The Haze, Part II

(NOTE: Most of this was written on Friday, September 28. Instead of trying to add more to it over many days, I am simply posting it -- under that date -- and am moving on.)

Fall semester: day thirty

The sickness comes in waves. As I told Daisy tonight, I've never had a sinus infection like this before. It's really strange. I will have spans of time where I am perfectly fine -- three or four hours, ten or twelve hours -- where I'm not in pain, my face/teeth don't ache, where I can focus and there's no pressure in my cheekbones or Eustachian tubes, etc. And then all of it will come roaring back and I will be miserable again for a good three or four hours, as if I'm not getting better at all. This will happen, mind you, whether I'm taking any medicine or not. Yesterday, for example, I was perfectly fine all morning when I got up and went in to teach my classes. Then, when I came home, after I was able to sit down, relax, and eat some lunch, all of it came roaring back again and I was in so much pain and sickness that I slugged down the last of a bottle of NyQuil and went back to bed. When I got up at around 9PM, I was fine for about two and a half hours before it kicked in again, lasting until about an hour ago. Waves. Always in waves now. I don't know what that means. It's as if my immune system fights the good fight for a few hours at a time, and then takes a nap before getting back up to resume.

Wednesday I felt so bad once I got to campus that I was having coldsweats and nearly passed out several times. I threw up twice in the bathroom down the hall from my office (who knows why; I've not had any other nausea problems with this sickness), and seriously considered packing up and going back home -- skipping the classes I was on campus to attend. I didn't, though; after noon or so, I felt better, and was able to power through the rest of my day.

Overall, then, I'm not much better than I was, say, a week ago today when all of this was just starting. All I can do is wait it out, keep taking decongestants on a regular schedule to wash as much of it as I can out of my system, and get some rest. Rest, though, is sadly hard to come by during the fall semester, and must be doled out accordingly when I can get it on the weekends. And, of course, my recovery is hampered by the fact that whenever I start feeling better, I know it will only last a short time until I feel horrible again. I made a smoothie tonight with almond milk and lots of fruits (berries, oranges, and bananas) in vain hopes that the boost of extra vitamins would give my immune system the push it needs to overcome this sinus bullshit.

There is a lot going on in my life. I don't have time to be sick right now. Not that I ever really have time to be sick, but still. I've not been able to write about a lot of what's been going on as of late because if I'm not sick and in bed for extra hours (when I can be), I'm on campus doing work for my students or my classes, or I'm in the cold-medicine-haze these two most current posts have been titled about. Over the course of the next few days, when I can, I'm going to try to cover most of it here before moving on with my life.

I suppose we should start with the little things and move on to the bigger ones, like going up a set of stairs. So, here goes.

To start off, my car is running really well. It is no longer squeaking at me when I start it up (must've just been something minor and/or temporary), it's getting about 25mpg (roughly), and as far as I can tell it's not burning or leaking a drop of oil or coolant. Ever. This is really good. Hell, I even accidentally squealed the tires a little at a stoplight yesterday when coming home -- that's how much get-up-and-go that car has now. It will cross 224,000 miles on the odometer next week, so even though it was expensive to fix it up, it appears to have been well worth the time and money. The wheel bearing is still a little growly, but even that's not being as loud as it was before, at least not most of the time. I'm putting about 200 miles on it per week, which means it'll need to go back in for another oil change around finals week, roughly. From now on, I'm taking care of it a lot better than before, and will be doing all of the maintenance on it ASAP when it is required. With care, I may be able to make that car hit 300k.

On Saturday night, I will be driving back to campus in the evening to see a play at the school theater (in the building where my Playwriting class is held, actually). It's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, by Tom Stoppard, which if you are a Shakespeare and/or a theater nerd, you probably have heard of or have seen. I would normally have a passive interest in seeing said play -- I've already seen the movie version several times -- but we're required as students in that Playwriting course to see two plays and write two papers on said plays over the course of the semester. That will knock out my first one. I don't know how much tickets are, nor do I know how it all works, but there are a few of us from the class going to the Saturday night showing (and at least one of our fellow students performing in the play itself), so eh. I'll wander down to campus in the early evening hours and deal with it when I get there. I just hope I'm not still sick and in pain during the play itself.

Today is my friend Jay's birthday, and tonight there's some sort of party for him at his house to celebrate. It doesn't start until 10PM, however, which is A) way too late for me -- usually if I'm going out, I'm back home by that time, since I'm the "old man" of my group of friends, and B) not something I'm going to subject myself to when I'm fighting off random bouts of holy-hell-I-feel-awful for several hours at a time. I've wished him well, and though I was invited, it has been already generally assumed by most of the department that I won't be there -- though, of course, it's not a slight against Jay in any fashion, which I'm sure he knows. Not to mention that with the trip down there to see the play on Saturday night, I'm already putting extra miles on my car for the week, which is more gas money, etc.

Finances are relatively okay at this point, but I've already been looking ahead to the coming months and have crafted a rough budget that I have to make myself stick to. Already I have been making sacrifices and have planned to budget around certain things -- I know that my car insurance comes due again in about two months, for example, and I'll have to buy a stack of books for reading for my comps. I also have to slowly begin to pay my parents back for the loan they gave me over the summer, which due to the car needing extensive repairs, I've not repaid yet. It's not that I've forgotten about that, mind you, it's that with everything else going on and all of my other expenses I have every month, I've just been overwhelmed. I'm still paying off my Citi card bill from over the summer as well, which I'd been forced to max out over those months just to be able to eat and drive back and forth for teaching. I've had relatively few luxuries since the semester started -- aside from a new pair of shoes, a few shirts, and the DVD of The Avengers, almost all of my money has gone to food, bills, and those aforementioned car repairs. It's still mostly survival.

I should also mention briefly that Lady and I are back in contact again, at least sporadically. She's okay, at school, and has a busier semester than even I do. We've talked a few times over the course of the past few weeks and exchanged a few IMs and emails, but that's about it. She dropped me a line earlier this week to tell me that she's sorry to hear that I've been sick, but I've not yet had time (or energy, or wellness, for that matter) to respond. She's a sweet girl. We may have had our issues when it came to our relationship, but she's a good person, and it's nice to know she cares about me being sick, and about me in general.

Daisy and I have once more been squabbling off and on. As I've mentioned here numerous times, Daisy and I have a strange dynamic in our friendship. She is all at once the person I am closest to emotionally and spiritually most of the time -- in essence, she is the best friend I have -- but because of that, and because of our differences, we are constantly at odds about something. And it doesn't help that my normally not-so-great communication skills are hampered even further when I feel like walking death and/or am obfuscated by a cold-medicine-induced haze, through which normal logic and sentence structure generally will not penetrate. So yeah, I'm weird, she's weird, everything's weird. These little squabbles, as mentioned before, usually only last a day or two at a time before things become normal again, but it gives our relationship a weird sort of bipolar-esque dynamic.

"You were being a dick," she told me.

Fair enough. Guilty as charged. I don't like taking my frustrations out on people; I tend to bottle them up (and, if that's not enough, occasionally turn to another sort of bottle to rid myself of them). However, when I'm sick, my patience levels tend to be at all-time lows, and my anger and frustration levels at all-time highs. I get very pissed off at little things very easily. Again coupled with the haze of the cold medicine, I was not a very nice person for about a three-day stretch. I am a planner, a problem-solver, and while I am not a control freak by any stretch of the imagination, for me to be at peace in life, everything around me just has to work, to run smoothly and as it's supposed to. If it doesn't, I get highly irritated. Therefore, when I'm sick, my body isn't running smoothly and as it's supposed to, and it throws me into chaos. It's also why I get very whiny and angry at everything and everyone while I'm sick. This is also why I tend to be more of a recluse than usual while I'm sick, as well. There's no reason for me to lose any more friends just because I'm feeling ill and want to scream at anything and everything that pisses me off. I've already lost enough friends this year.

That being said, she and I always make up rather quickly. I've never known fully what to define us as, and still don't -- I probably never will. This does, as you know, sort of drives me nuts. Daisy is, of course (if you read my blog at all over the summer) the kind of woman who doesn't like definitions anyhow, but suffice it to say that we are very close. Could we ever be in a relationship again, with real definitions, hard edges, clear boundaries and the like? Who knows, really.

Time, I suppose, she said. Time will take us to wherever it is we're meant to be.

This is a very intelligent observation, mind you.

And, of course, time is something I've been thinking a lot myself. As the days count down towards graduation, as assignments come due and requirements start needing to be fulfilled, I have ever-increasing stress and apprehension levels about everything. I actually found myself, earlier this week, discussing the possibility of sticking around a little longer to get a fiction MFA as well, if the school would let me. Mind you, I have no desire whatsoever to get a fiction MFA. I have no desire whatsoever to stay in Kansas any longer than I have to, period, yet that option sounds more appealing and less terrifying than just being thrown out on my ass in eight months with no game plan, no job, and nowhere else to go. While I lived and worked in the real world for the five years between undergraduate and graduate school, I am now somehow terrified to re-enter it. This does not necessarily bode well, as I will almost immediately have student loans I'll have to start paying off. People -- Daisy especially -- have been telling me not to panic, that it'll all work out and I'll find something to do, somewhere to go, but realistically that may not end up being the case, and that's what's scary.

If all else fails, I can fake my death and fly to Guatemala to start over.

That's not exactly a bad plan, actually.

