Confessions of an Internet Junkie

Seriously, I'm dealing with massive fatigue and an allergy attack that combined are making me pretty loopy. Let's just see, shall we?

As those of you on Facebook know, we were hit with a huge ice storm Thursday night into Friday. Power is out all over the damn place. Deb, whose apartment is in the basement, didn't own a backup battery for her sump pump, so with the power outage and the freakish amount of rain, her apartment flooded. Like … flooded. The cats' food dishes were floating. All of the floors have to be torn out, all of the walls need to be replaced as far up as the moisture seeped. Some of her furniture, some of our stuff stored down there is toast.

And speaking of toast, that's what we're living on pretty much. We finally got a big generator hooked up, so now we have water (yay, toilets!) and the fridges are running again. But we have to be really careful about everything else. We can use the toaster or the electric kettle or the microwave. I really had no good sense of how much I used the stove until I lost access to it. Also no TV, no radio, no hair dryer, certainly no washer or dryer. Or shower or bath. We use a candle in the bathroom instead of the lights. One light in the livingroom/kitchen, and I get to use a light in my room because I am truly night blind.

Hydro One (the power company for rural folk) keeps pushing back when we'll get power. It started out as Saturday night, then late Sunday night, now sometime Monday afternoon. I'm not holding my breath. I am, however, going to be missing Game of Thrones tonight. Bleh.

The good news is that the alpacas are all OK. The girls and babies were closed in their barn, but the boys had freer access to the outside. I did see a couple of the boys gingerly making their way across the ice-covered ground. Lots of damage all around the area, though.

Dar has had a buttload of medical tests (literally in the case of her colonoscopy last Wednesday), and Friday we get to hear all of the results put into - it is hoped - some concrete diagnoses and plan. We know that the colonoscopy results were A-OK, but the results of her upper GI tests won't be disclosed until Friday. Good thoughts, please.

I'm still waiting for my damn work visa to be renewed so I can get some tests and procedures done. It's over 22 months, guys. On June 4 it will be two years since my visa and healthcare expired. I'd say that's a wee bit excessive, wouldn't you?

Im not reading much anymore because I keep falling asleep. I've been trying to get through Mort (part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) for several months now. I bring it with me to read while I'm waiting for Dar to do her thing at the various units at the hospital in London, then fall asleep sitting upright in uncomfortable chairs before I get more than a few pages in. My life, she is exciting, no?

I went kind of overboard with The Walking Dead right near the end there. AMC reran the whole series every night for a week before the finale, and even before that they were rerunning the first season on Thursday(?) nights in b&w. Which I watched. As I watched the whole series rerun during the last week. It became so much a part of my world that I found myself looking for zombies in other TV shows. Like Boardwalk Empire. For god's sake, Nucky, don't just pull over to the side of road and start yelling! The walkers will hear you! I started getting a little concerned about our glass patio door. Way too easy to break down. Now I have until October to settle down.

I was initially concerned about Glenn Mazzara leaving as show runner, especially when I heard that he didn't like the direction that the creator (Robert Kirkland) wanted to take the show next season. But then I watched the episodes that the new guy (whose name I cannot remember right now) wrote - and they turned out to be my favorite episodes of the series. I'm going to have to trust based on that, because the finale had a big WTF moment at the end. But as I said … I'll trust.

I was getting ready for bed, just checking LJ, and suddenly the Post an Entry popped up. Weird. OK, I'll give. Just a short one, though. Maybe with numbers.

1. Definitely with numbers.

2. I've been waiting to post something good, because I don't want to come on here just to post rants. Still waiting :)

3. Wait! I heard from Immigration. Or Dar did because I was out running errands when they called. They said that my application is in process. That's it. It's been 18 months since I sent my latest application in - you might remember that someone from Immigration had called to tell me that I was here illegally and had to start again (headdesk x 1000) - and all I get is "in process." Dar said that they probably really called to see if 1) I were still alive and 2) if so, if I had given up and gone back to the States. So, I don't know. I'm taking it as good news.

