Adventures in Eye Trouble

On Thursday, I could see the red spreading through the white of my left eye. I could see where this was going -- pinkeye -- so when I got home, I got out the eyedrops from the bout last year, and began medicating myself before things got any worse.

That evening, I watched some TV, and I noticed how incredibly bright the thing was. As the evening wore on, my eye became more and more photosensitive. I woke up in the middle of the night with excrutiating pain in my eye, from the ambient light of my neighborhood coming in through the window and filtering through my eyelid! I may as well have been staring straight into the sun, for all the pain it was causing me.

Jeff got me a towel and I was able to wrap my head in it and the pain was not as bad, but there was still a stabbing pain every few minutes. But I managed to get a little sleep.

In the morning I still could not open my eyes or unwrap my head hardly at all. I took a shower with my eyes closed. Jeff took me to the doctor, blindfolded. He also went into the appointment with me, in case someone needed to hold me down while the doctor pried my eyelid open. The doctor was suspicious about the photosensitivity, which made him think it wasn't pinkeye, so he referred me to a specialist. By that point, things were starting to get a little better, and I could open my eyes in a dark room with minimal discomfort. The opthamologist numbed my eye and shone various colored lights into it. After a detailed examination, he determined that I had suffered an episode of iritis, a non-contagious, spontaneous inflammation of the eye. He prescribed some eyedrops for me and off we went.

Today, my eye is a bit sore and red, but much better. Vinny has been administering my eyedrops, which has been great! I am so lucky to have such a sweet and thoughtful son who takes good care of me!

Feeling Blah

One problem with sending Vinny to preschool is that he's picked up some bugs from his classmates, which he in turn shares with us. In other words, he's the world's cutest disease vector.

So far he hasn't been sick enough to miss school (with the exception of one day that turned out to be a snow day), and I haven't been sick enough to miss work, but just sick enough to feel kind of blah. (Jeff, on the other hand, has really gotten it a lot worse than we have.)

My throat is kind of sore, just sore enough to be annoying. My head is kind of congested, just congested enough to be annoying too. It's not enough to pull out the cold medicine, but just enough to keep me from feeling my best. I imagine that Vinny is feeling the same way. Hopefully his immunities will build up and we'll stop picking up bugs from Typhoid Vinny.

Conference Woes

So, Jeff had come down with something really nasty last Monday night, and was incapacitated Tuesday, and barely functional Wednesday. I had hoped to avoid it, but no such luck.

Even my constitution of steel (if I were a D&D character, I'd have a score of 18) was no match for this virus. I woke up early Thursday morning to the most painful sore throat in the history of the universe. Then, as the day progressed, I felt worse and worse until by Thursday afternoon I had a fever of 101.5 F. In addition, the sore throat had been replaced by horrible head and bronchial congestion. I went back to the hotel and skipped the Thursday evening event entirely. I didn't sleep well at all and missed Friday altogether. Luckily nothing much was going on at the conference and Jeff just went in and moved a couple of signs for me.

I suddenly realized that I would have to travel the next day, which in my state, did not seem like a good idea. So I called my dad and bonus mom and asked for their advice. Their advice: seek medical treatment (oh yeah, what a great idea!), so I called the hotel's front desk and asked if they could tell me the location of the nearest urgent treatment center. Instead they suggested that they could call the house doctor for me. He could come and look at me in my hotel room. Sold!

So, I got my first-ever doctor housecall, which was mighty convenient, let me tell you, although not particularly cheap ($150). A wet dishrag had more going for it than I did at that point. The doctor told me that I did not have the flu (I was missing a few of the symptoms associated with the actual influenza virus), but I had some kind of virus and an ear infection. He wrote me some prescriptions for antibiotics and pseudoephedrine (in Oregon it is available by prescription only!) and my wonderful husband went and got them filled for me. The doctor said I'd probably be okay to travel the next morning, but to wear a mask so as to minimize transmission of the virus.

