Erm yeah OK. It’s so nice they’re giving away tickets to a memorial service where they’re charging admission. I guess the promoters of his concert tour are desperate to recoup costs, and hey, who knows, if this event is successful maybe they’ll hold them all over the world! Ka-ching! Celebration of Life my ass, exploitation of a dead celebrity is more like it. How many of the winners do you think will try to sell their tickets on ebay? How much will they go for? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

I’m tempted to sign up just so that if I win I can burn the tickets in protest. But that would be selfish wouldn’t it?

What is this about the Feds talkin’ about how if we “refuse” to get “affordable” (LOL) healthcare coverage they’re gonna fine us $1000/yr? Well heck, if I could actually get healthcare coverage for $1000/yr I’d buy it, so uhm … for me at least it’s a better deal to pay the fine than to shell out more than that for even a basic healthcare plan. Oh and the “affordable” healthcare plans I’ve looked into all have deductables of at least $2000/yr which means they generally pay NOTHING until you meet the deductable, so total “cost” would be at least $3000/yr which is considerably more expensive than $1000. I truly think politicians are completely and totally clueless as to the state of reality.

Went to my regular doctor today (gotta love having no insurance, one advantage is you don’t have to wait a week or more for an appointment.) He did an EKG and it was normal (well “borderline abnormal” but that’s just cuz I have a mild heart murmur.) So that’s good, one down. I gotta go get my labs tomorrow, I have to fast for 12 hours first otherwise I woulda gone this morning. Gonna get blood panel, cholesterol, thyroid, urine and a “comp. metabolic pan.” whatever that is (sounds like a liver function test maybe.) I didn’t bother getting my hormones tested now cuz he said I needed to get the pap/mammogram thing anyway so I’ll do that when I go to a gyno. So, it looks like at least my heart isn’t too bad, he did put me on a beta-blocker though and is keeping me on the diuretic, and he’s gonna monitor me again in 3 months assuming the labs come back OK. The best news though is the drugs are cheap hehe. That can make a huge difference sometimes. And it doesn’t appear that I’m gonna die in the immediate future. Whew. I do gotta clean up my act though, cut down on salt, exercise more (I have been slacking quite a bit in that department lately) and eating healthier. I just needed a hard slap in the face to get me to do it. I just hope my cholesterol comes back OK, I’ve never had it tested, I don’t eat red meat, but I do eat dairy and a fair amount of processed junk which I think can raise your triglycerides. We’ll see though, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But the best part is I’m not at death’s door hehe. Yay!

I had my first health scare over the weekend, Friday at work I went home early cuz I felt seriously dizzy/weak/nauseous like I was gonna pass out (not that vertigo-type dizzy like I’ve had before either, this was oh crap I’m gonna drop dead at any moment kinda dizzy.) Anyway, of course I didn’t do anything about it right away, and Saturday I felt better after having slept most of the day, but then in the evening I decided I needed to go to the store because I had no food in the house, so I get dressed, and start to feel kinda dizzy, but went anyway. Get to the store, toddle over to the carts, feel dizzier, think gee maybe I should just turn around and go back home, but I had no food, so I said to myself, “I’ll just get a couple frozen dinners and get the heck outta here.” So I head to the cool frozen food aisle, walking REALLY slowly cuz walking fast exhausted me, and stare incoherently at the boxes trying to figure out what the hell they say while I’m holding onto the cart trying not to fall over. Erm yeah this isn’t good. So I grab a couple, head to checkout, drive home, barely make it, and decide to wait until the next day to go to the doctor cuz it’s too late for Urgent Care and ERs are super expensive when you have no health insurance. Anyway, this morning I got my mom to take me to Urgent Care and and the doc said my blood pressure was REALLY high as in damn, you need to be put on meds right away, so he did. And he told me to get the hell into my regular doctor for a full workup and EKG ASAP. The good news is the pills he gave me seem to be working, my pressure is almost normal now and I don’t feel like I’m gonna die. The bad news is I’m gonna have to pay a lotta $$ for a buncha tests, but I’ve been postponing getting a workup for awhile now so I guess it’s time. Hopefully the only problem I have is blood pressure, but I kinda wonder, cuz it came on sorta suddenly … I have been sorta “borderline” high blood pressure for awhile but not this high. We’ll see though, maybe my faulty heart valve finally gave out and I’ll DIE.

and shades of grey. Yeah, it was an interesting day today in the entertainment world, first Farrah Fawcett died, after a long and gruesome battle with cancer, and then later in the day, Michael Jackson did what he does so well, he stole the spotlight with reports he had died of heart failure. Now, I didn’t really know much about Farrah, and maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that Michael died the same day because maybe she can at least rest in peace. But I have seriously mixed feelings about Michael Jackson. When I was a college student, one of my illustration class assignments was to do a celebrity portrait, and being the oddball that I am, I didn’t choose to do a celebrity I like like oh, I dunno, Bernadette Peters, but rather I tried to pick someone that would challenge me in some way and make me think creatively. So I picked Michael Jackson:

I called that drawing Black and White because he was a man of opposing contrasts. I didn’t put everything in that picture, but I did put young/old, black/white, real/fake, fulfilled/hollow … to name a few. I chose to draw him as both an innocent child and as the “Man Behind the Mask.” I think Michael was seriously talented and seriously f***ed up, and I don’t think he was ever happy as an adult, which is sad, and he seemed to live a double life in a lot of ways. And I think he was trying desperately for most of his life to escape his life, and today he did. I just hope he didn’t do it by suicide or something, but he did torment his physical body at least as much as his soul was tormented, and that is the real tragedy, because now his children will have to suffer the pain of his choices, and, despite everything that’s been said about Michael and his relationship to kids, I think that would be the last thing he’d want for his own children, but I hope they are still young enough that they can go on and lead relatively normal lives now, because that certainly could never have been the case while Michael was alive. And whatever I may feel about his choices (I won’t even go there) I hope he is at last at peace, and in an odd way, I kind of hope there really isn’t a God.

Oh, and for those of you who feel the need to go camp out at UCLA hospital, don’t … people need medical care there … they’re already having to divert ambulances to other hospitals … don’t let someone DIE because of your selfish need to be where Michael died, please.

For those of you in southern California, Pavilions (and maybe Vons too) has Mountain Dew 12 packs on sale for $5.99 AND they’re buy two get THREE free! This means FREE 12 PACKS OF MOUNTAIN DEW WORLD OF WARCRAFT GAMER FUEL. So much for my attempts to get off soda for good. ::sigh::

I bought 1 Code Red, 1 Voltage, 1 Horde and 2 Alliance. I have a feeling the Horde and Alliance flavors are the same as the Code Red and the Voltage but who knows. And since I am hopelessly addicted to that Voltage flavor (it’s BLUE dammit!) I got 2 blue Alliance flavors since I think it’s really the same thing, only in WOW packaging. Besides, Night Elves are hotter than Orcs.

well, I thought I could see with my new glasses, but when I got to work yesterday it was obvious something was wrong, cuz I couldn’t see a damn thing on my computer at work, or the notes on the wall that I need to refer to … unless I cocked my head to the side all day long which gave me a sore neck like you wouldn’t believe. Erm yeah, like I need to add chiropractor bills to my monthly budget. I kinda noticed it a bit at home but at home it’s not quite as obvious cuz my computer at home is lower than the one at work and I don’t have to look down at papers then up at the computer all day like I do at work. Anyway, I sucked it up and went back to the optometrist, and they re-measured and re-tested me, and doctor said distance Rx was 200 old Rx and 250 new Rx, so he’s gonna re-do it in between at 225 Rx, and also shift the center over 1 mm, which he said can make a difference for some people with the progressive lenses. I told ‘em not to mess with the left lens cuz it’s perfect but they said for progressives they re-do them both, so I hope they don’t mess ‘em up worse, cuz I really need to be able to READ at work hehe. And if they do mess ‘em up I hope they don’t charge me for ‘em or I’ll be mad cuz I already shelled out $500 for these new glasses and that’s a lotta money for me, I can’t afford to just toss that away.

I get periodic spam from Nintendo about new stuff, and today I noticed they had released a new sequel to Final Fantasy IV, which was Final Fantasy II here in the USA back on the SNES (I think it was re-released eventually here for gameboy or somethin’ but I forget.) ANYWAY it’s one of my mostest favorate Final Fantasy games (FF IX was my most favorite, despite the fact it was 3D.) So here, right around my birthday, comes a nifty prezzie from Nintendo that I can play on my somewhat neglected Wii. Now, if I could only get my hands on a Time Turner so I could find the time to play it.

OOoooh! OOooooh! This game is an episodic title which means ::gasp:: each “chapter” is probably kinda short … which means I might actually have time to play it! ::twitter:: (No, not that Twitter, I am twittering with excitement!) Awesome. I might have to spend the entire summer digging out my old FF games and relive my past haha. IF ONLY I HAD THE TIME.

I finally picked up my super awesome expensive new glasses today and I can not only see really good far away I can read tiny tiny tiny print up close now too! Woot! AND I got those funky lenses that change to sunglasses in the sunlight too, unfortunately it was cloudy and gloomy today so I couldn’t test them out very much, but they did get a bit darker. So now I don’t need to change to my sunglasses to drive and stuff whee! The only bad part is the focus spots are in different parts now cuz the lenses are a bit rounder than my old ones so it’ll take a bit to get used to ‘em but last time I transitioned from normal “single vision” glasses to the progressives in just a few days with no problems so it should be fine.