Suzanne Calling

In the past few months, I've had a few pretty cool revelations and conversations that have lead me to be pretty introspective. As a whole, though, the journey through college has definitely helped me to look inward more than I have in the past. The job search lead to offering some support to others going through the same thing and I was able to help a friend starting out in his career with the sage wisdom that your quality of life will ALWAYS trump your paycheck. Yes, I asked for more money than I had been making in the past, but this job offer came with less pay and more vacation time-which I gladly accepted. Ed and I are at the stage in our lives where the travel beckons, so more time off and a respectable salary makes both of us happier.

This time last year, we were preparing for our second cruise, after attending the first CTTE in April.  Celtic Thunder was more low key, as we relaxed more, spent time with some of our prog friends and I only made an effort to get to one show (Gaelic Storm, loved them). Prior to the first Cruise to the Edge, Ed and I both friended people on Facebook, but didn't know anyone else IRL going on the cruise (or so we thought-we ran into my first serious boyfriend the last night).  However, we made many friends during CTTE, that we spent time with on Celtic Thunder. This year?  It feels like a reunion of friends in addition to an amazing music festival. Two weeks from today, three of us head aboard.  Game Teen will be staying home and my sister flying down from NY to keep him company, as he had no interest in going.  This time, some long-time IRL friends will be joining us. The lesson from last year was that we would have no sleep and need to recover, so we booke...

I started this blog. While I haven't written much lately, the urge to write is still here.  Much of it is career and research based, so I'm not sure if this is the right venue for that content.  Perhaps I should write more about the craft beers we've been drinking, or the upcoming trip(s), or the other stuff going on. A coworker who barely talks to me (because I'm not young OR cute...) came to me yesterday to ask me where the good sushi places are near work.  I found it funny that he was coming to ask me something, and that about a restaurant.  It seems that my coworkers told him 'you want to know where the good places are, just ask Suzanne-she knows them all." It's rather cool to have that reputation, and it made me smile.  I truly am the product of my parents.  They always were called upon to get suggestions for the new, the good or whatever specific cuisine someone was in the mood for. Thing is, he'd had another restaurant in mind, because it...

One of my most favorite shows of the 2014 Cruise to the Edge was performed by Lifesigns.  As soon as we were back home, I ordered their CD and it is easily the most played disc in the car-one which Ed and I each choose a different harmony line and sing along while we're driving along. When the group announced a crowd funding campaign to record new music at a concert in January, we jumped on board.  Even though we were wishing we lived in the UK to attend (and regularly wish we could teleport to all the European shows), it seemed a good alternative to relive the enjoyment of that Black and White lounge show.  If we move to the UK after my Ph.D, it is likely that we'll do a lot of exploring based on band appearances! Anyway, the other day John Young shared this teaser from the DVD and it has me happy to see that the same energy and cohesiveness we saw that April day once again. Check out "Different"! It is also making me antsy for November to get here, so we ca...

All assignments for the graded classes were turned in by midnight-one minute late on the last one.  Hey, I count that as being done on time! The work class, I'm missing one discussion board exercise, but I can easily make that up and do all the week two content tomorrow, plus the reading for at least one of the credit classes.  Might as well use the holiday to be productive, since the kids deemed it still too hot to travel to Universal.  It's just as well, as the batteries in my scooter need to be replaced...

Yeah, I know. I need to get back into the habit of blogging. I guess I need to pick a time every day once again and get back to it-especially since I have about a half-dozen Urban Spoon reviews to do and several nail posts to make. I think the main news is that I'm almost 3 months into the current job and boy, what a world of difference I am experiencing as compared to the last job. It's a big department, about 60 or so of us, and I interact with a handful outside of work. I've traveled to the northeast once already for work, and have another trip on the books for November.

This semester, I have two classes-both online.  One is in my autism cognate, the other is in my program and both will be easy to manage, but require a decent amount of reading or work, so the game plan is to do the autism readings during my lunch breaks and work on weekly assignments at night. Then, to add a monkey wrench, I'm taking a course through work on the adult learner.  At least it is only three weeks.  Everyone in my department was encouraged to take it.  At least it prepares me well for when I take the same course for my degree, and I have the textbook for that course-so I may be in good shape for that. Four semesters left...

