Lightning Strikes! The Lightning beat out the Flyers 2-1 winning game seven, taking the Easter Conference Championship and....MOVING INTO THE STANLEY CUP FINALS! They're playing for the Cup for the first time in their twelve-year franchise history!
Thanks Wow. I couldn't believe how many replies my last post got. I never thought anyone would want to read it, let alone offer up such wonderful commentary. The more I read about IBS, the more I'm sure that's it. It just makes too much sense and sounds too familier. Now it's just a waiting game (as always) until someday perhaps I might have the money to see a doctor about it. I guess though it's a small comfort to know that someone can understand and relate. I think I might make some more posts about it, but either over in my LJ or other so that those who don't want that kind of information can avoid it.
The Lightning go to game seven Dammit! Last night was an intense game. Game six of the conference finals and the Lightning had a chance to win and move on to play Calgary for the Cup. They made a big mistake with a pass to no one in front of the net which was quickly grabbed by a Flyer who proceeded to score. They were winning though, 4-3 when, with only 1:49 left on the clock for the entire game, the Flyers snuck in a goal to tie it up. Which took us to overtime. In overtime, it was tied - though the Lightning had a few good chances, the Flyers were just all over the puck - until 1:42 left when they scored and won the game. Dammit. So, they're back here in FL for game seven. Whomever wins that one, goes on to play for the Cup. Come on 'Bolts, you can do it!
A high school student wrote a poem that was critical of Bush, the war in Iraq, and the condition of schools. She was called "un-American" by a military liason at the school. Her teacher was fired for it. Her mother (also a teacher at the school) was told to destroy the poem and is risking termination for her denial to. They've also banned the reading, writing and teaching of poetry in the school. And the principal's educated response to people disagreeing with his decision and his political viewpoint? Screaming "Shut your faces!" at them.
Are we living in fucking Nazi Germany? This all happened in a New Mexico school. A school in the United States of America who's very foundation was based on freedom and liberty and the protection of speech. Who's founding fathers not only recognized that it was the right of every citizen to question the government, but that it was their duty. And now we have military officers in schools, chastising kids, firing teachers and imposing the most absurd restrictions on people's basic, core rights? Book burning isn't far behind in a world like this.
I am sickened by this. Utterly, utterly made ill.
I'm going to copy her poem here as well because I feel it deserves to be read by as many people as possible.
Revolution X by Courtney
Bush said no child would be left behind And yet kids from inner-city schools Work on Central Avenue Jingling cans that read Please sir, may I have some more? They hand out diplomas like toilet paper And lower school standards Because Underpaid, unrespected teachers Are afraid of losing their jobs Funded by the standardized tests That shows our competency When I'm in detox. This is the Land of the Free ... Where the statute of limitations for rape is only five damn years! And immigrants can't run for President. Where Muslims are hunted because Some suicidal men decided they didn't like Our arrogant bid for modern imperialism. This is the Land of the Free ... You drive by a car whose Bumper screams God bless America! Well, you can scratch out the B And make it Godless Because God left this country a long time ago. The founding fathers made this nation On a dream and now Freedom of Speech Lets Nazis burn crosses, but Calls police to Gay pride parades. We somehow Can afford war with Iraq But we can't afford to pay the teachers Who educate the young who hold the guns Against the "Axis of Evil" Land of the Free ... This is the land If you're politically assertive They call you a traitor and Damn you to ostracism. Say good-bye to Johnny Walker Lindh And his family. Bye Bye American Pie. So maybe My ideas about this nation Don't resolve around perfection But at least I know Education is more important Than money. Land of the Free . . . If this was utopia We'd have to see each other naked Before we got married But instead, we see each other naked all the time Because the government has my social security number And the name of my dog! And then we make babies, But don't worry, they won't be left behind And they grow up saying God bless America! But they don't know who Bush is Because they never learned the Presidents. And they will ride the ship Amistad To our dreamland shores Bearing the same shackles as us. I'm here to say that Generation X Is pissed and we are taking over, Ripping down the American illusion of perfection We are the future generation I have my qualifications I know it looks like Angel Soft paper, But don't worry It's a diploma Do I look qualified? You can take our toilet paper, But you can't take our Revolution.
Yeah, that's worth taking a shit on the Bill of Rights for isn't it?
This may seriously be TMI - bitching about my stomach So I'm here this morning and my stomach is awful. You have to understand, it's been fucked up pretty much my entire life. At 13, I had ulcers. Things haven't gotten better. Most everyday of my life there's something wrong with my stomach. Nauseous, bubbling, churning - not to mention the kind of problems no one wants to mention. I never know what the day will bring. I've missed countless days of work, family events, weekend days, plans, movies, etc. because of my stomach. I've been stuck for literally hours in the bathroom for one thing or another. And not infrequently. It hurts all the time. Serious, make-me-want-to-curl-up pain kind of hurt. This morning is one of my even-worse-than-normal days. It was all I could do to get here and now I'm utterly miserable and have hours before I can go home and try to feel better.
