Lighter than Air

Still jobless. This isn't a surprise; it's only been a week, and even if I'd been lucky enough to get an interview anywhere last week, the turnaround time for jobs, in my experience, is 2-3 weeks from the time of application, if you get anywhere at all.

So I still have plenty of time on my hands at the moment.

I've been cooking more, which is good for me, since it gives me something to do that makes me feel accomplished, and lets me try out potentially tasty new recipes at the same time. I found a recipe for udon made from scratch, actually making the noodles by hand instead of using pre-made ones, and as soon as I can figure out what kind of soup I want to put them in, I'm going to make some for supper, probably later this week. Considering the noodles themselves consist of flour (I have plenty), water (definitely have plenty) and salt (not as much as the others, but still a lot), I can make a lot of tasty meals really cheaply that way. A definite bonus when money is an issue.

And now the window in the kitchen opens, so I can make soup and bread without dying of the heat that having the stove and oven on generates! This makes me very happy, and comes at a good time, since turkeys are currently $1.99 a pound at a nearby grocery store. If I get a $15 turkey, that's a meal or two with roast turkey and vegetables, plenty of leftover meat if I want to make sausage or stuffed turkey buns or any number of things that don't take too much meat, plus the bones and leftover meat also makes a delcious soup. If I buy carrots and potatoes, I can easily stretch $20 of food into a week's worth of meals, using a few others things that I have in to supplement (mostly spices, flour, and water, so I don't tend to count those things in the overall cost of the food I make).

Turkey omelettes are also delicious, and I need to use up the eggs that are in the fridge before they're good for nothing but hard-boiling.

Making slow but good progress in Persona 3 Portable. I abandonned Hard Mode because it was frustrating me too much and the repeated dying I was doing prevented me from doing any decent level-grinding or plot advancement. They're not kidding when they call it Hard Mode! I'll give it another try eventually, but I want to play through more of the game without tearing my hair out. Right now I'm just past the part where Fuuka joins SEES, so now I've got Mitsuru to train in Tartarus, while I try to get enough money together to get everyone's equipment up to snuff. There's not much left that I need to buy, but I like having everyone in top condition as soon as I can.

More specifically, I like being in better-than-top condition; I always overlevel in games if I have the chance, because I'm one of those people who enjoys level-grinding. Always been a little bit weird that way.

Celebrated my birthday on Saturday, which didn't go over as planned but it was still fun. The ice cream cupcakes I was going to buy didn't work out since the store's freezer was broken so they just didn't have any. Then the debit machine was wonky at the second store I went to when I decided, "Fuck it, I still want ice cream, so I'm getting some pumpkin cheesecake frozen yogurt from Yeh!" But I still had a great day, ate a delicious meal at Boaz (and got hooked on edamame), spent time with friends, had delicious strawberry-custard layer cake, bought some tea bags that are specifically designed to make ice tea (the tropical sangria one is delicious, and I haven't yet tried the strawberry basil) and overall had a good time turning 30. There are worse ways to spend a birthday, that's for sure!

Today, though, I'll be spending most of the day off line, since there's a high possibility of thundershowers this afternoon and I don't like using my computer then. A holdover from the desktop days, I suspect, since I can just unplug my laptop from the wall and still have it function perfectly and not worry about the power going out or power surges or anything of the sort. It's just habit.

And since the next 2 weeks are largely free of responsibility (at least work-related responsibility), I've challenged myself to a readathon! I'm planning to read 6 books, finish a 7th that's been half finished for over a month now, and catch up on last month's and this month's Apex magazine. I'm about a third of the way through Julia Mary Gibson's Copper Magic right now, and enjoying it a hell of a lot! It's a quick read, not because it's so short (though it's under 400 pages, so 'short' is relative anyway), but because it's just so engaging. I can't help but keep pushing onward because I'm loving the story and the tone so much. Another one of those cases where I'm surprised that this is the author's debut novel; Gibson is definitely an author to keep an eye on, I'm thinking.

But now I shall vanish into the depths of my To Read pile and enjoy what's left of the merely semi-clouded sky before the rain really starts to roll in.

