Tag: Welcome to Night Vale

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: August 17, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,
I’ve been sick with the plague half the week and traveling a lot the other half, so not a whole lot of what I wanted to do got done. There was also a lot of sleeping involved, and it’s hard to consume media when you’re dreaming of living in a villa in Italy.

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Listening

  • Cabin Pressure
    Still working my way through the series, but I’m now at the beginning of season 3, which means it’s only a few more short cabin commutes before I’m done again. Thankfully, I’ve got a few things lined up to take its place.
  • Night Vale
    I mentioned this last week and a few days prior to that and finally got a chance to listen to 5 or so episodes of the show. It is delightful and reminds me much of our little village in northern Michigan. It’s especially poignant when reading the police blotter of the weekly newspaper.

Reading

I cannot tell a lie Internet, reading has been poor but in so far as books have gone. I’ve been consuming more content via my RSS feeds — even bankrupted the count to 0, which was glorious, and have been keeping up with feeds instead of shunning them like the pox. I’ve also been keeping up with my magazine subscriptions (Vanity Fair, New Yorker, JASNA, American Libraries) and work routing magazines (BBC History, Computers in Libraries, Library Journal).
Books currently in rotation:

Watching

  • Miranda
    I binged watched this again while I was sick this week and I still love every moment of it. Rumours are that it will be back in 2015, which seems awfully far away but isn’t. My next goal is to pick up her book, Is it Just Me?. in audio format as that is apparently the only way to consume it as Hart herself narrates.
  • Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England
    Based on the book of the same time, Ian Mortimer takes you through a time period but as a travelling guide. Interesting concept, and in written form it works quite well. In visual form, some of the effects were off putting and I found myself mind wandering in some spots, but overall very interesting. The two biggst issues I had were of the constant shots of Mortimer walking through desolate fields and the CGI drawn in effects how things might have looked. It felt a little too flash bang.
  • The Bridge (US)
    Based off the Swedish/Danish series of the same name, the US version places a murder on the Bridge of the Americas, joining El Paso, TX and Juarez, Mexico. Crime solving with one main character from each state department entangles, hilarity ensues. Not really. While the show as a lot great moments, some of the characters seems a little wooden. We also found that while we have watched all the episodes, the catch up of the previous week’s episodes we never saw or remember. Despite its quirks and often sloppy dialog and plot lines, there is enough to keep us entranced each week.

Weekly watching: Project Runway, The Newsroom, True Blood, Sons of Anarchy, Burn Notice,  Da Vinci’s Demons,  The Vampire Diaries
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2011, 2010

 

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: August 10, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Listening

  • Night Vale

Watching

Weekly watching: Project Runway, The Newsroom, True Blood, Sons of Anarchy, Burn Notice,  DaVinci’s Demons,  The Vampire Diaries

Links

x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012, 2010

If you see a red flag, run

Liberal Unionist poster, circa 1905-1910. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.
Dear Internet,
Dr. H. has become pushy, for him at least, on what drugs I am and am not taking. I should not fault him too much, because interaction could mean death. But he’s been pretty insistent my Metformin script is causing the havoc with me as of late, and I have to say, he may potentially have a point. I was pulled off of Metformin, after being on it for years, last winter when my GP and I were attempting to figure out if I was diabetic or not when I was going through all my ankle surgery woes. I use Metformin for my PCOD, but since it’s original intent is for pre-diabetics and diabetics not on insulin, it made sense to pull me off of it to make sure my blood work was not throwing up false negatives.
This, of course, all starts before Dr. H. and I start meeting and I’m off of Metformin for months. I think I finally went on it back in March when I got the all clear from the orthopedic surgeon on my ankle and my GP that I was not diabetic. Hurrah!  Shortly after I start taking Metformin again, it was around that time when the sleepiness and other bi-product of lithium would appear and then disappear a few days later.
Since my sleepiness has been ebbing and flowing the last few days, I decided to do an experiment of my own by taking myself off the Metformin and see what happens. Oddly the day I stop taking it is the day I start my period, and I hope ultimately this doesn’t end up as a choice: regular, pain free periods OR less crazy.
Dr. H. wants me to start Wellbutrin this week as he’s also pretty convinced this will save my soul, thus once I’ll get my prescription filled, the regime will be:

  • 500mg Lithium, 3x a day
  • 1 mg of Klonopin, night (during day as needed)
  • Wellbutrin, morning
  • Daily vitamin, morning
  • Glucosamine Chondroitin, morning
  • Metformin, morning (On hold)

