Calvin Writes On

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Writing prompt: Eavesdropper: Create a poem, short story, or journal entry about a conversation you’ve overheard.

Sometimes I overhear the damndest things on the bus. Some folks just aren't self-conscious at all. I've overheard personal conversations about STDs, people fleeing violent relationship (either side), and two guys sentenced to AA meetings convincing each other to sign their own meeting records and skip the meeting in favor of using some pills one of them had.

The all-time topper, though, wasn't exactly eavesdropping. I was on a westbound #10 bus here in Columbus one afternoon with a passenger who was trying to sell anyone a prescription written to him for pain medicine. He addressed the entire bus seeking a buyer. I don't know if he wanted the money for a different drug or something else, but he must not have been worried about being arrested for that. He left the bus with another man, and I guess he sold his script. The risk of that takes my breath away, but I guess addicts do what they have to do.

(Prompt from https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/)

Monday, October 26, 2020

Writing prompt: The Vessel;

Write about a ship or other vessel that can take you somewhere different from where you are now.

(This prompt and the last one come from https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/.)

Not a ship for me. I could take a small boat down the Scioto River, then something bigger on to the Gulf of Mexico, but there's a hurricane headed that way. The vessel for me would be a minivan or similar land vehicle that could take me anywhere in the Americas in due time when the travel restrictions for the virus go away. In the meantime, I could live in the vehicle if need be, or at least use it for local transportation.

Where to go, though? All over! Roads run from the northern edge of Alaska to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. There are tons of places I've never been to and quite a few I'd like to see again. The vessel could call at many "ports" and not be done seeing everything in one lifetime.</p>

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Daily writing prompt: what's the weather outside your window doing right now?

The rain stopped sometime this morning, but the sky won't clear before tonight or maybe tomorrow. The asphalt parking lot still looks a little wet. We're downwind from Lake Erie and Lake Michigan here, and the clouds rule most of the cold season.

I'm not forever restless and ready to leave any given place like I once was, but if I move along in the future, climate or weather will have everything to do with it. My sinuses never liked Ohio humidity, and my lungs have joined in that chorus. They both want to go to the Southwest until wildfire season comes. Then there's no good place to be except maybe the Dakotas. My knees, meanwhile, have grown creaky and they object to my enduring winters here. Climate change or desert air would help with that, or I could go to Florida for the few months between hurricane season and extreme humidity, except for the bugs there. I know, by this time, that I'm not going to find one place with a great year-round climate except a couple of places I can't afford.

I know people who live on wheels. Needless to say, there are drawbacks to that, too.

The bottom line, though, is simpler than that. I don't get much attachment to places, and there's a family history going back more than a century on both sides. What I get attached to is people. I have grandchildren, "family of origin," and close friends now that I never dreamed of in my younger days. I'll probably move around this part of the city, but I won't be leaving the area "for good" without a damn good reason.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Another couple of years went by

So I got the disability. I moved back to Columbus, but have yet to succeed in following up on the lung issue. I've been trying to work with Primary One Health Care. Their only advantage is taking Medicaid. However, I've reinforced my impression that "reactive" asthma is most of what I have. I've found a correlation to humidity, and other than that I react to any scented product and most cleaners, petroleum products, etc.

The bike is an "e-bike," which means a bike where the rider's assisted by an electric motor and battery. This one's pretty cheap, but it gets me around the city much better than I can do without it. After a year and a half, I'm still trying to get my back pay from the government. I've received two payments, but will eventually get another one. The bike came out of my last one, and the next one might bring me a minivan. I think I need a drier climate for my lungs, but I'd rather stay near the grandkids and my recovery friends. We'll see what happens.

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Still alive/around

EDIT: I have learned that I have to attach this blog to Google in order to post it to Facebook. Google controls (and tracks) too many things to be trusted, so I will find some way to migrate this blog to another platform. Stand by for updates.

I'm still around, but it's past time for an update.

I have gone through the entire Social Security Disability/SSI process and am awaiting formal results. I went all the way through the "final" appeal hearing, and I received a letter from the hearing officer. My lawyer and I believe this letter means I have been determined to be disabled, but we could not make heads or tails of the rest of it. I'm still awaiting clarification.

My medical situation continues confusing. The sleep diagnoses are sleep apnea (relatively mild) and hypersomnia, which just means I sleep too much in the daytime but do not have narcolepsy. I'll get a second opinion on the narcolepsy when I can use big-city medical resources. My other conditions are basically stable. I discovered during our first cold snap this year that the arthritis in my left foot flares badly when the temperature drops.

In the meantime, I have been seeing a pulmonologist (lung doctor), who always sounds confident. It has become obvious that she is guessing what is wrong because she keeps ordering tests that fit different diseases. My guess says the Breathing Association was correct in the beginning. They said asthma with indoor allergies.

I continue using Linux, but I changed to LinuxMint 17.2. I gave up Windows because it's difficult and annoying to install the dual boot (keep both) without training and background in this technology. Having done that, I began running into other problems that I cannot solve without much more knowhow, and LinuxMint's oversold "community" has shown little ability to understand my level of ability or inability. All the Linux who tried to help me work in the computer field, and their skills are too far above mine for them to understand my questions. I don't understand the jargon, and they don't understand questions not using it. I will go back to Windows when I get another laptop. That will be as soon as possible. The two laptops I own are too old to run Windows and pretty old even for "lightweight" Linux varieties.

