I done got tagged

Schnappi just tagged me in a random things meme.  So I guess I better do it.

It’s the Seven Random Things Meme! Two Palms just tagged me… It’s my first time so please be gentle with me.
The rules:

Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

Let them know they are tagged by leaving comments on their blogs.

Let the Randomness Begin!

1 – My first public stand-up performance was at a restaurant in Chicago when I was three.  I randomly stood up on the table and started reciting jokes out of my joke book that I had memorized.  My favorite was:

What do you get when you cross a dummy with a flower?

A blooming idiot.

2 – I can’t sleep if there’s a clock that has a ticking second hand.

3 – Most people think I have this incredibly busy social life.  I don’t.  I spend most weekends at home on my couch petting my dog and pretending to write.

4 – I don’t believe in past lives, but if they exist I’m fairly certain I was in a concentration camp during WWII.  I was at Dachau a few years ago and something told me to stray from the path up to the ivy-colored perimeter wall and I pulled back the ivy and right there at eye level were words written in Hebrew.  I promptly threw up.

5 – I would have moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan a few years ago if it hadn’t been for the Fringe.

6 – I hate Virginia Woolf not because I think she sucks, but because I can’t understand a lick of what she writes.  So I have no idea if she sucks or not.

7 – I cry in every single Broadway musical I see.  Not when I’m supposed to, but the minute the pit orchestra starts the overture because I’m so proud that people are doing what they love.  The woman from Jersey sitting next to me at Spamalot thought I was crazy.

Tag you’re it!

1. Litbitch
2. Bill
3. Hey Duende
4. Leigha
5. Caitlin S.
6. Cooper
7. phillip

Truth of the day

Myth Me Musings (30?): A Mass With No Music

Schnappi and I have started going to a new mass every week.  I do want to find a new spiritual home, she’s game for the journey, and there’s show research to be done.  We started out a couple weeks ago with Our Lady of Lourdes.  Now, this is a church I’ve had my eye on for awhile.  Old.  Close to home.  And was once totally in a scene in a Marisa Tomei movie.

At first, by which I mean getting to mass, this seemed like a good place with a very neighborhood parish feel–my favorite.  People running in to get there on time, not terribly full (then again, it was a Sunday evening mass).  The bells rang and mass got started, and I noticed something strange.

There was no music.

Maybe I’m more of the evangelical vein than I thought, but worship doesn’t make sense without a bit of tunage.  They even spoke the hymns.  I craned my neck trying to find an organ–old church has to have an organ, right?  I didn’t see one, although I couldn’t fully see up into the balcony.  The priest is supposed to make a fool of himself and sing before the eucharist.  The congregation is supposed to badly harmonize at least once a service.  It’s in the mass.  It’s part of the ritual.  And it just felt…weird.

I tried to set that aside, but then we got to communion, and while I know that most people choose not to partake in the communal cup any more–germs and such (I once saw a priest get drunk when trying to finish off the unconsumed wine that had been blessed during a service)–but they didn’t even offer the cup.

What is this, Vatican III?  Is it only the body of Christ that is a sacrament?   We can ignore the blood entirely, so as to ward off the threat of a cold?

I don’t think we’ll be going back to that one.

They said I had to blog

So I am.

I sent Schnappi the following text last night at 10:03:

Sz0hin hst!t rihht.

I was already in bed, and she was out in the living room knitting, but a text of that caliber merited a visit to the bedroom.  I have a horrid habit of drinking and texting.  This however, was a new phenomena–Ambien and texting.

[Schnappi has just interjected, whilst reading my blog over my shoulder, that she actually called me before coming into the bedroom, which led her to expertly translate my text which read “something is not right”.  I have no memory of this]

I am a horrid insomniac, mainly due to my reality-jumping escapades.  My brain is always moving, and I can never seem to slow it down enough to sleep.  I’m also a light sleeper, and began to turn to over the counter sleep aids a few years ago due to the above and some other circumstances.  My nightstand has a lineup of Tylenol PM, Advil PM, Benadryl, and Unisom–each taken in rotation so as not to develop a pavlovian dependency on any one shape of pill despite having similar active ingredients, and never exceeding the recommended dosage.  The warning to take them only for ten days was completley ignored.

I went back to the doctor today, and while patiently waiting the results of a full bloodwork to see what (if anything) is wrong, she suggested I try Ambien.  I figured it’d be just like one of the others I’d been taking.

Oy.

Apparently, the “something [that wasn’t] right” was that there were two TVs and six cats.  And the room felt like it was floating on water.  Apparently, at some point I sat up in bed and said “it’s okay.  I just fell.  I hate it when that happens.”

[Schnappi interjection–“ooh, remember when you were talking and it was Chinese and you said, ‘yup!’ and we were both laughing?” ]

I remember none of the above.  Zip.  And I woke up feeling more refreshed than I have in, I’m not joking, years.

The threat of a video camera set up in the corner of the room has been mentioned.  I fear an embedded YouTube feature in the morning.

Oh Tony.

A few years ago, Karen gave me the book Round Ireland With a Fridge for my birthday.  It was quickly passed on to just about everyone I know, which has since caused Nancy to have coughing fits due to extreme laughter and a German medical clinic to think my mom needed to be checked into a psych ward due to her humorous reactions.

The author is Tony Hawks, a British comedian.  Wait, you say to yourself, isn’t he a pro skateboarder?

No, that’d be Tony Hawk.  No s.  But, apparently, a lot of other people get them confused as well.

And here is a page Hawks has on his website about being confused for Hawk, and the emails he sent back to the skateboarder’s many fans.

