I know, more or less, what happens when I stop feeling like Caitlyn and lose interest in making caps and playing at D+X. But I'm not sure why I lost interest in posting here. I mean since I made this into 'Calvins Musings' and started posting more personal things, this has more or less become my journal. My diary. I don't post daily as that just wouldn't make sense. I'm not one of those people that post a photo of every meal to instagram or post everything funny I see to facebook.
But I DO get something out of putting up ideas here and working through them. Even if I'm just working through whether to buy an iPad, or getting excited about another trip.
Anywho... I don't know why I stopped having interest in posting here. It's not as though nothing happened, and it's not as though I haven't struggled to get my thoughts together on certain subjects. So I'm not exactly going to go through everything that's happened to me in the five months since I posted. But I will catch up on some things that were in motion and mention a few things that have come up since. If I want to go into any real detail about things (I might with the whole car thing), I'll make another post later for that.
OK.. so to update things:
The Surface Pro.
Yeah, that was just a horrible buying decision. It was an incredibly powerful piece of equipment and it could do just about any task I ever thought to throw at it. The problem is that there was a price to pay for all that power and I'm not just talking about the money. It's big... sure 12.3 inches might not seem that big and it's not when you're setting it up like a laptop, but I mainly used it in tablet form. They keyboard cover was more or less just for a dust cover. It also was fairly heavy. Again, not in the sense of carrying it around, but in the sense of holding it up to view facebook for a couple hours while unwinding and watching television. It left dents in my hands.
But there IS the cost issue. It's not like I want to toss it aside just because I made a mistake. So I kept using it until late last month. At that point I finally decided that it was a $1500 mistake that I'd had enough of. I still own it, but it's in a case and sitting atop my closet. If I ever need it I'll grab it, but between my desktop that's more powerful and my new tablet which is more mobile I can't imagine a niche where it will be needed. And no one I know is looking to buy one at the steeply discounted price I've been offering it at.
I ended up buying an iPad. Dee.... stop making that face. The windows interface is nice, but it's just not great for a tablet. I had troubles with the on screen keyboard not always working or not always popping up. I had trouble hitting some of the small buttons like the minimize button as opposed to the close button on various windows. I even had trouble using chrome as a browser because it was tough to hit the 'back' button! So any windows tablet was out. That leave iOS and Android.
Now I LOVE Android. I'll never slip to an iPhone... at least I don't ever see that happening. But I've had an android tablet before (back when Android Honeycomb was new) and while android works perfectly on even a big phone... it just doesn't work well with the tablet format. Many of the apps don't look good on a bigger screen and a lot of them force it to be vertical like a phone. And to be honest, I haven't heard a lot that says any of that has changed.
So that leave the best selling and the best reviewed tablet out there. An iPad. I did go a little conservative on the cash side as my initial thought was to buy the new iPad Pro 9.7. But in the configuration I wanted it would cost about $800. Instead I went with the iPad Air 2 for just under $500.
And its.... ok. I shouldn't expect fast as this thing came out in 2014, but it's a little slower than I thought it should be. Plus I've done as much as I can to 'Googlefy' the damned thing. It feels good in the hand, is light but not cheap feeling, and can check my email, use facebook, and read my kindle magazines with ease. And that battery life! Superb!
The Roku
On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Roku has to be one of my best purchases in AGES! I'm using it more and more and more, and if I didn't share the television access with others, I'd drop cable television in an instant.
The Monitor
I'm still in love with this monitor. The only disappointment is seeing just how few things actually take advantage of the screen space appropriately. I play Overwatch and it's in a 16x9 area with big black bars on the side. I watch videos on Google Play and it's displayed in a 16x9 area with big black bars on the side... even movies shown in 21:9, so those have black bars above and below. Grr. But it's gorgeous and I use the space myself in ever day situations enough to warrant keeping it.
The Job
Yup, still working in the prison reception center. The summer was hell for the most basic of reasons... the air conditioning broke and they didn't get it fixed until September. The actual nursing clinic where I spent most of my time is in the very middle of the building. It's so far away from windows and outside doors that when the power goes out it's pitch black. So the only air moving around when the AC is down is either warm moist air from the outside or via fans. At one point the nursing clinic was 98 degrees Fahrenheit. When the units the prisoners stay in reach 95 degrees it's considered a heat emergency. And the Inspector's office that's in the same building (The Inspector is a big deal... bigger than the Deputy Warden and just under the Warden himself) once reached 105 degrees.
So that was hell.
I'm so disappointed with this job. I'll go into it much later but the gist is simple... I don't like the job but the benefits compared to a different facility and compared to a hospital are just to great to leave it behind. So I'm keeping the job with no hope of ever liking it.
Our nursing supervisor got a forced promotion to a Health Unit Manager (HUM for short) at a different facility. I heard that without even throwing my hat into the ring, I was considered for her replacement, but they ended up going with another nurse. She's been at that facility for over a year where I've only been there (at that point) for 7 months. I probably should have jumped at it as the nurse they tagged just isn't that good at being a supervisor. She's a fine nurse... just not a good nurse manager. I, on the other hand, would be a good nurse manager. At least I think so and have been told by many people whose opinions I respect.
There was a riot at another facility about a month back and our facility ended up with about 80 of the inmates that instigated it. They were considered 'Segregation' or 'Seg' inmates, meaning they could not leave their cell unless it's a medical necessity. So we had to deliver all of their meals, all of their meds, and even check up on them all medically once a day. That was a nightmare. It took about an hour to do the med pass, and about 2 hours to do the medical checkup. It has meant a LOT of overtime.