4. Many baby alpacas born. Two of them were miracle babies. One other died, and it broke our hearts. Two, possibly three, left to go. One, possibly two, will be born tomorrow because they were medically induced today. It's been a very weird year for everyone and their alpacas. We all suspect it's due to the extremely long, hot summer.

5. We've been in coat and jacket weather for a few weeks now. I really hope we're not going to jump from summer into winter over the course of a month.

6. I've discovered that I'm a very good salesperson for our alpaca products (yarn, hats, scarves, mittens, lots of kits). It turns out that I enjoy talking about alpacas. Who knew? Heh. Plus it just supports my belief that most people are pretty nice. I've had the two top sales days at our booth at the farmers market. But then I've also had a day when I've only made three sales. Now that the weather is cooler, more people are thinking about warm clothing and/or knitting. We fit that bill nicely.

7. Dar has become a master of the dye pot. I'm dead serious. She's developed a way to get various shades (depths?) of the same color on a skein of yarn. It's a beautiful effect. And her variegated dyed yarns are luscious. We have the dyed yarns right on the end of our shop that's nearest to the corridor, and they pull people into the shop like a giant magnet.

8. Considering that I work (volunteer) at a television review site, I actually don't watch much TV. If it weren't for AMC and HBO, I'd probably just tune in to the MSNBC political news at night. And Up With Chris Hayes on weekend mornings.

9. Pixel is getting very round. She looks like a Kliban cat. She's still my baby girl.

10. Now I'm going to bed. Night-night, guys.

I'll save the not-so-good stuff for another day. Aren't you the lucky ones :)

Numbers are our friends.

( Ramble, ramble, ramble And flowers. )

I love Grimm. Every week it just keeps getting better. It is quickly becoming my favorite show on TV right now, and it certainly is high on my list of all-time favorites. Everything about it is first rate - from the writing and casting right down to the lighting and the set decorations. So much thought goes into every episode in an effort to present a cohesive vision of the noir world of the Grimmverse. Plus the humor is organic; that's a big hook for me.

On a personal level, it's just fun to watch a show where so much German is spoken :) I squeed a bit tonight when Monroe said to Nick, "Bis spater, alligator." Pretty much, "See you later, alligator." My brother and I say that to each other all the time!

And then there's Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell). He's one of the freshest characters to come out of a writers' room in ages. Ages! I understand that the character was going to be more of a cynical loner until Silas did his audition. They were bowled over by his take on it, and the rest is history. I was saying elsewhere that I believe that Monroe is very soon going to join the ranks of the iconic one-named cult favorites like Spock and Sheldon.

The true example of my love is that for Grimm . . . I would go to a con.

Seriously, if you haven't watched it yet, check it out. If you only saw the first episode, give it another look; everyone settled into character and the whole feel of the show is just spot on.

Now I need to go find some damn Grimm icons.

I never thought I'd get to the point where I'd only be posting every few weeks, but here I am. If thoughts could flow from my mind onto the screen, I'd have been spamming y'all from here to hell and back. Instead I wait for the confluence of time, energy, and a working internet connection. Tonight the stars, as they say, are aligned.

I think I mentioned that the screen on my MacBook is kaput. It's a stylish deep black, which is lovely but hardly functional. I have an old Samsung monitor hooked up to it; the down side is that the connecting plug falls out if I breathe wrong. Some days I swear I'm just going to Crazy Glue the damn thing in place, but then my rational side takes over, and I pick up the stupid plug from off the floor and reinsert it. Along with this comes my "now you have it, now you don't" internet connection. I keep the network diagnostics window open so I can watch the internet connection button flicker merrily back and forth from red to green. It kind of drains the fun from the whole internet experience sometimes, but, as my journal title declares, I am an internet junkie :)

