Stomach. I hate you.

Here I am searching google at 3am wondering if Yaz (birth control) is causing my severe stomach cramps right now. I think the worst has passed, but not ready to sleep yet since my stomach is still burbling away.

I dont know if Yaz caused this or not, but I'm switching to Yasmin 28 right away. I took that for 3 years or so and it was great. I thought Yaz and Yasmin were similar enough that I'd be fine on Yaz too, and this whole first month on it was fine. I've read some bad stories about Yaz, sure, but there are horror stories about Yasmin 28 too, and I thought it was great while I was on it.

It's just in the last few days, since I switched to the 4 days of not taking it, where you're supposed to get your period, that I've had issues. I've always had stomach issues to go along with my period though, so I didn't think much of it, but this little episode was way worse than anything I've experienced before.

I mean, I did a lot of running earlier, which doesn't help, but that was awhile ago. I also ate some shortbread cookies and pretty rich chocolate, about 3 hours ago before bed. That probably didn't help. I wonder if the granola I had after running had any effect... oh well, who even knows. I'm not taking the stuff anymore.

My prescription is actually for the generic Yasmin 28, but my doctor gave me some free samples of Yaz and said, why not try them. I'm supposed to start the second month tomorrow, and so I was going to continue on the free samples of Yaz, but I guess I'll just go and get my real prescription filled. I'm scared of it now that it fucked my stomach up so badly though, because maybe the problem will continue on Yasmin 28 too...

Brief Update

I have almost too many places to express myself in writing these days. The urge to write a personal blog (this one) has been mostly fulfilled by my private journal recently. I have some photos from events that I will post and share.

In the meantime, a brief update of my life:

I have started studying, a little, for the CPA exam. I am now writing TWO blogs about experiences related to that, and school, and stuff. One of them is my own domain, and is my original blog. The other is on a financial blogging community, which gets a lot more traffic. I only have about 3 posts up there now, but so far it's going pretty well. I am managing to write two blogs about essentially the same topic without repeating myself too much.

I have been having a lot of luck lately. I want to express my recognition and thankfulness for this, although I'm not really sure to whom/what to express it.

Monday

A post, because I haven't written in a few days, and I feel like writing. A quick post, because I am going in to work with my mother tomorrow, and so I have to get up... in 6 hours.

This weekend was interesting.

I would just say that the weekend was fun actually, except that a UGA professor killed three people on Saturday, which is very sad. One of them was his wife. The others were members of her community theater group. They haven't caught the guy yet, which is a bit disturbing. I wonder how long someone can make it on the run these days, when he has been so clearly identified.

Twilight was on (big bike race event that everyone uses as an excuse to start drinking at 4pm), so Athens was crowded, and we ended up going downtown super early (like 5pm) on Saturday, and staying until 3am.

CCK performed their NKOTB number again, and I got a complete video this time. Still working on figuring out how to take good video with this camera, but at least this time I remembered I can't rotate it, so I have to hold it landscape!:

Art Travel Diary Thing

While I was traveling in Italy, I tried to draw/paint a little. Mostly we were walking around cities and sightseeing, so I have far more photos than drawings. I'm going to make a little scrapbook/art journal of my trip.

First, I need my CD of photos that I left in Italy so I can figure out how many photos to include. I might add some drawings, because sometimes a photo captures all of the ugly things that you didn't notice when you were taking the picture. With a drawing, you can single out the beauty that caught your eye, and just leave the extra bits out.

Here's a page from the hostel we stayed at in Ravenna. It is my most complete page at this point, and even this one I am planning to add to.

Money Issues

So yesterday, my mom got really mad at me about... well, all sorts of things. One of them being that I spend too much money on things I don't need. I guess she has a point.

I don't do any drugs, and I don't drink much, but I am a little addicted to shopping, eating out, and hanging out in coffee shops. I thought about trying to come up with limits as to how much I could spend on each of these a month, but I decided that, like with any addiction, the best way to work on this problem is to cut these things out entirely. It's too easy to fall back in the habit if I let myself do it "once or twice."

So, from now until... well I'm not sure when. How about August? That's kind of extreme for a ban on eating out, but then again, I will need money saved up for first month's rent. Okay, let's do it. From now until August, I will not eat out or buy any more mochas (unless someone really hot invites me out to eat or get coffee.)

