In Other News...

I guess I should do a quick update on things that happened during the last two years to bring anyone interested up to date.

When we last left Grampy, his mother had just died and his son had been fired. Grampy was unemployed but recovering from a ruptured appendix and unable to receive unemployment benefits, and his wife was in the last stages of preparing for bariatric surgery....

1. Mom is still dead...obviously. I've pretty much adjusted to the trauma of missing her funeral, although it still bothers me from time to time.

2. My oldest son did find a job as a telephone tech support person for a major telecommunications company. The pay is better than his previous job but it's a long drive and they're pretty unforgiving when it comes to punctuality. His wife found work for the same employer but their work shifts are different, so it's one of those "ships that pass in the night" sort of situations at the moment.

3. I've recovered from the appendix surgery. It left a VERY large and unattractive scar, but otherwise I'm good with that...not counting my current crisis.

4. I exhausted all of my unemployment benefits but was able to start drawing early Social Security benefits, so it sort of balanced out. The money is still tight, but we're not starving.

5. The wife had her bariatric surgery. She's lost some weight and her diabetes has stabilized, which was what she had hoped for. She hasn't lost as much weight as she had expected and still needs insulin, so it wasn't a complete success. Another down side is that her ability to tolerate different foods is about nil. Two or three bites of most foods and she's done. More than that makes her want to throw up. Unfortunately she can tolerate things like cookies, ice cream and potato chips...which accounts for her not loosing as much weight as expected.

6. I signed up for bariatric surgery after the wife completed hers. The insurance company didn't balk at any of the doctor visits, tests, etc. until the last stage. I even had my gall bladder removed because they saw some "sludge" in it. I got all of my ducks in a row for nearly six months and the surgeon contacted my health insurance provider for approval on the surgery. Surprise! My insurance policy specifically denies all forms of weight loss surgery. What??? Yup, health insurance Nazi says "No weight loss for you!"

7. My daughter finally graduated college and got a good job working for the school in an area similar to what she was doing in the student work program. She's not 100% happy with the job, but tolerates it and is making reasonably good money.

8. I don't hear much from my youngest son, but he seems to be content and is working pretty much full time as is his wife.

9. I now have two grandchildren.

So that's pretty much all I can think of at the moment...back to the crisis at hand in my next post.

Spinning Wheels

Waiting for things to happen is the worst. It seems that everything about my latest crisis moves at a snail's pace.

I had an appointment with my cardiologist yesterday to talk about getting a pacemaker. The appointment was made before the CT scan results (cancer) were known. When I mentioned it, his jaw dropped and he said "Oh my God!"  Not the reaction you expect from someone who sees that kind of thing on a daily basis. It wasn't exactly comforting, although I do appreciate his apparent empathy. He usually has sort of a cold fish, clinical demeanor, so the exclamation was really surprising.

So, the pacemaker is off the table for at least six months. Apparently it would make any kind of radiation therapy more complex. Also he remarked that my heart rate seems to be doing better since they adjusted my medications. Yeah, sure, that's what he told me the last time he screwed around with them. I'm not that confident.

While I was there, I visited the CT lab where the test was done to try to resolve some discrepancies in the test results. There are two sections in the report. One mentions a mass on the LEFT kidney. The other section talks about the same mass, but says it is on the RIGHT kidney. So either the guy interpreting the scan doesn't know right from left, he's made an error, or both kidneys are endangered. Of course it was Good Friday and he was off work that day. They left a message for him to check his work. I'm not encouraged. If they're going to cut me open and take one of my kidneys out, I want them to be sure they're getting the correct one!

I still haven't mentioned my condition to my children yet. I sort of wanted to tell them all at the same time so I don't have to rehash all the details three different times, and since Easter is this weekend I had hoped they would all come home for the holiday...but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. One is running late and won't be here until late Saturday. Another has some sort of event he has to attend Saturday night and is working Sunday. The third hasn't responded to my phone call and is apparently not coming at all.

