wombat_socho

I did get caught up on blogging, did retrieve a bunch of stuff from the post office (including the replacement $100 gift card) and did pick up a few things at Raley's with it. That was Thursday.

Friday I stayed in, played some FNV and got my head handed to me by the Royals. I had the misfortune of facing Roger Nelson and Bert Blyleven, and while the hitters made it happen against Bert, Reggie and the bullpen just couldn't get it done against Dom's hitters, who have entirely too much power. We'll see how I do against Atlanta Monday or Wednesday. 

I went out to do laundry today and had breakfast for dinner at the Stage Stop, which means I have about $30 left on the gift card. Did the FMJRA, ordered Volume 14 of Ralts' Behold! Humanity! series, and ripped the latest Klaus Schulze La Vie Electronique volume (also #14). Unfortunately the first disc of the latter is mostly annoying pseudo-operatic stuff, which I'm not really in the mood for. Speaking of books, I also got the Makarov guide in the mail, and while I think it goes into excessive detail about things that have nothing to do with the care and feeding of Masha, it will do as a cleaning guide, if nothing else. 

Think I'll leave the packing of the suitcase, pill pack (plus a couple of snack baggies' worth of pills) and backpack for tomorrow and go to bed relatively early. Not sure if I should pack the electric razor or not, though if I do I will probably be able to find some LectricShave in a Walmart or CVS out there. 

The VA disability dropped today and I threw most of it at Capital One, paying down the various credit cards. 

Finished up two returns, started another which is mostly finished, and moved several returns to Code 5 because I'm pretty sure they're not going to file. One of my returns which has been hanging waiting for the client to give me their deposit info got dumped into the fulfillment queue, and AFAIC whoever wants the damn thing can have it. Hopefully Anne will tell me Wednesday to saddle up and ride to Reno, because otherwise there's no way I'm going to make bonus this year. 

I bought the Hormel spiral-sliced ham for Easter, roasted it, and had a couple of sandwiches off it last night; also cooked a bag of veggies that was mostly corn and slathered it with margarine. Good stuff. Did not go out today because I'm not out of anything and wasn't interested in any of the $5 specials.  

Rereading Behold! Humanity!; meanwhile, on r/HFY, Terrasol is out of the Bag and the shit is about to hit the fan for the Margite and anyone else stupid enough to mess with the resurgent Confederation. 

Lost two out of three games to the Yankees Friday and am expecting similar misery from the Reds tomorrow.  

Went out to do laundry Thursday and Sunday night, so now everything except for a T-shirt, shorts, and a sock are clean. I put the work shirts and pants aside (except for one pair of pants I'm packing for Nashville) and am going to throw the Confinement and Son of Silvercon T-shirts in the big suitcase for tomorrow. I'll pack a change of clothes in the backpack along with drugs and insulin  and the laptop; have not decided whether or not I'm going to bother with the range bag. (Probably not.)

Emptied the kitchen and bathroom garbage and also bagged up a lot of medical waste from the bedroom, but didn't make it outside today because I was hanging around waiting to see if I was going to get either of the appointments Amanda had teased me with (I didn't) so I guess I'll have to get up early and dispose of all the garbage then, because I don't want to leave it around the apartment for (another) week. There was an ad for a cleaning service on the Raley's bulletin board, and I'll call them when I get back. 

Tax refund came in a day early, and I mostly split it between the two big credit card accounts, and then on Friday did the same with my paycheck. Throw in some dinners at the Stage Stop, SWA tickets to Nashville, a couple of grocery runs for (mostly) beef and fluids, and some random acts of charity, and I still have around $600 left for the rest of the week. Not sure when the VA check will arrive, but for sure the SSDI will hit on 3/3, and there will also be a small HRB check on Friday of the convention. This should be more than enough to cover dropping the Kia off at Pep Boys Thursday on the way to McCarran so I can get the battery, tires & AC checked, wipers and oil changed, and hopefully nothing else is wrong with the old jalopy. Better than leaving it at the airport and not having work done on it. 

I'm into the third book of the Helldivers series, which is a unique take on post-apocalyptic survival tales. So far I'm getting more than my money's worth out of KU with it. 

Cooked up some pasta with the hamburger over the weekend and turned the rest into meatloaf which will sit in the freezer until I get back. Also going to throw the rest of the bread and ground turkey in the freezer too, so they don't go bad in my absence. 

Time to sort the pills and hit the rack for an early wakeup. I'd like to be on the road to Tonopah before noon if at all possible. 

From Joel Rosenberg's Not For Glory:  

 " 'Write this for a memorial in the book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, for I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.' Not my emphasis; his. Or, 'I—I, Shimon Bar-El—remember what Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him in the way when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not—' Remember, Tetsuo? Remember?"

