As it turned out, it was Friday afternoon before the ambient temperature and the water temperature (and reliable availability) finally rose enough to allow the resumption of normal showering habits, or at least the cramped range of "normal" that this pit ever offers up, since I did find myself running naked through my apartment hunting frantically for the pliers so I could unscrew the showerhead and bang the silt out of it. (Once again.)
The Prequel's Progress: 28746, at which point I noticed I'd been banging my head against a question of event sequencing for about half an hour and decided to call it a night. Increase does not for the most part represent the scene I originally sat down to work on, but it seems to have arrived on the intended idea's coattails, so it's all good, hey?
It's something of a miracle that I both got that much writing done since the last update and managed to make it to the LJ MeetUp considering that I spent most of Monday and Wednesday ringing various changes on 'sick as a dog'. On Monday I woke up, had a pop-tart, and settled in with a stack of library books that had been due back the previous weekend (it was snowing, I didn't go out...), and everything seemed fine, until I decided a few hours later that the pop-tart sugar rush had worn off and it was probably time for something more closely resembling actual food. Not, perhaps, that spaghettios exactly qualified, but hey, I did buy three "american cameo" apples the last time we shopped, so let's toss some appley wholesomeness down the hatch to counterbalance the processed horrors, right?
Except that about half an hour afterwards, I went to look something up in the dictionary that lives on the floor beside my desk, and nearly toppled headfirst into the pile that I rather charitably call my worktable when I bent over. Well, yes, now you mention it, my eyes are tracking back and forth in that telltale inner-ear-disturbance sort of a way, what the hell did I do? Sit down, breathe, catalog events of day... nope, just sat around and ate. So, either massive stroke (unlikely, no headache), carbon monoxide poisoning from furnace (house too drafty and cats not ill), or food-related issue; I decided, based on the occasional extremely fruity burp, that unlikely as it sounded, the most likely trigger for this reaction was the seemingly innocuous apple, either something it was sprayed with or simply the apple's genes itself, since there are a few varieties of apples ("jonathan" for one) that I do know give me dreadful headaches. (I am a walking argument against transgenic foods... how, for example, can you be allergic to iceberg lettuce? There isn't anything to iceberg lettuce...)
So, I decided to sit down and ride it out, since I know from bitter experience that the all but inevitable outcome of such things is an eventual genuflection or two in front of the porcelain furniture, and sat around popping pepto-bismol tablets in the attempt to stave off such, until 11:30 that night, when I tried to lie down again after a day of failed attempts to do so without the dizziness regrouping for another attack and shortly found myself looking at some extremely nasty new contents of the wastebasket beside my bed. Identification of same doubtful, as one might expect, but did look suspiciously like chewed-up apple pulp. Got up, brushed my teeth, decided I felt much better now thank you, had some toast and went to bed.
Tuesday, completely fine. I had been worried about making it to the LJ MeetUp, but in fact I had enough energy to walk over from the Wilson Red Line stop because it was so (relatively) nice out.
But Wednesday, ahhh, Wednesday.
Wednesday was the day of Angry!Colon!
Angry!Colon (not to be confused with Agricola, the Roman general made famous by his son-in-law Tacitus) had finally noticed the pepto-bismol. Angry!Colon, I keep forgetting, has some Issues with pepto-bismol in nausea-suppressing dosages. Angry!Colon was not pleased.
Angry!Colon took hostages.
Picture, if you will, an army of tiny soldiers. Since we've managed to drag Tacitus into this, we'll say that these are Roman soldiers, all bristly pointy bits and attitude and not nearly enough Russell Crowe because Australia hadn't been invented yet, dammit. Now picture that these legions are encamped in your abdomen having a disagreement about which of your internal organs to decimate first. And they're fighting amongst themselves about it. They're shouting and calling each other rude things in Latin loudly enough to scare the cat. And after this has gone on for a few hours, a tentative agreement is reached as to which organ to execute first...
I sent some Imodium down to talk some sense into them. The first negotiators were never heard from again, but a third volunteer was able to arrive at a truce that appears to be holding, although the legions are still doing occasional exercises in their hobnailed sandals. I am, needless to say, quite traumatized from the collective experience, and may take to my bed soon if the period between ominous lurching sensations continues to lengthen. I don't know how anyone can willingly subject themselves to those faddish colon-cleansing diet regimes...