I know my friends enjoy going out too, but I hope you can support me in this. (Oh man, I made myself sound so serious about this now, haha). I'm hoping that we can instead get together to eat in-I need to develop that as a new habit. My inability to cook anything edible is an issue, but maybe I'll work on that too!

I'm going to keep track on here of how long I can go without these things in a sidebar here. I also need to stop spending on crafts and fabric, etc. At least until I have finished the 3 or 4 projects I already bought supplies for. I'm going to keep the chart simple and just stick to not eating out and not going to Walkers.

Michal goes to Poland

Sadness: Michal left to go home to Poland yesterday. Hopefully he'll find his way back here soon!

Boybutante 2009!

This was my first time ever going to Boybutante, a big HIV prevention fundraiser held in Athens, GA every year. It's kind of like a big drag show, but with some non-drag performers mixed in. And hella fun, of course.

I got some videos and photos... a couple good ones in there, but it's hard to take photos of people dancing in bad lighting! I'm proud of my little Canon Powershot! I've uploaded all the decent and semi-decent photos to MySpace, but I'm having some issues with the videos.

Mary Jane getting some money :). I met her cousin when I went to the mall to buy my outfit earlier today. Yesterday. Whatever. The girls at Charlotte Russe were awesome. They asked if I was going to buy accessories to go with the shirt I picked out, and I said "Well... if you can help me pick them out." And they did! I don't usually wear a whole lot of jewelery, etc, but they helped me pick out some nice shiny stuff.

Big pot of money. Some people were giving more than just ones apparently! Those of us up close to the stage took the job of rescuing all the money that went astray and making sure it ended up in the pot. We buried the hundred under the ones after I got this photo, haha.

Athens Mayor Heidi Davidson put in an appearance. I think she goes every year. Best mayor everrrr!!

I didn't get any better quality shots of these girls, but they were awesome. Effie's Club Follies.

And on that note . . . I'd better get to sleep so I wake up in time for lunch tomorrow! Mmm, I just remembered I had ChickFilA for lunch/breakfast today (at like... 2 pm) and it was soooo good. Goodnight!

Drag Show!

I took my camera with us to the drag show on Saturday. Usually I end up leaving it at home because I won't even carry a purse with me when we go out. For now, I'm a little addicted to taking my camera with me everywhere since I got used to having it on hand all the time in Italy.



I was so excited that I got this shot. Mary Jane Dube, the drag queen above, used this photo in a flyer for her latest show!

We brought some straight guys with us. For one of them, at least, he had never been to a drag show or even a gay bar before. He was nervous about it, but had his really nice camera with him and decided he would sit on the stairs of the stage in order to take better photos, haha. I think he was still pretty freaked out, but I guess he was willing to get up close for photographies sake.

The other guy with us sat on the stairs too, to stick close with his friends, and ended up getting danced on a lot by Mary Jane, haha.

Trans Man Mapping Project

I thought this was interesting: I just followed @TransGuys on Twitter (found through @Audaciaray), and on his website he has this map where trans guys can add themselves and see how they are all over the world. It's called the TransMan Mapping Project. So far, I only see one person who has added themselves for Athens, GA.

http://transguys.com/map/

Ears

Mel, Michal and I went to a concert tonight at Caledonia Lounge here in Athens . . . it was very loud. I feel a little bit like an old lady . . . or like I'm back in high school, because that's the type of thing my friends would want to go and see. Maybe I'm thinking of my first year of college? That feels so far away now, haha.

Anyway, I'm all about some acoustics. And Ludacris. "I killed so many men I sell rappers on Ebay!"

Gratuitous photo of cioccolata. It is my new goal to figure out how to make cioccolata calda, italian-style, out of american ingredients.

Ciao Mirko!

I made it to Athens, ahead of the tornadoes, but it was a bit scary! The sky got all gray and swirly above me while I was driving, just as they announced a tornado warning for the county I was driving through.

We ate dinner at Mirko tonight in Athens, which was nice. I miss Italian food, and hearing Italian all around me, and even hearing people speak English with Italian accents. So Mirko was awesome because they have good, real Italian food, and then Mirko the owner came over and talked to us in Italian. He loves us because we study Italian, and not many people around here speak any Italian.

He brought us some free cake, shipped from Milano. "Torta della nonna" and "a cake with lemon" is what he told us.

Also, I wore my new glasses.