I'd love to be snuggled under a blanket right now, hiding from the chilly rainy weather that doesn't seem to want to go away this month, and the only thing stopping me is that my Kindle still needs to charge a bit more. I have 2 books to read by the end of the week, 1 of which I'm halfway through already (Betsy Dornbusch's Exile, also a reread) and 1 which I haven't started yet (Craig Cormick's The Shadow Master) but that I've promised a review by... Oh, for some reason I thought it was June 1, but it's actually June 4, so I have longer to read it than I thought. I'll be able to get it done by the 1st, though, really, since Exile won't take me too much longer (I'll probably be able to finish it by the end of tomorrow), and I don't have much planned for my days off work on Thursday and Friday except for some cleaning and cooking, and I highly doubt I'll be doing enough of either to take up 2 days of time. So I'll get to enjoy some relaxing time with new books then.

I expect I'll get a lot of reading done next week, too. I switched shifts around with a coworker, so instead of having a 4-day weekend, I work Saturday to Tuesday, have Wednesday off (for reading), work Thursday, then have Friday to Sunday off. Roommate's coming back for my birthday (which is June 7) and will arrive in the evening on Friday, so I'll have most of that day to read, and leaving early on Sunday, so I'll have most of that day too. And on Saturday we can go out for a delicious meal and possibly some book shopping and maybe taking a nice walk if the weather's good! Then I'll only work 3 more days before I'll have my usual Thursday and Friday 'weekend' off work again and can catch up on more reading.

I say 'catch up' because I have fallen behind somewhat, and review copies are piling up faster than I can read them. They already have, really, and always will, but it's getting particularly bad, so I want to has a massive reading fest or something so that I can whittle down the pile a little and get more reviews written.

It's an addiction, reading and reviewing all these books. It's hard to believe I've been doing it for almost 4 and a half years now. There have been times where I've thought that maybe I should stop, that I don't really want to keep up the responsibility of having to review when what I'd rather be doing is just more reading, but I keep going back to it, and I do enjoy talking about what I think about the things I read. And I like knowing that I'm doing a little bit to help publicity for good books, too.

I shaved my head last weekend. Not for the first time, but I liked it a lot before and it was getting long enough to be annoying, but too short to just tie back out of the way. So out came the clippers and away went the hair. I like it best this way, I think. It makes me look more boyish. Not manly, but boyish, and that's closer to what I actually want for myself, so I'll take it! Even if everyone else who looks at me sees only the outward signs of being female (boobs, me wearing a long skirt because it's comfortable and nobody can see my legs), I know I can look in the mirror and see a face that's a little more like how I think I ought to be. And that makes me happy.

I've been making more use of my camera, too, and getting more pictures while I'm out. I'm not bad, really, but I'm not that great either, and I think it wouldn't hurt me to read a couple of photography books so that I can get some tips on improving. For every picture I get that I like, there are about a dozen that are mediocre, and about 3 dozen that I just reject out of hand because they're not focused properly, a bad angle, looked great on the digital camera screen but aren't so great on the computer screen... I know that much of it is trial and error, and a bit of editing too, but I think my skill has hit a plateau and I need something new to get me improving again.

Aaand I just discovered that a cheque finally cleared my bank account, so I have enough money to get cat food and stamps without having to use credit! Possibly some cat litter, too, but I think I can make what I currently have stretch until I get my next paycheque if I'm careful, so I may not need to. But the other things are definitely needed; cats need to eat, and I have an important letter to send! So now I can depart the online world happy. My Kindle isn't fully charged yet, but I don't want to wait any longer, since time's running out and I don't have long before it'll be time to go to sleep so I can get some good rest for work tomorrow.

Wow, has it ever been a long time since I've updated this. I want to say it's because life hasn't given me anything worth talking about lately, but, well, that would be a big stinking lie.

