wombat_socho

Well, since I got back from the Not-Balticon Excursion, there really hasn't been a lot going on. I put on a lot of weight while I was out there and have been struggling to get it off, and over the last week or so I've been making good progress on that. I may even be under 390 by the time the convention rolls around next month. BP and BG have mostly been good. 

Speaking of which, we've had a trickle of memberships come in, a couple of T-shirt orders, some ideas for programming, and as usual no response from DoE or various nuclear industry folks. We'll just have to do without them, I guess. 

Speaking of doing without things, it is with great displeasure that I discovered the Pahrump Valley Times had closed their Tonopah office and with it the only copy shop for a couple hundred miles. Good thing I'm going to Las Vegas this week for an NSSAB meeting, because not only do I need to mail out con flyers to Jolie at Libertycon but my zine for StippleAPA to Jeanne. Well, I should have plenty of time before the meeting on Wednesday and on my way out of town Thursday to attend to those matters. 

I've been Ingressing a little but mostly just recharging things from the recliner; been doing my dailies and picking away at the current FGO event, and attempting to win a Planet of the Mongols setup in Civ5. Also continuing to reread Behold! Humanity! while also slogging through Mimi & Toutou Go Forth as well as the Fate: Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya manga omnibus. The former may convince me to give Conrad's Heart of Darkness another go. 

troika called me this morning for Father's Day and we hung out on the phone for about an hour talking about stuff. It was good. 
 

So I managed to put on five pounds down in Las Vegas between CFA and breakfast at Jack In The Box. I am apparently doing okay with the nose hose, so that's good. 

Turned out nothing was wrong with the Optiplex's PSU, and the tech didn't have to struggle too hard to get the new hard drive tucked into the case. He wouldn't accept payment so I dropped a couple twelve packs of beer on him Wednesday morning on my way to the VA. The trouble with the new drive only started after I got home; the new drive is D: of course, but that pushed the external drive to F:. and the Winamp couldn't find my music there. So I had to load all the music onto the new drive, which took a few minutes. I couldn't blog with the Surface Pro since I had stupidly forgotten to load a bookmark for The Other McCain's login page onto it. Well, I'll fix that on Sunday, if not sooner. 

Sent out an email to all of my East Coast friends, actually got answers from a couple of them, and will probably call or text the rest when I get out there. Stacy will be out of town unfortunately, attending graduations for Jefferson and Reagan out in the Midwest, but so it goes. I will be doing lunch with the Wrights on Wednesday after I get in, an early dinner with Trish on Friday, and the rest is up in the air. I suspect I'll be putting my heels up in some hotel room doing some writing or something one of the nights that I'm out there. As it happens, I'll be heading down on Monday so that I can spend Tuesday morning at the VA lab and pharmacy since I guessed wrong on my carvedilol and Novolin R. 

Did a bunch of research with Grok on aspects of colonizing Coaldale: electricity, power, water, & sewage. The EPA person shuffled me off onto NDEP, so now I guess I'm waiting for two calls from them. 

The Senators had a good week. Took two out of three from the Phillies at RFK and then split with the O's in Baltimore. We're out of the cellar, two games ahead of the A's and two behind the Brewers, most of our injured players and pitchers are off the DL, and Pete says we may just squeak into a wild card slot. 

So on the first weekend of the month, things are picking up at work. Did four returns yesterday, and another two today, so I had five hours on the clock total. I think I'll wait until mid-month to peek and see what my progress toward bonus is, since it's really too early to be sweating that kind of stuff. I also need to do better at getting to bed at a decent hour so I get enough sleep before my shift starts; both days this weekend I clocked in a lot later than my shift started, and I can't imagine my new OM is going to be happy with that continuing. On the other hand, I'm getting work done in a timely fashion, so...

The Romanov Rising is good, The War in Heaven is good, and the next volume of Komi is waiting for me at the post office. I think the final volume of Larry's Son of the Black Sword is due out this month as well. Plenty of good new reading. 

