Category: NoJoMo

I started doing this on the now-defunct OpenDiary in 2010. I’ve done it every year since.

Sixteen

Write about three things you did for the first time in the past year.

Okay, so three things I’ve done this year that I’d never done before.  Please excuse the odd organization;  i started with bullets, and I’m not sure if that was the correct way to go.  There’s multiple paragraphs for each.  Of course, if I was writing a DoD PowerPoint presentation, they’d be awesome.

Anyway, on to it….

  • Ate a raw oyster. A few, actually. They were listed as a specialty at my friend’s restaurant. I’d been considering doing it. The opportunity presented itself, so I went for it. Reaction? Not bad. Probably something I wouldn’t go for often, but it was good. If you want an example of what a nerd I am, in the months leading up to that time, I actually googled how to eat them. Do you chew them? Swallow whole? What? Obviously, roasted or fried you chew, but what of the raw variety. The answers I found said, essentially, take a few bites, let the flavor circulate around your mouth, then swallow. Yes, this is a pretty lukewarm reaction, but I’ve found months later that I have a craving again. It’s the oddest damned thing.
  • Spent a night in the hospital. This one didn’t happen until it was oyster season again. Obviously, they don’t serve those there. Both times were terribly unpleasant. One night the first time, two the second. The second instance was one day shy of a month later. Both were due to infections. Both of different bacteria. Both, ultimately, of the same cause. Protip: when you’re killing your immune system every four weeks, inserting foreign bodies into your body is a really bad idea(TM). Ultimately, I place the blame on one medical provider. I won’t write much about this here because I’m still considering all options (and, yes, that includes whatever legal remedies might be available). But, in my current job, I have no leave at all. None. I don’t even get paid holidays. If I’m not working, I’m not getting paid. I was also completely out-of-control. When I was younger, I prided myself in my ability to put up with nearly anything. Since I got sick, I’ve had to get over that. There’s things that I just can’t control anymore. My body is included in that growing list. That includes my emotions. I’m tempted to go back to some of what I wrote in about 2005 where I felt like I was completely numb to everything. Things have certainly changed. There’ve been high highs, and low lows. Sarah and I chuckle at one of our animated sons, Butters from “South Park,” (And if you know either of us, you can see how that’s our boy….) who was sitting on a curb crying after his girlfriend (a waitress at a place modeled after Hooters) dumped him. Stan was sitting nearby despairing about getting blown out by his new circle of friends. “I’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy goth kid.”
  • Walked away from a terrible work situation. Here, I’m talking about my last job. I don’t even try to miss it, knowing I won’t be able to. I’m still on decent terms with a few of the people I encountered, but there’s others I hope I never speak to again. Aside from the last two jobs, I’ve never felt that way before. Again, there’s a lot more I could say on this one, but won’t. I was used. I hope the people responsible have memories so short that they can look themselves in the mirror again someday.

I could write for hours about these, but I think I’ve said enough.  The last one is a bit of a cop-out;  I could have written about the sheer volume of whining about the election.  Oh, you’re going to have a peaceful protest?  Yeah, I give that about half an hour.  Also, nobody cares.  The Commonwealth of Virginia supported a loser.  Again.  This has been true many times in the past.  So, too, that I voted for whoever lost.

But I get it.  I’m a bigot because I didn’t vote for the party of historic racism.  Hmmmm…okay.

Feeding My Compulsions

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.

Thirty

Wrap-up

The Saints lost to the Cowboys last night.  I don’t know if anyone could have, to be honest.  For the game, I’d give the Cowboys a D+, the Saints an D-, and the officials an F.  In the disgusting hypothetical of being a Cowboys’ fan, a win’s a win.

Somehow I’ve misplaced some of my entries.  More.  Again.  It’s as if I really suck at managing things.  But two wrap-ups — 2012, and 2013.

I don’t really know if the separation between the mood of the two entries is evident.  Though I was a bit discontented in 2012, things really sucked in 2013.  In 2012, my future was really uncertain after there’d been a big change to the contract I was working on had been substantially modified.  In 2013, I was fully suffering the effects of that.  I got laid off towards the end of January 2013, and signed on with the four-letter company for roughly 80% of what I’d been earning previously.  Since I wasn’t able to travel, either, my salary had really been flat since 2010.  2009 was the year I earned the most money, but I spent probably eight of those twelve months working 60-hour weeks.

