Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

My back isn't broken yet, but I'd really appreciate it if the world would stop piling straw onto me.

[Rereading this post, I decided to add something positive to each point -- the other side of the coin. I'll add it in brackets.]

Weight: Two months ago I had hit my lowest number ever (200.2 SO CLOSE to being under 200!) and I never was able to get below it. I've gained seven pounds as of this morning (though this morning is unofficial, five pounds gained from official weighing date). It's just so amazingly frustrating as I'm not cheating, I'm not eating badly. [On the plus side, I'm off my high cholesterol medication, which means I'm down to one single prescription. As I used to be on four different diabetes meds and two other ones, that's a wonderful thing.]

Exercise: With my toe still not healed (seriously, I've had an open wound on my toe for months now, and I've been on antibiotics just as long) I can't do my usual exercises. There are still hand weights and pushups, but that's not the same as aerobic exercise. Which of course adds into the weight problem... [The good part is I'd be ready to do knee-high pushups if only I were willing to try. I worry that the position might put too much stress on my healing toe though. SOON! And then next will be doing pushups on the floor!]

Running: I decided there's no use waiting. Once my toe heals (if it ever does...) I'm going to try to start running. I wanted to use that "couch to 5K" app... but apparently my phone is too old to run it. An iPhone 4 is NOT that much older than an iPhone 6! It's utter BS that I cannot run what appears to be a simple app on my current phone! [All my life, I've wanted to be able to run. It was the one thing I felt like I was missing out on when I was heavier. I'm not sure if it will work for me, it might kill my knees, but I'm excited to try. SOON! As soon as my toe heals!]

Money: Adding into all that, money is still really rough. As in I'm living on my savings even though I have a full time job in the tech industry. This adds into the other issues, as in constant doctor bills for my toe ($250 per visit, weekly visits, even with insurance) and being unable to splurge and upgrade my apparently-ancient phone... [Hard to see a positive one on this point. At least I'm not homeless?]

Toe: I'm really so sick of dealing with it. My toenail was removed over a year ago, and it's never healed up since then. It reopened/re-got infected a couple months ago, and the infection is resistant to all antibiotics other than one. The pills cost $250 per pill, and I have to take them twice a day, and I'm on my third 10 day renewal of them, so the insurance company is being an ass about it. It's a constant fight with them to get my renewals, and they won't even cover a full renewal at once. I have to pick up 5 days, then the other 5 days on the day I run out of them, and the insurance has to approve it every time. It's nonstop calling, stress, and worry that I'll run out before the renewal is approved. [At least I do have insurance, so it's not all out of pocket?]

Vacation: I had the "good" idea to get a mileage credit card so I could fly home to visit my mother for free. I spent enough on it (and paid it off) to get the miles I need, but apparently it takes EIGHT WEEKS to credit the miles to you. Add to that the EXTREMELY limited number of seat options, and I doubt I'll be able to go home in June. (Seriously, a month ago, when I checked what was available in June, there were six seats for the whole month.) [Blah.]

Taxes: My mother's tax guy offered to look at my taxes and see if he could do better than the $1,000 TurboTax says I owe, but it's been about three weeks and I haven't heard back from him, even though I've emailed him multiple times since then. It's less than ten days until I have to file... [Well, I'm prepared for the worst. If he can't do any better, I was already mentally prepared to pay that $1,000...]

Life isn't supposed to be like this, you know? I work a full time "good" job. I have health insurance. I live about as far from an extravagant lifestyle as you can get. I have no children and no debt. [Hopefully things will get better soon... Money is unlikely, not until my lease is up and I can move to a smaller/cheaper place, but hopefully my toe will heal up soon and I can get back to exercising, which will help with the weight issue...]

This post was like talking to myself! :P

Seems like everything I've heard today has been really dark and disturbing. It started with the radio. I love love love This American Life. It's a show on NPR where they tell three stories all along the same theme. I listened between doing shopping and lunch, so I missed a few bits of it. The theme of the week was pets.

The first story bothered me a hell of a lot. David Sedaris told a "funny" story about how many pets his family had and how they kept dying. He told how his mother put a puppy in an oven to keep it warm after it "died" (turned out it wasn't dead). In a 150 degree oven. Story ("joke") after story about how all these animals of his died, all told in a way that was supposed to be "funny". It made me want to cry or throw up.

