Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

I was using my phone on the couch, like you do, reading facebook, and it gave me the 14% beep beep warning. A short time later, it was down to 11% or so (the red "plug in please" light hadn't started blinking, so it was over 10%). Very shortly thereafter it gave another beep beep warning and shut off.

Fuck it, I'm ordering that Moto X tomorrow. This isn't the first time the phone has turned off after going from a charge I ought to be able to get another 10 minutes or more of browsing on.

I invited about a dozen local friends to a monthly game night at my house. Two responded yes, two responded "definitely maybe if we don't have other plans." Two can't make it because of school commitments. One would like to come sometimes. Silence from the rest so far. I guess I should send them a ping and ask for an RSVP by next Wednesday so we can plan appropriately, but that feels so pushy.

So I've made my move; now it's up to other people to respond.

I have a mid-2011 11" MacBook Air, which has 384 MB of video memory, according to Apple. I recently hooked up a spare external monitor to it, and when I put Chrome on the extra display area, webpages load really slowly. Like, it's really hard to read tumblr because one image out of six will load.

I've been having problems with webpages not loading images if I've had the tab open for a while now (long before the external monitor), and usually if I closed the tab and reopened it, things were fine. (I initially thought I had to relaunch the whole browser, then I remembered that Chrome keeps each tab as a separate process, so closing one tab is as efficient and saves time.)

I told Ben that it got worse when I got the new monitor, and he was like "pffff, that's impossible." Then I told him again today, after clearing all my chrome settings and preparing to uninstall/reinstall it, because it works perfectly on the native monitor, and he said, "ok, well, maybe..." then some computer graphics mumbo jumbo I didn't quite catch. He suggested mirroring the display rather than extending it, but I really like being able to be reading tumblr (or playing dragons) and looking at twitter in the window below, so I don't really like that option. Also because setting it to mirror does awful things to the native screen resolution and display.

So I'm throwing this out here in case any of you know if that's a thing, or how to deal with it. I really like being able to edit text at a readable size (or see more of it at once) and sitting with my neck in a more natural position, so I'd like to keep this monitor.

I started teaching a German 2 class. The school requires 3 students to start a class. I had 3 students (1 continuing from German 1, two new). This week, the continuing student dropped out. One of the new students is moving to Germany in April. There are not enough students to continue on to German 3. So my 2-hour a week job will go to 0 hours in the beginning of March. *sigh*

Makes me feel less guilty about planning to apply to grad school, though.

I got a nice personal rejection on the castle story, which I revised a bit and planned to send in to F&SF during the guest editor issue, but I finally got my VP application story back from an editor who will remain nameless--after 14 months. So I re-read it, tweaked a couple things, and sent it in.

I am waiting on tenterhooks for a response from an anthology I sent another story to. From talk on Codex, the editors are making their final decisions. I don't want to get my hopes up, because I'm pretty much out of pro markets for this story :/ but the submission call was like they wrote it for my story. So. *barfs nervously*

Planning for Shatterdome Atlanta 2015 continues apace. We have a guest. We're discussing other potential guest ideas. We need folks to buy badges!

Monday Mylene was limping, and it wasn't better Tuesday morning, so I took her to the vet. They thought it was arthritis and tendinitis, gave us tramadol and Dasuquin. Tuesday evening we gave her a second dose of tramadol, and she responded poorly. Like, trip to the closest vet hospital poorly.

So we go to the vet hospital in Durham at 9 pm, get her on fluids and oxygen. They take some blood. Her hematocrit is 14%; she needs a transfusion. They keep her overnight, and the radiologist & oncologist will look at her in the morning.

This time it's definitely lymphoma. As opposed to March, when the vet school said it was IBS.

She's doing fairly well at the moment, though she doesn't want to eat much. I offer her food every couple hours, and sometimes she eats, sometimes she doesn't.

We need to decide whether to take the aggressive, most expensive 20-week treatment option that could give us another 6-9 months or the less aggressive, less expensive 15-week treatment option that would give us 4-6 months.

