Collection of recent stuff

It's been a very long week that started off a bit rough. I was very down last weekend and Monday, and I ended up going home early Monday and then staying home Tuesday and Wednesday. I just needed to be away from work (it's been slow for me again anyway) and just be at home on my own for a bit. It was mostly good, though I still had little energy or ability to decide on things. It meant calling up the doctor again to discuss pills. And what did we decide? To go back to the same pill I was on before, the one I had spent so much time with going through its withdrawal effects. But I don't mind really, they did seem to work for me. My backup option, after online research, was Wellbutrin, but then the doctor told me it's not available in the Netherlands. Well, crap. It's too bad I don't have it as a choice.

Besides being back on meds, I told my therapist I didn't want to continue with her and started with a new one the very next day. Well, it was an intake thing, it wasn't 100% that I would start going to this new person, but I think she'll be good, so I already have the next appointment. The last visit to my old therapist went rather crap, but it served the purpose of making me feel much better and confident in the decision to stop with her. I just don't think her methods worked well for me.

So, summary of my mental health, on to other things... I called my parents last night and found out that my mom was in a car accident last July and she didn't tell me. She was rear ended and so went to the emergency room afterwards, but they said she was fine. Now though she's having increasingly worse problems with her neck, so she got an MRI done and is seeing a neurologist, who told her some vertebrae are pressing in a bad way in her neck and she'll need an operation. Apparently it's not serious and this procedure is practically routine for the doctor, but, yeah, you're fiddling with the spine, it's scary. Also, my mom doesn't have medical insurance right now, this is all being covered via her car insurance and she's not sure yet if the operation will even be covered, and if it's not, she's just screwed, really. I hate this shit. I just feel so helpless and selfish.

It felt a bit sad, yet touching, that when I was saying goodbye to my dad, who is having short-term memory problems, he (accidentally?) called me by my mom's name (which is similar to mine), and didn't catch his mistake, but then he said "Say hello to O." Just kind of funny, he says my name wrong, but still remembers O.

I have added yet another link to a comic, this one called Savage Chickens. One frame, drawn on a yellow Post-It, involving chickens. Very silly and good for a chuckle.

Long ago, in December, there was an article in the Amsterdam Weekly about a gallery show of the artist Ray Caesar. The image accompanying the story was quite intriguing, rather surrealist, and based on it alone, I had plans to go to the gallery to see this guy's art, but it didn't happen. I finally got around to checking out more of his work online, and all of it is as weird, or weirder, than the piece I knew from Amsterdam Weekly. All of the characters have very child-like faces, but yet look very mature. Their limbs are often not normal. He is influenced by the years he spent working in the art department of a children's hospital in Toronto and seeing many sick and abused kids there. All of his art is done digitally, which is quite amazing because it looks so much like it must be a painting. Anyway, have a look through the galleries on his website. Almost every piece is both so frightening and something hard to look away from.

I am planning to change the look of my site, so if all goes well, things should look different around here very soon. It might get done today, depends on how frustrating it is to switch to something new and have it look the way I want.

We went into town yesterday to look for a new shoulder/camera bag for O, and at the Bijenkorf we saw a prime corner window filled with TVs to promote the new 24 game for Playstation. There were speakers on the outside of the window carrying Kiefer Sutherland's velvety voice over the Dam, informing us over and over again about how the game was developed by people who also work on the show and that it features all the actual actors' voices (don't most games based on shows or movies do that?) Who knew the game warranted such promotion? From what I've read about it, it doesn't. It looks good, but the play isn't very exciting. Best to stick to watching the show and laughing at all the silly side stories and massive plotholes.

Prison Break started airing on Dutch TV a couple of weeks ago and it's quite good. O has liked it enough that he wants to jump ahead and just download all of the episodes so far, so we might be spending a lot of time watching that soon.

Sars of Tomato Nation recently had a contest to raise money for equipment and programs for underfunded schools in New York City. Last year $23,000 was raised by readers of her site. This year the goal was to raise $25,000 between March 15 and March 29. Besides the many prizes up for grabs if you donated, as an extra incentive, Sars agreed that if her readers could hit $30,000, she'd shave her head. The first goal was reached I think a week ago, and the higher goal was reached last week, well before the planned end of the contest. A little video of the head-shaving is now on the contest site (though in a funky format that took some work to view). And hopefully there are many happy teachers and kids with new stuff and field trips to take in New York schools.