COUGH, COUGH

So, I’m into the coughing stage of my cold. I’ve encountered your typical sequence of symptoms: sore throat, runny nose, and cough. The good news is that this is usually the last stage of a cold. The bad news is that coughs can linger for a long time. I’m going to attempt to combat that by getting lots of rest.

What a difference it makes to be on-campus now. I woke up today at 11am and my first class was at 12:30pm. I didn’t get out of my PJs until noon. I feel some more energy returning to my body, though I still don’t know what it’s like to be on-campus and healthy this year. I have my microwave and toaster oven now. I would like to thank Amber for keeping these items safe for the three weeks I was gone.

I also bought my laundry card today. “Official” UBC residences use debit-like cards to operate the washing machines and dryers. I picked one up for $5 which includes a $2 credit to start me off. It’s a dollar for the washing machine, just like at SJC. The dryers are $0.35 for the first 30 minutes and then $0.20 for further 15 minute increments, so an hour would cost me $0.75, which is $0.25 cheaper than at SJC. I guess with the card system people aren’t always hunting for loonies which is convenient. My only complaint is that I have to go outside to reach the laundry room. During the rainy season, this might be a problem keeping my clothes dry during the sprint back to my apartment.

Well, on that note, I’m going to drink some hot water, hack up some phlegm, and think about going to bed (or watch Shaun of the Dead, Bryan I have the CD now).

BLEAH

I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but suffering through two different ailments back to back sucks donkey balls. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t leaking fluids out of either my ass or my nose. I haven’t been healthy for nearly two weeks now. This can’t be good for my body. All I do now is bitch on my blog, though I write about what’s happening in my life, and lately, all I’ve been is sick. What a shitty way to start the school year.

I swear, if I get sick with something else next Monday, I’m going to demand compensation. I’m not sure who I’ll go to demand this compensation, but I do know I don’t deserve to be sick three weeks in a row. What a bunch of complete BS.

OH THAT'S JUST NOT FAIR

Having just recovered from a serious bout of food poisoning, I now find myself fighting off a common cold. This latest development in the comedy of errors that is my life, occurred last night when I noticed a little tickle in the back of my throat. That little tickle grew into an uncomfortable grapefruit-sized lump by the early morning.

Today was supposed to be chock-full of errand-running, furniture assembly, and apartment cleaning. All I feel like doing now is sleeping. Oh why can’t I catch a break these days?

IN SEARCH OF A TOILET BRUSH

Now that I’m well on my way down the road to recovery, I’m itching to things unpacked and cleaned here at my apartment. If I had it my way, I’d clean this place from top to bottom all in one stretch, but I’d exhaust myself in the process. I’m going to start with my bathroom. I’m going to make it sparking clean. I still need a toilet brush though. I was at Wal-Mart today and I saw one for $9. Nine dollars is too much for a toilet brush and holder. I saw another one for $3 but the holder part was designed so that one side of it was exposed to air. That meant that when you put your brush back into the holder, it would drip toilet water onto your floor. What a dumb design. I’m going to the Dollar Store tomorrow to see if they have an economical, better designed model.

Next, I’m going to tackle my kitchen. The cleaning part won’t be so bad, the unpacking will be the challenge. This is the most poorly designed kitchen I’ve seen in my entire life. I have a set of four narrow drawers. They’re about 8 inches wide, the width of a sheet of paper. That’s so narrow that any normal-sized cutlery trays won’t fit into drawers. I had to go buy another narrower cutlery tray. I’ll probably need another one just to fit all my cutlery into drawers. Also, all my above-counter cupboards are extremely shallow. So much so that I can’t fit any of my dinner plates into them. It’s ridiculous. The only place I can see for them is the one cupboard below the counter, but I still need to figure out where to place all my pots and pans. Maybe I’ll put them in the drawer below my oven.

I know that some people want to come over and look at my place, but at this point, I’d be embarassed for them to see this mess. To cleaning!

