My internet is still out. AARGH!!!

It's absurd that my internet/cable hasn't been restored, and it won't be until tomorrow.  So, I'll have to give my readers abbreviated descriptions of what's been going on here, and hope I'll be fully back online tomorrow.

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My cable/internet went down yesterday (Monday, as I write this) and hasn't come back yet.  I have a service call scheduled for tomorrow, but I don't know if that will fix the problem.  This makes it impossible for me to have a zoom meeting with my friends tonight - we may be able to reschedule for tomorrow night.

While I've been disconnected from the internet (I'm using a tethered connection to be online with my PC), we had a banking emergency with my co-op which would have forced me to change plans and present as Mario for the day.  (I won't go into details, but it involved a money movement.)  Since I was already going to the doctor today, this wasn't an additional headache.  What was the headache, however, was the fact that I got almost no sleep last night, and my heart was racing when I went to the doctor's office.  And this resulted in a new prescription added to the list of pills I take on a daily basis.

So, in 2 weeks, the doctor wants to see me again to make sure that my heart isn't racing, and see where my blood levels are at.  AARGH!

Keep your fingers crossed for me - I need to relax soon.... 

My internet is out. Please come back tomorrow. (A very short post.)

 

Sadly, I am using a tethered connection to make this post, as the internet I use has been our for almost 10 hours or so.  When I called the cable company to report an outage, they default to sending a technician the next day.  I don't have time for this.  In the past, they pinged equipment in my area to tell if the outage was associated with a home or one of their switches outside the home.  Now, they assume it's something wrong on the consumer end, even when they show an outage centered within 3 miles of my apartment.  AARGH!

I have some stuff to write about that I don't want to spend time on here.

So, I'll sign off for now, and hope (as truckers used to say in the USA) to catch you on the flip flop. 

Dinner with Vicki

 

No, this is not what Vicki and I had for dinner.  Yet, this is a place I want to go to again with RQS when we're next in the city together.  Tonight's dinner couldn't be further from Jewish Deli fare, as we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner.

But first....

This was the second Sunday in 2 months that I had free.  Did I go to church as planned?  No.  I had no energy.  Instead, I lazed around all day until I had to get ready for dinner.  So, around 3:30, I started to prepare to go out.

One of the minor problems I've been having lately in the bathroom is that I have a small shelf in my shower which is meant to be attached by vacuum cups.  Unfortunately, one of those cups no longer wants to stay fastened to the wall.  As a result, I have to put my shaving gel, my razors, and soap on another shelf near the shower head.  This makes it very inconvenient when I shave my torso, arms and legs prior to going out as Marian.  Sooner or later, I'll find out a way to get this shelf to stay adhered to the wall tiles without glue.  Unfortunately, I did spend much more time than I wanted in the bathroom due to my GI Tract issues.  I think I'm going to talk to the doctor again when I see him this week.  Maybe, he has some ideas that will help me in this area....

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Finally, I was ready to shower, shave, dress, and get ready to go out as Marian.  What surprised me was the fact that I made it to Vicki's place earlier than expected.  And even more surprising was that I ended up driving to Brewster for dinner.  At dinner, we ended up talking about politics.  She sees the GOP having the upper hand at messaging, while I feel that if things get really bad, that even "Red State" GOP loyalists may abandon their leaders and put new people in charge.  Vicki doesn't understand the hold that the Snowflake has on people, where I do - it's the same problem Germany had 90 years ago, albeit with modern technology.  Unlike 90 years ago, we know what has to be done to preserve societal knowledge during a reign of terror.

Once done with dinner, I dropped Vicki off and went to the supermarket to pick up some stuff.  Lately, I've been using baby powder to keep from chafing and to absorb sweat in areas where it is not polite to scratch in public.  So, baby powder, chocolate milk, eggs and some crackers jumped into my shopping cart and made their way home with me.

With the exception of changing into Mario mode to do laundry (and to be ready for lunch with TCL tomorrow), I called it a night.

It was 3 pm before I decided to get ready to go out (a short post)

 

My original plans for the day were to get showered, dressed, and out of the house by 3 pm.  This would have given me enough time to choose a summery dress (the temperature broke 80° today) for a trip into NYC to see a Broadway play.  Well, that didn't happen....

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I woke up early again, and had no energy to do much more than sit on the couch all day.  Yes, I cooked breakfast for a change.  But I won't count that much for doing anything.  By the time I was ready to get moving, I had time to make it to the city.  Yet, I didn't do so, as there weren't any good/cheap tickets left for the play I wanted to see.

Instead of trekking into NYC, I decided to make a run to Costco to pick up a few things, and then get a couple of slices of pizza.  Was the pizza good?  Yes, but it was not the meal I first contemplated for the evening.  But this was just as well, as I spent more than enough month today.  I made the mistake of charging two garments to the wrong credit card by accident - I had $125 in credits on my Amex card and wanted to burn them off.  Instead, with a couple of other things, I now have $200 on my Visa card.  Thankfully, I have the cash on hand to pay these bills.

