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…the more I itch. It’s no fun trying to keep a journal up-to-date when the only thing I have to talk about is an itch. *g*

I went to the doctor on Friday. He made me strip down to my undies, and later remove said undies, making him one of a very (VERY) select group of individuals who’ve seen me model my birthday suit.

Unfortunately, after the doc was done admiring my physique and had done a little research in his medical-type tomes, he still wasn’t sure what I had. His best guess, he said, is that I have erythema multifome (which is a rash and not related to spiders in any way), and after doing a bit of research online of my own, I think I agree with him.

More unfortunately, the doc wants to make sure he isn’t wrong, so I have an appointment with a Dermatologist Tuesday at 11:15, meaning I have to miss all three of my classes on Tuesday. If I didn’t take that spot, I would have been waiting until ~next~ Tuesday for an appointment, and that isn’t particularly helpful. I would have itched my own hands off by then. *g*

So, I’ve got no drugs until I go and see the Dermatologist. The rash continues to grow and spread, and now my stomach itches as much as my hands do. Oh, and that poison ivy I thought was coming back on my legs? Nope. That’s more of the rash. It’s on my ankles and even a couple of my toes, so wearing socks and shoes is once again an uncomfortable experience (though not nearly as much as it was with the ivy).

In non-rash related news, I’m about 60% or so done with a new skin for the site, and I think it’s looking quite nice. It’s my favorite so far, at any rate. I’m thinking of calling it “Endless Summer”, as it has a sort of summery theme to it, and summer here in Iowa is already winding down. The high today is in the mid-low seventies (compared to the upper nineties of last week), and it feels a bit like autumn out of doors. I noticed a couple of the trees on the northwest side of campus have already started to turn colors, too (note: the directional indication was meant to help those familiar with campus picture it, not to suggest that I believe that fall and winter really ~do~ follow a perfectly linear north-south progression pattern. *g*).

Time to get away from the computer for a bit and do some homework. One of my professors assigned a whole bunch o’ reading over the weekend, and I haven’t started it yet.

Fun link: The music video to “Weapon of Choice”, as interpreted by stick figures (the dancer in the original music video is stick-figure-like Christopher Walken).

Itch. Frigging, stupid Itch. I’m really sort of sick and tired of itching, you know? I have had a horrible, irritating itch of one sort or another for the last eighteen days without rest.

I don’t know if I’ve poison ivy still or no. My leg looks like it, but it doesn’t seem to itch constantly. Either that, or my hands are just too distracting, and I don’t notice one itch for the other. That isn’t a comforting thought.

And yes, I said ~hands~, as in plural. Remember those couple of marks on my left hand, the ones that itched horribly? Well, I have about a dozen of those angry, swollen, lumpy marks now, on both hands, and each one itches as bad as the next. It isn’t easy scratching both hands at once, either. *g*

And now, the rest of my body is starting to itch as well. I’m desperately hoping that it’s just some sort of a weird sympathy-itch sort of thing, or maybe just a reaction to the bites on my hands or something. Of course, now I’m not sure that those marks ~are~ bites, because how could I end up with a dozen of them? That seems like one malicious arachnid. Maybe the first couple of marks were bites, and the rest are reactionary or something. Who knows?

Hopefully, I guess, the doctor knows. I’m going to try and see someone today, even though I loathe to do so for more than one reason, the financial reason being the biggest one. When I went to the Student Health Center last time, I showed them my insurance card, and the lady said, “That won’t work. We’ll just mail you the bill and you can send it to your insurance company.” And I don’t know what that means. Perhaps my insurance card was just too worn (it’s pretty old). Or perhaps it was just a nice way of saying “you’re screwed”. If that is the case, I doubt I can afford two doctor bills any more than I can afford one of them.

Anyway, that’s the latest update on yours truly. I still itch. I’m still going to work and classes regardless of the fact that I can’t really concentrate on either. And now I’m starting to think that I’m not going to be able to go out ~this~ weekend, either. I haven’t been out with my friends on the weekend since early July. I saw JJ on the bus yesterday, and I had to kick him before he recognized me. *g* None of my friends up here have seen me with my shorter, blonder hair yet.

