I'm moving out tomorrow. This summer is so full of mistakes. What I wouldn't give to go back to Bratislava, anywhere. Go back, go forward, just go. I don't think I'll last until May in one place. I hope autumn gets me out of this funk.

The last two days I have kind of wasted by being wildly intoxicated. To not implicate myself in anything that may or may not have ended when the police came to break it up (I have said nothing!), I will skip the details. Suffice it to say, I did some not very lucid wandering down alleys and waking up in a strange bed. Very "late '90's Robert Downey, Jr." Have had a lovely time, aside from the lots and lots of drugs and alcohol stuff. I'm leaving Bratislava tomorrow. Budapest tomorrow! People to see, math geeks to play with, etc. I danced a lot in the street with some Slovakian people I just met today. :) It was amazing and magical. I told them I would meet up with them for supper and a nightcap tonight, and I'm supposed to be meeting them in 15 minutes in a restaurant that's a half hour walk from here, so I'm off.

I am in Prague. My toe is still killing me. :( Other than that, everything is PERFECT. I am in love with this city. And still doing the insomniac thing. Shit's bananas back home and I'm trying to ignore it so I'm not really going online or checking e-mail or LJ anymore. I'm not going to Poland anymore, it didn't work out. So I'm going straight from here to Bratislava. I met a group of American college girls here and I'm staying with them tonight at a youth hostel, which is like 4 cents a night with all the people we crammed in. At the mo I'm in a 24 hour internet cafe but I'm falling over I'm so tired. I have a ton of things to say but I just can't get it all out so I won't even start. But I will say that I played chess with an impossibly old man in a park near a cobblestoned street and it was probably the most wondrous chess experience ever. Nooo sad, there is a dying ladybug stuck here. I'm gonna go rescue it and leave.

Alright! I have come up with a veeery vague plan. Because though I have a huge distaste for making them, it could very well turn out that without the slightest bit of a backbone to my adventure, I'll just get distracted and wind up drinking in a pub in Ireland for four weeks. Fuck! I just realized my plan doesn't include getting up to the UK at any point. Um, oh well. Some other trip. I'm going to London in a few months anyway for a conference, so I can try dragging that out to a week and putting in my Ireland pub-grazing into that trip, as much as I'd look forward to doing it now. :) Besides, the Germans are fine for a night out at the bar. Both trips would involve lots of beer and with that much beer, can I really tell the difference between Germans and Irish folk?

Without further ado I present to you:

1. My improbable delivery of my relatively unharmed person from my current location to Budapest: This will involve lots of going out in random directions I probably shouldn't. First off, instead of heading south immediately, I'm going to go up to Berlin, probably tomorrow. Then I will make my way down to Prague via Dresden, thereby closing this chapter of my German adventures, though I expect I will make my to Prague as slowly as possible, because Germany is the place that's most full of people I know and would like to see until I get to Belgium, which is in the other direction and I'm making a full loop first. So once I get to Prague and probably also Kutna Hora (am I spelling that right?) I should go straight to Bratislava, but instead I will almost definitely go out of my way to go to Krakow. Half of my relatives moved there and promptly died at Auschwitz and I've never even been to Poland. Many of John's ancestors died in the Holocaust as well, and it just seems "right" to go there and pay my respects, so to speak. So after that sobering experience, I will criss-cross Slovakia to get to Bratislava, where I've wanted to go for years now for really no reason other than I fell in love with a song by that name and swore to myself I would go there one day and be all Bohemian. Idiotic, I know, but while I have money, strength, and time... why not? From Bratislava, I'll cross back over to Budapest. I expect by this point I will be more than half done with my time, though I should figure out the timing more exactly before I leave Berlin, as I don't know how much internet I'll have after that.

