Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Well, I have an appointment with the dental surgeon, in Brookline (rather than out past 495), at which he will extract two more teeth, place implants, and then put on the partial that I was originally supposed to be getting in early July.

Vitaliy [the dental receptionist] called and asked whether I could do 2:30 on the 13th. I said yes, hung up, went to enter it on my calendar, and saw a conflict: I was scheduled for a telemedicine appointment with my psychiatrist at 3:00 that afternoon. So I called Vitaliy back and asked about rescheduling. He said that the surgeon is difficult to schedule with, and asked if I could reschedule the other appointment.

After a couple of conversations, I am now scheduled to see Dr, Awad on October 9 at 9 a.m., telemedicine. Yesterday her office offered me August 19th, but when I got around to looking at MyChart I saw it was with a different doctor (and also that I still had the appointment I asked them to reschedule. (The other doctor is probably as good as the one I'm seeing now, if not better, but switching psychiatrists can be a pain.)

I asked Vitaliy whether this dentist and office are in my insurance network, and he assured me that they will charge me the somewhat lower with-insurance fee for the upcoming dental work (which doesn't mean it will be cheap). I have no money left on my dental insurance for 2024, so the question of whether this practice takes my insurance in general is less urgent than it might be.

Interestingly, Vitaliy called me from his cell phone, and urged me to make a note of the number in case I need to reschedule. So I added him to my phone's list of contacts, with "dental receptionist" in the "company" field.

( cut for description of a pretty routine dental cleaning )

I have an appointment for my next cleaning on September 21st, at 4 p.m. I'd asked for midday, in the hopes of less-crowded transit, but I don't yet know what the travel patterns are on the relevant bus, the 57.

I was looking at my phone on the way home, and saw that I had effectively double-booked myself for July 14th, because google calendar no longer speaks to Thunderbird. I have an appointment for a physical that afternoon, in person, and I was looking at my calendar on Thunderbird when I made the appointment with my psychiatrist. I may download the google calendar app; in the meantime, I have made duplicate entries for appointments, one in the Thunderbird local calendar on my desktop machine, and one in Google calendar (which I look at on my cell phone, and is thus what I consult when I'm away from home).

Another set of saved comments from my journal, for later reference and, if you want, discussion here: ( defining people, avoiding overcommitment, what understanding people might mean, friendship and romantic relationships, being angry at lots of people, testing )

Having posted my tentative schedule, I just came home and found a revised schedule in my email:

The Tragedy of Change (Feminism, Sex, and Gender) remains at 9:00-10:15 p.m. Saturday in Senate A. Panelists: Rebecca K. Rowe, M: Vicki Rosenzweig, Jodi Anne Piwoni, Alicia Ellen Goranson, Gregory Frost [One change to the panel membership; I sent the new person a copy of yesterday's email-to-panelists about how I moderate.]

Fun Home (Feminism, Sex, and Gender) has been moved to 4:00-5:15 p.m. Sunday. Thank you, pantryslut. The list of panelists for that is now: Vicki Rosenzweig, JJ Pionke, Jenni Moody, Janet Lafler, M: Rachel Sharon Edidin

This schedule feels more manageable, in part because I'm no longer on the "this could be a doctoral thesis" panel about changes in feminism over the last 30 years, and where we're going from here; and in part because instead of the Fun Home panel being late at night and three of us, it's mid-afternoon and five of us.

I bought my airline tickets yesterday: arriving early afternoon Friday, departing mid-afternoon Monday. [And bus tickets to visit adrian_turtle next weekend, but that's only very loosely connected.]

This evening, cattitude and I had dinner with gothgeekgirl, who is in town for a few days for a class, and roadnotes, freshly back on her feet. It was good to see both of them; there were several years of catching up with Gothgeekgirl, though recent LJ interactions had provided at least a bit of the groundwork [the names, at least, of all of our new-in-the-past-half-decade sweeties]. After dinner, we walked down to Varsano's, because I still wanted truffles after yesterday's attempt, and Roadnotes could show Mark Varsano that she's doing a lot better than when her friends came in to buy her chocolate.

I'd spent part of the afternoon with my mother, who came uptown, spent a while with me in my doctor's waiting room, and had coffee here before heading off for an early dinner.

In the interests of not wearing myself out completely, I've decided not to try to have dinner with Matt and Janet (WANOLJ) tomorrow; possibly some time with Janet (and daughter) Thursday afternoon before Cattitude and I have dinner with Mom, or maybe we'll all get together Saturday. Probably not both, for the same "using myself up" reasons that I'm not going out to dinner with them tomorrow.

[The difficulty is that I have four people I like and don't get to see very often, all of whom live thousands of miles away, and all of whom are very briefly in New York during the same week.]

As noted, it's been a tiring few days, topped off this morning by having to dash downstairs and out into the street just in time to catch the FedEx delivery, because our intercom is broken: I could hear him ring, but neither buzz him in nor explain that I'd be right down.

An intercom repair crew is expected tomorrow, and we've been asked to be available from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. I can do this, but it's the sort of thing that's hard on single people and households where everyone is employed or in school close to full-time. (This doesn't even have the flexibility of you choosing the day the repair/installation people show up: Monday they posted signs asking everyone in the building, or at least the large proportion thereof whose intercoms are broken again, to be available Wednesday morning.)

It is important not to overschedule myself. Especially right now, because I've had two busy weekends in a row, with a third planned. (The weekend after this, cattitude and I are going to celebrate his birthday and otherwise Do Nothing, or as close to nothing as is compatible with being well-fed.)

It is also important not to fall out of touch with people I care about: I need to call porcinea and L (WINOLJ), and arrange to hang out with each of them.

NY Review of SF is probably out of luck for a while longer, though I'd like to see some of the people there at a time and place when we won't be told to stop socializing and get back to work. It's not as though Hartwell is paying me.

I'm thinking, given work and the desire to have a life other than work, self-maintenance, and sleep, it makes sense to explicitly decide I'll go to the gym twice a week, and make it Monday/Thursday, rather than push myself to try for thrice a week, and average about 1.5 times a week. Monday/Thursday has the advantage that if something comes up Monday, I can slip it to Tuesday, and ditto for Thursday/Friday, without messing things up badly.

Of course, this is partly a response to the time and energy taken by physical therapy, which ends a week from Saturday. At that last session, I shall have to ask Apu how often I should be continuing my exercises.

More specifically, I can't deliberately spend a day at home, very lazily, and with several hours alone scheduled in, and be out socializing. And I really wouldn't have had the energy to go to the piano bar last night, and still make it to work this morning in anything like a competent form, and I'm fairly sure I needed the time alone; with my current work schedule, I have to make a point of planning this, and arranging it with cattitude, or I don't get any. Nonetheless, I'm sorry to have missed seeing athenais while she was in town, especially since I had trouble falling asleep last night. (N.B. I was still asleep before midnight, probably 11:15 or 11:30--but that's later than is good for me when I have to rise at 6:15.) I'm hoping that this evening's exercise will give me body tiredness to go with the need for rest, and that I'll be asleep an hour from now.

Oh, the usual ( gym notes )