Update May 24, 2025

Waiting, waiting, waiting. 

Between the meds which tamp down my anxiety, and the worry exercises which help me stop endlessly worrying about something that I can't do anything about, I'm actually quite calm even though I'm on the very bleeding edge of returning to a normal life.  And quite close to what looks to be a fun vacation.  But, time still passes while I'm waiting, so an update seems in order.  

Migraine
I'm still cruising without a migraine.  The last one was on the 29th and it was both mild and wouldn't have prevented me from working.  That makes today day 25 without a migraine.  42 out of the last 43 days without a migraine.    I have seven more days to get through without a migraine severe enough to prevent work in order to call myself well enough to return to work.  I should clear that milestone before I post another update.  

Mental Health
Still doing well here too.  Good moods most days.  My only ongoing concern is being sleepy and taking naps, but I still believe that if I'm out and about doing things (work) then I'd be fine.  It's more about being in a low energy state than anything.  

Physical Health
I had the visit with my doctor.  It turns out that his office recieved a request for an insulin prescription.  I didn't send that request in, so it must have been my endocrinologist's office making sure his office was aware that they were no longer providing that coverage.  The problem is that I should have enough prescription left to get me to my new endocrinologist.  Regardless of how he got it, if he was to prescribe insulin he needs to see me twice a year and not just once a year.  He already had the visit planned out.  Make sure nothing was wrong, then inform me to request any new prescriptions of insulin through my new endocrinologist. If they don't want to write a new prescription before seeing me (a reasonable limitation) then he would write me a prescription just long enough to get me by until that appointment.  

Then I went ahead and screwed up his plan by offering my complaints.  Dizziness, GERD, urinary issues.  After discussing them, I decided to just hold off on the GERD and urinary issues as neither are severe enough that I would have called his office to make an appointment.  The dizziness though was getting bad enough that if it went on for another week or so, I would have called.  He asked his questions and did a basic exam, but his solution was to send me to a cardiologist for another workup.  

Great.  

I guess I can't complain as I'm still getting those dizziness episodes.  I actually got one while driving and while it passed quickly enough to not be concerning, I wouldn't want to experience something like that in a tense driving situation.  So, I have that cardiology appointment on the 24th of June.  

Finances
Nothing has changed here.  I'm still doing fine.  I updated my spreadsheet where I figure out what bills to pay with the last two LTD payments.  By not having any income after the end of June, I start to go into the red by the end of July.  Hopefully I'll be working and getting paid, but if not there's the 401K. 

Family/Friends
My brother B invited me over the other day for a board game night.  He, his sons, and I used to play board games fairly often.  Long ago we'd gotten a board game off of a kickstarted called Supremacy 2020 (it was released in 2013.  It's a fun game, kind of between Risk and Axis and Allies.  The big kicker of it is it involves nuclear weapons and can even induce a nuclear winter where there are no winners.  

I forgot just how long those games can last.  We started soon after dinner at like 7 PM and finished the game at 3:15 AM.  In the past, that would have been a fine time.  But now?  When I'm more than often going to bed at 10 PM?  Yeah, I was TIRED.  But worth it.  It was a good time with my nephews and brother.  Next time we'll hit up Risk.  

Eleven or Twelve days from now and I'll be heading down to Texas.  Good times!  

Entertainment
I finished the outsider.  It was good.  I'd actually recommend it more to non Stephen King fans as it's just different enough from the books to be annoying.  But if you haven't read the book, I think you'll really love it.  

Afterward I slipped into Reacher.  Reacher is great.  It pulled me in and kept me going for it's full three season run.  I'm now anxiously awaiting its fourth season as well as a spin off that looks really good.  

I decided to watch Tulsa King after Reacher since I was enjoying staying in the 'real' world.  It's a fun show with good characters.  Unfortunately after watching the first episode, I got a hankering for Godzilla so I watched Godzilla, Godzilla King of Monsters, Godzilla Vs Kong, and am midway through Godzilla x Kong The New Empire.  The good thing is that even though I'm satisfied watching some good monster movies, I'm itching to get back to Tulsa King.  

One thing on the horizon with the vacation coming is Dogma.  It's being re-released to theaters and I believe both A and E will want to see it on the big screen again.  

Navy

New Tech
I don't know if I'd call this being petty, but its a pretty close definition even if its not perfect.  The last several drives I've had down to Texas I've brought along a 20oz Yeti Rambler tumbler.  In the morning I can fill it with coffee and it stays hot/warm until I'm finished with it.  It keeps it hot enough that when I'm on the road and filling it with McDonalds coffee, I have to specifically request that they add a couple ice cubes, otherwise it's never cool enough to fully enjoy.  After I drink my coffee, I'm able to clean it out and then fill it with ice cold Mountain Dew or Gatorade.  And like the coffee, it keeps those tasty beverages cold until I'm finished with them.  

Power Pink

Originally I had a navy blue one.  It was fine.  I was just happy that it wasn't like black or tan or white.  For Christmas one year as a nurse manager, my nurses gifted me another one, this time in black.  I was entirely appreciative as it honestly is a great gift.  If I didn't already have one, I'd have been exited to get it.  As is though, I'd always pick the blue one so I gave the black one to my brother R.  It just so happens that someone later gifted him a tan one.  

