wombat_socho

Weight's been going up and down this weekend; as of this morning it's a hair over 390. BG has been on the low end of nominal when it hasn't been normal, and BP has been consistently good. 

I went to bed at a decent hour last night/this morning but for some reason slept in until after 1400. Going to try and crash early and get back on a more or less normal schedule. 

Mostly I just fooled around with Civicrack this weekend; I quit the second iteration of the Dutch because I was way ahead on points and got bored waiting for the lesser powers to come after me. I might go back and finish it just to get the achievement, but it'll be a long slog. 

So yeah, I got banned from Twitter again, for no apparent reason that I can see. As I stated in my appeal, I removed tweets I was asked to remove and edited the ones I was asked to edit, so what's the deal? I don't really expect an answer, and if I don't get account access back, that's fine. More time to spend on games, CE, and other things that need doing. 

Weight was down, BG was down (despite me forgetting to take the dinnertime pills) but BP was still ungood. Probably the lack of evening Carvedilol and Lasix. 

Lots of Civicrack today, along with Azur Lane and a little FGO (I am making progress on the Atlantis Lostbelt) but I did get out to the post office and retrieve a shitload of packages & mail, after which I went by the Stage Stop for a club sandwich & fries. Also got hold of the maintenance people here and managed to shut off the ceiling fan & light fixture in the kitchen, which had been going nonstop since my return from Reno. Laundry I have punted until tomorrow, or maybe Saturday. Was going to download World of Warships, because Amazon is giving way some goodies for it, but it takes up a lot more space than the hard drive on the Dell has left. Maybe when I get a "new" desktop...after which, as I commented to James, the old desktop will no doubt show up in 24 hours. Perhaps I should study up on networking again. 

Despite my best intentions I have started reading The Golden Princess, so I'll probably wind up reading the rest of the Orlaith & Reiko arc as well. There are worse ways to spend time. 

Finally got back to blogging with an abbreviated link post today; will probably double up on real link posts tomorrow, depending on how long it takes me to catch up on N3F stuff. 

Sent in my list of keepers to Pete today after completely forgetting about it yesterday. I think I've managed to preserve the offensive and defensive core of the team, but that's what we're playing the 1970 season to find out. 

I was going to get up at 0700 and take my laundry to the cleaners before breakfast at Peg's, but thanks to some assholes next door who were blasting rap through the wall at 0200 (I sicced the front desk on them) I slept in until 0900 and made it to work only a few minutes late.

Steady work all day today with clients, most of whom paid off, much like yesterday. The DAR came up the day after I poked PeopleCenter about it, and after updating my IPP spreadsheet, it looks like I'm going to reap over $3000 in bonus this season. Holy fuck.

I dropped my phone the other day and cracked the glass; the repair guy next door quoted me a price of $400 to replace it, since it's integrated with the underlying OLED circuit. So I went over to the T-Mobile store at the other end of the shopping center and lucked out: since T-Mobile is trying to close out all the Sprint leases, they gave me $800 in trade-in credit. If I'd had the Note 10 on a T-Mobile lease, I would have gotten bupkes. As it was, I just had to pay $150 in taxes and fees for a new Galaxy 22 Ultra, plus another $60 for a new Otter hard case. Heck of a deal. The new phone is much bigger than the old Note 10. In fact, it's just as long and wide as a brick, but not as thick - but it's noticeably heavier. Still has the shitty combined recharge port/audio jack, but apparently Samsung ditched the old 3.5mm audio jacks since idiots were going out in the rain with their jacks uncovered and ruining their phones. This is why we can't have nice things.

Well, I'm going to take another stab at getting up early to dump my clothes at Suds & Duds before work. The FMJRA can wait until tomorrow night. 

Well, so much for that plan. Here we are at a little after 1700 and the only things I have packed  are my nose hose and the laundry bag. Still, based on years of experience clearing out of hotel rooms, I should be able to get everything packed up and loaded by 1800, and then I'll hit the road for Reno. Bing says it'll be a four-hour drive in light traffic, but it'll probably be more like five what with stops for hydration, disposing of hydration, and other delays en route.