The Haze, Part I

Fall semester: day twenty-eight

I am slowly coming out of my sickness-haze, but very slowly. I felt almost normal yesterday, and then storms rolled in during the overnight hours (it's still storming now, at 6AM) and my allergies decided to kick in full-force. This means that I'll be chugging DayQuil while at work today in order to keep myself feeling at some semblance of normal, whatever that is.

Yesterday afternoon, when I arrived home after teaching, my pre-ordered DVD/Blu-ray set of The Avengers was waiting on me on my doorstep. I made a lunch, watched the movie, checked my email and Facebook, and almost immediately went to sleep afterwards. I awoke several times to nasty storms rolling through Newton, but didn't get up for good until about 4AM. Since then I've slugged some DayQuil, have taken a shower and gotten dressed, and printed some extra copies of my scenes for Playwriting, but have done little else aside from try to make myself feel better. Again, it's still raining/storming now, which is never pleasant to drive in, and I have to leave the house and make my way to campus in about twenty minutes.

The Avengers is good, by the way. The first half of the movie is pretty slow, but once it kicks in, it's really good. I also think it could've been about an hour longer than it was, to be honest with you -- and, of course, there are plot holes you could drive a truck through -- but for what it is, it's pretty good. Nowhere near "the best superhero movie of all time," though, as people have said about it. No, there are several films over the past few years that are better (namely the first two Spider-Man films, The Dark Knight, X-Men: First Class, and Captain America) but it was definitely worth the watch. I will agree that Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk was great, and that the film does have its "holy shit, that was awesome" moments, but overall I'd call it just slightly above-average.

Today is my fifteen-hour-long day on campus, the first one I've had in a few weeks. I'm not necessarily looking forward to it, as I'm still trying to recover from this sinus infection shit I've been battling for almost a full week now. As I said in an email to my mother this morning, I'm greatly looking forward to tomorrow afternoon so that I can come home and collapse into a "make myself better" coma of sorts, if necessary. I don't have a whole lot to do this weekend; I'll have some papers to look over and some stuff to work on for my classes, yes, but next weekend is my hell weekend where I'll have 50 big papers to grade. This weekend is more of a "Brandon gets to sleep as much as he can so that he can get better and no longer be a sinus-infected zombie" weekend.

There is more to write about, of course, but I haven't had the time or the energy since I've been sick. I plan to dive into that again here over the course of the next few days.

Stoppage

Fall semester: day twenty-six

I am sick. Like, really sick. Though I'm sure I'm making more of it than it actually is.

Let me explain. If you read my blog post yesterday (as brief as it was), you know I've been attacked by a vicious sinus infection. Sinus infections are nothing new for me; I'll get them a few times a year. Sometimes they'll last a few days or a few weeks, and vary in severity. Sometimes it'll just feel like the insides of my sinuses are raw, maybe a little sore, but I won't have pain or any other real symptoms. Sometimes they're so bad that I'm screaming in pain from the pressure and mucus. This one, it seems, is somewhere in the middle, but it's in that middle ground where I feel absolutely miserable.

I don't remember the vast majority of this weekend. I just don't. Because I've been sick, I slept through a lot of it. Therefore, most of the weekend has been viewed through the haze of various cold and allergy medicines, trying to find something that will dull the constant facial pain and release the pressure built up in my cheekbones and sinus walls. So far, the only thing that's really been working has been NyQuil -- it stops the pain, helps me breathe a little better, and knocks me out. Obviously, though, I can't drink NyQuil 24 hours a day, nor can I take a bottle of it to school with me this week without passing out in my office or in the middle of one of my classes. In about an hour, as much as I will hate to do so, I need to venture to Walmart to pick up some DayQuil and a few other essential items before I drive to campus tonight for my evening Playwriting class. I did consider skipping this class so that I could just sleep, but I'd rather not risk missing something important just because my sinuses are bothering me.

When I'm sick, everything stops, or slows to a crawl. It's one of the only things that slams on the brakes for me. Work gets neglected, problems I need to deal with are pushed aside, and I become a zombie. I'm writing this post now through the haze of cold medicines, and while I will vaguely remember doing it, ask me what I wrote six hours from now, and I won't be able to tell you. I meant to do some grocery shopping this weekend, I meant to vacuum the house and do all the dishes and laundry, and all of that got stalled out by my sickness. Aside from 1/3 of a bottle of NyQuil and a few random packs of sinus/pain pills, I have now exhausted my medicine supply in the house. I am dizzy and lightheaded a lot of the time, which is part of the "haze" I mentioned before. My face, the muscles and bone covering my sinuses, all aches horribly. The sinus pressure is so nasty that I feel it down in my teeth, which also ache because of it, and it's all up in those sinus cavities -- I cannot blow any of it out. It just has to run its course and slowly drain/heal, and that's why I'm miserable. I'm also fairly sure I've been running a low-grade fever for the past two days or so as well as my body fights it all off. Nothing I do, or take, makes the pain or pressure completely go away; it will only dull it, sometimes by just a little, for a short time before it wears off and I'm back to being 100% miserable again.

This weekend, despite how sick I was, I did mow the grass for the last time this year, as it needed it badly and could not wait any more. Do I remember doing it? Vaguely. For all I remember, I could've mowed the grass naked. I didn't, but that's where my mind is right now when sick.

I realize I'm probably sounding fairly whiny, yes, but that's mainly because I don't get sick very often. At all. It used to be that once a year I would get sick with something that would knock me flat on my ass for a few days, but in recent years that's become more of a "once every two or two-and-a-half-years" scenario. While I will get a cold or the occasional chest infection/rattle/etc every once in a while, it's usually minor, I usually get over it in a day or two, and it doesn't make me feel like walking death. Even my normal, low-grade sinus infections I generally get over in a few days and will start feeling normal again after that time. This time, it's like a sinus infection has set up camp inside my face and has decided to eat me from the inside out. If it keeps getting worse, I'll have to make a trip to the doctor (any doctor, really) to see if I need antibiotics to get rid of it, especially if it moves into my ears. If it moves to my ears, there's nothing else to be done but a quick antibiotic treatment to knock it out, otherwise I'll end up screaming in pain very, very loudly and incessantly. Yes, it gets that bad.

A hot shower earlier, with my face held in the hottest water I could stand, eliminated the pain/pressure/dizziness I've been feeling for the past three days, but unfortunately within half an hour of getting out of the shower, it all came roaring back just as badly as before. This sucks, as I was starting to feel okay, like a hot shower was all I needed to start feeling better. Nope.

So far, to make myself feel better, I have tried the following things over the course of the past three or four days, roughly:

• Sudafed, both real (psuedophedrine) and fake (phenylephrine)
• Mucinex Sinus
• Allegra-D, which contains a shitload of Sudafed and fexofenadine
• Alka-Seltzer Flu Medicine
• Equate Allergy/Sinus + Pain
• Equate Sinus Congestion and Pain
• Benadryl (diphenhydramine)
• Loratadine (basically, half the ingredients in Claritin)
• Equate "Nite Time" gelcaps (do nothing)
• Aspirin (for the pain/fever reduction)
• NyQuil, 1/3 of a bottle at a time

Of these, not a whole lot is working. Nothing will get rid of the sinus pressure and/or drain it, and without that the pain will remain. I really don't care much about the actual sinus pressure at this point -- that's manageable. I just want something to dull the pain, at least by a little bit, so that I'm not constantly wincing and punching at my face to try to get the stuff to drain. So far, NyQuil is about the only medicine that does anything, period. It dulls down the pain to the point where I barely feel it, if at all, and it knocks me out so that I can sleep. The aspirin has helped a bit with the pain as well, at the risk of giving myself an upset and/or acidic-feeling stomach when I take it. The other stuff? When it comes to the congestion and sinus pressure, it's almost like it meets it in my sinuses and the congestion beats the shit out of it and sends it away -- even the Mucinex Sinus, which is usually my last-ditch, go-to drug when I cannot get rid of my congestion in any other fashion.


I've decided to postpone my Walmart trip until I'm on my way home tonight. I totally don't want to do it at all, but I need medicine, specifically more NyQuil and some DayQuil to swig over the next few days, as I hope it has the same effect (yet won't put me to sleep). I also need cat litter and a few other small things, like paper towels. I really can't concentrate on anything else right now but how I feel -- my body won't let me. Class tonight will be me going through the motions and attempting to stay conscious and mentally present as much as I can, but that's really about it. Until my body stops rising up in mutiny against me, everything else slows to a crawl or standstill. 

Uprising

I have been attacked by a vicious sinus infection, and have been heavily medicated for the majority of the weekend.

Of the past 48 hours, I've slept for about 30 of them.

My head feels like it's made of Jello, as does my brain. Everything's a fog.

Posts here will resume once I am no longer sick.

[EDIT] Yes, that means everything else has to wait until I no longer feel like my face is going to explode.

A Change of Plans, Part I

[Note: most of this post was written on Wednesday, 9/19, which will become evident as you read forward. This is why the descriptions may sound off, so keep this in mind while reading.]


Fall semester: day twenty-three

Daisy and I, over the course of the past few days, have been squabbling a lot. Not exactly fighting, not exactly not fighting either. It's complicated to explain -- but then again, most things between Daisy and I are complicated to explain. We tend to get on each others' nerves quite a bit; each of us has several quirks that highly irritates the other on occasion. For example, Daisy is a highly logical, highly communicative person, and she could be great on a debate team. A lot of the time, that doesn't mesh well with me. When I'm serious, I'm quiet and reserved to the point of looking and/or sounding angry, and in serious conversations I always make sure I make my points and defend them, even to the point of arrogance. It's not that I have to get the last word on anything or that I always have to be right (neither of those is true, really, at least not with her), but it's sort of in my blood at this point as a writer and as an instructor of college-level composition classes that it is an overall goal to present your argument and defend it. Daisy just happens to be one of the few people on the planet who can (and will) carefully deconstruct everything I say, or infer meaning from what I say that isn't necessarily there. Compound this by the fact that I tend to have really strange viewpoints on a number of issues, and you can see why we squabble fairly often.

