Social Disease
May. 17th, 2004 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothYesterday was kind of fun, despite some quite annoying drawbacks.
The first drawback was entirely internal -- for some reason, I woke up feeling like crap, after going to bed Saturday night feeling like crap, and sort of felt like crap all day. I might be getting a cold, or something... although I don't have any symptoms other than 'feeling like crap'.
The second was that I may or may not be infected with scabies. Apparently, someone I think I might have touched a couple times two weeks ago might have caught (and/or did catch, not really clear on that) scabies from someone I don't know well, so there's a possibility that I might have caught them... I found out about this at the END of the day, which was unfortunate -- Odi had a post about it, but didn't name names. Yay. Names, BTW: Blaze. Skykit. Tasho and people who live with him (although I think they're disinfected again now). Lex and Jordan and Briar and Grayfox and Darter and Alfadore and Slox and Soltris and Icey are in the same situation as I am, which seems to be 'probably not infected, but you never know'. See below.
I had some mysterious bumps appearing on my chest and back (one each), that *could* just be pimples, but... and I saw a little bug crawling across my shirt that could have just flown in through the window like the other bugs in my apartment (none of the owners of this place have ever believed in screens, or air conditioning)... so I called GHC's consulting nurse to ask whether I was infected and what I should do.
They told me basically not to worry about it -- just to wash often and look out for bumps appearing in a line, specifically, in various parts of the body that did not include 'middle of the chest and back, out in the open', and for intense itching. They said it'd take six weeks before anything showed up, but that I shouldn't be contagious until that happened, because you needed a large, mature population of the critters to spread them to anyone else -- and that 'sitting next to someone on a couch and touching their clothing' probably wasn't enough to spread it anyway. Oh, and the bug I saw couldn't *possibly* have had anything to do with it, because they're too small to see.
At any rate, the nurse's attitude was 'oh great, here's patient ###### calling about yet another hypochodriac fantasy that he read about on the net.' This isn't the first (or second, or third) time I've called up about some disease or other, and every time before I've turned out not to even really have the symptoms for it. So, even if I *am* infected, I can't get treatment for it yet.
Now that THAT'S out of the way, the good things. }:)
The actual gathering at crossroads was okay, but I felt kind of left out -- mostly because I went off and started playing magic with people, which cut me off from conversations and such. Magic is more interesting than people, though. }:P I also watched a couple of Yu Gi Oh games, and it looks like that game is a lot more interesting than they show in the cartoon. Although I'm not about to start yet another CCG collection.
In the middle I wandered off with a small horde of people who were shopping at various places in the mall, which is where I started feeling a little oogy (as noted above). If I took off my coat, I was cold, and if I left it on I started feeling overheated. No good solution there. By the time I got back from that side-trip, people were heading off for the movie, and I was trapped in a little cycle of 'Let me play against you in Magic -- oh look, SHINY!' from several people.
Then we headed out to gasworks, again. It's still a nice park, and this time I didn't spend the time just playing magic. We plopped ourselves down near the 'beach' (a six-inch wide gravel-lined opening in the wall of bushes between the park and the lake) and I tossed around a football-with-fins with some people for a bit, because I wasn't really comfortable getting involved in a huge furpile right out in public (!!). The pagan contingent wandered off to do their thing, and after a bit I wandered around the park to the top of the hill, to be by myself for a bit.
Then I rolled down the hill on my side, wheeee! I was *so* dizzy at the bottom... I couldn't walk straight -- it was like a gyroscope. My brain said 'go forwards', and I'd head off to the side.
Eventually, we headed for Lex's place again, but not after a brief religious war concerning some ritual at the top of the hill. Darter joked around about how as the only practicing Christian present, he should be doing something to break up all the pagan stuff, and was extremely skeptical about the 'seal' on top of the hill having any magical significance, since it was made out of concrete and brass.
"Besides, there's a church up on that hill, across the lake, see? It has a much better view."
"Hmm, if you draw a line from the church through this sundial, it points right at the Fremont troll!"
