So the tale of the tape in the doctor's office has revealed a very interesting factoid about myself: despite being an avowed horror movie fan, a dedicated follower of the Oakland Raiders and not having killed my in-laws yet, I have been diagnosed with a "weak stomach."

You'd think the Raider thing alone would prove I have a gut of cast-iron, wouldn't you?  Well, you'd be wrong.  What I actually have is a slow digestive tract, and I got to find this out by going to my local Kaiser branch and eating irradiated scrambled eggs, whereupon their progress of lack thereof were then tracked through my digestive tract for the next two hours.  In case you were wondering, the eggs were horrible.  Not even cafeteria eggs... lab eggs.  Most likely some kind of experiment gone awry.  The substandard speed with which they traveled through told them that they were dealing with a person whose stomach just doesn't run at the speed it should.

What does this mean in practical terms?  Well, several things.  First of all, I should be eating several small meals throughout the course of the day rather than two whopper meals the way normal Americans do.  This is actually a blessing in disguise, because eating in this way actually speeds up the metabolism of your body, making it much easier to lose weight.

Incidentally, since we're on that disagreeable subject... 209 pounds.  Seriously.  That is so fucking far from being okay that I can't even really begin to wrap my head around it all.  Being 5;9" and 209 pounds is unacceptable.  Totally unacceptable.

Anyway, on to point number two of my new health plan, which is that the last meal of the night I eat should be something both fairly easy to digest and should also give my stomach a nice coating to fight off stomach acid.  What's the meal of choice?  CEREAL!  Yes, I have slogged through all I have gone through so I can chow down like a little kid.  While we're being honest, though, I have to admit that once again, this is actually fairly okay.  See, I happen to really like cereal, it's a very cost-effective meal and I get to have a desert as well.  Vanilla almond Special K followed up by Cocoa Krispies equals YUM.  So once again, not too bad.

Point three sucks, though.  Carbonation is bad, so that means... nighttime beer is a no-no.  Nooooooooo!  What will I do without my beer, that thing which usually keeps me from murdering my in-laws?

Well, I'm not a wi-no... I'm a wi-yes!  Wine has no carbonation, less of an acid content than hard liquor and goes well with cheese.  It's also tasty and gives a nice, mellow buzz, so there you go.

I'll let you know how my health plan goes but thus far, after two days I have had zero bad spells whereas before I had three out of four nights with the night pukes.  I guess something must be working.

Peace.

Under duress of torture, people will agree to almost anything.  In the fine flick Reservoir Dogs, "Nice Guy" Eddie takes umbrage with the well-meaning but counterproductive stupidity of Misters Blonde, Pink and White beating down poor bluesuit Officer Marvin Nash as they try to discover who the inside man on the job.

"You beat this prick long enough," Eddie solemnly tells the crew, "and he will tell you started the goddamn Chicago Fire.  Now that don't necessarily make it fucking so!"

In this same vein, I did a stupid thing three weeks ago while getting my ass kicked.  I went to the dentist's office on a day where my right shoulder felt like it was going to finally give up the ghost and squirt out of its residence in a spectacularly disgusting spray of bone jelly.  As you may well remember, I am not such a great fan of getting in the torture chair as it is.  My dentist does a great job and he's very good at not hurting me... but even with his best efforts, there was still going to be quite a bit of pain involved, virtually none of it from his end.  I got that.  It wasn't his fault.  It was just that the idea of voluntarily submitting to the chair and having something sharp placed within my mouth with my shoulder belting out "The Flight Of The Valkyries" was something I wasn't up for handling that day.  Therefore, I did the smart thing and rescheduled.

It's amazing what you will agree to when your nervous system is swimming in agony.  I wanted to do the appointment on a scheduled day off so that I wouldn't have to sacrifice a day of money to get this done, and I surely did that...

...by agreeing to come in at eight in the morning on a floating vacation day, also known as a day off.

As Lewis Black might not-so-rhetorically ask, how fucking dumb it that?  I have a dentist appointment, on a day off and one that I'll be sharing with my newly-paroled wife with, at a time when as of late, I am not even awake yet.

