robglazebrook.com

First off, a couple of site-maintenance type things:

1) I’ve updated my general schedule to reflect this semester’s stuff. It should give you a general idea of whether or not I’m busy at any given time, which can be important if you’re trying to get ahold of me. I’ll rarely, if ever, answer my phone if I’m at work or in class. The evening work times may vary from month to month. I’ll try and get to my detailed schedule at some point, and I dunno if I’m going to keep the ‘upcomming’ thing around. I never seem to update it, which makes it fairly moot.

2) I’ve moved ArcanaCam to a new server. This may not seem important to you, but it’s a pretty big change. You see, ArcanaCam has been hosted on ISU’s servers since its inception. Rootarcana’s webhost doesn’t allow webcams, since webcams upload a new image every couple of seconds, which can get really spammy. However, ISU recently changed the way their servers operate, and now all FTP uploads require Kerberos password authentification, which no webcam software on earth (that I know of) supports. So, I spent a fair bit of time last night looking for a new (free) host that supports FTP and finally found one. They’re new, and they’re still ironing out a lot of bugs, but it should work for now. Fingers crossed.

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I’m 99% recovered from all the sicky stuff, though I still have an annoying cough that won’t seem to go away. Megan’s been sounding a lot better of late, as well. I even got her to go to bed last night without drugging herself first. :)

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Sometimes it’s freaky how much of my homework reading seems to interrelate. I mean, I got used to it last semester while taking two 400-level English classes, because a lot of the material was the same, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen much this semester. My English 418 reading (Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students) is the culprit in particular. As with all contemporary rhetoric textbooks, this book felt morally obligated to start in at around 800 BCE with the Greek culture. This is exactly the same time period and culture my Classical Studies class started out with. I had Aristotle coming out my ears. It got freakier, though. Last night, I was reading in my English 418 textbook again, and it quoted the exact same essay that my Sociology of Family textbook had quoted from the day before. Same passage, everything. If my rhetoric textbook ever decides to quote from my environmental biology book, I’m going to feel oblligated to drop one of my classes. *g*

Well, I’m feeling pretty good today, all considering. I still have a nasty cough from time to time, but that’s about it.

Megan, on the other hand, didn’t do so well yesterday. Wednesday night we stopped at Target and bought a thermometer, so we were able to ascertain that Megan was running a fever of around 102.9 for a good portion of Thursday. Luckily, she didn’t have to work, so she spent most the day in bed. Dwight, my boss, also spent Thursday at home in bed, meaning I had a pretty lonely day at work.

So in short, I’m doing better at the moment, though Megan’s doing worse than she was. Which does make me a bit nervous for my own health. I mean, Megan was sick last week, so when I got sick this week, I assumed I got it from her. But now, she’s sick again. Which, as far as I can tell, means one of three things:

• I got Megan sick, meaning I got the sickies elsewhere, meaning I’m done.
• Megan got me sick, meaning she has something new, meaning I could get sick again
• Megan got me sick, and since she’s still sick, it may also take me a long time to fully recover

Fun possibilities, eh?

In better news, I finished up my grad school application yesterday and got it submitted. That gave me an very powerful sense of relief. My part in this thing is done. Now, it doesn’t matter if my application is good, or bad, or anything. It’s out of my hands. It is officially Someone Else’s Problem. Someone else gets to take control from here on out. I’m just along for the ride. Good stuff.

Finishing my grad school application also brought a tangible close to last semester’s work. Meaning that I can now start focusing on the new semester. Five days after it began. Ah well. :)

Well, yesterday certainly wasn’t much fun. I guess the real not-fun started Monday evening, when I started running a high temperature. I don’t really know how high, because it turns out Megan and I don’t own a thermometer. Regardless, I had a fever, and it was pretty high. Past experience has shown that I become hypersensitive to touch in the high 102’s, and I start hallucinating in the high 103’s. I was ultra-sensitive, but I didn’t see anything stranger than my apartment, so we’ll say I was somewhere in the 102 range.

I was still overheating when I woke up Tuesday morning. I got out of bed at 7am and tried to get ready for work. By 7:15am, when I couldn’t make coffee because the grinds smelled too bad and I couldn’t use the bathroom with the lights on, I realized that wasn’t going to happen, so I emailed Dwight to say I wouldn’t be in, and went back to bed.

I have one class on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, at 2pm, meaning I have to be on the bus by 1:30. I wasn’t planning on going to class (even though I ~abhor~ missing the first day), but around 1:15 my fever broke, so I got dressed and went. By the time I got there, I was sorry I’d done so. My fever was back and I was baking. The building felt like a sauna. And considering I was the only one of the hundred or so people waiting in the atrium sweating, I knew it was me. According to the clock, I had 15 minutes before class started. So, I did the only logical thing: I unzipped my coat and took a long, random walk around campus.

I felt a wee bit better by the time class started, and that lasted until partway through the bus ride home. As good timing as any, I guess. I felt terrible by the time I got home. Luckily, I’d already emailed my good friend and co-worker Mark about all this earlier in the day, and he offered to cover my evening shift for me. Mark’s a good guy. So I stayed home and rested.

Resting was good, in a way. I feel a bit better today. My throat is raw and my chest hurts, but my fever is much lower. I’m at work now, in fact. Dwight’s sick. He just threatened to sue me. *g* The only bad part about all this resting is that I ~still!~ haven’t finalized my grad school application. Yeah. And it’s due tomorrow. Guess what I’ll be doing tonight?

Well, well. Welcome to the new semester. I would like to report that my stomach ickyness of this weekend has gone away. I would also like to report that it has been replaced by an ickyness of a chestical, lungical, and throatal nature. And also a headache and probably a fever, judging by how much the room looks to be throbbing. That having been said, I would further like to report that I am hating the players in the sicky game, not the sicky game itself. You can’t blame a flu bug for bugging, and you can’t blame a cold for chillin’. So, instead, I’m blaming you-all. :)

Regardless, I’m sitting at work right now, doing a touch of web updating for the professors who like to wait until the last minute. Not that I can really criticize them, since I plan to start putting my portfolio together (the portfolio that is due Thursday, mind you) tonight. I ~was~ planning on doing such work yesterday, but decided to spend -all- day (from 9:30am until around 9:30pm) cleaning, with Megan’s assistance towards the end. She had to work all day, otherwise I’m sure she woulda helped more. I’m not complaining about the cleaning, though… our place needed it. And I like starting a new semester with a clean apartment. A fresh start, and all that.

Anyways, my first class is at noon, but I’m sure Dwight will come up with something for me to do until then. If not, I’ll probably just sit here with my head on the desk and try to make the room and my chest stop throbbing in sync.

Damn you, sicky players. :)

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Oh! I almost forgot the entire purpose behind my wanting to update in the first place. I just found out that last year, for the first time in my career here at ISU, the university paid me more money than I paid them. :) That makes me feel very, perversely, good.

My plans for the day: Finish drafting my letter to the graduate review board as part of my graduate school application package. I’ve got about five days left to complete everything.

The reality of the day: I’ve already thrown up once, and my stomach doesn’t feel all that great. Thanks a lot, all you sickies. *g* I’ve gotta start school on Monday. :)

Last week was pretty boring. I worked all day, every day.