It seems very clear to me that Hamas has chosen to be Amalek. Hopefully the path that leads to Ari Hanavi quoting his uncle Shimon in an apartment carved out of the rock of Metzada will not come about, as it involves the obliteration of Israel and Mecca both, but I'd be lying if the possibility hadn't crossed my mind. 

And just when things were starting to go well, too.  She's transferring to the Southwest clinic and away from Doc Kletzky's team in the Northwest clinic, so I get to break in a new pharmacy clinician next month. In the meantime, she was happy with my numbers, especially the weight, which had been going down over the last week or so since we increased the Ozempic dosage to 2 ml/week. It was actually under 395 earlier this week, but then I had pizza for dinner Thursday night and BK for lunch on Friday topped with potstickers for dinner, and now my weight is back up around 397. Well, I was moderate in my fressing today, so it should go back down tomorrow. 

The potstickers were a blunder; I didn't pay attention to the bag size in the ad and wound up paying $30 for two enormous bags of pork & veggie potstickers instead of $10 for two smaller bags. They taste pretty good hot from the air fryer, and if I hadn't had all those onion rings at BK for lunch I would have been fine weight-wise, but nooooo.

The VA sent me various wound care things which I picked up today, and some glargine earlier in the week, which is making up for some of the carbs I've been eating lately. My books from Amazon (A.E. van Vogt's Earth Factor X, a.k.a. The Secret Galactics,  and John C. Wright's Null-A Continuum) came in earlier in the week with the glargine, and I also got checks for the N3F and Son of Silvercon, which I deposited with NSB Friday. I finished the Durdane trilogy earlier in the week and am now reading The Domains of Koryphon, a standalone Vance novel, along with the hardcopy books received from Amazon. 

Speaking of the N3F, I managed to get my APAzine done and off to Jefferson in time for N'APA 265 this week. Decided not to lambaste Sam about Balticon in the APA. As incoming chairman, either he has seen my feedback or he hasn't, and I saw no point in rehashing it in public - more than I already have here and on MeWe & Twitter. 

On the Bioshock 2 front, I paused the replay (I'm going for the nice guy achievement where I rescue all the Little Sisters and spare Gracie, Stanley, and Gil) in favor of trying an ahistorical game of HOI4 with the Czechs. Started with the Germans and Soviets broken up (but not enough, Bavaria was the only separate state), missed my chances to defuse the Sudeten crisis and reform the Little Entente, but managed to whip the Germans with the help of the English and Poles. Italy is next on the list, and who knows? I may yet reform the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or something like it. I also finished the Atlantis/Olympus Lostbelt and am working on the Heian-kyo Singularity, which I think gives me a shot at destroying the last instance of Limbo. That'll be satisfying. 

Have made my reservations for the Plaza in preparation for my appointment at the VA and the NSSAB meeting Wednesday; will stay over Tuesday and Wednesday nights, coming back on Thursday. May pick up some stuff at Walmart or Sam's Club; may not. May do dinner for (relatively) cheap at Fogo Tuesday night; may not. We'll see how it all works out. 

Much to my surprise, my Senators swept Pete's Brewers, so we finished the week 4-2. Tomorrow we take on the Giants at Candlestick, and we'll see how that goes.

I'm feeling a little better since I started cleaning the leg wounds with saline and adding 4x4 gauze to the dressings. Still tiring easily; wound up sleeping until 1000 today when I was awakened by the property manager to do an inspection. I begged off since I legitimately wasn't feeling too great and she said she'd be back next week. In the meantime, I hope to have Theresa from the Stage Stop over to help me dig out from under all the boxes, do a little cleaning, and just help me tidy up the place in general so when the proprty manager comes back the place doesn't look like so much of a trash pit. 

Been making my way through the Behold, Humanity! books, which include some of the material from Tales of the Terran Confederacy (Vuxten and Dambree's stories, along with some of Dee's) but are mostly new. I started Up Jim River but have put it on hold while I make my way through Ralts' amazing tale. 

In other news, I got all the blogging done over the weekend, got the daily blogging done for today, and got a start on the comments for N'APA 264. 

Still too fat, but at least the BG and BP are better. Barely managed to crawl out of bed at 1000 and get online for my video appointment with Doc Bui at 1100; she was happy with my numbers overall but not yet ready to cut the Novolin R again. Said she'd send me some Ozempic; apparently the supply lines are unfucked to the point where the VA is issuing 90-day supplies again. 

