First off, a shout out to Elayne, who mentioned several days ago that Haloscan had added trackback. When she mentioned it again, I got up off my duff and added the functionality to my blog. I don't know that I really care about it one way or another, but it's nice to have a shiny new toy to play with on the blog.
And just a reminder for everyone who uses Haloscan. For a small donation, you get premium service (which isn't a lot more than what you get free, really) and you support them. I strongly recommend donating if you have the free money to do so.
I'm notoriously disorganized, despite my ability to project an appearance of being "together". There have been a couple of improvements in my life recently that I'm sure everybody else already knew about but have just made my existence easier... I'm sure I've mentioned that I now use Outlook as my mail service? It was a "path of least resistance" thing, as I had five accounts to check everyday, and Outlook was willing to pull them all together for me. I was a bit ... disgruntled ... that I was using the evil empire's software for mail instead of my preferred Pine, but I needed to get into this century someday. Anyway, I've discovered that two of the tools that come with Outlook are designed for disorganized idiots like me.
First off is the calendar. I was somewhat less than enthused about it, because you have to leave Outlook open all the time. But a friend sent me a little program that drops Outlook to the System Tray instead of the Task Bar, so it's not taking up space on the bar (my understanding is that later versions of Outlook have this function built in, but I've got Office 2000). So I set it up to remind me about every family member's birthdays... we'll see if I still forget to mention them now! I also discovered that I could import the Mariners baseball schedule. So I've got it set up to have Dave Niehaus yell "My Oh My" at me an hour before each game starts. And just for kicks, I put in my next few doctor appointments, too. Hopefully it'll keep me from being typically late.
The second is the Task list. I have a thing about writing lists. I write them, then promptly lose them. So I have a handful of "to do" lists that my room that surface every once in awhile to make me feel guilty for forgetting stuff. With the Outlook task list, I just write the entry and check the list every hour or so to see what I have left to do. To my surprise, it focused me this morning, and I accomplished a LOT more than I expected to. And I keep adding things to it. I've got about twenty entries now, but I've also managed to check off a few.
All is well and good... and I just checked on the progress of my wireless router and card. They finally reached the west coast from Memphis, and started up the road from Portland to the Seattle area about two hours ago. I'm betting I'll get them tomorrow. Today, if I'm really lucky, but more likely tomorrow or later if the regional UPS office isn't at top par.
And lastly, I'm sure you all want to know how I'm dealing with my fibromyalgia. I can't say I'm handling it well. I can't sleep at night, and when I do sleep I have rather bizarre dreams that wake me up, often involving alternate reasons for the pain in my muscles. My subconscious mind is apparently intent on providing its own reasons for why I hurt. In any case, the pain is slowly lessening. I'm told that people have good days and bad days. It's been mostly bad days for me since that night I woke up in agony, but I'm making progress. The treatment that I'm under right now is one designed by Dr Jacob Teitelbaum. It involves vitamins and an energy drink powder, and I think it's working. Only time will tell, I'm afraid. If I can actually make "to do" lists and keep up with them, then I'll be happy.
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