delight | Recent Entries

- I need an external but relying-only-on-me reward system for doing all of these charts. Because there are so many, and these are just the charts from the last week and I have to review over fifty of them. For writing I was giving myself chocolates until I ran out of chocolates, though I should also be looking at non-food reward systems because my cardiologist would Disapprove. I actually love chart review, but getting 86 for the first week of December means that someone else is doing something wrong somewhere. They should not get as far as me in that quantity -- I'm the second level. First there is a QA random check, and anything they pull that has something unusual on it comes to me for marking up and review. I got eighty-six of them from 12/1-12/9.

My arm is getting sore from the number of papers I have to shuffle and things I have to write on, and, oh yeah ...

- My eyes are so dry at this time of year I'm having trouble reading anything at all. I am already using natural tears 10x a day, and my oph took me off Restasis because he wasn't sure it was doing anything and it was painful and expensive, but lol my job consists primarily of reading right now because I am in chart review hell.

- Last night I made cookie dough for the cookies for work's holiday party, which is tomorrow. (My work does holiday parties in a way that a lot of people have said they wished their offices do; our holiday party is during working hours, paid and optional ... you can come to the party or you can stay at your desk and work. You're getting paid for that time either way, and you're exempt from having to work, but it's not free time off. It is also an optional potluck; you're not required to bring anything. It is not outside working hours and there is no alcohol.) This is perfectly normal, since I like to let my dough chill for 24 hours, I feel it bakes better.

However, last night I made cookie dough in the living room because there was extermination happening in my kitchen.

It was a very different experience.

Gmail, it is okay to not remind me that someone has not replied to an email in 3 days. Or 2 days. Or 5 days. People are allowed to take their time to reply to emails!

Trip sent me home from work early alerting yesterday, and it seems like today he's determined to try to convince me I still need to go home, depsite the lack of auras, because he wants to go home. It's snowing, so I also want to go home, trust me. (I have to bake a ton of cookies for work's holiday party, which I hope I feel up to doing.) Poor dog is so frustrated with me. But today is just a Wednesday, the day that I completely cannot stand because it's full of repeating meetings that I find frustrating and too full of people to cope with.

I do wish we could go home, loudly sighing dog. I really do.

So I always start out strong with the December meme and then never actually finish it. However, January is a lot more promising. Anything post-December 21 is more promising for my daylight-attenuated soul. A whole bunch of people on my reading list are doing this so I'm stealing the text from everyone and cobbling it together to make my text; sorry that I can't recall whose modifications I stole!

Pick a date below and give me a topic, and I'll ramble on. I'm good at talking. It can be anything you like that you think I might be able to talk about! They will probably be brief, or not, depending on the subject. Also, I reserve the right to decline prompts that I don't feel equipped to meet.

Topics: you can get an idea from my tags/from the stuff I usually ramble about/from things you maybe wish I talked about more but don't. I also am into sports I don't talk about on DW -- equestrian endurance & dog mushing. Two of my friends are running Iditarod this year!

My other modification to the meme norm is that I'm only putting down weekdays because realism.

( days )

(& did I mention TWO of my friends are running the Iditarod this year? We just found out about Quince; Meredith made her qualifiers last year and Q technically has one more but it approaches fast and all he has to do is finish!)

I don't really "do" Thanksgiving, between the being barely American and having no family things, but I must say that I am thankful for friends. For everyone who has been supportive in comments and encouraging about creative things and complimented my dog.

Right now, especially to

yhlee and

niqaeli, who are being bright and kind financial lights in a time of great monetary darkness. I would be drowned in shit creek without them.

Thank you all for being here for me. ♥

Today there's an all-day meeting with the EMR guys to make our software do more stuff that data people need it to do.

(Trip has been an excellent participant, because the conference room has a good sun spot.)

We are on a lunch break so I just had to come here and squeal and say people are listening to me. People who outrank me by several levels are listening to me. Everyone is listening to me. It's like somehow I inherited "health data expert" from my dad, then exceeded it (according to him I surpassed him even before he died but I don't buy it) and people I work with actually realize that.

