Rose is eating breakfast

I have been awake for two hours and Rose just got out of bed.  It took a lot of restraint not to barge into her room with Razzle and wake her lazy ass up long ago.  As of now, she is bagel and cream cheese eating – I do not know how the rest of her day will proceed.

I made popcorn with kernels and oil in a big pot last night for family movie time.  The movie was Michael Clayton, which I remember thinking was excellent when I saw it previously.  Last night I didn’t stay awake for the movie, but the popcorn, with salt added, was very good.

Razzle is lying on her back upside down, with her front feet in the air and her back feet against the kitchen door.  She is a different type of dog, much like Rose has just now called me a “different” type of brother.  I take no offense to her comment.

I am not a political individual, so when I read yesterday’s newspapers about how Hillary Clinton is supporting Barack and how all democrats should rally beside each other I said to myself, “yeah,” and moved on.  I do not understand how my dad, having read the same articles, can deduce large scale conclusions about how the election will proceed and how the further decline of family values is imminent.  I guess, what I hope, is that whoever becomes President doesn’t seriously screw up the country to the point that my day to day life is significantly negatively affected.

We walked down to the shore yesterday evening with the dogs to throw sticks for them.  Sadly, though, Razzle does not believe that she can swim, so she just stands at the edge of the water and barks at Bonza as she returns with retrieved sticks.  Razzle immediately chomped down on whatever Bonza brought back, and sure enough old easy going Bonza just let it go.  It is not a good feeling to suspect that I have raised a dog bully, but at least she only bullies Bonza, who doesn’t seem to mind much.

Rose is telling me that I gave her attitude last night when she suggested I move from the couch to my bed.  This conversation is pretty standard, as I often fall asleep on couches around bedtime and Rose is very nice to make sure I don’t sleep uncomfortably all night.  Last night, however, it seems I acted with as much sense as I would have if I was relatively intoxicated.

I said, “Razzle needs to go out,” and went back to sleep.  The next thing I know, Rose is re-waking me up and she asked, “Ben, how do you turn on this blinking ball?”  The ball is something small we clip on to Razzle’s collar so we can see her in the pitch dark, which would otherwise be difficult given her fur color.  Apparently, I told her to buzz off and proceeded to curl up beside Razzle, who clearly had no interest in either going outside or to bed.

So far, it has been just another pleasant morning on Vinalhaven.

Thanks to Rose, Kousha and Mike

After dinner on Wednesday I felt inexplicable pain in my stomach that did not subside until this morning.  Highlights of this illness included being unable to move, eat or sleep.  Never before have I been compelled to take a nap on my bathroom floor from fear of fainting.  I’ve actually never napped on my bathroom floor before, and this includes all drunken episodes, thus making this bout with the devil a.k.a. unbearable nausea and dizziness a remarkable new experience.  Sometime Wednesday I decided to forego sleeping entirely and began watching Ghostbusters.  This choice further worsened my night, as instead of simply drifting in and out of conciousness at the whim of the poltergeist inside my stomach, I was also repeatedly jostled awake by Bill Murray’s attempts to tame ghosts such as ecto and zuul, whatever the fuck that is.

Anyways, life got back to normal today when I gave myself two and a half liters of saline in dialysis, which raised my blood pressure from the measley 70ish over 40ish of the last 48 hours to a whopping 85ish over 50ish.  Yay.

Rose was of course a huge help through this ordeal, but Kousha and Mike also played great roles by visiting and spending time with me.  Without their insisting, and mac and cheese making, I wouldn’t have eaten or drank anything all of yesterday.  So thanks to the three of them.

cigar musings

Davidoff Mini Cigarillo

I returned home from dinner at Kousha’s and my neighbor was out behind his house enjoying a cigar.  If I hadn’t smoked my last miniature gloria de cubana last night I’d definitely be heading over there to make a cigar buddy.  I’ve looked into the health effects of cigars and at this point it is not exactly clear how bad they are for you.  Despite the fact that it would (supposedly) take the tobacco of 70 cigarettes to fill one large cigar, it is pretty much universally understood that the tobacco of 70 cigarettes is not equivalent to the tobacco of a cigar.  This is of course because cigar smoke is not inhaled down into one’s lungs, but instead drawn into the mouth and allowed to linger just enough for the smoker to enjoy the taste and experience.  I will not argue that cigars are good for you, at least in the medical and biological sense, but I do believe that any experience that relaxes an individual and provides a positive moment benefits one’s general wellbeing.  At least that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.  One thing’s for certain, I am way too young to convince myself it’s okay to smoke “just one a day” as my elderly, classy neighbor has said he does.  Hmmm… next time I talk to him I’ll have to find out when he started.  I’m definitely hitting up Leavitt and Pierce tomorrow.

Screwed up already…

I was already two or three paragraphs into a hilariously worded first post when I realized that I had written it under the “Pages” section of this site.  Aaargh.  Perhaps blogging is not for me.

At lab today I worked at the confocal microscope taking pictures of my stained kidney section slides.  My project is coming together and I’m quite pleased about that.  Something odd happened at lunch though.  I sat in the “tea room” where all the scientists are supposed to eat and there were two other people in there chatting.  They talked for the entire time I was in there and yet didn’t speak a single word of English.  I’m not exactly sure what language they were speaking.  I do believe they said ping pong a number of times.  Oh well, maybe I’ll learn another language and some organ development over the next year or so.