2. My downright impossible attempt at getting to Cannabis City and back home: I have a pair of Croatian friends currently studying math at St. Olaf in Budapest. They know the best way to get home to Zagreb, and so I will join them. Hopefully I can time it right, or otherwise I'll just go myself by their route and join them for a day or two around Croatia, which is another place I've ALWAYS wanted to go, obsessively, and never gotten to despite living so relatively near it for half my life. One of these friends lives in Zagreb proper, the other lives on the western coast of Croatia, and I will go with this latter friend to the coast and with her help, go to Trieste, from where I can resume the trains and walking itinerary. I will go from Trieste to somewhere near Österreich, where I know several grandmasters, and where I can hopefully even pick up a few chess matches before moving on. There will be lots of biking here, I know. Then I will head, via a regrettably short detour to Bavaria, to Paris. This is probably going to be either the longest or the most expensive leg of my journey, as I don't really know what to do between Bavaria and Paris, and if I don't find a cheap flight then I'll probably knock Paris off the list completely, though that would be so sad as I haven't ever been there. Either way, whether from France or from Germany, I will head up to Belgium, where I have several people to visit. With these people, we'll then head up to Amsterdam by car, and I will take a train back to Frankfurt, hopefully in time for my plane ride home.

So those are the two "halves" of my journey as I see them for now. There is a probability on the order of zero that it'll be anything like that by the time I am done, but I'm still thinking it looks like a good idea for now. It is probably a little to full of stuff, even for a solitary month, but I don't mind knocking a thing or two off. It's not my last trip back to Europe, I hope. :)

Thanks to yesterday's footballing misadventures, my big toe is broken. I cut up a credit-card-like object... not a credit card obviously because I kind of need those, but my REI lifetime membership card, haha... and placed it underneath my toe as a splint and wrapped it tightly with gauze. It looks pretty schnasty, pardon my German, but it does not hurt too much so long as I walk more on my heel than my toes. I'm proud of my battle-scar! Oh also yesterday I had a veeeeeeerrrrry strange encounter with the girl I mentioned I met in Heidelberg. She knew where I was staying obviously as I had her over for lunch, and she randomly showed up late at night. Very odd. She was being weird and I thought she was drunk, and basically got her to leave, but she showed up again this morning and apologized for being a nutcase and I thought she was so adorable that I invited her in for tea and breakfast, and we spent most of the day out together again. We split up for lunch as she was meeting her cousin and I wanted to play volleyball with some high school kids I spotted... which was hard with my toe being all beat up but at least I thought to wear proper tennis shoes today. We exchanged numbers... I got myself a prepaid SIM card thing... and we just met up again for an earlyish dinner and tonight we are going out with her friends to a bar. Haha... I love how I just attract strange people to me within hours of my arrival. That's a talent of which I'm very proud.

I'm in Schwetzingen, Germany! So exciting. I mentioned before that I would be staying in a hostel outside of Frankfurt, specifically in Darmstadt. I called on Monday, I think, to make a last minute verification that those plans were still in tact, and they randomly told me that they didn't have any such reservation and that they were booked all week. Wha?! But some quick footwork from Jack later, I'm staying in his brother Lukas' apartment in Schwetzingen, which is right next to Heidelberg, which is where I wanted to be anyway! Plus his apartment has internet and the hostel didn't. :) Lukas isn't even here because he actually lives in London. I thought originally he said he was going to be here during this week but it turns out he was here last weekend and so he left the key in a "secure place" for me... meaning, he left it in the mailbox haha... and then went back to London. I have full run of a food-stocked apartment! Got to love German hospitality. So much meat in the fridge!

Yes, so today I went walking around Heidelberg. I got out there fairly early to do so but there honestly is not that much to do in Heidelberg, so for a good portion of my day I read a book by the Neckar. I had to do some touristy stuff or I wouldn't feel right, haha, so I went to the Heidelberg castle, took some silly touristy photos, and then of course, I made a friend. I asked her to take a photo of me and we got to talking, and it turns out she is 23 as well and she was also there alone, because she goes to such locations to practice her English with the American tourists. Hehe so naturally I invited her to "my" place for lunch, as we're both on a budget. She goes to school in Heidelberg and her family's just moved out of Schwetzingen... she even showed me their old house... to Antwerp, Belgium. We spoke half in English and half in German although her English would have been perfectly sufficient for conversation, but I just wanted to practice my German. Which is not even close to sufficient for conversation, so I kept having to plug in English words haha. She took me to her favorite park in this area after lunch, and we read our respective books while lounging around. Then she saw a group of people she recognized from gymnasium, who were playing football on the grass, so naturally we joined them.

