It didn't take long so for that I'm really happy. Like a week and bam. New palm rest/clicker because I'm a doof, new fan probably because of bearings wearing out and dust.

Back to Bejeweled Blitz..

Kevin, omg KEVIN! :(

Or even Natalie (seriously). Jordan did nothing on BB. She wins 2/3 of the final HOH comp and all of a sudden, oh my GOD she DESERVESSS to ~*WIN! Yeah, let's not judge the stuff that happened before, apparently. Being the dumb, bum leg of a twosome is hardly considered respectable gameplay (disagree? moron!), when even Natalie used her brain in the grand scheme AND on the fly. I do (did? in game) hate Natalie, so don't get the wrong idea.

I just hate when people vote personally. So you were lied to, get a grip. You lost, you're out, you've been out and you can make an educated decision on who deserves that life-changing money and the choices do not include you. Maybe, maybe, the third place person gets a little elbow room if they were denied and they get less time to reflect or whatever.

I've taken my ambien (way late) so I have to be quick!

I've been watching Mad Men. Barely to the end of season one. Like it so far. Also, Warehouse 13.

This fan needs to go. Been saying that forever. My fault. I'll take it in, it's just that backing up sucks.

I've lost 10 pounds so far. Yippieeee!

Kevin better win BB!!!!!!!!!

Good Nghttt I feel this emtr box looks like ahou s e

I'm watching tennis and I'm mad because this Austrian guy keeps lobbing it so the American guy can't get it. I hope he doesn't win.

News on the diet front: I had a few days of weakness where I just quit. That was two weeks ago, though. I'm back on track. I have a cheat day a week, but I really only have a cheat meal. I've lost 8 pounds since July 10th. I want to at least try to exercise more than the little stuff but it hurtssss.

Speaking of hurtsss, but not really, I took my acrylics off. What a mess. My nails are so thin and delicate now.

My laptop is a piece of shit. I need to get in gear and back stuff up and bring it in.

I think I screwed something up with my loans. I've almost worried I've been paying a scam site. EdFinancial had been calling me. I've been delinquent with them for over 60 days now. I guess I have two federal loans out, so naturally I should be paying two. I have to find out. If that's true, I should have payments of $200 a month. Can't do that. It's not like I don't depend on my dad, because I do since I got sick and am not in school and can't work. I think I could consolidate them to pay less a month. But are they deferred if I ever go back to school?

I feel as if it was all planned. They bring on the new girl for one season of AI. The four judge thing sucks. Paula suddenly has "problems with her contract" for the next season then then she's done. Isn't Simon almost done, too? Next thing we know he'll be gone and Ryan will be a host/judge. Crazy.

Yeah, that diet? Mmm. I wanted a last hurrah out of Cheatland last night, and boy, did I go out with a bang! I ate as much greasy movie popcorn as I could in 2.5 hours during HP, then ate nachos at the Ground Round with Dad and even had a bit of those dipper things. On the car ride home, I felt so ill. I don't throw up and actually would have made myself do it had the neighbor not come over to talk to Jefe. Still feel sick this morning. Needless to say, I will be very choosy with what I eat from now on.

I've been in such a fog for such a long time. I'm still waiting for it to pop. That's my apology. I'm trying, blog.

I want to say that so much has happened, but that's not really true. A moderate amount of stuff has happened. I've been here, I've been there. I spend a lot of time worrying. I've applied for SSI and been denied and redone that although I don't think much will come of it now. I'm having insurance issues, but I think those are okay for the time being. Phew. I pay my loans now. 150$ a month.

I feel like if my insurance and social security were to work out, my life will be relatively normal again. I've got enough with feeling how I do. I have only so much loan excess to pay off my loans and I am not able to work or go to school. What happens when my excess runs out? I'm hosed.

I don't know what the plan is yet. Ideally, I get better and I go to be the best damn pharmacist, chemist, whatever. But now, since I am so worried about money, if I go back, I feel like I would go to a cheap school. I thought UMO was in the relatively cheaper zone, but I don't know, maybe I'm jaded now. Community college for me, but then what? What do I major in? I do not know. For now, I just don't think about the future. I'm totally a "today" person.

Anyhoozle. I'm on a diet, so that's cool. I've gained like a million pounds since leaving school and I've always been sort of pudgy. Forty pounds from here, maybe. Let's hope! I basically am just keeping track of what I eat and not eating a lot. Calorie counting mostly. Not a lot of that carb business. That's multi-variable. Eh. Like, last week, though, well, over a period of ten days, I lost like 6 pounds. Gained 3 back but whatever. At least I know how to do it.

