Good idea, always helps me!


Oh no, I know how you feel! Me too.


Oh dear, sorry to hear you are having such a bad time! *Hugs* I hope your day off is good.


How awful for you, I hope you can get through this quickly. Perhaps they can give you something to help with the nausea.


Mothers are like that! Sorry to hear about this.

You think you have your finances all figured out and then...
- The car needs more fixing up before the next MOT (-£300)
- Your friends are planning your other friend a surprise birthday meal and spa day (-£100)
- You have to change the date for your son's birthday party, which means the deposit and the cost is due before the next payday (-£200)
- Universal Credit have decided that when you had an account with them two years ago, they overpaid you (-£550 but possibly payable in monthly installments)

All in one day

Oh no! That sucks.

Realizing I forgot which office in the closest city to me was my appointment.

I didn't know if it was one of the other.

At least I can call in the morning and find out.

I think Youtube has been having a stroke for the past week.
My feed is suddenly full of news channels, political podcasts, reaction channels, drama, general talking heads, gaming speedruns(?!) and videos I've watched years ago. I've already spent more time trying to get rid of that stuff showing up, but it seems that the options to select 'I'm not interested' and 'Don't recommend this channel' mean nothing at all because the same videos keep popping back up.

I think it's bitten by the same bug as all the other social channels + Google...

I don't even bother logging in at Youtube, or check the front page (I don't have an account, so I don't subscribe, either). I just look for videos within whatever area of interest it is, and if I like the general content from a video creator, I save the channel as a bookmark, and check for updates when I'm bored. Painfully old-fashion, but I just can't deal with another feed that sends me a lot of crap to doomscroll...

It has been a shit week; I'm glad it is over. Really it has been a shit two weeks, whatever.



As for YouTube, it is turning into another version of TikTok brain rot. I do have a membership with a channel. It is a sims channel that I've been watching for many years and the rest of them are mostly benign. LGR Birds, some music channels ( Clamed by Nature) and a few others. There is Caleb Hammer, but I always find it interesting to see how many ways people can screw up with money. It is also a reminder not to do said stupid things...

YouTube never sends me updates. I have them bookmarked and find new videos that way. I wouldn't go near the YT homepage with a 10-foot pole.

Well, I'm super interested in Geopolitics, nuclear things, and list channels all of the sudden. What a shitshow.
I'm reverting back to the good ol' way of Youtubing, too.

My eldest aunt got a staph infection while at work and is currently in the hospital undergoing treatment, along with my grandfather, who needed stitches in his eye brows attempting to feed her cat. My eldest and youngest uncles had to help in the car shuffle.

So yes, I have to put up with the fact the call to family this holiday season on Thanksgiving Day may have some technical challenges.

In other words... Please stand by.

Computer crashed/bluescreened for absolutely no reason. Happened before (a while ago), a few times. Still have absolutely no idea what's happening, but it has happened at least a couple or so times when watching Youtube videos (this time too - but considering how often I watch YT videos it's likely just a coincidence), and once while absolutely nothing was actively running (besides whatever was running the background).

This time the computer was fine with a shutdown/restart cycle, though (Windows tried a reboot, but only shuffled into a "reboot and hit a key" thing, which wasn't doing much). I've had at least once where something kinda got screwed up and I had to go into fixit mode...

And of course it happens the day before I've planned to do a backup... I mean, this time things went fine, but it did give me a scare.

Today was payday...ended up surrendering all but about $6.39 for food and medicine.

Used the remaining money to sign up for grocery delivery from Whole Foods (I live quite a ways away from the nearest one. Worth every penny.)

Adulting was harder this month. At least I did my best for today.

My eldest aunt was fine enough to be released and is doing fine, but my grandfather was kinda unlucky (he got a blackened eye along with the stitches), but at least the card and letter me and my family sent to his house an hour south of us was enough to help him forget about his injuries.

Dentist appointment. Not the worst in itself - I'm not afraid of the dentist - but ohgawd how I hate that Ultrasonic scaler device (for plaque removal). Makes me want to jump out of the chair (almost made me jump out of the chair quite literally - doesn't quite hurt, but it's almost like every nerve in the body, especially the ones in my face, goes "WFTBLEEP???" at the same time)... Hopefully everything is gone now.

The appointment took maybe 10 minutes, and (unless unforeseen events) it's a good long while until next time, so I can't complain too much, I guess...

One more complaint, though - the "banana" taste of that fluoride paste thing they smear all over the teeth. Everything has had an aftertaste of "banana" all day

People can buy whatever they want with their money, however, do not buy the following pet bowls.



https://www.amazon.com/Mechpia-Piec...191&sr=8-2&th=1

I bought 2 sets of these a couple of years ago from Amazon. I wanted bowls that were shallow and attached to the dogs' crate doors. Jingle is notorious for flipping her bowls, so I figured these would be a ideal solution. I only use one of these in Chica's crate for water. She needs to be fed out of a slow-feeder bowl for food as otherwise she inhales her kibble which can lead to bloat and other problems.

