Journal: January 2005 Archives

Anagrams for "RENAL ULTRASOUND":

A SUNDAE TROLL RUN: I'm not sure why I like this. I guess that's about how I felt getting a renal ultrasound, minus the ice cream sundae.

LULU SENT ON RADAR: Lulu has a very exciting life. How is one sent on radar, exactly?

ASTRAL RULED NOUN: Um, no. Astral is always an adjective. And if these dictionary royalty are ruling this, they're just plain wrong.

OLD LAURA SENT URN: I just like to think of my buddy in her old age, doing God-knows-what with her English degree (yes, Nazi, that was a dig at you English majors!) Maybe she's an anthropologist and she discovered an urn, and she gave it to me. How nice.

LULU-TRONS ARE DNA: I told you that Lulu was exciting. I wonder what Becky-trons are, then.

TURN LOU NASAL RED: Whatever color "nasal red" is. I tried to illustrate it.

Good times.

In lieu of the recurring infections I've suffered lately, Dr. Sands recommended that I get a renal ultrasound, just to make sure that everything was groovy with my kidneys; so I did that today. I had a little trouble finding the place, but I got there at 1:25, five minutes before my appointment. I did all the paperwork hurriedly and then sat there for half an hour, half-watching that guy from the Real World on Days of Our Lives and half-spacing out.

They called me into the little room, and I had to disrobe waist up and wear their crazy little gown. Then came the ultimate strange experience, a young woman rubbed gel on my stomach and pressed and prodded me various ways for the better part of 45 minutes, searching for my apparently small and hidden kidneys, deliberating especially while leaning on my small floating ribs. It should be noted that for much of this, I was imagining the smallest rib snapping off and floating around my bloodstream and lodging into my heart like Finny in A Separate Peace. Meanwhile, she commanded me to, "Take a deep breath and hold it" (usually for ludicrous lengths of time) or, "Breathe" (which meant go ahead and breathe how you want to) or, "Stop breathing just like that." Stop breathing?! Well, all right. You're the technician. I'll just lie here, gasping sporadically, and watch the ultrasound monitor, where I can see nothing that slightly resembles even a monochromatic kidney. Excellent.

Afterwards, I de-gelled my abdomenal area with a small towel and got dressed, only to have her tell me that we're not even done. No. What comes next is an hour of sitting in the waiting room, drinking water while someone else gets an ultrasound, waiting for my bladder to fill up. Sadly, it only took about 20 minutes for my bladder to feel like I was going to burst and pee everywhere. The remaining 40 minutes were spent pacing the room and shouting the answers to Jeopardy: "What is Chile?", "What is a martini?", "What is Waterworld?", "What are boll weevils?" ...

After the third Daily Double or something, I was called back in, where I jumped on the table and bared my stomach where my bladder was bulging out. She pressed with the little ultrasound tool, and ohhhh, the temptation to just go all over the place was almost irresistable. Almost. Somehow I made it to the bathroom and it was glorious. I can't remember such happiness. She took a few more pictures of "Post Void Bladder" and then I was done.

I got some Sonic on the way home, to cheer myself up after the ordeal, and gave the lady who worked there a dollar for a tip. Even if you're not supposed to tip.

Lately, I've been Memphis's Crabbiest Person (and I'm willing to bet that I'm in the top five of the Southeastern United States, as well.) I am unable to deal with people; the most trifling things perturb me beyond belief. In the lunch line the other day, there was this girl wearing a bright pink sweater, a black miniskirt, and those pointy high heels that I hate because if your feet aren't correctly-shaped, I can see your disfigured, squeezed-in toes peeking out. Oh, and I should mention that this young lady's shoes were bright pink, to match her exquisite sweater. Seeing her gnarled digits crammed into those awful shoes...

A different day in the lunch room, I was looking at the back of a different girl's head. Her hair was a little mussed, and I felt like grabbing her and shaking her, yelling at her to get her act together, buy a brush, something, anything. Just before I reached my hand out to take hold of her shoulders, I looked down at my own smashing ensemble: sweatshirt, jeans (probably worn a few times since they'd last been washed), no makeup. Needless to say, I restrained myself and brooded in silence.