ANYWAY, we headed for Lex's place. I played a couple games of magic against Soltris and Morphy, then started helping Lex build new decks incorporating the extra commons I'd brought to help him out. Slox and Blake and Morphy had already taken some of the best cards, of course... and Lex wanted to build a deck of each color, which stretched the collection kind of thin. So it didn't really work out too well, although the resulting decks were *functional*...
Since the results were a bit disappointing -- especially the red deck, which wanted to be a burn deck, but had no efficient burn spells to use -- I spent some time today making a *proper* red deck for Lex out of my old red cards, the ones I don't use anymore. It works. It works TOO WELL. It has enough artifact hate in it (Mox Monkey, and some goblin that can kill artifacts if it goes unblocked) to totally shut down my artifact-focused decks at times, and it has real (if second tier) burn cards (no lightning bolt or fireball, but rolling thunder and incinerate and flame burst).
The only problem is that to make it work, I had to use four Dragon Whelps. And I *like* my Dragon Whelps. }:/
It was about 3am by the time I finally left to take the last few other people who hadn't gone home to their various domiciles. I need to remember never to be the last person present with a car again -- at least not while I'm feeling oogy! Lex and co don't have even a single car between the four of them, so I had to take Icey (I think it was Icey) back to Auburn, which was... well, a ways. And the route to get to his house once I was in Auburn was really complicated -- after the first four or five steps I started groaning every time he said 'Left at the next light...'
I almost got lost on the way back, but was saved by the fact that I was so low on gasoline that I'd been paying really close attention to the location of all the gas stations. }:P And by Jordan spotting a 'dead end' sign that could have wasted some time otherwise.
It was really, really late by the time I got home. I just crawled into bed and collapsed.
I've spent today really lazily. I'm still feeling a bit worn down, from whatever it is, so I've just been sitting around the house watching Inu Yasha, playing La Pucelle, and of course fiddling with old magic cards. I did get some good exercise in, though -- I started walking the normal morning route, and just kept going, 'around the block' with the high school on it. It's a really big block. Took almost an hour and a half. I wouldn't have been willing to do it without the Ipod. }:P
The first drawback was entirely internal -- for some reason, I woke up feeling like crap, after going to bed Saturday night feeling like crap, and sort of felt like crap all day. I might be getting a cold, or something... although I don't have any symptoms other than 'feeling like crap'.
The second was that I may or may not be infected with scabies. Apparently, someone I think I might have touched a couple times two weeks ago might have caught (and/or did catch, not really clear on that) scabies from someone I don't know well, so there's a possibility that I might have caught them... I found out about this at the END of the day, which was unfortunate -- Odi had a post about it, but didn't name names. Yay. Names, BTW: Blaze. Skykit. Tasho and people who live with him (although I think they're disinfected again now). Lex and Jordan and Briar and Grayfox and Darter and Alfadore and Slox and Soltris and Icey are in the same situation as I am, which seems to be 'probably not infected, but you never know'. See below.
I had some mysterious bumps appearing on my chest and back (one each), that *could* just be pimples, but... and I saw a little bug crawling across my shirt that could have just flown in through the window like the other bugs in my apartment (none of the owners of this place have ever believed in screens, or air conditioning)... so I called GHC's consulting nurse to ask whether I was infected and what I should do.
They told me basically not to worry about it -- just to wash often and look out for bumps appearing in a line, specifically, in various parts of the body that did not include 'middle of the chest and back, out in the open', and for intense itching. They said it'd take six weeks before anything showed up, but that I shouldn't be contagious until that happened, because you needed a large, mature population of the critters to spread them to anyone else -- and that 'sitting next to someone on a couch and touching their clothing' probably wasn't enough to spread it anyway. Oh, and the bug I saw couldn't *possibly* have had anything to do with it, because they're too small to see.
At any rate, the nurse's attitude was 'oh great, here's patient ###### calling about yet another hypochodriac fantasy that he read about on the net.' This isn't the first (or second, or third) time I've called up about some disease or other, and every time before I've turned out not to even really have the symptoms for it. So, even if I *am* infected, I can't get treatment for it yet.
