1. Work
I still work for Red Ventures in the AdTech department. Instead of reporting into a central corporate team I’m now moved back to report into the CNET Group (a smaller sub-set of sites). Sites in the CNET Group make revenue from ads.. and other RV sites do not make revenue that way. I understand it.. but I’m disappointed. I think a lot of the other corporate sites are leaving money on the table (with not monetizing their ads), but TPTB aren’t listening to me. So, okay. Fine.
The job is going. It’s been quiet this week and I can’t help feeling like I might get a new boss soon. My current boss has moved to the “Commerce” side of the house and my job functions don’t really line up with commerce. Nothing official yet.
This year I finally got a direct report. I’m working on training her in AdTech and TPTB also pulled us in to do engineering work on the MIT tool. MIT is ad related.. so I think it totally falls in my wheelhouse.. but TPTB have been treating it like it’s not part of Ads. I’m working to change their attitudes. It’s an ad tool so it make sense that it’s owned by AdTech (duh).
This week I finished up the “approvals” feature in the MIT tool. That’s been a big Q3 initiative for my team and we’re officially finished with it ~4 weeks early. Go us. The MIT front end uses Vue. It has some nifty features but I can’t say I love it. Okay that’s not true.. I might love it but it might be that my distaste comes from some of the implementation choices when the MIT tool was first built. I ended up having to write the same code 3 different ways.. and it wasn’t as reusable or scalable as I’d like. I was able to figure it all out.. but it was not as straight forward and clear as I’d like. I have a feeling we might end up rearchitecting this feature in Q1/Q2 to make it less hard-coded and more user-editable.
2. Home/Family
Hip pain (well and I’m lazy) is making it hard to do stuff outside. My house is an overgrown mess. We’ve also been super lazy inside the house. It’s “we live in this chaos” messy, not “omg there are bunny trails between the piles” messy. Add to that we got a new puppy in August.. and she’s in the “destroy all the things” phase of her life.
We’re having visitors for Thanksgiving so I guess dust bunny obliteration and mopping is going to move up higher on my todo list.
Erik’s school changed their calendar this year (boo) to start school earlier in August and give us a week off in October and another week off in February. Except that changing the schedule meant that we had Erik out of school for the first week of school since we were attending Pennsic.. and being out of school for a week (and then for the third week of school because of Covid) put him behind in his classes.. so now instead of having a week off in October he’s attending make-up classes in order to make up for the work he missed. Meh.
Earlier this year we had Erik assessed for allergies. It turns out he’s allergic to most trees, most grass, most pollen, molds, cats and dogs. So now we’re getting him allergy shots. Hopefully this will help him in the long run.
3. Health
So much to say. I turned 50 and it’s like everything expired. Now it’s a year later and I’m still struggling to come to terms with it.
Last year I went through the Novant Bariatric program. Our insurance was with Blue Cross Blue Shield (bastards) and one of the requirements was that I needed to lose 10% of my body weight (which btw, if I could easily lose 10% of my body weight I wouldn’t need bariatric surgery)(bastards). So anyway in September, once I’d completed all of the requirements for the program and submitted the insurance request. My request came back “denied”. It turns out that Novant had not recorded my starting weight.. and therefore even though I’d lost the necessary weight Novant had only recorded my ending weight.. and my insurance would not approve the surgery until I lost ANOTHER 10% of my body fat. I was screaming mad. Add to that, my work had announced they were no longer going to offer BCBS so I was going to figure out the hoops for a whole new insurance and go through the process AGAIN. So I stopped. I was mad and I stopped trying on the bariatric program and I just shelved it for a while. Bonus points, I smashed my right thumb and broke the bone into 4 pieces and then we had instability and layoffs at my work so honestly weight loss was not my top priority.
Last year my hip started to hurt (ache-y and felt out of joint). I visited my PCP and ended up doing PT and have my own personal Orthopedic doctor. His assessment is that based on my X-ray, my hip should hurt more than it does and that eventually I’ll need to have the hip replaced. I babied the hip through last year.. but this year it’s gotten progressively and painfully worse. The pain has slowly increased a lot over the last year and it’s time to get it replaced. This August I had a consult with the orthopedic surgeon and he agreed that I need a hip replacement BUT he also says that he believes I’ll have better outcome from surgery if I lost weight. Well no shit sherlock. I hold a lot of my weight in my hip and ass and that will make surgery difficult. He suggested I talk to my Primary Care Physician to get a prescription for Ozempic to aid in weight loss. I talked to my PCP and got Ozempic. BUT since I’ve blown through my insurance co-pay I’d really REALLY like to get the hip taken care of this year. I had another consult with the Ortho doctor today and the feedback is “lose more weight, come back in 3 weeks”. Meh. Hopefully I can lose enough to make them happy and slot that surgery in this year.
I figured since I was already assigned to lose weight it would also be a good time to resuscitate the bariatric program. I kicked off the process which is still with Novant but glory upon glories, my new insurance, Cygna, no longer requires me to lost 10% of my body weight(!!!, I had them check three times). So I just needed to do a few consultations (dietitian mainly) and not gain weight from my new-now-recorded starting weight (311) and I’ll be golden. Earlier this week I got the call and my gastric sleeve surgery is approved by insurance and is scheduled for December 5. That means I’ll be on a liquid diet for Thanksgiving (joy).
Also on 10/26 I’m having surgery (with the same orthopedic surgeon) to remove bumps from my left thumb (NOT the one I broke). The PCP assessed them as “ganglian cysts” but the orthopedic surgeon says that ganglian cysts usually don’t pop up on the thumb. He did use the “C” word.. but more like “it’s probably not cancer” but it’s “concerning”. The MRI was inconclusive so we’re just going to take them out and go from there. I figured since I’ve blown past my insurance co-pay amount I might as well get done as well. Frankly I just want to be able to wear my thumb rings again.
4. SCA/Project
I’ve been out of spoons for SCA stuff for a while. I feel the itch returning. I’ve started sharing A LOT of Landsknecht-centric woodcuts over on my Facebook page: Research Dumping Grounds
I want to work on clothes for me.. but knowing I’m looking at significant weight loss coming up I think I might just work up a couple of basic tunics to hold me over for the next year.
I also want to make Landknecht clothing for Fearghus. That might happen right after the basic tunics for me.
I should also probably clothe my child.. maybe he also needs Landknecht. *thinking*
I did finish up two more hoods for Fearghus’ fighting crew/team/troop(? not sure on the right term) for WoW. I also cut out a chemise for myself.. but haven’t yet finished it.
WoW is next week and the only thing I’ve done to prepare is order roses for Field of Roses and think about food for our meals. So that’ll be fun. I won’t be on-site until Thursday evening. Roses is on Friday. I’m teaching a class on Saturday.
Class title: Methods of 16th c. Tayloring Synopsis: We will review tailoring methods present in illuminations and paintings, found in 16th c. extant garments, and described in The Modern Maker books. We’ll talk about fibers, layers and sewing techniques.
I need to make up kits.
5.
With all of everything this year I blew past my copays for insurance.. so it looks like bariatric surgery is going to cost less than $300. The original estimate last year was $8k. So.. you know, winning at health care American style. Tally-ho.
Future:
Oct 17-22 War of the Wings (I’ll show up on 10/19)
Oct 26 Surgery on my thumb
Nov 3-5 Atlantian Crown (we’re camping in our Airstream trailer)
Nov 6 Another follow-up about hip.
Nov 14-29 Parent’s visiting
Nov 22-26 Brother and sister-in-law visiting
Nov 23 Thanksgiving
Dec 5 Bariatric surgery
