I have been to the rheumatologist, and the verdict is 99.99% officially Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. No one was really surprised. They have to test me for stuff they're pretty sure I don't have, just to make sure I don't have it (TB, HIV, Hep B). In the absence of any other indications of disease, deficiency, or imbalance, though, and with me having several of the items on the checklist of CFS, it's a fairly straightforward diagnosis, unfortunately.

I know CFS was in the news a lot a couple of decades ago, but the Center for Disease Control has a pretty good page about CFS as it's being treated and diagnosed now. The most under-reported news, in my opinion, is that every attempt to link CFS to a specific retro-virus (Or, you know, any virus. Or common factor at all.) hasn't yet been borne out in repeated studies. Anyway, if you're at all curious, the CDC page is a good resource.

( Prognosis; or, There are Two Kinds of Statistics... )

( My exciting exercise therapy )

Onward and upward.

About a month ago, I made a Facebook post to explain to the people I see everyday why I had dropped off the face of the planet. I've backdated that post and re-posted it to my journal so I can explain what's going on now. You can read the other post for full details, but the short version is that I've had some kind of (possibly viral) illness that's severely laid me up since mid-September. Time has marched on, and I wanted to touch base and give the LJ world an update as well.

( It's still probably an Evil Virus of Doom )

( Or it could be my meds )

( Or it could be Chronic Fatigue Syndrome )

The good news is that I'm feeling pretty good otherwise. I invested in a light box, and it seems to be helping a lot as the days get shorter. Maybe it's just a placebo effect, but as it seems to be a really effective placebo, I don't much care. So, even if I'm worried, I'm still fairly cheerful and I feel that even if this turns into the worst-case scenario, I can figure out how to cope.

I got a call from the Red Cross yesterday because I had just become eligible to donate blood again, and the gist of the call was essentially "OMG O-neg person please come in PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE." Apparently the Red Cross has used up a lot of whole blood reserves because of the various storms across the US, and the system a couple of days ago has only made it worse.

So, if you feel you can donate and you would like to, now would be a good time.

http://www.redcross.org

http://www.americasblood.org/

Since I last did any extensive updating at LibraryThing (over three years ago!), they've switched things up a bit. Now there are these "Common Knowledge" fields for the works which contain things like the publication dates, editors, characters in the books, alternate titles, and other tidbits of useful information. It's all nifty, and I'd like to add some information to the Common Knowledge pool.

There are two problems with this ambition.

First, I have about 4,500 books in my catalog. That's a lot of entries to go through. Clearly, some of them will already be up-to-date on their Common Knowledge (I suspect, for instance, that some of the other 50,000+ people who have copies of the Harry Potter books will have taken care of them), but when I've got the only copy of Suffering and Evil in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe, that'll be on me to fill in the fields. This is, of course, the point of the exercise--to add my unique information--but it brings me to my second problem:

LibraryThing no longer allows me to sort by the number of copies. In the Olden Days, you could sort your catalog by the relative popularity of your books. This would be a really useful feature to have right now, since it would allow me to bump all my unique works right to the top and work through them first, instead of having to scan through all 4,587 entries to find the ones where mine is the only copy.

(Okay, there's sort of a workaround, in that I can put Common Knowledge fields into my catalog viewing and then sort by the fields, so at least I won't be constantly clicking on works that already have stuff filled in. But it would really, really be a lot easier to go to works that I can be almost sure no-one has filled in because I know no one else has the book.)

On a completely different topic, if you look at the cover I scanned for the aforemenioned Suffering and Evil as an example, you will note that all the book covers I scanned in and uploaded three years ago suck. A lot. I think there was some miniscule size limit, and boy does it show. I just uploaded a cover for The Mad Scientist Affair that doesn't even qualify as "high quality," but it's about a billion times better. I may have to go back and re-scan some of those covers (another task that that "sort by popularity" thing would be useful for).

Busy busy....:)

The Purse Meme, most recently seen from 51stcenturyfox.

The Purse, fully contained:



I bought this purse primarily as a receptacle for my crossword puzzles. Of course, I had make sure that my crossword stash would fit. The natural solution was to take my ratty ziploc bag full of dog-eared newspapers into Dillard's and Macy's and try to fit it into various purses. For the record, I was not thrown out of either store.

The Purse, open to show that, yes, all the crap actually fits into it:



And now, under the cut, the actual crap I carry around:

( What I carry in my purse )

I am a genius! And also, amazingly stupid!

