And then, there's a bearded fetus.

Ugh. It's morning and I feel like ass. I got my second shingles shot yesterday and it is messing me up. The first one was a little tender, but nothing else, so I didn't think twice about getting it. My arm hurts so much, I didn't really sleep much last night and I had chills off and on. Today I just ache all over, and I may have a little fever. I'm going to try to go into work, because I need the PTO that I have. Though counting it, I could probably take half a day if I just can't do it.

I need to have enough time for the 17th of Jan, so I can go get my pap smear. Whoo.

Aside from the shot being a lot, I had a good day. Went for my doctor's appointment and got my prescription for my new Dexcom, had my labwork, which was all pretty good. Cholesterol is a wee bit high, but I can try to add some fiber to my diet. But my kidneys are in good shape (always a concern with diabetes) and the rest of me is chugging along. Then we drove up to the cupcake shop and I got cupcakes a half dozen, plus my free birthday cupcake! I also got a peppermint mocha latte, because having fasted, I was WAY behind on my caffeine consumption.

Then I headed home, where my sister had bought us breakfast. A cheese biscuit with egg, bacon and boomboom sauce was just what I needed. Then, I relaxed for a while until it was time to take Jess to acupuncture. We made a little stop to grab them some blue cheese and crackers (though I plan to get them some more cheeses when I get paid. I may duck over as far as Trader Joes and grab some stuff for game snacks.

While Jess was being stabbed, I chatted with one of my old IKEA coworkers, who I've been trying to get into Johns Hopkins. My dept had an opening come up, so I sent her the link to apply. She got a reply asking for an interview whill we were speaking, so I'm hoping it works for her. She's just had a shit sandwich of a life, especially the last two years since her husband died suddenly.

Then, back home and putting on the second rack of ribs. We discovered Kinder's sauces and spices via an enormous bottle from Sam's Club. Then we learned there were about a dozen and a half flavors, so we got a few to try. The ribs in the crock pot got the Georgia Bourbon Peach. The oven got the Gold sauce. Both were excellent, but I may have liked the gold a tiny bit more.

Then we had cupcakes. Jess had a white chocolate rasberry, which was excellent-tart and sweet and delicious. My sister and I split two cupcakes, so we could try more flavors at once, so we each had half of a Peppermint Cocoa and half a Gingerbread.

My mouth was so happy. The gingerbread was so good. Kind of spicy, offset by a not too sweet buttercream. The peppermind cocoa was a chocolate cake, with a chocolate peppermint mouse in the middle, and topped with a whipped cream icing. I'm not the biggest chocolate person, so when I say that I could have eaten it all night, it says something. It was amazing, and I may sneak back out before Christmas so I can get another.

We went to bed early, and my arm was on fire. I could feel the ache from the shot all the way to my wrist. So, I medicated, and we listened to the podcast that Travis and Teresa McElroy do for the Great British Bake Off, called Bake On. That helped me doze off for a little while at least.

Okay, time to get myself together somewhat. Everyone have the most amazing Wednesday!

And we're back to Monday! It's going to be a busy day at work, and I'm not looking forward to all the people who need MRI's *now* and are going to be unhappy at mid-January. (We have spots held for urgent patients, they just all think they're urgent.)

Had a very nice day yesterday--didn't bother getting out of my nightgown. coyotegestalt ran an early game that was a lot of fun. I played a cleric with a weird homebrew subclass, because they are a kind and benevolent DM, much like poisontaster, who both encourage my weird homebrew addiction. Ovio is a cleric of the Pain domain, and could use his skills to rewrite injuries on people. I had a pool of 6 sided dice that I could use to either reduce damage to my friends, or increase damage to my foes. I held on to those fuckers and waited. Used one or two here and there, but kept the bulk. And then, when Jess' character rolled a critical hit, I blew all but one, because on a critical hit all dice are doubled. So instead of rolling 5 dice, they gott ot roll 10 and add it to the damage. It was lovely. (also made me feel more useful.

DMs are without question the chaos players of the D&D world. If the question starts with "just curious..." Your DM player is about to mess up your balanced encounter. And as a DM, we fucking love that. Creativity just makes us better. Okay, at least I love that. I secretly feel that I might drive my DM's insane. (Especially my one character, who managed to hold concentration on a disabling spell on the big enemy for 90% of a fight, so everyone had advantage on him.)

After that, we kinda just fucked around for the rest of the day until it was time for our second game that I was DMing. That went pretty well, though my bad guys managed to get off only one or two competent shots in the entire battle.

Next up, on Wednesday, we shall have Brindlewood Bay!

Okay, time for me to go forth and get myself together for work. Everyone have a the best possible Monday!

