Oh God! Urp! Oh God! Make it stop!

It's been a rough couple of days for The Runner, boys and girls. A dose of viral gastroenteritis went through my family like a prairie grass fire. Just when I thought the angel of pestilence would pass me by unscathed, I started feeling queasy late Tuesday night.

"No problem," I thought. "I'll just pop a couple of gravol anti-nauseants, pass out in bed, and I should be able to sleep through the worst of it."

Yeah, right. I woke up around 1am to the realization that I was not going to sleep through this. The next four hours or so were spent with me dragging myself to the bathroom at 15 minute intervals, sitting on the crapper and cradling a bucket in my arms, simultaneously projectile vomiting and hershey squirting. Then staggering back to bed, sweating profusely and shaking. Soooo c-c-c-c-cold. Those four hours of hell made me realize that just when you think you couldn't possibly throw up anymore...you can.

The dehydration brought on by this was no picnic either. After a certain point, my kidneys started to ache. I started to wonder just how much dehydration needed to take place before your kidneys shut down. The only thing that stopped me from going to the hospital, was I didn't think I could make it from the house to the Emergency room without having another bout of the trots. Walking into the Hospital after just having crapped myself would have been one indignity too many for that night.

Luckily, sometime after 5am exhaustion overcame me, I slipped into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness and slept for about 2 hours. After that, I started drinking tiny doses of gatorade to restore my fluid and electrolyte levels. Against my better judgement, I started drinking more and more of it. Around 11am I was sick one final time and brought up about a jug's worth of gatorade. I have to say though, in the grand scheme of things, gatorade is one of the easier substances to throw up. It doesn't burn on the way up, and there are no messy chunks. After finishing, I actually thought, "Well, that wasn't so bad."

The rest of yesterday was spent lying on the couch and consuming fluids. Today, I ramped it up a little and had some chicken broth. Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're a wild man, RR. Out of curiosity, I decided to weigh myself, figuring I probably lost a couple of pounds from this. I looked down at the reading on the scale and thought, "That can't be right." I tried another scale in the house and received the exact same reading. I dropped ten pounds in the last two days. Jebus, that can't be good. Kids, listen to me when I say, don't try this at home.

Dreamland

So there I was, on a state of the art private jet with a half dozen beautiful women. I don't know where we were flying to, but I knew it was someplace far away and exotic. I also somehow knew that I had orchestrated this journey. The ladies were giving me long, appreciative looks indicating a guided tour of the garden of earthly delights was in my future.

Suddenly, I was rudely awakened to the fact that both of my legs were losing all sensation in them. The reason? My dog Scout was stretched out across both of them. Don't get me wrong, I love my dog, but sometimes he can be a real buzzkill.

Rule Britannia!

Look kids! Big Ben! Parliament!

Green Space

After several months in a country where the predominant landscape colours were tan and brown, I didn't realize how much I was missing the colour green until I arrived in London on a beautiful spring day.

Desert Rat

For those who haven't seen them, here's a couple of pics of me in Kandahar, Afghanistan from last year.

Mmmmmm, ham

Last week, the Notorious MBA and I went to the National Job Fair in Toronto. After having thoroughly perused their website, I had high hopes for what this event had to offer. I was looking forward to getting face time with a large number of corporate HR reps and wowing them with my leading-edge business card CDs. The CD label and resume contained within which were both designed by my artistically talented friend, Jalapeno. MBA was looking forward to speaking with the people from Australian Immigration, as the warm sunny climate would suit her just fine.

Alas, both of us were disappointed. Every person I tried to speak with about job opportunities would inevitably tell me to go look at their website. Look at your website? The whole point of this exercise was to have human contact. To get those extra dimensions you can't get just from submitting your resume online. Can't these jerks see I have personality, dammit?! Had I known it was going to be like this, I could have saved myself a trip out to the T-dot. Hell, I could have surfed the web looking for jobs and not even put on pants. I put on pants for this, people. This is a big deal here!

MBA's disappointment came when the Aussies told her they were only looking for people who wanted short-term employment down under, doing jobs such as picking fruit. Let me assure you, MBA, you are capable of doing more than just picking fruit.

On the bright side, I finally saw the Phantom of the Opera. Yes, I was the one who hadn't seen it. I learned that Phantom of the Opera = good, Phantom of the Opera while liquored up = better! I don't think the cast or audience liked it when I yelled out, "Hey! Where's all the singin' cats?!"

Eventually, I drove MBA back to our Nation's Capital and managed to get a few things crossed off on my to do list, such as getting my summer tires on my car, getting my mountain bike out of storage and even getting my bike tuned up for spring. We also saw the Adam Sandler/Don Cheadle movie "Reign Over Me", which was quite well done. Our favourite line of the film by far was, "That girl is crazy, with a side of crazy!"

I even got two Easter dinners out of the weekend. One at MBA's friend's house, and one back at home. For my money, you just can't have too much ham. Mmmmmm, ham.

RR

"Wake up, without a care. Your head's not heavy, conscience clear
Sins are all forgiven here, yours and mine
Fear has gone without a trace
It's the perfect time, it's the perfect place
Nothing hurting. Nothing sore. No one suffers anymore,
The doctor's found a simple cure.
Just in time

All these things if I were King would all appear around me
The world will sing when I am King
The world will sing when I am King"
- When I Am King, by Great Big Sea

Return of the Runner

After a long absence from this site, I've decided to come back and write a few posts again. Why was I gone for so long, you ask? Well, things had quieted down in my life in comparison to events of the previous year. Anything that was going on in my life I felt was either not worthy of blogging about, such as my professional life, or was best left unblogged, such as my romantic life. The last time I blogged about a woman here, it came back to bite me in the ass. RR would rather not go through that again.

Since I've been back from overseas, I've been asking myself the question, "What now?". The military, while it's been very good to me for the sixteen years I've been in, doesn't feel like a good fit for me anymore. I've been feeling like it's time to move on and do something else. A few months ago, I started looking at going back to school. Given my work background, I looked for something in the IT field. After seeking advice from a few people, an old army buddy mentioned a one year grad program in Information Systems Security that someone he knew had taken and done very well with. I researched it and thought it sounded very promising, so I submitted my application. Lo and behold, I was accepted into the program, which starts in September.

It feels good to have a plan in place for my life again. This program will be just what I need to make the transition to a decent career in the private sector. Lord knows there are no shortage of security breaches on e-commerce websites. That's all I have for know. I'll try and write a few more blogs within the coming week.

Peace out!

RR

"Now I've been happy lately,
thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be,
something good has begun"
- Peace Train, by Cat Stevens