Spicy Queso in Ground Control

[1.A] My nose doesn’t work like it used to. A sinus infection made my sense of smell disappear for awhile, and it didn’t come back fully. Now I get phantom smells or pick up on some elements of odors that other people don’t. Like, most perfume, cologne, body spray etc. hits me with the same weird smell first before I can faintly pick up on whether it is a “flowery” vs. “musky” scent a.o. I can’t describe it, but it smells like a pungent chemical almost, like something you’d catch a whiff of at a gas station, but not quite. Anyway, people kept complaining that the trailer of freight behind the store had a bad smell coming from it. I finally got to mess with that trailer, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to be smelling, but it smells like straight up spicy queso in there. Like, white dipping queso with roasted poblanos or something. Man, it smells good.

[1.B] I had a phantom food smell hit me before too, out in the woods by the river. My company talked about this odd smell that they couldn’t place. After a second, I started picking up on something, but when I asked if it smelled like fairground corn dogs, they thought I was crazy.

[2] I went to the doctor to have my neck and hip checked up on. I have problems that have compounded over the last decade that are now causing me to miss work, and there’s a nasty clicking sound in my neck when I turn it left and right. Whatever she did during the neck part, now the clicking is a lot louder and I’ve been able to pop my neck to the side more often. They sent me across town to get some xrays, and I should know more tomorrow. I need to check my portal information; the results may have shown up already.

[3] We’re having a warm rainy spell here. It’s brought some of the bugs backs out for photo shoots. Found a pretty gnarly spider on break today, and a pygmy grasshopper I’ve never seen before.

[4] iNaturalist added a new option to the annotations field for the animal kingdom. Now you can select whether the specimen was alive, dead, or if it could not be determined. Naturally, I had to go back through every one of my spottings, update the annotation, and remove “Dead/Alive?” from the custom field I’d inserted to every one of them. I’m not quite done to be honest, but I spent most of last night doing it.

[5] I’ve also been sorting my photos into categories. I mind-mapped out a network of folder names so that I can find my pictures easily and archive them away so only the most recent pictures will be visible on the main dashboard. I started by doing the same thing for my emails, which took a day and a half of solid effort. It’s unbelievable how many pictures I’ve taken, though. I’ve only cried once so far. Usually I can’t look at happy memories at all without being a miserable mess. Like, bawling so hard my eyelids are puffy and swollen the next day.

[6] I want to buy stuff to make pulla bread but it’s the literal worst time to be in the baking aisle at the grocery stores right now. I’ve spent most of my shifts trying to put out all the fires on that aisle now that Thanksgiving is approaching, so I know firsthand it is not where I want to be in my free time. It’s cramped and certain supplies are running out. Still, being around it makes me want to buy it all and USE it all.

[7] I caved. I bought Pokemon Shield today. I was very on the fence about it because of all the drama around the national pokedex and a few other things. I was going to wait it out. But then il Babbo goes and buys Sword and keeps asking me when I’m going to get it so finally I told him “look… after double xp weekend in Runescape, ok?” I only have four hours left on my double xp counter as we speak, so I bought it before work today, lol. He’s already three gyms in, but I can multitask. I can afk skills in Runescape while investing my attention in my Switch.

[8] Double xp went so well for me this year. I have maxed skills that, as a kid, I only dreamed of having, like Hunter (I actually got that before dxp started) and Summoning. I’m about to get 99 prayer, which is what I’m devoting my last few dxp hours to. Other difficult ones are now sitting at 97s and 98s as well. I almost had 99 herblore, but they just upped the max cap on that to 120 so I’m screwed on that for awhile. I like the challenge, though.

[9] I wonder if my binder is the main cause of my neck problems. I don’t think it has any bearing on my hip pinching whatever nerve (sciatic?) but I’ve been binding for ten years now, so it’s bound to have caused something.

[10] I have a mental audio obsession going on right now. I can’t get people screaming out of my head. Big loud rediculous screams, too, like the screaming goat. I keep seeing normal people in my head just get really mad and do something hulkish while letting forth a primal (strangely goat-like) scream. This has been going on for like… a week? This is what I mean when I tell people “Yeah, I have OCD. It’s not the charming kind you see on TV.” No, I obsessively hear people banshee goat yelling and smashing walls or throwing animals. Kind of cathartic, I guess. Like listening to Slayer to calm down from a rage, but all day and way more unique and hilarious.

[11] I wonder if I’ve put on thirty extra pounds because my back is screwed up. I’ve been blaming one of my medications, but now that I think about it, I don’t do as much because I’m hurting and stiff. Epson salt bath sounds good right about now, but I don’t want to waste time.

[12] Bout to go turn on that Switch~~~