Archigos' Life

…..But my back is still all busted up and broken.

You gotta read between the lines…
You gotta dig real deep sometimes…
You gotta read the writing on the walls for signs…

Originally I just planned on writing some of the new things that have happened since the last post and thankfully decided to read the last one again to kind of remind myself of the timeframe only to see I referenced that I would talk about things from yet another prior post that I didn’t get to in that one, so now I’m rethinking my ‘gameplan’ as I’m now going over things from the last three or four posts as well as all the new crap. Most (if not all) of you don’t care anything about this part but I figured it’d be a good explanation for why this post might possibly be the longest one yet.

I’m going to break the post down into the categories as I have been but I’ll be breaking each of those down to kind of bring each to current in segments.
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*Medical*
As you can see from the title of this post I recieved great news at the doctors earlier today so combine that with my screwed up memory issues anyway and you can get an idea why I’m a little absent minded and/or side tracked. I’ll get back to this part in a minute.

Clarification:
To clarify a comment made in the last post, in Dec. 2006 I saw my primary care doctor that I had at the time and he sent me to get a few M.R.I.’s as mentioned, but by the time I got the test results back it was the middle of Jan. 2007 and the new doctor I saw at that point sent me for a few more tests and they completed the end of Jan. so that’s why I wasn’t officially diagnosed until Jan. 29, 2007.

Playing Catchup:
A.) Back to the whole medication thing that happened… long story short, the medication wasn’t replaced, my insurance company changed their mind a lot pending on who I talked with so in the end couldn’t get any form of refill and ended up running out while out of state on my trip. Essentially I’ve been out for a few weeks and popping 500mg Tylenol like they’re freakin’ Tic-Tac’s since, I just hope next Thursday (9th) everything gets worked out finally.
B.) Between the combination of my trip, my medication issues, stress, pain, and a few other things I ended up failing my classes for school and was forced to take them again (which I restarted them a few days ago).

Anyway, I got back from my trip and ended up going to see my new Oncologist after a painful weekend sleeping off the trip and was able to get a temporary script to help me out, which the insurance company screwed me on that too. Since I didn’t have any money left I couldn’t afford to pay non-insurance price. Last week I ended up having another PET scan to determine my current status with cancer and got the results back earlier today (Sept. 2). I was informed that my scan came up 100% Negative (meaning NO cancer) and was relieved that this information will cut down my overall medical appointments to just a few a month as opposed to the buttload I have been dealing with the last few years.

*Travel*
I’m not sure if I’m going to update this post with some photos taken on my trip or just leave them in future posts… I guess if you’re looking at this more than a week or two after it was originally written, look at newer posts to see any photos I decided to post. 🙂

*Birthdays*
I missed making a comment about Jeff’s birthday last month (Aug. 28) so, um, oops. As far as September, the only one that comes to mind right now is Rick’s… If I missed one let me know.

*Quote of the Moment*
Just because you can put your foot/leg behind your head doesn’t mean you have to try and force me to do it… (NM)

So, my “3D Modeling & Animation” class technically ended about 3 hours ago and due to everything that’s happened this week I wasn’t able to complete my final three projects, so my nice little A turned into a ‘Losers D’ but oh well, I passed the class. On Monday I start “Information Literacy” and “Multimedia Design II” which should be ‘fun’ (read ‘fun’ with MUCH sarcasm). I can’t wait to finish college and be done with all this crap… I mean, I’m glad I’m back in school, still learning, yadda yadda… but the stress is killing me.