In no time at all, that was all gone.  I didn’t help matters by drinking away my discomfort.

I haven’t, and there’s a good chance never will, recovered.

What’s weird, though, is despite my conversion to cleaner living, I still lack time and energy to do things really enjoyable.

Or maybe I don’t care about that because I am actually busy doing things I find interesting.

But I do need a break.  And a shave.  And a haircut.

Twenty-nine

What are your holiday plans for Christmas?

To quote Jeff Spicoli, “I don’t know.”

I’m kind of bound where I am, and there’s nowhere I really want to go.  We’re supposed to go to some friends’ place for a short celebration for St. Nicholas’s Day.

I do still have friends I want to see.  Family, *shrug.*  There’s a variety of reasons for that.  Instead of making an issue with disagreements, I just go away.  It’s how I operate.

I think we’ll probably head in to the District one night to see the National Christmas Tree.  Maybe have dinner somewhere nice.  Day of?  I don’t know.  I’d be okay just spending time with my wife.  We actually had a good time doing that last night, keeping each other warm.  Maybe that’s the way things are supposed to work.

I will say that watching the Christmas special she’d chosen was a bit strange with the emphasis on kids.  We’re not having any.  The make-believe world has one Butters Stotch;  a real world incarnation isn’t needed.

Somewhat-unrelated, though, I do need to rap a bit about work.  It’s been an endless stream of job inquiries lately.  At first, I attributed it to lag from my unemployment in Norfolk in 2017.  Now, though, I’m seeing it as mainly laziness from the recruiting assemblage.

First thing — recruiters really don’t know what to say when you refuse a lucrative contract offer.  If it is contract-to-hire, I counter with something along the lines of, “you will make a full time offer during the first six months, or the contract terminates, and you owe me another six months’ contract pay.”  When unemployment was 8%, maybe you could have gotten away with that shit, but it doesn’t work these days.

Second.  Because of the way your clients are operating, I am no longer adhering to whatever you learned in your point-and-click recruiting seminar.  No, my resume isn’t going to be two pages.  It’s going to be as long as it needs to be to cover my twenty years’ experience.  It’s also putting my few remaining full-time jobs up top, and my contract positions in a subsequent section. Not that I think that matters, as you’re using a fucking automated tool to search for keywords, but when you actually do look at it, you might notice that I do direct to the applicable sections.

At some point you have to be firm on these things.

Maybe one of those contract positions would be more interesting than what I have now, but I doubt it.

But it’s time to stop for the evening.  Go take pills, and grab a nap before the Saints’ game.

One more day of the eighth year of this.  I have a problem, no?

Twenty-eight

Once again I had a misplaced prompt here as a draft.  The published prompts schedule, however, says that today’s a free-write.

So, what’s up?

Not a lot, really.  One day after another, and make it through.  I know at some point in time I will have a break.  But that won’t be this weekend, where I’m now supposed to work both days, instead of just Saturday.

Perhaps I should be more reflective about what I’ve done so far, but don’t have the energy.

Tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment, but at least these time-consuming, frustrating efforts are finished for the week, too.

Saints-Cowboys tomorrow night.  I imagine it’ll be a good game.

Will I have enough spoons to watch it?

We shall see.

Twenty-seven

What places hold particular allure for you; where might you like to live?

I’ve written a bit before about the allure of NYC.  Is that still there?  Yes.

At the same time, I think I could be interested in just about any city.

Suburbia is so…..sterile isn’t the word.  Uniform, maybe?  Things aren’t as bad as they once were, but I hate that I have to spend 20+ minutes in a car to do just about anything.

If I could still drive, it might not be such an issue.  The ridesharing apps do afford me a bit of freedom (especially since there’s really no paratransit service here), but I like to have, at least, the option to go do what I want to do when I want to do it.

I still might not with my current employment situation, but things like getting to the doctor would certainly be easier.

Would I do more?  Perhaps.

But back to the topic, and New York, I think I could be happy in almost any city that has some of the things that come along with being in a city.

I don’t care about having a yard for kids to play in.  (Though, maybe, there is some temptation in having one to tell kids to get off of….)  I can’t mow one, anyway.

The much-maligned tax bill from 2017 actually eliminates the incentive to rent a house from a bank for the tax benefits, so the push is gone.

It’s difficult to write this without a Budweiser radio commercial running through my scarred brain;  something along the lines of the local deli owner who gets morning coffee.

