Confessions of a One-Track Mind

I'm on my way over to J's to pick up some stuff she's been keeping in her freezer for me. Yesterday, I cleared all the frost-bitten stuff out of my own freezer to make room. The fridge is still a hazard, though. Stuff has been jammed in there, most of it since before my summer soujourn. Ah, well. Tomorrow is trash day, and I plan to be home early enough to get still more stuff to the curb. (In addition to the freezer stuff.)

I'm also hoping J can decode the mysteries of Safari on my iPod...it's stuck on a default page, and I'm trying to get it to where I can use it at places that offer free wi-fi. It would make checking email a little easier. Meanwhile, it's been helping save my sanity: I can peck little entries in the "Notes" function, which helps me vent during my isolation. Another thing I hope I can do at J's is download a free game ap or two.

The unspeakable digital converter box is giving me fits. I get CBS, if I'm lucky. If there are two clouds between here and Orlando, no dice. Fortunately, that gives me most of what I watch network TV for. No CW, so no SPN, damn it. Just when it's starting to engage me again!

I need to snag something to read over the weekend. TTFN....

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Placing my faith in ang5fam's assertion that the water department takes several days to deposit checks, I swung by there after visiting the library and floated a check for $100, which will take care of my bill and then some. That won't work for FPL (power), so I'm going to hold my breath and hope that they won't cut me off at the stroke of Thursday midnight. My direct deposit will be in first thing Friday AM and I can either do pay by phone or run up to the ATM at WalMart for cash and hit the pay station on the way home.

I stopped by Kat's after that and fetched home my clothes, pillows and provisions. Chalked my departure up to the difference in our hours, which is true to an extent, but wouldn't be if I was sleeping in the guest room instead of on the sofa bed. Let's see what happens when GK gets down again---I *really* want to hear her reaction to "the cat sleeps in there"---because she's more likely to speak up about it. Me, I figure Kat was doing me a favor, it's not my place to criticize, and if she weren't on the meds, she would probably not have been so inflexable.

The library...god, I love the library. I got online the other night, made a few requests, and now I have discs 1-6 of Band of Brothers. I've been hearing about it for quite some time from shanghai_jim, caught a couple eps last week at Schnauzerland, and was intrigued enough to want to see the rest. Thanks to the miracle of free (borrowed) media, I can. That looks like what I'm going to be doing with my free time for the next week.

Ah, home sweet home....

I'm at Kat's. Since her grandson moved out and took his cable modem with him, she's getting a clandestine wireless signal from somewhere around here, otherwise I'd be climbing the walls with no net access.

It's been a very long time (6 years) since I've had to share a house with anyone, and I'm finding it a little uncomfortable. (This is the longest that I've worn clothes since February, for one thing.) I'm paranoid that I'll inadvertantly do something gauche.

We did our usual Monday lunch date, after which I showed her the cheapest place to get gas---around the corner from the C's place, which wasn't that far from where we lunched. After that, we detoured to the library, so I could drop a couple of things off---let me mention Yet Again how much I LOVE having library priviledges!

BC came over and we chatted about science, science-fiction, favorite authors, blah-blah-blah...next Monday, we're going to try to get my mattress moved. He's also going to show me around a few of the local food pantries. Meaning, I've got Wednesday to plow a path to my old bed and strip it so that hopefully we can get it out and the 'new' one in with a minimum of carnage.

I'm transcribing my notes for the Jericho WIP, since I've had some encouragement. (It doesn't take much!)

I have an odd schedule on Thursday---I go in two hours early for White Trash Queen training---but I get out correspondingly early too, so I'll probably stick around to catch the fresh ep of Royal Pains.

At least I've got a plan....

Yesterday's cortisone shot helped quite a bit. My range of motion has improved, and this was the first morning in weeks that I didn't get up and immediately pop three Excedrin---I'm sure my liver is grateful, too.

I called out of work again today, because both the commute and the job are stressful and I didn't want to get those muscles all tensed up again. This way, I've got a couple days more to recuperate in, so that hopefully by Tuesday I'll be something close to normal. At least physiologically.

Speaking of the finer points of medicine (insert segue here), I spent this morning/early afternoon commiting an act of fiction, and I've lobbied the Pit of Voles for a new category: Royal Pains. Next Wednesday will be the 5th anniversary of my first posting over there, and commemorating it by inaugurating a new category pleases me.

