oneirophrenia | May. 24th, 2004

The Weekend That Was actually sort of began Wednesday night, when I was talking to Vanessa, and she told me that her stomach had been lately giving her a lot of trouble: hurting, churning, and so forth--in fact, by early Thursday morning she was quite sick. It sounded a lot like she had some kind of virulent food poisoning, from what she told me...except that, instead of coming on quickly like a rabid badger out for blood (as food poisoning is wont to do), it seemed to slooooowly fade into view over a few days. So on my way to town the next day, I picked up some Pepto Bismol and Dramamine for her, thinking that if she could keep either of those down for a bit they'd help the chaos go away. When I got to her place, though, she'd been throwing up every twenty minutes or so, hadn't slept at all, and was, in general, worse off than when I talked to her the night before. She was in a lot of pain and was just horribly miserable. As much as Vanessa hates hospitals, I convinced her to let me take her to West Penn to get checked out, as her symptoms were a great deal worse than just food poisoning....Finally, after much standard ER dicking around, they finally gave her something for the nausea and the pain, and hooked her up to an IV to give her some fluids since she was very close to being dangerously dehydrated. It helped...but I felt so bad seeing her in so much pain (her stomach was still killing her, as was the IV). All the bloodwork they did on her came back negative for anything major, so she was just diagnosed with general gastritis, which may have been (and probably was) caused by some sort of viral attack, or may have just resulted from an overload of stress. At any rate, though, by the time we at last got out of the hospital, Vanessa was starting to feel a little better--she could finally keep fluids down--and I cared for her as best I could for the rest of the night and the next day (which wasn't difficult, mind you, since she immediately fell asleep when we got back to her place). :)

I continued to look after Vanessa the next day, but since she was feeling a great deal less like dying, I went running errands and stuff about town. I'd dropped off

raincrystal's poetry anthology (the revised version) at Kinko's to be printed the day before when I first hit town, and when I stopped by there on Friday to pick them up...surprise, surprise! Their big-ass printers died and they wouldn't have everything fixed until Saturday or maybe even Sunday--which meant the anthologies wouldn't be ready until Monday morning. Grrrrrr. Well, at least they were getting taken care of. That night, Vanessa and

eternal_hlessi and I watched Twister while the supposedly "devastating" thunderstorm that the news was warning us about played out as little more than a wussy rainstorm with a little lightning and thunder added for excitement). Then I swung by Electro Night at the Upstage to check out

inmostlight spinning da funk. Too bad I missed his first set, but I was there to enjoy most of the second. Ohyeah. Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime." It is good.

Fortunately, Vanessa was in much better shape by Saturday afternoon. I met up with

raincrystal and her best-friend/soon-to-be-roommate-in-Oregon Annie for a bit, and we went down to the Beehive to hang out a bit and meet

siliconedreamer, since he was down there getting photos printed and mounted for the art-show/party at his studio space that night. I'm definitely going to miss Marie--she was a lot of fun to hang out with. I hope all goes well for her in the Great Green West, though....Maybe she'll get to see a Sasquatch crossing the street or raiding her garbage someday! Saturday evening, Vanessa and I went out to eat at Lulu's Noodles (one of the best places to eat in all of Pittsburgh), and she managed to eat well despite the fact that her tummy was still giving her some grief. That's okay, because I threatened to cut it out and make a set of bagpipes out of it if it didn't start to behave and leave her alone. Nonetheless, we then went over to aRvin's studio party--which was fun as hell, if a little less-crowded than I thought that it was going to be (which wasn't a bad thing, mind you). aRvin displayed his photos beautifully in his studio space, and I was seriously impressed by some of the other folks' artworks, too. As a matter of fact, I need to drop off a copies of a few different stories for the one painter fellow--Mike, I believe his name was--because I may want to use one of his paintings for an anthology cover someday. It was great to see Mikey and Artie and a number of other cool folks there, too...

After that, we headed over to Ceremony for a bit. It was quite low-key. Not much else to say there, really.

And finally, yesterday, I unfortunately had to leave early (and by early I mean before three a.m.) so that I could get my laptop repaired before going out to Penn State this week to take care of some student issues (grading questions and whatnot, but nothing major so long as I have my grade sheets to show the admins so they can see how the students I failed progressively shriveled up, gradewise, over the course of the entire semester) and go to the dentist today. aRvin and Vanessa and I stopped by the old abandoned metal shop near his apartment and hung out in there for a while. Industrial devastation never fails to inspire the hell out of me, though, so at least while I was working on getting the laptop back up to snuff that night I was also kicking out some stonecold industrial jams on my desktop, as well, and actually finished a new A Doctrine of Works song! Still...I missed Vanessa a lot. It was nice to be home again, with my poor kitty (who was so glad to see me home again she literally wigged out and was running around everywhere crazily), but I still wished I were there with her or she were here with me. But...well, I'm only here for until Thursday. Woo!

So...basically, that's that. Vanessa's feeling almost back to normal now, and will probably be going in to work again tomorrow night. Yay! I went to the dentist and it wasn't as nightmarish as usual, though sometime in the near future I'll be going to another dentist to get some very small cavities filled under IV sedation--which is the only way I will have dental work done anymore, since novocaine doesn't do shit for me anymore. I'm all for taking a chemically-aided nap while they do the necessary dental adjustments and repairs, though! And now, off to work I go, tra la, tra la.