It's Saturday and I slept in til 8am! The cat bugged me at five, but kindly left alone the rest of the morning. Now I'm sitting here sipping coffee and debating between eating something or waiting til the Christmas Village. It's supposed to be exceptionally cold, so I'm not sure how long we'll be staying, though there is a heated tent that we can go back in to warm up, so that's something.

After some thought about expense, we're going to drive down. I may take a little bag with a thermos and get my alcohol to go, but I haven't decided on that yet. I need to bring some snacks home to my sister anyway, so a bag might be the way to go.

I'm also kind of hoping to find a small gift for her. Nothing too expensive, but a nice little thing for Christmas. She's impossible to buy for. I ordered her a bathrobe, but I have no real hope that Woman Within will get it to me before Christmas. Their shipping is not legendary, so I'd like to get her a little something to open on Christmas as well.

Jess is doing a bit better on the new antibiotic. The pain seems to be lessening, and they're a little bit perkier. I'm really glad. I was a little worried.

We were really quiet yesterday, so I was browsing TV stands, and discovered much to my shock that electric fireplaces are back in vogue. We have an enormous one downstairs, but it's old and broken. Also too big to move. Plus now, they have varying colored flames, which is super fucking cool.


This is the one that's in my Amazon cart. It really doesn't go with any of our other decor, but it's affordable, and will fit our TV, and the dog can 100% lay in front of the heater.

Lately, for no discernable reason, I've been able to read longer things again, so I've been taking advantage of that. First up was T.Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call, which broke the dam by being so thoroughly fucked up that my brain just had to focus. I love her stuff, but ofter wonder why her non-horror books sometime manage to be more fucked up than the horror.

Then, I went on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and found a couple more that seemed interesting. The first was a fun urban fantasy called Moonshadow. The male lead was a bit of an Alphahole, but I enjoyed the book. Might check out the rest of the series.

Now I'm reading Daughter of the Merciful Deep, which is set a mere generation after slavery in the American South. It's based in African creation myths, and has been very good so far. Once that's done, I have a couple more lined up.

Now, I shall go get myself ready for the day. Gotta dress warm (and shake the dust of the marshmallow coat). Everyone have a super Saturday!

WTF, y'all? The cat was a 100% little twat last night, beginning to jump on me at 1am. She at least left me alone between 1:30 and 4am, but at that point, all bets were off. She wanted her breakfast and she wanted it now. I finally cursed at her and got up around 5. I feel a little bad about cursing at her, but she was being a little b-word. So now I'm awake, and puttering around online, while listening to her slurp her food. I will probably give her a second can at the rate she's going.

Of course, the moment I typed that, she demanded second can and is now happily slurping again. She does a weird older cat thing, where she'll eat like a piggy for two or three days, then she'll have one day where she just isn't interested. Towards the evening, she might stir herself for some treats, but that's it. And then, sometime during the night, the switch is flipped, and she wants immediate food. The vet said it can happen, and as long as the eating days are more frequent than the non-eating days, and she's not vomiting, we're okay.

I decided that this year, I'm going to try a new thing, so I have an appointment to speak to my doctor about getting a Continuous Glucose Monitor. I'd been hesitant, but the fact is that I'm not checking my sugar the way I should, and I'd like to do better with that. Hopefully, my A1C has gone back down. I've been trying to get better at eating.

I'm also going to the gyn in January, for the first time in 25 years. THe last time was so painful that I was afraid to go back. I had shooting pelvic pains for like three days afterwards. It's a good thing my appt is on a Friday this time. And I go in knowing that I have vulvodynia and pelvic pain like whoa. She's going to love me.

While I've been surfing the net, I was reading 411mania's review of Kraven the Hunter. It's hilarious. They gave it a 1 out of 10. I didn't think they ever scored below a 4, honestly. I really need to see this movie. It sounds like such trash. And the 8 minute preview they put up is suitably bad. Whether I see it in theater or pirate it is up in the air.

On the fun side, Red One is on Amazon Prime for all your Chris Evans' Boston Accent needs. It was a fun little movie. I enjoyed it, and will probably watch it again.

Jess is still not feeling well, so they're off to the doctor again. Not sure what's going on. Maybe the antibiotics weren't the right ones? Or maybe they need to do more tests, I have no clue. But they need to fix this, because my love is in pain and I don't like it.

We're supposed to go to the Baltimore Christmas Village on Saturday, but we'll have to see how Jess is doing. If they're still feeling shitty, we may have to beg off. But we'll see.

Okay, time for me to go start getting together, super early. My alarm just went off. Time to wake up. *headdesk*. I'm going to bed super early tonight. Everyone have a stellar Thursday!

Whee! We survived Monday! It wasn't that bad, really. I took 52 calls, which was a lot, but I didn't hit that "oh god, can't talk to another person" level. Part of that may have been that I got a few emails, with my stats for October and November on it, and it perked me up.

