— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीस —
Today I'm wearing my
Christmas bulb earrings, and as soon as Frank saw me when I arrived at work was: "Ooh, I like your balls!"
I immediately cracked up. "That's not what it sounded like," he said.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीस —
Funny how I'm working only a four-day week this week and still I keep leaving the office early. I left at 4:00 so I could make it to a 5 p.m. movie at the AMC Alderwood Mall on Monday; yesterday I left at 3:35 so I could make it to my 4 p.m. quarterly doctor appointment.
Shobhit made an appointment to see Dr. Means, a doctor we share, for a persistent pain in his abdomen, and he made his appointment for 4:30 yesterday—not even realizing my appointment was right before that. We just turned it into a joint appointment, which Dr. Means seemed to quite like as it saved him a lot of time. He was done with both of us by probably 4:40.
Anyway, my appointment was just to get prescription renewals and my quarterly STD screenings required to stay on PrEP, the HIV prevention medication I have taken daily since like 2010. But, since I was there, I did talk to Dr. Means about the state of the cyst-removal hole in my back. He asked, "Would you like me to take a look at it?" And I said, "I guess it couldn't hurt."
So, I took off my shirt, he took a look at it, and he immediately said, "Yeah, that's healing very nicely." That was genuinely reassuring to hear. He also mentioned "beefy tissue" (barf!) and how it actually was good to look like that. Basically the hold goes down the muscle, and the dampened gauze stuffed into the hole and replaced twice a day is precisely so that the wound heals from the inside out, thereby removing risk of an abscess. (On the car ride to Elbe with Alexia on Sunday, she said abscesses are horrible, and when she took care of horses she saw one big enough that she could have fit her fist inside it—oh my god, stop grossing me out, everybody!)
I'm now replacing it on my own, and it's pretty easy to do. I don't have to wake Shobhit up in the morning to ask him to do it anymore, and he certainly doesn't have to worry about being gone to India the last week of December and the first two weeks of January.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीस —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीस —
There's very little else to report today. Shobhit and I walked home together from Virginia Mason; we met there. I made chai, as we have milk we need to burn through as it's past its sell-by date. He got on a Zoom "Happy Hour" call and the chai was his drink of choice. That went on until about 6:00, and then we headed out to do some grocery shopping.
I had a PCC coupon for $10 off $50, plus my holiday gift card worth $25. This allowed me to spend quite a lot and in the end I only paid slightly over $18 for just over $50 worth of groceries. I've got a lot of stuff to tide me over while Shobhit is gone and not cooking huge-quantity meals. I probably won't even burn through it all before he gets back.
Today I got notice that now we have a Member-Only Offer (people around here actually sound out the acronym: "MOO"—it kind of cracks me up) for $15 off $75. It's the same percentage but with a higher threshold. I may or may not use it. I'm not eager to spend another fifty bucks just for the sake of this deal, but then, on top of my staff discount it's a good enough deal maybe I should take advantage of it.
We went to QFC afterward. Driving all over town, the rain was strikingly heavy. I was sure glad it wasn't like that when we were walking home. A good two hours had gone by before we actually got back home again. We then caught up on the last two episodes of
Abbott Elementary—a show that is as delightful as ever; it's the only network show I still watch religiously—before I went to get ready for bed.
I'll be leaving the office early today too. This afternoon is our Merchandising Department holiday social event, scheduled from 3:30 to 5:30. I'll get free food and free drinks out of it, so I'm looking forward to that. I'll be at a place called Metier Brewing down on Cherry Street between 26th and 27th. I don't even know yet how I'll get home from there. If it's not too rainy then I can walk; I brought an umbrella. I just checked and it's actually barely more than a mile from home, so that's easily doable.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ तीस —
[posted 12:58pm]
