good morning, sunshine!

actually i said good morning to the moon, today. needed to be up at 445 this morning because min's getting a test done at stanford. i forget the name of it but it's checking for a special kind of cyst on her pancreas that causes hyper acid production. and believe me, she's got acid-a-plenty. the nexium helps a LOT with that (she's on 4x the regular dosage) but she still has trouble not burning holes into her stomach. thus, the test to see if she has the rare cyst.

anyway! so i had to be up by 445, but that didn't stop me from waking up at 230 and NOT GETTING BACK TO SLEEP. min was having trouble sleeping (a regular occurence for her) so she went out to the living room to watch some tv. i woke up a little but then i realized i was hungry. and not like, oh i feel a little hungry but i'll just ignore it, roll over and go back to sleep. no. my stomach said OH MY GOD YOU NEED TO EAT NOW. NOW NOW NOW OR I'M GOING TO EXPLODE BECAUSE YOU NEVER FEED ME, EVER EVER EVER! i tried ignoring it for about 45 minutes...drinking water...trying a million sleeping positions... no dice. ugh.

on the upside, by the time i caved in and had a fun size cup of pudding, it was only an hour or so til i was supposed to get up, so i just went out and watched when harry met sally with min. who fell asleep in 5 minutes. not me! i knew i was up for the day, but it's been years since i've seen that and i enjoyed it for the 80's feel good predictable yet touching romantic comedy that it was.

and now that my rebase is done, i'll just say what's been said a million times: thank the drumming goddesses for starbucks.

oh and ps. min got her new botox shot scheduled, yay! on tax day, no less. appropriate since this has been a taxing experience (sorry, i couldn't resist). means she'll have to be on disability an extra week (it's later than we wanted) but i don't care. i just want this to be over and done with. as i imagine min does. ;-p

to prove my point

yesterday i joined a new project in clearwaste that took almost TWO HOURS to complete. how much of that time did i goof off? maybe 10 minutes. that's right: the other 101.5 minutes i was working. damn work ethic!

that 111.5 minutes was a record for me, incidentally. previously the longest one i'd seen was an hour. but liz beat me - hers was 116 minutes. i think she was just trying to show off tho.

clearcase rules

i've used several version control programs (source safe, perforce, cvs, clearcase) and at my current job, clearcase rules the day. i say rules because dealing with it in one way or another must take up a third of my day, and that's a lot of time for one little application. only other one that comes close is outlook and that's because email is well, you know. like crack.

anyway, i've recently come to realize that for all the aggravation, despair and clear waste of time that clearcase brings into my work day, it also brings me this: a chance to goof off guilt-free. because we track our time down to the nanosecond and while i'm working on one of the usual clearcase tasks that has to run in the background (rebase, joining a project, etc), my time is "accounted for".

thing is, i actually like to work. it feels weird to goof off in the office. so 95% of the time, i'm multitasking on other work. i get lots of shit done at once, and that's great. great for me, great for mr. brady, yadda. but once in a while i do take these opportunities for freedom (that's what they are!) to talk here, read my email, give liz a hard time, whatever. :-D

the point of all this is: i think i've decided that i don't mind if clearcase sticks around, even though i think as a version control app, it's pretty fucked up. i'm all about taking the guilt-free things whenever i can get them. that is, when i'm not guilting myself into working anyway.

aww

i kind of glossed over me and min's anniversary last week because there was a lot of chaos on that day. we'd planned to celebrate this past weekend but min still wasn't up for much, although we did go out for lunch in a lame kind of way (@whole foods before shopping there). i'm not complaining, mind you. just stating the facts. i was kinda out of it this weekend (and today) too what with my little ovaries going apeshit.

anyway. so imagine my surprise when today i get a call from the receptionist that i have a package. wtf? turns out my baby ordered me some flowers in an adorable bunny container! and you know how we love the bunnies. and tons and tons of flowers!

so if you get around to reading this, thanks baby! if anyone else reads this besides me, then please burst forth with a little smile. just a little one. if you have trouble, it looks like this:

you just saved $2489.35

i never used to pay attention to how much i "saved" on prescriptions because i have insurance. probably because i've been on the same few things for a long time - old news. but in the last year min has probably tried at least 30 new medications in an effort to keep her health under control, and a couple of times we've had to pay for the name brand of things and the regular copay (10-25) got scaled up to close to $75. bleh.

anyway, so yesterday her aforementioned-totally-kick-ass pain specialist dr. s adjusted her meds a bit. we go to pick them up at walgreens, i pay my $30 for the two rxes, then casually glance at the "you just saved" field for them. holy shit. one of them we "only" saved around $400, but the other one - JFC. 2500 smackers.

thank god for DP benefits. she has her own insurance for the prescriptions, but it really kicks in on the hospital visits. we both have blue cross so between the two i don't think we've had to pay anything for her escapades the last few months.

min is going on disability again. realized that she just is not going to be able to work until we get things under control. it's going to be hard on us financially but we'll work things out like we always do. i don't care if we have to move into a hole. she's been making things worse by working so hard. i'm actually grateful that she's doing this. i just hope that dr. t can work some magic and get her back to a relatively normal life instead of having to struggle through every second.

and of course i'm exhausted. i feel bad about complaining since i'm not having near the trouble min is, but there it is. i'm not horrendously tired and burnt out now, but i can see it coming and it makes me anxious, especially since i know the next month or so at work is going to be insane.

bleh.

blurry

while i wait for a rebase to finish, let me tell you about yesterday. yesterday i celebrated:

• 8 years of marriage to Min
  
• pearl's 1 year birthday
  
• a plethora of technical issues with work tools
  
• another last-minute trip to the ER for one of Min's attacks

Ok maybe i didn't "celebrate" the last two. #3 is actually fairly common. #4 is not as common as it used to be, thank the drumming goddesses. it's not any less exhausting though. and happened just in time for my annual review at work, at 9am so i didn't even get to think about sleeping in like usual (after an attack night). that's why starbucks is my friend and i'm so grateful that my baby gave me a gift card for valentines. i'm feeling less blurry by the minute as the caffiene and sugar attempt to zoom through my veins. today they're just kind of ambling in.

she has another appointment with dr. t next friday, and i sure as fuck hope he says she gets another botox shot to try to keep her duodenum from clenching shut and causing these attacks. because if this represents "as good as it gets" for her, then that just sucks so much that i don't even have the energy to talk about it. meantime her new pain specialist doc (another great guy with a longass name, so we call him "dr. s") has been really fabulous. they are still figuring out the best combination of meds for her, but just thank god thank GOD she has him too. wait, i meant to thank the scent-free shamanic vegetarian potluck-happy drumming goddesses. my bad.

well i suppose that's enough TMI for now. rebase almost done. back to the grind.

i did it all for the nookie

this morning's musing: is there a greater incidence of lesbian sex after watching the l word? i'm willing to bet yes, but obviously this is based on personal experience. :-D

i just need to figure out how to research this properly. hmmm. feel free to send me your ideas, my dear imaginary readers.

and obviously, i've decided that for all its shortcomings, that damn show is just fine with me as long as it keeps serving up the hot, fresh canoodling.

and the winner is

to answer my friend andrea, it looks like the next state to ban gay marriage will be indiana. morons.

do you ever

find yourself thinking about That Thing that you know you shouldn't think about, then realize that even remembering that you shouldn't think about it makes you start thinking about it even more?

sometimes i hate my brain.