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.