I then sent it to be betaed, went to Walgreens to drop off my scrip for muscle relaxers, headed over to the library where I returned 5 of last week's 6 (I'm still working my way through the convoluted web of Cyteen machinations that is "Regenesis"). Back when I last had a library card, things were far less states of the art: last night, I went online at 3 AM and reserved stuff. (They have JDM's Dead and Breakfast in the system!!! Yippee! I've been wanting to see that. Ditto Tales of the Black Freighter. *does Snoopy dance*) Oh, and as I was leaving for all this, I had it confirmed that the Asshats next door have moved. So long and thanks for absolutely nothing!

Now I have retrieved my scrip, and am waiting to see if said muscle relaxers do render me drowsy as everyone warns. I have an odd metabolism; OTC sleep meds make me twitchy and restless, more than half a Xanax has me cross-eyed trying to stay awake, and I once totally confounded a dentist when I told him that 1000mg of hydrocodone just took the edge off the pain of an extraction gone bad. He said he would've been unconscious; I was miserable but still functioning.

That was when I was working at the Dysfunctional Family Business. DFB was owned by the parents of two sons who also worked for them, and NONE of these people could speak three sentences to another before it disintegrated into a screaming row. I've never been happier to be fired from a job...anyway, I had a dry socket, which is a euphemism for "Oh fuck me, my head is going to IMPLODE!" -- this was a week or so after I'd started there, and they decided for reasons known only to them and God, to piss test me. For the record, I was sitting in an office answering phones and typing up forms (on an actual IBM Selectric typewriter).

Drug test came back positive, yeah, so what? I had a prescription for the stuff, which I produced. It helped that they knew the dentist in question, but afterward, Mrs DFB took me aside and told me how Mr DFB had gone through cancer surgery and recuperated and never took any painkillers along the way. To which, my unspoken reaction was, Then he's an idiot, because pain causes harmful stress to the body and who the fuck do you think you are, telling me to suck it up? Where do you get off, imposing your judgements on other people's health?

*yawn* Maybe a little drowsy....

Two good things happened yesterday: Harper's Island (for which my squee knows no bounds) and the gorgeous Chevelle I saw in the parking lot at work. Picture the same model and year as Bobby's SS, except a convertible in pristine condition, red with fat black racing stripes and those ultra thin tires that make a car look like it's wearing ballet slippers. The rest of my day...I'm not even going to go into it, since it does evil things to my blood presssure.

I didn't go to church this morning. Didn't have the energy in any sense of the word. Piddled around in slow-mo for a while, went out, repaid a debt, then zipped up to the library where I joined the queue waiting for them to open (About two dozen people by the time the doors finally opened at 1.)

GK was right---I whipped out my driver's license and had a shiny new library card within two minutes. I froliced through the stacks and emerged twenty-something minutes later with a stack of stuff to read that ought to keep me busy for a while. Y'all may be subjected to a lot of book reports in the near future!

For the record, I got:

Plum Spooky Janet Evanovich -- First thing on my list! Now I can wait for it to show up cheap somewhere without being deprived of the joy of reading it. Gotta have my Plum fix....
Blue Christmas
Savannah Breeze -- both by Mary Kay Andrews -- "Breeze" is a sequel to Savannah Blues which I adored. Chick-lit.
The Organ Grinder by Maan Meyers -- I may have to dig out and reread the one previous to this; like most of those, it's part of a series. Historical mystery.
All Shots Susan Conant -- More series fiction. They're dog-lover's mysteries.
Regenesis CJ Cherryh -- I almost created a scene when I discovered Cherryh's done a 600-page sequel to Cyteen. Will probably save this for last, since it's huge and will require complex thought. My thought is, perfect for while I'm house-sitting, since I will be in a/c and can relax and savor it.

Given the location of the library and taking into account that I needed a few things from the store, I ended up going to the Publix over the bridge. I *did* pop into Fashion Bug for a quick look-see, but not having a bank card has slowed my spending down admirably. I did NOT get the cute black studded top that was on sale for just $12.49. Picked up a two-week supply of canned soups and some sandwich fixings and boogied back home.

Now I'm going to have a nosh and stick my nose in a good book---Plum, of course---and I'll yak atcha later.

It rained AGAIN: no swimming. However, otherwise it was a pretty good day. GK and I came to an agreement that there are a few things I will have dibs on if/when Kat goes, IE, the fridge. Meanwhile, I have had access to the Grandma Lode of fabric; got a length of lime green stuff that I want to make a simple skirt from---it'll go well with my black and green top. A funny thing---we were both wearing dark neutral pants and tops with black, white and an accent color---and when we compared notes, found both tops were from TJ Maxx.

