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I just checked my schedule for the week of April 13-18 at work.



We have a wedding for Wong, a wedding for Wang and a wedding for Yang......



Really?



sounds more like something from Dr. Suess...

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Khayman
02:04 Apr 12 2009

Or a page from the Kama.



>:P

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BubbleGumClaudia
03:28 Apr 13 2009

Would u like a wong or a wang???



Or how about a nasty lemon slushie???

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Thursday, we got mail from Manulife, which is our insurance carrier from where Scott works.



Seems in my delirium, I gave the hospital THEIR card first instead of giving them my Care card, so now I am up to my ass in "fill this out, mail it to us, we will look at it, fuck you over, mail it back to you, THEN you can submit it to your insurance carrier so THEY can fuck you over. Have a nice day..."



For all you people who think that it's just peachy the kind of health care system they have up here in Canada?



THINK AGAIN



The bullshit runs just as thick with this health care system as it does in the states, people...just runs in a different direction, is all.



And the grand total for my little pleasure cruise through Blue Springs' ER?



$3221.75



As I am explaining to Scott what all I have to do to get this submitted properly as we are going to dinner last night, a guy pulls up beside us on Braid Street. I hapopened to be looking at Scott talking when he pulled up, so I got a bird's eye view of what he was doing IN the car.



I have yet to figure out how you can get a license to drive when you think it is a good idea to read a book WHILE driving, AND your lips move while you are doing it.....



0-o

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LadyChordewa
21:03 Mar 30 2009

WOW.

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Nightgame
15:11 Mar 31 2009

Well darn it would have been nice to think it was easier to deal with insurance in your system :(

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....After wrestling with the overwhelming stupidity of Orbitz, I flew to Kansas City, Missouri, where I met my friends Pat and Joanne. They were extremely instrumental in helping me get out of a rather bad situation, they gave me support and a place to live when I needed it, and hugs and love when I didn't think I could go on any further, no matter what was waiting for me at the end of the line. I hadn't been to see them since Scott and I got married, mostly cause I just didn't have the money, and when I had the money I didn't have the time :0



So here I am, walking out of the airport and into the arms of two of my best friends in the world, and thrilled with the idea of spending some quality time with them, AND getting my bbq sauce level back to normal (Vancouver's idea of bbq is limited to Tony Roma's, which isn't quite what I have in mind when I think of bbq, and a place we haven't tried out yet called Memphis Blues- I can't wait to walk into THAT place and tell them where I am from...lol)



So the first thing we did was head to Zarda's, so I could get my Que on. We also included Pat's dad, who was generous enough to not just do my taxes for free after I got divorced, but managed to net me $600+ back as well. And all those years Jim was telling me I didn't GET anything back...lol



The next day, Pat had to work (he works for a satellite provider company) so Joanne and I talked about EVERYTHING- sex, drugs, jewelry making, music, law enforcement, cross stich, Ms. Sue, parents, you name it, we covered it in the 9 hours we had the house to ourselves.



When Pat came home, none of us felt like cooking, but we didn't really want to go out either, so Pat and I made a run to the Sonic up the street. I have adored Sonic for years, primarily for the chili dogs and the lemon slushies they have, so I was jazzed to up THAT level in my blood system as well. So we get to the drivethru, and Pat starts with my order- A chili dog, cheddar bites, and a lemon slushie- he doesn't even have it out of his mouth good, when here comes the girl over the intercom:



"I'm sorry sir, we're out of chili....."



course at this point I am turning red from frustration, but I change it to a cheeseburger like everybody else, and off we go.



So we pull up to the window, and I lean across the seat to look at the girl with a



Really? You're OUT of chili? Is that possible?



"Yes ma'am it has been a busy night, sorry..."



fine. We get the food and head to the house.



Now. I have been craving one of those damn slushies for MONTHS, right? So is it that hard to believe that when it started tasting funy, I didn't really notice, right?



Wrong. I noticed, but thought it was just me.



That.....was when the trouble started.



The next morning, I woke up at 7 AM (not a natural occurence in my world, no matter WHAT is going on) with the overWHELMING urge to get to the bathroom NOW.



Suffice it to say I didn't really make it in time, since I had to run up the stairs from the basement where I was sleeping.



From that point on, at 7 AM in the morning, I was either puking or pooping ALL DAY LONG.

NOTHING stopped it. And it was damned uncomfortable with there only being one bathroom in the house. I went from the couch to the bathroom, back and forth, for EIGHT HOURS, every 15 minutes. At this point, Pat and Joanne were getting worried, and I was in tears I was so miserable, so Pat put me in the car with Joanne and hauled my ass to the ER.