I think I've also mentioned that I was writing reviews for Hell on Wheels for The Voice of TV. The series ended its first season a week ago Sunday, and it feels weird not to be filing a review on a Monday morning. It was scary to leap into review writing, but I ended up enjoying it. It was the one form of writing that had always given me trouble; I'd end up writing a recap instead of a review. I hate not doing something simply because it frightens me, so I took the time to study a raft of different reviews by writers I admire and took that leap of faith. It worked out pretty well, I think. My reviews didn't have a huge following (usually around 185 readers), but one of them was Tiffany Vogt, who is a bit of a big deal. That's flattering. Next up is Game of Thrones. Yay! The tricky part, having read the books, will be avoiding all those, "OMG, guys, wait until you see what happens next!" moments :) I may end up doing The River, too. It's a mystery/thriller/supernatural story by the people who brought you Paranormal Activity.

Oh! I got my brother addicted to The Walking Dead! For a while I was getting frequent emails titled "TWD Stupid Question of the Day." Heh. He went out and bought the first trade, but he's watching S2 on Comcast On Demand, and they're slowly doling out the episodes. He should be just about at the mid-season finale, and I'm dying to hear his reaction. That was one hell of an episode, even if you knew what was coming.

Speaking of scary stuff, I've been watching the GOP primary race. I . . . it's insane. I'm all bruised from my jaw hitting the floor so often. I've become a serial sputterer. I'm just holding on to the thought that the audiences at those debates are an extreme subset of average Republicans, and the majority is not fooled by those hateful idiots running for the nomination.

OK, complete change of subject. I need suggestions on what to eat for breakfast. Dar has been reading a few studies that are linking gluten to autoimmune diseases including lupus and Sjogren's. Every morning I have one whole wheat English muffin: half with peanut butter and apricot or peach jam, and half with veggie cream cheese. Here's the deal: I need to get a decent serving of protein and fiber; it has to be filling enough to counter the nausea that comes with my morning meds, but not so much that it gives me nausea from having eaten too much. (The reason why I do half peanut butter and half cream cheese is that too much of either gives me nausea.) Oh, and I've reached the point where swallowing even tiny pills is difficult, so I chew almost all of my meds. That means that breakfast has to be able to cancel the bitterness of the pills. So - what do you think? Also, keep in mind that I'm in a rural area; salsa is considered exotic.

The cats are fine. The alpacas are mostly fine; it's been terribly cold and windy lately, so we have coats on a couple of the more vulnerable ones, and we're terribly worried about Daniel, who is the oldest alpaca here. Dar is doing her best; he gets better then relapses a bit. He's not having a good day, but we're hoping he starts to bounce back tomorrow. And speaking of bouncing - or not - Dar took a bad fall on the ice a few days ago and bruised her tailbone. Scared the crap out of me when I looked out the window and saw her lying on the laneway. Damn ice. Damn winter. Just a few more months, and things should start to improve. We can do this!

I'm really a bit of a Luddite when it comes to social media. I can barely use Facebook, and I wouldn't know how to attract followers on Twitter if my life depended on it. (And who wants hordes of strangers following them, anyway? Besides, obviously, most of the world. [Introverts Unite!]) I'm even at a most basic user level on LJ - and I've been here for over seven years. (Holy crap.) But here I am, trying to get you to use GetGlue. And why? Because the networks pay attention to this little piece of internet real estate.

As I may have mentioned a time or a dozen, I love Prime Suspect. I know that some of you love it, too. And we who love Prime Suspect are worried that it will be canceled because it's getting low Nielsen ratings. But now, with GetGlue, there's a new game in town. You log in to GetGlue and "check in" with Prime Suspect; there's a running tally of how many people have checked in. You can leave a comment about the show, or you can just leave it at the default: "I am watching Prime Suspect." You can reply or rate the other comments, too. (I seem to get a lot of "So and so thinks this comment is funny.") The great thing is that you can check in whenever you're watching it - real time, download, DVD. It all adds up. And then there are the stickers.

