Publix, Radio Margaritaville, Eskimo Joe’s, playing tourist, dumb Americans: it’s my normal

Cockfighting Cupids

Hopefully this is the last time I grouse about this, but how stupid can traveling Americans be? I’m manning the duty phone again and it’s just amazing what people do.

First, visas are tricky to come by these days, and, if you travel internationally, you should always know how to obtain a visa in the country you’re visiting. So many people do not, and it seems that most of those people have called me this weekend. They are also under some delusion that I can beam them in the country. Nope. Go back from where you came.

They also seem to think I wield power with Turkish Airlines, such as the woman who missed her connection because, while her originating flight was on time, she didn’t realize she had to walk to the connecting gate. She was all pissed and expected me to talk to the airline out of having her pay a change fee. She said she didn’t have it and would “have to spend two months in the airport.”

Then there’s the people who put their 70+ grandmothers on an international flight alone and then get upset when I don’t swoop down in my black helicopter when they miss their connecting flights. The grandmothers always, always, are “elderly,” either “sick” or “crippled,” and never speak English, yet the relatives are fine to put them on international flights all by themselves.

"From Russia With Love" and "Inferno" filmed here.

Two scam calls, though neither caller would acknowledge they were being scammed. One lady who was concerned if her kids’ father could take them internationally without her. I had a terrible connection on that one and was basically yelling the same thing over and over in hopes that she got it. I was concerned because I wasn’t sure IF she wanted him to be able to take them. She did, so I kept trying to repeat “I think so, but call the airline.” Seriously, why would I know that? And how hard would it be to write a note just in case?

My favorite so far (I have the thing til Tuesday) was the American in Greece who called me with a beef with a Turkish company. He was stunned when I told him it was none of the U.S. government’s business.

Solve your own problems, people. That guy called me on Thanksgiving morning as I was headed out to play tourist. We’re still on “movement restrictions,” but I got permission to visit two places on Thursday morning: the cisterns and the Archeological Museum. I really wanted to see those two, and my annual museum pass expired the Friday after T-giving so I was really glad I got the OK to go.

Obligatory Medusa photo

I sped through the cisterns because, well, first of all, it’s pretty much all the same thing, but also because I had no cell service and couldn’t risk not being available for the duty phone.

But it was such a pretty place, and very peaceful when you’re there at 10 a.m. I’d been to a cistern once before, in Morocco, but it wasn’t nearly as nice.

Here’s a bit from Lonely Planet on it:

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/istanbul/attractions/basilica-cistern/a/poi-sig/402088/360887

“This subterranean structure was commissioned by Emperor Justinian and built in 532. The largest surviving Byzantine cistern in İstanbul, it was constructed using 336 columns, many of which were salvaged from ruined temples and feature fine carved capitals.  …

It was originally known as the Basilica Cistern because it lay underneath the Stoa Basilica, one of the great squares on the first hill. Designed to service the Great Palace and surrounding buildings, it was able to store up to 80,000 cubic meters of water delivered via 20km of aqueducts from a reservoir near the Black Sea, but was closed when the Byzantine emperors relocated from the Great Palace. Forgotten by the city authorities some time before the Conquest, it wasn't rediscovered until 1545…”

Two of the 336 columns are built on Medusa heads, one of them upside down. I feel like that’s the photo op everyone goes after.

Look! It's the Brady Bunch

I ran over to the Archaeology Museum after that, and again I practically had the place to myself – for a while. I was winding down in the “Istanbul Through the Ages” exhibit and the noise level increased exponentially. I think the entire Istanbul system entered the museum at the same time, so I got out of there pretty quickly after that.

But I loved perusing the exhibits. They had an entire display of sarcophaguses, like four rooms’ worth. Those just amaze me. I took three photos of one huge one, getting closer and closer with each shot. The detail is amazing, and how, first of all, and how long it must have taken to get those things right.

I’m really glad I got to go. I fear that in eight years, when I tell someone I lived in Istanbul for two years, they’re going to think I was an idiot for not being able to visit all this city has, but right now a lot of it’s off limits.

So that was one thing to be thankful on Thanksgiving. Another was being invited to a friend of a friend’s place. My colleague from work has friends from church who got together and asked me to join them.

There were a handful of Americans in the mix, plus one Mexican who had gone to school at Oklahoma State. The hostess was from Oklahoma and I totally blew their minds when I told them I’d gone to Eskimo Joe’s. Had a weird conversation with the bartender that had something to do with Dominik Hasek.

A taste of home

As I tend to do at parties, I helped out in the kitchen. I’m much better at coping with groups, even small ones, when I have a task. So, channeling Karen, I jumped in and helped with the food. Never done a sugar glaze before, but it worked.

I can make myself at home in a kitchen, but when Oklahoma pulled out the gravy packet from Publix, I knew I was home. Oh, man, I was so happy to see that. I miss Publix.

