due to attention span issues, the following post will contain bullet pointed items.

- got my new Crumpler bag. it rules even if it's too big.
- liked Indy 4; probably would agree with your criticism though. still, liked it.
- getting to Erie is long, and my ability to take the Long Road Trip is inconsistent these days
- Bravo! italian restaurant in Cranberry township PA is really good
- I think I have about had it with Quality Inns; once I turn in these points I will try another chain
- George's restaurant in Erie is a great breakfast place, recommended
- got to go to presque isle, unexpected treat!
- also Waldameer! the wacky shack! a classic!
- got home safe
- doctor says i don't have asthma
- of the 15 or so people who have posted on my psych class boards, we have 11 future nurses

And of course, congratulations to p_sunshine and simplesimon on their wonderful wedding and the beautiful church and brilliant reception and excellent food. Reuben puffs? Brilliant!!

Photos at some point later.

I already posted about the fine time I had eating belated birthday tapas, so I will skip that, but I did a bunch of other nice things this weekend that I should record for posterity.

Friday: Attended the Honeychuck show at the 9:30. My friend chiba plays guitar in this band and I wanted to make sure to be there to support them for this; playing the 9:30 is rather a huge deal! I hadn't been there in a while so to see it when it's not a sold-out show, after so long, was kind of weird. It doesn't smell like smoke anymore, and it seems so much smaller than I remembered it. I usually hate going there but this was nice. The band performed perfectly and had many of the crowd bopping around. I didn't stay for the following bands, since I'm a jerk like that. Some guy stopped me on the way out to give me a hard time for leaving; he was either in one of those bands or was hitting on me. I noticed him looking at me earlier so I'm thinking the latter. Which would be fine because it's been a good eon and a half since that happened. When I got home I fit in some drum practicing and we watched the season finale of Grey's.

Saturday is documented in pictures. With the exception of my drum lesson, which would have been weird to document.

Sunday I had wanted to get up, fix up the music room, have band practice, and then go out to WV to visit fabulist. That did not work out how I wanted it to but I will say that band practice was really cool. I asked meercat to come try to play bass since she had casually mentioned an interest. Chach was obliging and did some teaching and we put together our first two Jelly Sharks songs with her handily. After Jen was gone Chach and I tried to remember the rest of our set, which we did handily!! It was awesome!! With the exception of the last song we learned, we pretty much remembered everything. Also, by the time all was said and done it was 5pm and too late for me to go out to WV. I feel bad about that, because I really wanted to go. I took a leisurely time laying on the bench in our teeny back yard instead; despite the nearness of other buildings and our cars, it was a nice little slice of nature until a bug fell out of the tree onto my face, which left me slightly less relaxed.

Monday was for leisure time & grilling. Back to tzel's! I brought the cheap knockoff of Ladder Golf I had found at Target (sigh... all plastic.) and I enjoyed that a bunch, despite some tree and rose thorn issues. (Yes, it turns out there are MANY instructions and knockoff sites for making PVC and other variations on Ladder Golf.) Once we got home we decided to kick back with something from Netflix. We were in a rare "we can handle drama" kind of mood and watched The Wind That Shakes the Barley which was for me an education. It was good even if it seemed kind of rushed as it reached the end. I liked that the director kept in little verbal missteps and flubs because it made it all the more real, and didn't take away a smidge of the intensity.

It was hard to keep my tattoo out of the sun this weekend.

I also restarted WW and a general being healthy campaign on friday. I was in a terrible mood and in a rare feat turned a turd into a diamond. So I feel great, within myself, today. I worked out on the trampoline every day so far and blah blah points I know you don't want to hear all the details of that. I wish I knew what it was that struck me to reject all the bad things in the world and just be fucking positive, because I would like to be able to recreate that at a later date. At the moment I will settle for that as the default mode and hope it continues, or will it to continue as much as I can.

For the past several weeks I've been sleeping with my custom dentist-made night guard on, to stop the rapid deterioration of my teeth from grinding. Now when I don't make it through the night with this thing on (sometimes I take it out in my sleep) it feels like I'm putting a good 70 pounds of pressure on my poor little teeth. This sucks! And makes me talk funny right before bed. The up side is that I feel thoroughly compelled to brush my teeth before bed every night which has to be good.

After lab review last night I'm in a dead flat panic about the practical. I know I have LOTS of wiggle room but I want an A in this class. I am also mildly paniced because our teacher has lost people's work before and I asked to see my grade thus far last night and she wouldn't show me. Unacceptable. So I've got to learn muscles in a week. No more fucking around.

Off to run several errands before leaving town!! Whee.

No strep, no pneumonia, no flu. I just have a plain old regular cold. But it's kicking my ass so many ways I lost count. The doc at the patient first gave me an inhaler for the second cold in a row and I just tried it for the first time.

