Archive for May, 2010

“Things I Like: My Doctor”, or “How My Name is Now in the Virginia Healthcare System, Which is at Least One Place More Than I’d Like It to Be”, or “I Can Just About Guarantee that You Had a Better Week Than I Did”

Posted on May 31, 2010. Filed under: Things I Like |

Hello, all. I’m terribly sorry about the long hiatus (not really “terribly,” per se, but the part of me that feels normal human emotions is indicating that I should offer some sort of apology), but hey, I’ve been doing finals and been sick and been out of town and away from my computer and then still been sick, so blogging has recently been about as high a priority for me as apologizing to the Japanese-Americans for internment has been for the US government. (Would you like some ice for that burn, US government?)

But hey, I’m back now and you all can dry up your tears and stop shaking from withdrawal symptoms. Or you can quit whatever drugs you started using to fill the vacuum in your life that was formed by my deafening silence in the blogosphere. Whatevs.

Anyway, to business. As a lot of you probably know, I came down sick with something two Tuesday mornings ago, which was really inconvenient because I had a final on that Tuesday. I then spent a substantial amount of Tuesday alternately freezing and roasting away until Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning when I completely forgot about freezing and burning up with my 101 degree temperature in the face of trying desperately not to throw up. (Sidenote: mucus is slightly less effective than many other substances at settling a stomach. Before trying mucus to settle your rumbling tummy, I would recommend sticking your fingers down your throat and just getting it over with.)

Anyways, I do not really remember taking either my Tuesday final or my chem final on Thursday, but I apparently did well enough to get a solid A in both those classes so we’re good. Come Thursday I was just chugging along, looking forward to getting home where the pediatrician who writes the prescriptions for my drugs vitally needed medications lives. Unfortunately, the fates were conspiring against me – my older sister was graduating that weekend (sidenote: Congrats, sis! I do really and truly wish that I was coherent enough to actually remember the stuff that happened that weekend that didn’t directly impact my health.) This wouldn’t be a problem except for the minor detail that she goes to school in bloody Virginia. For the geographically challenged, that’s about a 13 hour drive from where I live. So instead of going to a doctor on Thursday or Friday to get antibiotics for my raging sinus infection, I was asleep for all of Thursday evening from just about the minute I got home to when my parents brutally and mercilessly wrenched me from the land of unconsciousness on Friday morning. I then spent almost the entire trip hacking up my lungs and guts and staring aimlessly out the car window (sidenote: the 2000 or so miles between my home and Virginia are really, really boring. There are a lot of cornfields, a lot of trees, and a lot of bloody mountains.)

Of course, the real fun didn’t start until Saturday around 11:30 PM (that’s at night) when pressure buildup in my ear (from coughing, of course) had me in enough pain that both my parents and I were worried I was going to blow out an eardrum. There was also the issue of how I was coughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath and also how my eyes were horrendously irritated/infected, but the kicker was the ear. This kicked off my second trip to an emergency room.

I went to Virginia and all I got was this stupid hospital bracelet.

I would like to take this opportunity to give props to my brother. The first time I went to an emergency room was on the 4th of July when I was between sixth and seventh grade and he was going to be in third or fourth grade or something like that. My brother and I had been playing soccer outside our house right near the edge of our property when I slid to block a goal, at which point my knee exploded into an exquisite symphony of excruciating agony. (I had speared it on a pipe that surveyors use to determine the boundary line between our property and the next.)  As I lay there on the ground, clutching my very bloody knee whilst screaming  in addition to bloody murder something along the lines of (and I quote) “GO GET MOM,” my wonderful brother went dashing full speed into the house like a heroic white knight. He returned, not with my mother, but with a box of band-aids. Which is understandable, I guess, because I totally get how “go get Mom” translates to “go get a box of band-aids” in third graderese. Or was he in fourth? Whatever. Not important.

