And then, there's a bearded fetus.

And, way to fast, we're back to Monday again. I have two days of just work, then the doctors and TTRPGs hit and the rest of the week is full through Sunday. I'll kick off the day on Wednesday with the ortho in the morning and Blades in the Dark in the evening. Then Thursday and Friday night are both D&D games. Saturday is my intake appointment with the acupuncturist, followed by a Monster of the Week game. Lastly on Sunday, we have two games, both D&D.

I continue to be nervous about the ortho. I'm not worried that he's going to say that I need surgery--from every medical professional (and people who have had rotator cuff injuries) I've talked to, that's the consensus. it's just not possible to unfuck that goat without it. I'm a little concerned about scheduling, and whether he's going to be willing to give me pain meds to hold me until then.

It's going to depend a lot on what the time frame is to return to work. I have 20 hours of PTO at the moment. If I can do the surgery on a Thursday and be back to work on Monday, I'm good to go in June. If not, it might have to wait until I've been there 6 months and can use short term disability, which would be in September. Of course, I've also got to figure out preops, so that could be interesting.

Either way, my shoulder picked a seriously inconvenient time to catastrophically fail.

I'm also a touch nervous about the accupuncturist. I'm hoping it goes well and that I get some pain relief. Again, I'm not expecting miracles. I just want less pain. That is the entirety of what I want from it. Honestly, if they try to tell me that they can actually cure anything that's wrong with me, I will be walking. Again, these goats are fucked, and this is not going to unfuck them. I'm going strictly for the pain relief properties, which I will be very clear about.

First up, though, work. It's going to be difficult waiting for Wednesday morning to get here. My sister is going to try to take a few hours off on Wednesday so Jess can come with me to my appointment. Hopefully she can get off. I'd like to have Jess with me. I know they're going to come up with questions that my hamster brain isn't going to.

Okay, time for me to go forth and consider pants. Everyone have the very best Monday you can have!

We made it to the weekend!! I have a whole lot of nothing but TTRPGs planned, so I'm content. I'll have to run out to the grocery store for coffee creamer, but that's about it.

Yesterday, I was not a happy camper. My shoulder was hurting like a sonofabitch, and the Ibuprofen wasn't touching it. So, after considering whether I should wait and go to urgent care after work, I decided to set up one more video visit, this one with a Hopkins nurse practitioner. I was a little nervous, because the appt with the other NP had gone so poorly, but I was kind of desperate, because I was having a hell of a time focusing. So I set it up for my lunch break.

She was so nice, y'all. She was very concerned that I don't currently have a PCP, because "you'll need one for the preop." Somehow, I'm getting a feeling that this isn't going to be a cortisone shot kind of injury. When I asked about pain relief, she did not act like I was asking for black tar heroin. She immediately offered me Tramadol. Which honestly is all I wanted. I don't think I could still work on Lortab or stronger. Jess kindly picked up my prescription and within an hour the shoulder pain had eased to a dull ache instead of full blown pain and spasms. And lo' I actually slept last night!! From 11pm til 8am, mostly straight through. It was glorious.

I'm getting a little worried about the ortho appointment. It seems like this may be more serious than I thought. I mean, I knew it hurt like hell, but I may have actually fucked myself up but good. I'm a little concerned what he's going to say.

So fortified with some mild drugs, we played Frostmaiden last night, and it went well. We brought poisontaster back into the fray, and said goodbye to another player. Many tears were shed as her character was spirited away by the goddess of the dragons to be held hostage in her hoard.

Okay, I'm going to go get myself dressed to go get my groceries. Everyone have an excellent Saturday!

And here we are, solidly into May. In MD, it seems like we bypassed spring entirely and jumped straight to summer. Last week, it was in the 50's, this week it's the 90's. After today, it's supposed to drop and be a little more comfortable, but I wouldn't call it optimal. Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be a little more pleasant, but so that's something. I mean, I believe it's supposed to rain all weekend, but that's okay. I don't really have anything to do outside. We have a shitton of games, but that's about it.

Yet again, didn't sleep great last night. I don't know if the shoulder is suddenly hurting more, or if I was so checked out from it that I didn't notice unless it was really bad. I suspect the latter. I already knew I was capable of pretty impressive feats of dissociation and I think this is just one more example. All I know is that now that I can't not pay attention, it's making things a lot more difficult.

