Being sick sucks.

I've been to the emergency ward and back. A terrible migraine held me in its grip last Monday and forced me to the hospital where X stayed with me for 6,5 hours. I can't tell you enough how much it meant to have her by my side as I laid there, fairly incapacitated.

My head was x-rayed to find out whether or not my brain was haemmoraging - surprise: it wasn't - but when a lumbar puncture was performed a bunch of times by two different doctors it revealed that I was severely dehydrated and acutely needed water. I drank a liter quickly and soon regained life.

Besides, a lumbar puncture is a procedure where the patient has a long needle inserted between two vertebrae in his/her back. It looks like this for those who want to see a video of how it's done. It wasn't fun, but the hurt in my head was worse, so really, undergoing the procedure wasn't hard at all. It did, however, feel really bizarre to have a very long needle stuck into my back in loads of different places at two different times. It amounted to little more than my irrational feeling like my internal organs had been damaged, but the following days I felt intense discomfort at standing, sitting up too long, bending over.

Seeing Patrick, Travis, Will, Scott, Lauren and Justin made things a lot better, though. I've missed Patrick and Travis a lot. It's always nice to see them, but it's bitter-sweet as it'll be a while until next time. Hanging out backstage has rarely been sweeter with all that entailed. Won't kiss and tell too much, but X has posted this heart-warming and precise description of what went down. Anyway, here's a little film I took of the band performing "Starry Stairs" live:

By no way, I've finally read through every single book from the Death Note-series. It was mind-warping to read such a complex and dense detective-story in 12 volumes. The volume titelled "Death Note: How To Read" seemed pretty high-flying and unnecessary but proved to be something else. It's clean-cut and explains a lot of stuff, but foremost provides great info on how the creators made it. Sweet stuff. Mattias has just given me the Death Note film (("Death Note: The Last Name")) but I'm scared to see it. Just seeing this promo-image from the film gives me the creeps.

I'm right now reading Sabine Dardenne's book on how she survived being kidnapped by Marc Dutroux. I've only read a bit of this book, but I'm glad that Dardenne doesn't litter the pages with adjectives. She's really scaled-down as far as describing things is concerned. I mean, I have no idea of how I'd describe being kidnapped, raped and set to be murdered, but she definitely lets the reader think for itself. By the way, the original title is translated from French to English as "I was twelve years old, I took my bike and I left for school", which actually are the first words in the book. I think this title works a lot better than "I Choose To Live".

I just bought new speakers for my work computer. They sound different than the last ones I had. I'm no real audiophile - even though I love some stuff, like the techniques used by audiophiles who know their stuff, e.g. Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs - but I listen to a lot of music. I know, I should get something that sounds better, blardy blah, but at the same time I've come to realise music (to me) is more about feeling than technique. A couple of days ago X and I sat scrapbooking ((Gawd, I used to hate that word, but have come to terms with it now.)) and found old mixtapes. I, too, love the idea of making mixtapes the olden way, using cassettes. That way, adding tracks is really a labour of love. It's like sending a physical mail to somebody rather than an e-mail. When I was little I used to dream of using sealing wax for mail that I would send to friends.