What Does the Fox Say?

Fall semester: day fifty-four
Halloween

I know I haven't written here in a while -- the Tuesday/Thursday schedule I've been working is absolutely killing me. Metaphorically, anyway. By the time I start my class on those nights, at 7:20 PM, my mind/body/motor skills are basically shot. I'm exhausted since I've been awake since early that morning, and have been forced to stay awake and (more often than not) spend the entire day in a cramped office, grading papers, with no friends or company around to give me a little diversion. I don't have access to (drinkable) coffee, I don't have my desk full of energy bars (as I do on main campus) and I don't have my laptop so that I can peruse most of the normal websites I would when I'm bored -- the West campus' internet system is on all new computers, and they're monitored. So, my mission for my 210 night class is usually to get in there, teach what needs to be taught for the night, and then get the hell out. I think I end up rushing through my lessons a little more than necessary, but it's not like I intend to -- it's subconscious more than anything else. I'm so exhausted and fried that by the end of the day I just want to be done. Especially on Thursday nights, like tonight -- mainly because I just want to go home and go to sleep. I can't help it. It truly is unintentional. Every Tuesday and Thursday I fight my body to keep going from about 5PM forward, just to be able to make it through the night.

I stopped at Walmart on the way home on Monday and purchased sleeping pills to ensure that I get a full night of rest on Monday and Wednesday nights from this point forward. No matter how tired I am, I'm so stressed out and preoccupied on Monday/Wednesday nights that I'll want to go to bed before 5PM, and then I'll be awake at midnight again and unable to go back to sleep. No no no, we can't do that when we have a twelve-hour workday ahead of us. Instead, I take the pills and force myself to get 10-12 hours of sleep on those nights. It really doesn't matter; I'm still fucking exhausted by the time 7:20 rolls around and I have to start my night class. All the pills do is keep me awake enough during the day to not pass out in my office for hours on end. I can't do that anyhow, as they're shared offices -- other faculty members use them as needed, and come and go throughout the entire day.

It's a shitty situation to be sure, but there's not much I can do about it -- there are but four weeks of actual classes left, skipping a week in there for Thanksgiving (as I've given my students that week off). I just have to do the proverbial "put my head down and run" sort of teaching and lesson planning for these last four weeks. In those four weeks, I will be collecting and grading seven different assignments from my three classes combined, not counting rewrites and journals from my two composition courses. I do not yet know when/where finals are for any of my classes, and probably won't know until the week before exams in December. I've already had students asking me about them, and I have no answers for them -- we never know, as instructors, until the last week of classes. The further issue arises when all of the 101 finals are given at the same time on main campus: 1 to 2:50PM, Monday of finals week, usually in the same building. This wouldn't be a problem except that my 101 class is on the West campus, which usually operates on a different schedule -- and I'm fairly certain they're not going to make West campus students drive in to the main campus to take a final there unless absolutely necessary. My 011 final will more than likely be at the same time as the 101 final (they always are) and my 011 is on main campus, etc etc. It's a mess, and I have no clue when they'll try to make me do it or how. Add to that the fact that I'm teaching three different classes and I'm no longer a GTA, and I don't know if I'll need to grade with a "partner" for those exams or not. Really, I hope I don't. By the time finals week rolls around I will desperately want to get things done and get the hell home to have a much needed holiday break.

In every post here I've written as of late, I've forgotten to mention how my eye is healing. My vision is almost completely back to normal now (a month later, of course) but not fully. I'd like to say that I've got about 95% normal vision in that eye, with only a slight bit of blurring; it's a little worse when I'm tired, but overall it's so much better that I don't notice any difference at all now when I'm performing normal tasks every day. I would imagine that within the next week or two it will be completely back to normal, and I'll no longer have to wonder if it's going to heal up.

As for the car? Eh, it's still rattling. Rattling like crazy. I don't know what is making it rattle, of course, and it's not really loud or anything, but it's annoying as hell. The weather this week -- pouring rain every day with constant 100% humidity -- made her sluggish and whiny on Monday (as this weather always does) but Tuesday and yesterday, she was fine. I've been driving her gently and switching up the gears I drive her in between the automatic overdrive and the normal drive to see if the transmission acts up in one, the other, or both, but this week she really hasn't given me any shit. I do know, however, that my coolant sensor is going out again -- I put more coolant in her last weekend and the light was still on, so when I stopped at Walmart on Monday I picked up another jug of it and poured half of it into the reservoir, past the "fill line" (because if it's apparently "low," there won't be any in the reservoir) and the light's still on even though it's full. I'm not leaking any coolant, nor do I appear to be losing any of it by burning it off, especially since the car barely gets warm on my drive to/from campus in the cooler weather unless I'm hitting every stoplight. My guess is that the sensor is on the fritz or that the thermostat is acting up again; both will go weird when the weather changes drastically (possibly why it acts sluggish and whiny when it's humid and wet outside). It's like my car has weather allergies, just like me.

I mentioned that it's been pouring rain every day, and that's the truth -- this week it's been unseasonably warm in Kansas, with low temperatures barely dipping under 55 or so and highs reaching the low 70s every day. We're getting a lot of rain, for once; it's barely stopped raining for the past 48 hours or so, and when it does, it's foggy/misty outside almost constantly. It's supposed to clear up and become sunny later today, but whether it will or not remains to be seen. We've had some good, strong storms at night, too. Some powerful/loud ones rolled through on Monday night, and more rolled through in the overnight hours last night.

I, of course, slept through most of this; sleeping pills are a wonderful thing. I slept over ten hours last night and almost twelve on Monday night. I'm up early this morning because I need to put on my makeup. Yes, makeup.

Today, of course, is Halloween. I have told all of my students that if they wear costumes to class, I'll give them 5-10 bonus points (5 for my 101 class, 10 for my 210s since it's a night class and they're almost all non-traditional students coming straight to class from work). I will also be in costume -- the most ridiculous, idiotic looking costume I could possibly wear. I'm "the fox." As in, "What Does the Fox Say?" the fox.

If you have no clue what I'm talking about, it's time you saw this:





Obviously, purchasing an entire fox suit would be way too expensive, so I went the cheaper route. I purchased this shirt and this hat, and bought a $4 clown makeup kit at Walmart for the face paint, simply because it had white cream makeup in it, a palette including black (for the nose) and a black makeup pencil for the outline and whisker dots.

The result? Well....

As you can see, I look like an idiot. But a foxy idiot.

Hah! Puns!

I also learned how hard it is to properly makeup oneself when one's face has a full beard on it.

I told my students that they are free to take as many pictures as they'd like, but I want them to email said pictures to me so that I can make a gallery of them on Facebook. Yeah, because I'm that guy. It's not like I'm running for public office anyway, right?

Look, Halloween is the one day of the year where people can dress like idiots and not really be looked down upon for it. All of my students are excited to dress up for class -- I feel like that's something some of them haven't been able to do since grade school, based on their excitement levels over it. As mentioned before, all of them have tried to get me to tell them what I'm going to be, but I kept it a surprise. I've told some people in the department, including Parker and the Director, neither of whom will see me today, and I told my 011 class, who won't see me either. Daisy has been trying to get it out of me for weeks, but I've remained tight-lipped about it with her so that I could keep her in suspense. Well, also because I drive her nuts with that suspense and because it keeps her constantly guessing. Because it's fun.

I also realized something with my 210 students for tonight -- as mentioned before, many of them are non-traditional students in their 30s and 40s, and as such, most of them have young children or children who are at least still of the age where they'd be going trick-or-treating. Because of this, I told them in class on Tuesday and via email beforehand that I'm not formally going to take attendance tonight; if they need to be at home with their kids to take them trick-or-treating, I'm not going to deny them that experience with their children, nor will I penalize them with a recorded absence for it if they do have to miss class to do that. Tonight is the first night since the very first day of class that there isn't an assignment to turn in; it's not due until Tuesday. We're doing peer reviews of drafts tonight, and I'm going over a tips and tricks handout for their assignment which should greatly help them. The "not taking attendance" thing may mean that a few students won't be there so that they can go trick-or-treating with their kids, or that some would skip class, but many of them -- even the older ones -- are excited to come to class in costume to show off, not even necessarily for the points. Most of my students in 210 are really good; they're doing quite well on their assignments, and unlike what I expected, none of them have dropped the course or have stopped showing up to it -- all of them (twenty in total) have been there and have been handling the workload admirably, which I totally give them props for. It's not remarkably easy; the assignments are somewhat short, but so far there have been three of them back to back, of varying degrees of difficulty. I'll grade through their third assignments, their "business letters," today in my off hours.

The makeup (pictured above) feels really weird on my face. I'll have to be careful all day today that I don't rub or scratch my face, as I'll not be able to get it off my hands without washing them, and I'll have to take the kit (hah! unintended pun! fox kits! ahem) with me anyhow in case I need to do some touch-ups throughout the day. I already know I look like a total idiot; might as well revel in it, really. I've taken decongestants/allergy pills too, so that I don't have to blow my nose repeatedly today (that will take off the black on it, and I don't have a lot of spare black).

On that note, I need to continue to get ready for my classes today, and need to pack up my stuff before I exit the premises. I'll return home tonight exhausted and spent, with a face covered in makeup, but my week will be over. Finally. Over.

Worst-case Scenarios

I am an idiot.

Well, I don't think I'm stupid, per se, but I make some really dumb mistakes from time to time.

Case in point: yesterday, while trying to burn a data DVD, I overwrote basically my entire hard drive.

