News:

Body makes Pot-like substance to protect skin

Wow I didn't know they could randomly seize your laptop at customs, apparently just for the hell of it, and hold it for a few weeks to copy everything on it, without any reasons to suspect you of anything.  Story here.  Apparently if you travel outside of the country, don't take your laptop with you unless you want to risk it being taken when you return home.

Seizures or not? Hmmm...

I'm seriously starting to think I have seizures.  Before you all say, yeah ok Ramie now you're sounding like a hypochondriac, just shush.  So many people think of seizures as someone convulsing on the ground.  But that's just the worst ones.  Others can be minor, so minor that pretty much everyone could have one and never have one again and/or aren't things doctors would worry about.  Those times I've had full body body twitches when laying down to go sleep for example are a form of seizure even though my doctors in Oregon had never heard of anything like that happening to anyone *blinks* yeah I had good doctors, 2 seconds on google you find them.  Mom saw a discussion among her friends online about these smells being seizures.  Which made me decide I'd look more into that aspect as I'd dismissed it as MS.  Seizure symptoms = a little eek. 

Lets go step by step here,

Of the early seizure symptoms, I get: Smell, sound, very rarely I've had tastes I couldn't explain with it, racing thoughts, strange feelings, and depending on how they mean tingling we know that might fit.  When I get the smells I get panic if it's the fire smell, so panicked I'll walk around the apartment freaking out looking for fire even though I think somewhere I know it's a phantom smell and feel stupid the second it ends.  Pleasant feeling?  Not really except the time the phantom smells were berries ;)  Headache, diziness, lightheadiness = check.  Sometimes numbness.  And no warning.  Doing real good on early symptoms :/

Of the Seziure symptoms, I get: Electric shock feeling, smell, spacing out (did this so bad at Vons once Brian took me home), Visual blurring.  Panic, again only with the fire smell though I did get panicked when I started getting all of these things originally, I've somehow trained myself to adjust to them.  Diffaculty talking?  Erm don't think this one counts either as I sometimes stumble over words I think I can attribute to just bad MS days.   Inability to move?  I've had that in the past during bad bad tingle attack which I'm not sure could be called seizure of not but I'm on anti-seizure meds because of them.  Staring (I'm generally aware of this like staring at a wall or something for no reason but can't stop it, it just passes and I snap back to reality sort of).    Teeth grinding? heh, ohh yeah but only in my sleep I think sooooo hehe don't think that counts?   Twitching movements = check (usually just one limb for a few seconds, fully aware, can't control it, happens with no warnings or triggers etc but those "sleep twitches" are full body).

Of the After seizure symptoms, I get:  IF tingle attacks somehow count as seizures, yes, otherwise no.  Frustration and embarrassment because frankly smelling something that isn't there, knowing somewhere in your brain you've een through this before, and still walking around looking for the fire or even berries IS frustrating and makes you feel just stupid.  Then the smells or whatever go away and you stop looking and you're not sure wtf?  Why, you knew not to bother looking.    Exhaustion is so often with MS, who knows :P  Headache, pain, thirst, weakness = check.

Ok, so not all of those everyday.  Just saying I've been what I'd call attacked by those things, the ones I'd think would be signs of seizures tended to last seconds or minutes, made me feel crazy or frustrated.  Many of those things could just be MS and have happened often or for longer periods of times (Meaning I don't think because headaches are a symptom that = sezire, just some of the other things combined make me wonder).  My tingle attacks for example, they don't happen as much as they used to now that I'm on Topamax regularly again and the ones so big I have to stop moving, that made me cry in public haven't hit in awhile.  But it does make me wonder if my doctors in Oregon totally missed what some of this was. 

I think I shall ask neuro on the 17th.  Seizures can be, for lack of a better word, minor.  And would explain a lot.  NMSS lists seizures as an uncommon side effect of MS -- along with headaches, tremors, and itching -- all of which I get thanks to MS.  I could be wrong, but I'm still asking just because I've been right on the other stuff I've asked about.  Maybe it's all just MS.  But seizures can be a symptom of MS.  If some of these attacks were seizures it'd still be blamed on MS.  I'm rambling, it just feels like an aha moment like it felt when we all said I still think it's MS and then were proven right when the doctor had still be saying migraines/strokes only.

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Ok real non political, non rant, non art, etc update.

