By the way... (inconsistent Internet access)

If I seem to have disappeared for the last two weeks, it's because my Internet access has been spotty.

Momentum challenge!

Before I left for New York I ordered the Momentum system for myself and my sister. It consists of a heart rate monitor, two training CDs, two exercise DVDs and membership in an online site where you can log your workouts and progress, read motivational articles and testimonials and earn free stuff for working out. I had them shipped to my sister.

There was a special price for Flybabies (www.FlyLady.net) in April, leading up to a challenge in May. The challenge was supposed to start last Monday, but the response during the last week of signups was so great that it was put off a week.

Today's the day!

Yes, I'm in New York.

I've been in New York for the last ten days helping my sister.

It's been a good visit. This is where I grew up, and I've been back only 11 days in the last 20 years; that was for a wedding and a funeral.

I've enjoyed visiting with my sister. I've enjoyed seeing the Island, noticing what's changed and what's stayed the same. We briefly went out to the bay (near the ocean) and plan to go back to visit the Flight 700 International Memorial, which we passed. I've been making a list of places I'd like to photograph when we have a free day when the weather's nice.

The night I arrived my great-nephew had a concert; we went straight from the airport. (That's why it took so long.) I enjoyed the concert, and visiting with him afterwards.

I've been tired, but I'm tired at home, too. It's no reason not to travel.

We haven't made as much progress on our project as I had hoped. We made a plan after I had been here a couple of days, but I wasn't satisfied with the way it was working, so Friday we had a meeting, discussed what was working and what wasn't, and made a new plan. It's going better now.

It's not broken...

but it sure looks and feels awful.

Early on May 14 I was packing and dressing at the same time, before leaving at 4:00 am for New York. I caught the little toe of one foot on a laundry basket. I knew immediately that it was serious, but so is a non-refundable ticket, so I put my socks and shoes on and left. I spent the next 18 hours traveling, without benefit of Rest, Ice, Compression or Elevation. I honestly believed it was broken.

It wasn't, but I spent the next few days barely able to touch it, much less walk on it. First the entire toe turned black, except where it was very deep red, then the pooled blood started spreading across the base of my other toes. Now it's swollen and a little pink. Still sore, but nowhere near what it was.

Update, 6/11/08: Actually, it is broken. It healed to the point I described above and then stopped improving. When I returned to Phoenix I saw my doctor and she ordered an X-ray. I got the results today.

Nick, pt. 2 (fan)

The bolt didn't break, it fell out. The fan is still broken.

The hollow piece that I thought was the connector is actually just a sleeve. I found the bolt on the floor. It fits through the sleeve on the fan housing and into a socket on the stand.

Well, it would, if I could make all the pieces line up and still turn the bolt. I had it lined up a couple of times, but couldn't turn the bolt without messing up the alignment.

The pieces are all plastic except the bolt and socket. I'm afraid that I'll cause more damage if I keep messing with it. Of course, I'm also afraid that I'm causing more damage by allowing it to stand with the heaviest piece attached only by a thin piece of plastic that wasn't intended to support it.

And this is the only fan that we didn't disassemble and clean last month. Every time I work on it I send a shower of dust onto the base, the carpet and myself.

I may move it into the kitchen, on the tile, lay it down and try to align the pieces without fighting gravity.

If I have any extra time in the next few days. Right.

Nearly Headless Nick does not make a good fan.

My fan broke! The only one with a floor stand!

Actually, the fan is fine, the stand is what broke. I heard an odd noise and when I looked, the fan part was tipped over, like Nearly Headless Nick with his head on his shoulder.

[This is my newest fan. I bought it less than a year ago, after my diagnosis. I've been very careful to always move it by the upright post, and to make sure nothing would interfere with the oscillation.]

I could fix it if I had a medical pin, the kind used to set a femur, for example. Lacking that, can anyone suggest a way to add little wings to a dowel or bolt?

The bolt connecting the fan to the stand broke. It was hollow, so I could stick a dowel through both pieces, but it's open at the bottom, so without little wings to support it at the joint, the dowel would fall right out.

There's no point replacing it until I know how many ceiling fans will be added during the makeover, and where they will be placed.

For now I'll move the table fan from the living room to my office. It isn't as big, but I'll get by.

