Jeannine Gailey — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:39:00 +0000

Back from a very hot and dry Seattle (92 high!) where I was very happy to get to see some of my poetry friends (Hi Joannie, Kelli, Annette, and Lana!) My friends are definitely the thing I miss most about Seattle.
My upper respiratory thing of course came back with a vengeance the morning I had to fly home. The last time I flew with this kind of sinus infection I burst an ear drum, so this time I loaded up on Sudafed, ear planes, nasal spray, and brought hot tea on the plane. It still hurt so bad I wanted to cry like the chorus of three babies that were wailing around us the whole flight. Boo on bad health, I say! Isn’t it time for me to get better? I now have the choice of moving to some very strong (read: bad side effect) antibiotics or some very strong (with side effects) steroids. Of course, you can’t take these particular antiobiotics with the steroids because they interact (there’s interesting interference between floroquinolones and steroids and NSAIDS, by the way, if you ever want to look it up…)Too bad that homeopathic stuff never really works with me. If I could buy stock in green tea and elderberry syrup…
Anyway, had a pleasant surprise waiting for me in the form of a contributor copy of “What We Eat When We Eat Alone: Stories and 100 Recipes)” by Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin. It’s a gorgeous, witty book full of delicious recipes, but it also has, incongruously perhaps, my poem “Spy Girls” in it, complete with a lovely illustration of a futuristic spy girl eating ice cream all alone. Really, I love illustrations – I wish publishers would illustrate all my poems
In other news, I’m eating soup and frozen sorbet, trying to work through my mental fog (over a 100 degree fever, etc.) to try to finish grading final papers. Isn’t it reassuring to students when you say stuff like – yah, I’m grading your papers through a haze of illness! LOL.
And I’m getting to know my new group of students in the Advanced class as well.
In geekier news, I was sad that ComicCon was already sold out, but bought tickets to go see Hayao Miyazaki, one of my top poetry muses, at Berkeley when he comes to give a live lecture, and booked a screening of his new movie, Ponyo by the Sea. If you haven’t seen Miyazaki’s masterpieces – my favorites are My Neighbor Totoro and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind – you really are doing yourself a disservice. The best animated movies that have been made in the last thirty years, by far.
Well, I’m off to my chicken soup and popsicle. You guys be good! The sun is out in San Diego, and cross your fingers that this darn episode of evil upper-respiratory stuff will leave me soon for good!

What We Eat When We Eat Alone – Webbish6