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#5353 – a lot has happened

a lot has gone on since my last lj post back in… march? has it really been that long since my last update? i guess so.

april

i adopted a cat from the washington animal rescue league and he is seriously THE BEST CAT EVER. i named him bertie, after p.g. wodehouse’s bertie wooster of the “jeeves and wooster” series of stories. (i need to do a post that is just about bertie, he is that awesome of a cat.) my friend jae had a passover seder, but it was actually more of an excuse to eat and hang out. venusglitz and lissylulu came to town on vacation and we had fun going out for dinner with some of their friends that live nearby. i went to the us science & engineering expo where i got to see adam and jamie from mythbusters (what little i could see, anyway), actress/scientist mayim bialik (amy from the big bang theory), and got a glimpse of bill nye as he was walking around the convention center.

may

i went on a road trip to tennessee to visit feisty_fitz and her husband. met a hot girl who works at a bar down there, got her number, then proceeded to feel like i was robbing the cradle when i discovered she’s about 8 or 9 years younger than me. kelly and i went to the grand ol’ opry and played tourist around nashville, and i got to see their new house that they just bought as well. i signed up for the dc road runners marathon training group to help me prepare for the marine corps marathon in october.

june

i went to my first professional basketball game with my friend caryn – she got two tickets from a coworker to see a washington mystics womens’ basketball game. saw the doctor about my depression and we think that the meds seem to be helping. next step is to find a psychologist to help me with coping strategies for my anxiety and depression. i don’t know how to find a good therapist, especially when there are dozens nearby for me to choose from.

july

i saw the fourth of july fireworks from the roof of the newseum in dc, and a few days later on july 8 dad and i set out on a father/son cross-country road trip as part of MINI takes the states. we went to chicago, des moines, lincoln, boulder, albuquerque, phoenix, and los angeles. on the way back we went to kingman, az; the grand canyon; mexican hat, ut; durango, co; lamar, co; kansas city; and richmond, in. MINI had events planned for us at each of the stops on the way out west ranging from visits to a zoo to a barbecue to a pool party and so on, but dad and i made a few detours of our own – from chicago we went to milwaukee and saw our old house in waukesha and the house and field from the movie “field of dreams”, and from des moines we went to kansas city for the all star game’s fan fest.

now i’m back at work. i’m not happy at work, and in general i’ve been feeling very down about things lately (my medication notwithstanding… i’m sure it helps me, but it’s not a magic cure-all in itself). that thing that i was written up about in my last post back in march, it ended up not being as severe as it could have been – i protested the punishment i was given and after reviewing the circumstances further it was decided it wasn’t really my fault. still, in the past few weeks i made some mistakes at work before i left for this two-week long roadtrip that were pretty bad, and i almost expected to not have a job when i got back. i talked with my boss the other day about my work concerns, but i don’t think it’s going to help me much.

tl;dr version: though my circumstances in general are awesome, i haven’t been feeling awesome lately. i think that finding a new job would help, as my workplace morale is very low, but other than applying for jobs i don’t know what else to do (especially since i’m either rejected outright or never hear back from jobs i apply to, and it’s difficult for me to find jobs that interest me). it sucks that everything around here seems to require a security clearance (which i don’t have), and when you find a rare job that will sponsor someone to get one, it takes several months to a year or more to go through that process.

i feel like lately i’m failing at everything i try to do. i keep making mistakes at work. i go out for a run, and since i wasn’t able to exercise regularly on vacation, my few runs since i’ve returned have felt incredibly difficult. i’m not motivated to do much of anything, really.

i’m trying not to withdraw from people and events, but i’m just mentally and emotionally exhausted and stressed and that just seems like the path of least resistance. i just want to stay home, but even when i just stay home, i’m finding it incredibly difficult to get anything done.

i turn 30 in less than a week.