I got grumpy with my primary care practice, which hadn't called me, and I saw that they were open til 8, so I gave them a call. It sounds like things were chaos. Apparently, the office closing was a shock to them, so they're scrambling to match patients with doctors. So, I probably wouldn't have gotten a call back for a week or more. But, they were able to get me an appt in 10 minutes with a PA.

She was very nice, and looked suitably horrified at the MRI report. My main question was whether I should set up physical therapy (mostly for the therapy pool and maybe the zappy TENS unit, or if I should wait until I see the Ortho. She told me in the strongest terms that I was not to do anything until I saw an ortho. I should just take it easy, not lift anything heavy and definitely not do anything that could strain the joint. She also said it will probably need therapy, but she feels like that will come after the arthroscopic surgery she is expecting him to recommend.

It was not the answer I wanted, but the one I kind of suspected after looking up all the different terms in my MRI report. I showed Jess the images from the MRI. I don't really know what I'm looking at, but on the last image, the doctor kindly put a little line that's 1.47cm just above the major tear. I don't think I'm supposed to be able to see bone right there, but oh well. 1.47cm isn't very big, right?

This morning, I'm feeling guilty. My sister was supposed to go up to Lancaster for a Blues Festival for a long weekend in June, but she's talking about cancelling, because I won't be able to do jack or shit to help Jess with Dad. I know we've basically spent the last year structuring our life around him, but I still feel bad. I convinced her to wait until after I see the Ortho to make any decisions.

I'm really frustrated with my inability to do things. I feel like a fully functional flower pot right now. I can sit and look pretty. That's about it.

Okay, time for me to get my ass in gear. These people aren't going to make their own MRI appointments, and before I can do that, I'm need of coffee and clothing.

Ugh, morning. I could have handled another hour or two. After my MRI, I had a lot of trouble winding down and I didn't get to sleep til 11, and then I was back awake at 12, and not able to get back to sleep until around 2.

I spent all day dreading the MRI, but it wasn't too bad. The hard part was holding my arm in the position they wanted and breathing shallowly enough that they were able to get a good view. Anxiety says to take deep slow breaths, but the shoulder is connected to the torso and lungs, so that makes for movement. I don't know how good the films turned out, but hopefully they're able to get the gist of it. By the end of the forty minutes, I was exhausted and hurting from trying very hard to hold pose. I was fairly unsuccessful, but hopefully they got what they needed. Now I just wait impatiently for the results to upload to my portal.

Work yesterday went rather slowly, probably because I was fretting a little about the MRI. I took 54 calls, setting something like 37 appointments. It's harder than I thought it would be, honestly. By the end of the day, I'm actually tired.

Of the games that we play, I especially enjoy the ones that I homebrew and fly by the seat of my pants. Frostmaiden and MotW are probably my two favorites of those games. MotW, I can come out with the wildest shit, and my players will throw back something even more buck wild. The Greek Gods want to be TikTok influencers? Sure, lets go there. Let's rewrite the entire belief system of the world.

I'm preparing for a new arc of Frostmaiden that I think is going to be a lot of fun. Right now, I'm working on the logistics of the next game. I've got to finish up with one villain, bring poisontaster back in, then there's downtime stuff that needs to happen, and then the big battle that will draw everyone together followed by the big bang that gives the party's thief their big exit and sets the party on to the road for the next adventure. I think I've almost got the timing down.

Aside from working on game, today will probably be a relatively quiet day. Work shouldn't be quite as bugfuck as yesterday, and I have no real plans for the evening, which is good. I can go to bed early, maybe listen to Adventure Zone, which will normally put me straight into a coma. It's an entertaining D&D podcast, but goddamn, the McElroy's voices just knock me right the fuck out.

Okay, time to go refresh the portal again. Everyone have a stupendous Tuesday!

And we're already to Sunday. I have no real plans except running my sister up to do laundry, and game at 5:30.

All of this is probably good, because my 52 yr old body is giving serious side eye to my bowling adventure yesterday. My back is decidedly unhappy and my thumb and wrist are achy. I threw on my off hand, so my shoulder is no worse than ever.

