Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Sirens. Flames, not just smoke, visible from my third floor window. Looks like it's about two blocks due south. Wonder whether I'll get there while flames are still visible. I'll load the cameras after I get to the site, if there's something worth shooting.

About that fire: they got the flames to below rooftop level by the time I had gotten dressed, as expected. Although it was clearly within walking distance, I took the car in case I had to circle around to find it or to find a direction from which to approach. As far as I can tell, it's on an alley or one of the teeny tiny one-block long streets that might as well be an alley, in the middle of a block: I could find police cars and fire trucks but could not see where the fire was from any of the streets I had access to. So call it two and a half blocks south of my house, south of Pratt and north of Washington, in the 1700 block. This puts it closer than any of last Winter's fires (but farther than the one catty-corner to me the year before that). Anywho, I came home w/o taking any photos.

As long as I'm typing ...

Last night I had a pretty severe headache, so I gave the Midrin another shot. Showered, dressed, made sure all the right music was in the right bag, still didn't feel well, sent my band leader email saying I was running late because I was waiting for the meds to kick in, took another capsule (that stuff tastes strange as well as bad[1]) ... and by the time the pain was down enough to think about driving to College Park, a) I would've only made it to the last half-hour of our two hour rehearsal, and b) I was extremely tired. Dunno how much of the tiredness was the sedative in the Midrin[2] and how much was leftover from fighting the headache, but I crashed. (I've also been sleep deprived lately due to insomnia, which may have contributed to the headache.) Fell asleep a few minutes after 21:00, woke briefly at 23:30, woke again for real just after 01:00 with the headache mostly gone but a lot of muscle pain in my legs (mostly my thigh) and a fair amount of hunger.

So I got up, took Ultram and ibuprofen (for the pain) and Mg (because I was also getting cramps in my calves) and Protonix (so my stomach wouldn't bug me later for forgetting to), made a plate of eggs (with broccoli, grape tomatoes, and onion mixed in along with the usual cheddar) and sat down to see whether I would wind up feeling well enough to knock a few things off my to-do list or sleepy enough to go back to bed. So far I'm halfway in between, which is a frustrating place to be, so I'm doing low-concentration stuff.

I wound up withdrawing dividends from one of my life insurance policies again -- pretty much emptied it this time -- to pay bills. I haven't had any assignments from my boss this month, so it doesn't look like I'll be getting a paycheck in January. I need to sell a bunch of photos, or get more photo assignments, or get more music gigs, or find a second employer who needs a programmer/analyst and can deal with my health limitations, ... or grit my teeth and deal with the scary-to-me process of starting the red tape to get SSDI or Welfare or something. <<shudder>> That shouldn't be as much of a bugaboo as it is for me. I've got "issues", ones that I haven't completely identified yet. *sigh* Maybe what I should ask for for Christmas is someone to hold my hand and walk me through the process.

And Christmas cards (and a "Happy Everything" card from browngirl) have started arriving. Seems like every year I'm surprised to notice how much I like getting them. I really must resume sending Groundhog Day[3] cards again.

I think I'm just going to keep an editor window open all the time and paste interesting stuff into it as I find it. Every so often I'll post it and start over. As before, these are from others' journals (including other "link sausage" posts), personal email, mailing lists, and random stuff I trip over.