Wombat Rampant

Actually I just need to cut back on the Cowzilla use when I get home, considering that I spend most of my day either bashing the keyboard and scribbling with a pencil in ledgers. It's not like I really need to get anything done online in a hurry, or keep up to date on the elections. As usual, it's a lot easier to find out what's going on in the race that affects me the least (The Promised One, Lord Obamessiah {PBUH} v. Some Old Dude Who Was In Vietnam Not Named Kerry) than what's happening in my congressional district or even the race to replace John Warner in the Senate.

Stopped at Harris Teeter to pick up some yogurt and wound up with a pound of sliced roast beast, horseradish sauce for same, grapes, Fig Newtons, (which were BOGO) and some Crystal Light, which was buy one get two free. So now I have something to moderate my Diet Coke intake besides water, ehich gets kind of old after a while.

Got the blood testing and insulin injection schedule squared away today - I need to stick my fingers 4x daily and theoretically could wind up injecting three times a day. Weehu. Feel my (lack of) enthusiasm...maybe I should stop looking when I do the injections. Tomorrow it's off to Annapolis after work so I can get measured for the CircAids like I was supposed to the first time. Should be an interesting drive if we get the thunderstorms the weathermen are promising for tomorrow.

Found enough change in my pants and the quarter cup to do a full laundry run, so I did both baskets and got it over with.
Aside from that, internet spaceships and experimenting with the bread robot (cinnamon-honey oat bread, which for some reason finished with a hole in the middle, wtf?) it was a pretty slow day.
( EVE stuff )
The Frank Miller graphic novels are pretty much what I expected after seeing the movie. I'll have to check the catalog and see if they have more of Sin City in their collection.

(h/t to onsenmark for the title)
Missed the bank, which is okay because I think I have enough quarters to do the required laundry anyway, and there's always tomorrow.
Hit Borders to take advantage of a 30% coupon, which was used on Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols, which I've been faunching after since seeing Greg Gutfeld's interview with Johnny Rotten in Vegas. Features a country version of "Pretty Vacant", which justifies the bandwidth all by itself. (Look for "Viva Las Vegas" in the Video section.) Also picked up a Case Logic CD case that will allow me to carry more mix CDs in the truck, which is good because I've pretty much memorized the ones I have.

Returned books to library, checked out two graphic novels by Frank Miller (The Hard Goodbye and The Big Fat Kill) along with the last Turtledove American Civil Wars novel, In At The Death. I don't expect it to be very good, but I want some closure, dammit. Also picked up Hot Rocks by the Stones, which ought to fill my remaining Stones needs; TMBG's Flood, which became increasingly annoying as it went on; the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou?, which was too scratched to play; and Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The opening cut on that one still makes me feel the way I did when I first heard it back in junior high school. Brrr.

Got meds from Kaiser, chikuns from Popeye, and then went home.

Went out to Fairfax last night and met up with P for dinner at Moby's, which I won't be doing again soon since two hours later my blood sugar was still over three hundred. Holy crap. I blame the rice. Six units of insulin and eleven hours of sleep later, blood sugar is down to tolerable levels (i.e. not requiring a fresh hole in my torso) but still not great.

So: make a deposit at Suntrust, pick up drugs at Kaiser, drop off books at library, throw out more garbage. And watch part III of Dr. Horrible after everything else, because it is SO COOL. Except for Wonder Woman, is there anything Joss Whedon does that isn't awesome?

Is it still TV if it's only on the internets?

Slept very well last night, had good sugar this morning, and had enough time to pack lunch. Which is good, since the heat is supposed to be on this morning and the humidity with it. Unfortunately, I completely forgot my meds this morning. Well, since there's not much to do around the office today (since the senior controller is out and the boss is on the road to Portsmouth) I may just take off early and have a late lunch at home.

In other news, the spinach egg & cheese thing we used to do a lot in Minnesota also works well with chopped broccoli, although admittedly it's a lot harder to stir the eggs into the broccoli than the spinach. I should probably be eating more stuff like this and fewer sandwiches/hot dogs.

Felt sluggish, tired, and a little feverish most of the day but managed to get the payroll taken care of anyway.
Not really in the mood for EVE or Civ, so I think I'll just wash out my remaining compression stocking (new ones due in 1-2 weeks!), mend a shirt or two, and call it a night.