It was a productive day. First we went to our favorite Thai restaurant for some delicious Panang Curry and Street Noodles. Both were excellent and we got to meet the new owner, who was very sweet, and clocked us as queer in 3 seconds, and was telling us about his husband who is the chef, and how worried we all are about the election. Apparently, he's having a bitch of a time with immigration already. The food was wonderful, and the strong Thai tea perked me up for the rest of the day.

Then, it was off to Jess's tattoo appointment. I just dropped them off, since the waiting area of the shop is very small. Then, I ran the leftovers home to my sister and headed back over to pick up Jess. Their artist took a look at the picture they'd brought for reference, and drew out something with her style of tattoo which Jess loved. It's going to be a very cool raven feather in honor of Jess's Curse of Strahd character, Tali. They'll have to decide what the next tattoo is going to be. Christmas is coming up fast afterall.

I had put the bowling down in my calendar as 3-8, meaning I had to leave at 3, and would be home by 8. Instead, my brain read that as "The bowling starts at 3." Gentle reader, we got there an hour and a half early. Which for anyone who knows me, is not a huge shock. So we went in and ordered fried pickles and crab fries and sat at the bar until people got there.

Once people started arriving, I went over and we bowled. It was a lot of fun, but god I suck at bowling. My high for two games was in the 40s. It was sad. But it was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed myself. I got some compliments from one of my managers and one of the higher up managers who asked how my first few days on the phone had been. I said that it went well, and they informed me that I'm doing a lot more than most people who have been here a while are doing. That was nice to hear.

Of course while we were bowling, my father told my sister to call 911, then decided that he was okay when the paramedics got here. I feel bad for her, but I also don't? It's like "Yeah, this is what we work with every day."

All in all, it was a fun day, but I'm looking forward to a day of rest now. Everyone have an amazing Sunday!

I got ear wormed this morning, so of course I had to share it with you.

We had ice cream last night (Baskin Robbins Cookie Monster, highly recommend) and my stomach's a little pissed today. I don't know that I'm lactose intolerant, it's more that my stomach (And my Rybelsus) don't like anything new. It was totally worth the discomfort today, mind you. I mean, Rybelsus makes my stomach very iffy anyway. Sometimes, it just declares war for no reason whatsoever. It's one of the happy little side effects.

It's Friday! Woot! One more day til we have two days of rest! It'll be lovely.

Yesterday, I took 53 calls, and by the end, my voice was getting a little craggy. Not a ton, but I could definitely feel that I'd been talking for 8 straight hours. Fridays are generally a little bit slower, so I don't expect to hit that today. I enjoy the job, but I'm not fond of the hours. I'm really hoping that once I'm done my 6 month probation, I'll start sliding my schedule earlier. I also would not object to working Saturday mornings at that point. Four hours of overtime would not suck.

Tomorrow is a busy day! Jess has a consult for their tattoo at 1, and we have my work event at 3. We may try to squeeze out lunch as well, but we also have to hit the dispensary at some point, too, so we'll see what we can get done. It'll all depend on how early we get ourselves in gear.

I'm a little nervous about the work thing. It's only 4 hours, in a swanky bowling alley. My shoulder is far too fucked to bowl, so Jess will be my proxy for that. I'm mostly going to say hello to my fellow Radiology employees, so I can put some names to the people I see in chat. Still, Sunday I may not talk at all until game, just to recharge the social batteries. I like working from home, it's fucking awesome, but it means that I'm going in with a group of total strangers, and that's a touch daunting. I have at least met the managers, and my former trainer, so I'll know three people.

It's downtown, so I'm sure parking will be a bitch, but hopefully it'll be a fun time. I could conceivably bowl right handed. I'm sure that would be a disaster for any team I'm on's score.

Okay, time to get myself together. Everyone have a most excellent Friday!

Greetings on a sleepy Wednesday! I really didn't want to get up, but also really wasn't sleeping, so I dragged myself out of bed. It was warm and I was snuggled in next to Jess, and that was tempting to stay for another hour. Technically, I could sleep til 7, but I've been getting up at 6. So I might rethink that one.

I'm a little less gloomy today, which is nice. Possibly I'm too sleepy to be particularly gloom and doom. Or possibly yesterday went a little less stressfully, and I've relaxed.

