Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

So much to do. My in box is full of emails, I'll be replying to comments and trying to catch up on my friends list over the next couple days. It's so good to have net access again!

There was a "famous" person on my flight home. Joanne Weir was in the check-in line right in front of me (and didn't even fly first class). I wouldn't have realized it was her at all, but she was recording her voice mail and quietly said into it 'Hi this is Joanne Weir, I can't take your call...' and I was close enough to hear her. Even from behind, I was sure it was her (she had the same unique hair), and when I edged around the front to see her face, I was sure. I didn't say anything to her though, partially because I hate her cooking show/how she acts/her voice and always switched the channel when she was on.

I was so happy to get home and see my cat. Unfortunately she seems to have forgotten who I am. Instead of running to me when I came home (as she does after work), she sat at a distance and eyed me in a 'Who the hell are you?' sort of way. When I approached her, she backed off, still eyeing me like she was scared. Silly kitty, I was only gone a week!

Both times through the TSA line at the airport I got pulled out of line for a pat-down. The first time was okay -- interesting since I never had one before and she mostly just went through the motions. Coming home was a different story and she actually felt my crotch (with the back of her hand), and fully between my thighs, across my butt, etc. That was odd and rather disturbing.

More tomorrow!

For some reason, I like to keep my book review posts on their own, so there will be another post sometime later today with a couple of reviews.

First off, exciting times! While this DOES NOT COUNT, as tomorrow is my official weighing day, I couldn't help but take a picture anyway. The first time I've been under 200 since I went away to college (multiple decades ago).



Now I just have to eat really, really good today so it doesn't go up for my official weighing tomorrow. :D (And yes, I'm bad, I can't help but weigh myself every single day. Yes, it makes me crazy. But I also think it makes me more accountable for my day-to-day eating.)

For a couple reasons, I think I'm going to move to Kaiser insurance when we're able to switch. Money is part of it (they're the cheapest plan by far), but also gonzostar posted some information on coverage of skin removal, and it seems like it will be a much easier process there. I'm not 100% sure I want to have it done (surgery, eek!), but my surgeon said I have about 15 pounds of stomach skin (can you imagine?), and getting my breasts done would be another big chunk, so I almost want to have it done for "easy" loss off ~25 pounds.

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Stardew Valley people: I found an easy way to get a screenshot of your whole farm. Go to http://upload.farm, upload your save file (open Windows Explorer, enter %appdata%, and you can find it from there), and you get a page like mine, scroll down to the bottom for the map. You can see my farm and all my game stats there.

orangerful had said I had a had a good farm, which started my quest to make that screenshot. As you can see, my farm SUCKS. I hadn't even realized how bad it was until I saw that overhead shot. So much wasted space! I think I'm going to scrap the whole thing and start over.


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I'm spinning my wheels right now on so much stuff. My vacation is coming up in less than a month, and there's so much I have to do/plan, I'm so nervous about so much. (I really hate my brain sometimes.) Even though I'm planning on leaving my apartment four hours before my flight (leaving two hours for what should be just over a 30 minute drive, but it'll be rush hour, and two hours for security and such), I'm so worried something will happen and I'll miss it.

Also, I had thought I wouldn't have to check my bag, but it's a couple inches too big, so I guess I'll have to. That's not such a big deal on the outgoing leg, but onto the returning home leg, I have a 45 minute layover (shorter than I'd like), so I have no idea if I or my bag will make it... Plus there's always the worry that someone might steal your bag during luggage claim.

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Though it's still early, I'm plotting and planning things for my move. I'd like to be rid of my sofa, but I had no idea how hard of a task that is. If I have someone come in to haul it away, it will be a minimum of $150! It's way too big for me to get out of my apartment myself, otherwise I could sneak it into the apartment complex trash (not supposed to dump furniture there, but people do).

I'm semi-considering buying a saw and, assuming it's made of wood inside, breaking it down into smaller pieces that I can take out during the night myself (putting a sheet down to contain any mess). However, I have no idea of a number of things: How expensive a saw is. What I would do with the saw after. If it's made of wood inside or if there are metal bars. How big of a job it would be to saw a sofa into pieces myself.

I will NOT be buying a new sofa to replace it. :P

My visit with my mother went well, though I wish I could see her more than once a year. We did some shopping, played a ton of board and card games, and generally just hung out together.

Since money is tighter this year, I used Uber to get her to and from the airport. (If it had been me, I'd rather use the group van service cities have -- it's a lot cheaper, and since it's "official" it would make me feel more secure, but she hates the airport vans.) Turns out Uber is a great service, though not as cheap as I'd like (about half the price of a car service, and less than a taxi).

While it's great visiting her, it's surprisingly hard to go a whole week without reading. I was able to get some online time while she slept and while we watched a movie or TV, but other than that my online time was limited. (I did keep up with my LJ friends list though!)