I'm not kidding, folks. The DVD authoring program I use on Linux writes to a temp file before it burns the disc image. There's a specific directory it writes to, and each time it burns a new disc it dumps whatever is in that directory, deletes it, and overwrites it with the new stuff. Yesterday, I accidentally selected the Desktop directory. Unlike in Windows, where most of your desktop icons are just shortcuts to those files on your hard drive, in Linux to make shortcuts to those files it's really difficult (depending on which OS you use, and which version). I, therefore, use the desktop as the hard drive, because it's faster and easier.

When I accidentally overwrote all the files on my desktop I lost countless files and tons of important data -- an estimated 60GB of podcasts I'd downloaded over the past year or so and archived, ALL of my stuff for the university (including every lesson plan, grade worksheet, quiz, and assignment I've written for this semester), my entire pictures archive of me and Daisy, all of my tax/insurance/important info, etc. Everything. Gone. Gone in a matter of seconds, and unrecoverable.

The last backup I made of all of this important stuff was in July, so I was able to stick that flash drive in and recover most of my most important stuff, but as for anything I'd done this semester for my classes? It was gone. I had to go out to Blackboard and re-download everything I had uploaded for my students. I had to completely remake my lesson plans and assignment sheets for the projects that are coming up but I haven't distributed to my students yet. I had to email my 210 students and ask if one of them could send me a scanned copy of the Business Letter assignment, as I'd given out all of my copies in class and didn't have a digital one to put on Blackboard or go from when it comes to grading (don't worry, one of my best students replied with that ASAP). When it came down to it, all I'd really lost was everything since July, and all of my podcasts. ALL of them. Most of what I've lost is either recoverable or re-do-able, but it will take some time to put it all back together. The podcasts alone will take weeks to go back out and re-download, and many of the ones I had cannot be replaced as they are now offline. The school stuff I tend to redo most of every semester anyway, or at least edit and streamline, and it's not like I lost any of my coursework from grad school. I did, however, lose a fair amount of resume/CV edits and cover letters/applications I'd sent out since July.

I'm trying to see the positives in the scenario; it did scrub most of my hard drive clean, and got rid of a lot of stuff that I didn't necessarily need but had kept anyway. The most important stuff I always backed up anyhow, but I thought I'd backed up everything since July, and apparently I hadn't. The best thing about it is that I didn't lose any of my email or important messages, or most of the paperwork I needed to keep for a lot of different things. The worst? Well, as time progresses I'll figure that out. I lost the sixteen-page letter I'd been writing to my grandmother, for example. I lost the pictures of, and stories about, my deceased sister -- including the digital copy of her obituary. It's the things like that which feel like a punch to the gut. Those are things that I really can't replace, honestly, but the important stuff remains mostly intact from my backups. I spent the entire day yesterday writing and re-writing the semester's lesson plans and assignments, trying to piece everything back together and make the rest of the semester work. By the end of the night, frazzled and stressed, I'd gotten most of that stuff back to normal, or as close to normal as it needs to be as we only have six weeks of actual classes left, and (aside from the 210 class) my classes are working on their last or second-to-last big paper assignments. The good thing about the 210 class is that I hadn't created most of their work for it yet anyhow, so this was exactly the push I needed to go in and make out some stuff in advance -- I'd already uploaded their lesson plan to Blackboard, so I knew what I'd be doing and when/how I'd be doing it.

That class is going really well, actually. Most of the students in it seem bright, ready to work, and enthusiastic about writing and learning how to write effectively in business environments. I try to keep it fun, I try to keep it entertaining (you have to when the material is sometimes quite dull) and they seem to have responded well to that approach. In the assignment for their Public Service Announcement (which I'll give out on Tuesday), for example, I told them that since their topics are pretty wide in scope, they can write on basically anything they want and be creative as long as it still falls under the large umbrella header of what the topics are. One of the topics is "a social issue" or something like that. That's really wide and vague. Yeah, they could write about drunk driving or bullying in schools, or they could write about the proper way to defend yourself against rabid bear attacks or zombie outbreaks. Or rabid bear zombies. It doesn't have to be dry and boring (or even real) as long as they hit the parameters of the assignment. That's what I'm looking for. I try to "pep it up," so to speak, as much as I can. For some assignments that will work, for others it won't. Again, as I've mentioned before, the last two projects in the class are big projects, projects that are a minimum of 10-15 pages each. The example request for grant funding/proposal project that I will upload to Blackboard for them is 22 pages. That's not a joke. It's 22 pages. Imagine collecting twenty different 22-page assignments for one class right before Thanksgiving break, not to mention the papers I'll be collecting and grading for my other two classes, and you'll know why I need as much time as possible over that week to get grading done -- as well as how hard it will be to not be stressed out the entire time and to be able to have fun with Daisy and her family when I'm up there for a few days. Again, it's not like there's a whole lot I can do about that in the meantime -- I am a professor, and there are things that I must take care of no matter what, things I can't just slack on. I can't come back after Thanksgiving and say "oh, yeah, I didn't get to grade all of your assignments, but you're still giving me oral presentations on them this week anyway because you have to." That's not going to work, and at best it's incredibly unprofessional of me.

I have a bit of leeway in my scenario, though; I collect those massive projects on the second-to-last day I teach before leaving town, and in the interim I have almost a week before I go up to Daisy's. While I collect other papers that week from my other students, I will have some time at least to work on them before and after the trip to Omaha. I told Daisy I'd be swamped during that time, and since it's the last week of classes when we return from Thanksgiving, I don't have any other choice -- we made our plans to work around everything we could. Daisy is understanding of my situation, at least, when many others may or would not be.

This weekend is me playing "catch -up," really, due to my computer issue and due to the fact that I have a bunch of stuff to do at the end of the month. I paid my electric bill and rent yesterday -- effectively breaking even after I was paid yesterday. In and out, that's how it goes. I am lucky in that all of my bills are now paid, and that I won't have to go shopping again for about another week, roughly. It's cold outside, but at least it's not snowing. I've been wearing pajama pants and long-sleeved shirts around the house just to keep warm and keep from needing to run the furnace constantly. I did laundry, ran the dishwasher, cleaned the catbox/room, and vacuumed the downstairs. This afternoon and evening, I'll be watching football while organizing everything I need to do for next week, printing papers for copies and reading through sections of the books which need to be covered in my classes.

My internet is still giving me problems, and those problems are much more prevalent now that I am trying to re-download my archives of podcasts that I lost. Again, it's not my modem -- that works fine -- it's the fact that they're kicking me off every few minutes when I try to download large mp3 files (some of my podcasts' episodes, for single episodes, mind you, are over 300MB) because I trip those "flags" or whatever it is that tells them I'm using too much bandwidth -- despite the fact that they not only raised their monthly rates by $7 over the course of the past two months, but I'm on their second highest tier for service and I don't and shouldn't have a bandwidth cap. I am very close to setting up my laptop out in the living room, jumping on the unlocked wireless connection I always have access to out there (from somewhere, anyway) and downloading all of my missing podcasts onto that machine just to get around them trying to throttle my own access for no good reason or because I won't spend $100 on their new fancy modem that I don't need. I've mentioned before that they've not said a word to me on my bills or via mailed correspondence that I need to, or should, upgrade things -- they've made no mention whatsoever about anything involving their systems being upgraded or that my access and speeds may be unreliable or anything like that. The only reason I know about any of this is because of two pop-up, in-browser messages a month ago that my ad-blocking software didn't catch. The least they could do is give me a rundown of my options in an insert with my bill, or mail me a flyer telling me what I can do. They haven't. As a customer, and a good one at that, if I hadn't noticed the in-browser pop-ups I would be oblivious to the entire situation and would think I had a hardware problem of some sort -- which is what, I think, they want everyone to think, so that if a customer calls and complains, they can say "oh, it's because you need a new modem." Again, it's all really shady, underhanded shit. I'm not a fan of subterfuge, and more importantly, I don't buy into it.

In other news, apparently my parents are in the process of, or are trying to, buy a second house -- a place they can live when they retire, on the beach -- and like I did seven years ago, they may finally be able to get the hell out of West Virginia and never look back. I support this, of course; I think it's really sort of cool that they're able to plan ahead and set everything up to be able to do this sort of thing. I am, however, a bit envious (understandably so), because here I am with $700 to my name, driving a seventeen-year-old car with almost 230,000 miles on it, and my parents not only own one house, but are buying a second beach house. For the moment, if all goes well, they're keeping both homes, but my mother asked me if I wanted to live in the West Virginia house with Daisy after we're married, and pay the bills for it so someone can actually use the house until/if they decide to eventually sell it. I didn't have the heart to say "with what money and what jobs will we be working to earn that money, since West Virginia is a black hole of employment for anyone with degrees like Daisy and I have?"

Not to mention that as much as I love that house and it's location, it's about as far away from town as I am from Wichita, and it's on top of a mountain where it's not uncommon to get two-foot snowstorms every week between November and March, and where the temperature will drop to -20 at night in the winter. It's like living in Alaska.

"If I could even get the Monte Carlo there," I told Daisy, "I wouldn't be able to drive it anywhere for about four months out of the year. Anything more than, say, four or five inches of snow, and even with as big and heavy as that car is, I'm not going anywhere. I'd need a truck or a big SUV or something to even attempt to get into town."

My parents both have big SUV's. My dad used to have an F-250 Super Duty for years before he got the SUV he has now.

