Playlist: San Antonio Songs

I've started taking "me" time at night, which usually involves leaving the laptop in my backpack and opting for the iPad instead. This way, I can leave in-progress work projects alone without any temptation to peek at them and instead, I can simply surf the web for pleasure at night in front of the TV. Kinda like Dad with the newspapers and Time/Life magazines of yore.

Along my web-traveling path, I came across a blog in which a post discussed how the author had many song playlists for various themes, events, and moods, but lacked one for being ANGRY. Indeed, there are very few good angry playlists out there. No doubt I'll make my own.

Instead, though, I thought I'd post some various playlists, too, leading off with one unique to San Antonio. This may or may not be all-inclusive and of course, your mileage may vary. To really "get it" you'd probably have to live here.

"Mirando Las Muchachas" by Mexican Institute of Sound
"When It Falls" by Zero 7
"Popcorn" by Hot Butter
"Faster Disco" by Faith No More
"En El Borde" by Soda Stereo
"What Do New York Couples Fight About (Instrumental)" by Morcheeba
"No Place Like Home" by Squeeze
"I Have Seen" by Zero 7
"Get Down Tonight" by KC & the Sunshine Band
"Still In This Thing" by Boomers
"Rock This Town" by Stray Cats
"Mexican Radio" by Wall of Voodoo
"El Gato" by Bon y Los Enemigos Del Silencio
"Eternidad" by La Ley
"Crosses" by Zero 7

Yep, a little dusty boredom, some down-home chillin, a bit of spicy Latino, some musty organic nostalgia, some daydreaming in oppressive heat, and indeed: there's no place like home.

Just an FYI about TX license CN4 Y355

Today on I-10 coming into San Antonio, we got tailgaited (couldn't even see his headlights in my rearview mirror, and without letting up) at 70-80 mph, and then nearly run off the road when he couldn't pass me on the shoulder. He then pulled right in front of me and jammed on his brakes, trying to make me hit him. (I didn't.) Then I saw him do the same thing to several other cars, pulling RIGHT in front of them after passing them (on the right, left, didn't matter), and forcing cars to slam on their brakes. All the while doing anywhere from 75-90 going into town with heavier and heavier traffic.

He was driving a gold SUV (of course) and his license plate was TEXAS CN4 Y355. It was a male in his 30s-60s. Just in case you're considering hiring him for a job, selecting him as a mate (please don't), or getting into a car with him (lol) you may want to think twice. Or, just in case you got tangled up with this asshat on the road, just know you're not alone.

Again, license plate CN4 Y355, out of Texas.

Yes, we made a report with the Bexar County Sheriff's Dept. His license is on file. If he's been as big a douchenozzle to you as he was to us and about 5 other vehicles (within about 3 minutes), please do the same - let's get him revoked!

I will not eat green eggs & ham...and other obstinate affirmations

I've come across a few things lately that I've found have varying degrees of adverse impacts on my sanity. So, I will not partake. If you'd like to contribute to the preservation of my sanity, please feel free to follow in my footsteps and even make up your own.

I will not participate in Facebook games, apps, quizzes, hugs, smileys, greetings, sweepstakes, family trees, networking apps, or coupon deals. Anything that wants me to subscribe and give them permission to mine all my data (and that of my friends) is out. Litmus test: the permission screen.

I will not post chain-letter-like statuses on my wall. I'm already aware of fibromyalgia, breast cancer, child abuse, the wars in the Middle East, and just about any other cause out there, and I'm sure everyone else is, too. I admire the spirit, but seeing these make the copy-paste rounds gets a little tiring.

Likewise, I will not email "Forwards" - you know--chain letters, dire warnings, jokes, Bible verses, etc (unless they are over-the-top funny/important/etc). I can always tell when my older friends/relatives get bored - they send about 20 Forwards a day. Unlike the retired/semi-retired/less-busy folks I know, I've got a mountain of things to do and I simply don't have time to read everything.

