Commitment Issues

A colleague of mine came into the gym locker on Tuesday and proudly announced that she had discovered that she was an exercise slut. She used to run a lot, then when she developed a knee problem and realized that it was good for her body to run every single day, she decided to pick up swimming on her off-running days. Pretty soon after that, she stopped running for a while and stayed with just swimming. More recently, she decided to pick up on weightlifting as well. And, she said, it isn't as if she has given up on running all together, she'll get back to it after a while. It is just that for now, she wanted to try out other exercise relationships. Oh, and she still has a thing with swimming. I can imagine that she'll stay at weightlifting for a while because there are just so many toys for her to play with that there will still be that exciting "just getting to know something new" feeling for a while. Though as the weather gets warmer, that makes running more and more attractive. Oh, this could get complicated, she might feel drawn to starting up with running again. I wonder if she can maintain a three-exercise relationship.

I could never maintain polyexercise or poly-any kinds of relationships. I like to focus intensely on one thing at a time, give it all my attention for a while. Right now, swimming and I have developed a really great routine where we see each other three times a week and I get a great workout in half an hour. Oh, it is not as if everything is all mechanized right now. I try really hard to be mindful of the time I spend swimming. I think it is more that I keep trying to fine-tune my relationship with swimming. I did that with rugby for a while, then it was running. Now swimming.

Oh no, I have to come clean. I did just start up this flirtation with soccer and oh, it is so much fun. Is this cheating? Swimming still has the three mornings a week. I only play soccer once a week at night. They never even overlap. Do they really need to know about each other? I don't want to jeopardize my relationship with swimming, especially since it has finally gotten good. But at the same time, I have to admit, I really lust after soccer. But more than lust after it, I think we could develop something really good in a different way than swimming. Am I a slut too?

Spider Bites

This is a pretty gross post. Don't read unless you are ready for something quite disgusting.

A huge boil occupied my roomate's leg for the last week. We couldn't figure out what it was and it just kept getting bigger. The poor guy, a few days before the boil showed up, he was diagnosed with Strep throat. I think this is just not his month. In any case, he being with out insurance, didn't want to go to the doctor because it would cost too much money. We were hoping it was just a bug bite that would go away in time. It finally got so big that it interfered with him bending his leg and so he went to a clinic to get it checked out. The doctor there though it might have been a staph infection of sorts (basically a skin infection) and prescribed him antibiotics- stronger powered ones than his strep antibiotics- and told him that if it didn't look like it was getting better in 24 hours, he should go to the emergency room. So he has been (and as a result, I have been too) obsessing about whether or not the boil was getting bigger or smaller, changing color, healing or not. In a matter of 72 hours, it turned from covering the entire lower part of his leg (below his knee) to a tight red nipple that was about two inches in diameter and a good half to one inch high. We were both weirded out but he decided to ride it out until his antibiotics were finished. Well, on Sunday, as he bent down in the bathroom to pick up something, his boil exploded and this greenish brown liquid just ooooooooozzzzzzzzzzzed out of his leg.

So, yesterday (Monday) he promptly went to the doctor's again to check it out. Upon looking at it, she told him that he needed to go see this surgeon that she knew so he could extract the material (meaning cut the stuff out of his leg). It turns out that he had a spider bite and that the poison had destroyed some of the tissue (or flesh for those of more gruesome persuasions). It needed to be let out of the body or else it would do more damage. The surgeon not only squeezed out all the liquid that had gathered there, but did some major scoopage of damaged tissue. He then showed my roomate this squishy mass and told him that the mass was his rotting tissue and that spider poison will typically do that to organic material.

My roomate now has a hole in his leg that has been stuffed up with some iodine soaked gauze. He has been instructed to not only replace that gauze once a day (which involves extracting it and restuffing it) but to stand in the shower and flush out the hole with water. One of his dancers said she got a spider bite once and had to do that too. She said in her lovely deep South drawl, "Oh, that's gonna hurt like a bitch."

a much better day..achoo!

