So they test my blood for allergies to mangoes and pistachioes, along with all the usual suspects, just in case.

We get the results in and guess what? I'm not allergic to EITHER mangoes or pistachioes. Well, not according to the blood test, anyway.

However, I am mildly allergic to peanuts. Apparently, rather like the Dread Pirate Roberts spending the last few years building up an immunity to iocaine powder, by snacking on the odd peanut butter sandwich, I have built up an immunity to my allergy.

So they move on to the skin prick test. This mediaeval form of torture basically involves a nurse dripping or crushing whatever it is you are allergic to onto your bare flesh (the insides of your arms) and then poking holes in you with a lancet to see if you come up in a lump.

Nope. Nothing. Nix, nada, bupkis.

Not allergic to pistachio or mango, even if you grind it into my skin.

The doctor was looking at me like I had two heads at this point. He suggested a food challenge.

While I had my hopes up for an 'Iron Chef' stylee event, it turned out to be me taking a pistachio, rubbing it against the inside of my lip and being intently watched by medical staff to see if I had a reaction.

Nothin' doin'.

The final part of the challenge was for me to eat the pistachio.

My first pistachio in over three years.

Mmm, it was delicious. I'd forgotten how good they were.

I was watched intently by medical staff. The poor nurse nearly fell over running for the adrenalin when I mumbled an apology that she didn't hear, and tried to pick bits of pistachio out of my teeth discreetly while a doctor and two nurses were staring at me. The poor love thought I was having a reaction.

Nope, the only reaction I had was an intensed desire to eat the rest of the pistachios.

They didn't do a food challenge with mango this time, just in case I did react and they couldn't tell what triggered it. They just sent me back to the consulting room for a final consultation with the doctor.

I walked into the room to find one of the nurses and three allergy specialists sitting there, all looking at me like some sort of rare specimen.

They fired questions at me about my medical history and allergies for about half an hour. Then, at the end, they all looked at each other, simultaneously shrugged their shoulders and looked at me.

They have NO CLUE what I am allergic to.

In fact, I might not be allergic to anything specific at all. Pending the mango food challenge and a blood test to establish if I'm allergic to latex (oops, there go the bondage parties!), the diagnosis is likely to be idiopathic anaphylaxis.

No, that does not mean I'm allergic to idiots and psychopaths, it means that I might just have reactions for no good reason at all.

Lucky me.

On the brighter side, it isn't severe. Severe cases have more than 6 reactions a year. I've had two in three years, not bad in terms of frequency of life-threatening events.

As for treatment, there really isn't any. Other than walking around with an Epi-pen and hoping it doesn't happen again.

The best news of all, pending Thursday's blood test results and the food challenge, this weekend, I'm having a mango orgy. I plan to roll naked in a bathtub full of mango flesh while consuming obscene quantities of them, interspersed with handfuls of pistachioes. After all, I have three years worth of nuts and almost an entire season of mangoes to make up for!

This is my 'farewell 100 ' gift to myself and I feel well rewarded.

There will be another gorgeous new look coming soon. If you prefer the old look and feel, there's a drop down list box under 'About Me' that lets you change the site skin.

Go visit Joelle and tell her what a lovely job she's done and if you're ever thinking of redesigning your own interweb space, look Joelle and the other talented designers at BlogMoxie up. Too glam for words!

So what did happen in 2004? Let's recap [cue swirly flashback graphics and 'back in time' music]...

January
Spent January largely recovering from our trip to the US. Exhausted, physically, emotionally and financially. But we brought back a DEMON of a computer.

I had also intended to write witty reports about our travels and I even have an elegant, leatherbound notebook (handmade by the lovely Chiliflower) full of notes from the trip. Alas, I am rubbish and never got around to them. Hmmm, potential blog fodder for when blog-spiration fails to strike.

February
Where I was struck by the meaning of Christmas (ouch, that hurt!), the rampant stupidity of the people I work with and the rapid expansion of my butt.

Featured the introduction of a new measurement, the . Remember, four marmosets to the kilo, approximately two marmosets to a pound. So far, since February, I've lost 106 monkeys and have around 36 (give or take a few) still to go. I have to say, I look quite spiffy carrying around fewer monkeys and the flea problem has almost entirely disappeared.

March
I actually managed a story about part of our trip, but it was a little odiferous. Mmm, dead skunk, anyone? I was also threatening to revamp the site. If I knew then what I know now, I'd still be using Blogger and have that orange background. Coding just does my head in.

I also learned the true meaning of evil when I tried to design my first site entirely laid out in CSS with IE 5.5 as my browser. If this doesn't mean anything to you, thank your deity of choice. If it does, then you know my pain.

April
I managed to turn 25 again in April, although it was a close thing, considering the pain that learning CSS was giving me. I asked for a web monkey, but I didn't get one. However, I did get much lovely gifty goodness and a head cold. And many mosquito bites. Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever because April is the dead of winter here.

However, April is most notable as being the month in which I had a good hair day. Perhaps I should celebrate the anniversary or something.

