On this day in 2010, we went to Norfolk Circuit Court and got married. From OD at the time…
For Better or For Worse absolutely was a correct part of the vows.
I don’t recall a ton about the day, specifically. Running around to various government building..SSA, probably DMV, then we went to Chik-Fil-A to pick up lunch.
We’re now hours away, but it really seems like another life, altogether.
But I’d do it all again.
Towlie would make a good facemask, no?
I was watching the 7p newscast supplement on WUSA. They were interviewing a restaurant owner who was worried about reopening. Her staff would be wearing masks, but the customers wouldn’t.
Let that sink in for a moment.
…
People eating in a restaurant aren’t wearing masks.
I was kind of going for a corollary to Davy Crockett’s Not Yours To Give. Freedom to live, work, worship, and so on, is also not yours to take.
Seems like this is when I’m writing. There’s not a lot to do, really; what can you do?
The news cycle this week has been dizzying. I had Sarah watch one particular commentator’s take on the dismissal of the Flynn case. I don’t agree with the guy on many, nay most, things, but he laid out the disclosures in a pretty straightforward fashion.
It’d be amusing watching the respective approach to what government(s) are doing. Lots and lots of emphasis on what the President is or isn’t doing, and barely any attention to government messed up the testing.
Other stuff I was going to write about:
So, stopping again. Too much rambling. Whatever. It’s what I do.
Nod to a Drunk History episode where they were talking about the song. Trolling through stories on Fark, while listening to “Run Your Mouth.”
One headline kinda touches on what I was trying to get at yesterday.
Texas is making reopening difficult through incredible regulation.
If I owned a theater in Texas, I’d probably just assume stay closed, rather than having the agents groping people coming in the door.
Of course, if they’re noble civil servants, of course they wouldn’t do anything improper.
so they choice is deal with that nonsense, or just not open on my own accord.
But it’s far better to have the government force me to open or not.
Awesome.
No thank you. Again if it makes me a bad person, I’m okay with that; let people be free.
I’ve had a few since this whole “shelter-in-place” stuff started.
On the bright side, I did know that today is Saturday, something I almost missed last week.
Things that have changed for me:
I will say that I feel a lot better today than I did, say, Tuesday. The medication is kicking in thankfully.
From informational; it might cause anxiety. That was part of the scattered message I got from this podcast this morning.
Part of what the psychology professor there had was this idea of limiting your intake of information to avoid the mental anguish new information might provoke
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
I did have a medical provider who told me the same sort of thing.
How can you even live in that sort of world/
That there are people who do might actually cause more anxiety for me than the change in “decided” facts.
No, information comes in, and you adjust based on that new information.
This is even more true when you have notable hosts, who’ve been demonstrably wrong, are worried that the audience doesn’t trust them. Oh, I don’t know? Or, maybe?
But back to the pod, the suggestion was that taking in new information constantly causes anxiety.
This is just completely incomprehensible to me.
Whenever I’m working on an argument, I do tend to dislike using the comparisons to cars or food. I understand that it’s probably lazy, but most people can comprehend the two ideas of driving a car, or cooking something. But, back to the examples I don’t like; does glancing at the speedometer periodically give you nightmares? How about looking through the oven window to see that the cake isn’t burning?
Incredible.
Subsequent things on the playlist, like the Reason Roundtable, quelled the disgust a bit.
Am I nervous about COVID-19? Yes. Am I nervous because I consume a lot of news? No.
Would I be better off if I was ignorant of the reasons for all the things that are affecting normal life?
No.
Even moreso when you consider that I’m on immeunosuppressants, and am at a greater risk of getting sick.
But I also know that the chances of me dying, even with my chemically-weakened immune system, is pretty low.
Assuming a 10% infection rate, and a 2% death rate, I’d be looking at a 0.2% chance of dying from the disease.
That I’m not anxious about that probably means that there’s something wrong with me.
Listening to the podcast only reinforces that. I’m messed up because I’m not that freaked out.
