holy infections, batman!

on friday evening i randomly got a really bad sore throat. then i got what i call airplane ears. you know, where your ears feel like they're going to explode from pressure? my tonsils were red and swollen with white bumps. i knew pretty much instantly that i had strep throat. the only other time in my life that i've gotten so sick so quickly was with strep when i was, like, 12. 

on saturday i developed a majorly runny nose. then on sunday i started coughing. i was going to try to ride it out without going to the doctor because all they would do is put me on antibiotics and antibiotics don't really do much for strep. they can shorten it by about a day which isn't really worth the crappy side effects if you ask me. on monday night my airplane ears turned into icepick ears. the pain was so bad that i couldn't sleep. 

i finally caved and went to the doctor tuesday evening. he came into the exam room and asked for my symptoms. i listed all of them and he said, "you've just describe the common cold virus." okay guy, i know it sounds like a cold but i promise you i would not be here if it were just a cold. he said he would, "check me out, just in case." he looked in my throat and said, "whoa, we need to swab that!" then he looked in my right ear and said, "have you been aggressively q-tipping your ears?" why the hell would i do that when they hurt this bad?! he said my ear was super red, inflamed, and irritated. then he looked in my left ear and asked me if one hurt worse than the other. i told him the left did and he said, "yeah, that one is way worse than the right and the right one is pretty bad." 

so you want the diagnosis? strep throat, middle ear infection (bacterial), sinus infection (bacterial), and an upper respiratory infection (viral). my friend paul said that if i had a yeast infection i would probably win some sort of infection prize. then i informed him that the #1 cause of yeast infections is antibiotics. so maybe i'll win that infection prize after all! wah wah. so i'm on steroids, antibiotics and narcotics for the cough+pain.

and on saturday i'm co-hosting a bridal shower. kill me now. please don't, but you know. i'm just miserable and i'm trying to figure out how i'm going to get everything done in time. 

this is not a retraction

a while back i did some serious blogging about falling out of love with one of my favorite bands (gomez). well, not exactly falling out of love with but definitely not loving their new album. and the fact that i haven't seen them live in i don't know how long. no really, i can't quite remember the last time i saw them. i thiiink it was july 2009? is that right? whoa. i don't know. 

anyway, they're doing a big quinceanera tour to celebrate 15 years of playing together and they are FINALLY doing something that wilco, and other bands, have been doing for years. setlist requests! maybe if enough people band together and request as an organized group we won't have to hear any of the new songs. i kid. sort of. sorry, guys. so i think i'm going to go to the shows. two great friends of mine are getting married the day before the first show and many of my friends that i met through gomez will be in town for the wedding and i believe they're all planning on going to the first night before heading back to their respective home cities. how can i resist seeing the band that brought us all together with my wonderful friends? i don't think i can.

untitled

i don't think i've ever been the type of person to make new year's resolutions, probably because i know that i won't keep them. but i kind of think i should resolve to get off the couch and stop watching so damn much csi. it's all part of a vicious cycle where i convince myself that i lack the energy to do anything thus actually giving away any energy that i might have had into the cushions of my couch.

i may have the physical energy to socialize but most of the time i lack the intellectual and mental energy to interact with people on any level deeper than casual. i don't have anything interesting to talk about and i constantly find myself struggling with my attention span which makes me a pretty poor listener. it also means that i'm constantly rewinding all these damn episodes of csi because i wasn't paying attention when they flashed that fingerprint match across the screen.

ugh, my attention span is making it difficult for me to write this blog or even to remember why i started this post in the first place. maybe i need to up my vitamin regimen.

is this thing on?

hi. i have a blog? i'm mostly here to document the 2 nights i saw wilco a few weeks back. i had already forgotten some of the details so i decided i would come here and put it down, for my sake.

i was lucky enough to get into wilco's austin city limits taping on november 30. it was incredible. it was my third taping this year but i don't know if it was the best. arcade fire's was probably still the best for me but that's only because i've only seen them a few times whereas i've seen wilco a million times. anyway, the next night i saw them again when they played a concert to the general public. afterwards i was able to convince my very wonderful friend who works for acl live that we should go down to where the band was hanging out. he was understandably concerned that maybe it would be awkward or i would turn into a psycho since they're my favorite band. i assured him that i could handle my shit (i've met jeff before and i was totally normal) so we went!

i talked with nels cline for a while about my nephew who is basically named after him. he seemed to genuinely appreciate hearing about him and he even asked if i had a picture of him. i showed him this one and he said, "whoa, psychedelic!" 

as we were getting ready to leave i spotted john so i ran over to him to tell him how much i love it's just that simple and that it's always reminded me of neil young. he said, "really? i thought i was channeling danko when i wrote that." then we talked about the last waltz for a couple of minutes. i love those moments where you realize why you like something. we like the same music so it's only natural that i'm going to like the music he makes. i had a similar conversation with ben kweller a few years ago. it's like the pieces fall into place.

maybe someday i'll blog about my life. or something. 

pop! goes the weasel

i swear i'll update my blog for real eventually but this is too fun not to share. i made this from a couple pictures my friend amber took when we got together to celebrate sam's birthday this year. i can't stop laughing at it!

here's the deal

the deal is, i suck at blogging. but check this out!

i co-hosted a bridal shower for one of my best and oldest friends on saturday. it was way more work than i ever anticipated it would be but everything turned out perfect. 

