EKG Me, Mr. Prophylactic

I had to go to the E.R. tonight. I've been having these weird heart-palpitations since I got back from Africa, and today they were on the rise. I was just shrugging it off as little-girl excitement over my transcontinental-skipping and my upcoming move to California.

That was until nurse Mama Rose said, "I think you should read the fine print on that Malaria prophylactic you're taking." So I did that.

It's always a good idea to listen to your nurse Mama. Especially when she says big crazy tyrannosaurus rexy words like, "prophylactic."

If you experience irregular heartbeat while taking this medication: CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY.

I did that. (But I didn't appreciate all the SHOUTING IN CAPS.) And the doctor sent me to the Emergency Room.

It's funny the things you think about when you're young with not-extravagant health insurance. The nice ER nurses are hooking my heart up to the EKG machine, and Mama--who used to work at this hospital--reminds me that this procedure costs about $500. 12 seconds of EKGness. $500. In my calculations, that's $41.67/second. (Not bad, robot. Hope you're saving for retirement.)

EKG.......$500
I.V. dripping salt-water into my arm.......$50
Multiple blood tests.......$200
Doc saying I'm all-normal and should just stop taking my Malaria pterodactyl......Priceless.

She also said I should cut back on the caffeine. Oh dear.

I'm very thankful for health insurance. But the expense of the whole system just baffles my happy little heart.

Tsunami Warning

Ladies and Gents, I survived my very first tsunami warning. We took a nice road-trip down to Dar es Salaam on the Tanzanian coast to visit Young Life Africa's illustrious Dyan Larmey. (Oh, I love Dyan!) It was such a nice visit.

But then late last night a guy out in the road yelled in Swahili from a scratchy megaphone that we should all be prepared for a tsunami. The Indonesian earthquake could have watery aftershocks. We were in a house only about 100 meters from the beach, so this was a pretty unnerving warning. At least for me, it was. Calmly, the rest of the house just went to bed, remembering that the African side of the Indian Ocean was barely effected by the last Tsunami warning. I sat on the couch wondering if I was the only sane person in the house! A tsunami might come and we were only armed with flashlights?

Well, said tsunami warning was then retracted, but I still stayed awake. I sort of went into I-will-rescue-the-house-from-any-gnarly-wave mode, imagining how I'd run up the stairs and wake everyone on the ground floor. Silly. I used my cataclysmic adrenaline to edit a road-trip travel log video #3, which is (slowly-by-slowly) uploading for you. Hopefully after we return from an Indian dinner feast the video robots will be done with the loading.

Check out sweet Lisa's side of the Tsunami-story right here.

200 Streams

I wanted to have something terribly profound to say today because the Blogger robots tell me this is my 200th post. I tried to find a cool image with el numero 200, but couldn't find one. So I made one.

I think stream of consciousness writing is very good for the soul. Maybe it shouldn't always be shared. But, maybe it should. Maybe our brains need to be drained more often.

I would like to always remember this day when it was a difficult marriage for the First and Third worlds. There we were cursing the internet connection and the 10, or was it 20 kilobytes per second transfer rates. I told Byron that it didn't matter much, it was only the difference between ten and twenty cents, when most of the world's internet ran at speeds of 20 to 40 dollars.

Current, currency: nearly the same in the digital age.

There are simple wires in Tanzania that carry current and information and such. These are tough times for simple wires. We must be patient and just wait for our uploads. And so, we drink loads of chai.

Rucksack Update; or, Clubbing Robots

Thanks very much for the prayers on behalf of my rucksack. I am at a conference in Hungary and have been feeling awfully bohemian in my lack of clothing. But I sort of get a kick out of that, I suppose.

Well, the Iberia web site tells me this exciting, but rather uninformative news:


Which means, I think, that the bag is definitely located somewhere in the known universe.

So I called the happy Iberian hotline whose robots told me,
"The call center is busy, please stay on the line, thank you," every 30 seconds until my call was disconnected, 30 minutes later. I had just decided that after waiting 34 minutes I'd hang up, so I felt like the friendly Skype internet telephone robots were trying to beat me at my own game.

Most of the important information on Iberia's site is in Spanish, but I managed to figure out that if you send a special almost-morse-code message via cell phone, their happy computer robots (might) text back with some info on your lost bag. So I sent my almost-morse-code message with my bag tag number and wrote: Solicito la información sobre la localización de mi bolso. (Muchos Gracias for Altavista's robot translators.)

To translate, my text message to Iberia basically said, "Please send me some news about my rucksack that I can put in some Hungarian goulash and actually chew on."

But I have the vague feeling that robots in Spain go out clubbing at night, and probably don't answer their work messages. That's probably why I haven't heard back from them. I hope they at least eat some tapas for me.

Continued words to the CEO of the Universe are welcomed.