Ups & Downs

Well all in all it has been a pretty horrible month. I went to the emergency room for my spine, then my turtle ran away, then my Grandpa passed away. So just when I thought things couldn't get worse, they did. So Friday was pretty awful, but Saturday two of my good friends, Kean + Tammy, were visiting from Seattle, and I haven't seen them in like a year so that was nice. I spent pretty much the entire day with friends and I think I needed that. Sunday, Aug 10th I have a art show, it is called "More Super Sundays" and it is in Hillcrest, we are on University + Richmond right in front of the Alibi so I am hopeful about that. For more info check out my "events" page.

Comic-con 2008!

Well Comic-con was pretty fun overall this year. I was a bit worried because of my injury that I would not be able to go, but I did manage. I maybe did not stay as long as I would have liked to, or gotten to do as much as I might have wanted to, but at least I got to go at all. On Tuesday I had absolutely no feeling in my foot and I couldn't walk so at that point I figured no way could I go, but then I regained feeling in my big toe, now I know that does not sound very important, but even if you only have feeling in your big toe, at least you can feel where you are putting your foot and then you don't accidentally twist your ankle.

Well my friends and I did decide to cosplay this year, I dressed up as Princess Peach from "Super Mario Brothers." I look kinda creepy as a blonde!

My friends went as the video game "Super Smash Brothers" which is neat, it is a fighting game with all sorts of famous video game characters in it so it allowed us all to go as things we really wanted to go as from different video games. With such a large group it can be hard to pick just one thing to dress as!

So starting from the left I am Peach, Sherief dressed as 'Snake,' Megan is 'Daisy,' Blue-gelica is "Ice Climber", Eirikr is "Mario", Brook is "Pit", Sean is "Ness", Sarah is "Zelda", Brion is "Marth", Josh is "Ike", and Trevor is "Link."

It was fun! I had so many little girls go, 'look look mommy, a princess' as I walked by, and I would wave at them and they would get SO EXCITED. It was funny!

Our friend Analee also came as Aeris from FFVII, so cute!



I have sooo many photos, I will have to upload a slideshow or something, maybe later. Well all in all it was a fun year despite the injury and despite the fact that there were not as many panels that I wanted to see as normal.

Last year I was angry because it was SO crowded, but I don't think it was any worse this year, so that is good at least.

Emergency Room Woes

Well I saw "Batman: The Dark Knight" on Friday evening, it was ok. I liked Batman Begins better but this one is still worth seeing. I was in a lot of pain when I got home (sitting in a movie theater can be difficult on my spine sometimes) so I took some vicodin and got a ziploc bag filled with ice to put on my spine. I woke up at 4am in HORRIBLE pain (and I was wet and laying in a puddle, I guess I fell asleep with the ice still there). Normally when my spine is in pain, laying down is what feels best. But this time it hurt to lay on my back, it hurt to lay on my side, and it REALLY hurt to lay on my stomach. Well I guess I was crying so that woke Trevor up. Then we were trying to decide what to do. With my insurance the emergency room is $50, but if I waited until the normal offices open at 9am then I can get an urgent care appointment for only $15. Well I thought about it for like an hour and decided I was in too much pain to wait so we went to the emergency room. We got there at 6am, it was EMPTY! My biggest fear was going to the emergency room and then having to wait several hours to be seen anyways. They admitted me immediately. They said my spinal disc was probably inflamed, normally when my spine is bad I have pain shooting down the from of my leg and into my shin and foot. This time I had pain down the back of my leg shooting into my buttock. Normally it hurts to sit, this time sitting actually felt 'good' and it hurt to lay! They gave me a injection into my butt of some pain reliever. It made me sooo nauseous, but it also made me sleepy so that was nice. They didn't want me to stand because they were worried I would pass out, but I told them I didn't want to lay becasue it hurt, but they made me! I had some interesting times flopping about the bed trying to get comfy, I flashed everyone my underpants 100 times (I was in those stupid ties-in-the-back hospital gowns) and I almost feel off the gurney once! After a few hours of observation and tests they sent me to the pharmacy, they sent me home with steroids to helps the inflamation and to strengthen things up, they also gave me some percocet for pain. When I got home I was able to sleep for several hours, that was nice. But when I woke up I was in terrible pain again. I took the percocet and it did not kick in for 1 1/2 hours!!!!! It only helped the pain barely, plus I think it made me nauseous again! So I tried to lay down to go to sleep that night, but it hurt soo bad. I tried sitting in my computer chair, which felt better, but I just could not fall asleep sitting up (it is too bad I don't have a recliner chair). So I got into bed and was in and out of sleep all night.