Today was a warm day and I found myself irritated immensely by the sightings of several bare midriffs throughout the day. I can't even convey why it was annoying, but it was. Tanktops in winter? I want people to wear real clothes in January, I guess, even if it is 55 degrees outside. However, now that I'm dressed to go out for the evening, I see my own inch-high strip of flesh hovering between my jeans and exceedingly-cute chocolate-brown tie-in-back V-neck. Oh well. Drew will just have to deal with me and my hypocritical shirt.

None of these things make terribly much sense: normally, fashion faux pas don't make me volver loca this way. I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn't help that I'm thwarted with a chronic headache behind my left eye. It mostly hurts when I move my eyes without turning my head first, or when I have to speak loudly (for example, bellowing, "COME IN!" multiple times so that people will just enter the darn room) or sing (Music class: bane of my existence! I actually got a menacing glare from Prof. Watkins for not singing along; I was, however, able to lead the class marching through Hassell Hall--demonstrating the duple simple rhythm--without conjuring too much white-hot stabbing pain spearing the left part of my brain.)

I asked Olivia if she thought her dad (a doctor) would tell me I had a brain tumor, and she said no--it's more likely stress or anxiety. I'll settle with The Worst Sinus Attack I've Ever Had. It feels sinus-y by the way I press on things (my left eye especially--but only the left eye; the right is fine.) I feel like my head is swelling to larger and larger sizes as we speak. Maybe Dr. Fischer (the astronomer who gave a talk last night in the Ballroom) would say my head has two Jupiter-masses. It sure feels that way.

It's true. Even though we look and feel like solid objects, we're basically a bunch of nuts and bolts (and a couple more complicated things like DNA and the small intestine) held together by electrostatic fields. I don't know why that freaks me out so much.

We watched a short film in Astronomy today that talked about this a little bit. It shows what things look like from a distance of a certain number of meters away, beginning with 1 m and going out to 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m (which is a long way out there--all the little dots are not stars but galaxies--groups of solar systems and billions of stars), then it zooms back in and focuses on the guy's hand at .01 m, then proceeds inward and you see his skin cells and the nucleus of one kind of cell (.0000000000001 m), and finally little blurry things.. quarks. But the video showed that there's a pattern of action and inactivity, the former being the scarcer of the two. Most of space is totally empty, and in fact, much of us is hollow as well.

Right after I left Astronomy, I was in a good mood and contemplating the universe and thinking, "Wouldn't Prof. Reed (Philosophy) be proud?" I came upon an elderly couple, who crossed in front of me to the left as I walked toward the Lair. The old man had gotten his keys out and was pressing the unlock button on the remote entry; I heard a clicking sound off to my right. I noticed that the source of the clicking (unmistakably the sound of car doors unlocking) was a white car similar to the one the elderly couple was standing near. They were beginning to look in consternation at the car whose handles they were yanking on, but weren't unlocking. I had gone past the cars a few feet when I figured out that they perhaps just had mistaken this other car for their own, so I turned to the woman and pointed to the other car. I said, somewhat inarticulately, "Isn't that your car?" She stared blankly at me. I repeated myself and tried to explain that "The clicking sound is coming from the other car," desperately pointing and gesticulating toward that car. No sign of comprehension passed over her face, so I turned and left. When I had finished eating, I came out, and the car I had been pointing to was gone.

Now, instead of doing my homework that needs so much to be completed (since I have lab tonight), I wasted 45 minutes typing this. Sigh.

On Thursday, I went to my other classes: Music of Latin America and Search. Music hasn't struck me as anything too awesome yet. Prof. Watkins gets really excited, but it wasn't very contagious (and we listened to hardly any music!) The upside is that I was in band for 7 years and I know most of the musical vocabulary (except some of the words that have to do with vocal styling), and that Olivia and Naughty Northern Dan are in the class with me. Search is how Search always was, except some different people and the course pack hasn't come in yet so he cancelled our Kant reading and gave us a semi-lame writing assignment. PLUS, he's going to make us write a SUMMARY-OUTLINE for EVERY DAY'S READING. ARGH! Significantly less fun.

