Sometime today (or possibly tomorrow), Tristan is dropping off my new helm. :o)
I'll post pictures. :o)
How many is that? We'll find out - Paul's sister Robyn is getting married in the Bahamas in April, and we're going. The room deal is all-inclusive.
I have never been to the Bahamas; Paul has been once. The only thing he tells me about are conch fritters. :o) Go ahead, ask him. You'll see. :o)
Main things on my mind these last few days: how to stop coughing, getting back into armour (my new helm arrives tomorrow), sewing, and whether or not to go back to temping.
... which is rarely a good thing.
We won't be going to Minneapolis this weekend. Ben has a test during the day on Saturday. In the US, there are two tests people have to take to get into University. This one is a prep for those, which Ben will have to do in grade 12.
So, no Twelfth Night for us. But a weekend at home still feels like a bonus, so it's not a crisis. :o)
Twelve inches of snow by midafternoon tomorrow. :o)
I've been "hitting the pell" kinda... that is, on the advice of my foster-knight, Paul bought me a couple golf tubes and I've been using them to practice in the apartment. I hit the corner post of a bookshelf. Repeatedly. :o) I'm going to leave one long and cut the other so it's the same length as my sword. It feels *good* to swing a sword... even when it's a golf tube. :o)
My job isn't so bad, but it is a call centre, and that makes it annoying. The regulations are strict and I have to be cheerful all the time. To everyone. Even to stupid people. And I *always* have someone talking in my ear... it drowns out the voices in my head. :o) I get pretty tired of dealing cheerfully with cranky people who believe that their poor planning is now *my * fault. But the rest of it is cool. I wish I was more patient with people, but I think I'm done (like dinner) with call centres.
Other jobs I've had...
massage therapist
teacher
course co-ordinator
administrative assistant
accounts payable and payroll clerk
accounts payable and receivable
band instrument repair technician
house cleaner
telephone answering service
office worker at Bowater (paper mill)
assisted living worker
taxi/tow truck dispatcher
horse-and-buggy driver
swim teacher
fencing coach
data entry clerk
midnight shift parts warehouse clerk in the diesel shop of a transport company
telemarketer
call centre team leader
pizza chef
Coughing: The doctor said I can expect to cough for two to six more weeks. He told me to use my inhaler four times a day for the next two weeks, then if it's still no better, he'll prescribe an oral once-daily asthma med for me till the end of winter. Dandy. At least it's starting periodically to feel like the distance between my sternum and my spine is opening up again.
Canadian Taxes: I owe a medium-small amount of federal back taxes to My Home and Native Land. From the last tax year, while I still lived there. Humph. I hate getting nasty-grams. Federal government nasty-grams are especially unpleasant.
What I Want to Be When I Grow Up (this time): I dunno, but I'm not really getting anything out of my curect job but a decent paycheck. Should I expect more? I've always envied people who knew what they wanted to do, who were passionate about one thing and who pursued it. I wanted to be a conductor, and shoulder surgery toasted that. So then what...?
There is an opening for a massage therapist at the chiropractic clinic near our house. I'm kinda-sorta looking into what'd be required to get licensed in Wisconsin...
I'm 40.
That feels weird, but I haven't called my mom yet. Maybe that'll sort it out a bit. I *always* call my mom on my birthday. When I lived nearby her, I even bought her gifts some years on my birthday. She did all the work that day, after all. But I don't think being 40 is really a big deal just by itself.
Sad me, for nothing recent, something other than my birthday. Last night I was horribly blue, and it's not much better today. It's just one simple thing; I miss Tello. I feel enormously guilty for having her euthanized, even though I know she was dying. Hope likes to snuggle with me, which is lovely, but she's not Tello. She's a sweet cat, but she's herself, not Tello. She's only a little larger than Tello was, but her fur is a different texture entirely. Tello's fur was thicker than any other cat I've ever touched... she was a solid little cat with the softest, densest fur. She was very intelligent and we knew each other very well; she came when I called her and understood when I talked to her. I could understand her, too. Most of all, I just miss her presence. Today is supposed to be a happy day, and she's not here to share it with me. :o( Owroo!!
It was a nice day. We got some new clothes work for Paul, who really needed them. We went out for dinner to the Outback, since we can't go out tomorrow because of curia.
The weekend was less busy than we expected. Saturday we decided to stay home to save money, and we ended up having a really relaxing but productive day around the apartment. Sunday Paul was sick so we didn't go to the regional practice. He's going to be calling the doctor tomorrow to make an appointment to start figuring this out.
I'm behind on sewing. :o(
My neck is making progress. I have a strengthening plan to start when I get the last couple stupidly tight muscles down to a dull roar. I'm hoping for next week on that.
The apartment is too small to actually do a full swing of a sword except in *one* spot. My Foster-Knight will be coming to Milwaukee sometime, so hopefully he can come up with something useful I can do in the space I have. I do some empty-handed stuff in the women's lounge at work when I can snatch a moment in the by myself, but I really feel I need to hit a pell.
We may or may not go to Twelfth Night in Tree-Girt-Sea (one of the Chicago groups) this weekend. Money is an issue as are wellness and busyness. There's a regional fight practice Sunday and Paul is really hoping to go. Helmless, I can't fight, but I can do out-of-armour stuff like work on footwork and movement... and I can film Paul if we can get the video camera working. It's many years old now.
Other than that, the weekend will be sewing and cleaning. Whee!
