Woke up this morning and felt like my head was packed with cotton balls that had been saturated in mucus. Not a pretty picture. Didn't feel so hot either. But Eric gave me some cough drops and I took (repeated) hot showers instead of going to my morning classes in an attempt to not have all my bodily fluids drain out my nose, which is what it felt like (especially when said nose began to bleed). I'm now probably severely dehydrated. Must... get... water. On the up side, my throat's only mildly sore today. Problems in that area have migrated upwards (sinuses!) and downwards (it feels like someone's welded my sternum in place, thus forcing my lungs to heave mightily against it every time they'd like oxygen).
Now that I'm done being melodramatic (thanks to Sudafed kicking in), on to actual content.
Got a email from my cousin Barby in the Philippines. She's finishing up high school and getting ready to college, and visited Olin with her sister last spring. I think she liked it. :) At any rate, I'm enjoying the email exchange; she brings up all sorts of random observations ("why are highlighters called highlighters?" "why do people respond to diasters the way they do?" "how much friction is between a bow and a cello string?" "I went golfing today and thought about parabolic motion...") that spark off my brain and keep me mentally young. I used to wonder how grownups could fail to stop and notice so many weird little things - now I know it's far too easy to do so. So I'm trying to take more moments to go random-happy.
IBM visited campus today. It sounds like a great company; from everything I've been hearing the last two years, they really take care of their people, care about them growing, learning, and being happy, and look out for their interns instead of just milking performance out of them. I'd like to work for a large company at least once in my life to see what it's like; I've only really worked in academia so far. Sure, I want to come back as an Olin professor - but that's after some time in industry so I can bring that experience back here in my old (or not all that old) age. (Assuming they want me back, that is. I need a lot of improvements first before I'm up to the snuff that is the Amazingness of Olin Professors. Sometimes I don't think I'll ever get there.)
Aside from the sickness, it has not been an altogether bad day. In fact, I'm very happy now - just had a conversation about discrete math with DJ (who is sitting next to me on the couch reading Turing, which is not a biography but a novel) and told Aasted (mid-backrub) that his shoulders needed more ductility, and explained to Becky how humanoid-form upgrades got more expensive as you aged (for those who don't know, I'm not actually human - I'm here for my planet's equivalent of a PhD in anthropology). Plus I got a book on Tai Chi and a book on biking. If I could only get the CompArch lab done, I would be the happiest kid in the world.
Er, young adult.
I'm actually not quite sure about what I wrote yesterday any more. It still does vaccilate - just in a different way than it used to. That's what you get for writing stream-of-consciousness.
This blog is a good indication that the consciousness stream should stop and go to bed right around now.