Anyway, my mother told me that in preparation, they're doing a lot of cleaning of the house to get rid of a lot of the stuff they don't or no longer need. I told her not to get rid of anything that Daisy and I could use or want once we're married (it's mind-boggling the amount of stuff they have in that house, stuff they've never used or wanted, or have bought, used once or twice, and stuffed away into storage), and to definitely not mess with any of the stuff I still have there, like my thousands of dollars' worth of comics I collected for many years or my two expensive guitars. I told her I'd go through all of my own stuff the next time I came home and would decide then what needed to be shipped or carried back home with me when I was there. It doesn't look like my next trip home will be until after the wedding, as they already have plans for Christmas and after Christmas.

"You know you're always welcome up here," Daisy told me. "[Sister] and [sister's husband] are coming in for Christmas, and [other sister] will probably be here for one day during that time at least."

"I should probably make an appearance up there anyhow over the holidays," I replied, "as I'm sure, since we're getting married, everyone will get us stuff."

Daisy's family is extraordinarily generous and welcoming to me, and always has been. The sister who's coming in over Christmas adores me, and (obviously) her parents love me as well. I have no doubt that they'll get us a bunch of stuff for Christmas even though there's little either of us really need and even less that either of us would ever ask for. I don't ask anything of Daisy's parents or even Daisy herself, as I don't want to put anyone out, so to speak, and I don't want anyone to feel that they have an obligation to do everything they can for me (or, as the case may be, us). I have a real guilt complex about stuff like that, especially as I'm poor and cannot possibly provide the same amount of material goods for anyone that are provided or given to me during the holidays. Last year, Daisy spent way more on me than she should have over the holidays, and she was even unemployed at the time. That's part of the reason we decided on a small Christmas this year, with little things if any.

"Is there anything you even want for Christmas or for your birthday?" she asked me last night.

"Yeah, a 2DS and the new Pokemon game," I said.

"So you want me to spend hundreds of dollars on you again?"

"Hell no," I said. "Don't do it, don't get it. Obviously. But I have everything I need, and that's the only want I have that I literally can't afford to purchase for myself. I'm fine, love. You don't have to get me anything."

I didn't say this in a passive-aggressive manner or as a hint that I really want her to get that stuff for me -- I don't want that. I don't need anything. We're both saving our money for the wedding. I don't want her to spend money on me to get me stuff that I say "oh, that's nice, that's thoughtful" to, and mean it when I say it, but have no real use for. Case in point: last year I mentioned that I used to have the McDonalds promo Fozzie Bear stuffed doll from the late 80s, and I loved that doll when I was like, four or five, but didn't know what had happened to the one I had (because that was twenty-five years ago). She went out on eBay and found one, new, with the tags still on it. That was incredibly sweet and thoughtful, and a wonderful gesture, but I didn't have a physical or emotional need for it, obviously. The same applies this year. There's really nothing I need except for the big stuff, like, say, a new car. That's not gonna happen, so there's nothing else I need. I can pay my bills, I can keep food in the house and in my cats' bowls, and (hopefully) my student loans will be deferred. So I'm good, really. I'd rather we both save money for the wedding.

So, really, that's about all that's going on right now. Now, it's football time.

Business

Fall semester: day forty-eight
 Dear God let it end

I can tell you already that the long days on Tuesday and Thursday, with getting up at 5AM on Wednesday morning in-between -- oh, they're going to seriously destroy me over these last six weeks or so of class. Right now, at 8:40 PM on Wednesday night, I'm running on fumes. Seriously.

I am, and have been, under intense stress and pressure to take care of many things at once, as you know. Sometimes those things are manageable. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes, it seems like those things are all I do. For example, tomorrow in my off hours, I will grade through no less than thirty papers. Back to back, one after another, until I'm done. I will then take those papers, set them aside, and go over my lesson plans and the assignment that I'll give my 210 students tomorrow night, and once I get in there I will return the graded papers to them and collect yet another set of them. It never stops.

I have filed and mailed the paperwork to put my student loans into forbearance, which is a fancy way of saying "hey, my loan payment is currently like, 35% of what I make in any given month, so please put it on hold for a year before I have to start paying it back." My loan servicer requires this paperwork to be mailed or faxed to them, and since I don't live in 1989, I don't have a fax machine. So, the forms have been signed (along with proof of my income in the form of a pay stub, because they require that) and mailed. I don't foresee a problem getting forbearance granted; they're supposed to grant it to anyone whose payment would be 20% or more of their monthly income. As I'm not paid exceedingly well as a university lecturer, my payment would be well above that amount -- as mentioned above.

I also learned that I can do this for up to three years, if necessary, though interest still accrues. I have the choice to pay some of that now if I want. I can't. I'm poor. Again, university lecturer.

As mentioned in previous posts here, my car has been making weird noises, mostly rattling. I don't know if it's the weather or not, but it's not getting any better or worse. I've also been having minor transmission issues as of late as well -- my car has two "drive" gears -- one is the normal drive, and the other is the automatic overdrive. Yeah, it doesn't have a button or anything like that, but a separate spot on the shifter. It's that old. Anyway, it has been running occasionally rough and a little jerky from time to time on the OD, but on the normal D it sounds and feels okay. I normally run the OD because it's supposed to be better gas mileage for highway driving, though as the car gets 19-22mpg anyway, I don't really notice a difference. The other gears are fine, from what I can tell, but I am (of course) worried that this is going to become a major issue. Transmissions probably aren't cheap, and if I know anything about how hard it is to work on that car of mine, the labor wouldn't be either if mine decides to crap out on me.

Again, since graduation I've always been in the mode of "well, let's do what preventative maintenance we can, and continue to drive this car until it goddamn dies," but it's not as simple as that. No, I shouldn't have to worry about my student loan stuff anymore (though I won't breathe easy until that forbearance is approved), but it's not like I can afford major car repairs or another vehicle right now. I get paid on Friday, and most of it will go directly to my rent for November. When I stopped at Walmart last night on my way home -- running even more on fumes then than I am now -- I got another two quarts of oil and two high-end fuel system cleaners. The oil I got was also the high-end, stop-burning-oil-off high mileage oil, as the car passed 229,200 today, and I put a quart of it in this afternoon. I refilled the coolant (with the rest of the bottle of coolant I had left, anyway) and I'll fill the car with gas in the morning so that I can add the fuel system cleaner. It could be the transmission giving me shit, or it could be gunk in the system making it act occasionally weird. It could be the weather changing. It could be any number of things, since the "service engine soon" light is always on due to my emissions system needing an expensive re-tuning that isn't required by the state of Kansas, nor is it apparently detrimental to the car's overall health. My only game plan is "keep it running as long as you possibly can, and don't drive it too hard." It seems to be working mostly okay thus far. Knock on wood. If nothing else, I'll have to figure out how to switch out the air, oil, and fuel filters sometime eventually myself. The oil basically changes itself, since it burns off a quart every six or seven weeks, and I replace it pretty regularly. I do about all I can, myself, to keep the car in the best mechanical shape possible for 200-mile-a-week back and forth highway trips -- but again, I know she won't last me forever.

The 210 class seems to be going pretty well, actually. Well, so far anyway. Last night I thought I gave one of my best lectures ever, for any class I've taught, but as it's a night class and I'm really covering some pretty basic stuff right now -- not to mention that more than half the students in that class are at least 10 years older than I am -- I could see their eyes beginning to glaze over. Even as a good instructor, I can only do so much before everyone's like okay, we get it, give us our assignment and let us go home.

So, realizing this, that's basically what I did. I went over the pertinent sections in the book relatively quickly, but slow enough to where people could follow along, and by 8:30 or so we were done and I got us out of there. I sent out an email to them this afternoon, telling them that even though it is a course that meets from 7:20-10 twice a week, there's no reason to keep them in there while I jaw like a blowhard in front of them. If I've covered my lessons for the class, we'll wrap it up. I realize that most of them have full time jobs, families, children, etc, and that they're taking time away from those things to take my class. Why make them suffer through a night class any longer than necessary if they know what they need to do and can go about doing it? Unlike some professors I know and/or have had in the past, I don't purposely and obviously stand in front of them yakking to fill time that doesn't need to be filled.  Get in, teach the lesson, collect the last assignment, give out the next one, get out. It's a philosophy I've always had in my classes, no matter what I teach. My 011 class this morning lasted half an hour because we had precisely four things to do -- collect rewrites, go over their journal assignment from Monday, cover a two-page reading assignment, and then remind them that this coming Monday is their in-class conference/peer review day. That's it.

As you could probably guess, I really like teaching 011. I didn't think I would.

My 101 class has dropped to seven students. All of them know what they're doing. All of them are awesome to have in class, because they actually care. All of them write good papers and participate in in-class activities and exercises. Teaching that class is like taking a vacation on autopilot. I assign papers, and bam, they do exactly what I ask, turn it in when it is due, don't ask me for excuses or extensions, and don't give me any shit. It may be the easiest 101 class I've ever taught.

This afternoon, thanks to directions and help from my close friend and compatriot-in-English, Suri, I finally learned how to access my faculty email account. Nobody had told me before, despite emailing the helpdesk and asking around the department on how to actually login and use it. Once I got into it, I had 335 unread messages, some of them dating back to Spring 2012 -- long before I ever would have been allowed access to it, as I was still a GTA then. Some of them were timely things that I just plain missed, as well, such as emails from financial aid for students who dropped my class, emails wanting to know whether said students had attended or participated at all for tuition issues. Oops. Mind you, some of these messages are almost two years old, and nobody ever told me anything about them or about that address even being in existence before, say, a few weeks ago.

I cleaned out the inbox and responded to the pertinent ones that required response. Now I finally have a faculty address and can use it for faculty things. I'll have to tell the office ladies to add that address to the mailing list for the department since it's actually up and working now.

