Catchy Name Needed

I took the medical terminology test on skin and made a 100. Yay, me.

Col and I spent most of the day trying out Lord of the Rings Online - aka LOTRO. There has been a bit of drama about this: Col has been playing for a couple of weeks here and there, and he was apparently rather perplexed when I said something to the effect of, "But I've always wanted to play that! How could you start without me?" Considering how long we've been friends and how much time we spend talking, we sometimes manage not to know each other very well. He seems to have completely overlooked my Tolkien-geek side. (Although I hear that nonelvis  was aware of it!)( More drama & dithering )

(I should probably get back to the studying, shouldn't I?)



(In case anybody is wondering what the hell that icon is, it's Cleolinda's Secret Life of Dolls, which is the closest thing to a Tolkien icon I seem to have at the moment.) (I swear I used to have one that said "Still Not King." I probably deleted it because I wasn't using it much, but I would like to have it back, darnit.)

So. I went and signed up for NaBloPoMo, even though I did rather badly at it last year. Of course last year was not in any way a normal year, and November was particularly bad, because that was when it became painfully obvious that my mother was actually dying. Under the circumstances, I'm not terribly inclined to beat myself up about whether I posted enough that month. And we will just see how this goes. I'll be surprised if I actually post every day, but stranger things have happened!

We are mostly occupied this week with unpacking, getting the new computer set up, and getting the last stuff out of the old apartment. We have until Sunday to be out, technically, but one of the assistant managers called me earlier to ask if we were done or not. I don't know if she had forgotten she gave us until the 4th or what, but I told her they were welcome to come in and start working on whatever they needed to work on, but that we were still working on getting the last few things out. That mainly means this:



We have been trying in a half-hearted way to sell it but have had no takers. I don't guess it's really in line with current furniture trends or anything, but it's in pretty good shape for its age, if you have room for such a thing. (We don't, really, which is why we're trying to get rid of it.) I think my parents bought it the year I was born - i.e., 1960 - and it was in my bedroom for my entire childhood. My mother had it in her apartment after the divorce and it eventually made its way back to me. Part of me hates to get rid of it, but the fact is, it's a clutter magnet, as well as being incredibly bulky. So I called the Salvation Army and they're going to come get it on Monday. (We called the apartment management back - with a bit of trepidation - to see if they'd have a problem with us technically missing the Sunday deadline to be completely out, but apparently not. They didn't say anything about it, anyway.)


In other news, I really, really need to find Microsoft Money, and get the data from the last backup and get caught up on my finances. We have a big cushion to work with right now, of course, or we would have really been screwed. For years we lived paycheck to paycheck and I had to constantly know what our bank balance was to keep from overdrawing the account. Now that it's not so crucial I have gotten very bad about getting behind on keeping up with it. (So far my copy of MS Money has not turned up, though, and we have relatively few completely unopened boxes now. I am going to have to do some sleuthing tonight, I guess!)

Added: it took me about 5 minutes to find my copy of Money. The next sticking point: I don't know my own passwords. I have a list but it's at work!

Of course you can't buy a car and have it really be easy, that just wouldn't be right. We had a very easy time on Saturday, on the whole, and came home with the car, but then on Monday it developed that the credit union wanted all the papers to be in both of our names, to match the loan which was written up as a joint loan. OK, fine, so we'll go back and re-do the papers, shouldn't take long. Well, it didn't, once we got there. But getting there was a problem - we left right after work and promptly got caught in traffic. There was a wreck on the causeway, which is the only major way off the island. (The two "minor" ways, for you completists out there who want to know - minor mostly because they go to very out-of-the-way places - are the ferry to Bolivar Peninsula and the San Luis Pass Bridge, which is way the hell off, 25 miles south(east) at the very end of the island.) Plus, where normally the causeway is two bridges, right now there's only one because they're in the process of demolishing the old ones and rebuilding. They built the one new span, which is meant to be 4 lanes (in one direction) plus a full shoulder on each side - but at the moment, meaning the next couple of YEARS, presumably, it has traffic going both ways on it, which means six lanes and no shoulder whatsoever. Which makes it hell on earth when there's a wreck.

OK, so anyway, we eventually got out of traffic, up to the Toyota dealer and got the papers done. No problem. THEN I ended up spending most of the day Tuesday playing go-between between the dealer's finance guy and the loan guy at the credit union. These guys could not get their shit together. All that needed to happen was that the dealer's guy needed to fax the purchase order to the credit union guy, and in return they would get their money. Instead I get this: "Well, I sent the fax." "Well, I haven't gotten any faxes from them." Apparently neither of them is too good at working a fax machine. And I don't think they ever actually talked to one another, that would've made communication too easy. But eventually the Toyota dealer finally got all the papers to the CU, so presumably they've gotten their money by now and I can quit worrying about that. It was just another bit of stress that I really didn't need this week. I was seriously teetering on the edge.

