It's just an ordinary day - Recent Entries

Had the appointment with the nutritionist today, which went about like I expected, only longer--solarbird and I were there for an hour and a half while this woman quizzed me thoroughly about my history with food and weight and such.

The good news is, she was pretty pleased with many of our already established eating habits, and she approved of my ditching the soda and of my strict snack rationing. The bad (albeit expected) news was that I need to bump up my fruit and veg intake, and also definitely resume my free weights exercises. I also need to ditch the efforts I'd started to have juice with lunch, on the grounds that juice is less helpful than having actual fruit. Meanwhile, Dara has been advised to edge the veg up during dinners, and the nutritionist made a good suggestion about putting the veggies on the plate first, so as to have them dominate the territory.

I am to keep up with this food log thing. And I think I'll be resuming the weights on Saturday when I'll have my first window of time free to work 'em in. Till then, I'll keep up with the current food habits; I'm already seeing improvement in my appetite just by ditching the soda and by rationing the snacks. And I've been inspecting the drink shelves at Whole Foods to see what I can purchase to drink with lunch that a) isn't water and b) doesn't have too many calories. The HonestTea brand seems potentially good; I found their "Community Green Tea" flavor today, which had only 34 calories to the bottle and just enough cane sugar and orange flavor to it to make it not too bad. I think this'll be my lunch drink for a while.

I think that in the interests of keeping this in the forefront of my brain, I shall start adding food log data to pertinent posts (like this one). And just to throw in other pertinent numbers, I'll resume more regular tracking of my walking as well. I'll slap this stuff behind a cut, though.

Meanwhile, the Stunt Boob has been acquired, and it's surprisingly comfy and natural-looking. Enough that it boggled both me and Dara. Should it happen that I have to postpone reconstruction surgery for whatever reason, I think I'll be able to put up with wearing this for a while.

( Today's food and exercise stats... )

solarbird, spazzkat, and I went and saw Avenue Q playing here in Seattle yesterday--and it was hilarious. Very happy to have gotten to see that. Three words: Bad Idea Bears! <3

And today, Dara and I went down to the Lake Forest Park Farmer's Market to busk! We made another $28 to go into the Buy Dara and Anna iPhones Fund, which was quite satisfying. I was also particularly charmed by a couple of little girls who happily bounced around while we were playing. The older one actually sort of danced, but the younger, who couldn't have been more than two, didn't know how to dance any other way than running around in circles. So the bigger one had to hold her hands and go around in circles with her. Then they both came over and dropped a dollar apiece into my guitar case.

As of this past Thursday, I'm back at work. It's a bit of a switch after three weeks off, and I must admit, I'm going to miss being able to be at home with Dara. But ah well, unless I get really lucky with the queries, I'll be at this a while longer yet.

I've had a couple more followup appointments, and have been told that I'm healing up well from the surgery. My energy's back to normal, more or less, though it was a bit of a bitch carrying the guitar up the hill from the market this afternoon. I'm off the Tamoxifen, too, though this has also meant that I'm going to have to take other risk reduction measures to try to keep my remaining breast clear.

Which means, mainly, an overhaul of my diet--because obesity is a risk factor for cancer, and I'm carrying way too much extra poundage.

For starters, I'm going to have to ditch the soda--and get hardcore about rationing the snacks. Dara's generally good about our dinners, but I need to pay harder attention to breakfast and lunch. Tuesday, I'm going to speak with a nutritionist as well to see if there are other modifications I'll need to make to my diet. I was given a big handout with a bunch of foods that are deemed helpful for cancer risk reduction, complete with stats and recipes and the like. Some of this stuff is stuff I eat already, but it'll be helpful to have somebody with a clue go over the other stuff with me.

