Timeframes, Part II

I have returned to Kansas safe and sound, and early this afternoon Daisy went back home to Omaha (as she has work tonight).

My Thanksgiving "break" is almost over. As I told Daisy last night while I was driving us home (I took us 2/3 of the way, in her Hyundai, between about 9PM and 2AM), it feels like I really didn't have much of a true "break" at all. I've been running around and doing all sorts of stuff since last Thursday night, the 21st. First it was grading, then cleaning, then prepping the house, then travel to Omaha, then everything we did in Omaha, then coming back -- and now that I'm home, I still have to grade the rest of my students' work, make sure I get all of it recorded and on Blackboard, and ready for my last week of classes at the university.

"I worked, came down to get you, turned around and went home, cooked most of the Thanksgiving dinner, and now we come home, I turn around and come home again, and immediately go back to work," Daisy replied. "So..."

She is right, of course.

It was a busy week for both of us; we got a lot of stuff accomplished during it, though -- despite our mutual sleep deprivation and running ourselves pretty ragged. I'm going to attempt to do a "recap" of sorts without rambling on too much (but, again, you know me).

Daisy arrived here at the house around...oh, 8:30? 9PM? Something like that, on Monday night. She hadn't slept. She was exhausted, and had to deal with an asthma attack on her drive down here -- generally pretty bad news. Daisy used to be asthmatic, but up until the past month or so, she hasn't really had any problems with it for many years. Now, all of a sudden over this past month, she'll have random asthma attacks and doesn't know what provokes them. She got a new inhaler for it to help, but it's still problematic.

Anyway, she asked if I wanted to wait until the morning to sleep first -- to get up early on Tuesday morning and go back up to make it in time for her interview (early afternoon; I think it was 1:30 or something), but we realized that if we did so, a) she wouldn't get any real rest anyhow, and b) we'd be really rushed in the morning to get everything into the car and get us up to Omaha with enough time for her to get ready for the interview -- and she would still be sleep-deprived and awake for several hours beforehand.

"I can go tonight, love," I said. "I'm awake enough; I can drive us and you can sleep. In the meantime, take a nap downstairs and I'll get the cat stuff done and ready for them, and I'll wake you up in a bit so we can go."

That's what we did. I turned on the electric blanket, and she passed out downstairs for about two hours. In the meantime, I got everything else around the house done and took care of the cats, giving them extra food and water, readying and filling their extra litter pan, etc. I made sure to pack the last of the stuff I needed but couldn't pack up until that point, and let her sleep for a bit. I also made sure to drink a shitload of extra coffee so that I could stay awake and be lucid enough to make that really long drive through straight stretches and darkness in the middle of the night.

When I woke her, it was almost midnight, and she was awake enough to get up and go. She decided to take the first leg of the drive, up to Concordia (about 2 hours away, roughly). I took us from there to York (about two more hours) and then she took us from York into Omaha (90 minutes or so), which she would've had to do anyway -- I don't know the layout of the interstates, exits, turns and mazes of the city of Omaha leading to her house, but she does.

We got back to Omaha around 4AM, roughly, and almost immediately went to sleep. She set her alarm for 11:30, and I got up shortly after that and spent time with Mama, who would be having her second knee surgery the next day.

Daisy's interview went really well; she had a second phone interview that afternoon when she got home, which also went well. She'll find out whether she got the job by the end of this next week -- right as I'm going into finals week. It pays considerably more than the position she has now, though it is still with the same company.

That night, we made calzones (all of us) for dinner, and then the two of us went to Dave & Buster's afterwards for our "date night" while I was there. Daisy and I always do a date night at least once when we're together either here or there; we tend to like Dave & Buster's because it's quiet when we go at night and we love the games. Then this happened:

Yes, that's one of the prize machines spitting out one thousand tickets at my feet. It was a lucky spin and we'll probably not get that much luck again when we return the next time.

Because of this huge ticket win, we were able to wander through the prize counter area to see what we could find. We had 3,514 tickets total on our card (they do it on a card, if you've never been to D&B before). A really nice Vivitar 60x/120x telescope was 3,200 tickets. Guess who walked out of there with a shiny, really nice new telescope? Yep, that's right, us.

I left the telescope in Omaha last night because we had too much stuff to take home as it was (which I'll get to later) and because, really, if I took it home it would just sit in my room or in the spare room and gather dust while I teach between now and the wedding in the spring...why not just leave it with Daisy and pick it up when/if I need it? She has a fair amount of stuff in storage downstairs in her house anyhow.

On Wednesday, our friend took our official "engagement photos" (nine months after we got engaged, mind you). We were supposed to have two sessions -- one formal session, which we did, and a second "fun" session with pictures taken by another one of Daisy's friends on Friday. Well, the second friend bailed on us, so Wednesday's photos -- in the freezing cold and wind on a lake -- were what we got. The photos turned out really nicely for the most part; Daisy is editing them tonight once she gets home. All three of us (Daisy, myself, and our friend) were frozen to the bone after we were done taking them; the temperature was barely twenty and the winds were just howling that day.  There are probably ten or fifteen good photos in all that we'll end up using.

In addition to that, Daisy's mother went in for her second knee surgery on Wednesday morning. It was horrible timing, of course, but timing she couldn't avoid because of her insurance plan and when the doctors scheduled it -- it really wasn't her own choice there. Dad spent most of the day at the hospital and came home late, then was gone on Thanksgiving morning to go take care of her and bring her back home. She's fine (well, relatively fine, anyway -- I'm guessing most of you wouldn't be that thrilled to have knee surgery); she came home on Thursday afternoon, and while she's in pain from it, obviously, she's recovering well. Because of this, however, I didn't get to spend much time with her over my trip up there.

Now, mind you, I was up there for four days -- we got there early on Tuesday morning and left late last night -- but obviously it's not like I can spend a whole lot of time with Mama when she's just had surgery. I helped out around the house and with cooking the dinner in every way I possibly could or was allowed, jumping to attention whenever there was something I could do to help out. That's just the person I am, really; I really love to be able to be helpful and useful -- it's the least I can do when staying with family on their dime, using their facilities and eating their food, especially when I have no spare money whatsoever between now and, oh, the end of January. If not longer.

Thanksgiving Day was fine; Daisy got up at 5:45 AM and made pies. Yes, at 5:45 AM. When we'd only been asleep for about three hours before that. She eventually came back to bed a few hours later and slept more before we got up around noon for good. Most of the rest of the day was spent cooking dinner together and taking care of Mama, who got home around 2 or so. I helped make as much as possible, though Daisy took care of a large chunk of it and Dad made the turkey himself with no issues. Mind you, by the evening Daisy was exhausted; the dinner was quite good, but we'd all been working on it for hours and she'd been extremely sleep-deprived for the better part of a week at that point, despite me trying to let her rest as much as possible. We'd also been running around, of course, doing date nights and pictures and shopping for dinner materials and anything/everything along those lines, so it's not like we were just sitting around the house. There were certain times where I felt somewhat useless or in the way, despite the fact that I was doing everything I could to help. It's just in my nature, I suppose.

Daisy was in bed by 8:30 on Thursday night; her father followed within an hour. Mama was already confined to bed anyhow because of her surgery, so that left me alone and awake with run of the house (the downstairs, anyway). I was tired myself, but wasn't quite tired enough to sleep. I ended up going upstairs to bed, in the pitch-blackness of her room (as she has blackout curtains and no night-light or clock to give off any light whatsoever) and used my DS to light the room enough to see what I was doing as I got into bed and went to sleep. Daisy said she didn't even feel/hear me come to bed, which I believe with how deliriously tired she was.

I should also mention two things at about this point -- the first being that Daisy had originally planned to go Black Friday shopping late Thursday night in Sioux City with her sister, who lives about two hours from Omaha. As you may know if you know your US geography, Omaha is right on the border with Iowa, so it's not like Sioux City is a mythical faraway land or anything like that:

I'd told Daisy that shopping that night would make an incredibly long Friday for us, especially when she was already sleep-deprived. If all had gone according to the original plans, she would've left Omaha shortly after dinner, driven to her sister's place, driven from there to Sioux City at midnight for the first sales, and would've been back home by 8AM (her sister has four children with the youngest one still an infant, and her sister's husband had to work on Friday morning). That meant Daisy would've been up all night again, then awake at some point yesterday to do our own Black Friday shopping or what-have-you, and then be awake enough for us to come back home to Newton in the evening so she could sleep, drive home again, and go to work tonight. Yeah, I knew from the moment she offered up the idea that wasn't going to happen. Regardless of when we left Omaha, we had a "hard out" of sometime last night so that she could sleep here today and then get back home to go to work. There wasn't time for leaving Omaha this morning and coming back this evening -- not to mention that would be a hell of a lot of driving in the meantime. So, Daisy opted not to go. I'd been invited as well, but being caught in the gaping maw of rampant consumerism when I myself needed nothing and had no real money to spend anyway...yeah, I decided early that I'd rather not be trampled and/or stabbed over a TV, tablet computer, or vacuum. I'd seen Walmart's Black Friday ad about two weeks ago, and the only thing I was really interested in was some of the movies and other DVDs they had deeply, insanely discounted. But I'll get to that later.

