commotiocordis: (Seven/B'Elanna)
Shoving (healthy) food down my throat even though I’m not at all hungry because my body decided to give out on me again during my gym class. It’s so fucking frustrating. I know it’s not because I’m missing any nutrients or hadn’t eaten or anything, though; it’s definitely my heart. I can tell the difference between low blood sugar and low blood pressure, and this was the latter. The doctor has said it’s undoubtedly just idiopathic (because if it were anything serious, I probably would have died already — she blames it on anxiety, like I knew would happen as soon as I got any kind of psych label put on me, when that’s obviously not the case. If it happened when I got up in front of people or was driving to school or something, sure, but not at the gym; give me a break), but it’s still scary.

I got halfway through the lunges (which are always hard on me, but today I’d thought were going pretty well), and in the 15 seconds or whatever while switching legs, my blood pressure ~recovered (read: dropped like a rock) so much that I sort of blacked out completely. Not as in actually passed out, but as in my vision went totally black, the girl next to me actually dropped her bar because she thought she was going to have to catch me because I was super white and kind of wobbled, and I only just managed to bend down and get enough blood back to my brain to be able to see enough to make my way out of the room and sit down on the floor. (I really should have just sat down right there, but I think I would have died from embarrassment.)

UGH UGH UGH. And then it did it again when I got out of the car after driving home. I was able to just, you know, hang onto the car door until I recovered that time, so it wasn’t nearly as bad, but STILL NOT FUN.

I hate you, heart. I want to make you stronger, but that’s kind of hard when you’re working against me like this whenever I try to exercise you, huh?
commotiocordis: Green on black, an animated depiction of a normal heart rhythm on an ECG monitor. (Default)
OMG beautiful weather today. Downright chilly most of the morning--add the windchill from bike riding and I was goosebumpy through all of my polisci class. Which is interesting. The class, not the goosebumps. It's one of those ones where all the material is interesting, but you come out of it looking over your notes and wondering what exactly there is in there to be tested on. Plus, the teacher's still trying to pretend she's from Oklahoma. Seriously. I recorded part of her lecture today, so I'm going to go though that and pick out some of the strikingly not-Oklahomian bits to share.

I'm in the top floor lobby atm, and not only did (in the few minutes it took for me to run back to my room, pop a bag of popcorn, and come back) somebody take my spot in the cushy chair alcove, now two other people (boyfriend and girlfriend, I'm assuming) have come into the same alcove to powow. Idk what they're doing--the girl padded in in her pajamas, bringing two bottles of water (vodka?) and the guy came off the elevator, and now they're just talking. Nothing wrong with that, I mean, but don't you have rooms? And at 11pm?

I am quite annoyed currently with the network stuff here. They're all "don't go over your weekly bandwidth or you'll drop down to dial up speeds!1!one!!" Umm, that's what I'm getting anyway. (And still managed to get within 400mb of the limit a few days ago, LOL). It's horrible. The inconsistency is the worst part--I'll be going 80 bytes per second for a while, and then it'll jump up to over 1mb/sec for a while, then back down to where it usually hangs out at 20-30kb/s. No idea how I got the killer speed, no idea what made it go the snail speed--all on Megaupload at pretty much the same time of day, so that's not it. And it's not even the wireless--this is on the wired connection. The wireless is more consistently fast (300kb/s ish in the basement lobby) if you're actually in the wireless zone--I can pick up the wireless from my room since this lobby has it, but the connection is spotty so it's not as quick.

[Edit: later, 1:20 am ish? I'm getting between 750k/s and 1mb/s back in the room on the wired. *sigh*]

Food here still doesn't make me happy. Omlette bar days do, because they've got whole eggs that I can separate myself (LOL at how I have to do it) in the hall that's practically in my building and a bucket o' egg white in the one that's on the way to most of my classes. But due to my scheduling, I rarely get down there for breakfast, which is sad. Most other days, the only thing I can count on is the salad bar (which tends to suck at the one near my classes--wilted lettuce, still-frozen vegetables, etc.; I only hit that one on T/Th for lunch, though, as other times I'm either in class during the meal times or near the closer one) and I have to bring my own fat free italian down because they only have one fat free dressing (raspberry--it's good, but you get tired of it quickly because it's a pretty flat flavor). There's a grill with burgers and stuff every day, and then some random fried meat substance most of the time for the main course (pork fritters today, etc.), and then one random thing that's usually not something I'll eat.

Even with the good weather today, the gym has not become any more tolerable. If there's more than one other person on the tiny row of treadmills, it's too loud to hear whatever episode of something I've put on my MP3 player (I wrap the velcro arm band around the handlebar thing to sort of prop up the screen so I can see it, though I've got to keep adjusting it the entire time because it tends to flop around because I can't quite get it to velcro on tightly enough), and you can never hear/see the TV. The latter mostly because my glasses are too wide for my face, idk how, and I can't get the ear pieces to sort of go back inwards, so if my face gets at all sweaty, they start sliding down.

Speaking of TV. O HELLZ YES, DENVER BRONCOS. Thank you for Monday night, sirs. But OMG, I didn't realize that we let Elam go. The new kicker's not bad (by that I mean he didn't miss last night), but IL Jason Elam. He's 38 and still the best kicker in the league. Plus, he's been playing pretty much my entire Denver-watching career, so he's one of the names that I still know from the Elway days. I read an article talking about how that's the exact reason that all the Denver fans are up in arms about his leaving, which is prolly true. Doesn't hurt that he kicks ass, though.

