And then that happened

Hi there! I wouldn't dust off this thing except that it was hugged out of me by CMGD, a SAHM (not to be confused with SARS) who recently turned a new age (the pretty one). We celebrated her decrepitude over tortillas, which was nice. There's nothing much new to report here. I am now unemployed, my lower left leg is discolored and bleeds a lot, I'm in the process of discarding my possessions so I can move to Seattle (aka Bunnyland), I drive a white '95 Taurus, I'm in love with a Wiffle Hutt waitress who looks like Julia Stiles without the bitchy overtones, my eyesight is fading, I like 90's sitcoms, and I have trouble stringing two coherent sentences together. Why don't fish have beanbag furniture? A pizza. And which is better: bouncy or boingy? Also, I no longer personally hate every person alive.

And here is Tracy's web site because I can't count the three times people have asked me for it recently: http://www.kaplyinc.com/

Memorial Weekend Celebration

Long ago on one of my birthdays I finally decided that spontaneity sucks. I woke up, decided to go to a historic site, couldn't find it, went shopping for a gift, found the store had moved, then went to a restaurant that sounded interesting and discovered it closed. That night I printed maps and directions, found new places online, and did the whole thing right the next day. Preparation is good, but the key to successfully planning an event is to later claim everything happened according to your plans. So, in retrospect, here is my plan for an insightful and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend.

Thursday:

1. Sick of living off beans and applesauce for weeks, force myself to go to the grocery.
2. Feeling too ill to cook any of the new food, grab dinner from McDonald's.
3. Debate with employees at both windows about who will provide a receipt (final decision - neither).
4. Spend hours having menopause hot flashes and constantly turning the a/c down.
5. Fever breaks, periodically turn a/c up again and fall asleep on futon watching reruns of Scrubs.
   
6. Awaken in the middle of the night to discover I am nauseous because I am in mid-vomit.
7. Consider running to the toilet, but decide it is too late to not puke on the futon and floor and decide to contain the damage to that area.
8. Note that regurgitated fries look like watery oatmeal, scoop vomit into the futon covers then race them to the washing machine.
9. Realize too late that the machine was already almost full.
10. Mop up remaining bits of vomit, turn washer on, go to bed.

Friday:

1. Awaken too late to check status of vomit - rush off to work.
2. Enter apartment to realize that the day's heat did not cause the sour vomit smell to dissipate.
   
3. Discover that the washer was indeed overloaded and that some of the vomit was more solid than first appeared.
4. Unload washer, shake clothes to dislodge larger chunks into the trash, place in piles.
5. Spend evening doing several rounds of trying to clean the barf juice from the futon cushion while disinfecting the air with Green Apple Lysol while washing a load of clothes followed by scraping the leftover vomit out of the washing machine.
   

Saturday:

1. Out of bed by the crack of five PM. Notice apartment still smells of vomit.
2. On the advice of Tracy whose Puke-fu is strong, go to Publix to buy Oxy Clean, aka Barf Begone (not a real slogan, but it should be).
3. Consider buying a box of Friday's Bacon and Cheddar Potato Skins because they're half off.
   Q - how can you identify what is on sale at Publix?
   A - look for the empty spaces on the shelves.
4. Having learned my lesson, have burger and fries from Krystal as the day's meal instead. (note - this time, pass on barfing since I'm still dealing with Thursday's upheaval)
5. While cleaning futon again, decide to name this weekend Vomitmas 2011.

Sunday:

1. Awaken and note that Sunday will not in fact be the first day of Vomitmas that will not revolve around stomach issues.
2. Look at new food, decide I can't stomach anything stronger than beans and applesauce, then eat them on the futon that no longer smells like a fraternity carpet while watching Scrubs reruns.

Monday:

1. Back to work! (at least I have permission to work this day from home)
   

There - all goals achieved. I guess that means I both had fun and reflected on the lives lost in order to give me my distinctive American lifestyle.

Handwriting Anal

...ysis. Knight claims you can tell a lot by a person's handwriting. Click to embiggen the below and let me know what you think.


Note - this was written last evening during a period when my neuropathy wasn't making it difficult to write. This is why I normally prefer to type or cut and paste letters out of random magazines (whichever is more appropriate to the situation).