Mornings are especially hard on my stomach because it doesn't like mornings. And, more so being rushed or on any kind of time constraint. You can imagine then, that having to get up, run my Love into work, come home, get ready myself and then try to get to work is stressful and most assuredly under the category of both "morning" and "rushed." Driving in, I was fighting gagging - a fun side-effect of my stomach problems is that if I have problems of the....er... not enough variety (or the not at all variety as opposed to the too much variety - both which happen in alteration every couple days), then I start gagging and if I can't get it under control, will throw up. (Or at least dry-heave if there's nothing in my stomach to actually throw-up.)
*sighs*
If it were just one problem, I could address it. Take more fiber in my diet for example. But it's not. It's both and it's a complicated combination as well. Things are never cut-and-dry with my stomach. It quite simply doesn't work. And I don't know what to do about it. No insurance means I can't go for tests and such to try to come to some kind of relief. But, the stomach situation is so bad - and getting worse it seems each year - that I can never be consistent enough somewhere at a job in order to get insurance. I don't know what it is. It's not dairy or anything dietary as far as I've been able to tell - changing what I eat doesn't seem to have any real effect on it. I can eat awful junk food one day and it's fine, but eat it another and I'm sick. Or I can eat healthy one day and be sick, but another be fine. I think my whole digestive system is just fucked up. I think it just doesn't work properly. And I hear about things like IBS and I wonder if it isn't exactly what I've been struggling with all these years. I know the vast majority of people in the world don't go through this. I know they don't feel this way all the time. They can't. If they did, nothing in the world would ever run because everyone would be like me and stuck being ill, sick, and in pain all the time. I wonder if then, there's at least a small group who can understand what I go through - and perhaps enough medical attention to the existence of such problems that perhaps there are options to make things even a little bit better; a smidge more normal. I just don't know how to get the resources to try to help this. It's medical. It's interfering with my entire life. And it's not only not getting better, it's getting worse. It's so frustrating. I'm so helpless to the whims of my body. The two major issues in my life are my migraines and my stomach. Both require far more money, experts and medical exploration then I could ever hope to afford. So I can't even live my life. And that hurts as much as the attacks. More, because I know I'm missing out on so much. From the outside, it all looks fine. And no one can understand how "an upset stomach" or "just a headache" can cripple me so much. But it's more then that, and it can and does. I just don't know what I can do about it or how I can ever hope to fix it.
Anyway, I don't feel well. What else is new. Same old broken record. Even the people close to me are sick of hearing about my stomach. Sick of it being an excuse. Sick of it interrupting life. I can't blame them; they don't feel it everyday. And they just see it from the outside. But being tired of the issue doesn't make it go away. And it doesn't help with the fact I'm in pain all the time. I don't know.
Whatever. No one wants to hear me bitch about this. I just needed to vent.
So, my pc crapped out today. First the fan went bad so I turned it off this morning and left it off. Tried to fix the fan, no luck. Went out and bought a new fan and now the pc won't boot at all (though the new fan works nicely). *sigh* I have a feeling that something went scortch on the motherboard because it's just D.O.A. all of a sudden. My Love spent a couple hours trying to get it to come up with no luck. He took his harddrive into work (don't ask, he does that a lot) so I couldn't even use his pc today until now. We're going to try changing out the motherboard tomorrow and seeing if that helps. In the meantime, I've got very limited net access and none to my email.
On the brighter side of things, my camera arrived today. *drools* It's so cute. I love it. Of course, I had planned to share some pics but well, my pc isn't working so that's on hold.
On another bright side, my mom brought me up a box today that had come to the PO Box. Covered in happy birthday stickers and extremely heavy, I had no idea what it was. Turns out the box is literally FULL - and I mean utterly full - of beads. The kind you use for making jewelry. It's amazing. There was a card and it was simply signed off "K" but, whomever you are, thank you. That was amazing. I've been sorting through it tonight - it'll be a lengthy process (but a bit like a treasure hunt) - and just having a great time. It's another thing I took a pic of so I could show you what I mean (because words don't describe the vastness of the beads nor the sheer amount of them) but once again, the pic will have to wait. In any event, Thank you.
Anyway, I just wanted to check in. Hopefully tomorrow night we can get my pc running again, but in the meantime, that's why things are quite on the M front. Take care all.
So I'm back at my temp job again this morning. Ugh. And beat. I'm so tired. In an effort to keep myself awake, I thought I'd write up my birthday weekend recap entry.
The weekend in review... Friday night we drove around so I could look at cameras before I finally ordered online the one I wanted. We had dinner with our friend Rand.
