snow day!

last night was lovely.  it felt like 8 years ago in Michigan.  I was a freshman at college in Michigan and we had lots of snow followed by a fantastic ice storm that knocked out the power–lights and all.  we couldn’t do anything but sit in the lobby in our new flannel pj’s and fleece blankets and talk til late in the night.   we had a wonderful time bonding by forbidden candlelight. the whole experience was magical. we got the real scoop on the recent college scandal, talked about boys, shared our hearts.  the next day the power came back on and we surveyed the fallen trees and were a little grateful for the time spent together.

fast forward to the present.  we’ve had an internet outage in our apartment since Friday morning.  I thought it was a glich until Saturday afternoon when I did some preliminary troubleshooting, but I was seriously inconvenienced on Sunday and decided last night to just embrace it.  the design edits, banking, emailing and everything just had to wait.  instead, i lingered after dinner with my roomates, hearing about their weekends, love lives, dreams and hopes.  then we kept lingering, talking til almost midnight.  we had light this time, but the lack of internet forced us together.  i’m glad to know more of my new roomate’s story.  it is rich and high contrast.  i’m glad for an evening to spend at home, being present with friends.

less labor, more fun

This weekend i:
- poached 20 eggs
- stage managed a complex breakfast featuring eggs benedict for 10 people with a support staff of 3 to run the toaster, stir the hollandaise sauce, and wash the dishes.  My roomate also made crepes.  It was a delightful brunch and everyone left delightfully full.
- made my way through home depot, triumphantly emerging with a gallon of buttered sweet corn yellow paint for the dining room, a tree for the living room (and appropriate accessories), a 94” curtain rod, and some blue painter’s tape.  It was a lot to manage.
- went to the pool twice
- set up my new workstation that doesn’t work (old ibooks don’t like new monitors with high resolution)
- attended a cookout
- helped my boyfriend move into his sweet new townhouse
- painted most of a cool painting on 3 square canvases in a sabrina ward harrison style.  I’m really pleased and look forward to finishing it this week
- made a little italian dinner for kristen, then watched a fabulous teeny-bopper movie
- deleted 10gb of junk off my ibook
- spent an hour on the phone with tech support for our router.  Got nowhere.
- ate delicious thai food
- went to a cocktail party

so, i’ve been writing about serious stuff lately: my life, healthcare reform, chemicals that jack up your brain.  i still care about that stuff, but i think my blog needs a little levity to correspond with how lovely my  life is right now.

last weekend i flew home with kyle to go to the Great County Fair a few miles north of where I live.  it was amazing.  we saw:

• exotic chickens that looked like aliens with plumes and feathers down to their feet
• rabbits that were huge and soft and small and quick and 2 that looked like sheep dogs with fur over their eyes
• a pretty good beatles cover band made up of 11-14 year olds
• fried stuff: funnel cakes, fries, cheese curds
• cold stuff: frozen cider, fresh ice cream
• my extended fam
• some big tractors

anyway, it was a great weekend.  more to come!

MSG is real bad, too

some people read “monosodium glutamate” on the back of a bag of chips and assume it’s super salt. it has sodium in it, right?

MSG is pretty evil stuff. It breaks down into free glutamic acid which causes your nerves to fire double or triple the speed they normally would. that grade d meat in your taco now tastes like steak, but not because it is steak, but rather because your tastebuds are tasting it exponentially. it’s really clever: use bad products that taste medicore and trick your brain into thinking they’re delicious. it’s like a magician or a pickpocket–turning your attention away from the actual food to create a deceptive illusion.

so once it’s tricked your brain, then what? well, listen up if you have a neurological disease. it breaks down the blood-brain barrier. there are lots of layers in our bodies that protect the brain & spinal column and spinal fluid from other fluids in the body. the central nervous system is really important and the immune system isn’t going to mess around if there’s an infection in there–it’s one of the most important battlegrounds in the body. because of this, God put a special protective layer to prevent infection. and MSG rips that apart, allowing all sorts of crap to get into your brain. when crap gets in your brain, an autoimmune reaction almost always happens and *bam* you have MS. fabulous.

