I'm Not Dead!!

Good Lord. It's been ages since I blogged anything. And I somehow managed to leave a giant gap like this when my last blog was about OxyContin.

Whoops!
 

That doesn't look good.

To anyone out there who worries that I may have fallen off the deep end and might possibly be curled in a ditch somewhere, twitching and scratching holes in my skin, I promise I'm fine! I wasn't too high to write a blog entry! I was just trying too hard to avoid unneeded computer usage while I was doing my first semester of my graduate degree and returning to work finally. In fact, I am avoiding nonmandatory keyboard usage so much that I am writing this with a robot.

 Well, almost a robot. More like my computer being my slave, but not a very good one. I am attempting to write this entire blog entry using a spiffy program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  It's kind of slow going... and, I must say, it's really weird to speak things first instead of just typing them. Normally writing is very silent activity for me and hearing myself say the words instead of simply move them from my mind to the computer  screen through my hands is way weirder than I thought it would be. For one, I have to have the room entirely silent so that my microphone can pick up what I'm saying, means I can't do what I usually do which is write while listening to music. I hope my creativity isn't found to lack as a result... but no matter what, this program is a million times better than the one that came with my Microsoft system, even though it lacks the punctuation finesse that my actual typing would have, so I've still had to type some to add it in. Also, I suck at enunciating. But my arm is sitting in my lap not yelling at me for typing, which has to be a good thing. The more I "write" with this program the better it will get at understanding what I'm saying so prepare yourself for several long-winded blog entry as I practice using this technology that may very well save my MLIS it degree

But before I start on the other stuff I want to say, a quick update: I switched neurologists and my new doctor actually seems to care about getting the better as opposed to my last one who basically wanted to drug me up and ignore me. Thanks to her, I've been off the heavy pain killers for over two months now (Huzzah!!) and have finally discovered that it was, in fact, the ibuprofen that was making me puke so often. Go figure.  Oh well, at least I dropped 25 pounds from the constant nausea!  (That's looking on the bright side, right?  I mean, I needed to lose 40 pounds anyway...)  Now, instead of sporting dilated pupils I'm now rocking an awesome looking pain patch which, when I'm properly clothed, usually shows just above my shirt collar line. 

Sometimes I wonder if people assume I'm the world's heaviest smoker attempting to quit...

Hey, I'll take this lameness over permanently scarring my liver any day!  

I'm back to work, but not quite full-time yet. I've hit a wall at the 30 hour per week mark and now my arm pain is getting worse instead of better, which I think is from the increased computer usage and book lifting thing that I have to do at my job. So I am trying to find a part-time job instead of the full-time one in order to make my work life less stressful and time-consuming so that I can prioritize my library science degree. I did pretty well in my first semester (if I do say so myself), especially considering that my professor's wife died three weeks before the end of the semester and I got struck down with plague the week when all my final exams were due. An A and A- doesn't seem too shabby after all that. :) 

So in general things are getting better, but not nearly as fast as I want them to.

(Then again, that's the story of everybody's life, I suppose...)