Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

I had a doctor’s appointment today, not because I was sick. I just hadn’t had a physical in nearly two years, and I needed to start a relationship with a local doctor. I really like my new doc. She’s a soft spoken Indian woman who wears a bindi. She stood very close to me while asking questions, and when she looked up at me, she told me I was beautiful. I minimized my current illness, saying that I was trying to get over a cold. She said that my glands were very swollen (she called the left one “huge”) and that I was too sick for a physical, so I needed to come back after a 10-day course of antibiotics. So I guess it’s confirmed by an outside source that I’m actually quite unwell. I mean, I knew I was, but I didn’t think I was antiobiotic sick. I am.

After picking up my prescription, I went in search of the Neti Pot, recommended by Roger here and others over many years. I hit the Whole Foods in Cary first, since it was near the doctor’s office. I asked the man in the health and beauty area if he had any Net Pots. He smiled broadly and said they were completely out. He said, “You know it was on Oprah!” Oh no. In America these days, that means that there’s basically going to be a “run” on the item everywhere, in stores, online, everywhere. He called over to the other store in Raleigh, and they had just one left, which they held for me. When I went over to get it, I headed to the checkout line. There, the woman said, “I must have checked out about six of these yesterday. You know it was on Oprah!”

I have it now, finally. Going to eat some food and pour saline into my nose. Then I’m going to see if my brain can handle a practice exam!

You may notice that all the archives and category links are gone. I’m trying to decide if I want those back or not. I like that idea that anyone who wants to dig into my archives has to work a little. I’m working to make this blog a very current one, rather than open for anyone to search into my last three years at will. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been making old posts private. I have to do it for every individual post, since there is no easy batch operation that does that for me. Some days I hide items in a certain category (“Work Life” was of course first, since that’s the topic I think it most important to keep private, even though my posts in that category are usually heavily veiled in tone and information), on other days I go for time periods. Slowly, I’m going underground, but only for old posts. I have no intentions of hiding recent posts. Anything that is only a few months old will remain visible unless there’s a really good reason for it to be hidden.

I had imagined that since I have been blogging less with words and posting more pictures, my readership would have dropped, but nope. I’m still getting about 500 hits a day, and these aren’t bots! So thanks, loyal readers. That makes me feel real special! Even you quiet, lurky types!

I’m still trying to clean things up on the new template. I’ve moved a lot of what was in the sidebar to the About Me page for now. I’ve gotten some of that pale print darkened up a bit, but I’m really no CSS expert, so I’m really using a trial and error approach. The whole grey people head thing is bugging me, and Gravatar has been down. Not yet sure how to fix that. I’m also annoyed that the “Pages” aren’t showing old user comments. This is particularly a problem on the Haiku page. I mean, without the comments, there are no haikus!! And the page is set to allow comments, so I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to try next.

If you have any knowledge that can help me, suggestions, etc, please share them. I like feedback.

In unrelated news, here’s me blowing a bubble for International Bubble Gum Week:

I joined Twitter ages ago, but it seemed like yet another silly distraction. Well, it IS another silly distraction, but until recently, I couldn’t see the use in actively participating. That is, until my trip to NYC last month. I found out that my friend Sooz and I had both been in NYC at the same time. She said, "I twittered it!" The part that turned me off was having my phone beep all the time. Turns out you can receive twitters any way you want them: online, on IM, in email, or on your cell phone. It was just catching on while I was in Boston, but only my techiest friends were signing up (me included, of course). Those who headed out to SXSW of course got hooked. Given my daily life, I never did. Lately, my techier friends in Raleigh have been signing up, and since I’d had that missed connection with Sooz, I’ve jumped on board. You’ll see my twitters in the right sidebar here and on my Twitter page. I’ll stay public as long as I can’t see any good reason not to.

I’m living in a land of Chloraseptic. My health hasn’t been great since Friday. I woke up feeling kind of puny, but I still went to the gym, and UGH, it all felt more difficult than it should have. That night, I woke up in a sweat and had a HORRIBLE experience which I won’t go into, because I’m a nice person who has learned that some things really are TMI. I will share that in order to break the fever, I had to slide into a bath of cold water. After that, I felt absolutely fine. Not sure if it was MSG or food poisoning or what… but it was bad. Very bad. Saturday was feeling cranky and low in energy. Then yesterday, I woke up with a raw throat and a regular old cold. Still have it today.

The good news is that my friend Jeff has loaned me the full series of the Joss Whedon television series, Firefly in order to prepare for a screening of the movie Serenity. It’s much more sci-fi than I would have chosen on my own, but I am really enjoying it, and now that I’ve gotten through enough of the exposition, the humor is starting to kick in. That always helps me. I’m also quite pleased about the inclusion of Alan Tudyk, who I’ve noticed for years. His character is great. He’s the competent pilot of the ship (very Millenium Falcony, if you ask me) who is married to the badass warrior woman, Zoe. I particularly enjoyed his initial scene in the series, where he is playing with plastic toy dinosaurs while sitting in the cockpit. He’s making the dinosaurs fight and says, “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” I guess I like sillies, and for the first few hours of this series, these are few and far between.

There’s lots more to say about life, television, and illness, but I wanted to launch the new (and probably dynamic) design of the blog with words rather than more pictures. I’m mostly expressing myself visually these days, and I don’t want anyone to worry I’ve gone mute (as if you’d think something like that!).