A Work Gripe

I'm sure I've mentioned before that the end of the month is often busy at my job, as we have a surprising number of people who assume that their project is more important than anything else and thus can be sent in late but still done immediately. Sometimes month-end is steady and other times the delusional people are a deluge.

After several quieter months, the end of June was batshit insane, as a startling number of people whose reports were initially supposed to be done in 2024 tripped over each other trying to get it done in the first half of 2025. By contrast, July wasn't that bad: yesterday we had a few projects of roughly 10 pages apiece come along, but nothing bigger.

And then.

Miss Truly Delusional came to play.

Miss TD is in the UK, so I was surprised to see, upon starting work this morning, that she had sent in a report at 10 last night our time (all three main editors are in the US, Eastern time zone; there's one editor in the UK, but his first focus is on a UK team that has stuff they do every morning, UK time). I mean, 10pm is after our working hours but in the middle of the night for her.

So she sends in a slide deck, 51 slides, puts "High Priority" in the subject line and ASAP in the text, and says in the email that she was "currently working on one slide but wanting to get the ball rolling."

Ma'am? Nothing is rolling at 10pm.

Then, at just before 7 our time this morning, she sent the "final edit" and added, "Again, is this can be prioritised."

Is this can be.

My boss assigned it to me, so I got started. It was not actually as badly done as some we get, and not the most text-heavy slides I've seen, so I had made decent progress by the time Miss TD got tired of waiting*.
*We do generally email back when we start a project to let them know we're working on it and when to expect it back. In this case, for a same-day project, I didn't do that this morning.

Yes, she emailed again at 1:40 to ask, "Can I follow up on this please." 

Sure, why put a question mark on a question? That is, I guess, why put a question mark on a question. I replied that I was working on it, and sent it back an hour later. And hopefully, she will actually look at the comments that have questions on them before she publishes it, but who knows. That's above my pay grade.

Sigh. I would like to win the lottery soon, big enough that I can retire, please.

It's Alive! (living things in Marathon and Key West)

In Marathon, we went to the Dolphin Research Center, and there were also various critters seen around the hotels and in Key West generally. Enjoy!

Some Random Photos

I'm not up to recapping the trip yet (I'm catching up on blogs and my email and while I did get the suitcase back down to the garage, the office is such a mess still), but here are some photos I took of a few things that caught my eye along the way.

To start, how my knitting project matched this part of the sign outside the hotel in Key West:

Isn't that something?

This just caught my eye for some reason.

I love the slogan, Serving the Southernmost City.

These days, $3.99 really is almost free, isn't it?

Someone with more bumper stickers than I have! Yet not a one on the back of the car, strictly on the bumper. Interesting choice.

Speaking of cars, I saw this beauty after I got back. Isn't it something?

I love it.

I Am Home, Yes

I'm home, and everything's fine, I'm just not getting to things like blogging much yet. But it's good!

For Example

The hotel has a greeter.

On the Way

I will (probably) (most likely) blog more details about the trip after, but for now, have some pictures!

What a Beauty

I ask you, how gorgeous is this yarn?

I splurged on it, and as it was a preorder, I had to be patient (not my strongest suit). But it came!

Beast Mode, indeed: 1200 yards is a lot! And with those colors I want to use every bit of it. Alison, I'm thinking of making your Nina's Ann Arbor Shawl; I should be able to use it all in that, it looks like.

Speaking of rainbows, I took a photo of the sock after I finished the toe:

The second sock is started and past the cuff, so it's ready for the trip.

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Unrelated question: Did anyone who reads my blog recently write on their own blog about making a recipe from the So Easy So Good cookbook?

I had to wait for it a few weeks from the library, and now I can't remember where I read about it!

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Don't miss my rant from yesterday about prescription drug prices. I turned off the auto-refills through Optum, so I can take the prescriptions to Publix going forward. I'm still dumbfounded that mail order costs so much more than Publix.

Does US Healthcare Suck That Much, or Is Publix That Awesome?

As I mentioned, my doctor adjusted my hormone dosage, so I picked up the new one at the Publix Pharmacy today. And since I get my regular prescriptions through Optum home delivery, I looked to see what the price difference was.

Holy cats, people. PUBLIX was cheaper. SO MUCH cheaper! I mean, $10.78 for a 30-day supply, or $87.50 for 90 days? WHAT? 😲

I absolutely thought that home delivery was cheaper. Did it used to be? You get the convenience of 90-day supplies and delivery to your door, but wasn't it also supposed to be cheaper? Am I crazy to think so?

After seeing that, I went into my health insurance website where it lets you check prices, and checked half a dozen other prescriptions. Not only were they all cheaper through Publix, but the difference was obscene. Multiplying the Publix prices by three months, the total was $42.34, and the Optum total was $255.69. 😠

What. The. Fuck.

Yay to Publix, I guess, but boo to Optum. I mean, a few bucks difference I can see, but 87% cheaper? No. That's outside reasonable by a wide margin. So wide you can't see the other side from here.

Ow, and Then OWWWWW

Summary

As I mentioned last week, my doctor wanted me to have an ultrasound to make sure that there wasn't something bad behind my getting my period recently. The result is that she thinks it was probably a hormonal imbalance, and we're adjusting my meds. She did a biopsy to make sure there were no precancerous cells; hopefully that will be clear and we move on and my ridiculous post-menopausal, this-ain't-supposed-to-happen body will settle down.

