December 7, 2006

Migraine today

That is all.

October 20, 2006

What a week!

All three of us with colds, and Joe and I with migraines. I think, though, that I gave an excellent lecture yesterday on Dr. Faustus, zonked on Tylenol 3. If life hands the people around you lemons, make lemonade, I always say. My students may have another story, of course.

Well, let them tell it on their own blogs.

It was an excellent lecture.

September 24, 2006

I have a headache

and the Jinker Boy just returned from a birthday party. This is a bad combination.

September 11, 2006

Another first,

this time my grad class. I felt a little sluggish but otherwise think it went reasonably well. (Other than there seeming to be no internet access in the classroom. Perhaps there is a jack somewhere but I didn't get the door unlocked until the class was due to begin and so was not about to crawl around the edges of the room like the woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper," looking for an ethernet jack. First impressions are so important.) I was up late last night mucking with the course website and a migraine seemed to be coming on, always a dilemma. Do I gamble and not take the pill, and perhaps wake up with a headache? Or do I take the pill, probably avoid the potential headache, but most certainly spend much of the next day with cotton wool between my ears?

Do ya feel lucky, punk?

Well, do ya?

October 29, 2005

Does your dog do this?

I was sick yesterday (don't ask. Gladys Kravitz's "sick headache" with an emphasis on the "sick.") and Sally, our Miniature Schnauzer, was concerned. As she always is when something is wrong. She would not let me alone, even though to be perfectly silent and still was the only thing I wanted in the universe. It was not to be: little nuzzlings, pokings, and sighs; the occasional bark in response to who knows what; one dramatic thrashing and churning episode when she got tangled inside the duvet cover. Yet how could I complain? Particularly as I had just read "The People of Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi,¹ about a future earth where humans are genetically modified to withstand all manner of pollution and contamination and to eat anything — and I mean anything; where all other species only exist in zoos, if at all; where one mangy dog manages to survive in the desolation, only to encounter dog's best friend.

I am wondering about doing an sf course focused on human relationships with other animals. Though frankly, it might be too depressing. "A Boy and His Dog," anyone? But the David Brin uplift series is pretty perky. Actually, now that I think of it, there are more than a few narratives which feature hybrids of people and other animals, wise sentient animals, and what have you. Okay, there are enough hopeful stories to provide some breathing room between the tales of wholesale exploitation and extinction. Oh, yuck, I could start with Wilkie Collins' Heart and Science ... I'm getting morbid.

I can't imagine doing such a course. The mass destruction of humanity is of course deplorable, but I really can't abide cruelty to animals.

Thrash and bark away, Sally.

¹ The Little Professor finds the story intriguing but feels the end is too pat. Niall Harrison disagrees. I think the ending is a nod to Harlan Ellison's story. Matt Cheney had A Conversation with Paolo Bacigalupi last year. The story was up for a Hugo for Best Novelette, though it lost to "The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link.

April 25, 2005

Parent/child

I went to bed with a migraine yesterday in the early evening. This means that I took some meds then ensconced myself in a complicated apparatus of pillows, ice packs, eye shades, and ear plugs. The Jinker Boy hovered, solicitous. When I woke up a few hours later, after he had gone to bed, I found myself surrounded by a number of very small toys tucked into the crook of my shoulder and leaning up against my head. There was one in my hand.

And my headache was gone.

Coincidence?

April 11, 2005

Slept

a few hours earlier, which I why I'm up now (I had a migraine). Woke up to see the Jinker Boy and Joe beside the bed, trying to tempt me to get up and eat some supper.

Me: What have you been doing all evening?
Joe: He's been watching videos but he got tired of them.
JB (solemnly): They made me go crazy.
Me (look at Joe)
Joe (nods).

I contemplate not getting up, but my bladder is full. I go upstairs to the kitchen, and he is, indeed, crazy.

