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| The more things change......the more they stay the same. It's an over used and often mis-used idiom, but it's definitely retained some merit in terms of validity.
I think I may have finally come to terms with the fact that I'm never going to really know what's going on. Every time I think I've figured out what's next, something outflanks me and catches me entirely off guard. Good things and bad things alike all come out of nowhere. Sure, there are definitely times when I can identify exactly what I did to cause a series of events that led to unexpected circumstances, but that's not always the case. Sometimes the unexpected circumstances arrive all on their own, taking me by surprise.
I'm not sure how I feel about surprises in general. I just really like knowing what's going on. My Meyer's Briggs assessment tells me that my personality's hard-wired goal in life is simply "to understand." Not that I'm walking around clueless, mind you, but that there's nothing I come across in life that I wouldn't like to understand better, even though my built in ambition often means I already understand things a little better than most. I think many people are far too satisfied with superficial knowledge, assuming that whatever is evident at a glance is all that matters, but I know I tend to err on the side of being overly analytical sometimes, so my opinion may be skewed.
And all this is my round about way of saying that I'm presently trying to understand a recent development.
Jas 1:2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
Jas 1:3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
Jas 1:4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Jas 1:5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
Jas 1:6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
Jas 1:7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;
Jas 1:8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
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| Doing Much BetterFortunately, the mystery ailment was as quick to leave as it was to arrive.
From about an hour before I went to bed Monday night until about noon today, I hadn't really had a clear enough head to do much more than veg out. The worst of it was obviously at the beginning, as roughly described in the previous post. After that, it's mostly just been the groggy headed-ness normally associated with a fever and the general fatigue that just comes from being sick. After getting the roughly 17 hours of sleep Monday night (and Tuesday morning) and about 12 hours of sleep last night, and after doing absolutely nothing of any consequence all day, I'm feeling very well rested.
When I spoke with a coworker this afternoon (to let them know that I'd be coming in tomorrow) I found out someone else had been out without something similar. Apparently it's going around. So, if you wake up one morning and instead of feeling rested you feel the kind of complete exhaustion that would result from staying up 72 hours straight while running on a treadmill, then you may have what's "going around." Seriously- words cannot express the complete lack of energy. Don't worry, though. Just take something to keep the fever down and sleep it off for a day or two. And even though they always say, "drink lots of liquids", I say you should drink lots of water, to be specific. As brain-dead zombie-like exhausted as you'll be during the first 12 to 24 hours of having this thing, you won't want to waste any energy starting up your digestive system; you just need to stay hydrated so you can break your fever a few times.
I'm doing much better now, and will be back to work tomorrow.
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| SickI called in to work today for the first time in probably at least three years.
For the past couple weeks I've been fighting off normal cold and allergy symptoms, and I thought I was on the tail end of it. As I got ready for bed last night (at about 9:00pm) it hit me, hard. I took some heavy duty liquid Tylenol multi-symptom stuff, cranked up the heater, and went to bed. I woke up in a cold sweat multiple times, though I can't be sure how many times, because I was near delirious with fever.
When my alarm went off this morning, it took about five minutes to muster enough strength to head to the bathroom to check my temperature. It was 103+. I struggled to call a few coworkers as I downed as much water as I could. I'd been sweating all night and was so dehydrated that I felt like I had a hangover. Fortunately, after leaving a couple of what I'm sure were very pathetic sounding voice mails, I got a call back to let me know I'd be covered for. So, I crawled back to bed at about 6:30, and proceeded to sleep until a little after 1:00pm. Apparently I'd been sleeping with my mouth open, because my entire mouth and throat were dry and covered in that gross saliva film.
I got up to brush my teeth, and in the process managed to gag myself which led to several minutes of painfully dehydrated dry heaving. That expended all the energy I had in me, as I still had not eaten anything, so I downed some Tylenol along with a couple more glasses of water and went back to bed. As I dozed off, I noticed that today is landscaping day for the apartment complex, but the lawn mowers and weed eaters did nothing to delay or hinder more sleeping.
I woke up again after 3:00, and decided to try to get up. The trek from my bedroom to the living room was quite exhausting. So, I sat down and watched some TV for a bit. The inevitable result was that all the commercials made me hungry. I was faced with a dilemma. I knew that after having my fever break multiple times that I was plenty gross with sweat. I also knew that if I attempted to shower, I'd have no energy left to run to Wal-Mart and pick up any food. So, a gross trip to Wal-Mart won out. I picked up some cereal, fruit juices (cranberry and orange), and, of course, some jello cups. Jello is pretty dad-gum awesome, but I only seem to appreciate it's wobbly goodness when I'm sick.
Anyway, I'm currently not running a fever anymore, but that may be due to the Tylenol. We'll see how things are once it wears off. I've already called in for tomorrow, too, so I'll have an extra day to recuperate.
I'm about to go watch U-571 on DVD now, and enjoy more jello- and maybe even some applesauce if I'm feeling adventurous.
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| Paranoid Much?Whoa.
The "Footprints" tracking feature continues to amaze and amuse me. Someone happened across my blog this morning by performing an AOL search for "elijahdh." That's oddly specific. I kind of felt bad for whoever it was that found my likely disappointing "Cut. Take Two" entry by searching for "haircut" styles recently, but it seems someone who knows me was looking for me?
In other news, I've done my taxes- the old fashioned way. My W2 arrived on Thursday, so I hopped onto irs.gov and downloaded the .pdf files of the 1040 forms, worksheets and instructions. I even used an 8880 to declare my Qualified Retirement Savings Contributions. I think I've come to the conclusion that the average person who uses boxed or online software (which I have done in the past) or uses a tax preparation service of some kind does so for the convenience, not because it's really that complicated or overwhelming. The commercials on TV make such a big deal out of it. They use scare tactics to get you to think that you're making unnecessary risks if you file without using their particular product/service.
Like most things in life, all you really have to do is read the instructions. The instructions may not be simple, but they are actually pretty easy to follow. Granted, most people think that the $29.90 (and up) price for having a program or person prepare your taxes for you just to get out of reading the 80 page instruction book is worth it in itself, but I think the time was well spent to save the money.
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| From whence you came
Welcome New Jersey and Kansas. D of C has been RSSing me for a while now. Oh, and several times last week I got people who were referred by searching for "haircut" blogs, amusingly enough :) It's such a specifically vague tool, that visitor tracker.
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