Don't Talk About The Rabbits

To the many wonderful people who wrote me wonderful things after my last post, thank you. I wanted to write more and personally before, but the past two weeks have been, let's face it, pretty terrible, and I went from thinking I would be able to report "everything is going to be okay, I've got this, NO WORRIES" right on over into "Okay, Fuck ALL of this already."

Stage 1 has now been changed to a diagnosis of Stage IIb (although they are still considering it early) based on the pathology results from surgery. Chemo, which was an outside possibility before, can now probably not be avoided. The lumpectomy failed to get everything, so we are going back in for another surgery. I was sick as a dog as a result of the first surgery and arduinna and mollyamory basically had to spend the holidays watching me puke. This went on so long and so terribly that they had to take me to the ER for anti-nauseau medication, and also I puked up a crown. Today they removed 100 millileters of fluid from the seroma that formed in my armpit as a result of the sentinel node biopsy.

Gatorade is TRULY DISGUSTING.

Today was a long, long day full of doctors appointments and paperwork and running around to find records, and now we are eating chips and guacamole and thinking idly about running to get some ice cream to ring in the New Year. It's a good plan, I think, even though I ate too many chips and am unable to move off the sofa at present.

I have good friends taking care of me through all this horror, and keeping my spirits up, and my workplace has my back, and I am truly lucky in so many ways.

But I'm not going to miss you, 2015, JUST GO.

( REACTION SPOILERS!!!11!1! )

ZOMG!!!!

Somewhere

in this house

a device

is chirping

From justhuman: I loved the photolog of the kitchen reno - what's the next house project you want to do (whether it's financially feasible or not)?

( So, RENOVATIONS. )

Full list of questions can be found here! Ask me something!

...as I am, with every major holiday that requires the preparation of a Large Bird for Eating... for Alton Brown's How to Truss a Turkey video.

Seriously don't know how anyone ever managed turkey bondage before the man came along to save us from ourselves.

When we updated the kitchen and heating system this summer, we added a second Nest Thermostat upstairs. Then we (okay I) spent too much time playing around with setting up the schedule, and checking on it from a distance via the app, and whatnot.

Earlier this week, the three Nest Protects (smoke detector/carbon monoxide detector combos) I had ordered a couple months ago finally arrived. The carbon monoxide detectors we had in the house all died over the last year, so the arrival of this product was nicely timed for us, since it meant we could rip out the now ridiculously old smoke detectors, and combine them into one device.

So, arduinna came over earlier today to help me with the setup and climbing of ladders and drilling and screwing and whatnot, and we got them up. The result is fascinating.

And slightly creepy.

First, I purchased the black model. This tends to me my first instinct with almost any electronic purchase, but in this one instance, I'm thinking perhaps I should have stuck with the boring normal default white color that most smoke detectors are. We had to relocate them a bit, and as a result, they are a bit more obvious than I intended. We'll see if we get used to it.

Setup had a few hiccups as I figured out how to get everything on the network but overall went pretty smoothly.

Drilling them into my ceiling was harder, and a bit exhausting. Apparently my ceilings are made of cement, or something. We discovered the old detectors were not nailed or screwed in place -- they were velcro'd. Previous owners must have given up trying to nail the bastards in. The ceilings are just that tough. But, we got them up eventually, and dubbed them "Basement, Family Room, and Upstairs."

Next, we tested them. This was totally unnerving. I knew from the setup that it would be a woman's voice. I also knew that the Protects, although wireless, and battery powered (not wired -- this house is *old*) were interconnected wirelessly. We were still not prepared for hitting "test" on one Protect to trigger all three to test simultaneously. The same woman's voice echoing from different parts of the house, 1-2 seconds out of sync, reporting in on smoke and carbon monoxide levels, before reporting that all was well, freaked us out waaaaay more than it did the cats.

The Protects flash green when we turn the light off in a room, to let us know everything is fine, which is all as it should be. They also, however, turn on a nightlight -- only when they detect you moving through a room in the dark. Yeah, they are motion sensing us as we stagger towards the bathroom in the dark hallway. mollyamory has been muttering about me bringing Cylons into the house for over an hour now.

( Robot Overload? )

Still, this satisfies some kind of weird, deep need of mine to be able to check on the house wherever and whenever I am, and be able to see that all is well, with nice green round symbols on my phone's app, and the "OK" text next to each location.

I have a vague hope Nest will come out with some nice security cameras before we finish re-wiring the house (a slow project that is taking years), so that as soon as they do, I can slap cameras on the front and back porch, and maybe set up a cunningly situated cat-cam to watch the lazy bastards sleep all day while I'm at work.

