My semi-weekly bah

Why I can't wait to get the hell out of the Pacific Northwest:

1) I need a *REAL* distinction between seasons, not that one is a little less grey or a little warmer. I want a few feet of snow and a summer that is 80F/27C/300K on average and a nice crisp fall and a wonderful thawing that occurs slowly and beautifully in spring. Not grey and spitty all year round and where I have to carry long sleeves with me all summer because it's cold in the shade and at night. I want warm summer nights. I'm sick of getting spit on and seeing nothing but clouds and grey and an average of 50F/33C/283K all friggin' year. HATE IT!

2) I never EVER knew that there was such a thing as a non-kosher hot dog. Granted, I'm a vegetarian, but still the point remains. It was fairly mind-blowing, just like how white it is here, even in the lower income areas of Vancouver. (This ties in with #3)

3) This is bar none, the WHITE-IST place I have ever lived. EVER. Although I am used to living on the east coast: Philly/NYC or Chicago and always in low income areas (since that *is* my income) to give you something to gauge that off of. (Though even in Seattle the lower income neighbourhoods are drastically split between African-Americans and whites) I miss people speaking Spanish and the local Bodega and I hate people looking at me funny whenever I use Yiddish. (Though my friend who came out here and is currently teaching at local suburban college has taken to using yiddish curse words since no one out here knows what she's talking about.)

4) I crave a city that's an actual city. (And don't tell me that Seattle, Vancouver, or Portland qualify as cities, they're too suburb-like). I like being able to hop on a train with my bike and get everywhere in appx 15-20 minutes (though in Chicago *everything* is 15 minutes away whether it actually is or not, we're weird like that). I hate having a car, but it'd be damn hard for me to get to all the things I need to get to without one here. And public transport that runs ALL NIGHT LONG to ALL places, not just particular routes once a friggin' hour (the night-bus in Vancouver is an annoying nightmare sometimes.)

Though I love being somewhere where there is a plethora of really good vegetarian food, there are really nice places in the cities, mostly ethnic places, so it's not like I'll want for good food I can eat. It is nice to have Bollywood theatres and lots of Indian culture, but I miss my old Puerto Rican neighbourhoods. That is something I haven't come across before, but it still isn't the whole mix of cultures that NYC or Chicago are.

I guess what brought this on is that it's been sunny, and that's nice and everyone's chirping about spring, but it just doesn't feel like spring, and there will be no thunderstorms to solidify it's springness. *sigh*

Please

Can the incessant migraines please stop? Please?

mmm Finals, and what other then anxiety!

So next week is finals week. Mine are on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.

So I've been getting migraines 1-2 times a week where I used to get them 1-2 times a month. My doc put me on some preventative meds but they also lower your blood pressure and it lowered mine way to much. I've spent the past 3 days feeling all woozy, dizzy, and airheaded. It felt like watching something and someone kept shaking the camera, and everytime they did it was like my brain was an etch-a-sketch that got erased as well. It made doing my last physics assignment hell. It took me 4 friggin' days to do an assignment that would usually take only two.

Is it right that I'm a math major but I spend all my time in the physics building? We have couches in the TAs office and food. It makes it really hard to have an excuse to leave before you're done with your work.

I thought that I was being fired from my TA job, but really the guy who assigns labs has very bad people skills, because I brought it up with Andrew, actually he brought it up with me, who I'm rewriting the labs for and he was nothing but praise, he only brought up his concern over my health issues (1-2 migraines a week since September) and I was really happy because I learned that I'm very enthusiastic about the labs, I'm very approachable for the students and well liked, and that I am very helpful. He then said he would talk to the guy who hands out the lab assignments because he was worried that I wouldn't get a lab b/c he felt that there may have been a miscommunication. He asked me to do the 101 labs with him this winter and then another calc-based physics lab with him in the spring. YAY! I'm a good TA (so said the anonymous surveys we received about the labs this summer).

Well I'm glad to know that after spiraling into a depression cycle for the next 4-5 days. yippie. I missed another quiz. gah.

I waited until after we talked about the labs, because I didn't want to make him feel bad or anything and then I gave him a teddy bear I knit for his 6 mo and some shark mitts (pictured below) I made for his 5 year old. He loved the mitts and told me that his whole family would. He's been under so much stress this quarter I wanted to give him something to pick up his spirits a bit. I love the mitts and really want to try to make them in an adult size.



Wish me luck on my finals! I will be, surprise, surprise, in the physics library all day Monday. I would be there on Tuesday if I didn't have a final that afternoon. whoosh!

Lazy Day posting continues

So my temperature has remained steady today at 96F/35.6C. Can someone tell me what a dangerous level is? I know that if my temp drops to 94.7F/34.8C that I should go to the doctor because that happened to me a few summers ago and I rode it out in bed under every blanket I could find in the house while it was beautiful and warm. All the things I look for online say "hypothermia" but how can I have hypothermia when I haven't been in any situation in which I would develop it. For the past 3 days when at home I am covered in blankets, with the heater on (I never use it), and wrapped in my lovely fleece robe and really warm clothes when I go out. Maybe I should see my doctor now because I'm continually fluctuating between being fine and too hot. Why can't I get a fever like everyone else and should I be worried?

I didn't go to school, didn't turn in my homework that I worked on for hours last night on and missed my lab meeting. Because I finally crawled out from beneath the covers so late I will still be running my lab tommorrow morning (didn't notify them in time today) and I haven't gotten a chance to go over it yet. Craptastic. Also, I still haven't gotten the grading guidelines for last weeks lab and I'm supposed to grade them by tommorrow at 8. Bah.

Yesterday the only time I didn't feel sick was when I was doing my homework. Gonna do some calculus homework now in the hopes that it will make me feel better. (Miraculously for the 10 minutes I took my quiz on Friday I did not feel my left frontal lobe trying to escape out the front of my skull. When the quiz was done my migraine returned full force. Yippiee.) Maybe I've discovered a new cure for pain and illness? Or maybe I was concentrating so hard on my work I didn't notice the pain and overwhelming crappy feeling of being sick.

I was going to post some links, but I of course closed the tabs they were in. But here's a funny one: Inky Circus on the Calculus of Saying I Love You

Enjoy.

Dear body:

I don't know what I've done, but can you please stop it with the constant pain. I take care of you and you reward me with seemingly endless migraines and muscle spasms. Also my tendonitis and arthritis acting up and the fact that I am in extreme pain if I don't wear a bra 24-7. I am really sick of spending my days in pain and my free time incapacitated and unable to do anything. I'm begging you. Please.

Lost Clown

Holiday, uh, fun?

Things to do:

1) Prepare bag for day trip
2) Go to woods and/or secluded lake to avoid

a) Drunken idiots
b) Fireworks ALL DAY
c) a + b

3) Come home and complain more about stupid US holidays to foreign friends (because of a, b, c)
4) Tell countless people who wish me a happy 4th that I hate the 4th because of a, b, and c, and convince them it's not because I'm UnAmerican.
5) Make more iced coffee (taking the last bit with me to the lake/woods
6) Think about the fact that like 99% of the population really knows anything about the holiday just that it's a day off where they get to be drunk and stupid and shoot things that could set them (or someone or something else) on fire.
7) Hate the world when the stupid fireworks are being shot off by neighbours at 3 am like they have been the past week.
8) Plot my revenge. (did I mention 3 am fireworks for the past WEEK?!!!!)