I do not check my work email on weekends. Maybe on Sunday night so I know what I might be walking into Monday morning (my job is currently full of one mini-crisis after another, which maybe will change and maybe won't), but that's it. I've advised my clientele that if the situation really is urgent, they can call my cell on weekends. But this unties me from the email and their expectation of a quick response or resolution.

This weekend, I didn't open my laptop once. I took it out of my bag to plug it in so it wouldn't run out of juice and shut down. Other than that, I did nothing else with it. That's got to be some kind of record....

....and I hope I set more.

Really?

My favorite new word of late has been "really?" As in, "really, Facebook, you had to make another pointless change?" or, "really, BMW? You just had to pull right in front of me?"

I have a couple other "really?"s...

Patient "B" wants receipts with codes so they can submit them to their insurance. No problem. Except that they want everything from January on. As in, almost 10 months. Really? They couldn't have let us know a little earlier in the year?

Patient "J"'s insurance keeps sending us letters wanting more information, claiming they don't already have complete info. (Top secret: they do. They're just dicking around, and framing us to look like the bad guys that THEY are.) Really, insurance companies? You seriously didn't see the provider name, address, NPI, TIN, diagnosis code, and procedure code neatly typed out on the receipt our patient--your customer--sent you?

The apartment is bathed in cockroaches - still. We keep everything clean, no dishes in the sink - hell, dishes get put away even before they're dry. The trash is emptied daily. Everything's fresh and clean. I have no idea how they're continuing to subsist.

Three particular users of my P2P program each feel the need to--and have no qualms about--queuing 14 CDs at once. I even had to send out some individual messages to remind them that 3-4 CDs at once is plenty. And after that, I had to send out a second reminder to WAIT until the current queue had finished before queuing more. Sheesh! Really guys? It's not like I'm never online. Chill already.

So the word "really" is great - it's very versatile and can help convey an interesting combo of sarcasm, disgust, and snark, all in two neat little syllables.

Bestest birthday present

I need to take a special moment to celebrate an extraordinary occasion: we just hired our first employee. Wam, bam, done deal. Just like that.

It started innocently enough on Wednesday night. We nabbed our massage therapist's significant other to help out with an evening new-patient orientation, gave her a crash course in Our Office 101 and some minimal vague instructions for that evening's affair, and turned her loose. She's psychic. She's a genius. She's a natural. She handled it all.

I had nothing to lose; I asked the question. Casually, half-joking. "So...you should totally come work for us." Actually, it was more of a joke than half-joking because I knew it was a pipe dream. This person had just graduated from school for something different, something that would pay more than we possibly could.

Imagine my surprise when she said, "I'm seriously thinking about it." At first I thought she was humoring me. "Really? I mean, I totally understand if..." I knew she was headed to greener pastures and I was chock-full of wishful thinking. But what if...

Strategically, I dripped bits of suggestion her way, even going so far as to caress the front counter and say, "this whole area could be yours..."

Wow, that was easy! I had been trying to mentally gear up for the onslaught of extra work I had previously been about to dump on myself - the email replies, the preliminary applications, the more advanced stages of application, the first and second interviews (along with compiling lists of relevant questions and pre-deciding ideal answers), selecting the final candidates, then the top pick, and then finally, training.

Make no mistake, there's still training involved. There always is. The CA field is not the most common of job positions, so many don't have experience. I've always been prepared for that.

But with our CA on board, I now have just one final email to send: "The position has been filled; may we retain your information on file?"

And now I can actually breathe.

Have you heard? the (blue) bird is the word

Yep, it's official. After almost 8 months, I am back on the world's favorite P2P file-sharing program that every broadband ISP loves to hate (too cool for legit channels and too lazy to master BitTorrent).

