Frozen Oysters

Two days ago, I came home to my roommate lounging on the couch – his usual position. This time, however, he looked a little different. He said he was sick. Yuck. He said he and a friend had eaten some oysters on Sunday that were frozen in his friend’s freezer for quite a while. His friend was also sick, so they figured it was food poisoning.

Yesterday morning, my stomach starts feeling pretty woozy, and during the course of the day, I ended up having to visit the restroom on a number of occasions. Yuckola. When I got home yesterday evening, I told my roomie that I think I had his bug, and he informed me that a female friend at work that had visited our apartment that Sunday had picked it up too.

So, for lunch yesterday, all I was able to get down were some snap beans and rice. That was it. I think it came out later that afternoon. Nice, huh?

When I’m usually sick like this, I like to eat bread since it makes my stomach feel better. Since I didn’t have any lying around the apartment, I decided to get a sandwich at Subway. I haven’t had a sandwich there in over 3 years, outside the one I had in an airport terminal this past year. I used to work at a Subway in college, and when I saw the latest menu I was blown away with how many choices there were now. All I wanted was a Steak N' Cheese, but couldn’t find it. Then I noticed they changed the name to Cheese Steak. Anyway, it was quite delicious and, lucky for me, it did not come out anytime soon.

My stomach has still been quite woozy today, although I haven’t had to run for the bathroom at all.

Tonight, I was in the city at the Community Q&A for the Gwen Araujo Trial. They had a panel consisting of Jim Hammer, a former SF Assistant District Attorney; JoAnne Keatley, Project Director of the UCSF-CAPS Transgender Resource and Neighborhood Space; Saifa Wall, Community Organizer with Gay-Straight Alliance Network; and Chris Daley, lawyer for the Transgender Law Center. I met Jim at the 2002 Cotillion when he was a judge. I was one of the judge assistants, and sat right next to him. He and another guy got totally wasted wasted when the other guy pulled out this flask of some pretty hard alcohol. I said hi to him before the Q&A event started and reminded him where we first met. He remembered and started reminiscing about that darn flask. Jim is also covering the Scott Peterson trial for one of the local channels. I have worked with JoAnne on a number of outreach committee activities in the city. I’d never met Saifa before tonight, but she was a very well spoken young woman. I have known Chris Daley for a number of years now, ever since I met him with one of the first education activities I put on with TGSF. They were all great speakers and provided a different perspective on a number of different aspects of the trial…from the trial itself, its possible outcomes, how to prevent the murder from happening again, how to educate the rest of the US starting in the schools, and how much of the US isn’t sensitized to transgender people. We even touched on the upcoming Pride festivities.

Cecilia and I were two of the first to arrive and we sat and chatted a bit before the event. Afterward, I hung around and talked with Gayle after not seeing her in quite a while. I think she was one of the first fully recovered Dr. O patients I had ever seen. I thought she was GG when I first met her. We talked about some of the lingering aftereffects of Dr. O’s surgery.

Gwen Smith and I chatted for a while after most of the people had cleared out. It was nice talking to her about some of her past history with her family and wife. I even chatted with a woman from CUAV (Community United Against Violence) who said I looked quite different than most of the TGSF people she’d met in the past.

I didn’t tell her this, but who else is there to do outreach projects with besides TGSF? I don’t work in the city, so it’s hard to do any of the weekly activities there. Plus, I have to work to pay for my own transition, so I can’t really volunteer during the week to help out. There are a few other possible groups, and I have worked with one or two of them in the past. Now that I have most things in order after FFS, I might look into working with some of them again.