To those wishing to contribute to the hurricane victims -
This is from rat:
Whatever you do, do NOT contribute to the American Red Cross. They may be the most organized of the groups, but they do something you will not believe happens, but it is true - they BILL the people who receive their aid.
rat's dad has a friend whose house went up in flames. The Red Cross came out and gave him a blanket and few other things. A few months later, he received a bill for the 'service call' and was charged for the blanket and sundries.
I do love this sleepy Eiri image in the latest online manga. And he is in a 3/4 length long-sleeve teeshirt - how unlike Eiri! What happened to your metrosexual dressing, boy?
Just look at that face in the lower left panel! I think the blond boy is a little jealous!
Last night rat and I did a dry run to the damned convocation location.
It is such a great place to have a convocation - it has parking space for about 100 cars next to the building, more than enough parking for the 500+ people being required to go to the event.
Stupid Stupid Stupid!
Of course, the idiots from above will point out the train parking is available, which is a large lot and a LONG HIKE from the convention center. Yeah, I want to hike in over 95 degree weather in the morning with at least an orange air pollution watch going on at the same time.
This means I will HAVE to get there early (like 7:45am) to try and get a parking space.
I am absolutely dead on my feet. The only explanation is all the work stress because I have been going to bed pretty early, at least for me. It also may be medication draining me. I just don't know.
Oh, I forgot to mention: On Thursday evening is the Faculty Convocation and I have to be at work for the breakout session afterward. This means I do not leave work until around 10pm that evening, only to turn around and go to the other Convocation at the crack of dawn on Friday. Ugh.
I used to go in and work a 13-hour day. I don't do that anymore. Tomorrow I am going to work at 12:30pm. Did I ask to do it? No, I just posted an email and said I was going to do this. Other people who will be there late are doing it, too, so I have the right to do it as well. I would have to take comp time if I did work the extra hours and the first of the semester is not a good time to take off, except for Fridays, sometimes.
I WILL be taking off next Friday for the four-day AnimeFEST.
On a better note, last night with rat's sister and brother-in-law was much better than I expected. We ended up NOT talking about the issue concerning their dad's memory loss and pretty much had a good time telling stories about each other and laughing. I am willing to do it again, actually.
The biggest problem of the evening was trying to find food on the menu that did not contain dairy products. I ended up getting the soup and salad combo, also knowing I just cannot put away much food at one sitting anymore. I DO get hungry a lot now and feel desperate for food, but I can take a few bites and feel better pretty quickly. I really want to keep the weight off I have already lost. The gyno doc says I have lost 22 lbs over the last two years, which is really good, actually. That's less than a pound a week, a healthy way to do it. However, I am not actually losing the weight in a healthy manner. Without a thyroid, I can only lose weight while being sick. I have been almost constantly sick with one thing or another for those years.
rat and I are still spending time every evening with the ps2 coop rp game. We have started the Extreme version of it, where the game allows us to import our characters with their stats, but not with all their goodies, like we could with the other three versions. I miss my +5 magical battle axes rat made for me. One of the cool things about the game is you can upgrade various items with runestones and gems. You have to purchase the upgrade in the workshop, but that's okay. After getting one item, we save the game with rat holding the item, I take the item and rat imports his saved character, which now has a copy of that item. It is how we duplicate stuff to sell and to use. We do that with lots of stuff. It takes some time to do it, but it is worth it when we can have kick-ass weapons and all the gems we need to make them. The Extreme mode will allow us to build +15 trinkets, something we are looking forward to doing.
Today is the LAST day for the dairy product ban. After tonight, I will glut myself with dairy over the next few days.
This is the final week before the Fall semester begins. This means we have to prep for everything asap because the entire campus (except a skeleton crew for all student services because registration is STILL going on) is stuck going to this required function called Convocation on Friday morning. We HAVE to go and if we don't show up we don't get this damned 'Thunderwater credit' for it. People who cannot attend because they are working student services must watch a video of it later in the semester.
We HAVE to have X amount of this credit every year, in various categories, and the amount of credit we are supposed to gather each year is up-ed every year. One category is called "Mind/Body/Health" and they want us to do some kind of exercise. When I was more healthy and could get away, I did line-dancing at noon. However, when we moved to the new building everyone decided NOT to be available in the lab to watch it during the time of the class so I could no longer go. Ex-boss, who is now fulltime faculty starting yesterday plans on going, so I may sneak off with her this semester and make the guys, and the new Associate Dean, remain in the office. However, I know the new boss/AD will go to lunch at noon as usual and pretty much disappear, as usual.
Anyway, this damned Convocation has always started at a ridiculous hour of the morning, with crappy breakfast foods served. They want people to eat and mingle. It is supposed to be a community-building event. Community my ass. Instead of this crap, save the money wasted on this stupidity and pay me more! I stopped going early because I have nothing to say that early in the morning and no one wanted to talk to me, anyway. When I am not being useful to someone, I am ignored. It's been that way for as long as I have lived so I don't expect it to change.
