there she goes, she's airtight

So a week ago I finished Haven on Netflix.

It was. Interesting.

( the rest of this is going under a cut, in case a) you're not interested, or b) you're in the process of watching and don't want to be spoiled )

On the other hand, two non-spoilery notes: first) the two WWE wrestlers who showed up, yes, turned out to be able to act, which I didn't find surprising but was apparently a great shock to my mother, which was hilarious; second) I had no idea how much I needed William Shatner playing a subdued but utterly insane mad scientist obsessed with his daughter until he showed up, and it turned out, the answer to how much I needed it was "a lot".

It’s been a week or so since Physicals Season ended, which means that everyone who needed to remove their facial hair in order to take their respirator fit test has done so. Mostly this is nice because — unless someone just decides to shave, obviously — I don’t have to worry about that two-second “whoa what the fuck” reaction every time I see someone who’s newly clean-shaven. Sure it’ll happen again in September, but until then I’m safe.

(My boss-boss decided to shave everything but his mustache. I’m not 100% sure why and it’s possible I asked him “why did you do that to your face”. It’s gone now.)


In other, stranger, work-related news, context: previously-mentioned coworker who felt the need to specify that he wasn’t a furry got fired a few weeks ago. (Or. I’m not sure if it was Actual Firing; he was a temp. He no longer works here, is the end result.) He had been staying in another coworker’s second bedroom, because most of us here have something of a commute but two hours is. A little much. And Other Coworker lives 20 minutes away. But when he got fired here I gather he moved back.

All of which is to say that Other Coworker told me he’d been asked to relay sincere thanks to me from Non-Furry Coworker for all the help I’d given him while he was here. I blinked and said “o ... kay?” The person whose office we were in was as confused as I was, and said “... do you keep in touch with him? Did this just come up in conversation?”

Apparently Non-Furry Coworker accidentally took home an Xbox controller that wasn’t his, and so called Other Coworker to let him know, and then ... well what Other Coworker said was “and then he like. Went on this tirade about how he should have appreciated all the help he was getting, specifically from Meghan — he mentioned you by name and asked me to thank you specifically.”

So like. Sure? Either I am misremembering the significance of the things I helped him with or he got absolutely no help from literally anyone else in the entire department. I guess I’m happy I was able to help in whatever way I did, one way or the other?


In something not related to work, I started a new seizure medication Friday night and JESUS FUCK I have never seen such dire warnings in the monograph and consumer information as I have with this one. It’s a benzodiazepine and Serious Business, apparently. It’s weird just because it’s a Schedule IV (so I knew it was a controlled substance and all before I picked it up, no worries) and when I was on a Schedule III for a while I don’t remember the warnings being nearly this dire.

No drama like office drama!

We share desks in my department, because five shifts and about twice as many people as there are desks means that sharing desks is inevitable. The seating chart gets updated every so often, because we lose people and gain people and so on, blah blah. I’ve been in the same seat since I started, but that’s because a) I hate change and b) my deskmate and I have a good arrangement. I’m lucky.

HOWEVER.

This last rearrangement met with some Serious Pushback. One of the people who got moved emailed some of the supervisors and said “if you want me to quit just tell me”, which, damn.

And it turns out that the reason so many people were upset is that one person and one of the supervisors figured out a chart where almost nobody would overlap, and everyone would be happy, and then Obnoxious Supervisor stepped in and rearranged it and screwed everything up. Which is par for the course.

They put out a new one a little less than a week later. I’m still laughing about it.



Also one of the new guys felt the need to state for the record that he’s not a furry.

It was a weird conversation.

