12.31.09
Posted in Reviews tagged Dave's Fresh Pasta at 11:12 pm by kyrias
EDITED for clarity.
I got ravioli and some sauces from Dave’s for our New Year’s feast at home. Caesura had to go in to work today and so we decided to keep it low-key.
Sauces: Lobster cream, marinara, and mushroom cream.
Ravioli: Lobster, porcini, goat cheese and caramelized leeks, meat, and duck w/ blue cheese.
I am still not a huge fan of the meat ravioli, although Caesura really likes it. For some reason it strikes me as more of a one-dimensional salty taste than anything else.
The lobster ravioli was very good, with bits of lobster meat instead of just a puree, especially with the lobster cream sauce. Mr P and I did manage to choke on pieces of shell in the ravioli, so I’d recommend caution whilst eating these. The word I’m thinking of is xian 鲜, in Chinese, which has connotations of being a “clean” and “fresh” taste, particularly with regards to seafood. The sauce was creamy, with a strong flavour of lobster without it being cloying or bland. I think that the sauce is probably good enough to go over pasta if you’re going for a cheaper dinner.
The duck, which I think is either a new addition or something special for the season since it’s not on the usual menu, was voted the favorite of the night. The flavour of the duck was complemented by the blue cheese without being overwhelmed by it.
Mr P and I thought that the goat cheese with caramelized leeks was rather bland, with the goat cheese being overly dominant and making it a one-dimensional flavour. I was looking for the caramelized leek taste and was disappointed. Caesura did manage to get a chunk of leek in one though, so I guess it depended a bit on luck. He, on the other hand, wanted the goat cheese to be more goat-cheesy and liked it whilst complaining that the leeks were too dominant. YMMD… but I wouldn’t want to get this again, simply because it didn’t seem worth it for the price.
The porcini was surprisingly good, especially with the mushroom cream sauce. That combination was not overkill, by the way. Even Caesura, who doesn’t usually like mushrooms, thought highly of it. The filling was light, savoury, and unlike the other kinds, probably something one could make an entire meal of. Although I really enjoyed the other kinds, I thought that they were a bit rich to have as a full meal.
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12.30.09
Posted in Racism tagged Avatar fail at 7:24 pm by kyrias
The rest of the house is out for a movie. I almost regret not tagging along — but there’s life when you’re broke and life when you’re not broke. The thing is, people who know me well understand that movies just really aren’t my medium. I tend to fall asleep, get bored and want to wiki the ending, or fidget for the whole two hours waiting for the torment to be over. If I were not broke, I’d be willing to spend the 8 dollars for something I don’t really enjoy for the sake of hanging out with people. As it is, even though a friend offered to pay for the dinner afterwards, I didn’t feel like it was a good use of money. Particularly since we bought that laptop to replace Caesura’s melted one earlier this month. Also, I don’t like non-reciprocal relationships and in those cases I don’t really enjoy someone else paying for my dinner. Hrm, perhaps less so now that I no longer eat like I have a portal to another dimension in my stomach, but still.
I really wasn’t interested in Sherlock Holmes, but I’d heard that Avatar was out and so I briefly toyed with the idea of going to see Avatar whilst they went to see Sherlock Holmes and we’d still be able to go out together afterwards. Couple of things happened to shoot that idea down: I realized that this Avatar movie wasn’t of the airbending sort and then I remembered that I was considering boycotting Avatar: The last Airbender (ATLA) when it came out anyways.
To a certain extent, I don’t usually get worked up enough to boycott media, but I think that I might have to make an exception for ATLA. Yeah, I’m remembering the huge racefail involving Wrede and how even that didn’t really strike me as BOYCOTT TIEMS but ATLA is really another whole new level of special.
Let’s see:
First off. For those, like me, who haven’t watched the series, this is essentially a movie based off of a anime series that has a world and culture heavily influenced by East - Asian culture, which has characters who are clearly dark-skinned in the series — and they’re being played by really, really pale white people in the movie.
Pics or it didn’t happen, right?
Katara pics from here and here respectively.
Sokka pics from here and here.
Zuko pics from here .
Aang pic from here.