I decided to go back to the doctor on Sunday, this time I waited until 9am to go to urgent care (I just couldn't afford $50 again for the emergency room). The funny this is even though I had an appointment it actually took me longer to be seen this time! I told the DR. the percocet wasn't helping at all. Also Saturday the pain was just in my spine, butt, and the top of my leg, today my whole right foot underneath had gone numb. It made it very hard to walk, I am very worried I will twist an ankle before all is said + done. He gave me another shot in the butt (I guess it is a hydromorphone solution) and then he sent me home with MORPHINE and muscle relaxants (flexeril I think). Well this time the injection helped a LOT. I went to bed right away, stayed asleep for hours and never felt nauseous! It helped so much I did not need to take pain killers all day! I did take a morphine and flexeril as I went to bed that night, but I fell asleep right away so I did not know how much they helped.

Now it is Monday and my Dr. told me to stay home all week to rest up and get better. Makes sense, especially since my foot is still numb and it is hard to walk. Also for some reason, they did not want me to go to work on Morphine, heheheeh. Well at noon I took a morphine and I did not notice any difference until 1:48. Then I felt a slight flush and my pain was slightly better. I am somewhat disappointed. I thought Morphine sounded very powerful, hey now I am finally using the big guns I thought, but nope!!! Morphine helped a little, but it was hardly much better than anything else I have taken! At least I am not nauseous today! So I am not loopy, or anything, does that mean someday I can go to work and take morphine!!! Still seems kinda weird! I really think there must be something wrong with my metabolism! Well all-in-all I do feel better than this weekend, still in pain, but nothing like before. Maybe the injections helped? Or maybe the steroids are starting to take effect, who can say?

Well one other thing I wanted to say was this last weekend was Gay Pride Weekend in San Diego, and obviously I did not get to participate in the activities and show support for my friends that are walking a different path in life than I am, but I did want to say to everyone, "Have a Gay Day!"

I like fish, but not Long Beach

Ok, so a week ago it was Trevor and my 7th anniversary so we decided to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific! I had never been there so I was excited! Well we were still quite tired from last month (see previous post) so Friday night we were like, well should we set an alarm clock? Well, yes we "should" but we are so tired, lets just see if we wake up in time we will go, if not then it was not meant to be....

So we woke up at 9am, not too bad actually so we decided yes lets go! Now of course the down side is that it took me 2 hours to get ready (I had to wash my hair....I have a LOT of hair). So it is 11am, suddenly it almost seems silly to go, but we were all excited so we decide to go anyways. I have a bag with knitting that I like to bring in the car (why not get some crafting done if I am stuck in a car for 2 hours?). But I am rather clumsy so as we are leaving and my hands are very full, I bump into the wall, this drives the "knifty knitter" hook into my thigh. It took out a chunk of flesh 1/4 in wide by 1/4" deep! Ouch!

