Goats!

Seattle City Light is bringing goats in to manage blackberries, etc. I like picturing this as an army of Seattle City Light-helmeted goats. Some of them wear bright orange vests in this mental picture.

WoW patch 1.12, or: "SANDLOL VANISHLOL ROUGESLOL"

So, for those of you who don't already know, I play WoW, mostly on Malygos. My main is a rogue, but I have a 60 warlock as well, a bunch of other rogues of various levels scattered through other servers because I'm a glutton for punishment, etc. Anyway, today is patch day. This patch was about two major things: PvP and rogue changes. I mean, there are bug fixes, but these were the two big things. The rogue review was a disappointment for me, but I won't make a long post out of that, since so many other people have made excellent posts on the forums about it and been completely ignored.
These are the highlights of the patch for me:

- One of the world PvP things they added takes place in the desert and consists of people gathering...sand...in the desert. I realize a lot of the aspects of any game are silly when you look at them, but this one just completely breaks down any suspension of disbelief for me and sends me into fits of giggling.
- Rogue review: I get to pay extra money to train up my skills to respec in the exact same spec that I had pre-review
- Vanish: still broken
- Gouge is once again causing poison to proc (gouge is a move that incapacitates your opponent and breaks if the opponent takes any damage; poisons, of course, do damage, so gouge is breaking itself)

But, I do sort of like patch day, because it guarantees a lot of funny stuff. Well, not funny for the people who are trying to play, but funny to me. Here are my favorite bugs in this patch from the Blizzard known issues list:

- Players are unable to eat or drink in an entire zone, Eastern Plaguelands (eating and drinking is used to regain health/mana)
- Players can get stuck in Alterac Valley (PvP zone) if buffed with warcry
- Druids' 6-piece bonus from a certain set causes them to stand up (??)
- Mages using Blink while in lava get teleported to the deepest spot
- Paladins summoning their mount causes them to enter combat (I'm not sure if this means their summoning gets interrupted as well, effectively forcing all paladins into being pedestrians)
- Paladins summoning their mount causes them to aggro guards in neutral towns
- Warrior: whirlwind increases weapon skill when not attacking mobs

Cross-server battleground bugs deserve their own paragraph. This patch, Blizzard made it so you can PvP agains people in other servers in the battleground areas. Anyone with an ounce of sense could see that this might be hard to implement and cause a lot of bugs...and I realize, there is no way to QA everything beforehand, but some of these things are pretty obvious--like everyone is rushing to try the new thing and BGs getting overwhelmed. Though I suppose there's not much that could be done about that specifically short of upgrading hardware just for the initial rush, which is dumb. But anyway--so far, reported bugs include:

- Unable to enter BG with "instance does not exist" message
- Unable to exit BG after winning (might happen under other conditions too...not sure)
- People getting flagged and not actually entering the BG--I supposed this could be a side effect of the "unable to enter" thing
- Entire groups being kicked out of matches due to "not enough players" and everyone getting the deserter debuff (this makes it so you can't queue up again for 15 minutes)--so for example, a game that takes a max of 10 players per side, you'll have both teams at the full 10 players, and people get kicked out with the "not enough players" message

But, not to be completely negative--here are my two favorite bug fixes in this patch:

- Invisible houses (official Blizzard text: "There are areas with invisible houses")
- The sound bug! This is one of the most annoying and long-lasting bugs in the game--it's not game-breaking, but holy crap does it get old. If you Alt-Tab out of WoW in Windows (not sure about other OS), when you come back, the music volume shoots up.

If the sound bug is actually fixed in the patch, I may have to call it good and consider this the Best Patch Ever, in spite of everything else.

I think it was the pepper shaker that broke the camel's back

Ok, here is something I don't understand: the fascination with fondue. A while ago we went to this fondue place in Queen Anne (I think it was my mother-in-law's pick). The whole schtick with The Melting Pot is that it's all fondue, all the time.

This is a place for people who think dipping stuff is fancy.

