Robin, yes on the symptons. As these things go, it's not that bad. I suspect the worst may be over already, in fact.

I suspect Top chef is a no go for me tonight though.

eta: Thanks for the sympathy, everyone.

Hope you feel better, Lee.

Poor Lee!

Feel better, Lee! Also adding to the warning to watch out for dehydration.

Yep. I'm watering myself as I can.

Honestly, if a village doesn't have any electricity, charging batteries is a great deal.

ita, a really belated reply: for this level of usage PV is lower cost than putting up a grid - cause a grid is really expensive per kWh of you don't put many kWh through it. But for normal usage a grid is cheaper. One bitter joke I've heard about this is that PV is to expensive for rich people; only people living on a few dollars a day can afford it.

You would never use PV to heat water though: a conventional solar water heater would work better for that if someone provided the money. The lower end solar water heaters can't keep heat all night, so you'd have to time your hot water use from between mid-morning to say a few hours after sunset - still a lot better than no hot water.

I suspect Top chef is a no go for me tonight though.

Don't wanna tempt fate.

Hmm. Seems this Sunday should be okay, but Kat's sleeping now, I reckon.

I had ONE PIECE (small piece) of chewing gum in my mouth for not even ten minutes, and it triggered a migraine. That is how sensitive I now seem to be to artificial sweeteners.

And gum is the only place I get them now. I switched out my toothpaste and mouthwash to avoid them.

It's just...my mouth tasted funky. Five minutes!

We had to eat whatever my mother cooked, no discussion no arguments no leaving the table. I don't think we did the limited palate thing, although every now and again my dad got weird about what we had to eat. The switching of primary complex carbs (J'can meals seem to have two or three sources) to foo foo didn't go well, for instance.

In terms of weird eating habits, I was a notoriously slow eater, except for bread and butter with Milo to drink. That I snarfed at a tremendous rate, and then threw up before showering. Not a bulimic thing--I just really liked them and didn't want to eat them slowly.

My mother has no idea I barfed up my breakfast for months as a pre-teen.

Of course, lunches came back home with me from school to get stashed under the bed (nasty, but even nastier in the tropics) and dinner was slipped to the dogs whenever possible.

Somehow with all that and no candy to boot, I was still a kinda chubby kid. Goes to show.

ita, any word on our mutual school friend? She hasn't responded to my email yet.

I almost forgot! She came up to me this evening all pleased as punch because you passed a compliment on to her. My rep is totally ruined. I'll need to make her cry for days to right things.

It's a shame you don't teach her, because she has one of the funniest mothers around, and her baby brother is pretty freaking hysterical himself--ma trained in krav until about her 7th month of pregnancy with him, and it kinda shows.

No, not like that. He's just basically grown up at the centre and he's a weird little thing.

I almost forgot! She came up to me this evening all pleased as punch because you passed a compliment on to her. My rep is totally ruined. I'll need to make her cry for days to right things.

Hee! Also oops! I'll send her another email that says I was just kidding. I'll tell her you really said that she's annoying and kicks like a sissy.