Things I've been up to in the last Month and a Half
I was home for spring break for most of the week. Not as long as I would've liked to be home, but I had to be back in BG on Thursday to give a midterm for someone who was going on her honeymoon the week AFTER our spring break. I got to see my family, including my aunt and cousins and my gramma. I got my car inspected and did my taxes. Tuesday I spent most of the day in the 'Boro, visiting with an old friend from high school, with a lot of friends and professors from the music department (but sadly, not Dr. Snyder. :( ), and with Z. Wednesday, Mum and I went to the Grove City Outlets. I got a new "rain" coat (in quotes because we had to Scotch Gaurd it to make it sorta waterproof) and a few tank tops (you can never have too many!). Also tried on boots at Target when we got back because they sell a great variety of rain boots online. I ended up ordering this pair: D'Accord Rain Boots. They match the new coat and the supposedly windproof umbrella, which I have not tested yet (it's been RELATIVELY dry here lately...). My visit home ended with a dentist appointment and lunch with my dad before I headed back out here on Thursday afternoon.
Finally fixing my computer. I've taken poor Athena apart twice in the last month and a half. She was having this unfortunate problem where if I watched videos for a little while, she would just shut down all by herself. I decided finally it was because she was overheating. I tried to solve this once by buying a can of compressed air and taking the back panel off of the computer and blowing the dust out. Now as a laptop owner, I am hesitant to unscrew the back plate by myself, thereby voiding my warranty and rendering me unable to take her to an authorized repair place. BUT... since I bought the computer last April at Circuit City, my warranty is fairly well screwed anyway. No more Circuit City means I wouldn't know where to take the computer. So my options were... deal with the computer shutting down under any amount of video processing (not really an option) OR take her apart myself and see if I could figure out the problem. So I took her apart. The first time, I just blew the dust out of the fan. Thought for sure that would take care of it. No dice. Still had that problem while catching up on ER and House... So I finally got around to taking her apart again on Monday. This time I took out the fan, intending to see if there was maybe a dust buildup on the underside? To my surprise there was a literal carpet of dust between the fan and its little heatsink/air intake thinger. So I've cleaned that out and she seems to be running smoothly. I don't even need to put the feet on. :)
My boyfriend came up to visit again the week after Spring Break. It was really nice to see him again so soon since I didn't expect to be able to until summer break rolls around. Since he only bought the ticket maybe two weeks in advance, it was almost a surprise too. We watched a lot of movies (11 in ten days, some in theaters, some on DVD). We went to Columbus on Monday, because Janet needed a ride down for fieldwork, and went to the Columbus Zoo, where I saw an aquarium with Dory fish (from Finding Nemo...) that were at least as big as my hand! It was a lot of fun. Later in the week I expected to be really busy with classes and a concert, but ended up having to cancel all of my obligations Wednesday-Friday because of an unfortunate need to go to the ER on Wednesday morning (see next paragraph). Nova left on Sunday afternoon, but it was great to have him around for a while again so soon!
Wednesday morning I woke up with incredible pain in my left eye. I thought, oh it's just a headache, I'll take some Ibuprofen and it'll go away. No such luck. I'm really glad Nova was around to drive me to the ER, since my roommates had left for the day and I'm not sure who else I could've asked for a ride at 9:00 in the morning... ER doctor said he thought I had Iritis, an inflammation of the muscles that control the dark part of the eye, put me on Vicodin, told me not to drive (like I could anyway with only one eye!) and sent me home with instructions to go see an opthamologist. I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday sleeping and in the dark. Friday morning, we went to the opthamologist, who pronounced the ER doctor wrong and said my eye itself was fine. He was unconcerned and thought I most likely had an infection of some kind around the eye and prescribed me antibiotics until I told him I had double vision when I looked down. This concerned him, and he sent me to another floor of the hospital to have a head CT, the results of which left him with two options - either I had a blood vessel tumor (benign) or more likely, an orbital pseudotumor, which is a growth on the orbital muscle (the one that controls when you look down, fitting with my doubled vision only when looking down). He was unsure, so referred me to a specialist, who I saw yesterday morning. The specialist confirmed the diagnosis and put me on steroids to treat it.
