Talk About Tuesday - Where The Heck Was I?!

 

In Which I Explain Myself
Probably Poorly

It's somehow been since the end of April since I last blogged. Yikes! I hope I didn't worry anyone! I promise, there's not really anything wrong.

Time just kinda got away from me.

I've been working on some big projects for family (which is my fault - I am not yet at the stage where I can make clothing patterns on the fly, but I tried it anyway!), playing around with digital art, working on my novel again, and...

not sleeping.

At all.

Kind of.

Let me explain:

Sometimes I go through these cycles where, instead of sleeping like a normal human being, my body does everything in its power to keep me awake for several nights. Sometimes it's triggered by stress - say, the anxiety of getting an inoculation when I'm scared of needles, having to do things by myself instead of with a support buddy, frustration of trying to do paperwork, etc - and sometimes it's just natural.

This time, as you may have guessed by my super specific examples, it was stress. And it was my fault.

In order to get a vaccine for the 'rona, I needed a valid photo ID. I did not have a valid photo ID at the time of my setting up my appointment, and had not realized I'd need it when I signed up. I noticed after I'd confirmed both date & time, and... had to cancel. Then I had to go get my ID, which was an hour of my life wasted at the DMV, five dollars down the drain, and a moment of panic beforehand when I realized I didn't have any recent mail with my name & address on it. Which it turned out I didn't even need for the ID.

Then I had to wait a week for the ID, during which I was panic-making a birthday present that just wouldn't come together dammit. The birthday was missed. By nearly 2 weeks. Because I gave the gift on Sunday the 9th. Oops.

The ID arrived the day after my original appointment, which the system did not cancel when I cancelled it, so I had to call the helpline which... not very helpful the first two times I tried, as robots tend not to be. The third time was the charm and last week I got my first dose of Moderna! The guy at the door complimented my Creature from the Black Lagoon shirt, and I bought myself sushi and dumplings and it was actually a great day!

So you'd think I'd be able to sleep again, right?

Lol no.

Instead, I got to have very mild muscle aches in my left arm and neck for two days (normal! All normal!) and then my body was just so used to not sleeping that I still can't sleep!

In fact, on Sunday I was operating on maybe 5 hours for the last week and that is Not Alright.

So I cut back on caffeine.

Fun fact, caffeine headaches will also not let you sleep.

So I added caffeine back in.

And finally I started feeling sleepy last night...

Except now my room is about 75℉ (23.9℃) and my optimal sleeping temp is in the low 60s (16.7℃)... I was roasting. And my head hurt. And my neck was sore from pressing my head into my pillow to sleep. And then my jerkwad neighbor decided that 5:30AM was a great time to start revving the engine on his crappy Cutlass.

So I woke up pretty cranky.

At 11AM.

I'm a mess, basically, is what I'm saying.

But! There is hope for a nap!

If the New Pokemon Snap doesn't consume me alive lol!

But seriously, on the second day of Moderna soreness, my copy of Snap came in and I. am. addicted!

Even though the underwater level is going to terrify me at some point. And even if there are some really upsetting moments (that poor Corsola! That poor Pyukumuku!!!) so yeah...

Uh...

Posts may be sporadic for a while due to a combination of temporary insomnia and a shiny new game :P

I do want to start posting again, though it'll be tough on Thursday, since it's kinda my birthday that day.

I have plans for Thursday.

They consist of sitting on my ass and eating Thai food.

I'm exciting.

So aside from all that and the surprise hailstorm we had today (which the ducks next door loved, fighting over the hailstones like they were peas from heaven lol), that's pretty much all I have to say!

Sorry for the radio silence, but now you know that I'm half-vaccinated, sleepy, and obsessed with fictional photography?

Anywho, Go Enjoy Something!

FC

PS It's raining on my roof but not the road. The weather is freakin weird, yo.

Fiber Monday: Cyberstruggles

 

In Which Today Was Very Difficult

This morning, I woke up before 10AM (around 8:30 I believe) and found that I'd unplugged my laptop in my sleep. I've developed something of a (not very healthy) habit of falling asleep watching YouTube videos with my laptop on my lap in bed. My poor laptop was quite old and had already had one battery fail completely. I replaced that battery with one at 76% of its life expectancy and... well...

Something went terribly wrong.

It's my partner's birthday today, by the way, so if you see them around the internet or you read their blog Attack The Stack, then please offer your congratulations! I'm dating an awesome person, so I decided to post on their Facebook wall just how I feel and offer my best wishes etc, and halfway through my deeply heartfelt message...

Everything stopped working. My laptop 100% froze - no hard drive activity, no fans, no amount of ctrl+alt+del or tapping the power button worked. I had to unplug the laptop once more and pull the battery, which if you do any IT work, you know that's a BIG NO NO. But desperate times called for desperate... what? Measures? WHO SAID THAT?!?!?! (inside joke, don't worry about it).

I pressed power again and... nothing. The internet and power lights were on, but the screen stayed black, the fans spun once and stopped, no hard drive activity.

I am not ashamed to say that I absolutely panicked. It wouldn't even be the first laptop I bricked, but it's Pandemic Times and I spend roughly 75-85% of my days on my computer, whether it's listening to music or reading or playing games or checking patterns. I freaked out. Luckily, MLK Day is a holiday for hospital IT guys (I know, it doesn't really make sense, but I'm grateful for it today) so my dad, who is the Computer God in this family, was home. Unfortunately, he was also on the phone and my family has this condition called "I'm Talking And I Can't Shut Up", so he was going to be in that conversation for... quite a while.

I tried everything I could think of while I was downstairs.

Except for the thing he suggested when he walked in and saw me struggling.

"Did you try taking the battery out, plugging it in, and trying to turn it on?"

Guys. It worked.

But! That dear old laptop has a very wobbly AC port and I knew that I couldn't function with it like that, so it was now time for an upgrade.

Which is a longwinded way of letting you know I'm typing this from a very nice not-that-new laptop. Like most things I own that I like, it's second-hand, refurbished, and my dad and I rebuilt it over the course of the afternoon. As you may have guessed, this left almost no time for crochet, so there's no progress from today to share, but I can still give you a picture of how far I've gotten since last week in general on the stocking!

Roku Remote for Scale

So there you have it - a massive, truly HUGE stocking! I have one last design band to put on and I am planning to put my nibling's name on in cross stitch. I don't put info about minors on my blog, though, so I'll show you the finished stocking sans name :)

It's gonna be so freaking huge...

The whole length of the Red Heart Super Saver skein is actually sitting in the foot right now.

Alright. I'm pretty pooped, so I'm gonna finish my last cup of tea for the day (more Meyer Lemon - I'll try to do a review some Sunday of all the teas I got for Christmas!) and get ready for my partner's birthday bash online :)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC