Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Last week an old college friend came to visit on her way through town, and she arranged for both of us to meet with another college friend who lives in the area but whom I'd completely fallen out of touch with for ... well for long enough that mentioning how long makes both of us feel old. It was cool to see them both, though I wish I'd been feeling a bit better (physically) at the time.

Next week (starting Sunday) I'm flying to Peoria to help an ex-girlfriend move to West Virginia. She's promised that I won't have to do a lot of lifting and packing; mostly supervising and driving, except that I may be called upon to handle one end of a large fishtank. (Strength I've still got despite the fibromyalgia. It's just that if I use it too much, I'll pay for it for the next week, and the "too much" threshold is somewhat wimpier than I'm comfortable with or consistently manage to remember. If the only Heavy Thing I need to lift is the fishtank twice, I should be okay as long as the days aren't too long.)

Hmm. Come to think of it, that ties into a RL conversation recently where the idea of couples remaining friends after a breakup came up...

This Sunday, I get to see -- too briefly -- yet another friend whom I haven't seen in far too long. A very important friend in my life, whom I've missed terribly.

I guess Spring 2002 is "see old friends" season. (I also got to see some folks at Balticon that I hadn't seen in a while.) I wonder who else will pop up over the Summer. I can think of several it'd be nice to see again. All of this really reminds me, however, of one of the things I really don't like about myself: I suck at keeping in touch with people. *sigh*

I'm not sure yet whether this LiveJournal thing is going to help or hurt that. One the one hand, it makes it easier for people who care to check in and see what I'm up to and feel like they've gotten recent news and maybe be inspired to email me. On the other hand, if I put everything here, will I be less likely to remember to write to other people, and thus be even less in touch with the folks who don't make checking friends' livejournals or blogs part of their daily routine?

More on that later. Meantime, back to the Peoria trip.

It's been a long, long time since I've been in an aeroplane. Planning this trip has reminded me of something: I hate to fly.

Well, no, I don't really hate to fly. I hate to deal with flying. Once I'm in my seat, I'm fine for a couple hours, until after I land. I don't like airports. I'm terrified that I'm going to miss my flight, or not have some crucial item with me, or that they're going to lose my luggage. (When I was travelling back and forth to university *mumble* years ago, they lost my guitar. TWICE.) I hate checking my bags. I hate waiting around if I do get to the airport as early as I should. I hate waiting to find out whether there'll be room for my guitar in the overhead compartments. I hate going through the security checkpoints. (And I'll be carrying film, and some of the film I shoot is high-speed, so I'll be wanting them to hand-check that instead of putting it through the X-ray machine, and this'll be BWI, and that could be a hassle.) At the other end, I hate waiting to see whether my bags will pop out of the baggage carousel, and I hate dealing with getting to my next mode of transportation from there.

The actual riding-in-an-aeroplane part of the trip is fine: there's not much I can screw up there. Just look at the pretty scenery while we're close enough to the ground to see it, and look at the pretty clouds or read a magazine or something for the middle most of the trip. (It would even be kind of cool if it felt like flying, but other than takeoffs and landings it's just sitting in a boring room with lots of other people and we're magically in a different city when we leave the room, y'know? First time I flew on an airliner -- that I was old enough to remember -- it was a real disappointment.)

A week after I get back, I'd been trying to decide whether to go to a big annual party full of lots of friends I see too seldom in the Catskills, or to go to Contata, the East Coast regional filk convention this year near NYC. (It changes name and city each year, ConCerto near Philly, ConTata near NYC, Conterpoint near DC, ConCertino near Boston. This'll be the 12th Floating Northeast Filk Convention, and the third time it's been Contata. I've made it to most, but not all, of the twelve.) There are plenty of Really Good Reasons that I should go to both, assuming I can afford to go to either; both for "networking" and just for social benefits to my sanity. But it turns out The Homespun Ceilidh Band will be playing at WAMA's Springtime Crosstown Jam on Sunday, 23 June. (Note: The WAMA and Crosstown Jam web sites have not yet been updated to show the upcoming Jam -- they're still listing the one in April -- but it does show up if you follow the Calendar link from the WAMA page.)

So that means that if I do go to either the aforementioned party or Contata, I'll have to cut it short and come home Saturday night. (Which makes Contata make a lot more sense, as it's a shorter drive.) I might just miss both, which'd bum me out, but that's the curse of being a performing musician: work happens on weekends, and the good weekends to schedule stuff are the weekends lots of different stuff gets scheduled.

At least I know that Tales From The White Hart will have several copies of Spinning Reels to sell at Contata. I should recruit someone to carry copies to that party just in case.

Of course, in between all of these activities I need to find time and energy to do the work I actually get paid for. Which is what I'm going to go dive into right now, seeing as the pain meds I took earlier finally started working. (That, by the way, might be what keeps me home from Contata: if I were to push myself physically trying to make it to Contata and back in time for our performance at the Crosstown Jam, I might well push myself so hard that I need a week or so to recover before I'm really productive again, and I can't really afford that kind of hit to my already too tiny paycheck. Boy, to I miss the days when I could just DO all sorts of stuff and keep on going.)

Things get scary, then they work out, then they get complicated again.

I went to pick up six prescriptons at my HMO. One had not been refilled -- it had no refills left, and the doctor who wrote it declined to authorize more. Okay, I should've asked my rheumatologist to write me a new prescription instead of coasting on the one from my internist in the first place.

But then the technician acting as cashier commented that one of my prescriptions was for $145!! My copayment is $15, so that just seemed wrong. We figured it out: my prescription drug benefit has a dollar limit, and I'd exceeded it! I don't have $145, much less the ability to spend that much on one drug. So I said, "If I put these three back, can we make this one be covered?", figuring I can squeeze out a few more doses of my athsma drugs but I really want the antihistamines (without which I'll definitely need the athsma drugs) and the painkiller that did get refilled. I was way upset.

Then it occurred to me to ask, "Does my drug benefit work on a calendar year, or a year based on the start of my plan?" They looked it up. I'd called in the refills 2002-05-28. The plan-year ended 2002-05-31 and the new year started 2002-06-01. So they cancelled the three that hadn't been covered under last year's plan and put them in again as if I'd just called them in, under this year's plan. *whew* Now to deal with getting the sixth one approved.

Well I also needed to call my rheumatologist to get a letter excusing me from jury duty, so I called his office. He's on vacation. Argh! But it turns out he gets back tomorrow, just at a different office. So I left a message at the place where he'll be tomorrow, explaining my situation. Now he hasn't seen me in a while because my car died just before my last appointment was scheduled and he's nowhere that I can get to by bus, and when I finally had wheels and could schedule a new appointment, the first available is 2002-06-28 -- the day I'm supposed to be All Moved Out of my house (no, I still don't have any clue where I'm moving to), and well after the fifteen days the jury comissioner gave me for obtaining that letter. Here's hoping he'll give me the letter anyhow. And that it arrives before the weekend so I can mail it before I go out of town.

(I was thinking, "Unless they find a cure for fibromyalgia, I'll need to be excused from jury duty permanently. Then I realized that all we need to do is manage to control the fibromyalgia well enough for me to be able to handle a full eight-hour day in order for me to be able to serve. That's unlikely given the lack of success I've had so far with attempts to treat it, but still well within the realm of possibility. And if that happens, I'll be happy enough about having the option to work full time -- oh the doors that'd open -- that taking a day out to do my duty to the court system wouldn't be all that big a nuisance.)

Stress. I got stress. Anybody need some? 'Cause I've got plenty to spare!

Oh, if anyone's curious, the tally was US$573 worth of drugs today; $75 out of my pocket. Which means I eay nothing but mac&cheese for a while, but at least it's money I had.