One Reason Why I’ll Never Be P.O.T.U.S.

Last Sunday I finally found the time to start my regular visits to “The West Wing” again and once I started it was really difficult to stay away. And now it’s difficult to not make this post a long one, gushing about the guys on the show and the stories and everything. I’ll do that in a post later, I promise. I’ve watched episode 6.09 and 6.10 last night, in which Bartlet suffers through a severe MS attack. Of course I watched the events unfold with slight unease, because a) I’m hypercritical when it comes to MS portrayed on TV shows / movies and b) I usually try to not think about what could happen to me one day. It ’s not that I’m really want to be oblivious and ignorant, because I do know the facts and I know what could happen. But most of my MS attacks have been comparatively mild, so I’m trying to keep that in mind and I hope that my life with this disease will be compartively normal. And believe (or at least try to) that I won’t suffer from severe attacks in the future, when I haven’t suffered from severe attacks in the past. Maybe that wishful thinking. I’m sure, part of it IS wishful thinking. But it’s that wishful thinking that is keeping me sane. Because I usually am a glass-half-empty person and worry too much and anticipate the worst. If I did that with the MS, I would have gone crazy a long time ago.

Miscellaneous on October 25th, 2009

I actually wanted to post that entry even yesterday, but I somehow never got around to do it. When I got home Friday night I realized that I hadn’t posted that my mom was discharged already on Friday and back home again. I should have posted that right away, but I was so busy throughout the day. She was supposed to be discharged on Saturday (or even later), so on Friday morning it took some phonecalls and organization to have one of my brothers pick her up, but it worked and she was home before 11 AM.
I spent most of the day over at her place to catch up and be there if she needed me to take care of some stuff. It was also Bro3’s birthday, so there was cake :-) The rest of the day I spent working on my termpaper for a while and writing my Grey’s review, before I had to get ready for the very low-key birthday celebrations at Bro3’s favourite pub. We had a great time and I drank much more alcohol than usual, because Bro3 was paying. It’s true that it’s really risky, if you don’t have to pay for your own drinks, because you loose count. At least I did and even though I didn’t really drink that much or anything stronger than a “Radler” (a traditional German beer/soda mix), I was kind of drunk when I left. And we had a really great time. I just hated that my clothes and my hair smelled like I had spent the night sleeping in an ashtray. Why do I have to live in the only country without a effective smoking ban ?

Even More Happy Moments…

My wall clock’s battery was running low. And I was wondering how it can be only 10.30 when it felt like much later. So I guess after watching two West Wing episodes I won’t read much longer tonight, but go to bed soon. When I thought about my happy moment of the day for the weekly happy moments post, I couldn’t decide which one to pick. So this will be the exceptional “a few happy moments in one day” post. And I will link to it in the weekly post :-)
The funny thing is, that I didn’t expected much happy moments today at all. I had to get up earlier than usual due to an early board meeting, which took longer than expected. Which lead to a stressful afternoon because a bunch (around 70) mails had to be sent today. Personalized with various different attachment, but at least similar text so I could copy&paste most of it. It still was tedious and boring work. And it took me much longer than I expected as well. And I didn’t have time for breakfast in the morning and just had some small snacks during the day. Rather not happy moments at all.

2nd Week of Sick Leave :-(

Well, that didn’t turn out like I planned. The corticosteroid IV actually helped with the MS attack, everything’s more or less ok on that front. I even handled the sideeffects (lack of sleep, restlessness) rather well, I thought. I could keep the muscle pain (from the ‘withdrawal’) in check with rest and some painkillers on Saturday.But yesterday afternooon my heart started to race. Or at least it felt like it did. It was beating fast and hard, like I had run a marathon. It really felt wrong and my heart didn’t calm down, even when I was going to bed and lying still. I also felt slightly nauseaous, which might have been caused by the racing heart and the growing panic, that it didn’t calm down. Or maybe the heart was beating so fast, because I was feeling nauseaous.

I went to my neuro this morning for the post IV bloodwork and also told him about my symptoms. He was sure that that this was caused by the meds I got last week, because that’s bascially what the do the bloodwork for: To check the elektrolytes (K/Na etc) status in my blood, which might have been messed up by the IVs. And a misbalance in elektrolytes can cause all sort of things. The bloodwork results won’t be back before tomorrow though.