And no one else has my level of expertise. And it's me. I'm the expert. I'm the second most important person in the room.

I'm kind of happy-vibrating. It's not even intimidating or overwhelming because to me it doesn't feel like I'm being asked much; it's just easy questions, easy strategizing, but to everyone else health data is like speaking ancient Sumerian. It's a rare experience that I actually feel confident in knowing things 100% when there are other people who don't know them. But to me it's things that seem like common sense, and I told this to my mom and she was like "that's because you actually do know your subfield really well. It seems easy and like common sense because you're actually an expert."

I am not used to this.

Updating has mostly been too hard for my brain, as has everything else in the world, because of the fact that I'm in almost constant darkness.

(My office has no windows, and "standard" time means that I'm in the dark for the majority of the commute, and am in the dark when I leave again at the end of the day. My problem isn't just SAD - I actually have so many cognitive issues from lack of daylight that I have not been able to think clearly past 9pm since my stroke ten years ago.)

But I am getting very very tired of the mice in my office. They have now destroyed two slow feeders for my dog. I can't store food in my office, even in airtight containers, because that might bring more mice. Every Monday I have to clean mouse poop off my desk.

They only are an issue on weekends because they apparently stay away as long as they can smell the dog.

I have no more money to replace the things they've destroyed, and I sometimes go days without eating during the day because I don't want any hint of me being responsible for this even breathed. I have a lot of paper clutter, all of which is stored in cabinets/drawers/shelves becaue I don't have the time or staff to file the overwhelming amount of documents I get handed, but most offices in health care have paper clutter. Many of my colleagues have paper clutter. What they don't have is terrible mouse invasions.

And it's not that the building doesn't care at all - there have been exterminators in here three times.

I'm just so tired of dealing with it.

Testing out an iPad keyboard setup but still too brain fried to really make any words happen, so ( a brainless survey a few other people have done. )

This is not actually the worst birthday I've ever had, but it is in third place right now and I have to keep reminding myself that the other two were absolutely a lot worse.

I think a few of you sent gifts, but I didn't have time to open anything this morning! I also am so overworked I do not likely have time to send emails of thanks, but hopefully I will. Normally I do a birthday tarot spread for funsies but I don't trust this morning's vibes and will do it another time - I have to show off the deck I have now anyway (it's this one, which was my gift to myself for my promotion).

My ten minutes of free time were going to setting up NaNo stuff, since i promised a number of people I would write something for the "Romance: Medical" category on Amazon that was more medical and less erotic, but is it just me or is the NaNo website an extra level of trash fire at the moment?

I still cannot stay on top of ANYTHING right now because everything is batshit, but I got a couple of requests to link my Amazon wishlist (my birthday is this Friday).

My Amazon wishlist has now also had the five other lists I had combined, so it looks like half of it came from October 16. I actually forgot I had the Schleich ponies on it and hope my mother didn't faint (this is a VERY long-running collection that she was frequently trying to convince me to not add more to when we lived together).

If you wanted to buy me something for my birthday, here is where you can. If you didn't, disregard this because I have no desire to guilt people into gifts for a birthday they did not know about!

( dog pictures; all post-operative, only one very minor visible wound )

So life is a little bit stressy right now! We had to take off the cone because he kept getting too anxious with it on as he had no peripheral vision; he does keep trying to eat his bandages but only while fully awake. We're currently keeping him pretty sedated so he doesn't hurt his foot worse.

I absolutely don't have the energy to explain what happened (especially since I have not slept in several days thanks to my own health issues and why yes, Trip and I are both at work, all I want to do is be able to rest) but another dog was also injured, both are on the mend after having minor surgeries yesterday, and we don't have to pay for care for this.

My life is nuts but writing about it ends up being highly emotionally draining, SO instead I'm stealing this meme from misbegotten!

