Always a good sign

When the indicator button on the scanner lights up green today, after being illuminated in red yesterday (and subsequent to which, the scanner didn't work), that's progress. The tech support guy is working on it now. Then I can scan charts on my own workstation, in my own office, instead of the shared scanner at the nurse's station. 

OK, whose idea was the SLEET?

What the Sam Hill? On my lunch break, I went to get a TrailPass for February. It was freaking SLEETING out there. Dagnab it. Like the 22.4 inches of snow we got a week ago weren't enough, now we get more freezing precipitation. Well, at least it's not accumulating, so that's a good thing. It's also a good thing that for only $10 more than a monthly TransPass, which allows for use for buses, trolleys, the Subway and the El, a Zone 1 TrailPass will allow all that plus access to Regional Rail trains in Zone 1. That means I can take any Regional Rail train from where I work that goes to Jefferson Station, without having to tear my hair out dealing with street traffic. From there (11th and Market), I can get a 17 bus. Given what the bus stops look like after the freaking blizzard, that ability would've been welcome this week. Some of those stops are a disaster because they were plowed in. The one at 30th and Market, where I normally catch a bus to get into Center City, looks like the Arctic tundra right now. I swear I spotted a polar bear walking through it. Unbelievable that they haven't cleared the snow mountains away from a bus stop where no fewer than six buses pick up passengers... yes, I know the whole city is a mess, and I appreciate that. But I would've thought that a major location like 30th and Market would get priority when the snow clearing plans were made. Well, it's no matter. Starting Monday, I have the option of taking the Regional Rail OR buses to get into Center City. I'm counting that as a WIN.

Another good thing: GIRL SCOUT COOKIES. :-) Like the ones I'm going to pick up when I go to Joe and Jean J's tonight. (I still work with my deaf-blind friend on Fridays, even though I've been working at my new temp job.) Gotta remind myself to hit the MAC machine before I leave here.

Hmm. Lunchtime's just about over. I'd better hit SEND and post this.

Blizzard of 2016

The totals are pretty much in. We scored 20.8 inches of snow. I'm not interpreting tomorrow. Between here and the parish where I interpret, there are no guarantees that all the streets will be passable. Getting stuck in snow, in these temperatures, is a Certifiably Bad Idea. 

Meanwhile, I fill my weekly pill minder on Saturdays. Once again, I am mystified by the fact that the bottle of glucosamine chondroitin, which is for joint pain, has a tamper-proof seal that requires an act of God to open. Exactly how are people with hand pain supposed to manage this feat, short of resorting to explosives? Even Mark, whose hands are not in chronic pain, couldn't pull the darn thing off the bottle on the first three attempts. Jiminy H. Cricket. Is this a ploy to make sure we keep needing to take supplements for joint pain?

An hour after filling the pill minder, I was STILL sore. Hello, BioFreeze ointment. 

Awaiting the Blizzard

The city and state are prepping for the major blizzard that's supposed to arrive tonight, and last well into tomorrow.

Fortunately for those of us who reported to work as normal, the evening rush hour is not likely to be impacted by this. If anything, it might be a little easier than usual, given the lower number of ridership I noticed this morning going in to work. I might not have to arm-wrestle anybody for a seat on the bus. ;-)

The break room here continues to astound. 55 degrees this morning... edging gently upward to 56 degrees now. Yikes! Pardon me while I make more tea, stat. 

Still BRRRR

The break room is a little warmer today. It's 62 degrees instead of 61.

Jiminy Cricket. I'm surprised that a building as new as this one (opened in 2008) has this level of trouble with temperature-control. (She says, while waiting for the space heater to de-Arcticify this office).

De-Arctifify. Is that a word? I think I just invented a word.

BRRRRR

Did I mention that the breakroom is 61 degrees? Eek. I'm thinking that the insulation in there needs work. (It's especially bitter cold outside today.)

Even in the office where I'm working, I have a space heater going full blast and I still find it chilly. Which only makes me wonder how frigid it'd be in here if there were no space heater.

Is it spring yet?

Something new every day

In the "You learn something new every day" category...

