F* a D*

Ah, fuck a duck, as the saying goes. I'm really not liking how this year is starting, and it had been so promising.

First, I finally sold the RV and paid off a bunch of debt. That was good!

Then I broke a tooth somehow - wasn't even eating anything. One of the back teeth that had a gold onlay on it. The onlay didn't come off, and there wasn't any pain, just some sharp edges, and we all know how our tongues insist on playing with strange things in our mouths. (I didn't mean that the way it sounds, really I didn't!) About a week ago, the onlay popped off too. Still no pain, thankfully, 'cause I really don't look forward to a huge dental bill.

Thursday, last week, I rushed out to the Mustang, on my way to an appointment. Dead. Dead. Dead. No hint of even wanting to run. Called AAA and they were there in less than 30 minutes!! But the battery was totally dead, and didn't even want to be jumped. Ran a diagnostic and amazingly, it was beyond hope. Three days after the two year free replacement expired. Of course.

Now I suppose I could have found someone to help me take the damned thing out, and cart it down to the dealer where I bought it, so I could get a discount on a new one, then cart it back and put it back in. But the lovely AAA guy gave me a great deal on a new one, with a three year free replacement, so that's what I did.

Arizona is famous for destroying batteries way sooner than almost anyplace else on earth. Since I've been here (almost 20 years now), I've averaged just over two years on a battery, no matter the quality (price!). One of the joys of the 'dry heat'!!

Then Saturday morning I woke up to a dead computer. I screwed around with it for a couple hours and gave up and headed to a geek at Best Buy (thankfully I had a new battery in the car!). Told him my story and he said it sounded like a dead hard drive. Oh, no!!! Less than five minutes into the diagnostic, it said it was a dead hard drive, just like he predicted. Now I'm ready to break down and cry.

I've reloaded Windows into computers so many times now thru the years, that I figured I'd save $200 and do it myself, rather than leave it with them for two days.

Drove home and settled into my chair with all my assorted discs, ready for two days of golf on TV while I reloaded all the crap you need. Except I had everything but the operating system disc. . . the Windows 7 disc was missing. Now I'm really ready to cry.

So I packed up all my discs and the damned computer and headed back to the geeks. The same guy was there, and was very kind, as he thumbed thru my collection of discs and agreed it wasn't there. But then he found something I had made back right after I bought the computer. I had written 'recovery disc' on it. Jeffrey said, 'well, here it is!' Huh?

It seems I had paid attention to the computer when it was new and it told me to make a copy of the operating system. If you didn't know, Windows 7 has a separate partition for the operating system, just so you can reload it if something goes wrong, and they suggest backing it up. Being fairly good a following directions, I did that. I just didn't remember! And, I mean really, it was called a recovery disc - why should I remember that it was the operating system recovery disc?????

And of course, the built-in resource didn't do me any good, because with a dead hard drive, there was no access to that lovely option...hence the back-up.

So I packed everything back up, thanked the nice young geek, and headed home. Settled in my chair and here we go again. After two days of pretty much constant attention, the computer is almost back to normal. I'm still restoring my files from my online back-up - Carbonite - but that usually takes a few days because I have so many photos and music files.

Today, I went to the dermatologist to get the squamous cancer cut out off my left shin bone with the neat MOHS surgery. . . the one where they take slice after slice, looking at them under a microscope to make sure they get it all.

This doctor, bless his heart, puts bicarb in the lidocaine he uses as a numbing agent. Only the second doctor I've met who does that. The bicarb(onate) takes the nasty sting out of the lidocaine. It's a little miracle that others should use for their patients comfort, but I guess they don't want to waste the few pennies it costs to do it.


The first slice was just a little football shaped piece in the shape of the original biopsy.


It came back 'showing margins', meaning there were still cancer cells at the edges of the cut, so he did a couple more little cuts.

It took four trips to the microscope before he got it all. When he was finished, I had a hole about the size of a quarter and more than a quarter inch deep.


Then it's cauterized, because there was no way there was enough flesh and/or skin on the shin bone to suture that big ol' hole shut. And anyone who's ever had a wound cauterized knows that once you smell burning flesh, you never forget it.


I was there about three hours for the whole thing. It's an easy and wonderfully efficient way of dealing with skin cancers.

THEN, then when I arrived home, it was to a message that my health insurance company had refused to OK my breast reduction surgery, scheduled for Thursday, because it was for cosmetic purposes. What a bunch of crap. It's a Medicare mandated protocol for mastectomy patients. WTF do they think they're doing?

My doctor's staff is up in arms and has a call in to the Director of the company and intend to kick some ass. Whether we can get a reversal in time for my schedule surgery in doubtful.

So now I'm having a serious cocktail, and contemplating those tears again. It's only January. What more can go wrong?