Me and Cinderella, we put it all together

I got the battery warning on my Toaster late last night, of course. After a week of sitting idle during cold weather it gets that way. One of the reasons I have the little Bouncie dongle and subscription.

So after a leisurely early afternoon, Belovedest and I got ready to head out. Last weekend I'd observed a light out. Belovedest thought they had a spare bulb somewhere. By the time I was dressed, I noticed they'd gone out. I looked up an instructional video as I was getting my boots on, then I grabbed my stuff and a box of gloves.

The hood was open. Belovedest was trying to get a video to load, but not having much luck. I put on a pair of gloves and waded in. I unplugged the electrical supply from the bulb just fine, but had trouble taking out the gasket. I watched the video again and saw the pull tab. It was off to the side and down in my car. I yanked it successfully. Another trip through the video to eye the wire safety latch thing. Okay. Then out came the bulb! [Edit: at this point we discovered that the bulb that Belovedest had was not a headlight bulb but possibly a brake light or blinker.]

We drove off to the store for the first item of business. When Belovedest came out with the new bulb I was already grabbing the gloves.

There was a video for the reverse operation too. I handled the bulb by the metal plate at the bottom, stuffed it in, latched it on (another video examination), stuffed in the gasket (with the tab at the top, kthx), and fumbled a little before getting it plugged in.

And it worked!

We picked up a prescription, then took a jaunt on the highway to visit another Trader Joe's in search of orange chicken. Alas.

Sandals in the snow, and a smile that won't wash away

New boots are nice. Though like most boots, I'm limited in how long I can wear them without my feet getting damp and chilled.

Today was supposed to have been the double-vampire day. I got up an hour or so behind schedule for my fasting blood draw (routine quarterly appointment to discuss results next week) but despite a very slow line at Burger King I got home by noon anyway.


I didn't actually need the printout list of all my medications, but for next time I think I need it, I'm going to put it in two columns. So I showed up to the blood drive a little early. We went through the rigamarole. (The screener asked whether I was male or female. My knee-jerk answer was "No!" and then I immediately explained that I don't have a gender identity, but here's what it says on my ID. Oops.)

I had been a little concerned about my laundry list of medications (it could have only taken one sheet of paper if I'd formatted it right) but it turned out that the thing that deferred me wasn't even on my mental checklist. I have no actual idea whether the ( dental procedure )

but in case it was the former, I got pushed out to mid-March before I can donate again.

The awkward part was when I went to get my stuff and leave. The two people who'd been doing the screening had headed off to do something else, so a third person saw me and went "Sit back down, I can help you!"

"I'm leaving."

"Huh?" *continues heading in my direction*

"I am deferred."

At least that part came through loud and clear.


I spent a while in the parking lot on the Terrible Sleep Advice For Night Owls thread on Twitter. It was weirdly freeing to get extremely specific about some of this stuff. Someone in Australia has apparently encountered the twin of the Regrettable Dr. M.; the world is apparently big enough to have more than one terrible sleep doctor with a delayed sleep phase himself who cannot help you if you don't adhere to the extremely inflexible wakeup time regimen despite it causing terrible psychological (and doubtless physiological) effects.


I got mildly lost while attempting to find that poké bowl place, and had to resort to the map. Silly roads that don't connect. Alas.


The prescription that I thought I was picking up was not the actual one that was ready; I suppose I'll be picking that up soon enough.


It was Trash Night, and I busied myself slicing and dicing the extremely narrow, tall, and wide box from my new glass chair mat. After that was done, I declared myself officially Sulking, since it was A Lot.


Tomorrow's a call. That should be fun. Last time was wrenching.


Links of the day:
https://www.vulture.com/article/joss-whedon-allegations.html - using the man's own words to damn him only slightly less comprehensively than that News Miner reporter did to that one guy that one time
https://www.businessinsider.com/natural-male-enhancement-privacy-case-2013-8 - Why it took until 2009 for law enforcement to stop grabbing emails from someone's ISP, and why "adult industry" businesses taking credit card payments are subject to higher fees and closer scrutiny (and why Dreamwidth's payment processor remains surprised at how well the website is behaving, payment-wise)
https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/5g-network-disruption-cluster/ - look, they TOLD you this was going to fuck up the altimeters or whatever