Murphy being the fellow he is, while I was cleaning off the desk today I found the missing trackball, which I guess I'll pack up to go with the HP so I don't have to remember to unplug the travel trackball and take it to work. The new trackball will go in the range bag, which is the new work bag. I'll probably have to stop by the Walmart pharmacy at some point to get more syringes, because it looks like I'm down to my last bag of 0.5ml syringes from the VA. Also, I'll reorder the new Kindle and have it delivered to the Amazon Locker in Reno at the 7-11 kitty-corner from the shopping center where the office is. 

Speaking of the VA, I talked to a social worker on Tuesday who agreed that I should probably stick with SSDI, though if SSA does get grabby and shut me off again for working too much, there is the possibility that I'd get approved for a VA non-disability pension, which I would probably qualify for since I have almost nothing in the way of assets and my income on regular Social Security (assuming it didn't take them another 1.5 years to get that started) would be less than $1000/month. Things would get interesting, that's for sure. 

Well, time to pry myself off the Dell box and get cracking on the packing. 

Woke up around 1300, drank breakfast (protein shake and coffee) and performed the daily bloggage. Weight and BG were both down, and I finally got under 390 for the first time this month. The Uber pay dropped, so I put the SE tax in the shares account and avoided even looking at Amazon or anything else tempting. Chewed on some almonds in lieu of eating a real dinner; I'll probably snack on some stuff while I'm out driving.

Finally installed Telegram on my phone, updated my inventory list for this weekend, and fired off a question about meeting on Friday night/Saturday morning before the shard event goes down. Apparently it's going to be in the 90s, but I'm going to be on a cluster team so I won't be hiking all over SLC. Going to try and reduce my inventory of L4 and L5 bursters in favor of L6 and L7 models; might take the time to glyph hack the backyard farm tonight and tomorrow night so I can maximize the amount of useful stuff I'll be taking up the 15.

Uber is offering a bonus this weekend: from Thursday morning until Sunday night, if I get 50 rides I'll get a $500 bonus. Since I'll be out of town Friday and Saturday, that's not too likely, but I suppose it could happen. Not going to stress about it. For now, I'm going to clean up, go fuel up the Hyundai, and head out to see what there is to see on Wednesday night. I do need to pick up some laundry detergent, dairy product, and allergy meds, but the latter will probably have to wait until tomorrow unless I can find a 24-hour pharmacy sometime tonight.

Weight dropped like a rock this morning and BG did likewise; it probably would have dropped further had I not forgotten to take my meds yesterday evening. I am below 390 for the first time in a long while. Probably need to start wearing the size 56 pants soon, and maybe investing in a new belt besides.

The TV arrived today, as did the Fire Stick - and the vacuum cleaner, which I had stupidly sent to the office. Picked up the TV en route to work and hauled it inside once I got there, since the trunk is unreliable, and left the vacuum behind when I went home. I can always fetch it home tomorrow night. On arriving home, I hauled the TV upstairs, went down to the mailbox to fetch the Fire Stick, and spent the next half hour assembling and plugging stuff in. The HDMI sockets were a pain in the butt both on the video card and the TV, but I got it all working. I know I'm going to have to shell out for an MLB.TV account, but the ESPN Watch app seems pretty useless since it insists on me having a TV provider. What's the point of having a Fire Stick if I'm paying for cable? Ah well; most of their programming is shit anyway. Will need to repurpose one of the empty Amazon boxes to elevate the screen a wee bit.

Work was busy, busy, busy. My first hour was free, but otherwise I had clients (or their work) from 1400 on through to closing. The first and last clients paid off; for all the first one's grouching about the cost, he took a Federal and a State RAC along with an Emerald Card. Fred's return, of course, was pretty hefty and we're going to talk in the off season about getting his expenses more organized and paying some estimated taxes so he doesn't have to write a five-figure check to the IRS. One of my clients from Virginia finished their return and paid for it tonight as well, so I had a REALLY good day from the revenue POV.

Didn't eat much today for lack of time. Lunch was the first meal of the day - a half-pound guacamole bacon thickburger with side salad - and I had a protein bar around 1600 when I finally finished going through two years of bank statements for a client who'd dropped off his returns. So for the day I'm sitting at ~1500 calories, 14.7 net carbs; I'll have a bite of cheese before I retire so I don't wake up hungry in the middle of the night like I did last night.

