World Book Night and Life Update
So I posted the other day about my plans to participate in World Book Night. World Book Night! (First year for US give-aways!)
Today was the day, so I took my Bag O' Books with me on RTA (actually that worked out particularly well; my carpool coworker happened to have today off anyway). I had 20 books to distribute, and I currently have two left. I gave away 6 or so on my first bus, another half dozen at the downtown Tower City RTA stop, one to the bus driver on my last bus, two to coworkers, and set aside one for a homeless friend who drops by every so often. Folks were a bit bemused, but pleased. Two even mentioned that they'd heard about the book (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) and been curious about it. I managed to distribute them to folks of a wide variety of ages, races, and genders, which made me happy.
This weekend was ridiculous, pretty much entirely by my own choice. I'd signed up for overtime for second shift Saturday, and then I'd swapped my Sunday afternoon shift with a coworker who couldn't get anyone else to cover for him Sunday morning. So I was working 3pm-11:30pm, and 7am-3:30pm. We had a major downtime (hence all the overtime - there's a string of them this summer as they relocate the Data Center), but it went well, so call volume was low.
I ended up getting really buried in all the documentation and organization work I'm doing for my current project, and decided it was easier to stay over at work than to try to get home and back to sleep a bit (I'd either need to arrange a ride in at 6:30am, or get up at 4:30 to catch the bus -- Sunday morning at o'god o'clock is not the time to need to get anywhere by public transit). I can sleep anywhere, so I wasn't too worried about that. And I've been pretty manic recently, so my fingers were twitching to keep working on the documentation project. I check with AwesomeSauceBoss and let him know I was a bit manic and might be insomniac and want to do some work, so he approved the extra OT.
I ended up working all but two hours of third shift and getting massive amounts done (of the 24 1/2 hours I was at work I worked 22 1/4 of them). Napped for an hour before working all of first shift (the other hour was fiddling about time on either side of the nap). Bec and Jer came and picked me up after that, thankfully, because I might've passed out facedown on the bus otherwise. I got home, and Grafton surprised me with incredibly excellent burgers and incredibly excellent smoke. Yay! That, a tramadol and a robaxin put me mostly to rights, then I napped for another four hours or so, then woke up and hung out with Chad for the rest of the evening.
I was sore and tired, but no more than I'd expect anyone would be after doing that to themselves. And I didn't lean on the Provigil to do it, either; I took my normal dose Saturday before work, but didn't take any extra to stay through the night or to get through first shift. I didn't actually end up taking any on Sunday at all (I did take a tramadol, a flexeril, and two excedrin at 5am, so the caffeine from the Excedrin was probably helping me some). I was really pleased with this, since I'm watching my use of the provigil pretty closely, especially when I'm already manic and could use it to do things that seem fun at the time (stay up longer) but are deeply destructive to me in the long-run. I'm not suggesting it was a good idea for me to pull an all-nighter like this, but it's incredibly happy-making to discover that it's back within the realm of possibility when I really need to. Historically, when I push myself anywhere near that hard I crash to nonfunctionality for at least a day, and often two or three. That takes high-dose meds to get the pain to a dull roar, and hours and hours and hours of recuperation sleep. What I've been feeling yesterday and today feels like normal 37-year-old human reaction to bodily abuse, not that sort of crash. This is cause for much whoohooing.
Still looking forward to getting home and getting some extra sleep, though! And I really need to be better about eating when I'm hypomanic. It's not a true "lack of appetite": my stomach will be grumbling, but it's perpetually "one more minute" of whatever I'm doing until it's been eight or twelve hours, and then I just shove the quickest calorie source into my mouth to shut the stomach up and let me get back to work. A coworker commented that I looked like I was losing weight, and that's usually a warning sign for me (one of the reasons I dislike the assumption that weight-loss comments are automatically compliments is because for me weight loss is almost always a sign of something problematic).
I finished up reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on Saturday night, and am getting tantalizingly close to finishing my ridiculously tricksy Exploding TARDIS puzzle. I'm also about 20 minutes from the end of Astrid Lindgren's Children of Noisy Village on Audible. I'll hopefully get a chance to put up real reviews sometime soon, but posts and linketies may be pretty intermittent until I work this mania out of my system or successfully finish "fixing" some 14,000 or so articles that my coworkers modify on the fly on a daily basis. I'm also only vaguely skimming FB and LJ, so if there's something you particularly want or need me to know, send me a message or leave me a note here.
Random thoughts from this weekend: Back in the 80s, when IUDs had such a bad rap due to the Dalkon Shield debacle, they should've hired Ron Popeil to market them. This came to mind as I was thinking about how happy I am with having switched to one. Which rarely crosses my mind because, after all, you just SET IT AND FORGET IT!
I was also thinking about the fact that I'm one of a subset of avowed atheists who actually had really good experiences with the church and became atheist anyway. And it occurred to me that my emotional reaction to the Episcopal Church as an entity is very much like my emotional reactions to the concept of monarchy. All tied up in romantic imagery and childhood memories and a weird sort of fondness, but that doesn't change that I don't honestly believe either is a good idea, per se.
Also, I FINALLY registered for Reunion! So excited; the Peeps Reunion (every four years) and the FLOO reunion (every five) are happening the same year for the first time! And it'll be my first chance to show Chad around one of the most important physical places in my life.
Today's been really busy on the phones, since we had three people out on my shift (and a fourth who was let go for a lie on his resume). I've gotten a bit of my project work done, and nothing else.
