Update April 14, 2025

No real reason to update other than it's been about two weeks.  

Seriously, I just want to keep this updated every other week or so.  I don't have anything major to report, but I figure if I can keep these regular, I won't have big long huge posts that take me hours to write.  Instead, I'll just have little updates here and there.  

Migraine
I'm having continued improvement. Since the last update I've had a single three day migraine.  Mild.  Only one day was a day that I couldn't have worked through.  And while it feels strange to think this, let alone say it out loud, it doesn't feel like a pipe dream to believe I'll get through April without another non working migraine day.  I feel SO good right now!  

Mental Health
I'm in a continued good/blah mood.  I can even look at the 'blah' feeling as a good thing.  I get to see NP M this week and it should be a good visit.  I saw my therapist last week and even though I had a migraine that morning, it was a good visit.  

  

Physical Health
Still struggling with the difference in sleeping.  This past Saturday night I went to sleep around 10 PM.  While I was certainly a little tired, the main reason I went to sleep (and the main reason I go to sleep most nights) is that I'm bored and getting to the morning seems like a good idea.  So, I go to sleep. I wake up at 4:30 with the sudden urge to use the bathroom.  I'd been constipated the past few days and had taken a stool softener so that wasn't a big surprise. My normal reaction would be to stay in bed and just hold it in, but knowing that the urge was medically induced made me not tempt fate and get into the bathroom.  I got back into bed at 4:45 with no urge to stay awake.  Just too early.  I then woke up at 4:59.  Damn it.  It took me a bit, but I was able to get back to sleep.  When I woke up at 6:14, I was ready to get up, but I fell back asleep before I was able to get out of bed.  I woke up again at 8:05, hearing mom move into the living room and turn the TV on, and realized I'd slept in enough and it was time to get up.  And promptly fell back asleep. My morning med alarm woke me up at 9:10 so I had to grab my phone and turn it off.  I fell asleep holding my phone to my chest.  I kind of shook myself back awake a few minutes later (I've always had the unfounded nightmare of falling asleep holding my phone and losing it in the bed/sheets/blanket/mattress), and put the phone away so that I could promptly fall back asleep.  I woke up again at just before 11 AM as I heard my brother R walking outside and getting into his car.  It struck me that he doesn't often leave the house that early and that Mom had talked about having a Sam's Club order to pick up this morning but I hadn't seen one when I went to bed the night before.  That got me curious enough to pull my phone down and see that the order was not only in, but currently ready to pick up.  

That was the only reason I got out of bed as I could have easily, and I mean EASILY gone back to sleep.  So, I slept for 12 hours, minus a bit for the bathroom usage around 4:30 AM.  If it wasn't for feeling bad about sleeping through my chore of going to pick up the shopping order, I would have slept longer.  

It bothered me enough that this morning when I woke up at 5:30 AM, I made myself get up and get out of bed.  I certainly felt that I could have continued to sleep but I didn't want to sleep for another 12 hours.  Why?  Why is this happening?  Why why why why why why?

Another mildly annoying thing, my plantar fasciitis and my slipper usage.  I believe I'd mentioned that a few months back, after puking into my old slippers, I got my hands on some nice slippers.  Some Uggs that cost well over $100.  Petty?  Yes.  Do I love them?  Yes.  BUT... I keep getting that pain in my right heel.  That plantar fasciitis pain.  I mean, damn it, the whole reason I'm constantly wearing slippers, the reason I can justify spending over $100 on slippers, is to AVOID that pain.  

I guess I need to try the cheaper other slippers I found and see if it goes away.  If it does, I need to just accept that I'm a cheap slipper kind of guy.  

Finances
So, I saw my neurologist on April 8th and had them fax in the paperwork saying I'm still disabled and that should extend my long term disability.  Not trusting them to continue working on this in any type of reasonable time frame, I of course messaged them online asking if they received the paperwork.  I got an answer on the 9th saying they received the fax and it would be reviewed in 1 to 2 business days.  It's now on the 3rd business day and of course it has NOT been reviewed.  I'm almost sure they're going to wait until the 20th, the arbitrary date they've set for me to get the paperwork in even though I already have the paperwork in and have indicated that it's all the paperwork I'm going to send in.  

Fine.  

Another annoying feature of changing health insurance came up the other day.  It required a little setup: A couple years ago, just after I quit working, my neurologist wrote me a prescription for Emgality, a once monthly injection that would help with my migraines.  It took two months for them to say that they wouldn't cover Emgality as it wasn't on their formulary (a list of drugs that they'll pay for), that they'd cover Ajovy instead, but that their chosen pharmacy would NOT cover it so I'd have to use a different pharmacy.  This was through my Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance that I had as a state employee.   So for the past 2 years I've been injecting Ajovy into my belly every month.  