The second thing I wanted to mention is that while my sinus infection has been on its way out for over a week now, it's still not completely gone. My lymph nodes have been swollen all week (and still are), and I still have congestion and pressure in my face and nose/ears, but it's not painful like it was a week ago. Being in Omaha seemed to help a lot of it, of course -- a change of environment, elevation, air I breathe, etc -- but it didn't take it away completely. I took sinus and allergy pills when I needed to, and tried to work it out of my system over the course of my time there. Being out in the cold for the photos (not to mention every time I wanted a cigarette) I'm sure didn't help either, nor did the constant running around Omaha and the lack of a normal sleep schedule for me as well. It's still lingering a bit; it's not bad at all, and it's not even painful, but it's still there and my immune system is still trying to fight it all off. I'm hoping I'll be feeling 100% again by the time I teach this week's classes.

That being said, Friday was an adventure all in itself.

I woke up early Friday morning and immediately went to take a shower; I needed it. I'm not a huge fan of Daisy's shower; she has a hanging, removable showerhead that is hard to use, and she uses strange soaps/shampoos/conditioners anyway. I feel like an alien in her shower, really, and because of that it takes me twice as long as it does at home to get a shower that actually makes me feel clean. My shower routine, therefore, gets sort of broken when I'm there. As much as I like the soaps she has, I am very grateful to be back home with my own shower, I'll put it that way.

Dad had been taking care of Mama when she needed it, so he got up late as well -- but he still cooked us a breakfast of sausage and eggs (which, of course, Daisy abstained from, being vegan and all). I had some coffee and tried to wake myself up a bit more; I was still quite tired from the night before, even though I'd gone to bed by around 11 or so. My lack of sleep had taken its toll from most of the week -- again, part of why I felt like I didn't really get any "break" time at all.

"What are we doing today, if anything, before we go home?" I asked Daisy.

"Well, you said you wanted to get a jacket for the wedding, so we can go to Goodwill, and then I thought we'd stop at Gordman's to see what their specials were for the day."

"Okay," I said. "Sounds good to me."

Mind you -- and I hate admitting this, because it makes me sound like an asshole -- Daisy knows I really have no money to spend right now, and the entire trip she'd been getting everything, everything for me/us. I already felt guilty enough about that, believe me. I'm working for slave wages, basically, and I have $400-something to my name right now before I get paid next Friday. Most of that paycheck will go to bills, leaving me with little more than I have right now. I'm more than willing to do what I can, but right now is a terrible time of the year for me for finances. Most of my groceries over the Christmas break will have to be put on my credit card(s), as I won't have money for those things until at least late January or early February. My car insurance comes due in December, too, which absolutely has to be put on my credit card, and of course there's the huge debt of my student loan shit hanging over my head as well, which I hope to get deferment on before its deadline of the 11th. If I can't make that deadline I have to do that postpone a payment thing if at all possible, because I absolutely cannot pay the first (or any) of the payments right now.

We ended up going to Goodwill, Big Lots, TJ Maxx, Burlington Coat Factory, and (finally, not to be outdone) Gordman's. I got a few little things -- some underwear, a pair of pants for the wedding from Goodwill (for I was unable to find a jacket), some snacks and a candle, a Transformers coffee mug, a few $1.50 DVDs at Big Lots, etc. Nothing major. I did not want Daisy to spend money on me, I really didn't; she says things like "my money is your money," but while that is incredibly sweet, it's not like she's rich or anything like that. And I desperately don't want her to feel like she needs to do anything for me, even though she wants to do everything for me she can. Any other time, of course, I would be doing the same for her -- I bought her a ton of work clothes from Cato when she first got her new job, for example -- but right now is a horrible time for my finances and debts, and I'm just struggling to keep my head above water for the next two months or so. It's not going to be easy, let me tell you. I understand that she knows this and doesn't want me to worry about it, but I'm still the kind of guy who feels guilty about having someone do things for him, buy things for him. It's just usually the other way around. I've always been fiercely independent since I've been living on my own, because I've had to be. I'm also a big proponent of ye olde hard work and "making do" with what I have and not expecting to be bailed out by anyone for anything. Other people may have a safety net; I really don't. While my parents and friends have occasionally helped me out of tight spots with bills and the like, it's not like I expect anyone to do that nor would I ever ask anyone to unless extremely necessary. In the cases where my parents have loaned me money to cover bills, I've paid it all back to them as quickly as possible. In the cases where friends and family have sent me gift cards so that I can eat and get cat food, I've always done something to repay them as well, even though I know it's not necessary. My finances suck, but at least it's a temporary predicament most of the time because of the way the semesters fall -- within a month or two I'm usually able to right myself again and let my life return to normal.

So that's the long way of saying that even though there's a lot of stuff I saw yesterday that I really loved while we were shopping, I dismissed it because I couldn't afford it myself (even though Daisy offered to get said things for me). She and I looked at new coats, for example, for me -- my black wool peacoat is wearing out and falling apart. I've lost several buttons on it, the fabric is getting thinner (because it's wool) and I have several places where I've had to stitch it back together again, notably in the shoulders and in the lining at the bottom of it. I've been looking for a new one in my size for over a year now, but all of them are incredibly out of my price range. Burlington Coat Factory and Gordman's both had really nice ones that I wanted, but even though she offered to, I was never going to ask Daisy to spend $70-90 on a new coat for me. Ever. The ones I really wanted weren't in my size anyway. Stuff like that. Daisy was more than willing to get me anything I needed, and I love and adore her for that, but it's not necessary to spend that much money on me when I can wear my current coat until it falls apart or switch to my leather jacket or trenchcoat. This is just one example, of course -- there were many things we saw yesterday like this which she was more than willing to purchase for me but I said no to.

We did both purchase Powerball tickets for tonight's drawing, though. Fingers crossed.

Anyway.

We didn't get back to her house last night until well after dark, and neither of us had eaten. The plan was to get something to eat, sit down for a bit and decompress, and then pack up and get on the road. I was exhausted by this point and somewhat cranky, and so was Daisy; her feet were hurting her because of all the walking we'd done through all of those stores. I was pretty much along for the ride on that, as I told her numerous times -- the only place I really asked to stop at was Big Lots, because, well, it's Big Lots. The rest of those places were Daisy's idea, and I told her we could do whatever she wanted.

We really didn't find a whole lot anyway.

We spent a bit of time with her parents before eating and heading out. Daisy was tired, and I told her if she got us to York (about 1/3 of the way home, maybe 1/4 even) that she could sleep and I'd take us the rest of the way. I knew she desperately wanted sleep, and the trip is basically a straight shot from York anyway. The trip to York is what's tricky for me -- highways, exits, cities, etc that I can't navigate because I don't know them like she does. Get us out of the Omaha and Lincoln areas, and I'm fine to get us the rest of the way here. I say this because Nebraska streets and roads and interstates are supremely fucking confusing to me. She's used to it; it's her stomping ground, and she's been driving around these areas ever since she got her license, but I haven't. I don't know where the hell I'm going or how, since the highways up there are like six-lane highways with people merging from both sides at all times, and I have horrible night vision anyway. I let Daisy deal with that, since she knows what she's doing.

We made it to York shortly before 10PM. In York, we always stop at the Walmart -- it's right off the highway, and gives us a good spot for a break/to use the bathroom/etc. Except this was the night of Black Friday. And as you may recall from earlier, Walmart had a ton of really cheap DVDs and Blu-rays on their Black Friday sales, as they do every year. This year's selection was much better than most, though as of last night I was too tired to remember what exactly was on it. I also knew that if I found anything I wasn't going to be the dick who made his fiancee pay for it, so I'd be breaking out the credit card.

I have experience with Black Friday shopping, sad to say. I don't like it, necessarily, but I do have experience with it -- especially in the bigger chain stores like Walmart and Target. I know that every year, Walmart will put the same kinds of stuff on sale for Black Friday, and it's those things that I zero in on if I'm interested. I also know that the Black Friday deals there aren't just the "five hours only, get in early" sorts of deals, but they're "while supplies last" and will remain on sale at that price until they run out or until they officially take the stuff off the shelves after the weekend. When it comes to their DVDs and the like, each store is stocked with tens of thousands of them because they're a) cheap, and b) people really, really want them. Every year they do something like 1,000 titles in varying price ranges, from $1.96 to $9.96. The more expensive ones are the new movies that have been released in the past two or three months at the most, where the cheaper ones are older films from the past year or two (or much older, depending on the selection). If I'm in a Walmart on the weekend after Black Friday, generally I'll find a few of them I like if I pass by the racks, but don't spend hours looking for them or anything (it's not like I have a ton of time to watch anything anyhow). I usually look at the DVDs, glance at the electronics, and get myself a new pair of fleece pajama pants since they put those on for $5 or so during the Black Friday sale every single year.

Even when we got there around 10 or so, the store was far from empty. In fact, it was fairly busy still, which I wasn't expecting. Since Daisy's feet hurt so much, she got into the motorized cart and rode it around the store singing songs (which was hilarious in itself and did not embarrass me in the least because, well, it's Daisy). And, of course, the busiest part of the store? The DVD racks, which weren't nearly as empty as I expected them to be by that time of night. People were, in fact, sort of swarming them. As I was already tired, I didn't look through them with an incredible amount of interest, but I did find some which immediately stood out, and I sighed as I knew I would be breaking out my credit card. Here's what I found:

DVDs:
Prometheus
Cloud Atlas
Fight Club (because my ex stole the copy I had a few years back)
Die Hard with a Vengeance (translation: the last real Die Hard movie)
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
The A-Team

Blu-ray:
The Big Lebowski (deluxe "limited edition" version with a shitload of extras)
The Hangover Part III
Argo
Star Trek Into Darkness
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

I indeed have my problems with the new Star Trek film; that much should be evident with the mini-review I wrote here on it during this past summer. However, I'm hoping on a second watch I'll enjoy it a bit more. Who knows, really. Most of the others I haven't seen yet (with the obvious exceptions of Fight Club and The Big Lebowski, of course). I don't see movies that often unless Daisy and I go see them in the theater, and of all of the above listed films, the Star Trek movie was the only one she and I have gone to see in the theater since we've been together, so eh.