ON SOLID GROUND

If you had told me on Monday that on Saturday night, I’d be sharing 100 chicken wings with four other guys, I would have found that statement quite incredible to believe. Here I was tonight though, consuming my fair share of some incredibly delicious breaded chicken wings.

It has been a difficult week. I can’t remember in the last two years if I’ve had a more challenging time. Between dealing with food poisoning that was debilitating and attending classes, I also moved into my apartment in T-Bird. Of course, the effects of the food poisoning overshadowed everything this week. For several days, I was confined to my bed, waiting for the painful cramps that would occur with a frequency of as little as five minutes apart.

Today was the first day that I felt someone recovered. Fatigue is something I am still trying to get over. I get tired more easily now. Simple exertion now causes me to break out into a sweat. My pants are very loose on me now.

With my recovery on the way, I am looking forward to getting settled. I work best when I feel comfortable in my setting. I need to clean my place. UBC Housekeeping is a joke. While I didn’t find a dead body in my tub, there are some glaring areas where some work is needed. My bathroom needs a once over. Among over things, there’s some strange orange mildew growing on my tub ceiling. In my oven, there’s an odd crystalline patch on one of the walls.

I wonder if I’ll ever getting everything unpacked into it’s proper place. So much of my stuff isn’t even here. I still have a few boxes over at SJC. Hell, my microwave and toaster oven are still SJC.

Ok, I have to go put together the rest of my cabinet before fatigue overtakes me again. More soon.

ALL HANDS ON THE POOP DECK

I’m tired, so I’ll keep this short. Tonight will be my first night here at T-Bird. Most of my stuff is everywhere, still packed away. I have three pieces of Ikea furniture to put together. Earlier in the day, I went saw a doctor about my illness. She said it was almost certainly food poisoning. I’ve had food poisoning before, but by the spice mines of Kessel, I’ve never felt anything like this before. It’s turned my whole purpose in life into cramping and pooping.

She gave me the okay to take Imodium. Now you might be wondering why I didn’t take that from day one. Well, that’s because a few years ago, I saw this medical detective show on TV. It featured the story of a young boy who came down with food poisoning by eating improperly cooked ground beef. He got sick and his parents at first gave him anti-poop medicine. It turns out that made it even worse. He was eventually hospitalized and just when it seemed things were getting better, he developed a hole in his intestinal tract. This led to an infection that nearly killed him. While he survived, his immune system now operates at a much reduced capacity. A simple piece of hamburger will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Well, with that in the back of my mind, I waited for the doc to give me the green light. I started taking the Imodium in the late afternoon. It certainly has helped, but it hasn’t eliminated the problem yet. Now, instead of knowing I’ll definitely have to go every five minutes, it’s now only a possibility I’ll have to go every five minutes. I’m not out of the woods yet.

Alright, I gotta get some rest. If you see me on-campus and I walk right by you, pray that I make it to the can on-time.

POSTPONED

For more than a month, I’d be looking forward to this day as it is my move-in date for new T-Bird apartment. I will not, however, be spending the night on-campus. My head was pounding all night and I got very little rest. When it was time to get up for school, I just leaned against the bathroom counter for five minutes. I caught myself breathing heavily as if I had just sprinted. I felt awful.

I am pretty sure I have the stomach flu. I feel this virus wants to knock me on my ass and then some. If the constant head throbbing and muscle aches weren’t enough, I can’t seem to retain any food. It goes through me like a greased pig on a Slip ‘N Slide. I have to be near a bathroom at all times now.

Somehow, I mustered the strength to get to school. In hindsight, I probably should have stayed home. I made it through three hours of class, where somehow, I closed off my “leaky valve”. After class, I did pick up my keys nonetheless. I have seen my new place. I’m not sure if it’s fair to comment on it now, since all I can concentrate on is not pooping every five minutes. I’ll take some digital photos when I have the time and energy.