Now I am back home in the apartment because I had to play barefoot as I was just wearing flip-flops today, and I slammed my toe into a rock. Ouch! I didn't feel like walking anymore so I came home to wrap it up... it's swollen and bloody and disgusting... and now I'm going to eat a bit of dinner from the remnants in the fridge and then decide where I'd like to go next. I literally have only a medium-sized backpack with me. This is going to be awesome!

Of course I called back home to see how things were going and there is more drama regarding John's health, but most of the point of this vacation was to try to live my own life and not be so obsessed with his, so I will try to not mention it here.

Tonight was a riot! John took me out dancing. We went to the club at which James works as a bartender, and Jack came along. Jack and James mostly talked and watched us dance, but John and I just tore it up! Ahh best dancing night of my life, I think. :):):) So, this is a kind of "upscale" bar/club, the likes of which I didn't think I'd find outside of my city, and certainly not in the City of Bridges. But here it was nonetheless and it was wonderful from the moment we walked in. There was a bachelorette party going on in one of the rooms, but their guests sort of spilled out onto the main floor, and it turned out there was a dancing "competition" going on. Naturally John and I couldn't help ourselves. He and I joined in and danced rather innocently together, in a harmless but still all kinds of hot and sweaty kind of way. ;) A small group of people cheered us on, which was hilarious, because most of them were intoxicated. This random guy comes up to me and goes, "May I have the next dance?" in a very pompous almost fake British accent kind of way. Naturally I said yes, and he led me to the dance floor where they struck up a totally wild tango. He was good... but not John-good! I thanked him for the dance and I came over to John and pulled him out of his chair and we had the next dance, which left me quite nearly winded. I felt sexy. :D John even dipped me... hehe. People clapped for us... haha. And that guy who asked me to dance came over and said, "That was very good, but surely we can do better!" and he said it very loudly, either to be funny or to intimidate John, I don't know. But I told him I was already really tired and I couldn't dance anymore, so to my great, great amusement, he actually asked JOHN to dance with him. Hahaha... so those two just tore it the fuck up. It was a total dance-off. I have not laughed that hard in forever... or been so impressed, actually, because both of them are really kick ass dancers. The night was capped with John and Jack dancing in a provocative but graceful kind of way. :) And we left pretty early too! And we didn't even have a drink.

Best night of my liiiiiiiiiiife. Now I am ready to drive home! :D

I've been avoidant and generally elusive the last few days. I'm just cool like that. I was supposed to be going backpacking for the next month, starting this Wednesday. I'm still in Pittsburgh and my flight leaves out of Newark Airport, so I have to drive back sometime very soon. I was considering staying and trying to be "of use" but I've decided there's no sense in keeping myself from enjoying myself. I've been excited about this trip forever, and I don't want it to pass me by. It's the first of its kind that I'm going on, in that I'm going for a long time, alone, and without any intention of meeting up with somebody that I know. Perhaps a few people here and there if I make it to Russia or to certain parts of Belgium, Germany, or Holland. I am flying into the Frankfurt airport, and I have reserved a place in a hostel for the first day, but nothing beyond that. Exciting!

Even so, there's a certain heaviness weighing down on my chest. That's all the more reason to leave, I suppose. I have to learn to start letting go of John sometimes, and we've both spoken about this and agreed it would be a healthy thing for me. I'm always worrying about him, and I have to learn to accept that there is nothing that my concern will accomplish. Knowing he's with Jack is a great comfort, though. :)

If I had an interest
in personal fitness
then things would be different.
You think?

But maybe that interest
would make me a sprintress
and then I'd get shin splints.
Which stink.

And that, John, is my response to your incessant questions regarding why I prefer sitting on my ass and eating leftover Chinese food for breakfast to going for a ten mile jog every morning like you do.

Rawr. "WTF?" is the question of the day. This particular post brought to you by the question, "WTF do we need a fennec for?" Michael and Sarah teamed up on John last night to convince him to get a pet fennec fox. He said sure, why not. Furthering our "WTF?" thematics, a gigantic box came in today while John was out. It turns out to be an AquaSkipper. That thing is one of the coolest things I have ever seen, but if it's coming now, that means it was probably ordered before John had secured a job. Somebody has a spending problem!