This is also the largest amount of Black Friday movies I've ever picked up, which -- when I'm so poor anyway -- makes me feel like even more of an asshole. Since I knew I'd be using my credit card anyway, I did get another pair of the fleece pajama pants (on sale, as predicted, for $6) and got a new pair of slippers as well (also $6). After a certain point, I really just wanted to say "fuck it" and get whatever I wanted. I can't tell you how sick I am of being poor all the time. I want to be able to have some little luxury on occasion, something that takes my mind off of how horrible my lot in life is when it comes to everything but Daisy. I mean, I can't afford a new car, I can't afford a fancy phone or big screen TV, but I can afford a few movies to take me out of the miserable rut of a life I'm in for a few hours at a time, even if I have to pay them off of my credit card slowly.

I used my Discover card for the first time -- its limit was, ironically, upped this past week to $2800, meaning last night's movie and pants purchases were just a tiny drop in the bucket, especially with how cheap those movies were. Still, it sort of rubs me the wrong way to be spending money I don't really have right now, even if I can or need to pay off the card balance slowly. I'll already be paying off my Citi Card slowly because of my car insurance in December anyway; the car insurance is something like $300, and I really can't afford to just drop that all at once.

Once in the car again, Daisy passed out after about twenty minutes of my driving, and we didn't stop until we hit Concordia -- which is about 90 minutes from York (and, finally, in Kansas). We got drinks and used the bathroom at the gas station there, and then twenty minutes after that she was asleep again once we were on the road. She slept until I got us back to Newton about two hours later, around 2AM...and promptly (accidentally) spilled my big cup of gas station coffee all over her seat once we got here, requiring her to spend about 20 minutes sopping it up with one of my towels. While I decompressed with my computer and made sure the house and the cats were okay, putting away all of the stuff I'd brought home and starting a few loads of laundry from the trip, she made herself tired enough to sleep by watching Netflix on her phone, and I joined her in bed a few hours later, around 5AM. We slept until around noon, and then she got up, I made her waffles for breakfast, and she went home.

That was our trip, really. There are a few other little things I didn't mention before, though; Dad knew we were going to Goodwill, so he wanted us to make a donation. I assume the donation was going to be a pair of shoes, a four-slice toaster, and a set of flannel sheets -- all of which he asked me if I wanted first, because "charity starts with family," he said -- and the shoes fit perfectly, I could always use a set of sheets, and my toaster is old, two slots only, and only works half the time...so problem solved there. I brought those all home. The shoes are really nice and have only been worn once or twice; they're dressier shoes that are leather and have great arch support, so I can't wait to wear them to teach in this week. He didn't like them because of the way the ankle area cut into/against his foot, but it wasn't a problem for me.

Plans are being made for Christmas, but unfortunately I'll be alone here on my birthday as Daisy has to work and it's on a Friday this year. Daisy's oldest sister, sister's husband, and their two boys (one of whom is still an infant) will be in for Christmas, so I'll get to see them again (and finally meet the husband of that group, who I have not yet met -- and who is the "minister" for our wedding) when I do make it back up there then. Daisy has apparently already discussed with her parents to do a "birthday party" of sorts for me on December 26, since I'll be spending my birthday alone; that includes me being able to pick a dinner and a cake/pie/whatever to be made for me in my honor, apparently. I told her it wasn't necessary in the least; it's not like I'm special or anything like that, or require any sort of pomp and circumstance, but she told me that it was settled and not to argue with her, so okay. Whatever she wants to do, I guess.

There's a lot of stuff I have to take care of between now and then, though; I have to finish my grading tonight and tomorrow at the latest, and I have to take care of my classes' work this week. If I'm lucky, I won't have to be there all day on Thursday as I plan to knock out all of the oral presentations for my 210 students on Tuesday night. Really, I desperately just want to be done with everything possible so that I can crawl into my proverbial hole for a few weeks and not care about anything else that's happening around me in the outside world. I told Daisy that since we're not doing a "big Christmas" this year, there are maybe a few other little things I'll get her, but I don't know -- I tend to be pretty creative for Christmas stuff (hence the tie-dyeing I did last year) but even that requires more money than I currently have available. I'll have to see what I can do and have time to do between now and then.

Timeframes, Part I

At noon, Daisy told me that she'd not yet been to bed and that she was still cleaning the house before she comes down here to make our trip for Omaha.

For those of you who have not been reading the blog that long, yes, I have a car. It's a 1996 Monte Carlo Z34 with over 230,000 miles on it (it passed that mark last week). It needs an oil change, will need new front tires in another year or so, and its transmission occasionally gives me some issues. While I do my best to take care of it, and it's reliable enough to drive 200 miles a week back and forth for my teaching career on two different campuses, it is not reliable enough to drive to Omaha and back. Well, okay, it may be, but I don't trust it -- and neither does Daisy nor her parents. It was decided long ago (and not by me, but by Daisy and her parents) that for any trips to Omaha, Daisy would come get me and bring me back. It's incredibly inconvenient, yes, but her car also gets double the gas mileage mine does, it isn't figuratively falling apart, and I generally pay for the gas used when I can afford to do so. So, that's what we do. It's a lot of driving, yes, but it's also about the only reliable way for us to travel. We considered flying me up there and back, but the flight costs as well as the costs of leaving my car in long-term parking at the airport were extremely prohibitive to do so. Until we're married and have a steady dual-income household so that I can get a more reliable, worry-free vehicle, this is what we have to deal with.

It sucks, yes, but it would also extremely suck were I to have my car blow a major part on the side of the road on the way to or from Omaha, in the middle of a straight stretch with nothing around me but wheat and corn fields for as far as the eye can see, when I don't have AAA, I don't have towing coverage, and I don't have the money to repair it or get a new vehicle. My car is my livelihood; without it, I can't get to and from work, I can't make any money, and I'd be homeless within a month or two. That's why I hold it together like the Millennium Falcon and keep it running as best I can. I can afford nothing else, and it's not like I have a wealthy benefactor somewhere who would be able to swoop in and pay for car repairs or buy me a new one. It's what I've got.

Over the past day or so I've been trying to take care of what needs to be done in the house before I secure everything, lock it down, and go to Omaha. This not only includes laundry and minor cleaning, but getting as much of my stuff graded as possible so that I don't return to a mountain of work to do when I get back home (that's probably going to be inevitable regardless). It also includes getting supplies for the trip so that the cats will be well fed and watered, and taking care of paying all of the bills I have as I won't return until Friday. Here's what I've accomplished so far:

• Finished grading all of the 210 final projects, at half an hour each (roughly) as they're all 15 pages or so
• Finished grading all of my 101 and 011 students' journals
• Did all of my laundry and packed 80% of the stuff I need to bring with me on my journey
• Cleaned out the fridge, both in eating and in tossing old stuff, so that there's nothing that sits there and goes bad while I'm gone
• Fed the cats
• Told my mother the travel timeframe (as well as got a rough confirmation of it from Daisy, as she's Daisy, and operates on Daisy Standard Time)
• Paid the rent and electric bill, officially leaving me with less money than I had before I got paid on Friday
• Took out the trash so that it doesn't sit in the cans for another week

And here's what I have left to do between now and when I leave...

•  Go to Walmart and get supplies for the trip (sinus meds, cigarettes, more litter for the cats, etc)
• Secure the house, put car in garage, lock garage doors
• Ready the cats' room (give them extra food/water/litter)
• Finish packing the rest of the stuff for the trip, including dress clothing for engagement photos, my laptop and other electronics, deodorant/toothbrush, and phone/charger
• Shower and trim up the beard
• Empty the coffee pot, so it doesn't sit there with half a pot of coffee in it all week
• Turn the furnace down low so that it doesn't run 24/7 while I'm gone (the cold snap these last two weeks or so made my electric bill double this month)
• Clean the kitchen and scrub down the stove/wash any dishes I have left

Daisy's original plan was to come home from work, sleep for a few hours, and then come down here around 3PM -- arriving here at roughly 8 or so -- then we'd come back up there tomorrow morning after a night of rest. This plan has been modified twice since then; for one, she's still awake and cleaning/tidying up her room and the upstairs bathroom for my arrival (even though I told her it wasn't necessary at all) and says she'll take a power nap before she leaves, though she should still leave around the same time...and for two, we have to turn around and come back tonight, not in the morning.

Daisy has a job interview tomorrow at her current company; she applied for a higher position there, and with her track record since she's been working there, she's likely to get said position. They scheduled the interview for tomorrow, so we couldn't feasibly stay here tonight and go back up in the morning -- we'd have no time to get there and have her be able to make it to the interview. Because of that wrench being thrown into our plans, we're a bit rushed in our travels today. I'm also concerned about Daisy's lack of sleep -- she's been running herself ragged, and hasn't been sleeping a whole lot. I told her that I'd drive us back up there if she needed me to due to the amount of exhaustion she'll be dealing with by the time she gets here, and I'm happy to do so, but we are now operating on a timeframe that can't really be altered any more than it already has been because of that interview, so it's a get-up-and-go sort of thing we'll have to deal with between now and tomorrow morning.

