Just call me "Chemo".

If you don't read old DC comics, this dude.

I'm all for modern medicine, but I'm starting to feel like my blood has been replaced by a chemical cocktail. I went to the doctor yesterday (the first available, not my normal one) because I've been nauseous and exhausted for more than a week. He asked me a few questions, told me it was "probably a virus or maybe an infection of some kind", gave me a prescription for a few days worth of an anti-nausea pill (which has given me a nasty metallic taste and dry mouth), and then completely ignored the problem I came to him for in favor of grilling me about my blood pressure.

Admittedly, my reading was pretty high (158/100), but I'm sick, which always gives me higher readings. I was on blood pressure medication a couple of years ago, and eventually stopped it myself (yes, bad Risha, I know), because as I moved out of the busy season at work my pressure kept dropping, which would give me dizzy spells until the doctor cut back the medication, and then a few weeks later I would be dizzy again. Then my refills ran out and my pressure was fine, so I never went back to get a new prescription. Plus, by that point I hated that stuff. I've had some borderline readings since then, usually when sick and/or overworked, but nothing like when I was first diagnosed or yesterday's.

So the doctor pitched a fit and demanded that I take the rest of yesterday and all of today off work (gave me a note to that effect and all), and come back to be rechecked this afternoon by my normal doctor. Frankly, the work that I'm currently falling behind on is stressing me more than working would have. Today my pressure was lower (150/100) but still too high. So, despite telling me directly that it was almost certainly because I went back on the birth control pill a few months ago, I'm also back on blood pressure medication. Simply stopping the pill for a week or two to see if that fixes it? No, why do that when I can be additionally medicated?

Maintenance medications currently prescribed to me:
Lisinopril 20MG (blood pressure, one daily)
OvCon 35 (birth control, one daily)
Tazorac 0.1% creme (acne, applied to face once daily)
Axert (migraines, as needed)
Albuterol (inhaler, as needed)

And I'm still nauseous and exhausted.

Doing my bit

Separated at Birth?

Pope Benedict XVI


Emperor Palpatine

"Pr-i-vate Eyes, are watching you, Pri-vate Eyyyyyes..."

Maybe it's the voyeur that I never knew was inside of me, but I love this site beyond the telling of it. I don't recall exactly when or how I ran across it (Top Five Too Much Fun Site of the Day? Blog of a friend?), but I watch it all the time. Traffic in Moscow, people working in Australia, laundromats in Japan, cats sleeping god knows where... for my perusal, 24 hours a day.

Missing in action

I'm sorry I've been gone so long. I'm not going to go too far into why in a public forum (though Chris tracked me down awhile back and got the whole story), but I will offer two thoughts:

- The tough part of depression is that when you're depressed enough to need a doctor you're too depressed to bother to see one.

- I will get a flu shot next year if I have to bribe a public official and knock over a small child standing in my way.

However, I'll try not to disappear quite so thoroughly again. Unless, of course, my head explodes or something. I've had a f^$%ing headache everyday this week, and as far as I know I don't need new glasses or a brain transplant.

"Female cliche"? Since when is that a personality trait?

Long test I spotted on someone else's blog... not very flattering, unfortunately, but probably not too far off for many of them.

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion |||||||||||| 43% Stability |||||||||||||||| 63% Orderliness |||||||||||||| 60% Empathy |||||| 30% Interdependence |||||||||||||| 56% Intellectual |||||||||||| 50% Mystical |||||||||||||||||||| 83% Artistic |||||||||||| 43% Religious |||||| 30% Hedonism |||||| 30% Materialism |||||||||||||||| 63% Narcissism |||||| 23% Adventurousness || 10% Work ethic |||||||||| 36% Self absorbed |||||||||||||| 56% Conflict seeking |||||||||||| 50% Need to dominate |||||||||||||||| 63% Romantic |||||||||||||||| 70% Avoidant |||||||||||| 50% Anti-authority |||||||||||| 50% Wealth |||||| 30% Dependency |||||||||||||||| 70% Change averse |||||||||||||||||||| 90% Cautiousness |||||||||||||||| 63% Individuality |||||||||| 36% Sexuality |||||||||||||| 56% Peter pan complex |||||||||||| 43% Physical security |||||||||||||||||||| 90% Food indulgent |||||||||||||||||||| 83% Histrionic |||||| 30% Paranoia |||||||||||| 43% Vanity |||||||||||| 50% Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||||||||| 90% Female cliche |||||||||||||||||| 76%

Take Free Advanced Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

This week so far - by the numbers.

Days ill with gastly death cold/flu thing that even the prescription drugs don't seem to touch: 5

Items completed from my To Do list: 10

Items not completed left on the list: about 1000

Hours in the car tomorrow (min.): 5

Boxes of tissues killed off in my house this week: 8.5

Hours of actual sleep (approx. total since Sunday): 20

Hours of tossing and turning and coughing and hacking: 200,000

Percentage of exaggeration in the last item: Not as much as you'd think.

Hours spent shopping during a massive downpour today: 3

Hours spent staring blankly at Christmas cards in the store, trying to focus enough to pick one out: .75

IQ of person who shops for hours in a massive downpour while still struck down by the death cold/flu: 38

Years in purgatory that my husband deserves for giving this to me: Haven't decided yet, but it will be a lot.

I have next week off, so I have nine glorious days to do with as I will.

