So, she is planning on doing the surgery in early September; as soon as her September schedule is finalized - sometime in the next couple of weeks - her office will call me with the date and time.

If the 'easy' way can be used to remove the gall bladder, it's a simple day surgery, with a week's recovery. If it can't - well, that's a different story.

Apparently my gallstone had actually caused some liver blockage; there was actual jaundice involved last week when I went into the ER. Gosh. This has since been rectified.

Also, I forgot (because I was kind of bleary when the ER doctor finally came in to see me), but he heard traces of a heart murmur in there, and I'm to get that looked into.

a) The nurses were fantastic, even overly-solicitous. There were two of them working my room, and they would /each/ take my blood pressure and oxygen levels (unbeknownst to the other). The male nurse would sing or whistle, though, which was kind of sweet and aggravating (at least at 4 am) at the same time. They both offered me blankets. (And when one was brought, it was pre-heated! That was heaven.)

b) I'm on some serious antibiotics. I am vaguely amused that the doctor insisted I start taking them IMMEDIATELY even though one needs to be taken with food and I wasn't allowed to eat for the first day. The other one can't be taken with any calcium or calcium-based food, which makes balancing my breakfast and the pills complicated. Also, I had to stay up very late last night to last long enough to take the pills as close to 12 hours later as possible. And they leave me kind of dopey.

c) Around 9 pm last night, I was feeling kind of sorry for myself being all alone after such a day. Then I realized I'd gotten /all/ of my laundry done and read a serious chunk of the Invisibles and finished all sorts of small chores, and if people had been around I probably would have been too exhausted and dopey to be company in any case, and just would have felt guilty for that. So really, it was a good day. And I watched the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2! Girly movies are my sick-day indulgence. Next time I'm sick it's going to be 'Another Cinderella Story'.

d) I realized that - at least in cases like yesterday - I was perfectly happy being on my own in the ER; I would (also) have felt guilty wasting anyone's time if they'd come with me, and I just wish I could have let rylock know that everything was okay sooner so he didn't get anyone else worried on my behalf. (But I was just in getting the ultrasound done right around the time he was leaving for work, so I didn't have any solid answers until after he was already worried.) And on my own, I got a lot of very important sleeping done, and read a goodly chunk of the book I brought when I couldn't sleep.

( To make a short story long... )

Some notes:

a) I don't know what a gall bladder does. I'll have to look that up.

b) There was a young Quebecois woman in a wheelchair, a few weeks pregnant and drawn with pain. Another young woman came up to her and asked if she could pray for her, then put her hand on the woman's belly and prayed right there.

c) Seriously, what's with all the blood pressure tests? If my first one was normal, and they weren't giving these tests to anyone else in my room... why? They said it was common practice, but no one else was getting them.

d) On the other hand, for the last set of tests the nurse checked my heart rate as well. "You must be very fit", she said. My resting heart rate was 58. Yay me!

e) No more buttered popcorn. Possibly for months. Yeesh. How am I supposed to bond with my father?

f) Thanks, G! Without you, I'd still be confused and battling horrifying waves of pain. Now it's no longer a mystery, I know what to do and how to manage it, and there is a cure on the horizon. An excellent outcome, I think.

g) Getting pushed and pulled around the hospital halls while still in my bed was kinda keen, like Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

a) I really really have the flu now. It feels like someone hit me across the abdominals with a two-by-four. Hopefully this will be as bad as it gets; I don't want to be riding any porcelain bus.

b) I decided to try my hand at buying music off the interwebs, like all the kids are doing these days. It's awfully easy, once you start.

c) First song: 'Steppin' Out', by Joe Jackson. Second song: 'Happy Together', by the Turtles. I figure I'll let myself have a roughly $20 budget per month for interweb music.

d) There were a lot of one-hit wonders in the 80s and 90s and even the Aughts for which I would rather not buy full albums, as it turns out. And who knew Nik Kershaw published a new album in 2006! Oh, iTunes, you and I will become great friends.

e) I'm going to go lay down and whimper for a while. Gosh.

I am now allowed to squee publicly about GenCon on the interwebs, so a-squeeing I shall go!

I'm going to GenCon! Look for me at the Bio-booth, and let me know if you'll be there too!

I keep getting 'followers' whom I don't know, who appear to be attempting to sell me things. Is it okay just to block them? I mean, I'm not following them. But I don't know if I should let them follow me, either.

Highlights:

Hunter: Trent's nerdy 'NightEdge' pretense of a hunter was fantastic. It would have been a more realistic portrayal if his biceps weren't as big as my head, however. I had to give up being angst-ridden Sam for the evening for a bit of Dean-like flirting. NightEdge was a playa-playa.

