Hazy Days

I had been doing really really good this week at sticking to my allergy-free diet and only eating things that I was 100% sure about. And the improvements were starting to show, I was slowly regaining my sleep schedule, my energy.. I was finally losing the edema (lost nearly 4lbs in 4 days) and regaining my concentration and my mood was improving.

So I should have kept at it, and remained strict to a fault.

Instead, at the Kosher store, there were some KFP (Kosher for Passover) Ringles, which are somewhat like Funyuns, in BBQ flavor that I just had to try. The BBQ flavor of course contains a little bit of onion/garlic to which I am mildly allergic, but I really miss having flavor on my chips/snacks. So I wanted to see if I could tolerate them.

It went pretty well. They were yummy and I was hungry so I ate almost the entire bag. Then I waited for symptoms to set in. I waited. Waited some more. Then figured all was fine and I was home-free.

What totally slipped my mind, was that my onion allergic reactions (ingestion) are almost always delayed. Sure initially the food tastes awesome, and I don't generally have any other reaction right away other than "THIS STUFF IS INCREDIBLE" or maybe the sniffles. But about 2-4 hours later, the sleepiness sets in, the brainfog, the chest congestion, nasal congestion, headache, and the complete inability to concentrate or remember what it was I was supposed to be doing.

I was actually talking to an old friend that I hadn't spoken to in years, when I noticed the first signs sinking in. I thought of course that maybe it was just the small talk getting to me, and that I was bored. So I ignored it, but my ability to concentrate enough to be engaged in the conversation was proving difficult. Luckily it was around the end of the conversation anyway, so no biggie. The funny thing was though that I was telling him how much better I'm doing now. HA HA HA Gotta love the irony.

So right now, I'm sitting here waiting for the benadryl to kick in typing slowly and attempting to make sense. (It's taken me about 30 minutes to write this, btw because I keep having to stop to remember what I was trying to say and where I was going with this, plus to re-read it and make sure I didn't type some sentence like "I shoulder ran hopscotch here.") But I think I'm going to go lay down, cuz the room is starting to spin as if I've had waaay to much to drink.

So much for my good week.

(oh and I'm typing this and posting it, so maybe I'll remember not to be a freaking idiot again.)

-- PS: Note to Self: May have lost a friend because my allergy-altered mind decided to say some stuff in such an off-color way that said friend is considering no longer talking to me. Only the "allergy-altered-you" could possibly misword "I really cherish our friendship, and respect what you're doing" into a insult. So lay off the onion, Idiot!

Temper Tantrums

Anyone who says that dogs don't have personalities is full of poo.

Right now, our dog is throwing a temper tantrum and I have no idea why or what she hopes to gain.

Our dog is a very intelligent, border collie mutt. The only thing we're sure of is that she's border collie, but what else is in there is rather a mystery. She could be a pure breed for all we know, as we rescued her from the Pound.

Over the years, we've come to an agreement. She gets what she wants, and she doesn't make messes, release bodily fluids in the house, and for the most part does what she's told.

Unfortunately, today's issue comes under the category of "WTF does she want?"

I got up today, and my husband had put the dog in the bedroom. When he does this, its usually because the dog has refused to go outside, or its storming, or lawn people are going to be mowing the lawn.

Well its not storming. Its bright and sunny. Its also January, so no lawn people.

So that leaves attitudal dog, so I assume the tantrum she's pulling now is the same tantrum she pulled with him earlier today.

She is quite serious in her desire though, and let me explain.

Our dog has an intense trepidation of the linoleum tiles in our kitchen that extend all the way to the garage door. She only travels them for food, or if we're in the kitchen and its storming badly that she's scared to be alone. Otherwise, she doesn't venture that far onto the tiles, even if we have the garage door open and are trying to coax her into the car.

When I got up and went into the kitchen to fix myself something to eat, she went and planted herself at the garage door. She not only quickly traveled over the scary tiles, but she stayed at the door to the garage in the oasis of scary tile and wouldn't move. So obviously she wanted in the garage, but I had no idea what in the world she wanted in the garage to do. (She never wants in the garage.)

Well I needed to take out the recyclables, so I opened the door to the garage and into the garage she went. She wanted me to follow her, but I finished my task first. I tried to get her back into the house, but she wasn't coming.

So I asked her what she wanted, and followed her. She wants in the car, and since she can't talk I have no idea where she wants me to take her.

Places we take her in the car:
Nebraska - to my parents
Vet - pretty certain she doesn't want to go there
Work - sometimes Morten takes her to work, but he hasn't done that in a long time.

So maybe she wants to go back to Nebraska? Its been 8 days that we've been back, so we're not heading up there any day soon. And when we were up there, after 36 hours she was ready to come home. At 72 hours, she was begging us to go.

She doesn't take "no" very well as an answer when she wants something this badly, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with her other than physically put her outside and hope her fascination passes.

Right now, as I type this though.. She's sitting in the garage with the door open to the house. She can come into the house at any time, but she is still sitting in there. I don't even think I could get her to willingly come in for some steak. *Sighs* I wish I knew what she really was trying to tell me.

I suppose I better go drag her out.

I hate my Computer

Warning: Temper Tantrum

For months, years.. I can't remember how long actually. My computer has been ticking me off.

When I first got it, it was amazing. Then things went down hill.

It had memory errors, so we switched out the memory. It worked fine for a while.

It had internet issues, we switched routers. It didn't help much.

It blew up! (seriously, I had black soot all over my office to prove it)

So we replaced all the insides, and reused the case.

I still had issues. Ok thats an understatement. I've had nothing BUT issues since.

The stupid thing won't boot up without the original CD in the freaking CD drive, even though it doesn't run off the CD while its working, just needs it there like a freaking safety blanket. We've tried to figure out why, but it hasn't been that big of a deal.

Then it would suddenly need rebooting for no apparent reason. I'd get some "failure" message, then it would start a countdown to reboot. If I tried to save anything during this countdown, the file would be corrupted beyond repair. I did figure out how to stop the countdown, but the computer wouldn't let me do anything anyway so I still had to reboot.

On top of this, it wouldn't stay connected to the internet and acted like it hated the router. Which we finally discovered was because the freaking router which is supposed to do wireless and cable connections both, would switch between the two cutting out one or both of the services for no apparent reason. So we shut off the wireless feature on it, and its been behaving 90% better. I only have to reboot the router and cable modem every 3 days, vs every 3 hours.

Hubby checked the thing several times for hacking and found nothing. My computer has been checked for viruses, and does a full scan.. I mean FULL FREAKING SCAN every night.

I also have to restart the computer about every 2 days.

Now I could understand this better if I did something highly taxing on the computer like active games that require a lot of memory and CPU. But the most I do, is have 2-3 documents open, a few webpages, and a couple IM programs.

We've souped up the computer with lots of memory, a fast good quality CPU, and a SATA drive. You would think that it could handle it?

Now today's lovely problem!

Datarat posted a link to a You-Tube video about something that Ayn Rand wrote.

I really really wanted to watch this video. I also wanted to watch a couple other You-Tube Ayn Rand videos. Which I can do, if I could be satisfied with only watching the first minute of each video.

Instead, I get interested in it. I'm waiting at the edge of my seat for the next words, and it stops. I tried it both in FireFox and IE and neither will freaking show me the video, though FireFox does show me more of the video than IE but thats hardly any consolation.

When hubby gets home, I think we're going to have a talk about getting that Apple Mini we've been discussing.

I really hate change, and having to learn how MACs work is not going to be easy for me (or for my hubby as I am going to bitch about it), but I have to do something.

I just want the damn computer to work. It shouldn't be rocket science.