Every day is a fresh chance to turn it all around and reach a new low

So Saturday was my day of rest and I slept until after noon, went to the store, slept some more, had a half cup of orange sugar-free Jell-O for dinner, and then spent most of the evening on the toilet.

I've read that a lot of people get upset stomachs from eating too many foods made with artificial sweeteners, and (surprise) I am one of them. And apparently "too many" in my case is equal to more than one serving in a single day, or a serving a day three days running. Popcorn is often pushed as being the healthiest snack for diabetics because it is a whole grain, supposed to be the foundation of our entire diet. This is one of the rare times I lucked out since I love popcorn, although then they go and ruin the suggestion by further saying you should eat it air-popped with no salt or butter. Anyone who's ever had it that way knows the taste and consistency is similar to Styrofoam packing peanuts, albeit a little less mouth-watering.

I should just rename this The Blog of Shart.

So that happened

Last night I went home after a long day of work and rested on the futon. Then I farted and the noxious gas was smelly enough to make me want to flee the room. Then I made several emergency shuffles to the bathroom to explosively expel diarrhea. Then I got into one of my coughing fits while on the toilet which caused me to shart in sync with every cough. Coughing shakes my belly, which is like shaking up a Dr. Pepper before opening it, so then I started belching and eventually had to barf out my dinner oatmeal. I didn't want to get off the pot and put my face in a bowl of toxic shart, so I leaned over and vomited into the shower. Several times. Then I gasped for breath and wished I had air to breath that didn't smell like puke, toxic shart, and blue toilet water. Then it occurred to me that, although I knew I would recover, at that moment I was not happy to be alive and was in fact looking forward to death. None of this stopped me from working last night or from returning to the office today. I am ridiculously awesome.

But I'm sure you don't want to hear about any of that stuff, so here is a bunny.

Current crush - Rika Satou, 24yo race queen bunny.

Night terrors are the new norm

So, this morning I awoke just after 4 AM and was absolutely convinced that I had to compose a paragraph including the word "break", but I couldn't remember what the word meant. Then I pondered the spelling and convinced myself that it was a made up word, like swaberpoo or Booflakken, and that no word that looked like "bree-ack" could have any serious meaning. And then I thought that maybe I needed to compose something with the word "brake", which looked more like a real word but then I couldn't think of a reason I had to describe another word I didn't recognize except that I was vaguely aware that it might be a car part. And then, despite some light feelings of terror directed at nothing, I managed to go back to sleep until the alarm told me to get up and go sit in traffic so I can spend my day yawning in a cubicle but feeling more like my old self, thank you very much.

Something similar happened last week, but I can only remember scant details. I remember being awake in the early AM hours and stumbling around my apartment and feeling terrified and lost and unable to completely remember who and where I was, but that's all. Apparently that incident ended without police intervention and I was back to feeling weak and crappy after more sleep. My dog was kind of like that in the last week before I had to put her down.

Hopefully this is just a phase and not the new level of suck and I'll feel as good (read: sharty) as I did last year before winter hit. Winter messes with my symptoms and makes everything worse for me. I never thought I'd see the day that I found Atlanta to be too cold and dry. In the meantime, if I run naked into your yard and throw rocks at the clouds and scream at them to stop following me, just know that I'm probably not dangerous and I would appreciate a nice cup of tea over being shot at and/or arrested.

Fun at Work, part The Latest

It's been almost a year since the "stay healthy or we replace you" threats began, and to celebrate the anniversary my employer has begun another drive to keep a close watch on what we're all doing and how much time we spend doing it. Spying on each other is considered to be a productive use of time around here. I sometimes feel like I work in a communist country wherein nobody can catch anyone doing anything wrong at home because they're all out spying on their neighbors to see if they're doing anything wrong at home.