Also on Tuesday, I have to go in to be fitted with what has now been officially named the Stunt Boob. Surprisingly, this means I go to Nordstrom's. It'll be very strange walking into a department store with a prescription, but apparently this is how the folks at Evergreen handle this. I'm to get the prosthesis as well as a couple of special bras for it. I dislike the idea of having to change bra types, but this is fortunately only a temporary measure, to tide me over until we can deal with reconstruction surgery.

In the meantime, we'll see how much poundage I can drop. Soda elimination and snack reduction efforts, plus the resumption of my usual workday walking, have already started altering my appetite. And I've already dropped a few pounds.

Wish me luck, folks. I'm aiming for 125-130. It'll take me a while; I've got over 50 pounds to go to get there.

I see I've picked up a couple new folks reading: hi there, mrgoodwraith and sar_anon. Things have been slow around here lately since I haven't had much brain for posting--or doing much of anything else, for that matter. However, things should soon be picking up.

Most of this past week has gone to various appointments (chiro, massage, talk therapy), as well as hanging out with the fantabulous mamishka--who's come over a couple of time and introduced me to the TV shows Moonlight and Pushing Daisies. Moonlight is better than I've expected, at least based on the first couple of episodes; it's got a few amusing moments of self-aware humor, and it makes me grin that it has the actress who played Reinette in "Girl in the Fireplace" in it. Pushing Daisies, on the other hand, is hilarious in a quirky, dark-humor kind of way.

As I feared, the replacement X-Files DVD set that Amazon sent me turned out to also be missing the season closer. To wit: argh. I shall have to find alternate means to acquire that season, I fear. But I also jumped ahead and watched the first X-Files movie, on the grounds that okay yeah fine I'm going to go see the new one and I want to be reminded of various plot points. At least the ones from when the show was still good. ;)

solarbird and I went and saw Speed Racer finally, which I liked way better than I thought I would--and I have to admit, the techno remix of the theme over the closing credits was awfully catchy, and I may have to buy it off of iTunes. Coming home to watch the two actual episodes of the old cartoon I have on laser made me doubly appreciate the movie. The cast really did do a good job nailing the various characters, and sure, it's cartoony, but hey, it's a movie based on a cartoon. Though I can see how, if you never were a fan of the cartoon, the movie wouldn't work for you.

spazzkat and Dara and I went to see Indy IV last night. And, after seeing it a second time, I've found that I've downgraded it to a nice enough coda to the original three movies. Dara has said that she feels that Indy as a character really belongs back in the 20's and 30's, because back then, so much of the world is still Unknown and Mysterious to Western culture--but after WWII, not so much. I think I find myself in agreement with her.

We've had one jam session, about which there will not be a Jam Report still because I haven't had the brain to write them. But it was fun to have folks over, and I hope to resume writing Jam Reports with our next session on the 29th. In related news, Dara has started busking at local farmers' markets--and has made quite a bit of pocket change, which is awesome. I hope to join her next week to help her out, and we're hoping to use the busking money to get us a couple of the new iPhones when they come out.

My energy levels are slowly returning to normal; I've been able to do some decent walking the last few days, going to the aforementioned appointments as well as running errands down to the shops. And my brain's coming back enough that I'm starting to feel a little guilty about not working on the writing (in fact, I finally had an idea occur to me about how to fix one of the skiffy novels I'm working on, about which I need to be taking notes).

I think that's everything for now. A few more days of zzzz and then I'll have to go back to work; in the meantime, though, I got more Nethacking to do!

Today's followup visit with Dr. Towbin turned out to not be with Dr. Towbin, but with one of his assistants--I think. I completely spaced on getting her name. I was too distracted by the removal of the dressing and drain from around my chest, not to mention my first look at the chest itself.