It’s little connections like that that do you a world of good on Thanksgiving. Kind of like a win over the Gators, you know?

But Monday was the best. The hurricane relief concert was past my bedtime or before my wake-up time; I’d had a busy weekend and just couldn’t spare those hours as waking ones, but I did write myself a note to turn on Radio Margaritaville as soon as I woke up. I managed to catch the last two songs live (and subsequently had “Hey Good Lookin’” going through my head all day) and then got a text from Leila from the show.

Happy she could go, but I was so jealous. Yes for Jimmy Buffett, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney and somewhat for resident Seminole Jake Owen (seriously, he didn’t wear an FSU shirt? Shame!) but Scotty Emerick was there, too. Bucket list item! Had a hunch but it wasn’t exactly like I could take that black helicopter from Istanbul to the civic center. It’s only for dumb Americans.

Having a ball. Or not.

Two busy weekends back-to-back here! Over Veterans’ Day weekend, I spent two days on a sightseeing tour and then ran 15k. Today is the afterglow from our “Marine Ball;” I’ve just finished baking and icing cookies for a party tonight as well as a dessert for Tuesday’s Thanksgiving lunch.

The 15k about killed me. I’d met my buddy at 7 a.m. to transport to the 9 a.m. race, which was darn early considering I’d gotten home at 10:30 the night before from my two-day road trip. I’d also not really eaten a decent meal the evening before so the race was really rough. I finished the 14k strong three weeks ago, but it took me 11 minutes longer to run one just one kilometer longer. That’s really not good, but I’m still trying to psyche myself up for a half in April.

The run was about the same route as last year’s 10k, except we jagged left at Eminonou instead of right and then added on another five kilometers. It was chillier than I expected, but I had brought a very lightweight jacket so I wore that the first 5k before warming up and taking it off (which is hard to do while running with a painful shoulder). Then, with about 3k remaining, we hit the shoreline again and it got really windy, so I had to re-juggle and put it back on. However, even though I struggled, I forced myself to run the last few bits so at least I told myself I finished strong.

And I hurt for a couple days alter, too. That’s the first time, really. My Achilles heel on one side wanted a divorce, and on the other both the knee and the hip weren’t really happy with me. Still, I feel like I’m cheating myself if I at least don’t try the half.

The two days before, I signed on to one of those tour companies and hit up both Troy and Gallipoli. Oh, man, I just love Turkey so much. There is so much history here, and Troy is exhibit A. There have been nine layers excavated, dating back to 3000 BC. The area is pretty big, but so far, only 10 percent has been excavated. It’s pretty impressive.

 

There’s a replica Trojan horse, even though that’s really just a story. Maybe it’s true, but probably just something that Homer, et. al., have popularized. But it’s really cool, and I love to take pictures of archaeological stuff like that, even if photos don’t do it justice.

Saturday was Veterans’ Day (happy birthday, Dorothy!), but the rest of the world knows it as Remembrance Day, and when I made my “I wanna go to Troy and Gallipoli” plans, I totally didn’t put together the importance of Remembrance Day in Gallipoli.

There were multiple Ozzies and Kiwis on my little tour bus, and one of the Kiwis had made it a retirement bucket item to see Anzac. He had retired the Friday prior, and it was that important to him to see the place.

We had a Remembrance Day service and the tour guide gave us each a rose to put on one of the graves. Most of the headstones had the same words inscribed but a few had personalized. I found the marker (and these were people who were “believed to be” buried in the areas) of one 18-year-old Australian who had “He gave his life for his friend” and it got to me. He got my rose.

Other than the Mel Gibson movie, I really didn’t know much about it, including what “Anzac” meant (Australian and New Zealand forces in WWI), and it really was enlightening. And that’s on both sizes s- the Anzac and the Turk.

The campaign itself was pretty awful – nine months for Anzac troops to try to move about 2k straight up a cliff from a beach.  The tour took us to the beach and wound around to see what’s left of the trenches (lots of erosion) and up to the high point they were trying to take.

 

On the Turk side, it was what put Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the map. He went on to found modern-day Turkey and is highly regarded, to put it lightly. His image is everywhere, including in practically every one of my local colleagues’ cubicles. I didn’t know that he was from that region of Turkey and had, so to speak, gotten his start at Gallipoli.

So busy weekend last weekend and so far this week’s been the same. Our Marine (It’s A Birthday Celebration, Not A) Ball was last night and I am just so glad it’s done. Most everyone had a good time, which is good, but as a person who doesn’t drink, cannot dance and really hates to dress up, it’s kind of my trifecta of hell. The only thing that made it bearable for me was that there was an amazing birthday cake involved.

But, since I was basically the person who finagled it to bring down the ticket cost from $60 to $30 and get an open bar, plus I organized the transport shuttles coming and going and pointed our Marines to an incredible baker for that amazing birthday cake, I felt I had to go.

I had two pieces of cake.