I'm alive.  Still recovering from that heat spell we had.  No energy.  Try to draw, etc but just no brain power.  After apartment shaking skipping cd on mega loud yesterday I got a headache like I've not had in a year or so and all of those vibrations and that level of head pain also seemed to trigger a tingle attack unlike any I've had recently.  So health could be better. 

Made it to Wall-E tonight and briefly met a few of Brian's co-workers as we left (they were already seated and not near us when we got there) and they weren't ones he usually talks about.  Then went to get f00d.  He has another co-worker event tomorrow but it was somewhere that requires reservations and with the exhaustion, MS'y, tingly stuff Brian just told them not to include one for me, which was a wise move.  But of course the co-workers he works closest with weren't at the theater tonight, so Brian told one of the others who was there they'd have to be his witness that he DID show up with me and does have a gf :P  His co-worker, of course, said it'd be something more like "Nah Brian was there alone, there was no girl with him' heh.

As for Wall-E, cute movie.. apparently it's weird that I am more excited about Batman than it and that Brian is more excited about it than Batman.  Sexism!  But Wall-E was cute.  MUCH better than Indiana Jones was.  Of the summer movies I've seen Iron Man, Indy, and Wall-e.  Wall-E's probably on top followed by Iron Man and dead last Indy and expect this list to be moved around once I see Batman and I might also see Hancock... thinking about Hellboy 2 too, but haven't seen 1 yet.

Hmm that's it.  Art = still working on several digital paintings but have no brain power or energy so getting nothing done on them to speak of.  MS'y stuff not horrrriffic but not good either so am lazy and tingly and just like I have no energy.  Umm hmm yeah.  Brian has the next week off and I forget to look up stuff to do, oops.  Told you no brain power... MS is so fun, especially in summer.  I'm repeating myself.   zzzzzzzz

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And you take the bad...

Bad = cat puking all over your blanket at almost 11 at night when the washer here is broken so rinsing it out in say the tub and letting it dry in the nice cali sun isn't possible.  Spot cleaned it best we could.  Just, eww.

Also Jury Duty summons for the middle of July, hello... Nope.  My MS has had my sleep "schedule" and pain and etc messed up for years.  I liked jury duty last time I did it but don't think I can handle it now.  So I called to postpone it long enough to get my new neuro to fill out the form getting me out of it, hopefully.  If not at least it's postpones until Winter and not the heat of summer when it's all even worse symptom wise.

Shot didn't go so well tonight, not truly bad, but one of the rare times when autoject is blech.  I do NOT want to use the needle alone and usually autoject is fast.  There are rare days like say twice a year when I must pick a spot it doesn't like and it seems to take 20 minutes for the shot to complete.  I said seems... it's really like a minute... but it feel like forever when trying to hold the autoject there waiting and it hurts.

Brain aliens, mostly pain alien have been active over a month now and don't seem to want to go away.  They start to then BAM hit me ten times hard, get better, BAM... it sucks.  But I'm managing to get some art ideas down and working on some, somehow. 

Overall more bad than good... but trying to get some good in today, yay art.

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Ok, I'm not.  But having MS and deciding that Avonex made me too ill meant Copaxone was my drug of choice.  MS + Copaxone = 1 shot a day to keep the brain aliens away.. HA!  Ok, not away, but in theory they'd be much worse if I didn't stab myself with this stuff everyday.  The problem with that?  No one either in Portland, then in Santa Maria, now in Los Angeles knows how to dispose of my sharps containers as a private party with a dumpster provided by her landlord nor do they know where to find sharps containers.  So I order sharps containers online and keep my "biohazard waste" in my apartment.  Even in drug stores when I ask "Do you sell sharps containers?" they look at me like I'm a junkie and suggest that medical supply stores MIGHT sell them (that's if they're older wiser employees, younger ones just look at me like I'm on crack). 

Needless to say, my container has been full, beyond full for weeks, as I keep hoping the sharps container fairy will deliver one to me.  Time to order one online me thinks.  Ladies and Gentlemen, while I do complain about the brain aliens, I try not to WHINE, not to really boo hoo poor ME I have MS waaaah too often, but here you go... a boo hoo poor me moment, the cold hard facts -- this is what life with MS means.  Ignore the dusty  container, I don't go out of my way to clean it as it's out of the way and I don't care about it to be honest since it just holds biohazard medical waste ;)

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Holy no seats Batman...
Yeah so we get there 15 minutes or so before it is supposed to start.  No seats for that show so we buy for the next one, 45 minutes later.   Go to the GameStop and look around.  Kill some time.  Go in, hit the bathrooms, get inside with about 20 minutes til it's supposed to starts. About 10 seats left, all in the first two rows.  People started leaving those rows hoping for better seats in the next show. Previews finally started 1/2 hour after the scheduled showtime. 

