Miscellaneous - January 14th, 2011
I had planned to write a "Leftovers" post for days now. But it can't be called leftovers when it's not the end of the day yet, can it?
° ° °
A few days ago I started to feel an MS attack creeping up on me. I tried to ignore it at first. Silly me, who still thinks that it will pass on its own. It so rarely does, I should have learned that after more than 10 years with this disease. Then I thought I'd wait till Monday to see my doc and start treatment, because I had plans for Sunday and getting IVs would mess with those plans. But then I did some more grown-up (=sensible *g*) thinking and decided to start with the IVs right away, because a) the symptoms (which got worse yesterday) would hopefully disappear sooner and b) I'd miss another whole week at work, if I started with the 5 IVs on Monday. I'm grateful for the German healthcare system and that my job situation is one, where I don't have to fear losing my job for taking too many sick days. But I'd still feel bad to be off for another week in January after I've already out sick during the first. So now I'll probably only miss Monday and Tuesday and be back at work on Wednesday. I got the first corticoid IV this morning and luckily don't suffer from side effects too much yet. My tastebuds are still more or less working fine. I have to wait and see how it will be with the sleep tonight.
FYI: My syptoms this time... similar to the last attack in the summer of 2010. Numbness in my feet and legs and even all the way up to my hip and bum. When I'm sitting I always have the strange sensation of sitting on something on my right side. Like the hem of a jacket. A cushion that's not quite right. Anything that's not supposed to be there. And there isn't anything there indeed, just my nerves and brain playing tricks on me. I've also got the tingling pins and needles feeing in both feet and lower legs. My feet feel like I have sand in my socks and shoes. When I walk the left foot also feels like I'm wearing very, very soft aircushioned sneaker. Soft, like it's stuffed with cotton. Well, and of course the sand :-) It's not too bad all in all, but it's annoying.
° ° °
IMHO the latest Grey's episode sucked. I realized once again that I stopped to really care about it and that made me both sad and relieved. It's a weird feeling. I'll still write a review later, just because it would feel even more weird to not write it. I've written reviews since early season 3. It's just what I do. I can't help it.
° ° °
As much as I bitch about Grey's these days I also recently remembered once again that this show did do something right in its early days: Introducing wonderful and awesome music and artists to me. That's something I'll always be grateful for. I had a huge thing for the Grey's music in the early season and I've got a huge collection of songs I liked. I haven't quite caught up with the music after season 4. Maybe because I thought the writing and storytelling started to become really bad. Bitchting about that might have kept me from paying attention to the music. I really might have to catch up with S5 - S7 music. I just recently heard a Kendall Payne song on my last.fm radio and I liked the song and I remembered that I liked her two songs on Grey's as well. I checked her website, ordered all her CDs and love them. It was the same with Anna Nalick, Mat Kearney, Ingrid Michaelson, Matthew Perrymen Jones (even though his song was on Private Practice, back then when I still watched that) and of course Brandi Carlile. I'm still a bit bummed that Brandi had to cancel the concerts in Europe last year. My favourite Grey's song? An old classic, I have to say: "Breathe (2AM)" by Anna Nalick, played in the crucial moments of the bomb episode in season 2. But there were a lot of great other songs later on as well.
When I got the parcel with Kendall Payne CDs earlier this week I started to remember how differently the whole "learning about new music, getting hands on this music" thing worked 20 years ago, when I started listening to music. You heard it on the radio or in TV chart show or on a tape a friend might have given you. Later there was MTV and but there were no TV series that had music featured prominently on it's show. There was no myspace, facebook, no last.fm or any other online radio, where you could listen to hours and hours of new music, new music like the music the radio already knew you liked. You could only buy music (on tape or vinyl or later CD) in real record stores. I know there were catalogues and post order as well for special genres, but you bascially just could buy what was on the racks in the record store. At least that's how I remembered it. Even if there ever had been a song on a TV series (or the radio or a commercial at the cinema). which caught your interest, it was difficult or even impossible to find out what that song was. There were no playlists on the radiostations websites, as there were not websites. There was no Google to ask about it and no fancommunities in which the playlists of an TV series episode was listed only a few hours after the episode aired. There was no easy way or no way at all to find out about furthers songs or albums of this artist you were interested it. No way to listen to samples on the artists website. And definitely no easy way to order CDs from another country. There was no easy way to pay for anything like that. Yes, there already were credit cards in the 90s, but I definitely hadn't had one, I was only a teenager after all. Today's youth has no idea how good their "music listener life" is in the 21st century :-)
Ok, I stop the boring reminiscences of the hard, hard lifes of the late 20th century. But it just now struck me, how far we've come within these 20 years.