My appointment with the urologist is Monday. I'm guessing that's when I'll get the official word on exactly how serious this thing is. I'm bracing for really bad news in the hopes that it won't be as bad as I'm thinking it is. The facts I'm working with are:

1. The main mass is 8.5 centimeters in diameter. That's bigger than a large orange.
2. The other mass is 4 centimeters. A ping pong ball. Nothing to sneeze about.
3. I don't think benign tumors are metastatic.
4. I've been having symptoms for 5 years or longer and attributed them to muscular aches and pains.

So based on that evidence, I'm guessing it's pretty advanced and possibly a waste of time to operate. I'm hoping that's not the case, but it's what I'm getting ready to hear.

A New Crisis

Perhaps I'll start with a bit of ancient history. Back in the 1980's (that's ancient to some of you, right?) I used to work as a quality control technician for an asphalt paving company. My job was to assure that the asphalt we made met specification by testing samples of our product three or four times a day. I would take a large sample of the asphalt and break it down into it's component parts and analyze it's composition. To do this, you place the mix in a centrifuge, pour in some solvent, and spin out the asphalt cement (tar) until it's nothing but rocks. Then you cook the solvent saturated rocks until they're dry and run them through a series of graduated screens. Weighing the rocks on each screen and comparing the end result to the original weight of your sample will tell you whether or not it meets state and/or federal specifications.

I did  this for probably three or four years. The solvent was something called "Trichlorethelene." We called it "trichlor." It's a clear liquid that has a very strong chemical odor and evaporates about like rubbing alcohol. That's about all we knew about it for a long time. Then suddenly we were told to stop using trichlor and switch to a natural product made from orange peels called "Orange Sol." It seems that they discovered that the solvent we had been using like water...breathing in the vapor...washing our tools in...even using to clean our hands...causes renal cancer. Cancer of the kidney.

Flash forward thirty years. I've just discovered I may have renal cancer.  Coincidence? I'm thinking no. I'm pretty sure I have it, but I say "may have" because, as of this moment, I still haven't talked to a doctor about the test results that I unceremoniously received in an email. From the reading I've done on renal cancer in the last few days, I'm suspecting I'm at stage 3 or 4.

So that's why I've resurrected this blog. To tell my story, to rant, to blow off steam. To anyone who happens to stumble across it.

Mad As A Hornet

It's been slightly less than two years since I last posted. I haven't even looked at this blog in well over a year and upon my return I see that there are several broken images and who knows what other problems. Even my header image has disappeared. I'll see if I can get at least that fixed this evening. As for the missing images in previous posts, I don't think that's going to get fixed.

[EDIT: Ok, the old broken images are due to my deleting what I thought was an unused directory on my image server a couple of months ago. Sorry folks, the missing images are history and not coming back. Sigh.]

As in previous posts, my return has been precipitated by a crisis. You can tell from those older posts that this is a rant blog. I use it to blow off steam and just work out my frustrations. I've got a big one this time and I'm mad as a hornet. I feel violated beyond measure. I want to scream at the world, "UNFAIR!"

More in my next post, but to sum it up, I've just discovered...not gently...that I probably have renal cancer. I'm not mad about the cancer though, I'm mad about how I seem to have been placed on the back burner by all of the doctors and other medical professionals that I've been seeing for the past month and a half.

See the next post for more details...

Singing The Blues.

[Please note that there is an almost 2 year span between this post and the one above it.]
 
Gloom, despair and agony on me! 

Deep dark depression, excessive misery! 

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.

Gloom, despair and agony on me!

It started out at the end of July. My mother's health has been slowly declining for four or five years. We all were expecting it, so it was no big surprise when she passed away. Thirty-six hours later I was in the hospital with a ruptured appendix. I missed my Mother's funeral. I'm too fat for laparoscopic surgery, so they had to split me open like a watermelon. I'm diabetic so we're looking at the wound to be fully healed by maybe Christmas. Since I can't work due to the surgery, I now don't qualify for the meager unemployment benefits I was receiving. We're down to our mutual retirement benefits, half of which are immediately sucked up by medical insurance.  The most recent blow was today, my son was fired by the same folks that fired me six months ago. They were accusing him of theft, so there's a possibility that might screw up any unemployment benefits he had coming.