alison and her fiance are both from louisiana so we used that as the theme for the food and drinks. we served popcorn with tony's, voodoo'd eggs (deviled eggs with crawfish and jalapenos), and cajun cocktail nuts as the appetizers. for lunch we had emeril's red beans and rice, a build your own muffaletta bar, and louisiana sunburst salad, a recipe from palace cafe in new orleans. dessert was bread pudding with many different toppings, hurricane cupcakes (passion fruit cupcakes with and orange/cherry buttercream), and creole ginger bourbon cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream. the cupcakes were my brain children and i think they turned out really, really well if i do say so myself. we also served hurricanes, iced tea, abita beer, and abita root beer. i have zero pictures of the whole spread which is pretty upsetting. i was just too busy hosting and socializing to even think about it.

up next is alison's bachelorette party. it's going to be very low-key and awesome. we're going to go to a local-ish winery for a tasting and then spend the night at a house on the lake. my sister and i are in charge of dinner and i'm thinking we'll do pork loin with risotto to pair with red wine and roasted chicken with mashed potatoes to pair with white wine and people can decide which they want, or have a little of each. then i'm going to make a banana chocolate icebox cake for dessert. it's all going to be so delicious, i can't wait! 

this looks familiar

long time no see...yeah, yeah, yeah. anyway, i just stumbled across this stereogum list of the 40 best new bands and couldn't help but notice something...

the exact same font i used on my 30 day song challenge graphic! and, well, the exact same idea. i'm not saying the copied me because that is ridiculously unlikely but it is a mighty strange coincidence. 

fires, weddings, showers...

as many of you are probably aware, we had some pretty serious wildfires in the central texas area last sunday. we had to evacuate my house and i was gone for 2 nights. i wasn't home when the sheriff came by to evacuate us so all i had was the clothes on my back. i had to go to work on monday wearing the dress and sandals that i had worn to brunch the day before. it was a cute outfit but weird to wear to work where i do. but i digress, everything is fine for us and i ache for those less fortunate it than we were. 

in october i have a couple of weddings to go to that i'm really looking forward to attending. then there's alison's bridal shower! and then in november sometime is alison's bachelorette party. ahhh! so much going on but it's all good stuff so i'm very excited. and of course the wedding in december!

this weekend is the austin city limits music festival. i bought a one-day pass for sunday a loooong time ago but have since decided that i cannot attend. even with the temperatures in the mid-high 90s instead of 105+ it's just too hot for me to spend a day outside. i will be miserable and it could honestly cause me a lot of pain and discomfort for several days after. i'm a bit bummed because i haven't been to the festival in 4 years and some of my favorites acts are playing on sunday but i just can't do it. damn fibromyalgia.  

and while i'm mentioning all these weddings i might as well tell you about the amazing wedding that is taking place in february. my wonderful friends jason and lisa are getting married and i could not be more excited for them. i'm also excited because i get to hang with some out of town weddings guests that i love dearly. it's going to be a wonderful weekend for sure! 

may 21, 2011

on may 21st i went to a day party with a couple of friends and had a really, really fun time. we drank tito's with pineapple juice and ginger ale and shared many laughs.

1. kelly, the funnest guy i know

2. me trying to take a long-arm picture with kelly and failing

3. me trying to take another long-arm picture with kelly and failing (he's just too tall!)

4. kelly and i cracking up as he finally takes a long-arm picture of us

5. me trying to look normal for a  picture with amber

6. me looking normal(ish) for a picture with amber

seriously, click on that collage to enlarge it and see what my face really looks like it some of those pictures. hilarious!

the reason this particular day stands out so much in my mind isn't just because of how much fun we had but because i woke up on the morning of may 22nd feeling like i was going to die and i have felt that to some scale every single day since then. some days i'm in more pain and some days i'm in less pain but the pain is always there. the physical pain and then the emotional pain that comes along with physically feeling like shit all the time. i've seen kelly and amber maybe 2 or 3 times since may 21st and that really bums me out. my darling joshua just moved to washington dc and i barely got to spend any time with him his last summer in austin because of this stupid condition. 

if you think this central texas heat is bad, try living through it with a disease like fibromyalgia. yesterday i went to the grocery store and put gas in my car and by the time i got home i could barely move and i had a crippling headache from barely being outside. i have a ticket to attend the last day of acl fest and if it hasn't cooled off significantly by then, i don't know if i can go. i would be putting myself at a huge, huge risk and i don't know if it's going to be worth it. 

some days i think i'm doing alright and other days i think back to what the "old stefanie" would be doing with her spare time and it probably wouldn't be, "recording reruns of csi to watch while she lays on the couch for hours at a time." i used to leave the house for reasons other than work and grocery shopping. i used to eat at restaurants, i used to drink at bars, i used to laugh with my friends. now i do none of those things. fibromyalgia is rough enough from a psychological standpoint, adding a pity party isn't really necessary. 

i'm sorry if it seems that all i ever write about is my illness but, uhh, i guess it's all i have going on these days. 

playlists

when i take my ambien at night instead of falling asleep, i stay up later making playlists in spotify. weird, right? i don't just make playlists, i also craft and cut things out of magazines for future craft inspiration. totally weird. anyway, if you have spotify you can check out my profile and see these silly mixes i've been making. 

in related news, i need a new sleep aid. i mean, ambien is awesome and i have a blast staying up and creating things but i really need to sleep as well. boo.