When I was first hired we submitted a weekly timesheet as the only written documentation of the hours we worked. Then the company decided it would be a prudent move to create the concept of labor claiming, which required us to submit a weekly online form matching the time we spent working against a series of labor codes. Even the accountants thought that was unproductive, and when the accountants scoff at the idea of more paperwork you know it's bad. Accountants love paperwork. They want to marry paperwork and raise little accounterwork children. It's like hearing an xtian fundie say "Woah, wait a minute, nobody needs to mention Jesus THAT often." We had classes and seminars and spent time setting up the software and registering and filling out the forms. Then we were finally ready and were told to submit the hours exactly as we actually spent our time. We did, and they discovered - HOLY CRAP - we spent a lot of time submitting our time. Then they told us not to submit time against the time submission code and said to instead "pretend you were doing what you would be normally if you weren't submitting time." For some people that would be "wandering the rows between cubicles looking for bloggers to report", but sadly they lack a code for that.

So, now they've added some extra paperwork to let them know how we typically spend our week, and I'm guessing "filling out this paperwork" will only get it rejected so that I'll have to do it again. And now a new directive - our submitted hours must exactly match our timesheet. That sounds like common sense, but we have to submit our timesheets before the end of the week, which means that in case we are needed beyond what we planned we either have to say "screw you - I already submitted my hours" (fun, but not allowed) or we have to work the extra hours and submit them as time worked Saturday. So the new directive conflicts with the old directive but is completely in accordance with the unspoken directive, "We like to issue conflicting directives but we are flexible as long as your actions benefit us and not you and you understand we may still use any disobedience as an excuse to fire you."

Another example of work rules conflict. #1 - all passwords must be at least 8 characters long. #2 - here is your computer. The boot up password will only accept up to 7 characters. I swear I am not making any of this up.

As a reward for having read all of that, here is a bunny.

Memesday

I thought I could either whine about how I hoped 2011 would be the Year of No Unplanned Medical Problems and how by day three it looked like that is already not an option, or about how people are STILL wishing me a happy new year and that makes me want to kill everyone in the building, but instead I'll do a quick meme stolen from Jay who got it from Inside The Actors Studio:

1. What is your favorite word? Discombobulate
2. What is your least favorite word? Crepe
3. What turns you on? Bunny*
4. What turns you off? Hypocrisy
5. What sound do you love? Heavy Metal
6. What sound do you hate? anything from a child's maw
7. What is your favorite curse word? BOOFLAKKEN!
8. What profession other than yours would you like to attempt? Bunny wrangler*
9. What profession would you not like to do? Mine
10. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates? “Sorry about all that. I guess I owe you big time. Here is your key to the bunny ranch*”

*Example of bunny:
Kyouko Hasegawa, 32yo actress J-bunny.

Resolutions for 2011

This year I resolve to do nothing of import, to lose no weight, and to spend as much time as possible drinking beer and playing video games when I can get some time away from my shitty job, which I will hold as long as I can, and when I'm not recovering from working my shitty job. Also, my health will continue to slip and I will get yet another year older as I continue my inexorable march towards death (T-8 years according to my doctors).

Finally, some realistic goals.

Good News for a Change

Yesterday I went to the doctor (again) for the latest round of tests / billing / med adjustments, and they discovered that my current meds and routines are doing all they had hoped. That doesn't mean my diabetes has cleared up (it's not a rash), but it does mean we're minimizing the damage and progression of the disease. For the first time in two and a half years, the doctors don't see an immediate need to get me back in their office, nor are they asking pesky questions like "Are you SURE you're still alive?"

Our regularly scheduled bitching and hot Asian women will resume tomorrow.

Take 2 Versace and call me in the morning

Since I was sick to the point that it was difficult to work a consistent 40 hour work week (although I'm back in my cubicle now), I've been going to the doctor more than planned. A couple of weeks ago he upped my meds, drew a lot of blood, and ran a battery of tests which resulted in some unexpected and devastating turns. I'll try to share them here with as little drama as possible as not to compound the tragedy.

My a1c hemoglobin number (the main measure of how well one is controlling diabetes) is supposed to be between 4.2 and 6. During my last check, our goal was to reduce it to 7 (i.e. only slightly fatal). Current level - 5.6 (safe).

My thyroid number was previously below one, but not below 0.34 which is the point they begin treatment (average is around three). My new number - 1.57. I have mixed feelings about this. True, I don't have to take more meds, but it means the treatment for my current level of fatigue is "suck it up, wuss".

Some other weird thing I've never heard of that deals with muscle inflammation was supposed to be between 55 and 170. My score - 672. That warranted another visit. They think it's just a fluke since I was getting over a virus and I don't have any other symptoms, but they're rechecking it and I should know something definitive soon, such as that I need to return for more tests.