Lucca, Italia

Lucca is a small town near Pisa, Italy, but with fewer tourists (I think) because it doesn't have the famous leaning tower of Pisa in it. I didn't actually go to Pisa, so I can't judge, but I absolutely loved Lucca.


Lucca is surrounded by a city wall, and you can rent a bike and cycle around the ramparts. It takes about 20 minutes to circle the old part of the city slower. The above photo is a grassy bit on top of the wall where I ate some pizza for lunch.


I got pizza from this small family-run place. The guy working there was really cute, but didn't speak English, which probably just made him seem even cuter to me, haha. I wanted to get my food to go, so I had to figure out how to explain that in Italian. It turned out to be pretty easy, haha.


It was a beautiful sunny day, but the wall has nice shady trees on it, so it was nice and cool for biking.


I left the city around 4 in the afternoon, to head to Cinque Terre. The light was just hitting the tops of these trees. I took this shot on the gound inside the old part of the city, looking up towards the walls. A few minutes later I walked through the wall to head to the train station, very much wishing I could stay.

Back from Italy!

Yay! I'm home from Italy, and I managed to sleep in until a decent hour, and I'm going to go and pick up my new glasses soon, and go to Athens tonight, and I can upload photos now! Whee!

Except for the 400 photos on a CD I left in Italy, along with half my gifts for people, lol. But they're going to mail that to me. But I'll get them all in the end, so I'm excited about that! It's so typical of me to leave the most important stuff behind, haha.

I have so many good stories from my last couple of days.

I hiked all day with an Australian on Monday. I met these two lovely people from Uruguay on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday I went back to Milan and had a lovely time just hanging out in a park, and playing catch with a Frisbee. I had a great chat with this English couple on the train to Milan as well.

Yesterday I spent most of the day traveling home, but I sat next to a woman who is a designer for one of the top fashion houses in Milan and met the US east coast competitive pizza team in the customs line. The guy who came 4th in the world for freestyle pizza toss showed me a video of his award winning performance on his buddy's digital camera, lol, which was pretty awesome.

Then, when I got to the airport, I randomly ran into Juliana at customs, on her way home from Dubai. Then I found a confused Danish couple, and played tour guide through the airport and helped them find their bags and car rental.

Right now I'm uploading photos to facebook. I have sooo many amazing sunset photos. I have to shower now, pick up my contacts and glasses, and then go to the doctor, so I'll have to write up all of my stories sometime later. I want to remember all the great people I met.

Sunny

Sooo... no hiking for me today, so I just hung out for hours outside. I sat in the sun for awhile. I feel like I should be out there now, taking advantage of the nice weather, but then I might get sunburned.

I decided to go ahead and do laundry since I had 0 clean clothes, but I only have 2 days left that I need clothes for! Oh well. I will have a lot of options for those two days and my bag wont smell like dirty socks!

I was thinking of sunbathing this afternoon, but wanted to shave first, since I havent at all for the last couple weeks while traveling. I couldnt find any razors or shaving gel here, just 'depilazore'. So I gave it a go. But I think theres a secret to using it right, because it barely worked at all. I have never managed to use that stuff effectively...

The Italians who live here started putting their boats into the water today... My goal for today was to meet a hot Italian boy with a boat. No luck so far, but 5.30 is by no means the end of the day!!

There was a really cute boy in Lucca, working at his family restaurant. Maybe I should go back there and get him and bring him home with me...

Hiking

I spent today hiking in the Cinque Terre, these five little towns along the coast of Italy. I am staying in Manarola, so I started out from here, intending to walk to the next town along and paint a bit.

I ran into an Australian, and we ended up walking to the next 3 towns along. Whooo, about 4.5 hours of walking, although with breaks for lunch and a couple of Fantas.

I have lots of great photos to post, especially of the sunset. Tomorrow, maybe I will actually draw or try to get some sun on the beach.

My australian hiking buddy and I didnt make any plans to meet up tomorrow, so I will start out on my own again, but there are quite a lot of people around here to meet. Lots of Germans.

Haha, I just remembered one German guy heard us talking today and asked me why there are so many Americans here now. I think that they are not happy to share their great holiday spot! Also, I am the only American I know here, so maybe there arent that many of us after all, haha.

Lucca

Lucca is awesome. It is a teeny Italian town where you can bike around the whole city on the ramparts (top of the city walls.)

Also, there was a really cute boy working at the pizza shop there.