I never want to do that again, if possible. I am shaking and nervous and I don't feel like my lungs relaxed at all. After I breathed crappily into the breathy-tube for like the first time, he was like, "Are you SURE you don't have asthma???"

Anyways I didn't work today and I won't be working tomorrow, I have a note and everything. I guess that could be considered an up side but at the moment I'd rather be healthy and working.

EDIT: I am sincerely and thoroughly sorry to anyone I exposed this weekend. For those before I knew: humble sorries and for those after I knew: MASSIVE IDIOT sorries. I am stupid.

Often, when someone tells you that something will take XX:XX time, they neglect to factor in all kinds of things. This applies in particular to working out; more often than not people are focused on the length of the workout: "Just 15 minutes every day!" or "Just 30 minutes 5 days a week!" or what have you. But this is actually lies.

( Every second counts. )

My filling that fell out needed to be replaced with a full crown. *sigh* I tried to be tough but I cried because they had to do the roof-of-the-mouth numbing, and you know how I am about needles. I have a new dentist - my original dentist mysteriously disappeared, and I said a little atheist prayer for her, because I think she got very sick. But I was afraid to ask.

I reached out for a calming visualization and for some reason I imagined pulling on a stout rope, feeling its fibers in my hands. It didn't matter what was at the other end of the rope, I was just counting, hand over hand, feeling every detail, engaging the senses to distract from whatever the hell was going on in my mouth. I am sure this rope image is a direct result of piratical influence. :)

Step 1: Come down with a vicious, mind-erasing, spirit-dimming, will-eroding cold.

OK, so I have been observing the fantastic bentolunch community lately. And then today tzel sent me this bento link. It is easy to chop up some things, or grab a few pita chips or carrots, or what have you to put in a bento box. But what I don't get is:

How do you prepare noodles to pack up on a daily basis? Or rice? Surely these people do not cook these starchy items the same day they pack them? Don't noodles get kind of oogy and weird if you refrigerate them? And rice, doesn't it get hard?

Please forgive my food ignorance, and enlighten me gently. :)

( blathering about health, food, healthfood )

I am now the proud owner of a pair of actual Earth Shoes:



Courtesy of a sale at the local "healthy crunchy shoes" shop here in Annapolis. In honor of the occasion, I made a long-overdue big fat hippie icon. My icon skills are for crap - if anyone with better icon skills would like to make an excellent icon of a giant hippie terrorizing the countryside, PLEASE feel free. I think they may be helping my back! But I can't tell because ( cut for the sensitive, and those rightfully sick of hearing about it. )

my weekend was low-key, and that is a laughably overestimated statement. i mostly just laid around. i did go to my drum lesson, and driving there tweaked my back, and we moved my computer to the standing-up desk, which, to my horror i discovered didn't help much if at all. i can't use the computer at home for more than ten minutes at a time. i watched every episode of penn & teller's bullshit that i hadn't seen yet, and went through phases of annoyed and amused at that. girls night was saturday and i had fun, although i was still in a bunch of pain.

jack and i had the most fun while trying to fall asleep saturday night playing a stupid game i made up that is basically 'name a song on a soundtrack'. you have to name a song that was on a soundtrack and the movie it was on the soundtrack for. you take turns. whoever can't name one any more loses. rules: you can't name more than one song from the same movie yourself, but your opponent can name another song from a movie you have already mentioned. if your opponent wins with a movie you have already mentioned, then you actually tie. we did this for hours (would have been a whole lot shorter if we had disallowed musicals) and he won with 'eye of the tiger' from rocky because i couldn't think of the name of that movie that used the 'hotstepper' song. which, by the way, i now recall was pret-a-porter. try it with your loved ones. adjust the rules as you see fit.

sunday jack made chili and we played final fantasy (IX, on the PS2 so i could be supine). i discovered that i cannot open 'Memos' on my treo 700p because it resets every time i try. any palm advice is welcome, since that's where i keep all my directions and not being able to use it would waste paper.

not being able to compute at home has me sort of paralyzed in my personal life. sick, isn't it! i can't figure out what the hell i am doing. and i am discouraged every time i look around the house, because i can't clean anything. i know, i am a whiner lately. yeah.

Today I got chiropracted. When my doctor said she would refer me to a physical therapist, I didn't know that was code for chiropractor! Well, now I do. Anyways, I mildly freaked out about it, but he only did a few cracky things and I think it may have helped, and then gave me regular stretches to do. And I'm not paralyzed. And I can't actually tell what might be worse or better, because the red army marched across the fertile fields this morning and the pain of that pretty much takes over everything.

But I've been chiropracted. Huh.

it was bound to happen sooner or later. i am sick. i mean, everyone i know just about has had the ick so i couldn't possibly avoid it forever. i just wish that when i got sick i was more resilient instead of being completely overwhelmed by it.

wahhhh plz send tea and spicy food.

