coin shortage

Having fun with world edit

That was the original nearly ground level guardian spawner I claimed on custom world Haven before it was world edited over to a replacement server Valhalla and built into a beautiful redstone operation by another player. When the claim expired, I locked it into an infinity claim after I became ranked high enough in staff to do so, and now that I'm a techmod, I made a copy to event world for other staff to make schematicas of it for their own worlds if they desire.

I knew the coin shortage was a thing, but I didn't realize it was literally affecting down to a micro level. I've always been the sort to cash in my change bowl every month, usually get about $40 out of it, last time was $21. Likewise, I've been spending down the spare cash I had on hand for months, or depositing it to pay things off electronically. Money as we know it will soon be useless. Not sure how soon, but they've stopped minting coins. All those years of pennies and other coins I've picked up from floors and parking lots and all over break rooms and whatnot, turning them into egg mcmuffins, sheets of stamps, even a tank of gas- all that is nearly over as we know it. Is the mainstream media even talking about it? Not really.

I ran into an article a couple days ago about old coins being melted down for the silver and new gold coins coming. "We are going to get new gold coins in high denominations $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 gold coins. They are not collectible but would be used as legal tender." Cool, huh? You could literally pay for a car in coins out of your pocket.

Money. lol

independently yummy

I own way too much land on server. Decided to subdivide so new players can get free protected areas to start out on. I may pretty it up around the plots.

Found a great live stream for the Mt Rushmore fireworks last night, really crisp hi def filming. 

Hit a fibro flare snag yesterday, likely the storm totally popping up practically over the house and rolling off in varying directions dumping rain around us but not actually on us. Weird. Scott had to dig around left shoulder blade like the old days, then I hit the heating pad, seemed to solve it but took about an hour. No pain pills, pretty rough. That is the last big nerve damage area, that left side that was micro shredded in the wreck skull down to left side throughout torso (no bones broken, just major hyperflexing while ejecting), and the last of the damage going through years of physical therapy. The nerves take the longest to heal. Definitely felt that flare up without the gabapentin cushioning it. I think tonight is the 7th day since the last time I took any. I've read up to 10 days withdrawal even tapering down to lowest dose first. Guess we'll see what happens.

Was really interesting watching that flare nearly roll me off the depression cliff. Pure brain chemicals. Pain overload -->> fatigue -->> brain drain -->> emotional response challenges. I gave myself today off and went back to bed for awhile, seemed to help much more than the extra cup of coffee and pain med I used to do in the past.

I'm going to say something very surprising.

I have really enjoyed having Scott around the house all week.

Usually by now I'm ready to get back to our routine, and I really thought the final leap off the gabapentin would make it more challenging, but quite the opposite is happening. To be very clear, this is the first time I've been off pain meds in Jacky mode (Pinky took over for years) and we honestly may have never even known each other like this. Pain meds always jerked my mood swings around, several have commented on it and fortunately lived to see another day, so this is the first time in nearly 27 years married that Scott is getting my flat effect personality with no meds in the way messing up brain chemicals, as in screwing up my natural biorhythm, and no kids in the way stressing us out. We always wondered what our lives would have been like if we'd met each other before all the other junk happened first in our lives.

Interesting.

And we've been enjoying some nice food this week. Personally, I love a good fresh veggie week, so I'm all over the salads, and then last night we had filet mignon in the cute little air fryer I got for him, and today he's getting a cordon bleu and my signature stuffed mushrooms while I divert to brussels sprouts with aged balsamic and parm. He thinks he can live on corndogs and frozen pizza and desserts and popcorn, so yeah, no, we're not doing that. My A1C is way prettier than his and I don't even do the meds (I'm actually worse for symptoms if I don't stringently monitor diet), so the least I can do is say hey, how about a *not* corndog for a holiday weekend? So we're eating nice food.

the Lhermitte's is gone

Besides having no memory of how this photo even showed up on my hard drive, I have no idea what it might even mean to me. I have always loved light on water, maybe it's that. The folder is dated January 2019 and back then I was posting on my Janika blog, so who knows. I was feeling a bit lost and trying to find my footing back then.

No gabapentin since last Saturday night, so 5 days in and I seem to be doing ok. I finally caved to gabapentin around 2016ish for unremitting Lhermitte's from neck to left shoulder, which is a hellish nerve pain that I'd had for many years, but we finally broke through that in physical therapy last November and I guess that nerve has healed enough for that pain to actually stop for the first time in two decades. The minor diabetic neuralgias and body-wide arthritic pains are nothing compared to having lived with that so long, so yeah, back off the gabapentin and so far so good. Mild headaches, light sensitivity, odd hard quick pinched feeling here and there out of the blue, but nothing like the cold turkey benzo withdrawal I went through some years ago. Again, this was a very long very slow taper and a final leap off after a month long plateau on just 100 mg once a day. I can't recall a time in my adult life I've had so little pain, so this is pretty marvelous. Sitting for a length of time has become a little challenging again, but since I'm now walking 45 minutes a day, it's really not that bad aside from a few fibro knots popping up here and there.

I've been cracking up over these old ads I ran into on youtube. I remember seeing those and thinking how dumb they were, now they just crack me up.

I'm about halfway through the third season on my The Flash rewatch and finally getting the bigger picture. That was the year the girls moved back in and we had to keep pausing the tv so much, or watch when they were elsewhere because it was kinda scary for a little kiddle.

Very seriously talking timeline convergence in another place. I can't help wondering if that is part of the pain of loss I've felt so many times, and why I hang on so hard to what is right and why I love.