( Cutting to spare y'all the copious medical detail... )

As y'all probably saw over on solarbird's journal, I did make it home successfully yesterday and the serious rest and recuperation has now commenced. My LJ posts over the next couple weeks are therefore likely to be kind of random! However, I wanted to express my gratitude to these heroes of the revolution:

spazzkat, for bringing me sunflowers in a vase, even if the cats think they are Too Damned Interesting;

gamera_spinning, for the Eddie Izzard Unrepeatable DVD that showed up at my door today;

risu (and by extension kathrynt), for Season 2 of the X-Files DVD sets, as well as the Sharing Knife books by Lois McMaster Bujold, which mark the first Bujold books I actually own, I believe;

sksouth, for bringing me over a boatload of music and books on DVD with which to entertain myself;

My siblings, who also sent me a lovely bunch of flowers;

And most of all solarbird, who has been very assiduous in making me take my meds on time, as well as getting up at regular intervals to wander around the house and do my range of motion exercises. My spouse? She rocks.

ETA 5:48pm: Wait wait, there's more! Paul just came home with another Amazon package for me out of the mail--this one courtesy of mamishka, who sends Regarding Henry, which I have been wanting for ages. Aw. <3

And, my teammates from work sent a big bag full of tasty chocolate goodies. Aw!

Thank you, everybody. <3

The surgery appears to have gone well, all. I'm in a private room at Evergreen this afternoon, solarbird is keeping me company, and I have my computer and some books to keep me occupied for the rest of the day. I feel... not half bad. No dizziness or nausea so they let me have Jello. And pudding. Mmmm pudding.

There's some general confusion about whether or not I'm still taking the Tamoxifen, despite my having told folks that Dr. Towbin did say I could ditch it. We're going to have to get that confirmed with him.

I've had a couple of interesting nurses looking after me. A young woman named Jolene had a Fujitsu Lifebook with her, I noticed--she was using it to do take care of all her medical record-keeping tasks. I told her my previous laptop had been a Fujitsu Lifebook, and that led into a nice little chat about MacBooks and Leopard and what we both do with our computers. She's running an earlier build of OS X, so she didn't know about Leopard or Time Machine. When I told her about Time Machine, she perked up quite a bit and thought she might try to pitch that to her husband as a reason for him to go Mac.

Helen was another nice nurse, with an interesting accent. I asked her where she was from and she said, "Bothell!" And then laughed and added that she was originally from the Czech Republic. I told her we didn't have any friends in the Czech Republic, but we do have friends in Bothell.

We just had a shift change though so now we have a new set of nurses looking after me. Dude named Saihou just came in to do my vitals.

I get to have a regular dinner when it's dinner time and until then, I'll play with the computer some. Or sleep. I'm pretty full of the sleepings. Thank you all for your various and sundry good thoughts!

ETA 10:05pm: Corrected Saihou's name. And it turns out he's from Gambia! He asked me if I knew where that was and I had to admit I didn't, but since my computer was in front of me, I immediately looked it up. Teeny tiny country in West Africa.

Ladies and gentlemen, the surgery as expected will be TOMORROW.

I had my pre-op appointment with Dr. Towbin this morning; we confirmed that yes, even if I keep the left breast, it's okay for me to ditch the Tamoxifen since for the left one, it would be purely preventative rather than active treatment. And since the MRI told me that the left breast is clear, I'm reluctant to do anything to it. We are therefore doing a single mastectomy only. Later in the year as appropriate we'll look at reconstruction now that we know what the best options there are, courtesy of talking to Dr. McMillan.

So yeah. I report in at oh-god-no-o'clock (read: 6:45am) for a procedure at 8:30am at Evergreen. I am to stay overnight, and assuming that nothing scary happens, I go home the next morning. solarbird will be staying with me overnight. I'm told by the admitting nurses that they'll be putting me into a new section of the hospital where all the rooms have little sleeping nooks for family and visitors and such. That will be useful.

Then I come home and fall over and think very calming thoughts for the next three weeks, as this recovery will be part physical and part mental and I am in desperate need of a vacation. The plan will be:

• Pet Dara
  
• Pet cats*
  
• Watch a lot of stuff on DVD**
  
• Read a lot
  
• Play a metric fuckload of Nethack
  
• Assuming I can manage to boot my brain back up after a few days, edit something
  
• Listen to a bunch of recently purchased music***
  

Wish me luck, folks.