What do you prefer to be called by folks reading the entry? Who named you that and why? Where did it come from?
Well, my name is Rue, and I'm fine with you calling me that; my dad's family named me it and it is after a plant. The short version of the long story is that my parents named me Rebecca when I was born, only for them to contact my dad's mom, tell her the name, and have her freak out: "THAT IS MY SISTER'S NAME."

News flash for my parents: Aunt Betty's name was a strange nickname for Rebecca.

They had to brainstorm fast, because while we are Sephardim and the naming-after-the-living thing isn't as bad, it was still pretty taboo and awkward. But these had been growing around the Franklin, MI house where my mom spent half her pregnancy seemingly out of nowhere, and they didn't want to change my initials, so Rebecca got shoved to the end (I now have two middle names, since they also kept the first one) and Rue moved to the beginning. As a result when I'm not using Opal/Opalite as a username, I use some variant on thalictrum or thalictroides (or if I'm tryng to be different, graveolens, which is an entirely different plant also called rue).

It does N O T have anything to do with the French language or being a regretted baby, and those jokes are rly old, thanks.

My Hebrew name is Rivkaleh, or "little Rivka," in honor of Aunt Betty without being weird. I have never stopped being very small, and have never tried to get anyone to change it to just Rivka. I still answer to and appreciate Rivkaleh as me, I don't care that it's technically a diminuitive. It has been my name and anyone who wants to call me that can.

My roleplaying game name has long been Opal for places that need player usernames, 'cause it's my birthstone and I'm boring. I use Citrine on one forum as a change. And when I actually write fiction, or when I participated in PBeMs where people used real names, I write under Kit Greenhouse, which has its own story behind it that might make this post too long & I have a meeting approaching. But safe to say that those are both family names too -- "Kit" is related to small foxes and comes from my aunt, Greenhouse is my dad's mom's maiden name and the actual New York-since-the-1800s part of my family are the Greenhouses. To this day most of the Pern fandom either thinks my real name is Kit, or knows it isn't but doesn't bother trying to learn to call me anything other than Kit anyway. My Dragon*Con badges have said Kit.

So I mean: you can call me Rue, Kit, Rivkaleh, Opal, variants on Opal (Opalite is my discord name, Opalescent was an old email) ... I'll assume all these are me. delight is fine too.

( The other questions in case you, too, want to meme pilfer. )

My Other News is really mostly that I don't have Other News because everything is depression, but that I need to be grateful for friends: BFF Sarah (who has an old DW but she doesn't use it and I don't know if I should even link to it) was here for Rosh Hashanah/Medievalfest, and just as I was stressing about how I didn't have another thing to look forward to until February 2021 (my depression coping mechanism is to line up things to be excited about) I was reminded that ursula will be in town this weekend. Other people's travel schedules are filling in those gaps at least briefly!

Because of work having a sudden unexpected mASSIVE deadline change thanks to the Feds, I remain super behind on my actual job and can't make a real post! However, I keep thinking about this and I think a lot of you are long time WisCon goers and past and future con-commers.

The tl;dr which is all I have time for is this: I was going to go this year, because my friend outside Madison doesn't have a prior commitment, and it's been like eight or nine years since SHE'S gotten to attend, and we were going to share a room etc.

My husband would also like to go if he can get the weekend off (it is a huge business weekend for massage therapy and he may not be able to).

I would also like to bring my dog. Flying with a medical alert dog who is over 60 pounds is an ENORMOUS PAIN IN THE ASS, and sometimes impossible as he doesn't fit anywhere but first class which I cannot afford (depending on the airline they won't allow him on a seat, and he sure doesn't fit underneath!). So the conclusion to this disjointedness is as follows --
a) would the financial assistance cover the costs of us driving from NYC so we could bring everyone for cheaper,
b) plus perhaps the $250 hit that comes from my husband not being able to work, as massage doesn't have PTO as a thing in like 99% of the world (I've never, ever seen it) and in order to smoothly travel with the pup I require him to drive, I can't do it on my own due to epilepsy
c) are any of these things valid enough to that committee that they're worth asking to be nominated,
d) is anyone willing to do that nomination for me, because I am extremely terrible at asking for financial assistance from people I don't know and I am pretty sure they not only allow but welcome financial assistance suggestions from third parties.