Now I realize that things could be worse, but the last four weeks have been a steady stream of extremely bad karma. I'm ready for some good news...right now would be nice.

On the brighter side of life, my wife's heart cath went well last month. The doctor didn't find any major blockages. She has a psych exam scheduled for tomorrow. As we understand it, that's the last thing needed before they can proceed with plans for the bariatric surgery.

Stressed Out

The wife had a stress test about three weeks ago and hadn't heard from the doctor on the results yet, so she gave his office a call. He was on vacation and nobody in the office could read his writing on her chart. Finally she got a call back a couple of days ago. They think it says something about a heart cath, so they've scheduled her to see the doctor on Wednesday. Hopefully it won't be serious. She also has an appointment in Columbus on Tuesday (tomorrow) for the second followup on her vitrectomy. Hoping that the doctor will say it's okay to proceed with the cataract surgery.

The "new" car is doing great. I ran a check on the gas mileage and it looks like it's getting about seven or eight miles per gallon more than the truck did. Certainly a big savings. Now that I'm out of work, I'm driving less also, so it all amounts to a lot of money.

Speaking of vehicles, my oldest son's van broke down yesterday. Looks like Walmart may have messed up when they changed his oil and he ran it dry. He put more oil in it and nursed it home this evening, hoping it won't be serious. He's talking about trading it in.

My fan fiction is doing somewhat better, I've written seven chapters and have gained a small readership. I'm sort of suffering writer's block at the moment, not sure where to take the tale next and trying not to write myself into a corner. My wife finished her first tale and has started on a second, but is also stymied for where to go next after publishing only one chapter.

Rollin, rollin, rollin...

Well, it took two weeks, but we finally got the truck back from the shop. We're $500 poorer, but it doesn't squeek anymore.  We also traded in the Oldsmobile for a slightly newer Chevy Impala with only 78,000 miles on it. Drives like a dream compared to the truck.  We'll probably be using it as our main transportation.  The wife wants to call it "The Silver Pearl," but I'm more partial to "Vlad The Impala."

Had some problems with our bank account, went to pay the garage with a debit card and it was refused.  Had to use a different account.  We had paid for the new car on the same account and I assumed that the big check had flagged the account. Tried to buy some gas the next day, same thing, card refused.  Tried using an ATM, transaction cannot be processed.  Called the bank's customer service...computer required me to enter the card number and then hung up on me, saying the account was inactive and to contact my local branch.  Great...I was out of town. Had to wait until the next afternoon and make a special trip to the bank to get things straightened out.  It seems that I made an online purchase from Oklahoma a few days ago and the bank thought that looked suspicious, so they closed down my account. Everything seems to be back online now.

The wife has been writing some "fan fiction" over the last month or so and I've been doing her proofreading plus offering suggestions on livening up her dialogue a little bit.  She's been getting quite a few glowing reviews.  At her urging, I decided to try my own hand at some fan fiction and posted chapter one of a murder mystery (serious stuff, no fluff) this afternoon.  I was excited when I got an e-mail within about fifteen minutes of posting...until I realized it was from a sexual pervert. She's rolling on the floor laughing at me.  Sigh....

Hitchin' A Ride ♫

Well, haven't heard back from the garage yet, so I don't know how much the ball joint repair is going to set me back.  Doing without a vehicle is very frustrating. We have another vehicle, but it overheats.  It's okay for short trips, but you have to stop and let it cool down if you have to drive more than 10 miles or so...and carry several jugs of water or antifreeze with you to replenish the coolant. I had it looked at a couple of years ago and was told it had a leaky head gasket. Don't really think that's the problem. I've had it worked on several times, by the neighbor, but it still overheats. I tried starting it yesterday afternoon; the battery is dead. And it's parked a lonnnnnng way from an electrical outlet to plug it into a charger. I may tackle that dilemma this afternoon; I think I might have enough extension cords to plug together that might reach it. In the meantime I've been borrowing vehicles from friends and relatives or asking them to drive me various places.