The pain has been investigated. Still likely to be due to all the surgical scarring, but the fact that there's a 6 cm cyst on my left ovary probably isn't helping matters. That's almost as big as the tumour was when it was first diagnosed, and a full 1 cm above the minimum size requirement to consider surgery to remove it. I find it more than a littlr suspicious that this cyst showed up hot on the heels of the tumour and surgery. I don't know if they're related, exactly, since 1 was solid and 1 was liquid-filled and not in the same place, but really? 2 benign growths in 3 years, where previously there were none and no symptoms? And the cyst literally grew between the surgery and now, or it would have been spotted on previous scans and the surgery itself.

So I'm going back to Dr. S. I wouldn't, except Dr. K thinks it might do me some emotional good to tell her, "Look, you gave me substandard care before, you ignored the severity of my symptoms, and now I'm back and you'd better take this seriously before I end up hospitalized again." And if she still doesn't give me proper care, then Dr. K said he'll be more than happy to refer me to another specialist to get this dealt with.

That appointment is on February 5, so I don't have to wait too long to start getting this handled. Which is good, because the pain has just steadily gotten worse as time has gone on, and the other weekend had a day in which I was in too much pain to bend in the middle and get out of bed without help. I managed to get up, get some morphine, and once that kicked in I went back to sleep, and by the time I'd woken up again the pain had mostly gone away. Mostly. Not completely. I don't think there's been a single day in over a month where my pain level has been under 4 without painkillers. A few months ago, I would have said 3 instead of 4. So it's ramping up, I'm having more bad days, and I'm not happy about it.

Still reading books like a mad fiend, and enjoying every second of it. It's funny, whenever I look at the ARCs folder on my Kindle, I think, "I remember telling myself that I'd work harder to keep my number of review copies under 300. Crap, now it's over 300. Okay, I'll try to keep it on the lower end of the 300 scale. Hmm, I'll try to keep it under 350. Fuck, I'm now almost at 400 review copies!" Don't get me wrong; I love this gig and don't plan to stop reading and reviewing any time soon. I just wish sometimes that I could read faster than people I like to read keep writing books. Give me a month in which no books I want to read are released, and I'll at least be able to get 8 or so read with no new additions so that I can bring the teetering pile down a little bit more!

There's nothing better than curling up in bed with warm blankets and a hot mug of tea and a stack of good books within reach or on my Kindle. I could spend weeks like that. Hell, if I could afford it, I'd spend every winter doing that!

(Ignore the fact that this means that in Canada, I'd be doing that from December until late April, if I'm judging winter by when it gets too cold outside to be comfortable. But hey, approx 1/3 of a year devoted to reading? Now that's a dream job!)

I've been getting back into crafting more and more, deliberately making the time to do a little each day. I've made some embroidered bookmarks lately, and tonight I think I'll start working on some coasters. Woven paper strips with a felt backing? Sounds like a plan! It's relaxing, and doing stuff like that allows me to destress and get in a few episodes of Supernatural now and then. :p

As soon as I can afford a new camera (or can borrow someone else's), I'll start getting pictures and re-open my long-closed Etsy store, so that I can sell things again and make a little bit of extra money to cover me during lean or sick times. I've learned the hard way that I can't rely on any benefits I get through work, or anybody at work to actually help me get more details about those benefits, so that if I end up really sick again or end up needing another surgery to remove things that shouldn't be there, I'm on my own when it comes to money. So the more I have saved up, or the more things I do that can make me money when I can't work my dayjob, the better things will be for me during that time. And if it doesn't come to that, then I'll just have some spare money saved for anything else that I need or want to do down the road.

Speaking of making things, a friend was incredibly generous recently and paid for me to take an art course I had my eye on. It starts on the same day that I have my appointment with Dr. S, and the focus is on making small objects, repurposing, and ACEOs and ATCs, so it should give me plenty of inspiration for other things that I can make on my own once the class has ended. I can't wait for it to start, and as shy as I am, I also can't wait to meet other artists and crafters in the city. I think it'll be fun, and good for me. So many thanks going out to V for helping me with that when I couldn't afford to do it on my own.

And that's about it, at least for important lifey updates. Hopefully I can get the health hell sorted out soon (I haven't been healthy for about 2.5 years now...) so that my life can return to positive things all the time, like books and embroidery and walks in warm weather and all that wonderful stuff!