I’m ending the Glucosamine Chondroitin as it doesn’t seem to do anything for me anymore. I need to do more research into the vitamin shenanigans before giving that up completely. I’d like to get myself off as many drugs as possible in the end. Too much evidence is showing me a healthy diet and serious exercise regime is much more therapeutic rather than dosing me up with chemicals. Except for Klonopin, as that is the savior to everything.
In so far as exercise, TheHusband and I walked two miles yesterday and today I  did entertain the idea of rowing, so there is that.
I’m not terribly sure if it is because I stopped the Metformin today OR if my period started, but what I do know my sleepiness is not as terrible as the day has progressed as it has been for the last few weeks. This morning I still had coffee and later, a 12 oz Red Bull, but I felt like I kept my shit together while I worked and I did drink a lot of water, which later supplemented with a bottle of coke. Maybe my caffeine intake is spiked and I need to adjust that more? I did stop drinking caffeine when I was on the legal meth for my ADHD and didn’t really miss it. I’ve also done routes of stopping caffeine after say noon to help me sleep better.
Right now this is not so much as planning as it is talking out loud to myself. Like I said, the boring bits of every day life but one I would like to track with gusto.
Dr. H’s idea behind the Klonopin is if I take it at night, every night, then a lot of the stress and other triggers that seem to randomly come and go will be squashed. If I can sleep a full night’s sleep, deeply, without fretting then I own’t be tired in the morning, and if I’m not tired then I’m not mainlining caffeine of of a hooker’s ass, and well, you get the picture. The number that is counting up after my name in all these recent posts is the number of nights I’ve taken Klonopin before bed, so that I could keep track in some form.
After a week of this inhaling of my wonder drug at night, and still feeling like death warmed over on a daily basis, Dr. P. suggested I take Klonopin earlier in the evening, say between 6-7PM so that the entire life of the drug would have cycled through before morning. The reason why this is important is because by taking it at my usual time (9-10PM or so), by the time I get up in the morning, the drug has such a long half-life, it would still be feeling the zombie effects come morning.
Makes a lot of sense.
Even with all of the Klonopin inhaling, I am still having panic attacks. Nothing to the extent like they used to be, but they are still there. One popped up an said hello today at around lunch time, so I popped half a Klonopin and did some breathing exercises to exorcise that demon. No one has time for that shit!
My social feeds have been abuzz about Night Vale, the podcast that is eating up the airwaves. Told in the format of community updates of the small desert town of Night Vale, it is the most delightful podcast. The show has been on for over a year now and one of the lovely things about finding out about something long after it has started is that you can gorge on the episodes. I would highly suggest you checking this out.
Finally, after weeks of trying to make this happen, TheHusband and I were able to make homemade pizza for dinner tonight and I did not die! As I’m allergic to cow milk and I can tolerate sheep and goat milk, how would I fare with buffalo milk? Namely, buffalo mozzarella?
Apparently, in all of Grand Rapids, the locations to get true buffalo mozzarella are minute. Once we found a place, I grabbed some gluten free crust for me and made a wheat based crust TheHusband. Below is the gluten free version.
http://instagram.com/p/csNwGivJDP
The taste? Not bad. I like thin crusts so that worked out well, the cheese didn’t spread as much as I had hoped, but as we bought only a single container, we weren’t sure how much would last for pizza. TheHusband made the sauce, which was sweet just as I liked it. Overall, probably the best version of pizza I’ve had since being diagnosed with my allergy and the ability to at least get gooey cheese was orgasmic. We will be making this again.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #13)

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012, 2012, 2003

Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes: August 3, 2013

Johann Georg Hainz's Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
 
Dear Internet,

Writing

The Lisa Chronicles

Reading

710Lybld0pL._SL1500_ What the World is Reading 2013 Sampler (Amazon | Google Books)
While at ALA, I was very judicious in picking up ACRs but couldn’t resist this sampler from Penguin. What is brilliant about the sampler is that it gave me bite size chunks of new authors with the downside being that I could not finish the story without buying the book. The first taste is always free.
Out of the dozen or so tales, I was intrigued with three or four of them enough to add them finish later on, but over all I thought the collection was fairly weak.
You can download the sampler, for free, from Amazon and Google Books.

Listening

Now that I’m commuting between Throbbing Manor and Throbbing Cabin, I’ve started listening to my radio shows again. I’m doing a run through of The Castle and Cabin Pressure – both again. Season 4 of The Castle came out last fall and I realised I had not listened to it. And Cabin Pressure? Well bing bong!  Next up on the list is Welcome to Night Vale, which has become the new black according to all of my internet friends.

Watching

Weekly watching: Project Runway, The Newsroom, True Blood, Sons of Anarchy, Burn Notice,  DaVinci’s Demons,  The Vampire Diaries

Links

x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012