Had a lovely time with plumtreeblossom Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. We met for dinner after work (I had pumpkin ravioli) and then went to auditions for PMRP’s annual Hallowe’en production of live radio plays — i.e., actors standing in front of the audience at microphones and performing radio dramas, while foley artists do live sound effects. plumtreeblossom wants to do foley (sound effects) rather than voice acting, but she came to keep me company. Auditions went well; I’ll probably know by Friday whether I’m cast. [EDIT: And we had a lovely time chatting out on her balcony with vanguardcdk in the evening. Always nice to get to chat with him.]

It was a lovely time with my sweetie, indulging some of our common interests.

Yesterday I had an appointment with an endocrinologist. It ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, since he was running really late and what I thought would be a 20min appointment turned into close to an hour, and then I needed to wait for blood work, but it was very informative. Basically, I think my PCP just wanted an expert’s imprimatur on the endocrine-related diagnoses I’d gotten, and on the treatment I’m getting.

The endocrinologist gave me two concrete useful pieces of information: One, it can take quite a long time after you’re on the right dose of thyroid hormone before you feel entirely right — more than the three months I already knew about. Two, I really should be keeping my testosterone in the fridge. That might explain why sometimes it seems to have an effect (when it’s new) and sometimes it doesn’t (when it’s been sitting out for a month).

And last night I went to Acapulco’s in Quincy for margaritas with [FIXED:] m_c_t and cathijosephine to celebrate cathijosephine’s new job. And beforehand she and I split one of the Best Pastrami Sandwiches in the World. We had a lovely time.

Oh, and last night Chickenfinger (cathijosephine’s cat) slept with me.

Life is good.

My doctor told me I should drink more wine. I like my doctor.

EDIT: He also agreed with my suggestion to try decreasing my testosterone dose a little bit and seeing how that goes. Don’t worry, those of you who might care about that; we’re only talking about a small decrease.

• Awesome date with plumtreeblossom!
• Awesome wildflowers!
• Awesome party!
• Awesome yummy people at awesome party!
• Awesome opportunity to show off my new kilt at awesome party!
• Awesome phone call from my awesome parents silverlibre and ka9sqb just now!
• Awesome literary/social gathering I’m about to go to with plumtreeblossom!
• Awesome progress made on cleaning house!

So the weekend is made of awesome.

The only less-awesome thing is that for the time I haven’t been hanging around with awesome people this weekend I’ve been a bit down and grumpy. Not sure why — might have to do with being low on T (due to not wanting to inject the stuff I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to and needing to wait for a new prescription), or might have had to do with the state of the house (which nevertheless is improving). But that was pretty mild, and the weekend is definitely net awesome.

This is going to be short because I'm very sleepy, but I had another really lovely day with plumtreeblossom today. We woke up and puttered around the house for a while, then went out on a couple of errands, including brunch at the little diner near my house, and then spent all afternoon doing yardwork. My sweetie weeded my flower-patches! And machete'd down all the foliage that had overgrown the brick path to my porch, which was a very time-consuming job! And I mowed the lawn, and then weeded a bit as well. (I tried siphoning out the gas in my gas mower and going out and getting fresh gas, in case that was the problem, but it wasn't. So I mowed the lawn with my reel mower, which worked better this time than it had last time. Entirely adequate.)

Then we took the T to the North End (Boston's Italian neighbourhood) and had a very yummy meal and some wine out on the patio at a restaurant called Mother Anna's. I rarely make it to the North End, and I allowed to plumtreeblossom as how the next time my parents silverlibre and ka9sqb come to Boston I should take them there. And then it occurred to me that I was having such a delightful time (I mentioned that it sort of felt like being on vacation) that I should share it with them. So I called them, and plumtreeblossom and I got to have lovely little chats with them both.

Then we took the T here to her place. Between sun, physical labour, a yummy rich heavy meal, and wine, we are both very very sleepy, and I think (this is utterly unheard of for me) I might be asleep by 10 or 11. It's a very happy tired.

[EDIT: PS -- I'm going to be giving myself half as much testosterone twice as often now, and today I gave myself my first shot at the lower dose. I had been doing 200mlmg every two weeks, and I was kind of manic for the first couple of days and really dragging towards the end. This should even things out a bit.]

plumtreeblossom’s mom has been visiting her this weekend, and I spent a bunch of the last couple days with them. After work on Friday I met them at the Kendall Square Legal Sea Foods for dinner. I forget what the fish I had was (it was a special, so I can’t just check the online menu), but it was deliciously prepared in an elegant sauce that involved lemon, butter, and mustard, and it was “breaded” with shredded potato, which worked very well. plumtreeblossom had filet mignon, and her mom had lobster.

Then this morning I brought over corned beef and some veggies, which we put in plumtreeblossom’s crockpot for the day while (after bacon and eggs which plumtreeblossom) we went to the Aquarium for the afternoon. It was unusually crowded (neither plumtreeblossom nor I had seen it quite that crowded before, and we got a wheelchair for plumtreeblossom’s mom, who broke her foot a couple months ago and isn’t up to lots of walking yet, and it was quite a challenge getting through the crowds to see the exhibits with the wheelchair. We’d see a gap we could squeeze into and start for it, but within three or four seconds it was full. So there was a lot of waiting, but it was still quite a lot of fun for all three of us. The sea lions and penguins were utterly adorable as always. (sionnagh, I told them how you used to feed the penguins. They were all rockhoppers then, right? Now they’re all or mostly African penguins.)

Then we came back to plumtreeblossom’s place (where her wildflower garden is doing quite nicely, thank you) for corned beef, which we got to share with her housemate vanguardcdk who arrived just as we did. After dinner there was cake with ice cream, and then we sat on the balcony and chatted for a while.

Now I am home, and I think I’m going to go to bed early (maybe after reading a little more of Harry Potter). It makes sense that I’m sleepy, since I woke up out of a prosaic-but-inexplicably-creepy dream at 6:30 this morning (which would count as sleeping in for ka9sqb, I’m sure, but is unthinkably early for me) and couldn’t get back to sleep.

In other news, I have a doctor’s appointment (with another doctor in my PCP’s office since he said it had to be a morning appointment and he didn’t have any available until the very end of August) to gauge the results of my hormone treatment. I presume it will involve bloodwork and that’s why the time of day matters. (The short subjective version is that I’m doing much better since I started treatment, but don’t feel like I’m quite there yet, so I think my thyroid dosage needs some tweaking. I think my testosterone dosage is probably fine.)

I had a very encouraging and hopeful meeting with my doctor today. (And an encouraging but possibly not quite on-target voicemail message from my hematologist this morning.) The short version is that I have a couple of endocrine problems, and it’s very likely that treating one or both of them will make a big difference. If I get a chance later tonight (I just got back to work after the appointment) I’ll probably post more details (probably in a locked post, which is a sneaky and underhanded way of encouraging my parents to get LJ accounts :-). [EDIT: It worked!]

(In other news, it is a marvellously sunny day here in Boston, so I was happy for the opportunity to go for a walk in the middle of the day — my PCP is walking distance from work.)