In other news, despite my lack of any real disposable income, I was able to throw together a decent idea for a Halloween costume this year (since Halloween is a week from tomorrow, and I'll be on West campus all day/night yet again, teaching). I have all of the materials for it except one last item, which should arrive via Amazon in the next few days (it's currently in California, last I checked).

"We have class on Halloween," I announced to my classes yesterday. "If you can, or have the time, to attend class in costume? I will award you bonus points. I'll be here. I'll be in costume."

Both of these facts are true. I offer slightly more bonus points for my 210 night class, as they're almost all older adults and most of them are coming straight from work. It'll take devotion to points to get them into costume. My 101s? Some of them are outright excited to be able to come to class in costume.

I haven't been able to dress up for Halloween to teach in my entire career as an instructor. In 2010, it was a Sunday. In 2011, it fell on a Monday, and I didn't have class or teach on Mondays. Last year was a leap year, so it fell on a Wednesday. I didn't teach on Wednesdays then, but I did wear my Superman outfit all day and to my classes, as well as during my office hours. This year, finally, it falls on a teaching day, so I get the privilege of dressing like a complete and total nut all day while trying to be serious about my lessons.

No, I'm not doing a superhero theme this year. I thought about it, but ultimately chose against it. Those costumes are expensive, especially the all-spandex zentai suits that I want. Oh yeah. I went there. So I chose something a little more low-budget, but will make me look no less the idiot.

"So what is it?" one of my students last night asked.

"Oh, I'm not saying. But I will say that it involves makeup...ahem...not, like, girly makeup..."

"Manly makeup?"

"Yes."

I'm not telling anyone. Rae and Parker know, and I've sworn them to secrecy. I haven't even told Daisy, because I want it to be a surprise (and I know she'll love it). I am, however, requesting my students take as many pictures of me as they want to and to email them to me so that I have photo documentation of my lunacy. I'll take a few myself, but I can't really take, ahem, action shots, so to speak. It's not like I'm ever running for office or anything anyway, right?

So. On that note, I'm going to bed. While I don't have to get up really early tomorrow morning, I do have to get up somewhat early in order to be able to caffeinate myself for the day and get a shower before leaving the house.

Heating, Part II

Fall semester: day forty-seven

I haven't written for the past week because I've been incredibly swamped with everything I've had to do, and I haven't had the energy to physically sit here any longer than I have to in order to get things done.

Here's a short recap of the past week or so:

1. This Tuesday/Thursday, being-on-campus-for-twelve-hours shit is going to get really old, really fucking fast.

2. It snowed like hell on Friday.

I'm making neither of these things up, obviously -- when I woke up on Friday morning, it was cold and rainy (as the weather had predicted). It later turned over to a sleety rain as the temperatures got even colder, which surprised me enough as it was, and then -- by around 1PM or so -- it was snow. All snow. Big, wet, fluffy snowflakes. I just stood in my living room and stared at it, like a deer caught in headlights. I went back to my Man Cave to tell people in Wichita about it -- people who, until about an hour later when it was snowing there, didn't believe me. I went out to my balcony and took a picture of it.

It continued to snow for most of the afternoon and into the early evening hours. Before it was done, it was actually sticking to the ground and the cars despite the fact that the ground was not yet frozen -- that's how hard it was coming down and how quickly it was piling up. By mid-afternoon, everything but the roads were covered, and there was half an inch in the grass. Measurably half an inch, mind you. By dark it had melted off of everything but the cars. On Saturday morning I still had some snow on the back half of my car. I didn't have to go anywhere, though. Saturday afternoon, it was nearly 70 again, so the snow was short-lived. But, for having no snow whatsoever in the forecast? Yeah, the weather people out here have no real clue what they're doing.

My Tuesday/Thursday classes (and work schedule on those days) is going to be less than pleasant. Last Thursday, I collected papers from my 101 students, so I had the ability to sit down and grade those for a few hours. The West campus people gave me a small, 8x10' corner office over there with three desks and (as of then, non-working) computers attached to them, and it's a nice enclosed space where I don't have to worry about being bothered or disturbed by the coming and going of staff and students. I used my electronic cigarette most of the day and powered through my students' papers one-by-one, spending as much time as I needed to spend on them...only to find that once I was done, I still had four hours before my night class would even start.

This looks like it's going to be a running theme every time I'm on West campus for the remainder of the semester, and I now dread these days instead of look forward to them. While I can get a lot done on West campus -- such as making lesson plans for my students and grading through papers -- there's only so much I can do there if I don't have my books for my other classes, and I don't have access to my computer here at home. Once I reach that limit and I've finished what I can do, that's it -- I'm stuck. I can't leap forward into the lesson plans for later in the semester, because if I do, I won't have anything to do on subsequent Tuesdays and Thursdays when I'm stuck over there for hours upon hours.

Today, for example, I really won't have a lot to grade -- I have three or four late papers for my 011 class to go through, and I'll have about the same for rewrites on Thursday, but other than that, I don't have much else to do the entire time I'm stuck over there. I've charged up my mp3 player with all of my podcasts on it and I'm bringing that with me, but that's about all I have. I'd bring my DS, but I don't have any use for it to keep me entertained over there -- I've already beaten Pokemon Black 2 numerous times, and have nothing more that will entertain me with that game. I don't have a 2DS or 3DS, so I can't get X/Y, as I've mentioned before. I don't yet have a tablet or anything like that which I could stream movies through via Amazon Prime, and of my two laptops, one is at my main office and the other needs a new OS before I can use it again. When I'm stuck there it's all about keeping occupied and entertained, because it feels like I'm in prison for the eight hours between my classes. Most people only work eight hours per day. I can't even nap in that office -- in the afternoon, I share it with one of the math professors who teaches an evening class over there, leaving no more private space for me after around 4PM.

As for my evening 210 class itself, I had about six of them missing on Thursday night, including the one or two students I've taught before. Most of them seem to be non-traditional students -- they're either coming to class straight from work or straight from their other classes on West or main campus. Many have jobs, families, and young children. Many are at least in their mid-20s, if not mid-40s and mid-50s. All of them seemed scared when I told them that their final two projects in the class would be ten and fifteen pages, respectively.

I can't help that, by the way -- it's just how those assignments work in an eight-week class. Even in a normal sixteen-week class, they'd only have two weeks to do each of those assignments. This isn't a normal comp class where all the students get a month to work on each paper. No, this is a more advanced course with more advanced work, and because of that everything is scaled up, even timeframes. It's a business writing class, so it's a microcosm of a business environment.

"These folks aren't going to last," I told the Director yesterday morning in his office. "Some of them will, yes, but most of them? They're going to get through the first three fast-and-easy assignments, and then when we get to the bigger, longer, and more complex ones? They're going to start disappearing."

"That tends to happen in eight-week classes," he replied. "You're in a tight spot here, trying to get a lot done in a very short amount of time."

"You should've seen how terrified they looked when I told them about the final two assignments being ten and fifteen pages."

"I would imagine that for some of them, it will mean a lot of very late nights."

As mentioned before, I expect about ten students, max, to remain in the class by the time we reach December. Any more than that would be too optimistic. With the amount of work they'll be doing between now and then, I'm hoping that the ones who can't do it or don't have time to do it will just drop the course -- it's going to be very, very time-consuming to grade through a stack of fifteen-page projects, especially at the same time I'm grading through papers for my other two classes. That's why I told Daisy that I need some book-ended days over Thanksgiving break to be able to sit down and actually spend hours upon hours going through all of my grading and getting it done -- the week after Thanksgiving, it's the last week of classes. I won't have time to finish it all otherwise. I'm already losing a ton of sleep as it is because I'm stuck over there on West campus for twenty-four hours a week. To put that into perspective, that's about the total of hours I sleep over the entirety of any given work week -- about six or so hours per night -- spent in one place, with only about half to 60% of those hours actually doing anything of consequence.

Yes, it is good for grading. Yes, it is good for lesson planning. But once I do those things? Yeah, they're done -- it's not like I can magically entertain myself or stay occupied.

It could be worse, though -- I got an email from the department upon waking up this morning that said the entire west side of main campus has had its heating shut off for at least the next week, as the physical plant is replacing/redoing much of the duct work, piping, etc. A good chunk of the GTAs and faculty either teach or take classes in those buildings, so it's going to be cold for them until everything gets fixed.

The perks of working at a university with a bunch of old buildings, I suppose. Right?

Sarcasm intended.

There's always a crew working on something on the West campus as well; there's never a shortage of something to do over there for them, it seems, even though the building and West campus itself is less than five years old (I believe it was completed during my first year of grad school).

As for my own heating, I've been running the furnace off and on -- that's sort of necessary when it's been snowing, you know -- but not any more than I absolutely need to. The furnace tends to be even more expensive to run than the air conditioner, especially if it's really cold outside. I turn it down really low at night or when I'm gone (to around 54, 56 or something like that) and turn it back up to 62-64ish when I'm awake and at home.

My bills are paid; I paid off everything I had over the weekend, which drops my cash reserves pretty low for the rest of the week. Luckily, I get paid on Friday, so I don't really have to worry about money for the time being. I'll probably have to do some shopping tomorrow night or Thursday night at the latest, though, which will cut into that a little more. I also have to pay the rent this weekend as well.

My lesson plans for today's classes are pretty simple -- in my 101 I'm handing back papers and am going over rewrites and a section in the book; simple stuff. In my 210 I'm collecting their first assignment and am covering the weekly plan for the rest of the semester as well as going over their second assignment, which will be due on Thursday.