In the meantime, I'm considering making and selling to order laptop, tablet, e-reader, and phone sleeves to get some funding for it (so we don't have to keep digging into savings). I have a stash of Amy Butler fabrics (3x2+ yards) that are nifty (and I think out of print), which I could probably get a decent amount out of. Plus some remnants. Any of that has to wait until after Dragon Con, though. Too busy trying to finish my armor.

Friday afternoon, Mylene (our 11-year-old orange girl) started vomiting. Repeatedly. I took her to the vet, where they did blood work and found nothing wrong (except some intestinal gas on x-ray), gave her nausea meds, and sent us home with the instruction to call the on-call vet if she kept throwing up. Which she did, but the on-call vet said it was our decision to take her to the vet school, and to go if she looked bad.

In the morning, she hadn't perked up, and she refused breakfast, so we packed up for Raleigh. We spent 4+ hours at the vet school while she got blood drawn and ultrasounds. She stayed overnight, and she apparently perked up enough to love on all the techs. (She's very friendly when she remembers she likes people because they give her scritches.)

They saw a thickening of the abdominal wall on ultrasound, which they said was either IBD or lymphoma, and the lymph nodes looked enlarged.

Sunday they did aspirates on her spleen and let us take her home. The vet said that the detailed radiology report didn't show enlarged lymph nodes, so it was more likely to be IBD, and they'd let us know what the aspirates said.

Meanwhile, Luna has been losing weight and eating a ton, but her thyroid and glucose are normal. So we sent off a blood sample to Texas to get vitamin levels, since that could tell us whether it's a nutrient deficiency (ie IBD) or cancer. Those came back yesterday, and apparently it's colitis.

So we're supposed to give her antibiotic powder on her (canned) food, as well as probiotics, for 6 weeks or so. I picked them up this morning, and she refused to eat her dinner with the powders on them.

Mylene is on metronidazole suspension and a floxacin tablet. We can't get the metronidazole in her, and her dose is 1/10 of the smallest available human tablet. So tomorrow I get to call the vet about a) getting a local pharmacy to compound it for her (rather than the usual place in TX), b) seeing how to get the dewormer the vet school wanted us to give her into her (it's also a liquid, which we got all over us the only time we attempted that), and c) asking what to do about Luna's antibiotics.

Mylene's aspirates came back, and they're "cytologically uninteresting," which means no lymphoma. Yay. Just a novel protein diet and a month of antibiotics.

Also, every time I think "OK, this month won't be too bad; maybe I can buy a new pair of shoes for summer because my Tevas are 8 or 9 years old and dying," we get hammered with $2k of vet bills. *sigh*

I wanted to get some writing in this afternoon, but I got new credit cards to replace the expired ones, which means updating all the autopay accounts.

It took a minute or two to get it changed at the home security company. Yay.

Then I tried to update the room I booked yesterday for DragonCon (yes, next year). All reservations are completely unmodifiable. Like, I can't even update my credit card using the online system. I probably can't add names to it there, either. I can understand making the rate not changeable (the Hilton charges more per person in the room), but the rest is ridiculous.

Which meant I had to call the hotel. So I called the hotel directly in Atlanta, and the reservations line was busy. So I called the central number, and the guy there took my information, put me on hold while he looked something up or talked to a supervisor or something, came back on and told me I needed to call the hotel itself.

...

So he put me on hold again while he transferred me to the hotel's rate department(?). Who took my information again, put me on hold again, and transferred me to yet another department. Who was actually able to change my credit card's expiration date in their fucking system. All that needed to be done was literally changing one digit in the expiration field. And it took 15 minutes.

Then I had to update my cell phone billing, which involved logging in to an account I never log into, which mysteriously got changed to have Ben as the primary user, so I had to get him to go in and fix that.

And now it's too late to get into writing, so I guess I'll go read about language acquisition theory instead.

The old one (the one I bought last July) decided it wouldn't recognize its SIM card. Or the one the guy at the AT&T store swapped into it.

So I had to get a new phone. (Because going back to the craptastic Captivate collecting dust on a shelf was not going to happen.) They had one like my old phone on the shelf, for $49.99, but it was out of stock.