I think that Wil Smith movie... err Hancock?  Something like that, too lazy to look it up, looks cute.  It's like the Summer of Superhero movies.  Batman, that Wil Smith one (though it's more a spoof'ish type), Hulk, Hellboy, erm feels like I'm missing something...

Anyway, I'm not an Indy expert.  I didn't see all of the first three, and the ones I did see were when they came out and my memory sucks.  But I would say it's what you'd expect probably.  Parts were cute.  Parts were boring.  Parts were action filled and yet silly.  No spoilers but for those who saw it, is it just me (I know it's not) but was the jungle poorly made in parts?  Like usually Brian points out why he thinks computer generated scenes are good or bad, etc.  and usually the bad stuff he spots I'm all hmm I'd never notice... but some parts of the jungle made me scratch my head, they just looked poorly designed.  And not in a we were going for an over the top Indiana Jones is unrealistic fun movie so why not make the jungle silly kind of way.   It was like it was supposed to be a real jungle but... something about parts of it just seemed either rushed or just flat out poorly designed.  That's my main gripe, it was distracting, and I don't usually notice those things or don't care.  Otherwise it's about what I expected. 

Ohh and why does it seem like Indiana Jones movies are talk talk talk talk... then action without talking action without  talk action without talk action without talk... talk talk talk... action action action action... talk... the end.  Seems unbalanced to me for some reason.  There were parts during action scenes I felt I've seen enough or seen it all before even without seeing all of the movies and little to no talking = *yawn*.  Ok, so I had two gripes then.

I left the theater in severe pain.  My lower back has been tweaked on and off since before Disney.  Then bounced around on Disney rides last weekend.  Not sleeping well this week.  Theater for hours.  Major tingles.  pain.    Vision funky, but think theater is part of that... second row sucks.  Some of the previews were hard to watch -- montages going back and forth with stuff it made me feel like I wanted to have a seizure.  Sometimes I think if I wsn't on anti-seizure meds for other things I'd have one fir real.  Certain lights etc at the right angle or flashing or whatever make me feel icky.

Sleepy. zzzzzzzzzz

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We went on everything we wanted to except Indiana Jones (when we went by I guess it had broken down and the chick out front said an hour + at least), The subs (the lines there are basically always an hour + and I couldn't stand out there long), and Splash Mountain (same, hour + lines and stairs = nope was in too much pain for that).

BUT, in addition to the usual won't miss rides (Star Tours, Pirates, Haunted Mansion, etc).  this time we did a lot of rides I'd think are where you head with the kids.  Ok if my grandparents (who took me to Disney when I was a kid)  were still alive I'd be placing phone a call today...Asking if they put me through that!  It's been so long since I went on the rides I'd always assumed were kiddie rides (except the Pooh Bear one, went on it the last few times I was there)  that I figured why bother, just kid rides... Boy was I wrong.

Holy... Ok Mr. Toad's Wild Ride -  What?  What? What? uhh... Did the ride end with us in HELL?  I think it did!

Alice in Wonderland... Snow White... Man the kid rides are scary, drug induced, WTF? moments if ever I saw them.  I'm glad we didn't have time for that part of the park when Keegan was here.  Sure Splash Mountain upset him a bit because his "tummy dropped"  but these rides would probably have given him nightmares he'd still be having :P  I hadn't been on the "kid" stuff since I was a kid... I didn't realize Disney was so scary.  Am surprised kids are so happy there.  Peter Pan was cool though!

Saw Eeyore this time but we were in line while he was walking around playing drums on garbage cans.   Brian "run over there and pull his tail off for me"... !!!  I told him to be nice to Eeyore :(

I accidentally made a joke that caused Brian to announce "Too soon".  Brian wanted to go on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad  well for those of you who don't know, heat affects MS, Anaheim is HOT.  At first I thought he was said he wanted to go on the train, that's how with it I was as we'd been talking about riding the train.  And I've never been on Big Thunder before.  Now as we get near it, I'm asking him what it's like as some of the coaster rides had me a bit jolted ( in fact it was after Big Thunder we hit the Kiddie rides as my body was done with coasters, my shoulder popped in it from being thrown around).  So we get there and there's a sign that says something like boomtown and population and numbers and they're crossed off with the numbers getting smaller and smaller.   Brian said he wondered what happened to them all.  I TOTALLY FORGOT that in 2003 someone died on that ride and said "They went on the ride and never made it out".  Brian "too soon".  Then something in my brain recalled... "Oh crap, someone died on this one didn't they, I'm about to go on a ride that killed someone and just told that joke, great, I didn't know, I'm sorry".   Seriously I'm not a heartless bitch, next time I go there I should check the list on wikipedia first. I was sure the karma gods were gonna get me for that as we got on the ride. I truly felt horrible.  Eeek.  Just, you don't think of DISNEYLAND as a place where people die.

