wink     ; )

Too much 24

Is it a sign that I've watched too much 24 when I see a utility van pull up on the other side of the street and I expect the guy who hops out to be brandishing an automatic weapon and/or a silenced pistol?

Yes. Yes it is.

Finals

Finals week is upon us! Run for your lives!

Spark Crawls

Spark started crawling last night! We were on the floor playing after his bath. He was desperately trying to get a hold of the space heater (which was on) about three feet away. I, of course, was holding him back. Then I realized that I was putting a lot of effort into holding him back, and that if I let him go, he would crawl right over to the space heater. I said as much to Tree, and she said "Let him go, I want to see him do it."

So I did.

And he crawled...

...right over to the heater, which we promptly had to move a more feet out of his reach. Very cool.

What I did on my Spring Break - Tuesday

[Note: events in this post take place on March 23, 2004.]

A cluster wakes me up at 2:30 this morning. Oh joy. That wonderful feeling of having my eyeball flattened as my brain is being squeezed out though my eye socket. By this stage in my cluster, this is a familiar feeling and not at all unexpected. I roll myself out of bed, grab the Imitrex shot sitting on the bedside table, stumble out of the room (so as to not wake up Tree), and impale myself with the needle.

Six minutes later, the pain melts away like magic.

I go back to sleep. And I wake up feeling like my head is in a vice and a javelin has been shoved through the back of my neck and out my eye. Great. A daily double.

And now I have a decision to make. I've already taken three of my five shots. I go home tomorrow. If I take another shot now, I'll have one left for tomorrow. I can reasonably expect to have another headache tomorrow. But if I have another daily double, I won't have enough. The only other tool at my disposal is heavy pain medication--hardly ideal (it takes a long time to kick in and only deadens the pain to just bearable levels). Do I take the shot now and risk having to travel with a cluster treated only with pain meds? Or do I take the pain meds now while I'm not travelling and save the extra shot for the not-likely-but-altogether-within-the-realm-of-possibility worst-case-scenario of a daily double while travelling?

I am trying to think this decision through while in blinding pain. It takes me 10 minutes just to think the whole argument through. 10 very painful minutes.

I decide to save my shot for tomorrow. I down some pain meds. And wait. Nothing happens. I wait for an hour. In agony. The pain meds are not making a dent in the pain. I take some more. Half an hour later, the pain subsides to a mere "my entire head is being squeezed like a grape" levels.

I am finally able to go back to sleep.

[Update: Wednesday--I wake up at 2:30 with another cluster. I give myself an Imitrex shot. I have one more just in case. My trip home is uneventful and my last Imitrex shot is not needed. I probably should have taken it yesterday.]

[Another Update: Three days after I get home, when Oxygen fails to have any effect on one of my clusters, I am very glad to have that last Imitrex shot on hand.]

What I did on my Spring Break - Sunday pt. 2

[Note: events in this post take place on March 21, 2004.]

When we returned from downtown, I had the following converstaion with Tree's mom:

Tree's mom: Did you see any protests downtown? The news said that there were protests yesterday.

Me: We didn't see any. What were they protesting yesterday?

Tree's mom: The War.

Me: ...

Me: The one in Iraq? Isn't it a little late for that??!?

Tree's mom: ummmm...I guess so. Maybe they were just protesting Bush in general.

What I did on my Spring Break - Sunday pt. 1

[Note: events in this post take place on March 21, 2004.]

Spark got to meet his great-grandfather today. Unfortunately, we cut our schedule too tight so our visit was far too short.

First off, we arrived late. Only ten minutes or so, but late nonetheless. And ten minutes is a lot of time when you only have a little over an hour to spend. My grandfather was so anxious to see us that he had climbed onto a bench to lean over the fence so that he could see down the sidewalk. The sight of him was adorable and touching.

By the time we got to his apartment, we only had about an hour to spend with him before we had to leave to go see Tree's dad who is in rehab. An hour was simply not enough time.

But then again, an hour was plenty. Grandpa is nearly deaf. He knows a little bit of English. I don't know any Cantonese. There wasn't much more we could've said to each other even if we had stayed longer.

Nevertheless.

That hour was far too short. We looked at pictures together. I gave him a massage. We held hands. He held Spark. We didn't need words for any of that. And with more time, we could have done more. There was laughter and smiles.

And when we left, there were tears.

The Rapture

Syndromes asked me:

Do you believe in 'the rapture' and things like that? I'd like to talk to a fundamentalist a bit to get a better feel for where they're coming from.

Hmmm...where to start? Well, first of all, I probably wouldn't be considered a "Fundamentalist". A more accurate classification for me would be "Evangelical". Both groups consider the Bible to be the inerrant Word of God, but "Fundamentalists" demand a level of literalness that not all "Evangelicals" demand. Also, Fundamentalism denotes a certain level of militancy which is not implied by Evangelicalism.

While I do believe that everything that the Bible affirms is true, I don't believe that everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally. Determining what is meant to be literal and what is meant to be figurative or spiritual can be quite difficult.

While virtually all Fundamentalists and most Evangelicals are politically conservative, I am politically rather liberal. But that is a topic for another post.

Though I am not a Fundamentalist, I am quite familiar with their frame of mind. I have been surrounded with Fundamentalists in the past and I go to school with a number of them right now. So while I can't answer Syndrome's questions as a Fundamentalist, I can still present their mindset if he is still interested.

But the question isn't "What do Fundamentalists believe about the rapture?", it is "Do I believe in the Rapture?".