As mentioned before, we have a lot of plans while we're there. Adding tomorrow to that, with her interview, we are having at least two different sets of "engagement pictures" taken, we have to go to thrift stores and the like to see if I can find a jacket for the wedding, she wants us to go to Dave & Buster's again (which believe me, I am perfectly fine with) and then on Thursday we have our Thanksgiving dinner -- for which Dad and I have to make the turkey since Mama will be out of commission with her knee surgery the day before (I have no idea how to cook a turkey). Then, on Friday, we're probably going to do some sort of Black Friday shopping, have the second set of pictures taken, and we'll be coming home that night. There is so much to do and so little time to do it. We have to come home on Friday because Daisy goes back to work on Saturday night and because I have to be able to have some time  to finish grading through what I have left (drafts and rewrites of papers I have for all three classes, probably fifteen or so of them in all).

I am glad, at least, that I'm not still sick. Well, I don't think I am, anyhow.

I slept fine last night; while I still have congestion in my nose and face today, it's within normal parameters for any given day (given my allergies, of course, coupled with the dry air in the house from the furnace), and while my face will occasionally still ache a little, I feel normal. My ears aren't clogged up, and everything seems to have drained out for the most part. I still have the antibiotics on standby if it all starts to come back with a vengeance, and I'll be getting more sinus pills when at Walmart this afternoon/evening. However, I seem to be perfectly fine, or at least as fine as I get when it comes to my normal state of health. Am I still tired? Yes, of course. But that's more due to stress and being burnt-out overall than anything else. How I can't wait until after finals week when I can sleep as much as I want and won't have to set my alarm for 5AM for well over a month. The spring semester doesn't start until January 21.

I haven't heard anything else about my classes next semester other than what I knew last week about the ones I'll get; obviously I'm more than likely not going to hear anything else about anything school related until I return to campus on the 2nd. As for my forbearance stuff with my loans, my account balance has been updated on the website, and I figured out what was wrong with it before -- it was indeed because I was in grace, and I requested the forbearance to start before the grace period ended. They can't and won't do that according to their directions. The payment is due on the 11th, and they need up to 10 business days to process the request -- so I either need to mail it today, or I need to be able to fax it ASAP from Daisy's parents' house if their machine is up and running. The new forms are printed and ready to go, and they do it on my gross income, which my loan payment is 34% of every month -- again, much more than the 20% I need to qualify for it.

[EDIT] Fax machine at Daisy's house isn't up and running; printed copy mailed no more than five minutes ago, with seconds to spare before the mailman came. 

So, for the moment, that's taken care of.

"If you bring an extra copy, we can fax it, too, just in case," Daisy told me, referring to going somewhere like a copy center who had a fax machine.

"I have extra copies of all the documents," I told her; "if I need to, I'll fax another copy from work when I get back on the 2nd just to be safe."

The timeframe is pretty close; they need ten business days to process it. I doubt it'll get there before Friday the 29th (conservative estimate, plus Thanksgiving mail holiday), which means they'd have December 2-6 and 8-11 to process it; that's nine days. My payment is due on the 11th, so I'm hoping that they don't take those full ten business days to get everything taken care of. I'll more than likely fax a second copy on the 2nd when I get back to campus just to be safe so that they have it in their possession and can be working on it then. It's still going to be really tight and really close to the date, but I can't help that when they wouldn't even update my account until this week. It took two weeks for them to even receive it in the mail last time, and then another week or so to process it. I don't have that time this time around because they gave me less than a month's window between grace ending and the request to be sent/received/approved...which yes, is a shitty thing to do.

It is important that you continue to make payments until we approve your forbearance request. If your loan(s) is or becomes delinquent, collection activities will occur until the forbearance is approved.

Well, that's nice, but I can't really do much else than I already have, yo. I'm poor. That's also why I'm faxing a second form when I get back to campus. I want to make sure that it's in somebody's hands and that they're working on it before that due date.  Nothing else really matters right now but that.

For now, however, I've done all I can and it's taken care of on my end -- I now just have to wait and see, and in the meantime, try to relax somewhat. With no more roadblocks in the way, there is no reason I shouldn't be approved this time around.  I also have the option to postpone a month's payment if I request it three business days in advance before it's due -- which would be on December 5 or so at the latest, as the payment's due on the 11th and the 8th, 9th, and 10th would be those business days. I hate cutting it so close, but I have no other real options if I don't hear anything back by the 5th. My next paycheck comes on the 13th, and I don't have enough in my bank account right now to cover the first loan payment -- not to mention that I'll actually need to use some of what's in my account right now for groceries and bills. That's sort of how life works. Also keep in mind that my car insurance comes due again in December as well, and I have to pay that with my credit card (and pay it off slowly) because I'm so poor. I don't get any more paychecks after December 20 for at least a month, I'm guessing, perhaps longer. Here's hoping I get a lot of money from various sources for Christmas, because I will need it in order to survive between semesters. I have to eat, the cats have to eat, and if it remains this cold, the furnace has to be on. There's only so much money I can actually save -- I still have to pay bills and the like; I can't get out of those no matter how broke I may be. I'm basically living paycheck to paycheck as it is.

Anyway.

I just asked Daisy for an updated timeframe, as it's now been two hours since I last heard from her on any of that, and she replied "Still workin' on it," implying that she's still cleaning.

"Honey, seriously, there's a point where you just need to give up on it, throw shit under the bed or in the corner, and worry about it later -- especially because I don't care and because we're on a schedule because of your interview and you haven't slept," I told her. "If you left now you wouldn't get here until almost 9, and even if we turned around immediately to come back we wouldn't get back until 4AM or so.

Why can't you reschedule the interview so you're not awake for like 30 hours, and why can't you just stop cleaning?"

I so absolutely, desperately don't give a shit at all about the state of Daisy's room or bathroom. At all. Really don't care. Don't care in the least. I don't understand why she wastes the time on it. It's me. She's seen my house. I don't clean anything I don't have to because I don't care, and I live here. I don't "gussy it up" for guests or when she's going to be down here for a few days. I don't understand her mindset or how she thinks she can stay awake indefinitely, because she can't. I've seen her sleep-deprived -- she can't function. Like, literally can't function; she breaks things, runs into things, falls down, etc. She can't drive down here like that. And when she does sleep after an extended period of wakefulness, she sleeps for fourteen hours straight. I'm not making that up. I've seen her do it. None of that is conducive to her having an interview tomorrow. And the clock is ticking.

It's really the fault of her scheduling that interview for tomorrow more than anything else; if I were her company, I would never schedule an interview, ever, during a holiday week -- especially not during a holiday week in which my interviewee had already requested days off from for travel purposes. Why she agreed to that day/time is beyond me. I know she's trying to better herself and our collective lot in life, yes, and I know it may sound selfish to bitch/moan about it, but it's not -- it's about her. She's running herself ragged to try to do everything in a set timeframe without sleep, and she can't do it. Something has to give. I've told her multiple times that the cleaning isn't important at all; kick shit out of the way and be done with it. She could've been down here already and we could've been on our way back to Omaha at this point had she just given up on the cleaning long ago.

"I haven't surpassed the time told you I was leaving by and I'm just going to slightly pass it. My room is done."

"I know, but you will not have slept. And let me tell you, even if you need me to drive some or most of the way back, there's no way I'll be able to stay awake until 4AM, love," I said. "I'm just worried about you."

"I know. I'll be fine."

[EDIT] She left the house bound for Kansas around 4PM, with an estimated arrival time of 9 or so.

I still worry about her, of  course. I would imagine I'll be making most of the drive back up there, at least until the I-80 interchange (as only she knows what exits and the like to take after that, and Omaha's highway system is really weird). In the time between now and then, I have to do the rest of the stuff around the house that needs to be done, such as the cat stuff and the trip to Walmart. I'd rather not put that off much longer.

I will update you when I have the chance; I may or may not blog from Omaha as I have a new OS on my laptop, and it depends on how fast said OS/browsers/etc run on the home network there.

 

Exhaustion

Fall semester: day seventy-one
Thanksgiving break: day four

Overall, I'm okay, I suppose.

This past weekend, more than anything else, has been a rest and recovery effort. For the past two days, I have been doing my best to shake this sinus infection which knocked me flat on Thursday and for most of Friday, and only now -- late Sunday night, after midnight (technically, Monday) before I go to bed -- am I beginning to feel mostly normal again. On Saturday I was feeling a lot better, but still had sinus pressure and a bit of pain here and there, and it began to move back into my ear. Today I had the occasional aching in the face and ear/Eustachian tubes, but for the most part it seemed to be draining out and trying to vacate the premises of my body -- due in no small part to the amount of decongestants and anti-allergy pills I've taken over the course of the past several days, no doubt. So, yes, I'm mostly okay.

But I am, however, exhausted.

As you know, the next two weeks are going to be really hectic and crazy for me. This week I'm traveling to Omaha and back for Thanksgiving, next week I'm giving a final exam, collecting two sets of final papers and proctoring Oral Presentations, and the Monday after that (two weeks from today) I'm giving another final exam. I still have two stacks of papers to grade even now, and half a stack of journals to grade and go through more than likely after I return home from Omaha. I also have some rewrites of other papers that I desperately need to grade through and update on Blackboard. I would've had most of this done by now had I not felt like absolute dogshit for the past several days -- but, after all, when it feels like your face is going to explode from the inside out, it's a mite hard to concentrate on things like proposals and grant request projects.

Because I've been feeling sick, I haven't exactly slept well. As I detailed in my last post, I can't really sleep on my left side. That's my most comfortable side, yes, but it's also the side of my sinus infection, and sleeping on it would mean everything would drain back into that side of my face and my ear, possibly re-infecting myself or making it all worse or more persistent instead of draining out of me. As of right now, I have antibiotics on standby status -- I'd rather not use them unless absolutely necessary, as my body tends to get an immunity to many antibiotics quite quickly, or (worst-case scenario) I get an allergic reaction to them as I did with the last ones I had to take last fall. Ear and sinus infections have plagued me my entire life; I'm guessing that my children will probably be the same way.

