The Daily Kelly - Day 163

Hello!

Today I received my first box from Quarterly. I went with Alexis Ohanian's box because I've always been a massive Bread Pig fan. When you first open the box, it's got a booklet explaining why the items were chosen and each mailing has a hashtag for people who are into that sort of thing. #Hashtag.

 My box had a jar of PB Crave Cookie Nookie, a bag of super yummy Emoticandy, and an annotated copy of "Masters of Doom" by David Kushner.

The Daily Kelly - Day 162

Today it has been 13 years since I was diagnosed with Pseudotumor Cerebri/Intracranial Hypertension. That blows my mind.
Three years ago today, I went skydiving... it was awesome! Here's the video that I finally got around to uploading to YouTube:

My boyfriend referees wrestling at Dragon*Con every year, whenever I can, I go down with him and do my nerdy thing while he's doing his. Someday, I really want to do the full weekend, I think it'd be a blast. This year, I only had time for one panel, I went to the "State of Black Sci-Fi" it was pretty cool.

I really enjoyed the conversation/debate around the definition of "sci-fi" really is and also getting to hear more about black sci-fi for kids who are starting to realize that the heroes in books don't usually look like they do. 

And... for the first time ever... my boyfriend's name was spelled correctly on his badge. Woot!

The Daily Kelly - Day 161

Calli decided to take a bath on me. Some cats...

The Daily Kelly - Day 160

This morning I got of way before the sun came up and went to have an MRI done of my right wrist. They then sent me home with a disc of the images, of course I had to take a look (these are stamped with Not for Medical Use because of the software I had to use to make the disc Mac compatible).

I call this one "Superhero Wearing a Garter":

 This one is "Wolverine's Fist":

 Here, we have "The Scream":

And here's a picture from this afternoon... Calli has decided she's totally cool with me sitting on an exercise ball all day, as long as she can too.

The Daily Kelly - Day 159

This morning I went to the neurologist. I got questioned about my recent falls and they want me to go to physical therapy for a mobility assessment. I was even asked if I thought I needed a cane! Personally, I think having a cane would be one more thing for me to trip over.

The Daily Kelly - Day 158

Look... another iPad pic taken in bed (that sounds way more exciting than it really is)...

The Daily Kelly - Day 157

Today I went to the doctor... my ankle and wrist were just hurting too much to deal with any more. He is sending me for an MRI of my wrist, so that'll be exciting here in a few days. His verdict on my ankle is that it's a pretty bad sprain. I would love to not hurt myself any more.

The Daily Kelly - Day 156

Today was a rainy day... but I work from inside my home, so it didn't really matter to me one way or another.
Cokaya joined me for work, she was very entertained by the wet humans running to and from their vehicles:

Here I am... working:

And I did an expense report that might be disturbing to the superstitious:

And I stumbled across a Not Sure Fry meme that just about sums of my life:

I am part ninja. 

The Daily Kelly - Day 155

I was eating Sprees (candy) and working today...

Yeah, it's a wonder I haven't choked myself before now. Btw, red and green Sprees are the best flavors and around Christmas, they sell tubes of just red and green Sprees, that's pretty fantastic. :-) 

The Daily Kelly - Day 154

This morning I checked in with my travel partner, who is still recovering from plague:

Then, Cokaya took a pic with me while I was working:

The Daily Kelly - Day 153

Well, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise... I'm sickly. Today I just slept on the couch all day. Calli decided to sleep on my chest so I couldn't leave without her knowing.

 This picture would have been a million times cuter if it were over just an inch or so...

 I was not drunk... but this comes pretty darn close to a drunk text to my boyfriend...

The Daily Kelly - Day 152

I made it home! I'm exhausted, but I'm here after way too long away. Calli jumped right up in my lap as soon as I stumbled in the door.

I entered my hours for the last week... not counting all of our tourist wanderings in NYC and DC, I worked over 72 hours. Imagine if I hadn't called out sick yesterday how many more hours I would have ended up with! That's crazyness.

The Daily Kelly - Day 151 - Edited

Today was horrible! I woke up and the whole world was spinning. No matter what I tried to do, my stomach and head just would not let up. Here is a pic I took after stumbling out of my bathroom. See, I really did get up and get dressed (at least half way) for work this morning. My stomach and whole body are hurting and swollen. It is not cool at all.

I ended up having to "call out" from work... when I was in Washington, DC. Sucktacular. I managed to crawl in to town on the Metro, with my ice bucket liner bag in my backpack, just in case, just in time to watch the pallets be wrapped and loaded on the truck. I missed the entire second day of camp. Bummer. And my partner is sick (sinuses) so he's miserable too and he ran camp on his own (with Evan, who is always awesome).