Big Bang Theory

Well, nearly a month has passed us by since my last post. I guess it's time for an update on how things are going.  I'm still unemployed, only one response to my resumes so far...they weren't hiring.  If nothing turns up by November, I'm probably going to apply for early Social Security benefits and say goodbye to the rat race. After working my arse off for 46 years, I deserve a little retirement. 

The website has been on hold for a couple of weeks, the wife has discovered Fan Fiction and is in the process of spinning a tale about Sherlock Holmes (ala Benedict Cumberbatch). She's finished 5 chapters (about 2 chapters a week) and has gotten several very good reviews from her readers.  I've been proofreading for her and suggesting changes to her text to liven things up a bit. Things like adding a few descriptive adjectives, pointing out continuity problems, etc.. I'm impressed with her story, she's really a good writer. I guess 30 years of teaching reading to third graders might have helped somehow.

As I mentioned earlier, the wife had a major blowout of a blood vessel in her left eye just a couple of days before she was scheduled to have cataract surgery.  It didn't get any better after a couple of weeks so she had to have a vitrectomy done (sucking the vitreous out of her eye along with the blood and debris, replacing it with saline solution).  The cataract surgery is now on hold until that clears up.  Might be two or three months before it's back on the table.

As for her bariatric surgery, there has been some good news in that corner. Her insurance company has changed it's waiting time policy from six months to three months.  She's already been in the program three months now, so the doctor's office is preparing the paperwork to request authorization. It'll take a few weeks to get that all together, then a few more weeks for the insurance company to go over it all before approving. Hopefully sometime in July or thereabouts she'll be getting that done.

I got my foot tangled in the seat belt of my pickup truck about two weeks ago and fell over on my back onto a concrete parking lot.  Messed my back up quite a bit, making it hard to walk without extreme pain.  Have visited the chiropractor several times and am starting to feel better.

I barely avoided a catastrophe today. I had both front wheel assemblies on the pickup replaced by a "big brand" service center in Columbus last summer.  Ever since that, the front end has had a rubbing/squeeking/creaking sound in it. Hard to describe, best I can come up with would be like a large rusty hinge. I had it looked at a couple of times, but nobody could see anything wrong.  I noticed today that the sound was getting louder and thought to myself, "I should have that looked at."  I drove to the supermarket and picked up a few groceries and as I started to back out of the parking space, there was a loud BANG! and the driver's side front end shook a little bit. I braked immediately and got out to look at the front wheel. Didn't see anything, so I thought "the service station is less than a mile away, I need to take it down there now and get it looked at ASAP!"  I jumped back in and started to back out again, moved just a little bit and there was even louder BANG! This time the whole front driver's side shook and dropped several inches.  I got out and this time there was something obviously wrong.  The tire was tilted out at about a 30 degree angle and something attached to the frame was sitting on the ground.  As I have since been told, a ball joint failed. While it's a disaster and is certainly going to mess with my already tight budget to get this thing fixed, thank the Lord I wasn't tooling down the road at 55 MPH when the thing failed!

My youngest son's adoption plans are now on hold due to other financial obligations, mainly medical bills. About a year's worth of work has gone into the adoption process, he assures me that it's just on "hold" for a year or so and they won't loose any of the money they've already poured into it.

Why do I even try?

I've now been unemployed for a little over two months. Resumes and cover letters have been flowing out of my printer and sent off like little pigeons. Unfortunately they don't seem to be homing pigeons, because nothing has been coming back so far.

I had to attend a mandatory meeting about looking for work and the opportunities that are out there. It was pretty depressing to hear that, although the average unemployment rate in Ohio is 7%, for our county it's 11%.  Didn't sound very good to me. One of the presenters was from the local vocational school, talking about adult training classes that were available.  Coincidentally, I used to teach classes there myself.  Anyway, he passed out a brochure that listed the various things available. A major drawback to any of the classes is the school location...on the other side of the county. It would be a 70 mile drive to attend classes which means spending $70 to $100 a week in gas. Not very likely.

