Today is the twelve year anniversary of my AIDS diagnosis. I have to say a couple of three things about that:

• I never imagined I would still be alive in twelve years, given where I was.
  
• I never imagined that I would have such a meaningful life.
  
• It figures that I have to get up early this morning, to do that thing that I've decided to do with my ( Read more... )

I learned yesterday that a good chunk of the bloodwork I had done Monday was already back. My bilirubin, while still abnormally high, is down a bit, from 6.8 in September to 5.3. It's supposed to be less than 1.5 in a healthy person. (Bilirubin a waste product of the liver, and associated with metabolizing one of my HIV meds. I'm a little jaundiced ( Read more... )

I was having some sort of dream. (It was kind of cool, the "oh wow I need to remember this one" kind, but now the content escapes me. I waited too long to wake up.) Anyway, Red heard my alarm go off, and promptly came up on the bed to herd me into feeding him and/or giving him attention greet me ( Read more... )

I was at some kind of boarding school, with a bunch of people. The only class I could remember was a sort of Literature class where we studied the works of Sylvia Plath. There were written tests, where instead of blanks to fill in (that look like actual __________ blanks), there were keywords we were supposed to memorize and, on the test, those ( Read more... )

I'll let the video speak for itself since, like me, my laptop battery is running low on juice...

Click to view

5 potatoes, sliced into chunks
1 bunch kale, julienned
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, sliced*
2 carrots, sliced chunky
salt to taste
~1 tsp cumin seeds
~1 tsp whole peppercorns
~2 tsp olive oil
2 cups vegetable broth
That's what I put into the slow cooker, and topped it off with just enough water to cover it. I set it to cook over 6 ( Read more... )

For the most part, I love the Immunology Center staff. They are professional, they are nice, they are on the ball. But they have one small shortcoming ( Read more... )

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth... I'm still here. The last few days have kinda sucked ( Read more... )

I feel like I need to make about a thousand entries, but I'll try to make just one with most of the major stuff. Let's hear it for bullet points:

• I saw my main HIV doc on Monday. And I got some kinda good news: I didn't realize just how much of a leap my percentage had made until I looked at it on paper. My June percentage, 33.2%, was the highest I ( Read more... )

Yay for the bullet points:

• Just finished another session with my life coach. Sometimes I feel like he is more an inexpensive and unlicensed (but very effective) therapist than a life coach. I know that we're "supposed" to talk about my career (whatever that means) but we often end up talking about other stuff. Someday, I hope to be in a position to ( Read more... )