To those ends, I've been taking care of my household tasks and my grading slowly -- much more slowly than I would otherwise. In preparing for a trip, short or long, there's a lot of little things I always need to do around the house to ensure that the cats will be okay and that the house will be locked down and secure, and I've been working through those things much slower since I've been ill. There's a lot of things I need to take care of in the next 24 hours, for example, and I'm just feeling overwhelmed and tired to the point where I'm not sure whether I'll be able to finish them all. I have to go out sometime in the afternoon to get some supplies for the trip -- more cat litter, cigarettes, etc -- and the thought of it just sounds daunting and even more exhausting. I know part of that is because I'm so tired as it is, but part of it is because I desperately need some true downtime, and despite it being Thanksgiving, I'm not really going to get much of that even when I'm gone in Omaha for a few short days. We have plans for every day that I'm there, Daisy's mother is having surgery on her other knee the day before Thanksgiving, and I always have trouble sleeping in Daisy's bed because it's so different than mine is. Tonight is going to be the last night of quality, uninterrupted sleep I'll have for the better part of a week.

Residuals

I'm fine.

No, really.

Last night when I went to bed, I had a lot -- and I mean a lot -- of trouble sleeping. The sinus pain was maddening; it would not go away, it would not lessen or fade. It was just there. And I couldn't do anything about it. I'd taken all of the meds I could. I'd probably drank a gallon of water throughout the day to help thin and loosen any and all mucus in my head and face. Nothing was making anything feel better at all. I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep because of the pain, which not only felt like it was spreading, but moving back into my ears. That was bad. Very bad. Once I get it in my ears, it's all over -- immediate antibiotics required, no ifs, ands or buts.

I sat up the bed to where I was propped up somewhat -- on three pillows -- under my neck and head. My logic was that if I slept on my back with my head propped up at an angle, everything would drain downward, out of my head and ears, and down my throat in the night. It's helped me before when I've had a sinus infection -- it's about the only thing that does work. The problem is that I don't sleep on my back. It's really difficult for me to do so. I am a stomach and/or stomach/side sleeper. Any other position isn't comfortable. When it came to last night, I was so exhausted and in so much pain that no position was going to be comfortable anyway.

It took a good hour of laying there and staying as still as possible in pain before I started to doze off. Sleeping in pain is not fun. I had to get up twice during the night to pee -- probably because of all of the water I'd been drinking -- and each time the pain was a little lessened, so I knew I was doing something right.

At some point I awoke and the pain was gone, so I rolled over onto my right side and assumed my normal sleeping position. The sinus infection was on the left side, so laying on my right would allow it to drain out of there and, hopefully, out of everything. Eventually, I did sleep some peaceful sleep.

When I awoke this morning -- a mere six or seven hours after going to bed -- I was once more on my back. I had the presence of mind not to sleep on my bad side, even if it was the most comfortable way to sleep, and...I was okay. No pain. My throat ached from what had drained down it in the night, and my nasal passages were once more stuffy (a sign of my allergies coming back to normal) but no sinus pressure/pain. I had heartburn, but getting a stomachful of mucus in the overnight hours will do that to a person, I suppose. I got up, swigged some DayQuil to keep that shit on its way out, and took two more Mucinex sinus pills.

I've been okay all day. There's some residual pressure and congestion in my sinuses and in my ears, but nothing outside the usual. The vast majority of it drained in the night and has stayed gone. My teeth, face, and jaw no longer hurt in the least. I think I'm all right, crisis averted and all that. I'll still take some decongestants throughout the day to push it the rest of the way out, but as of right now I'm fine. Feelin' normal.

I'm still exhausted. I didn't sleep well at all, and that shit knocked me out of commission all day yesterday, so I'm behind on my grading schedule and haven't gotten anything done yet. I desperately need some relaxation and recuperation time, time to sleep normally, heal up, and rest up. I have a long week ahead of me next week, a week full of travel and family stuff, as well as engagement photography and who knows what else -- and I had a day of my downtime cut short because of sickness.

Better get going.

The Feast of St. Brandon

Fall semester: day seventy
Thanksgiving break: day one

Last night's 210 class was a blast.

I mentioned that, because I'm a nice guy and because their last project is so extensive, at the beginning of the 210 class when I created the lesson plan timeline for my students, I worked in that the last day of class before Thanksgiving break could be a "potluck dinner" night in which all of us could bring something in and we could all share in the good food as our own miniature "Thanksgiving" in class as we discussed the last assignment, the Oral Presentation.

I also mentioned that over the past two weeks or so, I brought this up in class to quite the lukewarm reception. Lots of "ehs" and "umms," hemming and hawwing, and a general less-than-enthusiastic vibe settled across the classroom, especially as many of them were getting really stressed out and burnt-out as the semester began to draw to a close (including their professor).

I brought it up in class again on Tuesday night and tried to make it fun -- who's bringing what; it's not required, just for fun, etc. They seemed a bit more open to it then. I had several students volunteer to cook different things, bake different things, bring in drinks, etc. A plan was coming together. I was thrilled.

I was not as thrilled then, however, as I was once things started coming in last night.

Of course, I was there first -- I always am -- and I'd purchased four different types of chewy granola bars (big boxes, too), and had brought in some plates/cups/towels so that we wouldn't be without. On the whiteboard, I wrote in large letters "Eat. Grow large with food." That's a Simpsons quote, by the way, in case you didn't know.

I should also mention that, as expected, it was fucking freezing last night, with constant 30-40mph winds and mist in the afternoon that froze on the cars once the temperature dropped enough and the wind had its way with it. The weather had predicted that mist turn over to ice and sleet and then snow by the evening hours. I had sent out an email to my 210 class that told them yes, class would go on as scheduled, so that I could avoid receiving twenty different "are we still having class?" emails. The ice/sleet/snow never came (not even now) but it was 52 when I got to West campus yesterday morning around 8:30, and by 6:30 that night it was 25. With that howling, horrible wind. It was still 25 for most of the day here; the warmest it's been today thus far has been 28.

But I'm getting off-track.

I didn't expect a lot of the students to show up due to the weather issues and because their big final projects were due -- I expected excuses and whining and general laziness from even the ones who said they planned to bring something to eat -- and I thought for the first part of class, I was right. At 7:15, the time class started, we had seven students out of twenty there.

However, six of those seven students had brought an enormous amount of food.

We had the pizzas that one of my students promised he'd bring. We had chicken crescent roll casserole. We had a massive crock pot full of cheese dip and two bags of nacho chips. Three 12-packs of soda. Two bags of potato chips. A massive container of brownies. A chocolate cake made with avocados instead of eggs (it was amaaaazing). A huge dish full of cookies. And, of course, my granola bars -- which seemed strangely out of place amongst all of the goodies.

And nobody was filling plates. Everyone was staring down at their desks.

"Well, come on folks," I said. "Come on up, fill your plates, get something to eat. Don't make me sit up here like a fatass and eat in front of you. Because, translation, I will sit up here like a fatass and eat in front of you."

Mind you, when I teach my days on West campus, I don't eat anything all day. I get there at 8:30 in the morning, and sometimes don't leave until 9:30 at night or later. I have a ritual of getting two cups of coffee from the machine in the lobby, each with three creamers and two sugars, and that's it. So, believe me, by the time my night class rolled around, I was hungry. As I don't normally eat until I get home (around 10 or so), this was as much a meal for me as anything was.

I think everyone was just shy. Once one or two people started getting up to get some food, all of them sort of formed a line and began making plates. Once everyone had their food and had settled down, I went over the Oral Presentation assignment -- as by that time it was around 7:40 and everyone who was coming to class was already there.

"The oral presentations start as soon as we get back from break," I said. "We sort of hit the ground running here. Now, here's how we can make it work, if everyone is game: there are 20 of you in this class. Of you 20, only about...eh, eighteen or so show up. Our class is scheduled to run from 7:20 to 10. Averaging about ten minutes per presentation, if we started at 7:20 exactly, we could get through sixteen of them. Now, there is another class in this room before this class--"

I, at this point, motioned to one of my good students who is in said class before mine.

"[Student] here is in that class. What time do they generally get out?"

"It really depends," he said, "but a lot of the time we get out waaaaaay early."

This is also true; that class is supposed to run until 7:15, but I've been in my room to set stuff up at shortly after 6 before, and it's been long empty before then.

"So here's what we can do. We can't stay late -- this class is the last class of the night in the building, and it's also the one that ends the latest. As soon as 10PM rolls around, the office staff shuts everything down and lock up for the night, and they won't want to stay late. At all. We'd be holding them up. So, here's the alternative... How many of you can get here before this class normally begins at 7:20?"

A good 80% of my students in the room raised their hands.

"Yesssss. Excellent. So here's the deal. [Student] will come get me when that class lets out that night, and I'll be in here from then on. Could be 6, could be 6:30, whatever -- it doesn't matter, really. Come when you can. If you can get here early, go for it; if you can't get here until we'd normally start at 7:20, that's fine too -- it's not like we won't be here. When you people start showing up, we'll start knocking these presentations out, one by one, until we be done. If we do that? We get them all taken care of in one night and then none of us have to come back in on that Thursday night. Our class ends as soon as the last presentation ends. Thoughts? Questions? Can we do this?"

Everyone nodded and yessed at me, and were quite happy.

