Archive for February, 2009

I completely understand one mustn’t bitch about services one gets for free. Tough shit.

Over the years that I’ve been going to the VA hospital here in Phoenix things have majorly improved. There’s no longer throngs of smelly homeless vets with their missing body parts. I dunno where they went, whether they were helped or shipped out, but they are gone. Let’s hope they were helped out and are all better off now. Anyway, the smell of the place has improved. Also, the speed of service has greatly improved! Where you used to expect to spend the entire day down there waiting to see a doctor or get x-rays done, now you can be in and out in an hour. And because of that the parking has gotten better too.

But – the pharmacy services suck giant permanently flaccid dick. Seriously.

If you get a new prescription, you wait at least an hour. So unless I need it to keep me alive I have it mailed. You can order refills online to be mailed, so I guess that’s an improvement.

But – when your refills are running out, you have to wait until they’ve shipped the last refill before you can request more refills. And for some-odd reason I have three “in process”, three more that have ONE more available refill, and two I can order and yet I can’t just call and have them ask the doctor to give me another year on them all. They have to keep bugging him, he has to remember to allow, and THEN they’ll send them to me. No fucking wonder it takes them so long. It’s not like I take amphetamines or anything, these are asthma and high blood pressure meds. No big deal.

Originally, you could set your appointments up a year in advance. I’m required to come in for a yearly update with my primary care doctor and another yearly appointment with my Gyno every April. I used to set those appointments up yearly and get a reminder letter and it worked fine. Now you have to remember a year later to set up your own appointment (which doesn‘t coincide with when my medication refills run out dontchaknow) and now I have to remember to make an appointment in May.

My memory sucks. I’m assuming it’s an issue with years of not getting enough oxygen with my asthma or maybe the years of steroid use. I used to have a fantastic memory and I’m not old enough for it to be senility, so I’m blaming health issues. Whatever.

AND THE HOLD MUSIC! This deserves an OH MY GOD. The same crappy jazzish song over and over for. ev. er. We hates it yes we does. I really wish I could record it and share. After being forced to listen you’ll have that shit looping in your head for days.

Okay, bitching done. I feel better now.

I absolutely hate sewing. Yet every so often I get this uncontrollable urge to drag out all my sewing crap and drive myself batshit crazy while fucking up some really nice material.

I have a really nice old sewing machine. A couple of years ago (during my last uncontrollable sewing urge) I had it refurbished. I remember the guy saying it was always better to get this old machine repaired than to buy a new one as the newer models are – like everything else – not built to last.

So I know it’s not the machine. I know it’s me. You know when people say they know just enough about a subject to be dangerous? That’s me. I can load the bobbin, I know the mechanics of the machine, and I can easily figure out patterns and how to get the material into the proper position to get the final product.

I can never figure out how to set the tensions for the material. That’s where the EPIC FAIL happens. I never get the foot tension right, or the thread tension right for the material I’m using at the moment. I don’t even know what this particular material is called to look it up!

I’m converting a long dress I bought years ago and never wore into a shorter dress and then taking the leftover material and making it into a skirt. It’s a handmade dress so there’s no handy tag to tell me what the material is. The skirt part is mostly done, that was just sew in a “hem” and then threading in some elastic. Fine, no problem. But the material kept getting pulled into the hole where the bobbin thread comes out, the seam is missing like every fifth stitch and isn’t tight/even and I’m pretty sure that’s due to the tension settings. Which I played with a billion times and still didn’t get right.

Shit.

All that crappy sewing didn’t matter so much on the skirt, because the seam is all gathered by elastic so you can’t see how bad it is. But now I want to hem the dress and THAT will be obvious if I fuck it up.

I HATE THIS.

I hate not quite understanding the finer points of the project I’m working on. It’s just how I feel about podcast engineering. I can understand the mechanics of how the equipment works but I can’t seem to grasp the finer points of adjusting stuff like gain and mid-range and shit.

Oh well.