I'm not sure if any of you remember three years ago in the spring when I woke up with a random black eye. Apparently this is the same condition as the one I have now. I looked it up on the internet and learned that it can recur without warning and most often occurs in patients who are young women, though not always. They don't know what causes it (which the specialist told me yesterday) and treatment is usually just to let the stupid thing go away on its own or to use steroids. It's very painful (which I knew...) but not serious. ...yay?
Anyway, from missing three days of school, I'm a little behind on grading concert reports, but nothing I can't catch up on in a reasonable period of time. The biggest problem from being out of comission for a few days is that I had to reschedule my Oral Exams again... the last section of which would have been last Friday. Instead, I will take it on April 3, putting me even farther behind on thesis but giving me another two weeks to study for the test. I suppose this is a good thing, but really, I just want to have them over with! I'm also working on a paper for the seminar I'm taking this semester, Exoticism in Music in the 19th Century. My paper is on Japanese influence in music in the fin de siecle era (turn of the 20th century) and I'm really excited about how it's coming along. So far I have written 3 1/2 pages (of approximately 20), the introduction and background information on the art style Japonisme, which was a particular movement in art in France from about 1854-1910. My paper is (hopefully) going to relate the visual art obsession with Japanese items/art/styles to the prevalence of musical works using Japanese music as themes and/or inspiration. Still haven't quite decided on a thesis topic, but with the information I've collected for this paper, it is looking more and more likely that it will take a lot more than 20 pages to cover it in a comprehensive manner, leading me to think it may have potential as my 60-page thesis topic... We shall see.
Freakin' COLDPLAY is coming to Detroit in June!!!!! I really really really want to go, but I've got to find at least someone else who wants to go since I don't want to go to Detroit allllll by my lonesome. (Detroit is a scary, scary place.) Though I think the concert is actually in an outdoor arena somewhere outside of the city itself. Cheap tickets are $35 to sit on the lawn, but I think it would be so so worth it! Their tour actually kinda makes me wish I was in Erie this summer, they're playing in Pittsburgh and at Darien Lake in June/July also. How fun would that be?? I finally tracked down the EP Prospekt's March that was released a little after Viva la Vida last year. A few of the tracks are REALLY good. My favorites are "Life in Technicolor II," "Rainy Day" and especially "Glass of Water."
So other than missing almost a week of school from medical stuff, I guess my second semester is going alright. Just gotta play catchup for a few days and I should be right on track!
Finally fixing my computer. I've taken poor Athena apart twice in the last month and a half. She was having this unfortunate problem where if I watched videos for a little while, she would just shut down all by herself. I decided finally it was because she was overheating. I tried to solve this once by buying a can of compressed air and taking the back panel off of the computer and blowing the dust out. Now as a laptop owner, I am hesitant to unscrew the back plate by myself, thereby voiding my warranty and rendering me unable to take her to an authorized repair place. BUT... since I bought the computer last April at Circuit City, my warranty is fairly well screwed anyway. No more Circuit City means I wouldn't know where to take the computer. So my options were... deal with the computer shutting down under any amount of video processing (not really an option) OR take her apart myself and see if I could figure out the problem. So I took her apart. The first time, I just blew the dust out of the fan. Thought for sure that would take care of it. No dice. Still had that problem while catching up on ER and House... So I finally got around to taking her apart again on Monday. This time I took out the fan, intending to see if there was maybe a dust buildup on the underside? To my surprise there was a literal carpet of dust between the fan and its little heatsink/air intake thinger. So I've cleaned that out and she seems to be running smoothly. I don't even need to put the feet on. :)
My boyfriend came up to visit again the week after Spring Break. It was really nice to see him again so soon since I didn't expect to be able to until summer break rolls around. Since he only bought the ticket maybe two weeks in advance, it was almost a surprise too. We watched a lot of movies (11 in ten days, some in theaters, some on DVD). We went to Columbus on Monday, because Janet needed a ride down for fieldwork, and went to the Columbus Zoo, where I saw an aquarium with Dory fish (from Finding Nemo...) that were at least as big as my hand! It was a lot of fun. Later in the week I expected to be really busy with classes and a concert, but ended up having to cancel all of my obligations Wednesday-Friday because of an unfortunate need to go to the ER on Wednesday morning (see next paragraph). Nova left on Sunday afternoon, but it was great to have him around for a while again so soon!