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#5352 – the meds are working

so, let’s see – i last wrote just over a week ago, on march 16. since then:

– i’ve run my 10k race

– i played board games with bruno_boy and our friend jae at this monthly board-game meetup event we attend

– i met up with whammywah and his girlfriend (along with much of our pub trivia team) for a st. patrick’s day party at his girlfriend’s place

– my grandmother passed away suddenly

– i came one step closer to being fired from work

– i met up with my doctor for a follow-up appointment to see how i’m doing

– i met up with some of my dc drinkup friends and discovered a live-band rock and roll karaoke group in dc

when i did my 10k race i liked about half of it. i should have guessed, what with it being in prince william forest park, that it would involve trail running. well, about half of it was on trails, and since this was the first time that i’ve ever really run on trails for any length of time, i didn’t care much for trail running since i had to keep an eye out for loose rocks and slippery leaves and mud puddles and so on. the other half of the race was on paved roads throughout the park and that wasn’t so bad. the other part that i could have done without was running across a suspension bridge – it was only about 40 feet long or so, but running on that with one or two other people made that a bit more springy than i would have liked. i ended up with a time of 57:33, which was only 1 minute 9 seconds slower than my first (and personal-record) 10K race. but, for running cautiously on the trails, that’s still a great time. i still need to use my golden ticket i received so i can register for the marine corps marathon in october.

the st. patrick’s day party was great. beth, whammywah‘s girlfriend, had cooked up corned beef and potatoes and we all relaxed and hung out and made fun of the irish pub down the street that was so full that they had the fire marshal stationed outside all day long to keep an eye on their occupancy, and were charging a $10 cover for people to party in the back parking lot among the dumpsters and port-a-potties. ours was so much better, hahaha.

i had already planned to visit mom and dad and anne on sunday since anne’s home from school on break this week, so when bruno_boy called me to see if i was interested in going to hang out with him and zenmetsu that afternoon i declined. i can’t remember if it was just before or after his call, but about the same time i got a text from anne and a later text from mom about how grandmother was going in for surgery that day because she lost all circulation to her legs, so that made it even more important for me to go visit mom and dad and anne that day.

i’m not sure how the sequence of events went, but from what i can understand she had some sort of outpatient surgery scheduled and so had to go off her blood thinners. going off blood thinners meant that she had a few blood clots develop, and the blood clots cut off circulation to her legs. i’m not sure if it was before she was admitted to the hospital, but at some point she also had a stroke and a heart attack. so, the surgery that anne and mom texted about was to clear up the blood clots to the legs, but they might need to amputate the legs depending how well the surgery went.

i posted about it to twitter and facebook, and one of my dad’s cousins saw it and asked me for more details. dad spent pretty much all day in the hospital on sunday, but he called the house to say that the surgery went better than expected and that they were now getting a pulse in her feet, and that he heard from his cousin and said that i should probably take down my posts to avoid panicking the west-coast relatives at that time. so, from that point on, i became very cryptic about my tweets.

on monday morning i was just about to head out the door to work when dad called me to say that grandmother’s condition deteriorated overnight. i went to work since my office is only about 10 miles from the hospital, told my boss what was going on and took the day off, and headed over to the hospital. i got there at about 8:45 and spent some time in the visitor’s room for the ICU talking with mom and anne and dad and my two aunts and their husbands. apparently even though they were able to detect a pulse in her feet after the surgery, the loss of circulation might have caused significant organ damage and they were worried about her kidneys and liver since toxins were building up within her body, and then they lost the circulation in her feet later. she also had a do not resuscitate order as well.

at one point dad and his sisters went into the ICU so it was just me and mom and anne and my uncles talking, but then a little after 9:45 dad came running in and said she passed away, so mom and anne and i jumped up to give him a hug while my uncles beat a hasty exit to find my aunts. after a few minutes we went in to the ICU as well to see everyone. apparently the doctor had told grandaddy and dad and my aunts how they might have been able to buy hours or days, but not weeks, and shortly after that she stopped breathing and then shortly after that her heart stopped. when we arrived in the ICU, someone said how grandmother had always prayed to st. joseph for a happy death, and that day was the feast day of st. joseph.