* We expect the cats to be massively confused as, at least for the first couple of days after I get home, we're going to open up the sofa bed so I can sleep on it downstairs. The tricky part will be keeping the cats from sleeping on me.

** Watching of things has already included the first season box set of The X-Files, for which I must issue much public gratitude to cafiorello and her family. THANK YOU CATHY! MmmmmmmmMulder.

*** By way of retail therapy, I just dropped fifty bucks onto iTunes to buy a lot of music that's been on my To Buy queue, including various folks who have opened for Great Big Sea shows (Liam Titcomb, Jeremy Fisher, Ashleigh Flynn), the Carbon Leaf EPs, and the latest from the Irish Descendants. I also bought a CD at Folklife by a group called the North Shore Celtic Ensemble, who were pretty cool.

Just to pay appropriate note to the various and sundry other things that have been going on in my life:

Jam Reports. There have not been Jam Reports for the last couple of Jams, and I apologize in advance, but there will probably not be. I just haven't been focused enough to get proper Jam Reports written. However, it is worth noting that there is much promise with GBS' "Chemical Worker's Song" with the current set of voices. cflute in particular has some very impressive harmonies coming together for that, and kendaer is feeling some potential for rumbling out the lead on this on days when mamishka isn't available.

On a related note, solarbird and I went to go visit stealthcello this past Friday night, which was made entirely of Win. She and her family have a lovely home full of lovely large Maine Coon cats as well as six two-week-old kittens, with whom we visited as well and ZOMG TINY KITTENS. Dara shared some of the music she's been working on, and Betsy answered with some of hers, and me, I was impressed by Betsy's shiny new black carbon-body guitar.

One giggleworthy moment of the evening: Dara hitting a chord on the mandolin and announcing that that sounded like "ass minor". Betsy's daughter lost it laughing, and Betsy herself pondered the question of what precisely "ass" sounds like. Dara's response, entirely inevitably: "Here, pull my finger!"

I will also not be doing review posts for the most recent BSG and Doctor, again because short on general levels of cope. I will however say that the most recent BSG was quite solid. We actually haven't watched the most recent Doctor yet, but will hopefully be getting that in soon.

Current book on the queue: desperance's Bridge of Dreams, which I have scarcely begun, but already I am impressed by the liquid rhythm of the prose.

And because I could, I went and got RAM upgrades for both my MacBook and Dara's. Now Winnowill and Kiliandra both are at 2 GB, though I have observed that I'm still taxing the CPU a bit if I try to do too many things at once. Less so than before, granted, but the problem hasn't entirely gone away.

Working on listening to s00j's Sirens, to be followed up by vixyish and tfabris's Thirteen. I have however also squeezed in Capercaillie's shiny brand new album Roses and Tears, as well as Nickel Creek's first album, since I've been meaning to listen to them for ages. This marks the first official time I have ever purchased an album calling itself country. However, listening to it, I find it definitely upholds the Alexander James Adams Principle of Celtic and Country Music, to wit: same music, different whiskey. ;)

Dara and I are planning our assault on Folklife this weekend and we are for once actually looking at doing three of the four days. We definitely want to hit the Celtic Band Scramble on Saturday, but there are things that interest us quite a bit on Sunday and Monday as well. I'm thinkin', a great big (not to be confused with Great Big) glorious burst of Folklife just before surgery should be a good way to get ready.

And, it has occurred to me that as I am about to be lying flat on my ass for two weeks, I can finally read Deathly Hallows.

And have another Movie Suckoff. Because there will be another Movie Suckoff, oh my yes.

Last but most definitely not least: tomorrow night, JONES. Meeting casirafics and mamishka for the midnight show at the Cinerama, and there will be much fangirling. What can I say. There are only a few people in the world that can really get me to fangirl, but Harrison Ford is one of them.

