Oh, what a week
This past week I've:
* decided the woods where I go hiking all the time are trying to kill me. They've twisted my ankle twice, once so badly I don't think it will ever be 100% again and the second a more minor thing caused primarily by the lack of 100% ever again bit. Now they're trying to give me Lyme disease. I was using Deep Woods Off (25% deet), and coming out covered in ticks. I found six in one day and am definitely over 20 for the year thus far. Now I'm using something that is 98.12% deet and I'm still getting a couple or three ticks every time I go out. I find most of them before they bite, but I am getting some bites. I've resigned myself to the strong possibility of Lyme disease before the end of the summer, but that's not the best bit. Ticks are boring so the woods had to step up their scare campaign. They threw a rearing, hissing venomous snake in the middle of the path easily in striking distance of my leg before I was aware of it a couple of days ago. Groovy. I ran away very quickly and let the snake have the path.
* finished all my grading! Hooray!! That means today I get a piece of Blueberries and Cream Cheesecake that I've been eyeing at Barnes and Noble for a couple of weeks. Since I'm not teaching in the summer or fall so I can focus on my dissertation, this means I won't be teaching or grading for the rest of the year at least. That's a weird thought.
* received my third review on Rate My Professor. I check there periodically out of curiosity. The most recent review ends "Be careful though, she is really hot so you can get distracted during class very easy."
* saw one of my best friends again after almost a year. He finished his dissertation in August and is now teaching in Wisconsin but came back to walk in the graduation ceremonies this weekend. I didn't get to see him much, but it was absolutely fantastic having him around again.
* had a huge scare over my niece. For a few weeks, everything she eats has been coming back up and she's been hungry all the time, never sleeping, always cranky, etc. My sister has been pressing the doctors to take it seriously but they didn't really until this week when she actually lost weight between checkups rather than just barely gaining any. At just over two months old she was still only like 7 pounds. Everyone thinks she's a newborn because she's still so tiny. Anyway, Tuesday they did some tests and admitted her to the hospital. Wednesday they did some more tests and decided the most likely cause was that a muscle at the bottom of her stomach was enlarged and completely blocking off access to her intestines so she was basically slowly starving to death as nothing could get all the way through her system and had to come back up and out. Her stomach, on the other hand, was becoming completely distended and pushing all her other organs out of the way and causing all kinds of secondary problems. They did surgery Wednesday afternoon which showed that was the problem and they fixed it. They finally released her from the hospital on Friday. My sister is beating herself up over not pushing harder, sooner, but my mom and sister both say getting this solved is the best Mother's Day present they could imagine because since the surgery she has gained more weight than in the month before and is sleeping better, smiling and laughing more, and generally seems like a completely different and much healthier and happier baby.
My plans for this next couple of weeks are: clean the house and do other chores and errands I've been putting off around finishing grading, move out of my campus office, get organized and slowly ease back into my dissertation, and maybe work on some fanfic. I'm grading the American History AP exam essays this year (What did I just say about no grading for a year? Oops!) and that will be the first week in June. It sounds like it will be one week of hell (you are supposed to do an exam every 20-30 seconds or something) for a really good paycheck. I figure I'll hit the dissertation hard after that.
* decided the woods where I go hiking all the time are trying to kill me. They've twisted my ankle twice, once so badly I don't think it will ever be 100% again and the second a more minor thing caused primarily by the lack of 100% ever again bit. Now they're trying to give me Lyme disease. I was using Deep Woods Off (25% deet), and coming out covered in ticks. I found six in one day and am definitely over 20 for the year thus far. Now I'm using something that is 98.12% deet and I'm still getting a couple or three ticks every time I go out. I find most of them before they bite, but I am getting some bites. I've resigned myself to the strong possibility of Lyme disease before the end of the summer, but that's not the best bit. Ticks are boring so the woods had to step up their scare campaign. They threw a rearing, hissing venomous snake in the middle of the path easily in striking distance of my leg before I was aware of it a couple of days ago. Groovy. I ran away very quickly and let the snake have the path.
* finished all my grading! Hooray!! That means today I get a piece of Blueberries and Cream Cheesecake that I've been eyeing at Barnes and Noble for a couple of weeks. Since I'm not teaching in the summer or fall so I can focus on my dissertation, this means I won't be teaching or grading for the rest of the year at least. That's a weird thought.
* received my third review on Rate My Professor. I check there periodically out of curiosity. The most recent review ends "Be careful though, she is really hot so you can get distracted during class very easy."
* saw one of my best friends again after almost a year. He finished his dissertation in August and is now teaching in Wisconsin but came back to walk in the graduation ceremonies this weekend. I didn't get to see him much, but it was absolutely fantastic having him around again.
* had a huge scare over my niece. For a few weeks, everything she eats has been coming back up and she's been hungry all the time, never sleeping, always cranky, etc. My sister has been pressing the doctors to take it seriously but they didn't really until this week when she actually lost weight between checkups rather than just barely gaining any. At just over two months old she was still only like 7 pounds. Everyone thinks she's a newborn because she's still so tiny. Anyway, Tuesday they did some tests and admitted her to the hospital. Wednesday they did some more tests and decided the most likely cause was that a muscle at the bottom of her stomach was enlarged and completely blocking off access to her intestines so she was basically slowly starving to death as nothing could get all the way through her system and had to come back up and out. Her stomach, on the other hand, was becoming completely distended and pushing all her other organs out of the way and causing all kinds of secondary problems. They did surgery Wednesday afternoon which showed that was the problem and they fixed it. They finally released her from the hospital on Friday. My sister is beating herself up over not pushing harder, sooner, but my mom and sister both say getting this solved is the best Mother's Day present they could imagine because since the surgery she has gained more weight than in the month before and is sleeping better, smiling and laughing more, and generally seems like a completely different and much healthier and happier baby.
My plans for this next couple of weeks are: clean the house and do other chores and errands I've been putting off around finishing grading, move out of my campus office, get organized and slowly ease back into my dissertation, and maybe work on some fanfic. I'm grading the American History AP exam essays this year (What did I just say about no grading for a year? Oops!) and that will be the first week in June. It sounds like it will be one week of hell (you are supposed to do an exam every 20-30 seconds or something) for a really good paycheck. I figure I'll hit the dissertation hard after that.