EDIT: I fail at mending. Don't know whether my eye/hand coordination is shot or if it's lack of fine motor control, but couldn't get the needle threaded to save my life last night. Guess I'll have to pay a tailor to replace buttons on my shirts; at least it'll be cheaper than new shirts in my size.

I thought I'd be more tired than I was today, but I wasn't...however, it's finally catching up with me. I think all the brain sweat I spent on bank reconciliations today and the previous post sucked all the energy out of me, leaving just enough to nuke a few hot dogs and get laundry going.

Long chat with jamestrainor last night about family stuff. He surprised the hell out of me by offering me his EVE account, and I still don't know what I'm going to do with it. (I know, I know, x up for ops. :condi:)

Well, in between experimenting with the bread robot, playing Civ and EVE, and other wastes of time, I finished all the library books* and assembled another bookcase. This allowed me to empty another couple boxes of books, which gives me a little more floor space to work in. Go me!

I was thinking about taking part in this...well, I guess it's a meme...over at beatonna's LJ. Being the odd combination of shy and cynical that I am, though, I decided it wasn't for me. I can't see my younger self actually paying attention to the nearly endless string of "good news/bad news" anecdotes older me would inflict on him, and there isn't that much of it that would be funny to other people. Not in the "laughing with" as opposed to the "laughing at" category, anyway.

( books books books )
*I'm re-reading Yellow Eyes, as it's been too long since I read the first chapters online.

Finally got the culture results back from last week's "OMG hurry up and get in here!" appointment, and they were a trifecta of streptococcus beta-hemolytic B, pseudomonas aeruginosa, and staphyloccous aureus, most of which were apparently just hanging around on the skin waiting for a friendly environment to show up. It's possible I may have actually had this infection for a while and just written it off as depression or a lack of sleep, but at any rate it's being beaten back quite nicely by the Cipro and the sulfa.

In other news, work went pretty smoothly today, and we're pretty much ready to get through the month-end close tomorrow. That's what the senior controller thinks, anyway, and he ought to know. Came home to find the replacement bread robot blades in the mailbox, and may crank out some oat bread in the near future, especially if it keeps being pleasantly cool in the evenings.

Never got the signal from P regarding breakfast this morning, and when I called her at 0900 she was already asleep. Oh well. Fared forth to DD for breakfast, Jiffy Lube for overdue maintenance on the Sportage (during which I finished Colonel Dave Grossman's On Killing), and to the library, where I paid my debt to society and picked up the second and third Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard K. Morgan, along with Neal Stephenson's The System of the World. I then headed over to the Duncan branch, located in the Del Ray section of Alexandria, where I got John Ringo's Sister Time and Yellow Eyes. The former is excellent brain candy, carrying on the tale of the secret war between the O'Neal clan and the Darhel in a most amusing manner, especially in the scenes involving the reunion and subsequent meetings of Michelle and Cally O'Neal. What makes these especially fun is that Michelle has spent all her time off-planet among the Indowy, learning to become one of the fearsomely skilled mentats, who can, among other things, build hideously complex GalTech artifacts by manipulating nanites through a form of meditation and telepathy. Very much a study in opposites, these two, and the argument ensuing from the climax of events is FABULOUS.
( So what was with the Grossman book? )
Spent the rest of the day reading, playing Civ, and keeping cool.

I can see now why Goonfleet is so down on assault frigates.
( Cut for those who DGAS about EVE )

Stayed in last night and watched the second volume of Ai Yori Aoshi and was going to sleep after that but I was seized with inspiration and bashed out another page and a half for Blood Red Skies. This morning's breakfast plans failed, since P evidently went home and died after work, so I think I'll get the Kia's oil changed (finally), return my books to the library, and then figure out something to do for the rest of the day. Assemble another bookshelf, maybe. It could happen!

I was pretty surprised at how - well, not good, but functional - I felt today as the antibiotics get closer to their full strength. Legs didn't hurt as much, and a couple of other trivial sore spots seem to be diminishing as well. Unfortunately that functional feeling is deserting me now that I'm home, and I have so much to do before I crash for the night. Work shirts need to be washed, others need mending, and there are a couple other things around here that could stand to get done. Like my contribution to the APA, which needs to be bashed out tonight and mailed out tomorrow. It'll be a short one, since I haven't had the time or inclination to work on comments or natter these last couple weeks.

Well, better get to it.

