Time to get caught up

A week and a half, and nothing from me.  What kind of blogger am I, leaving you all hanging on what's been going on in my life?  Well, what's been going on hasn't been very pretty; in fact, a lot of it was downright disgusting.  And we'll get to the nasty details after the break, so if you're not of a strong constitution or just hate hearing about general unpleasantness, do not read further.  There will be more come Tuesday.

Before the jump, I offer my condolences to Sonya's family on the loss of her husband's father this week.  May he find eternal rest and freedom from his pains.

Okay, for those of you that are still with us, let's flash back to a week ago Saturday.  The day started out as normal, and we had extra plans that morning.  An artist that we both like (warning: items contained are NSFW at times) was going to be set up at a local comic shop for Free Comic Book Day, selling prints and things, so we decided to go down, say hello, and possibly purchase some prints.  We hadn't settled on lunch plans, but right across the street was an Indian restaurant we had eaten at in the past.  The food was generally good, and they had a lunch buffet, so once we were done at the shop, we would go across the street and eat.

The buffet was small, only a few items, and what I had didn't seem as good as what we got for the sit-down dinners we had eaten before.  We finished lunch, stopped for some quick things at the Central Market, and went home so Ms. Darkstar could call a friend of hers (she's officiating at her friend's wedding in June).

While we were home, we heard five loud pops from outside.  Given that it was Cinco de Mayo, and it's not uncommon for fireworks to be going off in our neighborhood when the weather gets warmer, we thought nothing more of it.  Then, I heard sirens.  When I heard the fire truck pull up outside I wandered down to have a look at what was going on.  I saw a couple of cars in our front parking lot, sitting at odd angles, and my first thought was a minor car crash (didn't see any damage from where I was).  I asked one of the people watching what was going on, and I was told that someone had been shot.  Yup.  Those five pops we heard earlier?  Gunfire.  I saw the firefighters and police looking at one of the vehicles, pointing out things of interest.  An ambulance left with it's emergency lights flashing, and soon all that remained were the police, a section of the parking area roped off with the yellow tape, and the detectives going over the car before it was removed.  I remembered how, earlier that day, I had remarked about the yellow ribbons tied around trees in a tonier section of town, and how nice it was to see yellow ribbons without the words "CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS" written on them.

Later that day, once the excitement had died down, we went grocery shopping and I made pizza for dinner with the leftover pizza dough from before.  Not much happened and we both went to sleep.

I awoke around 5:30 Sunday morning with a nasty case of cramps and spent the next hour back and forth from the bathroom with one of the nastiest cases of diarrhea I had ever had.  About an hour and a half later, once that end had emptied out, I ended up driving the porcelain bus.  I can't remember the last time I vomited, but the streak ended that day.  When Ms. Darkstar got up that morning, I asked her to bring the ginger ale to help settle my stomach and get some fluids back into me.  She said she wasn't feeling all that great herself.  Sure enough, she got the same exact thing I had, and we both spent the rest of the day in bed trying to recover.

I was still a bit queasy when I went to work on Monday, but I really had no choice, having no sick days and lots to do that day.  The rest of the week went along, although I got a big surprise on Tuesday when I found out I had won a recognition award.  This is the first time I had ever won any kind of award at a job, and probably will be the last time since I'm sure this is a definite sign that the world is indeed coming to an end.

Today, I made the meatballs I was going to make last week, and since we didn't really eat anything for a good two days, we didn't have to do a big grocery shop this week.  So, yay for severe gastro-intestinal distress and saving a few bucks, I suppose.