The Daily Kelly - Day 188

I'm still alive! Just super beyond crazy busy. And I broke my wrist! But it's mostly healed now! Yay! Here's a pic I just took. Apparently the human smiling at the iPad means it's time for kisses.

The Daily Kelly - Day 187

Cokaya was, once again, glued to me today. She's started laying on the floor in front of the couch, which is fine, except for the fact that I often step on her. That part's not cool. I've started doing a test foot placement before standing up.

The Daily Kelly - Day 186

I got up and headed home early this morning. My wrist was hurting too bad all night to let me get any sleep. Of course, after I had already left I got a call that I was supposed to be in a business meeting at the conference. Fail. I was too far gone to turn back.
Here's an odd sight (for anybody who lives around me, at least). Greenville is not supposed to be South, it's just WRONG, lol:

I drove straight home, left my luggage in the car, and crawled into bed. Here I am doing that whole roll around miserably trying to get comfortable thing:

My Cokaya decided to join me for midday bedtime:

Then, after our nap, she let me hold her while I watched a little Netflix:

Cokaya, as a rule, does not like being held. So, letting herself be cuddled is a rarity, indeed. 

The Daily Kelly - Day 185

Tonight was the big reception that we've been planning for months. I went to the conference today for another couple of panels. Honestly, I have been doing little more than sleeping since I got to Charlotte.
Here I am getting back to the hotel (between the conference and the reception), I look exhausted! And, some crazy man INSIDE Walgreen's had just asked me for money. I was like "Really? You're going to walk up to someone in a drug store of all places and ask for money?" Some people.

 Then, a quick shower and a fancy dress later...

Funny story, I couldn't get my dress to zip all the way up by myself (thwarted by the chiffon ruffles!), so I just zipped it as far as I could and then hooked the eye at the top. With my cardigan on, it totally looked like an open back cocktail dress (my skin was totally covered by the cardigan). Win! :-)
We had a great reception, people were totally into the food and seemed excited about coming to Atlanta next year. My wrist is hurting something awful from all the hands I shook tonight. I'm one of the youngest presidents in ASPA history, and the youngest ever in GA ASPA history, which makes lots of people want to meet me, and I'm cool with that, but my wrist is just not feeling it any more.

The Daily Kelly - Day 184

Today, I woke up feeling pretty good. I went downstairs and ate an amazing breakfast (included in the super low room rate!) and then gathered my belongings and headed into Downtown Charlotte. I got checked in for the SECoPA conference and then attended a couple panels. After that, it was time to check in to my new hotel.
By the way, did you know the fountains in Charlotte are red? I felt like I was in a horror movie waiting to happen no matter where I walked:

Once settled in, I headed out to hunt down dinner. I ended up at Moe's (I adore Moe's, seriously. I used to hold the FourSquare mayorship of four different locations at one time). While I was there, I noticed this sign:

I don't drink beer, but this sign totally made me giggle and I have no idea why. Then, I went to the Ritz Carlton for some gelato. These things just sort of happen to me. I wander in to a place because it has a dessert-y name and I end up at the Ritz.

Now it's time for an early bedtime at the Omni. My wrist is tired... and so is the rest of me too. 

The Daily Kelly - Day 183

This morning started off with an accidental selfie in bed. I think that may be half of Cokaya on the right side of this pic...

 After breakfast, Calli must have realized I was getting ready to pack up and head to North Carolina, because she crawled up on my chest again to sleep. Poor kitties, they are sick and tired of my travelling.

 I am an absolute genius, I totally forgot to book a hotel room for tonight, so I madly found the literal last room in the inn for tonight. I got really lucky, the Duke Mansion is extremely nice and the rate here (it's run by a non-profit) is better than what I'm paying to stay at the Omni for the next few nights. Here are some shots of my room, it's smallish, but it seems cozy and nowhere near as tiny as some hotel rooms I've been in lately:

The Daily Kelly - Day 182

My head is about to explode! But I'm still working...

And my hair looks totally emo all on its own, lol.

The Daily Kelly - Day 181

I totally forgot to take a picture before I went to bed, and I forgot yesterday too, so here's another bedtime iPad pic. This almost looks like forced perspective. It's really just super tired Kelly.

The Daily Kelly - Day 180

The last day of my last camp as a Field Lieutenant for Geek Squad Summer Academy. :-(

 Here I am with my WonderTwin and Patricia, finishing the summer as we began... together:

 Another bunch of the best employees around. We made school on a Saturday happen, and it was totally fun!

 And a super special treat, I got to spend the last few days working with one of my coworkers! Usually, we're all in our own homes all over the country, not this week! Kadryn is on my team and we've talked every day since I came on the team, but we finally got to meet. How cool is that?

The Daily Kelly - Day 179

It's camp day one here in Cleveland! We had some minor schedule issues (two lunches?) due to having camp during the normal school year, but it was all good. The employees are all amazing and it's been fun being with not only my beloved travel partner, but Evan and Patricia too.

Here I am, making last minute schedule magic happen:

Last night in the hotel room was fun... if fun is a whole lot creepy. The guy in the room next to mine called me up and propositioned me "I can hear you over there, want to party?"Uh, no.

The Daily Kelly - Day 178

Setup day in Cleveland! Yay! We were part of an active shooter drill at the school where we're working, it was cool though, we just put up our colored sign and went and hung out in an office inside the library.

Here I am with Shook and Evan, awwwwww:

We're in a super rough neighborhood, a car was stolen out of the parking lot today in broad daylight, no joke. It belonged to a guy there to speak to the school board, but that's still crazy.