There's an actual medical name for the sun allergy I've mentioned having in prior posts. 

Photosensitivity dermatitis. It's an actual thing. An annoying thing, to be sure, but a thing.

It's why sunblock and I are good friends now.

Full-Time FTW

I haven't filled out any official paperwork yet, but the good news is that I've been reporting for 40-hour weeks for the past two weeks, and I just got word that it's going to continue. So the conversion from part-time temp to full-time permanent is likely to happen a lot sooner than originally expected.

I'm also hoping that I get a desk of my own soon, if that's the case, as it's a challenge to get things done when I'm bouncing between different locations. Last week was nice, as I was able to work from an unused office all five days. But the office, which belonged to my former manager, is not likely to remain unoccupied for long, so unfortunately I can't presume that I'm going to inherit it. Darn. ;) It's more likely going to be used by the manager I report to now. I might land in one of the buildings in the main hospital where our department also has some real estate. Hey, from where I sit (or don't sit yet, lol), it's all good. Just plant me at a desk and I'll be good to go.

Day 2 starts... soon

Welcome to Day 2 of my new temp job! It'll be two 8-hour days a week, in the same hospital system as I worked in 10 years ago. The start time is 8:30 from now on. So today, for the first time, I took the bus with 8:30 as my intended arrival time. And discovered a few things...

- I believe the first bus arrived 5 minutes early. Maybe 10 minutes, if you count the fact that he should've been leaving the bus's start point five minutes after he picked me up, and my stop is five minutes away from said start point. So either he was early, or the previous bus was late. 

- I made PERFECT connections. Both buses arrived right when I needed them, the weather was ideal, and there was no traffic congestion. And under those conditions, it took 40 minutes to get here. So that's now my "ideal time", and I know I'll never get here faster than that if I'm using the bus. I can plan my commute accordingly.

So now I'm sitting in the waiting room, waiting for my supervisor to arrive so I can get some work to do. I actually arrived shortly before 8 AM, so I will kill time checking email and so on.

I has a sad.

I has a sad today. :( I had one yesterday, too, the one-week anniversary of Stanley's passing. I miss that little munchkin.

Captain and Baxter are picking up the slack. At least one of them has attempted to accompany me into the bathroom nearly every morning this week, which Stanley always used to do.
Baxter has been searching for Stanley, sniffing around and trying to wedge himself behind furniture (which is behavior he never engaged in before). Captain hasn't gone in search of his brother yet. I think he hasn't fully grasped that Stanley isn't coming back. I don't look forward to that realization dawning on him. :(


I know there was no alternative to granting the Final Act of Mercy. Not with those x-rays showing metastatic cancer all over his lungs (and the vet believed it was probably on the other organs as well, which the x-ray wouldn't have shown). But wow, one little kitty can leave such a huge vacant spot behind. Hence, I has a sad. :(

Stanley Momorella: April 2004 - October 30 2015

Though the crisis played out over the course of last Thursday and Friday, I wasn't able to bring myself to start creating this post until today. My heart is broken. Stanley has departed for the Rainbow Bridge, and the house has big empty spaces in all the places where that little brown purrball used to be.

When I got up on Thursday morning, I had zero reason to suspect that anything was amiss. Stanley followed me around for attention as usual. He dashed ahead of me as I went up the stairs, as usual. He stopped right in front of me, as usual, so I'd have to stop and skritch him, as usual. He preceded me into the bathroom, as usual, because he loved to have his Morning Dote. This was when I'd shut the bathroom door and he'd get lots of one-on-one attention from Meowmy. All these things happened as they did nearly every morning, and nothing was out of place. I picked him up and cuddled him, and he purred his wee head off, as usual.

But then when I was giving him a tum rub, which he normally loved, he abruptly stopped purring and meeped at me. NOT usual. He wanted to get down. VERY not-usual. I decided I'd keep an eye on him, since this behavior was utterly out-of-character.