And, just because I haven't done this in ages, here's an exercise update as well. I am now on my way back to Hobbiton!

Miles since April 5th: 107.6
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2863.8
Miles out of Minas Tirith: 26.8
Miles to Hobbiton: 1598.2

ETA 10:42pm: Oh yes, I forgot to mention: my Ubuntu VM problem has been solved thanks to help from blargh. The issue seemed to be that VMWare was confused by my machine's having both a CD-ROM and DVD drive, and when I changed the VM settings to tell it not to auto-detect a drive, it started behaving. So now I have a functional Ubuntu VM to use as a test platform at work. Go me! And thanks, Traest. :)

So, yeah. Didn't post about this on Friday due to general stress and distraction, but for the sake of getting caught up, here's what's going on.

( Friday and what happened then... )

( Today, consulting with the surgeon... )

Tuesday of next week, I go back to follow up with Dr. Towbin to discuss MRI results and hopefully also the consult mentioned behind the cuts above.

Wednesday of next week is potential Surgery Day. How long I'll be down for the count is going to depend on the MRI and the other forthcoming consult.

Some of y'all will have noted that on Tuesday, I had me Take 2 of the biopsy that was originally scheduled for the first. This afternoon, ever so conveniently timed to happen right during the first morale event we've had on my floor in months, I got the call with the results.

Long story short: DCIS, round 2.

I'd say I'm infuriated, aggravated, pissed off, and all of these things would be true, but honestly, I'm just tired. This makes it official: six years in a row of medical crap. I don't even have enough energy at this point to really work up more than a token level of pissed-offedness, despite the icon.

Spoke with two different doctors on my way out of the ship party, since they were willing to talk to me over the phone and I wanted answers now.

( What they told me on the phone... )

Tonight, there will be booze, 'cause really, if anything warrants getting plastered, this is it.

So, um, yeah. When you're scheduled to have a biopsy and they tell you not to have aspirin or ibuprofen for five days beforehand, do yourself a favor: obey that instruction.

Thanks to being sick again this past week, and coughing my damn fool head off, and giving myself a big ol' headache as a result, there I was popping the ibuprofen because that's what I usually take when I'm in pain... and completely spacing on the fact that I'd been told not to do that.

Showed up for the biopsy this morning and was told that yeah, that messed me up for having the procedure today--'cause significantly increased risk of bleeding, especially on tissue that has received radiation treatment, is generally Not Fun. I was, as you might guess, mightily irritated at myself as a result of this. But oh well, life's like that, and I am at least pleased that the staff at the Evergreen Breast Center continue to be on top of things.

I am now rescheduled to try this again on the 13th. Note to self: NO IBUPROFEN. Guess I better stock up on some Tylenol tomorrow.

Since this weekend, I've had either a relapse of the previous Martian Death Flu, or an entirely new bug invading my system. I've got some deep coughing going on. I've got occasional chills (though I'm not sure whether this is due to this bug or due to the Tamoxifen I've been taking). I've got general fatigue. I've got watery eyes and a congested nose.

And I'm really, really tired of this.

Staying home from work today because I feel like crap, and taking the earliest available appointment at the clinic this afternoon to see if I can get this figured out and dealt with. Let's see if they give me something more useful than the albuterol inhaler this time.

SO! Apparently the BFFN is not quite done with me yet. >:|

I went in for a followup mammogram this morning as per the instructions of Dr. Kohn, my oncologist, the one who put me on the course of Tamoxifen I'm currently on. The purpose of this mammogram was to pretty much check out the status of my right breast post-surgery and see what it looks like in there.

The actual appointment was no-stress, and the tech who did my films for me let me go with "you're good", more or less, after the initial review of them.