We also decide if we are all the way up there, we might as well stop at Sonic Burger for lunch! There is not a Sonic burger closer than 90 miles to my house, which is very sad because despite this they play the commercials on TV here in San Diego all the time and it makes me want to eat there! I really love Sonic Burger, they have so many drink options, and cool things like tater tots instead of fries! Anyways, we get to Sonic, and you drive or walk up to the menu, press a button and wait for someone to take your order. Well it was so crowded every drive-in slot was full so we went to the walk up tables. We pressed the button and after like 15 minutes no one had taken our order, so I decided to go to a different button, and then our order got placed after like 5 minutes. I guess I am saying we were there for longer than I had wanted and I was feeling like we were already late the the aquarium! It was also at this time that I discovered that during the painful hook into leg incident that I had dropped my hair clip as I was stabbed and while Trevor gathered up everything I had dropped he failed to get the hairclip, it was like 90 degrees Saturday and I have waist-length thick curly hair so I was DYING of heat without my hairclip...

So we get to Long Beach and the freeway just sorta dead-ends into downtown Long Beach, there are these stupid forks and google maps tells us something like take the left fork, right fork, right fork, left fork. Well clearly we missed a fork at some point because we ended up in the wrong part of town, we followed the signs to the Aquarium so we thought we'd be ok, but these actually led us back on to the freeway, Trevor said well I will just stay in the right lane so we can take the first exit, well I guess in Long Beach they have exits on the LEFT side! So we see a sign that says for the Aquarium you need to exit left and U-turn (wow that is stupid) so we cut across three lanes of traffic, we finally make it to the stupid Aquarium and the parking is full, so we park across the street in the "Pike" parking garage (I still am not sure what the Pike is...).

Yayy, we are finally at the Aquarium! Wow, they had the BIGGEST sting ray I have ever seen in my life! It had spots like a leopard, not I know many people say "spots like a leopard, and they just mean it had spots, but this sting ray really really looking like it had leopard skin (minus the fur).

The seahorses were so cute and tiny!

They had the most magnificent collection of jellyfish! My favorite was this one neat tank where they had res lights in the front which made the jellyfish glow red, then in the middle was white lights and in the back was dark so you had this neat mix of red, white, and shadowy jellyfish floating about.
So we finish looking at fish and we decide it is time to go, we go back to the "pike" parking garage and there is a line to leave (we are on the top 6th floor) so we are like dang this could take forever! Well we did not even realize the extent of how horrible it was.... After 20 minutes we had only moved one car length!! We saw an open parking spot so we decided to go park again and go kill time somewhere instead of sitting in line. As we were in the elevator going down the doors would open and you could see that the traffic was totally jammed on floor as well. Floor was jammed. The doors open on floor and it was completely empty, we were like, woah, where did all the traffic go???? We figured that there MUST be a traffic accident on floor 4. So we go to a Borders across the street to kill time, I bought 3 cookbooks, hehehe, opps! So we go back an hour later and the traffic is totally cleared, we see a security dude and we ask him hey was there an accident earlier, he said no it was crowded because people were leaving the aquarium, movie theater and something else all at the same time. Well that just did not make sense to us, then why was there no traffic on floors 1-3? Well as we were driving out we found out why, for floors 4-6 you have to drive through the garage to get out but at floor 4 they send you out to some funny little loop exit on the side of the garage. So everyone on floors 4-6 has to wait to get in the loopy exit as people from floors 1-3 also are cutting in front of them, what a poorly designed garage!!!

So we are finally leaving and Trevor asks what we want to do for dinner, I say lets just get the heck out of Long Beach/LA/Orange or wherever we are. Lets go home to San Diego where the roads are labeled and there are no weird left lane exits. Well then Trevor points out that it is 7pm already (I have not adjusted to daylight savings I guess) and that by the time we get home it will be too late to get dinner. So we decide to go to "Amazon" which was a Brazilian place that we had seen across the street from Sonic Burger. It was good, they had all sorts of funny meats like alligator and the waiter comes to your table with a sword of meat and spears you off a slice. We ate our meat, we went across the street and got a cherry-limeade and then went home to San Diego (which I have a new appreciation for) and fell promptly asleep.

I'm FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I am always a busy person. I am an only child and I think that being an only child has been fantastic! People say, oh weren't you bored or lonely as a child? No! I could always come up with something to do, this led to several robust hobbies that I have kept on into my adulthood, like crafting, cooking, gardening, video games, reading, costuming, theater, ect.....