I've not yet experienced a Wednesday this semester where I've had to work the night beforehand. That's what the problem is going to be with tomorrow. Tonight I'll come home (last week, luckily, I was home by 9:30 or so) and basically eat and go to bed, getting up again at 5AM to go in to teach tomorrow morning. I should be back home by around noon tomorrow, but the misery is that I can't just come home and go back to bed, no matter how tired I am  -- I have to be able to stay awake as long as I can to be able to sleep all night tomorrow night and be well-rested for Thursday, where I do that shit all over again. I should be fine today; I went to bed before 7PM last night and slept until my alarm went off this morning at 5 -- but on Thursday I'm likely to be a zombie unless I go to bed at like, 5PM tomorrow night and can sleep through the entire night. I'm not sure that will be possible, no matter how tired I am. That also cuts out a lot of time I would otherwise spend with Daisy, as well.

I make as much time for decompression and for Daisy as I can, obviously, but it has become clear to me even at this early stage of that night course that I'm going to be really busy and exhausted most of the time. Add to that all of my normal weekly responsibilities and the looming deadline of my student loans' grace period ending this time next month unless I can do something else to defer them, and my mind is already shot and stressed. I'm burned out. I had to chain smoke and slug down coffee all day on Thursday just to be able to stay awake and not be too incredibly bored out of my skull once I had everything finished, but obviously I can't do that every day I'm there. One thing's for certain, though -- in the spring, when I'll go back to teach again (more than likely, anyhow; nothing's ever completely guaranteed) I'm either going to request all night classes or all day classes. I can't do both, not on the same day and not at a super-accelerated pace for the second half of the semester when all of the big assignments and work come in. I'm happy to teach whatever I can get, obviously, but I'd rather it not kill me or make me lose my marbles in the months leading up to the wedding.

Heating

Fall semester: day forty-three

With "Fall Break" now over, we are now over the hump and are more than halfway through the semester. The semester itself generally consists of about eighty days, including any breaks and finals week. Depending on the year and the way the days fall, some semesters have a few less, some a few more. I'm not exactly sure how the university organizes the calendar.

As for my own break? It was...quiet. Really quiet.

When I have time off that's free-and-clear, I tend to use that time. Or, at the very least, I tend to appreciate it more. This is the first true "time off" I've had where responsibilities and other pressing issues weren't weighing me down since early August. It was time I was able to sleep -- I averaged nine or ten hours a night, including last night. It was time I was able to cook. It was time I was able to take care of the chores around the house, and do a little shopping here and there. It was time I desperately needed to be able to decompress, because the next several days are not going to be pleasant ones.

My week is cut in half, obviously, due to the break; I'm starting on a Wednesday instead of a Monday. This does, however, make everything a bit more difficult for me overall. I am collecting papers today in my 011 class, and tomorrow in my 101 class. This isn't a huge issue, but it will ensure that this weekend is going to be a long one as I'll have to grade through all of those. Tomorrow, of course, I teach my first 210 night class on West campus, and won't be getting home until close to 11PM. I've already burned through one instruction day I could've had in there because of all of the final/midterm exam issues those students had, so when we arrive in there tomorrow night it's like jumping out of a moving car and hitting the ground running. There's an assignment due in that class at every meeting for the next three classes in a row after tomorrow. Because I'll have to go to bed early tonight in order to be able to get enough sleep to stay awake until 11PM tomorrow night, possibly later (I need to go to Walmart on my way home tomorrow night if possible, since I'll be tired/hungry and out of several things I need), I won't be able to start grading through those 011 papers until at least Friday. My 101's papers I should be able to get through most of tomorrow between my classes, even if it means I'm sitting there alone in the lobby on West campus grading them one after another. It'll let me fill some of that time I need to fill. And, generally, my 101s are pretty bright students; I doubt I'll have to mark their papers up like crazy, or anything.

My weekend is a little more nebulous; I'll be spending a big chunk of it grading those 011 papers and preparing lessons/reading chapters to cover for my 210 students. There's not really a lot I can do personally to be able to avoid that. Work has to be done. My time with Daisy is already taking a hit from my "new" schedule; two of the days she's off every week, I'm stuck on campus out-of-contact with her for more than twelve hours at a time, and when I get home I will almost immediately have to go to bed. Tuesdays are going to suck -- getting home at around 11PM only to have to get back up at 5AM the next morning to go back to main campus. Thursday nights, at least, if I have energy left at the end of the week, I'll be able to stay awake to talk to her for a while.

As you know, I've done schedules like this before. My body gets used to them after a few weeks. Luckily, a few weeks seem to be all that's really left in the semester. A good chunk of November isn't even spent in class due to Thanksgiving, and then once we come back, it's December and the last week of classes.

This morning is the coldest morning of the fall thus far; right now, at 6AM, it's 39 degrees and feels like it. We've not set any low temperature records or anything, but it's not exactly the warmest weather outside. Upon getting up, I had to turn on the furnace for the first time this year. It did not take long to warm up the house, which is good. It never does. My house tends to stay pretty warm in the winter as long as I set the thermostat to a reasonable temperature (usually about 64 or so). After a long, hot shower this morning I was able to feel like somewhat less of a human popsicle.

The "storms" that were supposed to roll through and be "severe" on Monday, of course, didn't happen. We got some good, soaking rain for about two or three hours, and that's it. The rain was just enough to prevent me from being able to mow the grass either Monday or yesterday; if it's not raining and not forty degrees this weekend, I need to mow it one last time then just to get it done with and out of the way. Add that to my list of "other shit to do," I suppose.

All of my bills are paid except for my Citi Card bill, which isn't due for almost three weeks. I can pay it now, of course, but I haven't yet. Most of my paycheck from Friday went into paying the bills I already had then, including paying off my other credit card, and getting some groceries and supplies via Walmart and Amazon. As I've probably mentioned before, I need to pay off my Citi Card completely by the end of November at the latest, as I put my car insurance on it. My car insurance comes due in December, and putting that on there takes up more than half the card's available balance.

Daisy asked me a few nights ago about how much I would be able to take care of some things for the wedding, knowing my financial situation and need to live paycheck-to-paycheck most of the time. I told her that I still have a Discover card I've never used, and it has a $2500 limit. It's been my "emergency" card, in case something big-time-bad happens to the car or something along those lines, but if I can use it and pay it off slowly, we've got that as a bit of a cushion in case we find ourselves in a jam, or in case she needs me to cover something somewhat expensive. As you may know, we're trying to pay for everything involving the actual wedding ourselves, and were trying to keep it all as inexpensive as possible. We don't want to be a burden on anyone else, and we're simple people anyhow. We're not going to run ourselves into extreme debt with the wedding; we'd prefer, since both of us have student loans to pay back, that we don't run ourselves into debt at all.

My eye is much better, or at least it seems better. After two weeks, my vision is slowly starting to return to what I would call "almost normal." Almost. Yes, it's still blurry, but every few days it seems to be a little less so. I think, anyway. My fall allergies mess with it a lot, and when I'm tired I find it hard to keep it focused and comfortable without aching (both my eyes ache now when I'm tired, since the good one compensates for the blurry one when I need to rest), but I think it's slowly getting better. It may take a month or three to return to complete normalcy. My mother reiterated that I should go to a doctor, but again, there's really nothing an eye doctor can do but tell me to let it heal, or to try to force me to wear the patch when I can't do so and still be able to go about my life and my job. It just has to heal up. If it's not going to heal any more than it has, oh well -- so my left eye will be a little blurry for the rest of my life. Again, short of, well, future LASIK or something like that, I can't do anything about it. My life doesn't just screech to a halt; I have to live with it.

Because it's cold this morning, I've broken out my first button-up, long-sleeved "dressy-ish" shirt this semester (purchased at Walmart, on clearance, for $1), which I've coupled with a pair of Haggar slacks I purchased for a quarter at the Goodwill in Omaha over the summer. I'm breaking out the wool peacoat for the first time this fall as well. I'm sure I more than likely won't need it after, say, 11AM, but as it's really effing cold right now, I certainly need it now. This is the dressiest I've looked all semester, but it's not like I can help that, really -- all of my winter clothes, save for my hoodies and some of my cargo pants, are "dressy." They just are. I could probably wear a tie with this shirt if I wanted to, but...me? In a tie? Who are you kidding?

So that's what's going on in my life right now. Back to the grind today, back to a few days of sleep deprivation and, as my friend Jae always called it, "coffee abuse."

Plans and Planning

I'm actually rather bored.

No, seriously.

I told Daisy this fact earlier this evening, and she started laughing at me.

"For a man who always says he has so much to do all the time, now that you don't, you're bored?"

She makes a fair point. This is really the only stretch of time thus far this semester where I haven't had a ton of work on my plate, and where I've been able to actually take a breather, so to speak. Because of that, I have no pressing work to do. Also because of that, I am sitting here in my house going stir-crazy. Well, slightly, anyway.

The dishes are done. The shopping is done (for the moment). All but one of my bills (read: the bill that arrived today, my Citi card bill) are paid. The laundry has been washed and put away. The toilet has been scrubbed. The house really doesn't need to be vacuumed yet. My wardrobes for summer and fall have been switched out. The car has another week's worth of gas in it. I don't have anything to cook, for I made a big pot of soup tonight and put it in bowls for the fridge and freezer for meals. The cat box is clean. The bed is made. Coffee is in the pot. Food is in the cats' bowls.

This really is the first time where I really don't have anything pressing to do.

