Was I Cured By Apple Cider Vinegar?

Posted on by Elise
This is Toddy and me, together. Kind of.

After the ninth day without my voice, I got quite desperate. So I reached out to my ultimate favorite hipster hypochondriac, Toddy Wiseman. He is the type of person who does not drink tap water because it has fluoride in it. (He’s convinced it causes epilepsy.) He also warns of the dangers of aspartame (found in artificial sweeteners) and regularly avoids sending his pH balance out of whack by eating lots of alkaline foods.*

Because the cough drops and teas and vocal rest weren’t working, I asked Toddy for a suggestion. He found one on a Yahoo! forum an EarthClinic.com forum, posted by a woman who uses Yahoo!. It involved drinking or gargling apple cider vinegar with cayenne pepper in it. I went to Whole Foods to get the unpasteurized kind (because Toddy told me to), got a hot dog outside on the sidewalk (because it was a hot dog and it was only $2), and headed home to spike my vinegar with some cayenne pepper.

I wasn’t strong enough to swallow this combo so I just gargled it and nearly puked afterward. Half an hour later I tried it again. The next morning, I awoke with the ability to make some sounds for the first time in more than a week. I sounded like Kathleen Turner with bronchitis. But at least sounds were sort of coming out.

So. While I can’t say for sure, I gargled some of the vinegar concoction at the advice of my friend. And the next day, some of my voice returned. This has not been rigorously tested with the scientific method, but anecdotally, I took some vinegar and the next day I was sort of better. Thanks, Toddy?

*Other Todd wellness practices: Regular cold showers. Consuming spoonfuls of straight coconut oil. A stretch routine every night before bed. Neti-potting every morning.

Coming Fall 2012: Baby Hu-Stiles, A Wasian

Posted on by Elise
The saying is "bun in the oven," but SkyMall offers this great hot dog bun TOASTER!

Yep. I’m slowly wrapping my brain around this situation.

The Chinese think it is highly auspicious to have a “dragon baby” — a child born in the Year of the Dragon. (Women in China are rushing to get fertility treatments because a dragon baby is apparently too lucky to be left to chance. Crazy, right?) The Wall Street Journal reports:

Being aligned with cosmic forces is important in Chinese culture. The year of the dragon is supposed to be particularly fortunate for babies, marriages and businesses. Those born as dragons are “the strongest, smartest and the luckiest—supposedly,” says Yibing Huang, a professor of Chinese literature and culture at Connecticut College.

[…]

Chinese often schedule important life events to take advantage of the luckiest times. A recent lunar year that spanned two springs spurred a spike in weddings. And even though births are trickier to plan, in 2000, the most recent year of the dragon, 202,000 more babies were born in Taiwan than a year earlier, according to the Taipei Times citing government statistics.

I was personally way less interested in a dragon baby due to my own zodiac sign: the dog. It is the sign that’s least compatible with the dragon, and I already have one dragon to contend with — my husband. Now, barring unforeseen events, I’ll have two dragons to go up against. Grrrrreat.

Observation: My going vodka-free has created cascading problems. But the fetus has been awesome to me. Wouldn’t have been able to enjoy Costa Rica, assorted work travel and/or all the SXSW magic — Jay Z, Radiohead, etc — while sick. Fetus is always game to party. “Of course it is,” Fiscus said. “It is YOUR baby. Even if it looks like Matty.”

Fave Reactions:

ME: My eggo is preggo.
REEVE: Holy shit.

ME: I’m pregnant.
JAVAUN: [Incredulous] HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?!?

ME: I’m knocked up dude.
JAY: Dude, you are going to be so huge.

ME: Yeah, so I’m pregnant.
MCKENNEY: That baby is going to come out with a vodka tonic in one hand and a hot dog in the other.

The Lost Voice Chronicles

Posted on by Elise

I lost my voice. It’s day six. This has never happened to me before.

I am not noticing any signs of becoming like Roger Ebert, whose forced silence has turned him into a modern day Lao Tzu. I’m mainly just frustrated. I silently attended a two-night wedding in Chicago, full of family I hadn’t seen in years, completely unable to speak with loved ones. Chicago is less fun as a mute, I tell ya.

Ways I’ve worked around this: Using Skype to webcam myself into group meetings or interviews (so at least I can respond with facial expressions) and typing my questions in while someone else reads them aloud. Conducting a lot of conversations with gchat. Whispering as loudly as possible.

Yesterday, after hearing me whisper all day at work, Friend Danny said that the whispering could actually be making my problem worse and slowing my recovery. So he taught me how to use the the Say command in my MacBook terminal to get the computer to speak for me. Turns out, you can change the program’s voices, so today I attended meetings as “Victoria.”

Friend Dan recommended using this method:

Perhaps I'll learn these in time for them to be useful.

