The Biltmore is beautiful...

It was amazing, beautiful, the perfect weather, and endlessly romantic :) I'll get some pictures up sometime soon I promise, but I just wanted to put it out there that it was everything I anticipated and more, far more. More on that later though, with pictures to illustrate the comments.

Yay! Mountains!!

Guess where I'm going this weekend?!? I'm going to the...

Biltmore Estate!!

I'm so excited! My man and I are going to see everything there is to see on the grounds, and we're also going to take a horseback riding tour as well. It's going to be an unbelievably wonderful vacation, and he was the one to set it all up! I've only been once, and it was ten years ago, so I'm ecstatic about the whole trip. All the Biltmore that I can stand and more!

I'll post pictures when we get back!

Butterfly effect...

I was cut off by a Painted Lady butterfly on my walk into work this morning from the bus.

Vanessa cardui [Linnaeus]

He flew right in front of me as I was trudging to work through the brickyard and whisked away as he passed the "going to work" fog that had engulfed me. Suddenly I heard the cheery trill of a bird somewhere above me, and witnessed the sunlight streaming though the trees with its Midas touch, turning the leaves to gold and painting the bricks in the brickyard with a warm plated sheen.



I was suddenly aware of what a beautiful day it was going to be. A light breeze ruffled my hair as one might tousle the hair on a small child's head with a hand, and I felt privileged to have crossed paths with my fellow morning commuter the Painted Lady. He had seemed like such a rude little fellow to heedlessly tear across my path without warning, but he had actually done me a favor. He brightened my morning and raised my spirits. I shall have to thank him for the kind gesture if we ever cross paths on another work day morning.

Anonymous!

I addressed your comments and left one for you.... :)

Perhaps I should have put that here in a new entry, but I'm lazy. I did the comment first and then this, and that's good enough for me.

What?!?

Ok, so yesterday I put a question out there...How do you balance your life and end up floating contentedly around for a period of time? The answer that I got from an anonymous person is that "[I] might try Zoloft." What? That's ridiculous! I don't need to be medicated! I just want a little peace from the different aspects of my life that are pulling me in opposite directions!

I got that peace last night, thank you, and not from some pharmaceutical company's excuse to make millions (I know that some people do need these sort of medications and that there's nothing wrong with that, but it's part of my current rant, sorry), but from walking across the street and going to my friendly neighborhood Whole Foods, where I walked around in the organic goodness and bought ingredients for delicious and wholesome meals. I was serenaded during my shopping by the mightiness of Nature's power in the form of a severe thunderstorm with torrential downpours and quarter sized hail. It was awesome, and then I used my environmentally conscious cloth bags to carry my groceries home in the newly refreshed outdoors. That was what I needed, some interaction with nature (meaning the storm), and a wholesome environment to further and support by my patronage (meaning Whole Foods). I came home feeling great and revitalized, and ended up cleaning my apartment to compliment my cleaned up attitude.

Now I respect people that work in the pharmaceutical business (Casey and Dennis ROCK!) but why be so quick to suggest medication to provide the wonderful zero gravity experience I was after? Hey, Anonymous, what's the deal? Sorry to attack you like this, but I'm just a little put out by the comment. Hey, I love the little Zoloft circle that is questing after happiness...

All alone...

realizes he's alone...

finds hope on the horizon

Zoloft!

happiness :)

normality...

...but that's not me. However, I hate to get all over you without even knowing who you are. Defend yourself with another comment if you feel like it, and I'll not judge you, as I've worked out my feeling affronted by your comment with this reaction.

Blah...

I don't have much to say at the moment...I'm in a bit of a downward spiral as far as sanity goes. There are some things dragging me down, and some trying to rocket me to the moon. How do you balance these opposing forces and end up in zero gravity? That's what I want to know. That's what I'm putting out there for the world to answer. How do you balance your life and end up floating contentedly around for a period of time?



I need a zero gravity experience right now.

Eek! It's Friday the 13th!

Bah, who cares? No such thing as Friday the 13th bad luck, and especially not today, it's my mom's birthday! Happy Birthday, Mommy!

I'm not going to brag about how old she is and how amazing she looks, but my mom is beautiful and still young in my eyes, though sometimes she complains about being old. Another birthday is the celebration of another year that I have had the best mom that ever lived. I hope that when I am her age that I am as beautiful as she is, and as accomplished as she has been. The woman had three children and raised them well, even with myself as the youngest! Moved the family across the US three or four times, and was a great single parent during my teens.