Oh! Zahatar! Or Za'atar or something. My aunt showed me it. She's up and over from California and her husband is from Saudi Arabia and she introduced me to this spice. She mixes it with olive oil and puts it on pita bread. You can have it with tabouli salad, feta cheese and kalamata olives all at once. Oh, seriously, it's so good. I'm obsessed with it. It's probably where the three pounds came from.

And dude, edfinancial is on my ass. They keep calling me. I won't answer, either. I'm current. I have money due on the 15th. Today is the 5th. I'm going to pay. They called three times in a row last night. When you do pick up, there's a huge pause or they hang up. Dicks.

I might see Harry Potter today. Kind of excited. Kid movie or not, I don't care. Transformers, maybe. Either. Just the fact that it's a "big" movie.

Wheeeeee.

probably isn't the pain and other physical symptoms that go along with it.

I've been at stress level red since some recent time. Why? I have a shit ton of medical bills. Literally $1100 worth. Easy. I have insurance, great insurance (at least, I should until July). Because there are so many tests, those and delayed copays of $25 at a time. I just have to tell myself that they only need to get $5 dollars from me a month and it won't be a big deal. Down the line, I am going to run out of reserve money and won't be able to pay my student loans off every month.

The insurance thing. I'm on my dad's and would be covered until age 22 or 28 as long as I was in college. I'm not in college anymore. I lose it in I think July. I heard from them that they can't pull my insurance from me if I'm disabled and living at home. I applied for disability ages ago and am only waiting to hear back. Supposed to call today. I need a confirmation number.

Don't get me started on the pills. I'm cutting back on the amount of painkillers I take and it's already having an effect on how much - get this - pain I'm feeling. Instead of two at a time, I try to get away with one. So far, not so good. Started yesterday night and this morning was hell. I haven't felt pain like this since October. Of course, I caved. Mornings are always bad. I know that cutting my dosages in half will cause anxiety and anxiety causes more pain. I don't like not knowing what's real in my body and what's not.

My doctor wants me to go back to pain management. I can't say a want to and if I lose insurance, I probably won't. I will probably go file for MaineCare, but does that cover it? To what extent? I don't know. I'm just glad I got my lyrica for the next three months.

Humbug.

Actually, I've been back since the 23rd/24th, I think. Overall it was pretty good. Half Moon Cay was the best island we went to. It was sunny and warm, the sand was GORGEOUS, etc, etc. Our room was nice. It was big, considering we went with the suite instead of the regular stateroom. The food was great in the in the dining room. The buffets, eh, not so much, but whatever. The weather did suck, I'm going to say. It wasn't sunny except for HMC and a bit of Grand Turk. Dissapointing, sure.

But the way home..

The Carnival people told us that at the very latest, every single person would be off by 11:15am. Our flight was at 1:55pm and anyone with flights earlier than 1pm was supposed to let the people know and they would be boarded off earlier. They also give us these numbered zoning tags to board us off by and ours wasn't too high so we weren't too concerned. At about 10am or something over the PA they tell us half the staff over at the pier showed up for work today so things are moving slowly today and basically to push that 11:15am over a bit.

More time passes, eventually they drop the zoning tag numbering system and just have everybody line up (UGH!!) and we are through customs.

Finally we are outside and we wait for at least an hour in the wrong place for our bus because that's where everyone else is waiting. Gram also gets knocked over by some woman and her suitcase in a hurry. Great! (She's okay, but now, over a week later, she has a huge bruise). Anyway, we finally get to the right place (which is apparently down through an elevator to another sidewalk) and our shuttle gets called and that takes another 45 minutes. Don't forget it takes an hour from the pier to get to JFK.

We're at the airport, I'm hurting, Gram's hurting, and we've lost a LOT time. We check our bags in at 1:25pm, get through security, get down the long, long hall to the gate and it's 1:47pm. THEY JUST CLOSED IT. We miss our flight by five minutes. Get this, the 5:30pm flight to Portland was cancelled and there is only a 11pm. Kind of shitty.

We waited in the airport for 9 hours. Did I tell you I hate New York? I hated New York before, but now, I really hate it. Never had a worse day in my life.

Fun fact: before we boarded, a stewardess let a guy on the plane early and as she talked to everybody on the plane during the safety talk, they were winking at each other and she was blushing and stuff. After a while, I looked back and the guy wasn't in his seat anymore. :|

-Today: Possibly packing clothes, shoes, shamp/cond, jewelry, etc.
-Sunday/Monday: Dad and Becks come up. Going to see Star Trek and have Lobster for mother's day because it's $4.99/lb rn.
-Thursday: I get acrylics put on. Ahhh!
-Friday: Gram and I leave for Portland.
-Saturday: We fly out to NYC and then get on the boat.
-on boatday: MISS IDOL FINALE!