Friday, I went to more classes. Spanish was better since I sat in the front and couldn't see the "Cool Guys". Econ was fine since I understand slope equations and budgets. But Astronomy. Oh, Astronomy, that hath captured this heart o' mine!!

I accidentally wandered into FJC instead of FJA and sat there for a few minutes before Prof. Jiang (from China) began lecturing on Elementary Probability and Statistics; then I got up and left, realizing I was on the wrong side. I sat in the back in FJA because it was the only seat open, and within 5 minutes, was kicking myself for not getting there earlier because I just wanted to be closer to the front, where the pictures and Prof. White were located. He had such enthusiasm and this time it was contagious. He started by announcing, "If you are here and you aren't just floored by the fact that you exist, I think you should leave, because I am constantly shocked and pleasantly surprised every day that I do exist!"

Then he showed us Saturn and telling us how it didn't always have rings ("Come back in 700 million years and they won't be there anymore--you know why? Because they're little crushed-up moonlets orbiting the planet, and eventually they'll be sucked down into the atmosphere") and I remembered my and every other little kid's fascination with the planets.

Then he showed us the Cat's Eye nebula and told us that this is what will eventually happen to our sun ("Not with a huge explosion, but more just like a *sigh*--it'll leave just a tiny white dwarf in the middle.")

Even though we think our solar system is big place, it's not. Our sun is just one star in a couple billion that make up our galaxy, and how the last time we were at this position with reference to the center of our galaxy (24,000 light years away from the sun) was 200-230 million years ago ("dinosaurs were just starting to get a little bit bigger and a little bit nastier.")

Then he told us how sometimes galaxies collide and how our Milky Way galaxy is bound to collide with the Andromeda galaxy in about 90 billion years or some absurd amount of time in the future. That seemed to alarm some of the people in the class, but all I could think was, "In 90 billion years, we will so be out of here--one way or another." And the reassuring smile on Prof. White's face seemed to reinforce it.

So I'm basically totally psyched out of my mind about this class. Woo-hoo! (Not so much about lab, but I guess it comes with the territory. Maybe we'll get to see cool things like Gomez's Hamburger or the Eskimo Nebula, though I doubt it.)

Yesterday evening, I was slurping down noodles and a little piece of one went flying into my keyboard and lodged itself under the "O" key. My meager knowledge of computer hardware consists of something along the lines of keyboard + pasta = bad, so I pried the "O" key off, removed the offending noodle, and found myself unable to reinstate said key.

I ask you, taking in mind the situation in which I am placed and the predicament I suffer, how can I convey my woes if I have no "O". I don't know. Final thought: OOOOOOOOOOOOH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

P.S. Bolding done on o's, to illustrate my annoying at having to press exactly in the middle of the key to the little bouncy thing that makes the letter appear on the screen.

P.P.S. Lip is feeling better, swelling gone.

Due to change in plans on the part of the school, Enrollment Clearance was Tuesday and not Monday, so classes started yesterday and not Tuesday. Honestly, though. My pre-classes activities were more exciting. It took me 4 trips to the bookstore and various journeys over campus (if you can call them journeys, since our campus is admittedly quite small) to try to pay someone almost $600 to get un-"suspended" and then $350 more, for my books. Classes, thus far, have been enh-ish. I only had 2 yesterday, since Astronomy class was cancelled and the lab doesn't start until next week.

Spanish 303 (Introduction to Spanish Literature -- large array of literature from when Spanish was still mixed with Arabic, up to something written in the 1980s) is taught my Prof. Doyle, who taught my class last semester. I'd think this is great, except that I made the horrible error of sitting near the back of the class, where the hoodlums sit, apparently. Back there were some students being "cool guys" and refusing to speak Spanish, only talking in English. We were given a worksheet to fill out, working in groups. We were supposed to list what we knew about Spain: under political figures, I suggested we write "Franco", and all the boys in the group just looked blankly at me. I was like, "El lider fascista.. que gobernó España por casi cuarenta años.." Receiving the same blank stares, I gave up, even though one of these guys should have known about Franco. He went to Spain with the Maymester people and probably heard all about him.. But he's also the same guy that wandered drunkenly into my room last year through the bathroom from the suitemates' room, and lay down on my bed while I frantically tried to make him go back where he came from. (Eventually, Suitemate came and got him, apologizing profusely, saying, "He's so drunk, he probably thought you were me and this was my room!")

