Bleeding Fiction

I'm sick right now, that sort of raw illness that draws you slightly away from the world, that shrinks your skin but expands everything else. No fever, but stuffed sinuses and a marked difficultly concentrating on things. My sinuses clear up when I'm standing, but I feel sort of silly just standing in the middle of the room. Not that I'm good for much else right now.

I don't know where this came from - I felt fine yesterday. I went out for The Delightful Jeni Garber's going away party. I got to see some of her friends again (the cool local ones) and meet a few others (also cool) for the first time. I was up a little late, but not unreasonably so (I was up until 2, but since I'm usually up until 1...). I didn't drink a lot (hardly anything - one beer at the start of the night, half a vodka and tonic at the end). And yet here I am feeling sort of worn around the edges.

I hope this goes away soon; I've got a lot of shit to do, and I'm no good when I'm like this.

Good: I was able to cohere well enough yesterday to do at least the immediately pressing things I had to do and in a reasonably comprehensible fashion. You can find evidence of this over at the Fables.

Bad: Some time before I went to sleep last night, I developed a fever. I doubt that anyone actually enjoys having a fever, but mine tend to involve pain in unlikely areas, such as my arm pits. So, while uncomfortable, they're at least interesting.

Good: In the middle of the night, my fever broke and I woke up. It lasted no more than eight hours, which is some sort of record for me.

Bad: By that point the sun was already creeping through my window, which kept me awake for another three hours.

Good: In finally fell asleep again.

Bad: I fell asleep at about the time I was supposed to wake up.

Good: I feel generally ok and won't have a problem making it through class today.

Bad: I'm still a little stuffy, and a little achey.

Also, as a follow-up to my last post, I found an article from Salon . com linked to through Kissui.net, a blog I read. (I gave you the Kissui.net link - it quotes the article extensively, and this way you won't have to do Salon's lame day-pass thing.) The article's more or less exactly what I'm talking about when I say "fetishizing" and is the opposite of what I'd like to do (which is to say "understand the culture.")

I was trying to remember something just now. Not a fact or a bit of knowledge; I was trying to remember a snippet of conversation, a comparison between two things that I'd heard someone make a little earlier today.

I couldn't remember.

And I thought, "well, no big deal. Let me just Google for it."

On the one hand I'm horrified that my memory is so feeble, that I've let the tiredness and lack of sleep over the past few days build up and hit me as hard as it has.

On the other hand, the idea of a search engine that has the contents of your brain archived and call them up by relevance and key word is just cool. Hardly a unique idea, I expect, but very cool.

I'm posting about it here so that I'll, you know, still remember it tomorrow.

Erik got here on Thursday night and left again this morning; a brief but, for me, satisfying visit from a good friend. We didn't get up to much, just some minor sight-seeing around town. I'll let him tell you more about it at his leisure.

Now I'm feeling a little fuzzy, a little frayed, like my body's here but my mind and my energy haven't really caught up to me yet. I feel like there's something profound that's just missing right now. Too much done all at once, I guess, between the Right Coast, getting everything back into order here and then Erik. I'm sure that things will settle back down to normal soon.

While I'm waiting for that to happen, though, I went down to a reading from Susanna Clarke at the University of Washington bookstore. She's a rather charming lady: well-spoken, polite and knowledgeable, with just the right amount of stumbling awkwardness. She spoke about the deep influence of Jane Austen on Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and that was almost enough to get me to grab a copy of Sense & Sensibility or something. Almost. Instead I think I'll take the opposite route and recommend Strange &c. to Eric and Stefanie. Anyway, I got my copy of the book signed, and Lukas' as well since he couldn't make it, and it didn't occur to me to mention Patrick until after I'd already left the store. Oh well.

I seem to have pinched a nerve or something in my left knee. My entire lower leg hurts mightily every night starting around 9 or so and doesn't stop until I wake up the next morning. Too heavy and impact on the ball of my left foot during this time makes me howl.

I'm vaguely considering seeing someone about this.

But I probably won't.

Despite failing, despite having given up on doing the actual work for now, I'm still going to Japanese class. I feel as if I have something to prove, though I'm not exactly sure what or to whom. I feel really awkward being in class, though. The teacher doesn't call on me anymore, which isn't so bad itself, but the way she pretty obviously skips over me makes me just feel put out.

Then there's the thing with Natalie (erm... The Young Lady No Longer In Question). Walking past her before or after class and not talking to her feels funny; it's a strange thing to cut someone out of your life, especially when you still have to see them every day. By rights, I shouldn't care about this so much; I only knew the girl for a week. But the point I've been making the past week's been that we just clicked; why should it be easy? Still, I'm thinking about it less than I used to. I'm sure I'll be fine by week's end.

In the meanwhile, and in the class I'm actually doing well in, my professor asked me to help him with a new exchange program with UW proposed by a new-style Japanese University. If it goes through, it'd be pretty cool for both schools, as well as me personally, as I'd get to build fun job contacts and resume material.

Anyway, I'm a bit under the weather today; my throat's raw and my teeth feel ill-fitting in my gums. I might've had a fever earlier, but I think it's gone now. I'll turn in early tonight and see what tomorrow brings.

It's snowing here in Seattle, right at the opening of December. It's still a bit warm out, though, so the snowing turning straight to water on the roads and to slush on the sidewalks. Everything else, though, like lawns and rooftops, is getting a nice dusting of white. Very nice looking. I imagine that this bodes well for the rest of the winter.

I felt better yesterday than I did on Tuesday, but felt a bit cruddy again today - enough so that I slept in and skipped Japanese class. I'm feeling generally okay now, though; I'll have some tea in a bit and hope for the best. I think skipping class today is the death knell for Japanese, though; I was pretty pissed, being there yesterday, all for stupid reasons, and I was happy not to go today. I'm pretty much done with that class, now.

Yesterday, I spoke with the Admissions guy for the Evans School and how I want into their Public Affairs program (and out of the Japan Studies program I'm currently in. I mentioned this idea at the beginning of the month. The outlook is optimistic, to say the least. They don't guarantee my admission, but my odds are beyond good. Further, I'll get credit for basically every class I've taken so far that's relevant to Public Affairs. Since part of the program is an area focus... yeah. They'll honor most of my credits, in other words. Now I just need to figure out which classes to take. This is unabashedly good.

I'm awake right now, at nearly six in the morning, which I both should and should not be. Should because I have homework due in fewer than five hours and that homework is not yet done. Should not because I'm tired enough that small currents of white light periodically crawl, worm-like, across my vision and, startled at how close they are, I jerk back violently before I realize that they're just side effects of my randomly firing optical nerves and not actual photonic annelids that traverse the empty air as if it were soil, seeking to burrow into my flesh.

I thought it was raining when I started this post, the constant, medium-speed rain that falls in heavy, fat drops and sounds like nothing so much as a pot of water boiling steadily on the stove. Then I heard a car engine turn over in the driveway and rumble into quiescence again and the boiling noise stopped; it was only coming from the car and the sky is nothing but the morning color of charcoal and same weak, phlematic drizzle it's been all day.

My homework is to write a memo describing something of statistical interest in the most recent Washington State Population Survey, using a particular set of software to give fancy graphs. When I began this assignment, long hours before now, I did not know how to use the software. I now know, vaguely, how to use the software, but I've forgotten the something that my memo was to address. I'd made it up, earlier today, but all of my ideas have crawled away from me, like tiny little worms of light.

I can't focus my vision properly, but I keep looking around anyway. I hurt myself, sometimes, when I'm too tired not to. I find things that hurt me to look at, mostly happy things, and I forget to look away. There's something satisfying about a bitter, ironic fish-hook smile that comes with that hurt. It's like eating week-old stew; it tastes foul, but it'll still fill your stomach.

The car's back outside again, or maybe the sky's started boiling. Either way, the worms are getting worse. My homework won't get done tonight; I think I have to close my eyes now. Maybe tomorrow I'll have control of them again.

