Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

I've come to the sad realization that it's a good thing that I haven't pursued going to Burning Man this year because my right shoulder is still messed up. Even a slacker Burn, which I'd really like to do sooner or later, involves pitching a tent in a place prone to high winds, getting hundreds of pounds of gear and water into and out of a vehicle, and then tons of physical activity when it's time to pah-tay.

The Tickler was telling me to see my doctor about my shoulder, and that's looking like a good idea. I do seem to have lost some range of motion; putting a bra on without turning it hurts for a minute.

I worked my first full(ish) day of the year on Friday. Not horrible.

It's a good thing that Lambert House didn't have their data entry done until late last week, because I sure as hell wasn't ready for it until the weekend. So I bopped on down to the house — I can't work remotely because their remote access software is old — and failed to get into the usual office, whose lock has been janky for years. Luckily, somebody did the admin chores needed to allow me to use a machine elsewhere.

Next frustration: spending an hour resolving the 1% or so of data marked as duplicate entries, which mess up our reports to a degree that director Ken Shulman finds unacceptable*. I don't know how this happens so often, but nothing is foolproof.

Next frustration after that: finding the queries I need to run. This is where Microsoft Access makes me want to yell. Queries with UNION operators are elsewhere in the UI? Really?

But I got (most of**) the job done, so with numb toes from the lack of heat in the empty house I walked to dinner with the felicitously nearby Funny Lady. Bar Vacilando does have a good burger, as she promised, and I had a lovely time with glögg. But I was still coughing enough during dinner that I bailed on any further attempts at fun that evening. Look at me being sensible!



*What about the local government agencies that require us to make the reports? Historically, sometimes they read the reports and care about their accuracy, sometimes they don't. But Ken's right that we shouldn't take it for granted that they don't.
**Ken likes to do deep dives into the ZIP code breakdown. It looked like the kind of thing I shouldn't do alone. Indeed, in pre-COVID times Ken & I spent several nights working until 0200 on exactly this. Ungh.

On Thursday I hit Uwajimaya with K. It was a good choice on my part, except what we got from the deli case was kind of meh. She was very hungry and vegetarian.

But then all my end-of-year party plans ground to a screeching halt on Saturday afternoon when I developed a fever. It's been oscillating around 102°F (39C) ever since. The good news, though, is that I've tested negative for COVID twice already. I'm not coughing. I don't even have a runny nose, just a light head and that stupid fever. I've been living in bed for the last 48 hours.

I'm hoping that the year improves from here. Please? I must go out in the Devil Girl outfit on some random night just to make up for this weekend.

I've started working through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The professional artists I know need not fear for their jobs. It's just something I've always wanted to learn how to do. That, and I can draw my own pr0n. As with sex toys, I think some DIY is in order.

And speaking of a professional artist I know, the Stroppy One accurately described Vienna La Rouge as a "staggeringly beautiful wom[a]n". How fabulous, then, that I should run into her at the Merc last night in a Bettie Page wig and a very fitted Catwomanish outfit. Who me, gaze into the flawlessly made up eyes of an unfairly attractive lesbian exactly my height while I told Australia stories under the influence of nice absinthe? Yes. Yes, I did. (Shallow fashion details: the Sydney outfit.) Someday I'll ask her why her partner never comes.

Also at the Merc: Temptress, but without jengalicious's ex, praise Goddess. I didn't ask about that either, because as gift horses go, that's a Belgian. Maybe I'll ask if it becomes a pattern. She was with another fella, awfully dapper, who seems all right.

I punked out of the Merc, more or less as planned, at 2300 because I've forgotten how to sleep lately. I've only had one solid, seven-or-more-hour uninterrupted night of sleep in the last week. The Tickler has been nagging me to see somebody about it, and I'm beginning to wonder if they may have a point.

And now for something completely different: even with a new Mac, my (mechanical) backup drive had a few of the same issues. So, I replaced it with an SSD. It's so physically small it was hard to make it lie flat when connected to my Mac on its stand. I've kept the old drive for now.

And for something even more different: it occurred to me while I was doing my morning leg lifts that I might be able to make the little chair in front of my Mac comfier with a lumbar support. But why buy when you have a completed bum roll from an abandoned sewing project? The experiment begins.

Plan for tonight: ravey goodness at Substation. I shall abuse caffeine.

This is what happens when I neglect to write an entry for a few days. You get all the things at once. Sorry?

Friday: ack_yeahright bails on me due to an unknown respiratory illness.
Saturday: I find out that cupcake_goth has COVID after traveling to the UK.
Sunday: Tacoma Girl bails on the coven due to an unknown respiratory illness.

That's... not good for anybody. I just ordered more masks.

And on an unrelated note, I found out yesterday that Torture Garden, that fantastic event in London, is having one of its occasional forays into the US in San Francisco on the 28th. I'm on their mailing list, but I either missed it or rejected it long ago because of Folsom or whatever. I really wanna go. It's also a really bad idea, financially and maybe even work-wise. Maybe if I can get my hands on some inheritance in the next few days I'll do it; the boss man did say he was cool with my taking more time off than I asked for.

Tacoma Girl came over for snax & drinx yesterday evening. (namoda couldn't make it, or it would have been a full gathering of the coven.) Not all that long ago, TG started working at a non-profit that helps people get mental health care, including addiction treatment.

Tacoma Girl had lots of bad news about the fentanyl epidemic.