Speaking of stress, it’s been getting so much worse lately and really screwing with my depression. To make matters worse, Thursday night I went to the gas station around 11pm to pick up cigarettes and chatted for about 5-10 minutes with the employee before heading back to my car. When I got out there and got situated I went to turn the key and …. fucking thing wouldn’t start. I tried it a few times over the next couple of minutes and figured, “I have that roadside assistance coverage through Verizon that will cover a jump start, 10 mile tow, etc. and they’ll send someone to see what’s wrong with the car and I can have it dragged to Monro or somewhere where I can get someone I know to take a look in the morning.” I knew if I just called a random tow place or had them take me to a random garage, I might as well drop my pants and bend over, cause there’s no way I can afford this shit to begin with and you know how they charge ‘random’ customers, especially ones in emergency situations. I kept telling the lady on the phone the address of where I was (since although it’s part of a Verizon thing, they can’t seem to use GPS and find me) and she kept putting me on hold to call their different providers and see if anyone could come get me. Here’s the kicker, she spoke great English and from what I could tell, they didn’t outsource this service to some other country like most companies do now days… so I’m not sure if she didn’t understand the city I told her I was in or the ‘providers’ she spoke with are idiots, because according to her, at least 5 of them told her that I must have miscommunicated (or lied) and that I was somewhere in New Jersey and probably playing a joke on them. When she told me about that part, I told her the city yet again (I spelled it to her EVERY time) and I even gave her the zip code telling her I was at least 4+ hours from New Jersey. She put me on hold again and contacted more of their providers to see what could be done and this time when she came back on the line she said a few of them still gave her the Jersey story, but the ones that claimed they were in (or knew) the area wouldn’t come out because it was after hours… one even stated “I don’t feel like going out in this crap” since it was raining pretty bad at this point. At least I know whoever the rude/lazy fuckhead was, he was local, but she couldn’t give me their name because of policy. All in all, I spent over an hour on the phone with them and got nothing out of it. I called a friend that was sleeping and asked him to come get me so I wouldn’t have to walk in the rain with no jacket or anything (it was rather nice out when I left the house) and he said he’d be there as soon as he could… (I think it ended up being less than a half hour). After talking to him a nice guy that was pumping gas decided to check my car and see if he could help me and after checking a few things he said “From what I can tell, it sounds like it’s not getting fuel” and a passerby got on the wet ground and slid under my car, they had me try to start it and he said the fuel pump didn’t sound like it was making any noise so they both agreed it was dead. Once the rain let up for a few minutes (just after 2am) I went back inside and told them that I would have the car moved as soon as possible and I was told that I had until noon or it’d get towed. At that point I’d have to go back there to find where the car was taken and would be handed a bill by whoever came and took it. I got home and was obviously pissed/depressed so I went online to talk to a few people to see if that’d help and I guess it did a little, but not as much as I would have liked. In the morning I called a few people and we all went back to the car and at least got it dragged out of the Handicap spot it’d been sitting in for the past 10 hours or so and we pushed it to a spot that wasn’t directly in front of the store. A little later in the evening the guy came back with me and hooked up a diagnostic system to the car and it said that there was a failure in the fuel pump and something else… (can’t remember the other thing) and we strapped the car to the back of his truck and dragged it back to my place. It’s been sitting there since and I have a feeling it’ll be sitting there for awhile since I can’t come up with the money to get it fixed.

Some of the guys I talked with after getting home suggested I put a donation button on the blog and see if I can get any help, but I’ve always been a person that feels like that is begging and there’s normally people out there that can use the money more than I can… (like with Social Services and things like that) but in this case, I’ve already had to cancel appointments and other things because of the car and I have the appointment next week to finally get the braces put onto my legs, they just have to call when they come in, so I’m not sure when it’ll be. So at the bottom of this post is a donation button to see if anyone is willing to help out, but I don’t want this to appear like I’m either begging or that I’m trying to get donations so that I don’t have to pay out of pocket… I’m just so damn broke and my disability checks barely cover my basic bills anyway. If people do manage to help out, I’ll find some way to thank them properly and I’ll remove the button if I come up with enough money so that people don’t keep sending anything in if it’s not needed for the car.

I just figured I’d do a quick update for now mentioning some of the changes I’ve done to the blog this morning.

• Changed the background (and a few ‘behind the scenes’ features)
• Changed the “Share the knowledge” link set at the bottom of each posts (originally displayed only when you selected the post)
• Went back through each post made so far this year and corrected spelling errors and added tags. (I’m too lazy to go farther back)
• Fixed issue where first word in post topic was different color than the rest of the title
• Will be adding/changing/removing some of the other pages sometime soon… (I have a few ideas already)

I’m also looking at a few other ideas of things to add if I can find valid plugins that don’t piss me off like some I’ve tried.