Snowed Under with Work

The world seems to want to make sure that I have good grasp of the meaning of the word Entropy.

The last definition of that is more what I mean in this context: "a doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration."

The world seems to be determined to keep messing things up for me, and usually on a financial basis. Well, sometimes on a health basis, or, as one of my current problems, something that broke, but is going to cost me a lot of time and effort (and probably some money) to fix. More about that later.

The IRS, in it's logical fashion, started taking money out of my monthly Social Security payment last year to satisfy a debt that was a bit over $500. They took over $300 out of my payments, and then decided that since they owed me enough to pay the rest, that  they'd stop doing that. But instead of applying it to my account, they sent it to me. So, now they say that it means that I owe them almost a thousand dollars.

I spent some time discussing it with them today. The outcome is not happy, but better than what they originally planned to do to me.

I've been trying to get in touch with the VA Hospital near here to get one of the hearing aids they gave me to use fixed, and probably return the other one due to almost total hearing loss in the other ear. The part of this that's really frustrating to me is that I'm pretty certain that the hearing in that ear could be improved tremendously, and possibly restored completely, but the last person I saw about it (an ear, nose and throat specialist at the VA Hospital) said that there was nothing wrong with my ear and then asked "So, why can't you hear?" Which was kind of the question that I came to him to answer.

I'm getting really tired of doctors asking me the very questions that I came to them to answer. 

But you can never get through to the hospital on the phone. You just get to leave a message and wait by the phone all day to have them call you back. It's frustrating.

Tomorrow I'm going to work on getting something done about my front teeth before I don't have them any more. Or maybe later today if I get a call back and am not worried about making a call and missing the call from the hospital.

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I also have two projects that need to be done.

One is the Christmas stocking commission. That's going well. I'm almost through the colorwork on the leg of the last stocking, which will leave some very easy knitting, and then some finishing work.

The other one is the cover for the second volume of the Steve Canyon DVDs. I have a lot to do on that. The cover photo was taken in color, but the only surviving copy of it is black and white. And while the scan of the photo is excellent, the photo itself is covered with dust, dirt, and scratches. 

So, there's a lot of restoration work before I can even apply the colors and make it into the background for the cover.

And I haven't even designed the inside cover yet. Not to mention that there has been no decision made yet about the photo for the back cover.

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Now on the happy news! The science fiction shows that were off for the holidays will be returning soon, except for those casualties of the networks.

On the 31st of January, G4 will be running a Heroes marathon, pretty much all day.

On the second of February, we hit the jackpot, at least as far as NBC is concerned. 

Chuck will be back with an opening episode in 3D! That means that you'll need special glasses to watch it and get the 3D effect. I can't find any information on the internet about where NBC expects you to get these glasses, though.

Heroes will be back the same night, too! You knew there was a reason why G4 would be running a marathon!

Medium will also be back the same evening.

Later, at a date I haven't been able to pin down at the moment, the long-awaited premier of Dollhouse is coming up for all you Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku fans.

Fast forwarding to March will bring us the premier of Castle! For all you Nathan Fillion fans, he'll be starring in it, and that's enough for me. But it looks like it has the potential to be a great series, too. Nathan will be playing the role of Rick Castle, a fictional famous author of crime and horror novels. Rick helps the police solve crimes.

In the more immediate future, the SciFi Channel will be running random episodes of Lost tonight. They've already caught up to the the premier of the show last week, and are just running through some highlights.

NBC will be showing the second half of The Last Templar at 9 tonight. It was listed for last night, but I didn't realize that it was a mini-series and that they weren't just showing the same movie again tonight. Woops!

And Wednesday night, of course, we have an episode of Lost from last week followed by a new one!

It's almost 5 pm, and the Hospital still hasn't called. I doubt that they'll be calling me back this late, so I guess I can stop carrying the phone around with me everywhere I go.

Have a great evening!