The Syndicate

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:18 pm This is pretty unexpected, but all my support to you, my friend. I hope your life only continues to get happier from now on.

Thanks DDL, I value this a lot.

I appreciate the sentiments... which feels like an inadequate expression but I wanted it to be said.

I suppose I'm a bit late on posting about this because (in the past especially) I tend to want to try to resolve my emotions before posting about them publicly, but... I had a particularly rough time the last few days even mustering up the strength to look at myself in the mirror or go outside for even a minute. Coming out as trans has been an incredible feeling and process for me so far over the past handful of weeks or so, but inherent in the revelation is an underlying assumption that I'm unhappy with how I am and look right now (and have been my whole life).

I'm back to feeling good and optimistic, but waves of emotions I'm sure will continue to be a thing.

nutella wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 1:29 am my city is a fucking hotbed of fascist bullshit and i cannot bring myself to fucking care about anything

i'm burying myself in mafia to an unhealthy extent because i can't deal with sparing a single second to think about the fucking real world.

What a mood.

I really have no words right now. (In a good way.)

I will see what I can come up with later.

I appreciate you all so much.

Damn, sorry to hear it, Golden. I can't stand politics like that, but especially when they're seemingly out of nowhere. Hopefully this is something you can get properly resolved either way.

Oh man, that really sucks! I'm sorry to hear it, bud. I know you were really enjoying it.

I know you can find another new awesome position though, with your determination and skillset. Best of luck.

Dom wrote:

Epignosis wrote:It's that time of year again for me...

"Mr. Brown...what can I do to bring up my grade?"

"BUILD A TIME MACHINE AND GO BACK TO THE DAY YOU WERE FUCKING AROUND."

I would just like to say that I have not related to anything more in my life.


"Mr. Torro, how can I get a B?"


"Go back and not fail every test and quiz you have taken in this class"

LOL, I can relate to this one too, which is even sadder since you'd think they would have learned from high school.

Our public school system is so flawed.

Thanks for sharing that, Rob, it was a really great read, especially for someone who doesn't have near as much experience in the area.

Epignosis wrote:Lightweight.

The last time I drank I had about 12 beers and a bourbon.

That was yesterday.

Well, I know I'm a lightweight, but even still I did NOT remotely expect what happened to me after drinking four beers.

I echo the sentiment on losing traditions re: Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So... I've had an interesting week! Some of it was actually good, but since other parts were definitely not, it seems appropriate to post it here anyway.

Since I knew I wouldn't have time to come back to Cincinnati or any similar area before the wedding, I knew I wanted to have my bachelor party while I was up here -- figured it was the only time I could get everyone together for it. I put BWT and Devin in charge of it. Almost everyone I wanted to be there could make it the 23rd, so that's when it ended up being (couldn't find a date where everyone could make it, but that's to be expected with holidays). They had trouble getting a venue (such as Dave & Buster's) but Devin's parents were nice enough to host it for us and it was a FREAKING BLAST.

Now I had four beers, which... with my relatively low tolerance, probably would give me a slight or moderate hangover for Christmas Eve morning. Even though I don't drink often at all, there was a night earlier in the semester where I had four beers and the next day I had a slight headache and aches but it wasn't too bad. After Devin's bachelor party a little while ago, I had six rum and cokes, which was a bit more intense than the aforementioned... still no puking though, and certainly nothing I didn't get over after most of the day was done.

This time? I got home around 4:00AM. Woke up at 7:00AM with THE WORST HEADACHE EVER. I felt like my brain was going to explode every nanosecond consecutively for all of eternity. I also felt achy and somewhat of the hot/cold crap. Thankfully I made it back to sleep... woke up around 1:00PM. Head wasn't quite as bad, but boy were other things worse. Felt like full on major flu. Sadly, this was now Christmas Eve, and we had my mom's side gathering to go to. I pumped myself full of medicine, blah blah, sucked it up and went. Was relatively OK for the first hour or so, after that... absolutely dreadful. I thought it was all because of a hangover.

Turns out I had a fever of 105. Hot/cold like CRAZY. Swollen feeling in my throat. Taste buds were awful. Super achy. The worst part is that, unbeknownst to some, I suffer from restless legs syndrome, and so the aches and restlessness of my legs were at many times actually the most unbearable part of my sickness. This was seriously one of the WORST times I've ever been ill. Hands down.

Christmas day wasn't any better until about two-thirds of the way through. Then my fever started coming down.

Thankfully, yesterday I was at 100, and was feeling OK enough to go with Annie to her mom's side celebration up in Lima. Today I feel about the same as yesterday.

What's the worst part? My brother, mom, dad, and now Annie all seem to have varying degrees of the same thing, AND Christmas day is always the day my dad, mom, brother, and I spend our Christmas together. I spent that day sleeping and sitting in a chair watching Pawn Stars. All day.

So I don't know what the heck happened, since all I had before the bachelor party was a lingering cough from a cold I had a week and a half previous. But my best guess is that the drinking possibly lowered my immune system and I got sick with an actual flu at some point in the process -- because especially my symptoms from 7:00AM when I woke up at first to 1:00PM and the rest of Christmas Eve were somewhat similar but definitely characterized more so by hangover and by flu respectively, I would say. Who knows though.