Allergy Update

My family likes to be allergic to things.  It's sort of a past time for us.  We're all allergic to those "normal" things: dogs, cats, horses, things that pollinate.  You know, the usual.  My oldest sister seems to have won the "normal" allergy lottery.  As near as I can tell she is allergic to every plant on earth.  While that's certainly no fun for her, I think it's generally manageable, and certainly easy for people to understand.

My 3rd sister, she's the one that got lucky in the "deadly allergy" category.  She's allergic to aspirin.  (Or, as the people who made her medical alert bracelet like to call it: "aspirn".  The last time she took aspirin, it landed her in the emergency room, and, from what I understand, that wasn't any fun.  So, I guess she gets to live her life reminding her family and close friends that she has a serious allergy that medical professionals would need to be aware of, and she needs to check medications carefully to see if they have aspirin (or aspirin-like) substances in them.  I get the impression that includes more drugs than you'd think.

If you're wondering about sister #2, she seems to have avoided the worst of the allergy-curse, but she did get Dad's crazy eye condition.  I'd like to thank her for diving on that genetic hand grenade in order to save the rest of us.

So, this clearly brings us to me.  I've documented before about my allergies to various foods: peas, kiwi, fish, refried beans, canned chili, and garbanzo beans.  (Pretty much, I'm wary of all beans these days.  Black beans seem to be holding out, which seems to make some sense, since I ate them every day for 2 consecutive years and all . . . but I keep waiting for those to join their beany friends on the list of foods trying to kill me.)  As I've progressed through my 20s (and into my 30s), the slowly increasing list of food allergies has been partially offset by decreasing allergies in the "classic" category.  Dogs and cats aren't instant disasters of red, puffy eyes and runny noses anymore.  And I haven't dealt with seasonal allergies for years.  I can say all of this without feeling a need to "knock on wood," because life keeps finding other things to keep me all histamined-up.

As of this week, I am apparently allergic to . . . . drum roll please . . . . exercise!  Ta da!  Now, I'm sure the majority of you are already clicking on that comment button to make a joke ("OMG! I'm so allergic, too!") I want both of you to hold on for a minute.  This is no metaphorical allergy.  This is a red, itchy, skin with swelling lip and what-the-heck-I-can-tell-from-across-the-room-that-something-is-up-with-your-eyelid, all too depressingly literal allergic reaction.

Let me explain.  Last Friday, I went for a run.  It was 3.76 miles in a bit over 27 minutes.  Neither of those numbers are in any way abnormal for me.  (Don't make me produce a graph to prove that.  Please.  For all of our sakes.)  I wore nothing that I hadn't worn before.  I ate nothing that I hadn't eaten before.  I didn't run anywhere that I hadn't run before.  And about the time I got home, various parts of me were swelling up or turning red and itchy.  It got to the point that I could see my eyelid out of the corner of my eye.  Symptoms lasted perhaps close to an hour before gradually fading away.  Awesome.  Now I'm allergic to exercise.  Because, you know, it's not like I've ever exercised before.  It's not like I've run 700 miles in the last 30 months.  Or played basketball once or twice a week for the last 2 years.  But apparently, last Friday, I had to be allergic.

Upon consulting with both the internet and a doctor, it seems I have exercise-induced urticaria.  It may pop up again, but who knows when.  It can be treated with antihistamines.  It could be serious, but has only caused one death.  Or, I suppose, it might never come back again.  It can be diet related, and foods that have been implicated include "seafood, celery, wheat and cheese,"* as well as aspirin.  (Seriously?!?!  Another 10 years of this and I'll be living on rice and vitamin pills.)  I'm personally suspicious of my legume allergy that might have contributed to the outbreak.  You remember my list of mis-matched allergens? We don't commonly group them together, but peas and beans are both legumes, and on the day of outbreak, an hour or so before going running, I had an unusual (for me) quantity of another legume: peanuts.