We finished in the bathroom and headed down to feed the kitties. Captain was by his dish. No Stanley. VERY unusual. I had to go back upstairs and retrieve Stanley from where he sat. Absolutely not usual. As it happened, neither cat was particularly  hungry, because Mark had given them a treat of an extra scoop of food on Wednesday night. So I was not in panic mode yet over Stanley's lack of appetite. But I figured that he'd bear watching. He did stroll over to the litterbox and make a deposit, and he looked normal doing that, so I was hopeful that nothing major was amiss.

Cats sleep a lot. And Stanley did a lot of sleeping during Thursday. But even so, there were alarm bells ringing in my head that Something Was Wrong. I decided that if he continued in this vein on Friday, we were seeing the vet.

Sure enough, on Friday, he hid himself under the loveseat (which is comprised of two recliners and has large hollow areas under both seats). I carried him down when I fed the cats. He barely glanced at the food dish. OK, that was all I needed to see. I called the vet. I made an appointment for Saturday morning, because at this point, "lethargy" and "lack of appetite" didn't scream "medical emergency" to me. I figured that Mark and I could just work as we normally do on Fridays, and take him in the morning to the vet.

He curled up on the loveseat. Over the course of the next half hour, it became clear to me that his breathing was rapid and shallow. I called the vet right back and asked for a same-day appointment, and they had a 4:40 opening. I called out of work. I took a cab there, figuring Mark could pick us up when he got out of work.

When I got Stanley to the vet, we went through his symptoms. The only two obvious things going on were that he'd lost 9 ounces, and his breathing was labored. So the vet was thinking "pancreatitis". They drew up a treatment plan, complete with meds and instructions for me to follow. But first, they wanted to get an x-ray and a blood draw, just in case. So I waited in the lobby.

The second she came in to summon me to look at the x-rays, I knew something was bad. Sure enough, the x-rays showed innumerable little lesions all over his lungs. Mitigating factors were able to be ruled out, one by one. Fungal pneumonia could cause it, but we neither live in nor have recently traveled to the parts of the country where that kind of fungus is common. A sudden, severe electric shock could cause fluid in the lungs, such as from biting an electrical cord, but Stanley had no teeth. Complete immersion in water could do it, but that certainly didn't happen to Stanley. And so on. So we were left with the most undesirable of all the reasons why there'd be lesions all over his lungs: metastatic cancer. The x-ray didn't show where the cancer might be located, but an ultrasound might. Since the UPenn veterinary ER has access to ultrasound, I originally wanted to take him there just to be SURE that we were dealing with something not curable. There was no possible option for palliative care in this case, and if the only real option was to say goodbye, I wanted to be absolutely POSITIVE that I wasn't jumping the gun. Euthanasia is an irrevocable decision, and since you can't walk it back, I wanted to be utterly certain of what was going on.

But while Stanley was getting his x-rays and blood drawn, he started experiencing more severe respiratory distress. So they put him in their oxygen cage to get his breathing stabilized. While we waited, the vet said that they could send his x-rays electronically to the offsite radiology firm that interprets results for them. Normally, their results are returned the next day, but she could request a STAT turnaround and get their response back in an hour or so. Stanley could stay in the oxygen cage in the meantime. So I agreed to this.

While I waited, I called Mark, my parents, and Joe and John to update them on what was happening. Actually, in Mark's case, I wanted to tell him in person, so all I said was to come to the vet and park his car at the nearby garage, because something was seriously wrong.

After Mark arrived, two things happened. One, the STAT response came back, and it was essentially identical to the assessment of the x-rays that the vet had given me. And two, more significant: even an hour in the oxygen cage did not ease Stanley's breathing back to normal, as it should have done.

Originally, I had wanted those extra tests at UPenn. I wanted answers! But I realized that if an hour in an oxygen environment wasn't enough to give Stanley relief, that IS an answer. It's the answer I wanted least of all, but it was an answer. I envisioned the drive to UPenn, where a non-oxygen environment would only stress his breathing again. I pictured all the noise, strange scents, and tests that would have to be done, stressing him further and perhaps causing his already-brittle condition to deteriorate further. And I was reminded by the vet that on Friday evening, chances are high that their ultrasound people would've gone home for the night, necessitating an overnight stay for Stanley in THEIR oxygen cage.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't put him through that when the most likely outcome of those extra tests would be the same recommendation as was before me already. This was not a flareup of treatable symptoms I was looking at. This was the beginning of a final decline. And I could either ease his passing right there, or drag it out needlessly and STILL end up making the same decision.