Despite that, I of course have nothing but the highest respect for Daisy; I appreciate intelligence and logic, and she has both in abundance. There are different kinds of intelligence. Daisy has a communications degree, and therefore is very good about gauging people's interactions and communication styles, and can go toe-to-toe with anyone on most any issue. She's big on ethics, and examining other people's ethics -- basically, their hearts, minds, and personalities. I, on the other hand, have a different kind of intelligence; whereas she is strong in those things, I am strong in the fields of argument, more classical information, literature, nerdy things, etc. It would be overly simplifying it (by a large stretch) to say that Daisy is street-smart while I am book-smart, because that would imply many things that aren't necessarily true, but that's the most closely analogous example I can think of, to put it in the terms of the laypeople.

So, over the course of the past several days or so, our friendship has been fairly rocky. This has not been helped by the fact that I've had a miserable week so far in which many things with my classes and work have gone wrong, and the car decided to stall out on me last night (more on that later). My mind, as you may have seen from my last post, has been out-of-sorts this week. This doesn't bode well for anything I have going on, obviously. Again, I'm at that stage of the semester, already, where I just want it to be over so that I can curl up in bed and make the world go away for a while. Yet, I cannot do that, obviously. I have obligations, both academic and monetary, that I have to worry about and take care of one at a time. Half-fighting with Daisy all the time -- my closest friend out here -- doesn't make anything better.

We make up quickly when we do squabble, obviously, as we are very close. Yesterday morning she sent me a message before I left for campus telling me she hoped I had a lovely day and that I enjoyed teaching. I made the joke (as I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep the night before due to various issues I may or may not write about later) of "Sure you don't want to surprise me by being on my doorstep when I get home from class?"

Daisy works three days a week, eleven-hour shifts for two of them, unless she's working overtime -- which she has been doing a lot over the past few weeks. She usually works Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, which means during the semester, even when she does have time to spare, I usually don't. Her work days coincide with the days I am off, and vice-versa. However, this week was and is strange for me. I am writing this post (or at least part of it) at 11:24AM on Wednesday morning, a time when I am usually on campus and in my office hours. My thesis advisor wanted to meet with me this week, but couldn't meet any day but tomorrow afternoon at 4PM -- which is one of the worst times ever for me to do anything, as on Thursday afternoons I'm usually home for four hours by then. To balance things out, I canceled my office hours this morning (so that I didn't have to be on campus for even longer this week) and rescheduled them for tomorrow afternoon when I'm forced to be stuck there until 4 anyhow before that meeting. So, it just so happened that not only did I have my Tuesday afternoon/evening free, but I also had the first half of today free as well. This is a very rare occurrence.

Anyway, about two hours later at work, I got a text from Daisy that said "See you around 1:30."

I wasn't incredibly shocked by that, obviously, but I was indeed pleasantly surprised. It had started out as a joke, yes, but with any joke there's usually a grain of honesty involved in telling it. Being completely truthful, I've had a rough September. You folks know this. I even mentioned a bit of it above. I'm constantly exhausted, even more constantly morose and lonely, and having Daisy around is really...comforting. Soothing. I've told her many times that I tend to forget about my problems, issues, and worries for just a little while when she's here. It's that one-on-one interaction, on a personal level that does it. Very few people have an effect on my personality and demeanor like Daisy does. And this month -- hell, this week -- I needed that. I was reaching what I call critical mass, when I get so overwhelmed that I just shut down, turn off all of my communication devices, and hole up at home, speaking to no one (not even on campus) and doing nothing that I don't have to do. Very few people can snap me out of that mindset until everything dies down again, or until my own mental state cycles back up. Daisy is one of those people.

Also keep in mind that, as I'd mentioned, we'd been squabbling and half-fighting all week. Though we made up, it was still remarkable that she'd want to come visit. At least in my mind, anyway. But then again, it's Daisy. I shouldn't be surprised.

I replied that would be wonderful and that I would wait to make a trip to Walmart until after she got here (I'd previously planned to go on the way home) so that we could find something vegan to make for dinner. Daisy is vegan, in case you did not know. I am not (though I may as well be at this point), but the girl does have to eat, and after her drive down here it's not like I wasn't going to feed her. She said that would be good, and I taught my classes and came home.

Later, around the time I was expecting her to arrive, I got a message that said, and I quote, "I'm slow..."

"How slow?" I replied.

"I'll be there in three-and-a-half hours. I'm not sure where the time went."

Note: Daisy is habitually late for everything. She runs on her clock and her clock alone. In most other people this would highly irritate me, but as I'm used to it at this point from her, I know that usually when she gives me a set time for something, there's a fair amount of "wiggle room" involved with it. We operate on DST. That stands for Daisy Standard Time. 

On Tuesdays, my sleeping schedule is usually at least a little bit off. This is because it's the first day of the week that I have to get up early, at 5AM -- while I do have class on Monday this semester, it's an afternoon class from 4:30-6:50, and I don't usually leave the house until around 2PM or so. Because of this, I can sleep in on Mondays. Tuesday, however, it's back to the grind of three days in a row of getting up at 5, so usually by Tuesday afternoon I'm feeling rather exhausted. This week was different; I knew Daisy was coming down, and I was filled with an excited energy because, well, it's Daisy. She's the only person who visits me, and I like that.

She arrived around 5PM, and due to the cool weather, we were actually able to relax. It's been really nice here in Kansas this week; the first half of the week's temperatures were in the 70s to around 80, and in the 40s and 50s at night.

Getting time with Daisy is nice; as I mentioned before, all of my problems seem to disappear and/or become less important when she's visiting. I open up a bit more, I become a bit more social. Most of my friends would say I'm social as it is, but that's just because I'm in the department with them on a daily basis and am constantly around them. A little social interaction is required there, of course. It's also the only real social interaction I get -- as you folks know, I don't really get out much, and that's because of choice more than anything else. When Daisy is here I can fully be myself without having to worry about what anyone around me, including the higher-ups in the department, think, hear, or see, since I'm at home and comfortable in my own environment/surroundings. I am, fully, who I am here. Daisy realizes that, both on a conscious and unconscious level, and accepts it. I don't have to try to impress her. I don't have to meticulously clean the house before she visits, worrying about dishes in the sink or whether the downstairs is properly vacuumed. Daisy doesn't care about any of that stuff, or if she does, she doesn't show it. She just wants to spend time with me, and that's all that's important to her. It's also all that's important to me.

I almost dozed off with her; that's how relaxed I was. We eventually went to Walmart around 10PM or so, which wasn't a problem as I had changed around my Wednesday schedule anyhow. We were both hungry, so I wanted to get something vegan that we could not only make for dinner, but something that she would appreciate and enjoy.

Yes, that is a picture of the two of us in Walmart, one she took with her phone while we were going up and down nearly every aisle. Aside from stuff for dinner, I was making my normal weekly shopping trip with her in tow, which made for a fun experience.

"What do you want to eat?" I asked her.

"Whatever," she replied with a shrug. "Whatever you want."

It really didn't matter much to her. Again, Daisy's pretty easygoing. If it's vegan and remotely appetizing, she's game most of the time.

"What about a vegan pizza?" I asked. "Wait, what goes on a vegan pizza?"

"Vegetables?" she asked playfully.

We found a crust that was vegan (surprisingly) and got a jar of roasted garlic and basil sauce. Two ingredients down.

"What else do you want on it?" I asked as we went down the frozen vegetables aisle. I was really trying to come up with something to put on this pizza that would at least somewhat make it resemble a pizza. Because Walmart doesn't sell vegan cheese, this proved difficult.

"Onion rings?" I said.

"The batter will have egg in it," she replied.

"Check it."

She did. Surprisingly, she was wrong -- the onion rings were vegan. No animal ingredients or animal by-products. I'm sure she checked the label over at least twice.

So, three ingredients down. We needed something else.

"Spinach?" I asked. "Spinach might be good."

So we got frozen spinach, in a bag. Chopped, frozen spinach. Which, as an aside, I adore cooking with in almost any capacity, not just on relatively different dishes like pizza.

We returned home, using the rest of the ingredients I already had around the house to put together a makeshift vegan pizza. I oiled up the crust, put garlic and onion powder on it, poured and spread the sauce, spread out some of the spinach, placed the onion rings, and for cheese I used a generous helping of "nutritional yeast," which as Daisy says "is a complete protein" and is used as cheese in many vegan dishes.

Yep, that's what the completed project looked like. It was surprisingly good, as well. I still have three slices of it left that I will probably eat over the weekend. In addition to the pizza, I made us a box of roasted garlic couscous -- also vegan.

"There is something sexy about a man in the kitchen," Daisy would later remark.

Shortly after dinner, we passed out. I don't know what time we actually ended up falling asleep, but I set the alarm for a little after 8 and that's when we got up. I did my normal wake-up routine for any class day then (Daisy is not fond of my coffee/cigarette/internet time, but it is the only way I am able to awaken myself without wanting to go immediately back to sleep; it forces me to start my day). Daisy and I spent some more time together before she left around 11 or so, possibly a little later -- I don't recall. It was a wonderful visit overall.

Now, read on to part II for everything else that's happened in the interim...