Now I am at the coast again (a different coast than before.) I am in Manarola. I am going to go for a walk now to stare at the water and think about hiking.

Cinque Terre

We skipped out on seeing most of Firenzes sights and went to Siena yesterday instead. It is a lovely little city, filled with happy tourists having fun. We had a great cheese and meat plate as our dinner at this little butcher shop.

Today I am going to Lucca. It is near Pisa, but looks a little prettier in my book. Apparently you can rent a bicycle and cycle around the ramparts, haha.

Then, this afternoon, I will move on to Manarola, a small town on the coast. Im staying there for 3 nights, and then back to Milan for a night, and back on a plane to Georgia.

Alright, time to go and catch a train!

Birthday in Firenze!

Today we are in Firenze. The train to get here was great. It only took 2 hours, so we got here nice and early at 11 am and had the whole day to walk around.

It is very crowded here though, which is a bit of a shock, as we were in Assisi yesterday, and staying in this very tiny town called Torricella on Lago Trasimeno in the middle of Umbrian hills.

Assisi is absolutely amazing. The town is like a miniature city, because it is all paved, but it is also like a small village, because the old part is fairly small, and everyone has little vegetable gardens.

We started out at the Basilica of St. Francis, which was great. Dad and I sat and drew St. Francis tomb for awhile. All while we were there, we could hear the monks singing.

We climbed to the top of the city, stopping at a castle on the way. I had this amazing pasta with truffles in it. I decided that from now on we should only eat at restaurants mentioned in our guide book. Today we stopped at this tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant at the mercato in Firenze, because it was mentioned in our book. I had the most amazing ravioli ever... mmm...

I think, because of the crowds, we will go to Siena tomorrow. Siena might be crowded too, of course, but it will be nice to go back to a smaller city. We saw the Duomo today, and Donatellos statues. There is more to see, but we dont have reservations to see Uffizi or the Accademia anyway, so we would not be able to see the top Firenze sites anyway.

All the photos I have posted were taken by my father, by the way, because I cant upload photos from my camera without the software installed, so Ill have to wait until I get home!

New Twitter Account!

I just created a new twitter account for personal use. I feel obligated to write about accounting on my other one, since Accounting is part of my username!

You can now follow me @cecimeanspeas

We went have seen the 4 big sights that we bought an entry ticket for here in Ravenna, as well as the local beach. It is also raining again, so we are just having a quiet afternoon in the hostel.

The big group of Polish students is gone, although we saw them once today while sightseeing. Tonight there is another big group, only about half the size (33) people, but they are Italian, and the woman who runs the hostel tells me that they will be much louder than the Polish students.

I haven't been able to sit down and draw much this trip because it has been raining outside. I did some sketches at a fwe museums. I'm going to wander around now and see if I can find something to paint to pass the time.

Tomorrow we go to Perugia! It is supposed to rain more the two days we are there, but it will be rain in a new place! So... exciting!

Maybe the weather will clear up for my birthday in Firenze??

Venezia

Buonasera! Ceci live from Italia!

I am in my 3rd Italian city already! We went to the beach today. Well, it was almost sunny, and warm enough or only two layers, so it was quite enjoyable, but clearly not beach season yet!

This is the first time Ive been able to access internet for any length of time since our first night (in Milan.) After Milan we went to Venice, which is really expensive for everything, so I managed to spend about $10 just on sending emails to la mamma to let her know we are alive and eating healthy.

This huge tour group of Polish people just arrived at our hostel. Cool! We were the only ones here before. I am not sure if they will speak English though, as their group leader had a fairly difficult time checking them in.

Aw, I was going to upload a photo for you, but my camera is not cooperating. I can probably get one off of Dads camera tomorrow.

Packed and sorta ready!

Everything I'm taking is in this bag. And that totally hip fanny pack! (Almost-there's some stuff that's going in a plastic target bag until I meet up with Dad at the airport and then HE gets to take it.

Today I sewed us little cotton "sleep sacks" to protect us from potentially dirty sheets. I hemmed my new jeans, which took hours... I ripped some audiobooks for our iPods and those long train rides.

Oh and I put little ladybugs on my backpack so I look really badass and intimidate pickpockets.

I'm getting really excited about enforced downtime without a computer or a book to read. I'm hoping that some creative juices start flowing and I can work on some projects that I've been turning around in my head for awhile.