The bowls that come with this set are cheap stainless steel. Over time, the bowls split which can lead to injuries. More specifically, when the metal splits, if a dog ( or cat) rubs their face along the edge of the bowl, it will cut their face, muzzle, tongue, ect...

Today among all the other things we need to do, I'm buying new bowls for dogs. Neither of them have had problems with being sliced while eating or drinking, but I not waiting for that to happen. I've spent lots of cash this year in vet bills; the year isn't over yet.

EDIT: Here is one side of Jingle's food bowl. There is a split on the opposite side that looks just like this.

Does anybody else have a doctors office where a God complex overrules common sense?

I don't know how this works in other places, but here in the US, most ( if not all) insurance companies do not charge for a yearly physical. A yearly physical is part of preventative care. Under normal circumstances this isn't a big deal but I can't walk into my doctor's office without some kind of drama.

This morning I went to my appointment and was greeted with attitude. I was told I owed a co-pay. I asked if that was something new. I was told no and that I owed a co-pay. Instead of making a scene as much as I wanted to, I paid it knowing that this particular conversation wasn't over. I got through the appointment, then called my insurance company before I left. Insurance company wasn't impressed. No, there hasn't been any change in policy, no I didn't owe a co-pay, then the person I spoke to went off about how she's sick and tired of this kind of crap as it has become the norm rather than not.

After the check in area cleared, I went back to the bish that gave me attitude and told her "You charged me a co-pay. I have my insurance company on the phone, would you like to speak with them?" while offering her my phone. I got a instant "No! I'm refunding your co-pay now." At that point she thought I was done, yeah no.

With receipt in hand, I went back to the doctors office part of the building, then asked to speak with a manager. Long story short, I was apologized to and was told they would deal with this problem. Cool, but the red flag came when I was told that they know who did this which means patients have complained about this particular receptionist before and nothing has changed. If I had been arguing with them about a bill that I owed for some reason, I could understand the attitude, but since I don't owe them money for anything, this BS was completely uncalled for.

I'm always given the side-eye over my blood pressure when I have a appointment. It's fine when I'm home and not there, but it spikes when I walk in there as I know there is going to be bullshit. Today was no exception. I've agreed to have blood work done just so they'll leave me alone about it and stop with the side-eye, but it's not that deep. If I'm going to be put on blast for money that I don't owe, I'm not going to tolerate being bullied.

Having a cold.

Plus there's a mini-fly that insists on being around my face as much as possible. I didn't even get any peace in the bathroom (but it turned out that one was a different mini-fly, since I squashed it, and the one in my room was still there. Makes me wonder where they come from at this time of year, since we barely have any plants indoors, and never leave any fruit out* - even the spiders seem to have gone into hibernation )

(*They don't look like banana flies, they're just tiny and black).

6th chemo cycle is over, and I vomited at hospital while my mom was paying the bill at counter. I ran to a toilet, threw up little remain of my breakfast. She helped me cleanup. Guess I almost made a drama there...

Will CVS not try to foist somebody else's meds on us today? That is the question.

I was there on Wednesday to pick up my meds. They started about how they changed the last name on the prescription, blah, blah, blah. As one of the techs was bringing the meds to the counter for me to pay, one of them decided to take my confused look and loud "huh?" seriously and asked if I was some other person before ringing the stuff up.

In the three times I've been in there over the past month, only once there hasn't been any kind of incident. I no longer feel bad when I say it is buffoonery at my CVS, all the time.

Today's trip is for Chica meds. My vet came up with the idea of having Chica's Zonisamide compounded so that I wouldn't have to fill 2 scripts every month. It will be nice to have one less pill to shove down Chica's throat, but the best thing is I won't have to go into CVS for Chica meds anymore unless it is a situation like today where we don't know if her stuff will get here on Monday because of the holidays.

Today's script is part of a backup plan if Chica's meds don't arrive when they are supposed to. If it ends up that she doesn't need the extra few days worth, I'll stash them for a later date.

EDIT: Instead of filling the script within the promised 15 minutes, it took almost a hour. The pharmacist "forgot" about it.

Rain, rain and even more rain.

Plus, the picture uploader I'm using is (again) having a bad day. All of my pics seem to have temporarily disappeared, and can't even log in there.
(Edit: Potentially site bug? I don't know, but they seem to be back again)

Also spent some time deleting roughly 800 emails from some old accounts. One of them looked to be a junk mail magnet... :/ (I hardly use them for anything now, though - just had to check something and thought I might as well clean them uo while I was at it).

