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It says something about the state of things in this household when we find that we have stopped worrying about the excessively large pools of urine on the bathroom floor... and are now worried there are not excessively large pools of urine on the bathroom floor.

For those who don't follow my lady_curmudgeon's journal, she's been sick for the last 4 days or so. I came down with the Martian Death Flu on Monday, spiking an all-time high temperature of 102.8F sometime last night (I think around 1945 hours? I don't recall. Time is without meaning right now). I've been fluctuating between 99.9F and 101.6F since then.

I blame a coworker for getting me sick. Ug, it may or may not have been you.

Of course I called in sick to work today. That doesn't mean I got to sleep in, however. I had to haul ra_kitty up to Schaumburg to see his vet. Without the physical exam the vet's office refused to refill his prescription for Prednisone. Without the Pred, he becomes a very harfy kitty (as he's been for the last five days). So off we went at 0800 this morning. Got there at 0845, waited until 0900, went in for what I thought was an 0910 appointment. Found out it was actually for 0920. Was seated in an exam room and ignored until 0940 -- twenty minutes after the appointment, and I was the first person the vet saw today. That's fantastic customer service. Poking, prodding, yowling was had. Got Ra back at 0950 and was left to sit until 1007 when they finally came by with his pills and the bill. $245.70. Holy crap. His meds cost $12, but to get those I had to pay almost twenty times that amount. Expensive damn cat.

Drove back home, in the door my 1100, had to spend the next 36 minutes resolving an issue for work because I'm the only one with any knowledge of how our VPN system works. Hooray for never getting any off time, even when I'm coughing and hacking and feverish! Once that was done I curled up under the blankets and slept. sometime during my nap Ra joined me on the bed. He's pretty clearly worn out too, from all the yelling & fussing he did. I'm sure the vaccinations and blood draw hasn't done wonders for his energy levels, either.

I just finished a bowl of soup that took me about 20 minutes to eat! I suspect it is because I have zero appetite. Once I finish a quick skim of LJ I'm going to go lay back down in bed and try to catch a few more hours of sleep.

So it's 0432 and I'm one of only two warm-blooded beings on the office floor right now. Actually, come to think of it, the other creature on the floor is a contractor. Even though he's working on my project I don't know if he counts as a warm-blooded creature for that very reason... but I digress. As I was saying, it's 0432 in the morning and I've been awake since my alarm went off forty-give minutes ago at 0345. I went to bed sometime around 2145 last night, so I have something akin to 6 hours of sleep. At least that's how the theory goes. I'm sure tarinfirepelt can relate to the sort of confusion I have about sleep schedules when things like this happen, even if he doesn't have a lot of sympathy for me.

But that's just the problem: I haven't had a sleep schedule so much as I've had a toss-turn-wake-wander-return-to-bed-lather-rinse-repeat schedule. So, I've been working to combine a bit of the advice of markvd and ottr, the main thrust of which is to change a few of my habits. Namely? Cutting out the soda and caffeine that's been the mainstay of my diet for the last year. Monster energy drink? Gone. Diet Pepsi? Gone. Coffee in the morning? Gone (or at best replaced with decaf).

This will be my second day without caffeine. Like a complete idiot I quit cold-turkey on Tuesday night, which made yesterday Day One. I believe that had some hand in the "wharrgarbl" aspect of my day (a 12 hour shift full of dogjawed mouthbreathing project managers and last minute requests and outages certainly didn't help any, either; nor does the state of the house and the impending arrival of my parents on their way back to Minnesota).

I really hope that in a week or so all the withdrawl symptoms cease and, more importantly, I'm able to start sleeping through the night again.

You better

Well, maybe I'm not dead -- but I'm not resting, either.

( I am, however, taking pictures with my new toy. )

There you have it. If my photographs have left you in pain, I profoundly apologize. Let me suggest that you go enjoy some of the works of one gatcat by clicking here. Trust me on this.

Everybody wants you.

I discovered late last night that I should have worn my favorite cap all day -- even if was so hot that I was sweating buckets while we were moving things from the flat to the trailer. Like an idiot I didn't wear the hat and the wrath of the sun has inevitably been dealt: I have, once again, burned my scalp. It's not quite the color of a cooked lobster but it is along those lines.

Sometimes being bald is a pain... literally.

For the rest of the week I'll be rubbing my head down with aloe vera spray and trying not to put my head under the water when I take a shower.

We've sealed and locked the doors

... and then I pick up the trailer from U-haul -- that is, I will pick it up if they haven't screwed me over by renting it to somebody else like they did the last time, when I danced this dance for duncandahusky. At eleven o'clock, our friends will show up (my friends H.K. & G.K. as well as roho and genet). Once everyone has gathered the moving of lady_curmudgeon from Kenosha to Z'ha'dum commences in earnest despite having been ongoing for the last four months...

The 'mudgeon and I worked through most of today, though there was some downtime after a late lunch. The Expedition was loaded up to the roof and we drove down to Z'ha'dum. Once it was unloaded we drove back to Kenosha. We're down to a few boxes, some furniture and miscellaneous items. Once everyone gets here I think this is going to go pretty quickly. I just hope that the heat stays within something approaching "tolerable" while we work.

A man with a plan, a mechanical band

Blackteagan Sketch Commission blackteagan held a sale on sketch commissions this weekend. I was lucky enough to be able to get in the queue, which surprised me given how late I was in tossing my hat into the ring. When asked what I wanted for the sketch I told them, "I'd really like you to just have fun and surprise me." Surprise me they did with this wonderful piece! I'm very enthused about it and can't wait for it to arrive -- and I hope it arrives, since once again I'm having it sent to the PO Box. The same PO Box, you might recall, that the postal service seemed incapable of delivering to the last time I had a commission mailed to me. Hopefully this time... will be different. The thumbnail will take you to a larger version.