Sure, it's only a cleaning.  However, I think this anecdote proves that sometimes I am a very median genius.  Plus, I'm only now getting sleepy.  At least I won't be awake enough to get scared before the work starts, right?

Oh God, I want my guitar back.  Pleeeeeeeease.  Throw me a bone here.

Coming down with a particularly nasty case of the flu just before the weekend:  DOWN.

Drinking a ton of fresh-squeezed orange juice to try to get over this sickness:  UP.

Not having done more on the laptop than the two typed chapters of Living After Midnight:  DOWN.

Having done thirteen hand-written pages of Living After Midnight while at work during the week:  UP.

Watching awful television for the most part today:  DOWN.

Watching two episodes of CSI: Miami minus the commercials:  UP.

Taking a hot bath:  UP.

Not being able to stay in the bath for longer than fifteen minutes because of congestion:  DOWN.

Pain in shoulders and head:  DOWN.

Prospect of loading up on painkillers and watching television and/or typing in an agreeable cold-medicine daze:  UP.

Helping somebody on a writing project and far from screwing the pooch, being told that you made a three-pointer with somebody's arms in your face:  WAY, WAY UP.

Back to the healing process I go.  Whee!

Ugh, I'm feeling bad today; my throat feels like I've tried to swallow a number of sea urchins, so I'm not going in to work.  I'm going to try to use my time in a sensible manner by getting laundry done, taking notes for Living After Midnight and also watching the television series V in its entirety, which I am proud to say I own on DVD.

A little history lesson is probably in order here.  Like so many other aspiring writers, I cut my combat teeth by starting off in the land of fanfic... although back when I was getting started, reprehensible terms like "slash" had yet to make their odious presence known.  The rules were pretty simple; there really weren't any.  You could be as explicit or G-rated as you liked, you could do two pages or two thousand, but most of all, as long as you remained true to the subject matter, anything was a go.

Oh, I should probably mention one other thing that was different back then.  There were no communities where you shared your works, because there was no such thing as the Internet.  This was a project done purely out of love (or obsession, whichever label you think is more accurate) and the reward in the end was nothing more than the glow of accomplishment.  In this arena, I was par for the course by picking out my favorite series at the time (which was V) and doing stories within that universe.

It should be stated for the record that my efforts were not very good.  In fact, if I had an example of them before me (which thankfully for my ego I do not) I am sure that the sands of time would reveal that those stories I spent so much effort and hope on in fact actually sucked on dry ice.  I broke most, if not all, the rules about writing fanfic and turned out Mary-Sue characters by the boatload.  My list of sins, in retrospect, was seemingly endless.  Bad characterization, kewl powerz (the less said about that the better), self-insertion (ditto and double on that taboo subject) and breaking the rules of genre and decorum left and right with little regard for how a professional would have approached things.

I'm very glad I went about this in such a clusterfuck manner, though.  I'm now getting ready to go back and re-visit a story that has held at least part of my attention for almost two decades now, and I'm really hoping that this time I am the equal of the task before me.  I want Living After Midnight to succeed the way that Survivors, Falling From Grace, Lottery Odds and The Long Weekend did and possibly could not, because of where I was in my life when I wrote those stories.

What am I trying to say?  At this moment, I'm not sure.  Rambling bullcrap, thy name is blog.  Maybe tomorrow I'll start posting some baseball stuff.  Until then, my devoted peeps, have the best day you can.  Be well.

I had the surgery today, and it was a highly unamusing process.  First of all, when I walked in flanked by the two nurses/medical assistants, one of them asked, "Now, are we doing your shoulder or your back today?  It's written down as both on the chart."

Eyes widening, I stammered, "Uh, that would be my shoulder, and now with ten percent more terror."