Perhaps our biggest "WTF?" moment since John's father's homophobic outburst is the news that Jack has, or had until today, another boyfriend. I'm not about to pass judgment, but the whole situation strikes me as a bit unfair and sneaky. Due in part to that, and in part to a raging fever and infection, John had quite an interesting day today. I won't say more of that because I'll let him tend to it when he wakes up in the morning.

Maybe I will actually use this journal to talk about something that is not John, for once. For instance, I went to a gay bar last night. Go figure, right? I went to a gay bar with two straight male friends while John and his boyfriend(?) stayed in. I had a great time, banged my shin somehow that I cannot recall, and upset my liver a fair amount. All in all, one of the most fun times I've had in the bar/club scene. :)

Because I get distracted easily by pretend games, I couldn't help myself. One of the errands with which I was charged was to return a $675 pair of shoes. I do not know why anybody would think to spend that much on one pair of shoes. In any event, I put on "my most capable-looking outfit" and nice heels, did my hair up, and went to return the shoes. At the store they asked if I was interested in seeing them in a different size, and I said that I'd just like to return them. They said, "Was there anything wrong with the shoe?" And I said, "No, my boss just changes his mind easily about fashion." :) Another thing I was supposed to do was talk to the real estate agent that is still trying to sell Yitz's apartment in New York. She is the same one who sold John's apartment, and John would like her to take care of him buying a new house in Pittsburgh. She asked who I was and all that, and I told him I was John's personal assistant. hehehe That was fun. I could not help it! She's going to put together a whole set of listings of houses, comparing houses in the NY/NJ area, in Pittsburgh, and in New Hampshire, as those are the three places John is deciding between. If he stays in Pittsburgh, he'll be near his parents, which is both good and bad, and he can keep his job. If he goes to NY/NJ, I'll see him when I go home for breaks, and he can get a higher paying job, but the house will cost much more probably. He'll also be near Ellen, who is going to Princeton this fall. Either option puts him near Jack, as Jack is still deciding whether to work full time in one place or the other. If he chooses New Hampshire, he'll be near Michael and Sarah, who are starting at Exeter, and near me as I'll be at Dartmouth. The housing will be cheaper than in NY/NJ, but not as cheap as in Pittsburgh, and finding a job will be more difficult, but the living will be calmer as it's far removed from a city.

So that's that. I'll let my boss decide it with his estate agent. ;P Speaking of boss, he's recovering well from the surgery. They also cleaned the wound in his shoulder. He should be home this evening, once the drugs fully wear off. They said there is no reason to keep him there longer as everything looked alright. He still has a small fever, and they put him on different antibiotics, which will hopefully work better than the previous set.

It is in the low 60's and raining here, which is wonderful after a week of really hot days. Oh... it's 3 in the afternoon. I haven't eaten yet today and I got up at 8. I think I will go do that before I disappear. :)

I am back in Pittsburgh! I'm staying until Sunday evening.

John's getting surgery now on his shoulder. It should be fairly quick though they said they might have to go in and re-set the bone if it's moved too far out of place. Ow. All in all, though, it should be good. I'm glad it's getting taken care of.

It's Chris' 7th birthday tomorrow. Excitement abounds, and such. His school buddies are coming over for a pool party. It should prove to be adorable! Chris has a "girlfriend" in his class. The girl is totally cool. Chris is a roudy little kid that the nuns can't stand, but not so much because he's an outspoken atheist or something (like his 8 year old brother, wooooh boy) but because he's just incredibly hyper and cannot sit still. His little girlfriend, however, questions the nuns on everything they say, and tells them that stories about Jesus don't make sense and stuff. Love her!

I finished Northern Lights/Golden Compass on Monday I think, and I loved it. I'm leaving reviews of that for my newly started book review blog, though. Not sure if I'll keep up with it, but I'm hoping that stuff I feel embarrassed to put in here due to its pseudo-intellectual nature, I'll be happy to put in there. Because it's stuff worth writing down, I just don't have the literary talent to make it intellectually palatable.