mom and my aunts and uncles set about calling different relatives to let them know. i wasn’t sure if it had really sunk in with grandaddy at one point because when i looked over at him he was just reading the front of the wall street times as if nothing had happened. once the relatives were informed, and since grandaddy still hadn’t had anything to eat for breakfast, my aunts and uncles decided to take him down to the cafeteria, but that was closed from 10 – 11:30. we all went out in search of brunch and ended up up at a nearby bagel bakery, and then afterwards i drove mom and anne home while dad went with my aunts and uncles and grandaddy back to grandaddy’s apartment and later to the funeral home to make plans.

at work we get 3 days of bereavement leave, and while i could have probably gone back to work since i was surprised at how well i was taking it (the way i figured, even though it was sudden and a surprise, if you’ve got a do not resuscitate order and your organs start failing and you end up dying at 88 years old on the feast day of st. joseph when you’ve prayed to him all your life, your number was probably up and that’s the way you would have wanted to go), i stayed around the house just in case mom or dad needed me for anything. feisty_fitz was on leave from her boat until friday, so when she first heard about grandmother being in the hospital she scheduled a flight home and arrived monday night. dad said he was alright as long as he didn’t think too much about it, and mom liked having us all there at that time.

the viewing was on wednesday, the funeral was on thursday. grandmother’s grave site is only about a few hundred yards away from grandma and pap-pap’s in the same cemetery.

grandaddy is going to turn 90 years old in july, and plans were already underway for a combination birthday party for him and grandmother. half of the invitations were already sent. grandmother made grandaddy promise that no matter what happens, don’t cancel the birthday party. and, for the west-coast relatives, if they can only make it to one event (funeral, or birthday party), they should go to the party. she was very adamant about that when she was in the hospital, apparently.

i went back to work for a half-day on friday morning. i had a doctor’s appointment already scheduled for that afternoon and had the afternoon off. it was uneventful, but when i had my one-on-one meeting with my boss (that should have taken place earlier in the week), she said that this was bad timing because she had to write me up. about a year ago i made a dumb mistake when calculating a payment and that put me on some sort of probation. well, apparently with one of the payments that they had me write a query for, the query leaves out a bunch of lines that should be included, and when they asked me why i said how that was what i was told to do. (with this customer, we pay on any new lines that fall under this agreement, and any existing lines once they are migrated to this new agreement, and my query wasn’t picking up some of these migrated lines because apparently i had one understanding of the migration process that doesn’t jive with others’ understanding.) my boss thinks it’s stupid that she has to write me up for this, but this is coming from her boss, and it’s because this slip-up meant we underpaid a contract and might be considered in default of the contract terms. i told my boss that it’s ridiculous that i’m expected to be the absolute go-to expert for several issues and support other teams, with no additional compensation or anything, when i’m given insufficient resources to do my job, etc., etc. my boss agrees with me and i haven’t signed the writeup paper yet so i can write a summary of what happened and my side of events. so, basically, i can’t post for any other jobs in the company for the next six months (not like there were any jobs being made available anyway), but i don’t know what would happen to me if they find another mistake. if i find a mistake on my own, i don’t know if i bring it to their attention if they’ll hold that against me or what. but, whatever, i was very transparent about this query that i was writing and have comments throughout the query to show exactly what each step does, so anybody else could have seen what it does and said something, and look where being transparent gets me. almost fired, that’s where it gets me.

so, tl;dr: i’m close to being fired because of some ol’ bull-shit. time to step up the job search in dc even more. if i made a flowchart of things i want to improve in my life (save more money, go on dates / find a ladyfriend, replace my busted laptop, etc.), the root would be “need to find a new job” so i can “get more money” and then “do stuff i want to do”.

i also heard back about a position i applied for with the state department; i qualify, but i don’t qualify enough to be passed to the hiring manager. sigh.

when i got home from work there was a fedex delivery slip on my door – apparently someone tried to send me a package that requires my signature. i’m not expecting anything, so my first reaction was “it’s a bomb!” 😛 i looked up the tracking number and it was sent by one of the HR managers from work, but it also says “health and fitness”. so, i’m guessing it’s going to be a prize for the company’s health and fitness program where we track how many miles / minutes we exercise and get swag at different levels. but, when you just got written up at work, seeing a fedex package from HR is the last thing you want to see. 😛

after work i went to my doctor’s office and had my re-evaluation. while i scored a 10 on my original depression test, this time i scored a 1, and even that was kind of a stretch (i’m feeling tired and lethargic, yes, but that’s also because the weather’s heating up and i want to nap). follow-up appointment in 12 weeks and another blood test to see how my vitamin d is doing. my meds are still working. hooray!

