Sam-K.net

Since the start of this most recent swelling/allergy problem, I’ve received three different compliments from three different people who are not my wife.

The day my face swelled up, Cary’s cousin remarked how I was still cute even with swollen lips. Maybe that was a sympathy compliment, but it was nice of her.

The night (well, early morning) I was in the emergency room, the nurses who were looking after me said that I was the nicest patient they had seen in a long time. I guess I can see how dealing with people at the ER can be rough; people who are in pain tend to be cranky. I try not to rock the boat. The nurses and doctors were nice to me, so why not be nice to them?

This morning, after the nurse at the allergy clinic finally decided that my condition wasn’t just my imagination, I went to the clinic to have some blood drawn, and the nurse who took my blood commented on how I had “beautiful veins”. Of course that just means that my pasty, translucent white skin just made it that much easier for her to find my veins, but it still counts as a compliment. I guess.

That’s the way I describe Joss Whedon’s latest mini-masterpiece, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

I became a Joss Whedon fan when I saw Firefly. I only started watching his earlier cult hit Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few days ago, so I’m late to that one.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a three-part mini musical that was written during the writer’s strike by Joss, his brothers Zack and Jed, and Jed’s fiance Maurissa Tancharoen. The show was viewable for free during the week of July 15 through July 20th (last week as I write this). Sadly, it is currently only available through iTunes, but the $3.99 you have to cough up to own all three parts of this 40-minute musical is well worth it.

The musical stars Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D.) as Dr. Horrible (real name: Billy), an evil villain whose master plan is to perform an act of evil and thus gain entry into a nefarious society known as the Evil League of Evil, and eventually rule the world.

Dr. Horrible’s nemesis is the super hero Captain Hammer, played by former Firefly star Nathan “I’m heterosexual but even I’ll admit he’s a hottie” Fillian. Captain Hammer has constantly thwarted Dr. Evil’s plans of world domination.

To say much more about the plot — especially the more pedestrian, non-super-hero parts — would ruin the fun. Suffice it to say that the third main character in the show is Penny, played by Felicia Day; she forms the third point in a sordid, musical love triangle, and that is where the fun of this musical really lies.

It’s a comedy, but it’s not without its tragedy and not-so-subtle social commentary. But above all, it’s fun and funny.

Nathan Fillian really hams it up as Captain Hammer, and Neil Patrick Harris delivers a great performance as an evil genius that you almost want to sympathize with.

Musically, the show is incredibly complex. Each of the three main characters has a “theme melody” that they he/she carries through the film. But what’s great is that, like many classic musicals like The Music Man, these three disparate themes elegantly criss-cross, overlap and intertwine in some of the show’s best songs, making for some great ensemble pieces.

Although the show is only viewable on iTunes, it will soon be coming to DVD (with plenty of extras, including, as mentioned by Joss, a DVD musical commentary!) soon along with the soundtrack.

The show has proven to be more popular online than anyone had anticipated, even causing a server crash when, according to the web guys at video-streaming service Hulu.com, 1000 people tried to watch the show in the same instant.

Joss Whedon was recently quoted in an L.A. Times article as saying that he and his fellow Dr. Horrible writers are currently “too busy talking about the giant Broadway adaptation, the much longer film version and the musical commentary that we’re writing now.” This quote almost screams tongue-in-cheek, but I guess time will tell.

While it may sound appropriately mysterious, the title of this blog post is not, in fact, the title of M. Night Shayamalan’s next film (though it could be — I mean it sounds better than The Happening; it’s like he’s not even trying anymore); it’s what happened to me over the last week or so.

I’ve been taking various allergy medications (Zyrtec mostly) after I started having random swelling in my hands and feet about a year ago. Allergy testing pointed to a few mild food allergies and — unfortunately — a not-so mild cat allergy as the culprit. So the Zyrtec started working and everything was peachy until about two weeks ago, when I started getting more minor swelling in my fingers. But last Wednesday, all of a sudden, the swelling got much worse, and my entire right hand ballooned. Eventually, the swelling went down and then moved to my left hand, and a couple of nights ago, the left side of my face started to swell. I called my allergist’s office and left a message for the nurse. They called me back that afternoon and gave me a prescription for Allegra. Since the swelling had already started, I couldn’t tell if the Allegra was working or not, so I called back yesterday and left another message asking if they could prescribe anything to bring down the swelling.

When I was having my allergy tests done, they prescribed Prednisone, which would lower the swelling without affecting the allergy tests (antihistamines like Zyrtec and Allegra will really screw up a scratch test). The prednisone worked, but since it’s a steroid, I didn’t mind not taking it for long. I’d like to keep my heart as strong as possible.

But this swelling just wasn’t going away, and the swelling on my face eventually moved across to the other side. Swollen lips are not fun. Eventually, my left hand swelled up and stayd that way. That was the first time the swelling in my hand was actually slightly painful.

