Writing offline... because my damn cable modem has been mostly offline the last few days, and this evening has been basically an exercise in not trying to pull my hair out. I'm so tired of watching little spinning symbols. Damn, there are so many things I can't do without an internet connection, and I had a bunch of auctions end this evening. Can't look up or research anything, can't print postage, can't send invoices or emails, can't answer questions, can't list anything for auction. And lots more auctions tomorrow, here's hoping Time Warner gets their shit together. Ebay also, the few times I was up tonight, Ebay was almost always down.
Well, I've made an initial commitment to picking my contact lenses - I'm trying three different presciptions as a start. All are bifocals with the "high" add. I found my brain won't let me do one low and one high, which is what the doc kept trying on me in different variations. One strength works pretty decent for driving and running around to the grocery store, etc., and I'm basically testing the other two for reading and computer work. Kind of fun, I can put 2.5+ in both eyes (I've got two of them on hand), or a 2.5+ and 2.75, or a 2.75+ and a 3.0+ for when I'm really blind. I'm SO bad at the "better... worse?" thing, they all look fuzzy to me, dammit. So I'm going to get to experiment on my own now. And when I get my three boxes of contacts in, I'm going to try two 2.75s for reading. And the eye shop I'm going to say they would meet the prices of Sam's Club - which will save me $20 a box on refills.
On another note, I need to remember to do things like color my hair before it gets cold. We have a 1950's tile bathroom and the thought of standing around naked waiting for color to develop is not very appealing when it's 40 degrees outside. We don't get much winter here in Houston, but I'm such a sissy. I have to force myself to take showers and washing my hands is just plain painful at times. I share a circulation problem with my mom, the name of it slips my mind right now (ah, Google is working - it's Raynaud's Syndrome), but any cold weather at all is intensely painful. RIght now I can't feel my nose, my toes are cold in my fuzzy Dearfoams, and my hands are icy and numb. And it's like 70 degrees inside the house right now. I need to start eating ginger root again, it helped with my stomach problems and one of the nice side effects was it kept me warm. Either that or have a shot of port...
Been battling a sinus infection all week which literally started the day the weather turned cold. I always get sick around the holidays, whether I stay inside and hide or not. We've been invited to my parents and the inlaws to be stuffed twice this Thursday. I may make Sparky drive for the dinner invite to his mom's, she's across town and I have this weird tendency to fall asleep after eating at her house already, after two turkey meals I'm probably not going to be real perky.
My mom asked me to bring a dessert (I love bringing dessert, I'm actually good at that), and Sparky's mom asked for a veggie so I'm doing green bean casserole. I was going to use fresh beans, but they didn't look too healthy in the store the other day. I'm not good at transporting food in cars (or on cafeteria trays, etc.), but I'll give it a try. I haven't turned our oven on since last Christmas (annual Xmas scones for my dad). Now I've got to start thinking about Christmas (and three holiday birthday, four including mine) gifts.
I think I've stalled as long as I can, I'd better go shower, brrr. Oops, can't go yet, the eight minute extended version of Donna Summer's "Last Dance" just cycled onto my iTunes :-)
P.S. I've got comments turned on to Moderate right now (I have to approve them). Apparently MT 3.2 isn't as efficient as Blacklist was. Or I don't have it tweaked correctly, who knows. I tried to "preapprove" my regular commentors, so hopefully it won't affect any of you. Too many damn spammers. Someone has picked up one of my parked domains and has been spending tons of emails all over the place using my domain name, I'm getting like 400 bounces a day from their antics, I hope it stops soon, how annoying.
Well crap, my husband has had several friends who have committed suicide since we've been together. And several more who have died suddenly. Most of our friends are artists and fanboys and fangirls, perhaps there's more drama in our crowd than most. I actually had the misfortune of being with Sparky when we went to check on one of his friends, years ago, whose out-of-state family was worried about his well-being because he had AIDS, and so my husband had a key to his apartment and when we went to check on him, he'd shot himself in the head.
Earlier this year, another friend of his, who had moved out of the city several years before, had intricately planned her own demise on the anniversary of her failed wedding, down to leaving notes and wills, and slitting her own throat in the bathtub. She was a brilliant yet unappreciated artist and had designated who would get each piece of her artwork in her notes.
Now today we find out that the big story from Monday's news turned out to be about another old friend of his, whom he hadn't seen in person in years, but had apparently been depressed enough to coax the Houston Police department into shooting her after a car chase, news copters on scene and all. She was a very sweet, quiet and kind girl, she came to our house to visit during the 90's then drifted away when we moved. Sparky had known her since the 1970's, meeting her through the fan and convention circuit, she was a fellow movie collector and she actually gave him quite a bit of her collection over the years, he never understood why and would make videos for her as a "trade", but apparently she wanted her things to go to a nice home.
She worked for the Department of Public Safety in the driver's license bureau, we had spoken several times of our mutual desire (and failure) to become police officers. The news reports said she had been hospitalized, not shown up to work and had stopped taking her medicine, so her employer sent the Houston Police looking for her, and they found her driving around in her truck with her sister. They tried to stop her, she out ran them, they spiked her tires and as she pulled over, her sister tossed a gun out of the window.
And Angie jumped out of her truck, retrieved the gun and raised it towards her sister and the police shot her, she was dead on the scene. And that's all we know so far. The news reports say there are rumours that she was suicidal, if that was true she was successful. She certainly went out big, the incident created a huge traffic jam in the area during rush hour, and she was the top story on the evening news. She was 48 years old.
