I use IFTTT but not enough to get spammed, I think.

It only pings me when my doctor emails me, so that's about twice a year. It's just that he's done so twice in two days and I got that weird spam text right afterwards.

NOT ONLY AM I BACK ON THE NORMAL REGIMEN, he will consider an extra dose whenever I have a procedure (::sigh::, how non-rocket science is being ready for pain, even if you can't get in front of it??).

In a perfect world, though, no more procedures for a while. I've just had two in, like, two months.

Make sure you have all the possible pain-lessening options that are available to you.

It's clear I'm "on my own"¹ on this one, so yeah. My mother will be over the moon. She's been trying to get me on pot instead of dilaudid for months. If I take some instead of an extra visit to an ER, she will feel much better. I should tell her.

¹Clearly that doesn't take into account you splendid people.

We need to open delurking.

Oh, ita, yes, that sounds very sensible. Just don't go the Maureen Dowd route and take four times the normal dose all at once...

Steph, I'm glad you are taking a break. And I want to reiterate what everyone else said. As someone who sometimes hires contractors, I want to know if I've given someone too much work for them reasonably to do. Because if they can't meet my deadline by themselves, or will burn themselves out too much to be able to continue working for me, I need to have a backup plan.

Also, as (I hope) a decent human being, I don't want to ruin someone's life by burdening them with too much work to be done in a reasonable work week.

So please, DO push back against these people, and explain (because they may not understand) that you can't actually do it all to their schedule, and still be healthy enough to continue meeting their deadlines. Part of working with a contractor, and not a regular employee, is accepting that the contractor can set some of the terms of the job.

Anyway, my dinner was crackers and the end of a lump of Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk cheese, which was great. And (apparently) too much Pisco. Woops.

Ah, England. I'm watching an old Time Team (archaeology around Britain), and they're talking about the layout of the town. "And then, it curves at the end of the Shit Brook." And they show it on the map, named Shit Brook. I wonder how long it takes for the youngsters to stop giggling over it every generation.

[link] + [link] = [link]

Woohoo!

Wait, you can get either livers or gizzards at KFC? Oh right, the South.

ita, I love your light.

That is seriously cool, ita.

So my day's excitement was that the heat wave gave Franny a doozy of a headache. She was at a friend's house when it hit, and the friend didn't realize what Franny's headaches are like because how could she? The mom called me when she found out, but she didn't know until it was dinner and her daughter said Franny had been sleeping. whoops. Picked her up but she was already pretty sick. Poor girl! It breaks my heart to see her so miserable.

Wait, you can get either livers or gizzards at KFC? Oh right, the South.

That was totally my thought--I didn't even know KFC sold those, and at first glance thought it was a "wait, there's a gizzard in my chicken" kind of thing

I have no idea why I am so exhausted and lacking in stamina. Could barely dance, slept all day today, etc. I haven't worked out in a couple weeks (since the 10K two weeks ago!) because most of that I've had a cold. I thought I was feeling better yesterday but maybe I'm not? Ugh. Two weeks should not be enough to make me so out of shape!

Have I told my story about going to the MST3K Conventi-Con in '96 and introducing a whole Minnesota family to the nummy goodness of chicken livers? I went to a Japanese steakhouse for dinner and got seated in the spare chair of a table with someone's birthday celebration. With the meals you got a choice of appetizer, and while everyone else got something like spring rolls I picked grilled chicken livers, to the sound of much ew!-ing by others at the table. But when the chef started grilling them my appetizer smelled so good that I ended up sharing with the whole table. It was a big hit, almost everyone liked it better than their own appetizer.