Frustrations

I am not a good communicator.

Well, scratch that. I am, but I have some caveats. The big one, first and foremost, is don't ignore me. And if you are going to ignore me, at least tell me that you're going to ignore me, instead of just disappearing or being passive-aggressive about everything, keeping all of your disapproval of me as a person bottled up.

Note: this isn't directed at any one person; this is a continuing trend I've noticed with the people in my life over the past few weeks and months. At least four people, some of whom may or may not read this blog (I'm never sure) have done something along these lines in that time.

Another one of my caveats is that I communicate much better in text than I do in person. It's just the truth. I used to write really long, detailed, intricate letters to Lady when we were out of contact, for example (that has since stopped, obviously). While I do not text that much, I very much value the Facebook message system...when it wants to work, that is. I used to value the various messenger programs, like Yahoo Messenger and AIM, but since Lady stopped talking to me, and since Andrea and I are no longer friends (long story there, if you didn't already know it), I haven't even logged in to any messenger program in days. I no longer need to, really. In text, like in my writing here and elsewhere, I can sort out my thoughts. I can think more slowly. I can better articulate myself. In essence, I can make myself sound much more intelligent and appear much more formal than I actually am. I can't do that in face-to-face conversation -- usually I end up looking (or feeling) like an idiot, and I am much more prone to become irritated or otherwise openly take issue with something someone says.

My personality is like an on/off switch -- when I'm done talking to someone, when I'm done hearing what they have to say, I'm done. I flip the switch off. Face-to-face with someone, I just can't do that, because social interaction doesn't work that way. It's one of the major reasons that I don't go out and do anything social with anyone I know, aside from the anxiety factor -- because I know that once someone says or does something that trips that switch, I'll be like "yep, this conversation's over, bye, I'm going home." That may sound childish, and to some extent it probably is, but to a much greater extent I have found that I am no longer tolerant of people for the most part, not even on a basic human level, and certainly not on any sort of normal social level. In the past, I've had to force myself to stay in such situations many times due to factors out of my control -- namely, when the ex and I were together, and I was forced to be social with her, we couldn't go home until she was ready to go home. I can't tell you how much that irritated me. I do not like not being in control of my own social endeavors.

I have a very short fuse, so to speak, and I mean that in the sense that it doesn't take much for me, one way or another, to dismiss myself or take my leave from any sort of conversation or social situation that I do not see ending well. For example, if I am insulted or otherwise talked down to, even in a playful fashion, it trips that switch. Very quickly. If I am disrespected, shushed, or otherwise pushed aside, it does the same thing. I no longer have patience for this, and I used to have a lot of self-control and endless patience for it. In the past year or so, however, I have realized that life is too short to deal with people who are not pleasant to be around, or people who think themselves above or better than me and have no qualms about showing it.

Of all of the things that set me off, few things set me off more than being called stupid. It's the word more than anything else, not the stigma that goes along with it. There are very few words anyone could say to me which will make me go from zero-to-angry faster than being called stupid.

I was reading at a little older than age three. I tested something like a 160 IQ when I was four years old. I was the first person in my family to graduate from a university with a full four-year bachelor's degree. I worked for over five years in a microbiology research laboratory, not only assisting with research but keeping the laboratory itself running smoothly. I designed, and still currently run, a fairly successful nerdy clothing company that turns a profit every year. I have been a reporter for not one, but two different newspapers, and at the last one I was the webmaster as well -- which means I was in control of, and did upkeep and layout for the entire website, including every advertisement, news story, and link on it. In the years since, I have been a graduate student, furthering my education not because I have to, but because I want to, and in that time I have read over 100 books and written close to 30 papers. I have been teaching students English composition in eleven different classes now over the course of almost three years, and have been regarded by both my bosses and many former students as one of the best instructors in the department. I have published poems. I have written and self-published a 500-page memoir of three years of working in retail. I can take apart your computer, fix whatever's causing it problems, and put it back together again. And finally, in order to continue surviving in this world that doesn't seem to care about any of those things, I've made more sacrifices and tough judgment calls than most people will have to make in their entire lives -- all before the age of thirty.

I'm not saying any of this to wave my proverbial dick around. The point I'm trying to make here is that I may not look it or act it, but I am probably more intelligent than most other people I know, or most other people you know, regardless of age. And because of that, I don't like being talked down to or dismissed, and I absolutely cannot stand being called stupid. For any reason. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. I also believe that it's not simple impatience or frustration with social situations, but it is that intelligence that tells me I'm much better suited for a life away from most other people, a solitary existence. In a sense, it's my mind telling me that trapping myself in situations or conversations that are less than productive or ideal is, in essence, a waste of my time and energy. Look out for number one, Brandon.

It's reasons like this which make me fairly sure that I'll never marry or have children; I've yet to meet someone who did not become quickly irritated with me and end up leaving me, whether they left sooner or later. I don't fault them for it; they just didn't mesh with me. I'm not sure I'll ever mesh with anyone fully. I see myself as an enigma, a strange fellow; I'm not normal by any stretch of the imagination -- I just fake it well enough to get by in normal society. In reality, I am a deeply introverted person, and that introversion has only grown deeper over the past year or two. It's not a depressive thing, but it's the slow realization that nobody has ever, or probably will ever be able to completely "get me," to understand me as a person and fully accept and/or love me as I am. My past three (read: only three) girlfriends have shown me that; there are always issues, always caveats, always things that I "need to change" or "should change" about the way I am. I used to think this meant I was flawed or that there were things mentally or mechanically wrong with me, but I now realize that's not the case -- they just didn't want me for who I was, without caveats or issues. The long-term ex had multiple problems with me which apparently grew larger over the years. With Lady, I was too picky with foods and she didn't appreciate (putting it mildly) my sense of humor, amongst other little things. With Daisy, during the short time we dated, she wanted me to stop smoking and become vegan. Daisy doesn't really appreciate (or, really, understand) my sense of humor either. Issues. Lots of issues, different ones, for all three of them. Again, this is why I'll probably remain single and unmarried for the rest of my life. I have finally broken through the proverbial clouds and realized that all I really need is myself, whether that self is happy or unhappy.

But Brandon, you may be saying, what about your friends?

My friends, for the most part, accept me for who I am -- faults, eccentricities and all. But the ones who do, and the ones who truly care about me as a person, are few and far between. Most of them I haven't seen in over seven years, as they reside in West Virginia. Some of these friends I may never see or talk to again, which makes me question at this point whether or not I should even classify them as "friends" anymore. As we all get older, people slowly spread out and move out of our lives. The old saying goes "the ones who are worth it will stick around," but at least with me, this hasn't been the case (again, for the most part). I have also realized as I am now on the downhill slide-into-home, so to speak, for my Master's degree, I have increasingly less time for friends in the first place -- so I've become sort of a hermit in that regard, as well. It used to be that whenever my computer was on, my Facebook and Twitter feeds were both up and running. This is no longer the case most of the time now. As I told Zedral the other night, I've been trying to actively ignore everything but my work and have spent little time doing anything but working and sleeping, or running errands. For example, I have to go to the post office in the morning before I go to campus in the afternoon so that I can mail a few packages and get some stamps. Aside from a little grocery shopping, when I'm home, I rarely leave the house because there's always something else to do, something else to take care of -- and most of the time that doesn't entail being on my computer.

Conversely, I have already run into that mid-semester slump -- a full month before mid-semester. I'm constantly tired, I'm constantly frustrated with life, and (as mentioned before) I no longer have patience for anything. I'll yell at my computer if it takes too long to load a web page, or I'll yell at my water filter when it takes forever to fill the pitcher up again. I'm bursting at the seams with frustration, with needless anger, and I don't know where it's coming from or why I can't shake it. I can't relax, I no longer take enjoyment in the little things in life, and I can't even focus enough to read a comic book or one of the two magazines I still subscribe to (Playboy and Entertainment Weekly), much less force myself to sit down and read/grade papers or anything else for my classes. I can't concentrate on anything. All I really want to do is sleep, sleep for as long as I want without having to worry about waking up or doing things on a set schedule, a schedule that is not my own and not my choice.

It used to be that making tie-dyed clothing soothed me. It calmed me, centered me, let me relax a lot because I was doing something fun and creative, something artistic that I could show off or otherwise gift to friends and family. Now it doesn't have the same effect anymore. I still do it, but it's more out of trying to cling to that former feeling, like an opium addict chasing the dragon. And more often than not now, I feel even more frustrated when a design doesn't come out the way I want it to -- like I've failed to even be creative anymore.

A lot of this probably sounds like depression, doesn't it? It's not. I'm not depressed in the least. There's a difference between depression and just plain being unhappy and frustrated with one's life. As I've written before, there is a difference between depression and cynicism/fatalism, just as there is a difference between pessimism and realism. Pessimism is thinking things will always get worse, or never being happy about anything because something else bad is bound to happen. Realism, for me, is being able to tell that this is probably as good as things are going to be (or get), and while there's always the possibility that I'm wrong, and that things may end up wonderful and I may be happy for the rest of my life, the former scenario is more likely. I am a realist.

"What if this is as good as it gets?" 

And yet there's always that little voice in my head which asks "well, if things aren't going to get better, why even keep doing what you're doing now?"

Routine, mostly. I don't call it "hope" or anything optimistic like that. Most, if not all of my true optimism packed its proverbial bags and left a long time ago. Right now, as it has been for the past year or more, is all about survival. All about keeping my head down and just slogging through, going through the motions. I don't know what I'll be doing once the end of May rolls around. I have no true life goals, no life plans for the future anymore. A large part of me can't even think that far ahead. My only true goal right now is to finish grad school, and that's mostly to say afterwards that I did it, that "I have two degrees," etc. After that, who knows.