No laughter on anybody's part; we were all being serious.  Gulp.  They put me on the table, levered it up, the doc came in and we got started.  First off was the numbing, a local anaesthetic since it's ostensibly a simple procedure.  The needle going in hurt only briefly, as I expected it to, they taped off the area that was going to be done (the left shoulder, I noted with no small degree of relief) and we got started.  I fled to my happy place (whee, I'm a published author) and braced for the worst.

Necessity, so the old saying goes, is the mother of invention.  I just got a chance to find out how true this is with our latest miniature home disaster.

A couple months ago, we noticed that there was a rather large rat running about our premises that among other things, was eating the food of our remaining dumb dog, Sammy.  It had also chewed a hole through the bottom of the loveseat that he slept upon, and had left several dozen large calling cards in our pool house shed, so Lady Jade and I decided decided we'd officially had it with rattus norvegicus and set out to consign him (or her, as we are equal-opportunity killers of vermin) to the flaming bowels of Rat Hell.

To do this, we got some fairly decent D-Con rat poison, which we spread under the house and closed things up in preparation of turning his ratty digs into a trap.  It worked, all right.  However, displaying the kind of deviousness that has made the rat such a wonderful heel throughout the ages from Dracula to the Black Death to the awesomely disturbing James Herbert novel The Rats, he had one final trick up his (or her) smelly brown sleeve.

The rat chose to die in its lair, which judging from the hole chewed in the fiberglass insulation clearly visible when I shined the light back there, is in the space behind our tub.

Saying I was dismayed by this is like saying the inhabitants of Poland were a bit put out over the September 1, 1939 Nazi invasion.  Of course it would have to be behind the tub, right up near the faucet where, barring tearing out the tub box and thereby doing about a thousand dollars worth of damage to our beautiful bathroom that we can't afford, there's not a goddamn thing we can do about the smell of the decomposing corpse, the creature's final defiant middle finger to its persecutors.  It seemed like the dead animal was going to have the final grim laugh in this contest, right?

Well... that's not quite true.  Being much smarter than the rat and also possessed of a fervent desire to block off the smell, I went MacGyver on the project and jammed up every last crevice inside the walk-in closet with dryer sheets, replacing the stench of decay with the sweet scent of a mountain breeze.  Coupled with multiple odor-killing candles and a gentle fan, the bathroom is now once again suitable for human consumption, as evidenced by the enormously satisfying bath I just took, not more than a foot away from my vanquished foe.  In a week or so, those measures won't even be necessary, as the odor of the rat, like its spirit, will have passed into history.

The moral of the story is, don't fuck with the higher mammals.  And for added audience participation, I want to know what home horror stories do you bring to the table today.  What's your worst moment as a resident, be it renting or owning?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Fire away.

Today I get to go to the doctor so I can be prescribed antibiotics because it seems that two months is just not long enough for my body to throw off this bout of bronchitis.  I am not happy about this in the slightest bit, because by doing this it means admitting defeat.  Being the impossibly stubborn Capricorn that I am (a redundant statement if ever there was one), the idea of taking off time from work because I am sick sits about as well as an AFC Championship game victory by the Denver Broncos... which of course, we don't have to worry about this year.  Heh-heh.

Speaking of football, the two week gap between conference title games and the Super Bowl is just way too long.  Too long in the extreme.  To give you an idea of how bad this has gotten, I was bumping around online at about one in the morning on Saturday and stopped by the ESPN web site to see if the Raiders had picked up a retreaded, recycled coach on the cheap.  We hadn't, but there on the front was a series of articles breaking down the matchups for Super Bowl XL.  "Oh yeah," I said aloud, "that's right.  They still have to play the Super Bowl.  Heh-heh.  Forgot about that."

Yes, you read that correctly:  Your Number One Contender had completely forgotten that the NFL championship game, the culmination of the season, had yet to be played.  So, I guess my new name is Barrett Robbins.

Ack.  Phelgm.  I've been sick for so long, I've actually forgotten what it's like to be well.

