Today’s F Minus comic strip
Stuff
Not much has been going on, just the same old crap. My computer has decided to act like a spoiled child. It started turning off for no reason, and the keyboard and mouse would also just stop working. It has been sent to the home of a wonderful person who will shame and beat it into submission. This same lovely person has been so kind as to give me a loaner laptop. This laptop has spoiled me senseless. I get to sit on my couch, watch TV, tweet, poke around on Facebook, keep Mabel company and have my feet planted right in the path of the heater…ALL AT THE SAME TIME!! I KNOW! Awesome huh? I totally love it. She’s worried I miss that pissy, piece of shit computer. I don’t, not at all. Well, I sort of miss the music, but I’ve got my iPod which has everything on it. And I’ve got my external hard drive to save my pictures and any documents I need onto. So really… I’m not missing anything except some bookmarks, which I seem to be doing just fine without.
In other news, I’m going to attempt to do a detoxifying cleanse. I’ve never done one before and I found one that allows you to eat food while you’re on the cleanse so you will never be hungry. I think I’ll be OK with it. You make green juice out of whatever green vegetables you want (they recommend kale, celery, cucumber, wheat grass and sprouts) and drink that all day. In addition to the juice you’re allowed to eat raw vegetables. No processed foods, no refined sugar, no animal flesh, no grains. It sounds like I can have fruit, which I’m excited about cuz I love fruit. As many know my views of fruit is it’s like eating fun. Fruit is a tasty piece of excitement in your mouth. I don’t know how anyone could not like fruit. The only fruit I don’t care for is grapefruit. It’s just too sour, never liked the stuff. Is coconut a fruit? I don’t care for the texture of coconut. But all other fruits, I love them. And for those who know my insanity of being a picky eater, I feel safe with this cleanse since they want you to eat raw vegetables. The variety of raw vegetables I like is a much longer list than that of the cooked veg that I will eat. When I learned you could eat salad without salad dressing I was amazed at how salad was actually good. Yeah, I wouldn’t touch any salad dressing when I was a kid. It all looked really gross to me. I think the one thing I’ll miss the most during the next two weeks is peanut butter. 
Oh how I LOVE peanut butter. And lately I’ve taken to baking bread. Although, the latest loaf taught me that you can’t rush bread and you really should start baking early in the morning. You need to give it time to rise, you can’t jump forward to the next step if you don’t let it rise. The bread still tasted good, it is just pretty dense.
If you want to follow along with the cleanse experience you can read about it over on the Finding Thin blog. Starting Monday is the “pre-cleanse” and then the following week is the actual cleanse. Yeah, two weeks without my beloved PB&J…how will I survive? And yeah, no soda either! I’ve finished the last of it that was in the house, so.. it’s only water now. Maybe some herbal tea if I’m really craving something. So please, join me over at the Finding Thin blog and follow along.
2010 and the sickness
So sick
Ungh… I got to spend my new year with Michael Westen, Sam Axe and Fiona Glenanne. That’s right I was home on New Years Eve watching the Burn Notice marathon. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I had several party invitations. It’s just that I was horribly sick all week long. On Wednesday I was determined to make myself well so I could attend my dear friend Kate’s birthday party for New Years. I knew it would be a wonderful time and I haven’t seen her in much too long. I was certain I’d be better by Thursday. However, by about 3pm on Wednesday a new and very unpleasant symptom emerged. I was hopeful it was just something I ate that did not agree with me, but as I tried to figure out what it could have been that I’d eaten I realized that I haven’t eaten much of anything that could disagree with me. Chicken soup, chicken pot-pie, toast, crackers, applesauce…. none of these things could cause THAT. Then yet another night of non-stop coughing in bed until 4am. Giving up and sitting on the couch until 8am and finally falling asleep for 2 uninterrupted hours of sleep. Yeah, Thursday morning I just knew going anywhere would be a very bad idea indeed. Fortunately Michael and Sam were on to keep me entertained. I flipped to BBC America in time to catch Graham Norton’s New Year’s Eve show, followed by his two Dr Who specials. I caught a glimpse of Dick Clark (he does not look well) and then saw Janet Davies count down to the new year in Chicago. All the while coughing and hacking up a lung or two.
Allow me to tell you how NOT to get sick. Don’t leave your house…EVER. Don’t let anyone from outside into your house. Hose everything down with Lysol before it enters your home. And for God’s sake, if you see any children, RUN! FLEE! They are walking Petri dishes of germs and sickness! I was doing so well until I went out and became social the past two weeks. Never again will I leave my home, it’s just not safe out there.
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas
I just wanted to wish everyone a great holiday. I made this YEARS ago and it was up on Bijou’s Tripod website, I thought I’d use it again. Enjoy!
Working
I kinda have a job now. I’m the Media Specialist/Unit Publicist for a documentary that is being filmed. The film is called Finding Thin. They’re currently looking for people to interview and more can be read about that at the Finding Thin Blog
Please spread the word! I really want this film to be a success.
Travel Nightmare
I’ve always loved The National Geographic magazine. When Dad died I continued his subscription for a long time after. I finally gave up on it when I realized that I wasn’t actually reading the stories so much as looking at the pictures and then finally I wasn’t even looking at the pictures. I hardly had time to even flip through it, much less read it.
Apparently last month was a free preview of the National Geographic Channel on Dish Network. I always discover the free preview of the awesome channels at the total end of it all. I saw this show listed and at first I thought it was a one time special, but then I noticed on the listing that it’s actually an entire SERIES. It’s called Locked Up Abroad. Apparently there are enough stories of foreigners locked up in crazy places that there is a whole series about it. According to Wikipedia this started as a British series called Banged Up Abroad back in 2006. So far they’ve had 6 series (aka-seasons) plus a series called Kidnapped Abroad. The idea that this happens so often it could fill a several season show frightens me.