The police needed my help getting information about the purchases the person who stole my wallet made on my card. After much phone chasing, and though in the end it was incomplete, I was able to get some useful information for the police. I am happy to be helpful, but then part of me wonders if I just shouldn't let the guy go. Did he steal because he needed the money? Most likely. But will sending him to jail really help mitigate his problems? Well, if he has social or psychological problems, what kind of help would he get in going to jail? If it is financial, though he will be fed, housed, clothed and have medical care provided, he most certainly won't get those things once he is out of jail. I am NOT saying that we should disregard rule of law, but what does that rule of law mean in reality if the penitentiary system doesn't have a very good track record with rehabilitation. This may be getting a bit too serious for some.

Seriously, I did have a good day. I did a pretty decent presentation on my dissertation proposal to my class. That helped me rethink my proposal a little bit and also pointed out some things i really need to press on and hone. Found out that I might not have to get my masters and fill in all the stupid requirements for that and just skip to GO (my doctorate dissertation stuff). Found my cellphone and my car keys (thought I lost both). Saw a really cool presentation on the website http://www.childrenslibrary.org/ It is an international children's digital library. Over 5000 books digitized and stored on-line. It is a non-profit organization. The way books are organized there makes so much sense for the user. You can do the traditional searches that you would do at a library. IN ADDITION, you can search for kids books by how they make you feel, the color of the book cover, the size of the book, the kinds of characters (magical or real) that are in the book, all sorts of ways that actually make sense of how people might try to search for a book if they know nothing about it (or in kids cases, how to search in the traditional categorization that libraries use). It is a really cool website, you should check it out. Kids also right reviews of the books. Here is the website address again: http://www.childrenslibrary.org/

Okay, so the only bummer thing is that the weather has been absolutely beautiful but the pollen count is so high that i can barely breathe without sneezing. It is very hard to live like this and I have been living like this for a month. I can't seem to remember what life was like before maniac sneezing fits entered my life.

The aftermath

I kept hoping that i was just scatterbrainy and misplaced my wallet. Well, today, I got confirmation that I was very wrong. It was most definitely stolen and the person who stole it had a really fun time going shopping with my card yesterday. So it seems that this person really had a lot of things to buy at the gas stations. Seven charges to different gas stations and one $100 charge to the supermarket. I can't really tell if I am all that mad- evne though I was ranting yesterday. Even if I could tell, I don't think I know what I am really mad about. I am not sure I am still mad about it, I think I am more in shock that this happened. In the long run, as long as the thief doesn't also try to borrow my identity to do a bunch of things, I am not too worried. I dunno, maybe this is what PTS (post traumatic syndrome) is like. You don't really know what to feel.

Horrible, no good, very bad day!

I am having a horrible no good very bad day! I got on the bus this morning and was promptly handed a piece of paper detailing the route changes to my shuttle service. My University has deemed it necessary to chop out about 85% of my bus route. Next year, I no longer have a campus shuttle bus to school. This made me very mad. Since it is neigh impossible to find affordable and decent housing near my university, it is in effect a commuter campus. Parking is a major problem on campus. In addition, traffic and pollution issues are terrible in the DC metro area. What kind of message do they (the powers that be in my university) think they are sending? That they want us to add to congestion and pollution? That we ought to be encourage to continue our addiction to fossil fuels and be extravagant in our energy use? This isn't the first time a bus route of mine was to be axed. In my previous residence, they did the same. It was worse there. There wasn't any viable public transportation alternative for me and so I was forced to drive to school everyday.

So then the next really bad thing that happened was that my wallet was stolen- from my office area! I am so mad! I am so mad that someone would think that it was okay to steal someone else's stuff! That someone would think it would be okay to inflict this kind of pain, anger and frustration on another human being. Simply because they wanted something and it was easy to do it. It seems to me to be an issue of poor upbringing! If someone along the way had taught this poor soul properly, this would not have happened. I am not just blaming it on poor parenting or poor teaching, but also his friends/peers/role models. They let or encouraged this person think it was okay to inflict this kind of pain on me! I am also blaming our society for allowing the kinds of situations that would lead one to accept such messages (e.g. making it practically impossible for this person to gain enough social or financial capital to feel secure in pursuing more legitimate employment practices). AND I am blaming that person for buying into those messages and for not considering that another HUMAN being will be hurt in the process. And yes, I am hurt. I am hurt because I trust people a little less right now.