One of the problems I was having with my old computer was that all kinds of image files were getting mysteriously corrupted while in my New Fic folder. This did not happen to them while they were in any other folder, just the New Fic folder, and it only happened to files that had some kind of images with them, like .pdfs or picture files. Since there were Other Issues with my computer, I figured that this was probably just some thing with the hard drive going wonky.

I've had my new computer for a few weeks now, and so far all has been well with images and such in the New Fic folder. Until today. I opened a .pdf to read it, and lo! It was wonky. So was every other image and .pdf in the folder.

( If you're going to screw yourself over, at least be able to figure out how you're doing it. Eventually. )

I think I said I was going to talk more about Weight Watchers, so I will, a bit. So far, it's really working well for me. I've lost a little over 11 pounds in five weeks (\0/), and it hasn't been impossibly difficult, just a bit of a paradigm shift.

It's mostly been a matter of substituting things I really like to eat that have fewer calories and fat for the other things I really like to eat that have tons of calories and fat, and keeping track of how much I eat of everything. I mean, yeah, I love french fries, but I really will be just as happy with a baked potato with a dab of sour cream and butter. Not to mention that on Weight Watchers I can have the fries every now and then, because WW treats me like a grown-up and gives me extra points to use for occasional treats and snacks.

In other news, we have, at last, released Tom into the house. It seems like forever, but I think the slow introduction with letting Tom live in the spare room a couple of days to let his scent in and then letting them "visit" through a cracked door has paid off. There have been isolated incidents of hissing and growling, but it's kind of hard to take it seriously when both cats are sprawled a couple of feet apart looking so relaxed it's hard to tell which one's making the noise.

Greebo has been doing most of the growling, but so far they seem to be fighting for who's going to be the submissive cat, since mostly they hiss, growl and then run away. There was one point when Greebo was working up a really intimidating growl and then had to stop to cough up a hairball. Not his most dignified moment.

In short, they're getting along as well as could possibly be expected at this point. I'm sure that there will be actual contact fighting at some point, but two days in it hasn't happened. They might not end up as buddy-buddy as Greebo and Sylvester were (see below), but that's okay, too.

First things first:

As I previously mentioned, my family was relatively unaffected by the flooding in Nashville. But I know someone who lost her home and possessions and every day I learn about new groups of people who are having difficulties getting back on their feet. As always, it seems that those who can least afford it have lost the most. elizah_jane has a very good post with resources and links for making donations (thanks to coreopsis for the link). There is also a follow-up post with more information. Tomorrow I plan to take my O-neg self down to the Red Cross. It's been so long since I've had the energy to even come close to qualify for donating, and now seems like an excellent time to go back.

In more benign news:

This morning, Boo asked what "If your cat likes Cat Chow they might like this" meant (it was written on our bag of cat food). Since we had been discussing proprietary formulas the day before (don't ask), this led to a talk about brand names, which led to patents, which led to trademarks, which led to copyright. That took up the first half hour of the forty-five minute drive to school, after which we switched to the Kuiper Belt.

The problem? I meant to review the words for her weekly spelling test today.

So, yeah, she'll be fine if the teacher asks her about trademark law, but won't be able to spell "butterfly" or whatever the hell it is I was actually supposed to help her with. Crap.

( In other news, the cats are well )

Dear Trees and Your Pollen,

I realize that you are an important part of my daily existence. You are beautiful and stately and I know that I would find it difficult to breathe without your lovely oxygen-producing qualities.

Right now, though, I'm going to hate you and your stupid pollen for about forty-eight hours.

Miserably yours,

Dorothy

It is finally the end of the Longest Passover Break Ever. Boo's school was closed from March 26 until this morning. I have lost count of the number of games of Clue I have played.

Actually, I was a crappy mom for most of the first week. My allergies were horrible and I spent a lot of time stuffed with antihistamines, rousing only when prodded by little hands for feeding time. Boo was really great about letting me sleep off the stupid allergies and mostly amused herself. I did take her to my knitting group and we had a play date with a knitting pal's grandkids, so I wasn't 100% crap in the mom department. I also made it up a bit this week with the aforementioned Clue marathons and with taking her out places. It's really amazing how nice mom/daughter time is when mom doesn't feel like crap.

( Parental Visitation )

( Useful Post-Apocalyptic Skills. Or Not. )