I had my quarterly checkup with my fibro doc this week.  He’s not one of my insurance company’s providers, so I have to pay for everything out-of-pocket.  He’s got me taking one prescription that I get from a compounding pharmacy.  All the other supplements, I get from him.  Normally, my office visits run close to $500 every three months.  Thank goodness I can afford it!  And thank goodness for my Health Savings Plan, so the cost of visiting him is from pre-tax dollars (every little bit of savings helps).

This time around, I got a couple of new prescriptions… both generics, both covered by my insurance, and both available at the pharmacy around the corner.  One is for pain, the other to help me sleep.  We’ll see how that goes.  I also need to get some blood drawn for my semi-annual blood tests.  Looks like he added about eight extra tests, so I’m hoping to have some blood left to donate to the Red Cross.  My weight stayed the same, which pleased me because I haven’t had the energy to exercise and pleased the doc because he seems to think “the holidays” are a mad food fest for everyone.

Since the last appointment, I had a slight decrease in severe-pain days, but an increase in absolutely-no-energy days.  The lack of energy is typical for this time of year, and is exacerbated by lack of sleep.  Since the last pain medication made me puke all day, I’m hoping this one will be better and knock the severe-pain days down to zero.  The last sleeping medication made me wake up feeling like I was extremely hung over, and I’m also hoping for better results from this one.  As I’ve said before, good sleep is something I yearn for.  I’m pretty sure getting sound sleep every night (or at least most nights) will go a long way towards alleviating the feelings of hostility I feel towards the world.  I know I would appreciate that, as would my family, friends and coworkers.

Oooh, and maybe if I get more energy, I’ll be able to exercise again.  I really do feel better when I spend 30 to 40 minutes on the treadmill in the morning!

I hate them.

There.  I said it.  I hate compact fluorescent light bulbs.  They all buzz in my ceiling fixtures, and that’s going to drive me mental.  I can’t use them with the dimmer switches, and some previous owner of the building seemed to think nearly every freakin’ room needed a dimmer switch.  I even have one light fixture that eats up the bulbs in anywhere between one and 10 days.  This light fixture is not saving me any money, that’s for sure.  So I think I’m going to go back to regular incandescent light bulbs.  Well, except for the kitchen and the garage, where they actually seem to work.  And don’t buzz incessantly.  Oh, and the laundry room and the one bathroom that has the regular fluorescent light bulbs.

With the damn buzzing, I’m spending more on alcohol than I’m saving in energy anyway.

… I’d wish for eight consecutive, uninterrupted hours of sleep each and every night.

I don’t usually have problems falling asleep (except for my semi-annual bouts of insomnia in the spring and fall, and they only has for two or three days).  It’s the staying alseep I can’t seem to manage.  Apparently, I’m an uber-light sleeper.  I didn’t use to be.  I fondly recall the days when I could sleep through the every-six-minute rattle  and screech of the Ravenswood line trains.  I could sleep through the Clark Street bus as it rumbled past that apartment I had over the realty office.

Oh, but not any more.  Every little sound wakes me up.  I’ve taken to wearing earplugs at night, and those help. Every little motion wakes me up.  I have the firmest possible Tempur-pedic bed they make.  You’ve seen those commercials where somebody drops a bowling ball on the bed and the glass of red wine doesn’t topple over?  Lies.  All lies.  If one of the cats jumps on the bed, I notice it.  When the Spousal Unit (who weighs considerably more than the cats) rolls over in the middle of the night, I notice it.  And, of course, I wake up.

My fibro doc says the very best thing I could do to help alleviate the fibro symptoms is to get eight hours of sleep every night.  So here’s what I’m thinking… a concrete bunker with my most excellently awesome and comfortable Tempur-pedic bed.  I’ll lock myself in (no cats, no Spousal Unit).  No sound, no movement… and I’ll be able to sleep for eight consecutive, uninterrupted hours a night!  Well, yes, the cats and the Spousal Unit will be disappointed.  But maybe after a few months of good sleep, I’ll be able to go back to the bedroom.  Hey, it could happen.

(And I only call him a douchenozzle because cheesy pus rectal cancer odoriferous son of a bitch was a little long for the title.)

I read yesterday that Pat Robertson is saying the recent earthquake in Haiti is simply an exhibition of God’s wrath.  That the people of Haiti brought this on themselves.

What.  The.  Fuck??!?

I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two types of Christians:

• The Christians who seem to embody the teachings of Jesus Christ.  These people go about their daily lives being good and decent people.  They are thoughtful and kind, and never tell anyone they’re going to hell because they haven’t “accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.”  These lovely people proclaim their faith in deeds and not words.  My Christian friends are of this variety, and I treasure each and every one.
• The Christians who make a mockery of everything Jesus Christ taught.  These people go about their daily lives railing on about how God hates everything and everyone who isn’t just like them.  They loudly shout that God is punishing the world.  They have the Old Testament Yahweh seriously confused with the New Testament Jesus.  They have to proclaim their faith in words (but do those words have to be so hateful?) because they certainly do not proclaim it in their deeds.

Pat Robertson belongs to this second group of “Christians.”

It is the Pat Robertsons and Fred Phelpses of this world that make me eschew Christianity.  Oh, I’m happy to study it… along with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca, Taoism and many others.  But there is just too much Public Display of Hatred coming from “Christians” of a certain stripe for me to align myself with that faith system.  Unfortunately, my friends in the first category of Christians seem to be in the minority.  And that’s too bad.

It’s another book meme, this one involving just one book.  The handiest book at the moment is Death by Inferior Design by Leslie Caine.  Here’s what you get:

I battled through a mental flashback of Randy complaining about the taste of his Budweiser and forced myself to return her smile.  “That’s good to hear.  I noticed Taylor’s truck is parked in your driveway.”