So, I noticed that one of their classes was offered online and it sounded like something I could handle. Hot dog! I asked the presenter about it, and he said "Yeah, the whole course is offered online," so I checked the box on the form we had to turn in at the end of the session that I was interested in training classes.

The following Monday I called the school to inquire about when classes would be offered.  Surprise #1, not until September. Five months from now. Bummer. Okay, how about the online component of the class? Surprise #2, we don't offer that anymore...the brochure is out of date.

Come on, people. If you're giving out information on what's available, at least you could make sure it's current!  I mean, the brochures were obviously printed with a color laser printer hooked to your computer...is it too much trouble to go in and edit your document?

In other news, my wife's cataract surgery has been put on hold due to an unexpected rupture of a blood vessel in the eye. A trip to her retina specialist was unproductive last week, too much blood occluding the retina. He couldn't see anything, much less do any laser work on it.  We're going back in a couple of weeks for him to take another look, hopefully the blood will have settled and he can work on the eye then. If not, she may be in for some more serious surgery to do the repair.

Her gastric bypass is still on track, no setbacks on that front. She's been very serious on her diet and has lost at least 7 pounds so far. I'm very proud of how well she's doing.

Tech Guru In Training

I've been helping my wife set up a new website she's wanting to run. If you know her, you know she's a somewhat technology impaired, but enthusiastic nonetheless. She wants to learn but gets frustrated very easily when things don't work the way she thinks they should. She also gets VERY impatient if I can't fix the problem like snapping my fingers. Hopefully I can get things up and running for her in a few weeks, we're shooting for May 1, 2012 to put it online.

No major changes for the two of us otherwise.  As for the family, my youngest son and his wife just moved from a medium sized house into a 2nd floor apartment for two reasons. First, it puts both of them several miles closer to work. Second, they are in the process of adopting a child and felt that the new apartment would help them in regards to some of the qualification requirements. The old house had some problems in the basement that would have been really expensive to get up to the standards of the adoption agency.  They've also started an adoption blog, so we can keep up to date on how things are progressing.

I'm Still Here

No posts for a couple of weeks, been kind of busy. Unfortunately that doesn't mean I have a job yet.

I gave up waiting on the AARP insurance papers and called them on the phone and gave them my vitals...sorry Charlie, AARP only takes the healthiest people. After some more searching, I determined that nobody except my school retirement folks would even offer me health insurance.  So I had to go with the high-priced plan.  All of my retirement income plus somewhere around $600 of my wife's will be going to pay for it.  Still haven't gotten the first billing...sort of nervous about that.

My plan went into effect April 1st and I renewed all of my prescriptions for about $100 co-pay.  I sat down with the bills and added up the actual cost before the insurance and the price would have been about $150 less than what my premiums amount to...so I guess I'm sort of breaking even.  Why do I still feel it's WAY too much money?

I've started collecting my unemployment benefits from ODJFS, that's a little consolation also.  Just got notified yesterday that I have to attend a mandatory four hour meeting on job hunting next week. Oh joy.  I've also been sending out resumes to potential employers, no responses yet.

My wife is still pursuing the cataract surgery and surgical weight loss and has at least one doctor's appointment scheduled every week for the next month and a half, some weeks two or three appointments.  All of them involve a drive of between 50 and 200 miles, depending on the doctor.  At 14 mpg, my old truck is sucking up a good portion of our income also.

Ah, such is life. Sooner or later I'll get over it.

On The Toilet

Getting old and infirm definitely has it's disadvantages.  One of the major problems is just getting up and down.  Forget about trying to get up off the floor after you're down, let alone getting down there in the first place without falling.