° ° °
I was in a bad mood and easily irritaded a lot In the last few days. I have no idea why. It's not PMS. I usually don't suffer from irritability as symptom during an MS attack. I'm not even sure it's in the books as symptom. And I didn't flip out on anyone, except myself. I was wise enough to keep the bitching out of my tweets, for the most part at lest I hope. It would have been boring and annoying to read, about the driver of the mini van or the bus driver or the cashier and ... a lot of people who just got on my nerves. I'm trying to be more relaxed about all this, I really am... but sometimes it's not that easy.
° ° °
Is it cheating, when I take this week's project365 photos for the theme "Breakfast" not at breakfast time, but later in the day? They still are breakfast themed photos ;-)
° ° °
Two days ago I had an iPad in my hands for the first time in my life. I can understand the praise and hype about it, it's a cool gadget. I wouldn't buy one due to it's buildt-in restrictions (no USB etc) and because I really don't *need* one, but I can totally see why it is bought and used and praised. It is something special...
° ° °
I took a short break from reading "Moab is my washpot" (Stephen Fry's book of his early years) to read the "A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows", Diana Gabaldons contribution to a collection of stories of star-crossed love. It's rather short and I read it within two or three hours and I really loved it. I was spoilered, of course, by some the exerpts she posted last year and by some comments I read online. I really enjoyed it nonetheless, which I honestely didn't expect, because it's not about any the original cast of the Outlander series. Someone makes a short appearance and of course this alone gives room for thought. Plenty of thought, because of course this story has to be seen in the bigger picture of the Outlander canon and universe and I'm curious how she will bring these loose ends together in book 9.
**** Major spoiler ahead in the following paragraph ****
This story is about Roger's parents and what really happened to Jerry McKenzie in WW II. I didn't expect to care much about Roger's parents, because I didn't know them at all. But they were lovely people and they loved each other deeply. I was close to tears when Jerry painted a picture of a ragdool on Dolly III and even more so during the scene in the subway station. What pains me a little is, that Roger will never know how it all really played out. He remembered that his mother saved his life by throwing him down from the stairs when the bomb hit and the roof collapsed. He will not know that his mom threw him down to his dad who saved him and died while doing it. Roger didn't know his dad, he had only met him once before and he was not even a toddler then. So... yeah, tragic story, typical Gabaldon stuff ;-)
° ° °
A few days ago I started to feel an MS attack creeping up on me. I tried to ignore it at first. Silly me, who still thinks that it will pass on its own. It so rarely does, I should have learned that after more than 10 years with this disease. Then I thought I'd wait till Monday to see my doc and start treatment, because I had plans for Sunday and getting IVs would mess with those plans. But then I did some more grown-up (=sensible *g*) thinking and decided to start with the IVs right away, because a) the symptoms (which got worse yesterday) would hopefully disappear sooner and b) I'd miss another whole week at work, if I started with the 5 IVs on Monday. I'm grateful for the German healthcare system and that my job situation is one, where I don't have to fear losing my job for taking too many sick days. But I'd still feel bad to be off for another week in January after I've already out sick during the first. So now I'll probably only miss Monday and Tuesday and be back at work on Wednesday. I got the first corticoid IV this morning and luckily don't suffer from side effects too much yet. My tastebuds are still more or less working fine. I have to wait and see how it will be with the sleep tonight.
FYI: My syptoms this time... similar to the last attack in the summer of 2010. Numbness in my feet and legs and even all the way up to my hip and bum. When I'm sitting I always have the strange sensation of sitting on something on my right side. Like the hem of a jacket. A cushion that's not quite right. Anything that's not supposed to be there. And there isn't anything there indeed, just my nerves and brain playing tricks on me. I've also got the tingling pins and needles feeing in both feet and lower legs. My feet feel like I have sand in my socks and shoes. When I walk the left foot also feels like I'm wearing very, very soft aircushioned sneaker. Soft, like it's stuffed with cotton. Well, and of course the sand :-) It's not too bad all in all, but it's annoying.
° ° °
IMHO the latest Grey's episode sucked. I realized once again that I stopped to really care about it and that made me both sad and relieved. It's a weird feeling. I'll still write a review later, just because it would feel even more weird to not write it. I've written reviews since early season 3. It's just what I do. I can't help it.
