Greg In The Desert

On Thursday a week ago I went into work and had an large ice tea. I went to Dion’s for lunch (I am not blaming Dion’s for the following, it is very unlikely it had anything to do with them) and had a sandwich. I went home for the rest of the day and had water and some homemade soup while I worked on my house.

Friday morning I woke up about 7 am to go to the bathroom. No problems during the transaction and I went back to bed. At 8:21 am I woke up and looked at the clock and thought it was strange I was dizzy. Then I could feel I going to throw up.

I ran to the bathroom and spent about two hours at the toilet. I had no food in my stomach yet I experienced uncontrollable vomiting. I was extremely dizzy. I was sweating more liquids than I was vomiting and was freezing cold. I became disoriented.

The disorientation is hard to explain but my brains ability to tell which way is up or down was gone. It’s kind of like when a picture is turned on it’s side and it’s difficult to make out until the picture is rotated correctly.

Sometime during my marathon vomiting session I had to go to the bathroom. I managed to get myself up on the toilet and continue to vomit nothing into the tub. Crapping my pants wouldn’t have helped the situation. I am very thankful that didn’t happen.

After about two hours of what felt like a month I managed to stagger my way back to the bedroom. I was still vomiting but I had nothing to vomit so I wasn’t making a mess. It took a lot of concentration and stillness to get my vomiting to stop. Meanwhile I was still dizzy and cold. It was at this point that I considered calling an ambulance but I finally stopped vomiting and I didn’t want to start again by moving.

I managed to text a friend after a while, something about “HELP”. They brought me some crackers and electrolyte liquid. The throwing up stopped about noon on Friday and I spend the next two days eating crackers and mostly drinking water and electrolyte liquids. And sleeping.

Over the next week I had little appetite and it even seems like I forgot what hungry was. I had to force myself to eat real food. I also had body aches and headaches to suffer with.

I’m sure I had salmonella poisoning. I couldn’t be the flu since I didn’t experience a sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever and other flu like symptoms. I could be pregnant but that seems unlikely.

I was already on the weight loss path due to lifestyle changes (as in I’m not dieting) and I can attribute at least 5 lbs of weight loss to the food poising. Although it was nice to get a boost in weight loss I absolutely cannot recommend this method.

• News : Bats provide alternative to spraying – Rio Rancho Observer – SSCAFCA sponsors a number of bat houses erected near water retention ponds in Corrales and neighboring areas of Rio Rancho. Each house can hold between 150 and 400 bats, depending on its size.
• Plant communication: Sagebrush engage in self-recognition and warn of danger | Science Blog – Plants engage in self-recognition and can communicate danger to their "clones" or genetically identical cuttings planted nearby, says professor Richard Karban of the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, in groundbreaking research published in the current edition of Ecology Letters.
• Sci-fi comedy shooting in New Mexico – New Mexico Business Weekly: – “Paul,” a sci-fi inspired comedy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is shooting in New Mexico through mid-August. “Paul” is about two sci-fi geeks who make a pilgrimage to Area 51 and have a bizarre encounter with an alien named Paul, which leads to a life-changing road trip.
• Gil’s Thrilling (And Filling) Blog » Turtle Mountain Brewing – Rio Rancho, New Mexico – When Nico Ortiz, son of the famous anthropologist launched his inaugural restaurant and microbrewery in 1997, it just made sense that it should be called Turtle Mountain, a name which pays homage to his father and to the magnificent peaks under whose shadow his enterprise would reside.
• Is There a Milky-Way Galaxy/Earth Biodiversity Link? Experts Say "Yes" – 1n 1999, Astronomers focusing on a star at the center of the Milky Way, measured precisely how long it takes the sun to complete one orbit (a galactic year) of our home galaxy: 226 million years.

  The last time the sun was at that exact spot of its galactic orbit, dinosaurs ruled the world. The Solar System is thought to have completed about 20–25 orbits during its lifetime or 0.0008 orbit since the origin of humans.

• Watch this space | The Australian – AFTER you've spent more than 20 years hunting for an alien signal, you think you'd be celebrating if you noticed a mysterious pulse suddenly rising up on your computer readouts. A regular pulse, amid the random clatter of the cosmos, suggests that someone very smart at the other end is sending a message.

  But when Ragbir Bhathal, an astrophysicist at the University of Western Sydney, who teaches the only university-based course on SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) in Australia, detected the suspicious signal on a clear night last December, he knew better than to crack open the special bottle of champagne he has tucked away for the history-making occasion.

• Apartment Therapy ohdeedoh | How Mac N’ Cheese Is Like A Cigarette BusinessWeek.com – The article by Cathy Arnst is a review of a new book by Dr. David Kessler promisingly titled The End of Overeating. In it he describes "conditioned hypereating" – an almost uncontrollable drive to eat excessively beyond hunger. This breakdown in appetite regulation begins in childhood and only gets worse.
• Add enhanced audio track to iMovie | Music and Audio | Mac 911 | Macworld – Set about your dirty work in Soundtrack or whatever audio application you care to use and do anything you like except change the duration of the audio file. So, play with the EQ, filter noise, or add an unhealthy amount of reverb, just don’t cut or add anything to the file. (Because if you do, the file won’t be in sync when you add it to your iMovie project.)
• Wienermobile Crash: Oscar Mayer Wienermobile crashes into Racine home – WITI – The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile got itself into quite a pickle when it crashed into a Racine home Friday morning. Neighbors tell FOX 6 the Wienermobile took a wrong turn and ended up on the dead-end street, Kenilworth Avenue in Racine.
• Hoover Dam bypass bridge an epic marvel – A quarter-mile downstream from Hoover Dam, two fingers of concrete stretch toward each other from sheer cliffs, suspended nearly 900 feet above the Colorado River. In a month, the fingers will meet, an 80-foot gap will close and the longest concrete arch in the Western Hemisphere will be complete. The union will mark a major milestone in the nine-year construction of the Hoover Dam bypass bridge, scheduled to open in late 2010.

Looks like I’m not the only one with gopher problems.

An irrigation ditch in the South Valley overflowed Friday morning flooding a residential neighborhood near Isleta and Rio Bravo. Officials are blaming the incident on damage caused by gophers. Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District crews worked in the predawn hours to repair the damage and staunch the flooding.

A surveillance camera at the First Judicial District courthouse downtown captured a strange image Friday morning that left sheriff’s deputies, lawyers, clerks and judges scratching their heads as to what it might have been.
Some thought it was the ghost of a man killed at the courthouse more than 20 years ago after bringing a rifle to the building and taking several people hostage. Others felt it had to be a reflection from a passing car or a piece of cottonwood tree fluff. Still others threw their hands in the air, but somehow liked the image anyway or at least the hullabaloo it prompted.

Video available with the article. It’s low quality video with a dirty camera lens. It could be a bug, a reflection. I don’t know. I know it’s not a ghost. People see what they want to see.

Update 06/19/07: A follow up article at Free New Mexican.

Finally, another woman asked, “Have you consulted a reputable channeler? If you need help let me know.”

Give me a break!

Update 06/21/07: Here’s the security camera video via YouTube.