All in all I think we'd be asking for about $450 to cover the costs of driving, tolls and the lost income -- though it would be just as easy to rephrase that as being for lodging, it's the same money. It's just that we would be sharing our room with a third person who isn't requesting lodging assistance so I don't know how that works. Registration is not a hardship, but I'm afraid to register until I know how many people I'm registering!

ETA: While I was accidentally deleting this post instead of reformatting it, brainwane PMed me with more info, so I am armed with all of the data about the assistance fund now! But I didn't mean to actually take it down so it's here for ... posterity? Input?

For people who want the answer, it was a yes. :) so I am very pleased that we may be able to make the experience significantly easier on my poor dog, who while he doesn't mind flying in and of itself, minds the trappings around it quite a lot. And that I wouldn't have to leave him behind, which would be super hard on me.

All of our suboxone providers are out sick. Please shoot me.

(We are desperately attempting to find outside coverage to avoid having to send people to ERs with a written rx and a plea for assistance, but it's not going well.)

Things keep getting crazier and more exhausting, so I have not enough brain to write them all out. I am continuing to do my shadowy read but not comment because I'm always reading on my phone and can't comment on it ... thing.

We leave for Maine tomorrow night and come back on Tuesday, hopefully I'll be refreshed and not hugely overwhelmed.

An important document at work has gone missing and I'm running out of ideas for where it could be. We need it for an audit that's rapidly approaching, so it keeps me awake at night.

On the other hand, I got promoted unexpectedly today; just a change in title to recognize the added duties I've already taken, rather than another expansion. A small but much needed raise (my rent went up this month). I ended up getting the dachshund tarot for myself as a present, and the next year of extra income goes to medical debt ... which now includes $400 of canine medical debt, because I forgot Trip's vet visit (which we made the $250 gofundme goal for, thank you all) was a 3 year and that there would be a bunch of expensive 3 year stuff, so it came to $650.

I'm used to having no discretionary income, so we should be able to get rid of the majority of debt in 14 16 (edit: dyscalculia) months if all extra goes to it.

Work's internet and intranet are down so I am literally capable of doing 0 work.

Unfortunately I also keep most of my fun things on the internet, and the iPad M* client is kind of a POS that I can't do anything on, so I can't even RP! Lots of getting paid to sit in my future. Rereading books I have already read that are on my kindle app, etc.

In silly dog game, my most successful mid-generation dog is a Border Collie named Gerae after a hexarchate_rpg NPC at ursula's suggestion. Apparently in the alternate universe where Gerae is an actual dog (his male pup is named Scryer, btw) he would be an incredible actual dog!

(Virmad is not doing too poorly either, and Seyli - whose player asked for him to have a dog representation despite not being Rahal - is also a pretty good dog. But Gerae is like the best dog.)

Much to the delight of my becoming restless chair-eater, we seem to be actually leaving work on time today (though it is possible we'll be waiting for a late bus for half an hour, who knows).

The quarterly report that ended in June and was supposed to be in on July 1 was keeping me here late and worn out every day and I was spending weekends just worrying about it; now that it is all caught up and submitted, this workday has been nice and normal instead. We are also at an N=879 out of a required 900 and have temporarily suspended enrollment in the study. \o/

We may have even gotten another employee, I'm crossing my fingers.

iPad using friends --

I am about halfway through my attempt to add up enough credit card rewards to get myself an Apple Pencil (2, because I have the Late 2018 iPad Pro, meaning the original, cheaper ones don't work thanks Apple) and I do a lot of editing and beta reading for friends.

I want to connect these things for usability.

What I'm looking for is an app that opens .rtf and AS A REACHING DREAM, .docx files (I can always convert them before emailing them to myself) and allowing me to physically write on the documents with the Pencil. Underline, highlight, handwritten notes; when I don't have my keyboard with me, which does sometimes happen due to it needing to charge or whatever, I struggle a lot with touch screens. I'd be much more productive if I could read on the iPad which I can easily set to prevent strain issues rather than on a computer.

