Month: January 2014

A fine enough Friday

Given that I spent the very beginning of this week lying sick in bed, I’m quite happy that the rest of it passed by so uneventfully.

Tonight, I finished reading the second volume of Walter Simonson’s run on Thor. It’s maybe less heady and flashy than some of the bigger comics of the day, less groundbreaking than, say, your Alan Moores. But it’s really well plotted, full of lots of great and weird ideas, and good fun.

Meanwhile, I’m also slowly reading William Faulkner’s Sanctuary, which I’m also quite enjoying, although Faulkner definitely requires an investment of concentration. There’s a wonderful moment in this interview with him in which he’s asked, “Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?” Faulkner’s response? “Read it four times.”

I’m still only about a third of the way through the book, therefore — meaning I’ve so far only read 9 of 1 books for the year — but I quite liked this short exchange:

“….I be dog if he ain’t skeered of his own shadow.”

“I’d be scared of it too,” Benbow said. “If his shadow was mine.”

Random 10 1-31-14

Last week…or rather two weeks ago, since last week I was sick, hugging my bed. This week:

  1. “Street Spirit” by Peter Gabriel (orig. Radiohead)
    I can feel their blue hands touching me
  2. “Like a Rock” by Bob Seger, guessed by Clayton
    My hands were steady, my eyes were clear and bright
  3. “Four Dreams” by Jesca Hoop
    A bee flew from my nose
  4. “Milk” by Garbage
    I am red hot kitchen
  5. “Artificial Heart” by Jonathan Coulton
    It’s easy to sleep when I’m not buzzing all the time
  6. “Tree Hugger” by Kimya Dawson & Antsy Pants
    The cat wished that it was a bee
  7. “Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley, guessed by Clayton
    Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit
  8. “American Idiot” by Green Day
    We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
  9. “Car Song” by Elastica
    My heart’s spaghetti junction
  10. “Jerry Springer” by Weird Al Yankovic, guessed by random passer-by
    They all exhibit reprehensible behavior

If you’re still out there playing, good luck!

Tuesday

Today marked the first time since Thursday that I went outside, wore anything but pajamas, or did anything more strenuous than watch several episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show*. After four long days of illness and convalescence, of stomach bug and fever, I finally went back to work.

Sunday was pretty miserable, though, and it’s what convinced me I needed the extra day off. I’d planned to go to the doctor yesterday, but by that morning the fever was gone — and moreover, it seemed to stay gone without any outside assistance. I was still pretty beat, and so I lay about all day, but I was feeling a lot better long before the end of it. A lot better than the day before, definitely, when I’d had to take a long break between eating the two halves of a fairly small banana.

So I went back to work today. It was pretty uneventful, except for the yearly emergency preparedness training the building makes all of the floor’s fire safety team go to. And even that’s just sitting around learning about what to do in case of a biological attack, or gas leak, or zombie outbreak. I’ve still got lots of imminent deadlines and projects that I wish were more finished than they are, but it was nice to not come back to more of them.

And it was nice to get a chance to read again, something I couldn’t really do while I was sick. On Friday I couldn’t even concentrate on television. (Though later, putting Galaxy Quest and then Goonies on in the background while I tried to sleep was actually quite a comfort. Good movies, those.) Tonight, I finished reading Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred. It’s a simple but powerful book, a reminder of Butler’s talents, and though it’s a novel written about the antebellum South and slavery from the viewpoint of 1976, it doesn’t feel the slightest bit dated. I liked it a lot.

February promises to not be entirely normal, just looking at my schedule coming up, but it was nice to get back to a little bit of normal, today, anyway.

* Seriously, why have I never really watched this show before? It’s a little dated in places, but it holds up remarkably well. It’s endearing and funny.

Sick daze

So I don’t know about you, but I had a kind of a terrible week.

There was that whole kerfuffle on Tuesday, when I missed the Broadway show I had been planning to see, but after that, I thought everything was going to go back to normal.

And then on Friday I got sick.

I woke up that morning a few hours before I normally do, and that’s when the vomiting began. I’ll spare you any more of the graphic details. It’s enough to say that I spent a long and uncomfortable day at home, lying in bed, occasionally turning to Twitter or my work e-mail when I could, trying to sleep when I couldn’t. Later that night my fever spiked at close to 103, but at least by then I was able to hold down enough water to swallow some Tylenol, which seemed to make a big difference.

I’m much better today. The fever’s not gone completely, but it’s in the much more manageable double digits, and I’m actually managing to hold down solid food. (This being toast and rice pudding, all-day-meal of champions.) I even finally took a shower, brushed my teeth, and put my glasses back on. And I’m writing this. Whatever I had isn’t completely gone, but it seems to have done most of its damage in a real hurry.

I’m not doing anything much more adventurous today than eating rice pudding. I’m still lying in bed — new clean sheets, though — and watching episodes of Scandal and Supernatural (both ridiculous in their own charming ways).

The one silver lining in all this — beyond the fact that I am feeling better — is that the team outing I missed on Friday, the lunch and museum visit with my colleagues I missed in favor of retching and sleeping, has been postponed. I was looking forward to that, and I’d have been sorry to have missed it. I’m glad they were able to reschedule it. I would have made lousy company yesterday.

The snow must go on

So today took a hard left turn into suck.

For Christmas, Heather very generously and unexpectedly bought a gift card for Telecharge, which I decided to put towards a Broadway show. Specifically Waiting for Godot, starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, which is running between now and then and end of March and is supposed to be very good. I bought a ticket several weeks ago, and had decided upon tonight. I had my ticket in hand, was traveling light, and eager to see the play.

And then it snowed.

I knew the snow was coming since at least yesterday, but I thought it would start later than it did, and I hoped it wouldn’t be so bad. Then it just kept falling, and the wind picked up, and it got a little difficult and messy to walk outside our office, and then our announced that it was closing early, letting everyone go home if they wanted by 3:30. The MTA was recommending that people not stay in the city if they could help it; if you were traveling on the Long Island Railroad, you were encouraged to do so before the weather got worse and they started suspending service.

I didn’t much feel like getting stuck in Manhattan overnight, getting out of the play around…well, around now, actually, between 9 and 10 o’clock, only to discover that the trains home had stopped. Was I supposed to try and get an overpriced hotel room then? Find someplace open late at night to buy clothes so I’d at least have some clean underwear the next morning? I hated doing it, but I decided, better safe than sorry, and I headed home.

The commute wasn’t all that bad, hardly bad at all, actually. I’ve had better, but I’ve certainly had much worse. It’s still snowing, and they did suspend some service after 8 o’clock, reporting delays on the lines that are still running. But honestly, I don’t know if I made the right decision. I may never really know. It was a judgement call. I’m sorry it lost me the show — and much more the opportunity to make use of the thoughtful gift — but it seemed like the best bad decision to make at the time.

And I have actually seen Patrick Stewart on Broadway once before, so it’s not all bad. (I thought that show was kind of lousy, but I don’t think he or his co-star there were to blame.) There will be other shows and other opportunities and better decisions to be made.

It’s funny, any other day all of this wouldn’t have been so terrible. In fact, it would just be the fun story of how I got to leave work an hour early, which is pretty good, since my hands were starting to cramp up from typing up my conference notes all day. (Eight hours and ten sessions led to a lot of notes.)

I don’t know what the weather or commute will be like tomorrow. At my boss’ recommendation, we all took our computers home with us in case it’s too difficult to get in. Of course, I had to borrow a bag from her having left mine at home. I’d decided not to bring it with me today, because, see, I was going to the theater…

Oh well. Best laid plans and all that. It’s disappointing, but that’s okay.