Fill in tanning. Speaking of which, color patches?! I have them on my legs. Is it melasma from my BCP or skin damage from when I was a kid or from now or what?

I keep slipping into these weeks of feeling worse than usual. I don't even know when it's happening. I just all of a sudden realize that I really, really hurt and then I feel regularly crappy again.

This whole flu business has stressed me out. A guy in Kmart behind me in line sniffled thirty-one times. It's retarded to count stuff like that, but as I said: stressed. There have been maybe two people, at least one, who have it and are in this city/town and they've touched the same milk bottles and jeans as me and this isn't Bangor. I'm more concerned about having to spend 5 hours in NYC pretty much 2 weeks from today.

I've been so tired of this overcast cold, wet weather and now it's starting to be hot and a little sunny. Not as sunny as I would like, but still, it's warm out! It's about 85 degrees today but will be like 60's tomorrow, unfortunately.

I've been tanning. I'm going on a boat on May 16-23. I will otherwise burn like crazy and get that early season skin rash. I'm finally getting a base tan, so I will be okay. I'm not really for tanning on a normal basis because I just don't think it's all that smart, but I've decided it's better to be exposed gradually than burn hard and be miserable for the duration of the trip.

Anyway, I'm hungry.

All these jokes about "my rickets", akin to Denny Crane's "mad cow", and I could actually have a vitamin D deficiency. You might want to look here and here if you're interested in the connection between chronic musculoskeletal pain and low vitamin D levels. I might actually have to take up tanning. Or even whole milk.

Am I satisfied? They took two dragging nicks out of the once glassy top. Sad. It's not really noisy anymore. When I'm doing memory/processor/everything intensive stuff and whatnot the fan may come on and it's still a little rattly. I still think it's off it's center and when it spins like that, it makes that rattling noise.

I had this huge back-and-forth with my doctor about new meds, just ugh. Long story. I've stressed so much about it and now I hurt incredibly. It's mostly in my arms. My neck hurts a lot, too and so does my lower back sometimes. I've been getting chest pain, as well, and my lungs feel wet. Lots of fun stuff. It's this humid weather.

Gram and I have been talking about going to Florida to flee to warmer climates. This is something we need to do. Sandy swears by it. I just don't want to worry about being sick for awhile and actually feel somewhat close to what I used to. Aside from that, it's close to a vacation.

I have so many things I need to do:

1) I have to call my rheumatologist about pills. I need to do that soon, like so he gets back to me today possibly faxes a thing to Betsy.
2) I need to call Best Buy to change the contact number. They're calling my house and no one's home.
3) SSDI forms. Those are super important. For some reason they take me forever and stress me out.
4) Dentist stuff. I need to set up a cleaning with someone who is in-network. I want jaw scans and then possibly wisdom teeth pulling.

Dad knows someone with a condo in Florida. Gram and I have been talking about going down there for a week. Sandy says warm weather makes her fibro feel sooooo much better. After a lot of thought, I want to go. I don't like the idea of fllying, but to think, the possibility of no pain, or close to it? I'd have to.

I have an appointment with pain management next week. Gram went there to the same facility and had no success; needless to say, she doesn't recommend it. Sandy doesn't like it either. Not liking it.

FOUR WINDS!! Conor Oberst in a whiner and sucks in ways that aren't meant for family shows. My lovely band made it beautiful.

I'm using Flock! I found this browser and it's actually really neat. You set up your accounts and you click buttons to blog and post pictures and everythinggggg!!

I've decided I want a phone. Once I get -- If I get SSI I will, I guess. What sucks is that will take forever. I am trying to get Gram to get me one because she can add a line and what not cheaply. I mean I

Oh! I went to a dildo party (sorry! Passion Party™!) last night. It was scary. I went with Kati and my grandmother. Yes, my grandmother. That was all fine and dandy until we were playing this game (and I say we lightly because I carefully excluded myself from every activity) where we recieved points for doing it in different places, and I was sitting next to my Mimi and I heard her scribble points down. Sigh. I'm not recovered. She might throw one of these here.

I finally turned my computer in. My network issue should be fixed. My mouse problem should no longer be a problem. Fan thing. Whew. How long will it take? Will I get a different one? Will it get wiped? Who knows.

I bought a 500gb passport the other day for like 100 bucks so I'm backing everything up on this laptop. I'm afraid they'll wipe it, knowing it's happened to a few people I know.

The mouse is broken. Clicks and sticks. Sunken key. Fan is bad. Overheats. Cord is fussy. Guess that's it. Those problems are really my fault, but oh well. Full accident warranties. Yeeeeaahh!

