Burgers

I have been utterly craving a burger.

Ever since I was diagnosed Coeliac right before Christmas last year (and it feels SO much longer than 2 months ago), I have been unable to have a burger, due to the buns obviously containing gluten, being bread and all.

Curse you, burger, for looking so awesome!

It's quite a change, from being able to go to the local burger hole with Andrew and Mark for burgers every second week or so, to being completely unable to. I could go with them, but that would simply be an exercise in frustration, getting to watch them stuff their mouths with giant burgers of the awesome variety, while all I can do is sit and watch. Perhaps order one without the bun. Assuming they didn't add bread crumbs or something to the meat, which is entirely possible.

Hell, I can't even get chips from that place, since they cook battered fish and such in the same oil, contaminating what would be otherwise perfectly gluten-free fried potatoes. Bastards.

I cannot even comprehend the awesomeness of this beast

I even managed to find a burger shop which did gluten free burgers. Awesome, they even looked really good. But they're in Newtown. How the heck am I going to get to Newtown without driving for like an hour? Driving an hour for a burger strikes me as slightly insane. It was, however, almost getting to the point where it would be worth it.

Which is why last night was so damn awesome.

My mother found a place that did gluten free bread rolls. Yes, gluten free bread is horrendous, but my dietician offhandedly mentioned last time I visited him that people tend to not have such a problem with the rolls - that they're different somehow.

So last night's dinner was a burger, on a gluten free bread roll. The roll wasn't amazing, but it doesn't have the horrendous aftertaste that the regular GF bread leaves. However, the fact that I was having a burger, and it was edible, and it didn't make me sick, made me so very very happy.

Well, at least until next week when I get blood taken to test for how I've progressed. That's likely to go about as well as it did last time - ending with me on the floor in a less than conscious state. Eugh.

Rambling

I can't really put together a coherent post today. Something about there not being much happening at the moment, and such, so today's post will be a bunch of random thoughts I've had lately so that I stay in the habit of writing things.

The other day, someone mistook me for Jack Black when I walked into their convenience store and bought a drink. This is not the first time, though it typically happens when I don't shave for a few days (though to be fair, that happens most weeks because I shave Mondays, then get too lazy to do it again until either Friday, or the following Monday). It's tempting to run a social experiment to just stop shaving for a while, and see how many people approach me. Perhaps see how long I can keep the illusion up (probably just long enough for them to realise that the man doesn't wear glasses. Well, not ones to allow him to continue to see anyway...)

I recently started playing around with HGE (Haag's Game Engine) in C++ in preparation for an event I've applied for entering called GameJam. GameJam is an event for insane people where you spend an entire weekend making a game from scratch. Little to no sleep. To enforce this, they give you a topic and a set of keywords, which aren't revealed until the event begins. You are allowed to use whatever libraries you like, however, and so I started getting back into C++, since iPhone programming isn't very conducive to presenting the game on stage at the end of the event.
Anyway, I noticed that the HGE tutorials have only some of the WORST CODE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Its rife with magic numbers, global variables, and cryptic math that makes me want to find whoever wrote that tutorial, and shove a programming practices book down their throat, which will likely have the same effect as sunlight has on vampires (not the Twilight vampires, they're not vampires, they're sparkle fairies).
The engine itself isn't that bad, and it's possible to salvage it, but those tutorials... it physically hurt me to code like that. Once I get a bit more of a handle on the thing I'm totally gonna write a basic framework for myself. Well, less of a framework more of an organisational thing.

Today, I had breakfast for the first time in ages. I used to never be able to eat solid food before 10.30 or 11am, because if I did I would be sick all day. It seems this was a side effect of my undiscovered Coeliac, since typically breakfast foods (cereals, toast, etc) are filled to the brim with gluten. This morning I woke up early (accidentally), and decided to give that gluten free cereal Mum found a go. I didn't feel particularly well as I headed into work today, but by the time I got there the feeling passed. Though having brekky didn't have the utterly electric effect on my energy levels that I've been told it would. Science lied to me?

I have been sleeping utterly horribly lately. No idea why. This might be contributing to my acting quite crabby when I get home from work. I'd apologise, but right now I probably wouldn't mean it :P
So damn tired...

Meoo

So, today I had off work, for a little bit of day surgery.

A gastroscopy to be exact. I had a blood test a few weeks ago and was deemed as potentially having Coeliac Disease, and so was sent off to a specialist to get this test booked.

To be honest, I was freaking out before the op. I'd never been under sedation before, and I HATE needles of any sort. In fact, I tend to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach with anything medical.

The aforementioned blood test had actually caused me to pass out shortly after.

Anyway, so there I am, in a day surgery center, awaiting my turn to go in with my mother hanging around (someone had to drive me home) and my girlfriend (she was worried), desperately trying to avoid torture via tickling (from both parties) when an older lady comes and "saves" me from death via laughter.

I am then interrogated about when the last time I ate and drank were, told to get changed (into one of those stupid backless robes, weird feet bags and a shower cap), and wait for the anaesthesist to show up and talk to me.

So I sit in this cold room, wearing very little apart from a robe with a slit in the back, idly staring at a tv. It was then that I realised the tv was showing some hospital show, so I immediately changed it to the least offensive / boring material I could find.

Which was cricket.

I hate cricket.

2 excruciating hours later, I'm taken into the room where they do things to people, and am quite quickly interrogated (again), and made to inspect my signature on the form. Without my glasses on. I could barely see the form, let alone the signature!

So, I slept, woke up, and have been informed that at first glance, I am not showing signs of Coeliac. The samples they took still need to be analysed, but it seems a little odd to me.

Then the question hits... if its not Coeliac, then what in the hell is causing my guts to hate me? But who cares? At the time, I had a cheese sandwich and orange juice, and all was well with the world.

:P