i also went to mini of annapolis. i don’t know what caused it, but while i get FM stations in fine, i don’t hear any AM stations at all. scheduled an appointment for next month so they can take a look at it as they’re backlogged until then with recall repairs on water pumps.

went to the dc drinkup some of my friends organize last night. the original plan was to go back to the spinny bar but they charge a $10 cover on fridays, so we went to a restaurant nearby for dinner and drinks. afterwards i went with a few of the folks that were there to a bar over in clarendon to see the harikaraoke band, a live band that plays songs as you sing karaoke, just like metalsome monday does in atlanta. metalsome monday was better – much larger song selection and stage vibe – but these guys weren’t bad, and these guys are much closer than atlanta too, haha. unfortunately 2/3 of our group didn’t get to sing before their show ended, oh well.

i should really start getting ready. at 4 pm i’m going to see the mythbusters live stage show – i asked for a ticket for christmas, and received a pair of tickets so i could bring a date. no date, but i asked jae yesterday if she’d want to go since it seems like something she’d be interested in. apparently two friends of ours are going to be there too – should be fun!

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#5351 – recline to incline

i ran a few errands after work today, and got back home too early to go to bed but too late to do much other than import some albums into itunes and write this here journal entry, so here i am!

i haven’t been to pub trivia since my last update because none of my friends would have been able to make it there and i learned my lesson about going alone. 😛 since that guy sent me that email after midnight, it was actually on february 29 when he propositioned me, and later on the 29th i was reading how february 29 is unofficially “sadie hawkins day”. that explains things, i guess, hahahah. i ended up getting a text later that day from lovethiscaryn since she wanted to get out of the house for dinner and be social, and i hadn’t seen her in a while, so we ended up going to a duclaw over by her house for dinner and she ended up picking up my dinner tab, thus providing more evidence that february 29 is indeed sadie hawkins day.

i took off of work on march 2 so i could get my blood drawn at the lab as part of my physical and so i could pick my car up from the body shop. usually when i get my blood drawn (well, the past three times i could remember getting my blood drawn over the last 12 years or so) i didn’t do so well – i always felt very faint and almost passed out. the first time i can remember getting my blood drawn was when i had mono, so that could have explained why i didn’t do so well. the second time, my office had a lab come in and we could have our blood tested to see our cholesterol levels and so on, and i felt faint and had to put my head between my legs for a bit. the third time we again had a lab come into my office, and this time i kind of expected to feel faint, and they got me an apple to eat while i put my head between my legs to bring my blood sugar up. so, when my doctor said that i needed to get my blood drawn, he said i could have my blood drawn while i was laying down.

so, i went home to mom and dad’s place on march 1 so i could fast and go to the lab early the next morning. when i asked if i could be laying down for the blood test they put me on a chair that reclined all the way back so my head was actually the lowest point, and afterwards i took it slow in getting up and getting ready to go, but this time went so well compared to the other three times that i don’t know what i was getting all worked up about the night before. it was a piece of cake!

i also told mom and dad when i was home on march 1 how i was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and to my surprise they actually didn’t seem that surprised about it at all! they said that it was good that i was getting treated for it, and mom said how a few of my aunts and uncles had expressed their concerns to her privately about how the tone of my posts on facebook and so on had changed over the past several months, suggesting to her “you should invite glenn over for dinner or something! he seems to be having a rough time!” i told some other friends about it after i had been taking my medicine for about a week and they said how they could see a difference. my medication is going well – i’m feeling much much better now. 🙂 the only side effect i regularly experience is that i generally feel a little bloated, but i haven’t really had any dizziness or nausea or anything like when i first started to take it. it’s just something i’ll have to get used to, i guess.