May
Went even further back in time in May and gloried in the rude and ridiculous rhymes we used to sing in primary (elementary) school. Delightfully vulgar. Ghost and I also managed to wrestle Movable Type to the ground and I continued to curse colourfully at CSS, IE and technology in general. Considered chucking it all in and just journalling in a diary, but then I don't get lovely comments (hint, HINT!) and I'm a total attention whore at heart.

June
TA DA! I revealed the revamp in all it's glory. I was pretty pleased with myself, I must say, and you guys seemed to think it was pretty good too. I was just relieved that you could read it and I hadn't managed to code it to display entirely in Aramaic.

We also had some scary news about Ghost's dad, which we later found out was much less scary than first predicted (he's quite well now, thank you very much) and the delightful Shane came to keep us company. There were many lovely excursions with native animals and Shane was quite tickled by the ability to pet kangaroos one day and eat them the next.

Ghost and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary, significant because after two years, we still hadn't killed each other. Yet.

July
The entire month of July was spent trying new and increasingly more expensive ways to get my mother drunk to celebrate her 60th.

Culminating in the opening of a $400 bottle of red she had been storing away carefully for the event. While the price may seem outrageous (it was a gift, incidentally, but that's what the bottle cost in the stores), believe me, if you enjoy a drop or two of the fermented stuff, it's worth every fucking penny.

I also railed against the Shrub administration for deciding that Tim Tams were the tools of terrorists (nice alliteration!) and requiring me to register with some sort of mysterious agency to allow me to ship Tim Tams to my mates in the US. This was artfully overcome by simply unpackaging them and shipping them as 'home made cookies'. Because, you know, the terrorists would NEVER think to do that...

August
Ahhh, the return of the idiot client. Yes, just when you thought it wasn't possible to be any more stupid without constantly bumping into inanimate objects, my clients went and proved us all wrong. Oh joy.

I also inadvertently mooned the general public, while looking elegant, arachnids invaded our apartment (OK... arachnid), claymation aardvarks danced and I wrote far too many entries celebrating how good I felt. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

September
You know what? September mostly sucked. Hard.

The only shining light was Ghost finally getting a job. A sucky job that sucked. Hard. But a job nonetheless.

I, on the other hand, had scalpels wielded entirely too closely to my fundament for comfort and Chiliflower was given some terrible news about her dad.

I want a refund for September.

October
In which my usually shockingly black thumb managed a greenish hue, I took many photos for your curiosity and delight and the immigration department finally hauled its head out of its arse and decided that Ghost could stay in Australia. I also acknowledged, somewhat obliquely, that all was not well inside my head and I began living with chemical assistance.

For the record, things continue to be somewhat spoggly between my ears, but with therapy and natural supplements, I'm staying somewhat on track and the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer an oncoming train. This is of the good.

November
And the award for suckiest month of 2004 goes to... Miss November! [cue applause]

Yep, this month sucked great, big, hairy, donkey dick. It sucked like a souped up Dyson. It sucked like... well, I don't think anything has sucked quite like November sucked.

No, let me revise that. Events sucked, but the people around me where angels in disguise. The messages and support I got during November were fantastic and astonishing and humbling and I owe you all hugely for getting behind me. Thank you.

The highlights were another NaNoWriMo under my belt, taking a client to lunch and having it turn into a boozy, three hour praise-fest and a Thanksgiving dinner where I really sat down and gave thanks for what I do have in my life.

Sure, I didn't want to spend what was ostensibly the Fiddler's Green masqued ball in the ER, but when it all comes down to it, I have it pretty good.

Remind me to tell you the results of my allergy testing too. It's comedy gold.

December
Christmas brought its usual delights, peace, harmony and the overwhelming desire to kill. Clients almost fucked us over with non-payment of bills, but managed to come through right at the last possible moment. I delighted in my flowering frangipani tree and I outlined the sorts of things that will happen when I finally take over the world.

I have since revised that plan so that there will always be a gigantic emergency fund available for when tragedies such as what has happened in Asia occur. These are the sorts of events that I just can't get my head around, until a reader of my other blog revealed that some of her husband's family are still missing in Banda Aceh. It is a terrible truth that the loss of a few for someone you know is more tragic than the death of over 100,000 other people, but it's the only way to comprehend it.

Please, no matter how little, send something to one of the hundreds of charities that are helping support these people. Show George W that he really is a stingy prick and prove that people power is stronger than he'll ever be. And do it because you can thank your deity of choice that it's them instead of you.

Well, that ended on a down note, didn't it? Like I said, not a lot of shinies for the last part of the year, but I do have a lot to be enormously grateful for.

Including you lot. Yes, even you, the one over there who never comments (hint, HINT!) Thank you for sticking with me and reading, even when I'm periscope down and not saying much. Thanks ever so for commenting, supporting me, emailing me and just making it all worthwhile.

I've made no resolutions for 2005, but I will try to update more often and give you comment-worthy goodness to read. Here's hoping for a comment-worthy 2005.