Hack hack hack
It's been a while since I posted here, but I've been trying to keep up with reading other folks' posts. It's been a hectic couple of weeks. We went to Houston for Thanksgiving and I promptly got sick. I woke up Thursday with an earache, extreme soreness in every lymph node (especially my head and neck), headache and a metallic tasting cough. I made sure I didn't partake of any food preparation, and I tried to stay away from everyone else and not touch anything without repeated hand-washing. We ate early and I ended up taking a nap the rest of the afternoon. That night the fever and head congestion set in and I had a pretty miserable night. I got up for maybe an hour or two Friday morning, then went back to bed until close to 2 p.m., at which time G decided to take me home. I had ups and downs over the weekend - felt good enough for a hockey game on Saturday, then horrible again Sunday. Stayed home from work and saw my doc Monday, but to no avail really. She said I was already recovering and there was nothing she could give me since it seemed most likely to be viral. She said to take more mucinex (I feel like a freakin' mummy, thanks) and gave me low dose cough pearls which really don't do much. Since I got my regular flu shot back in early October, if this was flu, it was probably H1N1. Joy and excitement. She did give me an H1N1 vaccine shot anyway, just in case it wasn't - that way I'll be protected later on.
So overall I'm feeling better, but I'm still coughing. The cold air isn't helping...I walk outside and immediately start to hack. I cough so long and so hard I keep thinking I'm gonna throw up. I can feel my blood pressure spike to the point I've checked my eyes a few times to see if they're bloodshot. The worst thing is that most of the time there's no reason to be coughing. I have a little bit of crud left in my lungs, but mostly it's that little tickle that just keeps me coughing even though nothing is coming up. It SUCKS.
G and I went up to Austin for a Firefly Shindig this weekend. We stayed with A & M and we all got dressed up for a luncheon on Saturday (we arrived too late for the tea party and fashion show on Friday). It turned out to be about 12 people for lunch....um....we started having serious reservations. However, the company turned out to be mostly very nice. The ladies running the event were incredibly sweet and funny and outgoing, and a few of the other folks were real characters. We actually stayed a lot longer than we expected because the conversation was pretty entertaining (lots of sci-fi con stories, as one might imagine). There was a break, followed by a dinner and concert, and more folks showed for that (not a lot). Again, it was quite fun. The food was amazing (catered bbq with quite possibly the best pulled pork I've ever tasted), and the musicians very fun (friends and acquaintances of ours). I won a gift in the raffle (woohoo!) and G bought a hat. We couldn't stay for the showing of Serenity today, as we had hockey tickets for this afternoon. We lost, btw, which was disappointing, but at least we played pretty well.
This week is finals week and I can't wait for this semester to be over. I should have never agreed to an overload, plus 3 independent studies. I don't begrudge my IS students - they have been awesome all semester. The overload is just not worth it, though. It's a headache that is going to linger on next semester too, as it's a class stretched over the whole year. I'm hoping that next semester will be a little nicer at least...one of my classes is a small research class for students working in my lab - it's a lot to manage, but there aren't lectures and there isn't much grading, so it's sort of like getting paid for doing the IS projects I already do anyway. I'm also supposed to get release time or overload pay for the grad students I have, finally, and that will be pretty cool. My students have been working on a cool research project that I thought up on the fly one day, and it appears to be working. We might actually get a nice little publication out of it if we're lucky.
Speaking of publications, I'm way overdue on a manuscript I'm supposed to be reviewing for a journal. Oy....gotta get on that tomorrow. Along with all that grading. Crap.
So overall I'm feeling better, but I'm still coughing. The cold air isn't helping...I walk outside and immediately start to hack. I cough so long and so hard I keep thinking I'm gonna throw up. I can feel my blood pressure spike to the point I've checked my eyes a few times to see if they're bloodshot. The worst thing is that most of the time there's no reason to be coughing. I have a little bit of crud left in my lungs, but mostly it's that little tickle that just keeps me coughing even though nothing is coming up. It SUCKS.
G and I went up to Austin for a Firefly Shindig this weekend. We stayed with A & M and we all got dressed up for a luncheon on Saturday (we arrived too late for the tea party and fashion show on Friday). It turned out to be about 12 people for lunch....um....we started having serious reservations. However, the company turned out to be mostly very nice. The ladies running the event were incredibly sweet and funny and outgoing, and a few of the other folks were real characters. We actually stayed a lot longer than we expected because the conversation was pretty entertaining (lots of sci-fi con stories, as one might imagine). There was a break, followed by a dinner and concert, and more folks showed for that (not a lot). Again, it was quite fun. The food was amazing (catered bbq with quite possibly the best pulled pork I've ever tasted), and the musicians very fun (friends and acquaintances of ours). I won a gift in the raffle (woohoo!) and G bought a hat. We couldn't stay for the showing of Serenity today, as we had hockey tickets for this afternoon. We lost, btw, which was disappointing, but at least we played pretty well.
This week is finals week and I can't wait for this semester to be over. I should have never agreed to an overload, plus 3 independent studies. I don't begrudge my IS students - they have been awesome all semester. The overload is just not worth it, though. It's a headache that is going to linger on next semester too, as it's a class stretched over the whole year. I'm hoping that next semester will be a little nicer at least...one of my classes is a small research class for students working in my lab - it's a lot to manage, but there aren't lectures and there isn't much grading, so it's sort of like getting paid for doing the IS projects I already do anyway. I'm also supposed to get release time or overload pay for the grad students I have, finally, and that will be pretty cool. My students have been working on a cool research project that I thought up on the fly one day, and it appears to be working. We might actually get a nice little publication out of it if we're lucky.
Speaking of publications, I'm way overdue on a manuscript I'm supposed to be reviewing for a journal. Oy....gotta get on that tomorrow. Along with all that grading. Crap.