Finally got off my ass and went swimming. It was pretty good, except for stubbing one of the toes on my left foot and somebody's incredibly whiny daughter. Thank God the wretched little lloronita couldn't manage in the deep end, which is where I hang out until the pool closes.

After swimming I felt motivated to go get some ribs. The closest place closes at 9 on Saturday night (WTF?) so I wound up heading for King Street Blues over by the Default Wal-mart in Kingstowne. Service was very good, and the ribs were damn good as well, cooked so tender they fell off the bones if you shook said bones after picking them up. The steak knife that came with them was wretched overkill. Fries were fresh and unseasoned, cole slaw okay, beans mediocre and the apple crisp was a little overdone. Hush puppies had some strange green chili pepper-like objects in them, which sucked. I have to say, somewhere on my Evil Overlord to-do list is a pile of death warrants for cooks in rib joints who can't keep the distinction between "Southern" and "Southwestern" straight; there is entirely too much chipotle and other weird pepper bullshit getting into my barbeque and side dishes these days, and it needs to STOP. Hush puppies are lumps of cornmeal baked into tasty little nuggets that need no spicing up, dammit! It's almost enough to provoke me into driving all the way to Famous Dave's, but given the goodness of the ribs I'll forgive them this time.

So, yeah...ordered a couple replacement paddles for the bread robot, read some blogs, and that was that.

Was originally going to get up at 1100 (which would have been 10 hours of sleep) and wound up sleeping in until 1300 instead.
I have zero interest in doing anything, which is unfortunate since it's kind of a nice day outside - not too warm, not too cool, and the rain isn't supposed to show up until later. The leg's hurting a little bit, but not that much, and I'm not feeling depressed, so I don't know what's up.

I'm annoyed that I seem to have lost the mixing paddle for the bread machine. Odds are good that it either went down the garbage disposal by mistake or is hiding somewhere in the kitchen. Guesses for grabs, man.

I was going to go over to the house tonight, but I completely ran out of energy after getting the laundry done.
I was also going to go pick up some more groceries at Harris Teeter, but my get up and go kinda got up and went.

So I spent the evening sitting around reading Stephen Coonts' Saucer. Fun little book, reminded me a lot of Heinlein's Starman Jones, oddly enough, and would probably pass muster in most young adult sections these days. Well, assuming the librarians didn't freak at all the violence, that is. Basic plot: Rip Cantrell and his fellow mining surveyors find what appears to be a real flying saucer buried in sandstone in the middle of the Sahara. They hammer it out, poke around, and not too much later the Air Force shows up. Among their number is hot (test) pilot Charley Pine, co-star and romantic interest; she winds up being the saucer's main pilot, and taking off with Rip after goons from Australian mega-millionaire Roger Hedrick and Libyan Army troops show up, in that order. Hi-jinks and adventures follow, mainly revolving around Hedrick's intention to sell off the saucer to the highest bidder and what that means for Rip and Charley. Lots of suspense, politicians being portrayed as morons, Air Force types being secretive, and a lot of fun. Nice brain candy, in short.

The Player of Games....well, it's another Iain Banks Culture novel, which doesn't help too much since it really doesn't have that much in common with either Consider Phlebas or Look to Windward, except insofar as it relates how the Culture deals with other civilizations. In this case, Jemau Murat Gurgeh is a games master who has become utterly bored with the lack of novelty. He is the master of pretty much every strategic game, whether played on boards, computers or anything else, but even so has to be blackmailed into voyaging to the brutal Empire of Azad to play the game of Azad. Azad can't really be described briefly, since it involves 12,000 Azadians all striving on the Board of Origin, the Board of Form, and the Board of Becoming to determine their status within the Empire. Gurgeh, being a human of the Culture, isn't familiar with some of the concepts of the game and only when he is actually involved in the game does he realize that the game of Azad is in fact a simulation (after a fashion) of the Empire itself, and that losing may have more severe consequences than just failing to advance. I found it very absorbing and distracting, but reading it in the wake of my mother's death was a very bad idea. I give The Player of Games a 5.5 on the Oldboy scale; it is not for the squeamish.

Thanks to yesterday afternoon's storms, the power was out in Foxchase until about 2 PM today. So if you were wondering why the previous post didn't go up last night, well, that's why. Maybe throwing out that assload of votive candles wasn't such a good idea after all.