Now I just have to get some copies made of a couple of things, and print out the confirmation numbers for a couple of reservations.

Time for... a gratuitous cute photo of Mel and Andrea from this weekend! Claw hands!

Folksingers

Mel and I headed downtown tonight to see our friend's band Pholksinger Josh. They are pretty entertaining, but the guy who played before them, John Craigie was awesome. Dude is hilarious. Apparently he just drives from town to town playing music wherever he stops. I needed some relaxing folksinging experience to round out my week in Athens!

After all the drag shows we went to this week, when I looked in my wallet I was thinking "Score! I already have a whole lot of ones! I won't have to worry about getting change!" And then I realized you don't need dollar bills for folksingers, haha. But I ended up needing them all in the end, to buy that John Craigies's CD.

I spent a lot of time randomly chatting with Athens townies this week, and meeting random people downtown. I guess that's what happens when you're in Athens without classes or work. Tim, the guy with long white hair who paints buildings around town, was gave me tips today about my upcoming trip to Italy.

Tom Walker, who plays guitar downtown a lot is now my friend on MySpace, haha. And then I met this girl who bellydances, but I recognized her from a drag show. And I met her friend, who turns out is an old friend of my friend Matt... It was a weird and wonderful week of meeting people.

Tomorrow it's back to Atlanta and trying to get everything organized before we leave for Italy. I'm hoping to get some decent pictures drawn/painted while we're there, so maybe I can share them when I come back.

Hanging out in Athens has been super-cool.fuck. Michal typed "fuck," by the way. We're currently inspecting a "mysterious" red spot on his back right now. He is always shirtless here.

We determined that he missed a spot when he put sunscreen on, so a patch got burned, and now he feels better. Now instead of being worried about it, he thinks it's cool.

Today was a nice relaxed day. Mel's sister spent the day with us, and we hung out in the botanical gardens. Matt met up with us there, and we randomly ran into Winn too, so we were all united as future roomies.


ICE FIGHT.

Sorry, had to go defend Mel. I think I've got some bruises, plus I'm pretty sure Michal won. Damn. When we have Winn on our roomie-team, we will totally win ice fights against any Polish boys who dare to take us on.

Reality

Sooo . . . I actually had a conversation with this guy I have a crush on last night. It was exciting, but a little disappointing. He was friendly, but we didn't really get far into a conversation, and I wonder if we would ever have much to say to each other? Hard to say from just one conversation.

I think I need to just enjoy being single at the moment. I think I can handle that.

In the meantime, I'm chilling out listening to this guy play guitar.

Jammin' at the first drag show of the night (2nd of the week.):

Happy and Hyper and FRUSTRATED

Went to the first drag show of the week today. It was pretty awesome, except they need to dance up on stage at Tasty World, so that us short people can see all those talented dancers.

Also, I have a crush, which hasn't happened for awhile, and I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do about it. Try to talk to him?

Edit: Mel says I should mention the lesbians/transboys (not sure what they identify as?) hitting on us. And by us, she means, they made her grab their asses and compare which one was better. I'm pretty sure it was the same one one that hit on me last time I was at a drag show at Blur.

Love Poem

I love the song "Love Poem" by Athens Boys Choir . . . I've been listening to it a lot lately. I think I just want to fall in love. And stay in it. And really understand someone else, and decorate a house together.

And then I think, OMG I can't settle down and have a house or anything, there's a whole world out there to see first! And I feel like dating someone seriously will be an anchor, like having a house, because it is hard to find people who are okay with picking up and moving to a completely different place every so often, which I think I want to do. Maybe.

Creating... Meditation.

When I was younger, I really wanted to EXPRESS myself when I drew or painted. And I was always frustrated because my drawing skills are not strong enough to do that. Now, I draw and paint as a way to meditate.

When I feel so strongly about something, and I want to DO something about it, but there's nothing I CAN do: I draw. I pick some random object and focus on copying it for an hour, and it calms me down. It gives me a way to just not think about what it is that's making me anxious.

It's a new discovery that I can calm myself down like this. I can feel hurt and angry and it feels like what I really need is to go out and run 5 miles, or do something to prove to the people that hurt me that I'm worth it. But what helps the most is sitting down and making a crappy drawing of my car keys. Amazing.

(I did this car keys drawing a long time ago, and actually I'm pretty happy with it. So maybe not that crappy. But still, it's car keys, not great expressive art.)