Sick Baby

Yesenia has been fighting the same under-the-weatherness for the last three weeks or so. It started as allergies - she took it with her to Puerto Rico, where it actually got worse, thanks to her mom and her mom's dogs. Now, it's turned into a sinus infection.

Yesenia's infections seem to know no season...

Anyway, send some good vibes her way, if you can, since she's tired of feeling completely miserable.

D.

I Blog, So That You Don't Have To

Blogging on Yesenia's laptop this evening - the Dell Inspiron 1525, codename 'Espresso.' 'Cause I left the Manputer at Bubba and Fi's. Forgive any typos - I seem to be having a very hard time working my way around this keyboard.

Definitely, things are starting to feel more than a little Summer-y, here. The last few days have been very warm, but the thing that separates Summer from Spring is the nights. Spring nights are cold, whereas Summer nights keep the heat going all night long. And the last couple of nights (tonight included) have been edging up to 'unpleasantly warm.' Really, it's more a case of there being no wind to speak of - a little breeze would make things quite nice. But it's stagnant, and the mosquitoes have started their engines, and it's generally bryter layter, as Nick Drake said.

What to do with the Summer, as it's a comin' in? Loudly sing, 'Cuckoo?' There's an option - find some music to play and play it loud into the night.

Other options? Fix up my bike and go for a ride. I have to admit, I hate biking around here, but love to bike. This area is stupid hilly and the cars and drivers (speaking as one) suck. Last Summer, I opted for a little tennis, and I wouldn't mind pulling that out again.

Summer does seem to bring with it a seemingly endless offering of things to do...

D.

Symbolton

I realized it's been a while since I've give a progress report on the Learning of the Math: it's slow. Not so much in the sense that we're not going through the material, but without the impending deadline of the five tests,* I've been kind of slacking in the pursuit of my studies. Partly that, partly the added scheduling complication of working at the paper, and partly my dad's availability. Dad will be done with classes this week, I believe, so we'll perhaps kick it up a notch. At any rate, I've just learned basic matrices and Cramer's Rule, so we're somewhere in that gray are between Algebra and Trigonometry.

Is there any way to make this exciting? I wonder. Still, there is one positive to the new low-pressure math approach, which is that I do find I very much - well, enjoy might be too strong a work for it, but I at the very least am mildly entertained by working through problems. I suspect I'll always have some kind of math anxiety - I just can't seem to think through things with all that mud in my head - but it is nice to just do it and not worry about performance.

There really isn't anyway to make that last paragraph not sound like some kind of sex metaphor, is there? Best just leave it.

D.

*Deadline of the Five Tests sounds vaguely like the name of an excellent karate film, doesn't it?

I have an interesting face, and not necessarily in a good way.

For the last two years or so, I've had on-again/off-again crap on my face. I wish there were a more accurate word for it, but one of the big problems is that the multiple diagnoses seem to just keep being wrong. First, it was eczema. Then, it was seborrheic dermatitis. Now, it's some weird kind of acne that supposedly is pretty rare in men, but I guess somewhat more common in women.

Joy.

Anyway, as part of the earlier treatments, the one that seemed to keep it under the best control was the steroid cream - which, of course, is the one that you should be most conservative with, since not only does it possess 'entropic' qualities (meaning that it slowly eats away at your flesh), but - as I found out today - your skin actually becomes addicted to it, which means that when you discontinue use, you have a big flare-up.

I'm discontinuing use. And the new treatment is entirely anti-bacterial, and I'm told not to expect any results for a month. Meaning it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Am I telling you this to gross you or make you feel sorry for me? No, I am most emphatically not an animal. But chances are good that I'm going to be seeing most of the regular readers of the Rambler in person within the next month, and I wanted to give you fair warning that my puss could be gnarly for the next couple of weeks. If we meet up, perhaps we could do it in a dark, secluded spot? More for your sensibilities than my own.

The best part? Apparently, this new treatment will make me extra sensitive to sunlight in the affected areas. I'm beginning to think the only effective treatment for what I've got is holy water and a stake through my heart.

D.

Morgan was Right

As part of my last night of temporary bachelorhood - with much to do, no food in the fridge and no time to really go get something more healthy (and, let's face it, also genuinely wanting it) - I did the deed. That's right: McDonald's Value Meal #1, right from the drive-thru. The Big Mac and fries. I also compounded it with a 'chocolate' shake, but don't worry - at least I had a Diet Coke.