Ever the soul of caution, I went for a run the very next day.  Did about 6.5 miles this time.  Don't worry, I at least made sure my route passed several friends houses, as well as my consulting physician (not my physician, but I did consult with him . . . after this run).  The result: no problems at all.  Everyone inspected my skin and eyelids when I got home with nary a speck of swelling.  So, that's life now.  Shannon points out that I'm the ultimate nerd now.  Does this seem like a condition that Dr. Sheldon Cooper would have?

* Warning, this link has all sorts of doctor-y words, such as: erythematous, leukotrienes, dyspnea, pruritus, and many others.

Wild Ride

About 10 days ago, someone in St. George who works at the Blue Bunny Ice Cream plant was late to work. So he raced down the road at approximately 70 miles per hour. And apparently tried to take the final corner before arriving at work at about that speed. The road he was turning on to is a nice wide road, but not wide enough for those speeds. So, he got sideways, and hit the curb, taking chunks out of it with 3 of his 4 rims, and headed into the gravel landscaping. He managed to miss the large rocks (large suitcase size) in the landscaping, mowing through about 20 feet of gravel and up a 5 foot rise, throwing the rocks across the parking lot. He then left the gravel, and went out of control another 30 or 40 feet across the parking lot, before coming to a resounding stop when he crashed into the building I work in. His Honda Passport was totaled, and his un-seatbelted self we probably lucky to escape with nothing worse than a big cut on his head. First aid was administered by one of my coworkers who heard a noise and stuck his head outside to discover a car wrecked into the wall. If he had hit the building 5 feet over, he would have gone right through a big roll up door and started taking out equipment.

Moral of the story: slow down, wear your seat belt, and if you're not going to do to that, at least do it somewhere that I won't have to spend a bunch of time sweeping up rocks from the parking lot!

Father's Day Ties

It's that time of the year when the Sunday paper is full of ads for Father's Day gifts. Since it is likely that someone out there will be buying a tie for some lucky father out there, I just wanted to let you in on a little secret. Shannon spotted the Kohl's ad in the paper yesterday, and right on the front of it was a dapper looking man in a tie sporting what is apparently the new style on how to wear it:

Yes, that's right. This Father's day make sure your dad realizes that it is proper to tuck your tie into your pants! At first, I thought this must be just some weird slip-up. (But it's right there on the front page of the big ad. How could they have screwed that one up?) But there in the middle of the multi-page ad is another guy:

It's all Greek to me

So I discovered at work today that whenever I attempt to forward email from my boss, my computer translates it into Greek, but then when I send it, it gets sent in English. I can't figure out why outlook would be doing this to me, or why it happens with one person and not another. But somehow the forward button has the power to turn "We have revised" to "Ωε ηαωε ρεωισεδ".

King of Binks

Yesterday I woke up at 3 am with a terrible aching pain in my left shoulder. (It wasn't really a bink, but I don't get actual binks often enough to satisfy me desire to use the word, so I misuse it regularly.) The pain wasn't sharp, but it sure was constant. No position was more or less comfortable or any other. No movement helped nor hurt. Doing push ups didn't change the pain level. No stretch helped. Nothing. Just pain. Heat helped perhaps only slightly, and a warm shower helped not at all. Finally about 4am I managed to fall asleep for a while longer, but I woke up again at 6 and couldn't sleep any more. The pain was just too annoying to think about anything else. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary the day before, and my shoulder had felt perfectly fine before bed. I figure I just slept on it wrong. I got up at 6am and got ready for work, figuring that if I wasn't sleeping, I might as well get started on the day. I took some drugs and went to work. Somewhere between 8 and 9 am the pain went away as mysteriously as it came.

Another one for the List

What do the following things have in common?

Peas, Refried Beans, Kiwi, Fish and Canned Chili.

Answer: I'm apparently allergic to all of them. Shannon made Chili-Mac for dinner last night. Mac-n-Cheese, a can of Chili and a can of corn. It's tasty. And it makes me ill. It wasn't the first time it had ever happened, but I'd never been quite 100% sure that I was feeling ill because of the food. As of last night, I am officially declaring Chili-Mac off limits, and I'm fairly certain that it's the chili. (Makes sense w/ the refried beans, too.)

