Wednesday, from an enteric perspective

This morning, I woke up at 5:00, feeling nervous. I wasn't sweating, my heart wasn't pounding, but I had something like butterflies in my stomach. The butterflies soon turned into pain, and then into, ummm, several trips to the bathroom.

Whether this has something to do with my difficulty eating yesterday, an accidental overdose of fiber yesterday morning, something I ate yesterday evening, or the guy sitting on the plane next to me on Monday, who went to the bathroom 6 times during our 3.5 hour flight, I do not know. But it made me disinclined to go to the conference at 9 and sit through an hourlong keynote speech that will probably not impart any practical skills. 

Fortunately, my traveling companion texted me a little before 8 to say he wanted to skip the keynote and head in around 10. Unlike me, he did go to the party with the open bar last night, so I think his motivations may be related to that.

Since we were in agreement over our truancy, I headed back to bed to recover. I was unable, however, to sleep, which I thought meant I would be just as unsociable tonight as I was yesterday.

However, I managed to put on a decent show of extraversion that almost made me proud. There are about 10 people from our university here at DrupalCon, and we've formed a sort of social group. Tonight, I thought I would just quickly power through the shops I missed yesterday, then top off my evening with some ice cream. I even found this cute deli where I thought I'd pick up some veggies and maybe even a side dish to eat with it. But when The Group notified me they were eating dinner at a Thai restaurant, I didn't even make an excuse--just made my way there and prepared for an evening of being social. 

I of course treated them all to my weird eating habits, refusing to eat anything for dinner but a side of edamame beans, and then, amazingly, roping them into coming with me for frozen yogurt, which was my main course. Sure, after that, they all continued on to some party where there was purported to be free beer while I returned to my room, but for a brief shining moment, the group mindset actually aligned with Valerie's unconventional ideas about how an evening should be spent!

After the frozen yogurt, my stomach ache returned full force. Darn my dysfunctional digestive system. Here the college is reimbursing me for 40 dollars of food purchases a day, and I can't even eat a bowl of soybeans and a small frozen yogurt without getting sick!