Since doubling my blood pressure meds again, my readings have dropped from 200 / 70 (i.e. "are you sure your heart hasn't exploded yet?") to 130 / 90, which is merely very unhealthy. The doctor prescribed yet another med, but it is combined with the one I was already taking so no more pills. I have to return in six weeks, which the reception desk translated to "under a month", to retest and see if the new meds are working and/or have killed me.

Then I went to my hot bunny pharmacist to pick up the new drug and found that a) she just received the fax and so I had to hang out and chat with / ogle her while she filled it, and b) none of her usual helpful and friendly non-bunny assistants (bunch of dickbags) were there to get in our way. So we talked about what the new drugs could do to me (the old med is included so I get to keep my persistent cough, but the new one could add swelling in all the extremities except the one I would pay to have swollen), and then she dropped the bomb on me - the exact combination of drugs at that particular dosage is not available in my usual generic $4 prescription, so I had to pay for a designer label (I'm guessing Louis Vutton) for FIFTY FECKING DOLLARS! For a thirty day supply! If I drop one of those suckers down the drain, that S-bend is coming off so I can retrieve it.

Naturally the bunny came to the rescue. Since my retest is in under a month, they can decide to up the meds again (natch) and then I'll be back on the generics. Or if they decide I must have that precise dosage, the doctor can prescribe them separately and I'll just have two $4 refills. Or since my last tests were mostly good, I can just quit all my meds and spend the extra money on cake and beer. Since I've already paid my doctor two copays in the past few weeks and I don't want my pharmacist to know I spread my refills out so that I get to see her as often as possible, I'll leave this decision up to the Magic 8 Ball.

Okay, cake and beer it is. I wonder what cake goes best with what beer?

Productivity

This weekend I missed Halloween because I stayed in bed in preparation for being in the office this week. The next two weeks will be especially fun because they are working on the parking lot, or more specifically the part next to the building, so I get to park even further away than the typical third of a mile I already walk one way to get to my cubicle. This comes at a perfect time because the doctor just doubled my blood pressure medication dosage (again), and yet my last check showed my resting rate as 190 / 120 (we're shooting more for 120 / 80 or below), so the extra cardio will do my already pounding heart no end of good.

But just so you won't think I'm a relentlessly negative person, let me just announce that I did manage to finish the 3rd season of Veronica Mars on Sunday. I am awesome.

Further note - I am changing the day after Thanksgiving this year to 2nd Halloween, so don't be surprised if I show up at your door trick-or-treating. And, no, you may not use the event as an excuse to pass off some of your leftover turkey and dressing. But I will accept an early Hannukwanzaramadamas gift for 2nd Halloween because I don't celebrate Hannukwanzaramadamas.

Dream Job Update

I started my first day as a work-at-home IT pro feeling a little guilty. Sure, the company didn't go far out of it's way to accommodate me and there are several people who are permanently allowed to work from home for no obvious reason, but I've never been comfortable asking for concessions - it's just become necessary to keep working at my former capacity. Since I felt guilty, I was determined to do such an outstanding job that they would never question the wisdom of their decision. I set my alarm early, dragged myself out of bed at 5 AM, and began working on the day's most critical reports in the hopes that they would all be waiting for the department manager when she arrived (which means any time at 6 AM or later or not at all). Then I would spend the rest of the day alternately working and resting, but always near the computer with the speakers on high and audible prompts any time anyone e-mailed or IM'd me. I would be available to them in a way never possible in the office since the bathroom is now ten feet away instead of three counties over.

To say I am not a morning person is to say the Pacific ocean is a tad damp. My symptoms are at their worst early in the morning, so I struggled with them as I coaxed the bronze-age laptop into operation. I began running the queries, and immediately everything that had ever gone wrong before went wrong again. In addition, I even discovered some new things that could go wrong because they went wrong (excuse my technical jargon). So, three plus hours later the first report was ready, slightly early (although not impressively so) and I no longer felt guilty.