Re: mock trial. So, turns out that the pre-law fraternity is trying to start up a group. Which is good--takes the pressure off of me having to try to do so (as that almost definitely wouldn't have gotten done this year, now that I've looked at how many hoops you have to jump through). Nobody on the team's got MT experience at this level, though--two of us did it in HS (I think I actually beat her in State two years ago--definitely in rankings, if not also in a physical match) and we were talking after the intro meeting about co-captaining it. Which would be cool. I've pretty much got to join the pre-law frat to captain it, though, it's seeming, as the team's being done through them rather than as a separate club. Which is pricey. And I still don't have my bank card that they were supposed to send me (the form got turned in the 2nd of September, and I already had the account, all they had to do was print me up a card). Nor do I have my Public Speaking book that I ordered more than two weeks ago (totally could have done without it, too, as I know people in that class that I could have borrowed the book from to write my "Teach a chapter of the book to the class" speech, but it was only $6 or so including shipping, so whatever). That one's ticking me off. It's getting negative shipping feedback, LOL (as though most of the delay was probably the post office, the shipping confirmation they sent me says that they didn't ship it for some 5 days after I paid, which is not speedy).

Battery is low on the computer. Must go back now. Final note? Need to find out why I'm so sick pretty much since I moved in here. Dining hall food, methinks, but it's gotten to the point where I'm actually throwing up more days than not because I'm so nauseous.
commotiocordis: (QPicard)
A man who recently divorced his wife of more than 20 years shot and killed her before killing himself in a mall fairly near where I was working at the time. All the news reports tell us that the motive has not been determined.

Let's take a look at the first part of that sentence again. Divorced after 20 years of marriage. Safe to say that they were having some relationship issues, no? Motive.

More random miniupdate stuff. New job is pretty cool (though OMG the heat! I've got to work outside recess every day after lunch, plus some days we go outside for activities for the class, plus I got volunteered to do the after-care program, where we get bitched at if we don't take them outside no matter how hellaciously hot it is--I'm spending more time outside in one day than I do for entire months usually!) in that though most of the kids are annoying as hell, you get the choice few that are really excellent. Yesterday, I spent more than an hour having a conversation with one of them about Judaism. A five year old. Seriously. Turns out he's the son of a rabbi from one of the cool liberal temples around town. And he was totally able to hold up his end of a fairly high-level conversation (read: interrogation) about temple and shul and keeping kosher and such. Of course, and then you have the one that came up to Mike (one of the other after-care people) and demanded that he show him his armpit hair, and others of that ilk. But still. There's a huge difference overall from the nose-wiping of the gym kids and the gifted kids I'm now working with. Not to say that there aren't the same number of behavioral issues (it feels like more, in fact, because I'm with them for longer and it's a consistent group that I can count on coming every day and pulling the same crap, while at the gym it was more varied), but it's a different feel because the gifted kids have different behavioral quirks.

I also like the teacher I'm working with. She treats me almost like a co-teacher more than a TA, which is really cool. I do a little bit more of the scut work (paper passing out, copying, etc.) in exchange for not having to do lesson plans which is a fine trade off for me. Though today was a bit of an exception, as she just gave me the reins on the entire orienteering activity, the beginning of which was kinda plan-y--I had to plot out a couple of courses for them (outside, fail) while she was doing another activity, and then she figured that I might as well then teach them all how to navigate it when we got to it, so I did that and then led half the kids through the two courses to make sure they got all the markers and didn't. . . run into the street or sommat. Plotting the course and taking the complete lead on the teaching were the only things that weren't really typical of what she has me do, though, as usually she's got that stuff done ahead of time/naturally does the majority of the teaching. So maybe that's pretty typical TA stuff, but I think I really feel it in her attitude towards me; there's no condescension or anything that you might expect of somebody shunting scut work off on you. Plus, her partner brought in their twins today during our break, and they're pretty darn adorable.

Things that I don't like.
- Boss keeping giving me hints about how to work with the kids. Umm, seriously. Do you think I've never been around kids before? Do you think I've never been into a classroom? I did, you know, go through school, so I've got a bit of experience knowing the tricks that teachers can use to keep kids interested/in line. Plus, my parents, just a bit of knowledge coming from being around them.
- The heat, obviously. And having to be outside.
- Not anticipating liking having to walk around the city (the class is about the history of St. Louis) on our field trip all day on my birthday.
- And this is the killer. The fact that the commute is even worse because of the hours I'm driving. It should be about a 26 minute drive, so says Googlemaps. It's only slightly more than that usually in the morning (I leave around 8), which is good. But in the evening? For example. I left at 5:20pm today. Got home at 6:15. WTF. It feels like I'm spending my entire day working when I'm only getting paid for 8 hours, simply because I'm getting so little time at home.

Finally got myself back to the gym today after two weeks of vacation, and then getting home and having injured my calves the day before whilst hiking in the mountains of Vermont, knocking me out for Sunday and Monday, and then oversleeping during a nap and waking up too late on Tuesday (though it was the residual fatigue rather than the time that really prevented me--I could have gone, though it would have been killerlate, but I just didn't have the energy). Aforementioned energy is back, though. I really feel the difference that the workout gives me. Though not perhaps a good thing when it's almost 1 am now and said energy is still more or less here.

September 2022

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