Bad Blood

[A PSA For the Tl:dr People - You should always go and get a blood test at least once a year. It is responsible and sensible, despite the horror that results in the following novel of a blog post.]

---------------------------

I mentioned earlier that I had to go to the doctor a couple of weeks ago with a really bad allergy attack. At the time I was running a fever (probably due to a minor sinus infection) and so the doctor wanted to do a full blood work-up to make sure it wasn't anything more serious. Since I had missed my normal blood test on account of me being a lazy bastard (I usually get tested once a year on the week of my birthday), I agreed and had them run the whole thing.

-----------------------------

A week passed and I didn't even think about it, since my allergy problems cleared up after a couple of days. Then last Tuesday arrived and I went to check my mail after work. Inside was the envelope that the doctor has you address that usually contains your test results. I popped it open, but rather than a list of lab results, instead there was the most ominous letter I have ever seen in my entire life that was not written by a kidnapper.

[Note: This is a literal transcription of the letter, not an approximation.]

"Dear JASON," the letter read. "We have received the documentation from your recent blood test and they contain ABNORMAL TEST RESULTS. We need to discuss these results with you! Please contact our office as soon as possible to schedule a time to come in to meet with the doctor."

------------------------

First off - Seriously, how ominous is that? I went from zero to ready-to-vomit in about 7 seconds.

Secondly - Who the hell came up with the wording of their form letter? Do they have Satan on retainer as a copywriter?

You really feel the need to bold and CAPSLOCK the part about the abnormal test results? Yes, I understand that it's an important part of the letter, but short of springing for color and putting it in blood red, you're not going to make it any scarier.

And that little exclamation mark after the next sentence? I don't know why, but I read that line in this relentlessly perky voice that just grates my mind like a block of cheese. I mean, really, after that whole capslock adventure from 0.2 seconds ago, I get that it's important. That exclamation point just puts me in a bad mood.

The only way that letter could be more ill-advised would be to include a pre-tied noose in the envelope.

-------------------------

Anyways, continuing. So I freaked the hell out in as hardcore a fashion as one can. Because really, if you're a gay male in his early twenties who's already something of a hypochondriac, you tell me where your mind jumps first. Yeah, within 5 minutes of letter receipt, I was entirely sure that I had The Aids, and they were all over the place. Never mind the fact that I'm way less of a whore than I let on (almost monk-like, usually) - the deviancy had finally gotten me, only after 5 years as a practicing member. I felt like the first kid out in a game of freeze tag. Only with a lot more nausea.

I ran inside and grabbed my phone to see if I could catch the doctor's office before they left for the day. Of course I missed them by 3 minutes and got the office-closed recording instead. At that point I then realized that I would have to stew on this horrifying letter and what it could possibly mean for at least 18 hours, and probably more if I had to go in to get the results.

So I barricaded myself into my room and continued to freak out for the resulting rest of the night. Talking online, Jim tried to comfort me with the idea that maybe it wasn't so sinister. Maybe my diet of nothing but Pixi Sticks, Dr. Pepper, and pie had finally caught up with me and I had The Diabetes, instead. Which made me even more nervous, because what if I could never have Pixi Sticks or pie ever again?

This letter was the source of all evil in the world.

--------------------------

The morning finally came after the longest night in recorded history. The doctor's office opened at 9:00am. I managed to hold off calling until 9:01. The nurse who answered the phone managed to discern my name from my incoherent babbles and grabbed my file.

"Oh yeah, here we go," she said. "Yeah, we need you to come in in person to discuss the results. I can't do it over the phone. Will this Friday at 3:00 work for you?"

Note: At that point it was 9:00am on Wednesday. If two more days like the previous 12 hours were to pass before I found out the results, I would probably be a puddle goo at the end. I explained that fact to her and asked her if she could maybe at least give me an indication of how serious we were talking here: "Come on. Just tell me. Oh, is someone watching you? How about you cough once if it's life threatening. I promise, no one will ever know."

She was less than cooperative.

Finally, (perhaps sensing my imminent mental breakdown) she agreed to try to fit me in that afternoon as a walk-in, but couldn't guarantee me a time. I managed to make it through half a day at work without losing any excessive amounts of money or yelling at anyone, which considering the circumstances, I thought was very admirable.

Then, after an interminable 2 hour wait in a waiting room packed with (conservatively) 3,000 small children, I was finally able to get into an examination room. By that point I was as close to total insanity as a human being can get. And then just to top it all off, the exam room they put me in was not a normal one, it was an interview room with a literal fainting couch. Like they had this room specially reserved for giving homos bad news.

--------------------------

Then the doctor came in and told me that I had high cholesterol, and should really consider going on a diet.

--------------------------

SONOFABITCH

--------------------------

Ahem.

Well, that's the short version. She actually came in, glanced over my file, cocked her head to the side and said "So tell me about your parents."

Umm, my father is a minister and my mother is devoutly religious? Is this the part where we pour salt in the wound? Is that really where we've decided to start?

"Because you're very thin, but your cholesterol is near the range expected in the morbidly obese."

