Being Ill: A Cautionary Tale

Back in September I had some mild atelectasis (partially collapsed lung). Since atelectasis almost always results in infection, I took some antibiotics to guard against getting sicker. At the time I didn't think much of it - mostly I was glad for the codeine to quiet my cough and the breathing treatment. It was nice to have a few days off from school and play some super mario, and I had a pretty optimistic outlook about recovering.

So, I recovered, but I had some other crappy health problems (literally crappy... bowel problems). I didn't really do anything about it for a month or so, because hey, sometimes bowels are just irregular! Then in December my doctor says I have a staph infection and refers me to a specialist, who, just yesterday, told me that my infection is gone! Yay. Unfortunately my symptoms are not gone, and I am the proud sufferer of post-infectious irritable bowel. FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE! So, if you ever take antibiotics, remember to eat yogurt or something while you're taking it so you don't get an intestinal infection and then irritable bowels for the rest of your life, like what happened to me.

On the bright side, I will always have an excuse to be irritable!

This pity party is over!

wildlife

In the mornings I enjoy watching birds at the bird feeder. I think it rained last night and I could see mist evaporating into the morning sun. I breathed in some of the outside air, and it was like a sauna, only refreshingly cool instead of sweat-inducingly hot. A small murder of crows walked around in the front yard as a squirrel dug in the grass. How picaresque!

Even though I'm enjoying my break, I'll be glad to come home on Friday. There is someone I've been missing!

Briefcase

Recently I have tried not to covet after expensive things. It gets easier after time, especially if you can just buy something if you really want it. However, I was definitely struggling yesterday when I decided to do some browsing on leather briefcases. Who knew that professional accessories could be so expensive!

Why briefcases? Well, I decided that I'll be going into the real world soon, or at least the graduate school world, and I want something that looks a little more professional than my backpack I've had since high school. I do have a canvas shoulder bag that looks a little more fashionable, but not necessarily more professional. When I interview I want to have my Vitae ready in a container that says "contemporary academic" yet "not too concerned about expensive clothing; can live off of a small stipend." I've set my heart on the turn-of-the-century European-looking briefcases. What else could set a better impression on old professors than a combination of youth and classic style? Nothing! So, I may have to work an extra ten hours some week, or beg my parents for this necessary article, but it will be worth it.

But what is this interest I have in resurrecting old things into our modern era? I'm quite sure it's not unique - I mean, other people are interested in wrought-iron curly fences and calligraphy pens with changeable nibs! Maybe it's nostalgia for a time we never knew, that we feel had to be simpler and therefore better. Is this more past-centrism? Only time will tell. For now, I still fantasize about getting one of these leather briefcases and carrying it out on a hike with me, complete with a metal (not plastic!) thermos, binoculars, a hard cover bird-watching guide with color, hand-drawn plates, an apple and a sandwich in a tin lunch pail, a wooden bird whistle, and no cell phone.

Next Bestseller

I just thought of the next Bestseller! The only problem is, I haven't written it yet. It would be like a handbook and arranged alphabetically, and the title would be "How to Tell if Someone's Faking..." Entries would include "limping," "social status," "love," and "illness (mental or otherwise)." Someone just has to write it now and give me the credit! (This has always been one of my favorite webpages on lying. Not the most credible, but hey!)

100th Post

I feel that since this is my 100th post, it should be somehow special... but let's face it! All my entries are homogeneously Whistler-written.

In case you didn't catch the gossip, yes, my boyfriend and I broke up... for a total of four days! As I told my mother and other unsympathetic ears, they were the longest four days of my life! I even wrote this depressing poem in my Russian journal for the occasion. I didn't want to tell anyone because I think I was in denial, or something. Maybe you're wondering why we even broke up? Well... I'm not exactly sure why... but let's just say I wasn't being a paragon of reason. I was getting really nervous about dedicating the next six or seven years of my life to graduate school. I mean, what if I decide halfway through that I don't like it? I guess I could quit. But I really dislike not finishing things I start.