Saturday we got up and headed out to Orlando. Sought out the hotel we booked. First things first, you have to realize we had wanted to stay at the Wilderness Lodge. It's a beautiful resort within Disney and it's just lovely. You can take a private ferry over to the Magic Kingdom in fact, it's that close. Well, I had been trying for about three weeks to find an availabilty (they were running an excellent FL Resident rate - this is one of their "Deluxe" resorts so they normally charge a lot for it, but the special was only $124) without any luck. So I scoured the net looking for something else (everyting was booked up all over WDW except for things that were WAY outside the range of acceptable price for a night's stay). Checked out expedia, and priceline and talked to people on my Disney LJ group. Came across the Doubletree Club Lake Buena Vista. Looked nice. Sounded like it was close by ("Located at the entrance of the Downtown Disney® Resort Area") and had a pretty good rate. We ended up booking a room (2 Queen beds with breakfast for two). Well, we get lost trying to find it. This should have been our first clue. When they say "at the entrance" they don't mean where you park for Downtown Disney, they mean outside the ROAD THAT LEADS to Downtown Disney; several miles away in fact. And when they said "breakfast for two" they actually meant "two coupons for food from the food court at the outlet mall down the road." Oh, I kid you not. The place wasn't the shabbiest I've been to in my life, but it sure had aspirations to be. We laughed - quite hard I have to say - at the very misleading nature of their website and way of advertising themselves. Let's just say we're never going to be even thinking of staying there again.
Besides that though, the rest of the weekend was good. On Saturday, after checking in, we headed over to MK. Did the usual - burgers at Pinocchio's Village Haus, Philharmagic, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, People Mover, etc. - and just generally had a nice day. We left about fifteen minutes before Wishes (the amazing fireworks display) though to avoid the crowds. Went back to the room, changed and headed over to Downtown Disney. We thought we might want to see a movie, or go to Pleasure Island but it was too late for a flick and dinner and we were too beat for dancing. Had an ok, but way overpriced meal at Rainforest Care at about midnight (nothing else was open by then except McDonalds) and then back to the room. Laughed about the state of the room and got some sleep. Ok, he got sleep, I laid there most of the night on the most uncomfortable excuse for a matress ever.
Sunday we got up and as we're getting reading, housekeeping knocked on our door. At 9am. We have the room until 11am. Told them we hadn't checked out yet. Sorry she said and left. About 20 minutes later, they knock again. Same thing. Then, about 15 minutes after that, again. Look people, you can have the damned room when we check out. Sheesh.
Headed over to Epcot. Got Fastpass for Test Track. Love that ride but it's always got the most absurd lines. And they always run out of Fastpasses. As it was, our time to come back was almost two hours from then. So we went and rode Imagination (*sniffle* I so miss the original ride) and watched the Canada film and got some breakfast (not from the outlet mall *laughs*). Then we waited about 30 minutes in the Fastpass line and got to finally ride Test Track. We meandered a bit after that, hit Spaceship Earth and then decided to go back over to MK. We had dinner reservations at Cinderella's Castle for 4pm and wanted to spend a little time over there. I was planning on just eating dessert but I was hungry (having not eaten much the night before at Rainforest and the fruit cup, while a tasty breakfast, wasn't enough for the entire day) and ended up getting the prime rib. It was fantastic. And then we got desert - a chocolate lava cake with raspberry and buttercream icecream. Oh. My. Goddess. It was unbelievably good. They even gave me a bundt cake with icing and mickey-ear sprinkles and a candle and sang to me. They even put ribbon and confetti on the table as well. It was just lovely.
Afterwards we rode some more rides, but I was wearing down. Really just beat. Two days out in the heat and sun, not a lot of sleep, walking around nonstop, etc. Just really was worn out. So we ended up heading home about 7:30pm (park closed at 9pm). Love took Monday off so after we both showered and got comfy, we watched some tv together. He even had an ice cream cake waiting for me at home and we had some of that. It was a really great weekend and a super nice birthday.
Monday we ran aroud a bit and watched The Last Sammurai on dvd. (I liked it. My Love loved it.) Tonight we have the next game of the Lightning playoffs and my friend Rand is coming by. My camera is in transit right now via FedEx and scheduled for delivery tomorrow. I can't wait. Of course I desperately need a memory card for it (Secure Digital) because it only comes with a 16mb one which is useless, and a second battery because it's a propritary rechargable so when I need to recharge, I won't have a camera. Also, the a/c adapter would be nice since it doesn't come with a plug. (good for file transfers to your computer so you're not running your batteries) All that's going to require some cash though so it'll have to wait. (about $65 at cosco for the SD card; about $30 for the battery; about $30 for the a/c plug)
Anyway, I'm at the temp job again. Same one. They keep calling me. Fine with me, it's easy and it pays well enough and I can definately use the extra cash. (Especially after a weekend at Disney! *laughs*) Though something here at this desk, or the chair, or something, utterly stinks of cigerette smoke. Fucking bleck. I can't get the scent out of my nose but I can't find what is the cause of the offence.
Well, I've been babbling for quite some time now. I'm not sure if I got around to everything I meant to blather about, but close enough. I want to publish this thing and move on for now. Ta everyone and thanks again for all your fab birthday wishes!
Thank you to everyone for your wonderful birthday wishes! I'm beat. We had a busy, fun and just great weekend at Disney World. I have tons to talk about but I'm just too tired right now. (The construction woke me up again early this morning. D'oh!) Tomorrow I'm back at the temp job again (they keep calling me back) so if I don't get a chance to babble about it all today (the Lightning game is on tonight so my friend Rand's coming over to watch it this evening), I should have time tomorrow.