Today was a bad day for my phone to decide not to work. They had a lot of their stock at Duke for some sort of student event. Well, that, and this month is already really expensive, between the hundred or so bucks I spent on cosplay accessories and DragonCon. Next month we need to get Mey's teeth cleaned (though that could wait until October...when my part of the hotel room at Viable Paradise is due...)

It's basically never a good day for your phone to stop working.

So I got a black HTC One (the broken phone is a One X). The silver ones were all at Duke. I had to use Ben's overdue upgrade to get it. Hopefully his iPhone will keep chugging along, despite the button being sticky. The next upgrade possibility is next June, so if it holds on til then...

I've spent the afternoon putting my stuff on it. One feature that decided me for this was the phone migration tool, so I could just connect it to the old one over wifi and suck down all my photos and music.

All the new ringtones and alert sounds are obnoxious, so I've got most things set to Pacific Rim sounds. I kind of want to use one of the PR ringtones as default, but I'm attached to "Call Connected Thru the NSA."

Saturday night, Ben and I had people over to hang out and play games. A tray of chocolate-covered rice krispy treats was brought, and I made a point to tell people to make sure the cover was on tightly because one of the cats gets into all the food.

Apparently people don't fucking listen, because I got up at one point to put some fruit in the fridge, and Luna jumped guiltily off the counter, after having nudged the top off the tray and licked a bit of chocolate off one of the bars. She would absolutely have gotten a lot more if I hadn't coincidentally gotten up right then.

Apparently Luna having done this didn't make an impression on people, because a couple hours later, I heard the sound of top sliding over foil as Luna pushed it off.

Last night when Ben cleaned the litter boxes, he found a huge liquid poop in one of them and a smaller goopy poop in another one. This morning, Luna ate really slowly and then barfed up her entire breakfast. She's acting fairly normal otherwise, but we still may have to take her to the vet--because of someone fucking else's fucking inability to listen to fucking directions.

I've been called "bossy" and "bitchy" and "anal retentive" for insisting that people do basic things like NOT POISON MY CATS. "Ugh, C's just being a bitch again." I've been made fun of for having a particular way of doing things. I HAVE A PARTICULAR WAY OF DOING THINGS BECAUSE THAT'S HOW I KEEP THE CATS OUT OF MY FUCKING FOOD.

Maybe I'm overly sensitive because I don't want to make a fuss and have people roll their eyes at me for making a simple request to keep food from marauding cats. When Isis was still alive, I had to pick up all sorts of dropped food, following people around like their fucking mother, because she had diabetes and a severe grain allergy. I said, "hey, Isis can't have crumbs, so please be careful and pick your crumbs up," and that didn't work.

I am really pissed right now and scared for my cat. And I don't want to have to spend money on a vet visit because of someone else's fucking carelessness.

I made a to-do list last night because I feel like my ability to mentally organize things is gone. I keep meaning to do things and then either forgetting them or falling into the hole of facebook flash games.

I was feeling consistently awful and low-level migrainey for a few days a couple weeks ago, so I went into my doctor's office, and they took thyroid levels. They said I needed to go down on my T3 because my TSH is too low. So I've been taking 10 mcg instead of 15 for about 2 weeks now, and I don't feel all that great. No migraines or anything, just lack of motivation, dry eyes, mouth, and skin, and low energy. I can't focus worth a damn, either. (And because of my neurologist's verbot on caffeine, I can't just make some black tea and make some focus, either.)

It could be that 15 mcg is too much, but 10 isn't enough. Unfortunately, the medication comes in 5 mcg unscored tablets. Though it also comes in 25s, and 12.5 might work out. Except for reasons completely unknown to me, because I've never had 90-day supplies called in before, the nurse authorized 90 days with 3 refills on my last T3 rx, while doing 30 days with 3 refills on the Synthroid, because I don't even fucking know. Maybe she goofed and read the #90 as 90 days, but #90 and #270 are a lot different.

So I have a metric shit ton of 5 mcg liothyronine tablets (at 2 a day, they will last me 135 days, or approximately 4.5 months), and I refuse to pay for a new prescription when I already paid 3 months' copays for the bottle I have. So if my doctor agrees at my physical next Thursday, I'll see about either taking 2.5 every day or adding a third in the afternoon. Or going to an endocrinologist, maybe.

