Date: 2009-09-22 09:33 Subject: Quarterly Review of My Life Security: Public Location: Trapped in a lung-shaped prison Mood: sick Music: What If Your Butt Was Gone, by Carla Ulbrich Tags: not dying just yet

Still working.  That's significant, since the type of employer I seem to attract typically likes to play fast & loose with the rules (hire a guy, keep him for 5 months, 29 days, then arrange an excuse to fire him so that, when 6 months elapses, they don't have to observe the legal requirement to put him on the full benefit package).  I've been walking on eggs until the passing of the 6-month mark, but now I can stop and wipe all the omelet off my shoes.

Work is the same as it ever was, but more so since HD master tapes have 3 times as many audio tracks as SD tapes.  Watch a program twice, once with video and english mix, again with video and music & effects.  Now watch it again, in english 5.1 surround.  That's 8 tracks.  Now again, with portuguese stereo mix.  Ten tracks.  German mono: 11 tracks.  English commentary: 12 tracks.  Oops, someone recorded Laughs & Applause on the linear analog cue track.  Watch it One More Time. ("...I'll take you home again, Kathleen....")  Now, that was the Texted Version of the program.  Tomorrow, you get to do the Textless version.  As it happens, one doesn't make a career out of a job like this if one is afraid of a little endless repetition. repetition.  repetition. repetition. repetition.  repetition. repetition. repetition.  repetition. repetition. repetition.  repetition. repetition.

The truck continues to run well (Jeff apparently knows how to take much better care of vehicles than I do.)  A shame there is no trunk to use as a rolling storage unit.  Oh, well.  I've been learning how to throw stuff away, which, I suppose, is almost as good.

I'm beginning to entertain doubts that I'll be able to do the Virtual Masquerade at Loscon this year,  or even attend.  The plan was to have opened up suffucient space by now on my credit cards to charge the cost of the hotel room, which is necessary to have as an edit center and base of operations since there are no function spaces with sufficient security to keep my equipment from growing legs while I'm out videotaping costumes.  But the credit cards have not cooperated.  Every time I pay off $500 or more of credit debt on any one of them, my credit limit on that card just gets adjusted down to equal the current outstanding balance.  Net progress toward usability = zero.

The Health Front:  Two days ago I went to bed feeling fine, and woke up feeling like I was going to die.  I couldn't take more than the shallowest of breaths without feeling horrible pain in my chest and back and shoulders.  I was afraid I was having a heart attack, so I considered calling an ambulance.  Then I remembered what ambulance rides cost, and I considered driving myself to the hospital.  The I considered the possibility of driving off the freeway embankment while clutching my chest and thought, maybe I'll walk.  Then I considered that, given the length of time I had spent considering and reconsidering what to do, if it had actually been a heart attack, I'd already be 380 lbs of dead meat getting ripe on the floor.  And my right hand wasn't numb, and there was no sense of impending doom, and my pulse appeared to be steady and regular.  Breathing just hurt.  So, not a heart attack.  Possibly then, what?  Hiatus hernia?  Symptoms similar to a heart attack, but non-lethal...just distressing.  So I got dressed and went to work.

After spending 8 hours doing 3 hours worth of work, I told my supervisor I was going take one, possibly two sick days after the end of my midweekend (they have me working a Wednesday thru Sunday graveyard shift), sufficient time for me to see a doctor and deal with whatever this was.  When I got home I called my doctors office, but the receptionist said he didn't have any free time for two days.  So I went to the emergency room at St. Joe's, where they put me through a battery of tests and concluded that my heart was in good shape, and so were my lungs, and that my swollen left leg had no blood clots to shed into my heart, lungs or brain.  Blood pressure was a little high, but given that I was breathing in painful gasps, not surprising.  Still I should talk to my doctor about it.  They concluded I had picked up a viral infection that had resulted in pleurisy.  Gave me a shot that reduced the pain enough for me to breathe a little deeper for a while, plus a prescription for vicodin, and sent me on my way.

So, the good news is that I'm not dying.  The bad news is that I'm going to feel like crap and have to move slowly and breathe shallowly for a few weeks.  And sleep in a chair.  And probably have to start taking BP meds.  The worst part of it is having to delegate.  I get great pleasure out of doing for myself, but in this condition, exertion means having to breathe deeply, which is out of the question.  So for the next couple weeks I'm going to have to secure the cooperation of others to do the actual work of shopping for LASFS, loading the vending machine, etc.

Somehow, though, I will find a way to survive.