Got to head out to a lymphedema therapy appointment. Maybe dinner later with P, maybe not.

Since P is working today we got together yesterday afternoon/evening and had an early Father's Day burger dinner at Foster's Grille, which despite the pretentious spelling dishes out a quality burger with fresh-cut fries and is a Coke joint besides; think Five Guys with a bigger bun, a tad less grease, and beer on tap if you want it. Good eats. Too bad it was full of Little Leaguers, which made it a little tough to carry on a conversation.

I then motored down the road and hung out with Mark, who is understandably stressed about his mother, but not so much so that he couldn't show me the mid-season finale of BSG (which was every bit as awesome as advertised) ,Casting Call of Cthulhu, and the trailer for the actual Call of Cthulhu movie (silent, of course) produced by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, those fine folks who brought us Shoggoth on the Roof and other Things That Should Not Be. We also discussed Civilization strategy in general terms. I'm getting to the point where I can whip Civ III at the Regent level so long as I don't have to deal with more than four AI, though I usually wind up playing the same map multiple times so that I know where the resources are. Cheating? Good question; in a conventional wargame you'd know where all this stuff was already, and in any case I don't care. It works. Mark' struggles with Civ IV sounded painfully familiar, and hopefully some of the advice I gave him based on my C3 experience will help. Needless to say, we both miss Call to Power.

This ended far later than either of us planned, and I aggravated matters by staying up until past 0400 reading Farmer in the Sky. It was good reading forty years ago, and it hasn't lost anything in the meantime. Come to think of it, none of the Heinlein juveniles have aged that badly, allowing for the changes in what we know about Mars and Venus.

Today was largely spent lolling around playing C3 with expeditions to the Walmart (for waterproof bandages and meat) and the swimming pool. Was going to do laundry, but I'm pretty tired out from thrashing around in the pool for half an hour and I'm going to call it a night.

Turned out I was off by one day on both of my doctors' appointments, which was good since we had a fuckton of work to get through today so that we could get closer to the month-end file clears & purges. As Mr. Dunham predicted, most of the problem is coming from being frustrated at not being able to step in and intuitively grasp all the steps in the procedures needed to make things work, and now that I am most of the way through the month-end close it's beginning to come together. The senior controller seems to think I'm getting it, at any rate, and I'm seeing how stuff I did during the month (or failed to do, as the case may be) fits into the Big Picture. I also think coming in at 0700 helped some, as did packing lunch and eating it while watching the SC go through some of the routines involved in accounting for sales commission payments. Going to pack lunch and go in early again tomorrow; the traffic isn't that much better, but getting there early seems to put me in a better mood.

I know all this natter about accounting/bookkeeping, ledgers and procedures is boring as shit to 99% of you, but hey, this is my LJ and y'alls entertainment is not Job #1 here.

Time to nuke some chicken lumps and then hit the pool for a while.

Didn't stay up that late last night, and even with the heat and Friday night's late bedtime I didn't think I was so tired that I needed to sleep in until 1 PM. But I did. :(

It was every bit as hot outside as it was yesterday; even at 1945 when I finally stirred forth (too late to hit the pool, alas, but I did chuck out a couple small bags of garbage, so it wasn't a total waste of time) it was unpleasantly warm and muggy. 90 degrees with 63% humidity, to be precise. So far, though, I haven't had to turn on the A/C in the burrow. One of the Honeywell fans aimed at the back of my neck while I'm at the laptop in the kitchen works just fine to keep me cool; of course, I haven't been doing all that much besides fiddling with Civ, reading LJ, and courting fan death. OK, I did move the plastic cube shelving out of the living room and into the bedroom, which makes room for some more bookshelves, but that's not exactly heavy lifting.

Dutch was kind enough to loan me his introductory accounting text after I cried on his shoulder about the problems I was having adjusting to the manual systems at the new job. He thinks this is going to be an excellent learning experience. He's probably right, but at the moment it's being awfully frustrating.
We'll see how things go tomorrow.

Yeah, my new trunks arrived while I was out helping P cope with her cheap Japanese POStruck breaking. Since it was actually hot and sweaty enough outside to get me to turn on the Kia's A/C, their arrival is doubly welcome, and soon I will remove my bandages and go hit the pool. Hoo-rah!

Before that, though, a Warren Ellis meme ganked from phoenixalpha.
( Something angry, something blue, something hardcore, and something true )