Non-exhaustive list of things I hate:
- packing
- making so many goddamn decisions in such a short amount of time, Jesus Christ al-fucking-mighty
- my brain
- the inability to describe how my brain feels when I’m feeling off as anything but “... weird”
- (without fail, every time I try and fail to use any other word, I hear Leonard McCoy saying “you mean I have to die to discuss your insights on death?” which doesn’t help much)



On the bright side (well, possible bright side anyway, I’m working on it), I hadn’t realized that the PA I’m seeing at my neurologist’s now (the other one is off getting married and honeymooning et cetera) didn’t know I work third shift, and when she found out she absolutely lost her shit, so now I have an Actual Medical Note saying it is Medically Necessary for me to work first shift.

Which is fine, I just don’t know if I want to. I know it’s better for me, sleep schedule circadian rhythm blah blah blah, and I worked out the pay difference (third shift makes $1.25 extra an hour) and it’s not a super-lot especially after taxes, I just.

I don’t know. I like working four days a week. I like working nights when there’s not a lot of people around. I like actually doing lab work. But it seems like paperwork is where I’m headed, speaking purely practically, and one of my bosses has assured me that she knows I’d be good at it.

But this was my dream job. Like literally, people asked me in high school and college, what’s your dream job, and I said “I want to be a lab monkey in a corner somewhere that I don’t have to deal with people”. And that’s exactly what this is. So. Fuck. I don’t know.

HELLO TREMORS MY OLD FRIEND.

Less than a year after I got (mis-)diagnosed with MS, I asked my then-boss if he could have me taken off the recon schedule -- my hands were shaking a little too much for me to be comfortable reconstituting things, I told him, especially given how small some of the vials were and the fact that in order to recon properly you need a vent needle in addition to the one you're using to add diluent. He didn't have a problem with it, which I greatly appreciated. (I think he realized how much I hated even having to ask for something like that. I hate when my body does shit I can't control.)

And then semi-recently-ish, last half-year or so, I noticed that my hands hadn't been shaking nearly as much, and I didn't think anything of it except to go "ooh, hey, nice!" Never asked to be put back on the list, though, because I was always afraid that the day I'd end up being scheduled for would be a day they'd come back with a vengeance.

BUT! Turns out! I went back on the seizure medication that hates my liver desperately, and two weeks later my hands were shaking again, just like they used to. And then I thought about it and remembered that until we realized it was massively fucking my liver over, I'd been on this same medication at first, which would have been right when I asked Rich to take me off the list. So.


Also, hey! Two more seizures in the span of a week! One last Tuesday morning, by myself (always hard to identify, but I was typing into GDocs at the time, and I could feel my brain going weirdly but I could still read what I was typing no problem, and then I blinked and there were a bunch of characters in there that I had absolutely no memory of typing; not hard to follow to the logical conclusion), and then one this morning, right when I was working on getting up from my nap. I wouldn't have even realized I'd had that one except for the fact that my mom had gotten up to go to the bathroom and heard me.

Ugh. I feel absolutely and utterly wretched, again, but I can't even call in today because I'm out of fucking sick time.


ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. The date when I will officially Become A Cyborg has been scheduled! Friday the 22nd at 11:30am. And it turns out, per our lovely HR person, I'll be able to take short-term disability combined with FMLA for the following week, so I don't have to worry about not having enough vacation.

I feel like this surgery will be significantly less awful than the last one I had, although to be fair this one is going to have two different places I'll have to heal. Which worries me very slightly. But oh well. If it helps it'll be entirely worth it.

Earlier this evening, while I was helping my mom make her bed, I said, "And while I'm over at Mr. Tire getting my oil changed I can call over and ask if I'm getting the needle at my MRI."

And then, after a pause, "... maybe I'll phrase it a bit differently."

Having had the damn contrast dye at the last two or three MRIs I can remember, it's probably a safe bet that I will; I just like being prepared. (The first time I had to get it I was not prepared, and panicked, and because they had packed my head into the fucking thing I couldn't sit up and calm down despite the fact that I'd started to cry, and it was super-great. This way at least I'll know it's coming. And remember to drink enough water hopefully they won't need to go through three goddamn people before they're sure they can get the needle into my vein.)

