On the Road to Recovery

I'm completely tired of the liquid diet. I don't think I can stomach any more broth or jello. I had my follow-up appointment yesterday. I was stoned when I went in cause it's really the only way I can even swallow saliva. The pain meds made me pretty nauseous so they prescribed suppositories, cause ya know my butt doesn't have enough issues. Also, being on a liquid diet means my guts are pretty much just grumbley all the time.

The nurse suggested that I return to the hospital for one more overnight stay so they can pump me full of fluids. I know that getting fluids is important and I've been trying to drink enough water, monitoring when I pee and what color it is, really fascinating stuff. The doctor, however, said we'd give it till Sunday and if I still wasn't feeling like eating or getting enough water etc, I am to call his office. I have another appointment with him on Monday morning. He really seemed to think that I would make a significant turn for the better in the next couple of days. He did say that I was healing very nicely.

So now I'm pushing myself a little harder. I'm eating slightly more solid foods, which is good. It's still pretty painful to swallow, even with the pain meds. I get tired from eating and having to swallow, but I'm getting real foods in me now, which is so much nicer. Dave had been avoiding cooking while I was awake. We've been making cookies all week and it's been so hard not being able to eat any or even taste the dough, but I've been real good.

I'm not allowed any dairy for one more week. I guess they want you to avoid dairy cause maybe it coats? I have no idea. I do have a gallon of lactose free ice cream in my freezer, just waiting. Popsicles are good, but they melt faster than I can eat them and it's pretty hard getting the last of them cause I can't put the stick in my mouth. This has led to some pretty creative ways to eat various foods.

Shhhh, don't tell my doctor but last night I ate a cookie. I chewed and chewed and chewed until it wasn't crispy or crunchy anymore and it was sooooo good. Then I ate some rice chex, again with the chewing. Damn it felt good and definitely raised my spirits. I probably will be much better in the next couple of days. Still, I got a refill on my pain meds cause I had pretty much gone through the whole bottle and I didn't want to be left with nothing and end up in pain again.

Sorry this ended up being a bit longer than I anticipated and I hope I didn't gross anyone out. But that's where I am right now with all this.

Hospital Picture

pic of me in hosp bed...not too pathtic, i hope. slightly pathetic, warning

You can see my neck is a little swollen and I look fairly out of it, thanks to the roxicet. Also, you'll notice my orange ear plugs if you look closely.

Update and Stuff

Well, it's December...I wasn't ready for 2008 to begin let alone be ending.

On Friday I had a CT Scan of my sinuses to rule out them being an issue with my chronic strep throat. The CT was ordered by the Dr I saw for a second opinion on the whole tonsils thing. The first Dr said it was my decision, but then didn't give me enough information to really be able to make a decision. My pcp wanted a second opinion and so I was off on this quest.

The scan was on Friday and that afternoon the ENT Dr's office called me with the results. Too bad I was ignoring my phone that day. I just called them back and scheduled a tonsillectomy for this Friday. It's his only day at a hospital my insurance will allow me to have surgery at until the end of January. I really need to do this a) in 2008 because I've met my deductible (how sad...) and 2) not during classes.

I get to stay overnight (23 hours observation). I've never done that before. I'm not entirely sure I will like it. Is it cold? Can I bring my nice comfy warm blanket? Actually, what should I bring, aside from things to do...? My friends say, "yes warm blanket, yes warm socks, books/magazine/Nintendo DS."

I'm nervous, but really this is the only time I can do this, until next December and I'd rather not have another year of getting strep 4-6 times.

wha...

The Consumerist has something.

Quinto - A New Game from the Pennsylvania Lottery.

The Boy worked on the commercials you see on tv right now. It was a fiasco in its own right. Aside from bringing in a really expensive body makeup artist to paint the fingers on three hands, the producers (or whomever) decided to do six people because the last commercial they made someone got sick and this time they would have backup. Oh yeah, did I mention that each hand took about two hours to paint. A job that was supposed to take 6 hours ended up needing 12 - JUST FOR MAKEUP. Apparently this woman has done full body makeup for Madonna or something like that. (yeah, I'm so impressed...)

The kicker came when the Boy and I saw the commercial for the first time with CGI'd faces. It looks horrible and ridiculous. All that money wasted on this woman flown in from LA, first class, paid overtime to the tune of a few grand (or more, I'm really not sure), put up in a swanky hotel, and then flown home first class.

I'm failing to see where this benefits older Pennsylvanians unless the producers are perhaps old and Pennsylvanians. Not that I really believe the PA Lottery helps our older citizens at all.

Interesting Political Meme

You are a Social Liberal (81% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (26% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid.com: Free Online Dating Also : The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Another Cooking Experiment

This is my second attempt with cooking basmati rice. The first attempt was making rice pudding, which aside from the bits that burned to the bottom of the pot and the fact that the rice never really cooked all the way through, it was fairly tasty.

Tonight I decided to make some rice tonight. That expanded into cooking up some chicken and corn to go with it. The chicken came out so great! I basically defrosted a few breast tenderloins and wrapped them into tin foil with olive oil and spices. The corn was from a can; just don't ask.