My inability to get up and down forced me to call on someone else for help the other day.  Our toilet tank had been leaking on and off for at least a month.  I understand the mechanics of how the toilet flush thing works, I just can't get down on the floor and root around under the toilet to fix it. After multiple urgings from my wife, I finally contacted a fellow from church who knows a bunch of folks who can do odd jobs on the spur of the moment. One of the church elders dropped by the same day and installed a new flapper valve which seemed to fix the problem...until about 4 a.m. the next morning, when it started leaking continuously.  I was able to get the water shut off after about fifteen minutes of crawling around on the floor. Wow, that hurts the knees getting back up! So now I'm getting ready to go down to the hardware store and buy a complete new flush assembly mechanism. Hopefully our elder can stop by again and install it for us.

My youngest son and his wife have been visiting with us for a few days, he got a phone call yesterday evening to let him know that the store he manages had been broken into by thieves. So they left early this morning to return home and assess the damages.

My daughter is due in later today for a visit between school terms. I enjoy when the kids come home to visit.

Still haven't gotten anything from the AARP insurance people. The website says 7 to 10 days, yesterday was 10 days. I think I'm going to give them a call if I don't see something in today's mail.

I'm Doing Fine

Got my first check from ODJFS last Saturday.  It's a comfort to know that I'll have a steady income while I seek new employment.  The only thing still bothering me is the lack of health insurance.  Still haven't heard from the AARP insurance folks.  The website says to allow 7 to 10 days for the information packet to arrive.  Don't recall how long ago it was I requested it, but I think it's getting close to 10 days.  I need to look back at my earlier posts to see.

One little thing bothers me about the insurance...I know it's silly, but when I requested the info packet, the website said they would send me their "Insurance For Dummies" kit.  I'm a bit insulted by their insinuation that I'm a dummy. I consider myself fairly intelligent and am rather offended by their insensitive comment.

I felt a sore spot on my forehead this afternoon and when I looked in the mirror I discovered a tiny liquid-filled blister. WTF? I finally realized it had been caused by the CPAP mask I wear when I sleep. Guess I need to loosen the strap a little.

One of my sons and his wife are visiting with me for the next couple of days and my daughter is coming in later in the week. I always enjoy it when the kids drop in for a few days. We don't do a whole lot, mostly just sit around and watch TV or play games, but just having them around is a nice feeling.

I ordered a new wedding band online for my wife today, she had to have her old one cut off when she hurt her hand a while back and had to have it cut off when her fingers started swelling.  I also got hold of her original diamond wedding band that she hasn't worn in several years. The diamond fell out of it, so she stopped wearing it. I'm planning to take it to the jeweler's and see if I can get a new stone put in it for her.

Assorted Stuff

Several things have happened yesterday and today so I thought I'd pop in to update the blog.

Just after I finished my last post, an e-mail from ODJFS arrived to let me know that I'm eligible for unemployment benefits!  Not a big check, but after you consider the gas I was burning going back and forth to work at 14 mpg, it's pretty close to what I was making before I got fired, not counting the health benefits.  I think the thing that made me feel the best about it was that they determined I had been discharged "without just cause."  In my mind that sort of justifies my opinion that my former boss was pretty much a douchebag who just wanted to get rid of me.

I still haven't heard from the AARP health insurance folks, gonna give them a call Monday and see if I can get some info on how to get a policy in effect.

My wife is looking at two life changing surgeries in the near future.  First of which is cataract repair.  She has diabetes and has been slowly going blind over the last couple of years.  The surgery will brighten up her world and improve her eyesight, but there's already been damage to her retinas, so she is still probably going to need glasses. I took her to the doctor today and they scheduled the surgeries.
Second, she's entered a surgical weight loss program and is looking at stomach bypass surgery in about six months if all goes well. Hopefully that will stop or at least dramatically improve her diabetic problems.  She's very upbeat about all of this, I'm proud of her.

Forever Waiting

No word from ODJFS on the status of my claim yet, but hopefully it won't be long. I gave them a call and they said my employer had until last Tuesday to reply to their request for information. After that they would review my case and I should hear something by the first part of next week.

I'm not sure my employer's failure to respond promptly is a good thing or not. I'm a little nervous about the whole thing.