I did make it to dinner, which I didn't really feel like eating, but it was great for a photo op with two of my most favorite desserts of all time.

As we were leaving dinner, a random city worker offered to take our picture, he was totally awesome!

The Daily Kelly - Day 150

Camp day one was a whole lot of fun! It was so weird having kids old enough to sign their own permission slips! lol. My head's sort of semi-not-really cooperating. I've had a killer headache since New York, but I'm surviving.

We started to take a nice picture with the "mayor" to thank him for helping out with the super awesome facility... 

Then things kind of fell apart... 

But we all got a good giggle out of it and had fun... seriously, every employee at this camp is awesome. I would work with each and every one of them every day. 

 After camp, Shook, Evan. and I went to get some water on the way to try to fit in some sightseeing in DC. While waiting in line at CVS, I noticed this guy's hard hat. At least it's not: "SAFETY" THROUGH "TEAMWORK"...

Evan met a squirrel. It wanted to be friends, Evan wanted to take pictures of it with his new camera, it was a match for the ages... 

Two of my favorite people on the planet, I'd do (just about) anything for these guys (we can ask Meat Loaf what I won't do... he'll know). Evan carried my purse all over DC and Shook had my laptop in his backpack to try and relieve the pain in my ankle/back/wrist (oy!):

We then went to see Abe and captured what may be the most epically epic group selfie ever taken. All three of us AND Abe. That takes mad skillz. Especially with a broken wrist.

A nice tourist lady took a non-selfie for us with Abe, but I'm kind of proud of our selfie work.  

 Here Shook and I are trying to see what it takes for me to be taller than he is... we've got over a foot worth of height difference. He not only had to be on a lower step than I was, but then he still had to hunch over... but it looks like we did it, I'm taller!

 We embarked on this tourist journey with the intention to find food, and ended up walking about a million miles to make it to dinner. Once we found a place on one of our phones to eat, we wandered in that direction (seriously, if we could have cut through the White House it would have shaved a ton off our trip). As we were walking, I noticed this sign and had to stop for a Gangsta Book People pic. :-)

The Daily Kelly - Day 149

Today was set up day! It was definitely a different experience setting up for our first camp with kids who aren't really kids anymore. We're expecting a group of rising high school seniors with a few recent high school graduates sprinkled in for good measure. We get to talk about stuff like careers, college applications, and other exciting stuff we don't usually cover with our younger kids. We also got to buy chocolate since these kids are all old enough not to eat it if they're allergic. I'm sooo excited!

The mayor of DC helped our non-profit partner secure the OCTO offices for camp, so we have a super nice facility... the walls are white boards, that's pretty awesome :-)

Here I am helping to get the facility's computers tucked safely away before we brought in our own equipment:

After setup day, the WonderTwins and Evan went out to dinner and then wandered around downtown Alexandria by the waterfront. I fell (what else is new) and feel like I sprained my ankle pretty bad (and maybe my partner's back where I caught myself with my good wrist), but we still managed to have fun.

First, my partner found a cool car:

Then, Evan had a found a cow!

And finally, I took a propeller to the head. Ouch!

 We also had the opportunity to make some questionable stops in our wanderings... 

But that's a story for another day... 

Once we made it back to the hotel, my ankle was crazy super swollen (usually, I have actual ankles):  

My partner filled one of my room's (exceedingly clean) trash cans with ice and water and made me ice it. A lot. And he stayed with me to make sure I actually did it (yeah, it seriously hurt enough for me to have probably not have done it more than once like he made me do it). 

Here's a pic I took after he finally let me take my foot out of the water:

The redness is from the ice, but I think it looks a little less swollen. I'm glad my partner has sports medicine knowledge. For realz. 

The Daily Kelly - Day 148

This morning was a rush, I had a super early flight from NYC to DC. When I got to the airport, I realized I had forgotten my amazing (and amazingly expensive) travel pillow and my best buy blanket at the hotel. Then, I was put on a bus at the gate to drive a couple miles to the snow plow section of the airport to board a crop duster... for realz.

 Once I got to DC I was reunited with my WonderTwin...

And he took dorky pics with the shopping cart that had its own escalator at Target with me :-) 

Another thing that made my day today... I got to be reunited with one of my absolute best friends today. Our core team member for this camp is Evan, one of my travel partners from last year. Yay!! (That's him in the grey Lost World/Jurassic Park shirt ducking to the other side of the escalator in my pic).