The rice tastes like cardboard. I thought this stuff was supposed to be aromatic and flavorful all by itself! It dry and has a negative salt taste. I kept adding salt and nothing. I added a little bit of garlic and I am sad to say that I can't even taste that.

Thank goodness I made tasty moist chicken and corn to go with it, because on it's own this rice is just not edible. The bag does say high dietary fiber, but jeeze that was just blah.

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This is a test of the Beff Blog Program. This is only a test. If this had been a real post it may have contained interesting, or dare I say, even, intriguing content. Thank you.

Picture Meme

From Drop Box

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

The Oddities Continue...

I pulled into the alley behind my house this evening, because that is where our driveway is. Ours is the first driveway on the right, in fact it's really the only driveway - the other houses have garages in the back or their yards extend all the way to the alley. As I turned in there was a older gentlemen standing at the edge of my driveway with his back to me. People often duck into our driveway if they are walking down the alley and a car approaches. This makes sense, they are just trying to get out of the way and don't realize, until a turn signal is turned on, that we mean to turn into this driveway.

This is not what happened however. This gentlemen, and I'm using this term very loosely, looked like he was urinating. I did not see a stream, but his body position etc convinced me of this. I said to myself, "This can't actually be happening!"

I can't remember the exact timing of events, probably because I was (still am) so flustered. I pulled into my driveway. He returned to the silver mini van with Ohio plates (curses for not thinking to get the plate number). I gathered my belongings from the car and walked to the end of the alley. Another gentlemen was there as well, with more people in the van. I recognized this man, he recognized me. They were the guys working on the house behind mine. I had brought them iced tea on a couple particularly hot afternoons. Greetings were exchanged and then I asked him why his friend had peed in my driveway. He was flummoxed at first. (Is it fair to describe someone with a word that does not exist in their vocabulary?) When he realized I was referring to the older man he told me he wouldn't let it happen again.

I went into my house and told the Boy about this adventure and his response was, "Uh that's a sexual offense! We can really screw up his life!" I popped next door to ask my neighbor for the police chief's phone number. The police chief was no longer there so she and I are going to call tomorrow morning and have a chat.

Lazy Day

Even though today was not really a "rest" day for me I totally bummed around. The morning totally threw me off I think. I had to go out to the machine room to add tapes to our storage silo. I got back to the office in time to glance at my boss's screen for our weekly meeting and then jet to my noon class. I think I finally ate lunch around 3 and I never fully recovered.

I came home with the intention of taking a nap and heading to the climbing gym. Normally I get there around 6, today it was 9. Worse than that though, I just didn't feel it. I worked some problems but I didn't feel like I made as much progress as I did on Monday. Man, on Monday I was kicking serious rock.

Now I'm sitting here in a half daze, checking email and eating a totally lazy snack. Ricotta cheese, chocolate protein powder, mixed up with some natural peanut butter. It almost tastes like ice cream - minus the headache!

Turkey Meatballs

Well, at least I think it was turkey - could have easily been ground beef. Either way, they are damn tasty! Wheat bran and flax seed meal instead of bread or cracker crumbs along with the standard onions and garlic, salt and pepper to taste (oh yeah and egg - omega-3 and egg whites).

I bought a blender with a food processor attachment and that made doing the onions so easy! I was very pleased with that experience.

Dinner was a Mediteranean salad - a cucumber and tomato cubed and tossed with some olive oil. So tasty! Very easy and very yummy.


After the salad and meat balls I had plain yogurt with vanilla protein powder mixed all together and topped with blueberries! Holy crap that was good!

Update:I was not able to do much to save the al dente rice pudding. I tried cooking in some more milk but all that did was burn a bunch to the bottom of the pot. meh. It's still edible, just not the consistency I rice pudding generally aims for.

Rice Pudding and Other Adventures

I'm on a sort of new healthy kick. I want to eat better and I want to be able to get into better shape. My family is generally fairly athletic and until recently the only thing I really was, was apathetic.

I got a couple great cook books on gourmet nutrition. It talks a lot about vegetables and local grown stuff. Spending a tad extra now on quality will save you on medical expenses later, etc. I'm not sure how true that will hold, but it is good food and it's fun.

I tried turkey meat balls with flax meal and wheat bran - they were great and I'm making some more tonight.

Last night I tried rice pudding. Basmati rice, skim milk, vanilla protein powder, vanilla instant jell-o, and a dash of salt.

Unfortunately the rice didn't seem to cook all the way, sad - so mu rice pudding is a little al dente. I'm sad and I don't really know how to fix it.

Psych Prof

In psych class today we did the normal intros. My prof pronounced my last name like, "Aul-bert". It made me a tad self-conscious

Also, she says "obserbation" and it bugs me because I want to respect her and I don't know why that makes it difficult.

Climbing

Okay, new hobby - rock climbing. I know I mentioned it in a few posts but making one giant post about the weekend got to be hazardous seriously!

I started going to a climbing gym with a friend of ours. I'm not very active and I'm very out of shape so I thought this would be a fun way to get into shape and have fun. It's very fun, did I mention that?