Econ was after Spanish, and it was okay. Prof. Peters is young and energetic and smiles a lot.

Today, I have Music of Latin America (with Olivia and Naughty Northern Dan) at 11:00, and then Search (Philosophy), at 2:00. I'm hoping I won't freak people out, but I woke up this morning (to the sound of Laura shouting, "Carolyn, dude. Let's GO!" because they had 3 minutes until they would be late for class) with a HUGE. FAT. LIP.

Beware. This is not for the faint of heart.

Have a nice day.

I'm back at Rhodes and no one is really here yet, except my suitemate, who seems to never stop peeing, going in and out of the bathroom, slamming doors. Nevertheless, it is very peaceful. I finished unpacking, opened a window, and turned on the fan to get a gentle cross-breeze going in here. I'm enjoying the quiet, talking to Olivia on IM, hearing about her trip to Mexico and showing me pictures. It is just peaceful.

Go read my dad's description.

I went to visit my boyfriend, Drew, in Indiana. On December 31 (Friday) I flew in and smothered him and his orange PolarFleece jacket in kisses. We went to Chili's for dinner and smiled at each other a lot and kissed over the table. Drew asked me if I thought he would look good with a mullet and "friendly mutton chops" (though that's not what he called them), after we saw a jolly, rather portly gentleman sporting such facial hair. After that, we went to his house and I gave his parents a present as thanks for their hospitality (a Cabernet-scented candle, since I'm not old enough to buy real wine.) Then we went downstairs and watched TV until the ball dropped in Times Square: Indiana is on EST this half the year and CST the other half, thanks to funky Daylight Savings' habits. And then we watched Conan's the Central Time Zone New Years' Show. We kissed at both midnights.

Saturday (New Years' Day) we went ice skating for an hour or so; I was a lot better than I had remembered. I didn't fall down at all. After that we ran some errands: Best Buy to get a new battery for his remote carlock (whatever it's called), Borders to buy a DVD, the mall to get his snake (!!) a mouse to eat (!!!). We returned to his house, fed the snake (which was fairly uncomfortable to watch), saw Elf and LOTR: Return of the King, but it was the extended version (yes, that means four hours instead of just three) and I fell asleep in parts, but I don't think Drew minded. I swear, it was the ice skating and the Zyrtec.

Sunday we went to church in the morning and ate with the family (something Italian that I can't remember the name of), then ice skating again and watched Shrek 2 and I, Robot.

At some point during all of this, we also watched The Manchurian Candidate, which was a lot different than I thought it was going to be, and Wicker Park, which was less haunting and more annoying than I expected it to be. Perhaps we did that Monday, though for some reason, that doesn't seem right.

I left Tuesday evening (after eating Steak n Shake with my Drew and kissing him goodbye at the airport) on a similarly tiny plane (that was close to 40 minutes late; it was raining and cold outside), and sat next to a girl that often covered her ears with her hands and gritted her teeth. Her fiancé (who didn't want to sit next to her so that I could have the solo seat on the other side of the row) patted her sometimes. They complained that they were close to missing their connecting flight. At the end of the flight, I noticed that my bag was soaked because of a leak somewhere in the body of the plane, which had let moisture in; all I could do was sigh, take my digital camera out, and make a note of it to the flight attendant. It was raining pretty hard when we got off the plane, which was too small to dock up to those bridges to the terminal, so we had to walk on the ground (in the rain and puddles) to a door, up some stairs, and then we were in the terminal. My family went to dinner at Outback and I had lobster tails. Mmm.

In all, I had a very pleasant visit.