I have this writing idea that I've been letting float around in my mind for a while, and I finally had some insight into it last night. So I made some rough notes around which the idea can coalesce while I work on other things.

I'm going up to DC next weekend (via Amtrak) to see the US and German men's soccer teams play at RFK stadium. I am excite. I'm staying with my sister Fri & Sat, then going to the game and staying with Ben's brother Sunday, then coming home Monday.

I need to write a letter (in German) to a language school and ask if I can do a practicum there and if they meet the criteria set forth in my course description. I don't really want to do it, but I need to. Ideally, I'd do the practicum in winter when airfare is cheapest, but I don't know ... well, there are a lot of things I don't know, like whether they'll even accept non-native speakers as praktikanten or whether they'll have openings in winter or how far in advance I even need to make arrangements. Argh. (I am fairly certain that there are no practica that meet the course criteria in the US unless you are majoring in education and doing your student teaching. There is an alternative to the practicum, which is 120 hours of teaching experience, which would take me far too long to acquire, if I could even get a job without a certificate and experience.)

Anyway. Stuff. I need to get started on my to-do list before I lost the entire morning to faffing about. This has already taken over half an hour to write, in part because I got distracted and wandered away for a few minutes several times.

On March 1, I was supposed to have my IUD removed and replaced. This is usually done in a single office visit for a single office-visit copay. With my plan, the specialist copay is $30.

For reasons involving my apparently extremely abnormal anatomy, only the IUD removal actually occurred on March 1. The nurse walked me out and was going to get my copay refunded, since I'd have to come back again in a week to try again, except the person who handled that was gone for the day.

I went back March 7, checked in, and didn't pay--they didn't ask me to pay, because it was to be a no-charge visit. So I went up to the room with all the fancy equipment in it and had my cervix prodded for over an hour until the damned IUD finally made it in. Yay.

In July, I received a bill for $30 for date of service March 1. At the time, I misread it as for March 7, the no-charge visit. I called the clinic, they assured me it would be taken care of.

Apparently it wasn't, because I received another bill in November for $30. And a robo-call, which put me on hold for the next available representative. Normally I'd hang up on that, but it pissed me off so much that I stayed on the line. I told them I'd already paid it back in March.

So I got another bill for $23.84, and another robo-call.

I spent half an hour on the phone with billing today, while a representative traced the path of my $30 copay. It was applied to March 7. According to her, I had to call the clinic to get them to adjust the charges. So I called the clinic guy.

He says, snippily, that he can't do anything because they billed insurance something something and I had to pay extra for the IUD itself? I don't know, I was a little too pissed off to follow the bullshit logic.

I have his supervisor's number and will be calling her in the morning.

I left a message with my doctor's nurse line, saying that I have been having a billing issue since July where they're charging me for the no-charge visit and saying I owe the copay I already paid, can you please do something to fix it, I'm about ready to quit this practice and go somewhere else. (Which is sad, because I like my actual doctor, and it's not her fault billing is full of incompetent assholes.)

So. Anyone who thinks the American free-market health care "system" is more efficient than a single payer with a single fee schedule is either living in Libertarian Utopiaville or has never had to deal with the health care system.

On Facebook, I said, "talk me out of applying for a PhD in German studies."

Two people are trying to talk me INTO it.

Application deadline is December 8.

It's a joint UNC-Duke program, and I can't find any information on which school's tuition you pay. (UNC's would be so much cheaper.)

The main reason I didn't continue my German studies right after college (aside from thinking I wanted to be an O-Chem professor, hahahaha, lol) was because I didn't think I could get a decent-paying job with that. I really hate that a mercenary decision I made when I was 17 (ie, to go into sciences because $$$) is controlling my present and future.

(I also really like public transit and urban planning and smart growth, but German is something I've loved forever, or since the late 80s, anyway, when I started studying the language.)

Problems I see: a) I want to write. b) There's the barest chance I could get my shit together in time for the December 8 application deadline. c) I wouldn't be able to go to VP next year, if I get in. d) I'm a horrible student--total slacker. Though maybe if it's something I care about, it would be easier.