I have been assigned some errands, in response to my claim that I'd like to be John's Pepper Potts. They do in fact involve taking out the garbage. Somewhere in there I'll have to get my hair colored a deeper shade of red, and also start wearing a nice outfit and stiletto heels. Oh wow. I just remembered part of my dream. It had to do with having to dress nice, and this is a problem for me in real life. For instance right now I am wearing pants that are torn from the butt down to the back of my knee, and my under pants are showing through due to a bad stitching job, and I'm also wearing a bandanna in lieu of washing my hair. No wonder John decided he wasn't attracted to girls, after all. :P Also in my dream was something about levels of citizenry. I think the lower the level, the higher the quality of life. I remember right before I woke up, somebody who sounded a lot like Cate Blanchett said to me that I didn't have to worry about walking alone in whatever town I'd been deposited to fulfill some sort of mission, because "when you get below level 4" it's unlikely that anyone will harm you. I don't remember if it was actually "level" 4 or some other word implying a well-ordering on lifestyles, but you get the point.

Because I've been thinking about him all day, I may as well write it here.

Today is the anniversary of Maxim's death. He would have been 23 on July 1st this year. I met Maxim when I was two weeks old. Our mothers were best friends in St. Petersburg (Leningrad at the time). Maxim and I grew up together. Actually we lived three streets apart until we were 6, and then my family moved into the same building as his. We lived there until I was 12, and then moved to a town in New Jersey. Maxim's family moved there less than a year later. It was the longest we'd ever been apart, and maybe it was because we were newly teenagers and curious about such things, or maybe just because we realized how much we missed each other, we had our first kiss that summer that he moved. We started dating almost immediately, and we were 16 when he asked me to marry him. I was so young and immature that I even felt I had to ask my parents first for their opinion. They got married when they were 19, and they had a similar story... they met when they were 8 years old and had never been with anybody else besides each other. They said okay, so I said yes, and we got married on June 15, 2002. In December of 2002, he was diagnosed with cancer. It was very sudden. By the time he was diagnosed, they said there was already no hope for him. It was advanced and had spread all over. We made the most of it, and had good times whenever his health allowed it. He died on June 16, 2003.

Wherever he is now, I hope he's made something good of himself in his new life. He was wonderful, and I really loved him. And I didn't think anybody would ever come along that would make me as happy as Maxim did. But then there was John, and my faith in love and romance was restored. All in all, what I am trying to say is that I've had a great life so far, and all the more for the wonderful people in it. And despite the fact that we're no longer together, I just want to say that John has been one of the most wonderful. John, you'd have loved Maxim, and vice versa. In my heart, everybody I've ever loved lives happily together. :)

Despite being a bleeding heart liberal, by most people's standards, and despite being a Democrat forever, I am voting for McCain this season. I'm sorry but I know what living in a socialist country is like. Universal healthcare? Free college for all Americans? WTF? No. No, money and higher education are NOT birthrights. Having the opportunity to earn those things... THAT is a birthright. If you choose to piss your life away, why should you get the same benefits as somebody that worked damn hard to get to where they were?

And for the record, I am far from rich. I come from a middle class background, and am a fairly recent immigrant to the US. And for at least the next five years, my annual salary is what people like John make in a month. But I'm sorry, I just cannot see this creepy Obama socialist regime working.

...Can't believe I'm getting to be almost as Republican as John. (Okay, okay, libertarian. Or whatever.)

I know that this is neither here nor there, but Kisca just had a big puking session. I have seen her unsuccessfully cough up hairballs before but I never actually witnessed her throwing them up. She spit up white liquidy stuff a few times first, and looked horribly uncomfortable. But she seems to be fine. I went over to pet her and she was excited and jumped up to meet my hand like she usually does. So I guess she's okay. I am just jumpy. My cats are so old. :( They eat senior formula. Koshka (the older of the two) nervously bit out most of the fur on her tail, so she looks like a lion, and she's gone through most of the fur on her belly as well. She's got anxiety problems. Koshka is almost 12, and Kisca is 10.

Oh, good. Kisca is eating now. So I guess it was just a simple hairball and I should be less worried all the time. Though I wonder why she sheds so much more than a normal cat should. But no, stop worrying.

I want to cry.