Dar is the one who explained GetGlue to me. I'd seen a couple friends post on FB that they were watching such-and-such on GetGlue. I thought it was something akin to Netflix. I still wasn't sold, so she tried to lure me in with the stickers. They are a big deal over there. I was thinking they all had glitter and rainbows, perhaps tiny ponies. I scoffed. But then I started getting stickers while I was checking in - and it was kind of neat. Some of them are handed out based on your activity (Checked in four times for this show? Here's a fan sticker!), and some of them are kind of random (Hey, we've decided to hand out stickers during this episode's check in!). The cool thing is that the stickers are designed by the shows and their networks, so they're really pretty nice looking and appropriate to the show. They stay in a virtual list in your account until you acquire twenty of them, at which point they will mail you the actual stickers free of charge. Mine are in the mail, and I'm expecting them any day now :)

This isn't solely for TV, either. Books, movies, politicians, music, etc. etc. - I think they have things pretty well covered. I checked in with Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum page when I started reading the book a few days ago, and I had a laugh at the witty comments other fans had left. (Favorite comment: Time I visited again with The Maiden, The Mother, and . . . the other one.)

So. Go support your show. It doesn't have to be Prime Suspect, of course. God knows we've all had shows pulled out from under us. That's how many of us bonded. *sighFireflysigh* I just think it's a neat way for us to be proactive. And, you know, get stickers.

While I'm waiting for my battery to run down so I can plug it in and while I have a stable internet connection - a little catch up on what's been happening.

We spent many, many hours in the local ER (spread across two days), because Mark had intractable head and neck pain for a week prior to getting medical attention. Of course thoughts went to meningitis, stroke, aneurysm, brain tumor , all the bad stuff. It turned out to be a subluxated disk (C2?) from coughing so forcefully when he had a cold a few weeks ago. The disk was pressing on a nerve which in turn became more and more inflamed. He was put on a short course of high dosage prednisone, and it's mostly cleared up. There were some other health problems found during various exams and tests, and the bottom line is that he really, really needs to start taking care of himself. We'll see if that happens.

As that was happening, Dar got a call from her son that Little Cat was very sick. (Dar rescued a very fragile Little Cat when she was practically a newborn and nursed her to health. Little went to live with Dar's son a few years ago when we had so many cats that she just couldn't handle it.) It seemed at first as if Little (an indoor/outdoor kitty) was hit on the head; she had a big lump on top, and a few days later she became lethargic. Then the bump started to ooze pus. Then she went blind, lost her sense of smell, and started a manic pacing around the house. Off to the emergency vet went Dar, Oliver, and Little Cat; Mark (who had to drive, because I had to stay home to do chores) slept in the waiting room. It turned out that she inhaled the larvae of a bot fly; the larvae usually hatch and work their way out of the body by boring up through the skin, but occasionally they get lost and end up in the brain. (The vet said they've been seeing a lot of cases of this in urban areas, so please be advised.) High doses of prednisone for Little and sedatives so she could sleep; she's improving daily. We all really thought she was going to die.

Happily for us, sffan was visiting, and she saved our butts frequently over the week. She pitched in for chores like she did it for a living, and that helped us out tremendously. Our friend, Skye, also volunteered to drive up and help us (me) once SF had gone back to Toronto. Poor Skye - she was going to a benefit dinner immediately afterward, but it was raining while we were doing chores, and she left here with soaking wet jeans.

I realized at one point that I was the only around who could drive. If I took a header (and I was feeling poorly, too, at the time), we were sunk. Mark was too sick; Dar has a fused neck and is legally blind; Deb was gone (as were our friends down the road), and SF doesn't know how to drive. I told her that the next time she comes to visit, I am dragging her to an empty parking lot and getting her behind the wheel. She doesn't have to be a great driver, but if she's here during an emergency (and let's face it - we have a lot of those), then I want her to know at least how to accelerate, brake, and basically keep the car on the road. She unenthusiastically agreed :)

We spent about three days in the beautiful glow of autumn, and now we're on to winter. This is completely unfair, and I hate it. I was hoping to get out and take some pics of the foliage, but the week was taken up with medical emergencies. By the time that all settled down, the rain and high winds moved in; now almost all of the trees are bare, and we're trying to remember where we put our winter work clothes.