March 1, 2005

Lower back pain

can strike at any time: while lifting, while twisting, while getting up too suddenly after sitting too long on the toilet reading a story about Ziyi Zhang in the NYTimes fashion supplement: no-one is safe.

It has been a bad health week and it's only Tuesday. Monday I got a wierd headache in class — wierd because it wasn't a migraine. Non-migrainous-headaches are pretty exotic at our house. Woke up this morning, assured a concerned Jinker Boy that I no longer had a headache — which would have put a serious crimp in his snow day — and then proceeded, as above.

Scared to get up tomorrow.

February 2, 2005

Discussing Elizabeth Barrett Browning's

use of morphine in my intro. class today (maybe I'm sleazy to pander but they really seem to brighten up when I mention the various addictions of the writers we're discussing) and was wishing, earlier this evening, that I had some myself. Had a meeting with the other members of my dept. at which I was presenting a somewhat contentious proposal about reorganization, and not only have I come down with a cold, but I developed a migraine. Usually I would have just left and gone home to bed, but didn't feel I could this time, it being my initiative and all. To add some piquancy to the evening, begged a ride home from the person at the table least enamoured with my proposal, and had to fight hard not to throw up in her new car as we made chitchat for twenty minutes.

Came home and decided to go right to bed, but was worried that the Jinker Boy, having been without me for some hours, would object:

Me: Sweetie, I'm very sorry, but Mummy has a headache and has to go to bed now.
JB: (not moving eyes from Blue's Clues DVD) Well go to bed then.
Joe: (snorts, then looks abashed and pats my shoulder).

So, doped up and clutching my ice packs, I crashed out and had vivid dreams about programme requirements.

January 24, 2005

Hildegard von Bingen

Slide show of her art on this attractive site (link from Catalogue Blog).

Bonus links:

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) - A discography. And another.
Patron Saints Index: Blessed Hildegard von Bingen.
Hildegard von Bingen lyrics in latin and english.
Hildegard of Bingen: Symphony of the Harmony of Heaven.
Abtei St. Hildegard.
Hildegard.org.
Hildegard von Bingen's healing chants.
Hildegard of Bingen: "a blazing mind longing to soar above the clouds."

And, a migraine tidbit:

According to this site:

It is now generally agreed that Hildegard suffered from migraine, and that her visions were a result of this condition. The way she describes her visions, the precursors, to visions, to debilitating aftereffects, point to classic symptoms of migraine sufferers. Although a number of visual hallucinations may occur, the more common ones described are the "scotomata" which often follow perceptions of phosphenes in the visual field. Scintillating scotomata are also associated with areas of total blindness in the visual field, something Hildegard might have been describing when she spoke of points of intense light, and also the "extinguished stars." Migraine attacks are usually followed by sickness, paralysis, blindness-all reported by Hildegard, and when they pass, by a period of rebound and feeling better than before, a euphoria also described by her. Also, writes Oliver Sachs

Among the strangest and most intense symptoms of migraine aura, and the most difficult of description and analysis, are the occurrences of feelings of sudden familiarity and certitude... or its opposite. Such states are experienced, momentarily and occasionally, by everyone; their occurrence in migraine auras is marked by their overwhelming intensity and relatively long duration.

It is a tribute to the remarkable spirit and the intellectual powers of this woman that she was able to turn a debilitating illness into the word of god, and create so much with it.

I have started a new blog category, "migraines," in honour of Hildegard.

November 8, 2004

Migraineurs...

do you ever just keep doing whatever it is that you are doing, thinking, if you think about it at all, that those little twinges are just a tension headache, but when you stop what you are doing, you realize that it is a real headache, not even sneaking up on you but rather ignored?

Or am I the only one?

At any rate, no marking; off to bed.

If there are not posts in the next few days it means that I was murdered by my students. Remember me.

