#482 My Sexual Profile

<>This is embarassingly accurate. However, on the quiz page, the star in the grid was just above the third "I" in the green "Imaginative". The HTML they provided put it in the blue romantic square. Obviously a bug. I played with the code a bit, but couldn't figure out how to fix it. Any suggestions?

~~Silk

Later edit - Whoa! In the edit window, and in the preview, the table was a reasonable length and the star was in the blue. But when I "published" the entry, the table got strung out all ugly, and the star is now in the green, where it should be. I don't understand....

Still later - It gets worse! Half the time, the colored grid comes out all funny. Sometimes only half of it is there! If you can't see the grid, it's at http://www.quizuniverse.com/result_images/sexpersonality-bg.jpg , without the star.

Imaginative, erotic, passionate You prefer to have one partner and to try everything with them. You have an enormous sexual appetite, and you often create sexy scenarios to play out with your significant other.

Take this quiz at QuizUniverse.com

#481 A Four-Day Entry!

Man, my last post was late Tuesday night! Sheesh. But I have been sending three-word daily notes to Daughter to tell her I was alive and kicking. I don't remember now what I did earlier in the day on Wednesday. For sure, I didn't wake up in time to get to the recycle center, but I don't think my back was in shape for that anyway.

Incidentally, I'd missed my pills (all those supplements) Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and most of the pain is gone. I'm down to the usual dull roar. To fully test the theory, I'll have go to back on them for a while and see if the pain comes back.

I had to be at Barnes & Noble in Poughkeepsie by 3 on Wednesday for the Mensa benefit gift wrapping, and the traffic was horrible! I left here before 2, and got there at 3, whereupon I found a note on the table that Bibi had called in to say she'd be a half hour late. I couldn't do anything alone because I didn't have the sign and other material that she was bringing. We didn't get really started until 4. Roman came in at 6 and relieved Bibi, and he and I stayed until 11 pm. We made a whole $32, and ten of that was from one guy who vastly appreciated the scholarship information. Bummer. But it was nice to sit with Roman that long.

Thursday I met with Piper at 1 pm. It was supposed to be a 20 minute meeting. I went unwashed and without makeup, and without my watch. After I left his office, I went to the bank and deposited some checks, then to the hardware store to pick up some new nightlights, and then was going home to wash and dress for class. I was to meet Roman for dinner before class, so I had to leave here by 3:45. When I left the hardware store, I looked at the clock in the van, and it said 3:10! I must have been with Piper more than an hour and a half. I don't understand....

Dinner - we picked up Chinese takeout and ate in the lounge in the Dutchess South building. Class was good. During class, an ice storm started. The drive to Roman's was downright scary, there were so many turns and hills. But he's very easy to follow, very considerate, and he didn't challenge me on the ice at all.

We had talked some on Wednesday about the "other" relationship he's in, and talked more on Thursday night and Friday. Getting through his reticence is difficult, but I need to know what the story is so that I can make my own informed decisions. I cried a lot (very little in front of him, mostly while he was sleeping). It's all very complicated and very sad, and I don't see any chance of things changing. There are only three ways it can go - everything will go on as it has, or I will reduce my need for him, or it will end, but it seems there's not much else in store. I am very sad. Check that - I am devastated. And I feel so bad for him. He's in a situation that can't end well. I accept that he feels love for her. He's obsessed with her. I don't believe (my own opinion based on a few things he has said) that she fully appreciates him, and I conclude that she allows him to continue his attentions because it's comfortable and convenient. He's easy to be with. He's so very affectionate. It could take years for him to fully realize he isn't getting back what he wants and needs. I love him too much to watch that happen. Pretty similar to the situation I'm in with him, I suppose. I'm just more aware than he, and more insistent. The poor guy has had little fun in his life. I want to play with him, to have fun with him, to get away together occasionally, but it doesn't look like that's likely to happen.

Sigh. I understand, but I don't understand.