The Senators got whupped by the Cubs and swept by the A's. I am really starting to hate RFK. We're 3-8 at home, but 10-11 on the road, and we're underperforming our Pythagorean by one game (we should be 14-18 instead of 13-19), so I am hoping the bats catch fire against Minnesota, which is scoring a lot more runs but also coughing up a lot more than we are. Guess we'll see. 

Weight has been lingering in the low 390s, and probably would be better were I not eating so much cereal lately. 

This week I have a video appointment tomorrow at 1430 and an wound care appointment at 0800 Thursday. I've already booked my room at the Strat for Wednesday night. Next Thursday I have an optometry appointment, and two weeks from now an NSSAB meeting on the 19th. So I should be pretty flush with two VA reimbursements and a DOE check as well before Confinement; I paid for the SWA tickets with points, so my only expenses should be food, the rental car, and the hotel. I'll be in pretty good shape since the VA disability check drops on 2/28 and I'll also have sundry Block paychecks on the 7th & 21st. 

I didn't do one of these last year because I was busy with Son of Silvercon, but since my schedule is clear this week, I have the leisure to look back and see how things have progressed (or not) over the last couple of years. Well, I do have my CE to attend to, but instead of 18 hours we only have to do ten, and I've already knocked one of those out; between the AFSP and the mandatory ethics course there's another eight gone, so by the end of the week I should be all done with them. (Sure I will.)

Physically I'm doing better than last year. Weight is down, BP is almost always good, and BG is generally good as well, though I need to stay away from Punjabi Dhaba in Amargosa Valley, because their samosas will be the death of me otherwise. My legs are better, too, even if they're not healing as quickly as Dr. Lal would like. Part of it is that I'm not changing my bandages often enough, which is stupid of me, but then I'm lazy like that. Mentally, I'm okay, I guess. No urges to rope myself or do anything else stupid like that. 

Financially I'm doing better. Barb called yesterday with some questions about the hotel billing on either end of the Oak Ridge conference; we got that sorted and soon my NSB account will get a ~$1600 injection, just in time for the Anime Fusion excursion. While I do have four credit cards, the VA disability is enough to keep me current & even make progress on paying them down, which is a Good Thing, because it allows me to do dumb stuff like travel around the country AND finance an SF convention (mostly) out of my own pocket. 

I am keeping up with my N3F duties better now that tax season is over and I'm just the Treasurer and not also the membership secretary. Someone else is handling reminders to people whose voting memberships are expiring, and a good thing too. 

I'm undecided about whether this is going to be my last tax season or not. I miss dealing with people face to face; phone calls and video conferencing just aren't the same. On the other hand, I don't fancy paying someone else to do my taxes or trying to fight with TurboTax or HRB's at-home packages. Guess I'll just have to keep at it until I die, I guess. 

After I sort my pills, I'll be ready to head down to Las Vegas for tomorrow's NSSAB meeting, during which I'll have to report on last month's Low-Level Waste Stakeholders meeting and the visual observation I made at Test Cell C, ditto. I'm getting tired of all this driving back and forth and hopefully will be able to spend November and December sitting on my ass in Tonopah doing nothing except working on my CE...which apparently have been reduced from 18 to 10 hours. Big change. Also, I got surveyed for a possible Tax Assistant Advisor role, which may be a sneaky way for Anne to bring me up to Reno, since I don't think I'll be able to do the job very well from home. 

The weight has been wobbling between 385 and 390 lately, but the BG and BP have been good. 

Last week's series against the Cardinals and the Tribe were a disaster. Playing Oakland tonight and the O's on Friday; the final series will be at home against the Pirates. The good news is that even though this season was horrible, it's the best season so far except for last year when I somehow made the playoffs. 

Well, time to stop typing and get to sorting. I also have to remember to schedule groceries for pickup from the Walmart on Tropical, because if I don't, I'll find an excuse Thursday not to stop there, and there are some things I need from there that they don't carry here at the Raley's.  

Slept until after noon and didn't go out for anything; it sorta looks like my Amazon order is here along with a u/i shipment from Medline and something from the pharmacy; hopefully not insulin or Ozempic since I have plenty of all that.