This used to be a crud-load bigger. It would also turn purple when exposed to cold water. You can see my dog's paw in the lower left-hand corner. That red patch on his knee is what his saliva does to his fur over extended periods of time. We don't let him lick us. Ever.

The fact is that this time around he correctly interpreted my whimpers of pain and lack of response to, well, everything, as “I am in excruciating pain and need Mom and Dad right now.”

I would also like to give props to my parents for refraining from waffling on the issue of taking me to the ER/medical care providers like they usually do when I am sick or injured and correctly interpreting my whimpers of pain, lack of response to everything, and night-of-the-living-dead zombie eyes as “I really should be in a hospital right now.”

(The time that I nearly destroyed my knee was really weird because my parents knew that something was up when my brother got the band-aids and came outside and then showed unusual initiative by taking me to get medical care without prompting. Someday I will tell you all the story of the time my older sister dislocated my elbow* and my parents didn’t take me to see a doctor until a week later (after my preschool teacher told them something was wrong) because they “thought [I was] faking it.” They really should have figured out I wasn’t faking it when their six-year old didn’t magically get better overnight after completely forgetting about a made-up injury. It’s okay, though. It’s not like I hold a grudge or anything.)

*Said older sister need not bother trying to justify said violence in the comments section. I will delete any reference to the circumstances surrounding said dislocation. Just know that it was a complete overreaction on her part.Really.

Anyways, that’s how I found myself in a Virginia emergency room at midnight. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratefulness that said ER was not staffed by people who, well, are like me, because if I had been working there and seen somebody looking like me walk into a hospital I would have had me strapped down and searched for zombie bites while an orderly stood over me with a shotgun poised to fire.  My eyes really were not pleasant to behold; you know how the “whites” of your eyes are supposed to be “white?” It turns out that blood red is not in fact the color that you generally want to be shooting for on that particular body part. I mean, when I looked at my eyes in the mirror they would start hurting more because my eyes were in sympathy pain from looking at themselves – that’s how gross and nastily painful we’re talking here.

Unfortunately for me, the ER was staffed with an idiot that night. (I would probably be nicer about this except I had to wait a good three hours to see this shlub and he “diagnosed” me in five minutes and then took another forty-five minutes to write the bloody prescriptions he said I needed.) I mean, I’m a college freshmen. I realize that this means that I am not a really qualified diagnostician. But I bloody well knew I had a sinus infection and was not buggering around with severe allergies which is what Dr.-Thumb-Up-His-Nose thought I had. So he gave me a bunch of steroids and allergy meds and I’m sitting there thinking (or what passed for thinking at the time) of how much fun steroids (which are immunosuppressants, or in layman’s terms, things-that-make-your-body’s-natural-disease-defense-system-work-about-as-well-as-BP’s-efforts-to-contain-the-Gulf-oil-spill) will be for that sinus infection. But hey, by this time it was around three in the morning, I was exhausted, and the inhaler they gave me was taking care of the cough for the time being.

Two days later I still wasn’t feeling any better and we could now add “no voice” to my list of symptoms (although to hear my mom talk sometimes you’d think she would want that particular symptom to continue indefinitely, which is understandable I guess because I can be pretty obnoxious. But in a good way.) So my Mom took me to see my doctor, who I usually don’t like to see because while she is a nice person she also makes me sit in my underwear in the exam room which is about three degrees above absolute zero, usually, and I recently found out that my brother gets to wear a pair of shorts when she’s examining him (which is totally unfair), but under the circumstances I was very, very happy to see her. So we get into her office and I’ll be darned but ten minutes after I walked into that office my doctor was in the exam room and about five minutes after that she was filling out a prescription for some antibiotics because within five minutes of examining me she knew I had a sinus infection.

And this brings me to why I like my doctor: she’s a nice lady who knew what was wrong with me and made me  better-ish (I’m actually still trying to get rid of the bloody cough, but that’s the kind of thing that’s just going to linger. She did a good job.) I think that’s a pretty good reason to like someone. I actually can’t remember a single instance where I’ve gone to her office and not felt better within a couple of days.