I've been back for roughly 48 hours and already, I've downloaded over 8 gigabytes. Well over 8 gigabytes. And the lion's share of that came in all day yesterday (Sundays are very convenient). Yesterday I picked up all the latest ambient releases, and today I picked up all the new releases from popular artists. By the end of the day, REM, No Doubt, and Foo Fighters were mine. REM has disappointedly all but abandoned their trademark jangle-pop sound and No Doubt put the same 14 tracks in a different order, but Foo Fighters was well worth waiting for. They've strayed from their original roots, but it has been a well-penned evolution. After 6 years of doing a whole lot of nothing, Iio finally released something new as well. All in all, a success! It sure beat responding to the 10th practice email - not that I don't value them, but occasionally, enough can be enough.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), all my old list-buddies remembered who I was and we picked up where we left off - the chatting, the passing of cheese, the invites to exclusive invite-only VIP chatrooms, the warm welcome-backs, the respectful queuing, and lack of drama.

And yet, this time around, I'm bound and determined to minimize any and all of that said drama. Drama sucks and I didn't intentionally spark any before, but opening the collection up to anyone and everyone and downloading from those with whom I had very little in common linguistically, well, kind of set the stage for trouble. It had been such a chore to keep up with that P2P program - having to monitor for leechers and make judgment calls (leeching versus sharing is less of a black-and-white issue and more of a continuum), as well as setting download limits, unequal up/download speeds, dealing with people who didn't share, people who cussed me out, people to messaged me pointlessly, and more. Annoying.

So upon my return, I made a few changes. First, I share list-only. I'm sure that wins me more hostility than sympathy/empathy, but it's my connection after all and I don't have the time or desire to babysit. I also find that the program functions better the more I can keep control over the activity. So in the interest of stability (program) and sanity (mine), I share list only.

Where possible, I also download list-only, which means I try to search for the files I'm looking for among the people in my buddy list first. If I'm not successful, THEN I venture outside the buddy list. I'm not trying to be snobby, just trying to stay as familiar as possible. People on my buddy list already know I'm sharing and I don't have to explain (AGAIN) why they can't see my files, whereas I start from scratch and risk a ban every time I download from someone I don't know. (With more than 6 terabytes to browse, I'm surprised anyone can browse me at all, so the fact that people can queue files is encouraging.)

I kept my user info as simple and to-the-point as possible. I kept it as down-to-earth as possible. Hopefully people will get the idea that I'm mature, busy, common-sense, and have little time to police my machine, fill requests, or solve any problems. It's a controlled anarchy, within my parameters.

So far, it is peaceful and friendly, and hopefully it will stay that way. I didn't enjoy having to become a hardass and I didn't enjoy having to referee and explain and everything else. People were mean and/or stupid and I'm glad I haven't dealt with any of that yet. I probably will run into some of these douchebags eventually, but for right now I'm basking in the music-only-nothing-else vibe I'm putting out that is so far being gracefully returned to me.

Yay for birds :)

Children of the (cross-reactive) corn

Out of curiosity (and out of necessity--I also needed to be a guinea pig) I decided to run my own test panel through this new lab we established an account with. The test was yet another food reaction test panel (where you test a group of foods to see if you react to them), but rather than doing just one immunoglobulin (IgE or IgG) it did both IgG and IgA. And it grouped all the usual suspects together in one panel of all the foods gluten-reactive people are like to ALSO react to.

Ha.

Life dealt me another Joker. It was cruel. (Hint: not a new concept when it comes to my lab testing and forced dietary restrictions and whatnot.)

I react to (deep breath): milk (all protein subtypes), wheat (all protein subtypes and genetic varieties), coffee, (milk) chocolate, gluten-containing grains (we knew that): kamut, spelt, rye, barley, gluten-free grains (suspected some, like sorghum): buckwheat, millet, quinoa, pistacio, tapioca, sorghum, potato, corn, and hemp. I CAN still have: yeast, rice, and amaranth. Wewt.