July 24, 2004

An itinerent massage therapist saved my life

just now, in the tatty tourist market by St. Martin's in the Fields.¹ Eighteen quid for half an hour on the neck, and another twenty for thirty minutes of reflexology (aka. foot-poking), and cheap at twice the price. Well okay, that last is an exaggeration, but well worth every strange, large penny, anyway. I really, really needed to lie on a big air mattress in a tent, open to the late afternoon breeze, and drift off as someone found all the sore bits.

This has turned into a difficult trip. The first half, the conference and research side-trip to Suffolk, went well. But I have tried to fit in too much travelling, with the result that I have had a wicked migraine for the last few days (just now under control with my second-to-last pill). The series of visits to aging and/or ailing aunts and uncles has not been too upbeat, either. Okay, that sounds cold, and it shouldn't because I don't feel cold, I feel teary because this is probably the last time I will see some of them. Or, in the case of my uncle who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and of whom I am very fond, the last time he will see me. Oh hell, even my Uncle Bob's dog, Hamish, is fifteen. Jesus H. Christ on a raft!

¹ Which has not been in the fields since the early seventeenth century. See what I am learning from reading Quicksilver?

May 17, 2004

So it is written

Matthew Cheney points towards the Nostradamus Quatrain Generator. Delighted, I asked it if my migraine would end today. This is the response:

Triremes full of captives of all ages
Will be found in the temple of the Vestals
Their two vassals rebel against them
As the primate succumbs at Reggio

I think that means no, assuming that I am the succumbing primate. But this is not necessarily bad news for the PhD candidate whose defense I am attending tomorrow.

March 28, 2004

Ian Rankin, A Question of Blood

Half-way through; started last night as a treat to myself after three days of migraine hell. (Yes, I know I have to mark your papers, students from 3621. And I will.) I've read all the Rebus series, and they're the only detective/mystery novels that I still read. The story this time around is prosaically topical — ex-SAS soldier goes psycho and shoots up a school — and the writing seems off. I mean, "Now, on the M74 south of Glasgow, [the windshield wipers] were flying to and fro like Roadrunner's legs in the cartoon" (125). Or, "Her eyes were the same colour as the clouds which had obscured Arthur's Seat earlier that morning" (130). And, there is too much explication, too much awkward filler. The book is part of a successful franchise, moving along on the accumulated steam of its predecessors, but there is not much here that would draw in new readers. Rankin is not that old, yet with this novel he — and Rebus — have grown curmudgeonly.

Boy, there is no reviewer so cranky as a betrayed reviewer.

March 26, 2004

After two days of a wicked migraine

I noted this link on theme funerals, from Stephany Aulenback at Maud Newton, with much interest. I can't decide between the Aquarium (so peaceful) or the New Orleans Jazz Funeral (after all, I won't be able to hear it).

March 25, 2004

Just a matter of time

Just overheard an ad for a new medication for "erectile disfunction" (otherwise known as getting older) that managed to make that scary list of possible side effects read at the end into a recommendation: "While rare, if erections last longer than four hours, seek medical attention." Just so.

Now if they could just cure migraines. I was home in bed with my ice packs all day. Crap.

March 13, 2004

This is too wonderful

I have a migraine and have to get up early to prepare for Jinker boy's third third birthday party tomorrow (he's already had one at his aunt's in NY and one at his babysitter's), but I had to post this: Johnny Depp is playing the Earl of Rochester in The Libertine, a film currently shooting in the UK. Heads up, all you former students of 3204 who developed a soft spot for the Earl.

Thanks to Invisible Adjunct for the link.

January 19, 2004

What I've been doing

Had a surprise birthday party for Joe on Friday, which wasn't, as it turned out, a surprise, though he was very gracious and played along. I'm now exhausted and broke, but it was a good party.

Have a migraine today and spent it in bed with my trusty ice-packs. Awake now at this ungodly hour but back to bed soon. Cancelled class tomorrow; it's for their own good.

My laptop has died. Enough said. How to get a new one? Sigh.

The new blog for the women's writing class is percolating nicely.