At the same time we seemed to have gotten a lot more inmates that need to use the restricted medline... and it's almost always running late. So there's more overtime there. Remember... I don't want overtime. So this has been another page in the hell diary. We are back down to only two nurses on my shift... technically we have three but one of my co-workers is out with pneumonia for the past week. I'm hoping she'll be back at full strength starting on Monday. The other nurse we had on our shift has been moved to an earlier shift.. and she's hating it. Thankfully the nurse that's been on maternity leave since February is coming back in a week or so, so maybe we'll get the fourth team member back!
I'm starting to wear myself out, so I'm going to hit just a few subjects really quickly.
The Election
Fuck Trump. I'd vote for a potato over him. Secretary Clinton isn't the best candidate I've ever seen, but she's not bad in my book especially since the biggest dig against her is all the controversies she's in... and those are only controversies because the republican's won't let it go. 8 congressional investigations and one by the FBI, all with no conviction!? That's not corruption, it's fucking innocence!
Today (for when I look back at this years later) was the day that the video/audio dropped of Trump being himself... saying he tried to fuck a married woman and didn't get it done, how he loved groping and kissing women and because he was a star they just let him do it, and how he'd grab them "by the pussy".
Yeah... I'm actually surprised that this is as big of a deal as it is being made out to be. This is the same guy who said he'd date his own daughter. Is anybody surprised that he said these awful things back in 2005?
The Depression
Yeah, it's gone. I'll probably stay on my wellbutrin for the rest of my life unless the depression comes back harder or they find out that it slowly kills people. And even then, it depends on just HOW slowly it kills people!
The Health
I feel ridiculous with how many meds I'm on. But then again it's almost all about the diabetes. Because of the diabetes I should be on something for cholesterol... I fought that until my cholesterol numbers went to hell. And going on the cholesterol med generally kicks up your blood pressure which is a big no-no for diabetics like me... so now I'm on a blood pressure pill. It was lisinopril, but that gave me the cough (a known side effect for a lot of people) so now I'm on cozar. Oh, and I"m on Lipitor for the cholesterol. I also take fish oil for my cholesterol, and the wellbutrin in addition to the actual diabetes medication, metformin.
And my A1C is still rising... so I'm probably going to go on another diabetic medication later this month.
The other health issue was getting my wisdom teeth out. It has taken me almost 2 years of brow beating by my dentist to agree to getting them removed... and I ended up agreeing only because one of the exposed wisdom teeth more or less broke in half! Since it took me this long, I figured I should just get it done with one operation. Go under the semi anesthesia so that at the very least I wouldn't remember it. That way even if the recovery was bad, I wouldn't have to go through it again.
Yeah... that sucked. The pain was far worse than I feared it would be (and I had an expectation of a lot of pain!!) and then I got dry socket in the two lower sockets. If you've never had dry socket, it's a debilitating pain. I left work with it the first time and called the dental surgeon up to get some relief. The relief surprisingly comes from a bit of more or less ribbon soaked in several medicines and clove oil. Yes... clove oil. With that in one socket everything tasted like cloves. Clove cigarettes, clove sandwiches, clove soda.... fucking clove toothpaste!
That was bad with just one socket... but eventually the dry socket ended up in both sides and he had to put that clove oil shit in both sides. And having that taste drip down my throat was completely and totally nauseating the first day. I couldn't work because of the cure to the pain that was keeping me from working.
Yeah... it sucked all the way around.
I'm thankfully over the worst of it. On some days I do still get some pain, but it's manageable with normal doses of ibuprofen. Really nothing more than I take for my headaches. The worst thing I'm experiencing now is food getting caught down in the sockets, and that will probably take a few months to stop happening.
Trips
I had a blast in Detroit and Kalamazoo (a smallish town in Michigan) and visited with my buddy E in Chicago (he's the one I lived with in Chicago years ago). I was suppose to meet him there this weekend (they reason I have Friday and Monday off in addition to the weekend), but he got called back to work in San Francisco.
I'm planning another driving trip down to Dallas in December. But this time my buddy who I'm going to visit may fly up here and then drive down with me! That should be a blast and we should be able to make it in one go instead of staying in a hotel... but then again we may stay in a hotel anyway!
Car
I still have Ginger, my 2015 Ford Fusion Hybrid Titanium. But I'm giving serious thought into trading her in. It's not that I don't like it, but at the minimum I can trade her out for a newer model year on a 3 year lease and save about $200 a month. I just have to wait long enough to pay down Ginger so that her value is at or above the amount I owe on her (right now I owe $7000 MORE than she's worth). In February/March I should get both my tax returns and my bonus (I've been there a year now bitches!!!) and that will probably pay it down enough.
I'm all over the place in what to get instead. From spending about the same amount of money on a more expensive car (Mustang, Camaro), to getting a very similar car (Fusion Sport, regular gas Fusion Platinum...) and save a couple hundred a month, or get back into a small car (Focus, the new Cruze hatchback...) and save about $300 a month.
Seriously, I change my mind day to day and go through variation after variation. A yellow Mustang GT, A blue Mustang Ecotec, A six cylindar Camaro with the performance exhaust, A Camaro SS, A candy blue Focus Titanium, an orange Cruze Premium hatchback, a Blue Fusion Sport, a Champagne colored Fusion Platinum AWD.....
It's something that I'll go into more depth about for sure, but that's another whole post on it's own. Every car I've listed would make me happy in an entirely different way.
So hopefully I won't go another few months between posts. I'd still like to talk about the Nursing Advisory Committee I'm now on, getting more and more shoved on my plate at work, training a new nurse that I thought was fine only to have her more or less fired, Michigan Football, a new Pixel Phone, and so much more that's going through my head. But for now... Ta TA!
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