Never expected corn. Or potato. And I haven't even HAD help or quinoa enough to develop a reaction to it. I'm not emotional about rice, so it's kind of a so-what that I would gladly trade for something else, but then, I can at least have my Clearvite, my Pei Wei, my basmati (not that we have that much right now), rice noodles (in case I ever want them), and my Sushihana (their salmon and rice just plain rocks and every 10 years I can stomach sushi).

I am still having chocolate. Why? Because the test only evaluated for MILK chocolate and since I'm positive for milk, I don't actually know whether I react to chocolate itself. Sooooo....

Warpath Wednesday

Yep, I know I ranted a couple months back. It was that whole PMS thing. Well, I need to do it again, and this time, I don't even have PMS. This time, though, I'll try to come up with accompanying solutions. At least, where possible.

Gripe: Microsoft PCs
I despise them. And the more I use my Mac, the more I despise Microsoft. It freezes. It hangs. It gets confused. It can't multitask, no matter how much RAM you put in or how well-hung the CPU is. It's just not happening. My Mac has less RAM and a less powerful processor and yet, I've had to restart it maybe 3 times since January. And I've used it every day and night, with a gazillion programs running, browser windows open, PDF and Pages documents in progress, etc. I also can't stand the cryptic error messages, the excruciatingly long boot-up process, and the Office Clippy mascot.

Solution: Get away from PC altogether as fast as possible. (Reflex problem: lack of funding to do so. Reflex solution: be patient and save up.)

Gripe: Allergies who think they can come in and dominate my day
Sure, they just barge right in and take up residence as if I didn't actually need my brain and the ability to breathe or anything. So I embarrassingly sneeze through the day - those uncontrollable, don't-bother-trying-to-finish-your-sentence sneezes that come in a rapid-fire string like planes lined up on final approach to a major airport on a busy Friday night. These are the muscle-seizing, incapacitating sneezes where I can't hear anything, can't say anything, and can't carry out any other task. Repeatedly. All day. Thanks heaps.

Solution: Still looking. Homeopathics haven't done a thing. Herbs and herbal teas haven't done a thing. Nothing. Still looking to pharmaceuticals to save the day, and only a handful of them actually work (Claritin and Allegra are scams).

Gripe: Not enough fucking office space
I've outgrown my office. And my reception area. My books are stacked on my chiropractic table, constantly needing to be shuffled around to whichever area of my room I use the least. So are my binders--lots of them. Why? Because I have no bookcase and I don't dare put them on the floor lest I have one more thing to trip over.

Solution: Mercury needs to go golldamn direct so we can get a move on this other suite.

Gripe: Not enough golldamn time or memory
I'm trying to do the work of anywhere from 3-5 people at once. I also have no oxygen going to my brain and my thyroid hormones are low. Throw in a dozen different cross-reactive foods of which I wasn't aware and of which I'm constantly exposed to, and it makes for very poor brain function. Things slip through the cracks and people ask things of me that I will simply forget. I feel like I have too many demands put on me and no one else can help me.

Solution: Hire an assistant...again, Mercury is an issue. (Isn't it always?)

Gripe: Patients to whom I've given the world that begin to complain about prices/expenses and actually go so far as to ask if the new information I'm about to present actually needs a visit (!!)
Uh, yeah. It does. It took me time to research the problem, time to design the protocols and time to make the handouts, none of which I got paid for. It took me time to travel to the classes that taught me this stuff and time to sit in the class and learn all of it, none of which I got paid for but instead *I* paid for. Now, my time and expertise are all I have to sell. And I have given away A SHIT-TON of time and expertise FOR FREE to several of my patients. So yeah, I'm actually going to collect SOMETHING for my time. I'm a doc. I went through school. I paid dearly in MANY ways, some of which I cannot undo or pay back (i.e. my time and my health). I currently drive a scratched up truck badly in need of a tune-up and I live in a low-income apartment with my husband who is also a doctor. And now I'm about to present new information to a patient who has historically taken MUCH time to ask MANY questions. Yeah, I'm gonna get paid.