I got home around 7 pm Friday, and found my driveway coated in ice. I had to get a running start, and then got up by tracking two wheels on the grass at one edge. I couldn't get up the wheelchair ramp at the front door, had to tromp through snow piles on the side. Today, the narrow part of the drive is melted, but the flat area at the top is still under more than an inch of ice, and the ramp is a toboggan run. (Oooo! That reminds me! I can use the toboggan in the garage to take stuff around the house to the basement! If I can get the thing down from where it's hanging, that is. A project for tomorrow.) I went out today and bought melter-stuff (it isn't salt, but it works really fast - the snapping and crackling when I spread it was amazing).

So here I am. Sadder but not much wiser. The final class session is next Tuesday. We will be together after class. After that, I don't know. If I let him wander away, he'll wander right down a rabbit hole. I guess I have to do some thinking. Do I want to save him from a life of quiet desperation? Or is it myself?

~~Silk

#480 Good, Middlin', and Bad

Busy day today. Good - A few things accomplished. Middlin' - A lot of hurry up and wait. Bad - A lot of pain.

I was awakened this morning by a call from Piper. We'll meet Thursday, early afternoon, to finalize the plans for balancing the portfolio. He wanted to make it lunch, but I have too much other stuff to do that day. Puttered around, washed hair, etc.

Then across the river to the mall to the computer expert to get the scholarship application printed. He also made 30 copies of the 2-page document, and didn't charge me a cent for anything.

That all went so quickly that I was left with an hour before the appointment with the lawyer about the easement, not enough time to go home. So I ate a late lunch/early dinner at what happens to be Piper's favorite restaurant. They have things like $9 appetizers that turn out to be a whole meal. The full entrees there are simply too big for me. I don't understand why they charge $18 for a huge loaded plate. Why can't I get half the food for half that price? Frankly, I think it's a secret way to increase profits. It's like two people eating in one seat, requiring half the waitstaff.

Even with just a shrimp, spinach, and cheese roll appetizer, I ended up doggying half of it.

Then to the lawyer. My appointment was for 4 pm, but I got there at 3:45, and he took me right in. He filled out the tax forms for me (the state apparently considers the granting of an easement to be a sale). I had found a serious error in the survey of the easement - the way they had it written, instead of going up the edge of the lot, the line went across the middle of my front yard and into the neighbor's yard. They had an "E" where it should have been a "W", so the line veered. A little whiteout and a black pen fixed that. He also added a paragraph that maintenance was to be done at no expense to me, and answered my concerns about how the easement contract specified compensation of $1, and there was a separate contract for the brush clearing, which was to be the REAL compensation (if I had to hire someone for that, it would be at least $2,000.) I was out of there by 4 pm, and he didn't charge me a cent.

I'm beginning to wonder why I didn't get a free lunch.

I was left with an hour before I had to go to class, not enough time to go home. So I went to the classroom (an hour+ drive, at rush hour no less) early and spent the time collating and folding the scholarship forms.

The class was 4 hours long. I wasn't sure I was going to make it through it. For some reason, after a few years of hurting in only two or three places at a time, today I hurt all over. It seems to have started last Friday, with pain in my left foot and ankle, left hip, back of my neck, and temples. I've been taking glucosamine condroitin (spelling? I'm not about to look it up!) on May's recommendation. She says it did wonders for her joints, but it takes a very long time to kick in. I also recently increased my calcium supplements on the advice of my doctor. I'm thinking maybe neither of those are good for me with my problems.

I don't metabolize calcium very well, and it can build up in deposits in my joints, and as "gravel" in my muscles. I think that's what's going on in my foot, ankle, and neck. (Yeah, I'm limping on BOTH feet today.) Oddly enough, the deposits usually eventually dissolve themselves. Ultrasound seems to break up the stubborn patches.

Today, in addition to the foot, ankle, and neck, I had screws twisting into my temples and between my eyebrows, my breastbone was on fire, the middle of my back kept biting me, my lower back ached, the left hip burned, lower right abdomen was cramping, and ... whatever. It was so bad I had to do the relaxation breathing several times during class.