He was right. The fever broke that night and I was actually able to get some sleep before our 6:30 am flight. I wore the mask, and got some dirty looks from other passengers despite the fact that I was the passenger least likely to spread disease thanks to the mask. The descents before landing were fairly painful on my ears but I chewed a lot of gum in a semi-successful attempt to reduce the pressure in my ears.

Dad brought Vinny to the airport to pick us up. He was really happy to see us, and simultaneously intrigued and confused by the mask. He had grown that week, both in size and cognitive ability. His sentences are getting longer and longer and more complicated in meaning. I know he had a great time with his grandparents and I am very grateful to them for generously agreeing to take care of him for nearly 10 days!

We spent the night at Dad and Marvis' house before heading home the next day. I was still sick enough that I stayed home from work yesterday but went in today. The people at work were happy to see me until they heard my horrible cough. But I did what I could to avoid coughing on them and just get some work done.

It's great to be back home. Getting sick far from home is No Fun. I plan to use the four-day weekend to recover, especially so that I can go on my next trip the week after next -- back up to the QC to see and help take care of my sister, her better half, and my soon-to-be nephew, who will be born on or before December 3! I'm taking a week off work so that I can help them adjust to life with a newborn. I'm really honored that they asked me to come up and help them make that transition, and I hope I will be able to help out in a big way.

Feeling Better, Thank You

Finally, I'm doing better!

It took quite a while. I dragged myself to work yesterday, and managed to do a little bit. Today, I was able to accomplish a lot more. I talked to some people about some software we want to install on our system, talked about a possible new proposal with some other folks, and arranged to refinance our mortgage.

Yeah, that's right! I refinanced the old 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage that's two percentage points lower. The payment is only $50-75 more than what we're paying now, and we own the house in half the time. We just have to wait for the appraisal and then the backlog of other refinances, and we should have the paperwork signed within six weeks!

Blah

It was supposed to be a fun weekend. Granny and Granddad are here visiting for several days. Vinny and his daddy are having a fun time with them, but I am at home -- sick with the flu.

I'm aching, I'm congested, I have a headache and a sore throat, I have enormous, very tender lymph nodes, and I feel really weak and wobbly on my feet. So it's bed for me while my boys and our guests go out and have fun.

Feeling Better

Well, that was rather a short-lived cold.  I felt better yesterday, the only problem remaining was that I was congested.  And today, I'm nearly back to normal.

So, I will go to bed very soon and I should wake up feeling great!

Wiped Out

I seem to have acquired some sort of cold or something, rendering me nearly as useful as a bump on a log. It's a lot of work to just type this.

Vinny spent yesterday afternoon and all night at his Tia and Uncle's house. He had a really fun time with them while Jeff and I spent that time cleaning the house. I cleaned out his closet, removing the four big boxes of baby clothes and reorganizing them should they ever need to be used again. This has freed up some room we will use to store his ever-expanding toy collection. We need this additional space because the big boy bed takes up more space than his crib/toddler bed did.

I'm glad I at least got that done before getting sick. I think I will go to bed early and try to sleep it off.

Typhoid Vinny

I love my son, truly.  He is the sweetest child ever, and he's so thoughtful, generous, and caring.  But I must admit, I could do without the generosity when it comes to sharing illness.

After you share so many glasses of water, bowls, and eating utensils; after you get touched by snotty fingers enough; and get coughed in your face enough, eventually you will succumb to the illness.  And succumb I have!

I went to bed really early on Sunday night.  But when I got up the next day, I felt really bad so I stayed home from work.  Tuesday was a little better, so I went ahead and went to work, but by the time I got home I was pretty much dead to the world and went to bed at about 8 pm.  Yesterday was a lot better, so I think I am on the home stretch in terms of getting well.

Illness Stigmas

One time, I was involved with a job interview in which the interviewee was a cancer survivor. The young man was quite proud of his success at overcoming cancer, and felt that if he could beat cancer, he could do anything.