I've considered spending money on things to see if I get happier. Retail therapy, so to speak. It's worked in the past, and I do have a bit of money that I can actually use from time to time on things I enjoy -- but with the recent expenses on the car, attempting to pay off the Citi Card bill that I ran up this summer just so that I could eat, and still needing to pay my parents back their loan they gave me in July, even that wouldn't exactly make me feel better at this point because I know how many financial obligations I have. I still have $200 on the Citi Card to pay off (and $200 exactly, mind you; I paid the bill down to that today), and rent will be coming due again soon, so I'll have to deal with that too. I'd originally planned to go to the AWP conference with many other members of the department come February, but even that doesn't sound like it's something I'm going to be able to do because of finances. Yes, I'll get the other half of my student loan money for the year shortly before the conference, but I will be saving every scrap of that I can over the course of the spring semester so that I can move out of here after graduation. Again, with all the problems the car's had in the past few months, driving back home to visit my parents over Thanksgiving was thrown out the window a long time ago -- the last thing I need at this point is to blow a major part on that car during a 2,400-mile round trip, especially after I just spent almost $1,400 getting it fixed, and especially if I may need to drive it farther than that when I get out of Kansas. My mother has already asked me if I want to, or if I am able to, come home for Christmas -- as it would be the first Christmas since 2005 that I would be able to spend with the family. That, of course, will depend on my finances then, the weather of the season, and time.

Mind you, many months ago I'd made plans for the holidays this year; they were long-form, intricate plans involving a lot of travel -- at least two flights and one train ride. Now, of course, those plans will not take place. I shouldn't have to go into detail about why not; I'll let you figure it out. Read between the lines a little, folks.

Truthfully, I just can't wait for 2012 to be over. It has not been a great year; it has, in fact, been another one of those horrific, bad-luck years, in case you haven't been following this blog for very long. Between losing no less than three good friends, having two relationships that failed (mostly my fault), to the worst financial troubles I've ever had this past summer and spending a total -- over two sets of repairs -- of about $1,700 on the car, it's been a bad year. Add to that all of the other, smaller things that's gone wrong since January 1 and I already have a year that was worse than 2011 -- a feat that was very, very hard to accomplish. Yeah, no wonder all I want to do is sleep and hole up in my house until everything is just over.

My parents will probably read this blog, and -- as my dad emailed me the last time things were sounding bad, say that I'm "sounding grim." I'm not grim, really. Overall, I'm content enough. I'm surviving. I'm living. I'm getting up every morning and taking care of the things that need to be done, and going to bed every night once they are done. But I am frustrated about where I am in life and what I'm doing with it, and how it feels like every day I'm doing nothing but treading water, slowly wearing myself down and tiring myself out. My mental state is a mess, in case you hadn't gathered from reading the rest of this post. But really, I'm okay. I'll be fine. I am just not happy right now. Whether that changes or not is irrelevant -- the point is that I'm still doing it, that I'm still chugging along. It may not be fun, it may not be glamorous -- few things are. Yet, I'm doing it. I'm still trying to better myself a little more every day, and for the most part I think I'm succeeding. But sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees, as they say.

$48

I did a search this afternoon -- because I was curious -- to see what my Monte Carlo was worth if I were to sell or trade it for a newer vehicle at some point.

Mind you, I do not want to get rid of the Monte Carlo. I love that car. But eventually, once I get ready to make my move to wherever I go next, if the car is falling apart again by then and it would be cheaper and/or easier to get rid of it and get something else, well, I probably will. That will be a very sad day for me, but it's not one that isn't eventually coming anyhow.

I went to Edmunds.com and looked it up. I put in the color (black), the fact that it's a Z34, and added all the options it has (power seats, leather interior, anti-theft system, rear defroster, etc). And then I put in the miles: 223,000.

Side note: it's about 223,400 at this point.

After that, it asks for condition. The conditions range from the equivalents of  "basically perfect" to "pretty much totaled." From all of the work I just had put into it, I initially wanted to list its condition as "average," which is one of the options. But I know that no car dealer would judge that car as "average," not with the fact that I only have one key for it (which means I can't lock the doors, or open the trunk from the outside), the power windows are off-track, and the inside handle on the driver's door doesn't work. Its emissions system is also out of whack, which is why the "Service Engine Soon" light remains on. Therefore, I listed it as "rough," which basically means the car is roadworthy but needs some moderate cosmetic and mechanical repairs. It's the most accurate label I can give it.

The trade-in value of my car is $48.

Yes. You read that correctly. Forty-eight dollars.

I've bought cartons of cigarettes that were more than $48.

When I put gas in the car last weekend, after receiving it back from the shop with a nearly-empty tank, it cost $49 to fill it up. It cost more to fill it up with gas than I could get for it in a trade-in scenario.

$48 is about 1/4 of what I spend on groceries every month. $48 doesn't even cover one month's cable bill for my internet service -- that's $54.

In case you think I'm kidding, I screencapped it:

The picture is my exact car, by the way, other than the fact that mine has a spoiler.

Note that a dealer couldn't even sell my car as it is for $1k. $909 is their "Dealer Retail" quote. The "private party" sale price, in case I wanted to list it for sale myself, is $366....which is about $1k less than I put into it this month to fix all the shit wrong with it.

The tires on that car alone are worth about $150 each. $48 is a ludicrous number. The metal in that car is worth more than that, as is its stereo system, as is, well, the gasoline in it.

The car's registration alone (which I had to renew this month, and will put the sticker on the plate this weekend) was $63.

People have asked me "why don't/didn't you look at dealerships for cars?" Stuff like this is the reason. I'm not getting jacked. Kelly Blue Book lists the car in the condition it's in as $1,598 to sell on my own, and $793 for a trade-in. That's much more accurate and reasonable. The problem is that most dealerships don't go by Kelly -- I was outright told by a dealer that not even banks go by Kelly anymore. So, um, who does then, exactly?

Again, yep, another reason I'm not a big fan of car dealers. When I was looking at cars to purchase, I would outright call them out on their lies. For example, one time I was looking at a 1998 Mercury Mystique. The dealer wanted $2800 for it. I looked up its real value on both of those sites (including what a dealer should sell it for, which was about $1900 at most), and called him out on it. He gave me some line of bullshit about how they use some other pricing service/etc and clammed up on me. Uh huh. Sure.

I bought my car from Craigslist for $500 and have put about $1500 of work into it since then. While I doubt a dealer-purchased car would have required that much work in the same amount of time, that's not a justification for jacking up the price by almost a full grand. To put this into perspective, I put my mother's vehicle into Edmunds.com as well, and they say hers is only worth $5400 on trade-in. I somehow doubt that; she'd be able to get about $10k out of it in the condition it's in with its low mileage.

So yeah. Onward. $48, hm? I'm getting my $48 out of that car, that's for sure...

The Week

Fall semester: day twenty

Well, I remember most of this week. Most. This is important, as up until this point I have been severely sleep-deprived through a good chunk of the week. As you know, for me this is never a good thing. I tend to get more accomplished, yes, but at the price of short-term memory loss.

To rectify this (and I have) let me do a little math for you. I got home yesterday after class at around 1PM or so, roughly. That was, at present time, 25 hours ago. I went to bed around 3:30, after eating lunch, and got up at 11 or so. I stayed up for a few hours because nobody was around, awake, or online, responded to a few student emails and balanced my checkbook, and then went back to bed around 3AM. I slept until 12:30PM today.

That means out of the 25 hours I've been home, I have slept 17 of them. Roughly, anyway.

Again, as I've no doubt said over the past few weeks several times, welcome to fall semester, folks. This is what happens when Brandon doesn't get enough sleep during the week -- it all catches up to me once I get just a little bit of downtime. This is also probably a large part of why I don't have much of a social life.

The car is holding up well. Yes, she's still squeaking a little and I don't exactly know what that is, but otherwise she's running quite well. I've been able to double her gas mileage with the new spark plugs and other repairs last weekend -- the car is getting about 20 miles per gallon now, if not a little more, when previously it was about 10 or 11 with the bad plugs. No, that's not a joke. I did the math. Last Friday, I put over 13 gallons in the tank. Yesterday morning, I put 8 in when the gauge was showing that the tank was a little more than half-full (which means the gas gauge is correct; it's a 15-gallon tank) and I'd put about 160 miles or so on the car this week. My estimate is that it's getting about 20 in town and 22 or so on the highway. If you don't know a whole lot about cars, let me tell you -- for a V6, 215hp "sports car" that is seventeen years old? That's phenomenal. I'm guessing the two new tires, new oil/coolant, and new air filter is helping a lot with that mileage as well. This means, with rough calculations, that I could probably go about 300 miles or so between fill-ups. While I will never do that, it's good to know that if I have to, I probably could.

It's also good to know that (for once), I don't have a ton to do this weekend. My workload for not only my classes, but for my students is light, and aside from doing some reading and typing up a scene for my Playwriting class (which was canceled on Wednesday), I will be able to relax a bit and catch up on a fair amount of sleep -- which I did earlier, as you know.