speaking of my medication, i tried to transfer my prescription to my health plan’s mail-order pharmacy, but they need my doctor to send them a written prescription first. when i checked their website, though, it said how there wasn’t a generic version of lexapro available and that it would be about $100-something for a 90-day supply. well, a funny thing happened the other day: the mail-order pharmacy called to go over my benefits and to help me transfer my prescription, and they said that a generic version of lexapro was available. i was confused since i specifically read online how no generic version existed, but when i did a google search i found out that apparently the FDA had just approved a generic version for distribution earlier that day. if nothing else, my mail-order pharmacy is efficient! the price dropped, too: it’s down to something like $60-something for a 90-day supply of the name-brand, or somewhere around $20-30 for a 90-day supply of the generic version.

i hoped to pick my car up on march 2, but due to some slowness with a balance transfer to take advantage of a 0% interest promotion with my credit union not freeing up other funds in a timely manner, i wasn’t able to pick up my car that day. thankfully i was able to pick it up that following monday as i was getting pretty sick of that rental car and wanted my MINI back. it looks like nothing ever happened to my car, and it’s all oil changed and brake padded and air filtered and so on now, too.

i had planned in the beginning of may to go to MINIs on the dragon, a huge gathering of MINI owners in the great smoky mountains, but even though i have the time off of work already i doubt i’ll go – all the cabins are booked up, and it sounds like campgrounds are hard to come by too. i’m probably going to see about driving out to tennessee to visit feisty_fitz and jamie instead.

i also told mom and dad too about how i might be doing MINI takes the states this year, the coast-to-coast road trip organized by MINI USA. i drove on the first one in 2006, couldn’t make the 2008 or 2010 ones, but i’m hoping to do this one for 2012: it starts in new york city on the 4th of july, swings by DC, and goes all the way out to los angeles over the course of that week. when i told mom and dad about the trip, dad was extremely interested, and we were saying how he and i don’t usually get a chance to do things and he wants to go on an adventure, so it looks like he and i are going to make MINI takes the states a father-son road trip out to los angeles and then find our own route back home the following week. of course, this is all going to depend on what the price of gas is like this summer. 😛

if we do decide to do this trip, we won’t be able to start until the 7th since the 4th of july is grandaddy’s 90th birthday, and so my relatives are throwing a big combination birthday party for grandmother and grandaddy on saturday, july 7. so, our first stop will be to try to meet up with the other MINIs in chicago on the 8th, or in des moines on the 9th.

speaking of birthday parties, this past sunday was a surprise birthday party for one of my aunts who was turning 60 – several of my aunts and uncles and a few of my cousins met up at a restaurant in baltimore and had a good brunch with her.

i got the results of my blood test in the mail just a few days ago – everything in my blood is pretty much normal except i had low levels of vitamin D, so i’m now taking vitamin D supplements. i should see about getting a different type of vitamin D because the supplements i have start to dissolve just as they hit the tongue and they taste AWFUL. blech. 😛 i have my followup appointment with my doctor next week to go over my blood test and to see how i’m doing on lexapro, and it looks like i’ll have to get another blood test in another 8-12 weeks to check my vitamin D levels.

i’m scheduled to run a 10K race (the “irish sprint 10K“) this saturday. packet pickup is today, tomorrow, and before the race, but to skip the crowds and to have the widest selection of shirt sizes they recommended showing up early. i went straight to the pickup location from work since they’d be open until 7 and it’s about an hour away from my office. well, with rush-hour traffic around DC, that hour-long drive turned into almost 2 hours and i got to the pickup location with about 15 minutes to spare. i didn’t realize how close to the IKEA location in woodbridge this place was, and since i was complaining earlier today about how my neck has been hurting and wondered if maybe my pillows were to blame, and one of my friends suggested checking out the pillows at IKEA, i went over there for dinner and some shopping. this must be some bizarro-IKEA since it was not only practically empty by IKEA-standards, but all the kids that i saw there were extremely well-behaved. crazy!!

by running the irish sprint 10K i’ll be able to enter the marine corps marathon in october even though it’s already sold out. i’m hoping if i’m paying my own money to register (instead of getting in because my company sponsors the race), it’ll help encourage me to keep up with my training even when i don’t want to. i might also see about joining the DC road runners since i joined the annapolis striders running club just before i moved to DC, and it couldn’t hurt to meet other runners in the area.