Tomorrow is going to be busy as well - need to clear out a bunch of boxes so that the deliverymen from Walmart can get the bed into my bedroom. It'll keep me busy and out of trouble, I reckon.

So much to do today. Laundry, a run to Walmart for ham, Kleenex and cash, post office, library...and there's probably something else I'm not remembering right now. Still, that's a full day right there, and it makes me glad I have the day off. At least I have the daily blogging and the garbage taken care of. Mark's right; taking out the garbage makes you feel better.

The Amazon order came in while I was gone, so now I have a pair of Koss UR-20 cans on my head. They do a much better job of blocking out the background noise than the Yapsters, though they don't have a microphone...not like I need one of those at the moment anyway. I'm giving serious thought to punting Eve Online until I'm settled in Vegas, and I can't think of anything else I'd want a microphone for. Speaking of Amazon, last week's book post put me over $71 for the month. Booya.

Discovered while unpacking that I'd somehow forgotten my bandage scissors in Luray. Well, I was going to Walmart anyway.

Going to work a bit on What Did You Do In The Cold War, Dad? and then nap for a few hours.

Much accomplished despite not waking up until 1400; got Rule 5 Sunday done on time for the first time in a couple of weeks, got Live at Five in the can for tomorrow, and gave linky love to people who linked Stacy's review, or at least the book. Speaking of the book, I need to do some revisions and replace links with quotes since apparently many of the links managed to die on me between the time I put the book together and the time people started reading it. That's due back to Joy by Thursday.

Also knocked out the introductory Blockworks WBT; will tackle the next three-hour WBT over the next couple of days so I'll only be short an hour from yesterday.

Been re-reading On the Razor's Edge and The Fuller Memorandum, which latter I borrowed from the library since my copy's in storage. While reading the latter, I couldn't help thinking what a Delta Green op (say, somebody like Poe from Through A Glass, Darkly) would think of Mr. Howard's problems and his attitude. Probably not much. Maybe I should write about it.

Talked with jtrainor for a little bit this afternoon; he seems to think the problem with Learned Cow stems from bad RAM. I need to talk to brian_edminster about that and see what he thinks.

And this Friday was one of those. Sure, I got plenty of sleep after finishing Live At Five (and On The Razor's Edge) ; sure, I managed to catch breakfast and refill the Toaster en route to work, but then the rest of the day was just one pain in the ass after the other, a long string of 90, 120 and 180-minute appointments crammed into six hours by CSPs who evidently gave no fucks. This is going to change, if I have to maim some people to make it change. I only cashed out two returns today, but fortunately they were fat ones (and I left early besides) so I made my nut. Also worth noting is that as of this paycheck, I am finally in the black w/r/t draw already paid vs. commission owed. Considering how the schedule is starting to stack up with Larry out for the season and Marcia out for at least the next week or two as she tends to family calamities while walking off her malaria, I'm not too worried about finishing the season with a decent chunk of change, which will probably be sunk into the Toaster, with Vegas and Balticon next in the priority list.

About the only bright spot in the day was a post-work massage, which erased a couple years worth of tension from my back and shoulders and will probably help the lymph nodes in my legs work a little better to boot. I also managed to conform to the Law of the Fish, which in my case is kind of optional, but I figure I need all the help I can get at this point.

The HD/OS order from Amazon got derailed because I didn't have enough flex in the store card to make it go, which would enable me to postpone paying for them for six months.* This has been corrected, and I'll resubmit the order when the payment posts.

Tomorrow, it's back to the tax mines. There may be blood.

*By which time something else (like the motherboard) will probably have failed. :(

So yesterday's plan was to get up early, pack up Learned Cow, drive up to Baltimore for a.f.u. no Breakfast, and then head over to brian_edminster's place for grilled Bambi and computer diagnostics. In the middle, I'd hoped to drop by and visit some friends in Columbia. Got about two-thirds of that done...
( Cut to spare the f-list all the stuff )
All those calories (and unfortunately some extra carbs from all the half & half in all the coffee I drank, and a grilled onion besides) added up to an additional 1.5 pounds this morning and a BG of 113, which is still normal but way above what it's been this last week. I'm confident that I'll have that number down and the weight with it fairly soon.

*His shirt had a pic of a female chicken wearing a necktie.