My mom is my best friend, and I couldn't ask for a better one. I hope that I have made her as proud of me as I am blessed to be her daughter.

Migraines...

I've been suffering from ridiculously bad migraines. It feels like I have my head caught in a vise, and someone is hitting it with a hammer at the same time.

I went home early from work yesterday and just slept, which seems to be the only thing that really works when I get an especially bad migraine. On top of the migraine, I had hiccups at least three times yesterday that made the migraine even worse.

I won't complain anymore about it, no migraines today, and that's awesome. However, I'm not in the mood to ramble on for any longer, and I have lots of work that I should be doing after my afternoon break is over.

Missing the mountains...

I am missing the mountains. I want to live there. I want to buy a cute little mountain cabin or cottage, nothing big, just enough room to live in and not be too cramped, and a lovely view. I have always loved the mountains, and maybe someday I'll get a chance to wake up everyday with the sun bathing mountain peaks and forested valleys as the view from my kitchen window while I enjoy a cup of coffee.


My interview is over, it was in the mountains that I am longing to live among, and it went well. I think I did a very good job, and I looked very professional in my new suit, but the institution that I interviewed with apparently hires people in at the bottom of the pay scale range for a position. That is very tragic, as I currently make as much as the middle of their range for the position. I was hoping that they would hire in according to my qualifications and experience, and somewhere near the top of the range, but not the top, would be enough for it to be reasonable to take the job. However, I don't think an HR dept. that is used to hiring people in at the bottom will want to hire someone in somewhere near the top when they can find another person to work for less. I was really disappointed, but I'm sure there is a reason for it. There must be a better job, more suited just to me, even though it might not be in the mountains that I love and want to dwell in. Sigh.... I really wanted to live in the mountains.

Fourth of July frenzy...

I went shopping yesterday for shoes to go with my interview suit (my interview is tomorrow!) and of course no one else had anything better to do with a day off in the middle of the week than go shopping too. I did find some nice shoes, but because I had no one to tell me what might look best, I bought a few pairs and will get my mom and sister to tell me which one is best and return the others. The stores were packed, and good help was hard to find. I'm just glad I made it out of the mall alive. Kind of reminded me of Dawn of the Dead...

...not the eating people part of course, hahaha, but the milling around in crowds looking like they didn't know where they were going or why they were there. That clip shows the most people in the mall from the 1978 movie that I could find on YouTube, so that's why I snagged it. However, I've never seen the actual movie, original or remake, just a game based on the story line, Dead Rising, and this is a great little music video using images from the game, hehehe....

Anyway, after surviving my shopping experience, I went to my boyfriend's house, went out to dinner, and then we braved the crowds of people trying to find any place to park in a shopping center near Regency Park to watch the fireworks. We actually found a legitimate parking spot, with lines and everything, not just taking random space out of a lane or getting up on a grassy median (which we could have done in the jeep), and then we got to sit on a bench and watch the fireworks with lots of other people. When it was over we got caught in the exit frenzy, but we made it through in a reasonable amount of time.
July 4th - food, fireworks, and frenzied crowds. Yup, sounds about right.

I hate Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC's State Employees Health Insurance!

YES, I said it...I hate BCBS of NC's State Employees PPO plan. I opted to pay for the most expensive one because I'm a diabetic and I need more health care coverage than most people. The prescription drug coverage that goes along with this plan is absolute crap!

I'm an insulin dependent diabetic (Type 1), and I need test strips, insulin, and needles at my disposal at all times in order to regulate my sugar levels and be a good diabetic. By Thursday of this week, I will be out of test strips. I am only allowed to get 450 during a 90 day period, and I have already reached that max. The next day that I am eligible to get my test strips is on July 17th, fourteen days from today. And if I use their average allotment of test strips during that period, I will need 75 just to make it to the 17th.

Let me explain some of this to you. Test strips are a necessary evil, you have to have them to know what your blood sugar is so that you can give yourself enough insulin to regulate those levels. If you don't have them, you can't check your glucose levels and can't regulate your diabetes. Some diabetics use them only before they eat meals, or just in the morning or evening. If you check every time that you eat, and have a snack between each meal and one before you go to bed, you'd need at least 6 test strips a day to do a decent job taking care of your diabetes. Insurance companies only allot you on average 5 per day in a 30 day cycle.