I so thankful that my father came to pick me up from school. That reminds of me of line from Conan ‘O Brien, “which one of these buttons calls your parents to pick you up?” My dad also loaded up the car with some stuff, so we moved a few things in. I was winded just after a few boxes. We then drove home.

I am going to spend the night here at my parents and I’m not even sure if I’ll be moving in for real tomorrow. I’m going to take this day by day.

DAMN IT

Tomorrow I take possession of my apartment on-campus. It will signal the end of a difficult three week period when I spent on average 12-15 hours a week using transit. It seems however, fate is not without a sense of the dramatic.

Do you remember the end of Star Trek II : The Wrath of Khan? Kirk had finally outwitted Khan. As Khan’s crippled ship drifted and Khan himself was dying, he ignored Enterprise’s demands to surrender. Instead, he armed the Genesis device which threatened to blow himself and the Enterprise with him. Kirk realizes this and immediately turns the Enterprise around to get away, but without warp capability they won’t make it. In a classic scene, Khan mutters the line, “No… You can’t get away… From hell’s heart I stab at thee…”

Fate is Khan and I am the Enterprise. After three weeks of commuting, I avoided nearly everything that could go wrong. I wasn’t late for class a single time. I didn’t get diarrhea on the bus. None of my buses were late nor did they break down. I missed a stabbing incident at the Lougheed Skytrain station by less than 30 minutes. I managed to avoid catching an illness from all those unwashed commuters…. oh wait , what’s this?

Sometime this afternoon, I felt every muscle in my body ache and sing out that they were sore. Granted I did play hockey for the first time in three weeks yesterday, but these were the aches and pains that you feel when you’re about to be knocked on your ass by something. I don’t know what this is going to be, a cold, a flu? Who the hell knows. I do know that I just want to drink warm fluids and lie down. However, in between reading for my classes, an assignment, and packing the remainder of my stuff, I won’t be able to rest. I hope I’ll be in a half-decent condition to move tomorrow.

Incidently, the last line before Khan dies is, “For hate’s sake… I spit my last breath at thee!” The only question that remains is, do I have a Spock who will save the day?

CONSUMER ALERT

I was at the Lougheed Town Centre Wal-Mart this evening to get some things for my apartment. As I entered the store, I spotted giant walls of Halloween candy that been already put into place. I usually don’t buy Halloween candy, but the neat rows and clear delineation between brands appealed to the order-seeking part of my brain.

I’m a big fan of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups so I looked for those. There were bags of them packaged in a single-serving size. In each bag, there was 510 g of peanut butter and chocolate goodness for $3.92. Curious, I wanted to see what the standard three-pack cost. I sauntered over to the check-out lines and found the candy display. There, I saw the normal package, weighing in at 51 g cost $0.72. Keep in mind that everything at Wal-Mart is usually cheaper than anywhere else. It’s probably at least $1 at Safeway.

I did the math, which was easy, even for me. If I had to buy 510 g of PB cups in the three-pack size, it’d cost me $7.20. Compare that to the $3.92 for the large bag. Incredible. Buying candy and chocolate in small quantities is an incredible rip-off. If you buy confectionaries at even irregular intervals, you’re better off buying the Halloween-sized bags.

And I learned something today…

In completely different news, the 2004 Disney Channel Kids Awards Show was held in London just a few days ago. Disney, known for its family entertainment, put on quite a display. I believe this year’s theme was, “And Now, Something for Dad”.

RESERVED FOR GREG WILLIAMS

As you all know, everytime I run into Greg Williams, I write about it on my blog. I saw Greg and his lady friend Erin at Futureshop several weeks ago. He had some fascinating story about returning a digital camera, but I could not muster the effort to get all the fascinating details.

So, if Greg wants to tell the story here, he can. Erin, if you’re reading this, you can tell the story as well, just leave it in the comments. Otherwise, I’ll just make up something.