Saturday, February 15, 2003
 

Almost a week without updating. So call me a slacker.

A sick, tired slacker. I have no idea what I had, but it was vile. I woke up Monday morning with a terrible sore throat and worse-than-usual congestion. I couldn't tell if it was allergies or a cold; it didn't feel exactly like either. I wondered if it was the beginning of another sinus infection (which, if you've never had one, let me assure you that they're about as miserable as they come). I walked to campus around 3:00 to get yet more late-breaking handouts (if a certain professor would just get his act together and have the readings available sometime earlier than two or three days before class, that would be just splendid) and came back exhausted. I ended up sleeping for a couple of hours. Then I ate, then I made some halfhearted attempts at studying. If memory serves, I was in bed around 10:00. Tuesday, I also woke up with a sore throat, same neither-here-nor-there increased congestion, same state of near-exhaustion. I accomplished little, napped, and went to bed at 9:00. Wednesday I had to get up to finish my work for class. I made it through class intact, though a bit on the croaky side, and with the help of kleenex and Halls, plus much hot tea. Thursday was miserable by anyone's standards. Up at 4:30 AM to finish writing. Left for campus at noon. In seminars from 12:30-6:00. Went straight from seminar, with some others, to hear the now-infamous Cornell West (that was a performance, to say the least, but I enjoyed it), which was standing-room-only by the time we got there. Got in, though, and ended up standing for over two hours, craning my neck to see over the people in front of me. I screwed up my back a few years ago, and when I got home, it was really killing me. I couldn't budge from the futon and ended up watching CSI all by my little (well, not so little) lonesome. Friday morning, I'm still congested, still waking up with sore throat. I had to be on campus by 9:00, so, after I finished up with that and other errands, I headed to SuperCuts for a much-needed haircut (getting hard to see again). And the woman who did such a good job last time no longer works there. Phooey. Of course, it's humid anyway, so regardless, I look like Nancy from the comic strip. I have amazingly poofy hair. I got back here around 11:00, and I was in that exhausted state again, plus my back still hurt. So I went to bed. And slept for two and a half hours. I was awakened by a wrong number:

Unidentified Woman: "Is Muh-Shayl there?"
Me, groggily: "I think you have the wrong number."
UW, nastily: "Oh, you THANK?" *slam*

Ok. The "I think" part may have been unnecessary but was far from rude. I was perfectly pleasant, if groggy. She annoyed me unreasonably. I love having obsessive thought patterns; this is still bothering me! Joy. Groan. I'll get my revenge by rendering her lines in unflattering (albeit accurate) dialect. So there. Bet she's sorry.

Just had some Lipton mushroom rice that was pretty good. More or less the first real food I've had since Sunday. Whatever my random illness was, it also involved a real unwillingness to eat. I wasn't hungry, and a lot of foods were tremendously unappealing, on the point of being nauseating. But I wasn't nauseous overall, so who knows. Anyway, I don't recommend catching whatever it was.

The rice raises the ongoing problem of single-person eating: leftovers. Whatever you make, you're eating all of it yourself. If it has to be cooked all at once, this can mean many days without variety, especially because foods billed as "side dishes" tend to become main dishes. Of course, the plus of single-person eating is that if you feel like microwave popcorn for dinner, you have microwave popcorn. If you consider mustard toast a delicacy, no one tells you that's gross (until, of course, you mention it on your blog, like the glutton for punishmet that you are). And you don't have to share the Ben & Jerry's with anyone. But that's still a pretty durn huge bowl of uneaten rice sitting in my refrigerator.

We had our first round of dissertation proposals yesterday. Both proposals were quite interesting, and it was good to see how this works and what it entails. I also, in a long, involved, and unnecessary story, got a free Diet Coke, so I'm happy.

I went to the grocery this morning. I knew it was going to be a major run, anyway; I was running out of a ton of stuff, and I wanted this to be my last trip for awhile. I've noticed that I give in and go shopping only when I run out of breakfast cereal. Buying the 1 lb box of Honey Nut Cheerios (yes, I know that the store brand is cheaper, but I buy it in other stuff-- let me have this splurge) proved not only economical but also time-efficient (because of the reduced number of trips to the store), so I got another 1 lb box of it and two regular-size boxes of Multi-Grain Cheerios (had a coupon for the latter). I also decided that I was paranoid enough to stock up a bit on canned goods (and I had a bunch of soup coupons anyway) and a few other nonperishable items. Forgot D cell batteries, though. Anyway, I'll eat the stuff eventually, and I seriously doubt that canned goods will preserve me from nuclear annihilation or whatever the threat du jour is, but my generalized anxiety disorder prevailed. And, in fact, kept me up for a good while last night. Does she realize, you ask, that she's being pretty ridiculous? Yup. That just doesn't do any good. I'm having a bitter day; can you tell? Anyway, I wish I knew how paranoid I was actually being about the canned goods. It's not like I just spent my entire month's paycheck on soup, corn, and beans, and it's not like I'm boarding my windows shut or digging a bomb shelter in the complex's courtyard. I have a sneaking suspicion that I may have acted fairly reasonably, under the circumstances. Of course, I can still take comfort in my weirdness by knowing that I had to arrange all of aforementioned soup into rows grouped by variety. The influx of canned goods (and the fact that Old Mother Elvisette's Cupboard had gotten pretty bare, anyway) necessitated a rearrangement of stored food items, which meant a new system. I'm actually worse about this type of organization since I started living alone, for whatever reason. At least I can always get my hands on the food craving of the moment (which may or may not be a good thing).

Elvisette philosophized at 6:48 PM