I'm down to 1/2 mg of prednisone; I'll be done completely with it in 3 1/2 weeks. Yikes. I take 1 mg every other day now, and on those days when I take none, it feels . . . scary is probably the best word. It's been a lately ineffective talisman, and I've hated the side effects, but it's also been a bit of a security blanket, because maybe it will start working again, and I'll start to feel better. I know that's not going to happen, but you get these irrational hopes, you know?
'
I told you that my monitor died, right? I'm using an old Samsung monitor hooked up to my laptop. That's working out OK, and I'm getting spoiled by the large screen and large font. However, just to add to the mess, my internet connection is now ridiculously unstable. I keep the diagnostic window open all of the time so I can tell if I've dropped the connection or if everything is slow (or not loading at all) for some other reason. While I've been writing this, I've been watching the button next to the Internet line flicker merrily back and forth between green and red. Mostly it's stayed green tonight; I think because the winds have died down. I don't know; I'm just making stuff up as I go along. Some days I can barely keep a connection, so if I'm not commenting, that's the reason.

I'm hoping that AMC will rerun the opener for The Walking Dead before the next episode airs on Sunday. I missed a lot of it because I was exhausted and not feeling all that well; it was hard to concentrate, and I kept muting it when there was screaming - which was pretty frequently. I did like what I saw, though. Oh - I tried to post a link to a youtube video, but I couldn't get it to copy. Please do yourselves a favor and seek out "The Walken Dead." A little bit of genius, that.

And that's it for the highlights. I hope that life has been dealing well with you. I know the answer is "Not so much" for a few of you, and you're in my thoughts. I had this small epiphany this morning; I realized that I no longer ask that things go better with me (us); now I just ask that they don't get any worse. I think that's some kind of growth. Acceptance, perhaps. Or maybe desperation? Ha :)

Hey, guys! I have been noticeably absent from LJ. (Or at least I'm going to flatter myself that y'all have noticed my absence.) | am just now crawling out from under what is colloquially known as The Trifecta of Suck. 1) My body is going wonky from the loss of cortisol supplied by prednisone 2) I developed pneumonia, and 3) the screen on my laptop died, so it's basically become a big, black paper weight.

I'm still waiting out the cortisol deficiency; I'm hoping that things will start to improve soon, because this can get pretty crazy without any warning at all. It makes straying too far from home, shall we say, exciting. I saw my doctor on Thursday after two weeks of violent coughing (I kept waiting for it to improve on its own), and she confirmed that it had developed into pneumonia. The whole household has been sick - and that's including one of our cats (Holmes) and Deb downstairs. |The doctor prescribed Zithromax (my very favorite antibiotic), and there's a major improvement. Still some coughing and wheezing, but much, much better than earlier in the week.

After being computer-less for many days, Dar kindly let me use her little Acer laptop. I think she kind of regrets it because it's Windows 7, and it's making me insane. Loudly insane, I might add. Just posting this is taking much longer than you'd think, because the cursor has a mind of its own, and the screen scrolls just for the hell of it (apparently). But you know - it's computer access, and I am very grateful. Really. So we're off to an Apple reseller about an hour away to buy a cable to connect my Mac laptop to an old Samsung monitor we have hanging around. It's going to anchor the laptop to one location (probably the kitchen table), but, hey - I've used a desktop computer for many years before I had a laptop. I shall survive.