Coming tomorrow: the story of Amy and my search for a new Catholic church, starting with tonight’s interesting episode at Our Lady of Lourdes.

Stickittothemanitis (tm Schnappi)

I went to the doctor yesterday for the first time in a long time, since I now have insurance and can begin to get on top of the stuff that just ain’t right in my body.  I have to find a new primary care physician since mine closed his practice about six months ago, and I do like the new person I saw yesterday–having a general practioner who specializes in diabetes and other autoimmune dieseases is a good thing for, well, anyone in my family.  I listed some of the stuff–the rapid weight loss on four Chipotle burritos a week, the insomnia, the jumpy thumpy, and the textbook depression–all classic Graves’ symptoms.  I told her I was sure that I was just in a flare, and that I wanted to get back on my meds because that would begin to work things out.  She agreed, ordered blood work and said she’d prescribe a dosage after the labs came back and to schedule an appointment for six weeks out to see how the meds were doing, and do a full physical then.

I left feeling good–like I was on a good path to getting things back to normal.

Then the labs came back this morning.

For the first time since my original diagnosis twelve years ago, all of my thyroid numbers are in normal range.  Which means the Graves’ is in remission.  Yea!

But that being in remission means there’s something else, currently unknown, that’s wrecking havoc.  And that was what I feared most.  There’s no path–only time for trial and error until we get it right.

There are two theories that I’m fond of at the moment.  One is that there isn’t anything wrong that can’t be fixed with a lightening of the stress load (we all know I’ve been under that quite a bit the past few months) and better diet and exercise.  The other is that my body is now running at a normal level, and I’m so used to it being bonkers that normal feels slow and I don’t know what to do with it.

In any even, even if it is some new thing that needs diagnosis, there is still a bright side.  My new insurance, since I’d been uninsured for over two months, told me that they weren’t covering preexisting conditions for a year. 

But it can’t be preexisting if it’s new.

And, hence, my body has decided to help my bank account, and develop stickittothemanitis.

Myth Me Musings (27): God Wants You To Renew Your Licenses

I’ve been following with great interest the ongoing saga between Mary Jo Copeland and the City of Minneapolis.  Mary Jo is the founder and director of Sharing and Caring Hands, and is pretty much waging war against the City because she feels that they are threatening to take away her license to serve food at her shelter because they want her businesses to be closed, owing to the fact that they are within home run distance of the new Twins Stadium.  She has held a press conference full of bible-thumping, and told the mayor that if he is against her, he’s against God.

Here’s what the issue boils down to: her license is up for renewal.  The city has placed pressure on her to do something regarding security issues around her shelter–drug deals, aggressive panhandling, etc.  And her defensive attitude is that they’re putting new measures on her because they want to get rid of the homeless in that area because of the new stadium.

First of all, Mary Jo, don’t you want to get rid of homeless in that area?  Because isn’t that what your job is all about?  I don’t trust people who both run “non-profit” organizations (I say that because their net assets last year were over $18 million, while expenditure was $5 million) for causes such as homelessness while simultaneously adopting a holier than thou attitude that they are doing God’s will.  Because, really, if they completed their God-Given mission of eradicating the homeless issue, they wouldn’t have a job or a business any more.  Which leads me to believe that they aren’t really interested in actively solving the problem.  A Munchausen by-proxy situation in the name of service.

The city is not asking them to relocate, nor are they asking anything that they would not ask of any other business.  They are asking them to meet current licensure requirements, and pay for that license.  They’ve stated that they have 17 security cameras that are monitored.  The Star Tribune article has a picture of one of the monitors that is supposedly used to watch the cameras at all times.  Here’s a picture:

Maybe it’s just me, but that looks like a wide-screen flat-screen TV.  Is it wrong of me to assume that if the wanted to have something to just watch security footage, it’d be a bit cheaper model?

So Mary Jo, here’s what I propose.  Stop your holier than thou bitching and quoting the bible during press conferences.  Accept the notion that the City is also interested in the welfare of the people whom you service.  Make the changes they want you to so that you can keep your license.  And then pay it.

God wants you to renew your license.

Haven’t blogged in a while

So to make up for it, a little Azerbaijan humor.  With pictures.

Actual entries coming soon.

Myth Me Musings (26?): I need a new title

I decided that I don’t like Myth Me.  The show is starting to turn away from the original concept of rewriting old folkstories / biblical ones with my own life, ala The Woman Warrior, and so I’m not sure it fits any more.  I’d like to go back to the I Hate [insert person here], but I’m not sure what is the best for this show. 

So here’s what I’m looking for.  Really what this show drives at is understanding faith to the point where you know understand what you believe and know why you believe it (two very different things).  This in turn, means that one is benevolent and respects other’s beliefs because you understand that they are their own.  So, I’m thinking something in the vein of Jerry Falwell (but not him, ’cause he’s dead), Rush Limbaugh (but way too late 1990s to still be hating on him), etc. etc.  But currently, I’m at a loss.

No, it’s not the measles

I was cooking dinner the other night.  Hamburger in a small frying pan.  Too much olive oil in the pan.  I was holding the pan with my left hand, and trying to cut the burger over with the spatula (plastic, so not sharp) with my right, and the next thing I know the meat slipped a bit, and I got myself a face-full of scalding hot olive oil.

Ow.

So, I’m a bit splotchy as the burns heal.  No, it is not the measles.  Just a tattoo of dumbass.

I went to the clinic at Target yesterday to inquire about some antibiotics for a completely unrelated thing, and decided to see if there was anything I could get for the burns.

She prescribed bacitracin.

And a splatter-guard.