It's official - I *hate* bronchitis. I'm not sure how much better I ought to be feeling, but at least I'm not coughing as much or as hard as I was. Still feeling sick is being compounded by the muscles in my neck. They're really tight and sore... from all the coughing etc I expect. The phrase screaming headache comes to mind.
I've been doing what I can to deal with it - heat, stretching, digging at the trigger points... we bought a mechanical massager yesterday and that seemed to help get the back of my neck to let go a bit. Now I'm working on the right SCM. I think this is largely attributable to the car accident I was in several years ago. My neck has been tight and weak since then. Time to deal with it again; better to be strong for fighting anyway.
Fight practice tonight. Out of armour, since I don't have a helm.
Good weekend, nasty drive home. Getting out of Milwaukee heading west always takes longer than I expect it to. Traffic from home to Madison is always slow. I don't know why. And coming home was terribly icy. The roads were *awful*. We spun out once but didn't go all the way off the road. There was traffic all around us but the timing worked such that no-one had to swerve to miss us. We ended up backwards with two wheels in the ditch, two still on the verge. Nerve wracking! But we're ok.
We got to Rusty and Sarah's at midnight, and basically went straight to bed. Saturday we went for breakfast (Perkins) and then to Tristan's. My helm top is almost entirely done (pics to follow), and we sorted out the design for the rest of it. I'll be picking it up at Twelfth Night in a couple weeks.
Rusty had a look at my technique for throwing shots, then we all did some movement exercises with Tristan. They looked at my current helm too, and declared it dead. Dead enough in fact that Rusty said to NOT fight till I have the new helm.
My foster-Knight gave me a non-fighting assignment and a shirt. The assignment, write a Petrarchan sonnet, is due to Rusty at WW. Subject up to me. The shirt was Rusty's, and is a checklist. All the items are already checked off, by Rusty for HIS Knight. It's my job to do them all and check them off again.
It says
I'm a: helmet polishing, armor fixing, shield carrying, pavilion pitching, sword making, duct tape wielding, knight dressing, fire starting, beer fetching, strap buckling, beer finding, book borrowing, feast serving, chess playing, period dancing, ice getting, errand running, water bearing, basket toting, dust eating, battle hungry, bruised, battered, still swinging, save my knight on the battlefield
SQUIRE
-over-
I also do: dog feeding, popsie saving, falling on top of, last minute stuff fetching, coffee getting, arrow blocking, trash talking, power walking.
Tonight, sort fabric and cut out Paul's new gambeson.
"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." (from "The Blues Brothers")
Whee! After work tonight, we're heading to Minneapolis for the weekend. Not Chicago. There wasn't a good quote for Minneapolis. The roads are clear and the XM is set up and installed (Paul rocks). The armour is in the car.
The plan so far: staying with Rusty and Sarah.
Saturday day will be out-of-armour slow work and other fighting stuff with Rusty, probably in his garage, 20 degrees F being too cold to fight outside; go to Tristan and Eleanor's to fit my new helm and get advice on putting my gauntlets together; do fighting stuff out-of-armour with Tris, probably in his garage, 20 degrees F still being too cold to fight outside; maybe learn silk painting from Eleanor, otherwise take her class the day after Twelfth Night.
Saturday evening will consist of lolling about socializing and bonding with my Foster-Knight :o) , possibly going out to eat or staying in and watching the Jets game on TV (Rusty is a BIG fan), may involve consumption of alcoholic fluids.
Sunday morning up and go.
I'm looking forward to this. :o)
Yesterday afternoon I got "talked to" about my attendance at work. I know I missed a lot of time in December and November, first for the diverticulosis/itis, then the bronchitis. My probationary period was over December 16th, and apparently Raye and Phyllis met just before that and debated about firing me or not. Raye made the decision to keep me due to my "excellent customer service skills". But I can't afford to take any more sick time till after I've been here a year (August 16, 2005)... there's a law that protects employees after a year, so that they can't be fired for missing work for illness.
Humph. It's not like I was sitting at home for fun, feeling fine, just not going to work on a whim or something.
Conspiracy theorists might think it was the nearly completed blog entry I was working on that caused this entire building to black out yesterday morning. I spent the rest of the day trying to get my imaging system back up and running (thank you Matt the tech guy on 9), so I didn't have time to write it again.
We went to the doctor's Tuesday night. We waiting briefly, then he walked in. His first words were, "Prednisone and albuterol." Not "Hello," or "Hi, how are you?". I said "No, thank you" and he replied, "That was someone else coughing?" We went through the exam etc and the verdit was bronchitis... so, prednisone and albuterol. :o) Now that my brain is working again, I think that's pretty funny.
Fight practices resume shortly. How will I fight if I can't breathe? Humph. But I'm seeing Dr. Urlakis tonight. I'm hoping he'll wave his magic wand and *poof* I'll be better. Realistically, I expect some sort of medication, possibly an inhaler, for bronchitis. But god, I hope I can sleep tonight.
I figure all this recent illness has been due to all the stress I was under, now unwinding. But I'm not sure how to deal with *that*, or even if there's something more to deal with. I'll be thinking about that, once my brain functions again.
This coming weekend we're heading to Minneapolis to visit my foster-knight. We'll be visiting with Rusty (Sir Aaron) and Sarah, and I'll be having a lesson. We're also going over to Tristan and Eleanor's to fit my new helm, and Paul will have a lesson *there*, AND we may learn silk painting (banners!).
I have sewing to do... Paul's gambeson is first on the list.
Whee!