Rants in my pants

I would just like to say how totally unimpressed I am about being sick right now. I've been sick since Thursday, after 2 days of having a fever and being achy all over and snotting all over the place. Now my fever is gone, but my throat hurts, and I'm all stuffy and coughing. And I just all of a sudden got a rash all over my tummy, its origins totally mysterious to me. WTF. Seriously, adding insult to injury. And this was supposed to be my vacation week! This is me NOT IMPRESSED.

Big thanks to everyone who's checked up on me and brought me supplies over the last few days, I love you guys.

I am tired. And I know I'm not the only one. But I'm the kind of tired that sleeping only helps so much (not that I've been getting enough anyway...stupid insomnia). I don't know how it happened, but I think I'm burnt out. Thing is, I think it's more of a community burn-out that's happening, and rightly so as there's been a heck of a lot going on!

Especially the last few weeks, it just seems like there's one event after another going on. Not convinced? It's. Documented.

Then there's all of the online world I am trying to keep up with on a daily basis. Google Reader - 91 subscriptions, currently 521 unread items. Flickr. Facebook. Jaiku. Email. YouTube. My banking is online. My calendar is online. It's bleeping at me telling me about the yoga class I'm not going to in 30 minutes. I haven't posted on Spend Locally for...a couple months? Heck, I've been meaning to write this post for over a week! Somewhere in there I (foolishly?) decided to take a four week weight training course, thinking that some encouragement to exercise would help me feel a little more balanced and less knotted up, but I am already wondering if it was a dumb idea to take on one more thing.

And I'll admit it, I am having trouble deciding how to cut back. I've been meticulously weeding my Google Reader in hopes that at some point I will be able to keep it from building up like crazy. I've got all my email accounts funneling into Gmail. I've started just going home if there's an event on and I'm tired. But there's some things I can't skip, like making food every damn day--there's not much out there I can eat, so no matter how pooped I am, I almost always have to cook. And do dishes cause I don't have a dishwasher.

Yet, this week I still have somewhere I'm supposed to be every night through Saturday. I have a feeling that by the time I hit the weekend, I will be more than ready to bail on Friday and Saturday evening's festivities in favour of spending some quality time with the couch. And maybe doing some laundry before I run out of clean underwear.

It's going around bigtime too - everyone's tired, burnt out, sick as a dog. I've been fighting off a cold for over a week, my body doesn't even know whether to just let it win or keep fighting. Good friends have had to outsource menial tasks in their lives, called me so sick they couldn't go out and buy Kleenex and food, and others have quit their jobs just to get off the conveyor belt.

And before you pull out the "But you have Fridays off" card, you can stuff it cause all I end up doing on Fridays these days is going to doctors appointments and getting stupid tests done.

Solutions? Well, aside from the gradual scaling back, I have been considering strongly choosing a day of the week to spend offline. As a bit of a trial, yesterday (Sunday) I did not turn on my instant messenger. I know that may not sound like a big deal to some people, but it is normally on almost all of the time I'm at work and at home (awake). I've also taken to screening both phone calls and IM messages just to maintain my sanity (please don't take it personally!), and muting my computer when I am not sitting at my desk so I'm not drawn back in by the bleep of an email or IM coming in. I figure if anything that crucial is going on, someone will call me.

It's not much, but I'm taking small steps towards getting some time and hopefully some energy back. Which I'll need, since the weekend after this one is Northern Voice, and the following weekend I head to Boston for a week for DrupalCon. I'm not convinced things are ever going to slow down!

Advice? Thoughts? Complaints? Perspective? Give 'er. (ps. if you think this is too much complaining, don't worry, this is on my to-do list...)

Brace yourself, it's a random-assed post.

1) Out on Screen: had comp tickets (if you don't know what it is, it's Vancouver's queer film festival--and I'm going to use the word queer even though there was much discussion during the Q&A about preferred terms), and went to The Love that Won't Shut Up. It was a short film commissioned by Out On Screen's Queer History Project, made by Veda Hille and Ivan E. Coyote who both performed several songs/spoken word pieces. Bill Munroe (one of the people in the film) also performed. The film was mainly about different perspectives on the history of the queer community in Vancouver. It was great because I learned a lot that I didn't even realize I didn't know about the topic, and it also reminded me that (even though things seem super progressive living in the West End) there are still a lot of people out there who don't accept the queer community. There was still a tangible hurt in the room when topics such as gay bashing, gay marriage, and those who are no longer with us came up. I think it's easy to forget these things are still huge issues. I had a sad moment when I started thinking of one of my most favorite profs from my undergrad who died from AIDS in April of this year, and realized that probably everyone there knew him.