"Here's the caveat to that, though," I added. "Do not miss class that night. Do not. If you don't show up, and everyone else but you does their presentations, class is still over -- too bad for you. I'm not staying here all day/night on that Thursday when I don't have to, and I'm not bringing everyone else back in here that Thursday night for one or two presentations, especially when for them, class is already over and all of their grades have been calculated and posted. If you miss class that night? You'll have to come find me during my office hours on main campus on Wednesday morning or after I give my 101 students their final exam over here on that Thursday morning if you want your points. No exceptions. It's totally on you if you miss this. So show up that Tuesday night and be 'ready to go,' as they say."

They understood.

On that Thursday morning, December 5, it's the last day of classes for the fall semester. From 9:15 to 11:05 AM, I'll be administering the final exam to my West campus English 101 students, because I can do that when I teach classes on the West campus. I plan to stick around for at least a little while afterwards, not just to grade those exams myself, but to give any of those wayward students the opportunity to come to my office before I go back home for the weekend. If I don't have any of those wayward students, then once I give the exam and my 101 faithfuls all finish it, I'll just drive home and grade them there in my leisure. Everything else, at that point, will have been graded and returned to the rest of my classes, and the exams will be all that's left. On the Monday afternoon of the 9th, my 011 students will take their own final exam, I'll trade all of my exams with my grading partner afterwards, get them back and do whatever paperwork is necessary -- and, hopefully, by that night I will be completely done with the fall semester once all of my grades are entered onto Banner. I'll never beat my record time of being done by 4:30PM on the first day of finals week, but I'll more than likely be damn close to it, thanks to the fact that I will have already graded my 101 class's exams.

In other news? I have a sinus infection.

It is not pleasant.

Generally, I get a sinus infection about once or twice a year. Sometimes they're mild, sometimes they're terrible. This one, so far, is pretty in-between. On Tuesday morning, I woke up with sinus pressure and congestion. This isn't unusual, given my propensity for allergies this time of year. Pressure and congestion is manageable; some Sudafed and blowing my nose multiple times generally knocks most of it out, and I can go about my day. By Wednesday afternoon, my face was beginning to mildly ache, and my teeth were sensitive (as when I get a sinus infection, it's always in those sinuses, right in the middle of my face) on my left side. When I get that familiar ache and teeth sensitivity -- both upper and lower teeth -- that's the telltale sign that I'm getting a sinus infection of some sort. I took sinus/pain pills and the aches and pain went away for the most part, and I went about my day normally.

By yesterday morning it was much worse. The entire left side of my face/teeth/jaw hurt, and I knew it was a sinus infection at that point. My nose was not congested, and my allergies had decided to abandon me for a day or so -- it was all up in my face and above my teeth, and it was terrible. The pressure in my face was throbbing; if I sat still in a quiet room I could hear, and feel, the individual throbs along with my heartbeat, feel every nerve in my teeth and jaw jangling as the sinus pressure pressed against all my teeth and the floor of my sinuses. My nasal passages were clear -- nothing would come out but air if I blew my nose, because believe me, I tried. I took more sinus/pain pills and followed them up an hour later, before I left the house for the day, with Tylenol -- in an attempt to be able to function normally while I was stuck on West campus all day. However, like an idiot -- even though I meant to -- I completely forgot to take more sinus/pain pills with me to school.

I taught my 101 class that morning and I was fine; I figured that hopefully, what I'd taken would knock it out, or at least begin to send it packing. When I sat in my office yesterday afternoon, in the quiet, and tried to grade through papers and journals, the pain slowly came back, increasing in intensity until it was nearly unbearable and I couldn't concentrate on anything but how much it hurt. I composed myself and went to the main office, asking if they had any Tylenol or Advil or any sort of pain pills in the stockroom down there, as it was either that or drive to the gas station across the street in extreme facial pain to get something to stop the hurting. The administrator lady there gave me Advil, which I happily took two of. About an hour later, the pain lessened and lessened and finally went away, and I could fully concentrate again and finish my grading.

By the time that evening class rolled around and we had our potluck feast, the Advil was wearing off. My face was beginning to ache again, but it wasn't bad. I left campus around 9PM once we'd cleaned up everything in the room and had distributed everything left behind by the students who'd brought stuff in but didn't want to take it home. By the time I got home around 10, the pain/pressure was full-blown once more and had engulfed the entire left side of my face/jaws/teeth again. The first thing I did was take more sinus and pain pills -- I wanted the pain to end. I don't care about the pressure; when it doesn't hurt, I can't feel it, and my nasal passages were/are clear, but the pain is simply unbearable. It was the worst it had been yet, and nothing I did would make it go away. I waited, nerves jangling horrifically, my face muscles spasming and twitching because it hurt so much, and I held my hand to my face and softly sobbed, rocking back and forth on the couch, begging aloud for the medicine to just kick in so that it would stop. An hour later, nothing was different. I didn't know why the pills weren't working. I took another Tylenol and waited some more. By midnight, nothing had really changed, and I took two aspirin. Something had to work.

For those of you who never get sinus infections, it is not the worst pain imaginable, but it is pretty bad if it gets infected in the right spot -- usually the maxillary sinus right above the top row of teeth -- and it really feels like your face is going to explode from the inside out.

You won't always feel the pressure -- but you will feel the pain. It will radiate through your teeth, across your facial bones back towards your ear, down the jaw...every nerve will jangle and shake and hurt like someone is punching you in the cheek with brass knuckles over and over and over again with every single throb. Your teeth and jaw will tremble from the pain unless you physically hold them still. Your facial bones, though they are hard and...well, bony, are still flexible -- if you feel them with your fingers on both cheeks above your tooth line, you can feel that the infected side is slightly bulged outward more under the skin due to the sinus pressure and mucus.

And the worst part is...you can't do anything about it.

I have had some truly horrific sinus infections in the past, mind you. Some of them have been so bad that the pressure and terrible pain comes in waves -- waves of pain and pressure so severe that I've punched myself in the face repeatedly just trying to get some of it to dislodge and drain, because punching myself in the face hurts less. The pain is so bad that I've resorted to screaming at times, usually into a pillow (so that the neighbors don't think I'm murdering someone and call the cops) because there's just no other way to deal with it. I once had a sinus infection so bad that the only way I could get any of the pressurized mucus to dislodge and drain was by crying, a lot, loudly and forcefully, at the pain -- doing so was the only thing that would open up my nasal passages ever so slightly, and that was my chance to blow my nose as many times as I could, as hard as I could, to drain anything/everything that would come out. When I did, I could feel the pressure release -- it felt like, and sounded like inside my head -- someone opening a bottle of soda: the pshhhhhhh of carbonation escaping, pressures equalizing and normalizing for that moment. After I could blow out everything that came out, I felt fine for about forty minutes or so, and then slowly, slowly, the pressure and pain would come back as my sinuses once more filled with mucus that I didn't even know my body was capable of producing, and I'd have to repeat the cycle. This went on for many hours until I was so exhausted that I took a Lortab (yeah, back when I had those) to kill as much of the pain as possible, and went to sleep while I physically could.

Yeah. Sometimes they get really bad.

Last night, the pain finally, finally started to subside around 1AM -- almost four hours after I took the first sinus/pain pills -- and I slowly started to feel a bit more normal again. However, I didn't know how long I'd feel okay. Daisy was asleep; she'd been asleep for hours, and I was indeed exhausted -- I'd been on campus all day and night, and yet I couldn't sleep because I had been in so much pain I could barely function. It was nothing compared to what I described above, but still, it was not fun. By 2 or so, the pain had gone away completely, and I felt fine again -- but I didn't trust it. I went downstairs and ran some laundry, as that's one of the big tasks I had to do before I finish readying the house for my trip to Omaha next week, and fuck it, I was awake anyhow, so I might as well use my time wisely, right?

By 3 I was really, really tired. I couldn't stay awake anymore and the pain was mostly gone. Daisy woke up (again, she sleeps weird hours when she's not at work) and I talked to her briefly before I went to bed. As I was readying for bed, I felt it slowly beginning to come back -- that ache in my teeth was there again, but dull. I took another set of sinus/pain pills (which ended up being my last ones), since it had been six hours since I took the others, and hoped that it would get me through the night and allow me to sleep. I also hoped/begged/prayed/etc. that in the night, as I slept, all of it would drain and I would feel normal again this morning.

That was not the case.

At 7:10 AM, the sinus pressure and pain was so bad that it woke me out of a dead sleep. I staggered upstairs and took two Sudafed and three aspirin, as I had exhausted my supply of sinus/pain pills a mere four hours before. I went back downstairs and was able to fall back asleep after the aspirin slowly made the pain fade away into nothingness. I got up again, finally, at 11:45 with no pain or ill effects, and I was able to blow my nose to begin dislodging whatever had drained into my nasal passages during my sleep. This was short-lived. By 12:30 the aching/pain/pressure was slowly returning, and even though I'd caught it and realized it was happening, plying myself with more medicine, it again came back full-force and I had trouble functioning and concentrating. Daisy got to see this as I steadily got worse and worse while we were talking on Skype this afternoon. I told her I was fine, just in a lot of pain, and attempted to keep the conversation going with her as long as I could. It took another 90 minutes after taking the medications before I started to feel better at all, and even that was only moderately better -- by around 5PM it was rolling back around again, in its next wave, as the medicine completely wore off. She suggested I get a hot shower to see if it would make me feel better, and I did so. It did make me feel better after holding my face under the hottest water I could stand and then repeatedly blowing my nose in the shower over and over. The steam helped. The hot water helped. But not for long.