I do want to get to the rest of my weekend before I forget things. Even though I took copious notes to avoid that.

( personal and detailed in a personal way that may bore you )

Monday night was peril_book_club. We have a new slogan: "Now with twice the colon!" There was pie. And the best salsa EVER (Trader Joe's Hot - in the fridge/fresh section). Poor meercat was the only person who liked the book. Her input was valuable! I still would think twice before I read another Ishiguro book. [edit] Spoilers about the latest book included in comments.

So I finally gave AM & PM Yoga a try last night. For one, I think I might want to take a real yoga class. For two, Rodney Yee's black underwear is distracting. (Cast your mind back to this gem.) For three, Hero really, really loves it when I do yoga. He lays next to me and does kitty yoga and stretches and purrs. He also tries to rub up against me when I am most likely to collapse in a non-peaceful heap, as if to say, "downward facing what now, sweetie?".

So I wonder if I can find a yoga class that's not a) a ridiculous expense and b) too much with the woo-woo as sesby would say.

I must be getting better at pain management, because I only just now became aware that this is the shaking, vomity level of headache.

I didn't call in sick because it's snowing! I called in sick because I'm sick! Man I hate it when that happens. I'm at home hoping some food enters my body and doesn't leave in a way that makes me extremely uncomfortable. Could the BK chicken fries have done this to me?

Bleah.

This morning was a 2-kitty alarm morning. Some people hit the snooze twice, but for me it's measured in kitty visits. On a good day, Hero will come by and meow at me from one foot away from my face. On a bad day, Hero will meow, and Nicolas will poke me in the face. It took both to get me out of bed this morning.

I'm having budget misery. Seems I've been comfort-shopping a little too much lately. What's with all this latent stress? It's not like I don't feel great all the time lately? Blah.

Had my physical, everything checks out A-OK. ( TMI )

To do this weekend:
- clean out the car
- laundry
- clean out the closet and take everything to thrift store
- go to EC with my homies
- hit things with drumsticks
- get jack to get himself a new monitor so i can have his old one
- if i am feeling really excited, come up with a house to do list

I am so ready to get this weekend started. Then it's next weekend, and I'm going to philly, and I am so psyched for that. See, everything is good, why am I exhibiting signs of stress!

I am so sick right now. When I went to bed last night, I felt fine. And when I woke up it was like cats had crawled down my throat and to' shit up. To give you an idea, I don't even feel like I can read your entries, which is always one of my favorite parts of the day. I will now drink tea and make an enormouse dent in watching the piles of DVDs judithiscariot has so kindly been burning for me with her teee voe. I need Lipton Extra Noodles and to learn sign language.

I always feel pretty great after softball these days. Today it was practice, and I got through it just fine, held my own in the outfield a bit. It makes me think crazy-ass things like "I wonder if I really could take up jogging this time." Now the problem is softball's only 1 night a week... I need to find another group physical activity that's cheap and closeby...

Whenever I think I'm going to take up running, I go out once, run fifty feet, *pant* *pant* *heave* and think "that sucked", walk a little bit, return determined to do it again the next day, and then never do. I wish Jack wanted to do it with me.

Monday night, by the way, was peril_book_club. I was surprised that no one was really really enthusiastic about Hunter S. Usually people feel really strongly one way or the other. Anyways, I made a cream cheese doodad and showed everyone my library. I love book club. Tuesday was an all-star Tea at Franklin's. I would list every lj-owning celebrity of my life that was there, but I am so hungry I am about to pass out.

Now to decide whether to wind down with a dvd, or gaming...

to catch you up:

i am sick. really sick. i got drugs (amoxicillin & guanefesin w/codeine). i took them. i woke up last night at 2am with tightness and pain in my chest and all across my ribcage and i was faint. went to emergency room because, well, maybe i am paranoid but chest tightness and seeing pretty lights and potential for it being some kind of drug reaction made me a leetle paranoid. made jack drive me to laurel regional. did intake with RN. sat around for 2 hours feeling fine, actually. ended up leaving without seeing a doctor because well, the problem went away, scary as it was at the time. slept. finally expectorating actual lung goo. i take this as a turn for the better. still no idea what the 2am pain was about.

i haven't really read all your posts thoroughly and for this i apologize. basically my comments are: i totally agree. i totally disagree. that's what i would have said. you go girl! damn, i'm sorry... i wish there was some way i could help.

back to watching really awful television. i did stop by the library on the way to the patient first yesterday and borrow the entire ascent of man dvd series. i should watch that instead of days of our lives, shouldn't i?

and for all those waiting with baited breath, i did kind of enjoy the life aquatic. i felt the same way i did when i left the theater after the royal, tenenbaums, which is to say unimpressed. that film grew on me until it almost eclisped my love for rushmore. i don't think this one will though. not enough sympathetic characters.