Update, Part 1

Friday, May 18: After several days of walking around and tiring myself out, my body told me it was time to take a break. So I never left the house and never did anything useful, which seems to have been a good idea as...

Saturday, May 19: I finally had enough energy to run walk around town doing errands, walking a total of about 5.5 miles during the day. Go me!

Sunday, May 20: For various reasons, I only got four hours of sleep. For one particular reason, I was highly irritated with one of the housemates. When lyssabard invited people to come down and eat homemade chicken soup and be lazy with her, I really wanted to go, but sadly decided that this would be a bad idea since I had plans to do stuff on Monday and Tuesday. Then, after fighting the urge to bite off the head of someone in the house, and remembering that it had been months since I last felt energetic enough to go socialize with people, I called tlttlotd and Lyssa to let them know I'd very much like to hang out with them if they'd let me. Eventually their apartment had half a dozen people in it, eating tasty soup, playing with beads, talking, watching the Food Network, that sort of thing. After seeing Food Network celebrities eating in various diners, we decided that hamburgers sounded really good, so we went to Red Robin where I got a Bleu Ribbon burger and we all got more calories than we probably needed. It was a good day.

tlttlotd kindly agreed to drive me to a doctor appointment the next day, so on...

Monday, May 21: he followed Google Maps directions to my place and got somewhat lost. In the future, I need to point out to people that every one of the online maps anyone has tried to follow has been mistaken about where my street actually goes (if it acknowledges the existence of my street at all). After I called him up and talked him through the streets to my home, we made our way to the office of my latest neurologist.

About the new neurologist: Her office had no dogs wandering around and no Halloween pumpkins filled with pills. This is an improvement over my previous neurologist. The Doctor confirmed that the (lowercase-)doctor's office didn't seem shady to him either, so that was a good thing. She talked with me about my symptoms, read over the EEG report, inspected my MRI films and confirmed that the MRI looked normal, and said she'd like me to get another EEG. If the EEG is abnormal again, we can decide how to proceed after that; if the second EEG is normal, she can treat me for migraines instead. Works for me.

During the appointment, she mentioned that many patients feel better with exercise, and suggested that I should try walking, increasing my endurance slowly so as not to tire myself out too much. To my credit, I didn't laugh very loudly.

The Time Lord made some wrong turns driving through rush hour traffic, which may or may not have been because I kept commenting on the wrongness of certain church signs. The TARDIS needs a navigational system. Anyway, we went to a local diner so we could eat and let traffic thin out a leetle bit, then he dropped me off and drove home. I went to bed early that night.

Update, Part 2

Tuesday, May 22: I was having a good morning until about twenty minutes before I had planned to leave the house, at which time my body decided to remind me that it really doesn't like mornings and why didn't I consult it before deciding to leave the house in the early afternoon, which is practically morning anyway? So I called mariness, who was visiting the DC area for the first time in years, to let her know that I'd be a bit late. When I finally arrived at the Freer Gallery, I saw someone out of the corner of my eye who matched Mari's description. "That must be Mari!" I thought. Then, "I must go to the bathroom!" I dithered some fraction of a second before deciding to rush into the Freer to use a restroom, hoping Mari would wait. (By the end of the day, the Freer's security guard was greeting me like an old friend.)

After that little detour, I went back out to the museum steps where Mari & I introduced ourselves. First on the agenda was lunch, which was tasty as Smithsonian food usually is. Next, it was time to visit museums. It had been ages since I'd last done anything in DC more interesting than transfering from one Metro line to another, so I was willing to go pretty much anywhere anyone else wanted to go. We went back into the Freer and wandered around a while. After looking at nifty old Asian ceramics and things, we went into the Freer Gallery gift shop where we were awed by the prices of some items and by the amazing tackiness of other items. Then we visited the Sackler Gallery's gift shop, where we did pretty much the same thing. We overheard someone saying that most of the Sackler was closed in preparation for an exhibition next month, so we went outside to talk about where to go next, which decision was perhaps more difficult than usual because it turned out that many other places in the Smithsonian complex were closed at the time. We talked a bit more, and then Mari realized that she'd missed a few calls from her friend Kathryn (apparently also known as Australian Accent Girl). Oops.

After a few minutes of mildly confused telephone conversation, we met up with Kathryn, who needed to use the restroom at the Freer Gallery. I should probably point out that I can think of no particular reason why seeing Mari Ness should create a need to go to the bathroom. It was surely just coincidence. Anyway, because Kathryn and I were both willing to go pretty much wherever, Mari decided she needed to visit the dinosaurs again and we trooped off to the Natural History Museum. Yay dinosaurs! There were also ancient marine fossils, which marine biologist Mari very helpfully pointed out were often mislabeled. We wandered a bit, rested a bit, wandered a bit more, got kicked out of the museum (because it was closing! really!), and decided it was time to go take the Metro someplace where we could eat more food and have fun conversation.

Kathryn went home after supper. Mari wanted to go visit the monuments at night again. Realizing that the last time I saw any of the monuments at nighttime was in the early hours of 2000 and that I actually had a decent amount of energy left, I went along with her. Well, we walked a bit more than planned after getting off at the wrong Metro station, but that wasn't too bad. My superpower for the week seems to be making other people take the wrong turns. Anyway, the World War II memorial is beautiful lit up at night, so you all should go there if you have the chance. We spent some time talking, admiring fluffy families of geese and ducks, and dodging a few roving gangs of tourists. After a while, we realized that it really was rather late and we both wanted to get to Metro before the last train, so there was a bit of fast walking and then we said goodbye.

Wednesday, May 23: Woke up with a bit of a headache, but not nearly as tired as I'd expected to be. Walked a couple of miles, went to the library, did some grocery shopping.

Thursday, May 24: Did you hear that? That was the sound of me crashing. Couldn't keep keep my eyes open for more than an hour or two at a time, so I didn't bother trying. Didn't sleep much, but did spend a lot of time resting with eyes closed. Not in agony, but certainly in more pain than usual. Listened to music (old stuff from Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin). Managed to read a bit. Couldn't sit fully upright. Never turned on the computer.

Friday, May 25: Feeling better, I've managed to walk a little less than two miles so far. Now I'm about to check out LiveJournal. Did I miss anything?

Which Leading Dame/Man Am I?

Swiped from nalidoll:
( Silly quiz results of the evening )

So, who are the rest of you guys?