ProfessorTomoe

It kind of does, with the "level of trust required" addendum to the thread title and the "confidential" and "personal" tags.

This is why I ask. Thank you for your guidance, good sir.

I just thought of something related to an earlier installment. Was this discussed earlier? Could she, using her paste spell, create enough pastes so that you wind up with an, "I'm Spartacus!" effect to use against an enemy if enough people are being chased or threatened?

4:15 a.m. CDT 20170703. Here we go again. Two hours, wake up, two hours, wake up. However, this time I'm joined by my cat, who's decided that everyone else in the house should be up. Crazy diurnal creature. Doesn't help that there's a fly in the house, and that he's hell-bound to catch it. I think the problem I have isn't how long I can sleep, but how long I can stay awake. My conscious periods during the day are shorter than my unconscious periods, and when I have to stretch my periods of consciousness, I risk the possibility of a crash-and-burn, like I had a few days ago at the CVS. Speaking of things related to that CVS trip, remember the Bio-Oil? It's doing a real number on the dead skin around my toe. Seriously. Mrs. Prof had to come in with a dustbroom and a dustpan to sweep up all of the stuff that came off. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Mrs. Prof is keeping it off of the actual healing surgical scar for now, just as a precaution. I think I'm going to get on Amazon and find some pure Vitamin E oil (surprising that I couldn't find it at CVS) or an Aloe/E blend to put on the scar proper. BTW, you should see the scar. It's surprisingly straight. Now that Frankenstein's Toenail has been trimmed and ground back with a medical Dremel, I may post another picture of it. Believe me when I say it's much less scary looking. I probably won't even need to use the spoiler filter! ( @The Old Hack, let me know in advance if I should or not, if you don't mind.)

This qualifies in both this thread AND in the "WTF?" thread. /* shudder */

Oooooooooooooookay. Now, excuse me while I slip out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.

I got told to avoid grapefruit shortly after being put on Buspar back in the 90s. I was not a happy camper. Grapefruit juice (and grapefruit itself) is one of my favorite things. No can have anymore.

https://youtu.be/sLPi19uaGiY?t=28s If you're a fan of the new Twin Peaks: The Return series ...

Glad to hear they're gone, at least. Here's hoping for a long break between this and the next smallest possible outbreak.

Had a weird event happen during the last big thunderstorm several days back. My TV blanked out, a YUUUGE thunderclap went off very close, and the TV came back on. All like it was timed in step. Like off, BANG, on. No other electrical devices in the house were affected. Weird.

What's the status on those, anyway? Any progress?

Maybe she'd been Netflix-ing The Naked Gun.

Note to Self: Do NOT oversleep your pain medicine by an hour and a half and then expect to function normally for long. - Self

7:49 a.m. 20170702. The weirdness continues. I can't sleep for more than two hours at a time at night. At least no heartburn last night. I did take a Benadryl around 4am to help me sleep, but it didn't do much good. Forgot to mention that I had a nasty crash-and-burn after the podiatrist's appointment on Friday. Everything was going well through the appointment, through a late lunch, and through a trip into CVS to get the anti-fungal for my toenail and the oil for my surgical scar. We picked up prescriptions, checked out, turned to leave, and the bottom fell out of my world. I barely made it back to the Ridgeline and almost didn't make it back into the Ridgeline (those mothers stand tall). Mrs. Prof drove home and helped me in, then headed out for some cat work. I didn't remain awake for more than a minute or two after that. Move forward to today. The right-side back/leg/foot pain is reasserting itself again, as is my left ankle pain, now that my left big toe isn't hurting as much. The sesamoid bone area is still sore—couldn't tell if the bone was still snapped from the X-rays—so I'm still being very careful not to walk on it.

There are some who call him... Tedd?

I did a search for my childhood friend a few minutes ago. He lived across the street from my grandparents in Austin and was born about 4 months before I was. We spent every summer together while he lived in Austin, even after I moved to Houston. We bowled together, rode bikes together, and for a short time even went to school together while one of my uncles was in the hospital with a serious injury one spring in 2nd grade (I temporarily moved to Austin with my mother so she could tend to her brother). Anyway, he eventually moved away from Austin and we completely lost touch. He showed up right near the top of the Google search I ran earlier. In an obituary from 13 years ago. He died in 2004, cause not given, at age 41. I verified that it was him by the family listed for him. To say that I was shocked would be a massive understatement. Absolutely stunned might be closer. I really don't have the words to describe how I feel.

