On the 18th, I was up early and ready to go shopping at 7:00 AM for the items I needed to get several things done, but my nose decided that bleeding was going to be a thing. To be fair, I had woken up with a bloody nose, but I thought it had stopped until I was almost done clearing my car off and my nose seemed to start back up. Despite no tissues in my car, I luckily made it through the scraping of the windshield, but I'm sure any neighbours who were up likely thought it was odd that I warmed it up and cleaned it off only to turn it off and go back inside. The offending nostril was all blocked up after and I didn't know if I could trust it while shopping, but I had things to do, so I grabbed tissues and headed back out!
Unfortunately, this nosebleed thing happens quite often with Sjögren's Syndrome. Especially in winter with the dry heat from the electric baseboard heaters that are in my condo building. I miss gas heat. It didn't dry me out as much. A cheap way to help increase moisture in my home may be to air dry my laundry, which would also save some money. I sleep with a humidifier, but it doesn't seem to be enough.
I find sticking some petroleum jelly up my nose helps and it has often been better than the products that are supposed to be specifically designed for dry nose care.
Anyway, that was just a little of my weekend challenges. I was sure there would be more as I built a new monitor stand that I hoped would better handle my setup. I have a large monitor in the middle of my desk with a laptop on either side and a shared KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse), which lets me share the large monitor between my work laptop and my home laptop. While, I'd love three large gaming screens instead, this is what I have and it likely won't change for quite some time.
The wood was cut for the project, but I did not have the legs, paint, sandpaper, or other connective pieces and screws. I built one because the market doesn't have what I needed, which is a centre part with side wings for the laptops. I also wanted the whole thing to take up less space than most of the available products and be high enough off of the desk surface to let me have things underneath the stand like my soundbar, my small synthesizer, and my iPad. The whole thing is about making my small space more usable. And it had a benefit of being customizable to my own style.
I had some other things to shop for as well like a reading pillow to prop myself up in bed with and yummy things to eat. I didn't find a reading pillow that I liked. Most were ugly colours like mustard that wouldn't go with my decor at all. I soon learned that Bed Bath and Beyond is pulling out of Canada, so I hoped that I would find one there in the near future for a decent price.
I would be delayed again by a fire alarm in my building before I could go out and shop. By then, it was getting ever closer to noon and I decided to wait a little longer to avoid the midday traffic and busyness at the stores. I also had a film related workshop to attend starting at noon that I had forgotten about, so it would be the evening before I could get out and get the things I needed.
I thoroughly enjoyed painting the legs. It had been a while since I had last done a wood based craft project.
Here is the result:
