The Journey of Eurydice

I want to know why all the stupid inexplicable-seeming things that are wrong with my body are wrong with it.

I want to know why I get sick 4-6 hours after almost every meal. This doesn't happen with (most) very small snacks - nectar bar or smaller. It also occasionally doesn't happen after a regular meal for no discernible reason. Yes, I am lactose intolerant, but this reaction does not vary with or without lactose intake, or levels of acidity, or any other ingredient / characteristic of what I eat. It seems to happen after any mid-to-full size meals, but right now it is happening 4 hours after i ate a little handful of pretzels and like 5 almonds, and that inconsistency PISSES ME OFF. It feels not like acid reflux, but rather like my stomach is full of cold milk, sloshing around. I can *hear* it sloshing if I move too quickly. It feels like when you exercise too hard in the summer and foolishly chug way too much icewater too quickly and get horribly nauseous. An hour or two of having to sit very still and upright for miserable nausea. Eventually it passes and I get the blessed sense of emptiness in my stomach. Does the stomach digest in "batches"? I feel like I have to wait for it to finish chugging this batch of liquid around and let it drain out the bottom. 4-6 hours after most meals. Every damn day. I HATE IT. had this since i was a small child. hate hate hate.

second issue:

I also want to know what the stupid recurring stabbing pain in my lower left abdomen is. The first time it happened really badly about 6 months ago, I went to the ER, thinking it was, god knows, appendicitis or something. They gave me morphine and ran a battery of tests and said "oh, an ovarian cyst ruptured. nothing to be done about it, sucks to be you, it happens sometimes, probably won't happen again, though. MAYBE once more at worst." the pain was centered around approximately where i'd always vaguely imagined my left ovary to be (I've never examined an x ray and made the comparison exactly) which is also a spot that used to occasionally hurt during sex. er docs said yeah, the pain was probably the swollen, cystic ovary getting bumped, and now that the cyst was gone, so would the pain during sex. guess what? it did stop!. seemed very consistent with the diagnosis of "sucks, but at least it's over now."

debilitating left-side pain happens again a month later, while on the road in spain. alex seriously wants to know if i want to go to a hospital. I decline, as it feels EXACTLY like the last time, in the exact same spot, and they did say it might happen one more time. also exactly like the last time, the pain subsides in about 6 hours. I figure huzzah, I was right and didn't waste another 6k on a needless ER trip - now it's definitely cleared out and over for good. More follow-up appointments with doctors confirm this idea.

EXCEPT THE PAIN IS STILL HAPPENING.

Once, maybe twice a month. Sometimes as little as 2 hours, sometimes as long as 6. Same pain, same spot, still like doubled over almost crying cannot stand kind of stabby pain. Mystery! Doctors say this shouldn't be happening. Friends anecdotally suggest it may be melodramatic constipation. I start consuming fibre like it's my job - and don't actually have, never have had, any of the lack-of-poo symptoms of constipation anyway, nor have the half-dozen doctors suggested this either. FUCKING MYSTERY STABBY PAIN.

these two issues put me in mind of my chronic headaches. wasted a bunch of money, saw a bunch of doctors, all of them said "well, they're not migraines, we don't know what they are, fascinating, you're a first, um, do you want a prescription for painkillers?" Alex suggested it might be neck/muscle related, took me to see the first chiro I'd ever seen the day after our wedding, and voila: headache gone. Specific neck and shoulder posture and cramping issues identified - and precise suggestions for simple home therapy. CONSISTENTLY FANTASTIC RESULTS. I still get these headaches sometimes after sleeping poorly - and Alex can pull at my crampy shoulder, crack my neck, and headache is gone in 15 minutes. Solved. So fucking easily and every time, from one chiro visit, after dozens of "real" doctors and thousands of dollars FUCKING FAILED FOR YEARS.

This significantly reduces my faith in modern medicine. An I'm not being a stubborn idiot who ISN'T asking real doctors, (on several different expensive ppo networks over the years! been with blue cross blue shield, been with pchs/lettuce, now with celtic! been to fucking emergency room at swedish covenant, not like, stroger or that ghetto hospital in humboldt park!) getting second and third opinions. I KEEP WASTING TONS OF MONEY TO BE TOLD I AM A GODDAMN MYSTERY.

HATE HATE HATE

TV: Next, on MANSWERS-
Nicole: Really? Manswers?
Hunter: You never know when you could be asked about... the correct mathematical formula... for a perfect ass. I could be asked that tomorrow. And you know who's gonna have the answer? (points to himself) This guy.

http://www.groupon.com/r/uu33330 - $50 for 8 dance classes, drop in basis, doesn't expire for a year!

If you dance, you know that's a fucking STEAL!

Studio's in Lincoln Park, offers the traditional western world big 5 (ballet/jazz/modern/tap/hip hop), plus goo like cardio striptease (you can bet i wont be taking that one) and ballroom dancing. FYI the coupons are only good for their drop in classes, which only go up to level 2, so super serious western style dancers beware. of course for the bajillion middle eastern dancers on my list that wanted to take a bit of ballet or some such... THIS IS A FREAKING STEAL.

you have only 24 hrs to buy it! hurry!

Mini wine essay #2: more stuff as I learn it.

The French Obsession with the Geography of Wine (also, how to read a French wine label.)
by TC

What are all those words on French wine bottles, and what do they mean? The French developed the concept of terroir. "Terrior" can be loosely translated as "a sense of place." The idea is that the site upon which the grape is grown highly affects the quality of the final wine. It is not just the soil composition, but also the slope, the altitude, the latitude, the climate, the direction in which it faces. It is the vine's entire environment that affects the grape, and thus the wine. The French obsession with geography (and many cases of wine fraud) led to the development of the Appellation D'Origine Controlee (literally "controlled place of origin".) The French AOC system is the model for similar systems around the world (Italy's Denominazione di Origine Controllata, Spain's Denominación de Origen, etc.) The system defines the places where and how wines could be made. Thus, most French wines are identified by their place of origin rather than the grape varietals.

France is not a very large country - the whole thing would fit inside Texas. But climatically, it's highly varied. France can be thought of as being divided into three parts. Champagne and Burgundy in the north have a continental climate - cold winters and cool, rainy falls. Grapes may not fully ripen and thus produce wines that are delicate, fragile. Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon in the south have a Mediterranean climate, where ripeness is achieved easily and wines have a fuller, fleshier, sunnier feel in the mouth. Bordeaux and western Loire have moderate temperatures, but rain and humidity are high.

( There are three main categories of wine under the AOC, in descending order of quality. )

Hope it was useful! Anything need further explanation?

started, nye:

Vong's closed last night. It was the single most chaotic day ever spent in a restaurant. I was on a double. We were selling out of items left and right and packed to the gills every minute though the day. We only made staffing - and then only barely - by virtue of lots of charitable donations of time from not originally scheduled staff. It wasn't possible to update the menus and wine lists as quickly as things were selling out. We had to close early because we ran out of food.

I had been joking that I was "on this ship the whole way down" because I worked Monday night, Tuesday night, and a double for the close Wednesday, and because I had been yet un-placed as far as a transfer (the Mon Ami position went to JJ on Tuesday.) People had started abandoning ship as early as September, when the rumors of the potential closing started to fly. (I actually found out when our lease was coming up for renewal or not a year ago, but I've never been one to get excited about this sort of thing.) I never really wanted to be in that camp - if I'm going to stay in the industry and in this city, whether I end up taking the sommolier path or the event planner one, I would never dream of burning bridges with the Company. It's only half a joke that Lettuce is the mafia. It's the right side to be on, and I am definitely a Family girl, as it were. So I planted my feet and stayed on the ship. And at the eleventh hour, as Erin was frantically trying to get the last of us placed, somehow, at about 5pm yesterday Maggie from Mity Nice emailed to offer me a job.

It's just a hosting position, but of prime importance, I maintain my relationship with the company. Also, some money is more than zero, and for both things I'm infinitely grateful. I start Monday.

We popped open a few bottles of champagne at the end of the night (the real stuff - the good stuff) last night. Then we prepped the store to be gutted and hauled the booze across the street to Shaw's, and everyone went over to Mother Hubbard's for a drink.

This morning I helped to gut the store. Other restaurants, Lettuce mostly, bought off most of our furniture and equipment, and the rest went to storage. Most of the servers who'd made a lot of noise about showing up to help didn't. It was mostly kitchen guys and managers, Alberto Guzman and me and Joyee Lin. It took all day and was absolutely disgusting (did any of you know we had storage above the cooler?) but in the end it was worth it, because we got to go through the "yard sale" in the private lounge at the end of the day. By great fortune everything I had an eye on was unclaimed. I now have acquired a number of extremely pretty tiny Asian serving platters, a set of six trumpet flutes, and - the pièce de résistance - TWELVE RIEDEL GLASSES. http://www.riedel.com/

continued, day 2:

had a great time at nicole's party, plying candycane martinis on people. i actually managed to maintain the good kind of tipsy not sick drunk all night. alex hung out with his friends more soberly, and drove me home. there was a lovely lazy morning of snuggling while he played video games, then i (finally) cut shawns hair and we went and ate entirely too much sushi at shaw's.

and here is that lj new year's meme, which i actually filled out yesterday:
( new year meme )

some people got married (nikki and steve), some people got divorced (melanie), some people were born (sophie and debbie), some died (my uncle esmael, and friend mark). i bellydanced, grew closer to alex, learned about wine, went to spain, moved unexpectedly, and practiced poly-fu. i worked hard, struggled and grew.

yup, it was a year.

