Yesterday was devoted to preparations for Penguicon. I'm pretty sure I'm ready now. My bags are packed, and they're in the car.

Oh, and my stomach is threatening to secede.

See, I found out I'm on the "hot sauce tasting" panel, and I realized that I'm not "in training" at the moment. My p-gates are wide open, fully stocked with the neurotransmitter that tells my brain I have something too hot in my mouth.

So chalain and I went to lunch at the local Thai place with Rodney. I was going to order the five-star curry, but we got to talking with the waitress, and discovered that there are actually around 20 stars on that scale. There's no point trying to train yourself for hot food in one go, and not going for something actually HOT. I had the five-star last week and never broke a sweat.

This time I broke a sweat. I also made the mistake of eating quickly, and not fully chewing all those fresh peppers. Now I'm busy depleting p-trans throughout my tract, which means that this morning my stomach feels like I drank a barrel of boiling oil. Fortunately I've been here before and I know that no actual damage is being done -- there are some nerves firing, and the signals they send are worrisome, but I happen to know who pulled the fire-alarm.

Punk kid.

Anyway, I've just bounced up to about 75% of my usual training level. Bottled hot sauces are not likely to give me any measure of grief come Saturday.

--Howard

Tags: capsicum, food, hot sauce