Well this past month I took being busy to a new and unholy level. But I am FINALLY finished with my crazy commitments and I am FREEEEEE! Don't get me wrong, I am still quite busy, trying to schedule anything on a weekend for the next 4 months is a joke (I do have some free days coming up in August). But that is my normal state, rather than the work all say, stay late, then go home and work until I drop from exhaustion! I normally don't have this many CRAZY huge things all lumped at once, here is what I have been up to:

March 25th was our "site visit" at work. I work in a Bio lab at UCSD and every 5 years the federal government (NIH) comes to inspect us to see if we deserve more money for the next 5 years. So needless to say this is a HUGE deal for my work, we have to have everything ready and perfect.

Then March 30th was our Spring Line Up! Craft Show. This was a blast! I can't believe how many people came! I was on the PR committee so I am glad to see all our hard work getting the word out paid off! The only downside is right when we opened the doors it was so crowded people could hardly shop!!! If you stopped to buy something everyone behind you bumped into you!!! Well we are working on that for next time! Check out my pictures! I also hate to say I am glad it is over! I enjoyed doing it, but it was also hard because I was simultaneously trying to start up my business so I had to also do things like design and order business cards, get my tax license, try to make a website, ect.......... I also had never done PR before so I had no idea what that would be like! Then I made a 100 pairs of earrings to give away in the swag bag, and I had to make stuff to sell too! So it was pretty crazy, but it was worth it. Also I bet it will get easier with each show I do!
Then on April 5th I had to cook a medieval feast for 80+ people!!! The UCSD medieval club (otherwise known as the College of St. Artemas in the SCA) was having it's 20th anniversary extravaganza so I wanted to do an extra-special feast this year! I decided that the main course would be a beef Tri-Tip roast, it came out SO GOOD! The beef melted in your mouth! We had two ziploc bags of meat leftover which they decided to auction off and they went for $40 each! I cannot believe we made $80 auctioning off leftovers!!! A lot of people told me it was the best feast that they ever went to so I guess I am pretty proud of myself! We did not quote sell out, we were selling 80 seats and we were about 15 short so that means we had about 65 people. Well I cooked 120lbs of meat! And there was not very much leftover! So that means on average people ate 2lbs of meat each PLUS side dishes. We did not have many side dishes left either! It was crazy! Here, check out our crazy menu!

St. Artemas 20^th Anniversary

Feast Extravaganza!

~Course One~

St. Artemas Veggie Platter

Featuring green veggies and special yellow St. Artemas carrots!

Tzatziki Dip

A refreshing yogurt based dip with cucumber and dill

~Course Two~

Capon Rosted

A roasted chicken where lemon and rosemary infused butter is rubbed

under the skin with moist and delicious results

Fenkel in Soppes

Fennel and onions are sautéed in olive oil and seasoning and then turned

into a very light and tasty soup

Bread & Butter

A classic staple! The butter is flavored with honey, fresh parsley, and basil

~Course Three~

Malaches of Pork

With eggs, pine nuts, currants, ground pork, and seasoning this medieval

quiche is basically sausage pie which is extremely scrumptious

Salat

A salad of mixed greens, red onions, glazed walnuts, gorgonzola, and

a balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Couscous

A grain dish that is actually made of very small pasta spheres, added to

this is dried apricots, almonds, and olive oil for a pleasantly sweet flavor

~Course Four~

A Roste

Beef Tri-tip is roasted to perfection for a melt in your mouth consistency

and covered in an exotic array of sweet and savory spices

Garlec

Garlic cloves boiled with a rich array of spices

Hummus

A dip made of mashed chickpeas, garlic, tahini, and pine nuts

Pita

A slightly leaved wheat flat bread with a subtle onion flavor

~Course Five~

Fyne Cakes

These cute little cakes are shaped like mini castles and taste similar to modern

shortbread with cinnamon

Glazed Nuts

A delightful mix of sweet spiced pecans and walnuts