Likes and Dislikes

I've identified a personality trait that really annoys me: Strangers who make themselves at home in my territory. It's my space and until I know you well enough you don't get to act like it's yours. Don't come in here and start tossing your stuff around, messing with furniture, and eating my treats. Grrr....


In other news, I've begun a collection of Halloween-y classical music. I plan on playing it from my car at ward FHE Trunk or Treat tonight. My mix so far contains:

In the Hall of the Mountain King
Danse Macabre
El Amor Brujo (Ritual Fire Dance)
The Devil's Trill
A Night on Bald Mountain
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Infernal Dance
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor

as well as the Mannheim Steamroller Halloween Mix. Let me know if you have any other suggestions I can add to the list.

Rexburg

I took a trip to Rexburg from Friday evening to Saturday night. It was a bit of a drive, but enjoyable nonetheless (it's funny that nonetheless is one word, isn't it?). Who knew that BYU-I has a pretty good symphony orchestra?

I made Fruity Krispies Treats to bring to my home-teachees today. 2/3 Rice Krispies, 1/3 Fruity Pebbles. Basically we're the coolest home teachers ever.

Update on Unwell v2.0

I finished my 10 day course of amoxicillin (an antibiotic in the penicillin family). On Saturday evening/night all of my previous near-death symptoms returned. The bacteria had survived the antibiotics and bred back into full force in the intervening ~30 hours. I woke up around 4 am on Sunday morning and every time I would fall asleep I'd wake up again about 6 seconds later. I finally figured out that my natural breathing pattern while sleeping wasn't working due to my swollen tonsils. So my body would fall asleep and when it tried to breathe, no air would come in and then my brain would wake me up saying, "WAKE UP YOU FOOL YOU CAN'T BREATHE". So that was pleasant.

So Sunday morning held another trip to the Urgent Care Facility in Orem. This time I got to see Dr. Christensen. Seeing that I had a textbook case of an infection surviving weak antibiotics he took another throat swab (to test for Strep: Negative) and a blood sample (to test for Mono: Negative). With these two likely factors ruled out again for 4 and 2 times respectively he decided to prescribe me a stronger antibiotic (Avelox) and a steroid (prednisone) for the swelling. The antibiotics usually cost >$10 per pill, and due to my insurance being CT only, and unlikely to cover the drugs right at the pharmacy he instead went and found me 9 sample pills, and gave them to me (which I was very grateful for).

The drugs are working nicely and I can continue about my life. Hopefully my body with the new drugs can finally kill off the infection. An interesting side effect of one of the drugs is that I have an slightly increased resting heart rate. Which provokes a feeling of slight nervousness or unsettledness. Somewhat like a person with ADHD feels. As long as I'm involved in something I find engaging I'm fine, but anytime I'd otherwise just be relaxing I start to feel like I need to find something to hold my attention or I get bothered. It's a fairly odd sensation.

Sigh

I've just spent the last however long reading through all my posts on this blog. I don't know why. I just wanted to review my life a little bit. I slept for a few hours this afternoon due to being exhausted from forgetting to eat lunch, and not getting the proper amount of sleep for the past few nights. I've just been sitting in my living room listening to Pandora (hooked from my computer to my stereo) and reading my blog posts. I stopped for a minute to watch and listen to the hail. And I paused for a bit when alishka informed me that it was snowing in North Orem. I haven't eaten since 4:45, and I'm not hungry. I should just go to bed.

Dealing with life

Do you ever get the feeling that you're only an observer in your own life?

Lately I've been feeling like I see my life happening, but I'm not really controlling it. Not like I feel helpless that I have can't control things that happen to me; but that I'm simply watching my life occur, without being an active participant. Like watching a TV show, you observe, but you don't feel anxious that you're not changing what's happening, you're just a passive participant of the character's lives. I had this feeling growing in me noticeably for the past few days, although I suspect it's been around much longer than that. I think it may be connected with going through a stage of mild depression.


Now for something completely different:

I think my dream job might be as a professional thinker, analyzer, and advice-giver. I enjoy thinking about challenging problems, digging into them and picking them apart, and then providing insight; but I find that I don't much enjoy implementing those ideas. *GASP* I'm a THEORIST! Hm, I wonder how that happened. I'm fairly certain I was not a theorist 3 years ago. At that point in time I would have much rather have solved a problem by implementing a solution, rather than analyzing it and providing a theoretical solution, but not actually carrying it out. Now I would prefer to think it through, come up with an answer, and leave it to someone else to implement.

