that's not coffee

— पांच हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस — I went to a retirement party at the PCC Greenlake store this afternoon, which is why I'm posting so late, and will have to try and make this very short. I can post about the party itself later. In the meantime, I'm waiting for a nurse from Virginia Mason to call me back. The incision site for my cyst surgery, which occurred exactly two weeks ago today, is slowly leaking a mix of some kind of clear fluid and a bit of blood. This is actually the second time this has happened; it happened right after I dried myself off out of the shower on Saturday—I wiped it off, put a band-aid on it, and that seemed to stop it. That was four days ago, mind you. I googled it that day and was told that this sort of thing is normal for a healing surgical incision. I decided that if I managed to stop it, I wouldn't worry about it—even though my shirt that day did get a big blood stain on it, due to it seeping into the fabric over time. The exact same thing happened today. I just didn't realize it until Andrew from IT was talking to me and he said, "You have a stain on the back of your shirt. It looks like coffee." Yeah, that's it! I spilled coffee on my own back. I decided it best not to say, "Oh, no. That's blood." Since then, I've had my red hoodie on so I'm not walking around with this sort of watery--burgundy blotch on the back of my yellow shirt I'm wearing. It's dried up now, and the napkin I later put in between the band-aid and my shirt has hardly collected more than a couple tiny blotches over the past three or four hours, so I think it has dried up again. I don't particularly want to keep seeping into my clothes, though, so I did call the surgeon's office. The trouble was the timing with Dorie's retirement party, which I still didn't want to miss. I had to walk over to Symphony Station, take Light Rail to Roosevelt Station, and Amanda, who was otherwise working from home today, picked me up. She was running 10 minutes behind, so I thought I might have time to call the doctor. I was on hold for those 10 minutes and just hung up once Amanda arrived. Basically the same thing happened on the way back: train was arriving in 9 minutes when Amanda dropped me off again at Roosevelt Station; I called the doctor's office; was put on hold. I just hoped the connection would stay on while I was on the train. Of course someone finally got on the call while I was on the train. The woman took my information, what the problem was, even what my scale of pain is (it does hurt a little bit; I said 2 out of 10), and said a nurse would call me back. So now I'm back at the office and waiting for that. — पांच हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस — — पांच हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस — As for last night, I spent it at home, aside from when Shobhit and I went back to the Central District PCC to do some final shopping of the November Field Day sale so Shobhit would get a bunch more of the 10/$10 cans of beans. Yesterday was the last day. Ditto the sale on the Field Day Veggie Corn Dogs, which I was also able to combine with a $1.50 off Field Roast frozen product NCG coupon. Between those two things, and my staff discount, I got these for about 43% off. We did this after Shobhit had a SAG-AFTRA Zoom call, and I ate the dinner Shobhit had prepared but which he didn't eat until after getting back from shopping. We then sat down and watched my library DVD copy of the original Zootopia, which really is a delightful movie. As I anticipated, Shobhit was really into it too. My plan was to see the sequel after work tonight. We'll see how that goes, depending on if and when a nurse calls me back and what they suggest I do and when. — पांच हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस — EDIT: Well! I was just about to post this, and I got the call from the nurse. He didn't seem super concerned about it, even said this is a normal thing that happens, but suggested I get a picture of it and send it over the patient portal tonight. The moment I said goodbye to the nurse, Dr. Wancata, who had done the procedure, called me herself! I told her what I had just gone over with the nurse and she basically concurred. They may look at the photo and say it actually looks normal. Or, if need be, I can come in to see her definitely on Friday and possibly even tomorrow. I'm hoping it won't come to that, but we'll see. I just feel better knowing this isn't some great cause for concern, at least not based on what we know right now. In any case, at least I can stop worrying about it and just be annoyed by the shirts this crud has seeped into. At least Amanda tells me Dawn is apparently great at getting blood out of clothes. — पांच हजार नौ सौ इक्कीस — [posted 3:34pm]