I am not much looking forward to my next neurologist's appointment. He's not a terrible guy, perpetual lateness notwithstanding, but I am so, so tired of The Medication Dance. Yes I would prefer terrible headaches to seizures, yes I can still drive with terrible headaches, but I just. There has to be something past this that I can do.

(The fact that I have, once or twice, weighed out the pros and cons of just saying "fuck it" and stopping the damn seizure meds entirely also concerns me.)

Blah blah pre-cut text. Yes I know it's February already.

( Books read in 2015. )

It's weird to think about, but apparently my opinions are valued highly enough that my team leader at work told me my plan for March is good, and to go ahead with it. (I forgot to mention, but as of the 14th of February I've been at this job for two years. In a couple of weeks I will have been doing heparin testing for a year. I have no idea where that time went, honestly, but -- hey. Not complaining.) To be fair, I would be doing what most of the plan concerns anyway, and I'm pretty sure nobody wants a repeat of the utter trainwreck that was February, but still.

(On the other hand, this month corporate will be shitting on us, but we will have advance warning of said shit, and none of said shit will turn out -- OOPS -- to be from the previous month instead of the current month, ~oh well~, FDA commitments aren't really important, right? Right?)

In completely inexplicable news, my dad emailed me on the first with a link to a job posting and a query as to whether or not it's something I would consider. (It's this listing, for context.) The problems with this: a) not qualified (I don't even have three years at the job I have); b) I hate mass spec; c) KANSAS; d) I already have a job. e) WHICH I LIKE.

I still haven't responded, because I can't figure out what I want to say. I told my mom about it and asked for advice and, hilariously, she started defending him a little -- which, okay, I know he tries. And I do appreciate that he's thinking about me! Just. The fuck. And that's part of why I didn't respond when I read it; I'm still kind of worried that instead of being calm and rational I will just yell via internet. (There are also some fairly cruel things I could say to him, like for instance maybe he just didn't think I was at my job anymore, since I've been there longer than he was ever at one job when I was growing up. I am definitely not going to say that, but my god is it tempting.) I might just ignore it, honestly. I can't even -- dumbfounded, seriously.


And in completely unrelated news, I am leaning more and more toward calling my new (okay, I got her in December, what of it) Kindle Millie. It popped into my head a couple weeks after I got her, since after all her predecessor was named after her husband, and all I could tell was that my new Kindle was a she. The more I think about it, though, the more I like it; she's just as powerful as her husband, after all, just in a more subdued, under-the-surface way. And the more I seriously consider it, the more I like it, in the end.

Super-thrilling news: I have a ticket to my Fall Out Boy show! Ugh so exciting. (Less exciting: I ended up getting it for like three times what it actually cost because fucking scalpers; I told my mom where it was and she semi-seriously told me we need to get me some Mace before then. I cannot even list all the bad shit I've heard about Niagara Falls, though, so.) (Um, for clarification: the American side. I'm quite fond of the Canadian side.) I have to remember to take off that day, though, since it's a Tuesday and I am going to be busy at 9PM.

And I would feel bad about the price, but hey, that's what tax refunds are for, right? Right.


Other things tax refunds are for, apparently: tooth-fixing. Let this be a lesson to all of you: get your root canals crowned. Don't be a dumbass like me, because that leads to your teeth breaking apart round the work that's been done to it. Which is a terrible feeling. Please trust me on this and don't feel the need to try it out for yourselves. (Sometimes I feel like just getting the goddamn things pulled would be easier; then I think of how much both my parents hate that they've had teeth pulled and change my mind. I may have had about a thousand root canals but I've never had any extractions -- ever; I was born without wisdom teeth, go me -- and that's something, anyway.)

On the bright side I have an appointment with my dentist tomorrow at 10. I doubt she'll actually do anything to the fucker, but we will make a Plan, and then I can stop panicking.


PS anybody else watching Drag Race this season? Come talk to meeeeeeee. (My main thoughts so far are mostly my goodness the Heathers formed quickly this season; I want to hear yours!)