I see this trend in a number of my activities. I think it suggests I would rather be in a management position than an underling position. Which is interesting, because, again, 3 years ago I would have been content to just be given a project, and then complete it. Now I would find that particularly frustrating. I would rather make the design decisions and pass those on to the code monkeys. It is definitely a good thing I decided to get a Master's degree. I think I would have become miserable in an entry level job by now. I wonder if I should get a PhD.

Blog Action Day

You may have though that the previous post was all you'd get in addition to the first post of the day. But, you'd be wrong. My various web-wanderings have led me upon Blog Action Day. This year, participating bloggers are supposed to write something about the environment.

How can you make a difference in the environment from right here at your desk? It's actually quite simple: Turn off your computer when you leave. If you work at a computer for work each day, simply turn it off when you leave to go home. At least turn it off on the weekends. The amount of energy used to power computers left idle after work each day is tremendous. If we all turned them off when we weren't using them it would have a substantial impact upon the amount of energy consumed.

American Freedom Campaign

Ok, so you get a little more than that last post:

We do not support the actions of this government.

Can we please have the United States of 2000 back? You know, before Bush screwed us all.

Doing better

I'm mostly recovered from my bout with death. My throat is still slightly irritated, but at this point it's more of a minor inconvenience than anything else.

I'm not really feeling in the mood to write much. So this is all you'll get at the moment.

Update on Unwell

I went to the Urgent Care Clinic in Orem on Sunday morning. I had a negative rapid Strep test, but because this happened to me last time I had Strep they sent a culture into the lab. The doctor prescribed me "Magic Mouthwash" which is just a cocktail of Benadryl, Maalox, and Lidocaine. It's supposed to coat and numb the irritated area; it had no effect. Then as previously mentioned Ibuprofen solved my issue for 7 hours before becoming ineffective.
Monday evening I began having fairly severe pain and went back to the Urgent Care Clinic. They ran another rapid Strep test because this time I had a fever. See I was presenting textbook Strep symptom at a severe level; because of this the doctor this time prescribed me antibiotics and Tylenol with Codeine for the pain. I came home and took my new drugs hoping for the best. A maximum recommended dosage of the Codeine seemed to have no effect on my pain, I was becoming very annoyed.
I went to bed, and slept for about 45 minutes when I woke up with more pain, and the new symptoms of being unable to open my jaw more than half way, and being unable to touch my chin to my chest. I took two more Codeine pills and but they brought no relief within 20 minutes. So, I called the Nurse Hot-Line that my insurance company participates in, and with the addition of the new symptoms she told me I should go to the Emergency Room to get checked because I may have developed an abscess. So I changed into quasi-normal clothing and drove to the Emergency Room.
I checked in at about 1:30am and there was one other person in front of me. (Random aside, they were trying to call someone, but couldn't make long distance calls from the hospital, so I let them borrow my cell phone). About the time I finished checking in the Codeine seemed to be taking effect (FINALLY!), which was quite nice. Having the extra dose of Codeine made the ~1 hour 15 minute wait bearable.
Upon being seen the registrar working that night was a guy from my last ward, so it was kind of nice to see a familiar face, even if I didn't know him very well at all. Anyways, they gave me a steroid shot to help the inflammation (I never really noticed it have any effect though). Then they did a CT scan of my throat to check for abscesses. The CT came back clean, so I was released with a follow up appointment for today at a Ears, Nose, and Throat doctor, as well as a prescription for Lortab in case the pain got worse (since the Codeine hadn't been working originally). I haven't filled that prescription yet, since I've already spent like $75+ on drugs so far.
I came home and took another couple Codeine pills and fell asleep. The biggest problem with sleeping has been that the body needs to do something with the spit it creates. So I either have to swallow it which is painful enough to wake me up, drool it (not ideal), or let it pool up in my mouth until I choke on it. My body had retrained itself to do the latter in order to get some rest. Thankfully, one of my many drugs gave me dry-mouth last night, and I slept for 4 hour stretches at a time.

I'm feeling quite a bit better at the moment, and hopefully it's not just the Codeine. I should be hearing back the results of the Strep culture sometime this afternoon or evening.

Still not good

Yesterday evening I took some Ibuprofen for a painful lymph gland. To my pleasant surprise it also took down the swelling in my tonsils and I felt almost healthy from 4:00 to 11:00 when I went to bed. I took more Ibuprofen throughout the night, and all day today, but without the same amazing effect. It still helps with my swollen tonsils, but not as much as yesterday, and now I have a painful lymph gland on the left side of my neck which seems to be ignoring the Ibuprofen.

I'm beginning to suspect that I'm infected by nanoscopic Borg virii. They simply adapt to any effective treatment. Perhaps I just need to randomly modulate the phase pulse of the Ibuprofen signature; that always worked on Star Trek, right?