Having breakfasted on an English muffin and instant coffee, I fixed a flax muffin and a protein shake after the video call, and fucked around with Civicrack until 1600 when I took a well-deserved nap. Still nowhere close to winning with the Celts; I think I'm not pillaging the neighbors as much as I need to be. 

Was up until 0600 or so reading Larry Correia's Tower of Silence, which is pretty awesome and among other things, demonstrates Larry's increasing skill at juggling several plotballs at once. I don't think there's been a comparable fantasy/SF fusion based on Indian culture since Lord of Light. 

Woke up around 2000, fixed soup & a ham & cheese sammich, and pounded out some linkagery, including most but not all of the Substackery from this past week. 

Didn't stir forth from the apartment at all today, might go out tomorrow for meat and fluids, maybe a post office run if anything of note comes in. 

So despite spending a lot of time on Civicrack, I still managed to get a fair amount done. Bagged up and ejected garbage, did laundry Saturday night, collected my Boca Java shipment from the post office, paid all my bills (including the troublesome Frontier bill), and today since I have no Blockwork to do, I'll go pay rent, throw out some more garbage, maybe play a little Ingress and hit the Raley's after I stop at the DMV to find out what I need to do about my tags.

Since I'm temporarily flush with cash, I put $200 in the Fidelity IRA and another $200 in savings bonds, half in I and half in EE. Probably stupid to invest in the latter, since those only pay ~2%, but in five years they'll be worth $200. I should live so long, hah.

Bought some Moe Lane books, probably going to buy some more pocket T-shirts since I don't seem to have enough of those. 

Fixed the problems with the Friends of Fission-chan website and posted its URL everywhere. We'll see how this works out. 

Weight went down on Saturday and up on Sunday, BP was consistently normal and BG has been nominal.

I did hit up Raley's for tea and several jars of discontinued PB Friday night, demolished a bunch of Blackwasp's links and portals, threw some of my own, and called it a night after emptying my PO box. I'd thought my package from the VA would be in a locker, but nope. 

Woke up around 0500 Saturday morning ravenously hungry, polished off two PB sandwiches, milk, and a yogurt, and went back to bed. 

Saturday I got up, got dressed, had a cup of coffee, and went off to the post office to get my package and a couple pieces of mail, one of which proved to be a bunch of drink coupons from Southwest. I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. After throwing the Ozempic in the trunk so it would stay reasonably cool. I went into Hometown pizza and hit the buffet, where I ate way too much pizza and no salad or soup. Then I went home, did the FMJRA, won CivBE as the Asians, and started another game with what looks like the Korean faction. I am shooting for a Superiority victory with the Emancipation Gate, and am building up my navy (mostly) air force (a little less) and army (some) as I am expecting all my neighbors to come after my ass, for which I will beat the devil and the living God out of them. 

I had picked up the newest Ciaphas Cain novel, taking advantage of sundry credits and gift cards, and it was fun. You would think after ten novels the plot of Cain and whatever unit he's attached to (usually the 597th Valhallans, but not always) are sent to deal with xenos or heretics, only to find out something far worse is waiting for them would get stale, but Mitchell packs enough action and amusing stuff in there so you don't mind. 

Sunday was spent on CivBE, Rule Five Sunday, and that was pretty much it. Tried baking the General Chang's Chicken in the oven since I don't have a lid for my frying pan, and it turned out all right, I guess. Better than nuking it. Tomorrow I'll call the cleaners and see how much they want to charge me for helping get all these boxes out of here, check in to see if there's any work, maybe pop over to Raley's for more tea.

Finally, I think I'm done with e2. Whether people are boycotting me or because there just aren't that many people on there any more, I'm not getting much feedback on the nodes I post, so the hell with it. 

Well, I guess I misread the scale yesterday, since today's weight was 394.8. BG was on the low side of nominal, BP was okay, so we'll see if the weight comes down. 

Finished the box of Christmas cards but forgot to drop them in the mailbox when I went to Raley's, which I did with the intent of getting more tea, eggs, milk and meat but instead came home with just the meat, the tea, a bunch of crunchy no sugar added peanut butter that was on clearance, and a couple of banana-flavored chia cookies.  

I'm not sure where the rest of my time went (probably Civicrack) but I did knock out the daily blogging. Also ran the dishwasher and cleaned the crockpot, which I'll probably fire up tomorrow to make soup out of the ham hocks I bought over the weekend. Will probably add an extra book post tomorrow for Actuary Problem Dog's book and sundry manga. Didn't get around to doing the Spruce test or any of the other S2W stuff, but I'll hit that tomorrow. 

There was a note on the door when I went out dated 12/19 warning that management was going to come inspect the apartment starting on 12/20. They didn't show up today, but I'm not too concerned since the place is cleaner than the last time they came in to look.