Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Yesterday was two years since I had gastric bypass surgery. By chance, my two year checkup with my surgeon happened to fall on that same day. For the first time ever he told me I was doing well and he was happy with the results. I actually thought he was going to hug me, he came in close, but he ended up shaking my hand instead. Fellow is a good surgeon, but has so few people skills. (Also, he's quite overweight, which boggles me. All he does is gastric bypass surgery, day in and day out, he works only with these patients. That just seems really odd to me.)

Also, I've lost 152 pounds so far. I must remember that, I keep saying 130 pounds. (That's my brain for you, crapping on my own accomplishments as much as it can.)

I have a referral to see the plastic surgeon to talk about skin removal, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to go for it. If it's 100% covered by insurance and if he says it will be a safe, easy thing, then maybe... but I doubt those things will happen.

In other news, yay for me! I could have worked from home today, but I came into the office because I had things I really wanted to get done, and working from home tends to be less working and more fooling around online. 10 AM and I have them all done! Yay for being a responsible, productive adult!

And on apartment news, the "garbage valet" service is actually kind of nice. There is no way in the world I would pay for it if I had a choice, but we can't opt-out of it, so I'm using it. We pay $30 a month for it, and five days a week you can just put your garbage outside your door, and someone comes around and collects it (you leave it in a special garbage bin, a small one you bring back inside after, an upright kitchen trash bin sized one).

Also, my Internet issues are all cleared up, so I'm paying $30 to the apartment complex instead of $70 directly to Comcast. It's not 100% perfect, but probably 98%, and for that kind of savings I'm happy.

I know this will surprise no one, but Comcast sucks. I returned the equipment I rented from them (TV box months ago and modem two weeks ago), and they called me claiming I never returned either. Thankfully I sat around at the time so I could get a receipt (I had to wait TWO HOURS for the TV box one, but only 15 minutes for the modem one), so I was able to prove I did return them.

I know it's beating a dead horse, but Comcast sure does annoy me sometimes. In my continuing months-long battle to make the darned Wii work, the final thing I did was upgrade my Tivo to a series 3 HD one. Unfortunately, unknown to me, using a cable card instead of a cable box was not an option, it was required. Thus, a call to Comcast.

Nearly two weeks later, repair guy showed up. Waved off the Tivo directions I tried to give him, put in the card. Didn't work. He told me to run through the Tivo set-up again, but since that would take a half-hour, he couldn't wait to see if that fixed it.

Raise your hand if you're surprised that that didn't fix it. So I called in, was on hold another 30 minutes, and they sent another guy out. Then another. Then another. Finally one showed up with a card that actually worked, but he said it would take about an hour for Tivo to download all the info it needed to actually work. It was 5:30 by then and I was sure he was just blowing me off so he could go home, but surprisingly that did actually work.

So: Woo woo! After all this time, everything is finally set up and working! HD TV, Wii, DVD player, and Tivo. Now, so long as I never buy a new piece of equipment again, I'll be all set! :P

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I was half-interested in Up when it first came out, but it got a lot of bad word of mouth online, so I eventually just skipped it. What in the world were all those people thinking?! I loved nearly every moment of that movie! So sad! So touching! So much character evolution! I teared up a bunch of times -- it's amazing how sad it could be in such subtle ways (like the couple not being able to have a baby, and when his wife first got sick and couldn't walk up the hill -- that nearly killed me!).

The second half of the movie was a whole lot different than the first, but I had no issues accepting the house being floated around by balloons and a bunch of "talking" dogs (only thing that bothered me was the dogs flying the fighter planes... and I have no clue why since I was able to accept the dogs cooking and serving drinks and such). I really did love the dogs, they stayed so realistically doggy while still being able to talk.

Such a sad movie though, which made the happy ending even happier. :)

I really need to post about WoW on day. Been dragging my feet on editing screenshots...