Sunday, December 18, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Flu or Something Like It
So for the past two weeks I was pretty much completely out of commission for anything fun or fun adjacent due to an extreme bout with the flu. Or at least I think it was the flu. One of the problems with my current job is that it doesn't offer health insurance so I diagnosed myself using a combination of WebMD, Yahoo! answers, and a neti pot instruction manual. Since I couldn't breathe, I spent most of my time on the couch looking as pitiful as possible and requesting bottled water, kleenex, and various medicines, one of which made me wake up from a nap thinking it was 1994. A good year to be sure, but not one I'd necessarily want to time travel to. Despite my one time travel adventure, I recovered fairly quickly and was able to go back to business as usual.
It got me thinking about insurance though. One of the days I was glued to the couch I watched C-Span as the House voted to repeal the healthcare bill. I guess I'll just keep trying to save up for a Dr. who doesn't have "Web" in his name.
It got me thinking about insurance though. One of the days I was glued to the couch I watched C-Span as the House voted to repeal the healthcare bill. I guess I'll just keep trying to save up for a Dr. who doesn't have "Web" in his name.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Ambiguous/Identity
Once, in a theology class a teacher related the following conundrum to me: If God is all powerful, can he create a rock so heavy that he himself can not lift it? There's no answer, because if God is the most powerful force in the universe, he should be able to lift the rock, but could he also create something beyond his own reach? And that unanswerable question was the very first thing I thought of when a friend asked me what "queer" meant to me.
Lately I've been wearing a knit cap to keep my little head warm during the cold winter here in Savannah. The cold weather has afforded me the opportunity to look on the outside the way I feel on the inside all the time. It's easy for me to forget sometimes that many people, perhaps most, see gender as a black and white issue so it's always a little jarring to hear ma'am when I'm bundled up in my winter finest. It's not that I want to be a man, or feel more comfortable when I'm called sir, which also occurs fairly regularly, it's just that I'm not totally comfortable being thought of as a lady. Where I grew up being a lady meant going to cotillion, getting manicures, and more than likely getting pregnant some time before you finished college. And I don't mean to denigrate any of those things, they just...aren't me. I own The Bourne Identity trilogy, I loathe shaving my legs, and I'd rather go to the dentist than get a manicure.
Driving down one of Savannah's beautiful streets, I got into the gender discussion with a good friend of mine. "I don't understand queer", she said. And I felt myself audibly sigh as if the wind had been let out of my sails. This is a conversation I've had many times. So many I could probably just make a chart of talking points and be done with it, but I realized, the two of us riding along, that there's no hard and fast answer for any of it. It's all a personal choice. I choose to identify myself as queer and I also decide what that means to me. Gender and sexuality are a giant and sometimes overwhelming spectrum. My friend said, if you didn't know the word "queer" is that still something you would feel? She assumed that my identity was tied to the word, and not the other way around. And unlike the God question I immediately knew the answer. "Yes", I said. "I've always been the same person, someone was just kind enough to finally make up a word for it."
Lately I've been wearing a knit cap to keep my little head warm during the cold winter here in Savannah. The cold weather has afforded me the opportunity to look on the outside the way I feel on the inside all the time. It's easy for me to forget sometimes that many people, perhaps most, see gender as a black and white issue so it's always a little jarring to hear ma'am when I'm bundled up in my winter finest. It's not that I want to be a man, or feel more comfortable when I'm called sir, which also occurs fairly regularly, it's just that I'm not totally comfortable being thought of as a lady. Where I grew up being a lady meant going to cotillion, getting manicures, and more than likely getting pregnant some time before you finished college. And I don't mean to denigrate any of those things, they just...aren't me. I own The Bourne Identity trilogy, I loathe shaving my legs, and I'd rather go to the dentist than get a manicure.
Driving down one of Savannah's beautiful streets, I got into the gender discussion with a good friend of mine. "I don't understand queer", she said. And I felt myself audibly sigh as if the wind had been let out of my sails. This is a conversation I've had many times. So many I could probably just make a chart of talking points and be done with it, but I realized, the two of us riding along, that there's no hard and fast answer for any of it. It's all a personal choice. I choose to identify myself as queer and I also decide what that means to me. Gender and sexuality are a giant and sometimes overwhelming spectrum. My friend said, if you didn't know the word "queer" is that still something you would feel? She assumed that my identity was tied to the word, and not the other way around. And unlike the God question I immediately knew the answer. "Yes", I said. "I've always been the same person, someone was just kind enough to finally make up a word for it."
Friday, December 31, 2010
New Beginnings
I figure the best time to start something new is at the cusp of a brand new year.
The address is an homage to a (million dollar) idea for a restaurant I had as a result of too much time spent at Ryan's buffet with good friends. The basic premise is that it's a Melting Pot style restaurant with a moat of gravy flowing around the outside. Although I realize this particular idea will probably never come to fruition, we live in a country where anything is possible. Here, restaurants with names like Dolywood's Dixie Stampede are an actual reality and eating is sometimes as much of a event as going to a movie.
So hopefully this blog will become a repository for my thoughts, about food and otherwise. And of course, photos of my adventures. No better time than the present, so without further ado, I present to you the final day of 2010:
Some cool kids Jess and I ran into
Nothing says Happy New Year like a Yard O' Beef
Ryan's buffet. Sooo delicious. Yep, that's a hotdog bun wrapped in plastic wrap
Like prison, but with larger portions
So that's it so far. Here's to 2011. May it be filled with good friends, good times, and good food.
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