A seething mass of turgid drama.

I went to SF in SF for the first time in quite a while last night. They often run them on Sunday evenings, so I tend not to go unless there's an author I want to hear/get books signed. In this case it was two - one local, one formerly local now in Oregon. I've quite enjoyed both their books, which are quite different but maybe share a sense of humor. I haven't quite enjoyed them enough to buy them; my bar for buying books has gotten pretty high the last five years.

Megan O'Keefe has written a steampunkish fantasy trilogy centering around two con artists. I like well-done heist novels, and the characters are fun. (Plus the interactions are Wodehouse-esque.) Curtis Chen has written a couple sci-fi novels about a spy with a superpower (he can open a "pocket" to an empty parallel universe, which is handy for storing stuff). But the spy is hardly James Bond; he's a total amateur.

Both authors read from a couple of their works and took questions. I enjoyed it. The only downside was suffering a major calf cramp as I jogged across a busy intersection. I couldn't exactly do anything about it, and limping the 3 blocks to where I parked didn't help matters. It's better today although still bugging me.

Oof. At the risk of over-sharing, my digestive system has been unhappy with me for the last couple days. I suspect that the cause was one of the root vegetables I roasted for the curry. There was also lamb, but it was a hippy lamb that has caused me no problems in the past.

I don't think I'll finish the leftovers. Which is a shame; it was tasty. But it's not worth the distress.

I habe a code, but so far it's been a fairly quick one. (knocks on wood)

Yesterday I had a migraine headache that just wouldn't go away. It's still there today.
The reason I am not calling it a migraine? I thankfully had none of the usual side effects. While having a sinus headache is painful and irritating, I am glad to skip the nausea and other fun parts.

(Ten points to the person who calls the header reference. Minus five points if you have to use a search engine to do it.)
It was hot last night. I did not sleep well. Also, I bruised my tailbone in my bus fall. Occasionally I sit down and wince in pain.

The shoulder pain got so bad that I couldn't lift my arm past horizontal. I actually tried to make a doctor's appointment. I knew full well this would likely result in a one-week wait followed by "It's cleared up, so, um..." and honestly the clearing up was really the goal here. I'd forgotten exactly why I don't have an assigned primary care GP physician: finding one sucks.

Our work insurance is middling. It's at least not Cigna, which I had a couple employers ago, and whose model is similar to Dell's and AT&T: make the process as painful as possible so that your customers go away in frustration and you don't have to pay for what they want. It's also not Kaiser, which can be really annoying with its rationing (hello single-payer!) but is really good at some of the basics (which is mostly what I want). Oh well; my boss really doesn't want Kaiser because one of his kids has some weird medical problems so we're never going to get it.

Anyway. I launched the website and searched for GPs accepting new patients. Found a few close by that looked reasonable (I mean, how do you check? Yelp isn't exactly set up for this) and started calling.
1) no response.
2) doctor no longer with that practice.
3) no response.
4) doctor no longer with that practice.
5) give up.

Instead, last night the wife applied several doses of liniment (side note: what is the difference between liniment, ointment, and unguent? Is there one? I wish I still had access to the OED) and I took a heavy dose of knockout OTC sleep drug, on the theory that I was doing something wrong. Apparently that was the case: this morning I have a muscle ache, not a stabbing pain.

Now to try to figure out what it is I am doing during the night... and how to fix it. It's progress, anyway.
But I still need to find a general practitioner on general principles.

I had an off-and-on-again mild headache around the time I left work. It didn't go away at home, although it didn't get any worse... until about midnight when I woke up with a standard-for-me migraine developing. My temperature was cycling and my nose was starting to run along with the vise on my temples. Fortunately I got up and took a half dose of my nuke-it-from-orbit Excedrin and had the wife heat up a sandbag for my head. That took enough off that it didn't get any worse.

The downside was that I didn't sleep well, partly due to the caffeine in the Excedrin. From experience though, I won't sleep at all if I'm trying to suffer through a migraine. Feeling better today albeit tired.

Over Thanksgiving I was chatting with Dani about my weather pressure-induced migraines. She suggested applying (ETA: black) pepper oil to the temples. Given that I'd been having several, more intense ones for several weeks (my normal rate is one a month or so) I decided to try it. It seemed unlikely to hurt me; at worst I'd be a slightly more pungent snack for a predator.

Does it work? Shrug. I have had fewer and less debilitating migraines since I started applying a daily post-shower drop to my temples. But given that I don't have any way to compare to a baseline - and don't really believe the woo-woo claims about aromatherapy etc. - I'm going with placebo. And yet... I will still be using it. On the off chance that it is in fact helping.

Too damn many migraines this week. One woke me up a couple hours after I went to bed last night. And I can't point at any triggers other than possibly the weather.

I thought of tshuma last night while I was in bed.
...that sounds creepy. Let me start again.

I woke up around midnight with a sinus screaming at me. My usual M.O. is to moan softly, roll over, and attempt in vain to sleep it off until I get up around five. Then I take a long hot shower for the steam (feeling guilty because of the drought), take drugs that work but also contain caffeine, and have an generally ineffective morning until the drugs kick in.

tshuma suggested that this process might be sub-optimal. She has guidelines for migraines that dictate her responses so she doesn't have to overcome the migraine and use brainpower. This seems eminently sensible, even with the low-level sinus migraines I get. So this time I got up (moaning softly), took a half dose of the nuke-from-orbit drugs that contain caffeine, and went back to bed.

Whereupon I fell asleep as the sinus pressure dissipated. I feel fine this morning and would have been productive right away had I not had a system problem that set me back 45 minutes.

Lesson learned. I hope.