I am hating modern medicine for being unable to treat viruses.

Unwell

I am ridiculously ill feeling today. I woke up yesterday morning with a slightly sore throat. I came home around 5, and by 6 my slightly sore throat had developed into an extremely painfully sore/swollen throat, a headache, muscle pains, joint pains, and a fever. That is one fast acting bug. I'm now attempting to survive on cough drops, Alka-Seltzer Plus Day Cold cough syrup, and ice cream to attempt to numb my throat.

I would wish this on no one. I haven't felt this sick in like 7 years. Honestly I can't remember the last time I actually stayed home from illness (except when I had gotten out of the hospital). I hate being sick.

Unknown Person

I just had a lovely conversation with a guy who called my name as I walked by on my way to the Wilk. We spoke for about 3 minutes in transit. I still haven't the slightest clue who he was, but he knew me.

Transformers

Here are 13 things I "learned" from Transformers (which I saw last night at the dollar theater):

1. When an alien robot attacks a military base the only people to survive will be a rag-tag special forces unit, who happened to take a picture.

2. Alien robots can 'hack' into government systems using fancy, human-audible, audio signals. It remains unclear how this magical process works.

3. Good alien robots always pick fun, but tactically useless cars to disguise themselves as.

4. Bad alien robots always pick friggin' awesome, decked out military vehicles to disguise themselves as; for example: a tank, attack helicopter, or an F-22 jet fighter.

5. Bad alien robots are always way stronger than good alien robots, not to mention like 10 times bigger. As such, without the help of otherwise useless humans the good alien robots would be annihilated by their bigger, badder counterparts.

6. As long as a bad alien robot walks around non-nonchalantly no one will notice them, even as they walk by hundreds of police and military personnel, or through Air Force One.

7. A super bad alien robot who can conquer the opposing alien robots and lead his followers across the universe in pursuit of their magical cube thingy fails to take into account the Earth's magnetic field upon atmospheric entry, and therefore ends up frozen in the arctic circle for 11,000 years.

8. When trapped in a secret government facility under the Hoover Dam there will be an entire room filled with old computer/radio equipment covered with cobwebs, however, there will be no microphone. In lieu of a microphone one can send Morse code (ok so far). But, in order to send the Morse code, you must rewire a computer terminal to the radio and hope to heaven it has a built in Morse code program which will listen to and properly parse the audio Morse code signal to hyphen and period characters and display it on the screen. If this awesome hacker dude already knows Morse code (unlikely, given his age), wouldn't it have been easier to simply take a live wire wired to the radio and tap it against something grounded?

9. Somewhere within about 30 miles of the Hoover Dam is a large city with many 4-story overpass structures and sky scrapers, but is NOT Las Vegas.

10. A giant alien robot bent on your destruction will bend down and reveal his only vulnerable point within arms reach of you and the only thing that will destroy him.

11. When alien robots invade Earth the United States will be the only country to know or care about it.

12. When alien robots invade Earth not a single person will suggest using nuclear weapons (and the resulting EMP wave) to try and destroy them before they kill everyone.

13. You can save the world so long as you have at your disposal a hot girlfriend, the United States Air Force, a Special Forces unit previously stationed in Qatar, oh, and a team of giant alien robots.


Despite these things I actually did enjoy the movie; I just had to turn my brain way off.

Nurturer

I've come to realize over the last week or so that I am a nurturer. I really like doing nice things for people. I like to take care of my friends when they aren't feeling well. I like to surprise people with thoughtful things. I really like bringing flowers to a girl spontaneously and watching her smile, giggle, and get all giddy. I like putting a blanket over someone when they've fallen asleep and the room gets cold. I like making people hot chocolate on cool autumn evenings and cold winter days. I like to cook for people I care about. I like being a shoulder to cry on. I like being there when a friend just needs to talk to someone. I like giving gifts that show I know the person and thought about what they would like.

I know that doing these things makes me happy, yet I still get hung up in bad cycles in my life. I know I have things I need to fix about my life. Many days I will even be able to see that the best way for me to break those cycles is to do more things for other people and stop focusing on myself. But it is still so difficult at times to remember that.

Autumn always makes me wax nostalgic of days when I had someone to curl up with on cold evenings, sipping hot chocolate and watching the leaves fall off the trees.

Here's a poem I wrote last year about this time:

Autumn

The smell of a campfire
   somewhere in the distance
   drifts along the road.
Leaves rustle in the wind
   discontent with their new home.
Yellow, Orange, Red, Brown
   Against the grey sky.
And although far away,
   I close my eyes, breathe the cool air:
I'm sitting under my old Maple
   And, for a moment, all is well.