• It's so pervasive that she says she saw people trying to score at 5th & Jackson – near a light rail stop, close to touristy parts of downtown and Chinatown – on the way to my place. She says it was a little worrisome to her personally even though she grew up in Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood, which has a reputation throughout Puget Sound for drugs and violent crime. (That reputation is no longer deserved, she says.)
• The time from a hit to onset of withdrawal symptoms for heroin? About a day, maybe longer. For fentanyl? Two hours. That means that if you're addicted, you can't really sleep, and even eating is an issue.
• The immediately above means that about the only treatment that works is inpatient. That's expensive.
• You know how cocaine got segregated into powder for white people and crack for the poor and minorities? These days the analogous drugs are heroin and fentanyl, respectively. That bodes ill for a serious response to fentanyl.
• What also bodes ill for a serious response is inertia: treatment programs, such as they are, are set up for heroin, the drug of ten or fifteen years ago.
• And did I mention that effective treatment for fentanyl addiction is expensive? Tacoma Girl is of the opinion that only single payer health care can get the job done with fentanyl.

So yeah, Seattle, like the rest of the US, is going to have a bad fentanyl problem for the forseeable future because nobody's doing anything about it.

A story, as told to Tacoma Girl: In 1989 I had my wisdom teeth out. I asked the tech, "What's in the drip?"
"Fentanyl and barbiturates." This was the first time I'd ever heard of fentanyl.
A few hours later, or as I perceived it a few minutes later thanks to that serious anesthesia, I regained consciousness and asked, "Done already?"
And then I started to feel cold. I shivered like... a really cold person. They put a blanket on me, if I remember correctly.

Tacoma Girl says that "shaking" or "tremors" are a symptom of fentanyl withdrawal. It's typical of the medical profession, she said, to express things in terms of what their professionals see, not what patients experience.

I mean, I had a fabulous time with Tacoma Girl and I ate way too many snacks from Uwajimaya, but mayunn, she had some heavy stuff to tell me.

I did an accidental medical experiment on myself. On Sunday night, I got home late from a date, then woke up early to go to my employer's annual conference. I was desperately low on sleep, so I consumed at least double my usual daily intake of caffeine, and stopped doing so much later in the day than typically. Predictably, I couldn't sleep when blessed bedtime finally arrived. What to do when I'm in bed and can't sleep?

Bust out my new glass toy, Clara II*. Clara II's entire reason for being is that it usually (Foreshadowing!) takes me a lot of time and effort to get myself off. You may recall that all that bicycling has lowered my resting heart rate to not much above forty BPM. But I was caffeinated to the gills late last night, so my heart rate was, by my standards, annoyingly elevated. I speculate that this helped me reach a happy ending with remarkable speed, despite much such activity over the weekend. In other words, Starbuck's coffee helped me score a hat trick.

In circumstances like this I've said in the past that more research is needed, but I really don't want to mess with my sleep anymore. I'm reminded that the Tickler says that the best drug to be on for sex is Benadryl, and in light of the above that seems counterintuitive to me. Maybe it depends on the person.

Edited to add: Uncle Google says that Benadryl is a vasoconstrictor, as is caffeine. Will wonders never cease?



*The very first functional toy I made, plain old Clara, was made of Lucite.

Sorry for disappearing. Work has been a little hectic for the last couple of days. I've also been making plans for the Fremont Solstice Parade. (Foreshadowing!)

Went to latex dinner last night. I had a lovely time and learned something of great interest to me: Madame Zoe, one of the organizers, is newly single. She's cute. I like her. She's not hugely younger than I am. We have a lot in common. But is she queer? I don't know, but I intend to find out. Everyone else I know in her line of work is bisexual, so the odds seem good. She encouraged us all to show up for drinks on Thursday. I hadn't originally planned on going, but I've changed my mind.

I got another mammogram. It had been almost three years since my last, which isn't how you're supposed to do that.

I keep waking up too early. That's not good on a day when I've got the coven coming over.

I more or less finished a high-visibility, high-stress two-week work project yesterday afternoon. Naturally, I went down the hill to celebrate.

Taiwanese dumpling joint that I've never tried? No bar seating, and I didn't feel like being alone at a two-top.

Nuna Ramen? Not yet open.

Brouwer's? Hell yes! Mm, Belgian trippel with my fish & chips & curry ketchup. I learned that they're going to have a Bierlesque night there on April 6th. That's not my jam, but it is that of the Tickler, et al. I also (re?)learned that they have a barleywine festival every February, and I love barleywine. Edited to add: Brouwer's has tons of stickers and art, often hilarious, that are best seen from the bar.

On the way there, I stopped by the little shop a mere block and a half from my place that I've seen an older gentleman lovingly remodeling. This time, there were two fellows, both able to talk. Even though I'd noticed what looked like ice cream tubs, I asked them what the place was going to be. The guy with the grey pony tail who I was used to seeing said, "Espresso, gelato, and crepes," pointing to the places where each would be made. They're trying to get licensed for performances (!) in the back of the space.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I moved here for the convenience to both Green Lake and downtown. But possibly the largest attraction of Fremont, both lower and upper, is the food & beverages.

Oh: as of this morning I'm boosted for COVID, CDC & Walgreens be damned, and completely vaccinated for shingles. Take that, bugs!

...or rather, four blankets, five chairs. The chairs at the tables in my dining area are a little short for me and aren't adjustable. This made them uncomfortable when I want to, for example, sit for a while in front of my personal laptop and design a sex toy.

Meanwhile, due to family connections, I have four small Navajo (saddle?) blankets that I didn't really have a use for.

Until, more than ten years after I got the chairs, the light bulb turned on: seat cushions! The Wendling's usual chair doesn't get one because he drops a lot of food, but the other four are now Nun-friendly. I'm not sure if my father or anyone in his family would approve of this use of heirlooms, but my back sure does.

If you think this isn't journal-worthy, you haven't sat enough with bad ergonomics. I sure have.