He couldn't sleep all night because of the shit they have him on to keep his heart rate up. It spiked two more times past 150, at one point even getting close to 180. I asked him to call me at any point at night, and usually he'd never wake me up, but thankfully he called after both times. He was fine, but I could hear frustration in his voice because he had tried convincing them to take him off those meds and they would not. Late last night/early this morning he finally got aggravated enough to call Jack and told him that they couldn't stabilize his heart rate. At that point, it had been more or less 80 for an hour or two, but he said he kept feeling like his heart was skipping beats or suddenly for a minute or two he'd get this beating in his chest like he was scared of something when he wasn't. Jack got there just in time to see his heart rate bounce back up past 150. Doogie was in absentia but Jack got him on the phone and they agreed to take him off that stuff. After not even two hours, his heart rate slowly went back down to 45 which is roughly what it was immediately following the ER trip. Given that his usual resting heart rate was generally near 30, prior to all this happening, they figured it was still on its way down. However, it's still 45. Jack sounded just totally bewildered and confused and he said that he actually believes that John's heart might have improved from whatever happened to it. He is trying to find out what exactly they've done since he's been admitted, and when it's safe to do so he wants them to run him through some tests to see how his heart reacts to stress being put on it. He said that might have to be after he gets checked out though they'll want to do a few tests before letting him go just to make sure it's safe for him to move around and do normal low-stress things.

So I've said before that I don't get medicine, but now...I REALLY, really, really do not get it. If I had to guess, I would have said that cardiac arrest did not usually fix long-standing heart problems. But who's complaining?

James and I made iced coffee. I had about three cups of it, and I'm really wired. Which is good because it makes me a bit giddy to have caffeine, and if I'm a bit giddy then I can deal with things more easily.

Some pretty good news on John though. He's awake and doing alright, all things considered. James stopped his car in the middle of my street without even turning it off, ran in to get me, dragged me out to his car only half dressed, and sped like crazy to get to the hospital. And he parked in several parking spots and ran out without even asking me where to go. I had to run after him to tell him which room John was in. He wasn't awake yet when James got in and James just flung himself at John's bed and started crying, which he'd apparently been waiting the entire ride to NJ to do. John had apparently already been awake, just too legitimately sleepy to bother telling anyone, because he opened his eyes right away and hugged him. I think despite having kids that he loves and obviously wants to protect, James is still the person of whom John is most protective. A glance to one of the monitors he was hooked up to said his heart rate was 40 beats per minute, which is higher than usual. They put him on medication for bradycardia which is apparently working. I spoke with a very nice (and frighteningly young) and well-informed guy that is apparently the doctor taking care of him. He said he wasn't able to get in touch with John's doctor which is really no shock to me. I gave him Jack's contact info and told him that Jack is John's healthcare proxy, so he can pretty much act as his doctor while John's in the NY/NJ area. So yeah I told Dr. Doogie Howser that yesterday, they told me John's heart was functioning at something like 40% of what it should be. Doogie looked a little confused and looked through john's chart to see that it did, in fact, say something that amounted to that or similar. He said he was kind of surprised, and those must have been the notes that were written down when John was in the ER, because since he took over, he's seen nothing of the sort. He said that in fact, if he hadn't read in his history that John had a heart problem, he would have just looked at him and figured he was in good cardiovascular shape. He asked if John was a runner or a swimmer or something. He is in fact both, and Doogie looked impressed when I told him John's run, and won, several marathons and triatholons. He also admitted he wouldn't have guessed that John had cancer. Doogie was... really chatty. Which I don't like sometimes because I want people to just stfu and be professional... but Doogie seems to know what he's doing. When I caught him, he was just going for a short coffeebreak because he'd apparently been in all night. I felt bad holding him up because he looked all tired but I also wanted to get more info out of him, so I ended up joining him for coffee, and he got me a free coffee because apparently he's buddies with the people in the cafeteria. Awkward, Doogie. Really awkward. Keep in mind Doogie looks like he can't be a day over 18, but then again, neither does Michael J. Fox.

So yeah I'm digressing majorly because I ended up with two cups of coffee in the hospital and three cups of iced coffee with James since we got home, which is probably contributing to my inability to get my thoughts out in type.

In short, John's much better and awake, but Doogie and his nurses groupies kicked us out because the hospital has awkward visiting hours. We can come back after 7 for an hour so we'll do that. Doogie gave me a lot of comfort about John's prognosis! He basically said we have very little to worry about, though staying in shape is absolutely crucial for him. Other than that, really everything should be okay. He said John should feel very fortunate because not many people can so easily recover from cardiac arrest, no matter how brief, because most people who experience it are in such crappy shape that they can't compensate for it, but that's not the case with John.

