Views from the Reading Room

I'm used to having a few small, transient bruises of unknown origin (perhaps when I bump into things?) that don't hurt except when prodded. The largest number of exceptions to this pattern, or Bruises of Note, that I can remember is the 3 I've got now.

( cut for TMI )

Speaking of Ow, Paracetamol note: if you know what Paracetamol tablets taste like, the soluble kind are so much better. The chemist didn't have the capulets (h/t spiralsheep), so I decided to give the effervescent ones a try, and it turns out that the taste of bubbles (carbonic acid?) overcomes the taste of the active ingredient. Try it! (if you need OTC painkillers that aren't aspirin, not for fun, obv.)

So, a lot of things have happened since I last posted anything like regularly! And if I wait till I've Caught Up With Stuff, that'll be ... actually it might never happen. In lieu of a longer post that is ... not going to happen today, here are some brief notes, without links or anything.

My shoulder got better. I had shoulder pain that was identified as a rotator cuff injury early in the year, and it just kept getting worse until I had the steroid injection in May, then it gradually got better. I'd just stopped taking Paracetamol for it a few weeks ago when I fell over and hurt my back! But all my joints are back to their usual state of unreliableness now.

My new windows went in at the beginning of October, just in time for the nasty weather. I now have double-glazing in the kitchen for the first time, "obscured" glass in the bathroom for the first time, and windows I can open in the other rear-facing rooms for the first time since I gave up taking down getting somebody to take down the secondary panels in summer. Bye-bye, unfeasibly heavy secondary glazing, I won't miss you.

My benefits got sorted out. It felt like I spent the summer wrestling with the benefits agency's assumptions, but when I'd paid for the windows and did the change-of-circumstances form again, they got it right first time, for a change. So I'm back on full job-seeker benefits, yay! (Well, an actual job would be more yay, but you know).

In displacement activity news, I finished Gemcraft chapter 0.

Now I hit Post before I get distracted again:

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day.

I don't think I can write anything coherent for it. I had my first SALT (Speech & Language Therapy) appointment today, and maybe I used up all the words? ... no, actually I've been lurking for weeks if not longer and it's not because of that (my speech problem is intermittent and physical, except for where I get anxious about it) ... it's more Living With Pain (, Dammit), Too Many Distractions and possibly some lack of cope. I'm sure I'll start "talking" online again sometime!

So: BADD links:
Master roundup post at Diary of a Goldfish - more links than you can shake a stick at, and probably more to come;
The Exploitation of Home Health Workers at This Ain't Livin', because May 1st is also Labour Day.

I've had a rotten cold. It's pretty much over now except for the annoying cough, but for a while there, combined with all the Other Stuff, it was using up my cope to the extent that I was neglecting the housework and playing free browser games instead of doing anything useful (or sociable) that would take both energy and brain.

Part of the Other Stuff was Sudden Short-Notice Interview, which was a surprise. My (latest) adviser thought the job was "ideal", whereas I thought it was "very ambitious". I actually came out of the interview a lot more convinced that my skills and experience were relevant to the job, but obviously I didn't convince the interviewers. It's just down the hill, part-time, and mostly IT back-office work, which is me, but they want someone who can do project management and "customer care", which isn't.

Another part of Other Stuff was this (non-diplomatic email to $UTILITY-CO; translating into HTML loses some of the formatting):
( cut for length )
(I haven't had a reply to the email, but the original problem has been sorted out. The guy at the bank had no problem with the voice recognition system, but waited at least 8 minutes before getting through to a person.)

( cut for whining )

So that's my excuse for not writing anything.

• My laptop crashed on the 18th and has been flaky ever since; I think yesterday was the first day it didn't give me any trouble except for running slow. So I spent most of the day catching up on reading.


• I've got a new health issue to worry about. Oh, joy.
  ( cut in case of TMI )


• So this Wednesday (27th) I was already anxious about that, when I was going out to an event in the evening after a busy day, and my front door lock jammed. As in I pulled the door to, put the key in to lock it properly (it's a barrel lock) and the key wouldn't turn in either direction. This is the new lock I got in September.
  
  The friend who was giving me a lift had a go also and confirmed that it wasn't just me, so I had to leave it at "not properly locked, but I can't get in" and go to this event our group was hosting. I was somewhat distracted during. Also, the guy who installed the lock didn't answer his phone or return messages.
  
  We ended up calling somebody out of the Yellow Pages (ouch - not quite enough to be worth calling the insurance folks, considering the excess and my no claims bonus, but a lot more than the original lock), who (after all three of us failed to get the key to turn) opened the door with a Cunning Device. The Real Locksmith couldn't find anything to explain the jam - the lock's not faulty, but a different one would be more secure, apparently.

There's been a few things recently I should have commented on but didn't get my thoughts in order, and it's a bit late now; can I have a clean slate please?

Yesterday I was signing on, and the woman processing me had a couple of printouts of jobs somebody behind the scenes had told her to tell me to apply for (which they've started doing recently), and the one on top was Telephone Sales, which is right at the top of my Hell No list. So I went into my semi-prepared spiel about how nobody with an ounce of sense would employ me to do (insert telephone-related job here), because of this and that and it helps if you can speak for more than two minutes without coughing (cough on cue) and also etc.; but my voice was breaking up! and doing its familiar tricks of (in other circumstances) badness.

So instead of the expected "Your voice sounds all right to me" and pooh-poohing the rest of my issues with phone work, ending up with me applying for jobs I know I can't do, she cancelled that one and the next one, which involves taking people's details over the phone. Result!

(Well, a result would be if people advertised office jobs that didn't rely so much on the phone, OMG have they not heard of email? But in terms of getting out of the Jobcentre without more unnecessary stress, check.)

... Then when I was at a Halloween party in the evening, my joints started playing up in a major way, which they're still playing up, ow.