Something funny happened to me yesterday. I guess the right thing to do would be to provide a bit of background...
About a month and a half ago; roughly at the beginning of March, I began feeling run-down and tired. It felt like at any time, I would get some sort of flu and be knocked off my feet for a few days. I woke up every morning feeling as if I would be terribly sick that day but I just plowed on through and nothing ever happened. By the end of the evening, I was back to feeling tired and lethargic...
Then, around the second to last week in march, I got really sick. Fever. Headache. Body soreness. The whole works. I figured it was all over when I was out and about a few days later. That definitely wasn't the case.
Ever since then, for the entirety of the month, I've been feeling sick. My tonsils were swollen to varying degrees every day and my head would hurt for hours at a time. I went back to see a doctor to get some blood work and throat swabs done, all of which surprisingly came back negative for everything that it could have been - mononucleoses, strep throat. After getting the news, I went home certain that something wasn't right but determined to not let it bother me.
While studying for my exams, I started feeling worse and worse which made it increasingly difficult to maintain concentration. I made another and final appointment to see what they could do for me. I expected another blood test but what I got instead was a simple answer, stress.
Could I honestly be this stressed out? Stressed to the point where my immune system is on the flippin' red alert? I know for a fact that I've been a lot more stressed out before. Apparently my body thinks thats its been ubiquitous as of late...I disagree. Although I have to say, I did feel kind of pathetic when the doctor started mocking me for not having a life. A doctor! She gave me a note to defer my exams if I wanted and told me to go get a life. Harsh but apparently needed.
I'm not buying it. Then again, I might be in denial.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Umm...
Emailed to a friend about 2 minutes ago:
"So I just wanted to let you know that Portishead has struck again with another album. As I was waiting for the song to buffer on Last.com I was reading all the reviews which were raving with excitement and for a moment, a brief little glimmer of hope entered my mind and told me that perhaps, just perhaps, this wouldn't be too bad. It was finally finished buffering and I pressed play.
I got through about thirty seconds of it before I closed the tab and said to myself, "apparently not..."
(no offense to all the portishead fans out there - it just isn't my thing)
"So I just wanted to let you know that Portishead has struck again with another album. As I was waiting for the song to buffer on Last.com I was reading all the reviews which were raving with excitement and for a moment, a brief little glimmer of hope entered my mind and told me that perhaps, just perhaps, this wouldn't be too bad. It was finally finished buffering and I pressed play.
I got through about thirty seconds of it before I closed the tab and said to myself, "apparently not..."
(no offense to all the portishead fans out there - it just isn't my thing)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
transformational grammar....psycholinguistic theory...oooo loook a shiny thing!
I'm pathetic at studying.
P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C
That's bad, right? Seeing as how I actually have to get through this material some way or another before Friday, it really is bad that I can't seem to focus.
I blame the sun. And the trees. And the wind. And Vick. And Damean. And Mike. And everyone-else-who-messages-me. Not myself. Of course not. That would be silly.(On a side note - I hate that I've used "And" after periods...)
SO, in order to deem this post a "study aid", I will put up some of my favourite garden path sentences and ambiguous headlines (yes, that's right. I have favourites - and there you were thinking that I loved them all).
1. Prostitutes appeal to pope.
2. Queen Mary having bottom scraped.
3. Milk drinkers are turning to powder.
4. I saw the alps flying to Romania
5. (the infamous) The horse raced past the barn fell
6. Time flies. You cannot. They move too fast.
7. Cheney hunts quail. Companions duck.
8. Drunk gets nine months in violin case.
Zeugma
1. Are you getting fit or having one?
2. The beer needs to be drunk and so do we.
To add some educational information into the post (just to make it worthwhile for me), garden path sentences are often used as proof to psycholinguists that speech processing is done serially. Essentially, as a read a garden path sentence, we are processing the syntax devoid of meaning until we realize that its wrong and we have to go back and make another syntactic representation for it. Interesting? I say so.
