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I took myself to see a movie at Regal Cinemas downtown last night, which I had to see there because AMC for some reason isn't playing it. It was called
Your Monster and I didn't really like it at all. So, I wasted just over $18 on that.
The showtime was at 5:45, which meant little point in going home first. I walked downtown from work, and I went into Target on the off chance that I could find color hair spray for my Halloween costume idea. The Halloween offerings in there were truly pathetic, so, so much for that.
With still plenty of time to spare, I thought: maybe there's some Halloween stuff in Ross. So I went in there. The Halloween stuff in there was even worse than Target. But, I remembered I really need a new belt. They had tons of those, although the vast majority of them were not in my size. There were racks and racks of them—they were all more like hanging off long hooks, anywhere from 10 to 20 per hook—and I could count on one hand the number of them sized between 30 and 32". I need my belt to be black and not too thick, so my aims were kind of high maintenance here. I finally found a Calvin Clein belt that worked, and that also cost me about $18. This was on the higher end of the Ross prices on most of the belts, a lot of which were $9.99. This was the one I bought, though, and I'm very happy with it so far.
I looked up Calvin Clein belts online to compare prices. Most were on sale at other places too, I'd say with an average markdown price of $24. Regular prices listed tended to be anywhere between $45 and $54. So in context, I'd say I got a pretty good deal.
They really have a well-oiled operation at that Ross now, in terms of security. I'm glad they've done that instead of closing the store. When you walk right into the door, there's a roped off little spot where a lady gave me a spiel about having a "safe and comfortable experience" before she removed the strap blocking my way in. The same lady checked my receipt after I paid for the belt and was leaving.
Honestly my time at Ross was a lot more fun than it was at Regal.
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I just had my biweekly Zoom lunch with Karen. We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes first, and then she dropped this on me: she went into the ER two Mondays ago (October 14), due to far mor pronounced shortness of breath she'd already been experiencing all weekend. She was then in the hospital until last Saturday. That's five nights! Turns out, she had what she called a "heart episode."
What?
Not a heart attack, mind you. She knew the name for it but I've already forgotten it. But there's a valve that is connected by strings of some sort in the heart, and the strings broke off. That's what she needs to have fixed. She's on diuretic medication; she's on strict new dietary restrictions at least until a procedure can be decided on; she's termporarily down to working limited hours; she's waiting on a recommended second opinion from a doctor at the Mayo Clinic regarding the type of procedure considering her size as a little person.
She's doing well, it seems, and she was pretty calm and collected when recounting all this. It sounded kind of terrifying to me. She did say at one point, "Dave and Anita are
so worried." I mean, of course they are. She also did say, "You've caught me at a time when I'm feeling a little anxious." I should say so! But, she characterized the anxiousness as being more about being in limbo regarding decisions than about the health issue itself. She finds comfort in having a plan in place, and that's not yet firmed up. When we next speak, she may have more of a plan in place, but in all likelihood she won't have had a procedure done yet.
It seems like every time we talk, when we get on the Zoom call she looks great and everything seems like normal. And then she tells me about all this wild shit that happened since we last talked.
Anyway. That took up most of the hour. And that was right after the half-hour weekly 1:1 meeting (itself over Teams) with Gabby. And that was after an impromptu, rather long chat I had with Amanda here at work, where we talked a lot about the whole story of how she wound up moving to Seattle from the Bay Area twenty years ago. It was actually all pretty interesting. But, I do still have work to get done today so I'm goin to get on that now!
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[posted 1:18 pm]