Well, that and losing 10 pounds to that intestinal infection are the big things in my life. Oh, do you ever start walking, and realize that there are people all around you? I mean, individuals, who have lives and parents and people who love them and everything. Sometimes I try to look at people's eyes and think about that. Maybe we're exchanging biophotonic particles (through our eyes?)! So reading dinosaurcomics has really affected my writing style. I'm using many more exclamation points! But I assure you it is in a semi-sarcastic manner. :-[

I finished reading The Golden Compass again last week. I thought it was good juvenile literature, and that the so-called atheist points were... not that atheistic. Besides, it's another universe/dimension, perhaps they don't have a deity! Okay, the truth is, I had a conversation with some family members about the series and they were all unjustly against it. So out of rebellion and nostalgia, I bought the box set from the BYU bookstore. And it's been so fun to read! I feel all up on popular culture but reaching back to my youth all at once. yay!

It's the weekend!

...and I'm sitting here writing in my blog!

You know how sometimes you think things work a lot more nicely than they actually do? For instance, for some reason, I thought that all webcomics would get as nicely into Google Reader as blogs do. Boy was I wrong (sidenote: dinosaurcomics.com = much fun. It reminds me of the "high-brow, yet low-brow" humor a, erm, friend of mine enjoys. It may even inspire me to change the links on the side)! Also, have you ever filled out a bubble sheet and thought about how a computer will just read it? People have to correct errors on those things. Or when you place an order online and think, great, machines are going to put all my books in a package and send it to me, why does it take so long? It's because people are involved! Bah.

I recently had a conversation with my, ah, friend about how to match clothes. I insist that I have an intuitive sense about what colors match, which includes some heebie jeebie about shirts having the same about of brown or black in them (note: brown and black rarely go together). This site has some theory about color wheels. I think the term analogous is the one I've been searching for. For instance, you probably wouldn't couple autumn orange with lime green, but it might go well with forest green. Also, the army times has some good tips (scroll down), but I'm still going to recklessly wear various shades of green. Personally, my technique is to pull a shirt and pants out of my drawer, imagine what they look like together, and then choose a different shirt.

Also, have you ever had a problem where a shirt is too short? I have a bunch of long-sleeved shirts like this, so I end up wearing t-shirts over them. Then I instantly look like a skater chick (unless of course it is a turtleneck)! Another way to combat this problem is to always wear a sweater over or around the offensive skin. So uncomfortable! My pants are frequently too short as well; I've taken to just ripping out the seam at the bottom... I mean hey, the frayed look is in now, even if it is against the honor code (but the bookstore was selling frayed clothes/shoes! Such hypocrisy! (/irony)). Uh... bye now.

Great day

This morning was interesting. I slept for 10 hours and then grudgingly got up at 8am to go to a work meeting at 9. My roommate had a puzzle on the table, so I ate breakfast on my table. I also put my fresh gallon of milk on this table. Perhaps you can see where this is going... my table has about a 30 degree incline (darn writing desk), and midway through my second bowl of cereal, the milk slid off the table and onto the floor, spilling a good two cups of milk on the floor. First I was worried about losing this milk, but then I realized I had to clean it up. So, since I was running late, I biked to school. No one showed up for the meeting, and I was starting to get upset until I realized it was scheduled for next week. I then spent the next four* hours working on my statistics take-home test.

*or three, or two and a half, I don't really know


So, another thing I tried to do today was to cook a sweet potato. I worked out okay, and I ate the whole thing, but I managed to burn some brown sugar on the bottom of the pan. Go me! Also, I have either styes in my eyes or pinkeye. Hooray!

Um... it's November... and I need to get my applications together...

Playlist

So, today, for fun, I decided to make a playlist of kind of depressing and deathly songs, but not too depressing. Maybe what one might listen to after hearing about the death of an old friend. It's still in the works. I'm going for detached contemplation rather than in-your-face angsty. I'm thinking of taking out the Franz Ferdinand (I've already taken out, well, many songs). I consider this a bit of a landmark for me - knowing enough about popular music to make a playlist. Yet I know I still know very little about the genre. Suggestions welcome.

