A VERY LONG WEEK

Again, my apologies to my two and a half faithful readers for not posting in so long. I can't exactly use my usual excuse of beeing too busy, because I really haven't been in the usual sense of doing tons of stuff outside. I have been somewhat naughty and played Wow for way too long and let just about everything else wait. There's also the fact that the pain is back with a vengeance, and I'm trying to figure out what to do about it. I will have to go see my sawbones next week sometime and see what he thinks about it. The last shot worked for a little more than a month which tells me that there is some serious damage there. Not that I didn't already know that. I do have bone grinding on bone, after all. I am fighting as hard as I can to not increase the dose of the oxy to 20mg which is still a very low dose. It does do it's job well enough to let me get out of bed in the morning without screaming, and waking up all the sleeping babies in the country. The pain also builds up while I'm sitting here at the computer, and the cripple ballet exercises just make it worse. I do those against DVTs, and those exercises plus the pressure stocking are doing their jobs so far. I am always moving my right leg around and making that foot go up and down almost constantly. I think that maybe, just maybe that miserable rotten pain is affecting me when I am at WoW. It's just there in the back ground, but I'm sure it has a part in my lousy playing these days. And I was doing so well just a week ago. The friend who sent me the game has been so great about helping me with it, but a natural teacher he is not. Then, one day he got it and managed to make me learn how to use one of my character's abilities in a way even I could understand. That was a first. I usually had to ask one of the gals how to do things because they knew to tell me to right/left click this, then do this, this, then that. Us females are just naturally better teachers than guys, which just might explain why there are more females teachers in the elementary schools than men. Of course there are some absolutely horrible female teachers, the good ones out number he bad ones, men too. I'm just pleased as can be that he got that through my thick head. He also taught me another very important trick that I often to forget to use because I tend to panic in certain situations. I'll have to work on that, as well as many other things.
Yesterday I needed a refill on my oxy, and the new doc gave it to me, instead of making me wait for my regular doc to be there the next day. I went down to the pharmacy, the pharmacist got the pills, and neither of my credit cards would accept a 13 shekel charge. Go figure. He let me take them, and I promised to bring the money today. He won't be there until tomorrow. Golan, very kindly agreed to loan me the 13 shehels, so I don't have to ask Savta for them. I have no doubt that he would have gon right in and paid within 5 minutes of being asked, even if he had to rob a bank to get it. It's easier for me to owe Golan as he is in and out of here all the time, and he knows I'll pay him back one way or another. I never get bothered by wandering around cashless. I got used to that back in Brunswick. There was pretty much nothing I couldn't charge there, and it's still mostly like that these days. In fact, that's how I got my very first computer! Nothing down and four or five monthly payments on 'pay day' like clock work. I never missed or was even 5 minutes late with those payments.
I saw Savta on Friday and mentioned that I was going to my butcher to get some chicken, and he asked how much it costs there. I told him that it doesn't matter as I get all my meat there because they have always been so good to me over late bills. I firmly believe in customer loyalty especially towards local businesses. Even more so to those that have been good to me. It absolutely drives me wild when folks go out of town for any kind of shopping. Keep it local, support your neighbors and town is my battle cry. Going out of town is like giving local merchants a slap in the face, and in most cases things cost pretty much the same here as they do outside and then, add in the fuel needed to get out of town.
The Olympics pretty much sucked for me this year. I set the DVR to record all the skating events and it screwed up just about all of them. I missed the starts of all the dance events and some of the men's. I took a lot of time last last night to sort out the Women's competitions and hope it gets it right this time. From what I did see of the dance, the results were spot on. The Canadian couple was the best, with the American #1s coming in right behind them. Our couple was great, and came in at 10th place, which is quite good. I felt bad for the French #1s who are just about my favorite ice dancers today. She had a baby only 4 months ago and you'd never suspect. He was skating with a monster brace on his knee. In spite of all that, they did a great job. I could watch them dance on ice all night.
As to the men, I adore Yvgeny Plushenko, but I also quite like Even Kysachek who beat out Plushenko for the gold. There are reports of Plushenko acting like an over grown jealous baby over the results, but Lysachek did skate marginally better than he did. Whinging and carrying on is not doing Plushenko one little bit of good. He was beaten fair and square. His skating is still a joy to watch. I don't know much about the North American women and am looking forward to seeing them. In spite of al the DVR glitches, I am also glad that we get skating on Eurosport and not an American channel. The American commentators were great skaters in their day and are knowlegable, but the Brit commentators are so much better, and a pure joy to listen to. I wish they'd send Dick Buttons and the other American commentators to leaarn how to do it from the Brits. The difference is glaring to anyone who has had the priviledge to hear the Brits after suffering through the Yanks. It's a night and day difference. Thankfully the Yank commentators don't have any affect on their skaters. They are GOOD. I think the most enjoyable thing for me is seeing the new up and coming skaters and watching some of the less newcomers rise in the rankings. It's also interesting to watch them peak, and start moving down in the rankings. The Brits and Israelis in Ice dance are still moving up, if a bit more slowly than I'd like. Some of my favorite men are on their way down. France's Brian Joubet totally blew it, which is fine with me. I just don't much like him, despite what the Brit commentators say about him. And I can't quite put my finger on why I don't like him. I do know that it's not because he is French because I adore the #1 one French dance team. So,it's not a French thing.
For the ladies, I hope the Georgian moves up. Her, I like a lot, as well as Sarah Meyer(sp?) the Swiss gal. She can spin like no one else, but that's no surprise. No one can spin like the Swiss and most skaters end up there sooner or later to learn to spin better. Stephan Lambiel's spins are out of this world too.
I so wish that there skating competitions broadcast all year long instead of just during major competitions. I can't see that happening any time soon. But I CAN wish.
Dance has changed so much that it's hard sometimes to see the difference between that and Pairs. I can't say I'm in favor of those changes. I also miss school figures. So, I'm a traditionalist who hates to see things like that change. I do like the 'newish' scoring system, even though there were a few times when it was obvious that the judges have learned to fiddle the system already. Granted not as blatently as under the old system, but, I guess no system is ever really fiddle proof.

