A little too much

wine that is. but it's okay, because i don't drink that often, and i love wine, the way it heats up my throat with that nice feeling of warmth.

Anywho, I can still spell I think. It's just after midnight and I've realized that with Adobe Photoshop, that drat, I've lost my thought... I've realized that you need to recognize the proper photos for the proper effects. Duh, but still... like, there's this thing with little windows I can't think of the name of right now, and it does NOT work extremely well with waterfalls. And my friend left his metal hardware on poor Newton... Anywho, I forgot what I was talking about. I better stop writing before I make more of an arse outta meself.

I love Photoshop. And imacs. I love apples. yum! no wonder people were tempted by them in the beginning.

I can write!! Yay!

~nv
who really needs to be more careful with da wine. yikes.

Cough Syrup vs Instincts

Aflac sent me an article about cough syrups. It's located here: http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060109150409990002&ncid=NWS00010000000001 in case the link above doesn't work right. And in case you're reading this post-date and the link is no longer good, the article basically said that cough syrups are deemed to be ineffective even though some people swear by them. A spokesperson for Robitussin in particular mentioned that it seems to have high sales so it "must" be effective or people wouldn't keep buying it. (Hello? Why do people bother advertising so much if ads DON'T work? Robitussin has lots of ads. Maybe it's the ads that sell most of their product.)

All I know is that I hate cough syrup due to taste, drowsiness (with or without the antihistamines), and sometimes nausea/vomiting, depending on which kind I take. And, maybe I can never get enough in me, but it never seemed to work on me, either. Not that I remember ever trying Robitussin. Mom always forced Vicks 44 down my throat to shut me up and then complained I didn't get enough in me 'cause I was still coughing. She swore that stuff worked for her, though.

Sunday, someone at work gave me a couple of Fisherman's Friend lozenges. Now, THAT stuff relieves stuff, even as your face lights up like a newborn star and burns out in its infancy. I am going to get some today. It doesn't /stop/ the cough, but it makes everything open up so I can breathe while hacking up lung pieces. Tastes fine at first, you're like, whoooo, I can breathe! and then WHAMMO!! Licorice!! Why they put licorice in there... *shudder* But whatever. It amazes me, though, how people actually /force/ medicine and advice on you when you're getting over something you've acquired various strains of over and over your whole life. I made one preliminary cough at work yesterday afternoon and everyone turned to scowl at me. "What?!" I said. "Are you sick?!" "Not anymore, I'm getting over the flu." "You coughed!!" "Yeah... will be for at least a few more days, too... happens when I've been sick." Then within an hour, one of my coworkers offered me something called "Soothers" which tasted wonderful but did little if anything to help my cough. She came back over and said, "Here, you want another?" I'm like, "I just barely finished the first... no, but thank you." Then she said they were to be taken one every three hours. It wasn't even half an hour after my first taste!! It's like people are so afraid of illness because of hyped up media that they are terrified of hearing a cough!! I was taught wayyyy back when that so long as you cover a cough and wash your hands often enough, the little droplets are not airborne... but apparently if you merely breathe when you're sick and have no other symptoms, no one will catch ... ooh ... drum roll please... the dreaded FLUBUG!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! So I sat there all afternoon trying unsuccessfully and painfully to suppress a very naturally occurring phenomenon in the human body designed to help me get better quicker because I was afraid of offending someone and scaring them. Puhleeze. I get sick 2 or 3 times a year. No idea why this instance occurred so early in the year so I'm assuming I will be sick 3 times this year. I do know that other than those three times, I can be around sick people all I want to and not get one iota of an illness. I can hug them and shake their hand and remain perfectly healthy even while I'm acutely aware that cold or flu germs are crawling all over me. (I can actually feel them crawling inside my nose sometimes. Ew. But it's one way I know when someone else is sick.)