The school year is starting up soon, which means that most of the some 2,000 international students and scholars the University of Washington takes in each year have shown up in the past two weeks. It's been my job to play ring-master for these folks when they wander into my office; I collect and copy their immigration documents and generally herd them to where they need to be to attend their initial orientation (part one of seven). I've got some experience at this sort of thing, but it's still keeping me hopping.

Some perspective: I'm contracted for 20 hours of work a week. I've worked about 35 in each of the past two weeks, and only kept the hours that few by completely ignoring all of the other projects I have going on and the general office work I have to do. Friday night, I dreamed that I was still at work. (I also dreamed that The Ogre™ and I were back in New Jersey, trying to dig a roving bio-van out of the snow. Then Nick showed up to help us along with his dad, who was actually James Hetfield. But that's neither here nor there.)

So, 35 hours a week. Less than full time, but every hour was on my feet, on the move and projecting my voice to the far reaches of the hallway. I didn't exactly have quiet evenings after that, either, as I was either out with friends or co-workers until late. I was going full-tilt, and by Friday afternoon it had caught up with me. I had a fever. Like a car, I overheated.

Idiot that I am, I went out Friday night and got together with friends all day Saturday. Fever was gone by Saturday night, but so was my voice. So today's a recovery day; tea and chicken soup and not saying a damn word. All this so that I can be fit to go to work tomorrow.

The craziest part of this? I'm looking forward to getting back to work. I really love my job.

As part of our staff wellness program, my division sponsored a Red Cross CPR course that we staff could elect to attend. I'll jump at any chance to get out of the office for two hours, so away I went. Plus, I figured it's generally a good thing to know how to perform CPR.

A fair amount has changed since the last time I was certified, which was back when I was in the Boy Scouts. Detail stuff, like how to find the point on the chest you compress and the number of compressions per breath.

The instructor was a fairly funny guy but, like most paramedics I've met, had a somewhat macabre sense of humor and a tendency to give out a bit Too Much Information. A lot of what he said, though, was meant to be pretty reassuring; like how we should expect to hear a loud pop when doing CPR on a person - that's the cartilage that holds the breastbone and the ribs together snapping loose. "After that gives," he said, "it's really easy to get good, steady compressions."

My employer got a new vision plan with the new year, and I signed up 'cause why the hell not? I took the opportunity to do something I'd been thinking about for a little while now, and on Thursday I got contacts.

Now, poking myself in the eye twice a day isn't exactly a thrill, but I've just been getting tired of my glasses. They feel too big, they reflect the light too much and I just don't, honestly, much like the way I look in them. So, seeing as I can't afford laser eye surgery, contacts was the way to go.

Let me say that putting them in is a monumental pain in the ass. I've seen a few people put in and take out their contacts regularly, and they make it seem really easy. Sure; they have tons of practice, the bastards. I'm still learning, so it's getting easier with time, but it's still tough.

Also, I feel a little dizzy wearing them. I'm not sure if it's the usual "new glasses dizziness" or if it's something else; we'll see what the next few days bring, but in the meanwhile my vision's a little blurry. I mean, it's sharper than without lenses, sure, but not quite as sharp as with my glasses. It feels... Ok, it feels like the contacts work fine but also that I'm looking at the world from underwater. I'm thinking I might be doing something wrong - using too much contact fluid or putting them in backwards or something. We'll see what the next few days bring...

Countdown: 55 days

All day, my left eye has felt like someone's been pressing a stick up against it. Taking out my contacts hasn't helped. Neither has liberal use of eye wash.

The pain's actually bad enough that it's making me generally nauseous and sick to my stomach.

I'm really hoping this pain will go away soon.

"Guys want to eat meat," my friend Aimi said last night. "They want to. Especially western guys. There's no way a western guy could be vegetarian for a month."

"Oh, really," said I. But rather than pointing out my several male friends who are both of European descent and vegetarian, I said that I was sure I could do it, for the month of May.

Aimi wanted me to shoot for straight-up vegan, but Hula pointed out that then I wouldn't really be able to drink beer out at the bar.

I should get along just fine... But I am running the hell to Red Robin as soon as June rolls around.