The booth-style seating comes with a built-in electric hot plate thing in the middle of the table--that is to say, a flat, round piece of metal that heats up, not a hot plate as a college student might use to cook meals in a dorm; the waiter/waitress makes a big show of, you know, flipping the switch, and then places a pot of some sort on it. This is apparently supposed to make you ooh and aah as if you'd never had a hot plate brought to your table when ordering fajitas at a Mexican place, or one of the many hot plate dishes availabe in Chinese restaurants. So, ok, waiter brings you the chunks of food you will be dipping, flips on switch, places some liquid in pot, and adds course-appropriate meltables to pot--these may be cheeses for appetizers, or chocolates for desserts, or cheeses and broths for main course, or cheeses and beer for main course, or dessert cheeses for dessert--because let's face it, the repertoire of things that are melt- and dip-friendly is somewhat limited. Waiter stirs. Waiter leaves. Repeat this for each course.

For our main course, the dipping stuff consisted of a beer base, butter, some cheeses, and spices. Since the place makes a big show of setting stuff up at the table (see: fancy switch-flipping above), I expected at least decent spices; but no, the waiter just picked up this generic seasoning powder (like the stuff you might find at Red Robin), and dumped some in. Same with the pepper--this place didn't even have the decency to have actual pepper grinders--the waiter just grabbed the pre-ground pepper shaker, unscrewed the cap, and put a dash in the pot.

This made me sad.

Don't get me wrong, the food wasn't bad--it just wasn't worth the prices, and definitely not the hype.

Chocodeath, Part Two

("Man is trapped in chocolate for 2 hours")

It didn't seem odd for some reason

On our way to work, I think I saw very large black and white picture of Bettie Page painted on the side of a house in the U district. It's entirely possible that I'm just on crack, though.

Smellbutrin part two.

Well, it only took a couple of days after getting my partial refill for it to start smelling like death. Since apparently with all the advances in medicine all anyone can tell me is "I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to smell like that," and I'm not willing to keep ordering a couple of days' worth at a time so as to not have medicine that smells like ass, I just went ahead and got the extended release version that the doc had prescribed for a couple of weeks after. This is the brand-name Wellbutrin as opposed to a generic; we'll see if that makes any difference.

I'm not emo, just depressed.

Ok, so I listed my arthritis meds, but I didn't mention anything about the depression. I have a harder time talking about it lately because I worry people will hold it against me, etc., insert excuses here that really I'm too sleepy to write out.

At any rate, a few weeks ago my new and improved all-purpose doctor (as opposed to my rheumatologist)put me on Wellbutrin. It seems to work well so far; I'm not depressed, and I have more energy. There are some side effects, though.

For starters, I'm dying of thirst all the time. Granted, in the grand scheme of things, a little thirst doesn't even compare with wanting to kill yourself all the time, but it's kind of annoying nonetheless. I'm also having trouble getting to sleep--usually end up laying in bed awake upwards of 45 minutes after turning the lights off. This is a bit more of a problem because, I already get really crappy sleep since I'm constantly waking up, what with all the pain and stiffness, so I am very very tired at work.

And last and most unsettling of all, I'm twitching. Literally. I'll be sitting at my desk, and my hand will twitch, causing me to hit a random key on the keyboard, or to click my mouse. My jaw is also doing this twitching thing--whether I'm talking or not, sometimes it just does this quick spasm jut-out thing. It's annoying when I'm talking.

I saw my doctor yesterday, and I told her about the twitching and other stuff. She seemed surprised about the twitching, though as I understand it, tremors are not an uncommon side effect of Wellbutrin, and I would've thought my twitching was in the same vein. She said I do have a very slight tremor in my hands (I hadn't noticed), but really, some people are shakier than others, so I don't know how I'd tell if that's my normal baseline shakiness, or Wellbutrin-induced tremor. At any rate, she decreased the Wellbutrin dose a bit, to see if that reduces the twitching over the next couple of weeks, and we'll see what happens.