I admit, I messed up, there’s no anime pic of Aang in the collage. So sue me and go Google it. Anyways.
Then there’s the casting call. Vejiicakes does a pretty great summary, so I’m just going to link to that post and just comment: “Caucasian or any other ethnicity?!”
Because when you’re casting characters from an East Asian- based world who appear brown, you want Caucasians.
Oh and that little bit about wearing kimonos if you’re Korean? I have to say, this film is worth boycotting just because the sheer amount of stupidity in this movie. Must not support a film that pays these idiots.
I’m just so tired of people getting it wrong.
Mulan was wrong. All those portrayals of Asian girls as submissive, quiet, and sekretly hot in bed in mass media are wrong. That my boyfriend actually gets asked on occassion if he has an Asian fetish/ gets off on having a submissive girlfriend/ if he gets really hot sex because his girl is zomg azn and therefore well-versed in teh geisha artz is very wrong. That kids are feeling marginalized because of the casting choices for this movie is wrong, wrong, wrong. That I find it hard to come up with Asian-American actors/actresses is pretty wrong. That Asian Americans are more likely to be assumed to have come from elsewhere is kind of wrong. That people honestly see no problem with having all four main characters be non-East-Asian and who think that people who complain are just whiners who want affirmative action is damned wrong. The entire situation is just fucking wrong in far too many ways.
It’s more than just about Avatar. It’s about feeling marginalized even in a country you consider home. It’s about worrying about the kind of culture and mindset that you might be raising children in, one where they’re probably always going to be considered other and treated as such. It’s about never being sure just when reality is going to kick you in the teeth just when you least expect it. It’s about the whole “taking jobs/husbands/wives/resources/whathaveyou away from the white people” concept. It’s about getting slapped with accusations of desiring affirmative action in its ugliest form when you just want a little bit of representation, or even barring that, a bit of respect, please. It’s about realizing that in a country where race is fucking important, that you’re pretty low on the overall totem pole when it comes to consideration. It’s about realizing that maybe we’ve blended and bent our shapes to fit in a little too well when people don’t realize that hey, we have problems too. It’s about how it really hurts that somehow we’ve lost the right the complain about things because we weren’t/aren’t quite as wronged as the other, browner people.
I’m broke, but even if I weren’t, I can think of better ways to spend my money than to support such stupidity. Even indirectly.
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12.29.09
Posted in Recipes tagged Swedish meatballs at 11:55 pm by kyrias
Sometimes I don’t know if I’m just doing it wrong, or if I can never achieve certain levels of tasty simply because I don’t use MSG or hydrolyzed soy protein or certain unknown “natural flavorings”.
Take the Beef Stragonoff, which failed spectacularly. It came out a really unappetizing grayish beige colour which Nora assured me was how Russian food should look and just tasted a lot different from what our school cafeteria used to give us. I might go back and tinker with it because Caesura really liked it, Mr. P was slightly more enthusiastic than indifferent, and I think Zack was ok with it.
Then take the Swedish meatballs of today. First off, they came out tasting different from what everyone expected Swedish meatballs to taste like, even though I compared multiple recipes from multiple blogs, one of which is written by someone living in Sweden.
Yes. I read at least 20 different recipes. I don’t even know who to credit for my end product. Perhaps all of them.
This is one of the cases where I don’t know if I did it wrong, or if the manufactorers of the frozen meals we eat just added random chemicals to our food to make it taste better.
Then there was the sauce. It was a simple sauce made with broth, drippings, flour, some salt and pepper — and was dreadfully bland. Thinking back on it, I also failed at making gravy the last time too — which was a similar undertaking involving roux, drippings, and such.
Blafgh.
To be fair though, I didn’t particularly adore the sauce that came with the Swedish meatballs the last few times I’ve had it, so perhaps I should just write it off as a lost cause. The Swedish meatballs themselves were passable, except perhaps a bit too mushy with too much breadcrumbs. I was ok with the consistency, but the more carnivorous amongst us might want to cut down on them. I might decide to try and make a different sauce for the meatballs the next time I feel like having half my housemates dump their dinner into the trashcan. Say, a nice Alfredo sauce? Or perhaps some ridiculous concoction involving canned cream of mushroom soup, brown gravy, and sour cream? Wait, that last bit would involve those “natural flavorings” and probably more than a bit of MSG. Damn!
Mr. P thinks that adding salt and pepper would fix things. I think that probably it would have, but I didn’t want it to just be one-dimensionally salty either, which it seemed it would have been if I had just added salt to it until it tasted like something. Ugh. Maybe red wine would help. Or nutmeg. Or soy sauce. Or Worchestershire sauce. Or something.
Anyways, for those of you that might or might not want a recipe for some fairly tasty Swedish meatballs sans decent sauce…
Swedish Meatballs
(feeds 3-5 depending on food stretching skill and hunger)
- 1 cup breadcrumbs (can decrease as desired)
- ½ pound ground pork
- 1 pound ground beef
- 2 anchovy filets
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 egg
- 1 large onion, grated
- ½ cup milk
- ¼ tsp each of nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, and cloves
- ½ tsp each salt, black pepper, and white pepper
Mash the anchovies into the breadcrumbs. Mix the spices into the breadcrumbs. Beat the egg and soy sauce into the breadcrumbs and then add the milk. Let the mixture sit for five minutes so the breadcrumbs absorb the liquid fully. If decreasing the breadcrumbs to half the cup, halve the milk as well. Add the meats and blend well. Some people would tell you that excessive blending will make the meatballs tough — but with the amount of wet breadcrumbs I had, I don’t think that would happen.
Roll the mixture into small balls. I found that small balls about the size of a ping-pong ball worked well. Put on a baking sheet in an oven pre-heated to 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
As an aside, I think our oven does run hot since the smoke alarm was going off well before the 10 minutes mark.
Eat plain if you’re feeling particularly carnivorous or make some sort of sauce that works for you and eat over egg noodles.
This will make enough to feed 3-4 people. Maybe five if they’re not that hungry and you make more sauce and make the meatballs smaller to give an illusion of bounty.
—- later on —
For the record, Worchestershire sauce and soy sauce fixed the sauce sufficiently. Zack has proclaimed that he can make a meal of it. We shall see. I still don’t know if I can make a meal out of it.
The question of why I make things that I will not eat probably needs to be addressed at some point…
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Posted in Bupropion/methylphenidate, Depression, Health tagged health problems at 4:21 am by kyrias
My rosebush wasn’t doing so well at the end of summer. It had strange spots all over its leaves and if you so much as brushed against it, it would shed leaves like crazy. As for the roses? Forget about it. It maybe gave me a handful of blossoms for the entire summer after I bought it.
It had been sitting outside on the stoop for more sun, but I decided that I should probably bring it inside so it didn’t freeze to death. When I brought it indoors, Azora said that I should prune it back for the winter. I figured I might as well, since the poor thing seemed to be all but dead anyways. So the two of us set to with scissors and whacked off most of the green stuff — to the point where it pretty much looked like a Y-shaped branch stuck into a pot of soil.
A couple months later with indifferent watering…
Here’s a closeup of the perfect rosebud that I never got during the warm months:
If you can tell, there’s three buds on the bush right now. Three. When I was lucky to have a half-browned, wilty little bud on the bush half the time during this summer. The other half of the time there was nothing, just lots of leaves.
So looking at my sad, sad basil plant and my dead rosemary plant — perhaps next time I should just start whacking them too? For that matter, if anyone can tell me how to keep rosemary plants alive, I’d be terribly grateful. They seem to just shrivel away even with constant watering. I now have a very nice, dry, rosemary plant sitting in a pot of moist soil.
On an entirely unrelated note, further news on things in general:
I have a therapist now. I don’t really know if he’s going to be useful or not. Our first session, he pretty much just asked me the usual questions and then gave me worksheets pertaining to my sleep and what activities I engage in.
For the X’mas weekend, I pretty much had one word to sum up what I did for that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: Slept.
I’m not even joking. I woke up at 7 AM on Saturday morning, realized no one else was awake and decided to lie back for an hour or so. At 9:40 or so, I finally drag myself out of bed after hitting the snooze button countless times. I eat something, then sit down on the couch in the living room, and proceeded to fall asleep whilst Caesura and my father have a conversation. I rouse myself briefly to move to the other couch to watch my brother and Caesura play Puyo, and fell asleep. I realize it’s some time after lunch time, get a bowl of soup, eat that, sit down with a book, and fall asleep. I then wake briefly, rallied to read a couple more pages, and fell asleep again. Dad asks me to go help him with dinner prep at some point, so I go, then we eat, then I sit back down on the couch and watch some TV. At about 9:00 PM, I feel dreadfully sleepy…
Sunday sort of proceeded in a similar fashion.
I believe my therapist would tell me that if I only had something to engage myself with, I wouldn’t be falling asleep that much. If so, I have to say I don’t believe him. After all, when I had classes earlier this year, I would get on the train and zonk out, then I would get to class and then zonk out halfway through taking notes. In fact, I have quite a few samples of notes that pretty much went from coherent to faintly comprehensible gibberish within five sentences or less. When I was falling asleep in class in college from lack of sleep, the descent into gibberish was a lot more gradual. Of course, that’s hardly scientific, I realize.
Dad wants me to get a job. He believes that it would bring structure and meaning to my life. I believe that I would probably fall dead asleep in whatever job I managed to get and then proceed to be ignominously fired. He also believes that I suffer from self-esteem problems and guilt because I don’t have a job and don’t contribute anything to anyone. Asides from the usual self-esteem stuff, he thinks that I should get a job because if I ever broke up with Caesura/ Caesura died / something similarly unfortunate, I would need to be financially solvent.
He wants me to tell him what my “goals” are this weekend.
I really want to tell him to leave me alone until I sort out this whole problem with narcolepsy. I can hardly go job-hunting in this condition.
I also realized something unfortunate yesterday: For some reason, I’ve been continously leaking blood this entire past month even though I’m on the Nuva Ring. I thought about it and wondered if the narcolepsy might have had something to do with the constant blood loss. But then the narcolepsy was a problem before this month — so perhaps not.
My mother and my grand-aunt want me to go back to Taiwan so they can run comprehensive medical tests on me.
I really don’t want to. Asides from not wanting to deal with my mother on a daily basis in the context of living with her, I really don’t want to be living under someone else’s roof for however long it’s going to take for my body to sort itself out. I don’t know how healthy I can get with that sort of constant stress.
On the other hand, if the doctors here can’t fix me, I might not have a choice. As of right now, I’m sitting on the endless period problem and not telling the family about it because I can see a total freak-out session from everyone in Taiwan, resulting in a one-way ticket back there with no idea of when I’d be leaving. Dad pretty much knows about the narcolepsy, which is really unfortunate because now I’ll bet he told mom, which will worry her, which will lead to Bad. Things. At least I don’t think he picked up on the appetite problem or the hand tremors bit.
Ugh. Just. Ugh.
Thank the gods for small mercies, I guess.
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12.24.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged egg tarts at 11:39 pm by kyrias
Egg towers, if you want the literal translation from Chinese.
I’ve been craving these for a while, but there’s a couple of reasons why I haven’t made them in a long time. I’ll type out the recipe first, which should explain one of the reasons why:
Dan Ta (makes 12)
Pastry:
- 4 oz cream cheese
- 4 oz butter (1 stick)
- 1 cup flour
Filling:
- ½ - 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup milk
- 4 eggs
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract (optional)
Melt the butter and cream cheese, then mix in the flour until you get a supple dough. If you feel it’s a tad on the greasy side, add flour as needed. Allow the dough to rest for 20 minutes, covered, then press balls of the dough into the cups of a muffin tin.
Mix the vanilla extract, eggs, sugar, and milk together. Pour the mixture into the mold.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
If you look at the recipe, you’ll see that it’s pretty much nothing but fat, fat, and more fat. Considering that Azora and I can each eat 6 without even thinking about it — it’s pretty much a bad idea to have these lying around.
Secondly, I do not particularly enjoy the part of the recipe where you press the dough into the molds. It’s tedious, time consuming, and you have to be careful not to have thin spots.
Lastly — I often fail at making these, depending on the whims of the stove. Tonight I made two batches and met with abysmal failure both times. The first batch over-puffed and the custard portion looked holey. I thought it was because I left it in for 20 minutes, so the second batch I tried leaving it in for only 15 minutes and allowing it to cook with the residual heat. The custard portion still looked over-cooked and this time the custards seemed to give off water and became soggy.
I have no idea what happened and how to fix it, which is pretty aggravating. I would have made a third batch to test it further, but Caesura pointed out that we were going to have problems consuming the two bad batches already without further adding to the problem.
I looked up more recipes online and it appears that they have a couple of differences. Namely that their recipes have a higher egg to milk ratio, bake at higher temperatures for longer periods of time, and use evaporated milk instead of plain milk.
I think for next time, I’m going to bake at a lower temperature and keep an eye on them so that I can pull them out when they first begin to puff. If my muffin tin would fit in a baking pan, I’d try the water bath method used for making baked custards, but since I don’t have a pan that big, I suppose not. I have succeeded at this before, so I know it can be done, but I have no idea what I did differently. For all I know it’s because my mother’s oven heats differently from the oven at 136 Perkins or our oven runs hot, or something like that. Perhaps a oven thermometer is a good investment?
I know Azora likes these just as much, if not more than I do. So perhaps she’ll carry on the experimenting? I’m feeling a bit tarted-out at the moment and slightly boggled at the idea of eating 24 of these all by myself. Which essentially is 2 sticks of butter, a block of cream cheese, 8 eggs, and nearly two cups of sugar.
Note to the wise: White whole wheat flour doesn’t work well with these. Neither does replacing brown sugar for the white. These things are pretty much heart attacks waiting to happen and there’s no way to even make them seem healthier.
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Posted in Writing tagged writing, writing woes at 2:25 am by kyrias
I was reading a blog post about writing. It stated that the problem with a lot of writing is simply that the writers don’t know when to stop.
Right. I started thinking about that sentence when I was writing today and started second guessing myself. So I have a character in a fantasy setting. Often, one of my pet peeves regarding time travel, fantasy settings, and such is that I so rarely see authors address the question of bathrooms/kitchens/food. It seems to be implied that all worlds regardless of technological progress and background must needs have toilets/chicken/beef/etc.
But then I wondered: am I falling into the trap of writing too much? Perhaps my idiosyncracy for knowing what’s different in a world is simply that and most people prefer to ignore the nitty-grittiness of world-building in favor of moving the plot along.
Ergh. Caesura is in favor of not putting in descriptors of bathrooms fixtures. I am torn.
Thoughts?
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12.20.09
Posted in Environment tagged climate change, Copenhagen 2009, personal accountability at 12:59 am by kyrias
On the Copenhagen issue:
Let’s assume that it is humans who caused global warming. I have no patience to debate whether or not we’re going into a little Ice Age, or whether this is business as usual in the history of the world or whatevs.
So, assuming that humans caused global warming and that we can actually do something to fix/help the situation…
Considering that out of the 193 countries as formally recognized by the UN, there are 30 full democracies and 50 flawed democracies. Considering that even with just counting the full democracies, that’s slightly over 14% of the world’s population. Considering that with counting the flawed democracies, that’s an additional 35.5% of the world’s population, bringing us up to 49.5% of the world’s total population.
Considering all that.
Why do people insist on blaming the heads of government for entire environmental debacle?
I am far from saying that the heads of government have their hands clean, but isn’t it just a bit facile to say that it’s all the fault of our leaders?
Let’s be honest here and let’s start from the basics.
If we’re really a democracy, then shouldn’t the people representing us in Congress be paying slightly more attention to what we want?
If we really care about the environment, then why do so many people who claim to care still insist on eating meat with every meal, refuse to recycle unless it’s convenient, support urban sprawl, keep lawns, buy gas-guzzling SUVs?
The fact is that it’s just too easy to point the finger.
Awww, our government isn’t making us behave.
No matter that only slightly over half of Americans bother to vote and there’s probably a significant portion of that turnout who vote simply based on party lines. No matter that if we really wanted to insist on town composting, a more comprehensive recycling program, or anything of the sort, we’d either do it ourselves or make it happen by voting in people who share our ideals. No matter that if we truly cared about things like factory farmed animals producing methane, polluting water sheds, leeching antibiotics/chemicals/what have you into ground water — we’d boycott those companies. No matter that if people really cared, they’d downsize their cars or start taking mass transit more often. No matter all of that.
It’s just easier to blame Obama. Easier to blame those icky imperialist colonizing super-powers who care only about their continued economic prosperity.
Right.
Let’s ignore those people who think that shopping at Whole Foods makes eating meat every single day of the week hunky-dory. Let’s ignore the masses who see “organic” or “all natural” and buy on sight without trying to understand the labels and the politics behind them. Let’s ignore the sad fact that even in Boston, a city I consider liberal, there aren’t readily accessible recycling containers all over the city and no composting program. Let’s ignore those people driving their Hummers and those monstrous SUVs. Further more, let’s ignore how our friends take hour long showers, drive gas guzzlers, drink non-fair trade coffee that was probably produced in near-slavery conditions, turn up the thermostat instead of putting on a sweater, throw recyclables into the trash, eat steak for every other meal, use the dryer instead of a drying rack, wash their clothing in heated water, use the dishwasher’s heat-drying cycle, and in general just engage in rank consumerism. Let’s ignore our beloved babies and their disposable diapers piling up in landfills and all the stuff they’re going to consume in their lifetime.
Aside, before I get flames, I’m just pointing out the existence of our glass houses and I’m not saying I don’t do any or all of the above.
Let’s just ignore that.
It’s just easier to blame someone else.
Just like it’s easier to say that unless China joins the bandwagon, the US won’t commit to jack. Easier to worry about all those other countries stealing an edge on you and blaming them for refusing to relent. Easier to smugly talk about all those imperialist bastards.
Sure.
The corruption isn’t just at the top, folks. And considering who voted those people into office — seriously, you’re blaming it all on them?
Even better is that I’ll bet if the government ever decides to start cracking down, I doubt the US populace will stand for it. God forbid that the US turn facist/socialist/into a namby pamby pansy. Oh noes!
Let he who is without sin and all that.
The fact is that so long as the majority of the US/democratic nations’ populace aren’t on the same page, then our government is unlikely to change. If our goverment decides it’s the same old hat as always, then we’re just shit out of luck.
But it’s just easier to scapegoat someone, isn’t it?
Go right ahead. I’ll light a candle for you too.
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12.19.09
Posted in Health tagged bupropion, methylphenidate at 9:51 pm by kyrias
So the doc gave me a prescription for methylphenidate, and the pills came in 5mg portions. I was supposed to up my dose if I didn’t feel it, so to speak.
5 mg was as a pebble into the sea. 10 mg seemed to improve my game of Puyo.
Which, by the way, is my new obsession. It’s like some unholy offspring of dominos, tetris, and weird gelatinous …things…puyos. If you like Tetris, there’s a good chance you’ll like Puyo, and if you don’t like Tetris, I’d bet that you’d still like Puyo.
No, I’m not biased at all, oh no.
Anyways. I took 15mg this morning at 8am and I’m still feeling it, 12 hours later. The usual: accelerated heart rate, feeling like it’s a bit hard to breathe, and utter loss of appetite. All new record of only eating one buttermilk pancake, one quarter of a scallion pancake, and one dumpling. In 13 hours.
I’m not even going to calculate the caloric value of that, because it’s going to be scary.
On the other note, when watching Taiwanese Idol, aka 超级星光大道：
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Friends don’t let friends wear _____ when showing up on tv. This, however, really deserved a blog mention:
The woman is really talented in terms of singing, song composition, and lyric writing. I’m just going to put it out there that I really admire her — which is why, I guess, that seeing that outfit of hers hurts so much.
That combination of tube top with two bared arms and that scarf-thing is just… I have no words for it. It’s not even a skinny, decorative scarf; it totally seems as if she took all the material that would otherwise have went towards a proper shirt with sleeves and just scrunched it all around her neck. Doughnut-scarf-thing + tube top = *speechless+horror*
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12.10.09
Posted in Bupropion/methylphenidate, Depression, Health tagged Wellbutrin at 5:05 pm by kyrias
It’s been, what, about 3 weeks or so since I got on Wellbutrin? I honestly don’t quite remember. Let’s call it three weeks for the sake of simplicity.
What’s changed?
My hands shake so much that I think any chances of my knifework improving went straight out the window. I’m hoping that the shakes will go away after I stabilize on the meds, but just in case it doesn’t, I’m going to bid my future career as a sous-chef adieu.
I’m down to about one meal per day. Wellbutrin is/was apparently used as a diet medication. I get hungry, but I either A. forget to eat B. get too lazy/caught up in what I’m doing to eat or C. get bored of the act of eating and quit before I’m full. A, B, and C kind of imply that it’s not just that I’m taking something that also functions as an appetite suppressant, leading into the next problem:
My ADD has gone through the roof. If I thought my brain was like Emmental cheese (hah! Thene!) before, I’m most apologetic towards my brain, because what I’m experiencing now is what it’s truly like to have the brain capacity of a goldfish. I have a 10 page paper due today, and fuck if I can focus on it. That same paper I wrote 383 words on after spending 8 hours working on it without any outside distractions. For the record, I now have a full page single spaced after at least 48 hours of working on it. My mind for details has entirely gone and forget about remembering anything important. I managed to entirely forget my second psychiatrist’s appointment because I thought it was later. So it’s entirely possible that my ADD may be what’s contributing to the one-meal-a-day phenomenon.
I’m having problems with what looks like narcolepsy. Alright, I’m exaggerating, but not by that much. Even after 10 hours or so of sleep, I get suddenly very sleepy after two hours of being awake, and manage to fall dead asleep in class. Or I totally conk out on the T — leading to missed stops. I can wake up at 2pm and feel desperately sleepy at 6pm. It’s getting to the point where I feel like I should just stay in bed because there’s no point in getting up when I just want to crawl back an hour or so later. Insomnia is a documented side effect of Wellbutrin — so as Thene said, I did a great job on that one.
I have a constant bitter taste in my mouth that I’m not really enjoying. I can’t help but feel that it means that the drug is doing wierd things to me that might not be entirely benign.
Despite all this — I feel less depressed. I am not sure it isn’t apathy yet, but I think that I’m still worried about my paper should be a good sign. I guess, so long as I’m resigned to being a cheerful goldfish with no ability to get intellectually challenging things done, I’m good? Happy as a clam and all that, y’know?
I had an appointment with my psychiatrist and there are some real gems of conversation we had (keeping in mind these are trancribed from memory — which is really faulty lately ):
After I mention my problem with going down to one meal a day:
Dr: “I don’t think you need to worry about it, there have been no accounts of people wasting away whilst on Wellbutrin.”
I sort of blinked at him and decided not to bring up the fact that if I started taking stimulant type ADHD medication — that’d also be an appetite suppressant, which might make things really interesting.
Me: “I’m feeling better and all, but I’d really prefer not to fail my courses.”
Dr: “Oh well.” <– Yes, he literally did say that. Exactly that.
After describing my sleeping problems:
Dr: “You don’t look very sleepy now.”
…I guess that was a fair statement? But it isn’t narcolepsy after all, and aren’t most people usually a bit stressed from seeing their psychiatrist that they wouldn’t readily just fall asleep? I don’t know. It just seemed a bit odd, almost as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me.
My psychiatrist is a good man, I’m not throwing that into question. Furthermore, I think he’s probably also a good doctor. However, I think it’s hysterical that he’s so utterly unsympathetic.
What’s also interesting is that I almost had to twist his arm to prescribe me an stimulant-type ADHD medication. He didn’t seem keen on it, but he did it, which makes me wonder what exactly was going through his brain at the time. He said he didn’t want to muddy up the waters by throwing another drug into the mix, and I would usually be whole-heartedly behind that as really, I don’t like one drug in the first place much less two. But honestly, I’m tired of just conking over like that. P’raps he only did it because stimulants don’t really have much of a long-term effect and it goes out of the system fast enough that if I reacted poorly to it, I would be able to go straight off it. I have no idea! I really want some insight into this man’s mind!
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