In other news this has been a pretty productive weekend. I already alluded to the surprise that genet and roho had in store for me on Saturday evening. Today I helped lady_curmudgeon and her brother finish cleaning out their parents estate. The property goes on the market Monday and her brother wanted to make sure the house was in its best shape for when the realtors and potential buyers walk through. I know this is all very hard for Curmudgeon.

After sweating and laboring at the estate I came back to the World's Smallest Flat to sweat and labor some more. I took down the kitchen table, the kitchen chairs, boxes of books (OMG no more books honey, seriously!) , boxes of other fragile things, a bag of clothes and some other odds and ends. I had no idea that my girlfriend owned a didgeridoo. I got everything that we'd wrapped and packed downstairs and into the Expy, which is pretty much full. I'd like to finish this weekend by wrapping and packing a load of dishes from her kitchen but I'm not sure I'm up to the task. I've downed one Diet Pepsi in under a minute to try and lower my core temperature and I'll probably slam another before I actually post this to LJ.

Still, we're looking pretty good and the end is well within sight.

... or at least I am with lady_curmudgeon at the World's Smallest Flat in Kenosha. I caught the 0700 EDT flight out of LGA (meaning I had to be awake at 0400 EDT, which netted me something like 3 hours of slee) and arrived on time at 0832 CDT. I picked up the Expy, paid the long-term parking bill and drove North. I estimate my time of arrival to be something like 1000. I promptly stripped myself of clothes that stank of travel funk and defeat, crawled into bed with one of the cats and slept until 1635.

I am now awake, showered, shaved and ready to get some food.

A long day at the office yesterday netted mixed results but I think we made some progress on one or two important issues. I achieved escape velocity from the office sometime around 1920 hours and made my way up to Kenosha, arriving something like an hour later. Even when I-294 is under construction I can still travel a great distance in reasonable time on it -- so long as I wait until after rush hour has finished.

I was hungry and the hour was late, so I convinced lady_curmudgeon to accompany me on a quick run for some fast food. When we returned from Burger King I handed her the drive-thru bag and asked her to carry it since there was a "heavier bag I forgot in the back of the truck." When I came around the front of the Expedition and she saw the huge bag with "Happy Birthday" written on it she just stared and said "Oh, my."

Before we had our late dinners she unwrapped her gifts. I think I surprised her with the vast range of items I'd managed to fit in there. Everything from ceramic painted cats (Think of the Chicago Cows On Parade art exhibit and you have the sense of how these cats were painted) to a wireless desktop to an iTunes gift card she can use to buy some new music. Perhaps the biggest surprise to Curmudgeon was the bag of Russel Stover sugarless chocolate truffles that I had put in there. She was sure she'd hate them simply on the merits of their being sugarless. None the less, I convinced her to try one and she spent the next five minutes boggling at how delicious it was. Do I know my lady, or what?

In other news this weekend will be spent in the usual way I spend my weekends in Kenosha: helping the Curmudgeon pack for her upcoming move to Z'ha'dum and maybe having dinner or coffee with some local friends -- assuming we don't get roped into putting some final finishing touches on the estate so Curmudgeon's brother can get it on the market. Of course no weekend of productivity like this is complete without a twist. This week's twist is that the last round of antibiotics given to Curmudgeon's primadonna cat (Aptly named "Diva") seem to have had no effect on what has now been diagnosed as a kidney infection. So a new round of meds are being applied and I'm the lucky cat daddy who gets to put them down her throat for the entirety of the weekend (as an amusing sidenote, I think 'mudge is envious because when pill time arrives Diva fights me less and I usually get the pill down her throat the first time, whereas for Curmudgeon there's lots of squirming, biting and several tries are necessary before the meds go down the hatch).

Build the robots

I am feeling guilty as I haven't written anything in this journal for a while. The usual disclaimers [work|life] apply. As I am currently a bit under the weather I'll just jot down a few bullet points...

• Paperwork has arrived that proves the second lien on Z'ha'dum is released. I am now officially free of the second mortgage (taken at the same time as the first mortgage in 2004 so I could dodge PMI).


• Plans are in motion to have lady_curmudgeon moved into Z'ha'dum by the end of August.


• I haven't fixed the damage from the Expedition's little love-tap last month.


• A few months ago my father was been diagnosed by the doctors at the VA with diabetes. Not surprising, really. Now he's also been diagnosed with diabetic neuropathy. This is a surprise. A year ago he would not think anything of walking six or eight miles through corn fields to hunt some pheasant. Now just walking to his goose blind in the back 20 acres is agony for him. In his words, "I never should have retired because now I'm falling apart."


• ra_kitty is still fat and talky. He's also due for a vet appointment.


• I bought a new paper shredder. It makes me happy.


• I have the intense desire to commission somebody to draw Feren done up like Spider Jerusalem.


• I owe ottr a beer, for he has pointed me towards Balls of Fury. Christopher Walken and a brilliant send-up of Mortal Kombat. You know I'm going to have to see that.


• I'm planning to take some time off work and drag the Curmudgeon up to the farm so she can see where I grew up before it's completely turned into yuppie subdivision hell. I also am hoping to hit CONvergence so as to hang out with chebutykin and various other cool folks from the area.


• tarinfirepelt has gotten me hooked on Sequential Art.
  

That's about all I can think of right now. More substantial entries will be made in the future.