But, so, while the intrigue is NYC, I think my desires would be fulfilled anywhere where I could find a place to be comfortable.

Even if I don’t have the energy to fully-partake at this point, I’d like to be somewhere that I can participate when it does come.

The goal at this point is DC.  Maybe somewhere else will happen someday.

Twenty-six

Thanksgiving leftovers — what do you have, and what are you doing with them?

I had a random thought.  It’s not like there’s turkeys in India, but leftover turkey might lend itself to an Indian arrangement.  I mentioned this to my wife, who also cooked the turkey, and she started looking through the Intertubes.

Turkey Tikka Masala it is.

I think I’m about to go downstairs to get some.  The scent has been wafting up the stairs, now, for about an hour.  Considering I’ve been sitting at this keyboard, pretty much since 8:00 this morning, I’m ready for the break.

Problems with some work stuff.  Ugh.

I stayed up waaaay too late last night, and have been feeling it today.  I actually doubled my typical coffee consumption.  But I’m fading.  So food, and sleep.

Twenty-five

I think I was getting tired when I started copping up this month’s prompts into drafts, because today’s showed the following:  Small Business Saturday. Write about small businesses you frequent.

Since I rarely go anywhere these day, and Sarah wasn’t feeling well, we only ordered delivery from a local restaurant.

I have almost a reflexive, at this point, resistance to chain restaurants.  There are some exceptions, sure, but it is a bit of bigotry that I have.  Yes, this is influenced by the podcast to which I am listening right now.

Football

The Saints are the best team in the league.  It’s been awhile since I could say that.

But they’re playing the sort of football I learned when I played in high school in the early-90s.  It is fascinating to see teams that are having linebackers line up in the backfield because they don’t have a fullback on the roster.

The Saints, Patriots, Eagles, and Cowboys are all doing the same sort of thing.  The question is whether one of them can beat the fast-strike offenses and 3-4 teams that are so abundant in the league today.

That Monday night game with the Rams and Chiefs was entertaining, certainly.  But a team that can hold on to the ball for more than two minutes at-a-time can beat either of them.

In other not-so-interesting news, I found a place I really want to look at to live.  The big question is whether parking, or lack thereof, might be a deal-killer.

We shall see.

Twenty-four

So, today is a free-write day.  For whatever reason, my place-holder for this entry was, again, that thing I didn’t want to write about yesterday.

I’m still very much driven the past few days on figuring out next steps.

Thanksgiving was okay, though, in full consideration, we are so out-of-sync with what some family members think and/or want.

The only option is to not associate.  With the freedom to associate, comes a freedom to choose to not.  If I don’t meet your expectations, that’s fine.

If I ask you not to tell me how to live my life, I’m free to avoid you.  So, instead, force me to live my life the way you think I ought, and use men with guns to prevent me from leaving.  Venezuela, much?

Got a little distracted reading a discussion about whether passenger rail should be taxpayer-funded.

It is, largely because politicians want to show it off to constituents.

I didn’t participate in the “discussion,” because, well, what I think doesn’t matter.  Because I don’t believe exactly as you do, I’m a Commie, or a Nazi.

So I leave;  I still can.

Sarah kind of shared the same sentiment with me while we were discussing this.

So, what do I envision?  Go hole up somewhere in DC, and just be about each other.  The plan to do that is coming together.  It might take awhile to get there, but that’s where we’re headed.  I think.  Just me and Sarah.

Twenty-three

Nobody likes you when you’re twenty-three.

I feel much the same about the prompt I selected.  I need to pay closer attention, perhaps.

For the particular prompt I’d selected, it was something I used this past summer, and originally in 2012.  Do my views change?  Sure.

Some things are more closely-held than others, but, yes, I can see the arguments.  (Note:  that doesn’t mean that I’ll ever say anything good about the 3-4 defense.)

On that note, it was nice seeing the Saints help the Failcons do what they do last night.

Not a ton else to say today, though.  I’m tired by this past week, and am looking forward to a full weekend off for the first time in I don’t know how long.

Apologies for the digression;  the point of the changing idea.  Yeah, I do update my views on things..  Sometimes, an issue will really make me angry, and later I won’t care.  That speaks, however, to the idea that those aren’t the times to make laws.  Next week, you might not care, and you’ve locked things in perpetuity.

Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday.  I probably won’t be shopping, as I’m in a place where I can’t easily get to a small business.

I want to get to a place where I can.

So.  To plan.