They color code everything, and my month was 100% green. I'm well within all the stats they want me to hit. My quality could be better, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely. I've got that meeting today, and my monthly one on one next week. And then my second tier manager sent a message telling me that I was impressive, so that perks one up.

I'm such a total puppy. Any positive reinforcement practically turns me into a happy wiggling puppy. I'm sitting there going "I'm a good girl!" Is this what Ikea and 911 have brought me to?

Jess seems to be doing slightly better on their antibiotics, but it's definitely not been an immediate cure. I hope they feel better soon. I've really felt bad for them. I want to fix it.

I'm debating now, on whether we want to try to move Jess and I in a few days early--rent a truck and just get our stuff (which is mostly small except the bed) into the apartment on 12/31. Then, Boodle would have 4 days to acclimate. It's not a done deal, but it's a thought.

And now, I'm going to get myself together for work. Everyone have an excellent Tuesday!

And we're back to Sunday! Jess still isn't feeling great, so I'm a bit stressed. They've been having stomach pain since like Tuesday, and it's not improving with antibiotics and pyridium for the UTI the doctor told them it was. They're debating between talking to the doctor tomorrow or going to urgent care or the ER today.

Being a female passing person is exhausting when it comes to health care. They've had some bad experiences with doctors and that is making this decision doubly difficult for them. But I feel like the provider they saw just kind of handwaved the pain Jess is in, and kind of ignored the symptoms and labs that don't fit with their "musculoskeletal pain" diagnosis and I'm so angry about that. Then, the urine was full of bacteria and white blood cells, and it became a UTI. But it's been two goddamn days, and they're no better. My thought would be to go to the ER, but Jess doesn't want anyone to think they're being a pest, or a baby.

I just hate them being in pain that I can't fix.

This is very late, because as I was typing, Jess finally agreed to go to the ER. Diagnosis, kidney infection. Iv antibiotics and fluids later, they're resting semi comfortably at home.

I'm wiped, so I will tell you more about Saturday in my post in the morning. I hope everyone had an amazing Sunday!

It's Friday, and I want to go back to bed. I woke up around 4:30am, and took my pill and went to the bathroom, and then crashed again for an hour. That hour just kicked my ass. By the time the alarm went off, I must have just gotten deep, and now I'm groggy. I've got my coffee, and am slowly waking up. I also appear to be a bit snotty this morning, which I don't really appreciate.

I'm debating on whether to run a game tonight. The one that was scheduled had to cancel, and so the night is free. On the other hand, I have to work tomorrow, so I don't know.

Jess continues to be in pain while they wait for the labwork to come back and be reviewed. I want to know why they're hurting so much, and how we can fix it. I'm not good at my spouse being in pain.

Tomorrow, I have work, and then a game at 12:30. After that, I think Jess is going to work on their schoolwork, and I may take a nap. Sunday, we've got a late game, not sure how that's going to work out, but we'll see.

Okay, so there's about 8 people who were the "original crew" on the TTRPG discord server. And out of those 8, in the last four months, three of us have lost our fathers.

The third just happened, and it's bringing up feelings that I didn't even have when mine died. It wasn't as drawn out as ours, and I'm just so profoundly grateful for my friend, and suddenly so angry at all the shit we went through. Feelings are weird.

Okay, time for me to get myself together for work. Everyone have an most excellent Friday!

It's hump day! We're halfway there! Work has been incredibly busy. I've been doing between 50-60 calls a day both days. By the time 3:30 rolls around I'm like "I cannot handle another call." And then I take 5-6 more, of course. I feel bad for the patients who get me then. My voice isn't at it's top warmth, kind of thin and reedy. I try to keep up my energy til I hit log out, but it's tough. Apparently, this is going to be December, as people desperately try to get in before their deductible resets.

My work has finally put up a job ad for our dept, so I've been spamming people I know with it, so they can apply. It's an $18-30 salary range, which isn't half bad. Hopefully, some of the people I know will get it this time. I'd like to think that my name attached to an application would hold some weight, but we'll see. For a 100% remote job, I think that's a pretty good salary range. (If anyone wants the link, send me a message. We've got people out of the area, so it's not like it's a dealbreaker. You might need to come down to Baltimore for 1 day to get equipment, but that's not even a given. They might overnight it to you, I'm not sure.

The Merry Gentleman is up on Netflix! I had posted the trailer a while back. It's a Christmas movie about a plucky woman who decides to save her parents nightclub with a male revue. It has Chad Michael Murray, which is relevant to my interests. I have no doubt it's formulaic and probably very bad, but I wasn't in it for the plot or dialogue. I just want to be entertained for 90 min.

In that vein, I definitely need to see Kraven the Hunter. It looks so bad. They posted the first 8 minutes, and it looks so thoroughly overblown and takes itself 100% seriously. I cannot wait.

