A Day of Rememberance
So I kind of semi-forgot about having this LiveJornal thing.
That is, until I opened my mailbox and saw that one of my fellow online LJ'ers had left me a birthday message. At which point, I thought, "Oh, shit. Maybe I should have updated that sometime between October and now."
Well, my only excuse is that things have been kind of bad lately, and I'm spending a lot of time conetmplating the usefulness of my current job. Yes, it brings a decent amount of money into the household and all that, but the workload is getting fucking ridiculous. At whatever point you begin doing the work of six other departments, it's time to start re-evaluating what you are doing in that job. Now, to be fair some of those departments did the same thing we do, only on systems that we previously didn't have access to. All the others, though...No. So the idea of finding greener pastures has kind of been in the forefront since October.
As far as the Holidays went, they were pretty normal, all said. The nice thing was that with Xmas being on a Monday, I was able to get in two long weekends in a row. Not as long as I'd like, but an extra day off is an extra day off. In the past few months, I've lived through a freak snowstorm and I've been to the ER twice. Once for a strangely sudden and rather severe ear infection, and the other for a 102+ fever and severe dehydration. My blood pressure was something like 83/36, which for someone my height and weight, that's barely alive. I had somehow contracted a stomach virus over Thanksgiving week, and whenever I ate or drank anything, I would double over in pain. Since it was a virus, my body went to work trying to kick it out, so naturally I became feverish. However, with the dehydration from not being able to drink anything, my fever just would not go down. So my wife rushed me to the ER and they ran a series of tests on me (with the high fever, they were almost positive I had peritinitis), and all they found was dehydration and signs of a viral infection. So they gave me an IV and some Potassium (it was low thanks to not eating) and gave me a few days off to recover. It took me a good week and a half to really get re-hydrated properly. Which I have to admit is a really odd feeling, because at some point, your skin starts rehydrating, and your top couple of layers of skin are all dried out and dead, so you itch EVERYWHERE. Imagine having flea bites on every inch of your body for about two days. I learned the benefits of those family size bottles of hand lotion that day, let me tell you what. I would basically cover my body in lotion, drink two glasses of water and go to sleep for an hour or two, wake up and have to do it all over again. The nice thing was that each time I did it, I was able to draw it out for maybe an extra 20 minutes each time, so I finally did get some decent rest. But oh, the itching.
So this weekend was my birthday, as someone so kindly pointed out. It was a much better birthday than last year. Last year, my grandfather's funeral was on my birthday. This year, we had a surprise party for my eldest aunt, and although the party was for her, I wasn't completely forgotten, which was nice. The only bad thing was that I had to leave my wife behind, as she ended up having to work. Everything is more enjoyable when you're with the one you love. Even if you're having a great time, you know in the back of your mind somewhere that it would be just that much better if they were there.
The one thing I did come to realize was that once you have moved away from your family and you have a life of your own, travelling with your parents "for sake of convenience" feels odd. They basically gave me the "why drive down alone? Come with us and you won't have to worry about gas and all that." But it was like being 14 again half the time. At least I had my own hotel room. There is a certain level of comfort I'm not willing to give up, especially if it means having to go to sleep by 10pm because no one else can sleep with me rumbling around at all hours of the night. Such is the life of a graveyard shifter, kids.
Other than that, things are basically where they were back in October.
You didn't miss much.
That is, until I opened my mailbox and saw that one of my fellow online LJ'ers had left me a birthday message. At which point, I thought, "Oh, shit. Maybe I should have updated that sometime between October and now."
Well, my only excuse is that things have been kind of bad lately, and I'm spending a lot of time conetmplating the usefulness of my current job. Yes, it brings a decent amount of money into the household and all that, but the workload is getting fucking ridiculous. At whatever point you begin doing the work of six other departments, it's time to start re-evaluating what you are doing in that job. Now, to be fair some of those departments did the same thing we do, only on systems that we previously didn't have access to. All the others, though...No. So the idea of finding greener pastures has kind of been in the forefront since October.
As far as the Holidays went, they were pretty normal, all said. The nice thing was that with Xmas being on a Monday, I was able to get in two long weekends in a row. Not as long as I'd like, but an extra day off is an extra day off. In the past few months, I've lived through a freak snowstorm and I've been to the ER twice. Once for a strangely sudden and rather severe ear infection, and the other for a 102+ fever and severe dehydration. My blood pressure was something like 83/36, which for someone my height and weight, that's barely alive. I had somehow contracted a stomach virus over Thanksgiving week, and whenever I ate or drank anything, I would double over in pain. Since it was a virus, my body went to work trying to kick it out, so naturally I became feverish. However, with the dehydration from not being able to drink anything, my fever just would not go down. So my wife rushed me to the ER and they ran a series of tests on me (with the high fever, they were almost positive I had peritinitis), and all they found was dehydration and signs of a viral infection. So they gave me an IV and some Potassium (it was low thanks to not eating) and gave me a few days off to recover. It took me a good week and a half to really get re-hydrated properly. Which I have to admit is a really odd feeling, because at some point, your skin starts rehydrating, and your top couple of layers of skin are all dried out and dead, so you itch EVERYWHERE. Imagine having flea bites on every inch of your body for about two days. I learned the benefits of those family size bottles of hand lotion that day, let me tell you what. I would basically cover my body in lotion, drink two glasses of water and go to sleep for an hour or two, wake up and have to do it all over again. The nice thing was that each time I did it, I was able to draw it out for maybe an extra 20 minutes each time, so I finally did get some decent rest. But oh, the itching.
So this weekend was my birthday, as someone so kindly pointed out. It was a much better birthday than last year. Last year, my grandfather's funeral was on my birthday. This year, we had a surprise party for my eldest aunt, and although the party was for her, I wasn't completely forgotten, which was nice. The only bad thing was that I had to leave my wife behind, as she ended up having to work. Everything is more enjoyable when you're with the one you love. Even if you're having a great time, you know in the back of your mind somewhere that it would be just that much better if they were there.
The one thing I did come to realize was that once you have moved away from your family and you have a life of your own, travelling with your parents "for sake of convenience" feels odd. They basically gave me the "why drive down alone? Come with us and you won't have to worry about gas and all that." But it was like being 14 again half the time. At least I had my own hotel room. There is a certain level of comfort I'm not willing to give up, especially if it means having to go to sleep by 10pm because no one else can sleep with me rumbling around at all hours of the night. Such is the life of a graveyard shifter, kids.
Other than that, things are basically where they were back in October.
You didn't miss much.