Oh.

Still.

Rage, man. Rage unlike you have ever seen. I would have probably exploded, except for the fact that I needed to watch my blood pressure, what with all that cholesterol I've got going on.

--------------------------

So now I'm supposed to be on a diet, where I don't get to eat things that are good, and instead have to only eat things that are gross. And oatmeal in the mornings. It's uniformly horrifying and I'm really bad at following the rules.

Considering where my mind was at before, though, I'm totally pretty cool with it.

But yeah, screw that doctor's office.

Head of Household Hunting?

Alright, so I'm moving in exactly 56 days. This sounds, in my mind, like a ton of time.

Only, after extensive consideration, it's totally not.

Break it down! (like in that song, except math instead of dancing):

• 9 days to officially declare that I'm vacating my lease. (47 days left)
• 7 days for the application/credit processing (40 days left)
• 14 days subtracted to make sure we have a house in place two weeks ahead of moving time and don't end up without a place to live and have to resort to freeway overpasses for shelter. (26 days)

That's 26 days (or 3.7 weeks) to scour Dallas and all the surrounding areas for a house that meets my exacting criteria and will still accept Frnak and me as tenants. Other words: Less than 1 month to find both a perfect house and a gullible-enough landlord to accept the shiftiest guy on the planet and a Borders employee as trustworthy. Factor in the (outlandishly) high costs of living in Dallas proper and the current (monstrous) energy expenses with summer coming up and what do you get? Someone call Felicity and that Crazy Couch Jumping Guy, what we have here is one of those Mission: Impossible scenarios.

It's not all horror, deadlines, and plummeting bank accounts, though. Looking at houses is a really heady, powerful feeling. And we're not even buying, we're just renting a place for a year. But the idea of even semi-ownership of any size space is really intoxicating. The first house I went to visit, I almost swooned right there on the porch when the realtor explained that the whole yard would be mine.

I now totally see why emperors always end up corrupted. Just the thought of ruling over a 15x15 plot of bermuda grass had me dreaming about planting a flag and expansively gesturing with big arm flourishes while saying something about being a "master of all I survey." I would totally do that at least 2 times a day, every day after we moved in, until Frnak stabbed me with a dagger or killed me with ear poison while I slept. (As is the end of all awesome emperors.)

Also totally sweet about a new house? Decorating and furniture arrangement! I don't know why, probably a deep-seated combination of my father's genes and my homo-tendencies, but both of those things just fill me with joy. I've been watching that A&E show Sell This House religiously for about 2 months now, and it is just the best thing on TV that's not How I Met Your Mother. I am enthralled by all their machinations and can't wait to try it out for myself.

Oh man.

What if I was allowed to paint the walls in the new place? I got goosebumps just typing that out.

Y'all can bet that when this whole ordeal is finally complete and I've moved into the new place, there will be a housewarming party of epic proportions, the likes of which no one has ever seen and lived to tell the tale.

Or, y'know, I'll be broke and living in a cardboard box under the 635 overpass, drinking Wild Turkey out of a brown paper bag.

Either way: Drunk and awesome!

Erryday is Friday

(Note: I totally started writing this on Friday, so I'm still allowed to make it a multimedia review day. So there.)

My head feels like it is fourteen times its usual size. And since I have quite possibly one of the largest heads in the known world, you can understand why this is a bad thing.

The drugs, they do nothing. I'm thinking today might need to become a real-live sick day. I haven't had one of those in over 2 years. I'm pretty sure my available balance of sick hours at work stands somewhere around 160. I could contract the Ebola and have enough paid time off work to wait it out.

Anyways, before it comes to that, various bits of reviews, notes of interest, and other things to keep my mind away from thoughts of my brain exploding directly out of my ears.


Books

Accelerando, by Charles Stross - Quick! Take every single idea you have ever thought of about technology in the future, be it good, bad, or indifferent, and write them all down in a list on a single sheet of paper. No time for punctuation! Okay done? Congratulations, you have now written one page of Accelerando. Please now repeat step one approximately 400 times, never re-using the same idea twice, add in an occasional poorly-drawn character and/or bit of plot (oh, you know readers, they just love plot) and then stir until you can't remember why you started the book in the first place. And, bam, you're done!

Yeah, we're done.

Admirable book, with admirable intentions, but reading this book was like hacking away at a redwood tree with a plastic butter knife - you might eventually finish the job, but by the end will you really care?

Book of the Dead, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - I know I must have said this several times before, but I love me some really cheesy suspense/horror. And nothing comes as close to perfection in that genre as these two authors. As a stand-alone book, this novel will not make a single lick of sense, as it is basically the second half of the already bloated Dance of Death, which was itself actually the second half of another book that I can't even remember the name of. The sum total of the trilogy is great, though. They use established characters (from a half-dozen other great genre books) so you don't have to worry about characterization because it's already built in, and instead get to work rocking out with a ridiculous series of exploits.