Okay.
So I should stop from taking things in because I might be freaked out?
How do I fix that?
Also, I should be trusting Chuck Todd, because not doing so is dangerous.
Again. Okay.
It takes a lot to really get me spun up.
Title is the exasperated utterance from a shady recruiter who called back a few minutes after I’d told him that, no, I wouldn’t be working for him, or his shady client.
Let’s recap the timeline.
Monday I got a call from a recruiter about a position not terribly far from me.
I told him, we’ll call him “Recruiter A,” my two requirements:
I’ve told my current boss that my current role is the last one I will take in support of government as a civilian. Unless I’m laid off, I will. (And if I am laid off, I will see about returning to my last position, as I really loved that organization….)
I listened to his spiel on how that, no, this wasn’t a government gig, and it was in support of a commercial one who weren’t doing government work. (Given that the company is German, that I said, “spiel” is mildly amusing….) I finally got him off the phone after I told him I’d email him my CV when I got home.
I got home Tuesday night, and was a bit exhausted; travel takes a lot out of me these days.
Wednesday, I sent Recruiter A my latest Ops CV. Almost simultaneously, I got a phone call from someone I thought was Recruiter A (we’ll call him “Recruiter B”). The area code, and first digit of the numbers were exactly the same. The voices and accents were nearly identical.
I told him that I’d just sent him my CV. Recruiter B seemed surprised about this, and wanted to know information about my experience, which I thought I’d already given (to Recruiter A).
Recruiter B offered even less information on the position than Recruiter A, and was rather curt when I didn’t express the excitement he thought I ought to have.
We went talked about salary, the same discussion I’d had with Recruiter A on Monday. The salary range was unchanged from the discussion I’d had on Monday. The salary was less than I wanted, but still acceptable for something outside government. After going back-and-forth, I finally assented to him submitting my profile to the client.
About five minutes later, still fuming over his tone, I sent an email to Recruiter A, thinking he was the one I just got off the phone with, saying that, no, I didn’t want to move forward.
Recruiter A called me back in tears, saying that, no, he hadn’t just called me. Uh, so with whom did I just speak?
Regardless, I wasn’t interested anymore.
Thursday I got a call from Recruiter B. Uh, I thought I told you I wasn’t interested yesterday? I’m still not interested. I don’t care that you’ve already submitted me to your client; I won’t be working there.
THIS IS A UNPROFESSIONALISM!
So are you.
And I would never work for a company that hired you.
But my bigger message, aligning with what I wrote a few months ago, for so many things you can leave. I’m not playing this game anymore. Despite the newly-elected politicians’ desires to control me, I choose to be free.
I am not going to work for a company that doesn’t provide benefits. Even if Medicaid For All (yes, it’s Medicaid; some doctors will refuse to accept the artificially-low reimbursement rates, and will just choose to quit), I’m not doing this anymore. If you want to have full control of my time and effort, you’re going to give me paid time off, paid holidays, and a 401K match. No, I’m not going to do it temporarily. I refuse.
I do kind of feel like I should call and apologize to the guy I made cry. Maybe I will.
Update: I did call,a nd said pretty much what I said here.
I am not going to do this anymore.
Yesterday, I pretty much wrote my prompts for next month.
Yes, my doctor says it’s a compulsion, but I think it’s okay. I did resist doing it over the summer this year, so that’s a start.
I plucked a few entries from my past I’m going to revisit for this year.
Below is one of them.
One of the things I am surprised by, however, is that some of this stuff isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.
I was in a bad place there for a few years.
Certainly I’d be justified in pointing fingers, but it’s over now.
Describe your most recent doctor visit. I’m specifically looking for the one(s) you see most often.
I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking when I wrote this prompt. Maybe I should have consulted my calendar before i wrote.
My two most-recent visits were with specialists. One to replace the folks likely responsible for my two hospital stays this month. The other was to see what’s going on with something else in my messed-up body.