I bought a tablet in July of 2014. Admittedly, I bought the cheapest one I could find new. I believe the Android version was 4.4 or thereabouts. Even with an accessory keyboard (extra cost and weight), I could only develop indifferent skill with it. The Android apps often either cut programs down too much for me to understand, put functions where I cannot find them, or use some approach I am now aware of. I never figured out security very well, either. Now the tablet has been taken over by ransom-ware and I have no idea what to do with it. Whatever happens to the tablet, my bottom line is knowing how to work in Windows, how to get help, and easily finding freeware for it.

My future plans are unknown. I expect to get some amount of money for the "back" amount of my Social Security and/or SSI, but the amount and payment procedure are determined by whether I get one, the other, or some of each. Medical coverage (Medicare or Medicaid) is even more uncertain.

I miss the resources I had in Columbus (transit, MetroParks, big libraries, choices about medical resources) and I still have close friends there, so I'll probably go back there, but my asthma and other factors will determine whether I stay, move, or do something else.

For those who will ask, I'm still very active in 12-Step recovery.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Linux and personal update

This is a catch-all post. I have another one on my mind but I have waited too long to do this and I have loose ends to organize.

First, the Linux update. As I type this, I have been using Pinguy Linux for a couple of months. I have dual-installed it on two laptops, both of which run Windoze 7 otherwise. I re-installed it on this one because of a booting (startup) issue, and that has worked well. This netbook has no DVD drive, but saving the Pinguy download to an SD card solved that. In addition, it gave me an entire set of software that I can carry around in my pocket if need be.

Most of this works the same way it did in Windows although the wording may differ and program names always do. Setting up different software is easier because I don't have to download or pay for any of it; it's included free and is part of Pinguy. All I have to do is click a "menu" button in the upper left corner of the screen and find the correct category of software. The actual installation is pretty much exactly the same. Most other functions reside there as well. The menus get long but I like the organization.

I spend most of my time in Mozilla Firefox, a popular browser that works with almost everything on the Internet, and I do occasional word processing (Libre Office). All of this is familiar. Now and then I use something else. No problem. The desktop differs from Windows; there are more useful things there. Also, the browser screen does not automatically take up the full screen, but it can be set to do so from that same menu button. If I leave it as only part of the screen, I tend to run into things in Docky, which is basically the task bar containing things like the trash can (recycle in Windows) that people use often spread around different sides of the screen. All in all, the big problem was installing Pinguy in the first place. Once installed, it works more easily than I had expected.

Now for the personal update. I have had an interesting time at the same time that most of my days have been boring. I have had no cash income between selling my junk car before Thanksgiving and receiving my income tax return a few days ago. Therefore, I spent very little time in stores other than grocery buying with my food benefits. I find little that I can do with no car, no money, and no job. I have however caught up on most of my Internet activities. I actually read a bit less than I did before due to that.

The transit here lacks reliability, evening operating hours, and intelligent design. I have been using it anyhow when I could get the $1 per trip fare. I celebrated when I finally got one of my bicycles back. I have been riding it whenever possible. When my tax return came in, I ordered a trailer for the bicycle. Given that I will not have money to buy a car in the near future, I will use the trailer to make the bike do jobs such as big grocery runs and trips to the laundromat.

I continue in the process of trying to get a disability income. I received my notice that my first appeal was denied pretty much as expected. I am waiting a while to continue the process because I have Medicaid now and I am using it to gather much more evidence of my medical condition.

The two largest current events in my illness/disability story are (a) I am now taking an extended-release generic for nitroglycerin (heart medication) as an experiment to see whether it helps my symptoms and (b) I have a sleep study scheduled for the 20th of this month.

The shortness of breath and constant fatigue do seem to improve with the medicine. I may have found a cause for my un-wellness. That is a good news-bad news kind of thing. The bad news is that I might have heart problems. The good news is that those issues might get me my disability.

Most of the people who know me and also the medical people expect the sleep study to find apnea. Given that I snore too much to sleep on my back (I wake myself up) and have had insomnia my entire life, they are probably right.

As I mentioned above, I have another post in mind. You will see that as soon as I have the energy to write it.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Pinguy Linux update

One month on, Linux is again a major malfunction for me. I installed it on my laptop after it had worked well for about ten days or two weeks. There was a glitch about starting it from the "boot menu," and I eventually re-installed Pinguy because of that. When I updated after the re-install, something went wrong with the boot menu, and now I cannot make the computer do anything. Fortunately for me, I have a little simple computer that I can use. When I asked a question about this on a Pinguy forum, I got an answer that assumed I did not know to save changes, which is one of the earliest things I learned about computer work, circa 1989. One of my issues about Linux in general is that most of the Linux users I talk to show condescension, contempt, or both.

I will probably keep the computer that is down and try other things. After all, I have nothing to lose. I keep reading how Pinguy is "user friendly" and usable for anyone, even the inexperienced. I don't think so. Linux in general is over-sold. I have been pursuing this particular will-of-the-wisp for several years. It has cost me a prior computer and forced me to "restore" another to factory settings, losing all of my documents and pictures in the process. Moral of the story: user friendly is an easy term to say, but actual results may vary.