Newsbreak

Mood’s been kinda weird the past few days. 🤷🏻‍♂️ The whole transition of Trump leaving and Biden getting sworn in… I dunno, other than watching some of the inauguration, my brain has decided to just dip out of watching / caring about politics for the moment. 🙂 I know he’s signing a bunch of executive orders, but I just can’t be bothered to look into them all yet. It’s just a relief that the chaos of Donald Trump is gone, so I’m taking advantage of this teeny bit of in-between time to just not think about any of it, knowing that nothing illegal, immoral, or ignorant is gonna happen while I’m not paying attention. 😏

Of course I’m still anxious for the rest of the impeachment trial to happen, and I’m hoping that something is found out / done about politicians like Boebert and Hawley and Cruz, but just avoiding the news in general for a few days has been nice. I did see that Republicans are already outraged that Biden apparently wore a Rolex at the inauguration, and that he wasn’t wearing a mask while he was outside, by himself, visiting the Lincoln Memorial. 😯🙄🤦🏻‍♂️ Good to see the GOP focusing on the serious issues again, eh?

But my friend Jim is coming to town to take me and his brother out for our collective birthday dinners on Sunday, and with things being as they are – I do have to admit that I’m a little nervous about being out and around people. 😳 Went in town yesterday to top off on a bit of grocery / household stuff at Dollar General, and for whatever reason that store was packed in the middle of the day. 😣 Nobody, myself included, looked like they wanted to be there, but at least everyone was wearing masks. 😷😷🤧😷😑 Dinner will be fine though… it’ll be in the mid-afternoon, so less people than if it was actual lunch or dinner time, and obviously it’s not like I’m gonna be hugging up on the other folks that will be there or anything.

I can’t remember the last time I actually went inside a restaurant to eat though. 🤔🤨 I’m sure they’ll try to keep folks separated as best as they can, but I dunno… it’s either gonna jinx me, since I’ve been a champ at avoiding human contact for months now, or it’ll just be a nice treat that I deserve since I’ve been respectful with my mask usage and haven’t acted like a giant cunt about any of it to anyone. 😏 Looking forward to poofing my belly with something heavy though, for sure. Last “real” food I had was when Amy dropped off some stuffed cabbage rolls, taters, and apple dumplings. 😁 I don’t think her family realizes how spoiled they are when it comes to dinner.

Meh…

I was getting ready to start this entry by talking about my medical appointments yesterday, but then I realized that those were actually the day before yesterday. 😒 I sorta lost most of yesterday, whupped from the day prior. Earlier this week was the thyroid doctor appt, then Thursday was my WC appointment followed by going back out into the waiting area to eventually get my blood drawn. 😟 (A few more tests at the request of the thyroid doctor.) I’m now trying to figure how much I want to grump here… 😏

It was probably four hours for all that shit, from leaving the house to getting back home. My shoulder tremors were going nuts (a combination of physical and mental stress surrounding all this) and only got worse during my appointment. 😠 When I went for the blood draw, the tech didn’t really see a good vein to go after in my right arm – meaning she wanted to go in through the one that was flopping around like a fish just removed from your hook and dropped into the boat. 😳 But get this… besides being able to get it on the first stick, when she got the needle in my arm it immediately stopped shaking. 🤔🤷🏻‍♂️ That showed me, again, that even all these years later there’s still so much about this damage that we don’t understand / can’t explain.

Yesterday was just what usually happens, though… 😒 muscles got more and more cramped the night before, leading to less sleep of a shittier quality, topped off by a day-long headache that decided to join the party. And even though I didn’t have plans for the day, I was just never able to get going – so I just grumped around the house while I waited for either all the different “oush” to go away or for sleep to come. 🤨 Sleep won that race, with me crapping out as the sun went down and not waking up until about 5:30am today.

I suppose I’ll make some coffee and wait for the sun to come up to see how I really feel today. My normal meds have my neck and shoulder back in check, and the sleep / rapid release Tylenol did the trick again for the headache. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Maybe as I’m waking up more I’ll think of something I’ve done this week that’s worth blogging about.

