Tea Party Fast Food

Yesterday I had the most bizarre fast-food dining experience I've ever experienced.

I live in Norwich and do not get down to Groton very often. When I am there it is very rare that I will stop to eat there; if I do stop anywhere in Groton it's more likely than not that it would be Starbucks. But, I happened to have a coupon in my pocket for a free Whopper, so I stopped in to the Burger King there. When I first went in it didn't hit me at first. All I noticed initially was that it was clean and quiet - not too busy even though it was just a little before one in the afternoon. I place my order, get my food and go sit down. I notice that there was a large flat screen TV at the other end of the dining area with the sound all the way down and the captions on. The station was taking a commercial break and I thought to myself how nice it was that they had a TV for people eating there.

...and then the commercials ended.

After the advertisements Fox News came on, blasting the cover story for the current Newsweek about how President Obama can fight back against the smears and lies and the negative image that right wing "news" outlets such as themselves had forced upon him. Most of their arguments centered around Newsweek being bankrupt and how that therefore makes them irrelevant and incorrect about everything. (I've searched for an image of the cover to include here but could not find it. I guess it's still too new...) After that they went to an advertisement featuring G. Gordon Liddy trying to scare people into buying overpriced gold coins.

And that's when it hit me.

I looked around me. Everyone in the restaurant was white. Everyone behind the counter and working in the back... white. I finished my food, threw away my trash and walked outside. As I headed to my car there was a customer coming in for whom I held the door open... white. I drove around the building and passed three people waiting in the drive through lane... all white. It was Tea Party dining at its finest.

I eat in fast food restaurants probably more often than I should and I have never had a comparable experience. Maybe if I went to eat in a Burger King in Montana or Utah I might have a similar experience, but Groton is one of the larger cities in South Eastern Connecticut and is racially diverse. To me, the odds of an all-white staff serving an all-white clientele in a city like Groton seems statistically impossible. I was honestly shocked and dismayed.

Unemployment Blues

In all honesty, it's not altogether horrible. My last job has been the only job where I have taken so much on my own shoulders, voluntarily taken on extra duties above and beyond what my job description (and pay grade) called for. I was writing procedures, doing some marketing work and training employees. I made myself and the knowledge I had accumulated from working for almost fifteen years in the medical laboratory field at almost every level and at almost every job from microbiology tech down to phlebotomist and specimen processor - from LIS analyst to client service representative. I was, I now realize, pretty stressed out on a day to day basis. I am not affluent by any stretch of the most vivid and fertile imagination and vacations consisted mainly of just being away from the desk. I haven't gone on any kind of trip any further than a two to three hour car ride in well over a decade. So that's akin to what this feels like - a staycation. Only this is a stretch of time off that also includes trips to the food bank, strict budgeting and cutting back on un-necessities (such as Gamefly,) and is completely not of my own choice.

For now, I do not mind it so much. It's a lot tougher than it normally has been to make ends meet and we have to be much more cautious in nearly every decision we make. It's going to start weighing on me very heavily soon though. Men need to be doing something; we define ourselves, in part, by what we do. One of the first things you want to know about a man after you know his name is, "what do you do?" Until I have a long-term answer for that question I feel unsettled and incomplete.

Incommunicado

I have kind of withdrawn as of late, and I apologize. I haven't really felt like being plugged in, sharing every thought, blah blah blah...  I am having a hard time thinking about anything other that what is going on with my health. I just want to feel "normal" again. Thankfully, it seems that all the medical probing and prodding is starting to show something finally. It appears that I have sleep apnea. I went for a sleep study and I had enough instances where I stopped breathing, fell out of REM sleep, etc, and so forth that they woke me up halfway through the night and put a CPAP on me. It will still be a couple of weeks before I go back to see the pulmonologist and get fitted for a CPAP to use at home, but hopefully that makes a difference.

I am tired of being tired...

Ow!

Today is not a good day. It's not a bad day; I don't feel ill. I went down to the medical records department and got a copy of the report for mt CT scan from Tueday (I didn't want to wait till July 12th for my follow-up) and it's all normal. On the surface everything is normal - copacetic... But the reality is that I feel like crap. I ache all over. I feel run down and tired - almost sleepy. My back is sore and I am stiff in my hips. WTF is wrong with me!? I think I could tolerate being ill; I mean seriously ill... I am generally optimistic enough that a serious illness or condition would not drag me under. Hell, I had open heart surgery when I was in my 20's - I've spent plenty of time in hospital beds in the course of my life. It's feeling like this and the doctors having no clue what is wrong with me is what is killing me. If I knew what was going on I could steel myself and face it. Not knowing what I'm up against is frustrating and makes me feel
even more powerless.

Laugh If You Want To...

...but I have to admit to a bit of a new man-crush: John Krasinski.

I just finished watching Away We Go with him and Maya Rudolph and loved it. I liked it but I think the odd choice of having the whole movie scored with Alexi Murdoch songs simply did not work.

There is just something so completely endearing about Krasinski. He's comes across (in The Office too) as the kind of guy you'd want to hang out, drink beer with and shoot the shit. He's the perfect best man for a thousand weddings.

I'm Worried for Bobby Jindal...

The other night on the evening news I saw Louisiana's Governor Bobby Jindal very angrily raging against the environmental disaster that ravaging his state's shores and threatening to destroy a way of life for a great number of people for many years to come. A moment later he was criticizing President Obama and calling on him to lift the moratorium on issuing offshore oil drilling permits. Does the governor have an undiagnosed aneurysm or perhaps an as-of-yet undiagnosed schizophrenic personality disorder? ...my thoughts are with him and his family - I hope that they quickly diagnose whatever the hell is wreaking havoc with his brain.

Update on the health situation

I meant to do this earlier... sorry. So I met with Dr. Dulala, my new Hematologist/Oncologist last Friday and she basically confirmed everything that I already didn't know. She looked me over, asked a bunch of questions and we talked about what might or might not be going on with me. She's ordered a whole buttload of lab testing, most of which is still pending: BCR/ABL mutation analysis, Flow Cytometry, a couple of electrophoresis tests... I meet with her next Friday to discuss the results. If those results are inconclusive, the next step is extracting bone marrow for analysis... *SHUDDER*