Dr. N, I salute you.

P.S.

MY MOM ISN’T TAKING ME TO SEE YOU THIS SUMMER FOR A PHYSICAL. I DON’T HAVE TO SIT IN MY UNDERWEAR IN YOUR OFFICE AGAIN! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Things I Like: Star Trek

Posted on May 11, 2010. Filed under: Things I Like |

And with that, I have pretty much just outed myself as a nerd. Of course, those of you who know me already know that I’m an uber-nerd and you all probably know that I love Star Trek anyway. Oh, by the way, for those of you who might care, for the purposes of this discussion Star Trek: Enterprise doesn’t exist. And unless I specifically specify Star Trek: The Original Series, you can assume that I’m talking about the franchise in general.

To boldly go…

Anyways, this particular bout of declared love was brought on by the fact that I was watching Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan with a friend of mine last evening. Now, I vastly prefer Piccard to Kirk (hate me all you want – that fact will not change), but every now and then it’s fun to watch Kirk do what Kirk does best – be a smart-mouth swashbuckling hero, which is pretty much what you get while watching Wrath of Khan. Of course, almost all of the events of Wrath of Khan could have been avoided (ie, Spock dying, a bunch of nameless extras dying, Khan nearly buggering up the whole Alpha Quandrant, etc.)  if Kirk had put the stupid shields up 10 minutes into the movie when approaching the USS Reliant which any moron could have told him to do. In fact, a lieutenant (played by a very young and thin Kirstie Alley, and quite honestly I think this movie is the best acting she’s ever done) told him to put the shields up. But no, Kirk’s got to be all… you know what? It wasn’t even insane bravado that made him do it. It was just really, really lazy writing. What was I talking about? Oh yes, why I like Star Trek, not why it annoys me.

So, yes, there are a variety of reasons why I love Star Trek. I will enumerate them here:

1.) I’m one of those incredibly annoying people who enjoys pointing out physics flaws whenever I watch anything. In fact, there are a large group of people who have, at one point or another, been subjected treated to a diatribe on how Wall-E is based on an incredibly flawed concept (plants don’t spontaneously generate in closed and above all dark containers) and has numerous other problems as well. (There is no way that anybody will ever make a fire extinguisher that small last as long as Wall-E and EVE’s little tango did.) But when I do the same thing to Star Trek, nobody gets mad at me because almost nobody else cares. And to be perfectly honest, the people who do care join in with me. So I derive a great amount of pleasure from watching Star Trek and making fun of things like:

-When they have the engines running all the time. This is stupid and wasteful. Once a starship is done accelerating, it will maintain its speed indefinitely unless it hits a planet or something. So having the engines on won’t do anything.

-This whole notion of being “adrift.” Okay, you know what? Inertia says that if you’re going in one direction in space, you’re bloody well going to keep on going in that direction. So when the engines get knocked out by Klingons or Romulans, the ship doesn’t just magically stop. That is wrong.

-It is absolutely true that in space, no one can hear you scream. It is also equally true that whenever anything blows up in space, you can’t hear the explosion either. Also, no matter how satisfying it is, things do not blow up in giant fireballs in space. There isn’t any oxygen in space to burn. Although, to be perfectly fair, I have yet to come across a sci-fi series that doesn’t have enormous fireballs in space.

Since most of you have probably tuned out and are off on Facebook or something, I’ll cut this little diatribe short. Just know that I have a list about as long as I am tall of all the science problems in sci-fi series.

2.) Star Trek hired minorities before it was cool. Scotty was Scottish, Michell Nichols (Uhura) was black, and George Takei (Sulu) was a double-threat – Asian and gay. Except I don’t think anybody knew he was gay at the time, so I guess that doesn’t count. I think everybody knew he was Asian, though.