I've checked out a few of the new TV shows. I am madly, deeply in love with Prime Suspect. Maria Bello is flawless as Jane Timoney, newly transferred to an NYC homicide squad. God, I adore Jane. I want her to be real, and I want to hang out with her. Please, check out this show (Thursday night, 10PM, NBC, repeating Saturday night at 9PM). It can use the buzz and the viewership. I'm afraid it's going to be another case of an excellent and critically acclaimed show being canceled because no one besides me and a handful of others is watching.

I checked out Terra Nova; it's OK. Love the dinosaurs :) Hate the stupid teenage boy subplot, but that's their main demographic, so I'll live with it. Stephen Lang - a longtime favorite of mine - is looking kind of . . . ill. He doesn't look slim as much as he looks unhealthily skinny. I hope that he's OK. Watched Person of Interest because Dar is reviewing it for The Voice of TV; I can take it or leave it. Michael Emerson is an actor who is always worth watching, and I usually like Jim Caviezel, but the story isn't really grabbing me. Checked out Suburgia (again because Dar is reviewing it) and was pleasantly surprised. I usually hate sitcoms, but this was clever and it has the added bonus of no laugh track. Also, I kinda love whoever is playing neighbor lady Dallas. Very nice job of walking a line between obnoxious stereotype and quirky individual.

And for no reason I can detect, the font size just went to gigantic, and I'm typing part of this blind because it goes off the screen. Hoping I'll be back online soon with my old mac.

It's been a very busy week or so. Dar's daughter M is starting at the University of Guelph this week, and we spent a lot of last week helping her get ready and then moving her into her new apartment. She's renting a basement bedroom/bathroom set-up from the woman who owns the condo. It's a nice place, and it's close to a lot of things to which she'll need access. Of course we had a bout of horribly hot and humid weather during all of that, but she's in and settled, and that's what matters.

Dar is dealing with the empty-nest thing by working herself like crazy getting yarn/rovings/product ready for the two venues our fiber consortium will be attending this weekend. She's really turning into an expert dyer; she's taken skeins of yarn that weren't selling and dyed them in variegated fall colors. They're gorgeous! I'll see if I can get some halfway decent pictures of them. She's also been using some of that dyed yarn to knit alpaca-lined mittens, and they're beautifully soft and warm and luscious looking. Plus she crocheted throw rugs and made up kits to sell. In her spare time, you know. If the consortium makes a lot of sales this weekend, most of the credit will be due to her.

And while she's been busy as a very busy thing, I've been kind of laying low for the past few days. Oh, I did a lot of driving and moving and helping with M, and I've been looking after Deb's cats while she's been on vacation, but I've also been having some serious asthma attacks, so I've been keeping away from the barns and also away from the kitchen where Dar is using all those dyes. I had a bad scare a few days ago, and since then I've just learned not to push myself too hard right now.

It seems that prednisone was masking a few health issues that I thought were under control - asthma being one of the big ones. Now that I'm nearly off the pred, I'm having to get control of the asthma again. It hasn't helped that the air quality has been awful recently (smog, we still have it), and the surrounding farms have been harvesting (grain dust)and then laying down liquid manure (very stinky chemicals). Plus lots of rain and moldy grass and hay everywhere. So - it's not surprising, just annoying.

I don't think I'm going to survive the election season in the US. I'm a news addict, in case you didn't know, and since we got our internet back, it seems I spend every spare minute glued to twitter, reading scores of links about issues national and international. I scare myself sometimes, but I'm rather well informed :)

I need another book. More Pratchett, definitely. I've finished the first three Discworld books, and now I'm rereading some of the Watch series just for fun. I need to get to a Chapters and find something new (to me).

The new TV season is nearly upon us, but I'm not all that psyched for it. There are a few shows that I want to check out (Person of Interest, Prime Suspect, Terra Nova), and one that I'll be reviewing for The Voice of TV. It's a new show on AMC called "Hell on Wheels," which makes me laugh because cajoje had said that her fantasy roller derby name would Helen Wheels. Heh. But this is not the roller derby show I was hoping it would be; it's a post-Civil War revenge Western that takes place somewhere along the laying of the transcontinental railroad. Sounds interesting, and being as how I was brought up with cowboy shows on TV, I love me some Westerns. I'm hoping it will be a good fit.

And now I must hie me to bed. It takes me - without exaggeration - 35 minutes to get to bed. There are routines (flossing! meds!) and traditions (cats. must. have. catnip! omg!) And the washing and the brushing and the getting of water and . . . by the time I hit the sheets, I'm kind of wired. May an easier sleep be yours, my dears :)

Well, according to a pair of starlings trying to build in a nest in our barbecue I am. I feel pretty bad about it, too. They had quite the stockpile going there when I cleared it out today. We'd been watching them for a few days now, flying in with beaksful of straw and hay and grass. The hood is down on the barbecue (which is on the deck right outside the kitchen), so they've been crawling in under the vent. Dar had cleaned it out a few times, but then we got busy and ignored it for a few days. I didn't want it to get so advanced that the female would actually lay some eggs there, so I cleaned it out this morning and put the cloth cover on the unit. (There's so much vegetation in there that we'll have to burn it out to get it really clean.) Very unhappy starlings! I feel like a monster, and I hope that they find a more suitable site very soon.

We have three crias on the farm now. The third one (from another of Deb's huacaya girls) was born this afternoon; it's a cold and windy day, so the baby had to be dried with a blow dryer and rubbed with towels and outfitted with a cria coat. Dar had to help with the birth again, but the little boy is extremely strong and vigorous. He was up on his feet within 20 minutes! Mom wasn't that interested in him at first, and I had to lure her back into the barn with him by feeding her alfalfa bits. They finally bonded, and he's nursing like a champ. For now, his name is Harley.

Our little suri girl, Buffy, is a week old now. Her little huacaya pal, Ezra, is five days old. Yesterday they discovered how much fun running is. It's like a light suddenly goes on, and zoom - they're off! God, they're so adorable at this age. You can see them tearing around the paddocks, in and out of the barn, followed by two anxious mothers moaning the alpaca equivalent of, "Stop that! You're going to hurt yourself!" I expect that Harley will be joining them very soon.

In less adorable news, my car is on its last leg/cylinder/tire. There's so much wrong with it that when I drop it off at the garage tomorrow, I'll be asking for a priority list of what we absolutely need to fix and what we can continue to put off for a while or until we can get another vehicle. It's a 2002 Mazda with over 160,000 miles on it, so it owes me nothing. But still, it's my baby car, right?

I finished reading Game of Thrones last night. I wanted to go into the last two episodes of the series knowing what was coming. Yow! I plan to be impressed with how they're going to do all of that in two episodes. I really loved the book, and now I have to be on the lookout for the next book in the series. I'll tell you, if I had had an e-reader, I would have downloaded that sucker immediately. As it is, I'll have to wait for a few days.

So You Think You Can Dance is back on TV! Yay! This looks like an extraordinary year, and I'm especially impressed with the female dancers. They're usually overshadowed by the boys, but this year they can more than hold their own. And if nothing else, Cat Deeley is back on my screen, and that's cause for celebration right there. Why she hasn't won an award for best host(ess) is a complete mystery to me. She's Cat Deeley, people!

On the medical side of things, since I've stopped taking the evil metoclopramide, my blood pressure has returned to normal. My last pressure was 126/80, and that's just about perfect for me. If it continues to stay good, I can try quitting my anti-hypertension meds. That would be wonderful. I'm getting ready to drop down to 4.5 mg of prednisone daily. I've never been able to get lower than 4 mg, so the next few months should be interesting. My doctor and I have been working on some pain control, so I'm trying to be optimistic. Watch me try! Try, mays, try. Heh.

Almost time for Game of Thrones. Yay. Time to get out the headphones. Yes, really. Otherwise I miss some of the dialogue, and I don't want to have to blast the TV.

Hope you're having a good one, guys.