Then I went into a store and so missed the middle story (though looking at the website, it did look to be a lighter one). I also missed the first minute or two of the final story, which turned out to be a big issue. The story was about a man and his mentally ill brother. The two lived together because the brother couldn't live alone. Somehow the brother got an armadillo as a pet. The story told about how he took care of the animal (badly, scaring it on purpose and crap). The story went on, the brother died because he ran out naked in traffic. The healthy brother found the armadillo and took it into his own home. Then he described, in great detail, how he would hold the armadillo under water for minutes at a time, closer and closer to drowning it and in detail how it fought to get up to the air, how it reacted when he pulled it out of the tub. I wanted to throw up. In the end, the host mentioned it was a fictional story. At first I was relieved (I was so sick at the thought of someone doing that -- it was written in such detail I thought it had to be real, first hand experience). But then I got mad. Even fictional, the story made me feel so bad. So angry and hurt and sick and mad. Never before have I wanted to write an author to tell him he shouldn't have written about something. (Which I suppose means it was well-written, that it affected me that much. Still.)

If you want to hear the whole This American Life show, click here The armadillo story is Resurrection, the third one. I can't recommend it.

Then I got home and heard this song. I liked it a lot. I suggest listening to this version first, with just the lyrics and not the official video:


It's a sad but beautiful song with interesting lyrics. Then I watched the official video. Warning for hate crimes:

Oh my god, I could barely watch that! D: Knowing that that sort of thing happens in real life, that it happens now... gah. It's powerful, I think it's worth watching, but man was it sad and hard to watch.

After all that, I think we need a teddy bear to hug. This might not be the bear we're looking for:

The bad thing: Somehow I broke a tooth. How the heck does that even happen? I was eating lunch, thought I hit a bit of bone in my meat, but didn't check (spit it into napkin and tossed it). Hour or two later, I noticed my tooth felt really odd to my tongue. So, thankfully there's no pain (hopefully there's no 'yet' anywhere near this issue). I have an emergency appointment to see my dentist on Thursday morning. I'm eating only the softest foods I can find and chewing on the other side until then.

The good: I really like how much 80s music they're using in commercials lately. It's so fun to hear the songs again! And in some cases, see the old videos. Check out this car commercial! Such a great play on the old music video (other than the last 15 seconds).

Oddly (or not so oddly?) I seem to have no guns/violent icons! So have a kitty. I don't think I've ever used this one yet.

It's a sad thing, but wiki will fade to uselessness sooner rather than later. I listened to a story about it on NPR a while back, and I'm seeing the same thing myself. Not enough folks update it anymore. The generation who created it and kept it up to date are now raising families and don't spend so much time online, and kids nowadays only want to use it and don't want to do the work of updating it (and should GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN). Of course, I'm to blame as much as kids; I tried to update it once when I found an error, but gave up because it was taking too long, and never made another attempt.

So often I'll go to look up something, a new show, new author, whatever, and there's no wiki page for it. It always gives me an odd feeling -- can something exist if it's not on wiki?

Speaking of looking things up, a really odd thing happened yesterday. When I first posted about Old Man's War, people commented that John Scalzi seemed like a nice guy. I agreed and said I was happy he was. After that, I wondered what would happen if I encountered a book I really liked, but found out something about the author that would make me not like or respect him. I couldn't figure out the answer.

The very next book I read that was not by Scalzi, it happened! Last night I started a new book, fell in love with it (stayed up an hour late to read it), then googled the author. He is, to put it mildly, a gun nut. (Suddenly the realism in the space military book made sense.) Soon I didn't like the book as much. Problem is, the book took a turn at the same point that I learned that about the author, so I think it's not totally what I learned about him that changed how I felt about the book. (I'd hope how I felt about the author had NO effect on how I felt about the book, but that doesn't seem to be the case.)

The author makes me sad. Among other things, he said "I like George Takei, but I find it amazing that somebody who has been personally put into an internment camp by his government can hold the position that only the government should have guns." To me, that's backwards. The fact that he was placed in a camp but still is against individuals owning guns speaks volumes about how much he feels in the subject. (Though I understand how the author views it, too.)

The whole gun thing is such a can of worms. It makes me so sad. Just thinking about what the author believes leads me down roads of thought that make me sad and annoyed -- the misleading and incorrect "logic" in the "If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns" argument, the pain and harm guns do, all the shootings, crime... and this guy is pro-them.

I really wish I could separate my feelings towards the author from my feelings towards his book. I don't know if it's normal not to be able to. But now I see all the shooting in the book (military battles on US soil) through vision colored by knowledge of his real life opinions on the matter.

This is the first time I've ever been sorry I googled an author. Usually I discover good, interesting things. :/