The last few years, instead of getting up and going early, I would sleep late, eat a decent breakfast, then arrive a few minutes before it began, get my nametag to log myself in and go sit down. Well, this year the chairs in the Performance Hall, which were sent to be recovered and were PROMISED to be done by this date, are not ready. Do the Powers-That-Be do the smart thing and cancel the activity, or at least change the date for later? Nope. Now we have to be bussed to an auditorium in another town for the event. Talk about stupid.
We haven't gotten the details yet, but I bet they will force those taking the bus to get up at some god-awful time to meet the bus. I bet they will make everyone be there around 6:30am. That's crap.
Do I want to drive to the event? No. Why should I waste my gas to go to something they fumbled and will not admit it is a ridiculous idea to pursue?
There's lots more to this, like our tech being forced to run sound because the official campus sound guy feels like he cannot do it, so our tech cannot get our rooms completed before class since he has to go to all the rehearsals.
The Associate Deans in our area have also switched so now my great boss is full-time faculty and someone who really does not know our area well enough to do the job is the new Associate Dean. The new AD got back from vacation and was hit yesterday morning with all the crap that has to get done before the Fall semester begins and I really do not regret going it. The new AD has to realize the job has all these nitpicky details that have to be done and I cannot make those kinds of decisions on my own. If I could make those decisions, I would also expect a job title change and all the money that goes with the title.
Enough blathering for now.
rat and I are going out to dinner with his sister and brother-in-law tonight. This is the first time we have been invited out by them and while the excuse is to celebrate rat's new job (which he has not been hired on permanently yet!), I suspect an ulterior motive. I bet the topic of their parents comes up and what to do about their dad's memory loss. Ugh...
I worked my first full day of work in a week yesterday. Can you say exhausted by 4pm yesterday afternoon? I almost crashed on my desk a few times. I have been drinking a LOT of Tang at the office. Water alone is not cutting it right now.
Can you say still exhausted this morning, with sore muscles, too?
Of course, my mouth and throat are still not hungry but my stomach tells me about it, a lot. I try to ignore it, or drink something to quiet it some. Luckily, when I DO eat, the initial portion is so small it is almost not there. I ate a taco (no cheese) and a large guacomole for lunch yesterday and almost popped when I was done. Way too much food.
Work politics is happening again, stuff we knew was coming down, and I am just not up to talk about it right now.
I have also been a terrible fan. Sorry about not reading/reviewing fic, friends.
I need to pull myself out of this mental and physical hole soon, and I know I will. I always do. I am too body-dead and brain-dead to crawl out of the wallow at the moment, so I think I will go back into stealth mode some more.
Right now, I am just too tired for much of anything except mindless ps2 rp gaming and TV watching with rat, where I can lie back and relax.
Time for me to stumble off to get ready for work. Whee...
I am 99.99% sure I now have an intestinal infection. All evidence points in that direction, and I know I cannot doctor it with silver or garlic. I will try and knock it out this weekend with silver, but I think it is a lost cause. When I get to this state, the only thing that works is hard-core antibiotics from the doctor.
My doctor will be shocked to see me, yet AGAIN... I will have to call first thing Monday morning. Sheesh...
I am going back to bed again. My gut hurts in the usual place when I get these infections and I just cannot tolerate being up for very long.
I wonder if this is the last fight with the Prednizone to keep me sick for most of those nine months after I stopped taking it. I suspect my already faulty resistance is now permanently fucked.
Well, I packed rat's lunch this morning (something I never do) because we don't know what kind of food service is available at his new employment. We DO know they do not have a cafeteria, unlike TI/Raytheon or the Blockbuster warehouse site and the area where the new company is located is a combination of industrial park, nice homes and bits of nasty neighborhood.
So he left this morning, early, carrying an insulated bag with a frozen dinner entree, a ginger ale, some crackers, two mini Almond Joys, a fork and some napkins. It's definitely not a lot of food, so he will be hungry tonight. He will be checking out the area for fast-food places this week.
This new job has him working 7:30am to 4:30pm every day, and him having to drive the opposite direction than he is used to - toward downtown Dallas. He will probably be able to avoid the morning commute traffic, but he will definitely be stuck in the afternoon commute home traffic.
BAD News: The cable modem will not even be looked at until a week from tomorrow. This means NO CABLE MODEM for a whole week! We only have one computer with a functioning modem and it is craptop ni. Don't expect me to be around in the evening and weekend hours much. The modem is SLOW!!! Transfering files to it is a major event so no website update this week.
And I REALLY cannot spend time at work checking up on folks anymore. I suspect some things so work-related tasks must be done on the office machines and nothing else. I think I can pop out and do email quickly, but that's about it. So, if you need to get a message to me, email me, don't ping me on lj/blogger.