The only time I fear someone else's illness is when I know I'm due to catch one. I've been working a lot, not eating right, treating myself poorly, and on top of it all, it's just the right season for the flu. Weather changes, and then... it's a week before I'm due to get the "woman thing." All of this makes PRIME real estate for a pair of newlywed germs, and often their whole extended families, to buy a piece of property in my mucous membranes. The next thing I know they're trashing the place. So I quietly go to work on evicting them only to suffer for a few days as I draw up the paperwork. Then OUT they go... but I also know it's bound to happen, so the little fear I do experience around a sick person when I'm in the "potential flu-catching" situation is overthrown by the knowledge those little buggers really want a place to live. They'll find me. The sooner I get it over with, the sooner they can be evicted, and the sooner I can look forward to health. Better that than running from something that will catch me anyway.

I also realized why "have a drink" actually works. It's because as you're swallowing, you can't cough. You know, I don't know why coughing annoys people so much. I don't get annoyed when people cough. I shut up for a moment until they can breathe again and listen to me. Mom hated my coughing. Her coughs were OK though because she "took something at least." Big whup. She was still coughing...

I'll stick with stuffing my face. It tastes better, gives me needed nutrients to help rebuild lost ones, and alleviates the coughing. Plus it scrapes away mucus in the back of my throat that otherwise would seep into my lungs and make things worse. Go, instincts!!

:)

~nv

ahh...ahh.... ahh... CH-RING!!!!

Stupid phone... I was just in the middle of sneezing when the phone rang. Thankfully it was a modem calling and thus I hung up on him - er, it - since I've got dsl and don't use a modem unless *absolutely* necessary, so I was able to resume my sneeze. This is how I'd describe this situation:

Ooh. Gonna sneeze. Er... ahh... ahh... ahh... hrnkRINNNNNG!!!! *sneeze halts in midair* What the... *picks up phone* Hello? "bleep. blip." Sorry, don't want any. *click* ahh... HRNKTH!! (Don't ask about the sound, it's the closest I can get to English transliteration.)

So... I have now discovered that if I'm on the verge of sneezing, it will halt itself when the phone rings. I wonder if that would happen if the phone was ringing silently...

~nv

Another "you might be a geek if..."

You might be a geek if you change your wardrobe to accompany your new gadgets.

This is actually something I just said to a friend of mine. He recently acquired a LaCie 8gb portable drive. It's flat, with a USB connector that slides out of the side. He discovered that it fits *perfectly* in this special pocket in one of his sweatshirt-jackets... and thus commented, "I need to find more sweatshirts like this. It has *the* perfect pockets for this thing!" Hence... my... comment... ::grin::

In other news, I'm kicking the flugerms' butts. Granted, I'm having Advil help me, but... my body's still doing most of the work! MWAH hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!

~nv

Doozie Over, And Some Techniques

The doozie of a day is actually over, I think. Went off to play table tennis and exercised my body into exhaustion. Hard to feel angry about nothing when you're too darned tired! I made sure I jumped around a lot to help myself achieve this. Even made up a new move - which I can complete successfully about a quarter of the time. It's a serve (probably highly illegal, but in practice with someone who doesn't seem to care how I serve, it's fun). I basically take the ball in my right hand, life my right knee up, flip the ball under it, then quickly lift my left knee and swing the paddle with my left hand to hit the ball from beneath my left knee. It was one of those things that developed out of something I naturally (albeit strangely) did. Earlier in the session I'd gone to serve a ball, tossed it up, and swung UNDER my knee instead of just hitting the ball. I have no idea why, but it worked, it was a decent serve! Since I've always enjoyed throwing the ball up from beneath a knee and then hitting it normally, I guess it was logical to follow that I figured out the fun in my new serve. I've more control as above, although I did manage to successfully do it a few times opposite.

Another thing I came up with today - and this was while I was trying to figure out how to express my unprovoked anger this morning - is a form of dancing. The concept was necessary since me jumping up and down in the livingroom will shake everything off the walls and such. Old house, you see, with a basement - not the cement/ground floors I'm used to from my old place! I still love dancing, however. What to do, what to do? So I threw on my Pulse CD and thought for a moment as the first tune came on. Lay on my back!! Of course!! They do this sort of thing in exercises, why not adapt the idea to dancing? So I lay on my back, then pushed my feet upward until I was actually balanced more on my neck and shoulderblades than on my back. I held myself up by putting my hands on my butt, and ... danced pretty much upside down.

