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Yay! So, I think the drug is starting to do its stuff. To the untrained, unaccustomed eye, I’m sure my legs and ankle look just as nastified today as they did last week, but I’ve noticed definite, significant improvements. For one, although I had a horrible time sleeping again last night, it had a lot to do with general restlessness and almost nothing to do with pain. The night before was all about burning, searing, itching pain. Also, I’m walking a lot better today (when compared to earlier in the week, not when compared to before (and even during) the ill-fated camping trip), which means that the swelling in my ankle has gone down a lot. My ankle, for the last week or so, has been ballooned with angry, vengeful flesh to far more than its FDA-approved size, and has just now (within the last 18 hours or so) shrank back down to within regulation dimensions. I don’t wince when I bend my ankle anymore, which makes walking a helluva lot easier.

Don’t get me wrong: my ankle is still pretty gross. Today it looks more like a giant scab than a giant swath of dead gray-and-purple flesh, but I consider that an improvement. Scabs mean healing. At least, that’s how I’m choosing to interpret it. Also, I’m losing far less bodily fluid through my ankle now, which is good. I’m tired of losing my humors through my feet.

Okies, enough about the nasties for today. Promise. :)

Yano what? I used to be funnier (speaking of humors). I swear it’s true. I also used to be smarter, but I don’t know what happened there and that’s not really what we’re talking about, so I’ll leave that one alone for now. But really. I was reading through some of my archived entries last week (the scant 130 or so from the last few months, since everything from 1999 until late 2002 has been lost), and I realized that my journal entries used to be a lot more entertaining. I’m not sure when the transition from ‘ha’ to ‘blah’ occurred, and I suppose it was more of a gradual thing than an instantaneous switch, but I’m gonna do my best to recapture some of that old humor. I think I was just more ‘myself’ in those older entries, more sincere. By nature, I’m a weirdo with a natural knack for weirdo, nonsensical humor. And I think I musta started filtering out the weirdo stuff a while back. Which really isn’t fair in a lot of different ways. I mean, if I don’t bother to filter out my oddities at work anymore, why on earth would I want to do so here? So I’m going to try and find my inner freak again, if you don’t mind. It’ll probably be a gradual transition again, as all worthwhile transitions are (with the exception maybe of lottery-generated transitions).

You know what else I’ve noticed (aren’t ~I~ just a bundle of introspective wonders this morning)? I haven’t done a lick of real web design in something like two weeks. I need to change that here pretty quick, before I lose all interest in it entirely. Especially since, you know, I keep hoping to make money with this stuff.

One of the side effects of prednisone is weight gain (being a steroid and all, go figure), and damned if I haven’t gained at least three pounds in the last couple of days. I absolutely refuse to believe that the pizza I had for lunch yesterday had anything to do with it. *grin* The pizza couldn’t be avoided. Lorenzo and I have been getting pizza for lunch on Wednesdays for most of the summer, and since it was likely the last Wednesday we’d ever work together over the lunch hour, the pizza was a necessity. And then Megan made me a yummy salmon-and-rice dinner last night, and I had barely enough appetite to eat about half of what she served me. I felt bad about that, since I normally pounce on feesh any chance I get.

I wonder if another side-effect of prednisone is rambliness? Or if that’s just another form of restlessness?

School starts again in a few days. Gah. School itself doesn’t scare me anymore (I’m actually looking forward to this semester), but what this coming semester MEANS is scary as all-get-out. Or is it I’ll-get-out? I can never quite catch which variation it is when I hear it said out loud due to my dullard ear drums. Anyways, what this coming semester means, is that I’m almost done with my undergraduate career. I need to decide, some time this semester, whether I want to start working and paying back my enormous student loans, or if I want to get more enormouser (hehe) student loans and head to grad school. And if I ~do~ go to grad school, do I stay in the English department, or do I decide to become yet-another-lawyer or something (cause I love to argue)? And if I ~do~ stay in the English department, do I stay in THIS English department, or do I do the traditional thing and head for a new school?

So many questions that need some answering soon. Scary stuff. Stuff that will determine the path my life takes from here on out. Or a significant portion of it, at least. I’m 22 years old now. By the time I graduated with a Ph.D. in anything, I’d be at least 27 years old, and likely older. I’ve been going to school for nineteen years now (counting two years of preschool, and since I learned a lot of fundamentals there before kindergarten, I’m counting it). Do I really want to sign on for another five?