On another note, my Wellbutrin stinks. Some time last week or the weekend before, it just started to smell. I didn't leave it out in the sun, heat, or any humid spot; I didn't spill anything on it; just, one day, it stopped having the normal, slightly unpleasant smell of medication, and started smelling very pungent, like rotting lettuce.

I called the pharmacy. The girl there confirmed that, indeed, their Wellbutrin did not smell (no kidding). When I tried to ask what I should do--in other words, is my head going to fall off if I keep taking this?--, she started chanting "we can't take your meds back" over and over until I hung up.

Yesterday, I asked my doctor about it. She said that generics sometimes have a sort of unpleasant med-y smell. Fair enough. I made her smell it.

"Oh," she said, "it's not supposed to smell like that!"

Duh. So she recommended I...wait for it...talk to the pharmacist. So, ok, after work, we drive to the pharmacy, and I'm determined to shove it under the pharmacist's nose if need be so they can give me some useful information. I don't want them to take the Smellbutrin back and restock it and resell it, for crying out loud; I just want to know if it's safe to take or what.

We get to the pharmacy drive-up window. In retrospect, this would have been better handled by walking up to the counter inside, but oh well.

It turns out that the guy who's manning the pharmacy window is a reject of the Fast Food Drive-Through School. He doesn't understand anything we tell him (we were also picking up some stuff and dropping off new Rx orders). Finally we stick the Smellbutrin in the tray and ask him to smell it.

"Oh," he tells us, "it's not supposed to smell like that."

I'm starting to sense a theme.

He seems perplexed. He thinks about it for a while.

He recommends I go talk to the manufacturer.

No way am I going to try to track down some obscure-ass manufacturer of generic drugs, try to find the appropriate person to talk to, try to explain over the phone what my meds smell like, so they can tell me "no refunds." I DON'T WANT A !@#$!@#$ REFUND.

He gets his supervisor, the actual, non-stupid pharmacist who we are used to dealing with. He smells the meds.

"They're not supposed to smell like that."

I fantasize about punching people.

I explain--or rather, I tell Mr Sporks (while getting exponentially more worked up by the second) again, that I just want to know if they're safe to take, if I should try to get a replacement, or what, and he passes it on, since I'm in the passenger side and the window is next to him. Mr Sporks explains. I fantasize some more about punching people.

Finally someone seems to understand what we're asking, and the pharmacist tells us, "Yeah, I wouldn't take these."

So the Drive-Through reject asks if we would like to get a partial refill to take for the rest of the month, which sounds like a good idea. Except, remember how I said my doctor was lowering the dose for the next two weeks? The idea is, if the twitching and side effects subside on the lower dose, after the two weeks is up, she will put me on the extended release version of the medication, which seems to have good results for people with side effects. Ok, now, try to explain to Mr Drive-Through School dropout that the partial refill you're getting isn't for two pills per day, but just one pill per day for the next two weeks; and that the script (remember how I said we were dropping off some new scripts? Well, the hospital has taken to printing all the prescription orders on the same sheet, so in order to get my regular meds I also had to turn in the order for Smellbutrin XR, which I may or may not need in two weeks) that we just turned in (and spent another twenty minutes earlier explaining that it didn't need to be filled yet) doesn't come into the equation at all...

I'm supposed to pick up my partial refill this evening. I have no idea what will actually be in the order.

Cigarette butts.

Cigarette butts.
Originally uploaded by kjm45.

The internet is for [food] porn.

I have been reading a lot about cooking and food in general. I really really want to cook, and I have a lot more energy now (more on this later), but I still can't, for example, stand at the stove for any extended period of time. So I'm living vicariously through food sites. My favorite right now is the Julie/Julia Project, which is excellent and very funny. I had heard about the book, but the blog had completely passed me--probably around the same time that blogs were becoming popular, and I avoided them like the plague, because a lot of the noise coming out of the blogosphere that everyone was all atwitter about, was just everyone echoing everyone else's take on the news. Plus, even though I host my ramblings here at blogspot, I reserve the right to feel "pfft, blogs! I had an online journal when you people were still in junior high! People used finger to get my entries! Damn young people."