Dad decided not to get up yesterday, which is not ideal, but in the case of yesterday worked out well. His doctor came around 2:15. I was hoping he'd. be here during my lunch break so Jess wouldn't have to take it, but alas. He's more concerned about his low blood pressure and high heart rate, so we're adding a new pill into the list, and getting another chest xray to see how his lungs are doing. Otherwise, we're just watching him. No grippy sock vacation at this time.

After work, I raced around the beltway, as much as traffic would allow, and made it to my doctor's appointment. Diagnosis, fucked up shoulder and neck, unspecified. I need to have an MRI of the shoulder, and as long as the problem isn't the joint, I'm going to have physical therapy. She also gave me muscle relaxants and steroids to try to reduce the inflammation. It's pretty much what I expected, but it's annoying that I have to wait. I know there's not much in the way of MRIs for a couple of weeks, so I'm going to be waiting a while to get this scan, which means waiting a while for the therapy. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will cancel a 7pm scan in the next few days.

Yesterday was my last day of being supervised on the phone. Today, I officially start my time as a solo agent. Which is why my schedule is changing a bit. It's going to be weird to just sign in and start taking calls without any chit chat. I think I can handle it, though I'm sure there's still going to be some things that mess with me. But there are resources and things I can use to puzzle out conundrums.

Our game tonight got cancelled, which is probably a good thing as I get used to the new schedule. We don't have any other games until Sunday. If we can find a showing of Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, we might go to that on Friday, since it looks like all the Mummy screenings are early (boo). And Saturday, my work is holding an event at a swanky bowling alley, which I agreed to go to. With the shoulder, I probably won't be bowling much, but I wanted to actually meet some of the people I work with. Jess is going to come with me, so that should be fun. At the very least, we'll have some good food.

And now, I shall go forth and consider pants for the day. At least, since I don't have to go anywhere, I don't have to put on a bra today. That was annoying yesterday. Anyhow, everyone have an excellent hump day!

Despite my determination to get up at 5, I hit snooze and finally dragged out of bed at 5:45. I just couldn't quite do it. Even now, that I'm up, it's a struggle. I kind of want to crawl back down the stairs and take another hour. It doesn't help that we had our AC on yesterday, and it got fucking cold last night, so now it's chilly in the house. Makes me want to burrow in with Jess under the weighted blanket. I put the heat on and am wearing a sweater, so between the two, things should improve.

The weekend of games has come to a close. We played five games over four days. I'm a little bit wiped out, I have to admit. I might need to remember to hold it to 3-4 games per 4 day cycle. The last one was a bit of a struggle. They all wen't pretty well, though. The one I was most worried about was the Saturday game, and that went really well. We got through some plot, and more importantly, people were role playing the hell out of it. It was awesome. So many bits of backstory revealed! Everyone learning how the characters are going to be. Because no matter how you write them, when you come to the table, you might find that they play a little differently than you expected. Some characters, it's a bit of a journey to get them where you expected them to be. Which is one of the really cool things about this kind of collaborative storytelling--whatching the characters come to life and seeing how they're going to mesh with the other characters.

Yesterday were two of the longer running games, so there's minimal prep or heavy lifting. First up was Monster of the Week, which was as always a blast. The party has now made friends with the Greek Gods (And have taught them how to be influencers) and the Court of Vampires. This in addition to making a deal with a demon (whom they later killed) and getting the veil over the supernatural ripped back.

Dad was very fussy and squirmy yesterday, which occasionally made it difficult to focus, but I think I did okay. Fortunately, he'd settled down by dinner time, so we were good for Mine Finders.

Today, I shall relax and take calls, and see how I do with my own software. It needs to be set up, but it's waiting for me when I log in.

After much consideration, on Saturday, I set up an appointment for accupuncture. I looked, and our insurance covers it, so I figured I'd give it a try and see if I could get any pain relief out of it. Jess felt like it helped their head when they tried it. We haven't really been able to afford anything like PT or accupuncture for a few years, but at 90% coverage, we'll give it a go. Jess decided to schedule for the appointment after me, so we'll have a wall of consultation the morning of the 11th. Sadlly, because of my late day schedule, we had to wait a little while for our appointments. I figure that gives me time to go get the MRI of my shoulder and my neck done in the meantime, so I know what's actually wrong with them. I mean, the neck I'm assuming is just a flare up of my spinal stenosis. The shoulder? Who the fuck knows. Maybe a tear in my rotator cuff? Maybe just degeneration? I honestly have no idea.

