Day 156, Monday, July 1st, 2013
Happy Canada Day, everyone!
In medically expatriated celebration of our national day of
pseudo-pride, Ash and I made poutine with mushroom gravy, as pictured below. It
was delicious. She spent approximatly twenty minutes, post-ingestion, drawing a
maple leaf in the gravy leavings with her fork, at first, but soon gave up on
the utensil as an art tool, opting for torn fragments of paper towel. It turned
out rather well, all things considered.
This being the land of the free and the home of the brave,
though the definitions of such things appear to vary wildly from person to
person and state to state, the simple existence of Canada Day is neither
well-known, nor well-celebrated, and I found myself having to give many people
a basic run-down of the nominally entailed experience, which is to say that I
explained that we, as a people, make unhealthy food and look at fireworks,
while feeling vaguely nationalistic. Our national pride is comparatively null,
when registered against the sort of patriotic fervor that surrounds the
upcoming Fourth of July celebrations, this Thursday. I'm actually quite looking
forward to my first Independence day, for the simple fact that I assume that a
large centre like the Greater Seattle Area will upend a significant amount of
money in the form of an annual pretty-sky-explosion stipend to facilitate the
titillation of the masses. Further, this mass titillation is set to add
temporary horizon-based colouration from Lake Union, a mere six or seven blocks
North of the SCCA House. We plan to hie and hence ourselves seven stories up to
the wonderfully accessible roof of said domicile, where we should have a fairly
unobstructed view of the celebratory kablams.
In the intervening seventeen days since my last post, there
have been very little in the way of substantial medical happenings. I did develop some
graft-versus-host-disease, mostly characterized by a spate of individual, but
clustered, reddish dots on my upper thighs and torso; and further, by the
refrequenting of my bowels by the phantom of the fearfully faithless
flatulence, which is to say the return of the untrustworthy petard. To be fair
to my bowels, there was a sort of cold-war-esque pact of mutually acknowledged
distrust, wherein they didn't actually try to slip anything past my defenses
under the guise of great urgency, and I didn't attempt to pass anything while
not seated upon porcelain. It turns out that mutually assured destruction works
better between you and your descending colon than between nuclear powers. In
accordance with the development of GVHD, I was given a trio of oral steroids,
one, the temporary panacea of prednisone, the other a pair designed to coat and sooth the upper and lower gastro-intestinal tracts. They've done their jobs
well, and I feel generally far more composed, energetic, and able to broaden my
food inputs to a pleasantly enjoyable level once more. Similarly, my skin has
cleared up wonderfully.
The prescription of steroids to counteract the GVHD had the
extremely pleasant effect of rendering me energetic enough to adventure once
more, albeit in my continuingly limited fashion: I am still under orders to
avoid crowds and crowded venues, so while Ash and I have been exploring and
enjoying the area, we have been doing it during off-peak hours, and at off-peak
events. No Pike Place Market for us, though Target and the nearby Regal Cinema
have been frequented.
We took in World War
Z, which diverged wildly from the book, seemingly deliberately acquiring plot-holes
as it went on. For all that, not a terrible movie.
We also ventured down to the Chihuly Glass Museum, which
sits in the lee of the Space Needle, and has some pretty neat stuff, though
most of the other patrons spent significantly more time looking through the
viewfinders of their phones and iPads than actually using their inborn optics
to appreciate the artwork. My favourite pieces were the incredibly lifelike sea
creatures. Sadly, these works did not feature the Mantis Shrimp.
Chihuly himself looks sort of like pudgy-pirate-Garfunkel,
or, for a more topical reference, the neighbour from That 70s Show, sporting an
eye patch.
Mostly, Ash and I have simply been enjoying each other's
company, and doing a lot of both walking and sitting on the roof, enjoying the
ridiculously nice weather Seattle's been showing off lately. It's been a great
time, and it is simply a treat to be in each other's presence after so long
apart, especially since we'd already promised ourselves no more long distance
once, after she finished up in the UAE.
We had wanted to check out the Pride Parade, since,
especially after SCOTUS slapped down a good portion of DOMA, this would have
been a heck of a parade to see in person, but the projected crowds were immense
(this was borne out by the actual crowds), so we opted merely to read about it
online. Ash did make a trip down to Whole Foods during the parade, and while it
was not part of the actual parade route, she said that the store and sidewalks
were absolutely packed with happy couples and many, many children in rainbow
face paint, all of whom were having an obviously wonderful time.
If I were going to live anywhere in the United States of
America, I think it would be Seattle. The food's great, the weather suits me
fine, the culture of the area suits me better than the weather, and it is an
amazingly accepting place. Honestly, the single biggest factor that stops me
from even considering it in the long term (you know, once I actually get around
to finishing university) is that the Americans pay teachers slave wages, and
I'm not moving anywhere without Ash, whose primary vocation is teaching. It's
just not happening.
"And when there
were three sets of footprints, that's when I realized Jesus was actually two
little kids in a trenchoat."
-
Steve Mieczkowski (@igotsmarts), via Twitter
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