In addition to jacking up your brain, MSG causes obesity. [i believe this is one of the reasons so many kids today are obese] i read an article once that said that scientists use MSG exclusively to fatten up rats for weight loss testing. crazy.

anyway, watch out for MSG in food. also, quite discouragingly, other ingredients contain MSG or break down into free glutamic acid. watch out for “autolyzed yeast” “hydrolyzed corn protein” “torula yeast” “maltodextrin” “natural flavor” “yeast extract” “modified food starch” and “whey.” It’s depressing. If you start reading, MSG is in a lot of stuff. the worst is chips. however, trader joe’s saves the day with these adzuki bean & rice delish msg-free chips. i think they taste as good as any other msg-d chip (like doritos), but the taste comes from real ingredients like garlic and chiles.  let me know if there is other stuff that you like that is msg-free.  horray for tasting flavors that are really there!

dormoffice

seasons of!  loooooooovee!

my coworkers were singing Rent in the hallway at work.

this underscores my theory that my office is really a dorm.

you see, my team of about 30 just moved from a very crowded space with a few offices where at least 8 people shared a conference room. our new space is a sunny corner of the building where many of us have individual offices with enormous windows. big desks with room for rolling chairs. there’s a flavia machine in the kitchen. it’s posh. everybody is stoked.

when we “moved in” there were signs on our doors with illustrations that read “Welcome! New office. New beginning” and it said our names. just like the signs your RA’s made you in the fall.

further, we are dangerously close to a target, so people go and get “snacks” and so everybody’s always munching and passing bags around and tossing candy bars as incentives. just like in a dorm.

also, most of my coworkers are young and trendy. i definitely had to buy new clothes to work here.

it’s also just noisy, broadway musicals aside. it’s collaborative, i suppose?

let’s hope there aren’t any all-nighters.

healthcare solutions

There are a lot of people freaking out about healthcare right now.  I’m one of them.  If the government makes all healthcare nationalized and takes away my ability to seek help outside of the current medical system, i could become very, very sick.  since my diagnosis 2 years ago, the only help i’ve found has been outside the norm: supplements that the FDA won’t approve as helpful; treatments for which pharmaceutical companies won’t fund studies; doctors who refuse to take insurance for fear of lawsuit because they prescribe antibiotics above and beyond the “allowed” amount for my condition.  i’ve only gotten help outside the mainstream of conventional medicine.  if those practicing outside of guidelines must stop and if my money is forcibly taken to fund treatments that do not help, less of my money will be available for things that actually do work. further, if government controls are tightened on medical care in general, the very people who have helped me may soon be out of business.

the first link i have here is for health revolution.  their proposal is really different than anything i’ve heard before.  it’s a health nut’s dream.  basically they’re hoping to get catastrophic care covered by the government and all other healthcare will go to individuals through a debit card system.  this debit card can be used for anything from organic kale to energy work.  it also includes a free market rating system for physicians and hospitals and recommends competetive pricing.  that part is a little scary, but i signed it anyway because i’m fascinated and would like people to start thinking outside the box.  i’d also like congress and the greater public to start considering alternative treatments as legitimate means for healing.  the plan favors preventive care which is totally ignored in our current healthcare system.  it proposes paying for health instead of paying for sickness.  because this is such a different paradigm, i can’t imagine the average joe being on board, but it’s very exciting to me because i really want to take responsibility for my health choices and choose preventive care now.

A second option is for Patients United Now.  they’re basically running a petition that says to the government “leave us alone–don’t get involved!”  i also signed this one because while the current healthcare system is a huge mess, i can’t imagine any nationalized system being an improvement. better to stall than make a terrible choice.  once the government takes over something, the private sector & individuals will never get it back.

please take a minute to scroll through these petitions and see if you can sign them.  what do you think of healthcare now?  what do you think of a nationalized system?  how should we pay for it?

funny car convo

context:

sitting on a ramp trying to get from the metro station onto a road with a million lights that has 2 ramps to a highway that is sporadically and badly congested.  i plan to take this road with a million lights to my destination, just past the ramps.  at rush hour.  this one mile total drive has taken about 15 minutes and i still haven’t left the station ramp to get onto my road.

clever exchange:

me: “ughh!  this traffic is so bad!  i can’t believe it!  it’s the curse!  it’s the fall!  this is endless toil!”
k: “no, i think that some the urban planners didn’t toil enough!”

lil update

thanks for still reading, friends.  i’m a bulimic blogger. clearly.

let’s see.  an update:

- i have great friends.  and my bf is awesome.  really.