Google Docs and my new leukemia album

When I login to Blogger.com notices of new or improved features are included on the first page I see. One was listed last week that I immediately became excited about: PowerPoint-style presentations can be included in blogs. They are a feature of Google Docs, with which I was unfamiliar, so I started exploring.

I chose as a test project my leukemia album. I actually have two: one for 2007, recording my reaction to learning I have incurable cancer, and another for 2008, which focuses on my determination to get my life back. A presentation seemed an ideal way to share the pages of an album with my friends.

This is my first try. It's very rough: I need to rescan the pages, using consistent settings, and improve the design of the title page. But once I post this entry, I'll see whether the feature works.

Knowing where I'm going... (housing)

A management book popular in the 1970's included the maxim, "If you don't know where you're going you'll probably end up somewhere else." (The Peter Principle. I think.) I think I've finally decided where I'm going. It's not clear to me yet how I'm going to get there.

When my lease expires on July 31 I would like to renew for six months.

I've wanted to move for more than two years but medical crises kept interfering.

When I rented this apartment my income was more than double what it is now. When I renewed the lease in 2006 I had a balanced budget, but it included regular restitution payments as well as self-employment income from both mystery shopping and Memory Keeping. Neither of those has reached the planned level.

The cost of living is rising rapidly, and I don't expect that to change. Every time I buy gasoline or groceries I experience sticker shock. Utility bills, haircuts, toilet paper -- I expect all of these costs to go up. I am less able to work than I was previously. These factors would support moving to a less expensive apartment, or giving up having my own home completely.

On the other hand, moving is expensive. Besides the financial costs -- deposits, utility connection fees and the move itself -- there are tremendous physical and emotional costs. Right now I simply don't have the resources to spare, in any of those areas. Also, I have made tremendous progress this year in decluttering and organizing my home. I would like to see some specific projects through to completion, rather than moving things that will just get discarded or donated.

Finally, my oncologist gave me three months to reverse the deterioration of my health or face chemo. That requires extra rest, extra attention to my diet and wellness practices and, above all, a reduction in stress. I believe that if I move the last week of July I will spend August in my oncologist's office.

Renewing for six months will allow me to focus on my health for the next few months. I'll continue the projects at home, but with a much more relaxed timetable.

Heat seems to aggravate some of the annoying symptoms of the leukemia; I'm already having increased problems since seeing my doctor two weeks ago. Renewing my lease would allow me to rest during the worst of the Arizona heat.

This feels like the right decision. I don't know how I'm going to make it happen.

The end result...

I am very happy with the final result of my friends' and my efforts in my home in the past week.

I finished re-cabling the computer yesterday. I can reach my peripherals more easily than before, my external hard drive is in an out-of-the-way corner where it's safe, my wires are neat, my headset works, and ... I have ports for all of my USB toys!

I continue to be thrilled with having my music back. I truly had not realized how much I was missing, and how much I was missing it.

I may leave the TV where it is. Although I originally moved it because NCIS was starting and I didn't have time to troubleshoot my cable, it's working rather nicely.

Although I feel better than I did yesterday, I'm still sick. I'm tired. Really tired. I realized how tired when I looked in the pantry and decided I was too tired to cook quinoa for dinner. (You bring water to a boil, add the quinoa, stir, remove from heat and wait seven minutes.) Instead I ate some almonds and a slice of whole wheat bread.

I had scheduled two mystery shops for this afternoon, then pushed them off until evening. Now they can wait until tomorrow.

I'm sick. Part 2

I didn't go back to bed.

I knew that it would be easier to enter my mystery shopping report if I finished putting my computer back together. I didn't really decided to do it all today until I was almost done; I just kept doing "one more thing."

The cables and transformers are labeled. The external hard drive is working. I haven't tried the inkjet printer. It wasn't working before, and I don't need any more frustration today.

More important to my peace of mind, the furniture is where it belongs. I didn't want to push the computer cart against the wall until I finished messing with cables.

My throat feels better. I've continued to push fluids.

And I've continued to bask in the sound from my stereo. Ahhh....

I'm sick.

And cranky.