1. Death Cab for Cutie - What Sarah Said
2. My Brightest Diamond - Disappear
3. Sufjan Stevens - To the workers of the rock river valley region...
4. Franz Ferdinand - Fade Together
5. Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely
6. Yann Tiersen - Comptine d'un autre... (from Amelie)
7. Sufjan Stevens - Casmir Pulsaki Day
8. The Decemberists - Of Angels and Angels
9. Coldplay - The Hardest Part
10. Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out)

A Dollar Buys Impulse

Yesterday I had a very, very strong urge to buy an accordion. I was looking at some deals on eBay and thought that maybe I could get one (including shipping) for $50 or so. Then I thought, who knows in what condition it's in? Would I ever have time to learn how to play it? If I couldn't figure it out on my own, where would I find a teacher? How would I take it with me to graduate school? Where would I practice, and could I lug it all the way to the HFAC? If I decided to do street performing, would I really want to go all that way to Salt Lake? I finally talked myself out of it.

Then this morning I was walking through the bookstore on my way to work. I thought, "hey, my birthday was recently, I could buy myself something else other than that calligraphy set." I walked over to the classics section and decided $24 was way, waaay too much to pay for a book in the public domain. However, the Dover Thrift section really tempted me. For a minute I was about to buy Walden, Madame Bovary (both of which I have read), and Flatlands. I think it would have amounted to seven or eight dollars total. But I withstood this impulse: I've already read those books, and besides, I already own several books I haven't read yet (Don Quixote and volume two of Proust's Rememberance of Things Past chief among them). I could probably buy the books more cheaply at Moe's if I really wanted them.

Then this evening I went to the grocery store. I was about to buy a can of chili for a dollar, but told myself that I already had a few cans of chili and plenty of Ramen. Finally a deal presented itself that I didn't resist. A Hershey's Symphony bar (are candy bar names italicized?) for a dollar. And yes, I did have about 6 candy bars at home I hadn't eaten yet. Did I lose self-control for a moment? Did my impulse get the better of me? I don't really care. And this candy bar tastes sooooo good.

Use of tomatoes

My grandma frequently gives me food items that I don't really know how to use. Tomatoes are one such thing like this. I love tomatoes, but I don't really have any lettuce to make a really good sandwich with them. So this morning I made an omelet with a few slices. Verdict: A piece of bread with a tomato omelet is necessary. I wonder if you can fry plain tomato slices, and if they would taste good? Tomato chips?

Uses of tomato sauce (cont.)

So, last week I made a strange dish I'd like to call "lazy man's raviolis." It consists of those shell pasta things, chili, and tomato sauce. If you're skillful you can get some meat in the pasta and have that tomato sauce savor!

Dreams

Tonight I made a strange soup. It didn't even contain said oregano. However, it did contain tomato sauce, eggs, onions, and the usual vegetables. And now I have a bunch of leftovers and a stomachache.

I had a dream last night. I was on a mountain of evil, and I was trying to get away. There was a shortcut, but I had to say goodbye to the mountain and bite my wrists as I slid down to the water below. Blood was trailing everywhere. After I swam to a nearby island I thought I would feel better, but I didn't.

A dream I didn't have, but I should have, went like this. I was in Japan appreciating all the foreign-ness of the surroundings. I even ate some sushi (apparently I forgot that I am allergic to it). I ate a lot of rice too. Unfortunately I had a plane ticket for the next week, even though I was really enjoying myself. I decided to stop eating all the good Japanese food so I would miss it less when I went home. Then I became very unhappy.

A dream I didn't have, and shouldn't have had, went like this. As a rabbit with myxomatosis, I was isolated from all of the other rabbits until I went blind. Then I died.

So, the new Radiohead album is pretty awesome. It's a little short, which I guess is okay. Optimistic. says that it doesn't feel like an album as a whole, but could be listened to out of order and still make sense. I agree, but the songs on the album have a definite common feel. Kind of like, more electronic, more melodic, more minimalistic. The first listen was good, and I am just getting to like it even better (as we know familiarity breeds liking, in some cases). I did think to myself though, do I just like the songs because it's Radiohead, or is it genuinely cool music? I guess I'll never know... but it's really cool. I think my favorite tracks are "Nude" and "Videotapes."

I am now the proud owner of Mexican oregano. Or, as a friend of mine likes to call it, Mexican "oregano."