Is this a real thing that exists??? I do not care if it costs, so long as it's $20 or less it is for a good cause since some people pay me to do this (more than that I super cannot sacrifice because of the whole medical bills and rent ... thing, and that my first ketamine appointment today, the eval, is $1210 all on its own). I would just like to find it and have it, if it is a thing.

My App Store search skills are not up to par, and some of you are power users or reference librarians (or both). While my mother is a reference librarian, she is also a) blind, b) not experienced with App Store hunting. You'd think the blindness wouldn't matter because iPads are very accessible, and they are, she has one! ... most of the Google results she'd get for looking for this for me, uh, aren't.

Thank you in advance!

What I Just Finished Reading:
Lindsay Buroker's Crossfire, which was a beta read. The cover makes me ridiculously happy, because it's the first Look It's A Spaceship Cover I've ever seen where it calls up a specific scene in the book. I have aphantasia so that's kind of a big deal for me (I'm told other books with these kinds of covers do nod to specific scenes, but I've never been able to identify them before).

What I’m Currently Reading:
Digital Divide by K.B. Spangler, though I haven't managed to pick it up in a few days because of SPARS being difficult at work.

(Also doing a beta-edit for a friend which is super short but I'm reading it over and over 4000 times to make sure I notice everything because I'm a little bit too perfectionistic. Or just enough?)

What I Plan to Read Next:
The plan is to keep going with the Rachel Peng series, so that would be Maker Space - but since I'm doing Lindsay's entire series as betas and Star Kingdom #5 or a spinoff may be ready first, it'll be that. One of those two!

1. Grantwriting at speed because you only got 3 days is terrible but invigorating.

2. As a result I have been making Excel do a shit ton of math and am worried that my formulas are wrong because of no one else checking them and dyscalculia.

3. Ketamine clinic called me this morning, which I missed, and I need to call them back tomorrow. I was deep in somanynumbers land. I'm hoping it is not calling with a rejection because that will make tomorrow extra fantastic.

4. Still too tired to brain. I've not even gotten to write anything with Jaehnieseyth. I have been staring at the first Rachel Peng (my iPad just immediately turns that into "Penguin," of course, but she does answer to it) book and wanting to read it but my eyes won't stay open.

5. Relatedly I got both my new phone and my new blood pressure monitor in the mail today and have opened neither. Need to pull everything off old phone to back up my 30k of pictures since the Pixel line doesn't have MicroSD (I shunted my contacts into Gmail so I don't lose those at least) and so while everything is backed up in google photos, it will be reassuring to have the images on my laptop as well. The case I bought also has not arrived yet, and I don't really want to carry my phone around in a box. The Pixel 3a, in the name of being more affordable, is more breakable. I drop my phone a few times a day. I need the case.

While things are going much better for my mother -- I don't know what happened, but we talked her back into going on vacation with us and she seemed to be stable on the phone last night and when I saw her last weekend -- they have continued to kind of ... crash, for me.

With no external trigger reasons. I should not be this deep into a depressive episode as I am based on the circumstances around me. (I know my life is not roses and sunshine and I do have big problems, but I know my own disease and trust me, I should not be this bad.)

So: in two hours I have a phone interview for ketamine therapy.

There's a lot more to the ketamine story, and of course while Iw ant to blog about it it's hard to words when my brain is this far into the shitter -- ( here's the list of 'exacerbated depression symptoms' I need to remember for the phone call in case anyone else was curious just what is happening ) -- and I also don't want to reveal some of the other twists and turns until I know whether or not I'm going to the next step of a long approval process. This is just the medical approval process; while I know I'm a fit psychiatrically, I don't know if my kidney issues are going to torpedo this for me. Stupid blood pressure.

But that is where I am right now.

sketches & ghosts

partially parented by parrots.

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and then I will return to lurk mode

Trip got hurt yesterday.

"Subject lines are hard": my most frequently used subject line

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