I also went to the discount grocery store here in town this afternoon to pick up a few things -- I needed eggs and another box/bag of cookie mix so that I can bake cookies again for the ladies of the KAPodcast, my friends April and Kristine. I tried to bake them snickerdoodles last weekend, but it turned into an unmitigated disaster, a disaster of cookies sticking to the baking sheets and burning and the like. So, because of this, I'm trying again. Kristine was out of the country for a month, performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (she's a comedian, and a somewhat famous one), and I promised more cookies once she got back last week. As for April, she just completed finals week, and she wanted one of the spiral blue/red tie-dye shirts I'd made a few weeks ago, so I'm sticking that in the box as well for some extra padding. I love doing nice/sweet things for my friends.

The electronics keep piling up at the discount store as well; today I got a pair of digital camera binoculars for $3.50, a retractable laptop mouse for 99 cents, and a 2GB MP3 player with speaker set for $7. I don't really need any of these things, mind you, but they're neat to have. My parents have a set of digital camera binoculars, and they're neat. I've wanted a set of binoculars period for several years, so $3.50 is a good price for them even if the camera in them never functions correctly.

I also -- wait for it -- purchased a Shake Weight. New. For $1.50.

Go on, laugh. Most other people will and/or already have.



The South Park parody aside, I've wanted one for a while. I have horrible upper body strength. Yes, I've got good legs and strong ab muscles (even if they're buried under a thick layer of man-fat) but I've been wanting to exercise some more to work out my arms and pecs, and even though I have a full barbell set with bench in the basement...eh. I don't have the time or energy for that. I do have the time and energy to use a Shake Weight.

Okay, that's enough, you can stop laughing now. It was $1.50. If anything it should tell you how at ease I am with my sexuality and manliness. If the raging Castro-beard didn't tell you that already.

Ahem. Anyway.

Even in my sleep-deprived state of a few days ago, I created a marinade for two large chicken breasts and stuck them in the fridge. I'll be baking them tonight and making a side dish of a box of "Mediterranean curry" couscous (also found at the store today, for 49 cents) for dinner. Or maybe lunch tomorrow during football; I haven't really decided yet. I haven't been incredibly hungry over the past few days. Thirsty, yes, because of all the coffee I drink just to stay functional. Hungry, no.

The weather is beautiful; it's been in the 60s most of the day and sunny. There's been a slight breeze that's made everything oh-so-delightful as well; my windows are open, and thanks to a pumpkin spice scented candle, the house smells like fall. In my very, very sleep-deprived state on Wednesday night, I went to Walmart on the way home to find the night stockers starting to put up all of the kids' Halloween costumes, and stocking candy. Halloween this year is a Wednesday; I won't even be home that night to give out candy to the neighborhood kids, as Wednesdays I'm stuck on campus for fifteen hours straight (as you probably know). I considered wearing my costume to school that day, but a full Superman suit isn't exactly comfortable to wear for fifteen hours straight, and as I've lost about 40 pounds since I last wore it, it's not exactly going to fit that well anymore.

Yes, I own a full Superman suit. And guess what, ladies? He's single too!

I'm fairly sure my evening classes would get a kick out of it, though, if I at least brought it with me to school and put it on before class. Hm. Food for thought, there. Perhaps I'll do so.

I did, however, purchase a Wolfman t-shirt at Walmart from their clothing section. In case you didn't know, my nickname around the department is "The Wolfman," mostly because of the beard. When I had my longer hair, the name fit me better...but hell, if I'm going to be called that, I might as well play the part.

Daisy took that picture of me on Labor Day. Yeah, it is a very Wolfman-esque beard, is it not? It is a beard that will not be shaven for quite some time, mainly because I've been growing it and maintaining it since early May.

Yes, I do shampoo and condition it, in case you were wondering.

I also brush and comb it.

Yeah, I know. Shut up. My beard is the one good-looking characteristic my face has. I just wish my hair would grow back out a little faster. Every time I cut it (again, the last time was May) it seems to grow in that much more slowly. Perhaps it's my balding genes kicking in -- I already know that due to genetics, I'll probably be completely bald by age fifty or so. It travels down the mother's side of the family. My grandfather was bald. Yep, it's in the cards for me. As I will not look good being bald and bearded (trust me, gentlemen, it's never a good look) I'm taking advantage of what may be my last few years on the planet of looking good.

But, I've gotten way off track.

The week was long and hazy, as per the usual. I mentioned before that my Playwriting class was canceled on Wednesday, which wasn't a huge deal but did free up three hours of my day. If I would've known that said class was canceled, I would've canceled my office hours as well and wouldn't have gone to campus until around 6PM or so (I do have my Surrealism class from 7:05-9:45 on Wednesday nights, and I don't expect that to ever really be canceled).

My students are getting into the groove of the Engineering English 102 class I teach, and fairly well, I think. Most of them are on the ball and have been bringing up good discussion points in class, which is a plus. We're covering the last major article of the unit on Tuesday, and then they'll be diving into their first big papers in the class afterwards. I'm preparing a quiz and some in-class writing activities for them to keep them motivated and to help with their writing. Their papers are due in the beginning of October, and their workshop week is coming up soon as well. Should be really interesting to see how that goes with classes this large. As of right now, I only have one student who may drop the course. That leaves 49 others who are hanging tough. They're the largest classes I've ever taught, which (of course) means it's going to take a long time when grading their papers, especially their long and intricate research papers at the end of the semester. I've adjusted my schedule for that accordingly; I have changed around some of the dates at the end of the semester so that we not only have a bit of extra time for workshops, but they have a day off in the interim between the last day of class and the final exam.

As for the classes I'm taking, they're going interestingly enough as well. I have to meet with the professor of my Surrealism class at some point in this coming week -- he's also my thesis advisor, and wants to discuss some of the example poems I've shown him that give him a bit of a feel of what the thesis entails. I also need to provide him with my "reading list" for comps at some point soon, which he has requested as well. I have no clue what I'm choosing for my reading list, but most of said reading will have to take place over the winter break and very early spring if I want to be prepared for those comprehensive exams and graduation in general. I've also had no real interaction (except for a very short conversation) with our esteemed, famous poetry professor -- my second reader -- in several weeks, so I don't know when he'll want to see a draft copy of the thesis.

Add to this that it's mid-September, and I have not yet even begun to look for jobs come May, let alone figured out any sort of plan of where I'll end up and when. Hell, for the last week I've been preoccupied with car trouble and actually being able to sleep enough to function -- believe me, looking for jobs and teaching positions at other universities and colleges after graduation is so far down my list of shit that must be done, and soon that it hasn't even registered on my radar yet.

Yet, I look back to last fall and how busy I was then, and marvel at how I actually survived it. I was much, much busier then -- with two lit classes, a workshop class, and teaching two classes that I'd never taught before. Now, even though for the moment I am considerably less busy, I'm in more of the mindset of "I'm getting way too old for this shit," as mentioned before here in the blog. Everything seems so much more tiring, so much more draining of money, energy, and spirit. Daily tasks are a hassle and obstacles that must be tolerated and begrudgingly dealt with, instead of the daily challenges that made me drive hard to succeed (as they were in the past). Getting up every morning and forcing myself to go about my life is enough of a challenge -- yesterday morning I slept through ten minutes of my clock radio when it went off, and that radio is ear-splittingly loud. Ten. Minutes. Yes, I realize that after spending the past six years in the midwest, I can sleep through trains, tornado sirens, and the occasional loud domestic violence from the white trash across the street from me, but I don't sleep through alarm clocks. Never have. Doesn't matter how little sleep I've gotten. I'm pretty sure all of these things are signs of how I'm just growing more old and bitter and fed up with life. And I'm not sure I like that trend.

I've also basically given up on hearing anything from Lady ever again. I don't know what's going on in her life, but it's clear that she doesn't want me to be a part of it, nor does she want to be a part of mine. Oh well. I can't do much about that, really. It's been over two weeks since the last time I even attempted to contact her, and after that point (and the subsequent silence/cold shoulder on her part) I've given up. Life's too short to keep trying to keep in contact with people who don't seem to care about you one way or the other -- and you folks can quote me on that, if you like. I'm not pushy, I'm not dramatic, and I'm not stupid -- I know when to give up, when to move on. Lady's not stupid either; in fact, she's one of the most intelligent people I've ever known. And I know she's gotten the messages I sent her weeks upon weeks ago and has made a conscious choice not to respond to them. That's fine; I can take a hint. Again, oh well. That doesn't mean I won't talk to her if I do eventually hear from her again (as unlikely as that scenario seems at this point), but I've learned a valuable lesson here -- if someone cuts you out of his or her life, deal with it and move on. I don't like being ignored or cast aside, but sometimes it happens. I never blame anyone when I am ignored or cast aside, either. I may not have particularly high self-esteem, but I will always see actions like that as their loss, not mine.

I'm no stranger to this sort of situation, really; over the course of the past year or so, I've found out who my true friends are (as I've mentioned before), and some of the others have either been removed from my life or they've removed themselves from it. I am a good person; I am friendly, lovable, and endearing to people (as Daisy would put it). But, I have also learned that I need very few people in my "support network" -- otherwise known as a group of close friends -- to function and get by. I don't tolerate anger, craziness, drama, manipulation, selfishness, etc. People who exhibit those traits are given a one-way-ticket to go-the-fuck-away-ville, with few exceptions. I've found more than anything else that living in Kansas, alone and away from 90% of my friends and family is an exercise in self-reliance. Take care of yourself first; look out for number one. It may be a lonely, unhappy road a lot of the time, but not everyone gets to be fulfilled and happy in life. Those of us who don't have to suck it up and deal with it. For example, Daisy is probably the closest friend I have out here. She lives five hours away, and I'm lucky if I get to spend twelve hours with her once a month -- or less. Again, I suck it up and deal.  Anyone who reads my blog knows I'm no stranger to isolation and/or solitude; I'm not a fan of the bar scene, I would much rather watch a DVD than go see a movie in a theater, and I would much rather stay at home and sleep than go out and be social. That's just who I am. It doesn't mean I'm any more or less lonely or unfulfilled, or that I have more or less people I'd consider friends -- but it's my life, and those are the cards I've been dealt.

