Yesterday was hectic from when I got out of bed until I finally returned to sleep, thus I didn’t get any serious writing finished, namely Molly Ringwald’s big 4-0. It was also one of those good-new-bad-news days.
Good News: My first visit to the dentist in two years was a relative success. I don’t have any holes or new cavities and although my gums are still awful, the worst I had were a few sixes and fives on the recession scale: 1-3 is good, 4-6 is bad, 7-10 is awful. How can sixes be good? Two years ago, I had at least a pair of eights and some sevens. When it comes to my teeth, I’ll take any kind of victory I can get. Meanwhile, I’m back to spending some Mondays at Dr. Alice’s going through another run of planing and scaling to salvage things. You will all be relieved that there will not be any new pictures of my rotten, extracted teeth posted here.
Bad News: Somara didn’t fare as well with her doctor’s appointment. Her situation is serious enough to require surgery which is scheduled during the first week of March. I have her covered through my insurance plus I have enough reserves to tackle the deductible. What I’m dreading will be my provider nickeling and diming me on every little thing. I haven’t seriously worked with UHC on something as expensive. After I got screwed in 1996 by PCC’s sleazy insurance, I’m always suspicious. We all should be since the insurance industry’s goal is to make a profit, not to guarantee a person’s physical or financial health. Our Las Vegas vacation is definitely cancelled.
Good News II: The next phase of my future project took its next step.
Good News III: With Jeremy’s assistance, the upgrade surgery on Anje’s iMac G4 1 GHz was a mixed success. I was going to go through all the grief of upgrading the RAM in both sockets but Jeremy found a sweet 1 GB module for $70 to put in the more accessible spot. Then we had the 300 GB hard drive put in to replace the puny 80 GB it was built with.
Bad News II: We couldn’t get the iMac to boot from the 10.5 DVD. After metaphorically tearing our hair out, we called it a night and I’ll be tweaking it some more on my next whole day off. I’m confident the OS will install by hook or by crook, it boots from CDs and other DVDs.
Neutral News: In preparation for the worst-case scenario with Somara’s situation, I have been shuffling the money around: my savings, our vacation fund, extrapolating other sources, etc. Jeremy was generous enough to buy Somara’s old G4 tower because he wanted it for its PCI-card ability. He also let me keep the 802.11b AirPort card from it; they used to go for over $100, they’re averaging $35 on eBay from a quick glance, it’ll still is used on her operation first. Never fear, Somara will not be going without a desktop computer. I am giving her my “better” G4 tower with a 23” LCD display and I’ll do without it my office as I tend to do way more on this superior MacBook. Since it has USB 2.0, I scored a couple Mac Mini-style enclosures for $20 apiece to put an old 160 GB and 80 GB into; they’ll be my expansions when in my office on the MacBook. The other extension of odd logic is this: with the bigger computer setup off my desk in my office, I’ll make more progress on cleaning up the messy space.
That’s the long, long version of what happened on Monday. Please send words of encouragement to Somara too. I’m doing what I can but she’ll get tired of my voice, everyone loves variety.