Well, I suppose I still have to mow the grass; however, I can't do that at midnight.

My eye is tired and sore tonight, though its vision is no better or worse. It's tired and sore because I've been awake since early this morning. You'd think I'd flip around my sleeping schedule again now that I'm off for a few extra days, but in reality? Nope. Now that I've found a groove again and am sleeping at night, I need to keep it. At least as much as I can, anyway. I've been sleeping pretty well, I suppose. Every few nights I'll have a mild nightmare, though. I'm sure I can attribute most of that to stress, however. I have been under a lot of stress as of late, as you know.

My boredom isn't caused by having everything done. I don't think it is, anyway. It's more of a general malaise, as mentioned here before. Nothing I can do for entertainment serves to make me less bored. I've watched football today. I've had my earbuds in and have probably listened to 12 hours (or more) of podcasts since I got home on Thursday. I've tried to play the few video games I have. I've tried reading for pleasure. I've tried to sleep as much as possible. It's as if none of it seems...satisfying, I suppose? I get restless, I get frustrated.

"Why not go see a movie?" Daisy asked me.

"I have a stack of movies here at home that I want to watch, but haven't yet," I said. "It's not the kind of boredom that can alleviate. I'll just get more restless."

I have the entire first season of Eastbound & Down that I purchased a while back at Walmart when Daisy was with me, in addition to at least ten movies, older and newer, that I've purchased over the course of the past year or so yet haven't watched yet. I did sit down a few nights ago to watch This Is The End in its entirety, which was hilarious and enjoyable, but for some reason I couldn't sit down and watch anything else right now. It would make me restless. I'd feel like it was a waste of time, and with my eye already aching, it would probably make me feel even more tired.

I don't know; maybe I'm just too burnt out and stressed, subconsciously, to enjoy anything right now or to be able to take my mind off of the nightmare that the rest of the semester is going to be. I'm not actively thinking about anything, mind you, but all of that stuff is in the back of my mind whether I like it or not.

Daisy informed me tonight that she got the days off from work she requested so that we could enjoy Thanksgiving together, with time spent both here and in Omaha. We've drawn up our plans so that I will have time to decompress, time to sleep, and time to grade, split between both here and there. As you know, long ago (and I do it every year) I worked time into my teaching schedule so that I could cancel classes over Thanksgiving week -- while the students here still have classes scheduled on Monday and Tuesday, I have always canceled classes on those days if I've had to teach during them. I can (usually) easily schedule my lesson plans around that week. However, this year it's different -- when Thanksgiving week is over, we come back and it's the last week of classes, then finals week. We usually have a little more of a buffer zone than that, and have much more of a buffer zone in the spring between Spring Break and the end of the semester. That speeds everything up big time once Thanksgiving is over, and I told Daisy that because of that I had to cram a lot of work into those last few weeks of class, and had to rearrange a lot of my lesson plans near the end of the semester to be able to make them work once I realized that hey, I have so little time after we come back and they still have to turn in a paper.

As it stands, unfortunately, I'm collecting papers before Thanksgiving on the 12th, 18th, and 19th, and then will be collecting workshop copies from my 101s on the 21st  -- the last class day I'll teach before the holiday week. That's just the way the schedule falls. I'll have my hands full, therefore, going right into Thanksgiving week. Unless I do nothing else leading up to that week, I won't be able to have all of that stuff graded and given back to my students before the break, and I'll still have the workshop copies regardless.

"I need time, somewhere, to be able to grade this stuff," I told Daisy. "I really can't grade a lot of it, if any, in Omaha because I can't concentrate and can't get in the zone when I'm up there, which would be crucial to being able to get this done quickly and efficiently."

My zone consists of the couch in my living room with football on the TV in the background and my cigarettes and coffee on the desk in front of me. Over the past four years, this setup has become quite important to being able to power through papers one by one as the fall semester draws to a close. In Omaha, her family is there, there's no football in front of me, and I can only smoke when I go outside to do so. I also want to be able to enjoy my time in Omaha with Daisy's family, obviously, which would require not having a ton of papers hanging over my head with no idea of how or when I'd be able to grade them.

Because of this, Daisy and I set up a plan during which I'd be able to get all of my grading done here (if in two different sessions) and would still be able to enjoy the holidays with her family. We're still working out the fine details of it, but it seems like it will go smoothly, hopefully. As you know, I've not gone anywhere or done anything for Thanksgiving since...2009, I think. I've been so wrapped up in academia since then that I have never been able to get away from the house or from my responsibilities. In 2010 I stayed home when my ex went to her parents' place. In 2011 I was single and incredibly busy. In 2012 I was swamped with even more work, and couldn't make it to Omaha then, so Daisy came down a few days early and made a dinner for us here. This year, if everything goes right, I'll actually be able to have a real family Thanksgiving again. You know, someplace other than my home, alone, with the cats.

I would also imagine that by Thanksgiving I will be twitching to get the hell out of Kansas for a few days again, as well. Daisy is already making plans for us to go back to Dave & Buster's, as we have a bunch of prize tickets from last time that we didn't use, and we may (maybe) get to do some Black Friday shopping together, either here or there. Who knows. It's going to depend heavily on what we have time and money for.

"By the way," she told me last night, "I'd like to keep Christmas small this year and focus on saving for the wedding."

"I was going to suggest the same thing," I replied. "Remember, I kept Christmas small last year. You're the one who decided to buy me a laptop."

Daisy bought me a Toshiba laptop on Black Friday last year, a laptop that does get used, though not as much as I'd like because it only has 2GB RAM -- not enough to use on a daily basis without me wanting to punch it because it takes ten minutes to load up programs and/or run webpages with heavy flash. I also can't find an operating system for it that won't bog it down terribly, so it's now had five or so different OSes on it while I shop around and see which ones I can actually use. By the way, a memory upgrade for said laptop? It's about $100 or so. Yeah. If not more. It must use some sort of weird-ass proprietary memory, or something. I haven't looked into it too deeply because of the price. Keep in mind that to max out the memory in my old Dell laptop (which is currently in my office at school) it was about $25 and required five minutes' worth of "laptop surgery," nothing more.

Conversely, last Christmas (if you remember) I made tie-dye for everyone and got a bunch of other little things here and there.

I don't know what's going on for Christmas this year. I'm going to be, technically, between jobs at that time -- between fall and spring semester -- and won't have much spare money. My car insurance comes due in December, and unless I can go in and defer or postpone my student loans somehow, I'll be paying those as well. My electric bill for October going into November should be incredibly low, since I've not had to run the AC or furnace, but I'll have to worry about that a bit more next month once it gets a lot colder and I'll have no choice but to have the furnace on. There are a thousand little things I have to take care of and pay for when I can, and as my last paycheck will come on my birthday this year, there will be a stretch between then and probably early February that I won't be getting paid. Of course, a few months later is the wedding, and I need to be saving whatever money I can to put aside some funds for that as well. Etc.

Daisy told me long ago that since this is her last Christmas at home before she's married, she's going to spend it there with her family and do family things. I am welcome to join her, of course, but usually my parents try to get me to fly home to West Virginia for Christmas. I'd love to do that again, but my parents haven't said anything about it thus far. As the semester ends fairly early, there's enough time for me to make two trips in December if it can be done; finals week ends a week before my birthday, and after that (and everything surrounding it) is over, I'm basically free and clear for a month. With job security for the spring almost completely locked down (it's never, ever a given) I am free to make some plans once finals week ends. It would be nice to fly home to visit, if possible, but I don't know if that's in the cards right now.

Today is the first day since 2003 or so when a new Pokemon game has been released and I haven't been one of the first in line to purchase it. This is mainly because it's only available on the 3DS, which I don't have (and don't want). Nintendo has released a lower, non-3D version of the system called the 2DS at the same time as the new games, but it's not available to be ordered on Amazon -- which really pisses me off. Because of that I have neither the new game or the new system. Walmart had several of the new 2DS systems behind the glass in the electronics section a few nights ago, but no prices or anything else attached to them -- simply in stock and waiting to be sold on the release date. I haven't gone back to buy either the game or the system because I really would rather not drop $200 right now that I can't exactly afford to spend. I'll give it a few weeks; it's not like I'm not going to get them eventually. I don't really play video games -- it's not like I have the time or money to spare for them most of the time -- but I do religiously follow the Pokemon series and have since I've been in high school. It is my one major nerdy vice. Roll your eyes at me all you want -- I know people much older than me who play the games in a more hardcore way than I do. Successful people, with jobs, children, and nice cars. Pokemon is universal. It's like Harry Potter.

Anyway.

It's now a little more than halfway through my time off for Fall Break, even though the two actual "break" days remain. Tomorrow, I do have seasons 4 and 5 of Trailer Park Boys arriving on my doorstep, which (I suppose) will alleviate some of the boredom I've had. I find it terribly, horribly ironic that I have several days off with nothing to do, time in which I could be immersing myself in Pokemon X/Y on its release date, and I really don't have the spare money to get it right now.

It's probably for the best, I suppose.

Midterm Week

Fall semester: day forty

For most of the morning and early afternoon I have been once more immersed in student work. This is, primarily, because I want to get it out of the way. It's "Fall Break" for me now, and I really want to have an actual break. After the way the month has gone thus far, I desperately need one. The work I've been doing is primarily grading and calculation of overall grades for my students thus far; while Blackboard will do this for me, as a professor I still have to manually enter grades into the Banner system (the "official" grade-counting system) for midterms. I had to do this as a GTA as well, so it's not like it's anything new to me. In order to do that, though, I had to make sure everything I had was recorded and graded first, including the massive stack of my 011 students' journals. So, I made some coffee, opened my last pack of smokes, and began working.