Tropical Pink

And then I lost the blue one.  I have no idea what could have happened to it.  They're practically indestructible so it's doubtful that someone dropped it or otherwise broke it and threw it away to hide the evidence.  Of course I realized it was lost just before another trip, so I had to take the black one.  Functionally it was fine.  Worked as well as the blue one.  But yes, I missed having my blue one.  I tried to be financially reasonable though when I got back.  With two of these tumblers between R and I (even though I full accepted that they were both R's tumblers), I didn't need to buy another one just to have an interesting color.  On my next trip, R was using the black one as I was packing up so I just took the tan one.  

BeeKeeper

And it bothered me.  Seriously, I hate admitting it, but it really bothered me.  So with another trip coming up I decided to spend the $30 and get another one.  My initial thought was to get a pink one.  Looking at Amazon I found one called Power Pink and it was PERFECT!  Well, except for the fact that it was out of stock.  I could order it from some other sellers but it was $10 more.  As I was already being unreasonable in buying a $35 tumbler that I didn't need, I decided that I wouldn't go that much overboard.  They have a surprising number of pink varieties but the only one that was available was Tropical Pink and... uh... no.  That is not MY pink.  

Lid with magnetic slider on

Thankfully, there are other colors that I like.  They have a wide selection of yellows and oranges that looked intriguing.  The thing I was afraid of with the oranges though was that it doesn't take too much one way or the other to make it an ugly orange.  And an ugly orange would be worse than a Tropical Pink or even a black or tan.  So, I ended up picking BeeKeeper Yellow.  

Lid with magnetic slider off

But just as I was putting BeeKeeper Yellow into the shopping cart, I noticed a brown one.  The brown wasn't particularly interesting.  What specifically caught my eye on the brown one was the orange slider that it had.  Lemme explain.  One of the things that makes these Yeti tumblers so good is that it has a magnetic slider on the cap instead of a locking cap that flips up and out of the way.  This makes it very easy to slide it open and take a sip, then slide it closed and keep it sealed and hot/cold.  It also pops off very easily so that it can be washed thoroughly.  Up until I saw the brown one, all the magnetic sliders were black on a clear lid.  But if they made an orange slider specifically for that one... wouldn't they make extra sliders in other colors just for vain people.  Vain people specifically like me?  

Brown

You damn well better believe they make sliders in other colors!  In fact, the first set of alternative colored sliders that I saw almost made me reconsider the Tropical Pink as I could pair it up with three varieties of pink sliders.  I must have hemmed and hawed for ten minutes on that.  It took that long because they didn't offer a single yellow slider that would match my BeeKeeper.  

So, ultimately, I went with an orange trio.  Yeah, it won't match exactly with the yellow, but like the brown one there, it will make a fun contrast and be far more colorful than a plain old black one.  

So that was my vain new purchase.  Wasteful?  You betcha.  Am I happy with it?  You betcha! 

Writing
I haven't written a single word since my last update.  That's not quite true as I wrote a half of a chapter, but I haven't been able to finish that chapter.  I'll try again today.  I'd LOVE to have this second part of Gamer Gurl finished by the time I go on vacation.  Then I could return with really fresh eyes, edit it down for publication at Fictionmania, and put it up there.  Then I could move back to starting You're Not The Boss Of Me over again.  

One thing does cross my mind.  That's that I'm role playing at DX again.  I have to at least consider that as I have that as a creative outlet, it might be sapping my energy for regular writing.  

Michigan Football
Nothing new here.  

Computer Issues
The system is actually running fairly well.  I think I only came across a single song on Apple Music that I had to delete and re-download, although it's volume issues still occasionally pops up.  

One thing occurred to me recently as I thought about my return to normalcy.  Computer gaming.  Over the past few months, much of my life has returned to normal.  I'm hanging out more with friends and family, I'm more present at dinner with Mom and R, I'm helping around the house more, I'm looking forward to returning to work... I'm me again.  But one aspect of 'me' that hasn't returned is gaming on my computer.  And I don't know why.  

I look up to the corner of my desktop, where I have my currently installed games and I see that I still have Allen Wake II to play.  I have Assassin's Creed Valhala to play and need to finish that before getting Assassin's Creed Mirage and now they've even come out with Assassin's Creed Shadows which looks bad ass.  I have Path of Exile 2 and Helldivers 2 both installed which I've played with my brother and some of his friends... but I don't play nearly enough to keep up so I'm always the 'newb' of the group and that makes it just that much less fun.  Then I have three silly games, Balls Crush Simulator, Nuclear War Simulator, and Hooked! Demo.  All of which I downloaded, played with, and then never returned to.  I'd still like to play Cyberpunk 2077 and it's expansion.  And there are maybe half a dozen other games that I've had interest in but never bought like the new Doom.  

But I'm just not pulled to log into these and try them.  And I don't know why.  

To be fair, I've only recently acknowledged that the desire to play the games has passed me by.  Maybe a week ago.  So I've got more thinking to do on this.  But if I don't play games... man do I have an overpowered web browsing computer.