In more detail

Since I appreciate when people give details on this sort of thing, so I know what I might expect should I need to go through it, I decided to write it up more than that: not every detail, but some. No need to read it if you don't want that detail!

The ultrasound was ... very unpleasant. I had one before and uncomfortable is not a strong enough word for it. Even "pressure" is not a strong enough word for it! But it's in a good cause, and if it was intrusive enough for me to be glad I hadn't had a big lunch, well, again, I want to know if something's wrong.

After another stint in the waiting room, the nurse took me back to go over things, and told me that the doctor would do a pelvic exam (ugh) and might need to take a tissue biopsy. When the doctor came in, she told me that I have a "baby fibroid" that doesn't need to be treated, and as my endometrial lining was a little on the thick side, she did want to biopsy that to check in case there were any precancerous cells. Fair enough! 

She said that we could try doing the biopsy during the pelvic exam, and encouraged me to let her know if she needed to stop because it was too much. And it almost was too much! It went from uncomfortable to really hurting, but at least it didn't take very long. She was very kind about it, though that may sound odd under the circs, talking through it and encouraging me, telling me how well I was doing, and that she got a good sample. I should hear about the results in 7 to 10 days.

When it was done, she mentioned that I had just saved about $3000 (which is a hell of a thing, isn't it? health insurance in this country is serious messed up), and I said that I might be pleased about that in an hour, but right then it wasn't a lot of comfort. She said to stay lying down as long as I needed to, and offered Motrin and water, to which I said yes please, and she said she would have someone bring some in.

I stayed there for a few more minutes after she left, then sat up and stayed there for a bit. The promised Motrin was brought in, along with a cup of water (with ice cubes, even), and I asked for and was given a pad to use, so I didn't spend the whole drive home worrying I was bleeding through my clothes (it's close to an hour away, so I would have been thinking it). I slowly got up and dressed, and left the office.

I've noticed before in this building that the elevator is a little jerky in its movements, so I made sure to hold onto the rail, and I'm glad I did, because my legs were a bit wobbly and I would have staggered sideways otherwise. I got out to the car, where I had to hold onto the wheel with both hands to get myself in, so I decided not to be in a hurry, and pulled my book back out and read for probably 15 minutes, until I felt somewhat better.

The drive went fine, and I decided I had the energy to stop for therapeutic ice cream, which I did--still feeling a bit under my usual energy, but not unable to proceed.

When I went to the bathroom after I got home, there was quite a bit of blood, but it gradually tapered off until it was pretty much done by bedtime. Today I felt ... okay. Not great. But not bleeding, not super crampy, and honestly if my back hurts, who knows why? It may or may not be related: the older I get, the more things hurt, you know?

At least I have ice cream.

Found It!

As my long weekend wound down, I was pretty sure I was going to have to report back that I wasn't able to find the yarn I was looking for, and thus wouldn't be able to bring the socks I wanted to on my trip. Frustrating, though not the end of the world. But I decided to look one more time.

This yarn, Urth Uneek Sock, comes as a kit, meaning it's wound into two matching balls and comes in a box. Like this:

So that's what I've been looking for, the box with one ball of yarn in it. But today, looking again, I found ... the box.

Hmmm. Armed with this new info, I went back to the place I first thought it should be, the shelf with my other rainbow-colored fingering-weight yarn (yes, I have a whole shelf of that, hush). And this time, instead of feeling around in the back and corners for a box, I started pulling it all out. I didn't get half of it out when, viola:

Hello, my beauty!

So now I have two weeks before the trip, plenty of time to finish the toe of sock one and start sock two, ready to go. Whew!

It's an interesting lesson to me to trust my instincts. There's a Dick Francis book where the main character is looking for something in his father's study, and muses on how he follows his father in the principle of putting things in the first place you would look for them. It doesn't matter if your system doesn't make sense to others as long as it makes sense to you. 

This system is not without its flaws, clearly: I once went to pick up a library book and my card was not where it belonged, leaving me with the unsettling feeling that that meant it could be anywhere else on the planet...but I found it in the end. And I found my yarn. Yay.

The Real Plans

The first day off the long weekend has been very peaceful for me, full of lots of reading and wonderfully low-key. I keep thinking it's Saturday, but no, only Friday. Ahhh. Now I'm spending a little time thinking about my upcoming trip.

For me, a big part of any travel planning involves knitting projects, so of course that's what I'm thinking about for Key West. In general, I want to have more than one project with me, and it's often a shawl and a sock, both being things I make frequently. 

For the shawl, I've been working on Nixe, which I apparently haven't written about other than when I started it in May. Oops? It's a very thoroughly written pattern, which absolutely works for me, though it does mean it's potentially awkward as carry-around knitting: lots of pages. But each row is pretty simple once started, and I think I'll be okay pulling the pattern out and putting it away, for instance in the car, even though I'm used to spreading it out.

It starts out with the cream-colored yarn, simple knitting with yarnovers.

And then the colored yarn is brought in and the magic of slipped stitches does this:

I even like it held up to the light.

So, yes, I'm enjoying it too much to put aside. It comes with.

As for the sock project, well. For one reason and another, I actually have multiple socks-in-progress, so I pulled one out to see when I had left it. It turns out that sock one is almost done:

And I have time to finish it and start sock two before the trip. But. BUT.

Where is the other ball of yarn...?

Um, it must be here somewhere.

So. We'll see if I can find it this weekend. If not, I'll pick another option.

Sigh. Disorganization strikes again. I have to admit that it's kind of driving me crazy trying to figure out where it got to.