At any rate, I highly recommend it, if you happened to have missed it the first time around like I did. One side effect though, I find myself swearing more than usual (which is a fair bit!) after reading.

I have also been reading chile.rec.cocina, since I've been sort of craving Chilean food. Not just the traditional recipes you make for independence day, but just the stuff that Chileans eat every day. Chilean food is sort of funny; there are some really tasty things, some that are very time consuming, and some weird retro pre-foodie things--lots of things in molds, for example; the idea of simple meals seems without merit to a lot of people (ie, if you just make something with olive oil and garlic, it might be tasty, but it doesn't count as a real meal, because it wasn't hard enough). At any rate, it's nice to read people speaking in "Chilean," and it reminds me of both the things that I love about the country, and why it's supremely stupid in some ways. A lot of ways. But that's also another entry.

But, stupidity or not, I would do all kinds of dirty things for a curanto right now. Mmm giant fish dishes...(here's a recipe, though in Spanish, if you're interested)

Se va a caer

I was going to make a list of stuff that I can do now since I started back on the methotrexate, but just a brief comment on Cuba for the time being.

I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories or the like--but I couldn't help but wonder, when it came out that Fidel Castro had "temporarily" ceded power to his brother Raul while he undergoes surgery, is he already dead? Like I said, I'm not usually given to such speculation, but god knows there are enough headgames going on between Fidel and, well, you know, the world, and it seemed very odd that this transfer of power was done with just a letter, no speeches, recordings, etc. Of course, every so often one hears rumors that, this time, he really really is dead, only to have him pop back up a few days later bragging about his health. At any rate, I realize that, the more time that goes by without an announcement that he has died, the least likely it gets that he's dead, but, I have to admit, the idea of Fidel Castro dying makes me positively giddy.

Still, though--embargo? Not working.

Meds meds meds

Ok, I thought I would make a list of the arthritis meds I'm currently on:

Daily:
20 mg prednisone
1 mg folic acid

Weekly:
15 mg methotrexate

I just got approved to take Enbrel, so I'll be back to the weekly injection thing soon hopefully. I forget if that's supposed to go every week, or every other week--I'm just waiting to hear from the pharmacy letting me know that it's ready. Hopefully this will allow me to lower my prednisone dose.

Ah, prednisone. 20 mg is a very high dose to be on. Doctors are shocked when I tell them. I have been on prednisone, on various doses, basically since I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. That's seven years.

That's bad.

The longer you use prednisone, the more likely you are to get some nasty side effects. And there are lots of them ("can range from mild annoyances to serious, irreversible damage"*):

- Retention of sodium and fluid (that is, swelling, bloating)
- Weight gain, obesity
- High blood pressure
- Loss of potassium
- Headache and muscle weakness
- Puffiness to the face
- Growth of facial hair
- Thinning (!) and easy bruising of the skin
- Glaucoma
- Cataracts
- Ulcers in the stomach and duodenum
- Worsening of diabetes
- Irregular periods
- Rounding of the upper back ("buffalo hump" [ed. their phrase, not mine])
- Retardation of growth in children
- Convulsions
- Psychiatric disturbances: depression, euphoria, insomnia, mood swings, personality changes, and even psychotic behavior
- Prednisone supresses the immune system, so you also deal with impaired wound healing, more severe and/or frequent infections, and decreases the effectiveness of vaccines and antibioitcs
- Osteoporosis and resulting fractures
- Aseptic necrosis (death and degeneration) of the hip or knee joints

Another catch is, prolonged use of this type of drug causes your adrenal glands to atrophy and stop producing their own corticosteroids. So you can't just go off the prednisone--you have to gradually lower the dose. Sudden withdrawal may induce an adrenal crisis which may include symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and shock.

Being that I am fond of my hips and knees, achy and creaky as they may be, as well as my eyes, digestive system, and bones in general, I am eager to get to a lower dose. Also, I would like my old, human, face back.

* a lot of the information here came from this article: http://www.medicinenet.com/prednisone/article.htm and from the Arthritis Foundation's online drug guide.