3.) The Star Trek franchise is one of those odd little buggers that is sexy without any, well, you know, sex. (Except for all that pon farr nonsense, and for the purposes of this discussion I’m going to ignore that too, because generally speaking and with almost no exceptions any episode that makes mention of pon farr kinda sucks.) This makes my life easier because when I’m watching  I don’t have to censor what I watch around the seven year old who has this great knack for repeating the darndest things. (Although I don’t care what she says, I did not teach her the h-word.)

4.) The Star Trek franchise is probably the most optimistic sci-fi series when it comes to the future of humanity. If you take a look at pretty much any brand of science fiction that takes place in the future humans are always squabbling amongst themselves or have done something to destroy themselves or have just been generally destructive – to themselves. If you’ve got aliens involved, usually they’re all like “Whoah! Humans are violent crazy psychos! All you people do is run around and kill each other! We can’t trust you to not use our super cool awesome technology to blow yourselves to kingdom come!” Which is annoying.

But not Star Trek, no. (Well, if you want to be perfectly technical, Star Trek takes place in the post-post-apocalyptic future.) In Star Trek, humans are known for being honorable, steadfast, ingenious, emotional, and, above all, stubborn. That’s pretty optimistic. The suggestion that people not only won’t destroy themselves but will go on to unite themselves and lead (as opposed to rule) the galaxy is pretty revolutionary, and it makes me feel a lot better about humans today that someone out there (Gene Roddenberry) actually believed that people could peacefully forge themselves into something more than what they were and that we would be driven to explore without exploiting and unite without conquering.

While this is incredibly idealistic, it’s still a much nicer thought than the ones I usually have, so it does make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Now, there are a bunch of other reasons I love Star Trek, but they mostly revolve around space battles, phaser fights, the sheer colossal awesomeness of the Borg, character development, and other stuff like that which I won’t bore you with because I’m nicer than I look. But really and truly, it is the optimism of this series that keeps me coming back to it in all of its incarnations. (Except Enterprise. Because Enterprise is awful.)

Tune in tomorrow for something a little different…

Things I Like: Squirrels and Frogs and Turtles

Posted on May 9, 2010. Filed under: Things I Like |

So, as I mentioned previously, this week was terrible. One of the only things that made it bearable was the local flora and fauna.

There are a ton of squirrels that live on my campus. What’s really cool is that we don’t just get gray squirrels, which are by far and away the most common type of squirrel in my state. We also have black squirrels. Which are way cooler than gray squirrels. There is a black squirrel that lives right outside my dorm. I call him White Spot. This is because he has two white spots that make him very easy to identify, and also because I was really tired the day I saw him and stated the obvious, and, well, the name kind of stuck. I have tried on several occasions to get a picture of him, but he is more elusive than Osama, the other 9 people on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List, and Waldo – combined. Despite that, it just makes me all happy seeing White Spot out frolicking.

Squirrels really made me happy this week because earlier this week as I was walking back to my dorm I saw movement in a wooded area and saw a muskrat eating some grass. I stopped to watch, and I saw more movement out of the corner of my eye – a gray squirrel was playing on a log. The muskrat did not hear or see the squirrel until the squirrel ran up about five feet behind him, which scared the snot out of that poor little muskrat, who went flying up the side of a hill. It was pretty funny.

This is not White Spot, although he probably is a relative. Distant cousin, maybe. (Disclaimer: I didn't take this photo; my awesome roommate did. It's a pretty good picture, especially if you consider that she took it from behind a closed glass window and through a screen.)

I like frogs and turtles too, mostly because they’re a ton of fun to play with. Sadly, I have been so busy this year that I haven’t availed myself of the opportunity to try to catch (and release) any of the frogs and turtles that inhabit the pond on my campus. But earlier this week I needed to clear my head so I went down to the pond with my camera for an adventure. (Spoiler: I don’t have really exciting adventures involving car chases or explosions or stuff like that. Basically I went down to the pond and took pictures. That’s about it.)

