Doggy Poo

Netflix has a feature in which you can watch on demand programming, as many hours a month as you're paying in dollars. We're right now on the $4.99 plan, for other reasons which I'll get into later.

Anyway, it's Friday night after a long difficult week for both of us, and we wanted to do a whole lot of nothing tonight. My plan was to eat Chinese food and watch anime, a great thing to do on a whim. I was looking through the list for Akira (wonderful dinnertime viewing), and happened upon something very very different: Doggy Poo.

It's a story of a Doggy Poo trying to find its purpose in life. It is laid unceremoniously by the side of a road, and shunned for being the most worthless kind of poo. It discusses its lot in life with a clump of dirt and a leaf, until finally finding purpose in fertilizing a dandelion.

Sounds bizarre enough? But wait, there's more! It's very slow paced, as if it's aimed at kids in their very early years (like before five years old). Kids who like poo. Kids who might not understand the concepts that are being spouted, were it not for the fact that the characters are fun little pieces of the environment. Such is the parable nature of the show.

That's right, it just wasn't bizarre enough! It's a children's animation about poo that's actually a Christian parable. It reminds me a bit of Davey and Goliath in the animation style, the pace and the ultimate message (it's not so overt as Davey and Goliath were, but they also were never about excrement). The poo is born feeling worthless and dirty, abandoned by the dog who shat it. Nobody wants the poo, evidenced by the birds who refuse to eat it. The clump of dirt has sinned egregiously in his past, and all he wants to do is go back and make it right (which is called "works based salvation," and is not part of the evangelistic tradition). The leaf is blown wherever the wind sends her, and is not grounded like the poo (meaning in some metaphorical sense that she cannot be of one opinion about anything). The poo only finds its purpose in giving its entire self to the beautiful flower. I'm sure it makes a lot more sense in a Sunday School classroom, when the teacher (the teacher who shows her kids scatological movies) tells her kids what it all means.

So there ya have it: A children's Christian parable animation about a dog turd. Certainly wasn't planning on THAT for our dinner viewing.

The Big Flu

This weekend, I had the worst bout of stomach flu I've had in my adult life. It could have been food poisoning, but everybody I was with came out of it fine, and I was still pretty quivery the next couple days (up to today), so not sure what-all can be made of it.

In any case, I went to a brew at Mattox's place, and hung out with him and some other folks, and had some good chat time. It was my first time witnessing an all-grain brew, and it was certainly fun to watch. It will likely be fun to actually do one of these days, but we'll see what happens. Afterwards, Heidi and I met some other folks (Richard and Libby and a friend of theirs) for dinner at Red Rooster, a fabulous French restaurant in the city (I cannot recommend this place highly enough, even considering the rest of this story). Afterwards, we went to a party that Tracy and Kristin were having at their place, which seemed a lot more fun than I was able to appreciate. About twenty minutes into a good conversation with one of the guys there, I was pretty sure I was going to be sick. I figured we should go, as throwing up in a friend's bathroom during a party... not so good. It was good we went when we did, as we weren't even out of the city before I had to stop to take care of my dirty sinful business in a Jewel bathroom. Before we got home, I needed to puke again in a church parking lot. Over the next five hours, I ended up eliminating pretty much everything that was in me, out of whichever orifice was most convenient. I'm still a little achy from the violence of the sickness, but feeling significantly better.

As we were heading home from my mom's last night, Heidi said, "Well, except for the puking and the vomiting and the nausea and the explosive diarrhea, it was a pretty good weekend." I couldn't agree more.

Ass Effects

I've been having heartburn regularly, like every day regularly. Recently I had an additional development that if I've eaten within 3-4 hours of going to bed, I'm going to upchuck a little of it. Same if I lie on my stomach at any time in the night. So naturally, I chose to go to the doctor.

He understood the problem, and was checking to see if I increased my usage of alcohol, chocolate, mints, spicy foods, caffeine and a few others which escaped me. None of these changed significantly, but he mentioned that any of them could be triggers. Hm. Good to know. He also gave me a sample of a "proton pump inhibitor" (which is not as science-fictiony as it sounds), called Aciphex. It's supposed to reduce the acid production in my stomach, and we'll see where we go from there. But look at that name again: Aciphex. Say it out loud, and listen to yourself. Sounds kinda odd, doesn't it? I thought I already had enough of that.

But anyway, despite the hilariously sick name, it seems to be working OK. I think it's too early to tell, but so far so good.

Seizuriffic

I had a seizure this morning. I was at home, so it wasn't such a bad issue. I jave a carpet burn on my face, and it looks like I scratched myself with my toenail, but other than that, I'm pretty OK. This is good, because frequently, seizures end up with me getting a new scar due to falling at an inconvenient location. I don't think it's a big deal so much, as I average a seizure every seven years or so, and this one was eight years since my last one. So crap, but not so crappy as it could be.

I got the fever!

Actually, I guess the correct title for this would be I had the fever. Yesterday I ended up with a nasty fever. Now, this could be from two things: It could be an allergic reaction to a new seizure medication my neurologist has been ramping me up on (which would suck, because this is the only one I've ever had that doesn't include the side effect of perpetual fatigue), or it could simply be that I've been fighting an ear infection. The anecdotal evidence points to to it being the medication because last night I didn't take my evening dose (on tuesday I ramped up to two doses daily instead of the one), and last night my fever broke. So I woke up, drenched in sweat, but feeling a heck of a lot better. Will I continue with the medication? Heck yeah! This stuff is awesome! I may call the neurologist today (she's probably sick of hearing from me by now), just to be safe, but I'm hoping I don't need to switch over to another drug, or worse, stick with what I've already been on. That would be wrong.

Update: Under the suggestion of my neurologist, I saw my regular doctor. He was familiar with the allergic reaction to my seizure medication, and he thinks it's just a viral infection, which is good. I still had some fever when I was in his office (101), but Thursday night Heidi surprised me by coming over and bringing me food, drink, cloraseptic, and a thermometer. That night there was no fever. I'm not 100% right now (still have a slightly sore throat and inflamed lymph node), but I'm a lot better than I was.