Solution: I'm too much of a bargain as it is. Charge MORE. This will command the respect I deserve for the time I put in to each case and the results that I produce. Put a complete stop to lengthy informative emails and instead start doling out a simple Yes, No, or Too Long So Make An Appointment. Rejoice in the fact that I'm doing more volume, more successfully and ride that wave!

Gripe: Facebook stress
This, too, is something I've sort of brought on myself by letting things get out of hand and get to me. I've subscribed ("liked") too many groups and causes and I'm getting deluged. (Same could be said for Meetup, LinkedIn, and other naggy sites.) I've already waxed several people off my friends list because of drama and whatnot, which I just plain don't put up with, but now it comes down to all the political groups and such. Yeah, I'm right there with them in spirit, but there comes a point where I reach a limit, beyond which I just. Don't. Care anymore.

Solution: Trim the FB groups and start using FB for more benign things like professional networking/contacts, fun posts like eclectic music, and informative posts about things a broader audience can appreciate.

Gripe: Those cross-reactive foods
Ugh. I did my own food sensitivity test a few weeks ago. Rest assured, the tests I run do not return a false positive. If anything, it will be a false negative, but even that scenario isn't real likely. I ran a panel of like 20 different foods and lo and behold, I'm only negative for THREE. Yes, of the 20-something foods I tested, I CAN have only three. Everything else I've been eating is producing a similar reaction, even stronger than some of the gluten grains. WTF?? The interesting part? I did not perceive these reactions. I thought I was FINE. I wouldn't have known had I not been tested.

Solution: Rejoice in the fact that I can have 3 of those foods without a problem and that I at least know about the rest (it's better than not knowing) and go pretty much dairy-free, egg-free Paleo from here (minus peanuts, strawberries, kiwi, and raw tomatoes). Jesus.

Cross fingers for our space and a good assistant! (And an abatement of the allergies.) I think I can get through the rest.

Random questions to no one in particular

If I tested positive for corn, oats, tapioca, potato, buckwheat, millet, sorghum, milk, chocolate, sesame, quinoa, and more, what's left?

And why does every food I react to have to be something I like? The only foods I did not react to are rice, yeast, and amaranth. Seriously?

Why is it that as soon as I find (and fall in love with) something cool, Whole Foods Market has to pull it off the shelf (always blaming the "suppliers")?

Why does Teen Nick have to keep changing their lineup...which is not an improvement?

Why does 10pm have to invite all the scary, disturbing, fight-or-flight-inducing TV shows, documentaries, and infotainment? They rev it up just as I'm trying to lull myself to sleep.

Why do drivers swing out in the opposite direction just before making a turn?

Why are the cosmetically-nicest parts of town also the rudest?

What is the point of blasting the volume on the TV commercials, especially after the advent of the mute button?

Why are the shittiest companies also the biggest and most profitable? (It's not like most of them were even good at one time and deteriorated over time; many large companies were simply never good - always selling cheap products at inflated prices via subpar/absent customer service.)

Why does Facebook keep having to make ridiculous and pointless changes?

How did I not hear of Family Guy until 2009? (Answer: the Universe wanted me to actually pass med school.)

How is it that neighbors in our apartment complex keep moving out and yet we still continue to have a parking problem?

Why does family have the tendency to treat you like you're 16 no matter how old you are?

Why are there so many freaking crazy people (especially in San Antonio LOL)?

How does Beezit sell an iPad for $13? Why would anyone even do this?

Why do people still go to Walmart? (It's not like it's any cheaper to have to buy that skillet/shirt/etc *again* because it didn't last the first time.)

Why do iPad, iPhone, and Facebook games have graphics of 1993 caliber?

Why did anyone think the "Good Mood Food" Arby's jingle was acceptable?

How did shows like Robot Chicken, That 70s Show, and others even make it on to the airwaves?

Why do people buy comprehensive insurance plans? They always cost more than they provide.

I'm sure there are more random rhetorical musings, but it's getting late and the office will be waiting for me early in the morning.