As of about half an hour ago, I finished everything I needed to do. I posted midterm grades, filled the empty grade spots on Blackboard, and sent emails to my students to let them know their midterm grades were up and everything had been updated to the present on Blackboard. Both classes, my 101s and 011s, have their next papers due to me when we return after Fall Break on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

As for my 210 students, the business writing class I had to postpone due to some of my students taking exams of one sort or another, I modified the lesson plan to have their first assignment come in on the 22nd and their second on the 24th. It's a big rush, yes, but it's the only way I could feasibly modify things in order to get everything to work out smoothly for the rest of the semester without having to completely rewrite the entire weekly plan. Their first three assignments come in almost back to back, but they're also the easy, I-can-do-this-in-an-hour assignments. The ones who can do it will excel; the ones who can't probably shouldn't be in the class anyhow. I posted the schedule and their reading assignment on Blackboard this morning, and emailed them about it so they can get a jump-start on things over the break if they so choose.

This means that, on the Friday afternoon of Fall Break's beginning, I am basically finished with 95% of my teaching-oriented work through, say, Wednesday. Yes, I'll have to review a few readings and print out some new timelines/assignment sheets for my students, but the big stuff, the important stuff that I needed to do (like grade calculation and midterms), has all already been completely taken care of.

I do have some little updates, both good and bad, about some of the events I mentioned in my last post here, so I'll go into them now:

My car, though it's rattling a bit, is doing fine; I don't know what the rattling is. The car is, again, old and figuratively falling apart. It could be anything. What I do know is that its driving, performance, and gas mileage isn't affected, so it's more than likely something cosmetic and/or really minor. I'll keep an eye (and ear) on it, but as of right now I'm not incredibly concerned with it.

My mother updated me last night to tell me that the dog is doing much better than before, and seems to be happy to be home. Yes, he still has the big tumor, of course, but for the moment he seems to be okay. She said they're going to take all the good days they can with him, and I don't blame her. He's a good old dog, a trooper. He's a fifteen-year-old shih tzu, in case some of you didn't know that. I grew up with that dog -- we got him on July 5, 1998, as a puppy, from a pet store in a mall in Pittsburgh that no longer exists. Well, the mall exists, but the store doesn't. Interesting fact: he is AKC registered and his father's name was Elvis. Yep.

Anyway.

My eye seems to be remarkably better today. Still blurry, yes, but it's a...softer blur? I don't know how to describe it. I'm not seeing things double or stereoscopically anymore (well, not really), but it seems like it's trying to heal back up to normal. Part of this is probably due to the fact that I slept for ten hours last night. I'm trying to be patient with it, as that's all I can really do -- wait until it heals up and see where the healing completely stops.

I'm no longer sick, or at least I don't feel sick. My allergies, as always, persist -- but they're more of a minor annoyance than anything else. I don't have body aches or chills or cold sweats, and today I'm feeling fairly normal. This is good, as I didn't want to suffer through my days off for Fall Break with some sort of debilitating illness.

Daisy, on the other hand, is getting worse.

Let me explain.

I had to teach yesterday, as I always do. She was really not feeling well, so while she slept I sent her a few messages to tell her what I'd be doing and when I'd get home. When I got home she was still asleep, only to wake up a few hours later to tell me that she had slept for sixteen hours. During that time, her allergic reaction/rash had gotten worse; the rash had spread and now her face was so swollen that her eye had almost swelled shut.

"Go. To. The. Doctor."

I meant it seriously. Allergic reactions, especially reactions where the cause is unknown and reactions that get progressively worse, need to be taken care of. You don't fuck around with them. She could have gone into anaphylactic shock in her sleep and stopped breathing, or something like that.

"They're just going to tell me to take Benadryl, which I'm already doing, and to put hydrocortizone cream on the rash, which I won't do."

Hydrocortizone is derived from pig glands. Daisy, as you know, is vegan.

When we Skyped a bit later as she ate lunch, I got to see her swollen face and eye and desperately begged her to go to the doctor. She looked like someone had beaten her up. Her entire face was swollen, but especially on the side where she had the rash. She eventually relented and told me she'd call the doctor to see if she could get in before we got off Skype.

In the meantime, I made food and tried to take a nap. When I couldn't, I got back up and did the dishes and laundry, including the bedsheets. I changed them out for winter, put my comforter and blanket on the bed (it's cold down there at night, even in early October) and then went about switching out my wardrobe as much as possible, as it's getting cooler now. If I didn't do it soon, I'd never have the time to do it once the break was over -- it's a big undertaking of unpacking boxes and tubs, taking out my winter wear, replacing summer wear in my closet with that winter wear, and then putting the summer wear into the same boxes and tubs to store that stuff away. It takes a good couple of hours. I've been trying to pare down my wardrobes anyway, and pack away stuff I don't wear that much as sooner or later, I'll be moving out of this house. Packing a lot of it up now saves me time down the road. 

When I came back later, Daisy informed me that she had gone to the doctor and didn't even have to see an actual doctor; the nurse was there, examined her, and gave her a steroid allergy shot of some sort. Because she didn't see the actual doctor, she wasn't charged for her visit. She went back home, spent time with her nephew (her sister's family is there in town visiting) and apparently made some treats. I messaged her when I went to bed, and told her I was going to sleep. I figured she'd be doing better. I woke up to this:

...nothing says fun like having to wake your mom up so you can use her emergency inhaler.

I was sitting downstairs, just finished making sweets when I started having trouble breathing. I used my inhaler but it didn't work. I sat there a while hoping my breathing would normalize, but, it just got worse so I had to go upstairs.

I'm going to call the doctor tomorrow and ask her to prescribe me my own.

Note: I don't know why Daisy or Mama have inhalers. I'm guessing that one or both of them had asthma or something along those lines at some point, or currently. I smoke around Daisy all the time (it's not like I'm blowing it into her face, though, or anything like that) and it's never affected her in a wheezing, I'm-going-to-die sort of way; I am respectful about it and keep my smoke away from her as much as I can.

Still, my immediate reaction was what the shit, babe? Because after a steroid shot, she should be getting better, not worse. I didn't get an answer from her; she went back to bed (again) shortly before I woke up this morning, and I told her she could probably use the rest after that ordeal. She messaged me a bit ago telling me that she was going to pick up her car, as it's been in the shop all week getting hail damage fixed -- but the insurance check was taking several days to clear, and she couldn't pick the car up until she paid the shop (obviously). I'm guessing while she's out, she'll pick up this prescription inhaler or what-have-you as well.

Of course, throughout all of this, I'm worried about her. She doesn't know what's causing this allergic reaction -- she's done nothing differently, she's eaten nothing differently, she's not using any new products she could be allergic to, etc. Without knowing the cause and getting away from that cause, this could go on indefinitely or just keep getting worse.

"Does [sister] use some sort of different detergent or fabric softener on the kids' clothes that you may be allergic to?" I asked.

I was grasping for straws here. Since her sister and her two kids are in town, Daisy has been spending a lot of time with them. One of the kids is a baby, so she's been holding him a lot. Babies use different moisturizers, body washes, powders, etc, none of which she's used to. It could be anything along those lines.

Then again, it could be something completely random or something that just popped up for no real reason. About twenty years ago, on one of the last visits I had with my father, I had a severe allergic reaction to something, culprit unknown, that put terrible hives all up and down my body, starting on my thighs and spreading rapidly over the course of a week or so. My middle sister was, at the time, a newborn, so I was in the same situation that Daisy is in now. I never found out what it was, and to this day, it remains a mystery. The allergic reaction cleared up rapidly once I came back home to my mother's house, disappearing almost overnight. Aside from a scant few other occurrences over the years (like my mild allergic reaction to the antibiotic Clindamycin that I had to take last year for my sinus/ear infection), I've never really been allergic to anything.

Speaking of my father, I have not (of course) heard anything from him after my sister's death. Again, as you know, I didn't expect to. The entire family back home, including those cousins and aunts who kept me informed on everything happening, has been rather quiet since her burial. I friend-requested my middle sister (mentioned above) on Facebook, but she hasn't yet responded to it, and my oldest sister hasn't responded to the message I sent her on Sunday. Again, I'm not going to be pushy or anything. I've reached out; if they come around, they come around. If not, life still moves on. There's nothing else I can do.

As for my father? I desire no relationship or contact with him until he shows he wants that from me. He's basically a stranger to me at this point, and has been for over twenty years. I don't expect him to magically change, even now. I'm neither stupid nor naive, and I don't foster any sort of deep down, "maybe now he'll acknowledge my existence again!" sort of hope. In fact, his presence in my life at this point -- as I get ready for marriage and continue to better my career -- would be more of a hindrance than a welcomed addition.

I've become more of a recluse now than I ever have been before; I've begun to realize this over the course of the past few months. Aside from Daisy and a few people around the department (very, very few, as I don't see anyone anymore), I don't talk to anyone. I'm not socially active. I don't want to be socially active -- as I've written here before, I really want to be left alone a lot of the time; I don't have patience for anyone or anything anymore but what I have to do, who I have to see, what students I have to teach, what cashiers I have to interact with at the store, etc. I talk to Daisy, her parents, my parents, and a very select few friends and family members (most of the latter sporadically at best), but that's it. I barely use Facebook anymore unless I'm logging on to check a message or play Angry Birds, which is about the only sort of diversion I ever have time for. I rarely check my personal email, and when I do, it's full of pages upon pages of useless things like Facebook notifications and advertisements that I delete entire sets of at a time -- hundreds of them -- without even looking at. I used to be so wired into everything, constantly obsessed with the minutiae of social media and other online things, and now? Now I just don't care anymore. I have other shit to do, other responsibilities to take care of. What I value the most now is sleep, solitude, and silence. And my cats, of course. I haven't even really paid attention to football this fall, as I'm sure that the Chiefs being 5-0 is a sign of the impending apocalypse.

