

There is Airwolf fanfic. And it's less scary than your first guess would suggest if you've been an HP fanfic reader. I don't think anyone would have guessed Drarry would become the dominant 'ship for HP--- I mean really, underage m/m slash? How is that arousing for middle-aged women? And how is it not skeevy if it is erotic for middle-aged women? (And a lot of it is written by middle-aged women, it's not mostly written by 14 year old guys.) So I sort of assumed Airwolf fic would be String and Dom. I didn't even want to look. Because, ::shudder::.

I need to upgrade my house-stereo. I'm not an audiophile but I want to be able to have music on, out loud, sometimes. It absolutely cannot run on batteries. I don't want to spend a ton of money. But it doesn't have to be stupid cheap either. I bought $25 Skullcandy earbuds (which I love), so I'm clearly willing to go for at least a midrange option.

Today's bread is three-grain. Oat, Rye, (whole) Wheat, plus the standard white flour. I made a double batch to go with the stew. Thick slice of bread and some sharp cheddar cheese along side the bowl means the stew lasts at least twice as many meals.

My haircut looks good after I've washed it and combed it myself. It doesn't stand up weirdly when I've pulled a sweatshirt over my head at the gym. So overall it seems like a good cut. Still skeeved over the salon though.

I saw that jack liked The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I actually disliked it so much that I suggested against reading it to someone who was asking for book recommendations. Conceptually it is not a bad idea to write a fantasy novel for adults, but in my opinion, stripping away all the fantastical elements and leaving only the drudgery and disappointment is a poor way to accomplish that. It is shelved with non-genre fiction at my local library because it is not a fantasy book. If you want to read a non-genre book where the characters are played by actors on loan from Stalinist Russian literature, help yourself. I don't like to read misery. If I did like misery and woe, chances are pretty good I'd love classics and then I still wouldn't be reading Lev Grossman's book because it's not well-written compared to the powerhouses of literature.

In other news, my mouth is healing mostly okay except for the part that had bothered me enough that I complained to the dentist and got this whole mess started. That is in the corner, right where my lower jaw muscles attach; when the gums had gotten detached, every time I moved my mouth, it would ache all the way to the bone. But having them pick at it today didn't feel especially good and I got really stressed. I should have taken something for that, but I figured I'd improve by being out of the office and at lunch. But once I got home and decompressed, I was crushed and slept for a while. I'd turned down the heat before leaving but not up when I returned and managed to get chilled during my nap. So I am cold and sore. I am supposed rinse with warm salt water.

My lunch was interesting. I went out for Japanese food and left hungry because my beef teriyaki was half solid fat. That was so gross that I actually left less of a tip because anyone serving it would have noticed. I went out for fries immediately after. Without having gone for the treat, I would have been completely miserable. That was a good application of $2. But people stare at you if you go into a McDonalds and just order a large fry.

I had to change jeans this morning. The tight jeans from last January fell down when I put my phone in the pocket. The new jeans (3 full sizes smaller than the normal jeans from a year ago) are very tight in the pockets. Going from W-is-for-wide sizes to sold-in-stores sizes netted me a massive decrease in pocket dimensions. But they fit and I don't mushroom over the top and I don't get skin creases from where the fabric digs in. (When I first got these, they left clear indications as to where the zipper and button and seams were, because they fit everywhere except the lower belly.)

I made breakfast this morning. (Well, it started last night when I peeled the eggs and mixed up the egg salad.) Egg salad on toasted English muffins.

Then I drove my SO to the train. I came home, answered email, drank coffee, and washed towels. I've been to the gym. I need another shower (woo hoo! clean towels!) and to do my toilette before my lunch "date" and then knitting group where I might actually be going it alone with a dozen knitters who all want help.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to consume several alcoholic beverages when I get home, so I'll avoid posting more today.

I have a dinner menu planned, but haven't started on it. If I have a few minutes, I'll wash the lettuce and peel carrots (they don't turn brown like potatoes), so when I get home there will be fewer steps left.

I do like the Kindle for reading at the gym. It's superior to having a physical book because I can make the print really big and turning a page only needs a finger. I need a better bag since my current tote is awkward, but otherwise, excellent. I especially like that I can be reading erotica or romance and no one sees the beefcake on the cover.

Most of today has gone well.

So. Last year's "OMG you might have glaucoma" eye exam was not repeated this year. Same doctor. Same numbers. But this year it's not a problem. Wtf. And. as a PSA, real eye doctors no longer do that puff test. There are new diagnostic tools out there. So you should definitely look for one with new equipment.

The VSP stuff being every 12 months makes a lot more sense than "calendar year" eligibility, which was how it was explained last year. (I can't order my partially covered glasses until December.) I'm thinking I might not bother with it until January then because getting stuff done around the holidays is a real bear. But even though it's not as useful to have to wait to order my glasses, I don't have to mess with it right now or lose several hundred dollars in benefits.

I was, however, apparently a little stressed. I started to feel a bit ill by the time I had sufficiently relaxed at home. The unable to eat and kind of barfy feeling is usually a post-event sensation. But I went out to sit on the sofa and watched the new Sherlock (Masterpiece Mystery, PBS, still available streaming online if you didn't catch the airing.) I also knitted.

I am actually close to on track to finishing an entire sweater in a week. It's a sleeveless tank thing. The pattern is from Knitty so I don't have to re-derive my internal concepts all the time. I'm using an indy yarn, but it's off a commercial yarn base and it's pretty durable.

When I finally felt good enough to eat, I made ravioli (frozen food aisle) and a parmesan garlic cream sauce (scratch). I have to say that cream sauce is vastly easier when one starts with actual cream instead of faking it with milk and a roux.

Yesterday I went to the gym and was able to do 20 minutes of crosstraining elliptical. I also went out to a party where I had a good time and wasn't too maladroit.

On the whole, things are pretty damned good.

I feel like I've been run over, but there's no reason for it. Everything went fine. I'll grab a beer or make a very wet cosmo later if I'm still jittery. The stress reaction is because the appointment today could have been much worse.

And tomorrow's the election. So that means all those phone calls are going to stop! Yay!