I'll have a whole post on the new car coming up later today or tomorrow. This is just catching everything else up.
Migraine
It's been awhile since I've been able to write this. I haven't had a migraine since I wrote the last update. I'm currently on day 15 of this non-migraine spree. One more day and I tie my recent record. One more and I make a new record. At this point, I'll have the fewest migraine days in a month for more than two years. Even if I got a migraine tomorrow (knock on wood) and kept it for the remaining 4 days, that would be 8 days this month. February was my record holder at only 9 migraine days in it's diminutive 28 days. Of course the big test is non-working migraine days. If I can go four more days without one of those, then I'm golden for April and only need to go through May with no more than one non-working migraine day.
So, all's good on the migraine front.
Mental Health
Mood is good. Pretty elevated right now because of the new car, although I'm getting into the 'post happiness' blues. I mean, it's a beautiful thing but it's still just a thing. Having the new car doesn't change my life in any significant way. It's great, she's beautiful, she's techy, she's powerful... but there's a good sense of 'meh' to go along with it.
I saw NP M for our follow up visit. She apologized for not getting back with me for a different treatment regarding my muscle tremors (reminder, I started having muscle tremors after my mental health meds changed around (either the paxil or the increased dose of welbutrin). I dropped Depakote and no change. I started cogentin and no change. I upped the dose on cogentin and no change except for urinary retention, incredibly bad dry mouth, and dry eyes. We stopped the cogentin as the side effects were bad and there was no relief in the muscle tremors. Oddly, after stopping the cogentin, the dry eyes went away, the dry mouth reduced but didn't fully go away, the urinary retention stayed (but might be my old problem that was only 'solved' by the flowmax for a few weeks), and strangest of all... the muscle tremors subsided quite a bit. Not entirely as I can still feel them, especially in my trunk and my legs. But my hands are mostly steady now. Weird. As the main problem went away, we decided to not try anything further. So now I have a follow up visit with NP M on late June just so I can see her before reporting back to work (still hopefully going with the plan of no more than one non-working migraine day in May, apply in June, start in July!).
Physical Health
Sleeping has gotten better. I think I've only taken a couple naps since the last update post and haven't overslept. In fact, this past week while I was so excited/worried/anxious about the new car, I woke up early most days and then was tired in the afternoon/evening but didn't sleep/nap. I just went to bed around 10:00 pm.
On Thursday I woke up at 5:45 AM with a very significant nausea. I had an alarm set for 6 AM because I had my therapy appointment that morning and was hoping to go buy the new car, but I woke up just... man I thought I was going to puke! I got up, used the bathroom, got my coffee, came back to my room, took a sip, and then my stomach started in again. This time I didn't want to risk it as it felt serious, so I walked into the bathroom. I barely got to the toilet in time to lift the lid and start heaving. I hadn't ate much the day before so there wasn't much to bring up. A little of the coffee and mainly bile.
I used to be a bad vomiter. I'd struggle against it making all the muscles in my abdomen hurt. Making the muscles in my chest hurt. Popping blood vessels in my face. Making my throat just scream with pain. I mean, it was bad. Lately, especially with my GERD episodes, I've learned not to struggle. It's going to come up whether I want it to or not, so I just do everything I can to help. It's not like I'm putting my finger down my throat 'to help' but I'm not pushing against the vomit making me hurl over and over and over before it even gets to my throat. I'm not struggling against it there making it boil in my throat before finally spewing out of my mouth in a near scream, splaying out everywhere.
So, most of the time I vomit and I feel okay afterward. Sure, my throat is still a little sore, but that's about it. But evidently while I was vomiting this time, I jerked my head forward suddenly and I pulled a muscle in my neck. Yes, I hurt myself vomiting. And that pain is now on day three. As in it's giving me a headache style pain. I can turn my neck and I'm fairly positive it's just musculoskeletal, but still... ow. I'll just have to monitor it. Speaking of which, I'm gonna take some tylenol and motrin before tackling the finance category.
Finances
Okay, I had my meds, I had a snack, and then promptly had a three hour nap!
Anyway, my finances haven't really changed. The long term disability is approved through the middle of June. I plan on being approved to return to work before then, but I'll have them write it to be 'approved to return' as of June 15th. Get all the money out of them that I can. Fuck you money.
I'll talk more about it when I talk about the new car, but I'm entering financial concerns that I haven't been in awhile. I spent all of my savings paying off Layla and then putting a good down payment on the new car, so I have HUNDREDS saved away now instead of THOUSANDS.
Oh, I should mention this. I got an email saying that my health insurance payment was due. I could have sworn that I'd set up automatic payments, but when I went to the website no payment had gone through. I even checked my credit union and they had no record of a payment. So, not wanting to be late on a health insurance payment, I went ahead and paid. The next day I got the notice that my automatic payment went through. Yup, they took the seven hundred plus dollar payment TWICE. Fuckers.
Family/Friends
My brother R has been painting the dining room. This is at Mom's urging, but it's still frustrating. I mean, why not finish the fucking bathroom that's been in pieces for almost two years now? Pick out some wall tile, tear off the old stuff, and put up new. Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeazy! But nope, instead he sanded and dry walled and primed and painted the walls in the dining room. He's almost done but needs to cut in the ceiling, replace the bathroom door trim, and put up a six inch wallpaper border (it's actually nice looking and not as tacky as it sounds).
Maybe then he'll get to the bathroom.
One thing about A & E and I is that we all like good scotch. None of like bad or even average scotch. When E was at his best (or worst, depending on how you look at regular drinking), he got me a 15 year old scotch called Highland Park. It goes for about $150 a bottle. It's a single malt and I used it to celebrate graduating nursing school and then celebrating getting my first nursing job. It was SMOOOOOOOTH! And oh so tasty.