I just found out last night that Google AdSense has banned my son from their service for some reason. I'm guessing that he was getting too many clicks per ad versus the number of visitors to his blog. They're pretty anal about that. In his defense, it was a good blog and he had a lot of followers.

My wife and I have stumbled into the middle of a feud between two local factions. One of those "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situations. Perhaps I'll elaborate in a future post, it looks like we're not going to get our foot out of the bear trap any time soon.

Hurry up and wait

Still no word from ODJFS on my unemployment status.  Even so, I need to go online and file a claim for last week. I just hope it's not a waste of time.

A little hope on the horizon, my Google AdSense account is starting to bring in a trickle of loose change. I just received an email from them today to let me know my earnings have topped $10 and I can start receiving checks from them.  That's with just 17 followers and less than one ad click per day. I plan to work on cultivating some additional followers today.

I've also started scheduling the posts on my humor blog, my posts are currently going live every morning at 7:00 a.m. but I'm considering moving it up a couple of hours for people who possibly check my blog before going to work in the morning.

Doing okay for now

I just verified that our income tax refund was direct deposited to our bank account this morning. We have a few outstanding bills that need to be paid and a couple of purchases we would like to make, but hopefully a good portion of it can go towards getting cataract surgery for my wife.

I looked around online for better deals on health insurance and found a couple of policies available through AARP that look promising. Monthly premiums are significantly less than what the School Employees Retirement System is asking. Benefits aren't quite as good, but I don't think I can afford the gold standard at this time. I requested an information packet and will be looking into this deeper.

I weeded out a gob of old paper on my desk yesterday...and a gob more came in the mail.  Mostly bills that need to be paid. Nothing from ODJFS as of right now, hoping to get some sort of determination on my status some time today.

Everyday I'm Shufflin'

I'll admit it. I'm a paper hoarder. I don't throw away stuff like most folks. In particular, I don't throw away junk mail...or any mail for that matter. I intend to throw it away, I just don't seem to be able to get around to doing it. Consequently the paper stacks up on my desk to the point that I can't find anything very quickly and end up shuffling through it all the time looking for things. Eventually I get to the point that everything I'm going through is several months old and I end up sticking it in a box to go through and weed out...but it never gets done. So not only do I have stacks and stacks of stuff on my desk, I have boxes and boxes of stuff that needs to probably be thrown out. I'm hoping to do some paper disposal today. A lot depends on whether I get any more missives from ODJFS or not.

I mentioned in my last post that Google AdSense had finally approved my other website for ads. In the last 5 days I've generated more income than I had in three months using PocketSense. Amazing.  It's not a flood of money, actually less than a dollar so far, but I'm encouraged nonetheless.

We had some snow yesterday, enough to close the schools, but not enough to last until the end of the day. Everything had melted off by late afternoon.  My wife has a policy that states "If schools are closed, I don't work either."  So I took her lead and didn't do anything in regards to my unemployment situation yesterday.  Instead I watched TV most of the day.  I did get around to setting up her computer station so she doesn't have to wait on me to finish working here.

One last thing, I did verify that the wife of my former boss is now doing my old job. Supposedly it's only "temporary" until they can find someone else. Yeah, right...I can certainly believe that story.

Thank You, AdSense!

It doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy. For example...

About eight years ago I started a blog and put some advertisements on it courtesy of Google AdSense.  The blog never made much of a splash and I eventually let it go dormant for a long time. I don't think I ever made any money on it.

Recently my son started a blog with some Google AdSense banners on it and I was amazed at the size of some of the checks he was receiving after only a few months.  So I decided to give it another try.

I changed my e-mail address since I started the old blog and there were some problems with restarting AdSense there...so I totally deleted the old blog and started a new one.  Google still wanted to look at the old blog URL and nothing I did seemed to work.  I've been struggling for 4 months to get AdSense banners to show up on the new blog and had pretty much given up on it.  Suddenly this afternoon AdSense banners started popping up on my site.

I am happy.  Like I said, it doesn't take much.