The entire past two days now have been these repeating cycles: medicine kicks in, feel a little better, feel normal for two or three hours, medicine wears off slowly, pain comes back slowly, take more medicine, pain hits full-throttle until medicine kicks in again, repeat. It's like clockwork. The only thing that allows me to feel normal, and only for a short few hours at a time, is being heavily medicated on decongestants, aspirin, Tylenol, and Mucinex Sinus. All together, usually.

Physically, I'm fine from the neck down.

From the neck up? I've had to stop-and-start this post no less than three times tonight because of those full-throttle pain cycles. They've now gotten so bad that nothing I do seems to stop the pain or even lessen it -- I can't take any more aspirin or Tylenol tonight or I'll risk overdose, yet what I've taken has done absolutely nothing. Same goes for decongestants and the like; I can't take any more of them, yet the ones I have taken aren't seeming to help clear out what's in there now. What's worse is that the meds I have taken may actually be working, and when they completely wear off, my pain may shoot off the charts into the screaming in agony category again and there's absolutely nothing I can do about that. Nothing. I am so exhausted, totally so, but I am -- right now -- currently in so much pain that I would never, ever be able to fall asleep. That's how terrible it is.

Perhaps this may not be a "mild" sinus infection as I originally thought, but one of the really, really bad ones, as it has seemed to get worse and worse as the days this week have progressed forward. As I have been writing this tonight, it seems to be trying to move onward and spread into my ears, which would be really bad, even more painful, and would absolutely need antibiotics to fix. Daisy has a run of Bactrim she got specifically for this sort of thing popping up (in either me or her) but she won't be here for a few more days, and it's too short of a timeframe to mail it.

I will, of course, keep you updated on how I feel.

Small Things

Fall semester: day sixty-nine
Last day before Thanksgiving Break (for me, anyhow)

I have a few little updates here and there about some things going on in my life that I mentioned before, some of them really important.

The first is that it was confirmed to me yesterday morning that I'll have at least three classes next semester again -- the administrator lady who plots out all of our courses and the rooms for them told me as much when I was in the office to check my mailbox yesterday.

"Your classes on main campus are downstairs in 109," she said. Classes; plural. "28 students so far."

"Awesome," I said, ecstatic. "I haven't taught here in [department building] since...my first semester teaching? Four years ago. Yeah. The very first class I ever taught was here, and then I never had another one here after that. Did I get the 102 class over on West campus too?"

"The morning one, Tuesday-Thursday?" she asked. "Yep."

"Even more awesome," I said. "I'll have to tell my 101s I teach over there now. I knew [West campus administrator] had requested that 102 on the same days/times my 101 class is being held over there now, and my 101s wanted to sign up for it if I was to be teaching it as well. Now I can confirm that to them."

So that's settled. Well, mostly. Nothing is ever set in stone until I have access to my rosters, of course, but I'm no longer nervous about knowing what I'll teach and (roughly) when I'll be doing it. Because I have 28 students so far on main campus for the spring, I know that it's two classes at least -- composition classes are capped at 25. What classes they'll be, I don't know -- could be two more 011 classes, two more 101 or 102 classes, or even two more 210 classes. Or a mix of any of those. They could be two-mornings-a-week classes, or they could be one-night-a-week classes. One or the other or both could be 8-week classes. It's really sort of up in the air until I know what they are, but it's unimportant overall -- I've taught all of them before and have lesson plans for all of them ready to go, with only (mostly) minor modifications necessary for dates and reading assignments.

I'll get more details, of course, as everything gets finalized and penciled in over the next few weeks. At this rate, I may know everything I need to know about next semester by Christmas or so, which would be great. It would give me more time to plot out everything I need, and more time to reconstruct my syllabi and lesson plans so that I'm not rushing through those in the middle of January.

Today is my last really long day of the semester until the last week of classes -- as you may recall, I've canceled my Monday and Tuesday classes next week so that a) I can go to Omaha for Thanksgiving, b) so that I can have time to grade the mountain of assignments I have to grade, and c) so that all of my students can have that week to finish up their final assignments unimpeded by the time constraints of the class schedule. My 011s have a final paper to do, one that I assigned on Monday. My 101s are in the middle of their final research papers, and we're workshopping them this morning. My 210s turn in their last big paper assignment tonight (some of them already have it done and turned in), but they're working over next week to turn that assignment into a 5-10 minute "pitch" for oral presentations. Meanwhile, I have a stack of each class's previous papers to finish grading, as well as rewrites, journals from my 011s and 101s (about 35 or so in all) and anything/everything else that needs to be wrapped up between now and December 2 -- the day classes resume after break.

My time spent in Omaha will be relatively short -- three or four days at most -- because of all of that grading and travel involved, plus Daisy's work schedule. The day before Thanksgiving, Daisy's mother has surgery on her other knee (she did the first one earlier this year), so Mama will more than likely not really be joining in on the holiday dinner festivities. Daisy's sisters won't be there either -- one of them is coming in the weekend after I leave (I think) and the other isn't coming in until Christmas. Both of them live several hours from Omaha. The oldest one is in Colorado.

"So it's just going to be three of us for Thanksgiving dinner?" I asked. "You, me, and Dad?"

"Pretty much," Daisy replied.

Daisy and I have our own plans for a lot of the time I'll be up there anyway -- we're having two different "official" engagement photography sessions done, one outside and one inside. It is from these, I think, that we're making out the official wedding invitations. She also wanted to go back to Dave & Buster's one night while we're there, as we have a lot of tickets saved on her game card from last time. And, well, it's fun. It is possible that there may be some Black Friday shopping involved as well, but that depends on how much time or energy we have -- Daisy has to return to work Saturday night regardless of what we do, and I have to be home by then (obviously) because I'll teach Monday morning as always. So it's going to be hectic and we're going to be running around a lot while I'm up there, with the downside of not really having a lot of money to spare (if any) for shopping and the like. I get paid tomorrow, but 90% of that paycheck goes to the rent, which I have to mail out before I leave town...along with any other bills that come in between now and then.

I may have mentioned before (I can't remember) that because my 210 students' projects are due tonight and because we're not having class next week, tonight we could do a "potluck Thanksgiving dinner" thing in class if they wanted to, to celebrate what is really -- aside from the oral presentations -- our last real night of class. They originally seemed lukewarm to the idea, which sort of disappointed me, until I realized that most of them don't have time to eat dinner before my class -- they come to it straight from other classes both on West and/or main campus, or directly from work. When I mentioned this, they seemed a bit more gung ho about it (go figure). So, as we were finalizing plans for it on Tuesday night, many of them offered to do some outlandish things. By the end of class, I found that I had this on my tally of stuff people were planning to bring:

• Home-baked chicken crescent roll-ups(!)
• Homemade cookies
• Homemade brownies
• Several pizzas from Little Caesar's(!!)
• Sodas/water/juice/etc

I was highly impressed, really. I told the students who planned to bring the pizzas and the chicken roll-ups that it wasn't necessary to do that much work or spend that much money or anything like that -- this was just something for fun that wasn't required at all for the class, but they insisted. Those two are also two of the best students in the class as well, and two of my older, non-traditional students. Go figure, right?

So yesterday, on my way home from teaching my 011 class on main campus, I stopped at Walmart. I had to stop there anyway; the cats needed litter and a new bag of food and I needed cigarettes, but I wanted to get supplies and/or foods for the "dinner" as well. I ended up getting enough plates, cups, and a roll of towels (for napkins) for the entire class so that nobody else would have to worry about that, and I got four big, 24-bar boxes of the good granola bars in different flavors (chocolate chip, oats & honey, banana, and blueberry) for everyone. I figured that I'd eat the leftovers of them myself and/or give some of them to Daisy, if they're vegan, so she could eat them at work. I sent out an email to the class telling them this so that they wouldn't go out and buy unnecessary plates, cups, and napkins, but also noted that I'd forgotten to get plastic silverware, which might be necessary for some of the stuff. It should be a good, relaxed class, and it'll also mean that I won't be ravenously hungry when I arrive home tonight.

However.

From the Weather Channel:

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IS NOW IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM THIS MORNING TO 6 PM CST FRIDAY.
* TIMING... LIGHT RAIN IS EXPECTED TO CHANGE TO FREEZING DRIZZLE OR SLEET BY THIS AFTERNOON. THE PRECIPITATION MAY CHANGE TO LIGHT SNOW BEFORE ENDING FRIDAY.
* SLEET ACCUMULATIONS... ARE EXPECTED TO BE LESS THAN AN INCH.
* ICE ACCUMULATIONS... OF A TRACE ARE EXPECTED.
* IMPACTS... THE LIGHT WINTRY MIX WILL RESULT IN SLICK AND POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS TRAVEL CONDITIONS.

This, obviously, throws a wrench into tonight's plans for my evening class. That class doesn't start until 7:20. I've already had my morning students email me to ask if I'm going to cancel class, which made me laugh. We can't anyhow; it's workshop day. I can't cancel the night class because they're turning in their final projects and we're doing the food thing -- so, really, I'm sort of stuck here. There's not a whole lot I can do, and I sort of have to take my chances with the weather and hope my luck holds out. I doubt I'll be home before 9:30 or so, which is (apparently) going to be right as it starts getting really nasty.

The Monte Carlo is fine in snow, unless there's a foot of it on the ground. Ice and sleet is a different story altogether. I'm guessing my drive home tonight will be very slow and very careful, especially as for a lot of it I'm driving on back roads to get back to the interstate. Unlit back roads at that. I am not looking forward to it. It figures that for the last real "classes" I'm holding this semester, I'd have to deal with this. Basically when I get back from the break, I'm wrapping everything up in all of my classes, and will be tying everything together into a proverbial pretty little bow as those classes end and finals week begins.