Yah. Big, scary, important stuff. All thoughts, comments, and encouraging hugs will be accepted. :)

Hehe. I hadn’t seen my boss (Dwight) all morning, and he just walked in and said, “Where the hell have I been?!” Turns out, he forgot that it was his kid’s first day of school, so he had stuff to do this morning. Which means he doesn’t know that I was fifteen minutes late again this morning, since I wasted five minutes wrapping my legs with gauze and consequently missed my bus. At least, he doesn’t know until he reads this. Ah well. *g*

I ~promise~ that I will post my Gnomedex pictures later today. Just not right now, because this post is getting too long. So, talk to you all later.

Five days without updating, all of which can be attributed to one thing: Itch. If I had to summarize my life with one word right about now, ‘itch’ would be the word of choice. I Itch through the day, and I Itch through the night. I’ve missed the last two days of work due to the Itch, and I’ve gotten horrible sleep the last five nights at least, due in part to the Itch, and also because I’m sleeping with my legs hanging off the end of the bed due to Itch-related nastiness.

However, and end may now be in sight. Yesterday afternoon, I broke down and went to the student health center, after verifying over the phone that this week counts as a part of Fall semester, meaning I’m covered by my Fall health fees. After a short visit, most of which was spent discussing the long list of previous health problems while I wrapped/unwrapped my ankle, the doctor was merciful, and for the next eight days I’ll have a stomach full of Prednisone to counter all the ivy oils in my body. The idea is to suppress my immune system long enough for the oils to leave my body naturally, without all those well-meaning but pain-inducing white blood cells intervening.

So! I’m hoping to go to work tomorrow. I was planning on trying for a half-day today, but my boss ordered me via email to stay at home. I can’t afford more than two days off worth, though, so working tomorrow is a likelihood, not just a probability.

I hope you are all doing well. I’ve been ignoring the blogs on my list as of late, so I’ll have a lot of catching up to do once the Itch stops being so damnably distracting. Right now, I can’t really focus long enough to read all the long-winded entries you’re all so good at producing.

Time for bed. I’ve gotta spend a lot of time in bed, on the off-chance my body feels like sleeping at some point. :) G’night.

Well, another day of itching most horribly, simultaneously trying not to do anything about it, and rebuilding computers maimed by the latest tragedy to strike the Windows-based Universe is upon me. It would be easier to focus on these computers if my legs didn’t itch so much. The good news is, I suppose, that thus far my malady is tolerable, if not fun. When I went to bed last night, I wasn’t so sure that I’d be able to walk this morning (the worst of the ivy is on the top of my foot on either side of my ankle; both wearing shoes and walking are quite painful), but I’m up and about today just the same. I even made it to work before my boss did. :)

I am sad. Moderately depressed, at the least. The reason being, in the last week, I’ve lost more jewelry precious to me than I have in a long time. I actually feel a little bad mentioning this first here, and not in an email, but there’s too good a chance I’ll forget to mention it entirely if I decide to mention it in email only.

The first piece of jewelry I lost was my necklace, which I lost while camping this last weekend. I loved that necklace; the look of it, the feel of it, everything. It was given to me by my parents the day I turned 20, or two years and three days from when I lost it, if you want to count it that way. That was also the eve of the first time I ever kissed Megan. And now it’s gone. But I don’t think I’ll read too deep in to that one. I wore it as a piece of jewelry, a pretty silver chain, not as a metaphor or a symbol or anything like that. *g*

The second piece of jewelry I lost is my eyebrow barbell, which disassociated itself with me just last night. Megan and I were laying in bed, me with my Lord of the Rings (only a couple hundred pages left), her with her Children of the Mind (she finished it last night), when she looked over at me, gasped, and said, “Oh my God, Rob!”

Her cry wasn’t very specific, to be sure, but it was certainly enough to let me know that either something wasn’t quite right, or she had me confused with someone rather more omnipotent than I. As it turns out, she wasn’t claiming me a deity or anything like that. Instead, the ball had unscrewed itself and fallen off the bottom end of my eyebrow ring, leaving the rest of the barbell free to the wiles of inverse gravity or anything else that might pull it out the top of my eyebrow. We searched high and low (mostly low) for the ball, but it couldn’t be found.

I left what was left in my eyebrow, but I lost even that in the night. I plan to get a new eyebrow ring (sorry, grandma. I bet you had your hopes up), but I’m thinking about making this one only part-time. Now that I’ve proven to myself that eyebrow rings can and do come out just as easily (and painlessly) as earrings, perhaps I’ll be more comfortable removing it from time to time. When we get to the face-mauling portions of Tae Kwan Do, for instance. I don’t know how or when I’ll be able to replace the necklace.