So I was walking along the edge of the pond, getting swarmed by flies, and I came upon the frog which you can see below. He was a weird frog; he didn’t get creeped out by me walking by him like most of the other frogs. I actually have video footage of frogs fleeing from my presence like a weird reversal of the plagues, but the footage is supported by Quicktime which is not supported by WordPress and I haven’t had time to convert it. But it’s really cool.

Then things got really creepy.

This is a frog. I reall, really wanted to have a go at catching him, but I would have needed a net which I didn't have.

The frogs stared at me.

He just kind of sat there with his eyes above the water, like a malevolent and tiny alligator.

But I was in store for even more weirdness with this creeper:

Whenever I see a frog staring at me like this, I always imagine the "Jaws" theme done in ribbits.

And then this guy had me thinking I was in a really bad made for TV-sci fi schlocker.

He's a green shadow lurking in the algae...Amphibious vengeance shall be his...He...Is...NINJA FROG!!!!!!

I was less creeped out, though, when I found this guy:

This is a painted turtle. He's a cutie. I think I might have been able to catch him, but I would have gotten wet doing so, so I didn't try it. PS I'm sorry that this picture is kind of blurry.

I was a little sad that this guy was was on the bank, because most of the turtles like to hang out and sun themselves on a grate out in the middle of the lake, and this guy wasn’t hanging out with all the other turtles. I wonder if he’s like Rudolph and has a red turtle nose and I wonder if all the other turtles make fun of him and don’t want him to hang out with them.

I once saw 9 turtles hanging out here all at the same time.

Or maybe he’s way cooler than all of them and is hanging out by himself because he’s awesome.

Then I saw some bloody huge goldfish, which technically aren’t frogs, turtles, or squirrels, but I happened to see them and it made me happy.

If you look closely, you can also see a ton of minnows. I wonder if goldfish eat minnows.

As I was leaving, I also saw a pinto goldfish.

It's a white goldfish! With gold spots! I guess I should probably call him Gold Spot. Although that spot is kind of orange, come to think of it. Whatevs.

So to sum up: squirrels make me laugh, turtles are cool, and I think frogs may secretly be working with the spiders to kill me. Oh, and goldfish are cute. All of these things make me happy, except for the frog thing, but that’s okay because frogs aren’t poisonous and aren’t insidiously crawling around on my walls unlike some other members of the animal kingdom, so I don’t think I’ve got too much to worry about from them.

Once again, I apologize for the nearly blogless week; I will be resuming regular Monday-Wednesday-Friday posts again this week, now that I have time.

Also, I am again curious:

Things I Like: Weekends

Posted on May 9, 2010. Filed under: Things I Like |

I apologize to all of you who have been eagerly awaiting this blog post. I would have had a post up on Monday but this has kind of just been the week from down under. (No, not the week from Australia.) Scratch that: This week has sucked septic sludge.

(Disclaimer: I realize that when you take this week in perspective, it really hasn’t sucked that much. For instance, I haven’t been drafted to fight in some genocidal war, been killed in said genocidal war, starved to death, or contracted malaria. A lot of people in Africa had that week. But you know what? It was a sucky week for me and unlike some other people, I have a blog. So I will whine about this week if I want to.)