What?  You expected profundity on a Monday?

I love this one, and haven’t shared it in a long time.  So here’s my fun little paragraph pulled from five of the books I have surrounding me at the moment:

The man was called Calvin Fritz and the helicopter was a Bell 222.  They give you greater flexibility and skill as a journal writer.  You can set the locale identifier for your script’s content using the LCID property of the Session object.  Likewise, whenever a line proceeds in an even, fluid manner and then becomes frenetic and energetic, it demands more attention.  If possible, activate new extensions in the php.ini file.

Wow.  How totally random and bizarre!  Using books of the same genre make for a more logical (though often equally bizarre) paragraph, but since most of the books surrounding me at the moment are computer-related, I thought a geek paragraph might be a bit much… and would probably only be amusing to a fellow geek.

Today’s books are:

1. Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child
2. Creative Journal Writing by Stephanie Dowrick
3. PHP Cookbook by David Sklar and Adam Trachtenberg
4. Expressive Drawing by Steven Aimone
5. ASP by A. Keyton Weissinger

I didn’t do much over the Christmas break… which was the whole point, really.  I managed to finish reading six books, but didn’t manage to post about any of them on my book blog.  I watched some ER, some Angel, some Bones, some Law & Order: CI, as well as a few movies.  I got the new Blu-ray player hooked up, but had to run a cable from the player to the router because the wireless bridge didn’t work consistently.  The cable snaking across two rooms is pretty annoying, but I can watch my Netflix Play Now movies on the TV.  That’s a good thing because the recliner is more comfortable than my desk chair.

I made my Secret Family Recipe sloppy joes (vegetarian style) for Christmas dinner and the whole family went out to dinner to a new-ish local restaurant with the Spousal Unit’s stepmom a few days after Christmas.  Jolly good fun!

I mentioned the books I read, but I should point out I’m a complete book nerd.  I printed out labels for about 250 books, attached them to the spines of the appropriate books, and shelved said books in Dewey Decimal order.  (I picked Dewey over Library of Congress numbering because my first job was in a library, and we didn’t have any of that crazy LoC stuff at the time.  It’s nostalgia, pure and simple.)  I have another bookcase full of books that I need to put in my most excellent Collectorz book database so I can label them, too.  I do so love being a complete geek.

I had a couple of other things on my To Do list, but… meh.  Whatever.  I relaxed a lot.  And that was the whole point.

Up until a couple of minutes ago, I was pretty happy with your service.  However, I just got off the phone with the third customer service representative who has assured me that I won’t be getting any more text solicitations from you.  Since the first two customer service representatives were grossly mistaken about that, you can see where I’m having a hard time believing this third one.

Let me be perfectly clear: I do not care one tiny bit that the text messages are free.  I don’t want to be receiving them.  I don’t need tips on how to use my phone.  That would be what the user manual is for and I’m one of the few people on the planet who actually read the fucking manual.  There is no need for you to tell me I can access Google on my phone… I discovered that on Day One when I read the manual.

As I just told the latest customer service representative, you’re pissing me off so badly, I’m considering switching to a different service provider.  The only problem with that plan is that the others suck more than you do (or in the case of Verizon, hire ad agencies where the employees desecrate the English language).

Stop the text messages, AT&T.  This is harassment, and the next call with be to the nice people at the Do No Call registry.  (Ok, I’ll just report your harassment on their website.  But I’m still going to be reporting you.)

Thank you for offering to translate websites for me.  But you might want to know that your Toolbar has gone insane.  It keeps offering to translate pages for me that are already in English… not in the French or Swedish or Spanish or German the Toolbar thinks they are.

I hope Toolbar feels better soon!

I read recently that the federal government has told the airline industry that they can’t keep people on planes anymore if the flight has been delayed more than three hours.  In the world in which I live, I would need massive amounts of Valium to survive even one hour out on the tarmac waiting for takeoff.

Really, people?  Planes sit out on the runway for hours and hours and hours before taking off?  No, no… I’m sure it’s true.  I read the statistics, I see that it happens.  But what I’m really wondering is how many of those people stuck on airplanes for hours and hours and hours, just sitting on the runway and not even flying in the air, totally lose their shit.  Because I’d be having a major meltdown.

I used to fly semi-regularly between Denver and New York.  That’s a relatively short flight, but I’d be starting to bug out just about the time we started making our approach into Newark or La Guardia or Kennedy.  Maybe I have a bit of claustrophobia.  Maybe I’m a wee bit anti-social.  Maybe I have some hypochondria that makes me dislike (in the extreme) breathing in other people’s germs.  Maybe I just don’t like being jammed into a teensy space until every part of my body hurts.  Whatever the reason, I really don’t like to fly.

I could get a direct flight from Albany to Chicago (both O’Hare and Midway), but I’d rather drive the 13 hours out there.  Yeah, it helps that I really like to drive.  My mother-in-law wants us to come visit them in Florida… but my Spousal Unit can’t get me on a plane and I can’t get him to sit still in my car for 20 hours.  It’s sad, really.  I’m really lucky that all the places I’ve had to travel for work have been in Pennsylvania… in and around Philadelphia.  That’s a nice little drive.  Driving out to Boston isn’t bad.  Actually, driving anywhere in New England is pretty nice.  (Not in winter.  Let’s not talk about winter.  Although, I did drive back from Chicago in a snow storm that last time.)

So the fact that domestic airlines (apparently there are no rules for international flights) can keep people locked in their planes on the runways for up to three hours is not exactly encouraging me to get on a plane any time soon.  I just wonder… if I can’t get someplace by driving, is it someplace I really want to be anyway?