My thieving roommate

I've lived alone for, like, ever.  OK, since about 1991.  But still.  That's long enough to get used to it.  And one of the things I'm used to is the fact that if I lose something, all I have to do to find it is retrace my steps.

So, yesterday, I lost the little bluetooth earpiece for my cell phone.  Should've been incredibly easy to find.  I remember when I last used it -- someone called me on my cell and I took the call on my sofa, using the bluetooth thingie.  When the call was finished, I should have put both bluetooth and cell phone back in my purse (on the hallway table) where they belong.  The cell phone, it appeared, was on the hallway table next to the purse.  The bluetooth wasn't.

Nor was it back on the couch.

The number of places it could have run off to on its own is exceedingly small.  Pretty much any place between the couch and the hallway table.  No bluetooth.

But.

I have a cat.

My bluetooth earpiece is just about the size of them little toy mice she likes batting around.  Once, when I left the bluetooth unattended, it found its way under my bedroom dresser -- which is where many of the little mice end up.  It was fairly easy to find because it was flashing its blue light.

Yesterday, I did two room-to-room searches for the bluetooth.  First, I slowly carried the cell phone around my condo -- sort of like a hi-tech divining rod -- waiting for it to find the signal from the bluetooth and connect to it.  No luck.  Then I shut off all the lights and started looking for the telltale blue blinking light.  Again nothing.

My housekeeper is coming tomorrow -- I have great hopes that she'll come across the little dude while vacuuming.  Otherwise, I reckon it's behind the washing machine, and won't be found until the (happy) day when I move.

Sigh.  Can anyone recommend a cheap bluetooth earpiece?

Oh that's just freakin' splendid

Woke up today, feeling a little off. 

As the day progressed, found myself heading off to the restroom fairly more often than usual, displaying what is politely referred to as ... well, actually, I'm not real sure there is a polite word for it, but it's one of those things those poor line-dancing-people in the Pepto-Bismol ad are cheerfully singing about.

Also have a bit of a headache.  Not an "ow, ow, my head hurts" sort of a headache.  More of a "wow, I stood up too fast; I ought to lie down for a few hours" headache. 

The treatment for both is, thankfully, fairly obvious and already in my medicine cabinet (and, for the lying down bit -- my bedroom).

What concerns me is the cause.  We have several possible candidates:

1.  Stomach Flu.

2.  Common side effects of a prescription med I took yesterday.

3.  Rarely seen side effects that may arise from, er, combining yesterday's prescription med with the meds I usually take.

This latter possibility annoys me -- largely for my own stupidity in not checking for a possible adverse interaction, as I'm generally pretty good about that sort of thing.  Even obsessive.  But the little label that came with yesterday's drug didn't say anything at all about this particular combination, and my pharmacist didn't know I was taking the other med.

He should have known.  He so totally WOULD have known if my health plan hadn't forced me into bypassing him and getting my regular medication by mail.  So, here's me, taking my regular med -- and here's him, dispensing yesterday's med -- and he had absolutely no clue.

Yeah, yeah, ultimately my fault for not asking.  Most likely no harm done (but I'm gonna skip tonight's regular med just in case -- y'know, 'cause I'm not a full-blown moron.)  And, for now -- back to the couch.

Overheard at Work

Assistant to boss:  Stan is on the phone for you.

Boss:  Stan who?

Assistant:  Stan Mm--  Stan Gr-- ... Some dude named Stan.

Oh, the indignity

Went grocery shopping the other day.  I live on the second floor of my building, so I usually hang all the grocery bags off my arms and lug all my groceries up, in the elevator, in a single trip.  This time, I had about six plastic bags of groceries.

It had been raining.  When I got in the front door -- groceries dangling -- I wiped my feet on the mat.  Then I stepped off onto the tile, and left little black marks.  I stepped back onto the mat.  I wiped my right shoe repeatedly on the mat and test-stepped onto the tile.  No more marks.  Success.  My left foot is in the big honkin' air cast.  I wiped the air cast repeatedly on the mat, but every time I test-stepped onto the tile, I was still leaving little black marks.

I'm not supposed to take off the cast, and I'm sure not going to track little black marks down the hallway on my nice new carpet.

I look at the groceries.  I take the toilet paper out of the plastic grocery bag, jam my aircast in the bag, and tie the handles in a knot around my ankle.

Success and humiliation all at once!

Not Exactly Groundhog Day

It's still February 1st.

Still.

As far as AOL is concerned, I am stuck in a February 1st time warp.

Amazingly enough, I do not believe that this is AOL's fault.

February 1st is the day I installed Internet Explorer 7.