Well, I ~still~ have pictures to post, don’t I? Well, they’ll have to wait once again, because I’ve computers to update. I’ve updated four while writing this, and I’m working on four laptops and a desktop as I wrap this entry up. Have a good day, wish some health my way I’ve you’ve not yet done so, and keep in touch. :)

I survived the trip home, I did, though it seems that I’ve not come through our little adventure unscathed. Could I have expected anything less? Not really, I guess, though one always hopes otherwise.

Camping itself was a very fun time. I’d not spent much time with Eric or Renée for many months, and it was good to catch up a bit, gossip a bit, and just to spend time together not speaking, just communing in the silence.

We left on our voyage from Ames Thursday around five in the evening, and despite sundry construction zones, a couple of restroom stops and the one storm I was able to find in the state of Iowa to drive through, we arrived at our campsite in just under three hours, with less than an hour of daylight left in which to find two campsites, claim them as our own, pay for them, and make them habitable. We accomplished all, and in a fair bit of luck we even ended up with two of the campsites we were hoping for.

[aside]
I need a talking scale. You know, like the one Garfield has in the comic strip. I could step up to weigh myself every morning (as I do), and it could greet me with an “Ow! Get off! Get off!,” or a “One at a time, please,” or even “Good afternoon. one fifty-nine… p.m. You’re heavy.” I bet something like that could encourage me to lose weight. Much better than being too tired and pained to worry about dinner and ordering pizza does, at any rate.
[/aside]

We spent three nights under the watch of the pine trees, and aside from the few remaining sprinkles that fell on our heads from a small cloud chasing the storm we drove through, it didn’t rain on us once the duration of the trip. I was astounded.

We packed up and headed home Sunday morning. Eric and Renée left a couple of hours before Megan and I. I still hadn’t done anything stupid on this trip, and felt I needed the extra time to allow the inevitable a chance to strike. It took the chance, I’m guessing, when I wandered out into the woods a short distance in my sandals. I had heard nature calling, and thought that the was no better place to answer nature’s call than in the woods, despite my poor choice in footwear.

Two and a half days home now, and I’ve got a fairly good case of poison ivy going on both my legs.

My case isn’t terminal or anything yet. It’s not nearly as bad as the last time I had it, six or so years ago. Last time, the sly poison worked its way through my skin into my blood stream and out throughout my entire body (yes, even ~there~, thankyouverymuch. Try being male and not being able to scratch ~there~ when you desperately need to), and I was forced to take a strong regimen of drugs to fight it out of my system. I am reminded of my last case of poison ivy every time I look down at my legs: this outbreak has formed right on the edges of the large, ugly scars the last outbreak left on my legs.

So! Wish me luck, health and healing in the next few days, as I bend my will against the mindless poisonous oils invading my system in an attempt to not allow ~this~ time to send me to the hospital. Oh, and wish me wealth, too, while you’re wishing. It couldn’t hurt. :)

I’m just over two-thirds the way through The Lord of the Rings now, so I should be able to finish it without a problem before the second movie comes out on DVD, as was my goal. I read several hundred pages yesterday, through the second half of the Two Towers and on in to the Return of the King. I’m surprised more of Tolkien’s prose hasn’t worked its way into my own, after so much reading.

Or, should I say, Surprised I am, sitting here in my short-pants of cotton and dark hair still arranged comically about my head from a long night’s uneasy slumber, that more of the Great One’s prose has not entered into my own following such a communion as we enjoyed the previous eve, as the summer sun dipped below the trees in the West. :)

Maybe I just don’t have the mental lung capacity it would take to write as he did. :) It would be a fun mental exercise, though.

Alas! Time to shower (gently, very gently, ivy doesn’t enjoy warm water) and prepare for another day at work. I’ll try to update again today, as I’ve a couple pictures to post.

Thank goodness it’s the weekend. Well, it’s the weekend as far as I’m concerned. In a few short hours, Megan, Eric, Renée and I will be leaving Ames headed east with Maquoketa Caves State Park as our point of destination. So, if any of you need me this weekend, I will be here:

Maquoketa Caves Campground (click to enlarge)

I’ve taken the liberty of plotting out my own course, seeing as how Yahoo! is still adamant that their directions were the correct ones. For those of you unfamiliar with the story of our last trip to Maquoketa, you can read it here. Our course does NOT include the one-way bridge of eternal peril.

Bridge of Eternal Peril (click to enlarge)

Time to finish up packing. Have a good weekend! I will be. :)