So, maybe I think about it for the next 6 months, figure out the answers to the questions they want answered on their application form, and make a decision then. I know myself, and, while I make impulsive, snap decisions, this is kind of huge. (Also, I don't really have any 10-20 page papers. The one I wrote on Schnitzler's Reigen when I was in Marburg is 5 pages (I got a 2 on it), and I found my collected papers for Ideas and Power in the Modern World, which included some German philosophy (Marx & Hegel, mainly, also Kant), but they're all 3-5 pages, too.

Argh, I don't know.

Ben and I are very lazy people. Neither of us is particularly fond of cleaning the house. We tend to give the living room a thorough (relatively speaking) cleaning only when we're having a party, which hasn't happened in a goodly time, mainly because of a lack of funds to throw one.

We have cats, as you know. This means our carpets (wall to wall in 80% of the house) are basically covered in cat litter and cat hair. It's pretty gross. I'd like to replace the 11-year-old, cat-puke-stained carpet with laminate flooring, but there's no money for that. (We'll need to before we sell the house, because apparently you can't sell houses with nasty carpeting. I'd like to do it soon enough that we can actually enjoy said new flooring, but, well, income. I have none.)

So Friday afternoon I vacuumed downstairs and the bottom half of the stairs. I moved furniture and everything. Then Saturday, Ben and I finished the stairs, and I did the upstairs, digging out the mini shampooer to go over some pee spots. Irritatingly, the main vacuum doesn't have attachments, so we have to dig out a broom vac (the kind for wood floors or industrial carpeting) that does so we can get against the walls and in the corners.

So my goal now is to vacuum every other week at least, because the floors were really gross. And maybe we can make some headway into getting out the ancient layers of cat hair in the carpets.

I've got a very low tolerance for clutter, which, let me tell you, makes living with Ben really difficult at times. He never gets rid of anything. Judging by the probably 25-years'-worth collection of magazines in his parents' basement, I'm guessing it's genetic.

Our closet is overcrowded, you can't see the floor for boxes and piles (that are at least half his stuff) in the bonus room, and it's driving me up the wall. I've got a couple boxes full of things for either charity or a yard sale that just need to go (clothes & shoes mostly), but I can probably get a couple more easily. I'd like to convince Ben to help out, get rid of some of his things, but I've pretty much given up on that ever happening, or happening to an extent such that it makes a lick of difference. (He's going to have to make some really hard decisions if he moves with me to Berlin. We'll have half as much space as we do now at *MOST*, and I'll be damned if he's going to get 80% of it to keep his random papers from 7th grade and every card he's ever gotten, plus his toys. Yes, I find it rather frustrating that I'm getting rid of, or have gotten rid of, a fairly significant amount of things, and he's barely gotten rid of anything, and has, in fact, gotten MORE things.)

So, anyway. I'd like to start tackling the house room by room, saying keep or sell to everything. I'd also like to be able to walk through the bonus room to get to my bookshelf, but the 3 boxes of MORE THINGS from his parents house that have arrived since Christmas are in the middle of the fucking floor, in front of the tons of crap that's been sitting there for years. I'm just plain sick of it. (And if he's seriously considering putting the air mattress in the bonus room so my mom can sleep there, he needs to get all that shit out so there's space for it. And sell those motherfucking MAGIC cards already. They've been here ... two years now? Three? And he promised to sort them and sell valuable ones before he had his parents ship them here. All 24 pounds of them, which doesn't include the binder that holds the last deck he made.)

I made some progress in sorting memorabilia from traveling by putting postcards into photo sleeves and things like that. I'd like to scan the millionty photo albums that are sitting around in boxes, but there are a ton of them, and it'll take forever. Also, a lot of the photos are really shit, from my cheapo, no-focus 110-mm camera that I had from 3rd-10th grade. So, fun and a lot of sorting. Except they're in the back corner of the bonus room, and I can't really get them *out* of the bonus room without hurting myself.