° ° °
As much as I bitch about Grey's these days I also recently remembered once again that this show did do something right in its early days: Introducing wonderful and awesome music and artists to me. That's something I'll always be grateful for. I had a huge thing for the Grey's music in the early season and I've got a huge collection of songs I liked. I haven't quite caught up with the music after season 4. Maybe because I thought the writing and storytelling started to become really bad. Bitchting about that might have kept me from paying attention to the music. I really might have to catch up with S5 - S7 music. I just recently heard a Kendall Payne song on my last.fm radio and I liked the song and I remembered that I liked her two songs on Grey's as well. I checked her website, ordered all her CDs and love them. It was the same with Anna Nalick, Mat Kearney, Ingrid Michaelson, Matthew Perrymen Jones (even though his song was on Private Practice, back then when I still watched that) and of course Brandi Carlile. I'm still a bit bummed that Brandi had to cancel the concerts in Europe last year. My favourite Grey's song? An old classic, I have to say: "Breathe (2AM)" by Anna Nalick, played in the crucial moments of the bomb episode in season 2. But there were a lot of great other songs later on as well.
When I got the parcel with Kendall Payne CDs earlier this week I started to remember how differently the whole "learning about new music, getting hands on this music" thing worked 20 years ago, when I started listening to music. You heard it on the radio or in TV chart show or on a tape a friend might have given you. Later there was MTV and but there were no TV series that had music featured prominently on it's show. There was no myspace, facebook, no last.fm or any other online radio, where you could listen to hours and hours of new music, new music like the music the radio already knew you liked. You could only buy music (on tape or vinyl or later CD) in real record stores. I know there were catalogues and post order as well for special genres, but you bascially just could buy what was on the racks in the record store. At least that's how I remembered it. Even if there ever had been a song on a TV series (or the radio or a commercial at the cinema). which caught your interest, it was difficult or even impossible to find out what that song was. There were no playlists on the radiostations websites, as there were not websites. There was no Google to ask about it and no fancommunities in which the playlists of an TV series episode was listed only a few hours after the episode aired. There was no easy way or no way at all to find out about furthers songs or albums of this artist you were interested it. No way to listen to samples on the artists website. And definitely no easy way to order CDs from another country. There was no easy way to pay for anything like that. Yes, there already were credit cards in the 90s, but I definitely hadn't had one, I was only a teenager after all. Today's youth has no idea how good their "music listener life" is in the 21st century :-)
Ok, I stop the boring reminiscences of the hard, hard lifes of the late 20th century. But it just now struck me, how far we've come within these 20 years.
° ° °
I was in a bad mood and easily irritaded a lot In the last few days. I have no idea why. It's not PMS. I usually don't suffer from irritability as symptom during an MS attack. I'm not even sure it's in the books as symptom. And I didn't flip out on anyone, except myself. I was wise enough to keep the bitching out of my tweets, for the most part at lest I hope. It would have been boring and annoying to read, about the driver of the mini van or the bus driver or the cashier and ... a lot of people who just got on my nerves. I'm trying to be more relaxed about all this, I really am... but sometimes it's not that easy.
° ° °
Is it cheating, when I take this week's project365 photos for the theme "Breakfast" not at breakfast time, but later in the day? They still are breakfast themed photos ;-)
° ° °
Two days ago I had an iPad in my hands for the first time in my life. I can understand the praise and hype about it, it's a cool gadget. I wouldn't buy one due to it's buildt-in restrictions (no USB etc) and because I really don't *need* one, but I can totally see why it is bought and used and praised. It is something special...
° ° °
I took a short break from reading "Moab is my washpot" (Stephen Fry's book of his early years) to read the "A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows", Diana Gabaldons contribution to a collection of stories of star-crossed love. It's rather short and I read it within two or three hours and I really loved it. I was spoilered, of course, by some the exerpts she posted last year and by some comments I read online. I really enjoyed it nonetheless, which I honestely didn't expect, because it's not about any the original cast of the Outlander series. Someone makes a short appearance and of course this alone gives room for thought. Plenty of thought, because of course this story has to be seen in the bigger picture of the Outlander canon and universe and I'm curious how she will bring these loose ends together in book 9.
**** Major spoiler ahead in the following paragraph ****
This story is about Roger's parents and what really happened to Jerry McKenzie in WW II. I didn't expect to care much about Roger's parents, because I didn't know them at all. But they were lovely people and they loved each other deeply. I was close to tears when Jerry painted a picture of a ragdool on Dolly III and even more so during the scene in the subway station. What pains me a little is, that Roger will never know how it all really played out. He remembered that his mother saved his life by throwing him down from the stairs when the bomb hit and the roof collapsed. He will not know that his mom threw him down to his dad who saved him and died while doing it. Roger didn't know his dad, he had only met him once before and he was not even a toddler then. So... yeah, tragic story, typical Gabaldon stuff ;-)