Today was the day, so I took my Bag O' Books with me on RTA (actually that worked out particularly well; my carpool coworker happened to have today off anyway). I had 20 books to distribute, and I currently have two left. I gave away 6 or so on my first bus, another half dozen at the downtown Tower City RTA stop, one to the bus driver on my last bus, two to coworkers, and set aside one for a homeless friend who drops by every so often. Folks were a bit bemused, but pleased. Two even mentioned that they'd heard about the book (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) and been curious about it. I managed to distribute them to folks of a wide variety of ages, races, and genders, which made me happy.
This weekend was ridiculous, pretty much entirely by my own choice. I'd signed up for overtime for second shift Saturday, and then I'd swapped my Sunday afternoon shift with a coworker who couldn't get anyone else to cover for him Sunday morning. So I was working 3pm-11:30pm, and 7am-3:30pm. We had a major downtime (hence all the overtime - there's a string of them this summer as they relocate the Data Center), but it went well, so call volume was low.
I ended up getting really buried in all the documentation and organization work I'm doing for my current project, and decided it was easier to stay over at work than to try to get home and back to sleep a bit (I'd either need to arrange a ride in at 6:30am, or get up at 4:30 to catch the bus -- Sunday morning at o'god o'clock is not the time to need to get anywhere by public transit). I can sleep anywhere, so I wasn't too worried about that. And I've been pretty manic recently, so my fingers were twitching to keep working on the documentation project. I check with AwesomeSauceBoss and let him know I was a bit manic and might be insomniac and want to do some work, so he approved the extra OT.
I ended up working all but two hours of third shift and getting massive amounts done (of the 24 1/2 hours I was at work I worked 22 1/4 of them). Napped for an hour before working all of first shift (the other hour was fiddling about time on either side of the nap). Bec and Jer came and picked me up after that, thankfully, because I might've passed out facedown on the bus otherwise. I got home, and Grafton surprised me with incredibly excellent burgers and incredibly excellent smoke. Yay! That, a tramadol and a robaxin put me mostly to rights, then I napped for another four hours or so, then woke up and hung out with Chad for the rest of the evening.
I was sore and tired, but no more than I'd expect anyone would be after doing that to themselves. And I didn't lean on the Provigil to do it, either; I took my normal dose Saturday before work, but didn't take any extra to stay through the night or to get through first shift. I didn't actually end up taking any on Sunday at all (I did take a tramadol, a flexeril, and two excedrin at 5am, so the caffeine from the Excedrin was probably helping me some). I was really pleased with this, since I'm watching my use of the provigil pretty closely, especially when I'm already manic and could use it to do things that seem fun at the time (stay up longer) but are deeply destructive to me in the long-run. I'm not suggesting it was a good idea for me to pull an all-nighter like this, but it's incredibly happy-making to discover that it's back within the realm of possibility when I really need to. Historically, when I push myself anywhere near that hard I crash to nonfunctionality for at least a day, and often two or three. That takes high-dose meds to get the pain to a dull roar, and hours and hours and hours of recuperation sleep. What I've been feeling yesterday and today feels like normal 37-year-old human reaction to bodily abuse, not that sort of crash. This is cause for much whoohooing.
Still looking forward to getting home and getting some extra sleep, though! And I really need to be better about eating when I'm hypomanic. It's not a true "lack of appetite": my stomach will be grumbling, but it's perpetually "one more minute" of whatever I'm doing until it's been eight or twelve hours, and then I just shove the quickest calorie source into my mouth to shut the stomach up and let me get back to work. A coworker commented that I looked like I was losing weight, and that's usually a warning sign for me (one of the reasons I dislike the assumption that weight-loss comments are automatically compliments is because for me weight loss is almost always a sign of something problematic).
I finished up reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on Saturday night, and am getting tantalizingly close to finishing my ridiculously tricksy Exploding TARDIS puzzle. I'm also about 20 minutes from the end of Astrid Lindgren's Children of Noisy Village on Audible. I'll hopefully get a chance to put up real reviews sometime soon, but posts and linketies may be pretty intermittent until I work this mania out of my system or successfully finish "fixing" some 14,000 or so articles that my coworkers modify on the fly on a daily basis. I'm also only vaguely skimming FB and LJ, so if there's something you particularly want or need me to know, send me a message or leave me a note here.
Random thoughts from this weekend: Back in the 80s, when IUDs had such a bad rap due to the Dalkon Shield debacle, they should've hired Ron Popeil to market them. This came to mind as I was thinking about how happy I am with having switched to one. Which rarely crosses my mind because, after all, you just SET IT AND FORGET IT!
I was also thinking about the fact that I'm one of a subset of avowed atheists who actually had really good experiences with the church and became atheist anyway. And it occurred to me that my emotional reaction to the Episcopal Church as an entity is very much like my emotional reactions to the concept of monarchy. All tied up in romantic imagery and childhood memories and a weird sort of fondness, but that doesn't change that I don't honestly believe either is a good idea, per se.
Also, I FINALLY registered for Reunion! So excited; the Peeps Reunion (every four years) and the FLOO reunion (every five) are happening the same year for the first time! And it'll be my first chance to show Chad around one of the most important physical places in my life.
Today's been really busy on the phones, since we had three people out on my shift (and a fourth who was let go for a lie on his resume). I've gotten a bit of my project work done, and nothing else.