Me: Holy shit, amazon responded to my email already. And not auto-responded. Like, a live person solved the problem.
Alex: They're not a poor company.
Me: But 24 hour service? It's the middle of the night. Of course, it's also like 4 days before Christmas.
Alex: Yeah, if anything they should be more 24 hours right now.

Go amazon with your more 24 hr self.

(A seller canceled my order because the book was out of stock. There was no ability to refund my credit card, because i'd bought it with my rewards points. According to the FAQ, "refunds are not issued on items purchased with promotional certificates." I wrote them objecting to this policy at 10:33pm and had a polite response from a real person and a credit on my account by 10:59. Now that is service.)

this is playing now:



OMG WANT TO GO

gabriel iglesias is playing the chicago theatre april 10th!

(that is part 1 of 6)

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/07004348E7B1B41E?artistid=853206&majorcatid=10002&minorcatid=51

putting out a feeler for sunday december 13th as the jewmas celebration.

(this would be a potluck dinner, irreligious and capitalistic. gift-giving encouraged but not required.)

comment if you could come.

Does anyone have any books on tape they'd be willing to lend?

A friend of mine from work is a blind gentleman who mentioned that while he really enjoys books on tape, they're expensive and so he owns very few of them. To put it simply, he's from the hood. Chicago Public Schools do not offer much in the way of career training for special needs. The Chicago Lighthouse just placed him at his first real job, at Vong's, a year ago. He's in his 40s now.

He doesn't expect and wouldn't accept handouts, but being loaned a book or two from a friend is the kind of normal thing that he would accept. And I'd like to try to arrange it for him.

Thanks.

Yes.

You make me ashamed to have a penis
by tsaven
Oct. 9

A recent experience helping my not-girlfriend mordere flesh out her profile further reinforced something that I've already known for a while, and anyone with a vagina who uses this site knows as well.

We boys are a stupid, stupid gender.

Just looking at some of the messages that she has to routinely clear out of her inbox made my jaw drop. I mean . . . seriously? Where the fuck do these guys come from?

What really blows my mind is that these actually are people sending out these messages. Not some retarded spam-bot with only a tenuous grasp of the English language, but supposedly functional human beings, hopelessly whacking at their keyboards in an endless and unfocused attempt to, and I'm only guessing here, have sex. I'm at a loss for who these people are in real life. There can't actually be this many people with Downs Syndrome on this site. How do these people function in the real world?

There are stupid people everywhere in meatspace, but the level of idiocy evident in most messages boggles my tiny little male mind. Judging from the writing samples and profile content, I think it's a fair assumption that everyone with a penis is too retarded to accomplish basic tasks such as "wiping their own ass", "feeding themselves", and "sleeping". My own morbid facination with idiocy makes me want to sit down with some of these guys, and ask them what the hell they are thinking when they write these messages? And even more then that, I want to actually talk with any female who's replied positivly to these messages, and ask them what the hell THEY'RE thinking.

And here's the part that really fucks with me head. Statistics tell us that by the age of 55, 95% of people in this country will be married or at one point will have been married. This implies that at least 95% of people in this country will, at some point in their lives, have sex.

So this means that the VAST majority of the troglodytes who are sending these hopelessly weak, generic, form messages will at some point in their lives find a partner who is stupid enough, or desperate enough, to have sex with them. And maybe even have a relationship with them.

So I suppose my astonishment is two-fold. One, that there are men in this world that are this dumb, and two, that there WOMEN in this world who like them in spite of it.

This is part of the reason that I list myself as Straight in my profile, even though I have been known to, on occasion, enjoy the cock. Gay men are just as guilty of this as their breeder counterparts, although I have to say usually slightly less retarded. Maybe that's because the truly desperate and uncreative ones don't even bother with this site, instead sticking to Craigslist's Casual Encounters section. For whatever reason, while I did get a lot of dumb fluff messages from my fellow faggots, they weren't as bad as what it seems most of the girls on this site have to put up with.