So if you guys who are reading this have any questions please give me a call, if you have my cell #. If you don't have my number but care about John's health, feel free to e-mail me or comment here. I'm just trying to tear myself away from the computer so I might not write back immediately.

And for those of you who wrote comforting e-mails and have left voicemails and texts I haven't responded to, THANK YOU. It is most certainly not going unappreciated, though I've been too tired to respond.

Sorry I sound like such a fucking retard, but a bad combination of too much coffee and too many anxiety pills has made me sound kind of hyper and stupid.

I fell asleep by 6a.m. but I got up a few times and checked my e-mail. Why am I so addicted to the computer? I went back up for a nap a little while ago and I come downstairs to see John with tears just POURING down his cheeks. I ran to him and asked what was wrong and hugged him and everything and he started laughing and pointed to the onions he was chopping. Hahaha overprotective much???

So I had another dream when I finally got to sleep for a few hours this morning. I was in a desert again and this time I was totally alone. And there were no mountains around me, just desert for as far as you could see. I was looking for that white leopard because I thought he might know what was going on. I walked around and I looked for him, and for the fire, but I couldn't see it. It was like a movie set that had been stripped. I started practicing flying around, and after a long time I suddenly saw a small lake in the middle of the desert. I flew to it and there was a white animal splashing around in the water and having fun. I called out to it but it got up out of the water and stood on it. I could see it wasn't the leopard, it was a moose or something. It didn't have antlers but it had a moose-like face. Only it was white. A bit like this one I guess. I got scared of the moose for some reason and I ran off in a different direction without looking, and bumped into the leopard. It was mozying along and doing its own thing and didn't even notice me until I'd tripped over it. It looked at me with this kind of "whatever" expression and nodded its head, meaning it didn't care about me but I should go ahead and follow it anyway. We walked together, really slowly. There were crazy lights in the sky at this point and it was getting to be night time. I remembered, in the dream, that John had once told me about a very similar dream experience. I had this sense that the leopard was trying to find someone too but he wasn't in a huge rush. I was getting tired as I walked and I fell down on the ground, as if I was asleep. But in the dream I could see everything around me, I just couldn't move. The leopard laid down next to me and then I woke up.

Note to self: Ask John about his leopard-in-the-desert dream. Did that ever happen that he told me about it, or did I make that up in my dream?

Anyway, dreams are fun, blah blah blah, now it's time to make some dinner. Some friends are coming over in half an hour and I haven't even showered yet, even though I keep planning to.

I fell asleep for a little while but I woke up from a crazy dream.

I was in the desert, I think. There was snow on nearby mountains, which is strange. It was a desert in the middle of mountains. I could see for miles in each direction. A very long way off, there was a fire burning. For some reason I had to run to it and I did. I was running as fast as I could, kind of almost flying. Every stride I took was ten times the length of a normal human stride. I looked to my side and there was a white leopard running with me. I knew somehow that it wasn't chasing me, we both needed to get to the fire. It took a really long time but eventually we got there. The fire was built on a pile of bodies. I don't know if they were human because I couldn't really see from how high the flames were. I think I just knew they were human, but I don't remember now. Their flesh was completely burned off and they were just mummified skeletons. At the top of the pile, was John. He looked dead but he wasn't. I knew I was supposed to help him somehow but there was fire for twenty feet around him and the pile of bodies was ten feet high. I knew I wouldn't be able to pull him out. Without warning the leopard suddenly jumped into the fire. The fire blared when he jumped in, almost like an explosion, and I woke up.

I have no idea what that means but I woke up with the distinct feeling that I have to do something. I don't know what, and I'm just going to try to ignore it because it was just a stupid dream. But this has happened before. I'll ask John tomorrow what he thinks.

Meh. I can't sleep. I've been sitting in bed next to John, typing up some more of my structures notes. I've got 9 pages, which cover 33 pages of my handwritten notes. Maybe I should put in more spacing. No seriously, it looks really cramped and ugly. (I tried it. Now I have 10 pages and it looks a lot more breathable. Does that even make sense? No it does not. Stfu.)

