Life is complicated, and then there's mold
Yesterday ranked high in the Crappiest Days count for the month.
I must have slept through my alarm clock for a bit. I never do this, I'm a terribly light sleeper in the morning. This is mostly to my benefit, as in the past I've worken up to the "click" of my old radio alarm clock turning on. My new-to-me alarm clock has taken on interesting personality traits lately. It used to belong to my friend A*, who kindly gave it to me when she left town. It would make an excellent example for my Usability class in "how not to design an alarm clock for Procris." The thing has four settings: radio, off, radio alarm, and beeping alarm. These are operated by a tiny switch on the side that can only be moved with a pen or a hairclip or something. Well, I managed to break it some how, so that it's stuck in the "alarm beeping" stage. This is fine, as it turns out, because through some weird space/matter warp, the "sleep" function now turns on the radio. The sequence that occurs in the morning now is: Alarm goes off to soft beeping. This is not as good at waking me up as voices are, but it works, usually. I hit "sleep" which turns on NPR. When I want to turn the damn thing off, I hit "snooze/ sleep off." This button also works if I hit it *before* the "sleep" button in it's original function: ie, it gives me 9 more minutes of sleep. Does this make sense to anyone? Anyways, I slept through the soft beeping for a few minutes yesterday, which meant I was running late to class.
I biked furiously to get there on time, even five mintues early so I could print out my treatment report. At which point my professor asked where my respirator was, as we were doing solvent removal of pressure sensitive tape that day and I'd need it. So I cursed, which I keep meaning to work on not doing, hopped on the bike and peddled furiously back home. I wiped out taking one 90 degree left, in front of a car, who thankfully had stopped at the stop sign and actually waved me through, so I know he saw me and wasn't going to run me over now that I'd crashed. Hip hurts, even though I caught myself and ran. Got the respirator, biked furiously back to class.
After sitting in class for all of five minutes, one of my classmates pointed out that I was exhibiting the signs of dehydration, red face, white lips... at which point I realized I was shaking. My body does not like heat. I know this. Biking 3 times my daily commute in record time, was not really the brightest move. I got excused to guzzle water (which you can't do in lab...) and nearly fell down.
When I sat down to class discussion, I realized that I had my book lab notebook, not my paper lab notebook. All fine and dandy, I can take notes in either and switch them later. Except that my paper lab notebook had the highlighted and written over article I was presenting that afternoon.
Then we started getting sick(er). One of my classmates left to go see the health clinic folks in the morning, she was coughing so hard, another left early in the afternoon, and I was feeling like I'd been run over by a dump truck.
The good news is that because people needed to leave for health reasons, I didn't have to present my article. Also, the mold count in the building is so high we've been ordered not to come in this weekend. We all have automatic extensions on our projects. So I'll be staying home to recover from the mold exposure, do a lot of reading, and work on judging blogs for my prof. I wanted to get stuff done this weekend, but I can't argue against not going to the basement!
I must have slept through my alarm clock for a bit. I never do this, I'm a terribly light sleeper in the morning. This is mostly to my benefit, as in the past I've worken up to the "click" of my old radio alarm clock turning on. My new-to-me alarm clock has taken on interesting personality traits lately. It used to belong to my friend A*, who kindly gave it to me when she left town. It would make an excellent example for my Usability class in "how not to design an alarm clock for Procris." The thing has four settings: radio, off, radio alarm, and beeping alarm. These are operated by a tiny switch on the side that can only be moved with a pen or a hairclip or something. Well, I managed to break it some how, so that it's stuck in the "alarm beeping" stage. This is fine, as it turns out, because through some weird space/matter warp, the "sleep" function now turns on the radio. The sequence that occurs in the morning now is: Alarm goes off to soft beeping. This is not as good at waking me up as voices are, but it works, usually. I hit "sleep" which turns on NPR. When I want to turn the damn thing off, I hit "snooze/ sleep off." This button also works if I hit it *before* the "sleep" button in it's original function: ie, it gives me 9 more minutes of sleep. Does this make sense to anyone? Anyways, I slept through the soft beeping for a few minutes yesterday, which meant I was running late to class.
I biked furiously to get there on time, even five mintues early so I could print out my treatment report. At which point my professor asked where my respirator was, as we were doing solvent removal of pressure sensitive tape that day and I'd need it. So I cursed, which I keep meaning to work on not doing, hopped on the bike and peddled furiously back home. I wiped out taking one 90 degree left, in front of a car, who thankfully had stopped at the stop sign and actually waved me through, so I know he saw me and wasn't going to run me over now that I'd crashed. Hip hurts, even though I caught myself and ran. Got the respirator, biked furiously back to class.
After sitting in class for all of five minutes, one of my classmates pointed out that I was exhibiting the signs of dehydration, red face, white lips... at which point I realized I was shaking. My body does not like heat. I know this. Biking 3 times my daily commute in record time, was not really the brightest move. I got excused to guzzle water (which you can't do in lab...) and nearly fell down.
When I sat down to class discussion, I realized that I had my book lab notebook, not my paper lab notebook. All fine and dandy, I can take notes in either and switch them later. Except that my paper lab notebook had the highlighted and written over article I was presenting that afternoon.
Then we started getting sick(er). One of my classmates left to go see the health clinic folks in the morning, she was coughing so hard, another left early in the afternoon, and I was feeling like I'd been run over by a dump truck.
The good news is that because people needed to leave for health reasons, I didn't have to present my article. Also, the mold count in the building is so high we've been ordered not to come in this weekend. We all have automatic extensions on our projects. So I'll be staying home to recover from the mold exposure, do a lot of reading, and work on judging blogs for my prof. I wanted to get stuff done this weekend, but I can't argue against not going to the basement!