Talked to a dude at Cal-Nevada about my bumper and he says he'll zip-tie it back on for me, which beats paying $$ to get it clamped back on according to the shop manual. I'll stop by there tomorrow en route to the post office & bank. 

Did a belated FMJRA to make up for the one I missed doing last Saturday and did the daily blogging as well, but I was that close to blowing it off.

Changed my bandages today after I woke up and weighed myself; they weren't smelly and there was only a little bleeding from the right leg. Weight was down from ~390 yesterday to ~387 today, huzzah. Probably drop more tomorrow since I had a normal flax muffin instead of cronuts and salad for dinner.

Didn't do anything Son of Silvercon related aside from tweeting and chatting on Discord. Tomorrow I need to write the AAR, and maybe the manifesto if we have time. Also need to talk with relevant staffers about doing care packages for Caitlin and Fred, to whom we owe T-shirts and other gestures of appreciation. 

My weight is still on the wrong side of 390, since I ate a bunch of stuff I shouldn't have while I was down in Las Vegas getting an EKG and an X-ray on Tuesday. I stayed at Santa Fe Station, since it was right up the road from the clinic, and it was kinda nice - as I commented to the desk guy, for a deposit of $150/night, it better be. The Food Court contributed to my weight gain since I ate at Panda Express and the custard place instead of eating something more reasonable, not that a couple of stops at Dunkin helped. 

Tuesday afternoon after my appointment, I picked up a couple of Route 44 Sprite Zeroes at the Sonic on Rancho, got some generic Claritin D at the Sam's Club of Tropical, went through the nearby CFA drive through for a couple of Hate Chikuns and some diet lemonade, and then hauled ass for home. I stopped in Amargosa Springs for a bathroom break and a couple more bottles of Sprite Zero, and much to my surprise drank both of them before I got home...where I stopped briefly to drop off the nose hose and the backpack before heading over to the convention center to cast my vote. 

Wednesday morning I got up early for a phone appointment with the VA social worker, who confirmed my suspicion that Medicare Part B was an expensive scam. Therefore, when I got my new Medicare card from the post office (along with issue #3 of Pigman and some Novolin R) I stuffed it in an envelope with a brief note telling them I didn't want Part B, and I will throw that in the mail tomorrow. 

Thursday I mostly stayed inside playing video games, but Friday I got up, made breakfast, and went down to the Post Office to collect all my mail. One item was a return of the note I sent Ed Ylst, who is apparently not at PO Box 60 any more. So I guess I'll have to call Esmeralda County on Monday, find out who's been paying the property taxes on Coaldale, and see if those people still want to sell the place. Friday evening, I beat the Orioles two games out of three, with hard-luck Pat Dobson taking the loss in Game 1 while Jim Kaat and Joe Coleman notched their sixth and eleventh wins respectively despite the hitters not hitting much. This brings us up to 37-42, 12.5 games out of first but apparently within striking distance of a wild card slot. Next up we're taking on 43-36 Pittsburgh, who has some nasty hitters but whose pitching doesn't look that impressive. I guess we'll see. 

We got a couple more memberships by PayPal and in the mail, but also heard that Holly, Oscar, and their kids won't be with us this year. This sucks. I hope a lot of people either send in their payments tomorrow or show up at the door, otherwise things are going to be interesting. No point in worrying about it...except that I need to talk to the local insurance agent  about an event insurance policy. 

 I was only on the clock for about five hours today, but I did more work than I did yesterday, including a Second Look conversion, and a fat family return I snagged off the fulfilment queue. Word around the office is that while we're fairly busy, Damonte Ranch is just shambolic chaos, with a lot of calls not being made, appointments being dropped, and similar fun. Guess it's just as well I'm not up there this year. Saw that Elizabeth approved my expense report, and it looks like it's been processed. As long as they pay me by Friday I'll be happy. 

Didn't make it to Ash Wednesday services today, for which I have no excuse, but I did conform to the Law of the Fish. For whatever good that will do me. 

Changed bandages this morning, including the Aquacel on the right leg, which was beginning to smell bad. Got some blood on the carpet, but it couldn't be helped. 