It was so bad, I passed out three times while sitting in a wheelchair, or laying on a small couch in the waiting room. When they did my triage, I was so sick, they couldn't get my temperature to register so they had to stick it in my armpit to see what was going on. Thanks to Kyle, the nurse who took EXCELLENT care of me, they finally managed to get TWO bags of fluid with compazine in me, which finally did the trick, and it took a grand total of 5 hours in the ER before I could stand up without pasisng out.



To say I was scared is putting it mildly- I was terrified. I had NEVER been that sick before in my life, and I never want to be again. AND I was MILES away from home and Scott, which REALLY upset me. How the HELL was I gonna explain this to him? lol



And suffice it to say, Sonic is not exactly in my favored category ANY MORE......



And that was just the FIRST part of my trip....oy.

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Nightgame
23:37 Mar 25 2009

I haven't been able to go to either one of the sonic's in my town since you told me about this o.o

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LadyChordewa
17:23 Mar 26 2009

*hugs* But you were with friends...at least that is good.

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There was the airport. Vancouver airport, that is. The bane of my existence for the past 4 years, and the site of enough aggravation to power a small city for a week, at least on my part.



It never fails to amaze me that when you put certain people in power, that they seem to assume that means that they have free reign to be just as nasty and humiliating as is humanly possible to anybody that strikes their fancy, no matter the time of day or night, circumstances, or frequency of appearance. Now don't get me wrong, there are REASONS there are border guards, both coming and going, and I have seen some of the people they have refused crossing to, and I have heard why.



HOWEVER.....



I am not a threat to anybody. At least not to anybody of any importance...lol



My flight was to leave at 6:20 AM. That's right people, I do tend to leave before the BUTT CRACK 'O' DAWN more often than not. For me, it is easier to stay up all night and get there early (which I have to do since it is an international flight) than to try and sleep a few hours and get up that early. So I go trooping through, heading for the Delta counter to check in.



"I'm sorry, what did you say your name was"



Luanne Kendall



"I'm sorry, we don't HAVE a Luanne Kendall listed on the manifest, are you sure that is the name?"



Here's my passport, AND my print out from Orbitz.



"Ma'am, this ticket is in the name of Luanne MINCEY (my former married name) NOT Kendall"



Orbitz, in it's infinite wisdom, instead of getting the name from the CREDIT CARD I used to PAY for the damn things, had pulled the name from my email on Yahoo, which until recently I had not been able to change over to my new married name for some reason (Thanks to Corin, who baby stepped me through that yesterday so this NEVER has to happen again).



So I patiently (yes, girls and boys, I actually can do that) explained to the second ticket agent (the first didn't speak English so hot, and when you throw in my southern accent, it is all over but the crying) what had happened, he was gracious enough to go ahead and print out my boarding passes with the admonition that I still, after all, had to get through customs at the American border.....



So off I go, through security, where they threw away a new bottle of shampoo, conditioner, the last of my hair lotion for hot rollers, and my face wash because, and I quote "it's just a tad over the 3 ounce limit" (this after she hoisted it in the air a couple of times)...



Then off to customs, where a tired lady pointed me toward lane 4, and a young man waved me forward. I carefully explained the situation, fully expecting to have to call Scott and abandon the whole trip...when the gentleman looked me dead in the eye and drawled "Where you from, sugar?"



*insert stunned look here*



Why, I am originally from Georgia, honey, where you from?



"I hail from Texas, Ma'am (note capitals on the ma'am) and it is a pure pleasure to hear someone else who talks like I do. How you liking it up here in the frozen North?"



I like it just fine, but finding certain foods is a pain...



"Ain't that the truth. I don't suppose you have a recipe for biscuits and gravy I can give my girlfriend? She just has a heck of a time trying to make that for me......"







10 minutes, 2 recipes, and a lot of laughter later, I was on my way to the boarding area for my plane, finally convinced that not EVERYBODY at the Vancouver airport is a complete and total ass.....



He did say that even though I had correct ID and a Blockbuster card with my former married name, I could "still be fibbing" to him. I asked him if he seriously knew of a Southern woman who would voluntarily lie about changing her name? When most of us wear new marriages and names like badges of honor?



*eyeing me sideways* "Damned if that ain't true- go ahead, and have a great trip"



But I did have to explain the ticket problem to every single gate agent along the way, so thank you very much, Orbitz, for making THAT the first of several VERY stressful days along the way of a two week tour that can ostensibly be called the trip from HELL.....



But with several bright spots, and you guys will see in upcoming entries....



And here.....we....go.........