Mobile Tree

— पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस — I'm close to taken aback by the response I've gotten so far to my mobile Christmas Tree this year, which I did as a sort of compromise with the decision not to hang Christmas lights on the windows this year. The building is still completely encased in scaffolding for the building repair project; the fix for wood rot around one of our balcony doors still needs completion; one of our windows was supposed to be fitted with one that does not open and they put in one that does, and they have confirmed they will need to return to switch it out again. There's no set timeline on any of this, but the potential for some or all of it to happen in December, and it just seemed best to keep any strings of Christmas lights out of the way, which people wouldn't even be able to see from outside on the street through the scaffolding anyway. I had already used the cart I bought as a Christmas present in 2023 to haul up the boxed Christmas Tree and other decorations from the storage unit in the parking garage. I don't know why I never thought to do this last year; for years I have taken all the boxes up in stages: moving them all from door to door and then up the elevator and then to the condo. This way I could just wheel them all up at once. We usually use it for large shopping hauls from Costco. I asked Shobhit if he'd be okay with having no access to it for a month and he had no problem with that. So, I went with setting up the tree inside that cart. I was afraid the base would be too wide for the the cart, but it actually fits perfectly. The only real downside is how much lower the tree is than usual, as I usually stand it on top of one of the cupboard endtables in the living room. Standing it inside the cart, it's much lower to the ground. But, I do love being able to move it from room to room. And Shobhit will bitch about the lights a lot less this year. I did kind of creatively edit the video, though, taking three separate vide clips of myself that I cut together, pulling the tree from the living room past the nook and guest bathroom and into the main bedroom. You can't see that at all times, it's actually plugged into an outlet via an extension cord—which I moved two different times in between cuts of the video. It's easy to watch that and assume I could just take it right outside and parade it down the street, though, which no fewer than three people have already suggest I do: Gina on Facebook, Jill on Threads, and Frank at work this morning, after he arrived and said he had seen my post while riding in on Light Rail. "You're brilliant!" was the first thing he said to me. This has all made me consider finding a battery power source, but I probably won't. I love the idea of pulling a lit Christmas Tree down the street, but I'd have to come up with a separate, more generic one for that. The tree I have is covered with ornaments that have deep sentimental value to me, and I'd never risk losing or damaging them by parading them on a tree outside. Even with the limitation of needing to plug it in, I'm still delighted by the flexibility of being able to pull it into whichever room I want to on a whim. I could pull it into the bathroom if I wanted! — पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस — — पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस — I had two DVDs to pick up at the library yesterday, which I did during my lunch break, now that the library is just a few blocks down the street from where I work. I'll watch one of them tonight: the original Zootopia, which was perfectly timed to become available yesterday, so I can watch that tonight before taking myself to see Zootopia 2 tomorrow. Shobhit watched the other one with me last night, while I decorated the tree, having finally found the time to do so amidst all the shit I've been doing since Friday, which would ideally have been the day I had it done. Anyway, the movie was Christmas in Connecticut, a film that's been on my list to see ever since I found it on multiple "best Christmas movies" lists. It came out in 1945 and holds up relatively well. It has some very bad editing moments but I still enjoyed it, and Shobhit certainly did too. He laughed a lot. I think he enjoyed it even more than I did. I'd have liked to get to bed earlier than I did, but recording myself with the Christmas tree, editing the video clips together, and adding the music took a bit of time. But totally worth the effort! — पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस — That wasn't even the only movie I saw last night! I left work early to see a 4 p.m. showing of Rental Family with Laney. It was okay. Fine-ish. I settled on a B-minus. A lot more people than I might have expected seem to really like it, but I found it a bit lacking. I think maybe Laney enjoyed it slightly more than I did, but not by a wide margin. Laney had walked there from home on Broadway, and I met her at the theater. Showtime was 4 p.m. but that was when I left, knowing I had a full half hour before the movie actually started. It was quite cold yesterday, and rather wet last night, so when Laney declared she was going to take the bus home I happily did too. Shobhit had dinner ready when I got home, and I ate, and then spent about an hour writing the review. And the rest is a history of the evening that I already told you! — पांच हजार नौ सौ बीस — [posted 12:36pm]