Brian made the mistake of calling me a doorknob... forgot what HE thought he was saying, but he never heard the "everyone gets a turn" joke and couldn't figure out why I was glaring at him.  He felt like a dumbass when I explained it to him..

Now, I'm in a LOT of a pain, everything hurts.  I'd still be asleep but Dutchie woke me up when Brian's alarm went off... so I'm gonna curl up in bed and watch tv while I try to recover. I was walking and talking like a drunk... without the alcohol yesterday... ugh.

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Ok semi real update I suppose since movie update and the artlog on my site weren't exactly real updates.

First I don't think anyone who reads here regularly has any family in China, but if you do... family, friends, whatever, I hope they're ok.  Holy... Watching news this morning was so sad.  So many schools collapsed.  

I was already kind of sad for My bot before bed... And of course there's a wave a storms, Burma/Myanmar (whatever we're supposed to call it).  Seems like the world is having a tough time lately...

Which makes me not want to complain, but I will :P

I wish the MS Brain aliens would take a vacation. I know it's not a full on exacerbation.  Same old symptoms.  Just ugh.  Pain alien isn't controlled as he had been (though in fairness he's not as active as he used to be either so still somewhat controlled, err.. yeah just even a few stabs to my head that make me stop everything to grab it and make me feel all twitchy = feels uncontrolled, heh).   The alien that controls sleep, well he's on crack.  He has be so tired that while talking to MY bot I was so out of it between tired brain fog and pain alien I was correcting words I typed right and then having to correct that and fix which ones I meant to fix in the first place. I can't fall asleep, can only pass out -- today that was at at around 1-2 pm.  Then am so tired and in pain when I wake up I don't feel alert enough to do anything. 

I have been working on painting for Misi but it's been going like this, do some, err looks wrong, erase, redo, err wtf? not right, erase... etc.  Good thing I'm painting it digitally ;)

Viddler appears to like me better than YouTube.  A - I played around with the idea of making videos not art private on YouTube, and setting friends could see (small friends list there) but then I found if you do that you can only set up to 25 friends so if your list gets bigger later too bad AND when you set them that way it spams them with you've been sent a video AND it spams your own outbox, not once with a cc, but for each person you sent it to *blinks*.  YouTube = inefficient.  *nods*    Haven't really used the feature yet, but on Viddler you can comment on a moment of a video so instead of people saying, as they do on YouTube @ 1:22 look for this, they can just comment at that time of the video pointing out whatever right then).  Interesting.  Thankie to Miss A.. for showing me the site, I could tell you her name, but then I'd have to kill you *nods*

Err my wrist hurts.  My eyes hurt.  Waaaaaaahhhhh!  But yeah I ranted enough.  Oh for the first time ever I made money with Google Ad Sense today, w00t! 

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News:
Nick Bollea aka Nick Hogan was sentenced to 8 months in jail + 5 years probation + lost his license for 3 years for the accident that left his friend John Graziano brain damaged.  Good.  He's lucky he didn't kill him or himself.  Hopefully he learns something and stops driving like he's on the track when on the road.

Sleep:
Couldn't sleep until 1.  Slept til 8 which is good I guess.  Hate though hours for sleep but nice amount since I haven't been sleeping straight through and it's only been 5 or 6 hours tops lately.  Lister was laying on my chest when I was falling asleep and I pissed him off because my head was some mutant form of pain alien just stabbing in pain almost causing me to twitch when I reacted he looked at me like stop it, I'm trying to sleep here.  Rude cat :P 

Brian/Plans:
Brian was talking about picking up dinner after work, then after we eat going to a 10 o'clock show of Iron Man.  I'm not usually a comic book super hero kind of girl believe it or not.  Just ther Superman ones and now SuperGirl and Batman.  Still haven't seen Spiderman, Fantastic 4, etc and no interest  But Iron Man looks good and well Robert Downey Jr. can usually make even the worst role seem good.  But it's 9:40 and Brian still not home from work with dinner so think that will be tomorrow.

