Sunday, December 21, 2008

White Solstice

This a collection of miscellaneous items. It is snowing again! We are supposed to get another eight or so inches of the white stuff! Enough is enough! In spite of this Christmas may not be white. The forecast is for rain later in the week. We may have a slushy Christmas. This will be quite appropriate for me - a slushy Christmas. It kind of rolls off the tongue. Note to self: Write a song entitled "A Slushy Christmas." (Sorry about that, but I am looking for positives anywhere.)

My surgery is healing very well and I may even look normal after all. I know that sounds a little strange, but those of you that know me personally either know about what was done or can ask. Anyway I have been told I am weird. (Have you ever noticed that the word weird breaks the rule of "i before e except after c"? Now that is weird!)

I experienced a great deal of pain after the removal of the wisdom tooth on Tuesday. Since then there has been almost no pain. I do have a big hole where the tooth once was. I didn't realize how big the tooth was. It was way back in my mouth and was pretty much unnoticed except for brushing and flossing.

Last night I went to a benefit event in New Haven at a Gay Bar down there. We had dinner and then drinks. I went with some friends. I have done very little drinking since the Lap-Band surgery. Any small amount of alcohol make me very light headed. In addition, my usual wine of choice (Merlot) upsets my stomach. Last night I did have a glass of White Zinfandel before dinner and then another much later in the evening. White Zinfandel seems to work with my digestive system and I mostly drank coffee. Two glasses of wine was more than enough. The event got very crowded and I really don't enjoy being bumped and jostled in tight quarters. It's not a real big bar. We left about Eleven because one of the women I was with had to work early today.

I am not really sure if I was drunk from that small amount of wine, but later last night I spent quite some time crying. I don't think I was drunk. I have been upset since Thursday evening. To recap a bit, that day I drove to visit my father in Rhode Island early Thursday. I visited him and my Aunt (aged 97 and 93 respectively.) I then drove to Hartford to meet a friend for dinner. We then went to a cocktail party at Real Artways. When we got there I told my friend I planned to leave early (7:30 p.m., I was pretty tired.) She convinced me to stay a bit and I did. That is when my friend who is no longer talking with me arrived. She waved and didn't say a word to me. I had to go to the Ladies room and did. When I came out she was nowhere to be seen. I had already stayed later than I planned and it seemed that she still wasn't interested in talking with me, so I went home. I used to think we were good friends, but communication recently between us had been sparse and limited to brief emails. Her's always seemed to be disparaging of me in some way. At Thanksgiving I sent her an email hoping we could work things out, but her reply wasn't really positive. The whole thing is very upsetting to me. This is the second friendship in the past four years that has ended up with us not really communicating. I am pretty much back in therapy over this along with finding some kind of new life for myself. Truth be known we have spent more therapy time dealing with this friendship. She doesn't want to talk on the phone, her emails all seem to have negative tag and she seems to not want to talk in person. That really isn't very friend-like. (I am sitting here typing this with tears rolling down my face. Oh, Crap! My therapist would not be happy with me at all!) I guess I just have to live with this and get over it. The sad thing is that if she wanted I would still be friends at the drop of a hat. As I said it will be a Slushy Christmas.

On another matter (I am wiping up the tears and trying to move on), I have been trying to start a computer consulting business. I have been doing computer consulting mostly at no charge for quite some time now. I have been fixing computers and advising people on systems mostly for friends. (I fact, I spent a day fixing the computer of the friend mentioned above.) I began to think that I might do this for pay as a way to supplement my income and fill my time. There is a link on this site to my business web site. I have discovered that there is more to starting a business than printing cards and placing ads! I'll have to collect tax for the state, for example. The details of a business will be a very new experience for me.

I am now getting up to speed on Vista to be able to better deal with that system. I had worked with a pre-release version I was sent by Microsoft. That expired a while back though. I got Vista Home Premium with my laptop. I then purchased a subscription to Microsoft Technet and installed Vista ultimate and Office 2007. I will be setting up Server 2008 in a virtual machine on my desktop. I will be able to practice all configurations that way. There is a lot to this stuff! By the way, virtual sessions are wonderful! I ran server 2003 in one for quite a while as I also now run Linux and FreeBSD. If I could run Apple OS X in one I would do that also. I anyone out there knows if that is possible (or practical) let me know. Everything Apple produces is so expensive and i already have spent a lot setting up what I have. The Apple operating system is a variant of Unix so should be familiar. I worked with their old operating systems in the past.

This is proving to be one of my longer posts and I am sorry about the length. I am not sure if there will be another post before Christmas. I will wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas. If you are not Christian I wish you the best of whatever Holy day you might observe. For you strictly secular folks today is the Winter Solstice. Days get longer from here, Rejoice! In any and all cases Peace to you all!
Love,
Shel

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