In other news, I know nothing else about the loan stuff or the forbearance paperwork for it; my account balance, even though I'm now out of grace, still says "payment due: $0.00." I haven't gotten a bill for it in the mail yet; what I got last month was a statement. I haven't even gotten any emails that say "you have now exited grace" or anything like that. Nothing. That means I really can't do anything else yet. If I don't find something out one way or another before I leave for Omaha I have to make a choice -- send the forbearance paperwork again, via mail (since after today I no longer have access to a free fax machine), with updated dates and information, or see if there is any other way I can get my information dealt with and taken care of.

"You really should call them," Daisy told me earlier.

"I know that, and if I have no other option, I will -- but they really need to update my account balance and they really need to send me a bill so that if I do owe them something in December, I can have it on record and prove to them that hey, I qualify for forbearance."

I really don't have time to deal with it right now; for the moment, even if it's just for a few more days, I really have to wait and see what happens. I have too many other proverbial balls in the air that I'm juggling right now, balls that have to come down one by one so I can take care of them one by one. They can't expect me to make a payment if my account balance due says $0.00 and they haven't sent me my first bill. I mean, I'm not exactly super-intelligent with financial stuff, but I do know that, at least. If I have a bit of free time this afternoon in my office on West campus, I will look at the stuff again and see what I can find out, if anything. Today would be my last chance to be able to fax in another forbearance form from campus, if I need to. There are fax machines on West campus; I've seen them.

On that note, I have to get ready to leave the house. I must get gas in the car and head southward; hopefully my day will be a relatively painless one. Fare thee well, folks.

Forewarned is Forearmed

Fall semester: day sixty-seven

Sunday was the last day of "grace" on my student loans, as you know. Yesterday was the first day they entered "repayment" status, not that anyone at the loan servicer told me -- which, really, is a bit surprising. They emailed me to tell me my loans had entered grace two days after graduation; I got that email when I was in Omaha with Daisy, visiting her family that week.

I logged onto their website this morning, and it still shows that my payment due is $0.00. Okay, well, maybe they haven't updated their information yet. Who knows. You'd think it would all be automated. Or, perhaps, they've seen in their records that I applied for forbearance and it's been redone and granted, but I haven't gotten the paperwork yet. Perhaps a human actually read my email and redid it, but I haven't heard anything from them yet in email or by mail. I don't know. Really, I don't. According to the statement I have in my kitchen, my first payment is due on the 11th of December.

This leaves me in a tricky spot with few options. While I could redo the forbearance form I sent them before in the span of a few minutes, and fax it in today or tomorrow, if it says my balance due is still $0.00 on my account there, it's likely to get kicked back to me again -- especially if this is indicative of someone actually working on my account in the meantime. I jumped the gun a bit before; I don't want to do it again. However, if nothing changes over the next few days, and I get no further emails, bills, or letters or anything like that, I've got little choice -- I have two days at the maximum to make a decision on what to do, as if I need to fax those forms, I won't be able to have access to a fax machine after Thursday for over a full week. With that due date being on the 11th and me not getting back on campus after Thursday until the 2nd, if I don't send those forms again this week I risk my forbearance not being processed in time, even if they're faxed.

Daisy tells me her parents have a fax machine (Dad is an IT guru), but I don't want to cost them money by sending a fax while I'm up there over part of next week unless it absolutely cannot be avoided, obviously. And I'm not going to pay five bucks to send a fax from a grocery store or copy center if I can avoid that, too. So, really, it's more of a waiting game as always. I'll weigh my options for the next 36 hours or so and figure out what I can -- or should -- do.

In the meantime, life goes on as normal. This is my last teaching week of November -- my last real teaching week of the semester, really -- and with it comes a lot of work to do which will keep me busy/stressed/swamped for the vast majority of it. I have so much to do that I wrote out a daily, detailed to-do list of everything I have to do every day this week. If I hadn't done that, I would forget things. That's how swamped I am. I have so much to do that I simply can't remember it all in my brain. It also doesn't help that half my week, I am stuck in an office for twelve hours straight. That helps me do some things, yes, but not everything. The rest of the time it feels like a prison. I don't have the option of doing a lot of that work at home. As you know, during the week at home, most of what I'm doing is sleeping. It's all I can do, really.

"So being a teacher is your chosen career path because...?" Daisy asked me earlier.

"Because I can do it and I'm good at it," I replied. "And because I can't make any money as a poet."

Sad, but true.

More than anything else I'm just trying to make it through the rest of the semester. I get paid on Friday, and must immediately mail out my rent check and any other bills I have before going to Omaha for a few days, whenever I leave. The weather is supposed to get nasty this weekend -- snow and ice are probabilities -- so Daisy and I are trying to figure out when would be the best time to make said trip without worrying about needing to drive through all of that. Most of the actual weekend I'll be grading anyhow, in order to finish up all I can before I have to leave the house. I'll have a little time to finish the rest of it up once I return, but not a lot. There's just so much of it to do. It's all I can do right now to not let it overwhelm me.  

The upper level undergrad classes are all filled with instructors lined up for them for the spring; this is good. It means that all of the composition courses (read: what I teach) will possibly be assigned sometime sooner than later as well. I've been told that's easier to do for the spring semester since all of the GTAs are already there and locked into whatever they'll be teaching -- for the vast majority of them, anyway. And, again, there are several of them who won't be teaching in the spring anyhow, freeing up more sections. I know, as mentioned before, that I'll more than likely get the 102 section over on West campus on the same days/times I'm teaching over there now, which is nice, but even that's not a guarantee. The spring semester runs late as well, as we end the fall so early and don't go back until January 21. I'll be happy to do whatever they give me, though I do hope it's about the same amount or more that I'm doing this semester. I know hoping for more work to do sounds crazy, especially with how swamped I am now, but the reason I'm so swamped is not because I have three classes, but because they're three different classes -- two of which I've never taught before. That means three different schedules, three different sets of papers and assignments, and three different lesson plans. That's three times the work I'd be doing if I were teaching three sections of the same class -- say, 011 or 101, because I'd be using the same schedule/lesson plans for all three. Ironically, it would be less work I'd have to do if I taught five sections next semester, if three of them were the same course. I'd be thrilled to teach five sections next semester even if they were all different courses. More work? Yes, absolutely. But that's offset by the money I'd make, which I'd sorely need leading up to my wedding.

Right now, though? Again, who knows what's going to happen. Daisy and I are examining all of our options, but we won't be able to make big concrete plans at least for another two months at the least. That leaves a ton of stuff just hanging in limbo, and we play the waiting game. I hate waiting on anything. I am not a patient person, not in the least, and I just want things to be sorted out and taken care of by the powers that be so that I don't have to stress over them and/or worry where my next paychecks are going to come from after the end of the year.

"I don't have Christmas Eve off," Daisy told me. "Or New Year's Eve."

"Does that mean you work the night beforehand and get off at 7:30 AM on Christmas morning, or what?" I asked.

Generally, Daisy's job is good with holidays; if she has to work the night before a holiday, she usually gets off at midnight, as they're not open on holidays. For example, when I was last there over July 4, she had to work the 3rd until midnight, and then was able to come home because the 4th was a holiday. I don't know if that will be the case at Christmas. She does have to work at least one night while I'm there over Thanksgiving, because she requested Black Friday off that week in order for us to get our official "engagement photos" taken, possibly do some shopping, and then come back home to Kansas. Still, her work schedule is always a mess when she has to request days off, because she works a real job that doesn't get a month off or more between holidays like teachers/professors do.

As for whether or not she'll have to work the overnight into Christmas morning, who knows -- she hasn't given me a concrete answer on that yet. I do know that Christmas week seriously messes with her work schedule, though. I plan to spend Christmas in Omaha, as it's the last year that Daisy herself will get to live there and spend Christmas with her family -- not to mention because I was in West Virginia last year for Christmas (and stuck there two extra days because of snowstorms). The timeframe is something of a quagmire, though, because of the week that separates Christmas and New Year's, and her work schedule.

"I can do one," I told her, "but I can't do both. I can't leave the cats alone for well over a week in the winter when I don't know what the weather is going to be like. That's what happened last year with that big snowstorm on the day after Christmas back home, and I'm sure you remember how that went. I'm not risking something like that again."

As you may recall, that storm hit here first (according to all accounts, anyway) and then smacked the east coast, closing down Pittsburgh's airport and keeping me stranded back home until I could get the first flight out of there. Because I couldn't get anyone to really update me on everything going on back here, I didn't know how bad the storm was when it hit here; for all I knew, the power could've been out in my house for several days, pipes frozen, cats freezing to death, etc. I've only got three things in this world that nobody can take from me -- Daisy, my cats, and my car. And I am extremely obsessive over all three. And always, over the holidays, some snow/ice storm blows up without fail when I have to travel. That's why I hate, hate hate to travel over the holidays.

As I've been typing this early this morning, the weather forecast for the weekend has changed -- it's supposed to be nice and somewhat mild today, but by Thursday afternoon/evening and Friday we're supposed to get a rain/snow/ice wintry mix thing. Next week's weather (at this point) appears to be clear, at least for me here in Kansas. Who knows what will happen in Nebraska. It was snowing up there last week when it was 70 here. I may have a shitty drive home on Thursday night, for all I know at this point. That's not good when it's a long drive through cornfields and darkness to get back to the interstate, which may be just as bad.

On that note, I shall leave the house to deal with my extremely long day. I have a ton to do today, as always, and will be working basically from my first minute on campus until my last. Sigh.