I took a short rest break while the computer computed, then returned to my normal daily routine, albeit still ahead of my normally scheduled schedule. People sensed I was out and began requesting that I join them for meetings RIGHT FREAKING NOW! I let everyone know that I would be within reach of my computer all day long, even later than normal, available for phone conferences and IM's and e-mails and teleconferences, but that I was working from home. This upset them as the entire worldwide computer infrastructure will fail if I am not in my cubicle for people to bother in person (if your ATM is temporarily out of order, you can assume I'm in the bathroom), so they apparently began questioning my primary handler about my new schedule which prompted him to call me and have the latest version of the conversation we've been having every time I've been sick over the past few weeks. "Grant, you do great work, blah blah blah, thanks for getting those reports early for us today, but the laptop is just for rare uses when you can't come into the office." Apparently I was supposed to assume "You can work from home" meant "You can work from home in addition to being in your cubicle."

The new deal is this - if I feel as though I may be too sick to work in my cubicle a full day at my regularly scheduled hours, I have to let them know when I'll be out in advance and what my status will be (beyond being logged into the IM system as "working from home"), and then I can work from home for a couple of hours until I'm well enough to return to my cubicle. This is the special new system created just for me to replace the antiquated system other employees use, known as "calling in sick". And people say large corporations don't treat us as individuals. That's not true. They just don't treat us as individuals when it would benefit us instead of exclusively them. So, apparently I don't work at home, the new offer is that I get to work at home in addition to the office. And thus ends the great work at home experiment of 2010.

That was lovely.

My life as designed by Joseph Heller

Three weeks ago I was sick, overslept, and arrived late to work. By the time I had arrived they had called my mommy and asked if I was in the hospital again. (we're estranged, btw) They told me I needed to inform them if I'm going to be sick again. Then yesterday I was sick again, e-mailed them with the news, and then came to work later in the morning. I was then pulled aside and told that, despite my outstanding work, they couldn't tolerate my excessive tardiness anymore. The new deal is a) I get healthy enough to work a consistent schedule, or b) I arrange downtime in advance (i.e. I have to call in before my shift and inform them that I need x hours more rest before I can get to the office). It's important that I do my job from my cubicle because it can be done from anywhere in the world with a computer and Internet connection, so naturally my employers have canceled telecommuting because the poor economy provided them with the excuse they needed to stop improving efficiency. I was further told that if I they weren't relying on me so heavily they would have more flexibility, but my work is very important and of high quality which is why I may need to be replaced.

I used to be in management before I decided to pursue a career path that ostensibly rewarded having actual job skills and I knew from previous seminars that Georgia is an "employment at will" state, meaning you can be fired for any reason or none at all, so my only legal protection lies in federal law. I contacted a lawyer and he advised me that he can't give advice over the Internet and then added me to his mass e-mail list so I now get spammed by him. I checked the Social Security website to see what criteria has to be met to be labeled disabled, and in plain terms you have to a) be unable to do your job and b) be unable to do similar work under reasonably adjusted conditions (e.g. telecommuting instead of working a rigid office schedule). If you meet those conditions you can be disabled which will then require your employer to work with your medical issues and keep you employed. If not, you can be fired for your poor health and can become a burden on society (but not a disabled one - just a healthy bum).

Also my recent downturn has left me unable to exercise (my life now consists of being in the office, or at home resting so I can return to the office), which in turn leads to a rise in my blood sugars which leads to me being sicker. However, experience has taught me that exhausting the little energy I have during these periods leads to serious downtime and missed work and less exercise as a result. Basically I have to get healthy so I can exercise and get healthy. I also haven't been eating much lately. I think I've gained (more) weight.

And in other fun news, the first hospital that kicked off this whole adventure continues to ignore the bankruptcy ruling and to pester me with old bills, new bills, and collections agencies. My bankruptcy lawyer is taking action against them. Her e-mail to me read, in part, "This should be fun." With luck, that means we'll sue them and win easily and I'll have enough money to live without working for my remaining time. With my luck, that means I'll get to pay her much money to go to court to convince the court that they need to tell the hospital to do what the court said in the first place.

There's some subtle irony in here somewhere, but I just don't see it.

---

Update - they agreed to let me work from home. If you own stock in anything, sell it and spend the money on hookers and beer because the world is ending. Seriously though, that's good for both of us. They'll get their data when needed (before, actually) and I can focus on work and my health instead of expending energy to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day. As for the above - forget all that. Now I'm good.