There are only three of us in this class, and when the pain got bad I had to keep forcing my eyes to stay open. Didn't want Roman to think I was falling asleep. I kept slumping, and that would set the back off. I forgot there was a guy sitting next to me, and several times I slipped my hands under my sweater and inside the back of my pants to massage my lower back. I wonder if he got a show. After class, Roman said I seemed to "be out of it tonight." Little does he know....

The temple stuff frightens me. I've heard that tic doloreaux can come back, and I never ever want to see that again. I had it on both sides, 4 to 8 20-minute episodes a day, for 18 months. Mine was so severe the doctors at first refused to believe that's what it was. (It was so severe because it was due to a stretched and twisted brainstem - not the usual cause.) And I can't take pain pills stronger than plain aspirin.

When I got out to the van, a little after 10, the van thermometer said 9 degrees. Driving up route 9, I started shivering so badly I couldn't hold my head still (and I was wearing the warmest of my fox jackets!) and it was messing up my neck even more, not to mention that the head shaking was so violent I couldn't see to drive, so I stopped in Barnes & Noble, and bought some books on HTML and web site design. I keep registering for the web site design class, but apparently I'm the only one who wants it, and they keep canceling it, so I'm giving up. I'll figure it out myself, thank you.

Like I said - a good, middlin', and bad day.

I'd like to sleep in tomorrow, but I also want to take more paper to recycle, which has to be done by noon. Compromise - I won't set the alarm.

~~Silk

#479 Mensa Strikes Again, Worse!

Well, I took my little floppy to Office Depot. I did check it out before I left the house. The documents, a brief description of the scholarship program and a fancy 2-page application form, both display from the floppy on my system, and look good in the print preview. Of course, I didn't attempt to actually print, having, um, like, no printer.

Office Depot was able to display and print the shorter "Word" file. I then made 30 copies of it. The PDF application form, however, was a different matter. When they tried to display it, it was just the title, and then two blank pages. The gal who was trying to do it kept zipping past an error message, and on her fifth try or so I made her stop and read the message to me. Something about "unable to extract embedded font". She called over another guy who claimed to know what he was doing, and he tried to tell me that it "must have been formatted on an old system. Nobody much uses these 5 1/2 inch floppies any more." Huh? I don't know much, but I know he was full of bananas. It was a 3 1/2 inch firmie! And the medium should have had nothing to do with it anyway, as long as his machine has a right-sized hole to stick it in! They told me to try Staples.

Off to Staples.

Same problem. But they said there's an internet cafe in the mall, and I should try there. Wow! I didn't know we had an internet cafe. (It's new. They have them on every block in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, but this is the first one I've heard of in this area.)

Off to the mall. Search the mall. Finally find it. Not a cafe exactly, just a bunch of computers and a kid in a tiny hole in the wall that was a nursing uniform store last time I looked.

I described the problem about the "embedded font", and he said he's familiar with the problem and he knows that's not something he can help me with, it's beyond his expertise, but his father will be in tomorrow, and he's sure Dad can get it to print.

I get to go back to the mall tomorrow. Whoop. So everything I wanted to do early in the day tomorrow, I'll have to do tonight.

And this file wasn't a local production - it came from the Mensa national office. The Mensa Education and Research Foundation, to be exact.

Sheesh! I'm really annoyed. This is what I get for trying to do something right.

~~Silk

#478 Mensa Strikes Again!

I am so flippin' annoyed.

I will be wrapping gifts at the Poughkeepsie Barnes & Noble for donations to the Mensa Scholarship Fund, this Wednesday, from three to eleven pm. I do it every year. There's a minor annoyance in that Bebe, who sets it all up for both Mensa and Sierra Club, scheduled Mensa only for Poughkeepsie (a 50-minute drive for me), but scheduled Sierra Club for both Kingston (a 20-minute drive for me) and Poughkeepsie. Last year I asked her if it would be possible to do Kingston, that I would prefer Kingston, but she didn't get Kingston for us because she didn't think she'd be able to get anyone to cover it. DUH?

