It’s a major pain and a lifestyle change. It’s also one more thing I can’t eat, behind excess sodium. But the rash is unsightly and my skin is so fair the rash remnants stick around for weeks. So I’ll go GF and see what happens.

I’ve also got my insurance’s approval for allergy testing. Rather like I hoped for an acoustic neuroma instead of a Meniere’s diagnosis, I hope to have an identifiable allergy that doesn’t require me to give up even more food options.

Until that happens (not for another few weeks) I’m working on going GF. To that end, I had dinner at Switch last night. Eating out is very difficult when going GF because gluten is so ubiquitous. Monday nights are burger nights at Switch and I was afraid I’d be left out. But they have a totally acceptable GF bun. Since the bun is not my favorite part of a burger anyway, this was cause for celebration.  I see many a Switch Burger in my future.

The ceremony for my program was nice. We had a very interesting speaker, Peter Brantley from the Internet Archive. His topic was interesting; he spoke about future technologies, tying it all back to the concept of the holodeck from Star Trek. Afterward, I had to tell him how many times the Way Back Machine has saved my butt with clients and improperly backed up files.

The remainder of the ceremony went by quickly. I now have a cap, gown, tassle, and hood (an inexplicable furbelow, that) that I’ll never wear again. Still, it was worth it for the 2 hours of wear. After the ceremony, speaking to some of the people in some of my classes but whom I’d never met, we were done.

I’m sure the other programs for the college and the university were equally as lovely but we didn’t attend. Walking across the stage and getting my unofficial diploma seemed like enough for me.

So that it. I’m done with library school. I’ve had to put so many things on hold. Working full-time and attending graduate school full-time will do that. I have a huge list of Stuff to Do After Graduation. I hardly know where to start.

It all began on the first morning of my San Diego trip with Kristin, Jeremy and Juan. Juan is our friend from Palm Springs, also known as Papi Chulo . Somewhere along the route, I started talking about my chonies and my chanclas which is Spanglish for underwear and cheap house slippers and/or those smelly rubber flip flops that cost $1.99. Papi kept telling us not to use the word chanclas. Papi is from Venezuela and his mother always scolded him not to call his sandals “chanclas”. She thought it was low class and, furthermore, she worked hard to give her kids an education and to buy them sandals so they better not call them chanclas. Naturally the three of us, me most of all, could call them nothing but.

The next morning I was wearing my chanclas around our room and forgot to put on my sandals when we left for breakfast. They aren’t exactly comfortable to do as much walking as we did. My feet were hurting by the time we got to the botannical gardens so I sat down, to rest my chanclas and to watch a humming bird feeding from a flower. When I went to take a photo I casually lifted my foot into the shot and took a picture. I said, “Look, Papi, I’m taking a picture of my chanclas.” Juan thought this was so funny, soon we were
giggling so hard people were staring.

That’s how it got started; it took a life of it’s own. In the gallery you’ll see pictures of my chanclas on a gate, making a wish at a wishing well, at the beach, and at the Point Loma light house. The best picture is with some stoner dudes parked at the beach. The four of us were laughing so hard about me trying not to fall over while taking a picture of my foot at the ocean. The stoner dudes wanted me to take a picture with this huge doobie (that’s what we’ll call it even though I’m sure it was tobacco, t sure didn’t smell like weed to me) one of them was puffing on. So I put my foot on the back of their car and took the shot. Kristin took a few behind-the-scenes type shots of all this. I now have a picture of my chanclas, with a big fattie and some other guy who dived into the shot at the last minute.  In one of the shots you can see their buddy hunched over in the back seat who was puking the whole time between two cars. Everyone else had seen him but I hadn’t until I looked at the picture later. Guess I was too focused on my chanclas.

[Show as slideshow]

My only real problems revolve around Meniere’s disease. The past few months have been very active, abnormally so, in the vertigo department. I’ve been dizzy several times each week, twice at work, and once right as I was leaving. I sat in my car for 2 hours. Meniere’s is such a glamourous disease.

I’ve told all my coworkers about the possibility of dizziness . There is absolutly no possible way I can ride out a vertigo attack in my cubicle. One of my chief complaints about my job is the building we are in. It’s quite nice, actually, designed to foster communication, blah, blah, blah. But it’s so freaking noisy. I sit in a high-traffic area, making it nearly impossible to get work done because of all the hubbub. In the entire building, at least the part that belongs to my company, there are only 3 places with any privacy. One is a bank of phone cubes on a different floor, another is an inexplicable shower/locker room area in a restroom, and the mother’s room.

At first I thought I’d be able to use the mother’s room to ride out vertigo but I got kicked out last week. HR messes everything up eventually, I’ve found. I understand what the room is for and I respect that. But it’s a room that has to be reserved just like a conference room so I see how empty it is all the time. I don’t see why I can’t use it. But whatever. I’ll figure something else out, because it seems the vertigo is not going to let up.

The reliable schedule should help with the Menieres stuff, too. This past few months have been rough, lots of disequalibrium episodes, a few real vertigo episodes, lots of milligrams of diazepam. My records indicate last spring was tough, too. I wonder if it’s an allergy thing.

Fireman/paramedic Johnny Gage, played by the handsome Randolph Mantooth, was my first TV crush. I remember watching this show with  my dad when I was 5 years old and thinking I wanted to marry someone like that when I grew up.

Here are two tacky finds on recent trips to Savers, my all-time favorite thrift store. Usually I find only one item worthy of a blog post. These were found on the same day.

This gem was discovered at Goodwill (16th Street & Indian School). It was deemed to frightening even to be added to my bad wall art collection. Not sure the picture does it justice. It features a half-girl half-puppet either swimming or shambling away from a melted tree toward a witchy woman pushing a shopping cart. On any given day, I have some humdinger of weird dreams. Even mine aren’t this effed up.

I am Cher. In the past ten or more years, I’ve dated only one person older than me. And he moved across the country and married someone else.** Me an Cher. Separated at birth?

* I paraphrase.

** That really didn’t have anything to do with me but still.