Now that THAT'S out of the way, the good things. }:)
The actual gathering at crossroads was okay, but I felt kind of left out -- mostly because I went off and started playing magic with people, which cut me off from conversations and such. Magic is more interesting than people, though. }:P I also watched a couple of Yu Gi Oh games, and it looks like that game is a lot more interesting than they show in the cartoon. Although I'm not about to start yet another CCG collection.
In the middle I wandered off with a small horde of people who were shopping at various places in the mall, which is where I started feeling a little oogy (as noted above). If I took off my coat, I was cold, and if I left it on I started feeling overheated. No good solution there. By the time I got back from that side-trip, people were heading off for the movie, and I was trapped in a little cycle of 'Let me play against you in Magic -- oh look, SHINY!' from several people.
Then we headed out to gasworks, again. It's still a nice park, and this time I didn't spend the time just playing magic. We plopped ourselves down near the 'beach' (a six-inch wide gravel-lined opening in the wall of bushes between the park and the lake) and I tossed around a football-with-fins with some people for a bit, because I wasn't really comfortable getting involved in a huge furpile right out in public (!!). The pagan contingent wandered off to do their thing, and after a bit I wandered around the park to the top of the hill, to be by myself for a bit.
Then I rolled down the hill on my side, wheeee! I was *so* dizzy at the bottom... I couldn't walk straight -- it was like a gyroscope. My brain said 'go forwards', and I'd head off to the side.
Eventually, we headed for Lex's place again, but not after a brief religious war concerning some ritual at the top of the hill. Darter joked around about how as the only practicing Christian present, he should be doing something to break up all the pagan stuff, and was extremely skeptical about the 'seal' on top of the hill having any magical significance, since it was made out of concrete and brass.
"Besides, there's a church up on that hill, across the lake, see? It has a much better view."
"Hmm, if you draw a line from the church through this sundial, it points right at the Fremont troll!"
ANYWAY, we headed for Lex's place. I played a couple games of magic against Soltris and Morphy, then started helping Lex build new decks incorporating the extra commons I'd brought to help him out. Slox and Blake and Morphy had already taken some of the best cards, of course... and Lex wanted to build a deck of each color, which stretched the collection kind of thin. So it didn't really work out too well, although the resulting decks were *functional*...
Since the results were a bit disappointing -- especially the red deck, which wanted to be a burn deck, but had no efficient burn spells to use -- I spent some time today making a *proper* red deck for Lex out of my old red cards, the ones I don't use anymore. It works. It works TOO WELL. It has enough artifact hate in it (Mox Monkey, and some goblin that can kill artifacts if it goes unblocked) to totally shut down my artifact-focused decks at times, and it has real (if second tier) burn cards (no lightning bolt or fireball, but rolling thunder and incinerate and flame burst).
The only problem is that to make it work, I had to use four Dragon Whelps. And I *like* my Dragon Whelps. }:/
It was about 3am by the time I finally left to take the last few other people who hadn't gone home to their various domiciles. I need to remember never to be the last person present with a car again -- at least not while I'm feeling oogy! Lex and co don't have even a single car between the four of them, so I had to take Icey (I think it was Icey) back to Auburn, which was... well, a ways. And the route to get to his house once I was in Auburn was really complicated -- after the first four or five steps I started groaning every time he said 'Left at the next light...'
I almost got lost on the way back, but was saved by the fact that I was so low on gasoline that I'd been paying really close attention to the location of all the gas stations. }:P And by Jordan spotting a 'dead end' sign that could have wasted some time otherwise.
It was really, really late by the time I got home. I just crawled into bed and collapsed.
I've spent today really lazily. I'm still feeling a bit worn down, from whatever it is, so I've just been sitting around the house watching Inu Yasha, playing La Pucelle, and of course fiddling with old magic cards. I did get some good exercise in, though -- I started walking the normal morning route, and just kept going, 'around the block' with the high school on it. It's a really big block. Took almost an hour and a half. I wouldn't have been willing to do it without the Ipod. }:P