I've been fighting a sinus infection since last week. The last two days I've felt sufficiently un-well that I sucked on zinc lozenges and got extra rest. Apparently that wasn't enough. I woke up this morning feeling distinctly ill, with a stuffy head, body aches, earaches and a spot on my pharynx that was red, swollen and sore.

Unfortunately, my office is still torn up, I have a mystery shop due today and the clean dishes have been in the dishwasher for days.

But...I am still thrilled with having my home theater accessible, and I can now watch TV and use the Internet at the same time. (I had to add a cable outlet.)

I've been drowning my symptoms in fruit juice. My throat feels better. My materials are printed for the mystery shop this afternoon.

I am going to start a stack of CDs playing and go back to bed.

Clearing up the confusion

Apparently I was so upbeat and positive when I reported on my last appointment with my oncologist that I completely obscured the primary message.

I said:
. I expected my numbers to be worse.
. I was right.
. I didn't expect them to be so much worse.
. In that context, not being anemic was the bright side.

I did not say:
. My white cell count increased more than 50% in just the last three months.
. It is now three times what it was when I was diagnosed.
. My current numbers would apparently be sufficient to justify chemo if I didn't feel as good as I do.
. If I don't reverse the deterioration within the next three months I will be looking at chemo regardless of how I feel.

Coincidentally, that is the same time frame for either significantly increasing my income or moving. (My lease is up ten days after my oncology appointment.)

Not a good combination....

All in all, a good day's work.

I've spent most of the last 12 hours working towards having my computer put back together, in one way or another.

So far, so good. My new USB hub is not only working, it is attached to my cart with Velcro. It has enough ports for all of my toys, which I've never had before. I can easily reach the ports for my mp3 player and headset.

My laser printer and scanner are working. That's necessary for me to complete the mystery shop that I rescheduled from today to tomorrow. (At that point I couldn't print the questionnaire.) My Palm cradle, photo card reader and cable modem are working.

My headset is only half-working. It records ok, but the sound is coming through the laptop speakers instead of the headset. That's workable, but some voice-overs that I'm recording would be a lot easier if it worked correctly.

I haven't installed my external hard drive or inkjet printer. I don't expect any problems with the hard drive. The inkjet wasn't working anyway; I discovered a conflict on the port last week.

I did not expect to spend three days on this, but I'm happy with the result.

Update, 5/7: My headset now works. Oddly, but it works. I can connect this headset using either the audio ports on my laptop or via a USB adapter. For some reason I need to run the input through the adapter but the output directly.

Back online!

I'm back online, after being incommunicado for 48+ hours.

On Saturday friends moved some furniture for me within and between two rooms. My PC cart was one of the pieces that got moved; I needed to re-cable it and make some adjustments for the new layout. Right now I've connected just the laptop and the modem; I'll have to take it down again to connect the printers, external hard drive, card reader, audio, etc.

I was immediately very happy with the results. I'm grateful and glad that I went ahead with the changes. Right up until they arrived I was considering chickening out. It seemed like so much work, and for a short benefit, if I move in July.

Then I turned my stereo on. Ahhh! When I moved into this apartment I put the home theater in the living room. Sounds reasonable, but...my living room was designed as the master bedroom, and is directly below the master bedroom of my upstairs neighbors. I've ended up listening to my CDs on a boom box in the office while my lovely home theater sat neglected in the corner. It now sits in a corner that lets the sound fill the apartment without annoying the neighbors. Well, they haven't complained yet, anyway. I hadn't realized just how much I missed my music. Saturday afternoon I was dancing in my office. Literally.

My friends recabled the computer after they moved it, but today I tore it all apart. Completely. Right down to removing the shelves from the cart so that I could thoroughly clean it. (Yes, Connie, I wore a dust mask!) As I'm putting it back together I'm labeling the cables and transformers, as well as the outlets. No more lying on the floor asking, "Is this the cord? This one?"

Because I moved some of the peripherals in relation to the docking station I need to make some additional changes. I may end up putting the hutch on the computer cart, which I've resisted.

But yesterday I was able to rearrange the art on the walls, as a result of the furniture changes. I've very happy with the way that turned out.

I'd better end this here. I've read my email, and checked my blogs, and checked in on SparkPeople. I need to connect the rest of my equipment in order to complete and report a mystery shop tomorrow. Gasoline, not fast food.