Uveitis Ugh

I've been nocturnal for the last few days because of the uveitis in my eye. It has been so extremely painful that the idea of looking out at daylight kills me. Since Friday, I've been holed up inside the condo, shades drawn, sunglasses on. I've only been able to go out at night once the sun has set. I took Friday off from work and am taking today off too. I can barely look at computer screens...and my left eye is so tender that opening it is such a chore. I'm really opening that this will end soon...or get to the point where I can try to wander out during the day and be fine....

Pitas, Uveitis, Spamalot + Swank

I'm almost done with my Pitas migration. I've moved over all entries except for the ones written in 2000. Man, 7 years ago. Crazy to think I've been keeping this blog for that long. I've been going down memory lane copying & pasting all these old entries....

So, my uveitis is back. This is the 3rd time I've had an inflammation, though from reading my past entries, it's the first time I've had a flare up in 5 years with the last one being back in 2002. The first one was in 2001 -- funny reading back on that as I had no idea what it was and didn't seek treatment until having it for nearly a week, resulting me in missing work for 2 days because I had gotten to the point of not being able to look at the computer screen. The good news this time around is that it's a really mild inflammation, such that I don't even need to dilate my eyes daily (which I previously had to do). I'll see my opthamologist in a week and hopefully it'll be gone by then.

Last night, Matt and I went to the Paramount Theater to watch Monty Python's Spamalot -- my, was that musical hilarious. Classic Monty Python totally politically incorrect and random humor.

Tonight, we'll be heading to the Emerald City Swank, Seattle Works' annual fundraiser. This will be my 4th year in a row going! Can't wait to see what auction items are up for bid.

Migrating from Pitas....

If you look at my archive links over on the right there, you'll see that my first 2 years of blogging (2000 and 2001) all took place on a really really old blogging service called Pitas. What an irony considering what the acronym stands for ("PITA")--I'm now in the process of trying to consolidate all my blog entries into one, and because Pitas is so old, there's no concept of a feed, importing tool, nada. So I'm literally copying/pasting all my entries here into Blogger. Ugh.

All of this is getting done with plans to eventually move my entire website to Wordpress. I really loved the page organization tools I had when I put the wedding website together. I was even impressed with all the plugins that exist for Wordpress (such as this nifty Flickr one that I used) that I think it's about time that I take my website and overhaul it....but the big thorn standing in the way is for me to migrate my old pitas blog entries to blogger first so that I can easily import them to Wordpress.

Whirlwind Trip #2: NYC

We took the 2nd of our whirlwind trips to the East Coast last weekend to attend Debbie & Saevar's NYC wedding reception (they got married in Malaysia in August). The trip was fabulous as we ended up seeing a ton of folks in the short amount of time---from hanging out with Debbie & Saevar and meeting their friends, to staying with Anna & Frank, and having dim sum with some friends from Kansas, Hester & Rod.
The weather was ridiculously warm too---when we left Seattle, we were wearing sweaters and puffy jackets (or at least I was). NYC, on the otherhand, was about 86 degrees on Saturday and I was able to prance around in a tank top and skirt throughout most of the weekend. It was awesome.

Here are some photos:

A crew of us at Debbie & Saevar’s reception at the SoHo House---I’ve always been curious to see what it’s like inside this notorious celebrity hangout. The rooftop pool area is really nice.



With the newlyweds:



Dinner with Anna and Frank at this fabulous barbecue joint (Hill Country):



Dim sum at the Evergreen Café with Rod, Hester, Mike and their newborn, Emma:



On Sunday afternoon, we found Lucrecia who happened to be in NYC also:



As a thank you for lending my veil to her for her wedding, Debbie treated me to an amazing massage (the Vishesh treatment) at the Deepak Chopra Center + Spa at the Dream Hotel. (Picture here is of the entrance into the spa) After changing into our robes, we were greeted by our masseuses and led into our individual rooms. The Vishesh treatment involves using a ton of warming massage oil and then applying long strokes and creating friction to develop strong pressure and relaxation. It was absolutely amazing and wonderful. After our massages, we checked out the center and saw the yoga room (beautifully constructed) and sat in the meditation room for awhile. The meditation room had a few low seats in the room (where you can sit cross legged) and this beautiful huge stone on a pedestal in the middle of the room. With the dim, museum-like lighting, it made the atmosphere quite peaceful.


Check out the rest of the photos from this trip.

True HD

Yesterday, I sold my plasma tv to a Chinese couple off of Craigslist. Why? I'm finally getting true HD. Back in 2003, over Thanksgiving at the Joes in Portland, we all woke up insanely early to jump onto any major deals. At the time, I splurged and bought myself a 42" plasma TV---rather proud of this deal as I was an early adopter with perhaps one other friend with such a flat-panel TV. The actual HD televisions were ridiculously priced so I got an EDTV which was fine for me at the time. Fast forward 4 more years -- the cost of HD televisions is perhaps 1/5 of what they used to be--they're thinner, lighter and so much more accessible. My new officemate, the deal king that he is, had located an amazing deal for a new 42" LCD flat-panel TV from Sharp and clued me in on it (it was about 47% off). One impulsive moment later, I was the owner of such television. So now I finally get true HD. It amazes me to view the tech specs between my old and new TV---see below. It arrives this Friday....can't wait!

Specification	OLD TV	NEW TV
Model	Zenith P42W34	Sharp LC-42D64U
Resolution	852 x 480p	1920 x 1080p
Brightness	1000 cd/m2	450cd/m2
Contrast Ratio	1200:1	10,000:1
HDMI Inputs	0	3
HD Component Input	0	3
Weight	75 lbs.	48.5