I'm not sure what any, or all, of this says about me.

Over the weekend I'm going to try to detach from much of the world and go "underground," so to speak. I need a few days of solid rest and solitude; I need to be left alone and left to my own devices without anything popping up to throw my world into havoc.

Sickened, Part II

Fall semester: day thirty-eight

Okay. Honestly?


October can go fuck itself. Seriously.

Traditionally, in the past, October has been my unluckiest month. That's not a joke; all of the worst shit that's happened to me (or people in my life) over the years, for the most part, has happened in October. I don't know why -- if it's the stars aligning a certain way, or what -- but October, generally speaking, ends up being hellish most years running. And, if it's not hellish, it's at least really strange and off as a period of time.

Let's see what's happened this month thus far:

September 30 (while technically not October, I didn't hear about it until the 1st): My youngest sister dies in a car crash.

October 1: Government shutdown.

October 2: I injure my eye with a pineapple, requiring me to wear a patch for 48 hours or so and to cancel my Thursday 101 class due to lack of vision. It's still not completely healed.

October 3-4: Daisy and I celebrate our anniversary, which, due to me not being in the best of mental states during this time, involved a lot of fighting and bickering back and forth. Most of the anniversary itself, though, was fine.

October 4: Sister is buried. I am unable to be at the funeral, for obvious reasons.

October 4-5: After arriving back home, Daisy becomes ill with flu-like symptoms that come and go. 

October 6: I learn that because of scheduling issues, students who have me for their 210 class will be taking finals during my first class, and/or having other midterm exams leading right up to its start.

October 7: I learn that I probably will have to postpone the first meeting of said class until the 17th because of this, which completely wrecks my lesson plan for said class and means I will have to reschedule everything. This contingency plan is discussed with the Director at length, who gives me the go-ahead to do so if necessary.

October 7, also: My car begins making a funny, low-frequency rattling noise.

October 7, again: Daisy begins developing an allergic rash along her collarbone and neck, with the offending allergy-inducing culprit unknown.

October 8: I begin to start feeling ill, with swollen lymph nodes and a possible low-grade fever for most of the morning.

October 8, also: Postponing my first 210 class becomes a certainty when two more students email me (after I've asked via Blackboard that they do so) to tell me they have a schedule conflict. First class is rescheduled for October 17. Director backs me up in my decision.

October 9 (today): Rattling noise on car is louder and more noticeable, even on the interstate.

October 9 (also today): Fatigued and in light cold sweats for most of the day, I put on a brave face and power through teaching my class on three-and-a-half hours of sleep, until I could get back home. I forget my 011 students' journals in the car, and have to go back downstairs to get them in the afternoon.

October 9 (also today): Daisy still sick. Rash getting worse. Daisy has problems getting the hail damage on her car repaired/paid for.

October 9 (still also today): My mother emails me to tell me that the family dog, while at the vet, was found to have a massive, inoperable tumor on his head/jaw and will more than likely not live much longer. Their options are to continue to medicate him and keep him relatively comfortable for as long as he has left, or to put him to sleep. He's fifteen years old. Parents elect to bring him home to let him live out what will likely be his last few days.


...This is nine days, folks. Only nine days.

I'm at a loss. Aside from the Chuck Palahniuk Q&A session where I got to meet the man, and the good parts of my anniversary with Daisy, the entire month of October has been a disaster -- much as it usually tends to be, for some unknown reason. I really, really am having trouble dealing with it all, but one thing is for certain -- I know better than to ask what else could happen? or something along those lines, because it's not like I need any more shit to rain down on me at this point.

On the plus side, I don't have to be on campus tomorrow night, sick and exhausted, until 10PM.

I made the judgment call to postpone the first meeting of my 210 class late last night, really. As mentioned above, I have several students who are dealing with exams (even though they're not supposed to be; the first eight weeks ends today); one of those students has a final exam up until the time my class starts, another has one during my class, and two others have big long-form midterms right before my class would start, which would force them to basically speed across town to get to my class on West campus if said exams take their whole class period. As that's a good chunk of my class, and as I don't have the time in an eight-week course to cover the same assignment twice, I postponed our first meeting until the 17th. If there are four, there were probably more who hadn't yet contacted me, and I wasn't going to attempt to teach to a mostly empty room, especially because A) I don't want to, and B) because I'm not a dick, and I'm not going to say "oh, you have a final? sucks to be you, class goes on without you." That's not fair to my students.

The Director was apparently going to be looking into the scheduling issue today with the registrar, because no final exams for first 8-week courses should be given after today, since the second 8 weeks begins tomorrow (hence why my class was supposed to start tomorrow night). It's a glaring oversight by the university, or at least by the professors teaching those classes. Students with big midterm exams, however? I can't help that. It's not their fault, or their professors' faults, that they have a long-form midterm directly before their second 8-week class is supposed to start. That can't be helped. I'm not going to force students to speed across town to get to my class on time and start learning something completely new and different right after they've just burned themselves out on an exam. What's the point there? Again, I'm not a dick. And, honestly, I really, really need the rest and decompression time afforded to me by coming home this morning after I'm finished teaching my 101s.

I've received emails since about assignments and the like, and those students just have to be patient -- we're in the middle of midterms right now, and before I can rewrite my assignments and schedule for the 210 class, I have to take care of the classes that I'm actually teaching right now. I told my students that I would be putting up their reading assignments and giving them their first assignment for 210 over the next few days. As it's fall break after today, they can just relax for a day or two while I sort things out, because I basically have to restructure a good chunk of the course to be able to compensate for not only starting late, but for being out of town over Thanksgiving week. The 210 eight-week class is a sort of "jump in, get-up-and-go" course, and with several snags in the schedule, I have to compensate for that. I have it in my lesson plans (and in the syllabus!) that I'll be gone over Thanksgiving week, but now will have to shuffle some things around in order to work it a little tighter.

Ooh, work it a little tighter. That's a sexy phrase, Brandon.

Ahem. Anyway.

In the morning I will teach my 101s, though there's little actual "teaching" involved; they are workshopping their second papers and I'm giving their journals back to them so that they can take home over break and continue writing in them. I collected my set of 011 journals yesterday, as mentioned above, but that's really the only pressing thing I have to get done over Fall Break, aside from entering midterm grades and rewriting the 210 lesson plan schedule. It's a rather light amount of work for the moment, the eye of the storm. When I return to campus to teach next week, I collect not only my 011's second papers, but my 101's second papers as well, back-to-back on consecutive days...and then I have to stick around campus until 10PM next Thursday night to teach the first session of that 210 course. On the plus side, I will more than likely to be able to grade through all of my 101's papers that afternoon before class that night, since I collect them that morning. This would be extremely helpful when it comes to actually having any free time the following weekend.

I get paid on Friday; it couldn't come soon enough. I have a few bills to take care of, including my Amazon Visa card bill, that I want to pay and be done with so that I don't have to worry about how much I'm putting on it in gas money. I was able to fill my gas tank this morning, and don't usually have to worry about it, but as I'm filling up every week, at $30-40 each time, it adds up quickly. I've barely gone over the halfway mark on the card's $400 limit (yeah, that's what it is) but I don't even like to use it that much, as it's not like I get paid a ton of money to be a lecturer -- which is, apparently, my official "position" within the department. It's a fancy title that really means "the lowest rung of the academic food chain, only slightly above GTA."

My eye is healing up a little better, I think. It's nowhere near perfect, of course (and much less perfect when I'm tired or in very dim/very bright environments) but it's getting better. As it's been a full week now, I'm beginning to wonder if my recovery has plateaued; yes, it's gotten much better over the past few days, but yesterday and today it's not been much different. What if it heals only to a certain point, and then stops? What if my vision in that eye will be, permanently, a bit blurry? I don't know. There's not much I can do about it either way. Sometimes it's incredibly annoying (mainly when I'm tired), but other times I've gotten so used to it after a week of seeing a little blurry that I don't even notice it that much. It's not like I can't function normally anyhow. I can still see to read and write (obviously) just like I could before, my driving isn't affected, my teaching skills aren't affected, etc. Like everything else, I'll just have to wait and see. Pardon the pun there.

As for my own "sickness," I don't know if I'm really getting something or not. Yes, I've had cold sweats a fair amount, and yesterday morning I'm pretty sure I was running a low-grade fever, but I'm not coughing or sneezing any more than my allergies would normally have me be, and I'm no more congested than I normally am. I don't really have body aches or anything like that...I just feel icky. I'm guessing a large amount of it has to do with my stress and fatigue. I'm still sleeping okay, I guess, though that sleep tends to be a lot shorter in duration during the week (as per the usual). Last night I went back to bed after grading my 101's journals and workshop copies and slept for an extra three hours before I had to get back up, and I felt no more or less rested than before. Since Daisy is sick too, and at least one of my close friends in the department (perhaps more) has the flu, I don't know what to think at this point. Daisy's sickness is more than likely allergy-related to a certain degree, though not seasonal allergies but an actual allergic reaction to something -- hence her rash. Most of my own sickness is just me being exhausted and twitchy, probably.