P-A-T-H-E-T-I-C
That's bad, right? Seeing as how I actually have to get through this material some way or another before Friday, it really is bad that I can't seem to focus.
I blame the sun. And the trees. And the wind. And Vick. And Damean. And Mike. And everyone-else-who-messages-me. Not myself. Of course not. That would be silly.(On a side note - I hate that I've used "And" after periods...)
SO, in order to deem this post a "study aid", I will put up some of my favourite garden path sentences and ambiguous headlines (yes, that's right. I have favourites - and there you were thinking that I loved them all).
1. Prostitutes appeal to pope.
2. Queen Mary having bottom scraped.
3. Milk drinkers are turning to powder.
4. I saw the alps flying to Romania
5. (the infamous) The horse raced past the barn fell
6. Time flies. You cannot. They move too fast.
7. Cheney hunts quail. Companions duck.
8. Drunk gets nine months in violin case.
Zeugma
1. Are you getting fit or having one?
2. The beer needs to be drunk and so do we.
To add some educational information into the post (just to make it worthwhile for me), garden path sentences are often used as proof to psycholinguists that speech processing is done serially. Essentially, as a read a garden path sentence, we are processing the syntax devoid of meaning until we realize that its wrong and we have to go back and make another syntactic representation for it. Interesting? I say so.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Somewhere a Clock is Ticking...
...and I'm still going through the daily motions the way I used to: unmotivated, unproductive, apathetic.
"I guess I'm emo". Whatever. I welcome any kind of title the world offers for this kind of feeling.
It really pisses me off that I have nothing better to say. I'm just another, in a crowd of millions that are complacent and miserable. Power in numbers? I think not. There is no good to be had when a group of down and outs join hands and find confidence in...erm...crying?
That being said, all of us, all these people can do something about this state of mind. I started writing this post a while back and forgot about it. Thank goodness. If I had continued it then, it would have probably been full of similar sounding woes as the first few lines. Pity me pity me pity me!
I personally think that being miserable is a choice (unless you're chemically imbalanced - don't worry, at least its in style!). You can wake up in the morning and decidedly stay in bed to cry about how the terrible realities of your life OR you can learn to find joy in the smallest of things. Perhaps how the branches on the tree outside flutters its leaves against your window or how much happier people seem in general now that it's summer. Of course, that feeling of happiness, brightness and joy might feel foreign and distant but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm sure that there are many people in the world that would gladly trade their lives with yours - to live life where you are, like you are, looking like you. If you're honestly that pessimistic to think that what I said isn't possible, then why not begin trying to live your life - give people something to envy!
I know that it seems so simple in your head until you go out and try it. But honestly, try it.
Somewhere a clock is ticking.
Don't let it leave you behind.
"I guess I'm emo". Whatever. I welcome any kind of title the world offers for this kind of feeling.
It really pisses me off that I have nothing better to say. I'm just another, in a crowd of millions that are complacent and miserable. Power in numbers? I think not. There is no good to be had when a group of down and outs join hands and find confidence in...erm...crying?
That being said, all of us, all these people can do something about this state of mind. I started writing this post a while back and forgot about it. Thank goodness. If I had continued it then, it would have probably been full of similar sounding woes as the first few lines. Pity me pity me pity me!
I personally think that being miserable is a choice (unless you're chemically imbalanced - don't worry, at least its in style!). You can wake up in the morning and decidedly stay in bed to cry about how the terrible realities of your life OR you can learn to find joy in the smallest of things. Perhaps how the branches on the tree outside flutters its leaves against your window or how much happier people seem in general now that it's summer. Of course, that feeling of happiness, brightness and joy might feel foreign and distant but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm sure that there are many people in the world that would gladly trade their lives with yours - to live life where you are, like you are, looking like you. If you're honestly that pessimistic to think that what I said isn't possible, then why not begin trying to live your life - give people something to envy!
I know that it seems so simple in your head until you go out and try it. But honestly, try it.
Somewhere a clock is ticking.
Don't let it leave you behind.
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