Open letter to makers of generic Pepto Bismol

When making a product designed to quell stomach upheaval, it's a good idea to ensure it doesn't taste so bad that it makes people want to barf.

Ugh. I think I just drank pink liquid chalk. And my stomach is making even more noise.

The Great Light Beer Challenge of 2010

Many doctors have given me permission to stop trying to get healthier and start relaxing and enjoying my remaining years, but old habits die hard. According to the doctors and Web MD, they strongly recommend you do / do not mix alcohol and diabetes because the effects will definitely / possibly cause your blood sugars to spike / plummet / remain unaffected, two of which could kill you, and most of the doctors agree that is bad. However, on one topic they do agree, and that is if you are a beer drinker, you should be a light beer drinker.

I've never been a big fan of light beer because I think, if you're going to drink beer, it might as well have a little taste and booze in it. If I carelessly run out of the German beers I like, I'm forced to fall back on the Coors Light I keep for people who don't like my normal stuff, and there's just no beer in that beer. To me, most mainstream American beers taste like fermented sewage anyway. But when I saw that Sam Adams Light was on sale (still more expensive than my regular brands), I thought maybe what I needed was a better class of light beer and so I bought a twelve pack.

Since I never know how my body is going to react to anything new, I save all trials for Saturday night after I've had a day of rest, but don't have to get up early for work the next day. So last Saturday I performed my normal ritual, namely sitting in front of my computer with a beer while playing Dragon Age. I can honestly say the Sam Adams Light did not taste bad. In fact, it barely had any taste at all. It had all the flavor of a rice cake, or maybe liquid cardboard. But I had paid for it and it was drinkable, so I focused on my game.

I have a strict formula for determining the number of beers I need to get tipsy and kill the pain while still staying lucid enough to fight evil monsters effectively, which is x-1, where x represents the point where I make a careless remark, embark on a gay relationship with an elf, and then get myself and my companions killed. With my Warsteiner (330ml, or about 11.2 oz each), that number is precisely "about three". (yes, I know I'm a light-weight drinker) So, I played DA and managed to kill the right people and have sex with the right people, and I went to bed feeling okay and not really sure about the whole light beer thing but still willing to try another brand in the future.

Sunday I awoke after 1 PM with the worst hangover I've had since I was young and healthy enough to handle them, then I spent the rest of day in bed (and still feel sick today). When I felt well enough, I checked the rinsed-out empties to see what X-1 had equaled, and found it was nine. NINE! I couldn't handle nine beers at once when I was in the Army and rampant alcoholism was considered manly.

So, to recap: I paid more for this beer, drank three times as much, probably consumed more calories, felt no drunker during the evening, felt much sicker the day after, and to top it off the stuff tasted like watered-down seltzer.

So ends the great light beer challenge of 2010.

Why I haven't been posting

I've had absolutely nothing new to talk about. My routine is to get up (too early for me), go to work, sit in my cubicle and do whatever keeps me from the latest round of layoffs. I do this because work allows me to continue to do things like go to work. If I'm allowed time for lunch, I go home for a nap. If my employers decide lunch time = non-productive (occurs increasingly these days), I grab a sandwich from the cafeteria in between meetings about how productivity is down and we're behind schedule and who else is being laid off as a result. At the end of the day I go home, lie down and rest, do a little apartment cleaning (very little), get hot and sweaty and realize I can't handle any more physical exertion for the day, rest again, and then depending on how vertical I feel I play Dragon Age on the computer (very vertical), read (semi-vertical), or watch Firefly on TV (non-vertical). Repeat times five.

Saturday I wake up at the usual time, have a rare moment of pleasure when I realize I don't have to get out of bed, and then sleep until noon or later. After noon I force myself to get out of bed, run a few errands that I would rather do on Sunday but must do Saturday because beer retrieval is involved and my Jesus-intensive state won't allow that on the Lord's day, get hot and sweaty and realize etc. The rest of the day is the same.

Sunday I sleep late, contemplate going to the gym, assess my physical condition and decide that the benefits of the exertion are not worth the very real possibility that I won't be able to work the following day, decide I'm behind on running errands, skip running errands because I had to leave the house Saturday and I want one full day of rest, do some cleaning, get hot blah blah blah all the stuff's the same. So I got nothing.