THAT'S ONE WAY TO DO IT.

Of course I went and did it again. Got night and day reversed, just the way I like it, and all in one great night of playing WoW until 0600. After accomplishing that with absolutely no effort, I slept until 0630, and spent the rest of the day/evening worrying about getting back to day time living. I could very happily go onto permanent Night Owl time and play WoW until day light every single night. What to do that there are things must be done during the day? (my ideal sleeping time). The issue was solved for me this morning at 0800. I got a call from the clinic informing me that the doctor from Home Care was on his way and needed to see me. Ok. Fine. Great in fact. I sat up, hauled on the pressure stocking, hit the loo, put Pegasus out, made coffee, answered e mails, brought Peg in, got dressed as only I can when in a hurry. On the first attempt, I put my pants on inside out, on the second, back to front, and as I didn't see the shirt close to hand, I left the jammy shirt on and put a put a sweater jacket pull over thing on over the jammy top, and headed for the clinic. He was actually nice to me for a change (we usually exchange words) and wrote up the final recommendation, which I have to get up to the Health Ministry office in Safad. Thankfully he wrote a very strong recommendation. I'll get it up there this week some time. I met up with Savta and we had a nice chat about this, and that, I came home and am having another morning coffee because the first one didn't really feel like a proper wake up coffee. How could it, considering the rush I was in?
Yesterday I had such a wonderful time on WoW. Jonathan ran me and my horsie ragged running all over the place to get me as many flight points as possible, and it was fantastic seeing all those areas I'd never seen before. After that, I joined up with another player from our group (guild) and we cleaned up a few things I still had to do. While doing that, a wee little character begged us to help him on his stuff, which we did. I signed off a little after0200 and went to bed quite satisfied with my progress. Now, I can go and clean up things left from yesterday and not worry about getting stuck on Night Owl time again. At least for now.

HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

It finally happened! I've been suckered in to WoW. I just love that game and the people I play it with are so great. I played so long yesterday that I ended up going to bed at 0600 and woke up today at 1630. I feel just fine as that is my natural time clock. Now, how on earth am I going to get back to what the rest of the world considers a normal internal time clock? I really haven't figured that out yet. I just might go with it for a few days as it feels so good and right for me.
I'm doing much better at that game than I ever thought I would. That's a most pleasant surprise for me. It looks easy enough some times, but it is anything but easy. I'm getting a lot more confident at too, almost recklessly so. That's ok though, because getting deaded there is no big deal. You just go get your corpse, get repaired, and continue.
There have been a few times when I feel like giving the friend who sent it to me a nice solid Gibbs like smack up the back of his head, but overall he really does deserve a big hug for getting me into it. He seems to have trouble figuring out the new 'crippled' me, but so do I at times. Time and crippleness can change a person so much. I'm still learning me too. He does seem to be starting to get his head around it a little better these days. That's no easy trick.
Last week he started in on me to get a horsie and I refused point blank. I felt that I just wasn't ready then. One fine day a letter landed in my mail box offereing me riding lessons and a good deal on a horsie. I decided to go for it and ended up with a nice brown mare. One of the gals taught me how to use it and I just love riding her to bits. I was accused last night of taking their (the gal's) advice over his. Not true. It's just that they are better at explaining things I don't know how to do by going through it step by step. That is hardly advice in the sense I think he means. Women are just better at that than men are. He started pushing the horsie thing. I thought about it and realized that he was right, so, on that one at least, I did take his advice. Kicking and screaming like a two year old having a tantrum, but I took it.
Not much has been going on other than that. I'm feeling ok, except for the finger I almost ripped the cuticle off of at Savta's last week. I keep catching it on things, but it is getting better. And there we have as comprehensive update as I can manage for now. Except that I found a WoW skin for WMP, and installed it. Now al I have to do is figure out how to save that DVD to my computer and how to post it here. I'll get on that project next week sometime. How hard can it be for a level 24 Human Priestess?

PRIMORDIAL SOUP AND GUM GRUNGE

I have a pot of the most disgusting primordial soup sitting on the stove waiting for the cleaning lady. I made a lovely beef stew ages ago, and after the first two days had had more than enough of it. It sat for weeks taking up room in the fridge and growing a vile smelly foamy gunk on the top. I finally got around to taking it out to make room for something else. I half expect to see a monster crawl out of it at any moment. When will I learn to cook smaller amounts? Ach, don't bother answering that. The cleaning lady is already late, yet again, so it is likely that I will end up disposing of it myself. Oh, well. I've cleaned up worse, even if this is running a close second in the disgusting race.
I discovered the other day that I have some kind of gum grunge on my gums. I did a little thinking on it and decided that it could very well be just some kind of gum grunge that I've never had before and that ratther than go running to the doc all worried that it might be mouth cancer, I decided to try an antiseptic mouth wash. Witch Dr. Gimp was right again! The mouth wash is clearing it up. I do a swish rince twice a day and it's going away. When it's gone, I'll keep on swish rincing twice a day. The grunge didn't hurt or anything, it just was there, and now it's leaving. Good riddance.
Yesterday was a most amazing day. Savta needed to go to Petach Tikva, a city near Tel Aviv. His son, who lives there had to get some things out of his apartment NOW. So, yeah, I volunteered. After he told me what kind of emotional shape his wife was in, I decided to go over and try to calm her down and reassure her. When I left she was a little better. I picked up Savta and his other son (useful for shlepping) at a little after 1400 and we headed out of town.
I informed Savta in no uncertain terms that I fully intended to take the son we were going to rescue back with us as a surprise for his mother. Savta didn't think I had any chance to succeed in that part of the mission. We got there in good time and I did manage to get the kid(an adult now, but to parents always a kid) to agree to go back with us. So, there we were, 4 adults in my Ford Focus and the trunk stuffed full of things. To say the car was dragging it's ass is an all time understatement. On the way home, Mrs. Savta called the son who went with us, and we all had a great time loudly interjecting nonesense into the conversation. Then she said that she was going to call the other kid, assuming that he was at home all alone. We closed the car windows and were as quiet as mice so as not to give away the surprise. One of the boys went up to the house and got a wheely so I could be there to see Mrs. Savta's face when she realized we'd brought her baby home.I was afraid for a minute that she was going to faint. She looked at the guy standing next to me with a perfectly blank expression, then, she got it!! Tears, hugs and blessings all around. I felt so good that it's hard to express. Never mind making her day. I think I made her year. It wan't all that easy to convince him to come with us, but when he saw his mother's reaction, he finally got it. Boy sons can be so stoopid at times. Me? I'm chuffed as can be at how it all turned out.