Problem was, this was apparently just the initial review. I just got off the phone with the doctor who reviewed the films, and he says that he found some calcifications kind of in front of where the main incision area was before; from what he told me, it sounds like it's closer to that other problem area that they spotted before, back in October, but which was dismissed at the time. At first he thought that they'd be okay and that I could just come back in six months for the next mammogram (of both sides), but he's apparently feeling antsy given my recent history as well as my young age.

So he's recommending a biopsy. A nurse is supposed to call me to get this set up.

So yeah. This is me swearing up a blue streak, because NOT FUCKING FAIR; I was done with this. I was done with having myself cut open and zapped, and feeling rundown and brainless, and not being able to fucking write. I do NOT want to go through another round of this. I do NOT want 2008 to be the SIXTH GODDAMNED YEAR IN A ROW that solarbird and I have to put up with medical crap.

One year. One year with a clean bill of health for both of us. You'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask.

GAH!

The Martian Death Cold is not done with me yet.

I started feeling crappy last night, and this morning, I woke up with a sore throat. I'm home sick. Again. And very, very tired of this. Three and a half weeks this stupid cold has hung in there.

So here I've been all ready to edit Queen of Souls this weekend as well as mentally gearing up for the final week of a massive project at work. I narrowly escaped having to work this weekend, in fact, because the project slipped a week. It needed it. And I was quite grateful to get the time to start working on the book.

But apparently my immune system decided that the perfect capper for this scenario was a head cold.

Now I get to spend today curled up under blankets instead.

I did not go to the caucuses today. Not out of lack of interest, but more out of feeling generally blicky and unpleasant, and still being in some small part Recovery Girl. But all y'all who went out to caucuses, though, good for you. You get pie!

The last couple of weeks coming out of radiation therapy have been first brutal and then not so bad, and all around generally exhausting. I discovered week before last that all the muscles surrounding the area of zappage had taken quite the assault--and I hadn't really clued in before because I've got a generally high tolerance for pain. By the time I notice something enough to think "Hey wait, that hurts", it hurts quite a bit and it means I need attention on it now.

Which is what happened with my right shoulder and the right side of my chest. It manifested initially as numbness and tingling all up and down my arm--always a sign that my neck and shoulders are fucked up. solarbird went at the area with her massage fu, and discovered muscles so tensed up that they spasmed at her touch. I was sobbing after she worked on me for a while, and when she was done I felt like I was thrashed.

It was, however, the correct thing to do. The next day I felt significantly better and I've felt pretty good since, although there remains quite a bit of work to do. Since Dara has been getting massage therapy at the place upstairs from our chiro clinic, I went ahead and got signed up with them as well. I went in for my first session with them today; after, I felt quite a bit more relaxed, but also quite tired.

I have run out of painkiller. This has proven annoying only at the end of the work day when I'm more prone to feeling random little blips of pain, but it's otherwise manageable. Better, anyway, because I'm starting to feel mentally clearer--and restless about not doing any writing, a sign I need to be coming back to that Real Soon Now. But my sleep's still kind of disordered, so I've had to resort to valerian. Between that and massage and chiro, I'm hoping to get my sleep patterns stabilized soon. That will in turn help a lot with the return of my brain.

So. Vaguely guilty about not making it to the caucus, but not at all displeased by the news of how things have gone today in Washington state. And once November comes around, I have every expectation of stepping up to the plate with y'all to do my civic duty.

Right now, though, no matter how you caucused or who you caucused for, if you got out there and threw your voice into the fray, I salute you.

I am DONE done done done DONE with the radiation treatments. Last night was the very last one.

Dr. Taylor wants to see me back in a month for a followup appointment, and I'm to have regular mammograms over the next couple of years, every 3-6 months, to establish a new baseline for what's normal for me now. I'm also to see Dr. Kohn on Wednesday, at which point I expect to get prescribed the tamoxifen. If all goes well, this should be the last lingering remnants of the BFFN over the next couple of years. After that, fingers crossed for nothing more exciting than regular, scare-free mammograms. And for no further medical excitement through the rest of 2008. Very, very done with all that now.