I'd say 'this really makes me feel American!,' but McDonald's has so successfully spread their brand in the last few years that it would be more accurate to say 'this really makes me feel human!'

But it doesn't. It so doesn't. Short of being locked in a cage and force-fed metal filings, I can't think of a dinner more dehumanizing than the 'Value Meal #1.' The literal definition of 'empty calories,' I note that since the last time I indulged/punished myself with VM1, McDonald's has taken to printing the nutrition info on the side of the package. That's 560 for the Big Mac (with about 30% of that fat calories), 380 for the fries (170 fat calories) and 770 fucking calories for the 'chocolate' shake (160 fat). Which adds up to 1,710 calories for one meal. And the joke is sadly true - I was hungry again just as soon as I finished it.

Other than that, I only had a peanut butter & jelly sandwich today... and the beer, let's not forget the painting-break beer. And that was my full allowance of calories for the day. I won't even get in to the dubious moral choice of eating at McDonald's - these issues rarely cross my mind at times like that. Given Yesenia's all-wheat germ diet these days (with a milk and tofu allergy added to her list of dietary no-nos, the robust pork-eater I married has basically become a vegan), I figured the only time I could eat something like the VM1 guilt-free was the night before she returned.

I guess I'm ruined, though, since the 'guilt-free' part didn't work. Consider this Rambler my mea culpa: my fault, my most grievous fault.

Small thanks: at least my stomach seems to be handling the load of crap okay. I was fairly certain even before I ate that I would be paying for the VM1 with a severe case of ick.

D.

Wrap it Up

I just realized that it was Sunday night and I've really got to make some headway on various work projects that I've left hanging - mostly small things, but those are the things that add up. I'd been ignoring work in favor of the house for the last couple of days. The bathroom is small, but there's just a mandatory bottom limit to the amount of work that goes into redoing any bathroom - it's all the fun of painting, plus putting in a new sink! And now the work is waiting to be done, as well.

D.

The Missing Day

Apologies for the break in service - my host did its periodic and highly secretive changing of the FTP info, and Blogger coughed and whined 'Error 530' when I tried to post late Thursday night. Since I was actually logging in from a different internet connection than usual, for some reason, I just assumed that the problem was the connection and not the server (like, say when you can receive mail but not send from other connections, sometimes). But of course, it was the server. They require that you change your password and login info once every few months - let's say 'four months' - and they take it upon themselves to prevent any remote logins of the type that Blogger does, but neglect to inform you that their deadline has passed and you need to go in and update things.

Really, an email would be nice.

Anyway, I've posted Thursday's lost entry about my ride up to Middletown, and you can read below toady's Rambler.

It's now Saturday at around 7:30 PM, and I've been back to Tappan, back up to Middletown, and back to Tappan again in that time. Something like 9 hours of driving between Connecticut and New York in the last three days. Which would be less impressive if you delivered pizzas in Rye from Greenwich, but the point is made, yes?

In the middle day (Friday), I retrieved Kate and various bits of construction material, and we got some work done on the house. Not as much as I'd hoped, since we each were totally zoned-out from lack of sleep the previous night. Don't go getting any ideas: I didn't fall asleep until about 4 AM, as the combination of lack of Yesenia, general insomnia and the kind of creepy basement atmosphere made it difficult for me to hail the sleep taxi, while Kate had apparently woken up at 3:30 - in bed with her husband, yo! - realized after an hour that she wasn't getting back to sleep, and instead wet out to their garden to plant tomatoes.

I wrote about my own great work ethic earlier this week? Right. I would not get up at 4:30 to plant tomatoes.

Official wake-up time had been set for 7, and we managed to get out of the house by around 8, over to Weslyan to pick up some of the free construction materials (insulation panels, in this case), and got on the road and into New York probably by 10:30 or so. Even with the lack of sleep and my own achilles heel of lack of forethought and preparation, we still got stuff done, and I'll finish that work in the next couple of days on my own.

In fact, I'm going to change into my nasty-wear now to get working. Let's see if I fixed the posting issue, and I'll see you tomorry.

D.