As if my eating habits weren't weird enough without all this being forced upon me.

PIN weirdness

Shannon and I recently got new debit cards in the mail from the bank. All you have to do is call the number, and you're good to go. They even explicitly state that your PIN will not change (note: you shouldn't say "PIN Number" because that means "Personal Identification Number Number" which would be dumb.) That would have been great, had it been true. Instead, we activated our cards, and found that they didn't work. And it's not like the bank was going to send us a new PIN, because we weren't supposed to need one. So, that's fixed by going to the bank, complaining, and waiting a week before you can shop again.

Now for another interesting PIN note. About 2 years ago, we got new cards and with them new PINs. My PIN changed from a number that I had picked and could remember, to something randomly assigned that I never liked much. And so I spent 2 years wanting a new number, yet not bothering to spend the time at the bank to change it. To make matters worse, here I was getting a whole new PIN, so even my randomly assigned PIN, which I'd at least gotten used to, wasn't going to work anymore. Well, as it turns out, when my new PIN arrived, it was the old PIN! I don't know if it was done on purpose, or if I just got randomly lucky, but the bank changed my PIN back to the old one that I'd been missing for the last two years! What are the odds of that? Exactly 1 in 10,000. Unless they did it on purpose, then the odds were unity. (Unity means 1)

(Maybe some day I'll make a whole post on the difference between 1 and unity. Yeah, I know I said they were the same thing, but they're really not. Unity is actually more specific. I'd tell you more, but that would be ruining a possible future post!)

Magazine Offer

The other day, I got a letter in the mail for a magazine subscription (only $12.50 a year!). I share the beginning of that letter with you:

Dear Mr. Clark Blockburger

Sometimes you just have to see what you're missing. That's why we've pictured the last year's issues of AARP The Magazine on the right. It's just one of the benefits of membership in AARP you could be enjoying now that you've turned 50.

Shannon asked me if I'd been hiding anything from her. Mostly, I just want to know if I can get into the movies cheaper!

Merry Christmas. But really, the whole point of this post is to alert the world of the utterly unique shower head to be found in the Anderson's basement. It's not terribly new, but it's still news worthy. The shower head, rather than producing any sort of streams of water creates a windy mist of pelting droplets. I guess it's supposed to save water and stuff, perhaps by pelting you hard enough with this crazy mist that you just shower quicker. It's not bad or anything, but it sure is unique in the world of shower heads that I've experienced. If you're ever in the neighborhood, maybe you should stop in and take a look.

Redicularity

Nursery rhymes are pretty silly things. But some go above and beyond. Shannon and I have a running debate on whether or not Patty-Cake involves "throwing up high" or not. It seems to me that any throwing up high of cake batter would get messy in a hurry. Then there is a bizarre one involving riding a "cock horse". I just make up words to that one.

But one of the all time weird things hidden in Nursery rhymes has to go to the Little Piggy/toe rhyme. It seems somewhat plausible at first. One goes to market, and the next stays home. Nursery rhymes are thick with people prancing off to the market through the woods to go fetch something or other. But then, out of the blue, here comes "This little piggy had roast beef". Roast Beef?!?! Of all the possible things in the whole wide world, how did roast beef get chosen? What is a pig doing eating roast beef? I just don't get it!

It's like it's trying to speak to me.

While out driving, Shannon and I saw a license plate:

GRDCNPT

If you have any ideas as to what this could possibly mean, we'd love to hear them.

Hot Zippity!

The next time you are entertaining guests, make them some Hot Zippity Tomato Dill Drink! Here's the recipe (from the Lion House Recipes book).

Ingredients:
1 can (46 ounces) tomato juice
4 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
3 dashes Tabasco sauce
1/2 cup dill pickle juice
1/3 cup lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in saucepan. Bring mixture to a boil. Let stand awhile to develop flavors. Taste to correct seasonings. Beverage may be served hot or cold. Garnish with chopped chives or a dollop of sour cream, if desired. Makes 7 cups, about 12 servings.

I can't even think of where to begin, so I'll just let this recipe speak for itself.