The episode I caught is about Sarah Jackson, a woman from England who was living a big party lifestyle of drugs, etc and found herself three thousand pounds in debt to a loan shark. In order to pay off her debt he gives her the only option of going to Peru and smuggling “a few kilos” of cocaine back into the country. The catch is, he wants her to take a friend. It looks less suspicious if you’re not traveling alone when you smuggle. She gets a friend, Simon Burke, to go with her. She tells him it’s just a holiday to check out Machu Pichu and all the beauty therein. He asks about money, she tells him she got money from her Grandmother so it’s all good.
As the departure date looms, Sarah has second thoughts and tries to get out of it by telling the loan shark she can’t find her passport. No problem, he has one, but the picture looks NOTHING like her, well, OK the girl in the picture also has short hair, but it’s not the right color… But it seems it’s very easy to get out of the UK with a passport that looks nothing like you, and it’s really easy to get into Peru as well. The only problem they had was the airline losing Simon’s luggage. She and Simon have a lovely time in Peru seeing the sites. She lets nothing slip to Simon about why they are really there.
She ditches Simon for an afternoon to get the goods that are already concealed in a suitcase. All she has to do is pack it and bring it back to the UK. Simon is totally clueless about what’s going on. They fly from the Machu Pichu area to Lima where they will switch planes back to the UK. All is well when they land in Lima. They claim the bags and then head to check in for the next leg of the flight. Sarah doesn’t want Simon around when she checks the bag in because she’s trying to keep him out of it. She tells him to go check on his lost bag from the beginning of their trip.
She checks in and everything seems totally OK, until a worker questions her passport, then her luggage is X-rayed and that’s not going well either. But right when she thinks she’s finally made it, they pull her aside and have her open her luggage. They cut into the bag and find the drugs. She’s brought back into a holding area and they discover she’s not traveling alone. The police go out into the airport to find Simon. These two are a man and woman traveling together, obviously they’re working together. They are interrogated. The police find 10kg of cocaine in the suitcase. They find Sarah’s real passport and a wig.
This all went down in 2007. Both Simon and Sarah were put in jail since Peru’s justice system is nothing like the US or the UK. After 18 days together in some sort of holding cell they are sent to separate prisons. The whole time Sarah is trying to tell anyone who will listen that Simon is innocent. However, no one in the Peruvian justice system cares if your innocent or how long it takes to prove that you are.
Sarah, the guilty party, is sent to what looks like a luxury resort. Simon, the innocent one, is sent to hell. The disgusting filth of the men’s prison in Peru where he is stuck for 10 months, is enough to make you lose all faith in humanity. Once the Peruvian officials accept Sarah’s guilty plea they let Simon leave prison, but he can’t leave the country. He has to wait until Sarah is sentenced before he can go home. Again this could take forever because they don’t care about due process or speedy trial in Peru. Now he’s living in equally squalid conditions.
I searched a bit online to try to learn more, I found the blog of Adam Sweet. He saw the Banged Up Abroad episode when it first aired on Channel 5 in the UK. Simon was staying in the spare room of a Peruvian family. He was trapped there for over 2 years. It cost his family twenty thousand pounds because Simon had no means to earn an income while stranded in Peru pending the court case and the prosecution’s appeal of an earlier acquittal. Simon was finally allowed to get home in October of 2009. If I remember correctly (as no online sources say) Sarah was sentenced to 7 years in prison. From what Adam Sweet says on his blog, there wasn’t a lot of mainstream press coverage about Simon and what was happening to him. His family and friends started a few Facebook groups to help raise awareness and pressure the British government into doing something. They also took donations for his living expenses. This poor guy’s life was ruined, and ruined by a friend.
So… let this be a warning to you, just because you’re innocent that doesn’t mean you wont get fucked over in another country. Peru’s law is lock you up and sort it all out later, even if that takes years. If going to Peru, make sure you’re a woman because the women’s prison is so much nicer. But also, don’t get involved in drug smuggling. You WILL get caught and it WILL be nasty, because you’ll get caught in a foreign country. I think I may continue to remain holed up in my cave.
The Robe
Microfleece Robe from Target
This is my new robe, but in plain black. I got it for 50% off at Target.
My family was never one to wear bathrobes. If I was cold I’d walk around wrapped in whatever blanket was handy. I’d even sit at the table wrapped in the blanket. My mother would sigh, roll her eyes and say, “You can’t be THAT cold!” I’d reply, “Yes, I can and I am. Why do you think I’m wrapped in a blanket?”
If you saw me dressed as Arthur Dent for Halloween, you know I have a lovely purple checkered robe. But, it just wasn’t the warm and cozy robe I dreamed of. When walking through Target on Black Friday, I saw a display of these Microfleece robes and I had to have one. Sure it’s a men’s robe, but that Microfleece is awesomly soft and warm and cuddly. Plus, as a men’s robe it doesn’t have that stupid inside tie thing. I hate the extra tie on the inside of women’s robes. I tried the robe on over my jacket, figuring if it wraps around me in my coat, it is perfect. And it did, so it was, plus it was 1/2 price AND it comes down to my ankles! This robe is BETTER than a Snuggie. This robe is AWESOME. It means I can turn down the heat and still be toasty warm. This robe discovery has been the best thing ever. Turning down the heat doesn’t just mean spending less on the gas bill, it also means I don’t have to keep turning up the TV volume. The heater is so loud I have to crank up the TV just to hear it. So, if you have yet to discover the beauty that is The Robe, I highly recommend this one.