I’d wanted to leave at 10 p.m., right after the birthday cake part and before the dancing but our motor pool guy begged me to stay and help him get everyone home safely, so instead of being in bed at 10:30, I arrived home after 1 a.m.

Today, I’ve been trying to knock a few things out before going to another little get-together. It’s feast of famine for me. We have a luncheon on Tuesday and not many people have signed up to bring stuff so I’m trying to make a dessert (cookies) and three side dishes (veggies/rice, stuffing, okra) but I decided that the side dishes will have to wait until Monday night because they’ll get nasty.

Tomorrow starts another rough week at work, but it’s rough in the “there’s a lot to do” vein. I got a cortisone shot in my shoulder this week and have a follow up tomorrow. It’s helped, which confirm there’s something wrong with my shoulder, but there’s still other pain so I have to figure out what to do on that.

My only really downer this weekend has been that I am too busy to have scheduled a massage. I could really use one.

There’s something wrong with my shoulder and I am thrilled

Something like 8-9 months ago, my thrift-store leather Timberland jacket fell off the back of the chair at my desk. When I went to pick it up, some terribly mean invisible gremlin took my left arm, ripped it out of the socket, twisted it, and then jammed it back into the socket.  Or at least that’s what it felt like.

That was December, January, February or something like that. After a couple of months of agonizing pain when I reached for something or twisted it a certain way, I went to an orthopedist. That was April, but until now, all signs indicated there was nothing wrong.

Since April, I’ve had a total of three MRIs (two shoulder, one neck), X-rays, anti-inflammatories, steroids, physical therapy and some kind of really, really, really painful shot that was supposed to block pain but didn’t. All that took place between two doctors and one physical therapist at a hospital that took an hour for me to get to, which added all kinds of stress. And in all those appointments, I was probably with the actual doctors maybe a total of 20 minutes. That counts a five-minute stretch with the original doctor as he waited to see if the shot would kick in. (It didn’t.)

The original doctor diagnosed me from across the room. In two appointments, I spent maybe five minutes with him before he passed me off to the other doctor, a frozen shoulder specialist, who prescribed physical therapy and was initially convinced it was frozen shoulder. To be fair, I had many of the symptoms, but after unsuccessful and incredibly painful PT she changed her mind and announced it was probably my neck and not the shoulder at all. I was like, um, OK, but you have the neck MRI I did four months ago, right? They never bothered reviewing them.

As it turns out, I have some kind of thing in my spine where the disk is mashing against the spinal cord, but Doctor 2 still wanted to rule out any shoulder injury with the shot. It hurt, but didn’t work, and this convinced Doctor 2 it was my neck and not my shoulder at all.

At this point, though, it was about August and I was just exhausted and frustrated trying to commute to the place, and I also really didn’t understand why kind of doctor they were trying to send me to next. I tried to make an appointment to understand and that didn’t pan out, but fortunately, the medical staff at work helped me figure out it was a pain management doctor who wanted to do a shot in my neck.

However, at that point, I was just done in trying to deal with the commute and really not overly happy with the doctors, who always seemed like they were just trying to get me out the door. The medical staff made me another appointment at a different place, and, after two postponements, I finally saw the doctor today.

And there’s something wrong with me! I’m so relieved.

The pain is just incredible, I figured there had to be something wrong, but all the MRIs came back with nothing special. I’m no wimp, though, and the pain, which is getting worse, just takes my breath away.

Massages have helpd, and during the last one, the masseuse found a spot that definitely trigged wet-your-pants kind of pain. She said it was a tendon and it was “crooked.” She tried to “pull it out” and holy God, that was the worst. Massage therapists are absolute sadists.

But as it turns out, she was pretty dead-on, at least partly. By that I mean the new doctor (No. 3) took a brief look at the MRI, left the room and came back five minutes later with not only one issue but about five.

The tendon, indeed, is pinched between a couple of bones, so the masseuse was right on that. I have tendonitis as well, plus arthritis and some kind of other “you’re getting old” kind of thing. Can’t do much about that, but I have the bone-on-bone that I had in the other shoulder, too.

As if all that wrong with my shoulder isn’t enough, I also have what they call here a “hernia,” which is where the spine disks are stabbing the nerve. I really did suspect that, too, because once in awhile I will bump my arm, but not move the shoulder, and a jolt of pain goes all the way up my arm.

I feel vindicated that something really is wrong. Dr. 3 read the readout on the MRIs, which said all was right with the world, kept saying, “This is not right. There is something wrong with your shoulder.”

The problem is, though, that I don’t know which of the owies is really making me go owie. My spinal disks are attacking my nerve, yes, but that might not be the source of the pain. It could just be the tendon. The course of action is to start with a cortisone shot and see if that quells the pain. If not, it could be the neck thing.

Honestly, right now, I don’t care. I’m just so thrilled that someone validated the pain I’ve been in for more than a pregnancy’s worth of time. My plan is to try the cortisone next week.  And get another massage.