Not much else to report today, except that I am finally winning the war against our dumb dogs.  We've gotten them breath formula that you add to their water dish, breath spray (which they absolutely hate but once it's been blasted down their gullet, there isn't a lot they can do about it) and, in the coup de grace, my Spritzer Bottle Of Doom.  At least, that's how Sammy and Junior view this ordinary household spray bottle filled with minty mouthwash, which I use whenever the mood strikes me to give their coat a thorough blasting.  Now not only do they smell minty fresh, it doubles up on helping with the breath problem, as when they lick themselves and each other, they get another dose of Scope to help fight the cainine halitosis.  Now I can actually stand to be in the same room as them which, although it may sound pretty damn heartless to you, ranks as definite progress to me.

Viva la resistance!

(sabrarosa recently made a post saying how many of the posts she'd been seeing lately were very happy-go-lucky.  this is not one of those posts.  the easily offended or nice people may wish to skip this one.  I'm serious.  you've been warned)

Having dogs has driven home the unavoidable truth that I am a Cat Person, and most definitely not a Dog Person.

This caught me a little off-guard, but it's not the first time this has happened.  After years and years of wanting a 1967 Mustang 2+2 Fastback coupe, indulging my latent Sports Car Gene that all guys have somewhere, it turned out that in reality, I was a Truck Guy.  This has its roots back in antiquity, back to when I was four years old and used to ride in my father's old red Ford F-250 by placing one foot on the seat and the other on the dashboard, with my forehead about two inches from the glass.  From all accounts, I had a ball doing this and from all accounts, I never rammed my dome into the windshield during a sudden stop.  So for years I thought I was a Car Guy, but in actuality, I was a Truck Guy.

So now that 2005 is getting ready to give way to 2006, I have abandoned a long-held perception of myself that I love dogs.  I don't.  I love the idea of dogs, but the actual reality is pretty disagreeable to me.  Dogs do many things that irritate the holy living hell out of me including, but most certainly not limited to:

1)  Begging for food.  Cats at least have the good grace to ignore you at almost all times, esxpecially when you are eating.  A dog will get right on up and place their head right on top of your crotch, looking up with watery, hopefully eyes that completely ruin any pleasure involved in your meal.  At the same time, they also huff out...

2)  Horrible dog breath.  You may say that cats also have bad breath since they never brush their teeth, and this is true.  However, it's considerably less noticeable than canine halitosis and since you usually get to encounter it when doing the aforementioned "oh please please feed me some of your food" bit, it's triple annoying.  This usually leads to...

3)  Terrible guilt.  This happens when you say "No!" about fifteen times and the creature doesn't get the hint, so you try pushing its head away which makes it think that it's either time to play or it's even closer to getting some of your chow so it persists, whereupon you finally scream "Fuck off!" and clout the dumb animal upside their head.  At this point everybody in the room looks at you like you just morphed into Beelzebub, thoroughly ruining the evening and the dog finally runs off to whine and soak up sympathy from everyone else.

4)  Jumping on me.  I hate that.  An animal that will happily splash through a puddle of its own urine has no business whatsoever putting those filthy paws on me.  When I want to play with you, I'll let you know.  This is a direct by-product of my most hated thing about dogs...

5)  Pissing/crapping in the house.  The first thing Junior did when he got into his new home was to take a giant, smelly dump on the living room floor, thereby setting the tone for our relationship.  No doggie door?  Why not?  Because we have a natural gas heater that is expensive enough to maintain, so we have to let the dogs out and bring them back in with annoying regularity because otherwise, our heating bills will be astronomical.  However, this practice is about to end and cost be damned.  I've fucking had it.

In all fairness it's only one of our dogs that does this, but that's more than enough for me.  Let me explain, lest you think I am a heartless meanie who does not understand biology: I paid two hundred and seventy-seven thousand dollars for a house with hardwood floors that I happen to love very much, sporadic sewer problems aside, and I don't want it to smell like animal excrement/urine.  That's it.  There really needs to be no explanation beyond that, because in and of itself, that should be enough.