IV 4 & US Presidents…

Four done, one left to go tomorrow. I was so groggy last night, went to bed around 10.45 pm and got about 5 and 1/2 hours of sleep last night. Plus some short naps for the rest of the night, well morning actually. But it definitely was in improvement. I felt rather relaxed, when I got up. At least for the situation I’m in. And the corticosteroids help to keep the tiredness at bay during the day. I was actually feeling up to think about some stuff. About local politics and budgets and such. Vast improvement to the days earlier this week, which were only spent with watching DVDs. I love watching DVDs, but when you know you could and actualyl should spent the day more productive, it makes you feel bad to not be able to just that.

Anyway, today I did. I also spent some time doing Facebooks quizzes. Pointless I know, but fun every once in a while. And one made me laugh so hard, because the question which West Wing character I am, was answered with… no, not Donna Moss, but Jed Bartlet himself. Which is especially funny at the moment, with me on MS sick leave and all. And there wasn’t even a question about health problems.  But I’m obviously presidental material… :-)

Donna Moss, Citizien of Canada :-)

I love the Canadian National Anthem. And I love Canada. For that reason I was really touched at the end of the West Wing episode 3.16. It was such a great idea to have “Oh Canada” played during Abbey’s birthday party at the White House to honour and cheer up Donna, who had just learned that she actually is Canadian and not a US citizien [don't ask, but it was a funny story and of course Josh fixed it in the end]. But it was so weird, because it’s the home of the US president after all. During festivities like this the band usually only plays “Star-Spangeled Banner” and “Hail To The Chief” :-)

I just love this series. All the characters. The writing. The wonderful dialogues and the very very entertaining and informative storylines. Love love love this series.

The West Wing – Season 2 Finale

I managed to squeeze in the last episode of the West Wing’s season 2 this evening before I’m off to my own political business. And OMG do the writers know how to write amazing season finales. Season 1 ended with a bang and even though it’s pretty obvious how this showdown will turn out, it was just an incredible episode. “Brothers in Arms” gave me goosebumps, because it’s such an incredible song and it fit so perfectly. And the whole sequenze was very well directed and filmed and written and just. WOW!

I guess I will put in episode 3.01 when I’m back from the meeting later tonight, even though I have to get up early tomorrow. Well, maybe I can restrain myself. But maybe not. 3.01 is the “9/11″ episode, so it’s probably going to be just as intense. Maybe I should keep waiting to watch this, until I have some more free time and not so many things on my mind.

The Good & The Bad of Week 6

Well… it might tell you something about my week, when there only is another list at the end of it. Although I have to admit that I probably could have used my spare freetime (late at night) better than with just visiting the White House. But at least that’s a pretty entertaining and relaxing way to spend my free time. So entertaining that instead of the one or two episodes I ended up watching four. And I was tempted to watch a fifth and finish the 2nd season with that, but I’m reasonable and postpone that to another day…

The Good…

• I started with Kieser Training again
• Harry Potter audiobooks read by Stephen Fry
• McDreamy wants all of Meredith’s “crappy babies” *sigh*
• “The West Wing”
• Team Germany is going to Vancouver in 2010!
• I’m getting my daily (weekly, well regulary ) doses of V., the cutest baby I’ve ever seen
• I completed some of the Green politic things I wanted to finish
• I started to work on my term papers again

The Bad…

• Extremly busy days and lots of work at the office and the homeofficce as well
• I already know that I don’t have any free afternoon / evening in the next week
• I screwed up an assignment for job#2

“The West Wing” is back with season 8

There are a few things I could write about, but I’m rather stressed at the moment and I need to be lazy tonight. But I really really wanted to share this :-)

Promo for the new season…

Miscellaneous, 2009/01/04

It looks like the Cologne Sharks won’t even make it to the pre-playoffs (10th in the standing). Theoretically there still is a chance, but it’s highly unlikely. Right now I don’t even care that much, which is strange. I guess I’m just so frustrated about how the season went so far. Frustrated and annoyed by the lack of fight and motivation and skill and a lot of other things in this team. I’m just… very very frustrated. They lost in Mannheim on Friday and against Krefeld at home today. In today’s game they once again gave away a 2:0 lead and once again lost in OT and got nothing more than one point out of this weekend’s two games.

They don’t have that many games at home until the season ends at the beginning of March. So I guess my last hockey game in Cologne will already be on the 16th January, because I’ve got to work on both the last game in January and the last game on home ice at the end of February. But I’m honestly not upset about that, I’m almost glad this awful and disappointing season will be over soon.

° ° ° ° ° ° ° °

More fun than watching or listenting to the Cologne games on TV/Radio is to watch the clips of World Jr hockey at the moment. I know we couldn’t afford Jaruslav Janus as a goalie, but maybe he could teach our goalie Frank Doyle a few tricks? Janus had some great saves in this quarter-final against the USA, which Slovakia won, by the way. Here is a 2min summary clip.