As I pointed out to my family, if it's torn or otherwise fucked up in a way that would require surgery, I'm going to just have to butch it out, because I can't take time off work right now, nor time off taking care of dad. It'll be a least 6-8 months before I'll have the kind of PTO I'd need for that.

Okay, time for me to consider the merits of pants. Everyone have a wonderful Monday!

It's Saturday! And I didn't get up til 7:45 am. Of course, that means I don't get any quiet time, as my sister is now awake. I give it 20 minutes until overstimulation. She's not even talking to me, just to the dog, but it's this constant barrage of noise when I just want to drink my coffee and sit quietly.

I'm really sore today. This 51 thing is for the birds. I pulled a muscle in my stomach sneezing, and so that's sore. In addition, my shoulder is highly peeved today, just achy and tender. I go to have the shoulder and neck looked at on Tuesday, so we'll see what the next step is. Probably an MRI, if I had to guess. Doesn't thrill me, but I want to know what's going on, so I'll deal. IF the stomach is still sore, I'll add that to the list of things to get checked.

Yesterday, I did calls for a few hours, then had lunch. Dad's home health nurse came right as I got off lunch, so I let Jess know that I'd take that appt. Wasn't the best of choice, as it ran nearly the full hour. I had just enough time to grab a cup of coffee when she was done.

Everything checked out okay, and she didn't seem concerned about him still bleeding, so we'll just watch him.

After lunch, I went back to work and into the last of my Epic classes. (Finally!) The class was boring as hell. It was teaching me stuff that I have already been doing, so it wasn't exactly thrilling. I managed to stay awake, and completed the test, and am officially certified on Epic. That finished up super early, so I took some more calls for about two hours. Towards the end of the day, my copy of Epic finally showed up, so on Monday, we'll spend some time setting it up the way I want it, and then I'll do a couple of days of taking calls on my system while supervised. After that, I get shoved out of the nest to fly solo.

Today, we have one game, the start of a new campaign. Odyssey of the Dragonlords is an indie game that came highly recommended. It's a campaign set on the mythical island of Thylea, and is structured like a Greek myth. The characters are the foretold heroes who will save Thylea from doom at the hands of two Titans. It's been a while since I started an official campaign. I've had one shots that morphed into campaigns, but I think the last actual campaign I started was Strahd. (At least that's who my Session 0 document was customized for.)

I'm nervous about this, because it's an enormous module, and a very different tone than I'm used to. It'll be fine, but until I settle into it, I'm going to be a bit nervous.

Speaking of which, time to go prep some more! Everyone have an amazing Saturday!

Today's subject line is brought to you by Bo Burnham's hilarious "From God's Perspective."

I really enjoy a lot of his skits and music. A lot of them are on my playlists. This is one of his older ones, so occasionally he goes a little flat, but I love it anyway.

I didn't sleep great last night. I was up and down all night, which was annoying. I feel okay, but I know this afternoon, I'll be a tired kitty. We've got a game tonight, so I need to be somewhat awake.

Work went pretty well today. I took 40 calls, which is not my max, but I had a lot of fairly complicated calls that took a little bit of time. Of course, at my meeting, they told me that for the first month, you're only expected to average 30 calls a day, so I'm doing okay.

I'm still working on preparation for the new campaign on Saturday. It's an independent game, and seems to be awesome, but because they can't use official art, they just made default tokens of a red circle with the name of the monster on it. It's making me twitch. I'm slowly going in and replacing all of those with actual art, but it's an enormous module, and it's going to take roughly forever. So, I'm just replacing it in the order that the creatures appear, and hopefully, I'll be able to keep up. I think I'm okay for Saturday at least. I'm four scenes in, and since this is session 0, I don't expect to get that many down.

I have rewritten my session 0 document, so that I'm ready for this game. I'm going to try to play this one a little more straight. It's based on Greek Myth and fabled heroes, and doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor about it. While I'm sure we'll break that fairly thoroughly, for the start, I'm going to play it as written.

Okay, time for me to go forth and get something to eat. Everyone have an amazing Thursday!