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Nightgame
18:47 Mar 18 2009

You just gotta love those fine gents from Texas :)

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means all hell is going to break loose SOMEwhere along the way. As many of you have read in previous journal entries, I just don't have the best of luck with plane trips, and it usually turns out to be absoultely hilarious by the time I tweak it around here....



THIS time, it might not be so hilarious, but I'll do the best I can...



Drama to start as soon as I can organize my thoughts on the whole thing, bearing in mind this was a 2 WEEK tour, with FOUR plane trips involved...



May God have mercy on us all...lol

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LadyChordewa
05:27 Mar 18 2009

I heard it already and sorry dear but you might be better off taking the train. lol.

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Medieval 'Vampire' Skull Found

Heather Whipps

LiveScience's History Columnist

LiveScience.com heather Whipps

livescience's History Columnist

livescience.com

1 hr 3 mins ago



The remains of a medieval "vampire" have been discovered among the corpses of 16th century plague victims in Venice, according to an Italian archaeologist who led the dig.





The body of the woman was found in a mass grave on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo. Suspecting that she might be a vampire, a common folk belief at the time, gravediggers shoved a rock into her skull to prevent her from chewing through her shroud and infecting others with the plague, said anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence.





In the absence of medical science, vampires were just one of many possible contemporary explanations for the spread of the Venetian plague in 1576, which ran rampant through the city and ultimately killed up to 50,000 people, some officials estimate.



Italy's famous canal city wasn't really overrun with medieval Draculas, however.



With hundreds of Venetians dying every day, gravediggers likely just misinterpreted the corpses they saw at varying levels of decomposition while reopening fresh mass graves, said Borrini.





The "stages which reduce the corpse to a skeleton were poorly known because they happen in the grave," Borrini told LiveScience. "Graves were usually reopened after years, when the body had completely turned into a skeleton."



Death exposed





Vampire superstition was already part of European culture by the time the bubonic plague reappeared on the continent in sporadic outbreaks throughout the late 1500s. The classic folkloric image of the undead, bloodsucking vampire likely originated in Eastern Europe and spread westwards, historians say, blending and morphing with local beliefs as it went.





Ignorance about the natural stages of decomposition probably fed the original vampire myths, Borrini said, noting that historical documentation of vampires harped on the oddly life-like appearance of recently buried bodies.



"There are some recurring aspects in vampire exhumation reports (usually written in the 17th and 18th century by church-goers and well-educated men, and sometimes even by scientists): uncorrupted corpse, pliable limbs, smooth and tensed skin, renewed beard and nails," Borrini said. At the time "death was linked to a cold and stiff corpse, or to a blanched skeleton (dry bones)," he said, so evidence of anything to the contrary was considered worrisome when the rare body was exhumed for examination.





In the middle of the plague in Venice, however, victims were being dumped into mass graves such as the one on Lazzaretto Nuovo very regularly, exposing bodies at every gruesome stage of decay.



Frightened gravediggers



A phenomenon that occurs early on in the process of decomposition - abdominal bloating - is what likely concerned the Venetian gravediggers, Borrini said. When humans die, the body releases a myriad of bacterial gases that cause a corpse to bloat with fluid, usually just a few days after death in the absence of any kind of preservation or protection from coffins.





"During this phase, the decay of the gastrointestinal tract contents and lining create a dark fluid called 'purge fluid'; it can flow freely from the nose and mouth...and it could easily be confused with the blood sucked by the vampire," said Borrini.





If the "vampire" woman was emitting blood from her mouth, the fluid likely moistened her burial shroud causing it to sink into her jaw cavity and be dissolved by the fluids, Borrini said, making it appear as though she was trying to bite through her shroud. When discovered in that state, a stone was jammed into her mouth as a kind of exorcism to prevent her from potentially spreading the disease further, the researchers think.





Medieval skeletons have been found in a similar state in other parts of Europe, Borrini said.



Bad times = superstition





It is difficult to decipher whether the brick-in-mouth tactic discovered in Venice was truly based on a deep fear of vampires or was merely extra precaution in troubled times, Borrini acknowledged.



"From a forensic point of view, we can accept the reports about the 'vampire corpses' as real descriptions, but we can also realize why those legends spread especially during plagues," Borrini said. The mere fact that tombs and mass graves were reopened so frequently during pandemics to bury new victims of a disease, exposing partially decomposed bodies, only increased "dread and superstition among people who were already suffering pestilence and massive death," he said.





Borrini presented his findings to a recent meeting of the American Association of Forensic Sciences, along with forensic orthodontist Emilio Nuzzolese.

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Nightgame
22:50 Mar 11 2009

Yep I'd just right to thinking vampire too o.o

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