Feverish Productivity

Following my last post on Wednesday, January 6th, wherein I promised to update more, I promptly got violently ill with what was either the flu or the Devil.  Since Gatorade is cheaper than exorcisms, I opted to call it the flu and treated it as such.  Anyway, the thing about the flu is, it gets in the way of your plans.  Plans like training for a marathon that's only 2 weeks away, for example, and updating your blog.

Speaking of which, look forward to a post about what it's like to run a marathon with no training!

Pictured: Mile 2

After going home early on Wednesday the 6th (more accurately being sent home by my boss after I began dry-heaving in her office), I quarantined myself on the couch, where I experienced combating bouts of chills and high fever.  Andrew stepped up to the plate to take full responsibility of the 5 animals in the house while also going to work and taking care of me.  Not a peep of complaint out of him, either.  He might have been slowly be going mad, but by George, he didn't complain about it!

He had a look of sympathy on his face like this the whole time.

Although there's not much more to say about my illness, as part of my new "updating regularly" thing, I'm going to post about it anyway so this post appears to have more content.

Experiencing Fever as an Adult:

It's Like Taking Government-Provided LSD

• No one could enter my bathroom without a hazmat suit.
• I was unaware I was capable of sweating so much. A small African village could have been helped via the amount of liquid coming out of me. There was literally water in my ear. I almost got swimmer's ear. From my own sweat.  We had to lay towels on the couch so I wouldn't ruin it.  I smelled like a musk ox.
• Seriously, though, the sweat.  My fingers actually turned wrinkly and pruny from my own sweat.
• By day 4, I'd began pouring Gatorade directly into the toilet to save it the trouble of passing through my GI tract. My body refused to absorb any of it.
• I sweated through a pillow and we had to throw it out.
• I confessed to my best friend that I "sexually identify as Tony Stark" while delirious.
• I had a fever dream that I built a time machine and brought back a T. Rex to my primary school cafeteria. I then went and had a serious conversation with my primary school teachers and adulthood bosses about the ethical rationalizations or lack thereof of keeping a T. Rex captive in a primary school cafeteria. And also I had shapeshifting powers.
• I considered cutting off all my hair.  (Been growing it for 4, 5 years now?  Couldn't brush it.  Joints too sore.)
• Watched the movie "Saving Private Ryan" and concluded that war is bad. Called several friends to inform them and e-mailed to the UN about it.
• Watched "Planet Earth." (All 11-ish episodes on Netflix.)  Apparently donated $50 to the World Wildlife Fund.
• Watched "Babadook."  It's good.  You should see it.  I already e-mailed the UN about it.
• Became hyper-aware that I would be dead if I lived in a third-world country.
• Asked my boyfriend to remove the puppy and kitten that were playing on top of me because I felt so sick. "That's when I knew it was serious," he said.
• I looked like the old woman from Insidious.
• I tried to go back into work after a week and dry-heaved in my boss's office again and was sent home again.  

Yeah, that sums it up.  I hope that where ever you are, you don't catch the flu this year, reader.  It's a doozy.  Remember to get your flu shot if you haven't already.

Fortunately, despite this crippling fever, I was able to get a lot done in the month of January.  I got my bathtub reglazed.  Or, more accurately, some guy did it while I passed out on the couch.  Following violent chills, I would pass out and then wake up gleaming with sweat, with my clothes soaked like I'd been in a tropical rain storm.  On that particular day I woke up not just gleaming skin, but a gleaming new bathtub.  

Which is great because I was starting to run out of gin.

I also got a new bike, a Kawasaki Vulcan 800.  The new bike ("Betty") rides like a dream, although between the larger size and my own fear of getting hit again, I've found riding a little difficult emotionally.  The truth is, after I posted about my accident on a forum site, the number of comments that said things like "WOW, you were LUCKY," and, "You only get one of those!" and, "Same thing happened to me but I broke my clavicle," scared the hell out of me.  Even though I handled the accident really well, I've gotten really paranoid about people switching lanes near me.

My old bike, ("Veronica"), by the way, ended up abandoned by the insurance company at the mechanic's.  They took so long to settle with me that the storage fee for the bike was worth more than the bike itself.  So instead of picking it up for salvage, they left it.  I, as the title holder, happily went and got it back.  It's now restored and ready to ride.  So far there hasn't been much jealousy between the bikes but I'm keeping my eye out to make sure that the 250 doesn't get bullied by the 800.

Shiny!

At work, things have been chugging along beautifully.  I think I made a new friend ("Alex"), who also likes D&D and superhero movies and irreverent humor.  Social scene aside, I'm feeling a lot more confident with the lab techniques and language of the lab, which is new; I felt very lost for the first few months.  I gave a killer presentation last week entitled: "The Impact of a Consortium of Fermented Milk Strains on the Gut Microbiome of Gnotobiotic Mice and Monozygotic Twins: A Review."

Who says science isn't transparent?  This diagram, for example, is crystal clear to even the most casual reader.

At home, Andrew and I's relationship has been closer than it has been in a long time.  We're still playing D&D weekly and our newest player, "Jeff," is this really awesome guy we met online last year.  Jeff is Chinese and has a hilarious deadpan sense of humor.  Last Sunday he invited us out to see some Oscar-nominated animated shorts with him at a local theater.  He's a really easy-going guy who invites us out to a lot of cool activities and who often brings authentic Chinese food to our D&D sessions.

Stupid cookie.  What does it know, anyway?

Lastly, I started writing again.  Not in my blog, obviously.  Right now I'm embroiled in an emotionally-charged sci-fi thriller about parallel timelines that Stephen King called, "A piece of utter garbage.  Please stop contacting me."

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, while doing research on parallel timelines and multidimensional theory, I discovered a list of Marvel's universes and they're hilarious.  Here's my personal favorites:

• 616: The one we know and love.  aka "Home World." 
• 617: the Nightmare Realm (aka "Dimension of Dreams").
• In 59,822, Thor gets a haircut.
• In 61,828, Tony Stark develops an eating disorder.
• In 74,820, George Washington was assassinated.
• In 82,801, the Fantastic Four are literal bananas.
• In 82,809, Nick Fury wears eyepatch on right eye instead of the left.
• In 82,810-82,812, Ghost Rider possesses a wheelchair-bound grandpa, a roller derby girl, and a baby, respectively.
• In 82,819, the Invisible Girl dyes her hair.
• 89,130: Old West London.
• In 92,202, Dr. Doom is a pediatrician.
• 99,467: Dino Land.
• In 103,173, a dog named Wilson goes through a experiment with Mascara X and becomes this universe's Deadpool (named "Dogpool"). 

Okay, no more Marvel references!  Instead, let me conclude by saying that things are going well for me so far in 2016 and so I guess the antidepressants are working because I'm generally feeling pretty optimistic about my life.   Thanks, chemistry.

Yay, serotonin!