Soup

One of the best things about cooking is that I am always discovering new things. For instance, how incredibly easy soup is to make. Sure, peeling all those vegetables takes some time, but there's nothing horribly difficult about it. No strange "only stir for five minutes" or "change pans at least three times" complications. Lately I have been making different kinds of vegetable soup. It's cheap, hot, and healthy (Ramen only fits two of those criteria). I was even able to use up a tomato I didn't know what to do with. It was great on a sandwich but it was really huge so I still had a lot to eat in a short time. I hear that canned tomatoes work just as well though. Another thing I'd like to try is different spice combinations. Currently my spice collection consists of cinnamon and Garlic salt. I should at least have some basil or oregano. Oh, and I definitely want to eat spaghetti next week. Or how would spaghetti sauce taste in a soup (the answer is, it has been tried before)? Or chili? There are so many possibilities that I can try without having an extensive knowledge of chemistry.

I feel like I don't want to tell you about my life. I've returned to this blank blog page again and again, and I can't think of anything I want to share. Selfish me.

My old room

I've been home for a brief break in between the end of summer term and the end of my contract, and I've been staying in my room. The shelves full of books and the pictures on the wall bring back old memories, and the whole room seems like a shrine to my childhood self. Part of me really misses having my own room and a 2nd-story window overlooking a hill full of trees. I look at my old copy of the Aeneid in Latin and wonder how I ever pretended to translate it. My beanie babies on the shelves remind me of how I used to act out plays with them all as characters. They represented different people in my life... I'm a little concerned because the one that represented me is missing. It's like I'm not a part of their group anymore. I'm a stranger in my own room.

They are the same!

This is an announcement: I am not crazy. The melody in the Gorillaz's "Feel Good Inc." is almost identical to the part in No Doubt's "Comforting Lie" where she sings "I am Jekyll I am Hyde." And you know who came first? No Doubt. I wonder if it's a small enough similarity to be legal. (The part about not being crazy is where my roommate didn't believe me while I searched frantically, remembered the tune, but not the lyrics.)

google chat conversation as poetry

I can tell you a story about something disguisting I ate

remember how I bought that Rice Roni?
I bought it because it had the Golden Gate Bridge on the box.

ah, yes?

well I fixed it tonight

it said to saute the rice and vermicelli

so I did

then I was supposed to put in some water

and I almost burned myself

with all the steam

when it was finally done I was really hungry

but it was so salty

and the vegetables were dubiously real

and not very present

I ate half a bowl while watching TV

(and I can eat some pretty gross things while watching TV)

and I couldn't take anymore

it was an insult to my tastebuds

I should throw out the rest

No Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

Suddenly all of my bark has been biting me. That is to say, all the research I have been involved in is suddenly asking me to do things other than attend meetings. This has caused me a little stress over the week, stress that induced me to make some lemon curd today and work 7 hours at work (as you can see I have great procrastination abilities). I'm also worried about my performance in a certain essay-intensive class. The thing is, I hate editing my writing, and I like getting things right on the first or second try. Lack of editing and overfaith in my sheer brilliance have led to some dull grades on essays, and I hope I don't make the same mistakes again.

I started Hofstadter's new book I Am A Strange Loop last weekend. It's great. Possibly more accessible than GEB, but not quite as funny.

Do you ever start thinking about life and think that it's all a charade? I became disillusioned with the music world when I discovered that politics play more of a role than skill at times. I didn't think psychology would similarly disillusion me. I feel so powerless to change anything in the world of psychology, let alone the world at large. I often feel like just another brick in the wall. Like it isn't worth it to actually think things out because it will only make me more unhappy later on if I see others with differing opinions.

Short

I bought new shoelaces yesterday. It was quite exciting. I also bought a pair of men's shorts that was on sale, and I can see why. No self-respecting man would wear these shorts. First, they are grey-black suede. If a man has suede something or other, it's probably going to be a wallet, or perhaps a jacket. Not shorts. The shorts are also impractical. There is no button-zipper mechanism, but only a strip of velcro (I can only imagine what difficulty this presents for the standing-up fashion of relief). To make matters worse, there is only one side pocket, and a lacey shoelace to mask the velcro. Don't you just love ugly clothes?