I've been behind on getting my best friends a good bottle of scotch whisky. As we're seeing each other in June, I decided that I was going to bring down something special. Now, especially for E, this isn't easy. Single malts are notoriously different from each other. He might love a 12 year old Glenlivet but not care for the 21 year old one. Now with blended malts, they're far more easy to buy. We were all into watching The West Wing at the same time (trust me, it's relevant). There's a great episode when Leo McGary talks about the night he got drunk (he's an alcoholic and it was bad) with some big donors. This was while they were running for office. As the guy uncorks the bottle he says "Ever try this Leo? It's Johnnie Walker Blue. Bartenders are selling for thirty bucks a shot." Leo, as he's describing this years and years later to a lawyer, says "Good scotch sits in a charcoal barrel for twelve years. Very good scotch gets smoked for twenty nine years. Johnnie Walker Blue is sixty year old Scotch." That episode was from 2001 and Johnnie Walker Blue Label had only been out for nine years. But it was already considered the best blended malt scotch whisky in the world. As for being sixty year old scotch.... well, it's a blended scotch. So SOME of it might have been aged sixty years. Johnnie Walker only says that "1 in 10,000 casks of whisky are considered good enough to warrant the Blue Label." They even bought and shut down several distilleries so that they could continue to make particular malts just for the Blue Label.
Anyway, it's a scene we've always liked. And ever since watching it, we wanted to try Johnnie Walker Blue Label. I'd bet good money that E has already tried it. But I don't think A has and I know that I haven't. And there's good reason for it. It sells for over $200 a bottle. In comparison, Johnnie Walker Red Label, the worlds most sold scotch, goes for about $25. Is Blue eight times better than Red? I don't know, but A, E, and I are going to find out.
I don't mean to gush, but... damn. The damned bottle comes in a box. And like Apple products, its not a cheap box. The bottles themselves are individually numbered!!!
Entertainment
After the whole Yellowstone saga, I wanted to stay in the 'real' world and not return to sci-fi or fantasy. So, since I had Peacock I started watching Mr. Mercedes. I'd wanted to watch this ever since it came out. It's based on a trilogy of books from Stephen King. It stars Brendan Gleeson and he's really good in it. Unfortunately the series was made by David Kelly (The Practice, L.A. Law, Ally McBeal, Boston Legal, Chicago Hope, Picket Fences, Doogie Howser M.D.). I don't know about you, but I don't think of those types of David Kelly shows when I think of Stephen King. It's... bad. I'm not gonna sugar coat it. Even as a Stephen King fan, I'm finding it difficult to get through. I'm on the third season but I feel no strong desire to finish it other than to say that I did.
New Tech
Well, there's the car, but that's another whole post. So, nothing new here.
Writing
This is another subject that I'm going to cover in more detail. I think I've figured out why it's more and more difficult to write, but it's deep enough that I shouldn't just try and put a short version here. Keep a look out for it as I don't know when I'm going to knuckle down and write it. It's... it's quite personal.
Michigan Football
The NFL draft started this past Thursday. Three Michigan players went in the top 15 of the first round. They had seven players overall drafted. Sadly the Don (Donovan Edwards wasn't drafted).
It's the slow season for college football, so there isn't much else going on.
Computer Issues
Last time I was talking about the random slowness of Google Chrome. I did the uninstall/re-install and that didn't fix it. I tried using MS Edge and it ran fine (well... it ran like Edge, but it wasn't slowed down like Chrome was). Finally I took out the last four Chrome extensions. That fixed it.
FUCK. That sucks because I use all of those extensions. After a day making sure it wasn't going to start slowing down I started installing the extensions one by one. The first one back was my password manager and it ran fine. The next day I installed my ad blocker and again, it ran fine. The next day I installed the Microsoft Editor. I honestly thought this would be the one as it reads everything on the screen that you type and not only spell checks it, but looks for grammatical and other writing errors. I use it a lot. But after a day... it runs fine.
That left Adobe Acrobat. I realized, something that Adobe Acrobat does is 'look' at everything and start making it into PDFs for you. Even when you don't ask. Its so that it can move faster when you DO ask. I imagine that's what the problem was. Maybe Adobe fixed it or maybe they'll fix it soon. Either way, I don't need it that bad. It was nice to be able to edit PDFs in the web browser, but I honestly barely used it. Hell, I barely edit PDFs at all. So, I didn't even bother reinstalling it and Chrome has continued to run fine.
Apple Music continues to be buggy. I still occasionally find song or two that needs to have the download removed and then redownloaded. Annoying but not all that bad. But something new has cropped up. Like the song re-downloads, it's annoying but not all that bad. I minimize the main Apple Music window and leave the mini player (along with its 'Playing Next' que up. But occasionally, when I want to change playlists, search out new songs in the store, or remove a song from download and re-download it, I have to go back to the main window. But when I hover my pointer to the task bar, go to the apple music icon, then move up to the main window and click on it... nothing. I have to alt-tab over to that window to bring it back up.
I honestly wish there was a better alternative to Apple Music, but I've been invested into this walled garden for going on 23 years now. I've tried Spotify and YouTube Music and they both have fatal flaws. Google Music was good enough but Thanks Google, they killed it.
Finally, something that's come up in the last few days. I don't know if this will be ongoing or not as it's only happened... three times? But Chrome has crashed hard. It takes out all of the open windows and tabs. When I open it again, it realizes it crashed (that it was a bad boy) and offers to restore the pages. So, not as bad as it could be, but still damned peculiar and annoying.
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