Beer Very Afraid. A Web Place By James Morgan. A Person.
One thing I have never had is allergies. Apparently this has changed as I had a severe allergy attack when I woke up on Thursday.
My arms were covered with these red blotchy patches that were really itchy and if I scratched them they would only get itchier and then hurt like a son of a bitch. My lips swelled up and turned purple, also with the itchy/pain thing going on. So I took it pretty easy Thursday and didn’t do anything. I tried to sleep but the bitch ass itchies wouldn’t let that happen. Friday it seemed to be getting better as the red patches were mostly gone. I did still have the itchy/pain in my hands and they were pretty swollen, but I could deal with it.
I had no idea that it could have been allergies and pretty much dismissed it. Friday night though? SUCKED! All night I would not stop scratching in my sleep and it woke me up 200 times at least. This morning I had the red stuff covering almost both my arms, ears, neck, throat, face, and back. So I finally said fuck it and went to the urgent care by my house.
The diagnosis was an acute form of allergy that starts with a “U”. I can’t read the handwriting. Apparently this type of reaction is usually brought on by foods. Which is weird cuz I ain’t never had ‘em before. They gave me some pretty powerful stuff called Prednisone and it wiped our the red itchies in about an hour. Awesome! Included, an antihistamine called Vistaril that is supposed to further stop the itching and knock me out so I can sleep. All better now, and ready for nap!
Not much goin on lately, just living and eating and working. Yep, I’m that boring. I think I should win the Least Active Blog award. I’m in the process of getting hired at Yahoo! doing some customer service / illegal content removal. The first interview went extremely well. They made it sound like I already had the job but I have my second interview on Monday. They have 8 or 10 open positions and I made it through the first round. Round two is next. Wish me luck!
The above photo is from my back porch at sunset. Pretty cool huh? Much nicer than winter.
(Huge file alert! This post will require some high speed internizzle. Or, at least patience. For those of you who do not want to download the full res photos, you can find them here.)
I’ve been going over it for more than a week now trying to come up with a way to sum up the Coachella experience with words that actually exist. I’ve read the entire internet twice, 3 magazines, the sports section of the Tuesday newspaper, the back of a cereal box, the ingredients of all the food in my kitchen, some braille, and the instructions for 3 folding chairs.
Turns out there is only one word: maltodextrin.
Wait, no. Let me, uh… lemme re-work that…
It’s AWESOME. The word is AWESOME.
3 absolutely fun filled days of audio, visual, and substance debauchery that one really has to check out for themselves. You can check out a collage of video clips by clicking this link. I couldn’t have had a better time there.
I flew in to Ontario airport on Wednesday the 23rd and my uncle Dan picked me up. From there we headed to Joshua Tree National Park to camp for the night and hike around a bit. The park was in full spring bloom and gorgeous. I ended up taking a ton of snapshots and you can find them all in this giant 560Mb zip file.
Thursday - We got up early and, after some Yukon Jack enhanced coffee, puttered towards Coachella stopping along the way at most of the interesting spots. We arrived in Indio around 3:00 in the afternoon. Stocked up on ice and other things and off to Coachella we went. We grabbed our tix at will-call and found a place to park. Went through the the entry where we were searched. Dan’s Leatherman was confiscated from his back pack. All my stuff got through. We set up camp and made a few more trips back and fourth to the car. We met our neighbors, which included, but were not limited to: James & Lani, John, and Angie who were all awesome about the fact that our 12′ x 12′ canopy was in all of their assigned camping areas. It was mutually decided that having shade in the desert would be much better than not having shade in the desert. After set-up, it was time to find a drink. John and I went to the bar area. Where we paid $10 each for 9oz drinks and shot the shit for awhile. We got tired of paying $10 for drinks and set out to find a bar nearby. Dan, John, and I walked around like idiots for an hour only to discover that the nearest bar was like 8 miles away. As luck would have it, there happened to be an empty cab that drove right past us. We ran it down and got a ride to town. While at the bar, it collectively dawned on us that it would cost the same to drink at the bar in the campsite because it cost $40 just to get to and from the bar. After returning to the campsite, it was discovered that Dan had smuggled in some vodka and whiskey. More drinks happened, and then there was crashing because they shut the lights off at night. Note to self: bring glow sticks next year!
Friday - By 8:00 - 8:30 in the morning, it was way too hot to stay asleep in the tent. Everyone was pretty much awake by then. We sat under the shade, had drinks, and chatted until the doors opened. We strolled over to the doors and I soon realized that I would not be able to see all the stuff I wanted to see while hanging out with anyone. I told Dan “there is no way I am gonna be able to stick around all day.” and added ” see you back at the tent!” The first day I made it my goal to know where everything was. And I found it. I knew where all the bars were, all the watering holes, and all the smokers lounges. American Spirit was there giving away free smokes. Frickin sweeeeeet! Oh yeah, I also saw some music, in kind of this order:
Saturday - Today I started off with the same extreme heat in the morning. Followed by vodka drinks and chillin in the shade. At this point I was so stoked to see the lineup I think I peed a little. The only bummer of the whole trip happened today… my iPod fell into a cooler and was completely submerged. It will be missed. Noon rolled around and we all headed to the gates. This was by far the busiest day. I really don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say there were about 8 or 10 thousand people there, and that may be a little light. I didn’t think it possible, but I found even more things to do inside. A Heineken dome that was air conditioned and had a mini-rave inside, the Playstation3 tent, and FREE water refills. I spent $50 on water the day before. Dumb ass. I also found the best Mexican food on the planet in one of the food courts. Nom nom. This was also the day I made sure to walk the entire perimeter of the venue. Only stopping to see music:
Sunday - I was a bit overheated on Saturday and chilled at the campsite until about 5:00. Once inside I spent most of the time socializing with people that were as fubar’d as I was. This is weird because I’m just not much of a social creature. Met tons of cool peeps and not one asshole. I did get a chance to see some music too:
This was the only day I had remembered to bring my camera. Which was OK i guess because I filled up all the storage I had brought with me. You can get the pics by downloading this giant 477 Mb zip file.
Monday - Somehow we managed to get all of our stuff packed up in such a way that we only had to make one trip back to the car. Sweeet. We stopped at the In & Out burger for breakfast, got some gas, and headed towards Ontario. We had enough time on our hands to stop at the Palm Springs Tramway. This was pretty cool. Check out the pics in this 313 Mb zip file. We got to the airport early, so we went looking for a bar. We found a brewpub called Babe’s with Ice cold beers and drank them. Things are a little fuzzy so I’m not sure if this is the correct order in which things happened at this point.
All in all it was a fucking blast. I am definitely going next year and all of you should too. The more campers we have = the more space we can get. To keep cool, we could bring a carport and an inflatable pool!