i’ve been looking at trying yoga, too. i got a beginner’s yoga dvd from netflix that got great reviews, but i’m thinking about trying a beginner’s class or two – miming a dvd is nice and all, but i’d like feedback as to whether i’m getting positions correct or not. i was looking yesterday at a local yoga studio (i found out they had a workshop specifically about yoga for runners, but that had already passed), and i thought this part i emphasized in their policy for fees related to their unlimited-class pass was pretty amusing:

Cancel anytime with one month’s written notice. We do ask for at least a 2 month commitment, and it requires $100 initiation fee if you’re not a student, nonprofit worker, vegetarian, or someone who can demonstrate financial need and fill out our Initiation Fee Waiver Form.

apparently if you claim the vegetarian exemption you have to provide a “statement of ethics and one reference and your word”, hahaha. how stereotypical yoga!

work’s been going well. my boss’ boss (my manager) pretty much dropped something in my lap, though. we have this process that’s extremely manual, takes forever to do, and because of contractual requirements we need a tracking system in place, so my manager gave me the task of developing this new system. i was annoyed about it for the first week or two since jobs like this are usually given to people in higher positions (who also make more money than i do :P), but now i’m looking at it as more of a challenge than anything else, and it’s better than sitting around doing more of the same stuff every day. i think my manager also knows that project management is something i’m interested in. it also helps that one of my resources wants this to be a real feather in my cap, so even though i’m going to be getting some help if/when i get stuck since i’m not as familiar with some of these development systems, it’s still going to be practically all my doing. even when i was in school i never led any of our team projects, so it feels a little weird and pretty awesome to have created a work schedule for this project and put “project manager” next to my name. 🙂

my ipod classic bit the dust several months or perhaps a year ago. it could play what was already on it, but it refused to sync any new songs. i tried replacing the hard drive in it with the SSD from my broken macbook air, but all that did was leave me with both a broken macbook air and a broken ipod classic. well, even though i can’t listen to music at work anymore, i went ahead and bought myself a new ipod classic this week. i missed having all my music in one place and got tired of trying to keep a fresh collection of songs synced to my iphone. plus, i figure with these road trips i’ll probably be doing this year (boston in april to visit my cousin and his wife and gaiadea and to visit the MIT flea market, tennessee in may, los angeles in july), i’ll want to have a big collection of music to listen to in the car again.

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#5350 – aaaaaaaaaa wtf

well, that’s a first! O_O the moral of the story, don’t get all chummy and give your email address to guys who you create a pub trivia team with who are business men on a business trip who says their wife doesn’t know that they’re gay.

—

From: Glenn Fitzpatrick

Date: February 28, 2012 11:45:37 PM EST

To: Dave Maddux

Lololol nobody [from our usual group] was at pub trivia tonight so I sat at the bar and these two guys from Philadelphia were like ” you can sit here if you join our team” and so I got to drink all night on their tab, I’m pretty drunken right now bahahahahaha I think one of them was trying to pick me up though wtf since he was saying how his wife doesnzmt know he’s gay wtf wtf time for a quick exit from the Stetson after 3 or 4 beers on their tab bahahahah

Sent from my iPhone

—

later…

From: “xxxxxxxx@comcast.net”

Date: February 29, 2012 12:13:32 AM EST

To: glenn@glennfitzpatrick.com

Subject: Hey sweetheart

Not sure if I was crossing signals or if you weren’t interested, but I’d love to see you again tomorrow… Call if you want….610xxxxxx… Craig 😉

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

—

i’m flattered and all but AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WTF

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#5349 – day 2 quickie update

slight dizziness this morning (but that could also be because i didn’t as much sleep as i should and was super-drowsy when i woke up and was stumbling around), but that’s about it… no other side effects today. not sure if it’s just a placebo effect – i’ll have to see how i still feel over the next few weeks – but i’m already feeling like i’m finally able to concentrate in a way that i haven’t been able to for a while, which is good. 🙂