Finally got around to plugging the Kindle into the laptop so I could convert a few books from epub to mobi format, but I screwed that up and deleted the books instead. Back to the drawing board. 

Weight was down to 396 this morning, and I didn't eat much today, so I'm hopeful that I'll be closer to 390 than 400 by Saturday. 

Kukuruyo finished the art this morning, including the ice cream cone. The Battle of Leyte Gulf never looked so sexy. 

Well, none of my cards showed up in the mail, so I didn't bother going out today. On the other hand, I did find my PenFed CU debit card, and shifted $50 to checking from savings. Also noticed that PFCU was still linked to NSB, so I took another $50 from there, though that might not show up until next week. I also hooked up one of the Capital One cards to my Walmart account so I can pay for Walmart stuff with my phone, and after a phone call to the Plaza got my deposit and casino fee deducted from the Savor virtual card. So even without new NSB or Capital One cards, I should be good for the trip tomorrow. I also called and ordered a replacement for my missing Emerald Card. Wonder if the new one will have chip and tap functionality.

Did not work on CE today, but I got the daily blogging done - and completely forgot about baseball. The Twins postponed the game until tomorrow night, for which God bless them.

Weight has been constant the last few days, holding at 395. BG has been mostly good, Finished off the rest of the penne with the last of the meatballs for dinner and tried using the homemade bread to make a grilled cheese sandwich, which the bread proved to be a little too crumbly for. Tasted great, though.

Going to set the alarm for 0700, which should give me plenty of time to stick a change of clothes in the backpack, sort out two days worth of meds, and throw the cooler bag of insulin in the pack as well. Even if I'm draggy and don't get out of here before 0900, that should still give me plenty of time to get my ass down 95 and the 215 to the VA, maybe grab some lunch in the canteen, and then go check in at the Plaza. On the way from the VA to the hotel, I'll swing by the Walmart Neighborhood Market and pick up my order - about $50 worth of water enhancers, yogurt, cream, and various other foods to go with the turkey breast in my freezer, which I think I'll cook up Sunday. Also got some onions and sliced ham. The fridge in my room at the Plaza is going to be stuffed....might be a good idea to take an insulated bag along and get ice at Sonic. 

I guess I can go back to using this icon. It's been a while.

So I went a little overboard last night, eating an entire small cheesecake and half an ice cream cake, but God was merciful and my GI tract didn't rebel against me. I've also steadily been losing weight over the weekend despite going out for Mexican for dinner. So I have that going for me.

Losing streak continued today; lost both games against the Orioles in Baltimore. They were both close games, but a close loss is still a loss, and worse yet, Cookie Rojas is out for 60 days. Del Unser also got crunched for three days, so I guess Mike Andrews will go back to starting at second (with Hal Lanier as late-inning glove man) and Johnny Callison will get called up to be our left-handed outfield bat. Hopefully we'll break our losing streak against the Cubs on Friday - we swept them in the first series at RFK, but Friday we'll be going to Wrigley, and I worry that some of our pitchers might feed their gophers. 

The print shop in town didn't have any card stock, so I sent the membership list off to Caitlin and she took care of the printing and mailing. It looks like we'll get at least another ten people at the door, and for some reason we keep getting a few supporting memberships trickling in. Perhaps we'll get a few more people from the flyers I left at Meepleville and the notices on the Regiment Discord, but I'm not counting on it. I just want to get through the weekend, get all the hotel bills paid, and have enough left over to sleep and eat until I go home after the Security Site tour on Wednesday. 

Tomorrow I'll go renew my driver's license at the DMV, pick up a tube of antibiotic ointment and maybe some tea at the Raley's, do my laundry, and start packing. Unlike my usual practice when heading down to Vegas, I'm going to try and pack most of my clothes and pills and bandaging supplies the night before, because I want to be on the road and checked into the Stratosphere around mid-afternoon so I can catch a brief nap before heading to Fogo de Chao for dinner and then to McCarran to pick up Maggie & Caitlin. The rest of the weekend promises to be hectic.