Well, aside from doing the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, sweeping the kitchen, changing the cat boxes, finishing my Christmas shopping, putting up the tree, decorating said tree, wrapping presents, trying to keep the kittens out of the tree, brushing the adult cat (Persian), making a hair appointment, keeping the appointment, making a long overdue followup doctor's appointment, keeping the appointment, changing the sand in the lizard cage, playing with the lizard, exchanging some bras I bought that were the wrong size, buying toothpaste, doing some food shopping, getting an oil change, getting a car wash, meeting some friends for Thai on Wednesday, cooking something to bring to Christmas dinner at my in-law's, calling my parents and telling them that we're doing Christmas at the in-law's this year, seeing my parents at some point before or potentially after, seeing my grandmother at some point before or potentially after, dropping some presents off at work before Wednesday (for two people that I wasn't expecting to give me a present who gave me one), paying credit card bills, getting cash from the ATM, and traveling five hours each way to and from the in-laws.

"...a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

Or maybe a better quote would be, "That's cool," said Zaphod, "we'll meet the meat."

http://www.3dweb.no/galleri/stuestolbm/bilder/anim1.swf (PG-13: Contains strong language, bad puns, cartoon cows) (not actually Douglas Adams related despite the quotes.)

Required reading

Are all of my loyal readers (hi Chris!) reading Josh reads the comics so you don't have to?

"The workers have nothing to lose but their chains." - Karl Marx

A very wise person once said never to post something that you wouldn't want written on a twenty foot high billboard on your front lawn.

I'm going to blatantly ignore this advice for a moment.

----------------------

Generally speaking, when I disappear for several days at a time, it's due to work. This week has been busy and stressful, but unfortunately this is not unusual. I got home at around 10:00 tonight, which is also unfortunately not unusual. Even better, I'm already depressed about how much I didn't get done today, which means that tomorrow's pretty much going to suck.

In that spirit, I'm going to post a short manifesto that I wrote in a moment of fury a couple of weeks ago. Names and argot changed for clarity and to protect the guilty.

Current management team issues. In no particular order.

No clear sense of expectations.
It's 5:00 on a production load day. Jim's note said that we load at 11:00. Does it actually mean that we'll load at 11, or is it just by 11? Are we expected to stay until 11? Do you have to check in before you leave? What if your work in done? What if your issue is fixed in staging, but the QA associate is still testing it? What if you have an issue outstanding from a week ago that you have no idea how to fix and no one has said word one to you about it? What if you have an issue outstanding from a week ago that isn't hard and would only take you about two hours to fix, but you just haven't gotten to it and no one has said word one to you about it?

"Absentee" management.
Such as six hour meetings on the days we move to staging. Failure to assign issues until the day of or after the due date. Not reading email on a regular basis.

Unrealistic deadlines and workloads foster a sense that it doesn't matter if you hit your due date.
If you know you can't make it anyway, why not leave at 8, or 6, instead of staying until 10?

Burnout.
No one, no matter how dedicated, can work 50 - 65 hours a week from July to November without serious aftereffects.

No sense of an end in sight.
In that team meeting last month it was a mistake to tell a bunch of burned out people that they need to keep working as hard as they had been (or harder) for the rest of the year.

No sense of anyone at the wheel.
There is a general feeling that management completely lost control of the project roughly four weeks ago, and more importantly that no one has made any attempt to take it back.

The requisite holiday post

Just popping in from the in-law's house to say "Happy Thanksgiving" to any residents of the U.S., "Happy Really Belated Thanksgiving" to any Canadians, and "Very Happy Unbirthday" to everyone else.

"Hey! Who DOESN'T like mexican porn?"

This gave me such a fit of the giggles.

Almost forgot

Today I downloaded Thunderbird to use for my email. Phill made me try the Firefox browser a couple of weeks ago, but I wasn't impressed until I discovered extensions*. There doesn't seem to be a lot available for Thunderbird in comparison, but I've always hated Outlook Express, so I figured what the heck, it couldn't possibly be worse.

I mean, at times I've been so desperate to access my email without Outlook screwing me up, that I actually used Popcorn as my main email client.

*Incidentally, if you use Firefox, I recommend SpellBound, which is what I'm using to check these posts.

Damn him to heck and back.

I've been sick for the last couple of days with the plague that's been going around work. Yesterday Phill tried to get me to go to the doctor, quite logically pointing out that a) last time I ignored a cold it lasted (literally) a month, and b) he really didn't want to catch it from me. I hemmed and hawed and dragged my feet, convinced that it was a waste of time and money, that they couldn't help me at all with what was after all just a cold/flu, and that the people at the doctor's office would think that I'm a hypochondriac for even bothering them with something so minor.

Today I went, and was instantly prescribed two pills and a nose spray for my sinus infection.

Don't you hate when they're right? *sigh*

Cue the orchestra

As the name implies, I wouldn't expect great things from this blog. Or great creativity, or even regular updates. However, I will endeavor not to bore you to tears. (Hah! How's that for setting the standards low?)

I am hoping that having a published site that needs to be filled up will encourage me to actually write some fanfiction, or even, god forbid, original stuff, like I've meant to for a few years now.

WARNING! EXPECT:
- run-on and unnecessarily long sentences
- big, odd-sounding words, like "palimpsest" or "megillah"
- lots of ellipse (...), dash (-), and parentheses (( )) abuse
- way too many exclamation points!!!
- the frequent use of "that that" (i.e., "I wanted him to know that that was wrong.")
- and lots of other bad habits I can't think of right now.