So, I just got back from Atlanta. As always, I had a lot of fun.
The first few days was spent playing on Jason's new Playstation 3. He had Katamari Forever. Very fun, but we mostly played Arkham Asylum, the new Batman game. This game is really amazing if you are at all a Batman fan. You get to do just about everything Batman can do, and the environment is pretty open, so you can take as much time as you want whipping batarangs, shooting grapple guns and zip-lines, and taking out bad guys in ever increasingly fun varieties of ways.
Wednesday evening (30th) I was getting out of Jason's truck and I felt a pain in my stomach, sort of like how your stomach muscles feel the day after doing a few too many sit-ups, so at first, that's what I thought it was. The next morning, however, when I tried getting up, it was much worse. It was deeper than muscle pain, and just on the left side. A little panicked, I woke up Jason and Allen, and they drove me to their nearby doctor's office.
Turns out I now have Diverticulitis. That is a weakening of the diverticuli in your digestive track. That can cause pockets to form in the lining of places like your colon. Hard to digest foods can use these pockets like hermits use caves, to hide away from the other foods and let their hygiene go, causing all kinds of nasty infections and possibly even holes in your digestive track. The next thing you know, your pizza is in your lungs and your coughing up anchovies, which your cats may love you for, but will shortly lead to your death. Seriously though, it mostly means I have to maintain a higher fiber diet, and avoid things like popcorn and nuts. Which totally sucks, considering how much I love Fiddle-Faddle. If I do start hurting, I just need to make sure I get to the doctor to get some antibiotics. If it gets worse, I may need surgery at some point, but that's not very likely anytime soon.
Anyway, most of the rest of my trip was spent resting on the couch doped up on pain medication, and simultaneously hanging from gargoyles so I could knock out guys wearing clown make-up.
On the last full day, I was feeling better, so we went and had breakfast at Waffle House, caught the matinee showing of Avatar in 3D, and capped out the evening at an awesome sushi place.
Again, apart from my new, life-altering illness, I really had a wonderful time in Atlanta, and if I had to pick a place to get sick, I'm glad it was there, where I had someone who was willing to take care of me for a few days through the worst of it.
Oh, and one of Jason's Christmas presents to me... my own copy of Pandemic