We have an office that the dogs stay in when it's cold, and it now smells (most likely permanently) like dog piss.  I have always wanted an office, and now I have one... and I hate it.  In fact, I'm smelling it right now, and I doubly hate it because I spent an hour mopping the floor yesterday to get rid of the odor and this worked--until I came home this morning, whereupon I discovered a new puddle of piss right in front of the stairs that hadn't been there at 5 AM.  As soon as the dogs saw me entering the office, they happily bounded forward right through the puddle pf piss, which Junior proceeded to then sit in, wagging his tail and waiting to be played with.

I did the only thing I could: I threw them both outside into the semi-cold and started making plans for that doggie door.  This shit (literally) has gone on long enough.

Now let's see who unfriends Jesse for being such a cold-hearted bastard!  Yay me!

Jesse is thoroughly upset and pissed right now.

The plumber came over and since there is no valve installed for cleaning out the pipe (which is most likely blocked), we would have to pay about two hundred bucks to have one installed.  Until then, the insurance company is denying our claim, and the fucking backyard smells like crap and piss.  There is shredded bits of toilet paper all over the rear quarter of the deck, and the drain itself is so fucking foul I can't even stand to look at it.

Marcus the backup kitty keeps meowing, wanting to come in the office where I have locked myself to type this, and I keep yelling at him to shut up.

I've placed a phone call with the previous owenr of the house to see what she did when this sort of thing happened (because it's most likely not the first time) and surprise of surprises, she hasn't called back yet.

My stomach hurts like hell and I want to call in sick to work but if this costs even remotely close to what I fearfully suspect it will, I can't afford to call in sick because I'll be taking a loss on my daily wage that right now we really can't afford even without this repair bill looming like a rabid bitch of the Apocalypse.

There is a ton of dirty dishes piled up in the sink that we can't wash.

There is a grip of dirty clothes as well, ditto.

My mother is coming to town tomorrow, which I need about as much as a colonscopy with a barbed wire probe and a saltwater enema afterward.

I almost just cried while typing this.  I hate not having any self-control.  I hate it.

Goddamn... I fucking hate the holidays.  I hate December and my stupid upcoming birthday.

Stick a fork in me.  I'm done for the day.

Out.

UPDATE:  All right, I feel a lot calmer now.  As it turns out, one of the major issues that I was freaking out about has turned out to be nothing much.  The plumber was very puzzled about the fact that the sewage leak (and boy do I hate typing that) was coming into the back yard away from the house when, in fact, it should have been heading toward the street, meaning something was really fucked up.  This could possibly mean that not only was the line fucked up--obviously--it could also mean that the land itself was now saturated with glop, making the place a horrorshow when it came time to do any yard work in the back.

My neighbor Al pooh-poohed (sorry, couldn't resist) that notion.  "Actually," Al said, "the pipes run the other way; they go through your neighbor's back yard and out into the street in front of his house.  I know this because we replaced our plumbing a couple years ago, and that's exactly where ours go, not to mention everyone else's."

Whew, feeling calmer.  I felt even better about it when the two hundred dollar question of the drainage valve was brought into play.  I thought originally it didn't exist but, according to Al, it is most likely buried under about six inches of soil right next to the main water valve.  "Because you can't build a house's plumbing without something like that," he said.  "If you do a little digging, it'll turn up.  That's where ours was.  Sure, you won't see it on a visual search, but it's there."

Plus, there is also the fact that our roommate's father is a certified union plumber who has specifically ordered his daughter not to allow us to do any more major repairs without calling him first.  "Beer is a good form of payment," he was reported to say.

Thank you so much to everyone who responded; I apologize for freaking out, as I find losing one's self-control (especially in such a public way) to be distasteful.  Freak-out posts are not kosher in my book.  So hopefully, this will be fixed very soon and in the meantime, Baldman is being a saint by letting me crash his shower.

Still not happy about mom's impending visit, though... but that's something for next time.

What a fucking weekend.  I'm going to try to be jocular and humorous as I make this post, but there were a few things that happened that absolutely steamed the crap out of my rice, so I apologize in advance if this degenerates into whining.

Onward.