Yeah, the "shocking museum exhibit gala goes horribly wrong" bit is overwrought, but I got over it pretty quick. That said - Seriously, how many museum galas in this universe have ended in complete tragedy and multiple deaths? I count at least 3 or 4. And every single time the heroes warn everyone to stop, and every time the bureaucracy pushes the event through anyways. Is there no pattern recognition, people? Whatever, it was entertaining, that's all that matters.

JPod, Douglas Coupland - Several disclosures to start things off: I hated Microserfs for no real reason. Hey Nostradamus! was weird and really compelling, but still put me off. And I really hate when authors get all pretentious and do things like insert themselves into the story (see: King, Stephen) or mess around with fonts and word placement without any real reason (see: Danielewski, Mark - Only Revolutions).

Now that those are out of the way, I really dig this book. A lot. In fact, I read the entire 500 pages or so in a single day. Sometimes you just want to sit down with an incredibly quirky, completely unrealistic and improbable story and just ride it to the end. It's a really sweet (and gory) little book that just keeps ratcheting up the coincidences and jokes until it seems like the author got tired of typing. It was just fun and mindless and forgettable, and geeky enough to suck me in completely. Plus, I really tend to love books that randomly have strange lists for no other reason than the fact that lists are cool.

Movies

Breach - 1) Laura Linney is awesome and will always be awesome. 2) Chris Cooper is a really good and really underrated actor. 3) Ryan Philllllipe has got a giant knot on his forehead that might be the most distracting onscreen feature since Tom Cruise got that weird middle tooth thing corrected.

4) This movie was great, even though there was a very decided lack of action and a plethora of weird Catholic guilt all over the place. Might be a little too measured for my tastes, but in general I am way more of a fan of the thoughtful movie than the mindless one. A-.

Zodiac - And here we are again. Another really great (almost amazing) movie that pulls back from the action so hard that you're constantly left wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. I mean it's a serial killer movie and the guy directing it is the same dude who made Fight Club and Panic Room. In which several people were beaten with sledgehammers and Jared Leto was set on fire in one and had his face basically bashed in in the other. I was expecting more gore. But it is more thoughtful, more focused on how the killer affects those who are chasing him rather than his victims.

The ending really is something of a letdown, if only because the bottom just drops out of the movie. It fits well with the overall scheme - you're just waiting for a payoff that is never going to happen. Which, I guess, is what the whole movie was about, so bravo.

Whatever, Jake Gyllenhaal is so pretty and awkward and swoon.

--------------------------

So yeah, that was my Spring Break week, lots of books and a couple of movies. I blew my entire monthly entertainment budget in abotu 5 days, so look for way more discussions about household events in the coming weeks, while I store up money like a squirrel with his nuts, for the long winter that will be my house moving experience.

Wow, that was a tortured metaphor. I better get out while I still can.

So Where Were We?

You may have noticed that I haven't been around lately. When I say "you," I'm obviously referring to the imaginary readers that I still have after letting this place lie fallow for about a month. You're awesome, imaginary people that most likely do not exist.

Rapid fire updates of how I spent the last 20 odd days or so:

• Working. Working, working, working. Like a house elf. Coming into work at 8:00, leaving at 6:00-6:30, stopping only for about 30 minutes once a day to eat a sandwich at my desk. People want their mortgages and they want them right now, dammit. I am freaking exhausted and earning every red cent of my raise.
• Devon's birthday weekend, which was full of things that I would normally abhor, like piano bars and tequila but turned out to be wicked fun and was also full of things I love, like vodka sours, avocados, public drunkenness, IHOP, and that Proclaimers song about walking 500 miles.
• House hunting. I have just less than 2 months before I need to move. And I am determined to find the absolute best house out there. Items that I am looking for in my new house (in no particular order): Three bedrooms, at least two full baths (preferably 3), a distance from my office that does not make my commute more than 30 minutes, a back yard, a neighborhood in which we are not across the street from a crackhouse on one side and a church converted into a hippie/cult den on the other, a lease that starts approximately on May 15th, no longer than a 12 month commitment, that looks relatively new, with all appliances supplied except for washer/dryer, hardwood floors or very new carpet, at least 1,650 square feet, and showers that have really excellent water pressure. All for as little money as humanly possible. Is that so much to ask?
• Wild allergy attacks. The last of which happened yesterday and left me so incapacitated that I had to leave the office and sit in a waiting room with 2,000 small screaming children for 2 hours, rather than endure another second wondering if my head would actually explode like that one scene in Total Recall. I eventually left with an allergy shot that was effective for approximately only 14 hours, 4 different sets of blood tests taken (when it was determined that I was running a fever in conjunction with a sinus infection), 5 different stab wounds (3 small blood tests on various fingers, one full vial of blood taken from my arm for a complete blood workup, and an ass wound from the allergy shot), 2 kinds of antibiotics, a nose spray, a new type of allergy pill that is supposed to be less paranoia-inducing, and some lovely hydrocodone spiked decongestant that made sleeping last night incredibly enjoyable.

And, hmm, I think that's it. I finished a couple of books and saw a couple of movies, but it's not Friday and would still like to avoid reviews on non week-ending days.

How have all you imaginary people been?