Delay
Time's wingéd chariot came and went today and I didn't get anything written on here. The good news is that you have a whole night and day to take care of the question concerning our friend, Ben. Happy Hunting!
Prayer Request for Dad
Some of you may remember from last summer that my father underwent quadruple bypass surgery. This week he has been experiencing numbness in his left arm and tightness in his chest… he is scheduled for an angiogram on Tuesday. Best case scenario is that it finds nothing, although given the present symptoms, that seems unlikely. Second best is that any blockages can be taken care of with an angioplasty while they are already “in there.”
What's worrisome is that while they successfully did that nineteen years ago on my father, they had tried last summer only to decide bypass surgery was necessary. Worst case is that they would do another bypass — the second of (as I understand it) two possible such surgeries during one's life. Not even considering the risk at hand during surgery, this would be bad also because such surgeries usually only last a maximum of a decade and a half or so, meaning that Dad would be in trouble down the road when he should be “due” for a second surgery.
If you can keep him in your prayers, that would be great.
It Just Makes You Want to Say, "Inside Cheke and Cimble"
Kevin got the answer to the question that has been haunting the asisaid Challenge: it was the Garden of the Forking Paths, a delightful short story from Jorge Luis Borges. (It is much more interesting than the first paragraph — that which I quoted — gives any indication to). You can read it here.
The story is complex and elegantly crafted. The concept expressed inside, well, I won't tell you… I'll make you read it and see if you want to say “inside cheke and cimble” afterwards or not.
Decompression
Two good things happened today:
- I took my last final today: Brit Lit I. This means that once I wind myself down a bit, I'm back to only doing business-related work for awhile. At any rate, the final had two parts, six quote identification questions (of which you had to write an essay on three) and a comprehensive “matching” section that looked like something I did back in third grade. The essay/identification part turned out to be easy, but the matching was a bear — it doesn't matter what it looks like, it matters what you have to match. There were 23 or 24 items to match to 20 other items (the extra 3 or 4 weren't used), of those, I'm almost certain I got 10 right, I felt “alright” about 15. This part is supposedly something everyone does, and I quote, “terrible” on, is graded on a curve, and is only worth 5% of the total grade for the course, so I'm hoping it won't be too much of a problem.
If I get a 90 on the essay section (which I think is realistic based on the previous two tests), I should only need a low-middle B on the paper (25% of the grade) to get an A on the course. If I get the same grade on the essays as the last two times, I'll only need a middle-C on the paper to do the same. This paper wasn't my favorite topic of the bunch I wrote, but it had the best result based on the given material, I thought, so I have cautious but high hopes for it.
- Remember the issue I couldn't talk about that had me down back in October? Well, I think the situation has been remedied completely and even improved beyond where it was before the October issue. I'm thrilled about that. Now I just wait to see how all the pieces fit together. I still cannot talk about the specifics, but hopefully I will be able to eventually.
How was your day?
Draining Myself
This fall has been interesting. Working toward getting out of the computer sector by getting an English and Religion degree is something I've been working on for awhile now (as noted in the linked post), but this was the first semester I was entirely devoted to this rather than meeting general education requirements and the like. Trying to balance obligations has been tough, and some less important projects that I normally work on as part of my business have gone by the way side… at least temporarily.
As I said a few weeks ago, business has been a bit slow, so I was focusing completely on papers. Since the beginning of November, I have probably written between 70-80 pages, about 60-62 on major papers. Now into finals week, I've written 28 pages in longhand over the past 24 hours over the course of six hours worth of exams (hey, that's 4.7 pages per hour). Now I hurt. I have the bad habit of gripping the pen very tightly when writing in such a manor, and my arm hurts from the bottom all the way to my shoulder. Even if I was not trying to work with clients and complete this course work, this has been the craziest semester of any kind, I've ever had. I've felt on the edge of insanity the last few weeks trying to get stuff done — I'm not the kind of person who likes to be working against the edge of a deadline. I feel completely drained.
But, I'm not complaining. It feels good. I can look back and I'm satisfied. I've spent the last four months immersing myself in the things that I love to spend time doing. It will be years before I am able to switch professions, who knows, I may never switch completely — but the point is I know that I am doing what I need to do; what I should have realized I needed to do a long time ago. If you can be so busy that you have no time to catch your breath and still be happy with what you are doing, that is an excellent indicator… I fit that to a “t” right now.
This Week
Will probably be very busy, but after that, I should have a bit more tranquil schedule for awhile. That's a nice thought.
Tomorrow...
…I will rise out of the ashes of too many pages of papers like a Phoenix, err… Firebird, err… Firefox! That's it, like a Firefox!
Writer's Block
I have a bad case of writers block. I haven't been able to make any progress on my opinion pieces that need to be written for OfB. I can't get any of my ideas onto paper for Sakamuyo. It's frustrating for someone who normally can do this kind of stuff.
To make the compound the situation, I had the need to write approximately 52 researched, documented pages for courses as well. Perhaps fortunately, business has been slow the last few weeks, so I've been able to pretty much dedicate myself to the writing of those pages. As it stands, I've written 53 pages in the last few weeks, although some of those are cases where I took more than the required amount of pages, which means I still have about four to five pages to go to meet the requirements for one topic that I lumped in that grouping of pages.
At any rate, even if those pages had flowed, none of them actually provide anything I can put on OfB — which is, bad news. One of my biggest flaws is that I need to be “inspired” to write even technical reviews, probably because I'm not really a technically minded person despite the fact that I can make people's eyes glaze over with technical facts at times. It might sound silly, but that's why I call it a “flaw.”
I guess my Muse decided to take a trip off Mt. Helicon to go see some “sights.” Maybe that will mean better inspiration in the long run… but, alas, for now, it may mean continued struggles.
Tired
Today was a day of catching up on stuff that needed to get done… I stayed busy almost all the day doing stuff I had hoped to get done earlier this week. Now I am tired, so no big blog post will be coming today.
How about you?