Throughout the day, I left two messages with the allergy clinic. The nurse called me back eventually and said she would check with my doctor to find out what they can prescribe me for the swelling. That was at 10:30 in the morning, yesterday, and I still haven’t heard from them (I’m actually leaving a message with the nurse right now).

The swelling on my face worried me, but yesterday afternoon, it started to subside. At around 10:00pm, I noticed a tickle in my throat, which didn’t bode well. The urgent care center closed at 8:00pm. After about an hour, my throat started to hurt, but I wasn’t having any trouble breathing, so I decided to try to go to bed.

At around midnight, I awoke with a much more painful throat, but still no trouble breathing. At that point, I decided to go to the emergency room (Cary drove). Checking in to the Duke ER, I was prepared for a long wait. There were no less than 30 people in the waiting room in various stages of — let’s say “anguish”. Many of them were wrapped in blankets (though it didn’t seem that cold to me) and pretty much all looked miserable.

I walked up to the check-in station and gave them my name and symptoms.

At the ER, mentioning the words “swelling” and “throat” tend to get you pretty quick attention. Within about 5 minutes — before Cary even returned from dropping off the car — I was ushered into a room labeled “Triage 1″, where a nurse recorded my vitals and asked me about my symptoms. There was a knock at the door, and Cary walked in. Apparently, the word “husband” also gets you attention when you’re looking for someone in the ER.

Shortly after Cary arrived, I was taken to another room with much fancier equipment and a bed. I thought it was odd that there were no less than three nurses in the room with me. I expected only one, but there were three. Given the number of people in the waiting room, I was surprised there were that many people looking after poor swollen me.

The nurses asked me the basic questions about the swelling and if I was allergic to anything — my mention of cat allergies and the fact that we have a cat elicited a couple of “aw, poor cat” comments form the nurses, but I assured them that while I have been avoiding direct contact with Merlin, Cary has made sure to make up for it in spades.

Soon a doctor arrived, asked me many of the same questions, and after talking with the nurses for a bit, decided to put me on an IV of Benadryl, Zantec and Prednisone.

Megan, the nurse who started the IV was very nice, warning me of the pain I might feel (which was actually pretty mild) with the needle and describing what she was doing. My position on the bed prevented me from seeing everything. I did notice that as she was inserting the IV, Cary — who was sitting in a chair across from me and behind the nurse — suddenly made a wide-eyed “holy crap” face. Apparently, a rather copious amount of blood spurted from my vein when the nurse inserted the needle. Megan assured me that it just looked like a lot of blood, but it really wasn’t much. I wasn’t concerned, but was slightly amused by Cary’s reaction.

After the IV was inserted, Megan injected a saline solution into it and left to prepare the first dose of medication. First came the Benadryl.

I’ve never had an IV before — unless you count the one time I gave plasma in college just to see what it was like but that’s not the same thing as a drug IV because the only thing going into my body that time was my own blood, sans plasma — but I knew that drugs take effect more quickly than by other means. I was not, however, prepared for the lightning fast reaction of the Benadryl. As soon as the stuff hit my vein, my sinuses cleared and I began to get a case of the giggles. Both Cary and surprisingly, Megan seemed to find that a little odd, so maybe giggling wasn’t a normal reaction to an intravenous dosage of diphenhydramine. I didn’t really care, however, thanks to the Benadryl, but I did try to stifle my laughter a bit because the rapid onset of my need to laugh did kind of disturb me a bit. The giggles subsided after a couple of minutes, and then I was really really just plain tired. Next came the Zantec and Prednisone, which, to my relief, didn’t really produce any noticeable affects.

The doctor’s told us that they would monitor me for 3-4 hours while the drugs took hold, but after about 45 minutes, they decided that if nothing bad had happened yet, it wasn’t going to happen, so they wrote up my discharge papers and a 4-day supply of Prednisone and sent us home.

Thankfully, the Prednisone is doing its job, and most of the swelling has disappeared. We’re still not sure what’s causing this, so I’ll be keeping a better count of what I eat and come in contact with over the next few months.

So let’s say you’re a company called Eppendorf International, and you have this machine that automates pipetting tasks, saving wear and tear on thumbs. How do you market such a device? How do you get the word out to all of the hip chemists? With a dorky name like Eppendorf International, you’re going to have a hard time selling your machine to the masses.

The answer: Produce a fake Boy Band video.

Instant Sales

When Cary and I got our first apartment together, we quickly realized that one of the big challenges when it comes to our pets was keeping Megan from Merlin’s food.

Megan was used to a set feeding schedule; she was fed in the morning and late afternoon. Merlin, however, was accustomed to having food out all the time (which, I admit, is one of the reasons he’s slightly overweight. While Merlin never really got a chance to eat Megan’s food, Megan LOVES cat food, and would often sneak a few quick bites of Merlin’s chow whenever possible. Unfortunately, cat food makes Megan sick.

