Corner of Bourbon & Division

I've been at work for an hour but today has lasted eighteen million years or so.

I got to bed shortly before 2:00, but since I had a 9:00 appointment at the bariatric clinic and I knew that sometimes traffic and parking can be dicey, I got up at 7:00 in order to leave at 7:45, with a view to arriving around 8:30. Oh boy, did THAT not turn out the way I planned. It was snowing, you see. "Snow, Phnee?" you may ask. "Surely in Canada you are all accustomed to snowfall and can adjust accordingly?" To which I'd answer: "You'd be surprised, and don't call me Shirley!"

For some reason, there were no snow ploughs to be seen anywhere, including the highways. I counted no fewer than five vehicular collisions on my way to my appointment, and traffic had slowed to a crawl even on the side streets near my house. The trip that usually takes me 30 minutes when traffic is clear took an hour and a half, and therefore I arrived in the parking lot already 10 minutes late for my appointment. Then the parking machine stubbornly refused any form of payment card that I offered, and since it also didn't accept cash, I gave it up as a bad job and went in hoping that I wouldn't get towed or ticketed (which, luckily, I didn't). Then the receptionist ignored me in favour of finishing up the world's longest phone call, in which the patient on the other end was asking questions that were very obviously not urgent, and since by then I was 20 minutes late (I had called ahead twice to advise them of the situation) I was pretty stressed out, and it took all my self-control to remain polite and not come off as aggressive/impolite/entitled/whatever in any way, because that's a good way to get yourself thrown out of a medical practice these days. But I knew the nurse practitioner was waiting, and she couldn't know that the reason I was extra late was just because the receptionist wouldn't put a phone call on hold for one minute.

The appointment itself went well. I will put a few more details behind a cut, so that anyone who doesn't want to read about weight, deliberate weight loss and medical interventions for said weight loss can skip that part. I will not be discussing specific numbers.

( Discussion of weight, weight-loss, and medical weight-loss procedures behind the cut! )

Okay, onto other stuff that happened with my day that's not weight-related!

First off, I finally got my compost worms! I sent a follow-up email yesterday, got a reply from the owner of the operation referring me to an employee, and the employee answered my email at, like midnight, which is wild to me. Go to bed, people, I don't expect service 24/7 for worms, IT'S FINE. Anyway, I called her after my appointment and arranged to drive out to what kind of felt like the middle of nowhere to pick up said worms. I took them home tucked inside my coat, because she said they'd gotten cold and it would be best to get them settled quickly. Since I had a 40 minute drive in bad weather ahead, I figured human body heat would be just the ticket, and I wasn't wrong. They were in a glass jar, in case you somehow imagined that I just had pocketfuls of worms or something. :P 

I got home without incident, caught KK up on all the happenings, got the worms situated in their new home, and promptly crashed out for a one-hour cat nap that was interrupted on multiple occasions by my beloved hounds baying loudly at the neighbours, the squirrels, the Amazon delivery person, and the lovely people who came to shovel our walkway. The dogs have Strict Opinions about anyone or anything coming too close to their house, you see, and those opinions are invariably loud and shrill. I love my dogs, they are a delight.

After that I had just enough time to shove my lunch into my bag and head to work. I left early just in case the road conditions were still terrible, but I was pleasantly surprised and arrived early. My coworker took advantage of my arrival to also leave early, meaning I'm working voluntary OT today for about 20 minutes, but whatever. What was more annoying was that he somehow managed to unplug the headset adapter while he was working. I'm one of the few people here who uses a headset, because between the back injury and the hearing loss, I find I can work much better with it. However, people keep accidentally or deliberately unplugging the adapters in new and creative ways, and, like today, I don't always notice right away. So of course my first call was for a possible IED (they're always false alarms but I have to treat each one as if it was real), and the headset wasn't working and my coworker had shut down the computer instead of restarting it, so I was on the back foot for at least 10 minutes until I got all the technical issues sorted out, which made me very grumpy indeed.

Since then things have calmed down, enough for me to type out this post, so I can't complain too hard. I remembered to bring my knitting tonight, and I'm hoping that I might actually be able to finish the Hubris Shawl, if not tonight then maybe tomorrow. Maybe. We shall see.

I think that's enough for now. See you on the flip side!

I got up at OhmyGod!O'clock this morning to bring in the car for repairs, only to be told that the courtesy car they promised me on at least three separate occasions was not yet available. They swore from here to Sunday that they'd have it for me in time for me to go to work.

So I schlepped home in the bus, scrapping my plans to go grocery shopping. The cats now have no food, but I shall remedy that in the morning. Don't worry, I had just enough left over for tonight, so they're not starving. Besides, anyone who looks at them and then worries that they're malnourished needs to have their head examined. ;)

The up side is that I had no excuse not to wash my floors anymore. I had nowhere to go, and a brand new bucket to try out. This new bucket comes with a nifty plastic attachment that I can use to wring out the mop, rather than use my hands, which never works well anyway. The verdict? Phnee approves of the new bucket. It's very handy indeed.

So I spent the morning mopping the dining room, kitchen and bathroom floors. Tomorrow I shall tackle the living room and give the dining room some more attention. I also did laundry, and any number of small things that needed doing. I'm not done, but this place is much, much cleaner than it was this time yesterday.

I schlepped back to the garage, only to be told that the previous customer hadn't yet returned the courtesy car, and so I was SOL. They didn't touch my car, knowing I'd be more or less stranded without a car to get me to work on time. Sure, I could have taken the bus, but then I would have been more than an hour late. So I have to get up stupidly early again tomorrow and take the car in again.

On the plus side, that means I'll be up early enough to to more cleaning, and grocery shopping (with any luck). Also, the construction on Autoroute 40 just outside my workplace appears to be at an end, which means no more 45-minute delays getting home at night! YAY!

I'm also tired enough (from all the not-sleeping yesterday) that I think I shall hit the hay with a vengeance tonight.