Some of you may know me and will have noticed I haven’t been around as much, and others will be like “Who is this Sisen character?” My last honest to goodness blog entry was probably from the beginning of 2011. A good bit has happened since then and a few downtimes in between. Sometime probably around last summer… or thereabouts we found out we were getting a new home. (And oh hey BrickFair was last August, and it is only…. 8675309… uh like 61 days away?) So around September into October we had to pack up our house to have it taken out, and then we had our new house put up. That took a long time to happen. I ended up staying with my cousins and uncle for about three months, while my mom and sister stayed at my grandmas and my dad roughed it out at the place being constructed. We actually got moved into our new home just in time for Christmas, like literally the day of Christmas Eve we were allowed to move in. Thankfully by some miracle I didn’t have to work Christmas Eve, or the day before, and we were closed for Christmas like most businesses… it was easy to move back in.

Speaking of work… I got hired at Best Buy April 2011. Last November/October I got a promotion and raise, and recently I got another raise. I work five days a week and most of the time I do work before and after I’m schedule for an eight hour shift. Now I am taking on even more responsibilities at work… Business has been rough lately and a lot of drama has been going on. Best Buy announced stores were closing, but not ours so that led to issues with customers and employees. Our store is changing and developing a different focus, everything is shifting. While my job specifically as an associate is not in jeopardy, the shift in focus has caused some unfortunate stuff to occur. My manager had to leave the store and go to another, because our store went from having four managers to only having three. Other titles and roles are being shifted and it’s different. Next month all of our new district people will be coming to meet us all. Business is just rough, there are customers, but not the right customers… and my coworkers aren’t always at their best or perform on the same level.

The promotion I mentioned though was pretty impressive. Out of the people who have worked there for a couple years, they haven’t seen anyone rise as fast… I went from a part time employee to a fulltime employee in… around six months. Some people are there years before they ever get offered that, and there are some part time people there currently who have been there longer than me. I still enjoy my job a lot and it is a lot fun. It is just more time consuming now because of the influx of hours.

Online classes are about the same. I recently determined I have a year left of classes before I graduate. I changed majors from what I thought I wanted to do, to what I think I want to do… but I have no idea what I’m going to do once I graduate. I just finished up a two month break from school, because I honestly don’t get any holidays off and maybe get a few days in between sessions. Eight week courses are pretty fast paced and have a heavy workload. I needed a break and now I’m back to school.

Last year right around the summer or a little before, I had gone off my medication for Crohn’s Disease. I didn’t just go off the medication; it was a mutual decision between my doctor and me. I was doing really well and wasn’t having any trouble, so we weaned my medication down until I wasn’t taking any. I had trouble here and there but it wasn’t anything bad, and I managed well without the medication… but recently I had to go back on my treatment. I don’t know if it was stress or just my condition in general acting up. I’m back to taking eight pills a day, but I’m feeling a lot better than I was. I’m not spending every waking hour when I’m not working resting because I don’t feel well anymore. It’s nice to feel good again. Luckily the insurance I have through work now covers my medication, because without insurance it costs almost $800 for a month of pills. You can’t imagine what it is like to have a prescription that expensive, and not having insurance to cover it… My entire month’s earnings would go to just my medication if I didn’t.

Going back on my medication wasn’t the only medical thing that happened to me this year though. I got a nasty infection and it was pretty bad. I was almost off work for an entire month because I was hit so hard by it. Clostridium difficile. That’s what I got. I have no idea where I got it. I have no idea why I got it. Usually it occurs in older people in hospitals and is transferred through fecal matter. I’m a stickler for washing my hands, so knowing I got infected by that… still weirds me out.

If you don’t want to search for c.diff (that’s what its call for short) here’s a general description. It actually causes symptoms pretty close to what I experience to Crohn’s disease, but it is different. Imagine how I felt when I thought it was my condition causing me so much trouble. I was torn up and scared, and on the verge of breaking down. Basically one night I woke up one night and in like five hours I had used the bathroom more than I would in a week’s time. I started running a mild fever. The pain was excruciating, but thankfully I only experienced it sparingly. Most of the time it was when I was trying to sleep, so I got no sleep at all… The trips to the bathroom continued and I ended up getting dehydrated. Finally I ended up in the ER. Guess what they said? Oh you’re fine, here we’ll give you your fluids, but nothing looks wrong…

Riiiiiight. So after I had more test run by my own doctor, they finally realized “Oh hey you actually have a pretty serious potentially life threatening bacterium.” So that was a lot of fun. Needless to say I ended up having to take one series of medication for a month for that, and I had another medication I took for about three months for it. The best part about getting infected is, once you’re infected, the chances to be infected by the same thing again increase! There’s a 20% chance I’ll get it again, and if I do get infected again…. That 20% chance increases to 40%... and 60% with each recurrence… So I have to live with that paranoia, and my Crohn’s disease already leads to a compromised immune system.

I did have my wisdom teeth out at the beginning of the year too, though that sort of pales in comparison to all that other medical stuff…

So yeah… I’ve been away for some time. I’m starting to lurk again. While I don’t have as much crazy stuff going on, work and school are still demanding. I mean by the time I get up for work, which is usually around seven am, I get home around seven pm… and by the time I usually go to bed… I only have a few hours… so you have to factor in hygiene, cooking, sleeping, and eating (not in that particular order) I honestly don’t have too much free time. And when I do… I honestly just want to sit back, relax, and do nothing.

That’s that. I’m probably forgetting some stuff here and there, but that’s the majority of key factors.

Skryim is awesome. Mass Effect is Awesome. LEGO is still Amazingly Awesome.