Bad medicine

This week, I'm in a little more pain than usual. On Friday, a pain/inflammation started in my upper abdomen. By Sunday, it was about a 7 and very tender, so I went to E/R. They diagnosed a stomach virus with inflamed lymph nodes and told me to eat small, bland meals and follow up with my clinic if it didn't improve or worsened. Follow with two days of hard work at work, then one day of hard labor at home in the yard when I was supposed to be resting, but there was a complaint about the yard, so we had to put in about 9 hours yesterday on top of 6 Sunday to have it done before a reinspection today or be faced with fines today.

Anyway, by the end of work Tuesday, let alone yesterday and today, moving has me out of breath. At this point, standing up or walking to the bathroom is too much. And the abdominal pain has increased to about an 8.5/10, and when it subsides a little is replaced by a deep, burning itch. Sooo... I don't know. But I have an appointment in two hours and I don't know if I am more afraid that they will tell me out is serious or "it's just a stomach bug, you'll get through it." Because I have never had gastroenteritis like this.

Mishmash

In just sitting in the break room ready to work and sorting out some thoughts. Yesterday was talk like a pirate day. No one dressed up with me, but I scored us some free krispy kremes, anyway. I'll take any excuse to run to work in costume.

This is interesting reading:

http://aweinstein.kinja.com/fuck-you-im-gen-y-and-i-dont-feel-special-or-entitl-1333588443

... OK, while you were reading that, I banged out 3 hours of my work day. Time compression, weeeee!

I'm in a blue funk today. I don't quite want to say depressed, because I feel that depression requires more commitment to one's mood. I'm just... Bluesy.

I'm eating lunch today, though, so maybe that's some kind personal achievement. I don't know.

Whatever, man. Thanks for reading. Time for a smoke, some orange is the new black, and then more work.

XM

As I may have mentioned, I have a bit of a commute to work. My savior on the road is SiriusXM radio. My gently-used Hyundai came with XM, and especially when I leave work late and Showtime on Broadway is on channel 72, my car becomes a haven of solitude instead of the painful body trap it can be at times and which it seems especially to have been when I reach my destination and have to exit the damnable thing.

Anyway, what I have not had is a way to listen to the XM at home. Until today. I just upgraded my package to include internet radio, which includes listening through the website and the android app. Since I don't usually watch a lot of television unless I get an urge and start a whole streak/season of something, I think being able to catch up on some of the radio shows I miss while working will work out well for me.

Groceries in Autumn

I try not to shop at Walmart much. True, in my area it wins out on grocery prices, but in terms of employee relations... Well, I'd far and away rather give my shopping dollars to the Commissary (DeCA), Publix, or Winn-Dixie (the first two having better reputations and the third having a neutral reputation from what information I've found and generally better prices/variety in my area) than to Walmart. So I shop at those three places. Please don't email me and ask why I don't shop at grocery chain X. It's probably because it's not available here.

Anyway, there's a problem: I'm allergic to cinnamon. Every September through, I don't know, December sometime, Winn-Dixie, Publix, and a lot of other big grocery chains put out display after display of brooms that reek of cinnamon. A simple trip to the grocery store, should I forget that it's the season or should the grocer jump the gun and put them out in August (!), becomes a minefield, with me avoiding whole sections of the store and just sending Chris off to shop for meat, produce, spices, or whatever else is near yet another display of brooms.

So, with the grocers trying to kill me (no kidding, this is a tongue-swelling, breath-interfering phenomenon), I can (a) time all my shopping trips to coincide with base errands and do all my shopping at the commissary or (b) give up and shop at Walmart, as long as they haven't started with the cinnamon; it's not a thing I've experienced there in the past, though.

Either way, though, you guys with your brooms have lost thousands of dollars of my business. I realize it's a drop in your bucket, and I realize you're just carrying a product to sell, but staging them everywhere to scent the place is a real problem for some customers-couldn't they be isolated to a cabinet like flowers are?

Two weeks

It's been a full two weeks, so I've had plenty to blog about and then either not made the time to blog or not been able to gather my thoughts to do it. I'll be better, I swear (fun fact: the Minions from Despicable Me singing "I Swear" is one of the personalized ringtones I use. Song-coding the people who are calling is the most brilliant invention since the telephone itself).

So, brief run-down (let me explain! ... No, there is too much. Let me sum up.):

* Dad was in hospital, sepsis, multiple surgeries, most of the time in ICU, but has somehow gotten to go home already

* D has gone on an emotional roller coaster culminating in suspension from school after a bus fight

* I've been trying to ease back into reading more. This week I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. It's a decent piece of YA (older teen, some sexual content) lit, though the savvy adult reader may be able to predict most of the plot five or ten pages in. I'd recommend it to any teen looking for emotional stories or love stories as an intro to some of the tropes of the genre, anyway.

* I also read Joyland. Pick it up if you like ghost story mysteries.

* got sick. Had two bugs at once at one point.

* the rest is work stuff. More there later.

Good day, all!