The cable guy could have come out on Wednesday afternoon, which would have been fine with rat's work schedule, however...
Good News: rat interviewed with a temp-to-perm company yesterday and they liked him enough they are willing to let him work there three days a week to accommodate his other work schedule. He will have to work out the details, but he wants to make sure he has the new job before saying goodbye to the current one, which has all his benefits, etc. At the same time...
Bad News: To be here for the cable guy, he will have to take off early next Friday to be here during the afternoon. If the guy does not find anything wrong at the box outside he will want to ping the box inside the apt, something I really don't want to happen.
On another note, we had planned to go together to my doc next Wednesday, so rat could drive the distance, but now he won't be able to do it with me.
Bad News: The new meds are going to cost me an arm and a leg! JEEZE!
Anyway, it's mostly bad news, but that's the way it is right now. A lot of it is just major inconvenience.
He said I now have the blood pressure of a 20-year-old, which is good.
I have dropped six pounds in three weeks but I suspect it has to do with water weight because of the diuretic element of the blood pressure medication and not real weight. I am always thirsty now because of the meds so I drink a LOT of water every day and pee almost every hour when I am awake.
I thought I was developing another sinus infection because of all the drainage I was getting, but he checked and said I was fine. I was dealing with regular allergies. He DID decide to get me back on sinus control, yay! I will be taking Zyrtec-D twice a day and doing Flonase before I go to bed every night. Maybe my daily headaches will subside somewhat.
I told him the over-the-counter 24-hr Claritin-D did not work for me. He said it is actually a different pill than the prescription kind. It is the same medicine but a different delivery system. He told us some people find the drug works the same while others find the new stuff does not work at all, like me.
Next week I go in for my yearly well-woman exam with another doc, the one that has moved his practice an hour away from us. He used to be the same building as all my other docs, which is attached to the hospital in our neighborhood. Oh well, I decided to keep the guy since I only visit once a year. When we went in last year, which was the first year we had to drive so far, I had decided to look for another doc after the visit. He was so happy to see us and talked about how I had started being a patient with him when he was first starting out (something we had not known about) so I started feeling guilty about wanting to find a new doc closer. After the exam, rat and I talked about it and decided a trip once a year was not a sacrifice.
My back still twinges me but I have learned to live with it for a while now so I don't think too much about it unless it flares up.
Anime Update
I finished Otogi Zoshi and found the parallels between the first 13 eps and a few bits of Monkey King/Journey to the West storyline to be interesting. The second 13 eps were interesting because of the magical factor in modern Tokyo.
It was also interesting the anime took us to a few places I was familiar with from other series. I like seeing those kinds of similarities. I suspect if I watched more modern-day anime I would see even more of these familiar places.
I am through most of the first seven eps of Victorian Romance Emma. It is a sweet little story. Hakim and his four attendants are definitely fascinating and I can see how angrybee found inspiration to write about them. Riding an elephant through downtown London was a hoot! I am also fascinated by the Japanese perspective of Victorian England.
The physical details are quite successful to me, but someone who knows more about the nuts and bolts of Victorian living would be the one to verify if they are getting it right. The clothing aspects are 'okay'. Madame's neckline in the photo is 1840's while the sleeves are definitely 1850's but that's a quibble from the apparel historian in me.
Gaming Update
Well, we finished the game at easy level. We have started the regular level and have imported our final characters from the easy level into this game. The sword I carry does a minimum of 90 hits points of damage. We have pretty good armour - not the best, but the best weighs so much more than we can carry right now. The Elven armour is light and still very protective. We can now walk up to things that could kill us in a few strokes and stand there while they whack on us and not take ANY damage. Things with projectile attacks do not phase us and we just walk up, do one hit and the things are dead. We are already deep into the first section of the game, almost ready to fight the boss, and it only took about an hour to get there this time, unlike the days we took the first time we did this section. Of course, we are not picking up stuff to sell (like old armour) or keep (like potions) like we had to do the first time, to get enough money to buy things. We are carrying TOO MUCH money and have nothing to spend it on because we have really good weapons and equipment. It does not stop us from picking up more money as we go. Greedy are we? Yep!
Thanks: --> to Lia, my sensei, who has inspired me to draw again. I
wouldn't be doing this without your support, Domo Arigato!
--> to Talon, for sending me her fabulous fics, inspiring me with her writing to draw my first
illustration for a story and actually liking what I drew.
--> to Dasia, for her words of encouragement when drawing her original chara.
--> to Joules, a wonderful epic fic writer, for liking my art enough to want to post them with Talon's
and her own stories.
--> to Lutra, the other half of the epic team, for being so supportive.
--> to Jacque' & Becca Raddittzu, we met on eBay as bidder and sellers and now we are face-to-face
friends. You showed us the real DBZ with your fansubs. It's all your fault the house is full of
doujinshi! *LOL*
:: welcome to bakayaro onna's mindless ramblings, rants & raves :: 