- my health is a little rough again.  last time i posted i was discouraged, then i took some awesome supplements that help with detox pathways and i felt a ton better.  now i’m still taking those things and doing my diet and getting sufficient rest and i’m feeling bad again.  legs are all buzzy and my brain is foggy and slow.  i’m able to be a pretty upbeat happy person most of the time but when i slow down and actually feel my feelings, i am very sad and discouraged about it all.

- i love my job.  no really, i do.  i’ve been there 2 months and i still love it.  it’s not as magical as when i started, but quirky corporate culture aside, it is a very good place to work.  i work at a location that is 2 miles from my house and another that is about 7 miles.  the commutes for both can take up to 40 minutes with all the lights and traffic. my gas mileage is averaging 19mpg, which is really atrocious, but i don’t have to get much gas.  also, my coworkers are pretty cool.  i like the project that i’m on and feel that it is meaningful.  also, and perhaps most importantly: i have great health insurance.  (we’ll see how great they are when i start asking for reimbursements for out of network charges.  but for now, the copays are lower and i’m a happy camper.)

that’s a little update.  more to come.

corn syrup is bad

i was minding my own business, flipping through “cooking light” this morning when i ran into another one of those obnoxious high fructose corn syrup ads.  it’s enough to see them on tv, but in print, it made me so angry.  this is a small version.

so, these sickeningly aggressive ads are probably working on the general populace that doesn’t want to do research on HFCS, or who go to the google-sponsored link related to the campaign: sweetsurprise.com

here’s the gist, friends.  i’m a fan of putting foods into my body that is not that processed, that’s closer to its original form than a scary strange form.  i know white sugar isn’t a pure substance, but HFCS is really far from what it started out as.

HFCS starts out as corn, a starch.  in order to break down that huge starchy molecule into smaller sweeter ones, harsh techniques are used including a genetically modified enzyme (alpha-amylase) and an aflotoxin bi-product of a very common allergen: aspergillis mold.  isn’t that scary?  if not, consider that some of the chemicals used may have trace elements of mercury which is responsible for most neurodegenerative diseases!  also, consider the 2007 study with lab rats where leptin-resistance was developed resulting in obesity.

as usual, there’s a lot of political stuff behind the scenes here with corn subsidies, ethanol production, and different groups promoting their own interests.  just think zoolander.

well, that’s all.  i’m expecting a vehement backlash from some HFCS supporter, like i got from my organic post.  but if i get a lot of criticism that reults in hundreds of hits, i’d be okay with that.

discuss amongst yourselves.

gonna make it through this year…

right now the second class of fellows is at their beach week, celebrating the end of a successful year together.  i am shocked that a year has gone by so quickly.  shocked.  it seems like a good point in time to draw a line and reflect on what’s happened.  it’s been a whopper of a year:

- four jobs, plus freelancing
- two layoffs
- one crazy boss who heard from Jesus about my salary, then decided she hadn’t
- one awesome boss who remained my friend after we both got laid off
- one messy breakup
- a proposal
- two random bad dates with a guy who “doesn’t believe” in myers-briggs
- a lovely relationship that started with ulterior motive fellows recruiting
- 2 big flares of symptoms with 3 diagnoses: MS, Lyme, Lyme-induced MS
- 6 months of IV antibiotics, 4 days a week, 2 hours a day
- thousands of supplements taken
- 35 treatments of hyperbaric oxygen
- more time than i can count pray-crying
- hundreds of dollars spent on the tollroad, lots of smiles from my favorite toll booth worker
- lots of physical pain and exhaustion
- thousands of dollars spent on medical treatment
- 3 appeals to get insurance to pay for my IV antibiotics
- hundreds of phone calls home to my parents
- thursday night dinners with jillian
- tuesday night movie nights with russ and friends
- wednesday night counseling class
- ikea/craigslist furniture acquisition
- lots of heels worn

it’s been an insane year.  i could not have imagined any of this drama last year at this time.  i really thought i’d be with the guy i had a crush on, that i’d quickly get a stable job, that my health would even out.  it’s crazy.  i’m committed to the idea that God is writing something very important and meaningful with my life, but most of the time I have no idea what He’s up to.  I believe there’s a “rest of the story.”  I believe there’s still ink in the pen.