still positive
Jesus, what a pain in the ass. I'm only starting this post at 12:33 because, when I got back to my computer after eating some truly delicious Annie's Macaroni & Cheese for lunch (to which I add chopped bell pepper, chopped tomato, and ground black pepper), none of the monitors were responding. Not the dual desktop monitors, not the laptop monitor. I had to press the power button continuously until the computer simply re-started, which happens to me with this dipshit piece of machinery semi-regularly. Having it happen as soon as I return from lunch, though, is most annoying.
And then? It did system updates. And restarted. Again. I spent like ten minutes just sitting here waiting for this damned thing to run at normal function again. Fuck you, computer!
Hey, guess what! I guess I have other, personal news I could share, something many might think I'd be better off keeping to myself. I tested positive for chlamydia again! Twice last year, twice this year now. The most annoying thing this year is that I have used condoms all year without fail . . . except for oral. Who uses them for oral? Nobody, that's who. In the email from Dr. Brandon this morning, he changed his tune from yesterday, in which he said he thought maybe the last test positive was a false positive, to thinking it was probably a legitimately new infection but that maybe the issue now is that taking medication for only one day last time was not enough, so now I need to pick up a prescription for a week's worth of pills to treat it.
He sure seems eager to give me the benefit of the doubt. I mean, whether I have it now because last time had "antibiotic failure," or because it's a new infection, what difference does it make, really? I'm infected now either way. I have been feeling unusually fatigured since the cold I had last month, though, sleeping like the dead nearly every night which Dr. Brandon seemed yesterday to think was unusual, and he even had extra tests done on my blood work to look for any red flags that might be the cause -- and found nothing. So, now I will be interested to see if this has anything to do with it, and if my slight fatigue might abate after my week of antibiotic treatment is finished.
I do feel like this is dangerous in a way you might not expect. If I keep getting infected, one might expect me to start thinking, why bother using condoms at all, especially while on PrEP/Truvada (an approach far too many gay men on PrEP take, unfortunately)? Strangely, this seems to have strengthened my resolve to keep using condoms for anal sex. The thing is, even with HIV prevention covered by Truvada (to an extraordinarily reliable degree in all people using it), unprotected anal sex remains a far higher risk of STD infection than unprotected oral sex. And I don't especially want to dramatically increase my risk of all the other things like syphilis or gonorrhea. Some people with active sex lives just accept occasional STDs as part of life, and I'm not really interested in adopting that perspective, at least not completely. When it comes to the past couple of years, it seems to be a little bit more my perspective than it used to be, admittedly. But the key difference between last year and this year is that last year I made a couple of reckless mistakes that was a far higher risk than I'd been taking with my behaviors prior, and that is not actually the case now.
I guess it's just as well I don't have much else to report at the moment anyway. No movie last night; and since it was rainy in the morning but not at the end of the work day, I bussed to work (after the doctor's appointment) and then read my library book while walking home. Not the whole way, actually -- Steven actually caught up with me at the corner of Western Avenue & Broad Street when I was waiting at the crosswalk. It was the first I had noticed him. "Were you behind me all this time?" I asked ("all this time" being just the couple of blocks from the building on Western we can cross Elliott Way into via a skywalk over the street and into its parking garage). He said he had been on the other side of the street thus far.
And then we walked together to Olive Way & 3rd Avenue, where he was to catch a bus to his home in West Seattle. I walked the rest of the way home, actually reading again. I was reading my book about suicide (Suicide: Why We Kill Ourselves by Jesse Bering) and he, as it happened, had been listening to a podcast about cannibalism. Sounds like maybe we're kindred spirits, in at least one regard. Then he told me he could never walk while reading a book (which I have done regularly for years) and can't even do it on a vehicle because he gets motion sickness. I guess there are few circumstances in which he can effectively read a book, so "I almost never read books," he told me. I'm not going to lie, I instantly felt my impression of him as an overall person changing when he told me that. Probably unfairly. I mean, just because you don't read doesn't mean you're not informed or educated. I already know from previous conversations that he sees a lot more documentaries than I do. Still, I even with as little as I read as compared to more voracious readers (I average 10-15 books a year), I really cannot imagine a life in which I did not read at all.
I got home and Shobhit arrived from work shortly thereafter. We went to Trader Joe's to get a couple of vegetables. We had the last of the palak paneer he'd made for dinner the night before, with a new batch of rice, and we also used up the last of his prepared dough to make delicious puris. We ate while watching Sunday's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I then put on an episode of Cheers, and he fell asleep.
I went to the computer in the bedroom and hung out, until Shobhit called out for me about an hour later. He barely managed to stay awake for the rest of the Cheers episode, a season finale in which Sam buys back the bar for 85 cents (this aired in 1990 so that's $1.67 in 2019 dollars!). I then went to get ready for bed, and of all things, Shobhit wound up watching the movie Dante's Peak. I informed him that movie was largely shot in Wallace, Idaho, the town Mom, Bill, Christopher and Tristen now live in, and which we will be visiting for the 26th time since 2003 (well, 26th time for me; 25th for Shobhit) in December.
[posted 1:05 pm]