Anyway. Off to exercise, take a shower, and go to work and probably a doctor.

I just had to do something that depressed me to no end: I dropped Taekwondo.

If I had just one reason for doing so, I probably wouldn’t have been able to talk myself into doing it, but I’ve a few reasons. None have anything to do with the art itself, or with the instructor, or with the sauna they teach in, or anything of the sort. These are all personal reasons.

Not least of all (but not most of all, either), are my piercings. The syllabus the TAs handed out in Master Pak’s absence on Monday make it clear: absolutely no jewelry, of any sort and in any physical location, allowed in the dojang. I thought long and hard about the rule, and decided that I was okay with it, since it’s in the spirit of safety (of self and others) and respect. So, I spent a good long while figuring out how to take out my earrings (I’d never done it), and I practiced taking out my tongue ring, so I could do so quickly. My eyebrow ring doesn’t exist right now, so that was easy. My nipple rings were another matter. I tried and tried to take them out, and I couldn’t get them to budge. Eventually, I figured out that the lady who put them in me simply closed the metal hoops ~far~ too hard, and the little metal ball that’s supposed to ‘pop right out’ (as I’ve been told countless times) is jammed in there with enough pressure that I can’t unpry it with my hands. So, I used a pair of needle-nosed pliers to loosen one. And promptly lost the little metal ball on the floor somewhere, never to be found again. THEN, I discovered that the only way to ‘quickly’ remove these rings, based on the width of the gap in the metal hoop and the relative size of my lil’ niplets, would be to bend the hoop straight and pull it out. And that, my friends, I’m not so okay with. I went through a lot of pain for these rings, and I’m going to keep them for a while longer, thankyouverymuch.

More significant than my piercings, is my health. I’m not so healthy right now. My legs still haven’t fully healed from the poison ivy episode, and in some spots on my right leg, it’s starting to look very suspiciously like I’ve got ivy where I didn’t have any before, which I need to keep a close eye on. So, that takes both my legs out of commission. Not for normal use, but certainly for running around barefoot in a robe (dobok), swinging them around in the air and at others.

And then, there’s my left hand. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with it yet, but the pad of my thumb is sore and unevenly swollen and really friggin’ itchy (not ivy-itchy, though), and it’s making it tough to make a fist with that hand. And making a fist is sort of essential, you know, for punches and all. I’m wondering if maybe it was a spider bite or something (though it looks like three spider bites, if it is), and maybe I picked up a lovely new allergy from somewhere *cough*mom*cough*.

And there’s other little stuff, too, but those are the big ones. So, I dropped the class. I’d still love to take Taekwondo at some point in time. I plan to replace my nipple rings with barbells so they’ll come out easier, and my body’s bound to heal up ~someday~, right? So then, I’ll plan to give it another shot. I could just join the club, instead of taking the class. One credit doesn’t make or break me at this point in time. :) It just means I’ve got five credits to go until graduation after this semester, instead of four. I was planning on taking nine credits or so, regardless, so it’s not a big deal.

But I didn’t even get to meet the famous Grand Master Pak. That was going to be one of the best parts. :( At least, the part that was going to make Kara jealous. *beams*

(I just wanted a big word in my title)

Yesterday morning marked the beginning of the ninth semester I’ve spent here at ISU, and it was an odd start, even as far as first days (which usually have something noteworthy about them) go. Yesterday was odd, in that, although I went to both of my classes, I didn’t meet either of my professors. And I’m not talking intimate, face-to-face conversation-type meetings, either. I have yet to see what either of them look like.

My first class of the day was Tae Kwan Do. After spending ten minutes finding the room (it was down a hallway that was under construction, diagonally across a gymnasium in use, and up a back flight of stairs to the third floor of a building I didn’t know had three floors), I get to the door, add my shoes to the growing pile, and step on to the mats. I look around for the professor (I’m looking for the little old Korean guy who could kill me with his pinky, so he should stick out), but I don’t see him. Turns out, he’s in Korea. Go figure. The TA’s walked us through the basics, and we’ll probably start in earnest on Wednesday.