Blood Royal: the costumes were beautiful and the setting fascinating, and I had the strange experience of having randomly asked for a Divination and, in that moment, setting a whole string of plot in motion of which I had no previous knowledge - all just based on a hunch and another player's question. Trent shirtless didn't hurt, either (see above note about the biceps). I managed to fail my objectives in the first five minutes of the game, and yet still have a busy and interesting time throughout.

Methuselah Club: it was one of the few times in my larping history where a game was meant to be a celebration, and the characters were actually in a celebratory mood - dancing, gambling, generally jolly. Emmanuel's crazy Count was definitely a highlight, as was Jim's Silenus. Getting to mediate a marital dispute between the Queen of the Fae and her consort was pretty hilarious, too, as Connor was certain I would side with him instead of his wife's more romantic view. He was incorrect.

Lowlights:

Hunter: ah, WoD combat, how I don't miss you. Also, playing in a Supernatural world with WoD rules made for some unfortunate misapprehensions. (What do you mean holy water doesn't work? or crosses? or silver? or salt? How on earth did I get to be a hunter in the first place if I don't know any of this?)

Blood Royal: We started almost 2 hours late - in part because of costuming, but also because of a very long rules explanation - rules we were never, ever going to remember inside the game itself. I'd love to playtest the game, but as a tabletop, not in a one-shot larp. In a one-shot larp, I'm just going to ask the organizers what to roll. However, they were more than agreeable to that, at least with me, and I had a really good time. I feel bad that there wasn't more playtesting for the organizer's sake, but it really wasn't the forum.

Methuselah: I can't think of much in the way of lowlights except that I hope, one day, to find my character's one true love. Eventually we're going to need some plot for the Methuselah Club, although admittedly I didn't need it for this particular game. But some day.

But all in all, faboo.

The games were wonderful, Suzi was a divine hostess, and I loved playing all my characters.

I did actually miss going out for the 'afters' coffee - it's one of my favourite parts of these trips, of any larp, really. I love the energy and excitement and burbling about the game with semi-strangers, and getting to meet and make new friends out of game as well as in. There were tons of fantastic people I haven't gotten to know nearly well enough yet, although I entreat them all to join us for Firefly this fall.

But I also love Suzi a bunch, and since she wasn't playing, the 'after' time was the only time we had to spend with her and Cheruby, and I certainly couldn't begrudge her, or any of the others, that time.

Also, you know you love someone truly when you can spend 10 hours in a car with her and adore her more when you get home than when you left. The drive there and back was as much a treasure as the event itself.

After foolishly taking my father to see 'Taken' a few short days before we left for Europe (I know, I know, but it was the only thing in the movie theatres he was remotely interested in seeing; what's a devoted daughter to do?), he insisted - after we parted ways in Athens - that I email him ever 48 hours without fail. Should 72 hours pass without an email, he warned in his best 'I used to be a spy' voice, he would send out the troops.

I would explain this on occasion when asked why I was so keen to get to my email while on vacation. Their response was, more than once, "Is your dad in the military?" This would make me laugh, because yes, indeed, he used to be.

Amusingly, the one time when I missed the 48 hour deadline (I was in Crete with Cindy - insofar as I thought about it, I had figured perhaps they might consider me 'safe' in her care at that point), it was my mother and not my father who sent out the panicked email: "It's been 60 hours, Cori, where are you?" I guess lilldragon just isn't enough protection from the big bad world.

You really don't need to save all my energy and heat for my womb. Honest. It's not getting any use, any time soon. There are other parts of me that could use some warmth and circulation too, y'know. Like, say, my hands. And feet.

Don't you think it's a little bit silly that, in the middle (and at the end, for that matter) of a brisk walk on a pleasant spring morning, my hands should be nigh frost-bitten while the rest of me is sweating? Or that I should be so cold afterward I need to have a blistering hot shower just to get feeling back to my extremities? No? Really?

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, in that case. But think it over. I promise not to spawn in the near future, if you could just share the wealth of all this exercise around.

Eternally if not always cordially yours,
Me

(P.S. If you could let up on the sugar cravings a little, that would be nice, too. I don't live in the land of honeyed pastries any more, and I don't have time to work it all off, as hard as I'm trying, even if I did. I know the Frosted Flakes just aren't cutting it, but that's all I've got.)

(P.P.S. I'm sorry about the yoga. It's good for you, honest, and if you could just hark back to a couple of months ago, you'd remember that it got better eventually.)

