~Tuesday~ I had my annual physical today, and all I’m going to say about it was that it was a wake-up call in several ways. Since I’m bound and determined not to be on (what I’m calling) the fat-as-fuck health plan come July 1, 2011, it’s good timing.
The numbers on the scale and on the measuring tape were both off the charts. In my lab results, almost every number that’s supposed to be low was high, and vice versa. The only two pieces of good news were a PSA count “in range,” which is important because my dad has prostate cancer, and my HIV test was negative.
I love my doctor, Amy Hird, who’s actually a P.A., and just a great health care provider and an awesome person. And she knows how special she is once a year when I bend over, having covered with a piece of black electrical tape the tattoo at the top of the crack of my ass that says, “EXIT ONLY,” giving her permission to do the old in-out to get the information she needs from up in there. Not to mention letting a woman root around up in there.
At the end of my appointment, I stopped by the lab and showed that phlebotomist that stuck me so well a week or so ago for my lab work what I had tweeted about her. Her reaction was priceless. “You made my day,” she said.
Working from home for the rest of the morning, I worked on assessing some technical communication and documentation I’m going to have to devise and edit on how this: Trend Micro Announces Alliance with Intego to Secure Apple Mac OS X Users affects our users.
Once in the office at 12:45, I spent a good deal of the rest of my workday catching up on e-mail, some as far back as when I was at the UNC CAUSE 2010 conference at the beginning of last week.
I caught a Wolfline bus home at around 6:00, and oh boy.
The bus driver, evidently as lonely as he is new, said several things to the bus-at-large, to which the response was crickets. Nobody laughed at his attempted humor. Nobody replied to him in any way. Basically, the first time he said something, some of them looked up as if to say, “You talkin’ to us?” And then, on subsequent comments, they just ignored him.
First of all, the volume of his microphone was way too loud, and every time he grabbed the microphone and bent it toward his mouth, it made this screeching noise over the speakers that was just about unbearable.
Here are the comments from him—each of these were several minutes apart mind you, with that screeching in between:
- I hope you have a good couple of days off next week from your mean professors.
- When you get back from Thanksgiving, you’ll gained 80 pounds.
- [At one stop, he closed the back door before everyone had gotten off, because he couldn’t see back there with everyone in the aisle, and folks yelled up to him, to which he replied:] If I close the door on you, you just say, “Open the door please, black man.” [Awk-ward.]
- Hey, any of y’all know that guy who was streaking in the li-berry?
- Anybody know that genius? Don’t y’all be doin’ that; it’s not good for your career.
In other bus news, a student stood in the aisle who had a knee brace on and was doing everything he could to keep pressure off that leg. He had a huge guitar (in a soft-sided case) in one hand and he was holding on to the overhead bar with the other.
A girl sitting across from me said to him, “Would you like to sit down?”
“No, that’s okay, thanks,” he replied.
Shortly thereafter, the driver slammed on his brakes and he fell forward, but caught himself before completely falling down.
The girl sitting to my left, who had in earbuds and was watching a movie on a smartphone [Not that I looked. Okay, I could tell that it was a British period piece by the way the characters were dressed.] hadn’t heard the other girl’s offer and she asked him the same thing.
Again he said, “No, but thanks.”
At the next stop, both of those girls got off and he sat down in the seat vacated by the girl who had made the first offer.
After dinner, I stopped by K-Mart to pick up my Nexium prescription with my newly renewed Purple Pill Discount Card, and to pick up a few other things, one of them being some fish oil vitamins.
When I got to the register the girl said, “Oh, these are good for you.”
Resisting the bitter response of, “Why the hell else would anyone take them?” I said, “Yeah. I just hope they don’t make me burp.”
This was on my mind, because I remember the first time I took some, years ago, there was a brand that said “Burpless” on them, and I remember thinking, “Good god. How gross. You mean some of these things will make you burp up fish taste?” But they only had a couple of brands on the shelf there, and none of them said “Burpless” on them—hence the comment.
She replied, “I’ve taken this brand before, and they didn’t make me burp.” Before I could even think, “Well that’s nice, but you aren’t me, now are you?” she added a little quietly as there were now people behind me in line, “Now, I can’t say they might not make you a little gassy.”
OMG. I hate poop talk of any kind, and all I wanted to do was close down that conversation ASAP.
“Well at least I live alone,” I said, and grabbed my stuff and moved swiftly up-stream to the exit doors.
At the gym, I started off with 225 (15 sets of 15) ab crunches, and after the first set, noticed that one of the TVs in front of me had on Glee. I did everything I could to avoid it, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to watch the whole thing, and I didn’t want to waste time watching some parts twice.
I followed that with 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, doubling the amount of calories burned on the treadmill for the same amount of time on Sunday. Who’s counting? Dr. Hird, and the fat-as-fuck plan, that’s who.
Back at home, I had a nice instant message conversation with Robert, and made several moves in the four concurrent Scrabble games I’m playing on Facebook.
I spent a little time adjusting the programmed settings on my (somewhat) new thermostat. Casey set them to what I thought would work at the time he installed when he was here, but it’s been going long enough now, and the weather is changing, that I was ready to change a couple of the settings, of which there are basically four:
- Wake up: What temperature you want it to be when you wake up and what time to start it so that it’ll reach that temperature by the time you get up
- Leave: What temperature you want it to go down to when you leave the house and the time you’re going to leave
- Return: What temperature you want it to be when you get home and what time to start that so it will be by the time you get home
- Bed: What temperature you want it to drop to overnight and what time to start heading that way.