Allow me to dodge yet again. Regarding the period of time commonly known as the "End Times", the only belief that I hold very tightly is my belief that Jesus is coming again. Everything else, from the time and manner of His return, to the timing and nature of the tribulation and/or millenium, to the rapture and the new heavens and new earth are all topics where I hold my beliefs very lightly because I feel the Bible doesn't comment on them in a very concrete manner. As a result of the vague and heavily symbolic language regarding the End Times, we can know little for sure about the events surrounding the Return of the King (that being Jesus in this case, not Aragorn).

(For those who have the burning need to know my lightly held beliefs and are familiar with the jargon, I am post-trib, pre-mill. Though a friend of mine has proposed a new theory which is convincing to me; it would require a new classification, probably something like post-trib, post-post-mill.)

So. Returning to the question of the Rapture. Do I believe in it? Sure. But as for the timing or the nature of the Rapture, I have no idea. My picture of the End Times looks nothing like the one presented in the "Left Behind" series, though I was brought up in a church that would fully endorse that series.

(Syndromes: does that answer your question? Do you want more of a Fundamentalist point-of-view? For Pete's sake, drop me an email so I can discuss more privately. Or IM me or something.)

Tired yet unable to sleep

I am utterly exhausted today. But I drank a ton of caffine today, so I'm wired too. I can feel the tiredness under the surface, but the caffine is keeping me superficially awake.

End result...I'm really cranky. I have no patience and nothing seems enjoyable. Sleep will be good when I'm finally able to get some.

Ooops

You know that paper I turned in yesterday? Turns out it isn't due till next week. Oh well. At least it is out of the way.

Questions?

I'll post my response to Syndrome's question about the Rapture in the near future. Meanwhile, if anyone has any more questions to ask me about what I believe, ask away.

Last Paper

I wrote my last paper of the semester last night! Yay! Only two more weeks left before summer. And only two finals left. This semester has just been flying by.

Bringing Spark to class

Yesterday, I attempted to bring Spark to one of my classes. My babysitter got very sick (she was throwing up) and I decided that I'd rather not have Spark exposed to whatever she had.

In previous weeks, my prof kept saying that I should bring Spark into class instead of leaving him with a babysitter. That didn't seem like a good idea to me, but I knew that my prof was game for it. I was fairly sure that Spark would just be a big distraction during class, but there was only one way to find out, right? And if he handled it well, then I wouldn't have to stress out about getting babysitting for any and every occasion--I'd be able to bring him with me to many things.

My class overlapped with Spark's afternoon nap. So I brought him to the classroom early and attempted to get him to fall asleep in his stroller before class started. If he did that, then we might be able to get through half of class with no difficulties at all.

Unfortunately, he did not fall asleep before class started, or indeed at all. And he decided to be rather vocal as well. And kinda whiny. D'oh! He was being rather distracting and I frequently had to take him out to the hallway to keep him from totally disrupting the class. (He would of course be completely silent the moment we entered the hallway.)

The hardest was when I was taking the quiz. He was very squirmy and noisy and I had to hold him in my lap. Not an ideal quiz taking scenario. Eventually, my prof had to sit next to me and entertain Spark so that I could finish my quiz. (Did I mention that this prof is the most accommodating prof I've ever had?)

I bolted after the quiz, skipping the last 40 mins of class so that I could put Spark down for a nap three hours late.

I have a feeling that I won't be trying that again anytime soon.

Happy Easter

It is a good day to be undead.

What I did on my Spring Break - Friday pt. 2

We're about to leave for CA. I'll be 5 days without my precious oxygen (which does a great job of aborting most of my headaches). And I've already finished my course of prednizone (which does a decent job of preventing my headaches while I'm on it). So for the next 5 days, my only defense against the Clusters are my Imitrex shots. I have 5 doses. Lets hope my Clusters don't decide to double up on me on any given day.

I'm a tad nervous...

What I did on my Spring Break - Friday pt. 1

I met my work deadline. WooHoo! Doing so meant several nights of staying up until 5 AM, but I did it.

Scrivs says that you should avoid the low paying clients as they invariably suck up more of your time than your clients who pay you full price. I'm starting to see his point. I did this project as a favor, but the time I put into it was disproportionate. My client just didn't trust some of my design decisions. Maybe because she isn't paying me much, she thinks that I don't know what I'm doing? Maybe if I charged her full price, she would have left the professional to do his job in peace? Who knows.

I had endless discussions with my client about color and emphasis. Sample discussion:

client: We need to emphasize these names...and can you bold this...and make these links stand out more."

me: Well, yeah, I can, but I don't think that's a very good idea. Look, you can't emphasize everything on the page; that has the same result as emphasizing nothing.

client: But everything on the page is important.

me: Yes, I know. But the very fact that it is included on the page indicates that it is important. If it wasn't, we would have cut it. Choose the 1 or 2 most important things on the page, and we'll emphasize those.

client: But I want to draw the reader's attention from this paragraph to the next one, and then to the next one. The bolding will tell them where to look next.

me: Actually, the fact that the paragraphs follow each other is enough of a cue to your readers that they should read it next.

And so on and so on. Why hire a designer if you aren't going to trust his design sense? My client is too used to making fliers; every design suggestion pushed in that direction: more fonts, more bold, more colors, brighter colors, bigger, more in-your-face. Appropriate for fliers (maybe), but not so much for the website she asked me to put together. She finally relented on most of her requests when I got another designer, one that she trusts (he designs her fliers), to back me up.

Whatever. This stage of the project is done. Now it gets shown to the Board of Directors who will undoubtedly give me a fresh batch of changes to make. But I'm done. Off to vacation with a clear conscience!