So, ahem, yeah. After multiple sidetracks, one video, and one picture, that was my week, I suppose. This weekend I'll be trying to relax, sleep, bake cookies, and not think about all of the stuff that's barreling my way over the course of the next few weeks and months.

But hey, looking on the bright side, I'll be able to gorge myself on Halloween candy soon enough.

Shop Talk, Part V

Fall semester: day eighteen

I sent an email to the car shop about the "Service Engine Soon" light kicking back on in my car. This is the reply I received:

Good morning Brandon

 

We knew the check engine light was going to come back on because of the emission codes we saw when we checked the codes. It should run fine  as long as the light is not flashing.

The squeaking noise concerns me because I do not know what it is, so would suggest we at least listen to it so we can decides if it need attention.

Hoo boy, that takes away a lot of my apprehensions. The light isn't flashing, of course -- that would signify a cylinder misfire, which would signify that one of the new spark plugs had blown or that there was some sort of hazardous condition for the catalytic converter. The light flashed the entire time I owned the car up until when I got it repaired this past weekend because it had two bad plugs and a bad wire. Apparently that extended to five of the six plugs going bad over time once the gasket broke and drowned 'em in oil, which is why the car was running rough and why I took the car in for service in the first place.

The "emission codes" he refers to are nothing major or important; it means, basically (more than anything else) that the car is old and that its emissions system sensors are burning out and/or that it's letting out a little more or a little less exhaust when I drive it. I like to keep my carbon footprint as small as possible, but something like that's going to pop up on many a car as old as mine regardless. My Monte Carlo has a fairly complicated dual-exhaust system that is (thankfully) in good shape.

Whatever is squeaking (and I paid attention to it this morning) squeaks steadily, though quietly, for about the first half-mile I drive the car when the engine is still cold, and then stops afterwards. Something like that could be anything. Could be a belt, could be a rotor, could just be the engine warming up and the like -- who knows. Whatever it is, it doesn't affect the car's performance or driveability, so unless it gets worse and/or much louder, I'm not incredibly concerned about it. Still, I told him that if it persists, I'd bring the car in on Thursday afternoon once I got off work so that they could look at it and try to listen to it then. After all, I don't have a whole lot going on this weekend (that I can foresee, anyhow), but reading and doing some homework.

I came home this afternoon, talked to Daisy for a while, and attempted to read some of my poetry for class tomorrow evening before passing out downstairs. Tomorrow (read: today) will be a long day not only because I have to be on campus for fifteen hours, but because my sleep schedule is off. I slept for about five or six hours this evening -- what I get most nights -- but that's not enough when I'm on campus all day and all evening tomorrow. It's just not. It doesn't matter that most of the day will be spent in my office and/or taking care of little things, office work, reading, stuff for my students, etc -- it matters that I can't just be done and go home/go to bed before 10PM, meaning that (because I need to stop at Walmart on the way home) that I actually won't get to sleep until 12 or 1. I'll more than likely go back to sleep tonight for a while, but as I have to be up again in less than four hours anyhow, I'm wondering if it is a fruitless endeavor.

Again, folks -- fall semester messes with one's body and mind. You sleep when you can, and you don't when you can't. On Wednesdays, when I'm stuck on campus for very long stretches of time, I end up drinking two or three full pots of coffee just to be able to stay awake and stay lucid. I can't tell you how many classes I've gone to in graduate school which I'm sure I contributed to, and I'm sure I did well in, but have no memory of whatsoever. After a while my mind enters a "fatigue haze," a fog where great stretches of time, even though I was lucid and functional during that time, I can no longer remember. This is why I write everything down in class word-for-word, in case in my haze I cannot remember a due date or issue of importance. I barely remember the classes I took last fall -- it was not only a dark time in my life, but it was quite possibly the worst semester of any form of higher education that I've ever dealt with. This semester isn't nearly as busy (yet), but I'm really getting into the mindset of "I'm getting way too old for this shit." I can only hope that in the spring, when I have nothing to do but teach, finish my thesis, and (more than likely) attend one class -- either visiting writer or sitting in on workshop again -- that I am able to finally regulate myself and catch up on some real sleep.

For now though, at least the light on the car isn't indicative of any real problems, most of my work is finished, and tomorrow will be spent downing a lot of coffee and dealing with student work, office hours, and my two classes. Life, as they say, moves forward.

Shop Talk, Part IV

Fall semester: day seventeen

Yesterday afternoon, as planned, I left for campus around 3PM. It was a warm, gorgeous day, without a cloud in the sky, and there was a nice breeze going. The Monte Carlo was running in tip-top shape, fast and strong, growling proudly.

And then, halfway to Wichita, the "Service Engine Soon" light came back on again.

...you've got to be fucking kidding me, right?

I paid attention to the car -- nothing rumbling, nothing rattling, no loss in performance, no out-of-the-ordinary shuddering (it's always had a bit of a shudder, which is probably the motor mounts and/or shocks just being old) and no overheating, so I don't know. For all I know, any of the triggering sensors for that light could've just now decided to go on the fritz. The only thing different about the car -- aside from the fact that it is running much better/smoother -- is that with its oil change/coolant flush and the lighter 5w30 oil they put in it for the winter, it warms up a little faster in the heat than it did previously, which I guess is to be expected as there's no gunk in there clogging it up anymore.

Gas mileage, by the way, seems to have been doubled (or more than doubled) by switching out the bad plugs -- it used to be a 1/4 tank to get to Wichita and back, meaning I had to fill up at least once a week. Now, after driving around town this weekend and making the trip to Wichita and back yesterday, it's barely used an 1/8 of the tank. Over time, that's going to save me a lot of cash when it comes to gas for the car.

Anyway. The light came on halfway down there yesterday afternoon, and has remained on, being on when I start the car and not going off the entire time I'm driving it. It was on for the entire drive home last night too, yet I still don't notice anything wrong with how the car drives or feels. The only thing I have noticed is that when I start it up, it sounds like one of the belts is squeaking at me just a little bit.

"Could be timing," Rae told me yesterday when I told her about the light kicking back on.

Rae's father is a used-car salesman, so she grew up knowing a lot about different cars. I also have to admit that this was one of my first thoughts as well. Although they checked all of the belts and hoses and the like when I had the car in the shop this past weekend, and they all apparently checked out fine, one of the only things that has not yet been replaced under that car's hood is the timing belt, as far as I know. It's a pretty important part, obviously, but from what I know about it, it's not incredibly difficult to fix/replace. It's also one of those things which, if it breaks, you're fucked because the engine won't run at all.

I doubt it's the serpentine belt slightly squeaking at me; while it could be, I just had that and its tensioner replaced six months ago. It could be anything squeaking, really; the car's old. And it's not loud, and only squeaks on startup -- once I move, it stops. So eh.

With all of this in mind, I sent the following email to the shop guy last night once I got home, as he had sent me an email as well to check up on how well the car was running:

Halfway to Wichita today the "Service Engine Soon" light clicked back on and stayed on both for the rest of the trip and my drive home. Car is running and handling really well (and my gas mileage has doubled from what it was with the bad plugs), so I don't know what it could be. I did notice that it does have a little squeak to it when I start it up, so it might be a belt, perhaps? I doubt it's the serpentine, since you folks replaced that about six months ago. Timing belt, maybe?

My question to you: should I bring it back in for you folks to look at? What do you think?

Brandon

I have to teach this morning, but I'm done by a little after noon. If necessary, I could stop by this afternoon on my way home and have them plug it into the computer to see what's causing that light to kick back on. I will, of course, wait to hear back from them first, to see what they say.

"I say take it back in there and tell them 'look, I just spent $1400 on getting this thing fixed,'" Jay said.

While that's true, I do want to know what their opinion is first. It's an old car, folks. Despite the fact that it's now running better than ever, it's still very old and has a lot of little things wrong with it, both cosmetic and mechanical. While I don't want to dump any more money into it, there are certain things that, if they go wrong or break, need to be fixed or I will no longer be able to drive the car. My finances, while okay at the moment, can't support me spending $1400 on car repairs and needing to purchase an entirely new vehicle shortly thereafter, especially on super-short notice. Additionally, it's not like I have the downtime or breathing space to do all of the stuff required for another vehicle right now, either. I just need this one to fucking work, and keep working.

I will, of course, keep you folks updated on what happens and when. For now, though, I must make my morning journey to campus to teach. Let's hope it keeps running.

The Nutshell

In a nutshell, the rest of this weekend has been, largely, an exercise in futility.

It is 11:25 PM on Sunday night. I've tried to sleep, but cannot. I am writing here as a way to try to make myself tired enough to go downstairs and actually pass out.

I took the car out yesterday morning to drive her around, to test the vehicle in and around town to see if she would act up or smoke anymore. This entailed going to the local discount grocery store, as I mentioned before. I noticed three big, important things about the car:

1.) She will now, once more, go 0-60 in about four seconds without even trying. As in, I can touch the accelerator and she will rocket off, basically throwing me back in my seat. Again, I once more have to gauge how much pressure to put on the pedal, as I'm used to pressing it down a little harder. New spark plugs are indeed important, kiddies. That car gets to once more put out the 215hp she was built to throw around.