Unlike most diabetic care items, you can actually buy test strips without a prescription, because how can you use them to harm yourself in any way? You can't. (Unless you're ridiculously stupid and some how prick your finger to test your blood sugar in a way that causes you to bleed like you cut an artery and lose enough blood to kill yourself in the process...or if you start using their sharp little plastic edges to cut your wrist...or you eat them and die of some weird toxic plastic poisoning...in any of those cases the human race should be glad to be rid of such a complete idiot.) However, if you decide to buy these things on your own, without a prescription, and I don't know why you would need them if you couldn't get a prescription for them from your physician, they are only a dollar a piece. Yes, these tiny little strips come in containers of 25 for only $25. That will last you perhaps 5 days if you are careful and your blood sugar miraculously stays regulated with no problems or fluctuations due to stress, exercise, and other outside factors.

Wait! There is a way that this limit on test strips can be overridden. If your doctor contacts your insurance company and gives them prior authorization for going beyond the established allotment, you can get more test strips. No one bothers to mention this to you until you find out that you can't get anymore when you try to refill your prescription at the pharmacy, which people only do when they actually need the prescription filled! When you call to find out how prior authorization works, BCBS tells you that the doctor will need to answer a few questions about your medical condition (meaning if he doesn't say that you are a brittle diabetic, meaning that you could die any moment without excessive help in controlling your condition, then you are screwed because you won't meet their definition of someone who needs more test strips than they think the average diabetic needs) and that this process can take from 7-10 business days to finalize.

Excellent! Not only am I almost assured not to get the prior authorization unless I warn my doctor that I really do need more test strips than they let me have because I'm a good diabetic who likes to check my sugar often and keep on top of it and that I won't sell my extra test strips (which could be lucrative if you could find a buyer and sell them for 50 cents instead of a dollar), but I'm still not going to have any test strips for at least a week and a half, which is the 7 business days, even if they do approve the authorization!

CRAP! CRAP! CRAP! I hate stupid health insurance companies who don't give a damn about their customers true needs! I'm a diabetic who wishes to live a decent life with fairly regulated blood sugars, but go ahead, make my life harder than it is already with a disease that could kill me with just a few missteps in its regulation!

Eek! So much for exercise...

So, my wonderful boyfriend and I decided that we should get some exercise this weekend and opted for a walk/hike in Umstead Park. We started on the Company Mill Trail at quarter after 6 p.m. on Sunday and kept pushing on and on, thinking that we would eventually finish the whole trail. We ended up having to take a shortcut to cut off part of the trail so that we could make it back to the jeep before the park closed at 9 p.m. and so that it would still be partially light when we left. We finally made it back to the parking lot at quarter to 9, with both of us worn out after so much physical exertion. It was a beautiful day for the hike, cooler with low humidity, and the forest was gorgeous and green. We saw lizards, squirrels, a frog, fish in the river, tons of bugs, and a white tailed deer, just as we were almost to end of the trail. We made it back to his house and decided that we should check ourselves for ticks, because there had been talk of people getting them when going through the park. We looked everywhere, I combed through my hair, and then I spotted one!
It was on my ankle and looked just like a freckle, except it was an impossibly tiny tick!! I pulled it off and we put it in a ziplock bag. We decided to kill it by pouring some rubbing alcohol into the bag, and it took forever for the creepy thing to stop wagging it's evil little legs and die!
I don't know if I'll get Lyme disease or something like that, but I'm going to keep an eye on the spot that it bit me to see if it starts to look funny. When I was looking for a picture of a tick to use, I found that ticks can be found on tons of animals. There are bird ticks!

Poor little purple finch. :( There are ticks that feed on iguanas!

Look closely at this picture...the ticks look like scales, but they aren't. Who knew that reptiles could get ticks!?! I certainly didn't. And elephants! They have such thick hides, who knew they could get ticks too...

but apparently they can, poor guy.
There are lots of places that are infested with ticks according to these signs...





Well, ticks are nasty little things. I'm not sure I want to go walking in Umstead again after finding the one on my ankle, but I'm sure that I will. Unless I get Lyme disease, that would mean a definite NO.