The Best Shizz I Found On The Interwebs Today

Posted on by Elise

I usually leave the internet distractions to Reeve, but when I returned to my computer after a weekend of family time in Chicago, the interwebs had gifted me with so much goodness. Herewith:

A Guy Accuses The Texas Tribune of “Destroying Journalism,” I Disagree

Posted on by Elise

A couple of days ago the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, featured a blogger named Stephen Robert Morse’s post in which he claims that a.) The Texas Tribune is destroying journalism and b.) Reporters are soft on donors. Some excerpts:

“It never dawned on me until I had a chance conversation with a reporter from The Austin Chronicle at South by Southwest who accused “The Trib,” as he called it, of creating an unfair playing field for journalists who work at for-profit news organizations in Texas … A TT insider, whose anonymity I will protect here, told me that because it is important for The Trib to maintain positive relations with donors, the organization rarely takes strong stances on issues.”

I left Morse a comment yesterday afternoon but it’s nearly 11am the next morning and it still awaits approval, so I’ll just share it here.
Continue reading “A Guy Accuses The Texas Tribune of “Destroying Journalism,” I Disagree” →

A SXSW Epilogue, From My Fave Magazine

Posted on by Elise

She wrote this about music but it works for the whole festival, especially since I’ve attended each year since 2007 and have wistfully watched it evolve:

Every year, this conference gets larger and larger, leaving attendees to pick increasingly specific paths around its girth … Earlier in the week, I said the Interactive portion of the conference was like the Internet, only in person. But then so is the Music part: vast, increasingly centerless, a little daunting, and bound to send you home feeling like you only got a pinhole view of something you wish you could see in its entirety. And also with ads on banners everywhere — just cheaper, dirtier, stickier ones than last week.

I think it’s “cool” to complain about the bigness of SXSW in the same way Austinites say that Austin “used to be cool” the moment they got there, but has been going downhill ever since. It IS too big, but so is everything in Texas, including my high school graduating class (nearly 2,000). Everyone seemed to come out okay in the end.

Not Such a Hard Knock Life, Or, Lucky

Posted on by Elise

A few weeks ago I had a Jaydiohead renaissance. If you aren’t familiar, some geniuses out there took Radiohead tracks and laid Jay-Z’s rhymes over them. They make for amazing mashups that for some random reason I decided to play as my life score for a good three or four days.

Then, just as I was packing to head back to Austin, I got an email from KLRU, Austin’s public television station that for decades has been putting on Austin City Limits. The community manager there said he heard I’d be back in town and would I be interested in seeing Radiohead’s first performance in Austin since 1995? And um, that they would be playing one of the best new live music venues in America?

Gee, lemme think.

I could have died happy after that show. (The boys crushed it.) And being back in Austin, connecting with friends old and new, revisiting the places I love (most of which involve food), learning lots along the way … that was all fantastic and unmissable. But then, when a few days after Radiohead I found myself with only 2,000 others lucky enough to get into Jay-Z’s 8o-minute show at the same intimate venue, I really hit some sort of karmic jackpot. Friend Chris and I were seated in an amazing mezzanine spot only 50 feet from the stage and right behind the New York Times’ executive editor (who did throw her damn hands up, as HOVA instructed.)

Jaydiohead in one week. I don’t think I can complain about anything, ever, again.

SXSW 2012: The Evolution and Future of Online Dating

Posted on by Elise

Those of you who know me well likely know I am fascinated by online dating, mainly because I have never done it before and I am afflicted with FOMSS (Fear of Missing Something Syndrome). So here we are at SXSW 2012, where I get to learn about what the online dating terrain looks like, how it’s meshing with new technologies and how it’s influencing the way humans romantically connect. And because journalism is ultimately about connecting with people, the lessons this can teach us about new-new media are in here if you think about it.

THE PREMISE: “Traditionally, dating sites have used algorithms that rely on user profiles and personal preferences to create matches, but what if the information submitted isn’t true? Sites such as Match.com are evolving their methods to provide more accurate results – like pairing algorithms with user behavior. We’ll hear from innovators in the digital dating world and get unique insights from people who’ve searched for love online. We’ll also see how technology is changing the dating game.” – Session desrciption 

HOW ONLINE DATING WORKS: Sign up, answer questions, pay a fee and you get matches. Our moderator/tester registered for a slew of sites. Apparently, eHarmony takes the longest compared to Match.com and OKCupid, and takes much much longer than the newer sites (see below). OK Cupid is apparently pretty cool in that their questions are user-generated and their profiles include some data visualizations. And in recent years, various niche dating sites have started up, aimed at the over 50 market (OurTime.c0m), the Jewish market (JDate) and weed smokers (420Dating).

THE AGONY AND THE AWKWARDNESS: Online dating changed the way people interacted with the internet, helping usher in social networking as users became more accustomed to sharing their lives online. But online dating sites seek almost exclusively to match you up, which can be awkward. Match.com’s Mandy Ginsburg:

“They don’t do it because it doesn’t feel natural. They don’t trust that a computer will allow them to find that perfect love or spark, or it feels like it’s not serendipitous so there’s no romance … so how can we make the whole experience as natural as possible?”

Continue reading “SXSW 2012: The Evolution and Future of Online Dating” →