Fast forward to last month when my state employee insurance ran out (COBRA would no longer extend it) and I had to get new private insurance through the marketplace.  It just so happens that the best plan for me was the Blue Cross Blue Shield Gold Extra plan.  It was the most similar to the state employee plan.  It cost a little less per month but also cost a little more in co-pays and deductibles.  

Even though it's the same company, it's a new plan so all of my medications that required pre approvals will require them again.  I jumped on the first two, Qulipta and Ajovy, as Dr. C had given me samples for those to get me by.  The Qulipta finally got approved and I'll be getting a months worth of that this week.  The pharmacy that handles the Ajovy was already working on the new pre-approval (I swear, I don't know how they got my new insurance, but whatever).  I got a call from them the other day... Evidently Blue Cross Blue Shield denied covering Ajovy.  It is not on their formulary.  Instead, they'd like my neurologist to write a new prescripton for... Emgality.  

MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!

And to make all this worse, I HAVE a dose of Ajovy that I'll use (I simply won't waste a dose of medicine that costs $1600!).  That will be my May dose.  I'll get a June dose.  I'm hoping that in July, I'll start working as a state employee again and.... will likely have to have my neurologist write another prescription for Ajovy as this version of Blue Cross Blue Shield won't cover the Emgality any longer.  

Family/Friends
I got with A & E and we have set the tentative dates of June 6 through June 9th to meet up in Dallas.  I'll be driving down and E will be flying in from San Fran where he has to have some meetings for work.  After the four days E and I will drive down to his new place in Austin where we'll hang out for longer.  I'm hoping A will be able to join us as well so that we'll have family time with A's wife and kids, plus just some time with A & E.   

I'm also hopeful that I'll have only had one non working migraine days in April and May and will be looking to apply for jobs in June.  I might even be doing an interview over the phone while on vacation!

Entertainment
I finished the whole Yellowstone/1883/1923 saga.  It's certainly worth watching and I look forward to the story progressing further in future shows.  I found out that the same guy that wrote Yellowstone started his career by writing the movie Sicario.  GREAT movie.  He followed it up by writing Hell or High Water and the sequel to Sicario, Day of the Soldado.  Both great movies.  He also produced the movie Finestkind, a really good movie.  

For television he's written, created, and/or produced Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, The Last Cowboy (I haven't watched this one), Mayer of Kingstone (heard good things about this one), Tulsa King (loved the first season and am waiting to watch the second season), Lioness (am waiting to watch as I've heard nothing but good things about it), and Landman (heard nothing but good things about it).  

So, if you haven't heard of Taylor Sheridan, you might want to put him on your list to watch out for.  He seems to have a Midas touch.  

New Tech
Nothing new here, but I'm looking at new phones.  I'd love to wait for the next Google foldable phone (I'm assuming it will be something like the Google Pixel Pro 10 Fold).  It should come out in August.  But the problem is that my phone is getting more than a little wonky.  And not in an insignificant or merely annoying way.  My phone is the connection to my continuous glucose monitor.  I check it several times a day to see what my blood sugar is and it should be recording it constantly so that my endocrinologist can see what my trend is.  Well, it seems to be losing connection to my CGM on a regular basis.  As in the software just crashes when it tries to connect.  I have to go so far as to restart the phone to fix it. 

It will also do the same thing for the shopping apps we use for our groceries.  Meijer, Kroger, and Sam's Club.  That one is just annoying to have to restart the phone when I drive up to get the groceries.  

Now, as the new foldable is probably coming out in August, it would be pretty stupid to buy the current foldable for $1700 in April.  Especially as I still have two monthly payments due on my current foldable.  I thought about just getting a cheap replacement that would serve me for a few months while I wait for the new foldable.  But they just released the Pixel 9a and it's going for $499 (I don't get any discounts on phones until my current one is paid off). As they JUST released the 9a, the 8a, last years cheap phone, is still going for $499 as well.  $400 is about the price I'd start to consider.  $200 would be an easy choice. And no, I'm not going to go for other phones that DO go for $200.  I insist up on staying with Google.  

So, for now unless my current folding phone gets worse, I'll stay with it.  

Writing
I'm going to take another stab at writing today.  I looked at how my writing has gone over the past few months and I'm afraid that my downturn can almost certainly be tied to my medications.  

I was writing Gamer Gurl pretty steadily through September of 2024.  I then took a two month break.  In November I picked it back up and wrote again, but it was far more hesitantly.  The breaks between writing spurts got longer and longer until it just stopped in late January.  It's now two and a half months later.  