2.) No smoking, at all. I took the car for a good ten-mile round trip around the outskirts and back roads of Newton, and while I didn't drive her hard enough to get the engine temperature rising by much, I did open her up on several straight stretches. No smoking, perfectly responsive, lightning fast and smooth. She didn't smoke a wisp during the drive or afterwards. This is a good sign, I think.

3.) It is very, very odd to drive that car with no warning lights on the dash lit up whatsoever. I mean, nothing. The "Low Coolant" light has been on ever since I bought the car (no matter how much coolant is in it; the shop said that's just a bad sensor, and there's not much that can be done on those cars about that after a while), yet with its radiator flush this past weekend, it is now off. The "Service Engine Soon" light, which until I got the spark plugs replaced was either flashing at me (indicating a misfire because of those bad plugs) or was always steadily on (indicating all of the other problems the car had) was off. For the first time ever. Yes, it was off when I brought it home from the shop too, but still. Not having those warning lights on, not having something always flashing at me from the dashboard? It was not only strangely calming, but just strange in general. I'm so used to so many things being wrong with my car that having everything working for once is surreal.

As I told my Dad, it drives like it's a new car -- and it should, after I put almost $1400 into it. If it slowly falls apart piece by piece between now and graduation, I am sort of okay with that at this point. Minor stuff I can fix myself or otherwise prevent, really. Even major stuff can be put off a little while, such as the wheel bearing occasionally growling at me -- I plan to get that fixed when I next take the car in for another oil change around Christmas, if it doesn't act up any more before then. The new tires feel like a dream, and make braking and accelerating much easier for some reason. I'll get to listen to the radio in the mornings now to keep me awake as I drive to school, and to have something to sing along to while driving back home. The car actually has a really nice aftermarket CD stereo system with removable faceplate, remote, and everything. I've just never used it. I've never been able to, obviously. The blown fuse they replaced I found in my cupholder yesterday afternoon, and laughed. Two little prongs of metal joined by a piece of plastic. Smaller than a dime. Yet that was for all intents and purposes what prevented me from turning on the radio for the past fifteen months. Cars are weird.

Anyway, I suppose that was a pretty successful road test. It may smoke a little when I get it to campus tomorrow, as I will have been driving at 75 on the interstate all the way down there beforehand, and thus will be warming up the engine and giving it its first true workout since it was worked on, but if it does, I at least know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's not anything serious, like a hose or clamp they forgot to reconnect. This weekend's drive proved that to me pretty nicely.

So with the car taken care of (for the moment, anyway) I can finally relax a little about that. One thing at a time, as they say. Small moves, piece by piece. I'll still be a little nervous for the next few days as I drive her back and forth, just to see if anything acts up again, but she seems like she's going to hold stable for the time being. I don't have to venture to campus until late tomorrow afternoon, for my 4:30-6:50 Playwriting class. I'm planning to sleep in and move at a leisurely pace for most of the day; there's nothing at all I have to do on campus other than go to that class. I neither have anything to do in the office nor for my students, so unless I get supremely bored and twitchy, I'll probably leave the house around 3PM or so.

Yesterday afternoon after the test drive, I sat down at the coffee table in the living room -- and in two sessions, one class after the other -- graded almost fifty papers back-to-back. I say "almost" because there were several students who were absent or who otherwise did not turn one in, so the number was about 45-47 or so, really. Many cigarettes were smoked. Much coffee was consumed. Much football was half-paid-attention-to on the TV. It took me about five hours total (they were short papers, only worth 20 points out of their 1,000-point class total). When I was done, I returned to my room -- and to my cell phone -- to see several missed calls and voicemails.

Hm, I thought. That's odd. Nobody EVER calls me. Not unless someone is dead. Usually text messages work fine, but nobody ever texts me either. I had a text from Jay, as well, asking me if I was going to the grad student mixer thing they were having in Wichita, which I covered in my last post here (short answer: no, because I hadn't tested the car yet at that point).

I checked the numbers before I checked my voicemail. One of them was Jay's number. The others were numbers I'd never seen before.

Note: this is nothing new; I get robocalls all the time from scammers, political activists trying to get me to vote a certain way, or from the cable company trying to sell me digital phone service to go along with my internet, so I'm used to seeing strange numbers on my phone. I also never have the ringer on my phone turned on, whether I'm at home or otherwise, so I never hear my phone ring. It's always on silent or vibrate. Plus, well, as I said, nobody ever calls me. My parents don't even call me unless there's an emergency. Aside from them, Lady was the only other person who would ever call me, and for some reason she hasn't spoken to me in over three weeks, so my phone has remained relatively undisturbed.

Sort of panicked that something had gone really wrong, I checked the voicemails. Three new messages.

All of them were from friends in the department, who had taken turns calling me to leave messages or had passed the phone around on each call to take turns telling me how much they missed me at the mixer and how much they loved me and wanted me there, since they knew that my car had been fixed and was running (I wrote about the test drive, briefly, on Facebook before starting my grading). It was both hilarious and sweet at the same time -- it was, essentially, a cell-phone intervention of sorts to snap me out of my hermitude.

I didn't realize, really, that I was being a hermit. Well, I guess I did to a certain extent. As you folks may know, I'm not an incredibly social person. I don't go out and do stuff much, if at all. It's not a finances thing, especially not now that I once more have money -- it's more of an unconscious choice of sorts. I have a lot of responsibilities I deal with in my downtime, though no more than most other people in my situation (I assume). I tend to have a lot of problems and issues that pop up -- this weekend, it was the car, and then the mountain of grading that I had to take care of so that I'd actually have time to do my own work for my classes. I've always been one of those people who has the mindset of well, I'm on campus so many days a week; I socialize enough then. The weekend is spent taking care of business and "me time."

Don't get me wrong -- I do socialize within the department when I'm there. It's the main reason that I can only do most of my serious work while at home, aside from the fact that the old laptop my friend Jae gave me years ago is too slow to do a whole lot of schoolwork on. I hang out in friends' offices, they hang out in mine, and yes, there is the occasional "beer and a game of darts at the student union" outing that I'll participate in, or a "hey, let's go out after class for dinner and drinks" thing that I will occasionally (read: very, very rarely) attend. This weekend, I could've gone to the mixer thing, yes. But I didn't know if the car was going to act up and start smoking violently, and I did have nearly fifty papers to grade, about 100 pages to read in two different books, and two scenes to write for Playwriting. Based on that, I made the judgment call that it was probably best that I stay in and do all of the work I needed to do.

I only got about half the reading done, by the way. The rest I'll finish in the next day or two.

The voicemails were very cute. I'm not sure whether or not it was everyone just trying to annoy the piss out of me or everyone being genuinely concerned for me and my well-being/wanting me there, but they were cute. Most people I know in the department also know, on some level, that I am not a "social situations" sort of guy -- i.e., they know about my level of social anxiety, even when surrounded by a lot of people I know and/or am usually comfortable with.

"You are loved!" Daisy told me later, when I relayed the story to her.

"Gods, why?" I replied. "I never do anything with any of my friends, I never hang around on campus any more than I have to, and I have fairly poor social skills."

Many people would debate that last one, of course, including Daisy herself. I should say that I can have good social skills, and I tend to have a sharp wit and good sense of humor, yes, but a lot of that is just timing more than anything else.

Timing was key in this situation again as well -- I didn't receive the voicemails until about four hours after they were left on my phone. By that time, the group had probably dissipated and had gone back to their respective homes anyhow. If I hadn't been grading, there's a good chance that I would have actually gone to the mixer/party thing, as I'd told Rae and Jay earlier in the week that I wanted to, but it depended heavily on whether I got the car back by the weekend's end. I had, but until I took it for the test drive, it's not like I knew whether it would be okay, and again, after that I settled in and started doing my work. Truthfully, the mixer was the last thing on my mind once I started going through papers.

"You're loved because you are endearing to people," Daisy said. "You are a good man, a nice guy."

Daisy is a bit biased in that assessment, of course, but okay.

I didn't call or text anyone back; this was partly because of shame that I'd missed the calls in the first place, partly because I wasn't there, and partly because I knew I'd see most of them this week, if not tomorrow. Judging from the sound of the...ahem...raucous party that was going on in the background of those calls, I'm pretty sure most of them probably won't even remember leaving me those voicemails anyhow, which I'm fine with. Never let it be said that GTAs don't know how to have fun, though.

I have been in a sort of quiet, introspective mood for the past week or so. While I'm getting to know the new recruits better over morning coffee and cigarettes before we teach, in my home life I've become increasingly closed off. I try to talk to Daisy when I can, and Zedral as well, but aside from them I barely speak a word to anyone (unless it's my cats). I'm rarely on Facebook anymore, on Twitter even less, and have been burying myself in the work I have to take care of for my classes -- it's all-consuming, a lot of the time. I've been sleeping a lot, even if it's on weird schedules, as if it's an escape from reality -- the more I sleep, the less I have to worry about why Lady isn't talking to me, the less I have to think about how much money I spent on the car, the less I have to think about when I have to take care of all of the bills, housework, and schoolwork I have to do. However, just because I'm sleeping a lot doesn't mean I've been sleeping well. Over the past few weeks -- mainly since school started again -- I've been having at least one or two nightmares a week. Sometimes they're mundane, sometimes they're terrifying. It seems like my insomnia, which at times was fairly crippling before, has been replaced by nightmares. I don't like the trade-up.

On that note, I am once more going to bed. In the morning starts another week, and day sixteen of the fall semester.