Just a quick note

Yay! My language packs for Rosetta Stone arrived today! I am now set to learn several languages, each of which I will be testing the RS format with. I received the following:

Chinese (Mandarin)

French

Dutch

Danish

German

Greek

Irish

Italian

Latin

Japanese

Russian

Spanish (Latin America)

I'm starting with French.

Pain, Meds, and Other Lifestyle Choices

See, this is what I was talking about back there. Here it is, four full days after my last post, and I'm really only updating out of guilt. Well, guilt and a desire to actually stick to a writing project, even if it is a weblog. And maybe a little bit of narcissism. (Just a bit, though!)

My husband's shoulder started giving him trouble (he has the beginnings of arthritis), and after a nice long battle with the ER doctors who were convinced he was just after morphine (it confused them rather satisfactorily when he refused the nasty drug), we finally got him an appointment with a REAL doctor, in the same clinic as my own primary care doc. This man is amazing, folks. He listened, did all the right tests, even wrote out a note for my husband to take some much needed time off work to recuperate! (With arthritis in his shoulder and arm, working at a computer is damn near impossible for him right now.)

The doctor gave him better medications, including an anti-inflammatory (think ibuprofen, with a kick), and the best pain-killer/muscle-relaxant known to mankind. I won't share names, but this medication comes in a little yellow tablet... a little tablet of sunshine, if you ask me! It takes his pain down to a dull ache, just as if he'd had a rough day working on the car.

We hit up Walgreens to fill the prescriptions, and to pick up some essentials for pain management. A heating pad (electric, great buy and works wonders with its 3 settings), an ice pack complete with a little cloth sleeve to keep from burning the skin, a tube of muscle cream (gets cold, and then slowly warms the pain right out of his joints), and of course, the biggest necessity... Rocky Road ice cream. That last one is mostly for me. ;)

Our days have been spent enjoying each other's company, and commiserating between his shoulder and my kidneys. We laugh about what a fine pair we make, watch old TV shows about men screwing in space, and take naps. This little speedbump in our lives may have prevented us from doing what we'd originally planned for Valentine's Day, which was to go out of town this next weekend, but instead we get a full week to spend, at home, just focusing on not stressing out. With any luck, it will help in some much-needed areas of our lives. This is kind of it on some levels, and I think I'm dreading life going back to normal so much more than he is.

It's a dreary day today, which means that the windows are of course all wide open, letting in that gray light, and whatever cool air I can get my nose buried into. The crabbed trees and snowdrifts outside make it seem almost otherworldly, giving the impression that, much like his work schedule, the entire world has stopped for these few days. And for all intents and purposes, it has. Our bills are caught up, our rent isn't due yet, and we have food in the refrigerator. I have my books, he has his Sci-Fi stuff (I refuse to call it "SyFy", that's just an insult to any real fan of the genre), and we get to act like a stable old married couple for a few days.

In travel news, I have been glued to the Delta website, waiting to see good deals. I have an account set up with a few other programs to earn miles, and we'll see how quickly I can get to that 25,000. :) If you have a Delta SkyMiles account, there's a great program that partners with it, called "SkyMiles Dining". The way this works is quite simple. You register, link your SkyMiles account, and then supply a debit/credit card number. THERE IS NO FEE TO USE THIS! The reason for the card number is that it is then linked to that account. Every time you use THAT card at one of the approved dining locations (and they have a million of them), you earn miles. It's like having a Diner's Card with FF miles, but without needing the credit. ;)

To try it out, go to http://skymiles.rewardsnetwork.com/ and sign up. Again, it's totally free. They never charge a fee to use their service, and you can have family members link THEIR debit/credit cards to the account as well. I have my husband's card and my own, along with a card from a family member who doesn't even live with us. The more cards you link, the more likely you'll earn miles. :)

Now that the sales pitch is over, I have to say... that 25k looks pretty distant right now. I'm hovering around 4,000 miles, from my last trip out to CA, but I have a great deal of hope that I'll get that number up fast. Even with my bad credit. I would love to be able to get a Delta SkyMiles credit card, but since I'm not working right now, and both my and my husband's credit stinks, that's just not going to happen. :)

New World

So here I am, making yet another blog. Yep, I have been here before, making a first post on a new blog, talking about how often I will be writing in it.... and then inevitably falling through on that. I don't know, it just always seems hard to stick to something like this, knowing I'm the only one reading it. I'm the easiest person for me to let down, I guess. :)

I still don't know what I want this thing to be about. I'm working on several things right now, each of which would make interesting topics to chronicle, but I doubt highly that I will keep track of them well enough here to make it worthwhile. I already have a surgery blog, on a more appropriate website (which I just remembered I need to update today as well), and a religious discovery blog right here on Blogger. So what is left? Plenty! I am working on immersion language learning (for several different languages, mind you), drooling over volunteer-abroad programs that would allow me to spend time in Asia (one of my biggest dreams), and determined to finally pin down what I want to do with my life...

Why does it always have to be "what I want to do with my life"? What if what I want to do doesn't involve college, but I still want to go? What I really want to do with my life is pack a bag with a few essentials, put some money on my debit card, and travel. All over the world. I want to go to Japan, China, Romania, France, England, Germany, Norway, the Cayman Islands, Brasil, Puerto Rico, Thailand, Greece, Egypt... Even just traveling around the US would be spectacular. I was raised to embrace the desire for these experiences, but I lack the funding. So either some rich relative kicks off and leaves me a fortune large enough to do this, or I wait until I can get enough together for the first leg of that journey.

Every couple of years I get this bug... I need to travel. Taking frequent trips out to California has helped, and at the same time it has made things worse. Now I've got a taste for booking a flight for the next morning, hopping on the plane, and jetting halfway across the country for a weekend. And I'm hooked. I spend half of my free time right now looking up more flights, trying to find the best deals from my little airport here in South Dakota. Fortunately, I have friends and family that love the chance to pitch in and help pay for these luxuries. If not for them, I would have to spend my "trips" in a mental institution, flying on Klonopin Airlines.

So here's to hoping. Hoping that I stick with this blog enough to actually make something of it, that I get my dream of traveling around the world, that I actually learn more than just "bonjour" and "merci" with this language course. Here's to hoping this blog will at least keep enough of my sanity intact that I won't go do something profoundly stupid, to break the monotony. ;)