sundries - #ashtag, celiac, doctor who

[rm]

Airports are now shut until 1am tomorrow, at the earliest. The Met office is also working to move to give further ahead closing notice, so we can anticipate better, as opposed to viewing this in six hour chunks.

25% of the particles are apparently falling to ground in much of the UK. Whether this is a health risk depends on which agency is talking. The thing about being in the EU is that there are a lot more authorities than in US, and so there are more contradictions, and, more importantly, a greater sense of when people are lying just to maintain order.

The Met office says conditions are getting worse and that we should expect this to go on for days. Our flight is still listed as Wednesday, but since they expect the ash cloud to go on at least that long, honestly, I'm not sure we'll get out before the weekend.

Today we move to a guest room offered by friends of a friend. And if I told you some of the people involved in getting that sorted: a) you wouldn't believe me and b) fuck the epic Internet drama.

I have, of course, been linked to the HuffPo piece on surviving the apocalypse. I've got that last one down, kids. Although as several people noted, this shit is probably all my fault in the first place.

Despite contradictory information from everyone, it seems Patty and I will be able to get some compensation from the airline when this is over. We could actually apply now, but I don't think we should -- I don't want to look like the problem customer until they get us out of here.

Emotionally, I'm sort of all over the place. On one hand, adventure! and I do love it here. And I can more or less work remotely here, although some things are difficult. On the other hand, I hate not having control, I miss our bed, and this is all very frustrating. And it feels harder to deal with, you know, pretty much anything. Which brings us to some non-#ashtag news.

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Last night I had one of the worst experiences I've ever had with celiac disease in a restaurant, where waiters lied to me about my food. I wound up not getting glutened, because I put my foot down. But when I ask if something has gluten and you tell me it's just stuffed with cheese and then it comes and it looks like it's stuffed with bread so I ask you to double check the correct answers are not:

- to agree to go check and then never return to the table
- to send a different waiter over to point at it and say it's cheese (I'm Sicilian, fuck you)
- to suggest I try it when I say it's not cheese after I've already informed you I have a severe allergy (excuse me, would you like me to need to be hospitalized)
- to leave it on the bill
- to grudgingly take it off the bill and then say it was just chicken and mushrooms -- if that were true (and I really, REALLY don't think it was) why couldn't we have least gotten that answer at the beginning?

Pretty much every meal we've had here has ranged form good to spectacular and I did not need this shit while stranded here because of a volcano. It was extremely upsetting, and made me doubt the legitimacy of my concern. Because they are the restaurant, they must be right. Who am I to not believe them? But there was NO WAY, that food wasn't potentially dangerous, especially after I was lied to whether it was bread or not. It really shook me.

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Everyone is noticing different, seeminly intentional, arc-specific, echoes from past Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes in the Moffat season so far. Add yours in comments below (BEWARE, spoilers through 5.3) -- I'd like to get a full list, and I know I've tweaked to totally different things than others.

Comments

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

A few years ago in Key West I was with a friend who has an allergy to peppers. Her reaction is less severe than yours to gluten, but still. After a few experiences of us getting peppers in our appitezers in restaurants near Ft Lauderdale we decided that we would tell any future waitstaff that we were both allergic to peppers. We're sitting at this diner and have both told the server about peppers and she ordered "conch fritters but only if there are no peppers." Fritters arrive, we take a bite, peppers. Wait staff claimed first that only she mentioned the allergy and I ordered them, not true. When we asked for the manager our server said that he was the manager and he wasn't taking them off the bill, we ordered them and we would pay for them. A few more rounds of this and we gave up. We took the fritters and gave them to a street musician, and I paid the bill with a single bill that was over twice the cost of lunch and left zero tip.

This is all to say, I have had a taste of establishments playing fast and loose with food allergies, and it is terrifying. I do not envy you, and I am glad you were not glutened.