GK kept me fed: We dropped of the first vanful of stuff at the Sharing Center, hit McD's---chicken sandwich for her, fish for me. Went back, took on another load, got Kat and took all that to Sharing Center, then went in and browsed. Due to the fact that I had a total budget of $14 for the day, I didn't get every piece of hammered aluminum I saw---just one, which was particularly choice.

I've been collecting for well over a decade, and have never seen a similar one. It's a rectangular tray. The long sides are bent up at 45-degree angles for about a half-inch. Straight aluminum rods span the short sides as handles. The design embossed in the center is a continuous length of chain---very celtic-looking. At first I thought it was Canterbury Arts, which specialized in that sort of thing, but it's Everlast, which usually did the more fruits-and-flowers type designs. It was all of $4, which is about a quarter of what I paid for the lone Canterbury Arts tray I have.

We stopped at Taco Bell on the way to Goodwill. It's right next to my bank, where I had to write a check to cash---more on adventures in banking later*---and scored a steak quesadilla. Goodwill---there my major score was a neat pair of kitten-heeled black shoes with big fauceted stones in lieu of bows. Leather uppers, size 11, and worn/broken in enough that they fit despite not being wide. (Oh, btw pwcorgigirl, GK was delighted with the boots. They fit her just right, and she says they'll be excellent with trousers come winter.)

Aside from the items mentioned, my net was two books and a leopard-print chiffon scarf---more orangey than most of the leopard prints I see. I still have $2 and change left, gee, wow....

GK wanted to print a copy of her boarding pass, so we zipped to the library. Kat and I stayed in the van. She napped and I read one of my new acquisitions. GK was a busy little bee---in addition to the boarding pass, she inquired of the staff as to what it would take to get me a library card again---I don't think I've ever gone into that saga here, but basically, they claimed I'd lost a new book and sent me to collections, charging me the cost of the book plus what they claim the collection agency charged them---$75. This all went down around '02; I've never had a spare $75, and anyway, I hadn't lost their fucking book, so...etc.

According to her, the staff looked in the system, which as apparently new since my time, and said I wasn't in there as delinquent or anything, so theoretically I can go in there with ID and they'll set me up with a new card, and all will be joy and skittles. (Or joy and Starbursts, whatever.)

As if that wasn't happiness enow, she got a stack of Little Ceasar's pizzas on the way home, including one for me. We detoured to the humane society---closed, but we dropped off some decrepit towels for their use. They won't mind!

I have watched last week's Harper's Island for, like, the fourth time. I am no closer to figuring out wtf is going on, but OMG the hurt/comfort/angst potential for Sheriff Mills has me flailing wildly. If, of course, he survives the next few eps. (Although I was right about who was going to die this week, though not necessarily why.)

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* The bank business is making me insane. If I ever got a new card, god only knows where it is. I called my bank, extremely not happy about the whole thing...remember the other day, I said they'd sent it registered mail? Oh no, that would be too freaking simple. I had two green "Come and get it" postcards---I *thought* that's what it was, but no, I got to the post office and it turns out that my mail carrier is a four-star, gold-plated idjit, because the whatever it was want for me, it's for the Asshats next door. And the bozo somehow managed to leave TWO notifications in my mailbox. Silly me, not looking to see who it was addressed to, since after all, it was in my mailbox and there were TWO of them. So I called the bank today, they are asking to have the card reissued, which will take 7-10 business days. I swear, if I ever get my hands on the dipstick that arbitrarily canceled my card, I'm going to knock him/her on his/her ass and stomp them to a pulp. Thank God for online banking.

My April 1st post was well-received...that's the handy thing about using the docs folder at Pit of Voles as a back-up---I was able to retrieve it, dust it off, and put it up without having to angst about the compatibility of storage media with the system at work, etc. (No one's said anything about me bootlegging after my shift, but I don't *like* to do it---the idea of them logging keystrokes and finding out who I am online makes me nervous, know what I mean?)

Meanwhile, I'm hanging at the library---there are worse places to spend a day off---checking my e-mail and reading my way through the latest episode of the Vatta's War series (Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon)**.

Other stuff going on...not much. The usual routine: laundry, stabs at house-cleaning, contemplations of Camaros...this being the dread week-between-paydays, I haven't even tried to get Biscit over to look at it. And next week isn't going to be much better, because I've GOT to get the cable hooked back up. This shit is getting WAY old.

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** I'm beginning chapter 16, and I'm waiting to see when she's going to reveal who the "military advisor" is. I'm absolutely convinced that it's going to be the heroine's lost-love, last seen being a stuck-up ass in Book One. And what's more, I came to that conclusion during the LAST book. Enough with the foreshadowing, already!