Crowdog Brie

Happy Birthday to my older (truth) and wiser (questionable) Brother.

Don't worry, Josh, riding a fixed gear totally shaves off a few years and will keep the ladies from realizing you're pushin' thirty.

Love ya.

It's been a long couple of weeks, school is wrapping up, I'm packing up, and the social obligations seem to be piling up. So, that's my excuse for just leaving you with this bit of good news from the ever tedious, frustrating and sodden world of the IDSA:
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced that his antitrust investigation has uncovered serious flaws in the Infectious Diseases Society of America's (IDSA) process for writing its 2006 Lyme disease guidelines and the IDSA has agreed to reassess them with the assistance of an outside arbiter.

The IDSA guidelines have sweeping and significant impacts on Lyme disease medical care. They are commonly applied by insurance companies in restricting coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment or other medical care and also strongly influence physician treatment decisions.

Insurance companies have denied coverage for long-term antibiotic treatment relying on these guidelines as justification. The guidelines are also widely cited for conclusions that chronic Lyme disease is nonexistent.

"This agreement vindicates my investigation -- finding undisclosed financial interests and forcing a reassessment of IDSA guidelines," Blumenthal said. "My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists. The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science.

"The IDSA's Lyme guideline process lacked important procedural safeguards requiring complete reevaluation of the 2006 Lyme disease guidelines -- in effect a comprehensive reassessment through a new panel. The new panel will accept and analyze all evidence, including divergent opinion. An independent neutral ombudsman -- expert in medical ethics and conflicts of interest, selected by both the IDSA and my office -- will assess the new panel for conflicts of interests and ensure its integrity."

Full article here.

For my 15th birthday, maybe my 16th, Jesse gave me a book titled "Go West Young F*cked Up Chick," it wasn't wrapped and he handed it over with the statement he'd purchased it from the 70% off rack at Barns & Nobel. This might have been around the time he was making money by taping rocks, so I forgave the cheapness of the gift. I only read a chapter two as the dirty, sexy and optimistic images of Los Angeles did nothing for me at the time - my blinders were set towards the East Coast not Southern California. Regardless, the title has always stuck with me and seems to run through my head every time I board a westward bound airplane. It came back again, ringing and clear, when a short while ago a far fetched plan was hatched to spend the summer months in Portland. The impetus was, and is, an internship that will hopefully give me a good sense of the publishing industry (the third in the quartet of possible jobs this Master's will help me with. The others being Teaching, Agenting, and Writing enough to sustain a standard of living). The idea started to gain momentum when I came to find that some of my favorite people would also be in the beautiful North West, some of which I hadn't spent any real time with in ages.

It's always been a dream to be able to live bi-coastally. Or with one foot in the city and one in country, or woods, or mountains or beach. I've been in New York for approaching on a year, and I've grown awfully fond of this place - it affords me a lot of the big city luxuries that Boston didn't, and is more accessible than Los Angeles, but over all the pace is more my speed than any other city I've lived in. But I'd be lying if there wasn't something about that Pacific Northwest that always seems to call me back. I watch Ax Men with a powerful sense of deja vu for the color green and that crisp, clean smell that outsiders say smells like mold and I say smells like wonderful.

I think it's going to be an interesting experiment, a bit of a leap of faith, and to be honest it makes me nervous. But without a little compulsive behavior now and then life might just start to be a drag. My expectations for what the whole summer might bring are nebulous and easy going. They swing on a day by day basis with the emphasis on just enjoying the time I will be spending there, the sun, the food, and the good company.

It's been 10 years since I earned my bionic wings.
Happy birthday Robo-Spine.

"Flowers flying cross the room
Vases smashed against the floor
Said 'I'd rather be alone
Take your chocolates and go home'"
-DBT

What does getting dumped, falling down a flight of stairs, being in the hospital, and nearly getting arrested all have in common? They all happened on Valentine's day. So, needless to say I've always been a little wary of the holiday above and beyond the usual loneliness that can accompany it.

I usually discourage the Valentine's day presents, from gentlemen callers or otherwise, as I'd rather get a gift of the just-because variety than because the giver feels obligated. The Valentine's Day of my sophomore year of college, however, was one of the more memorable of 'love oriented' gifts I'd ever received. After thoroughly advertising my distaste for the day to anyone in earshot, I came home to find a hunting knife on my bed with a note, written in red paint on a torn piece of cardboard, that read: "V-day can be brutal. Arm yourself." Maybe it's the McCue in me, but that's my kind of romance.

But for those stuck on what to get that certain someone for Valentine's day, and those that end up with a gift that elicits a lack luster response, you've only Chaucer to blame. Although St. Valentine (all eleven of them) date back to over 200 AD, the first association of V-Day as a day for lovers wasn't made until 1382, when our buddy Chaucer made mention of the exchange of love notes in his poem Parlement of Foules. Asshole.

The best story I'd ever heard of St. Valentine was that he was a scorned man who cut out his own heart and then gifted it to his lover. Unfortunately I can't find any evidence of this story, and I think I might have made it up. Regardless, I like it better than the current story of the jailed priest who continued to marry couples in secret. Because what's a better way to say I Love You than with cold cold spite.

But in moderate seriousness, I like to consider myself an a-typical gal with typical sensibilities, and as much as that statement might reek with pomposity to some, it holds true to my innate girly desires for The Ring, The Wedding and the Happy Ever After. One year, probably around the age of six, my mom substituted my birthday cake for a wedding cake, which has staved off any serious premature itchings to get my Big Day, but maybe not so much that innate desire to find that buddy you couple up with on the playground. But despite that want, I have a bit of an allergy to the L word. Never been good at saying it, never been good at receiving it. I know my fear of the L word comes from the anticipated danger that it will be taken back. Takesies Backsies, if you will. But after saying those three little words the last thing I assume most boys want to hear is a puzzled and inquisitive "Fo' Reals?" So perhaps the aversion comes from the knowledge of my own tendency to second guess, and not the implication of the word at all, and what I'm looking for is just someone to answer me back: "Psh. Fo' Reals, girl."

Insomnia is back in full swing round these parts! Help a reformed night owl out.

I've always had moderate trouble with sleeping, especially in the last two years. Lots of bad dreams, burst of energy right before sleep, the inability to fall asleep etc. etc. etc. And recently I've been doing my hardest and what feels like my most regenerative sleeping between 6 and 9 am, which usually means I've over slept and have to scramble to get out the door. I've implemented a new rule to not eat after 8pm, when it's possible, so as not to have Ebenezer Scrooge-esq fits of dreams due to a bad spot of cheese, and I try not to nap, but these don't seem to be helping.

I'm not a fan of sleeping pills or other sedatives, and a few fool proof methods just aren't physically an option, but it's clear I need to start getting more than four hours a night.

I've taken up an old practice I used when I was a kid, which is listening to classical music all night. I streamed some piano music last night that seemed to help, but I was still up and down more than I should be. This practice started when I was thirteen or fourteen, I remember seeing a special on PBS about how certain passive activities stimulated brain growth without strain, one of these was the simple act of listening to classical music. So, when I found out I was going to have back surgery as a freshman in high school I knew that my dreams of attending Juilliard and becoming a famous dancer were probably out and I was going to have to start relying on the brain to be the money maker (I was fourteen, odd logic abounded). So, night after night I'd turn on Eugene's classical station and conk out, hoping to wake up just a little smarter.

I don't know if it actually did anything, but it created a restful sleep that I'm now, ten years later, trying to recapture.