Here is a cookie:



See this cookie? They had piles and piles of these cookies (and also chocolate chip and oatmeal) in front of the security gates this morning around 11 at work. They were there as a Thank You, I guess, for putting up with the fire drill they had just put us through. And I am guessing they felt they had to give us make-up cookies for putting us through a second drill so soon after the last one.

But do you know why we had a second drill so soon after the last one? Because we SUCK. Everyone in that building SUCKS at fire drills. They shouldn't be giving them cookies, they should be giving them LASHES. The behavior of our buildings' residents during fire drills makes me want to PUNCH people. Usually in the back of the neck while I am stuck behind them in the stairwell during the fire drill.

Here are the ways we sucked the first time around: People brought their drinks with them, despite the explicit rule to not do so (one dropped drink means how many people sliding on liquid in an emergency?) People chatted on their cell phones. People texted on their way down the stairs. One person decided to go down 14 flights with their crutches (Yes, there are provisions in place for people who need to take the freight elevator in an emergency). Our time in getting everyone out of the building sucked so bad we got a lecture about it from building management.

And here are the ways building management sucks at the fire drill: the people with disabilities are told to wait at the freight elevator to be taken down. But, once they got there, the people assigned to take them told them it is just a drill and sent them back to their desks. So, as far as I can tell, they never actually *tested* how fast they can get everyone who needs assistance out of the building, or how many trips it is going to take. Way 2: If I am spotting building employees every third landing with trash bags to take away drinks from people who brought drinks, then you have given away the fact that this is a drill, and removed any sense of urgency that might have otherwise spurred these layabouts into movement. Way 3: Ditto if there is SOMEONE FILMING THE ENTIRE OPERATION WITH THEIR IPHONE.

It has reached the point where when the little pre-alarm speech goes off saying "if this is really an emergency, leave when the tone goes off" that I don't bother to wait for the tone. I am absolutely sure that if it were a real emergency, my only hope would be to get the hell out before 95% of the rest of the building decides to get to its feet. I just grab my stuff and go.

This time, I made it to the 7th floor before traffic crushed to a stop, and I had to stand behind chatting, meandering nincompoops. And still, apparently, I was better off than the majority of my office, who didn't move as fast as I did. Apparently by the time our fire wardens were ready to leave, the traffic stoppage was all the way back to the 14th floor, and it could take up to 5 minutes to even get a spot in the goddamn stairwell.

If it were me, we wouldn't have helpful employees offering to take drinks. We would have goddamn movie smoke and sparks, and if that didn't work, friggin electric cattle prods.

This makes me unreasonably angry, I know, but I lived through my apartment building catching fire in a non-minor way when I was growing up (my parents were convinced it was some kind of insurance scam by the end, as the building connected to ours burnt to the ground all three times) and I am just not okay with this kind of lackadaisical bullshit. I am not going to burn because you had to play Popcap during an evacuation.

Well, I am really scraping the bottom of the barrel of this posting thingummy here. This was basically another day of me doing nothing but lying around and moaning, after my initial trudge to the Doctors office where she went through the list of things already attempted (physical therapy, new bed, new mattress, chiropractor, massage therapy -- apparently I forgot the acupuncturist, which she thinks I should also give a try) and based on the complete failure of everything, and my current inabiity to even sleep through the night, I now have an MRI scheduled. NOT SOON ENOUGH, frankly, I wish they could have found a way to fit me in today.

If they find what they expect (pinched nerve, I believe) then it seems like the next step involves steroids shots? I don't know, sounds awful, but if it will work, I am so freaking there.

And I killed a sick day for this appointment, I... hate it when I take sick days and actually am sick? It feels like such a waste of a valuable day? Unproductive.

mollyamory is trolling around all the free new pilots available to us via iTunes tonight. In this manner, we ended up watching Ironside, followed by Brooklyn 99. I knew basically nothing about Ironside going into it, and even less about Brooklyn 99.

( Brooklyn 99 )

( Ironside )

The plumber arrived way too early. The silver cats discovered a flaw in my security procedures to keep them indoors, and away from the plumbing, and they made their escape, all collarlessly, out through the basement bulkhead and into the wilds of the back yard. We didn't see them again until noon. And the plumber has revised the plan and will be back again next Saturday at 7:30 am to finish the job, and will need to get to all floors of the house at that time. I could cry. Doesn't the man know weekends are when I fruitlessly attempt to make up my sleep deficit?

But there will be heat, eventually, right? A new tankless water heater has sprouted in my basement like a large red mushroom. Also a crapton of copper pipes are winding around areas they didn't exist before.