Wednesday morning I woke up with incredible pain in my left eye. I thought, oh it's just a headache, I'll take some Ibuprofen and it'll go away. No such luck. I'm really glad Nova was around to drive me to the ER, since my roommates had left for the day and I'm not sure who else I could've asked for a ride at 9:00 in the morning... ER doctor said he thought I had Iritis, an inflammation of the muscles that control the dark part of the eye, put me on Vicodin, told me not to drive (like I could anyway with only one eye!) and sent me home with instructions to go see an opthamologist. I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday sleeping and in the dark. Friday morning, we went to the opthamologist, who pronounced the ER doctor wrong and said my eye itself was fine. He was unconcerned and thought I most likely had an infection of some kind around the eye and prescribed me antibiotics until I told him I had double vision when I looked down. This concerned him, and he sent me to another floor of the hospital to have a head CT, the results of which left him with two options - either I had a blood vessel tumor (benign) or more likely, an orbital pseudotumor, which is a growth on the orbital muscle (the one that controls when you look down, fitting with my doubled vision only when looking down). He was unsure, so referred me to a specialist, who I saw yesterday morning. The specialist confirmed the diagnosis and put me on steroids to treat it.
I'm not sure if any of you remember three years ago in the spring when I woke up with a random black eye. Apparently this is the same condition as the one I have now. I looked it up on the internet and learned that it can recur without warning and most often occurs in patients who are young women, though not always. They don't know what causes it (which the specialist told me yesterday) and treatment is usually just to let the stupid thing go away on its own or to use steroids. It's very painful (which I knew...) but not serious. ...yay?
Anyway, from missing three days of school, I'm a little behind on grading concert reports, but nothing I can't catch up on in a reasonable period of time. The biggest problem from being out of comission for a few days is that I had to reschedule my Oral Exams again... the last section of which would have been last Friday. Instead, I will take it on April 3, putting me even farther behind on thesis but giving me another two weeks to study for the test. I suppose this is a good thing, but really, I just want to have them over with! I'm also working on a paper for the seminar I'm taking this semester, Exoticism in Music in the 19th Century. My paper is on Japanese influence in music in the fin de siecle era (turn of the 20th century) and I'm really excited about how it's coming along. So far I have written 3 1/2 pages (of approximately 20), the introduction and background information on the art style Japonisme, which was a particular movement in art in France from about 1854-1910. My paper is (hopefully) going to relate the visual art obsession with Japanese items/art/styles to the prevalence of musical works using Japanese music as themes and/or inspiration. Still haven't quite decided on a thesis topic, but with the information I've collected for this paper, it is looking more and more likely that it will take a lot more than 20 pages to cover it in a comprehensive manner, leading me to think it may have potential as my 60-page thesis topic... We shall see.
Freakin' COLDPLAY is coming to Detroit in June!!!!! I really really really want to go, but I've got to find at least someone else who wants to go since I don't want to go to Detroit allllll by my lonesome. (Detroit is a scary, scary place.) Though I think the concert is actually in an outdoor arena somewhere outside of the city itself. Cheap tickets are $35 to sit on the lawn, but I think it would be so so worth it! Their tour actually kinda makes me wish I was in Erie this summer, they're playing in Pittsburgh and at Darien Lake in June/July also. How fun would that be?? I finally tracked down the EP Prospekt's March that was released a little after Viva la Vida last year. A few of the tracks are REALLY good. My favorites are "Life in Technicolor II," "Rainy Day" and especially "Glass of Water."
So other than missing almost a week of school from medical stuff, I guess my second semester is going alright. Just gotta play catchup for a few days and I should be right on track!