Anyway, this harddrive is great. It's so cute, too. It's small, it's fast and I only have to plug it a USB cord into it. I almost got the networked one, but it's not general networked, you have to use some program and I didn't want to get into that.

Now, I think tea is for saps, but there is this Thai tea that my grandmother got at the Asian Cafe (my new favorite restaurant), and it's the best.

There's this Strawberry Shortcake show on after the news and the basic idea of the show is that there are child and a pet, both based on the same food. There are probably a dozen of them. Basically, they were having a contest to see who had the best pet.

I rolled my eyes, just knowing exactly where this type of shit was going.

By the end of the episode, after some crap and the contest gets ruined, the food pets were all happily playing in a group, unaware that they were symbolicaly arranged with their "#1 pet" trophy in the center. Isn't that sweet, they're all winners? Of course, the main character, has her closing voiceover:

"We forgot they were all the very best pets and we didn't need any help knowing that."

This is what I don't understand about our society. For some reason, we teach our kids that everybody wins. Ninth place and you fucking sucked, but you get a ribbon. We give the team that came in last a trophy, because hey, you signed up!

It's the most harmful ideology. It devaules a "win" for those who actually deserve those ribbons, those trophies and it teaches the literal and actual losers to be whiny bitches when they are exposed to the real world. Why do we to this to ourselves? Just so we can make a feelgood episode of television? There are winners and there are losers. Don't tell me that a 5 year old is too young and too (I'm gagging) fragile to start learning that. Instead, we maybe we ought to introduce different attitudes towards losing.

That show just made me so irritated. If it's supposed to teach the next generation of America something, at least make it something that's true.

I can't help but get up early. I feel so crappy all the time, even when I just roll over and briefly wake myself up. Pain floods in my legs and my feet and my back and my arms and my hands and fingers and my hips. I try to go and take some pills and unscrewing the bottle hurts and I always keep them on the anti-childproof end. In the words of the dentist kid, "Is this going to be forever"? I certainly hope not.

I would love to get back into school. I need to get back into school. But man, I can't even do the dishes because I have to stand and move my arms for a half hour. And walking to classes? I always tag along grocery shopping to Shaw's or Walmart or Job Lots or wherever and usually whoever I'm with with (Dad, Gram) will end up going to 2+ places. Ah. I can't keep up. Once in a while I think I am and I'll be on my third store and then going to have lunch and about to go to the fourth and then when I come home -- that's it. The next day and the next, too. There are online classes to look into to stay on my dad's insurance (with me having to have bone scans, MaineCare is a no). I'll have to check on those today.

Enough about that. I've been thinking about the Gardasil vaccine. Now, is it a cancer vaccine or a virus vaccine? Those aren't quite the same thing, are they? Merck says the former, the CDC, the latter. Maybe cancer vaccine sounds better? Wouldn't be the first time they opted for the auditory superior. Their catchphrase, "One less"? It should be one fewer. That bothers me. Less deals with "uncountable" amounts, like happiness. Fewer is reserved for countable things, like, oh say, statistics in "we're all in this together" in virus, no, STD vaccine commercials.

I was asked to get the vaccine in September. I said no. For one reason, I'm not needing it, so don't go and thing I'm a gungo-ho conspiracy theorist who hates pharmacy companies. I love them. I want, well wanted, at this rate, to be a part of them. I just don't like Gardasil. I don't think little girls should be getting it at all. Not just because I firmly believe they should be keeping their legs closed in the first place but that the vaccine isn't ready. The sampling size for testing, for the 9-12 age group was unreasonably small, like 1200 or something.

Take your yes we cans and one lesses and be gone.

First, I'd like to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Years. Second, I'd like to say how this blog has become, blah blah, world's tiniest violin, etc etc.

Lynn had her baby shower on the 10th, so needless to say, I finished that baby blanket! She'll be having the baby in about a week, maybe less, so that'll be neat.

I had my rheumatology appointment today. After an MRI, an EMG, a nerve conduction study, two blood tests, umpteen questionnaires, neurology visits, a psych evaluation, four dozen pill scripts, countless poking and prodding, today I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Just in case, a few more blood tests, a piss test, a sleep study as well as a full body bone scan were ordered to make sure everything is in check.

I'm so excited for House and Lost next week!!

At no doing of my own, I'm really exhausted. I need a nap. A nice long, deep nap.

It's Christmas Eve!! Going out for chinese with everybody tonight. Dad and Becks will finally be here.

All the Christmas lights are on! The tree, the stairwell, the bear thing and the minitree in the bay window. Isn't this exciting?

I need to finish this blanket!!