Diagnosis Week

My sister declared this week salad lovers week and wanted me to post a salad recipe a day to share with her and whomever else. I really would love to participate in such a thing so here's my FAVORITE salad recipe:

Romain lettuce
cucumber
green peppers
cherry tomato's
feta cheese
avocado

I put it all in a bowl and then I use a Italian Basil dressing. I eat this every other day. It really makes me happy. Sometimes I'll put cooked chicken on it, but that's a rare event. Boring I know, but so basic, good and true. Salad in it's purest form.

Although this week for her is salad lovers week, I will dub my week diagnosis week. It's been amusing to see just how much stuff all happens at once in my life. Why oh why!??!

1. Last week I was at home working on my laptop (working is used very loosely--I mostly recreate, compiling music, "research", watching Arrested Development on hulu.com, and stuff like that). While I was compiling a great new play list the screen started shaking, bouncing up and down very fast, and then it turned a greenish hue and then went dark. I shut the top and put it aside hoping that in the morning it would return to it's normal level of functioning. Of course, I was wrong. It's clear that the computer is still working, it's just the screen that isn't.

I spent some time on the phone yesterday with our pals and the geek squad. Did you know that they'll charge you $70 just to look at your computer? I told them that I knew what the problem was, the screen. The guy said it sounded like the LCD screen or something and that would--judging from the age of my computer, purchased in 2002 a Toshiba--cost me close to $500 to fix and that I should probably get a new one. Then I was wondering about external hard drives. These can range from $80-$120 or so. So how much will it cost me to have them save my data? It depends on how much but possibly $160. Now I don't know what to do. Would they charge me the 70 to talk to me, the 100 for the hard drive and then the 160 to transfer data? And that's not even considering the cost of the new computer.

2. My dear sweet car does a good job. She is a little old and has 123 plus thousand miles. She's a Toyota Corolla and I try to take good care of her because she's helping me out a bunch. The other day I was thinking about how I know there is an oil leek in my car and I was pretty sure that if there was any oil in the car at all, it was probably very little. I decided to do the right thing and take it in. My findings? I need a new oil pan and gasket--maybe $400, but they also decided to tell me I need new front brake pads and new rotors because they were bent--maybe $300. Really? So I'm trying to shop around for that. I can't imagine an oil pan being that expensive. I suggested duct tape, but they weren't amused.

3. Yesterday I couldn't speak. I had a scratchy throat for a few days but the last two days were really bad. I could hardly leave a message for my boss when I called out sick. I love that I don't have to try to sound sick. It was the strangest thing though. I've never had a sore throat like this. I had no other cold symptoms. I felt fine physically except that my throat felt like it was on fire. I hadn't had strep throat since I was really young, so I thought maybe that was it. I spent a lot of time yesterday on the phone changing my PCP, learning that my new PCP wouldn't give me a referral because she wouldn't see me until Nov, my new PCP's secretary is a JERK, my health insurance is a joke, I can't go to a walk in without a referral from my PCP, and my only options were to change my PCP again to someone who could see me that day or go to an ER where my awesome insurance lets me pay $75 for an ER visit but I also have a $500 deductible for lab work. What kind of insurance is that? I HATE our health care system and what I hate even more is that people are making other people purchase this insane insurance that then isn't helpful for them when they actually do get sick. But I don't want to go off on my thoughts of insurance (I just deleted a ton--you're welcome)

So yeah. I guess I have a lot of diagnosing going on. What's wrong, what's the necessary treatment, what do I want as my desired results? For now I will just try to find relaxing activities, you know things that help me distract/avoid the rest of my life. I could probably do that for a while.