elainegrey

Thursday, the nurse wrote, after i left a message in the chart software:

I just checked and it looks like a decision will be made tomorrow.

I am out of the office tomorrow but I will have the person who is working on your case (R--) send you a My Chart message when [they find] out.

Thanks,
A---

Friday morning i wrote, It will be a relief to know. I am glad that the prep for me before the surgery is minimal: discontinue one supplement, no analgesics. No big diet change.

I found out at around 11:45. I was in a bit of a spin and a bit emotional. The original denial came about two weeks before the original surgery scheduled date, that the insurance stuff far outweighed any anticipation of the actual surgery. Now it's less than a week away. Colleagues said, "Congratulations," which felt weird.

Other things were going on with work that heightened my emotions (experty visibility). Muchness. Christine has a Family Thing today that has her emotions all heightened, too. I think part of the feeling is a very low grade fear of a totally novel experience. Does it map to the same sort of experience as a colonoscopy or removal of wisdom teeth? Which were a blip of disruption. Am i being silly allowing two weeks for recovery? I guess i do have the experience of pneumonia, which didn't hospitalize me, but did take over a month for recovery. Anyhow. I continue to poke the future with sticks but will have to wait for it to transform to the present and past before i will know anything.

Meanwhile, on a conference website, labeled "Networking," this image:



I added the bars across the eyes (who knows if that's enough for facial recognition avoidance). Two other photos were in the series, "The Exhibition," which featured a single woman, and "The Conference," which had a crowd of people in chairs applauding with a woman center (a few others in the crowd of men). This photo -- well, i assume the conference is trying to be welcoming and show diversity, but this just resonates with the awkwardness i feel when facing all the tables at networking time at conferences and heightens it with all the suit jackets being all that navy-grey tone, and the woman standing wearing something else. Of course with me it was a bright tangerine orange. My copresenter commented that it was easy to find me in the crowd.

Okey doke. The image of my daily computer is booted up from a USB drive where i can use it. Just in time for me to realize why i have been failing to get to the administrative account at my mail server: because i am using Authy as a second factor and not a text message. Unfortunately the UI prompts all imply an SMS message, so i was very worried about getting access to the admin account so i could get access to one of my two mailboxes .... and it's all well now.

I read quite a bit the past 48 hours: Friday afternoon i had a headache and just escaped into CJ Cherryh's Foriegner, inspired by a post of twistedchick. That devoured, i got the latest Liaden novel and read that. I also picked up a collection of Liaden short stories. I assume that's where the morning went today.

On a scale of ankle sprains that resulted in instructions to stay off my feet for weeks and ankle sprains i've managed myself, this is nothing like the horrible sprains. It's enough to coddle, but with the coddling it hasn't particularly swollen up and the discomfort was staying at bay until i might have stretched and exercised it a bit more than i was ready for.

Bruises are fascinating color combinations.

I am thrashing about a bit pondering self help with stretches and exercise. I have an app that sort of helps one have a custom yoga practice, but it's not quite ... i dunno.
Maybe i will go to the local yoga studio. There's a restorative yoga instructor: maybe she'd be willing to help a no-yoga-for-decades person with a routine for knee recovery.

Yowsa.

I can see my workday is going to shift dramatically from now on. Not sure how i want to handle this. I'm now doing a daily "stand up" at 8:30. The previous stand-up was at 9:45. There are questions around commuting and such that will challenge me. (How important to be face to face with the one person with whom i can likely be face to face ?) Skype is our friend.

I plowed pretty deeply all day, too. There is something useful in the focus the commitments gave me, although i'll admit to blowing off one meeting and not attending to email. I can't read my energy: compared to last week, there was barely any demand on my interaction energy. On the other hand, i certainly had some intensity.

I feel a little burnt out this evening and i worry about not having energy to live the rest of my life. I suppose it's a matter of discipline, developing a baseline and building endurance.

I've no idea what happens if i get depressed.

--==∞==--

Yahoo quickly refunded this year's hosting and domain name charges and suggest that some criminal was trying to verify whether they had a "good" credit card number. I've just skimmed through the months of charges after that. A couple Amazon charges in May just over $100 ... and a quick cross check indicates one of those orders was for a La Cie firewire drive. The other may be Christine's order.

I'm find the whole thing terribly odd. But at least it was settled without a huge headache.

--==∞==--

Currently living with steroid ointments for a variety of different skin issues. Then there were yesterday's injuries. I sliced the tip of my left hand thumb on the brand new mandoline + salad spinner device producing a prodigious amount of blood. In an unrelated event i caught my "index" toe nail on something, and it's now a nice blue. My left little finger that i fell on Easter Sunday still aches a little, but it's easily ignored.

This is reminiscent of loosing things, in that it makes me wonder whether i'm doing it to myself.

(And by the way, i forget if i noted that right after replacing the lost mother's day yarn i found it. I've replaced the letter case but no return from the airline, yet.)

Christine's recovery is what i'm to be focusing on, and i know it's probably weighing on me more than i admit to myself. So, i suppose i'm "stressed" and additionally clumsy because of it.... ? Meh.

--==∞==--

That all said, i feel good -- just a little overextended with a conference starting tomorrow, new work patterns, a sense of enthousiasmos (gave ministry on Sunday, still thinking about scrum and Quaker process). Reading the entry from last March when trying to track down the strange website purchase made me aware just how dark a muddle i was in last year. I wonder at the Prozac: my six months is approaching its end.

Today was "Distract myself with social media day," in that i tried Google Buzz in the afternoon, adding a passel of folks for whom i had gmail addresses (but not everyone, and in a somewhat random manner), and then later i had to dissect what was going on with the Facebook login weirdness (see previous post).

I suppose the Facebook analysis should count as work, as authentication and authorization are what i'm specializing in, these days.

I was cold today, as i complained to everyone. After two cups of hot cocoa (and two pots of tea and lots of hot water) i finally warmed up. Or was it because i cranked the heat & closed the blinds? My lungs are still gummy, and "phlegmatic" ought to be an appropriate description for me with all the clearing of my throat and other respiratory passages. I seem to be disproving the medieval medical principle regarding phlegm as of the four bodily humors, "believed to be associated with a calm, stolid, or apathetic temperament." I wasn't calm about a staffing situation. I suppose i *was* "apathetic" all day. Definitely pathetic.

I have to write the Quaker LGBTQ concerns group and am stalling. I need to write my brother back about his couch surfing visit Friday & Saturday. It helps that i think he can understand the filthy kitchen floor and our obliviousness to stuff other than our work. I dunno. (lola_kristine, has he ever told you how filthy our place is?) The laundry -- tons of sheets and towels that accumulated while we were under the weather -- is still undone. That, at least, is something i can throw money at.

I did work on some small Continuing Effort projects. I made a tiny loaf of bread from the premixed batter. I scanned more of the childhood ephemera in a model where i changed what was on the scanner when i was walking by it for some other reason. I scanned into Readerware the four books my mom sent while watching a Sherlock Holmes.

Sigh.

I have just remembered i used to imagine an arch-nemesis who would try to foil my plans by screwing up technology. Christine and i called her 35merelda. Apparently, i've never shared her name in this blog (or on any digital file on my computer). I would tag things with 354 and 354defeat.

I might ought to bring that practice back.