Within a few days of moving into the apartment, we found that putting Merlin’s food dish in the bathtub was the best way to keep Megan away from it. Merlin doesn’t mind hopping into the tub, and Megan is a bit too small to do so. Plus, Megan hates baths.

Since we never used the bathtub in the guest bathroom, this worked great.

Now that we have a house, however, this just won’t do. Here’s our current solution:

I only had to help Merlin into the bin once to clue him in, and so far, Megan doesn’t seem interested in trying to jump into it.

Cary and Cary and Chris and I are at a Mudcats game right now(who knew a AA team would have wireless Internet?).

Tonight I realized something about baseball: the lower the league level, the less foul ball activity is required to get fans excited. At a major league game, it takes a bare-handed catch by a fan to get a cheer. A foul ball that bounces off the walkway and into someone’s hand is enough to warrant celebration at a AAA game. But the crowd at a AA game will burst into applause when a ball hits the roof of the upper deck and stops at the gutter. It an odd phenomenon, and one that warrants further study.

Here are a few pictures before and after our weekend painting spree:

Living Room:

Before:	After:

Kitchen (the “before” picture doesn’t really show much of the wall color, but you can get the idea from what little is there):

Before:	After:

So I was planning to spend some time during last weekend making a few blog posts here and there with short updates to the status of the move to the new house, but that didn’t happen.

So here’s a recap:

Friday started at 8:30am, when we met our realtor at the house to do a quick walk-through. The first thing we noticed was that the sellers didn’t really clean up much. While they didn’t leave any trash in the house, they left it pretty dirty. I don’t think it’s really out-of-the-ordinary for people to move out of their house without mopping floors and cleaning walls, but I couldn’t in good conscience leave without doing a more thorough job. Cary and I made sure to vacuum our apartment and clean all of the kitchen and bathroom surfaces. I’d be embarrassed to leave a house in such condition, but that’s just me.

After the walk-through, we spent a couple of hours running errands (including renewing my driver’s license which had expired the day before), then headed to the attorney’s office for the closing.

We spent thirty minutes on Friday closing on the house. Apparently, getting a home loan through the State Employees Credit Union makes the closing soooo much easier. We signed our name maybe 10 times — and 7 of those signatures were for 7 copies of the same document — and initialed a few more places, handed a gigantic check to the attourney, and we were done. The sellers weren’t present at the closing, which is not really out of the ordinary, but what was odd was that their realtor wasn’t even there; another realtor from the same office showed up to sign documents for them. The strange part was that this particular realtor seemed to have very little information about the whole thing. He knew only what paperwork he was supposed to give to the attorney and take to his office. He mentioned that he had been told to show up only that morning. At any rate, we were done by 11:30am.

After closing, we took a trip to Home Depot to pick up a few things, had some lunch, then met with Cary’s Mom and Patty — they brought tons of paint supplies for us to use — at the house to start painting. Our plan was to paint the kitchen, master bedroom and master bathroom, and if we had time, to also paint the living and dining rooms. We worked until around 10:00pm prepping the rooms for painting. Cary’s sister and her boyfriend also helped us on Friday and Saturday. Over the course of three days, we managed to paint the walls, doors, trim, ceilings and closets in the master bedroom and master bathroom. We also painted the ceiling, walls and trim in the kitchen, and repainted the kitchen cabinets. Once the kitchen was finished, we had just enough time to tackle the living room and dining room, but didn’t paint the trim.

After all of that was complete on Sunday night, Cary and I drove back to the apartment at about 10:30pm, and worked to finish packing in preparation for the movers arriving on Monday monring. We worked until 1:00am, then took a 2 hour nap, got up at 3:00am and kept going. We loaded up both cars with delicate stuff we didn’t want the movers to take and made a couple of car trips to the house to unload.

The movers arrived at around 8:45am, loaded up our stuff and unloaded at the new house by around 3:30pm. The movers did a good job, but we did find that one of our dining room chairs was broken. Luckily, we got them from Cary’s uncle, so a replacement is on its way.

It’s Thursday, and we’re slowly but surely getting the boxes cleared away. The house looks more like a house, and less like a house with a child’s impromptu but elaborate box-fort inside it.

We still have some painting to do, mainly the trip in the living room and dining room, and the walls and trip in the hallways, but those can wait until our sore muscles have healed — and until the day arrives when we no longer feel a wave of exhaustion overtake us when we just look at a paintbrush. One of the priorities is to clean the window blinds, which were covered in a layer of dirt and dust. It became apparent during our first inspection of the house back in April that the owners never cleaned the vent filters. It’s a wonder that their kids weren’t constantly sick.