My scanner also does negatives, so I could do some of those while I'm at it. I wonder where the Photoshop Elements CD that came with the scanner is. Last I saw it, Ben was installing it on his iMac. I also wonder if it'll work on my laptop anyway. It's installed on my Mini, but I almost never use that. (And PSE has a tendency to crash if you look at it funny.)

I want to go through my closet and get rid of clothes I never wear or that don't fit well or that are just 15 years out of style. I have so many t-shirts, and I wear... 5? 8? I don't want to get rid of many work clothes, just in case I get a real job again and need to look presentable. I have way more clothes than I need.

My sewing room terrifies me, but I need to get in there and sort that wreck out. I'll save it till last. I can't do anything to the bonus room, because most of what's in there isn't mine, and as much as I'd like to say "tough shit" and pitch it, I can't.

We are both lazy people, and every little organizational trick I've tried to keep the kitchen table from being a stack of papers with no room to eat has failed. We just leave things on tables, counters, the floor, wherever we decide to set them down, and they stay there until I get pissed off enough by the clutter to force Ben to pick up his shit while I pick up mine. I'd really love it if I didn't have to clean an entire room to find one thing I was looking for, but that's never going to happen.

Those of you who live in North Carolina know exactly what I'm talking about, I bet, before I even say it. For everyone else, March Madness is the college basketball tournament season, starting off with regional tournaments and culminating with the national tournament.

There are many major basketball schools where I live, including my alma mater, UNC, its arch-rival Dook, NC State, and Wake Forest. There may be more, but idgaf about college basketball, except when it interferes with my other plans.

I turn 35 in just under a month. Since I'm a bit broke right now, I thought, hey, we could go to the bar and hang out, and people could get food there, then we could go back to my house and eat cake. That would be awesome and save me the $60+ on food and drinks. (I throw a party with damn good food.)

So I had Ben ask the folks at the bar if 15 or so people coming in on a weekend afternoon would be cool. Apparently Saturday afternoons are pretty busy, but Sundays aren't so bad. Unless there's a game, which they'll have on the TV. So I checked the UNC basketball schedule to see if there were any that weekend. OF COURSE. It's the ACC tournament, times TBA.

If Sunday's game doesn't start till later, like 7 or 8, or if it started around noon, it wouldn't be bad; we could leave before people start pouring in for the game. But I don't want to invite people and be like, well, we might have it at the Nickel, or it might be at my house, depending on stupid March Madness.

The Dook match on the 5th starts at 8 pm, as do most matches. But I don't want to assume anything and end up scrambling for new plans and not have food for people. The Nickel is very cozy, probably holds about 35 people comfortably, 50 like sardines. They have a surprisingly good beer selection, mixed drinks, and food for a small town bar. The staff is great.

We were there last night, actually, and the bartender was mixing a martini made with green stuff. I said it looked pretty, and he poured the excess into a small glass and gave it to us. Before we left, he gave Ben a taste of Bärenjäger because he mentioned he'd like to try it sometime. (It's alcoholic honey. Delish.) I want to try the Kentucky Orange Blossom next time I go: Maker's Mark, St Germain, Gran Gala, and soda. St Germain is ridiculously good; I apparently am quite fond of elderflower. (I tried elderflower (or was it elderberry?) palinka in Budapest, and it was YUM.)

So I have no idea what I'm going to do for my birthday this year. Balls.

Yesterday I did a load of washing composed entirely of things cats have peed on: the rug inside the door, the bathmat, and, the item that sparked the washing-up, a cat bed.

They're all line dry, so I put them out overnight, and I brought the rug in earlier, since it was dry. Not one our later, I heard a sound, looked over, and there Isis was, pissing on it.

This is my "I'm really not fucking happy about any of this" face. I got up, ran over, scruffed her, and put her in the litterbox. Then I took the rug outside, hosed it off, and hung it up over the deck rail to dry.

I think Isis understood I was thoroughly pissed at her, because she did the slinking and hiding thing.

Also, the hardwood floor in the dining room has been peed on repeatedly, apparently, and so far the only cleaning that's been done was perfunctory water-mopping. This weekend, the residue and stickiness will be mopped up with cleaner. Before any fun is had.