Oh, also in the category of relevant to our interests: Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton have produced a new "genre savvy" horror movie called Bloody Axe Murder. It looks pretty entertaining, and I will definitely be getting it when it releases on 12/27. Apparently, it's releasing in "select theaters" and on videao on demand. I'm assuming that none of the theaters will be near me, but I can 100% get it off Amazon or whatever.



And now I shall go forth and get ready for work. Everyone have an amazing Wednesday!

Yesterday was an unexpectedly quiet day. One of our players had a family emergency, so we ended up cancelling both games. Which was just fine, because I didn't feel great at all. My stomach was pissed off all day and I had intermittent headache that got WAY worse towards the end of the day. I went downstairs by 5pm and laid quietly for the rest of the night.

I did come up with a bit of a background for one of my games, so that's something. I had been thinking that I might use a bit of Lilith Saintcrow's Bannon and Clare universe, but after rereading some of the books, I decided that I was just going to use the setting whole cloth. I really like the mix of magic and mundane, and I think it could be a lot of fun to play in. It'll change the overall feel of the game to make it slightly less dark, but for a game that's being played for New Year's Eve, that's probably a good thing.

I did realize for the NYE game, the system we picked to play only has 6 playbooks, and we have at least 7 players, so that's a problem. Fortunately, there's another system that we're all familiar with, that should work just as well.

Today, the holiday rush begins in earnest. Everyone under the sun will be trying to make their appointment before the end of the year, and we just don't have it like that right now. When I was chatting with the head boss on Friday, she was saying that last year was really bad. People were assholes, doctors were calling pissed off, and in general December was her least favorite month. I'm so looking forward to it. I'm just plowing ahead and grabbing every opening I see so that we have somewhere for STAT appointments.

And now, it is time for me to put on pants and get my ass in gear. Everyone have an amazing Monday!

It's Saturday, and I'm getting that sweet, sweet overtime money today. This is excellent as I need money for our outing to the Baltimore Christmas Village. on the 14th. We're meeting up with some friends from the D&D server for an afternoon of eating and drinking and fun. I believe we're taking an Uber down, since all of us want some of their Golden Egg Nog, and it is seriously high octane.

I'm not sure whether I'll get off for my birthday, so I'm going to have my outing on my birthday weekend. Then, if I'm able to get off for the 17th, I'll go get some cupcakes from my favorite place. It's outside of doordash range, so I have to drive it. But they have the best cream cheese frosting ever. Also a snickerdoodle cupcake, which makes me happy. They're called Flavor Cupcakery and they're awesome. They used to have a closer location, but it closed, so now I have to ride up to the original location. Though, I just noticed that they do doordash now to my brother in law's address. Hmmm.

Yesterday at work was interesting. I have a list of people I'd like to get in sooner, so I keep an eye on the schedules. And I noticed that our one location had opened up a whole day of appointments for Diagnostic mammograms. Which is one of our hardest ones to get an appt quickly. We have a list of over 40 people who need urgent ones. So I pointed it out on Teams, and my boss verified that they actually wanted to open that date. And I said "If you need me to call anyone, let me know." It was a genuine offer, but not something I expected them to take me up on.

They have a woman whose primary job is to make these calls. But lo, apparently she was out. This somehow led to me playing appointment tetris, making over 40 calls, and spending all day chatting with the head of our dept in Teams. Not just about who she had that I needed to call, also just about general things. She said she'd interviewed someone else from IKEA, and thought about me when they were talking about the conditions there. And we talked about black Friday sales, and rainbow light up keyboards. It was nice.

And when I made some suggestions about the way we do STAT or Urgent appts, she listened, and we have the nascent inklings of a plan for weekends, because I always feel bad, we get a lot of cancellations, but only Leads have access to the urgent appt spreadsheet. We're going to figure out a long term solution, but for the next two weeks, she's going to be sending me a copy of the list, so if there's openings, I can make some calls. The plan is to get someone to be in charge each week, and try to get more cooperation and communication, so if someone cancels a high value appt, they'll tell the lead, and they'll put a hold on it, and see if anyone on the urgent list can use it. Even if it means that 2 or 3 more STAT appointments get taken off the list, it's something.

It was nice to feel listened to, and I think I might see what project they're going to give me to get me more experience in a lead role.

At 6:30pm, my alarm went off, reminding me of game at 7pm, and I abruptly realized that I hadn't prepped. I knew a vague outline, but I couldn't remember most of it, and I hadn't set up any maps. I scrambled and got everything set up in an hour and pieced together some notes, and we had a lovely game. As usual, it was supposed to be the final game for this group, but at the end people asked for more adventures. So, more adventures I shall provide. It's always a little bump for my ego when people want more. Especially when it's a homebrewed adventure like this last one.

Okay, time to get my ass in gear for work. Everyone have an amazing Saturday!