I also got to go meet Evan's parents with Patricia and Shook, it was great meeting them since I spoke to them on the phone several times last year :-) 

Here I am as we were walking in to dinner:

The Daily Kelly - Day 177

I am soooo ridiculously glad I left crazy early this morning to head to the MARTA station to get to the airport. Here's what the traffic looked like as I was getting off of 316 onto 85 South:

 Here I am, sleepy, but thrilled to be on the plane headed to see my Evan and WonderTwin!

 Since I so rarely leave the house, maybe this explains my expression above better than I can:

 My WonderTwin and Evan picked me up at the airport and then we went to lunch and to tour the facility we'll be working at. While we were at the school, Shook found a note (if says: Do You Like Me? Yes No and has check boxes):

 Then we went to buy candy for camp. Shook found a Tootsie Roll Pop, we didn't buy it because we figured it would take way too many licks to get to the center.

For dinner, we took our GEAR Officer to a very special GEAR dinner... Trivia Night!! Woohoo! We lost, but we still had fun :-)
After that, we ended our night at the grocery store, where they had a massive amount of gluten free items, btw. They also had these... we were extremely confused until we walked all the way around them:

The Daily Kelly - Day 176

It's our second, and final, day of vacation. This morning, we went to the beach:

 And I took the obligatory, feet in the ocean pic, but my jeans kept unrolling, so this is what you get:

 And there were jellyfish all over the place, so we stopped walking in the water:

 To be extra touristy, we rode the SkyWheel (like a ferris wheel, with capsules to sit in):

 When we went to lunch, this place was next to it, we didn't go in, but it looks like my kind of place, lol:

 I LOVE SUGAR!!! Kendall loved their gelato.

 Then we went mini-golfing. I sucked. I blame my wrist, it wasn't a fan by the end. Then it conveniently started pouring rain, so we decided we were done.

 Then we went to dinner, and wandered around after dinner. We found another candy store called IT'S SUGAR... which was cheaper than I Love Candy, in case you're shopping for candy in Myrtle Beach.

The Daily Kelly - Day 175

We're off to Myrtle Beach, where neither of us has ever been before.

On the way, we stopped and I got a Fanta. It was Peach. I've never seen Peach Fanta before.

Once we arrived in town, we wandered around trying to find food. It seems that the "season" here ended a couple weeks ago, so it's quiet. Really quiet. I had a caramel apple and some cotton candy. My boyfriend had a hamburger and it came with his very own mayo:

We then found a place selling the most random glasses, here are my favorites (for breast cancer awareness, of course):

The Daily Kelly - Day 174

Going to Myrtle Beach for a couple days, leaving tomorrow. While I was at Target tonight they had this swimsuit on super clearance (like $5), figured I might as well. I took this pic to send to my sister to see if it was "cute weird" or "old lady weird"... she said it was cute.

Sorry for the boobiliciousness... and the weird hand on the chest thing, lol.

The Daily Kelly - Day 173

My wrist was absolutely killer all day today. I ended up clocking out from work becuase, even wrapped up in ice packs, I still was having trouble typing anything at all with my right hand. I already had plans to have dinner with some friends (Katie and Laura, in case you were wondering) and went ahead and showered and got dressed. It only took me 25 minutes to get my bra on (no kidding, not being able to use your wrist at all, period, is really uncool). I do think the shower helped it a little though, I did still decide to wear the splint to dinner in case it bumped into anything and just for a little more support since I cannot eat with my left hand without making a huge mess.

Here I am after dinner and going back to Katie's to just hang out and chat. I showed them both the 23andMe site and explained about my journey to find out more about my family and why I am not afraid of genetic testing like a lot of people seem to be nowadays (if you want me to write a manifesto on this or any other topic, please let me know, lol).

And now, a very important message:

Sadly, this very helpful chart does not cover being lei-ed or lei-ing someone, very important for any Hawaiian-themed events.

The Daily Kelly - Day 172

This morning, there was a massive spider web across my garage door, of course I had to back through it to get my car out (pretend the open garage door is the entire picture, look dead in the center of that and you'll see a dark black circle-ish spot, that's the spider in the center of his/her web).

 Then, as I'm backing up I notice this little, teeny tiny grasshopper in my back seat. Once I'd backed out, and pulled a little away from the spider who's web I'd just decimated,  I chased him out of my car.

 Then, I came home and Mr/Ms Spider had completely rebuilt across my garage door again. I hate destroying what would typically be a pretty awesome setup for a spider (especially since my car doesn't get out much), but my car isn't going to stay outside so the spider can keep its web intact (the over-exposed white circle in the middle of the picture in line with the GDO tag is the spider here).

On to today's serious business, my regular doctor called me a few days ago and said that the MRI of my wrist had been inconclusive but that they didn't think there were any torn tendons (the big worry since my issues have gone on so long) so today I went to the orthopedic surgeon.

So I go to the surgeon, and he looks at my wrist, does some horribly uncomfortable things, and then he says that the x-rays they did in the emergency room and the MRI that was done were all from the wrong angle and wouldn't have been able to see where I had actually hurt myself. He said he could see fluid on the MRI that was where it wasn't supposed to be, meaning inflammation, right? But he couldn't actually see the joint and bone where I'm having issues. So he sent me for an x-ray series taken at extremely specific angles (he actually came and demonstrated what he wanted for the technician while I was in the waiting room). He takes a look at the x-rays and then says that I probably broke the bone in question, but that it's so small it's already healed and the only thing left to see is the serious damage to the joint. He then injected something into the freakin' joint and said that the pain would be bad for about a day and then excruciating for about three days before it started to feel better. 

See the teeny bandaid there on my wrist? That hides a great big ball of fire. Holy wow.