Friday night went well; Lady Jade and I polished off the last episode of Season One of Farscape, which had been much-ballyhooed during its run but we'd never viewed.  Our overall impression of it was quite positive, and thus we are now looking forward to Stargate: SG-1 resuming its run in January even more so than before.  I have a new level of respect for Claudia Black's ability as an actress.

Saturday morning signaled things turning shitty... and I do mean that literally.

( Cut For Oncoming Grossness )

Quick update:  I seem to be attracting a lot of new friends lately, and this is fine with me.  Meet alaskan_blue, who besides having one of the most adorable icons in the world, is also a huge Stargate geek, just like Yours Truly.  She's also quite the photographer and looks good in Renaissance garb.  Welcome, Blue.

I'm currently dealing with the cleaning process associated with the electric cat box.  This should be a treat, and when I say "treat," what I really mean is "I'm going to get high from inhaling a whole lot of bleach as I do this ew ew ew EW EW!"

I'll post again later this afternoon before I go back to work, but I have some chores to get done on my honey-do list.  I also have to find the next place where I'll be submitting my novel.

Until then, adieu!

I'm going to be hitting the hay in about an hour or so; I have signups to do tonight at the bus company which means getting to bed much later than usual, and I'd just as soon not be rocking and rolling on my feet tomorrow morning when I wake up at 4:55 AM.  Getting some rest this morning/afternoon will be essential to maintaining my normal Zen.

It wasn't a very good morning; I saw a squirrel get run over as I was beginning my last trip, and... well, it was gruesome and not just in a "oh yuck, squishy" kind of way.  I actually felt psychically horrible after witnessing the event, and the image took a while to wash away from the front of my retinas.  To add to the fun, I didn't have any 4-way/turn signals for my last trip, something I didn't find out until somebody almost hit me as I was pulling back out into traffic.  People are shitty drivers anyway, and even more so when you're not able to telegraph your moves to them.  Ugh.

But on the positive side of the equation, we got this.  It was a little pricey but goddamn, it's so worth it.  I know that domina_lilith rightfully has a thing about the old kitty smell, and now our apartment is litter-odor-free.  It rocks.  Therefore, our new house (11 days and counting) will also be kitty-box-odor-free.  How cool is that?

So I'm off to eat and bump around looking for new and exciting crap to expose queentana to.  Have fun today, folks!

Okay, made a new post in the Too Much Info LJ community.  Be warned; it's gross, but since it doesn't have to do with any of my bodily functions or bodily injuries (unlike other contributions, if you dare scroll through them) I felt okay about linking to it here in my journal.  Happened about a year ago and I always wanted to talk about it, but this space didn't seem appropriate.  However, for the TMI folks, it's gold.

Once again, don't go here if you're easily offended or have a weak stomach.  Still interested?  Okay.  With that said, I present The Big Bird Blood Bath.

So... do you still love me?  :)

Wednesday night I go to bed feeling pretty decent, looking forward to only being two days worth of work left before the big three-day break and already drooling in anticipation of having the house for just me and Lady Jade for nearly a week (more on this at another time).  I lay my head down upon the pillow, hoping my dream will be restful...

...when I snap to at about midnight.  Oh, Christ.  Not again.  The HMS Bile Fairy has sailed from its dock once again, and is currently trying to dock in my mouth.  I lay still, swallowing desperately, hoping that the inevitable will not come to be, and of course, I am more wrong than Max Kellerman's prediction of an Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl victory parade.

I won't disgust you with a blow-by-heave account of what happened next, but one fact needs to be pointed out.  Although I am a veteran of late-night yark-fests (I went to jolly old Chico State, after all), this one was different because for the vast majority of the time it was happening--about twenty minutes in all--I couldn't breathe.  That's right, my devoted peeps, America's Favorite Literary Bus Driver was gasping for air like a fish out of water.  Frightening is a very mild way of putting things.

This of course scared the absolute flaming shit out of Lady Jade, who did what she could until I crawled back to bed, feeling as though Andre The Giant had just done the Bristol Stomp all over my diaphragm.  An hour later, I swam back into consciousness again and the ghastly process was repeated.