I wish I could see her more often. She is unfortunately getting older (as mothers tend to do), and I know our time is growing shorter. We're on opposite sides of the country though, so it's a whole day's flight one way. I know it's both very selfish and stupid, but sometimes I hope I'll die first, so I won't have to get through the pain and loss of losing her. I have almost no family other than her, and we're very close (talk daily on the phone, text multiple times a day). My sister is my only other family, but unfortunately we're not close -- I'd like to do something about that, but it's hard, especially since we also live on opposite coasts and we're just about as different as two people can be.

I have to get my toe nail permanently removed Monday morning, then back to work Monday afternoon. Boo.

Since I used Uber, I'm now on their mailing list, so they send me things like this: Uber will deliver kittens to your office! $30 for a 15 minute visit from a group of kittens. Some of the fee goes to local shelters, though I don't know how much. What a fun idea!

This was going to be a long post, but now I'm sleepy and it's late, so we'll see how it goes!

Finally, finally, finally Wii works! I can't believe how much time and money I put into this. The costs for only exercise-related things (not games for fun).

Wii: $200
Extra set of controllers: $45
Active Life Outdoor Challenge: $55
TV: $400
Charger for the controllers: $20
Cables: $75 ($25 x3 -- none of these turned out to do the trick)
Switch box thingie: $25 (? might have been more)
Cable that finally worked: $15
Stand for the new TV: $150
Wii fit plus: $90 (which I haven't even opened yet, ha!)

That's a total of $1,075 just so I can exercise. Gah! Makes me think I should have just gone back to walking outside... (Though, to be honest, boxing is a lot more fun and gets my heart rate up more and I can do it inside in private.) I need more fun games though...

Turns out, though the new TV has many ports, it doesn't have the right ports I need (or the Wii didn't come with the right cables I needed...). I had to get a Wii HD cable thingie (with five colored ports instead of three (edit: 'ports' isn't the right term, the sticky things you stick into ports!) ) so I could use the HD input. The Wii doesn't need HD, but the only ports for the three colored one (white, yellow, red) was taken up by the cable from the cable box (or Tivo? one of the two) and I couldn't get Wii into that loop without breaking something else (and the switch box didn't work either). Anyway, finally! It works. Just between that cost and a week of vacation last week, I'm going to end up in the poor house.

RP: Yay RP! Got so much today, *pantpant*. I finally joined a new guild, though it was a hard decision. (I take the whole thing too seriously and feel like a guild should be my "forever home".) Should be fun though, even if I feel like a totally clueless person around them all. (All the ones I've met have like 3472740917401 level 80 characters and have been playing for years.)

RL: So very relaxed! It's amazing how enjoyable little things are now, like the luxury of being able to just sit down and read if I want to, or go out and have fast food for lunch (so bad, I know!).

I finished getting my apartment back in order today and doing all the laundry, so for the rest of the week I can just relax and try to catch up on WoW and my backlog of TV shows and such! :D

WoW is plugging along. Almost done with jousting on Keen, though I'll be grinding champ seals until the day I die. I finally, finally, finally learned to joust right! Not how I used to do it when I first successfully did it (meleeing with both of us with green shields the full time -- each match took forever!), I can now charge AND shield break at the same time! Wait for the other guy to back off, charge, then shield break as I circle around back to him! :D Now I can win quickly instead of taking forever!

I'm semi-sitting on my druid leveling. Seems like there's no use doing it until I get my heirloom chest piece for the extra +10% XP bonus. (He has the shoulders already.) He's 21, and somehow I didn't hate leveling in WSG for ten levels! In fact, I kind of liked it. I think druid is just OP there in the 10 bracket, where rogue was really rough. Travel form before others get mounts, and bear is amazing (at 21, I have more health in bear than a lot of 29s!). The only downside (which isn't, really) was that I had to hold the flag a lot. It was kind of cool, because I felt like *I* personally really made a difference; when I put effort into it, when I went out to cap the flag myself, we often won. If I slacked, we often lost. Cat form is fun, and travel form is great, but this time I'm falling in love with bear. (I hated bear the first time I leveled druid, in PvE.)

Tech question! My computer started doing something odd, just today. When I have a window forward, and I don't touch the keyboard or anything, somehow it's stopping being the most forward window even though it still looks to be (the button on the taskbar is in, the title bar is dark/active). It's the strange thing, even mid-typing it can stop being the forwardmost window, so in the middle of typing a sentence I'll start getting a Windows 'beep beep' error... Anyone heard of anything like that before? It's like an invisible window is coming forward, except the window that had been forward before doesn't stop looking like it's the forward/active one... (Virus scan is active and reports nothing.)