2) Went out after the film and was promptly reminded how prevalent homophobia is, when I blurted out "That's really not appropriate" in response to a comment made by one of the other people around the table. I think that the environment in which I live and work is soooo progressive/left wing that I've become a bit complacent about these kinds of issues. But it was jarring to find myself sharing a table with someone who so genuinely didn't "get" it. I mean, what if one of the other people there was in the closet? You never know! There are people in my life who are gay/bi/etc. who I have so much respect for and love so much, and I just find this kind of attitude intolerable. Then I hopped the bus back to the West End, and on the walk home passed by a gay couple holding hands (a very common sight in my neighbourhood) and felt like the world was an okay place again.

3) Onto the non-queer topics... Is it me or does this site (found through a link on Richard's blog) have one of the most amazing header graphics/layout? I love it.

4) I got my hair cut/coloured yesterday. It's the first time I've had my hair coloured at all, it's not drastic but it's awesome. Martin is so great, I am so glad to have finally found someone who gets my style and can help refine it (because he's far more stylish than me), and is just a really talented and super guy! If you are looking for a hairdresser in the area, I highly recommend him. I'll try and get a photo that does justice to it and post it up.

5) How much do I love the farmer's market! I never fail to leave the market thrilled with my haul--it's tomato season, and if you don't go buy tomatoes at the market you're really missing out. There were so many varieties that even though I bought two bags of tomatoes, I didn't come near sampling all the varieties. It's insane. If you want to read more of me ranting about my love of the market, I posted on SpendLocally.ca yesterday.

I'm sure I had more to say, but it's getting late and I've got lots to do today, so I'm off.

This morning my chiropractor said two things to me while I was at my appointment:

"You've lost a lot of weight."

"You're really stressing out about something."

Duh and duh. Seriously, tell me something I didn't know. I lost three pounds (which looks/feels like a lot on someone my size--my 'skinny jeans' are roomy on me right now) cause I've been sick, and I've been stressing about being sick. The prescription: fun and exercise. I'm doing it as much as I can considering I've been sick!!! I mean, I know she's trying to help, but AARRG!

Plus, I think my naturopath is writing me off--I've been getting progressively worse the longer I've been seeing her, which might be totally random, or might be from some of the stuff she's had me on. So yeah, that's really great. Regular doctors don't know what to do, you go to a naturopath, but if they don't know what to do anymore, then what?

First the backup drive gave me the big f.u., today a new hardware battle... But let me backtrack a little...

I knew it was going to be a bit of a crazy day today, but I didn't think the transit would be that messed up on the way TO work this morning. I got out there in time for the 'early' bus, only to find a pack of people probably 4x as big as usual waiting at the stop...this (and all the angry faces) could only lead me to the conclusion that 3 or 4 buses had already been missed. Finally a gas powered bus (my route usually only runs the electric ones) turned up and everyone packed in. I think my stop is the third on the route, and by the fourth, it was full. People were not pleased. Nor was I when I ended up being about 10 mins late for work.

Anyway, I came prepared for an unorthodox trip home (orthodox being: walk three blocks, get on bus, 15mins ride, get off bus, walk across street), as I was planning on getting off the bus halfway home to stop and buy the new Tegan and Sara CD, The Con. I brought my backpack, cause I figured that there was a good chance it was going to be busy already because of people coming down for the fireworks, and that it was likely once I got off the bus I was going to have to walk the rest of the way home.

So I went and bought my CD, and thought surely if I walk a few stops down there'll be people getting off the bus, and hence room for me to get on. I passed the London Drugs on my way down the street, and stopped in and picked up a webcam, then walked to the next stop. I chatted with this nice little old lady, as we cooked in the sun and hoped a bus would come by. It did, but it sure as heck didn't let anyone on. Which was fine for me. I said goodbye, went and got an iced tea, and walked the rest of the way home. But what the heck was she supposed to do? With a cane, she was doing about 20ft/min, and it was obvious to me that she was stuck there until...until the crowds die down? It kinda ticked me off, because I realized she probably wasn't going to be able to make it to go get her dinner, and nobody seemed to take any note of that. Anyway...

Aside: this evening someone above me was throwing bread off their balcony, and I had a few bird-friends make some pit stops on mine...

I had some trouble setting up the webcam because friggin Logitech decided to give me the big f.u. as well--again, no mac support! Thankfully, a lovely open source program called maccam came to my rescue. And with a little help from my favorite geek (listen carefully to the podcast he posted today and you'll get a surprise!) I managed to get it working with Skype--just in time for the fireworks! (Which are crazy loud by the way and still going after 25mins!)

Ok, now they're done. Not bad at all...great not having to brave the swarms of people, now we'll just see how it goes getting to sleep at a decent time...oh, the people they are loud...