So ya I am borededed. And my back hurts from sitting in a really uncomfortable position for the last two hours. Ew I can't believe it took me two hours to type an additional...what...3 pages? This is gonna take foreverrr. Well I'm 33% of the way in after about 4 days so that's actually not so bad. At this rate I can get it done in...about 8 more days, if I step it up a bit. And then I can do a cursory proofreading and send it out to my respected volunteers/algebra delinquents that need to work on their basic group theory. I'm feeling good about this. I don't usually do anything with my summers and so far I am being fairly productive, between this and my online anatomy & physiology course. That course is fun. I like being the Hermione-esque know-it-all, which I haven't bothered to be/ couldn't possibly hope to be in most of my classes at CMU. I mean I graduated with honors but I was nowhere near the top student in my serious math/CS classes. Not even close. In this class, my competition is some bored soccer moms and old guys with no college education trying to earn a nursing degree. Not that they're necessarily dumber than me, just that I have way more free time and I'm in the swing of being a student, while they probably aren't. So for instance, I finished this week's assignment today. (Weeks start on Tuesday.) I'm thinking I'll go ahead and start next week's assignment, if I get especially bored in the next few days. Then I can have it on reserve if I suddenly get busy next week. Which is unlikely to happen but that's okay.

Can I say something mad gross? I'm glad I have a boyfriend that doesn't think it's gross to have sex when I'm on my period. I mean, I think it's gross. But I'm also hornier, on average, when I'm on my period, so I'm not gonna complain.

Blahhh okay in honor of how hideously bored I am, I'm going to do a couple of surveys until I either start falling asleep, or I go back to algebra. Here we go!

( Cut because honestly, who needs to see this crap? )

What a day. John surprised me by showing up here this morning unnanounced, which made my LIFE.

Then I had a class to teach at the college I'm working in this summer. I got home before 4:00 and John looked like he was dead. It was really scary. He was completely pale and almost blue and he was curled up on the couch and was just out cold. I couldn't wake him up for fifteen minutes. I got so panicked that I splashed a glass of cold water on his face and he woke up slowly. I asked what was wrong and all he said was, "ER." By the time the ambulance got in he was shaking and totally unresponsive. At the hospital his heart rate dipped well below 20 beats per minute a few times and they thought he might crash. Thankfully Jack is in New York for most of this summer so he was able to come an hour after I called him. John's doctor is in Pgh obviously and he's just not very good. Jack called Yitz, who came with Kat, and the four of us waited together. Jack and Yitz periodically spoke with various medical people and tried to explain things to me and Kat.

John had internal bleeding that had started probably several days before. They got it under control and sent him home with the suggestion that he stay in bed. He's been a good boy so far but we all know it isn't likely to stay that way for more than a few hours. He's feeling alright now and is just a bit weak. He fell asleep in the car on the drive home (it's only a 10 minute drive) and he didn't even resist being taken to the car in a wheelchair on his way out of the hospital. That is the policy in most hospitals anyway but John's never accepted it, even when he broke his leg.

He went straight to bed when we got home about an hour and a half ago. In the morning he'll probably be fine, but Jack made him swear he wouldn't go for a run. John doesn't know how to lie so he looked him in the eye for a few minutes with a look on his face that just said, "It's not gonna happen, Doc." Jack shrugged and said never mind. Hehe.

I'm still worried because they don't know what caused the bleeding, and it's not the first time that's happened. Last time it happened, he very nearly died, because he was alone and losing massive amounts of blood for three hours before someone came home. I really hope they figure out caused it this time. Last time they said that it was because he was on anticoagulants, but he hasn't been on them now I don't think.

So, this has been quite a day! I'm glad we are home now, and I am ready to cuddle up in bed and listen to John snore. (Okay, okay, he doesn't snore. I do. And for the last several years I have been trying to convince him that he's the one who is snoring. It's been a long uphill battle and I think I've almost gotten him to believe it.) Oh! And unrelated to health stuff, John got me a gift, as if him surprising me with his visit wasn't enough. He bought me Charade on DVD! I love Audrey Hepburn like nobody's business, and I still haven't seen that movie. It's the only Audrey Hepburn movie I hadn't gotten around to seeing. We are going to watch it tomorrow when we wake up! Okay I just ate half a pound of chocolate but I am ready for bed. Just thought I'd make this post here in case there was anybody I hadn't spoken to about this that  heard about it and was worried.