And I swear if I could get hold of all the people who are responsible for terrible pill tray designs, I'd give them a good shake and tell them to try fishing out X number of pills from those awful things, see how they'd fare. I don't mind that part of the job, but would have preferred if more pills came in bottles... My fingers are getting ruined from the pill trays that have to be pressed very hard, the ones that cause not-bleeding (but still sore) microcuts from the foiling, and the ones that for some extremely annoying reason have double layers and have to be performed "caesarian sections" on to get anything out (and of course that's the ones where everyone needs double or triple numbers, so after a few rounds of that particular one I just want to throw all of those pill trays out the window ), or the ones when not pushed quite right always split pills in the middle or they get get pulverized (another candidate for "caesarian"), the ones with tiny pills in giant bubbles (a LOT of unnecessary trash, too), Pill trays that split in the middle (danger zone), and so many other variations of horrible design. One would almost think they didn't do any testing to see if people with medical issues like arthritis and whatnots can handle them (A few pills every day perhaps isn't the worst, but when people with various diseases/conditions can't handle their meds, someone else has to take over - and good grief it's painful to push out probably 1500 or so pills in just a couple days...)

Some days I question if I did or said something wrong, or if I just can't have nice things.
I've been volunteering at the animal shelter I previously worked at (now under new ownership) and last Sunday I had an interview to hopefully work there again. Went well in my opinion and I had a generally good feeling into monday morning, when on my way to the shelter my bicycle's chain decided to just hop off and absolutely lodge itself between the gearwheel and a metal fixture holding the casing, causing the pedals to be stuck aswell.
So far rather inconvenient but I can walk the rest.
So of course as soon as I had parked my bike to be picked up later, it just started pouring down and did so for the remainder of the walk there. On my way home when my clothes were barely dry, it poured again, and stopped when I unlocked my front door.

Dealt with 2 "blue screens of death" today. I don't know if I need to upgrade software or buy new hardware or both.

But I at least am 11¢ closer to shopping again.

My room is still a mess.

The fact I have to take a new medication that requires supervision.

In essence, I would not only lose glucose and creatinine when I go #1, but I may lose salt and have blood pressure issues, so my father will be keeping an eye on me and for any weird side effects beyond getting a cold, changes to frequency\urgency of bathroom breaks or yeast infections. (Those 3 are most common.)

Otherwise I currently have a day where I have time to transfer my amiibo cards from one binder to another. Personally, I wish they brought back older villagers like Sue E. and the cosplaying twin squirrels Cece and Viché, I have been playing Animal Crossing for a while, well before the pandemic. In fact, I collected every card, including the Sanrio booster pack in the campers.

More Windows shenanigans.

Last night the laptop spent longer than usual turning off, and was a bit iffy when turning back on, so I suspected some Windows shenanigans. Turned out it had activated some "storage sensor" or whatever it's called, to "help" with low disk space (no thanks, I don't want Windows to manage my files any more than necessary ), which deleted some files I hadn't removed yet (thankfully just in the bin, but there was a reason I hadn't removed them yet). Had just 14 GB left on the main drive, so I knew I had to do something, but didn't know Windows was going to do the first move. Though, I could almost swear there was more free space before I switched off . So now I've freed up some space (100+ GB left now), which should be enough for a little while. Been meaning to do it for some time, so maybe my computer thought I needed my butt kicked or something...

My next computer probably needs at least 10 TB of storage, the way I'm going on collecting CC
(and yes, I've got a backup, too - just wasn't ready to fully move over the files just yet)


(EDIT: weirdly, yesterday when I'd moved files it said I had around 107 GB, but today when turning on the computer it said 127 GB. Odd. Probably even more Windows shenanigans )

My father caught some respiratory "ick" and I have nurse duties to go with dishes and laundry.

No good deed goes unpunished here.

Blizzard for a couple days now, though it did calm down around when I went home from work today - been walking around outside way too much the past couple days. Lots of snow, some ice under the snow, awful wind, and everything combined makes for weather I absolutely hate.

And with the temp going down outside, it gets colder inside too (especially in my bedroom). Right now (in addition to what I usually wear indoors) I've got a duvet and a blanket, a fleece jacket, a bathrobe, a hot water bottle, plus wool leggings, and I'm still kinda cold (especially my hands. Considering gloves, which I have worn indoors when it gets too bad...).

I hate this weather.

Plus, I've got a cold again. Kinda had a feeling - half the town is sick, it seems. At least a couple of the kids in the family have been sick, which likely had time to spread around last week. Not surprised if I caught it from one of them.

Forgot how to properly save my game in "Pokémon Legends: Arceus", which means I have to redo the trial where they ask me to catch, in order, a Bidoof, a Starly and a Shinx to test my skills...again! I found out that the hard one way after I woke up in-game and checked my missions list.

I sometimes wish that, if you haven't been playing a new game for a long time, that doesn't feature a stringent auto save, that the at least have a recap feature that helps those who are new\busy with life, because the menu in "Pokémon Legends: Arceus" isn't a straightforward one when it involves buttons.