During that same time period I have made no caps.  I only wrote a hand full of tumblr posts in that time frame and none this year at all.  And that's the same time that I've had trouble masturbating. The desire is there... it's just not strong enough to break through and is leaving me frustrated.  I guess the same is true of writing and creating.... the desire is there, it's just not strong enough.  

Michigan Football
Nothing new football wise.  Still looking forward to the new season.  

Computer Issues
The Apple Music issue is almost completely taken care of.  It's now rare for it to lock up on a song.  The background/wallpaper issue hasn't come back and is fine.  I'm fairly sure it will come back soon enough as I'm getting close to wanting new images for my wallpapers and of course it will come back at that time. 

BUT, I have a new issue.  And it's more than a little frustrating.  Chrome seems to be lagging.  

I've explained my system before.  There is NO reason it should be slow.  Yes, it's over a year and a half old now.  Yes, it's a generation behind in both processor and video card.  But the new processors aren't faster.  My Intel Core 14900k is still faster than the newer Intel Core Ultra 9 285K.  And while the newer Nvidia 5900 IS faster than my older Nvidia 4900, it's just barely faster.  I have the fastest Intel CPU and the 2nd fastest Nvidia GPU. I have 64 Gigs of RAM which is 32 more than most 'fast' systems and my SSDs might not be Gen 5 fast, they're still some of the fastest PCIe Gen 4 drives out there.  

All that's said to lay out that there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that my system should lag in anything I want it to do.  At least not lagging without a problem.  And yet... it lags.  It lags HARD.  In Chrome.  CHROME! 

Yes, Chrome is memory intensive.  But I'm not exactly a power user.  I might have two chrome windows open with two or three tabs open in each.  But when I say lag, I mean LAG.  As I'm typing right now, the letters are appearing on the screen about a full second AFTER I type them.  If that sounds fast to you, open up note pad or some other place you can type and start typing.  I guarantee its not a full second between you hitting a key and the letter/number appearing on the screen.  

It's not just typing.  When I move the mouse around, it won't change from the pointer to the clicking icon for a second or two, even when hovering over a hyperlink.  When I click on or hover over a dropt down menu, it takes a second or two to drop down.  When I click on a video to start playing, it takes several seconds (10?) to start.  When I click a video to go into full screen mode, it takes several long seconds and does it so choppily that I can see the screen drawing itself over two or three times, all the while I can hear the video continuing to 'play'.  It's so bad that when I'm watching a full screen video and click the mouse button to pause it, it takes so long to pause that I assume I didn't click it hard enough and click it again.  I did click it hard enough, it was just moving slow.  It pauses... then starts back up as I clicked it twice.  

Sadly, Chrome is primarily what I'm using my computer for.  Even though I'm feeling better, I still don't play games on the computer.  It's like I have this Ferrari sports car and basically use it to drive up and down my driveway.  And while I'm sure it could top 200mph on the track, it's stalling in the driveway.  

Most days I have Chrome, Apple Music, my VPN (Mullvad VPN), and Discord running.  I'll occasionally open Excel (my migraine/bp journals), Word (my worry journal), or Photoshop (fucking around with an image).  They all run just fine.  I don't ever notice Discord screwing up or slowing down or hesitating.  Apple Music does... but Apple Music is a piece of shit software.  And yes, I've tried running without Apple Music (playing music through my phone or my Google Nest instead) and it didn't fix it.  

It's just Chrome. 

And Chrome is about all I'm using now.  

I finally decided to start really investigating the slowdown a few days ago.  First thing I did was uninstall all of my old unused extensions.  It turns out I had a ton of old extensions for when I had a 21:9 monitor, trying to force videos to take up the full screen size.  I had a few others that I'd installed but barely used, but uninstalling them didn't fix anything.  The only extensions I have now are my password manager, Adobe Acrobat, and my Adblocker.  

A couple days ago I figured I'd find out if there was some underlying problem slowing the whole system down that was only showing up in Chrome.  So I ranseveral benchmarks that would push the CPU, the RAM, and the GPU.  I then compared them to the same benchmarks I ran a couple years ago when the system was brand new.  They were all a little slower, BUT I've also installed several BIOS updates that were specifically designed to slow the 14900k processor down as it had a habit of burning itself up.  They weren't even down by 10%, so that seemed to fit what the BIOS updates should have done.  The GPU scores were actually better than before, which tracks when you consider that includes a couple years worth of driver updates.  

So, it wasn't the extensions and it's not a hardware issue.  

I think the next step is to uninstall Chrome and then reinstall it.  I don't expect that to work, but it might. Next, if that doesn't do anything, I can try taking out ALL of the extensions to see if one of them is fucking things up.  And finally, if none of that works, I can try a different browser to see if maybe it's an internet issue. 

I hate having to put effort into this.  I'll update you when I find out more.