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It didn't help that in the middle of all this, I get a call from radiology: I need to come in and have a follow-up mammogram. They called on Monday and scheduled it for Wednesday, which is a little ominous in itself because they usually make you wait longer than that. But then my OB/Gyn's nurse calls, and says, "Oh, I don't think it's anything to worry too much about, it just looks like some calcification," and so I relax for a while. So I go in yesterday, get it done, and the tech says, "OK, let me just go check the film real quick, I'll be back in a minute." 15 minutes go by and I'm starting to get worried. I figure the longer that takes, the more the chance that that means they're looking at something specific. And they were. They take me in to the room where the doctor is looking at the films - and she has it on a computer, too, I don't know if they scan it or what - and she shows me these spots with the calcification. She says there are some funny cells in there. 80% chance they're benign, 20% chance they're cancer. I can just wait 6 months and "see what happens" - which I think would drive me insane - or I can have a needle biopsy. So, I'm having a needle biopsy after Thanksgiving. I've had one once before, it's not a huge deal. I think wondering for six months if I have cancer or not would be a lot worse.

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This is not going to be a very cheery journal to read through the holidays, I suspect. (Even assuming that I don't have cancer!!) Y'all are going to have to bear with me, because writing about it does help, it seems.

For a little comic relief, though, take a look at Lupin's wand, which is, well, sorta scary. Makes me inclined to think the set designers had been reading Snape/Lupin fanfiction or something.


(I forgot to say earlier that I called this "Complaints" because I meant to link to the Complaints Choir - even though I'm sure everybody who cares to has seen it by now. I don't normally watch a lot of YouTube stuff, but I like that one.)

It looks like it might rain. I bought some silicone to put in the rusty spots in the roof of my leaky car, but I haven't gotten around to actually doing it yet. I really should. Let's just hope it doesn't rain hard, because every time it has lately I have ended up with wet carpet. It's very annoying, and probably not very good for the car, either.

Speaking of cars, we are not supposed to be buying a new one for a couple of months, but Rob is really shopping already. Our budget is really limited, but we are looking at either a new small car or a "lightly" used one, hopefully not more than a year or two old. We were planning to buy my mother's, but she has decided not to sell it. Which I think is wise. She doesn't need a new one right now.

I was going to write an entry but if I do it'll be all about Dofus, and really, does anybody truly want to read that? Even Col? (I might write it anyway, whether you guys are interested or not. Just not right now.)

Or else I could write about my money troubles - we are actually relatively close to being out of debt but it sure doesn't feel like it right now - but that would be depressing. At least it's depressing to me. It's nothing major and we'll get through it, it's just annoying.

(So instead, you get an entry about what I'm not going to write about! Oh, well.)

(Oh, and the Firefly icon is because I just pre-ordered a Serenity ornament. (Thanks to takaal for the link.) Squee! That place charges you 10% of the price at the time of the order on pre-orders, which is a whoppin' $1.69, which even in my current tightened financial straits I think I can manage.)

We went & had dinner at Kelley's Country Cookin' (great name, ain't it?) - we used to eat there all the time but we don't eat out at the drop of a hat like we used to. Well, at least, Rob doesn't; I still do way too much eating out at lunch. I'm going to have to behave for the next two weeks because we're broke as all hell. We cheated tonight and charged it but we can't keep doing that. Anyway, I only have two work days this week so I have limited opportunities to eat out. I'm off Thursday and Friday, yay!

We went to Dillard's after dinner and got a gift certificate for my sister's birthday, since I didn't know what the heck else to get her. We also bought Rob a pair of Timberlands that were 50% off to wear to work. He's been wearing a pair of Earth Shoes that we bought at Target for a year or so and they were pitiful. I hadn't been paying attention or I would have made him get new ones sooner.

I might ought to start thinking seriously about packing a little bit. We're going to a four-day quilt retreat, and if you're going to sew, it involves taking a good bit of stuff. (Every year my mother's boyfriend says, "Why don't you just stay here and sew for four days? It'd be a lot less trouble.") And we have to get off fairly early Thursday morning, partly because my mother is a person who likes to have a schedule and it'll make her crazy if I'm very late, and also because we're going to have lunch with my sister on the way up. Her birthday is next week and we didn't think we'd have another chance before then.