And when you flip the light switch, a toilet flushes.

A few hours ago, I started coughing. As a man allergic to just about everything, this is not an unusual event in and of itself. This cough, though, was rather persistent. After a few minutes of hacking, I decided to take steps. This measure was not so much for myself, understand. When it comes to my personal health, I generally fall somewhere between stoic and almost suicidally stubborn. If my body wants to spend a few hours hacking, fine. I'm not going to let it change my course of affairs one jot; it's not the boss of me! In this particular instance, though, I had other considerations to think about. It had just turned midnight, and I had roommates trying to sleep. As a matter of etiquette, then, something had to be done. I put on a heavier shirt. Still coughing. No worries; that was just a preliminary sally forth anyway. I blow my nose. Still coughing. I take a double puff on the inhaler. Still coughing. Then I pull out my hail mary--it's directly against my pointless stoic beliefs, but I swallowed my pride and my medicine, and helped myself to my sole bottle of brand name cough syrup. Alas, it was all for naught, for the cough persisted.
Then I got an idea. And this wasn't a long shot type of idea. No, this was the sort of idea where it comes to you, and you simultaneously think "that'll do it" and "I should have thought of this from the start." I go into my bag of winter gear, got out a toque, and put it on. The coughing stopped almost instantly.

I was coughing because my ears were cold.

This body, man. The stories I could tell you. Still, it gets me to work in the morning.

Later Days.

This Update is For My Mother, Because I Know She Worries

It seems every time I promise to recount some trip, my present situation gets sufficiently complicated that I need to cut the recounting short to deal with something else. This time, conference discussion will be compressed here on account of comp studies and one of the weirder illnesses I've had. First, because everyone loves hearing about other people's health problems.
Back in the middle of October, I had a raging sinus headache. It was so bad that every now and then, I had to stop whatever I was doing to just concentrate on not screaming in frustration for the pounding in my head to cease. The sinus stuff ended just before the trip to Atlanta, but a bad cough has plagued me since then--so it's been about a straight month of illness. To top it off, I've been pretty lethargic the whole time. So of course, it's only today that I bother to actually seek medical "help." I put the help in quotations because it wasn't particularly helpful. From the examination, the doctor believes that I had some sort of virus and the cough and tiredness are symptoms of what may be an extremely prolonged recovery period. The bad news is that there isn't really much I can do; the good news is that, from the examination, he was pretty confident it wasn't mono or H1N1. So... yay?
The worst part of this is that it's put a definite cramp in my comp studies. Not enough that I think it's really hampered my ability to take the test, but enough that I won't be devoting quite the level of attention to a few of the more challenging texts that I'd like to. That exam, for those counting the days (like me), is on Nov. 27th. So... nine days. Yikes.
So between the lethargy and the studying, I'm not going to have a lot of time for updating. I know, I'm still getting back to speed after a slump, but... well, that slump will have to last a little longer. Expect a new flurry of book reviews, TV commentary, and a weeklong dissection of "The Batman" TV series when I return. For now, here are some truncated thoughts on the Atlanta conference:
--Though the focus on paper of the conference was coding, what everyone in the science/humanity crossover seems most interested in at the moment is animal-human cognitive relations. I feel very ambiguous towards this focus, but I'm putting off articulating those misgivings to a later date.
--My fellow students gave their panel with Katherine Hayles sitting in the front row. That's a big deal.
--Of the conference, the two highlights in terms of panels would have to be Ian Bogost's key note speaker address, and W. H. Mitchell's presentation on images. Those guys know their stuff.
--Atlanta has some of the most courteous servers I've ever seen, even though one waitress repeatedly referred to me as 'ma'am' to the great amusement of all, until someone finally took pity on me and her and pointed out gently that I am, in fact, all man.
--My presentation went fine; amazingly, the math analogy seemed to be the part that everyone liked the best. It was also the part where I set down the paper, and just presented my thoughts as they came, so that's something to keep in mind for the next conference presentation.
--Atlanta looks like a big forest from above. It's weird. But very eco.
--I kind of wish I'd kept the "confused for a woman" story to myself.

There. Sorry, but that's all you get, conference-wise. I'll post again once the sheer panic from comps requires an outlet.

Later Days.

Cold War

Once again, we seem to have entered a dry spell of postings. I'd make the promise that things will be different this time, but after so many betrayals, I can't expect anyone to believe that. So let's just work through this, together, one day at a time.

Actually, I have reason to be optimistic re: a new, better posting schedule. See, I'm presenting a paper in a conference in Atlanta on November 7th, and I finished said paper... oh, about eight hours ago. Considering I got accepted to the conference back in about June or so, and considering it's only an eight page paper, this level of procrastination has been about as ridiculous as it was lengthy. For the past five months, it's been competing for my attention, right alongside the comp exam, and being able to give it a rest is a huge weight off my mind. I'm hoping it'll free things up in other areas.

Such newfound freedom would be a good thing, considering I'm battling one of the most prolonged sicknesses of my life at the moment. I was somewhat hesitant to make this claim before, because the concept of a trendy disease really, really rubs me the wrong way, but... H1N1? Maybe. According to my first Google search, symptoms include "runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue." I've had all of those, at some point in the last month. Of course, that's the problem; with a virus that has so many traits in common with virtually every damn virus out there, and with the (admittedly justified) advice that you're NOT supposed to go see a doctor unless it gets truly life-threatening, knowing whether you have H1N1 or not becomes a rather elaborate guessing game. What I know is that 3 weeks ago I had an incredibly sore throat, 2 weeks ago I had about a week of migrane-level headache attacks, last week my left side was so congested that I had a low-level headache 24-7, and right now, my cold is keeping me up at night so I have a tendency to fall asleep several times during the day. Blergh.

And now I'm the guy that complains to everyone about his health problems. I hate that guy. I guess I can take some condolence in the fact that, at the moment, I have nearly an entire city full of company right on my doorstep.

Later Days.