So, on behalf of my gender, I openly and unconditionally apologize to the women of this site for the actions of . . . well, all of us.

And I encourage you all to go gay.

---------------------------------------

This goes hand in hand with my own minor peice of internet fame, How To Write To Womnen On Okcupid.

Also, he said "supposedly functional human beings, hopelessly whacking at their keyboards in an endless and unfocused attempt to, and I'm only guessing here, have sex." Yes. This.

sending out a feeler. anyone interested in doing dinner for Slaughtering and Displacing Indigenous Peoples Day? people orphaned in chicago or just don't like seeing biological relatives?

i make good food...

This is looking to be an *awesome* show.



Be there!

created an rss feed for groupon in chicago: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/groupon_chicago/profile

should be useful. hopefully i did it correctly.

Fare you well upon your journey,
To the bright lands far away,
Where beside the peaceful rivers,
You may linger any day.
In the forests warm at noontide,
See the flowers bloom in the glades,
Meet the friends who've gone before you,
To the calm of quiet shades.
There you'll wait, O my beloved,
Never knowing want or care,
And when I have seen my seasons,
We will walk together there.



( Kristina found her litter in a window well when we were 10 )

She passed in my lap on Thursday afternoon. She was nearly 17.

Rest in peace, Stella Mae.

JUST GOT THIS RINGTONE: http://www.cellsea.com/ringtone/detail/RT4aed4b0484a21.htm#

(which is this:)



now you must all call me. a lot. when i'm not and work and can have the sound on.

I had an excellent Halloween. It started with a plan to dress as socially inappropriate Barbie dolls, based off Julia's jokes about Keesha the first black Barbie. We came up with:

Julia: "Mammie" / House Nigger Barbie $10SALE! $6 (only 3/5ths)
Mike: Trucker Ken $10 and a case of Schlitz
Nicole: Trailer Barbie $10 and a pack of Newports
Hunter: Homeless Ken 30c for a bus pass (please help god bless)
Me: Chola Barbie $10 or 2000 pesos
Alex: Vato Ken $10, ese!

In the last 24 hours, the party of 6 became a party of 12 as we were joined by other in non theme costumes, whom we mostly tagged and included anyway, because Julia was having fun making pricetags:

Kitty: Miscellaneous Woodland Sprite (dubbed "Woodland Farie Barbie". $10 and the laughter of children.
Shawn: Nonspecific shamanistic personification of Pan/The Horned Man ("Shaman Ken." $10 and the spirit of the wolf)
Brendan: Legolas ("Elfin Ranger Lvl 12 Ken." $10 and the one ring that binds us)
Mandy: miscellaneous goth with extra glitter ("Twilight Barbie." $10 and the blood of a virgin)
Melanie: Fem!Shirlock Holmes
Melanie's Skanky Sister Who's Name I Can't Remember: A Slutty What? I'm pretty sure she was a Victoria's Secret Angel.

Yes, there are pictures forthcoming.

Some highlights of the evening:

>>Hunter ran down to the CVS to pick up something in costume, and a homeless man glared at him. Over the night he also was given a dollar and a tequila shot. Another homeless man called him brotha and bumped elbows with him.
>>Someone yelled "Oh my god, Orlando Bloom!" out a car window at Brendan
>>We invented a new drinking game. Every time you see a Slutty!What? you drink.
>>My eyebrows scared people. And/or reminded them of high school. Ive got some GREAT chola pics.
>>Nicole got uproariously drunk. People thought she was really pregnant. She was like "are you kidding? this drunk and smoking if I was really pregnant?" She at one point sat on the infant doll she had pinned to her side, and had to buy Julia a shot to prevent her from calling DCFS.
>>Slutty!Red Riding Hood stopped us in the street to give us candy.
>>Julia and I jammed tribal at SmartBar, and everyone suddenly wanted to learn.
>>The best part of the night was the walk down Clark street from SmartBar to Pick Me Up's, in the thick of costumed masses.
>>We found Waldo!
>>We saw a Slutty!Mexican at Pick Me Up's. A white girl was wearing a sombrero and a stereotypical poncho-blanket as some kind of micro-mini wrap dress. Since I was also dressed, technically, as a skanky Meican, I stood up and shouted "Viva la Raza!... and you don't speak Spanish and have no idea what I just said."

I'm pretty sure there's more, but I will wait til we have pictures.

Nicole: Your purse and keys are at my house. And your car is parked safely in a free no meter no permit zone. And yes it is locked.