Just Humor Me

I cautiously got some work done around the house yesterday and today. Didn’t plan plan to do it, but that’s usually the best way for me to be successful at something chore-based… not really knowing it’s coming. (I know, it doesn’t make sense.) And no, it wouldn’t be considered a huge amount of housework for someone in tip top shape, but yeah…

Yesterday’s work was in the evening, where I finally tackled the bathroom and not only totally cleaned it up, complete with scrubbing all the gross surfaces, but I also got into the closet to throw out anything old or unneeded, followed by getting everything organized and on the shelves in a way that makes everything much easier to get at. So, looking at it, it looks done… but I do still want to go through the drawers and get all that shit organized or tossed as well.

I also got the living room tidied up, vacuumed again, etc. Then this evening was the kitchen’s turn… well, mostly the dishes. I’m still a dumbass though. Every, every time that I do up a sink full of dishes, I tell myself that from now on I’m gonna clean each dish as I mess them up – that way I’ll never end up with a sink full again. I dunno, maybe I did a little better this time, since 75% of it was just silverware and stirring spoons and spatulas and such. But man… fucking dishes, man… I swear. Whatever it is about standing there and using my shitty arm / shoulder, it just messes me up so quickly.

So I broke it up into three or four pieces, which feels lame as hell, but it’s the only way to keep from gimping myself up by the time I’m done. But it’s all good now. Got those couple of bowls and pots cleaned out, and then all of the Olive Garden containers… which, honestly, look way better than any kind of cheap tupperware type containers you would find at the dollar store or wherever. That’ll let me work on some soup, stew, noodle combinations which I can then freeze for later.

Heh… such a dumb entry. But I felt like patting myself on the back. I was telling a friend just the other day that I need to get out of this fucking rut, even if it’s by doing the littlest “different” thing each day to push me in the right direction. It helped that it was sunny all day, and despite the cold I even had the front and back doors open for a bit. But I decided that I could get out of the house some other day, when I wasn’t quite so low on oomph. Heading to bed early, since I’ve kinda whupped myself with the chores, plus I woke up at a normal AM hour, which leads to this normal PM hour bed time. We’ll see if it takes.

Too tired for emojis… figure it out.

Discussing Delayed Discussion

It was a heck of a day yesterday in the nation’s capitol. 🙁 As fate would have it, I actually slept through all of the stuff as it initially happened. (And I’m glad that I did.) Having been up all day and the night before, and then most of the first half of the day yesterday, I just conked out (as planned, this time) at the right time in the afternoon to miss it. I’m pretty caught up on the news now, currently at 6:30am the day after, but it sure felt like a long night. 😞 That’s just my lengthy way of saying that I’ve got some stuff to say about everything that happened, but I just don’t have the oomph to do it right now. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I don’t plan on going to sleep any time soon… I mean, I know I’ve got several “good” hours in front of me, where I shouldn’t feel too drained or tired, but it’s just that reading everything that I’ve read about what has happened in DC, and after making a handful of tweets and reading some of the sad, distressing tweets that others have made… I just don’t have the emotional energy to really get into it like I’d like. (Wow, that’s a hell of a run-on sentence… heh) Might do it some other time, but also maybe probably not. 😏🥺 A good part of our country is in sad shape, man. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Cobra Kai – Season 3

I don’t know what it is about this show in particular that grabbed me, versus any other “throwback” based on something from when I was a kid, but it sure grabbed me. 🙂 And the rest of the fandom and I have been waiting over 600 days for season three, from way back when season two was released and binged by everyone. But tonight’s the night. 😊 New Year’s Eve, with the episodes released at midnight… Pacific time. 😅🤦🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️ I tried to catch a nap earlier, but of course it wouldn’t take – so I’ll just be staying up all night and into the day tomorrow to see if I can knock out all ten episodes.

Three day weekend, nothing on the schedule, not feeling half bad, so I’ll sleep whenever I sleep… and as for wrapping up 2020, I honestly can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing right now. 📺🧎🏻‍♂️ The neighborhood was silent all through the evening but then at midnight, even out here in the semi-country, things started popping. 🎆🎇 Mostly fireworks, but I did hear what I believe were a pretty good series of rifle shots somewhere out back. 🔫🤠 Makes sense, the way people have been stocking up on tools and freedom seeds this year, that at least one or two folks out here would wanna let some fly. I did my part to add to the noise, tossing a few M-80s out in the yard along with the “grand finale” of a couple of these flashy sparky things. 😏

I did make a run into town earlier, since the weather app was talking ice or snow or something… 😨 although I’m not sure if it ever came. I didn’t feel like doing the whole song and dance with the pharmacy 🙄😒 but I was at least able to pick up two of my meds today. Added a few more short stops after that, dropping off some mail, grabbing some pop, hitting BK for dinner, etc. The air was sharp and smelled different than the “valley” air, so I dunno… 😌 it was just nice being out in it for a while, even though I never left the car. (Half the town seemed to have the same idea, crowding the busy streets.)

Talked to a few different friends as midnight drew closer. Bri’s busy packing, since she found a new apartment here in town and basically had to shut things down right after Christmas morning, so they could then be at least close to ready to move over this weekend. 😯😃 Absolutely nothing new with Jim G, much like here… but Amy and her family were doing the “assortment of yummy and/or weird snacks” thing for their NYE, which reminded me of when I was little. 🙂 When Mom would let me help make silly little “hors d’oeuvres” like meat and cheese on a toothpick, celery sticks with peanut butter, and Doritos with melted cheese. 😊 (My first time using a microwave… heh)

And of course I talked with Genesee throughout the day… and it sounded as busy there as it usually is around the holidays. They’re particular re: COVID precautions, which is understandable given the amount of younger and older folks in the family, so for everyone to get together safely they all took a “stay-at-home quarantine vacation” during the period leading up to Christmas. 😳 The little ones sure missed their Auntie Sarah and Auntie G though, so I know it was worth whatever inconvenience everyone may have felt as they got ready to make it all happen. 🙂🎄👪☃️🦌

Okay, that’s enough for now. 🙂 Time to focus on my show…

Doin’ This Again, Eh?

Internet came back on after about 36 hours, so that was nice… for the few hours that it stayed on. 😒 My dumb ass, even as the internet was recently out, and I was talking about how I was gonna download a bunch of stuff for offline watching for the next time the internet was out… yeah, I didn’t bother doing that when the internet came back – and now here I am again, with my phone plugged up to my laptop so I can scrape out as much internet as possible until Spectrum gets their shit together. 🤨

I used up my six gigs of high speed data on my phone by Christmas night, so now my phone connection is throttled at speeds that only really allow me to stream audio. So even being able to get on my site here to make an update is surprising. The tech that I just talked to said there’s no reported outage in my area. Bitch, I reported an outage like seven hours ago before I fell asleep. 😠 I don’t give them a hard time though… there’s very little they can do where they are. But I did poke them to make sure my outage does at least show up in their system in case others in the neighborhood call in with the same complaint. (Which I’m sure they will.) But for now they’ve scheduled a tech to come out to the house in a few days. 🙄 Pro Tip: The problem isn’t in my house, and I’m fairly certain the outage will be solved before then.

I was useless on Christmas day though… 😞 slept almost the entire day away, but yesterday was a little better. Caught up on all my messages with people so they wouldn’t worry about me, and I even plowed my way out of the driveway in the late afternoon to check out the new quicky mart down the road. I bought some stuff and paid with a fifty, and the cashier was this close to giving me change as if I had paid with a hundred… so I’m glad to know that I’m still a decent person, since I just naturally told her about the error as she was getting ready to hand me a bunch of twenties in change. 😏😇🤷🏻‍♂️

I dunno. 🤔 I guess I didn’t really do anything else. I’m not even sure what I thought I was gonna type about when I started this entry, since it was more out of annoyance of not having any internet for TV, but yeah… I guess I just felt a lot better today than I did on Christmas, so it felt like I did more… even though I really didn’t. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Ended up falling asleep around 7p I believe, which isn’t bad considering I had been up since 10p the prior evening. And now it’s about 5am, so I might actually be on a somewhat decent schedule for a few days. Might try to get into my new “The C64” here in a bit since it doesn’t need WiFi.

Where’d That Come From?

Today has been good. No worse for wear from yesterday’s activities, and the original plan was to basically do the same sorta thing tonight… including just getting on here and rambling about whatever, whenever I needed or wanted a break. But boy, as soon as the sun went down this evening “sleepy” caught up with me in a hurry. It’s not even 7pm yet, but I guarantee that if I let myself get comfy in the recliner, I would be out. I guess it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise, since I only got about four hours of sleep this morning, but now I’ve got a decision to make.

Last thing I wanna do is fight sleep, since it’s such a struggle for me to get good sleep… but I know that if I take a nap or even try to actually go to sleep for the night right now, there’s a really good chance that I’ll end up wide awake around 3am. Meh, I might take a shower in a minute and see which way that pushes me.

But hey, at least the first half of the day was decent. Nothing much happened with Tesla stock until well towards the close of the day, so I didn’t miss anything there… and since I was feeling a little nostalgic due to the dream that I had, one of the first things I did today was watch Frosty the Snowman. I just realized how close it actually is to Christmas, and that I hadn’t watched a single Christmas special yet. This year has sucked, for sure, but I’m still gonna do my best to self-administer some holiday cheer if I can.

But many of you know how I struggle to string together decent days sometimes, so just in case I ended up falling asleep for the night I wanted to pop in here first to confirm that today has been another good one. To be continued… maybe…

Overnight Ramble (2 of 3)

After getting back home and settling in, I started to instinctively “take it easy” since these appointments usually end with me feeling worse than when I went in, just due to the nature of the visit and exam. 😯😬 But I’m not sure if it was because other parts were hurting more, but for whatever reason my neck didn’t seem much worse. 🤷🏻‍♂️ At this point I decided to take advantage of the day, knowing that they haven’t been coming along that often lately, and not wanting to waste this one.

Obviously I wasn’t gonna go too nuts. I was just feeling that experience that I’ve mentioned before, where you’ve felt like shit for so long that even getting back to “moderately okay” feels pretty awesome. And since I’m not convinced that the kidney stone stuff is completely over, I just stuck with small, non-physical stuff that’s been on my mental list – and then sitting around, enjoying the day, catching up on some text conversations in more detail, and staring at the multiple baskets of dirty laundry that have been sitting here mocking me. 😏

I kept my eye on Tesla’s stock price throughout the day, since Friday is the last day of trading before they’ll be included in the S&P 500… and I was surprised to see relatively low-to-normal volume all day, minus the very start and very end of the day. 🤨 So it looks like Friday will be the day where things get a little nuts. But who knows, maybe all the funds that need Tesla shares have already been buying them or something… 🤔 just in much, much smaller chunks than everyone expected. I doubt it though, since that would leave room for some pretty big index tracking errors for their respective funds. I’m probably gonna miss the first half of the day though, staying up all night like I seem to be doing. 😒

Current status: All of the laundry has been washed and dried, and all of the baskets have been shlepped back upstairs and into the living room. I’m definitely feeling it at this point. It’s not horrible, but I know that I’ve gotta be careful. 😳 In fact, I think I’ll bring all the hangers out here – but for tonight I’m only gonna sort everything out, then fold and put away just the towels and washcloths. (Before taking a hot shower myself.) Believe it or not, the motions of putting hangers into shirts and folding jeans, kinda like standing and doing dishes at the sink, is a particularly aggravating set of motions that always manages to get me. 😠 And my pain is much like your belly at a buffet. Where you don’t realize how full you actually are until about 15 minutes past the time you should have stopped eating. 😏