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As the winter comes closer, I will look to flesh out my winter wardrobe a little.  Going out in dresses all the time is not what a cisgender woman does during the winter.  So I will need to find a few more tunics I can wear over leggings for the colder weather.  Let's hope I can find things in my size that will both fit and look good on me.

 

For some reason, it was a jammie day. (a short post)

Again, I didn't have much energy today.  I stayed in my jammies almost all day, and watched YouTube videos to relieve the boredom.  Although I woke up early, I had no energy, and fell asleep on the couch in the afternoon, losing my chance to do things in the daytime.

Why have I been so tired lately?  God knows, I don't.  I have a feeling that I'm suffering from the effects of depression.  Yet, I don't feel down.  So, around 7 pm, I finally started to get ready to go out for dinner.  Unlike yesterday, I decided to get dressed as Marian and go to the local buffet. 

Now, I have some of my winter wardrobe available to me, but I didn't want to deal with putting on tights to be worn with a dress.  So, I found a pair of leggings and tried on a dress that I bought from Target.  One problem - it was a size too small for me.  Now, I had to figure out what to wear.  And I decided to wear a summer dress with the leggings, and go out wearing a denim jacket over the dress.

When I finally went outside, I was glad to be wearing the leggings and the denim jacket.  It was too cool for the dress alone.  Then I drove to the buffet and chowed down for an hour.  (I'll pay for this when I get on the scale in the morning.)  Eventually, it was time to go home for the evening - a short evening out, but one I needed as Marian.

It was a slow day, but I accomplished a little something.

 

As most of my readers know, I am a Marxist at heart.  No, I have nothing for the words of Karl.  Instead, I cherish the words and antics of Chico, Harpo and Groucho.  Their absurdities prepared me well for the insanity we live with today.

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If one were to see the interior of my apartment, they would see an absolute mess.  Clutter is all about, and I am shifting one pile to another while I prune the contents of many storage containers, reducing the space  needed for the things I want to keep.

Today, I moved a large, irregularly shaped chest from behind my loveseat to an area next to my dining room table.  This caused me to examine the contents of each of the storage containers blocking it, and then toss out what I no longer want to keep. Even though I'm keeping a lot of stuff, I can make my way behind the loveseat and get at the individual storage containers, something I couldn't do before.  While doing this, I went back and forth between the living room and bedroom, taking care of cleaning tasks in each room.  I was able to empty 2 large storage containers, making the bedroom feel a little bit more open.  Now, I can get at the storage containers holding my winter clothes and put my summer dresses into newly empty containers to go in back of the loveseat.

Working in a cluttered room presents its difficulties.  While moving the chest, I knocked over a standing lamp and broke it.  (Thankfully, I didn't break the fluorescent bulb in the lamp, or the glass in the bookcase which was hit. Those would have been messy things to clean up.)  To fix the lamp, I had to disassemble it even further, putting the bulb receptacle in the correct position, then finding a way to keep the receptacle, stand, and shade in place, so that I could reinstall the bulb and have a working lamp again.  (Even after everything was back together, I still had minor problems turning the lamp on/off again that were fixed with a little effort.)

Right now, I have a few bags to take to the dumpster, as well as a large suitcase to bring back upstairs.  Will I do it tonight?  Who knows?  But I'm seeing slow progress in decluttering my place, and that's a good thing. 

Dim Sum in Parsippany, NJ

 

It's been months since RO and I have been able to get together, in part due to sinkholes on I-80.  For both of us, it's a 90 minute drive to a midpoint destination.  If one of our key highways to Parsippany, NJ is out, it can add at least 30 minutes to the trip. For both of us, spending 2 hours to meet an acquaintance would be a non-starter.  So, we waited until I-80 was repaired fully before we scheduled lunch again.

I wasn't in the greatest of moods when I woke up.  Current affairs is very depressing, as one can't escape mention of the Orange Snowflake in the news.  I limit my interactions with the news, while RO tunes it out.  That doesn't mean that she doesn't care about what's going on.  Instead, it means that turning off the news is her only way of escaping the monster and his childlike voice.

While driving to the restaurant, MAR called me.  She doesn't have a stable job, and we have been trying to find a time and date when we could meet.  Even though this upcoming weekend is a rare open one for me, she was booked up already.  So, after a long conversation over the phone, we rescheduled our get together for 3 weeks from now.

Eventually, I reached the restaurant, and RO arrived a few minutes later.  It was as if little time had passed since our last get together, and conversation flowed like water.  We each had a bowl of hot and sour soup, and then split 4 dishes of dim sum - including some soup dumplings.  Yum!  All too soon, we had to leave, and we will try to schedule something within 4-6 weeks.

On my way home, I decided to explore the items in Lane Bryant.  Only one catch - I was trying to avoid the tolls on the Garden State Parkway.  This was a mistake, as I drove through the bowels of Patterson, NJ -from one side of the "hood" to the other. Eventually, I made it to the road I was looking for, and then made it to Lane Bryant (with a pit stop at Panera Bread.)  Luckily, I escaped the store without spending anything, and went home for the evening without further delay.