Oh, and it was hot in that room. Real, ~real~ hot. A long, squat, poorly-ventilated padded room on the third floor of a huge exercise complex can really get nice n’ cozy when it’s 98 degrees outside. :)

After my sauna (heh), I headed across campus in the (comparatively) cool summer sun to my English class. Since we were all English-ites and upperclassmen, we sat around and socialized a bit before class started. My old buddy Rob Backstrom is in the class, which makes this something like our seventh class together. :)

Anyway, we socialized. And then we socialized some more. And then we asked each other for the time. And then we socialized. And then we got bored, and tried to come up with reasons that the professor hadn’t shown up yet. My favorite was the idea that it was some sort of a hazing ritual / endurance test, and the professor was sitting just outside the room with a list of our names accompanied by our photos, and would check off attendance and make notes in the margin as we walked out on him. In reality, though, it turns out that the guy is an English professor, and simply got his days confused. He sent us an email a couple of hours later to apologize and to assign homework. What a guy, eh? *g*

So. Let’s hope today’s classes go a bit more smoothly, eh? I just found out through the wonder that is the Internet that the teacher for my first class of the day (Visual Aspects of Business Communication) is a graduate student, so that has me wary already. The ‘Net also informs me that my Poetry teacher is a Distinguished Professor, which makes him an old fart. Let’s hope he’s a nice old fart.

In other news, I finished reading Lord of the Rings a couple of weeks ago and never thought to mention it, which means I made it well before my self-imposed deadline of today. I’ve read a couple of back-issues of Fantasy & Science Fiction that I never got around to since then, and a couple of days ago I started reading Stephen Dobyns’s The Church of Dead Girls. It’s a bit slow so far, and there’s far too many character names for my poor fuddled mind to get ahold of, but Megan promises that the book picks up and the minor characters fall to the wayside after a while.

Time to work out (I’ma gonna need to be in better shape than I am for Tae Kwan Do), shower, and dress for another day of Academia (Wacky Acky?).

Alright, you want some stinkin’ pictures? I’ll give you some stinkin’ pictures. But only cause I promised.

[related aside]
I just took the bandage off my ankle, and, as it did the day before, it hurt like a sonofabitch. It felt as though I were ripping large chunks out of my skin. Because, you know what? I was. And it hurts a whole bunch. So I’m in a really pissy mood until I find something to kill the pain.
[/related aside]

But first, the story behind the pictures:

It was the last evening of Gnomedex, things were winding down, and I was enjoying the free ‘beverages’ from our loving sponsors, Google and Budweiser. Lorenzo, Nathan and I were sitting at a table, talking, when a guy we’d never seen before walked up behind us and said, “So, you guys go to Iowa State?”

Turns out, this guy didn’t know who we were either. He needed a ride back to ISU, and was walking around the crowd asking everyone roughly our age the same question. We said we did, in fact, go to ISU, and what was it to him? He explained his quandary, and I offered him a ride back north. He (whose name is Adam, by the way) joined our little party.

Adam had a digital camera with him. Adam had ~also~ been making the most out of the free beverages. Adam and I quickly devised a devious plot to get our pictures taken with all the cute girls at Gnomedex: we’d walk up to the cute girls, digital camera in hand, and ask if we could have our pictures taken with them! Brilliant! Couldn’t fail! And, it didn’t.

First up was Chey, also known as Gnome-Girl:

Chey and Rob (click to enlarge)

Next up was the lovely Miss Gnomedex 2003, whom, just the night before, had only been known as Jennifer:

Jennifer and Rob (click to enlarge)

Lori Lockwood and Gretchen Pirillo weren’t tough to track down, as they were the only two in attendance decked out in leather. *g* From left to right, we have Nathan, Lorenzo, Lori, Adam, Gretchen, and yours truly:

Gang and Girls (click to enlarge)

Last, but certainly not least, we got a snapshot of Chris Pirillo, Mr. Lockergnome himeself. You know the names. The guy you don’t know, by process of elimination, would be Chris:

Gang and Pirillo (click to enlarge)

And that’s all I really have for good-quality, generally interesting shots. I didn’t get pictures of (or with) all the people I wanted to, but the night ended all too soon and Lorenzo had to drive us home. :)

Pain’s slowly starting to wane. I think I’ll celebrate with some sort of pain killer. *g*