?ABC’s urging its viewers to conserve gas by staying indoors the week of Sept. 21 -- it’s ?National Stay at Home Week?. The Alphabet’s marketing team dreamed up the holiday as a way to promote the start of the season. ?National Stay at Home Week? not-so-coincidentally coincides with TV’s premiere week?The promo spots and companion website take a tongue-in-cheek approach to the whole idea that audiences can save money and help the environment by staying home that week and watching TV instead.? - Variety, August 13, 2008



WHY HAVEN?T I BEEN BLOGGING: I WAS FRIGGIN? SICK AS A DOG, DAMN IT! Yes, another illness, something I know a lot about, unfortunately. You must already know that I was diagnosed with pneumonia almost two weeks ago. My doc prescribed Levaquin, because I?m already allergic to Penecillin or any type of sulfur drugs?whatever. Levaquin usually gives me diarrhea and even anal leakage, but miraculously no Hershey squirts this go round. (Do you like when I talk dirty?...) Obviously, my liver is getting better?HURRAY! But my appetite suffered miserably, I was down to two meals a day at one point. I intentionally don’t own a scale, because I don’t want to know how much weight I?m not gaining. I could feel myself loosing the muscle mass that I worked on over the summer. Forget about tanning when you?re on antibiotics. The first two weekends in September would have been great free sun-time exposure. (I usually visit a tanning salon during the fall/winter season; otherwise I take on a green, muted complexion with dark circles under my eyes...real pretty.) Oh, did I happen to mention the delicious herpes outbreak which pop-up right under my nose! I have a tendency to over-think things, especially when I’m held captive in my apartment during an illness, but summer was in ending abruptly in a most hideously way.

Fourteen days (not your usual seven or sometimes ten) on antibiotics. Running out of Leviquin on Wednesday, I made an emergency call to my doc, complaining that I was still having pain in my lung, but the soreness had shifted downward. I was dreading the fact that my lung infection had turned into full-blown pneumocystis pneumonia, more x-rays, more Leviquin, more weight loss, etc. etc. My doc instructed me to take a deep breath, while still on the phone with him, which I did successfully with no distress whatsoever. He blankly stated that I probably just bruised a rib muscle?bruised a rib muscle, WHAT!? The last Levaquin tab was taken today, along with two tabs of acidophilus during every meal. Today, also happens to be my first day back at the Chelsea Piers Sport Center, since right before Labor Day?shall I remind you that that was the end of August! I?m a cosmopolitan gay man; it?s in our genes to go to the gym! Pilates class was definitely quite an experience with a bruised rib muscle. No V-sits for me! Tomorrow, Sunday, I planned spend the entire day at the Sport Center, swimming, eating, working out, eating and most importantly tanning on the sundeck. Not only will I be off the antibiotics, it?s also going to be a sun filled day in the 80?s.

Although summer 2008 ends sometime mid-day on Monday September 22, you will not see me camped out on the couch watching ABC or another type of television. I live in the most fascinating city in the world, which is all accessed by mass-transit?or my trusty bike! Now I have the energy and enthusiasm to get out there, and shake up the last nibblits of summer, fall, winter? In regards to ?National Stay At Home Week": that?s why they invented the DVR!

XOXO...

Edited by (I-can’t-think-of-any-new-titles?!) Dr. Aimee Kilbane