Piece of mind

This from the AAA website on traveler's checks:

• Foreign Currency
• For piece of mind, buy before you travel.

Back to the Future, Part III

I love this trilogy. Nostalgia, yum. There's this one part where Doc and Marty are discussing ways to get back to 1985. Marty shoots down an idea, saying it won't work.
Doc: "[No], Marty, it's perfect! You're just not thinking fourth-dimensionally."
Marty: "Right, right, I have a real problem with that."

I don't know why, but I laughed my ASS OFF at that. It was hilarious. I think it may be partly because I do time perception research.

Savage Love

Oh damn, I am at least three weeks behind on Savage Love columns. Need to catch up on what the freaks are up to.

Still awake after all these years.

I had some coffee earlier today, in the afternoon. It tasted so fucking good and I gulped it all down. I can't wait to have some more tomorrow. And Lord knows I'll need it since I can't fuckking go to sleep now!
Dammit.

Annoying, but with Good Taste

It's fairly commonplace to meet a person who's developed good taste in some arena of life, whether fashion or music or literature. Unfortunately , when a person developed good taste, it usually runs neck and neck with a shriveling up of humility and compassion. It's really annoying me, these people I meet. So what if I like Seinfeld and Toto?

I've done something stupid

I've left my power cable to my laptop at my parents' house in Dallas. I've got 31 minutes worth of juice left in this thing, and then I've got til next Wednesday before I get it back. Arrrggg.

Boldly go where no one has gone before: Outside.

I watched Fight Club tonight. It always has such a dramatic effect on me. There's a line in the movie, right after the main character moves into the shitty house on Paper Street, where he says (in monologue), "I didn't even miss TV."
It set something off for me. All I've done today, aside from a little programming, was watch TV. I stopped tivo-ing my favorite shows two weeks ago. But I still sit in front of the TV every weekend and flip through the channel guide, and I invariably find things to watch. But that idle comment triggered something. How wonderful, how nice would it be, how perfectly zenlike, to not be television's bitch? to not be an incredible slave to my idleness? It just so happens (and this may be TMI), I was also half naked. While I was on the phone, cancelling service with Time Warner and Tivo, I looked down at my disgusting pasty blobby body. I threw on a pair of gym shorts that used to be loose that are now snug. I'm so disgusted. There's no part of me that's lean or fit or efficient. Not my brain and certainly not my body. I've been backsliding into idleness for so long, that I've assumed that things that didn't come easy, I just wasn't destined to do. Well fuck that. No more.

Acid reflux is not a superpower.

Anyone who's been within 5 feet of me when I'm stressed out knows I have acid reflux. Acid reflux sounds kinda cool, like I could shoot acid out of my mouth or maybe my wrists ala Spiderman. And the "reflux" part makes it sound like it's a knee-jerk pistol-whipping cat-like reflex. But it's not a cool superpower. Unless superpowers can include belching every 14 seconds with a persistance that would astonish you if it weren't so pathetic.
And that's my current problem. Acid reflux is a gassy, belchy gross problem, and I've just moved into an office that's all cubicles and everyone can hear every rumble. Or smell it.
I was in the car with Praztitute earlier this week. I did one of those under-my-breath inaudible belches. You know, the kind where your cheeks momentarily blow up like a helium balloon and then you discreetly whooosh it out. Six seconds later, Praztitute turns to me: "Dude! Did you burp? I smell garlic and marinara." Which was an accurate diagnosis, since I had just had garlic bread and spaghetti sauce...three hours earlier.
My stomach is an acid cesspool with swamp gas. I get to taste my food hours after I've eaten it. It's made for some interesting combinations. Today I got an delayed replay of a white chocolate mocha latte + store-bought unagi sushi.
I am lucky though. I can control the problem by a) taking a medicine called Prevacid and b) not getting so stressed out. The medicine works really well. So well that I'm having the typical don't-trust-the-man-it-must-be-black-magic superstitions. There are people who don't take medicine that they knew works for them just because they don't like the idea of taking a pill every day for a long time, even though it would probably mean that their quality of life would improve and would probably improve the long-term prognosis of their condition. Those people are idiots.
And now I'm one of them.
Somehow, it made sense to me that having acid rot away your stomach lining, and belching more emissions than a Land Rover was the BRAVE thing to do. Life is pain, suck it up, and deal with it. And if in 15 years you've eroded a hole through your torso, well at least you've built some character in the meantime and by gum, you're leading a pill-free existence! You could also probably reach through your gut and crack your better than your chiropractor can.
So I'm going to start popping the pills. In the meantime I'm going to try eating things like baby powder or country apples or lavender blossoms; at least then when I burp it out later, I'll have saved money on air freshener.