6:22 a.m. CDT 20170701. That. Was. WEIRD. After months of sleeping with a moon boot, my body rejected sleeping straight through the night without one. It kept waking up every two hours, wanting to check the internet, regardless of whether my eyes could focus or not. One time I woke up with horrible heartburn and had to take a Zantac. I guess the "magic mouthwash" doesn't do anything for that. I've finally decided to give up for now and let things straighten themselves out–with the help of a cup of coffee.

9:42 p.m. CDT 20170630. No more moon boot! Also, most of my Frankenstein's Toenail is gone now! The podiatrist took X-rays of my foot and determined that the big toe is healing nicely. It's still not 100% healed, so I have to wear an orthopedic shoe (more of a sandal with Velcro holding it on) for the next three weeks. I might be able to stop using a walker to get around outside, which will be a godsend. Furthermore, I no longer have to have it bandaged! In fact, the doctor said I should start putting some vitamin E and/or aloe vera gel on it (found something called Bio-Oil for it) to help get rid of the dry skin and the scar from the surgery. As for Frankenstein's Toenail, for anyone who clicked on that picture, he did some serious trimming and grinding on it. It's almost completely gone. He said he still might remove the nail, but not until the toe heals. He went on to deal with the rest of my toes and found fungus on the big toe of my right foot. I've got Kerasal for that now. Overall, I don't have to go back to see him for three weeks, as mentioned above. Some not-so-good news from the podiatrist: he recommended that I go back to my primary doctor for my edema/venous stasis. The compression stocking isn't doing any good, so I need something medical rather than mechanical, most likely. In other words, I'm probably going to have to go back on the Lasix. A bit of good news to balance that out from the ENT side: I think the "magic mouthwash" might be helping. I could be hallucinating, but I think I'm getting some of my vocal range back, mainly in the low falsetto. I'm still working on it. Also, no Zofran emergency tonight. I think we've got the pills timed out right.

Interesting enforcement of the style, to be sure. I'll grant that what I wrote doesn't fit any classical definition of "poetry." If you consider free-form or "free-verse" poetry as valid, then it does fall under a currently accepted style of poetry, as I was told by my critiquers on Scribophile. It's a tale told from two POVs of the same narrator (one internal), written in free-verse. I would not agree that it is an essay, though. An essay makes an assertion and goes about proving it. I definitely didn't try to do that. However, If you reject the free-verse as a valid form of poetry, I would ask that you consider it as a short story instead, again told from two points-of-view of the same narrator.

10:18 a.m. CDT 20170630. I just heard back from the ENT specialist. My H. pylori test was negative, so I don't have GERD causing my cough and voice changes. Recommendation: use the "magic mouthwash" for a month and see if it helps. If not, call them back, probably for an appointment. Today is podiatrist/X-ray day. I hope I'll be able to get out of the moon boot, as I've said, but I also hope that I'll be able to stop using a walker (something I've had to use since I broke my toe). I'd like to go back to a cane for outside walking, which is something I can't do as long as I've got the moon boot on my left leg. The X-ray will be the judge of that, I guess. I think we're also going back to ACG Medical Supply for a more reliable foot elevation pillow. Again, that'll depend on the X-ray results. Do I still need to elevate both feet, or just my right one (the one with edema / venous stasis)? We'll take the answer to that question to ACG and let them figure out the appropriate pillow. My pills have settled now, so I'm off to do the "magic mouthwash" routine. I then get to figure out how to fit it into my spreadsheet of medications. That'll be (no) fun.

Thank you. I hope it was a good read, also. I'm a music composer and a wanna-be novelist. Poetry is at the bottom of my creative tree, but it's something I do on rare occasions when I get stuck on something or get a serious muse pushing me in that direction. It's not my best talent, but I hope the end result is at least readable. My pills did, too, for a week, although the bottles still required the shoebox. At the time of the poem, I'd outgrown any AM/PM dispenser on the market. I recently found one that holds my morning and nightly pills, but the way it's put together confuses me (the lids are connected at the middle, the AM is at the top, and I keep getting it confused with PM) to the point where I can only use it to keep track of my hydrocodone doses. Oh, just got a phone call. Update in next message.

Microsoft. Literally no sooner did I get my music system active and updated after several months of downtime than it decided to a] put updates on my machine in the background, b] prep my system for the Creators Update, and c] offer the Creators Update to me. For a musician, item c] is an annoying thing, since we have to deal with copy protection and machine-based authorization. The Creators Update changes certain machine codes–just enough to make some of my more useful plugins think that they've been moved to a different machine, according to reports I've seen on the programs' forums on Facebook. There are supposedly fixes to these issues, but I'd rather have a backup of my working, updated system as it is now before giving in to the Dark Side. So, once again, for the second time this week, out comes the 8 TB external HD and the latest copy of Clonezilla. I'm backing up all four internal drives (two 1 TB SSDs, two 2 TB HDDs) to images on the external drive. The 8 TB was a good investment, or so it seems so far. Backup #1 took up just a tad over 1 TB thanks to Parallel GZIP compression, and it did it quickly thanks to a fast Haswell processor and 32 GB of DDR4 RAM. Once I'm done, and once G.DATA finishes its scan, then have at thee, Creators Update! Do your worst. I'll be backed up and ready to take you on.

Give that man a silver dollar.

The glove, the Gauntlet, Lord Tedd, et cetera, et cetera ...

I mentioned that I wrote a poem about the shoebox of pills I have to take one day after going through a rather depressing and frustrating series of medical appointments. I posted it to Scribophile and got good reviews, so I figure I'd share it here, concerning the medical frustration I've been going through lately. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present to you ... THE SHOEBOX by D. Lee Jackson I really ought to replace it. It's a bit lighter than usual today. Some of the medicines I used to keep in it are on the coffee table behind my laptop, ready for my midday dose. Others are still on the bookshelf, waiting until my doctor clears me to take them again. Mainly herbal supplements. When did I start using it, anyway? I wonder if a date's printed on it somewhere. There's also another bottle missing. A bottle of pills that were supposed to help me with my allergies, help me to breathe so I could go outside and enjoy nature at its fullest. Suggested Retail $75.00—Our Low Price $64.99. No date. Just bars and codes. One that would help me get out of the house so that I could take care of some “much-needed exercise,” as several doctors have told me, without having to worry about explosions of pollen from nearby trees. Exercise I needed before they would help me with my other problems. “Made in Indonesia.” Damn. Had to turn it upside down to read that. Jumbled the insides now. Exercise that would help me lose enough weight before they'd work on my knees, my back, my ankles. “Lose thirty pounds and call me in the morning.” Right. The lid fold is getting seriously warped. I wonder how long it'll stay connected. Self-serving bastards. They'll give out expensive medicines to help me “deal with the situation,” but won't do an operation to fix the cause. Of course, that means other meds for the resulting depression, the anxiety, the heart problems, sleep problems, illness-of-the-week problems, and so on. I've put too many stickers on it, I think. Who needs to know about a Houston radio station in Dallas? About which university I went to? At least they cover the goofy company logo. But there was a sinus problem which absolutely required an expensive operation by doctor number … hell, I've lost count. Couldn't fix the other problems without it. It could just barely hold all the pills I took before the sinus surgery. And then, post-op, the one allergy medication that was supposed to help me breathe so I could finally exercise. The one that almost made me suffocate instead. How the hell do you survive a dream where your lungs are collapsing? Another few minutes asleep and I would have stayed that way forever. All thanks to a bottle of pills that was supposed to help me “deal with the situation.” I know at least my feet would fit inside it. I mean, it's a shoebox, right? Shoot, it'll probably out-live me. What's my motivation? Well, doctor? How do I get out of this vicious cycle? I wonder if my ashes will fit inside it one day. ©2015, 2017 D. Lee Jackson. All Rights Reserved,