(OK, that part was AOL's fault, as I was merrily going along with IE 6 quite happily, until web-based AOL mail decided to choke on it.  So I upgraded to IE 7, and web-based AOL mail is back to normal.)

But now, every time I log in to AOL, it gives me February 1's Welcome Screen. 

You can't fool me.  It isn't the first anymore.

I try to solve the problem by refreshing the Welcome Screen.  This isn't as easy as it sounds, as the little "refresh" button is grayed out when you're on the Welcome Screen.  I go into AOL help, which tells me I can refresh the welcome screen just by going to Keyword: Welcome.  OK, I do.

Still February 1st.

I try to solve the problem from within IE 7.  This is actually more frustrating than trying to solve it from within AOL.  I go into my Tools, and my Internet Options, and I locate the bit that talks about how frequently it should check for new versions of a webpage.  The option is set to "Automatically."  I'm not entirely sure what "automatically" means (automatically when?), but I switch it to "Every time I visit a webpage."  That ought to do it.  Every time I visit the AOL welcome screen, IE 7 ought to check for the new one, rather than just give me February 1st.  Right?

Wrong.

Internet Explorer does not seem to want to accept this change (no matter how many times I hit "OK") and keeps kicking it back to "Automatically" -- which apparently translates into "No time after February 1."

I finally get annoyed enough to change the setting on how long it keeps web pages cached.  It will now save them for ZERO days.  This will probably slow down my browsing in general, but at least it'll be today in AOL, right?

Yes!  I get February 7!  Success!

Let's see what day it is tomorrow.

Physical Manifestation of Someone Else's Stress

Some years ago, I developed an eyelid twitch.  This totally weirded me out, so I called the eye doctor about it.  Once he confirmed that it was the lid doing the twitching, as opposed to the actual eye, he told me that it was just a physical manifestation of stress, and that it would calm down when I un-stressed.

This turned out to be true.

From time to time, when I'm particularly stressed, I go all twitchy-eyelid for a while.  I kind of like it -- not that I enjoy the actual twitching, but that I have this stress-meter that lets me know when things are getting too dicey.  Eyelid starts twitching and I know it's time to sit down and breathe me some kitty-filtered air.

Today, I did something new and exciting.  I had a physical reaction to stress when I wasn't actually, y'know, stressed.

Interesting factoid about me:  Eye surgery ooks me out.  Now, I had eye surgery as a kid, and I was not ooked out by it at the time.  (Convenient for me.)  I only actually developed the whole ooky reaction to it some years later when my mother had eye surgery.  Cannot describe why, exactly.  I just know that I went from, "Oh, eye surgery; that's nice" to "Eww" in no time flat.

My sister tells this story about when she went to the eye doctor to get lasik done (or whatever it is that makes it so she doesn't have to wear glasses anymore) and they sat her down to watch a video of the procedure.  A little ways in (somewhere around "remove the cornea") she stood up and said, "That's it.  I'm done."  And they said, "You don't want the surgery?"  She replied, "No, I want the surgery.  I just don't want to watch the video."

I find this story amusing.  I also note that I was done just hearing her say "remove the cornea."  It's just my way.

So, anyhow, today, I'm talking to a friend at work who is going to be undergoing some eye surgery.  It's a fairly big deal -- not a "gee, I don't want to wear glasses anymore" sort of a surgery but a "it would be awfully nice to preserve the sight in that eye" type of deal.  I'm trying to be supportive.  She's a friend and it's scary and, hey, I'm a member of the Eye Surgery Sisterhood and can compare notes with her on how to attach an eye patch to your glasses and where to best park at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA.

And then she starts going into detail about the fairly unpleasant (but medically necessary -- and, ultimately wonderful) things that are going to be done to her eye, and, in fact, some of the unpleasant things she's endured just with the examinations leading up to her upcoming surgery.  Generally involving medical-type things going inside her eye.  And I'm standing there in her office nodding, and I'm thinking, "Does she notice I'm turning green here?"

And then, I actually have what may well be an anxiety attack.  Totally unprecedented in my life on the planet.  I start feeling light headed and I can't hear anything except the sound of my (rapidly increasing) pulse.  She's still talking and it's fading into the background of the sounds of my circulatory system.  I try to make a proper exit as I think it wouldn't look good if she's the one having the surgery and I pass out in her office.  I book down the hall to my office and sit with my head between my knees for a few minutes until it passes and life sounds normal again -- although the light-headedness doesn't completely pass for ten or fifteen minutes or so.

I guess she's taking her upcoming eye surgery a lot better than I'm taking it.