A really good friend once said, “Getting sick is your body’s way of telling you, you need to rest.”
My inner self keeps struggling with the notion of “rest”. I think I’m more comfortable working and constantly moving.
That is, until I got really, really sick – With one of the probable causes of it being stress.
Pfft.
Having said that, I’m not allowed to do intensive research for at least a week… And for the next month, I’m not supposed to consume alcohol, anything citrus, oily, and (gasp!) coffee* (plus, I have to eat on time).
I’m a touch better now, but I’m going to keep this article short, sweet, and simple by talking about the reactions I got from my previous article.
I rarely talk about people’s reactions to my articles because I feel like it’s incredibly narcissistic, but I was so touched (digging up a more appropriate term in my head but alas, medication is limiting my vocabulary) by a couple of reactions that I had to share.
I’m keeping the first one extremely private, so I will neither quote verbatim nor name the person. But I was stunned when a fellow woman in the industry reached out to me after reading the post. She mentioned being both on the receiving and giving end of “beverage generalisations”, which is why the article resonated with her. Some of what she’s received were particularly hurtful, a couple of which I’ve encountered myself.
I thought, if this brilliant, gorgeous, absolutely kind woman could get affected by people putting her in a box she doesn’t deserve, how many others out there could be going through something similar?

Couch-bound and drooling over this… I wonder if it’s any similar to that drink Chekov had in the bottle…
The second is much more fun, coming from the inspiration for the post in the first place, Bel Castro. After reading the post, she sent me this:
“So… What was in Chekov’s bottle? Decided, not cognac. Wrong glass. My bet would be whisky. There is a bit in the end of the movie that suggests that it’s Scotch. From a wiki ‘In 2263 of the alternate reality, Pavel Chekov claimed to Natalia that Scotch whisky had been invented by a ‘little old lady’ from Leningrad (Star Trek Beyond). In 2268, Pavel Chekov made this same claim to Montgomery Scott while visiting the bar at Deep Space Station K-7 (TOS: The Trouble with Tribbles).’”
My husband Chad, an avid Trekkie, weighs in:
“It’s whisky, because the entire scene is an Easter egg in reference to Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. In TOS (The Original Series), Chekov is very proud of his Russian heritage that he makes up stories that a Russian actually did something when it wasn’t true. But as to WHY Chekov was drinking whisky instead of vodka… No idea. My theory is that Chekov has always wanted to make sure he’s on Kirk’s good side. He also idolized kirk – The youngest captain of Starfleet, etc. And Kirk is a whisky guy.”
Anybody out there who wants to weigh in? I’ll be back with a better article next week, I promise. Cheers!
*I actually have a harder time cutting coffee from my diet as opposed to alcohol… Words cannot even begin to convey how hard (and physically painful!) it was to do a cold turkey on coffee.