It was... interesting, exhilarating, and more creative than I'd figured it'd be. Given my knowledge of the tunes, I "choreographed" my movements a bit: Lift feet up, legs straight, slowly... slowly... spread 'em as if I were doing a sideways split... back together... left foot forward, right foot back... other direction... spread 'em again... bicycle riding... that sort of thing. Then I started pumping one foot upward a couple times, alternated to the other, and the next thing I knew, I was also moving my floored shoulders beneath the weight of my little self!

So, I've learned a couple things today. One, I have a new serve. And two, when you're irritable and feel like dancing but don't dare lest you knock things off old walls, dance upside-down.

And for the record - exercise IS good for the mind as well as the body. If nothing else, it exhausts all the cares right out of you! :)

~nv

Irritable Indecisiveness

About an hour or so ago, I beat my old record on Pod Racer using a ship called the Boles Roor. Clocked in on the training course at 42 seconds (one lap). I've been slicing it down second by second since last night when Aflac and a friend were playing with me. Intense. I just took a long shower trying to calm down my stomach but I still feel nauseous.

Why do we play things that stress us out so much? (Because it's fun?)

I am, incidentally, having one of those days where I can't seem to get anything done. I know others have them, so you may understand what I'm talking about. It's the sort of a day where you wake up happy, realizing that you have a whole day off and to yourself, go off to do something, can't figure it out, get frustrated, keep trying, get more frustrated, scream and curse and storm off to watch tv, continue thinking about it, go back to try again, still can't figure it out, more frustration, *mental block* which makes it even more frustrating because now you *know* you won't figure it out because of the mental block you just built yourself and you REALLY WANTED to get the darned thing done, get angry, wandering around hungry for hours before realizing you're hungry, eat something fast, overdo it, feel sick, watch more tv, look at project, curse again with frustration that never went away from last time, wander around some more contemplating next activity, decide to paint but before you get to where the paints are, you decide to check email instead... then you play a stressful game but beat your score so you feel slightly better despite the nausea that has crept back into your stomach... then check email again... then cry in the shower because you're so angry over feeling stupid for no reason other than you can't figure one tiny itsy freaking stupid thing out yet you can't stop being frustrated... then realize that in the space of ten minutes you've decided to dance, do internet research, open an IM, play with a music program, play keyboard, paint, race some more, practice bouncing a ball on a paddle, and find food but within moments of each one you angrily said screw that, I don't want to! only to then think, but I DO want to and then screw it, no I don't...

I HATE these days... don't get them often but when I do, they're doozies. These are the days I remember Mom telling me to putter. Problem is, I haven't been able to even finish enough of my thoughts TO putter... AND the housework was done yesterday because I was IN a puttering mood to begin with.

UGH!! And to top it all off, Kitty and I have gotten along great for weeks but today when I'm feeling like this, she decides she's lonesome and if I dare to leave my playpen, she's all over me, meowing and clawing and poking and glaring and staring and... ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I think it's PMS. Or maybe it's the overdose on caffeine I had yesterday what with my eight cups of black tea and several wonderfully caffeinated chocolates I had while sipping a mixture of two different Monster drinks that my friend let me try. There's no other explanation I know of as to why today should be any different from yesterday. Financial worries are always there these days, but they're not that bad, just much more restricting than they used to be back when I didn't have Dante (that be my truck - and all his associated costs). It's not like I'm going to debtor's prison or anything because I don't have enough. I have more than a lot of people. My life is pretty damned awesome, actually, and when I'm not feeling like this on occasion, I'm on cloud nine or close to it. So there is no logical cause for these feelings except something inside me, myself, and I. Unfortunately, those are the three people I can NEVER escape from. And while in the shower, I had to laugh despite myself because I somehow envisioned this book called "The Depression Book" which I have somewhere. It mentioned that sometimes you run into depression even when you've overcome it, and sometimes it's best just to give into it because to fight it only gives it energy to drain you more. It's like telling an angry man who's about to hit you that you've been taking naked pictures of his wife's petoobies for the past ten years without anyone's knowledge. Yeah. That might drive anyone over the edge...