I was thinking about how the donations box says on it that it's for the scholarship fund, but there is no other information provided about the scholarships. Bebe always provides all kinds of fliers and brochures about Mensa, and about joining, but nothing about the scholarships. It's easy for people to think that the scholarships are for Mensans only. So Saturday I fired off a note to the board suggesting that it might be a good idea to have info about the availability of the scholarships, maybe even some applications, so people will know that their little chick can apply. Good publicity and might even increase donations.

In my note I was very specific that I DON'T HAVE A WORKING PRINTER, so don't send the info online to me. Send it to Bebe, and she can print it and bring it with her on Wednesday. She'll be working with me from 3 to 6 - another annoyance. She's an incredibly messy wrapper, flatly refuses to learn about creased corners, Candace and I have tried to teach her for four years now, and she just shrugs and says "I can't do that", and it's downright embarrassing what she hands people when they have paid for it.

Ziggy responded with exactly the right stuff - a brief description, and an official application with all the rules and everything. Wonderful. He sent softcopy email attachments to me. Didn't even copy Bebe. In his note, he even acknowledged that he was aware I didn't have a printer, but said that I can "put them on a floppy and get them printed at an Office Depot or somewhere." WTF?

I'm pissed. I had planned to haul my filthy aching body to the basement and spend the entire day down there. Instead, I shall now wash my body and hair, and haul it off across the river to the Office Depot - which, incidentally, is right NEXT DOOR to the Kingston Barnes & Noble.

I can't do it tomorrow because I have a lawyer's appointment (the easement) that I still have to pull papers together for and then a class from 6 to 10 in Wappingers. I can't do it Wednesday morning because (ahem) I want to keep that open "just in case".

So today is already mostly shot. I may as well get the oil changed in the van since I'm crossing the river anyway and it's overdue.

Why don't I just forward it all to Bebe and have her print it off? Because I have not received any response from her to my Saturday note, and I have no confidence that she'd actually do it. Maybe that was Zig's thought, too.

The only consolation to all this is that Roman will be wrapping with me from 6 to 11.

[Edit - the correct time for this entry should be about 10 am. Blogger had a problem and it didn't get stored until later.]

~~Silk

#477 More Basement

I did more in the basement today, still working on it after this break. The past two Saturdays I've taken over 20 bags of paper to the recycle center. So far today I've filled 12 more, and emptied 11 boxes of paper and junk. I'll take the paper to recycle on Wednesday. (They're gonna ban me pretty soon!)

Would you believe a huge box, about 2 feet on all sides, filled with nothing but maps and tourism brochures of Europe, and every American state, dating from the 1970s through 1990? I'm throwing them out. How about a box full of unopened mail from 1982? Or twelve large envelopes of "benefits information" and signup forms from Carnegie Mellon, from when Jay was on the staff there in the mid-70s? Unopened, of course. I wonder if he has retirement benefits languishing there.

A lot of the junk is actually useable stuff, still in gift boxes, so I'll take some of that to the recycle center too, for the trade shed. Maybe somebody will regift them. Jay's ex was a teacher, so she got lots of little gifts that she never used, and her decorating style was cutesy-poo, which isn't me. So the three huge wooden lawn geese are going away, too. (I lean more toward a herd of pink flamingos peeking out of the woods. I'm Victorian with a touch of kitsch.)

We can't put books in the recycle bins, and I'm finding a lot of trash hardcover books down there, like 30-year-old chemistry and math textbooks. I don't know how to dispose of them. Plain garbage, I guess. But awfully heavy.

Many of the boxes I'm getting into now are placed low, on the floor or on bottom shelves. They're too heavy to lift (being full of paper and books), and working on them so low, bending over, is hell on my back. I forgot to put the brace on earlier, but I will definitely wear it when I go back downstairs, or I'm going to be really hurting. My left leg is already burning - a warning sign. Or maybe I'll just give my back a break and cut up boxes instead.

Pretty soon I'll have some shelf space for the storage containers I've been filling with fabric and trims from upstairs. Then I can start clearing up here.

Progress. Slow, but progress.

~~Silk