Let me know if there is a specific topic you want me to address, or if I should just continue to post pictures of hot Asian women. Otherwise you're not likely to hear from me over the next couple of weeks.
Example of a hot Asian woman.

It happened again

In my world, food = shart, so these days I try to spare my intestines and just snack instead of eating a full meal all at once. Sometimes I'll plan a healthy and nutritious meal like baked fish, brown rice, and sauteed asparagus, then I'll just spread it into a four hour meal, but more often I've found that snack foods have become my main courses since they're quick and relatively light. This can be unhealthy as most snack foods seem rather bacon intensive, but I try to stick with healthy organic choices. Recently I realized that I loved chips and salsa to the point where I was eating some once per day. I was all like "Hells yeah, I love salsa" and "Salsa effing rules" and then I kept running out so I bought bigger bags of chips and jars of salsa, and then yesterday when I was grabbing an oat bran pita and hummus I realized that my pantry was full of giant bags of stale chips and I have a mostly full jar of salsa in the fridge that, by now, probably violates several biological weapons treaties.

I've had a lifelong tendency to get really excited something random, then go nuts with it, enjoy it to the point of obsession, and then suddenly realize that I've lost all interest. That perfectly describes my interest in pro wrestling, nature hiking, and now salsa. Since I'm an adult trying to be an adult trying to maintain the facade of being an adult, I think I'll try to moderate things and force myself to slow down once I find something I like. But enough of that for now - the workday is over and I need to go to the store to get more hummus. Hummus effing rules!

---

In other, totally unrelated news, here is a bunny.

Super-duper fun wow special contest

If you can correctly answer the following questions in 184 guesses or less, then you will win a special personalized prize made JUST FOR YOU!

---

Last night I had the following to do:

1. Wash clothes (x3).
2. Wash dishes.
3. Refill water bottles.
4. Take a shower.

Question: guess which utility was out when I got home? And when fixed, spewed out cloudy water that would probably add more filth to anything I wanted to clean?

---

A coworker took a short vacation which left me covering for her. On the day she left, everyone else on this and other neighboring planets decided that they needed more help from me. To deal with the crunch, I worked Sunday and then stayed offline Monday morning to focus on work rather than answer random IM questions. Since my bosses received e-mails from me on Sunday and didn't see me online Monday morning, they assumed I was undergoing another round of healthcare (god forbid they call me or actually walk the twenty meters to my cubicle) and have started triple-teaming to monitor my movements in case I'm out sick again. They've already contacted my contract supervisor and the standing order is that I can keep my job as long as I'm healthy enough to be present in the office for eight hours per day x five days per week. On a side note, they're happy with the work I do, but that's of lesser importance.

So, to recap, my job is in danger because I showed some initiative and handled a work overload without involving my many supervisors and as a result they assume I'm not in my cubicle and may need to be replaced by someone they assume will provide the same quality of work while sitting in the cubicle during scheduled hours.

Question: is this insane, or merely stupid? Or is it the new norm for workplace BS now that the economy doesn't force employers to use a modicum of decency and common sense?

---

Bunny!

Question: is this picture still work safe, or slightly over the line?

Quick, Spoiler-Free J-movie Review (plus medical updates and stuff)

Cutie Honey - a live action version of the manga and anime about a cute crime-fighting ninja who can change outfits by shouting "Honey Flash" in Engrish (Hah-nee furasho!)

Don't bother. It left me feeling like this:
I went to my regular doctor yesterday and he gave me a quick verbal examination, noted that all of my symptoms are now under control (as much as possible), updated my prescriptions with refills to last a full year, and then sent me on my way - no scheduled return visits and no more specialists to see. This is the first time since May 2008 that I haven't been under some form of healthcare. Needless to say, I was thrilled:

In other news, every company that knows I exist has been sending me e-mails suggesting that their product or service would make an excellent Father's Day gift. Although NetFlix could make a good gift (except that the last time I saw my parents they were resisting the evils of the Internet and DVDs), I'm not so sure if my gym should be on that list. "Happy Father's Day, you lazy fat bastard!"