I guess my most recent medical visit was with my longtime dentist. I’ve been seeing the guy pretty much continuously since I was in high school. My medical issues have definitely included attack on my teeth; he’s been helping keep me sort of functioning. Yesterday’s visit was for a cleaning. I have to get an extra one each year because my disease modifying drug affects my oral bacteria. That said, no cavities!
As for regular medical stuff, I’ve been seen at Ghent Family Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School since the day that I had the MRIs that led to my diagnosis.
I should probably write a counter to this lousy Yelp review. They’ve been great for me, especially last year when my oh-so-wonderful Healthcare.gov plan wasn’t accepted by the two specialists I’d been seeing.
Dr. Robert Newman is my primary care physician. He helped find new specialists, including my new neurologist, Dr. Kuczma. I also have to tip my hat to Dr. Thomas Grant, who has looked after me for several years at EVMS.
My last visit was with a resident at EVMS (who I’d link, but I can’t find her bio right now….Dr. Jodi Newcombe). I was there to follow up with them after my second hospitalization, and to get a prescription refilled. She was one of the residents I recommended to my wife after the one she’d been seeing left. My wife ended up with the other one, who’s since left for a fellowship, but she went with me to my last visit with Dr. Newcombe. “I like her!”
I do normally end up seeing a resident when I’m there; that’s what the clinic is for. At the same time, part of the reason I decided to go there is that when I was looking for regular medical care, I had no idea what the fuck was wrong with me. At a medical school, there should always be more than one opinion.
Sometimes, though, I do think the professors take some sick sadistic pleasure in sticking a rookie resident with me.
“Do you have x or y?”
“Yes.”
“Well, which one?!”
“Both. Depends on the hour. Check my record; I have multiple sclerosis.” “Oh.” brow furrow“OHHHHH.”
As I said, I went as a followup after my hospital stay in October.
It was also an opportunity to get my flu shot. I don’t know if there’s some academic group that gives them brownie points for handing them out, but I’ve gotten the flu shot every year since I’ve been going there. Magically, I’ve not gotten the flu. It’s like it works or something.
My wife did get the flu last year, so she got hers on the last trip, too.
But the way the clinic works, you’re seen by a resident, then normally the supervising faculty member, like Grant or Newman, comes in to check over whatever the resident did.
Occasionally, they’ll change things. This past spring, I managed to fall getting off the bus. Validating gravity’s function – it’s one of the things those of us with perpetually-numb feet and vertigo issues do. The resident wanted to send me for a bunch of X-Rays; the faculty supervisor came and checked me out, and decided against it.
Yes, I was sore for a long time, but I’ve recovered. Lasting soreness implies I’m getting old or something.
Monday, I’m going up to see if I might be an appropriate candidate for studies at Georgetown.
I did a study on some thing that didn’t work, previously. This failure pretty much made me swear off serving as a test subject, but I am intrigued by this, and think Georgetown might be one of the places on the East Coast where they might try it. I also have zero reservations about using my own cultured stem cells.
We’ll see how it goes.
I’ve been kind of productive this weekend.
I was going to complain about being exhausted, but I’m actually really not. Do I like the roll in every day? Not in the least. Is it really kicking my ass yet? No, not so much.
The urge to find some place new to stay, however, is much stronger than it was even last weekend. I want to be closer to the city and work. This needs to happen sooner, rather than later.
We can do this; just need to refocus on what’s available.
So that’s the goal in the next couple of months. Hopefully my employer will be willing to work with me on things.
I’ve been kind of productive this weekend.
I was going to complain about being exhausted, but I’m actually really not. Do I like the roll in every day? Not in the least. Is it really kicking my ass yet? No, not so much.
The urge to find some place new to stay, however, is much stronger than it was even last weekend. I want to be closer to the city and work. This needs to happen sooner, rather than later.
We can do this; just need to refocus on what’s available.
So that’s the goal in the next couple of months. Hopefully my employer will be willing to work with me on things.