So, coming out of the shower earlier, I decided the book might have something there. Thus I'm going to live in the moment and simply wander around as I see fit. If I get nothing in particular done for the rest of the day, so be it. The thing I get done will be ... nothing. I'll have succeeded in getting some exercise by wandering around the house and obliging my wandering interests until they tire themselves out. Then perhaps I'll feel like playing ping pong and will actually push myself into my beloved truck and get my arse to practice on an evening I seldom have available to me.

With that said, I'm off to join the circus. No wait. Screw that...

~nv

New Years Remembrance

Today is January 1st, 2006!! I remember that at this time last year I had barely fallen into bed after being dropped off by a couple friends. I'd gone to a saloon two nights in a row to watch one of them play his last two performances with his band. And I got sooooooooooooooo sloshed both times. Great way to start a year, huh? Why do people do that I wonder? But my reasoning at the time was "Screw it, this past year wasn't as great as it could have been, I'm going to go out and live life this year and see what I'm missing. I'm going to get drunk on New Year's, get some dancing done, interact, celebrate, maybe even have a hangover, though hopefully not... and then, after all that, I'm going to get my driver's license, get myself a vehicle, go full time at some point, stop caring about work so much, get my arse away from computers more often, and start hiking and enjoying myself and who I've become! And I'm not gonna be too focused on any guys, either, because I don't need 'em!"

So I did. I went out and got my license in February, went rock climbing with friends, carefully stopped caring so much about work, accidentally "met" Aflac, got my truck, Dante, met Aflac in person, started hiking, fell in love, met more friends... wait. What about my last resolution? Ah, but that was also held true - I don't /need/ Aflac, I /love/ Aflac. There's a difference!

So, I'd have to say that I did exactly what I'd planned to do last year. There were a few stumblings, of course, but I kept picking myself up and forging ahead with due force. I reached the height of my quest about a week ago when I was submersed in the Christmas Spirit.

Last night/this morning, Aflac and I were downtown both at 8 and at midnight, wandering around and watching fireworks and listening to shouting of "Happy New Year" and all that stuff. People moved on after the fireworks but we lingered and got some pictures of the town. Then we noticed the drunks also lingering and decided it might be best if we, too, dispersed! So we got back to our nice warm place and expressed more excitement over this new year before collapsing up the stairs and into bed. It was 1am something. Quite a ways past MY bedtime, but not nearly as late as it had been last year when I stumbled home and into the bed which I couldn't even notice the warmth of given my drunken stupour.

I was thinking about this as we got back in the car so early this morning. How lucky I am that it was a two-night drinking episode that had less to do with flushing out my woes and all to do with progress! If it had been the former, who knows... maybe it would have been the indicator of a new alcoholic. But instead I purged the alcohol from my system and did what I wanted to do in order to experience life. Not everyone is so determined or lucky to come so possibly close to ruining their lives and instead pick themselves up higher than ever.

And the best part is that I know Aflac is only one reason for my steadfastness. It's me who decided to push forward and get things done. He's offered some wonderful support to help me in this endeavor, but all the support in the world can't move someone unless they want to move. So I know that it was me who did all that! A good feeling, that. And it's exactly this "being myself" business that allows me to love him so much, because I've come to love myself, and in doing that, it's fired some embers I'd forgotten existed. It's a bright and roaring flame but it does not burn and char its fuel. It simply pushes the confines of my being until I feel I'll burst. But instead of bursting, I expand...

...into the new year!! So may it be a happy one, and a great one yet again!! God bless!!

~nv