Since Sunday I have been feverishly working on papers and presentations, homework and quizzes, more papers, an exam, um…some other stuff that I have forgotten about in my sleep-deprivation induced haze… Oh yeah, and in between all of the work I’ve been doing, this week has also sucked just because. I found out that I will not, in fact, be getting a scholarship (a small one, but still) that I thought I had stood a pretty decent chance of getting; I found out I got an 89 on a paper that should have been a 93 at the very least, which wouldn’t be a big deal except I’ve currently got a B in the class because my prof is allergic to giving As on papers that deserve them, which also wouldn’t be a problem except this drags my GPA down and some of my more lucrative scholarships depend on me getting a high GPA;  I got an infected hang nail on my left ring finger; I have walked into various doors in various states of openness four times (apparently sleep deprivation torpedoes my motor skills. Who knew?); I stubbed my toe; I am currently wearing my last clean pants and t-shirt, so I had to actually put money on my laundry card; on Tuesday after a brutal Chem exam that wouldn’t have been brutal if I had had time to study instead of doing the million and one other things that acquired my attention, I went to one of my college’s convenience stores and bought a turkey and cheese lunchable and some T.G.I.Friday’s Buffalo Sticks (I wanted Mozzarella sticks but they were out) only to discover upon reaching my dorm room that the turkey in my turkey and cheese lunchable was moldy and that there is a reason that the C-store wasn’t out of Buffalo Sticks – namely, they taste like what I imagine regurgitated Mexican food tastes like; and, oh yeah, THE ENTIRE COLLEGE HAS BEEN OUT OF HERSHEY’S COOKIES AND CREAM® WHITE CHOCOLATE BARS FOR THE ENTIRE WEEK. I honestly think that I could have gotten over the rest of the week, but nooo. The universe just felt like putting that extra little squirt of lemon juice in the paper cut of my soul.

But that’s all done now. All of the crappiness of the week is ended. The weekend has brought all kinds of good things along with it into my life:  Today is Saturday; the sun isn’t shining (in my odd little world this is a good thing because sunlight hurts my eyes and sets my skin on fire because while I am a vampire I am not a stupid sparkly, stupid, idiotic, annoying, abusive Twilight vampire ruins my geek-chic pallor); I watched an episode of Smallville last night that was so incredibly stupidly written that it made me laugh; I just slept for over thirteen hours; in the wee hours of this morning, my alliance (in one of the online games that I play, not some secret war I’m waging that you all don’t know about yet) slaughtered a full 529 soldiers from a rival (and really douchey) alliance at a loss of only about 130 of our own troops; for dinner last night I had this really fantastic pudding-like stuff that had what I think was a crud load of brown sugar on top (along with whipped cream and chocolate sauce) and it was fantastic; instead of having to work feverishly on schoolwork I have been blogging and Facebooking since I woke up around 9:30 this morning; and I don’t have to worry about Monday for another day or so.

And this brings me to why I like weekends: I don’t have to worry about the week for a full day and a half (yes, I sadly have to do things on Sunday.) It’s like a mini-summer vacation, except it’s been about 45 degrees outside for most of today. That’s the main reason – I can do what I want on the weekend (except for watch good TV. There isn’t any on the weekends.) Currently I’m scanning my classwork into my computer while watching the audio commentary on the “Hell is Other Robots” episode from season 1 of Futurama (Fun fact: I once spent an inordinate amount of time translating the alien symbols from Futurama into English. I don’t know where the notebook that has the code is, but I do have it somewhere. I am just that awesome.) I am also in the process of cleaning the nest of paperwork from my workspace; it is currently ankle deep and some of the lower strata are threatening to become sentient. And that’s it. That is all I am doing right now. I couldn’t be happier. (Well, I could, but that would involve taking special pills or kidnapping some kittens to play with, neither of which I currently feel like doing.)

However, since that would be a really sucky way to end this post, I am going to do a special double post here and talk about squirrels and frogs and turtles in the next post. Which will be available for your viewing pleasure around 6:00 PM tonight.

I’m curious. To all of my college friends (and anybody else who feels like responding) what was the worst part of your week? And what made it all better? (Please note that my parents read this blog and be sure to use an appropriate level of…well, appropriateness, in your responses. So let’s keep it PG. By the MPAA standards of today, not the old standards under which Ghostbusters is classified as PG despite the one scene with that one ghost and Ray – you know the one I’m talking about – and the rampant use of a certain four-letter word. So keep it clean.)