I tried and tried and tried to find good calamari on my trip. I had some decent fried calimari in Italy, but in Greece it was startlingly, disappointingly terrible. Honestly, if you get better calimari in Edmonton, a landlocked desert tundra, something is wrong.

In a restaurant on Santorini:

Me: I'd like fried calimari, please.
Restaurant Owner: Wouldn't you rather have grilled? It's much better for you.
Me: (suppressing shudder) No, actually, I'd rather have fried.
Him: (looking me up and down appraisingly) Well, you're a big girl, I guess you can handle it.
Me: (stares at him with the horrified expression of a client who has just been called fat) Uh, thanks.

For the record, I'm not skinny, by any means, but I ain't fat, at least not by any measure I've ever found, and certainly not by what I would have thought were Greek standards. Unlike Italy, people in Greece were not often what I'd call sleek - perhaps not quite North American levels of large, but still I thought I was pretty ordinary-sized there. But did I walk out then? No. Me dumb. In my defense, this restaurant had been recommended by my guidebook.

When the calimari came, it was so rubbery I couldn't get my fork through it. I ate the bread and the vegetables I'd ordered, and not a single piece of calimari.

This is my first official post from my shiny new MacBook!

It may take me a while to get the hang of it, but it shore is purdy.

It was 27 degrees Celsius in the office when I walked in this morning. I sent a 'critical' bug.

It is now 27.5.

At 29 degrees, it becomes blocking.

At 30 degrees, I go home.

(Having foolishly paused for a minute in the Grand Bazaar to consult my map*)

Him: "Can I help you find anything?"
Me: "I'm looking for the Spice Bazaar."
Him: "How about a spicy carpet?"


*Never pause anywhere in Istanbul if you can help it. People will assume you are lost, and then attempt to 'help' you. Generally helping you involves telling you that what you are looking for is a) closed b) too busy to gain entrance c) nonexistent and then offering to take you to their lovely carpet store instead. Usually, they are lying.

You can, however, work this. Once I let someone help me find a museum, and then agreed to go back to their carpet store afterwards. I actually went to their carpet store. They gave me free apple tea**, and a warm place to sit for 20 minutes while they showed me pretty carpets I had no intention of buying.

**Never pay for apple tea. People will give it to you at the drop of a hat. Also, it's basically just apple cider, and probably from a powdered drink mix. Once, while I was looking at costume jewellry in one store, a guy from a carpet store from ACROSS THE STREET brought me apple tea, unprovoked. I went to his store. I admired his cats. I drank the tea. I left.

By a poolside in Mykonos, having been brought a cup of tea with two packets of sugar.

Me: "Could I have more sugar please?"
Waiter: "But madam, there is sugar." (Points helpfully at sugar packets)
Me: "But could I have more sugar?"
Waiter: "But madam, there are /two/ sugars."
Me: "But could I have more?"
Waiter: sigh "Yes, madam."

I seem to have become a sleep bulimic - it's either binging (9+ hours, like last night, thank the heavens above) or purging (less than 5, like the previous night), and nothing in between.

So I had lots of time for deep introspection while I was away, and a couple of things I came up with were:

a) I need shorter hair.

b) I need to stop the week update.

The former has been accomplished, and the latter starts now. I'll tell stories when there stories to tell, and talk about feelings when they need to be talked about, but the reason for the week update is long since over, even if it were ever desired. It had become a chore, and not terribly interesting even for me, and so it shall be discontinued.

Now you may all commence admiring my adorable hair.

The fever I didn't know I had is breaking. Um, yay?

Hopefully this means I will start getting better.

(while watching Star Trek)

Me: Bones is amazing!
Dad: I think he's better than the first one!
Me: Shut your whore mouth.
Dad: (stares)
Me: He's not better than the first one. Cuter, maybe. Never better.
Dad: Good point.

I know I left before you did, and we didn't really get a chance to say our usual goodbyes. But it wasn't personal, I promise. I just needed to get away for a while, and it had nothing to do with you. Hell, I even missed you. But you didn't have to come back - all the way from the other side of the world, at that - just for me.

I appreciate the effort. But we're okay, I swear. I'll always love you. You know that, right? It's okay for you to go off to other places, see other people for a while, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again in November. I won't have any hard feelings if you don't.

But it's okay for us to be apart for a while - I'm willing to let go for a few months if you are.

Okay? You're going to be alright, right?

Dude, please stop crying on my shoulder. I know you care, and I know I left too soon. It won't happen again, I promise. I'll always be there for you.

Just - relax and chill out. I hear New Zealand is nice this time of year.

Love,
Me