The Prequel's Progress: 28746, at which point I noticed I'd been banging my head against a question of event sequencing for about half an hour and decided to call it a night. Increase does not for the most part represent the scene I originally sat down to work on, but it seems to have arrived on the intended idea's coattails, so it's all good, hey?
It's something of a miracle that I both got that much writing done since the last update and managed to make it to the LJ MeetUp considering that I spent most of Monday and Wednesday ringing various changes on 'sick as a dog'. On Monday I woke up, had a pop-tart, and settled in with a stack of library books that had been due back the previous weekend (it was snowing, I didn't go out...), and everything seemed fine, until I decided a few hours later that the pop-tart sugar rush had worn off and it was probably time for something more closely resembling actual food. Not, perhaps, that spaghettios exactly qualified, but hey, I did buy three "american cameo" apples the last time we shopped, so let's toss some appley wholesomeness down the hatch to counterbalance the processed horrors, right?
Except that about half an hour afterwards, I went to look something up in the dictionary that lives on the floor beside my desk, and nearly toppled headfirst into the pile that I rather charitably call my worktable when I bent over. Well, yes, now you mention it, my eyes are tracking back and forth in that telltale inner-ear-disturbance sort of a way, what the hell did I do? Sit down, breathe, catalog events of day... nope, just sat around and ate. So, either massive stroke (unlikely, no headache), carbon monoxide poisoning from furnace (house too drafty and cats not ill), or food-related issue; I decided, based on the occasional extremely fruity burp, that unlikely as it sounded, the most likely trigger for this reaction was the seemingly innocuous apple, either something it was sprayed with or simply the apple's genes itself, since there are a few varieties of apples ("jonathan" for one) that I do know give me dreadful headaches. (I am a walking argument against transgenic foods... how, for example, can you be allergic to iceberg lettuce? There isn't anything to iceberg lettuce...)
So, I decided to sit down and ride it out, since I know from bitter experience that the all but inevitable outcome of such things is an eventual genuflection or two in front of the porcelain furniture, and sat around popping pepto-bismol tablets in the attempt to stave off such, until 11:30 that night, when I tried to lie down again after a day of failed attempts to do so without the dizziness regrouping for another attack and shortly found myself looking at some extremely nasty new contents of the wastebasket beside my bed. Identification of same doubtful, as one might expect, but did look suspiciously like chewed-up apple pulp. Got up, brushed my teeth, decided I felt much better now thank you, had some toast and went to bed.
Tuesday, completely fine. I had been worried about making it to the LJ MeetUp, but in fact I had enough energy to walk over from the Wilson Red Line stop because it was so (relatively) nice out.
But Wednesday, ahhh, Wednesday.
Wednesday was the day of Angry!Colon!
Angry!Colon (not to be confused with Agricola, the Roman general made famous by his son-in-law Tacitus) had finally noticed the pepto-bismol. Angry!Colon, I keep forgetting, has some Issues with pepto-bismol in nausea-suppressing dosages. Angry!Colon was not pleased.
Angry!Colon took hostages.
Picture, if you will, an army of tiny soldiers. Since we've managed to drag Tacitus into this, we'll say that these are Roman soldiers, all bristly pointy bits and attitude and not nearly enough Russell Crowe because Australia hadn't been invented yet, dammit. Now picture that these legions are encamped in your abdomen having a disagreement about which of your internal organs to decimate first. And they're fighting amongst themselves about it. They're shouting and calling each other rude things in Latin loudly enough to scare the cat. And after this has gone on for a few hours, a tentative agreement is reached as to which organ to execute first...
I sent some Imodium down to talk some sense into them. The first negotiators were never heard from again, but a third volunteer was able to arrive at a truce that appears to be holding, although the legions are still doing occasional exercises in their hobnailed sandals. I am, needless to say, quite traumatized from the collective experience, and may take to my bed soon if the period between ominous lurching sensations continues to lengthen. I don't know how anyone can willingly subject themselves to those faddish colon-cleansing diet regimes...