I'm not very good, but that doesn't deter me. My upper body strength is lacking, but I'm working on that with pull-ups and push-ups. I'm working my legs by biking a lot. I will ride to/from work about twice a week and that's 4.6 miles each way. The climbing gym is about 2 miles from work and 2.5 miles from my house. It's pretty nice and exhausting.

I think I'll go clean a bit, the house is getting a little out of control!

Krissy

Krissy came to visit me. It was her birthday and she came to visit me! I took her rock climbing!

(more specifically bouldering)
The weekend was packed with tons of other stuff too. We baked chocolate chip cookies to send to her friend stationed in Kuwait. He said there are tons of stores there so he doesn't need anything, but would love something homemade. Nothing is better than cookies from scratch with love. :-)



We baked and cooked and made a mess and cleaned it up. It really was a great time. I drank my first protein shake - I really should buy a decent blender. The shake wasn't too bad. I added strawberries and banana to the vanilla powder - I used water instead of milk because my body hates me.

Krissy just left to drive back home. It's quite a trek so I'm really glad she could come out. I miss her already, even though we'll probably talk for like the next month and then not talk for 4 months or something. We've been friends like that forever.

Summer Classes

Well, it's been a while since I've posted. So much has been going on, but as it's happening it doesn't really strike me to write anything.

The spring semester is done, and I got B's in both of my classes. My sister, Amy, graduated from college and a really good friend of mine at CMU graduated also. The first six week session of summer classes have come and gone. One class I signed up for, I showed up on the first day and the prof gave me an option to read some books instead of coming to the class. Basically, because I had taken a similar class of his last summer he gave me an independent study. It was insane though because I had four books that were HUGE. Thankfully the papers I had to write were teeny. Four pages, double-spaced (so really two pages). Part of me wonders if he even read the papers because the day after I handed them in I got my grade: A! W00T!

I also took a film class where we watched some noir classics, I'm still waiting on my grade in that one. (I'm only a little worried about it, I hope I get a B.) This class was hard because I really didn't like many of the films we watched. I always feel like people read way too much into symbols and things in films. I just want a movie to be entertaining and maybe thought provoking, but not so obscure that I need to read a bunch of papers on what other people thought it meant - and especially so when the director (read David Lynch) doesn't even have a clue as to what the film is about - he just wanted to put a bunch of random stuff together and call it a movie.... okay /rant.

Wow this post is G rated I think!

I Chopped my Hair...Again!

I decided last week I was bored with my hair. This can be particularly dangerous because generally when I decide this I do something really drastic like loose 18 inches. The last time I did this was 4 years ago and afterwards I was really sad about having to wait for it all to grow back.

This time I tried to figure out exactly what I wanted my hair to do/be like. I like it long because I do wear it up the majority of the time. I would love to wear it down occasionally but it gets so flat and hugs my scalp, so it's sort of boring.

Instead of loosing 18 inches I lost closer to 4 or 5. I did get layers so that it will curl a bit more and not be so weighed down and boring. Check it.

The Boy & Kid

So, I guess I can sort of brag about this kid. He's so cute! The Boy hasn't seen him in a few weeks just due to schedules being insane, plus he's going to be working (yay) the next few weekends.

We drove up to the kid's area and took him out to dinner and then walked by the river. I have a spiffy camera phone so I got some pics of the two of them together. Too.Cute.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bethalbert/Xander

spring break is gone...

What a wasted week. I think I might have had a chance of accomplishing things if it was just a bit later. I spent most of the week at the Carnegie Science Center helping out at the SciTech Festival. A bunch of hi-tech, science, math, and engineering companies get together and try to get middle and high school kids interested in said topics. I talked to a lot of kids - more middle schoolers than high schoolers. It was quite fun and I took a ton of pictures - click here if you're interested.

I didn't get much of anything done in the way of homework aside from reading most of a book and thinking about the short story I need to write. Now I should get this document edited for my other class. I can't remember if that's due tomorrow in class or Wednesday...

Sping! sorta-almost-kinda

In a Pittsburgh way. Basically it just means it's really wet here. The house is holding up really well though. We had the basement waterproofed (think internal french drain) in January. We're not entirely happy with the work the company did, but the basement IS dry. They're coming back next week to fix things, like our stairs, that they broke. *sigh*

The birds are back though. We had a few that stuck out the winter because our neighbors feed them, but today walking to the bus stop - it was just so relaxing to hear all the chirping.

The boy is working, hurray! There are a few films in town that are in various stages of production. He doing various jobs on these films. I'm so glad that he's been able to work locally even though I don't really see him a lot when he is working.

The kid is doing well; he's 8! Struggling a bit in school with reading comprehension, so we're trying to show him ways that reading it fun and a huge part of everyday. My sister, who is a genius, suggested having him read the cereal box while he's eating or reading the items from the menus in restaurants. Good plan, too bad we don't see him very often. It's hard when everyone is so busy and we can only have Saturdays together. I hope this changes as he gets older.

Last night I had the strangest dream....

It did not involve sailing away to China though.

I was elected as the Mayor of Swissvale (which is the borough I live in). I guess it was sort of a "Oh great, another thing to be responsible for." Perhaps I am feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment.