... I try to put on a few extra pounds

My visit to the doctor last week was to get her to change my current anti-depressants to a brand my therapist suggested. At this visit they took my blood pressure (all good), and my weight (not good, I lost two pounds. TWO POUNDS! Now I'm a borderline waif so to hear that I have in fact lost two pounds is not good news to me. For one, I want to know where I lost it from. My butt? Hardly, it's small and flat. How about my ears? Quite possibly.



Either way, my doc prescribed this wonder-drug, Remeron. How cool is this - one of its many side effects is .... wait for it ... weight gain. Is it time to do the dance of joy yet?

... it's that time of the year!

I love fall - or 'autumn' as they call it around the rest of the world.


The colors, the light, the cool air. There's just something really great about this season. I just wish the jolt between warmish to shriveled-balls-cold wasn't so damned sudden! 


Then again, just look outside and see what you see. It's so purdy.

...South Africa's crime comes to Pittsburgh

Ever been pistol-whipped? Well, now I can say I have. 


Twenty four years in the rape/car-jack/hijack/murder capital of the planet and now I get help up at gunpoint and pistol-whipped in Pittsburgh.


I had packed up the car with all sorts of things to take to my new apartment. My laundry basket, ironing board, curtain rods, toaster, new towels, etc. After several trips up the stairs and back down again, I was finally done. As I walked out the building door - cell phone in my hand to text my current room mate to let him know I was headed back because it was already 11pm - I noticed a guy standing on the sidewalk. 


And then I looked across the road and saw the driver's door open in the car. Now common sense would say, "Get your skinny ass back in the building!", but no, the sense was not so common that night. I walked up to the car - and the guy behind the wheel jumped out and marched toward me WITH A FAKKIN' GUN POINTED AT MY FACE!


A fakkin gun! Not a Swedish fish. Not a rolled newspaper. But a fakkin gun!


I opened my pie hole to shout (or scream like a girl) but nothing came out. Up came his hand and down came the handle of the gun on the side of my head. THUD. He saw my cell phone, reached for it and I instinctively threw it toward the ground where it slid under a nearby car.


As if by a miracle of God, my voice came back from its vacation:


"HEEEEEEELP ME, PLEASE, SOMEONE, PLEASE HELP ME!"


The would-be robber must have been frightened off because him and his accomplice hightailed it out of there faster than two bikers in a transexual stripper club. 


I managed to find my phone, climbed into the car with blood pouring down my face, locked the door, stopped shaking just long enough to be able to call my Dad in South Africa and break down crying.

I now need to go and give my underwear a private washing.

...I get to call it HOME SWEET HOME

So this past weekend I started moving my stuff over to my new apartment. I feel like an excited kid. New TV, new curtains. But of course, it comes with the NO PAIN, NO GAIN policy. I was one curtain short, the curtain was not long enough, i didn't have a screwdriver to get the TV set up.

                                   A rather dull kitchen, but at least it has a brand new stove

                                    This is going to be too easy - a nice new bamboo toilet seat and we're set!

                           Aaaah yes, my boudoir. Mmmmm, needs new paint.

                           Why does a skinny guy need so much space? Because he wants it!

                        Is this a sun room? Yes, it most certainly is!




Oh well, Rome wasn't built in a day, I guess.


But it really is very exciting.


Next I have to convince my landlord to let me paint the place. I was thinking a nice masculine coffee color, or some shade of tan or something. That puke beige is not so attractive.

... I heard a heart-tugging story

It was a busy morning, about 8:30, when an elderly gentleman in his 70s arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He said he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.

While taking care of his wound, I asked him if he had another doctor's appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry.

The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I inquired as to her health.

He told me that she had been there for while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer's Disease.

As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late.

He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now.

I was surprised, and asked him, 'And you still go every morning, even though she doesn't know who you are?'

He smiled as he patted my hand and said,

'She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is.'

 

Now I don't know if this story is true or not, but it made me realize something: one day, I want to experience love like this.