Bruised throat and all I went to work in the morning, and Lady Jade was of course righteously pissed about this, but I got the rest of the afternoon off and went to go see my doctor.  Not only is my doctor pretty and nice, by far her best trait is that she is amazingly competent and this time was no exception.  I have Prilosec on steroids (twice the beef of what you get over the counter) and the commandment that I should do my damndest to avoid the following items:

Chocloate, alcohol, cigarettes, spicy foods, salty foods, garlic, onions, caffeine, coffee, carbinated beverages, peppermint, fatty foods, aspirin, antihistaimnes, acidic foods, vineagar and birth control pills.  Yes, that's on the list; apparently you ladies have just as much trouble with acid reflux as I do, which means some of them might be trading stomach cramps for morning sickness.  Not a good one in my opinion.

So now I'm on a diet.  I haven't had a cigarette since 10:35 PM on Wednesday night.  So far I feel pretty decent... but if I suddenly snap off and do a post that say

GODDAMN IT I HAT3 ALL J00 FUCK3RZ DI3 DI3 KILLAHILLABZNCH3S

then now you will know why.  I am trying to become a better person and goddamn it, the path just ain't that easy.

(note:  those who have weak stomachs might want to skip this post.  you've been warned.)

No work for me today; I was sick.  Went to bed last night at about 11:00 PM, a little later than I should but hey, I wasn't tired yet.  There's not really a lot you can do when you need to go to sleep and you just aren't feeling it, but finally enough of the sandman's magic dust hit to send me to bed.  I snuggled down beside the wife, laid my head on the pillow and got ready for a 5:00 AM wake-up call...

Danger!  Danger, Will Robinson!

I rolled over to examine the clock, which read 12:05 AM, and realized two things:

1)  I was very sweaty, and

2)  My mouth was currently having a fire sale on today's special, bile.

I laid there for what seemed like forever but in reality was probably only about two minutes, trying desperately to both find my moment of zen and ignore the rumbling and queer noises currently coming from the belly region.  I was fighting a losing battle, but I didn't know that at first.  Only when I hiccuped and realized that I was in danger of spweing all over the silk pillowcases (never advisable, BTW) did I flee for the bathroom.

Okay, I'm just going to spit this out, everything will be fine, big guy, no worries...

I spit in the toilet and that seemed to clear things up.  I paused to make sure, then hocked twice and cleared my mouth.  Success!  All was well in Jesseland once more.  I rinsed out my mouth with some amazingly refreshing cold water (a sure sign that not all was done) and headed back to bed...

...whereupon I 180'd and hit the floor on my knees.  I'm sure you can guess what happened next and I won't drag both of us back through that; there was, however, one detail that bears repeating.  I had eaten Taco Bell for dinner, among the items consumed being a bean burrito with extra red sauce and no onions.  My first panicky thought upon viewing the resulting carnage was that I was bleeding to death from the inside-out, which is not the thought one wants to have while on their knees worshipping the Porcelain God at just past midnight.  Bad scene.

Lady Jade asked if I was okay through the door, and I did a first: not only did I answer in a quavery, cracked voice completely foreign to me, I also told the truth.  "No," I gasped.  "No, I don't think I'm okay."  It's not in my nature to admit discomfort of any kind, having been raised by New England Yankees, but this time trying say I was fine would have been ludicrous and just irritated my wife.

She insisted that I call in sick to work and after debating it for about fifteen seconds, I did so.  I sounded awful on the phone--plus the fact that I was literally gasping for breath due to the effort I had just expended--that the dispatcher sounded genuinely concerned as he marked me down.  "Get better soon, okay?" he said.

"I'll try," I managed.  "I'd sure hate to get worse."

So I slept in until almost 11 PM today and I still feel drained and washed out.  Sorry that this entry is so gross and scatalogical, but LJ chronicles both the good and the bad and unfortunately, this time I came up tails.

Good evening, all.  Be well.