If you don't have it, get it! There are four others like this, all within the past half hour.  Nope, you're not getting into my gmail.

Sent from my iPhone

The vertigo has been a constant companion since January 1st, a full month of riding the merry go round and wondering when the hell it would stop.  Last Monday, thanks to some self-caused stress (oversleeping), it ramped up to the degree that I usually experience right before the carousel operator kicks the switch into overdrive, and sends me staggering to the bathroom amid the 45 (or 78) rpm my world is making. My MRI results were insignificant, which basically means that there has not been enough progression in the Chiari to cause this.  I went through the 10 day course of faux steroids, took hydrocodone for the headaches as directed by my neurologist (a treatment course we normally do, but she'd asked me to try a run of Imitrex for any and all headaches-but there's a really bad interaction with sumitripan and this not-a-steroid), and nothing was stopping it. A week of phone tag ensued, and as is typical, the neurologist looks at the headaches first, vertigo second. ...

Yeah, so last post talked about being prescribed a steroid to hopefully fix this off-kilter feeling I've had since New Year's day.  Well, it seems that my severe allergy to Cortisone  means I cannot take any steroids.  Something I did not know, because in nearly 9 years, no other doctor has prescribed steroids.  Probably because they knew this, but I don't know. So, the pharmacy tried to call my OLD phone number to tell me this, I wait in line for a half hour to pick up said prescription and then find this out.  Not happy about that, I call the doctor's office Friday morning to inform them.  They call in a synthetic steroid and I get a text to pick up my prescription last night-except it is the WRONG prescription (it's for the Meclizine I told them I didn't need yet.) I'm still off kilter and no closer to seeing if adding medication to the mix gets rid of the merry go round I've been on.

Well, all of it is pretty crappy, if you ask me, but right now, the most sucky thing? When the neurologist admits that she can't tell whether the vertigo is causing the ubiquitous headaches, or whether the headaches triggered this current vertigo episode.  I can honestly say it is not a lack of knowledge on that front, it is a labyrinth of issues that are so interconnected that even the most seasoned neurologist can't definitively answer this one. Thing is, the headaches are nearly always a part of my days, that I never stop to consider that they're causing other problems.  The only thing I have notices is that the constant neck and shoulder pain (that hovers at a 5 or 6 on that Likert scale) have been strangely absent since this whole episode started. I think the biggest surprise is that this doctor, who I am not really fond of, was actually rather decent and displayed a modicum of compassion-which she has not shown one shred of in the past.  She even offered up a ...

I do not deny that when the new iPhones came out, I had a serious case of 'I WANT!', but the practical side of me knew I couldn't spend that money any time soon.  There's a trip this year that required some deposits (yes, we are boarding a chartered cruise again) and well, I'd rather pay those than have the newest phone. My current phone, the iPhone 4s, was acquired the day those came out just over three years ago.  So, I've been well out of contract on our cellular service, but like I said, the priorities for the fun money this year had a phone lower on the list. When the new phones were announced, I looked at AT&T's website and saw they had two options, the plan we've always had with them, where you pay a subsidized amount for the phone, and the new Next plan, where you pay a monthly fee.  Unfortunately, the site doesn't really spell things out for you, so I assumed that the $25 a month for a 16gig 6 was over and above what we pay each mon...

Last year, when I got the new (and arrogant) neurologist, she sent me out of the office with prescriptions for three 'just in case' medications. The fact that vertigo had returned after ten years of playing nice was enough for her to think that it would not lay dormant anymore. For the most part, I feel like I carry a little Vera bag in my purse that takes up space and sounds like maracas. I had a couple of major vertigo episodes that were enough to convince me that hey, maybe that little bag of medication isn't such a bad idea. Let's just say that when you triage yourself to the doctor, she sends you to 4 specialists because she doesn't want to agree, and two of those doctors come back with the EXACT same diagnosis you'd triaged, you don't really put a lot of faith in their abilities. In the past few months, I've had a fair bit of low level 'spinny' spells that weren't fully ramped up and started taking the meclizine I was prescribed. ...