I am very much looking forward to getting up at 6:45 in the mornings again rather than 6--hell, getting up earlier was making me almost as tired as the actual radiation treatments, for a while there. I am also very much looking forward to having my early evenings back and getting to go straight home rather than having to divert to Kirkland.

And I am very much looking forward to sleep, though that's more in the neighborhood of, well, tomorrow. ;) Especially if the expected snow shows up, which will make it very much a good day to stay under the flannel blanket and snooze.

Had to stay home today; I slept very poorly, and as a consequence, felt like crap when the alarm went off. I've also felt periodically shaky and shivery and weak throughout the day, which suggests that I may actually be fighting something off. Which wouldn't surprise me. My system's working overtime right now anyway to compensate for getting zapped--I probably don't have many resources left to handle fighting off a cold.

So I emailed in and have pretty much been lying down all day aside from going out to get zapped and running a couple other errands. And Dr. Taylor prescribed me Silvadene, as well as a round of Percocet to help me sleep better at night until this is over. Along with that, the nurse gave me a soft adhesive pad to put over the area to help keep it from rubbing against my clothes and stuff. I have tried some of the cream, taken a painkiller, and put the pad on. All of these things seem to be helping, and I suspect a nap of sheer relief is in my immediate future.

Thursday I start with the boost zaps, which will be focusing a greater dosage of radiation right to the spot where the incision was done. Which means I only have a couple more days of the bit under my underarm having to deal with getting zapped. That'll be good. We'll just have to see how my energy holds out.

I pretty much took it easy this weekend, and worked on more tweaks to Winnowill; this was about all that I had energy for, and it was a relief to not have to do anything pressing. (I'm sad that I didn't get to go down to Rustycon with solarbird, especially since she was well received with her big flute and the pieces she played, but oh well life's like that; hopefully I'll be up for Conflikt.)

This weekend's task: getting the Windows virtual machine installed. Yeah yeah yeah, Windows haters, shouldn't pollute the machine with Windows, etc., etc. I still need to run Money until I find a suitable native Mac-side alternative. And I still need to be able to VPN in to work, and have no word yet on when that'll actually work in Leopard.

( A lot of techie details back here... )

And it amuses me to run one OS inside another, too. If I had a Linux VM running inside the Windows one, that'd be kind of like turducken.

Meanwhile, I have to note that it is a very odd sensation to have a sunburn on my underarm. That is a portion of the body not normally meant to be sunburned, and it's getting rather distracting and a little painful. I'm going to have to ask the doctor and the duty nurse about bumping up to some heavier duty cream for the last two weeks of zapping.

And I just reached Minas Tirith. Now I'm on my way to the Morannon, to help Aragorn lay the smackdown on some dead guys. This should be fun.

Miles since the 7th: 14.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2584.5
Miles out of Minas Tirith: 5.5
Miles to the Morannon: 132.5

Yesterday when I went in for zappy, there was a bit of oddness: the usual finagling of placing me just right on the couch and such took longer and had a false start. Tech Ashley told me that the couch setting was supposed to be 185, only the system kept waffling between 186 and 184.(random number), presumably until she whacked it in the head and got it stabilized. They were still able to successfully zap me last night.

Which is an interesting thing to remember in conjunction with how Tech Chris called my cell this afternoon with the news that their machines were on the fritz, and they were contacting all the people who had afternoon appointments lined up. He wanted to touch bases with me especially, he said, because he knew I took the bus to get over there and didn't want me to take the bus all the way there for nothing.

"Okay," I said, since it was around 3pm by then and I've been leaving work around 10 to 4, "is there an ETA on when they'll be back online?"

No, said Tech Chris. It could be two minutes, it could be hours.

"Okay," I said, "let's just cancel tonight and I'll see you all tomorrow evening."

Because, yeah, if the machines which are shooting radiation at me are broken, I'll stand way over here until you guys get those fixed. Yep. Way, way over here.