So we opted for the Final Act of Mercy. Mark and I skritched and cuddled him, and he purred the ENTIRE time. That's all he ever did was purr. And I can be confident that he had a peaceful passing, being loved on by his humans.

But as I said, my heart is broken. I never in a trillion years would've predicted on Thursday morning that I'd be taking an empty carrier home from the vet within 36 hours. :'(

And now...

Only one cat dish, in a place that was set up for two, looks wrong.

Only one kitty demanding breakfast, where there were once two voices, is wrong, too.

Thank goodness Mark picked up the extra food and water dishes on Saturday, when he fed Captain. I might not have been able to bring myself to do it yet. Those dishes might still be sitting there, waiting for a kitty who no longer has need of them.

I miss my Stanley. So does Captain, his bewildered brother.

Someone took my username in vain

What the frack? I got a "Welcome to Pandora" email for my gmail account, which is NOT the one I use when I register for online services. My real Pandora account has been up and running since 2007 or so.

So for kicks, I tried to log in with said gmail account. I did "forgot password", and sure enough, instead of an error message, I got a password-reset email. I reset the password, all right... to something of MY OWN choosing.

Whoever took my username in vain while creating a Pandora account, created a country music station for it. So I know for certain it was someone else's doing. Let whoever created the account, go and create another account under THEIR OWN freaking email address. I won't tolerate people trying to access mine, particularly strangers.

But at least I shouldn't run into this issue again with THIS email address. Whoever created the account just lost access to it. I trust they'll either use their own email addy or find someone else's address to usurp.

Eye Doctor

It's that time again! I'm sitting and waiting for the eye drops that dilate my pupils to take effect. I don't like how unfocused my vision gets when the drops are doing their thing. 

Oh, well. File it under "necessary evil". If I don't want my vision to be messed up like that 24/7, I have to keep up with these regular exams, including the annoying eye drops. 

Ta-da! All Done!

Bath Fitter

The Bath Fitter guy is here. Just one worker. Here is the "Before" image of our bathtub area.

Bummer about having to sacrifice the ceramic soap dish that's imbedded in the original tile. I don't even know if they make those anymore. But we HAVE to have the tub redone, because of issues with leaking. The work being done now will resolve that. While the end result will be walls and a tub that are installed right over the existing ones, some tiles will have to be removed to accommodate the new faucet setup (one central control instead of separate hot/cold controls). Plus, the aforementioned soap dish will have to go (drat), as will any tiles where leaking may have caused mold to grow behind them.

Baxter didn't bark at all when the worker first came in. But since I've put Baxter in his crate, and the worker has started hammering and chiseling, NOW the dog is having himself a nice barkfest. I can't say I blame him. If I didn't know what those noises were, I'd bark at them too.

The workman arranged multiple drop cloths along the entire path between the front door and bathroom, including a cloth that goes up the stairs. Good thing this isn't a big house, so he only needed 3 drop cloths. Who knows how many cloths they need to use when they're working in a large house?

Captain Wuvs His Paw

Selfie Sticks

*sees that selfie sticks are banned from the Papal Mass area*

* buys a cane with a tripod thread hidden in the handle*

When I want a monopod with me, by gosh, I am going to HAVE a monopod with me. Selfie stick ban, shmelfie stick ban. And since I have no intention of being an ignoramus with said monopod, no one will have reason to object.

Online... camera?

I'm giving my new camera's internet connectivity a test drive. The SIM card just arrived today. I look forward to using it in situations where a using dedicated camera is a better option than even tbe best smartphone camera out there. Because 21x optical zoom. :)

Will wonders never cease?

I am creating a new post. That's nothing unusual. What IS new is that I am composing it on a CAMERA. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a camera with a wi-fi connection. It'd have a cellular connection as well, if i had a SIM card for it. Perhaps that's next. We shall see.

Earworm of the Day

Today's earworm is "Shambala" by Rockapella. You're welcome. :)