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Mar. 7th, 2005 09:31 amFirst off, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. You guys rock so hard! {{{{{{{{{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
I am slowly recovering from my illness, which I am only now coming to understand was pretty darn serious. To give you some idea of how sick I really was, I weigh a little over 110 pounds at the moment. Those of you who know me will know how severe this is. (To those of you who don't know me in the flesh - I was never meant to weigh so little. Ever.) I went out for the first time in ages a few nights ago, and it was very interesting to see who complimented me on all the weight I'd lost, and who thought I looked horrible. I've been eating nonstop for the past week, sleeping, and doing little else. This weekend, I went to bed at 5pm and woke up at about noon the next day. I've been going to bed at 7pm this past week, and it is an understatement to say that I am a night owl.
When I have been up, I've been lousing around like no one's business. I have no energy at the moment, which is worrisome, but on the other hand, it's helped me to sit still long enough to get a lot of reading done. Some interesting things I've read online are this, which is a travelogue of a guy who went to North Korea a few years ago (I'd been discussing the possibility of going there with a couple of friends while we're in China this May, but we ultimately decided against it.), and this, which is a photo diary of Chernobyl, and is absolutely chilling. Having read up a bit on the photologue's background, it seems it was taken on an approved tour of the site, and not on an unauthorised motorcycle trip, as the author suggests, but either way, the pictures on that site did not leave me sleeping easy last night. (As an aside, the author's newest photo project, about battle sites around Kiev, is also fascinating.)
I was born in Cleveland, and some of my earliest memories are of listening to simulation meltdown emergency warnings broadcast from Perry Power Plant. At the time, I though they were cool - I was intrigued by this godlike voice "This is only a test. This is only a test..." that seemed to come out of the sky at random moments and could be heard from such disparate locations as the Lake Erie shore, the school playground, and my house. I also remember how the two reactor towers were a constant on the skyline on the drive between the beach and our house - my father called them 'cloud making machines'; I was extremely skeptical. Of course, it's only recently that I realised that this was all occurring around 1986, and that what at that time was just a mundane aspect of my life - it rained some days, some days they tested the Perry Power Plant warning sirens - was in deadly earnest, and probably in direct response to current events in Chernobyl. Sheds new light on my father's jokes - they doubtlessly masked a fair bit of unease on his part, raising kids so close to a nuclear plant.
That will be all.
I am slowly recovering from my illness, which I am only now coming to understand was pretty darn serious. To give you some idea of how sick I really was, I weigh a little over 110 pounds at the moment. Those of you who know me will know how severe this is. (To those of you who don't know me in the flesh - I was never meant to weigh so little. Ever.) I went out for the first time in ages a few nights ago, and it was very interesting to see who complimented me on all the weight I'd lost, and who thought I looked horrible. I've been eating nonstop for the past week, sleeping, and doing little else. This weekend, I went to bed at 5pm and woke up at about noon the next day. I've been going to bed at 7pm this past week, and it is an understatement to say that I am a night owl.
When I have been up, I've been lousing around like no one's business. I have no energy at the moment, which is worrisome, but on the other hand, it's helped me to sit still long enough to get a lot of reading done. Some interesting things I've read online are this, which is a travelogue of a guy who went to North Korea a few years ago (I'd been discussing the possibility of going there with a couple of friends while we're in China this May, but we ultimately decided against it.), and this, which is a photo diary of Chernobyl, and is absolutely chilling. Having read up a bit on the photologue's background, it seems it was taken on an approved tour of the site, and not on an unauthorised motorcycle trip, as the author suggests, but either way, the pictures on that site did not leave me sleeping easy last night. (As an aside, the author's newest photo project, about battle sites around Kiev, is also fascinating.)
I was born in Cleveland, and some of my earliest memories are of listening to simulation meltdown emergency warnings broadcast from Perry Power Plant. At the time, I though they were cool - I was intrigued by this godlike voice "This is only a test. This is only a test..." that seemed to come out of the sky at random moments and could be heard from such disparate locations as the Lake Erie shore, the school playground, and my house. I also remember how the two reactor towers were a constant on the skyline on the drive between the beach and our house - my father called them 'cloud making machines'; I was extremely skeptical. Of course, it's only recently that I realised that this was all occurring around 1986, and that what at that time was just a mundane aspect of my life - it rained some days, some days they tested the Perry Power Plant warning sirens - was in deadly earnest, and probably in direct response to current events in Chernobyl. Sheds new light on my father's jokes - they doubtlessly masked a fair bit of unease on his part, raising kids so close to a nuclear plant.
That will be all.