We had talked about Disneyland this weekend as they have the 2fer deal going on and it's only good if you use one by the 22nd and Brian wants to force me to see the Whoopi California thing before they remove it for the park makeover  (if it's not gone already).  So I suspect we'll go next weekend maybe because I'm pretty sure we'll never pay for CA Adventure (unless the makeover is really good, but that will be years from now).  And with the 2fer specials we pay for Disneyland and then during the next month can go to CA Adventure once for free.

Hmm so that means this weekend is dentist (1 filling scheduled, still gotta figure out the others), Fry's,  Iron Man, refill Topamax, and really finish Misi's mail I hope.

Dunno why my brain aliens are so busy lately.  The one that controls sleep is a mess.  Pain  alien a mess.  General brain alien too my thoughts keep getting all muddled up and I type wrong words and yeah... argh.

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My mom (her Vox here or LJ here) took part in Collage Mania (her suns are on page 15 but are claimed already).  Had I realized this earlier I'd have posted earlier but I'm *cough* stealing her infor about it so you guys know about it in case interested.  It's going right now! 235 collages are available today for a minimum donation of $80 to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause. If that is too rich for your wallet, the ones remaining tomorrow go for $40 each. Help FFAC and Virginia Spiegel meet and exceed her goal of raising $30,000 for the American Cancer Society and add to the more that $150,000 already donated.

Also, I haven't really talked about it here, because I've primarily been using it on other blogs, but I joined SocialSpark (a blog for money site).  You know, pick an opportunity you're interesting in and qualified for, write a post, get paid.   And yeah, it works, I made a little money last month.  Well it's a little different than some sites like that, in that it's also a community and has some blog back opportunities.  I of course had to check the charity channel.  And found a woman who now blogs about her daughter that was recently diagnosed with MS.  Selected Visions, reminds me of my mom shortly after we found out we found I'd had it with her posts like the one about Vitamin D in MS.  Of course my poor mom then had to counter-research Vitamin D with Sarcoid too.  But I know there's more than a few with MS who read this on the LJ crosspost, so if you have any kind words you can offer her or just want to add another MS blogger to your feeds, go check her out.

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Politics:
Hmm Insomnia posted yet another interesting post, I'll just let you read his post here instead of ranting about it myself as he rants far better than I do ;)   But basically, it seems that voters in predominately black areas of NC received calls explaining they only needed to sign and return their voter packets -- WITHOUT VOTING, to be eligible to vote.  In other words a. they clearly think these people are stupid and b. this woman's organization targeted mostly black voters trying to suppress their votes.  I'm a news junkie and haven't seen it on mainstream national news yet so, errm... wtf?

In other political news, mom once wanted to nearly disown me because I liked the Clintons.   That was before Hillary ran in this election.  Hillary has now convinced me that she's a closeted Republican so I no longer support her and with Edwards gone I support Obama.  My sister has taken up my to be disowned spot by announcing she'll be voting for Hillary in the Oregon Primary, heh.

Dutch:
I have picked up my Dutch books only to, as predicted, read the first few chapters, again!  BUT, I also have Pimsleur beginner Dutch CDs and have listened to lessons 1-6 (of 10 lessons I think) during the last few days.  So far, since it is beginner stuff, it's a lot of hello, how are you types of things.  Which is good, I know to spell those things I'm hearing.  Lesson 6 has moved onto the would you like something to drink types of things.  Eeek.  I always said the Dutch letter g scared me, and it does.  But hearing the word "graag"  eeek.  *hides*  I know it's nowhere near the worst, but it's the first gr word and multiple letters g word I've heard.  Oh man if I tried to say that in front of a Dutchie they'd be laughing for a year.  Guess I have to go back to being an American now.

Health:
So I slept on and off from 4 am until 4pm yesterday.  We've been having record high temps for this time of year.  It's finally supposed to drop down now... to record lows possibly.  Ugh.  My body doesn't like when the weather jumps all over the place.  Especially not when record highs start early in the year.  Brain aliens in full effect.  Pain alien been around.  Exhaustion alien.  MS IS NOT HAPPY.  MOTHER NATURE MAKE UP YOUR MIND ABOUT THE WEATHER!  In fact if I get extra ranty or mess up lots of words, yeah, brain aliens around, sorry.

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