Urgh, the sequel

New mini-flare occurred this weekend, predictably, I suppose, after a week-to-month's buildup of too many consecutive baked beans, beers, mildly spicy stuff, popcorn, cheese puffs, Indian food, and two glasses of dark cola. I should be grateful it's not a flare-flare, a flare with teeth. But it's still kicking my ass into this week.

One of the hardest parts is eating. In addition to the emergency I'm on a self-imposed bland diet to shut down the crazy intestinal spasming, and what gets me irate about it is how difficult it is to do. And I'm not talking about the delicious food cravings that start after a few days in. It's really hard to cover your daily caloric requirements with applesauce, yogurt, rice, bananas, etc. Two dubious internet resources and a calculator show me I'd have to eat over ten servings of applesauce to make it. And forget about nutritional requirements, because they are not the priority.

In any case. After a couple of meals it feels like you're stuffing pillowfuls of glop down your throat, because bland diets are, by nature, bland bland bland. And you start to feel adverse to eating, and then because you're eating less anyway you start to feel weak and hopeless, and bland bland bland - er, blah blah blah.

Why yes, I am a ball of delight in times like these. Come back any time! Here, have a dog picture:

Puppydog would gladly eat all that applesauce for me. Yep, uh huh.

Luckily I have some good books on hand. After watching the Mark Gatiss BBC Horror thingie, I was reminded by Google that he'd also written some books, so I picked up The Vesuvius Club. So far it's ridiculous, scandalous, silly, exciting, mysterious, and almost exhausting to read -- but in a compelling way. I'm only 70 pages in, but I can recommend it that far wholeheartedly.