The few times I've mulled over the idea of suicide, I've always leaned towards the non-painful methods. I have a gun, but would not like to be shot, with my luck I'd end up being paralyzed or something worse. I don't like knives, if anyone ever finds me dead of anything other than an overdose of something sedating, please consider it a homicide. I used to drive so much in my work I always figured if anything unnatural happened to me it would be a major car accident. Lord knows I've had enough of the things.
But even at my most depressed, I wasn't selfish enough to leave my parents, pets or husband behind. And my biggest fear is I'll have to come right back and start all over again. I believe in reincarnation, and the idea of starting over scares the hell out of me, especially in today's screwed up world.
This morning's paper has the story Group Question's Motorists Shooting. That's nice - I hope someone does. But from my years of law enforcement experience, if someone really wants to kill themself they usually do it. The people that threaten and whine about it constantly don't.
I hate drama. I don't ever want to be on the news, for anything, good or bad. I can't believe what's going on all over the world now, and everyone knows and sees every detail. And no one does anything about it. We all just hide in our homes, hoping it won't touch our little lives.
Related links:
ABC Houston News
CBS Houston News
NBC Houston News
Last Wednesday I finally got up the nerve (and money) and walked into a local optometrist office and asked if they could give me an exam for contact lenses.
Reader's digest history:* I was born with 20/400 vision, hated glasses as a kid (ugly, inconvenient, made me dizzy)
* Got contacts in high school when soft contacts became readily available
* By my mid-twenties could barely wear them anymore due to allergies and dry eyes (they kept sticking to my eyes!) so I had the old-fashioned RK surgery
* It gave me bad night vision and weakened by close-up vision but it worked OK till my late 30's
* Then my close-up vision got steadily worse till I had to start wearing reading glasses, which didn't work well and made me dizzy
* Then my distance vision started getting fuzzy and I developed double vision in my right eye
* My stupid opthalmologist basically told me between my MS and the RK side effects I'd never see well so I should just wear cheapie reading glasses and suffer
* I went to an different optometrist who managed to give me a set of halfway decent presciptions for distance and reading glasses, which took forever to get used to and helped a little
* I still hate wearing glasses - they still make me dizzy, I'm tormented by glare because of the RK scars, and I feel like I'm looking at the world between bars or out of a tiny window, they actually made me really irritable and gave me panic attacks
So I finally decided what the hell, Halloween was in a few days, I would be wearing a ton of eye makeup, and contacts had to be better than glasses, even if I couldn't get near 20/20. And I know I could never handle bifocal glasses, my depth perception is non-existant with regular glasses.
So I plunked down my $260 and have been experimenting with different combinations of contact lenses. I had read that I would probably need RGP contacts (mega expensive) but the doctor has been trying B&L Multifocal soft contact lenses instead. Bifocal contacts? Wow, who'd of thunk it...
My only problem has been balancing the driving and walking around part of my world with the reading books and staring at a computer all night part. He tried making my right eye do distance and my left eye do reading, but my right eye wouldn't allow the left eye to be stronger without giving me a piercing headache. So he changed them up and gave me a third contact for my right eye to try and use for closeup work. Still giving me headaches, though, I think it's too strong. I'm trying not to be a pesky patient but I don't think I can handle using it till my next Wednesday appointment, I'm probably going to go in and bug them this weekend and see if I can get a somewhat less intense reading lense, the variation between the two is just not working.
The non-reading set is actually pretty good, though. It's wonderful to be able to drive around with my normal sunglasses, walk through stores and look at price tags without having to pull out my reading glasses, and just not feel like I'm looking at the world through a fricking window. And not to have to contantly worry about getting smudges on my glasses. My cat loves it, she can get right in my face without bumping into a piece of metal.
I know it supposed to take several weeks at the minimum to adjust to multifocal contacts, and I'm trying to be patient and let my brain adjust. The worst part so far, though, is when I take them out, my vision is severely blurred for several hours afterwards. Like my eyes have been dilated. I can't even see with my reading glasses on. Apparently my cornea was so messed up by the RK surgery that it's easily distorted even by soft contacts. So no more reading in bed for me (sigh). I hope that side effect fades over time, but I've got a bad feeling it won't.
But I keep telling myself... it's better than glasses. And I understand in the UK they've almost got the whole corneal lens implant thing perfected.
I've been getting hit with a lot more spam trackbag pings and denied comments the last few weeks and I just found out why - MT Blacklist has been discontinued with the arrival of the new and apparently very spam-resistant Movable Type 3.2. I was still on MT 3.15 so I must have suddenly become a huge spammer target.
So I upgraded to 3.2 tonight, not too hard, I got a couple of errors but everything seems to be working now. I hope the spam filters are as good as Blacklist, as much as I was getting tired of despamming all those pings and comments, at least I knew it was working. Thanks forever to Jay Allen for all of his hard work, apparently he had to endure a major bandwidth attack before everything was settled, poor guy. I grabbed his little "screw the spammers" banner (uploaded to my own server, of course), maybe it will discourage some of the perverts that have been attacking me.
I also deleted my old Blogsnob exchange links code because all I've been seeing for months now is "Pheedo Exchange" ads, they bought Blogsnob, but the thing is obviously not working now (I tried emailing them to ask what's up) and it's just slowing down my page loading time. I just checked and it appears I'm still registered with them, so I guess I'll try one more time to reenter the code, because it's a fun little exchange when it works.