There are many other proud cancer survivors out there. Lance Armstrong comes to mind. He has used his fame to found the Lance Armstrong Foundation, which provides support to people affected by cancer.

Cancer survivors are a source of inspiration. Rarely do people with cancer get blamed for their illness. But the same could not be said for another type of debilitating disease: mental illness.

Like cancer, mental illness is simply a case of a physiological defect. It's a deficit or surplus in production of chemicals within the brain, not a character flaw. Too often I hear people talk about clinical depression (for example) as though it's something that can be overcome with positive thinking (or Jesus). Sometimes, perhaps, it can be, but more often than not, depression stems from a serotonin deficit in the brain, something that must be treated with medications.

When we lived in Illinois, there was a woman in town -- a well-educated professional with two young sons -- who fatally stabbed one of her sons and critically injured the other. She was suffering from mental illness, which drove her to commit these horrible acts of violence against her children.

If she had been of sound mind at that particular moment, I could almost guarantee that she never would have done such a thing. But she was not. She was tried and sentenced to several years in a mental hospital, and her rights to her surviving son terminated.

It seemed like a reasonable sentence to me, but there were others in the community who did not. How could a woman murder her child like that, they wondered? They would never dream of harming a hair on their child's head.

Like the critics of the sentence, I cannot imagine what was going through the woman's mind that day -- and I'm glad of that fact. I'm glad that I have not experienced such a horrible thing -- the need, the desire to kill anyone, not to mention to kill my beloved child. But, unlike the critics, I understand that it is a result of my good fortune that I have not had this experience. I'm not morally superior while she is morally depraved, I'm not blessed by God while she is being punished for her sins; I'm just lucky that the combination of my genes and my environment have not induced this experience in me.

Mentally ill people have these horrible thoughts and impulses -- even though they don't want to. They're not morally depraved; they're neurotransmitter-deprived (or oversaturated).

I'm sure that the woman was -- and is still -- being punished more than enough for her actions. After that horrible episode, she regained some sense of sanity, and felt remorse for the actions she had committed in her psychotic state. She will suffer the guilt of actions committed by her body but not by her sound mind, for the rest of her life.

Mental illness does not usually lead to such tragedy, though. Most of the time, it simply makes life more difficult for the person suffering from the illness, and their friends and families. Once an effective treatment is found, the daily maintenance activities aren't any more inconvenient than the treatments for other chronic illnesses such as asthma, high blood pressure, or diabetes. And it shouldn't be stigmatized any more than those illnesses.

Bullets of Cranktastic Goodness

As I am recovering from my illness (I'm up to about 60% of full power today, thanks!) I still lack the focus to create a posting masterpiece. My usual M. O. is essay-style, not bullet-style blog entries. But bullets are about all I can handle right now, so here goes.

• I have all kinds of brilliant ideas for posts, just no time (or energy) to follow through. Some topics of interest:
  
• Cars: basic mechanics, horsepower, RPMs, and getting the best gas mileage out of them
• Math: significant digits (this is related to the cars discussion), estimation, integration (also related to the cars discussion), game theory
  
• Computers: computer hardware, how a computer works, technology trends, supercomputers of the future
  
• Social Science: why torture is not useful (incorporating the game theory from the math discussion above); stereotyping and closed minds
  
• My sister Laura is getting ready to defend her dissertation next month. (Yay, Laura!) I'm supposed to make a cake for her party. I have a few ideas for an interesting cake, but if anybody has any suggestions, I'm all ears.
• Getting sick really makes you appreciate your good health when you get it back. I'm at about 60%, but hey, I feel awesome compared to how I felt on Wednesday and Thursday!
  
• Vinny's learning a lot more words. For "milk," he hears only the final consonant and calls it "k" (like he did with "light"). He knows his nose, his mouth, his ears, and his eyes pretty consistently if you ask him where they are. He thinks most four-legged creatures are dogs, and that they all say "oof" (that's "woof" without the w).
  
• Also, last night when he and I were playing together, he peered between the handle and main body of his toy "workbench" and saw me. This was possibly the most hilarious thing ever. He then got a huge kick out of it when I poked my finger through there and beeped his nose.
• Speaking of his workbench toy, that thing is one of the most annoying toys out there. The problem is the fact that it counts and it sings the alphabet song.
  
• I have to know: Is the woman who joyously exclaims "One!!!!" "Two!!!!" ... "Ten!!!! Let's count again!!!!!!" that manic in real life? How did she inspire in herself so much enthusiasm about the numbers one through ten? And how did she feel about singing this somewhat stilted version of the alphabet song? Does she really love the letters that much? Was she paid well? I certainly hope so.
  
• Here in Tennessee we were part of Super Tuesday. Unfortunately my main man John Edwards had already bowed out of the race so I had to decide who to vote for between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (I could have voted in the Republican primary, I suppose, but then I would have had no one to vote for.) I think that either one would be good (and definitely an improvement over the current occupant of the White House!), but in the end, I chose to vote for Hillary Clinton. Her health care plan is better than Obama's, she seems less homophobic than he is, and when we watched the debate the week before we really admired how well she did.
• Also, I'd really like to see a woman in the White House. It would be interesting to count the number of heads that exploded on Inauguration Day. (Think Clayton Bigsby the black white supremacist.)
  
• Is she perfect? No. Is any candidate perfect? No. Even John Edwards, whom I really liked, tried to paint Hillary Clinton as weak for being a woman. Not cool, John Edwards, not cool!
• Here's the thing: Attack her policies, her votes, whatever. Those are legitimately up for criticism. But attacking her for being a woman? Not appropriate. Ever.
• So that misogynist who suggested she was pimping out Chelsea? I hope he never finds another job. Rush Limbaugh, who said that we don't need to watch a woman age as president of the United States? He needs to STFU, for good. And the entitled assholes who hired these two losers? May they lose their entire fortunes to "uppity feminists" and "articulate minorities."
  

Under the Weather

I feel terrible. I have a miserable cold/flu virus that has completely wiped me out.

And if you know me, you know that it takes a lot to wipe me out! If I were a D&D character, I would have a Constitution of 20. But I have a fever, my body aches all over, my head is congested, my throat is raw, and my lungs are full of uncoughable phlegm. I'm at about 20% power right now.

I went to work for two half-days yesterday and today. I really shouldn't have gone at all, but today was the Black History Month choir performance, and I had to be there. (It went remarkably well, given how poorly I was feeling.) But by the end I was so weak that there was no way I could climb up the (huge) hill and retrieve my car from the parking lot. So I found a colleague who knew how to drive a stick, and asked him to drive my car down for me. I owe him one. Maybe when I feel better I'll bake him something nice.

Tomorrow, I'm taking a sick day. Hopefully the weekend will give me a good opportunity to convalesce, and I'll be back at work on Monday.

Otherwise, if you're off work for health reasons for more than four days, you go on short-term disability. I don't want to find out how that works.

Exercise and Moving More

My sister Rachel has a post up about exercise. She says that exercise doesn't actually make you feel better; what it does is keep you from feeling bad.

You can tell that Rachel and I are sisters. We both hate exercise, but we enjoy certain activities despite the fact that they involve exercise. Rachel enjoys dancing. I loved karate because it was so much fun (and incidentally, I got exercise). I hate to sweat, but I would do it for karate because I enjoyed it so much.

I haven't found a suitable form of exercise since I moved to Tennessee. Part of that is the fact that I have much less free time. And part of it is my $%&*# elbow. But most of it is just plain inertia.

I was thinking of taking up belly dancing, or tai chi, or kung fu, but that would involve taking the initiative and finding a class, and then signing up for it, and then going to it. And I feel bad enough about all the time I spend away from my family because of my job, and I would hate to take even more time away from them just to do something like that. So I have plenty of good excuses not to exercise.

Our Weight Watchers leader encourages us to just move more. I do the small things, like parking farther from the store entrance and taking the stairs. Every day I climb a huge hill to get into my car for the drive home. Also, there's a circuit I take whenever I get up to use the restroom or to talk to my boss or the secretary, so anytime I get up I walk a tenth of a mile. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.

I realize that this low level of exercise is not helping with my weight loss. Last time I was in Weight Watchers, I was getting an average of six hours of exercise a week, because twice a week, I taught children's karate and took the adult class, and then I also walked to school at least once a week. I really need to figure out a way to move more.

Surgery Complete!

Just to let y'all know, the surgery is over and I'm doing fine. We left the surgery center after noon and I spent the afternoon sleeping. I'm on some pretty powerful pain killers and I feel a kind of three-second delay between when things happen and when my brain finishes processing them. So I think this is about it for this blog entry.

Back for More

Hello, vast blogging audience! How have you been?

Things have been interesting over here. I have been busy, busy, busy. I'm sorry I was so busy that I neglected you. But if I look over at my sidebar, I see that I have already posted more this year than I posted all of last year, and it's only July. So I don't feel so bad.

Last year, I was still adjusting to my new job, and balance that with being pregnant and then being a brand-new mother. So the blogging kind of took a back seat for a while. Then, I somehow got it all figured out in February, and went on a blogging rampage. I still have dry spells when I get really busy with other things, but hopefully I'll be back for the long term now.

I think it's safe to tell you now, after the fact, that yesterday's deadline was actually a job interview for a staff position here at the lab. At a supercomputing workshop in March, I caught the eye of the group leader of one of the groups in the supercomputing center, who told me to let him know when my postdoc was up. Well, my postdoc can actually extend for a third year, through next August, but he didn't want to wait that long, so he asked me back in May if I'd be interested in interviewing this month. I said sure, so yesterday, I managed to fit myself into one of my suits (despite being ~30 lbs heavier than the last time I wore it) and gave a seminar and talked to a lot of different people.

Last week, I had to concentrate on getting some meaningful results, which was non-trivial to do. I worked all weekend the weekend before last, and into the evenings after I got home from work all week. I had to balance this with taking care of Jeff and Vinny, because Jeff had come down with a really bad cold. Then, on Wednesday, Jeff's generous nature finally topped my iron constitution, and I fell victim to this cold. I still had to keep working, though, because I didn't have any meaningful results. That night, I couldn't sleep because I was unable to breathe, so I got up at 3:30 a.m. and kept working. I got my last results on Thursday, and incorporated them into my talk then. I think I really felt the worst on Friday and Saturday, but by Sunday I was feeling human again, and yesterday I was at about 80% power.

I blame my sister Rachel for this cold. She made some passing comment about getting a travel cold while she was here. My hypothesis is that she gave it to Vinny, who expressed it with a 103º late-night fever, who then gave it to Jeff who gave it to me. The purpose of said illness: to ruin my life.¹ But she wasn't counting on my constitution of 20 (D&D, anyone?), so I managed to fight it off. And the residual cough and raspy voice just made people impressed by my working through my illness. Sorry Rach, you're going to have to try harder next time!

I think that I would really enjoy this job, because it involves doing science and working with people. One thing I miss in my current position is human interaction. I really like talking to people, so it gets kind of lonely to go into work, disappear into my office, and come back out maybe for lunch, but otherwise basically spend the day alone, at my keyboard. The degree of isolation is actually kind of sad, because my boss's boss didn't know what I am working on, until he came to my seminar yesterday. If he'd known, he might have put me on a proposal that he'd just submitted, because my work is actually very relevant to what he was proposing to do.

Anyhow, I think my chances are very high, because the group leader had already done a lot of background checking (talking to my boss and the people I work with) before he even approached me. The group had to approve of me joining them, and I think overall they liked me. But I should know for sure in about two weeks. And, in the event that it falls through, I can still be a postdoc for another year. But I really hope it doesn't fall through. I think this is a job that I would enjoy and do really well at.


1 For reasons still unknown (except, perhaps, that he was batshit insane?), one of my teachers in high school declared that the reason I was so stressed was that my sister Rachel was ruining my life. Taking four AP classes (Calculus, Chemistry, French, and U.S. History)? Naah. Not Stressful. Functioning on six hours of sleep per night? All teenagers can do that. A complete lack of free time to relax or do anything fun? Of course not! No, it was Rachel, and her incessant drive to assert her superiority over me, that was ruining my life. Who knew? Ever since then, I've become acutely aware of the ways in which she attempts to ruin my life. In return, I foil her plans and ruin her life. (Occasionally, I even take steps to actively ruin her life.)

In Which My Ire Is Ignited by an Anti-Obesity Activist

I recently saw a blog entry at The Zero Boss with a video that got me really angry. It was a Fox News clip discussing the alleged obesity of American Idol star Jordin Sparks. Rail-thin MeMe Roth, a representative of the National Action Against Obesity organization, described Sparks as a picture of poor health, and decried her fame as a bad example for children.

I am totally out of the loop and I had never heard of Jordin Sparks. So I looked her up on the internet, and saw that she is an attractive young lady of large stature. She looks like she is at least six feet tall, and she is curvaceous. But Ms. Roth can't appreciate the aesthetics of Jordin Sparks, instead prognosticating that she's a walking case of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer just waiting to happen. When asked if Sparks was obese, Roth demurred that was a question that should be settled between Sparks and her doctor, which meant "yes, but I'm too much of a coward to say it."

MeMe Roth came off as an aptly-named, self-centered, condescending prig in the interview segment, and I really think that's too bad. The goals of her organization, as outlined in her (otherwise ridiculous) letter reproduced in this blog entry, seem like noble, lofty goals. I'm all for eliminating junk food from schools, getting rid of unhealthy food additives, and stopping obesity from being handed down from one generation to the next. Unfortunately, her smug attitude undermines her organization's effectiveness.

If she had any iota of compassion in her body, Ms. Roth would realize that obesity is not something that can be shamed out of people. Obesity is a result of genetics, food choices, and exercise habits! If she truly cared about stopping obesity instead of feeding her own superiority complex, then she would exercise compassion for obese people and find constructive ways to help them make different choices when it comes to food and exercise.

I think that she must have no experience with excessive weight. She's never had to rethink all her assumptions about food, or change her eating habits. She's never been "good" for a week, only to get on the scale and find that she's gained five pounds. She's never been snubbed, discriminated against, or ridiculed for her size. She's never been told that the ugliness of her body is due to a flaw in her own character. She's never had trouble finding clothes that couldn't be used as tents for thin people. She's never experienced the humiliation of spilling over into somebody else's seat on an airplane. She's never stayed home out of self-consciousness and fear that people will stare. She's never struggled to exercise because the weight she's accumulated makes her knees creak, or makes it difficult to walk from one end of the room to another. Until she's had at least one of these experiences, I suggest that she kindly shut the f*ck up!

I think Jordin Sparks is a positive role model for children, because she shows that you don't have to be anorexic and toothpick-thin in order to succeed in life. I wish her all the success in the world.

Even More Migraines

I had another migraine at work today, but I had left the pills the doctor had given me at at home, so I couldn't take them. I consoled myself with the thought that it probably wouldn't have helped anyway.

More Migraines

Yesterday I had another migraine. It started at 12:30 p.m., right when I was heading off to lunch. So I couldn't hardly see the food I was selecting in the cafeteria (not that it mattered; it is all pretty much nasty), and I had to get the cashier to pull the money out of my change purse to pay for my food, because I couldn't see well enough to differentiate between the denominations of bills. After lunch, I called the doctor's office, and they let me come in for an appointment at 2. Luckily by that time I could see well enough to drive to the appointment, although I had a splitting headache. The doctor prescribed some medication for me to try the next time I get a migraine. I hope it works better for me than the other type that I tried when I was a grad student (i.e., better than "not at all").

After the appointment, I came home and slept for about three hours. Then I vegged for the rest of the evening before going to bed. Last night we had a huge storm that kept me awake for several hours. But it didn't faze Vinny. He startled slightly during the loudest thunderclaps, but they didn't wake him up.

Today my head was still painful but not as bad as yesterday. I got some work done despite the pain.

Adventures with Migraines

Until today, I hadn't had a migraine in a long time. I can tell you that I wasn't missing them at all. I don't get the really bad kind that debilitate you for days. What happens is that the migraine is triggered by a flash of light, such as sunlight glinting off a car mirror. I have an aura for 30 minutes, and then I get killer head pain. The aura basically makes it seem like I'm tuned to the wrong channel. The pain lasts until I sleep for a couple of hours.

I can't remember the last time I got a migraine. At one point in my life, I got a migraine every other Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. Then I lost a bunch of weight and it seems like that helped reduce the frequency of migraines. (Of course I can't be sure because there aren't two parallel universes, one in which I lost weight and one in which I didn't.)

Today I had a migraine. It was strange because it wasn't triggered by the sunlight; it was dark when I had the migraine. I walked into a store and felt really dizzy, and then I got the aura. Unfortunately, I was all alone, so I had to wait in the store until the aura lifted. Then I got to drive twenty miles home. I made it home without getting into any accidents.

I'm trying to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, slowly but surely. I've started back at Weight Watchers. Hopefully I'll be able to lose the weight again and get rid of the migraines.

Adventures in Tooth Brushing

I recently bought a new electric toothbrush. The last time I went to the dentist, they guilted me about all the plaque on my teeth, linking gingivitis and premature birth/low birth weight. So they told me to get a super duper industrial-strength electric toothbrush, an Oral-B Braun. I shelled out the hundred bucks for it, trying not to think too hard about the cost of the thing. On the bright side, it has removable brush heads, meaning that Jeff can use it too, so it's only like fifty bucks each.

But it is pretty cool. The sensation on your teeth is a lot like the feeling when they brush your teeth at the dentist's office. It gets them really clean. It has a timer on it, too. Apparently you're supposed to brush each quadrant of your teeth ({left/right} {upper/lower}) for thirty seconds. So it stutters every thirty seconds, at which point you're supposed to go on to the next quadrant.

The only thing I don't like about it is that it makes me drool more than ever. I produce more saliva than anyone any dentist I've been to has ever seen, but this thing stimulates my saliva production even more and by the end of the two minutes I've drooled all over the toothbrush, my chin, and my shirt. It's kind of embarrassing. But I guess it's worth it to get my teeth so clean!

Adventures with Colds

You'd think it wasn't the season to have a cold. But you would think wrong, because I have a really terrible one. It's not as bad as whatever it was that knocked me flat on my back for a week in March, but it's plenty bad enough.

On Monday night, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling terrible. I was snoring so horribly and thrashing about enough that Jeff left the room and slept elsewhere. On Tuesday morning, I didn't feel very good but I went to work anyhow because I had an appointment with an ergonomics specialist. He came to my office, figured out what was ergonomically bad, and had my boss order me a new keyboard tray, a lumbar support for my chair, and padding for the edge of my desk. So far I have the keyboard tray and the lumbar support.

Anyhow, after that appointment, I felt bad enough that I came home early. On Wednesday, I slept in and went to work a little later than usual, so I didn't feel too terribly bad most of the day. We went out to dinner with our friend Adam and at that point I started feeling weaker. But I went to bed early and got a pretty good night's sleep. Thursday wasn't so great either, but I managed to work through it. Yesterday I think I took a dud decongestant pill because I couldn't breathe hardly at all. Also by that point it had progressed down from my head and into my throat and lungs. I came home early yesterday too.

Today I'm feeling a little bit better, although I am still congested and coughing up a lot of fun stuff. This is just in time for Jeff to come down with it, of course. You know me, I'm always delighted to share everything with him!