Unexpected Outing

Call it a night turned around.  The day already very well wasted, I was preparing to get it done and over with the last of class—on Mondays I have a class from 7:15 to 9:15 PM—when my phone rang.  It was from my friend, apparently bored and wanted to know if I wanted a drink after class.  Having a lot of other things I wanted to do, all of which will not be done or even begun, I naturally agreed.

We arrived at a coffeeshop at nearly the same time.  The place sold beer and wine as well, and both of us knew where it was, so it was a good place to go.  We got to talking, although I do not know what we talked about exactly.  It went from iPhone to books to movies to caring for sports (which we do not, at least not to fanatical level), continuing on conversations like I could not for a long while.

We parted at midnight.

It was fun, if sedate.

I’m saddened by the fact that I will not be doing much more of it anytime soon.

Downside of giving

I donate blood every now and then.  I do not have a specific schedule, but while I decline the offer to give blood every other time, I do have a time to do so.  There is no science to do this.  I just do it when I feel like it.  I had done that for past six times.

And this was one of those times.  Never mind that my right arm no longer feels quite the same.  Never mind that I now have needle marks on my arms that, while they do not stick out like sore thumbs, still crave some attention from me every now and then.

So, I went.  I was a little late, but that is the same for all the appointments I make.  I do not come often at all, so I saw no familiar faces.  A strange nurse took care of me—she did not talk too much, and had a negative aura that I could immediately feel.  She had an odd accent, and went way faster than she should; I simply did not like her.  But that is okay, as long as she did her job well.

Well, she did not.

The trouble began in the question sessions regarding my info.  She had asked me about my name, so I answered; but she then asked my birthdate like she was waiting the answer from the first question.  Not a good start.  Then she gets the gloves on.  Right after that, though, she types with the hand that she put the gloves on.  What the hell?  Having some experience in the microbiology field, I know that it will be anything but sanitary.  At least she took an alcohol swab; otherwise I would have been driven mad.

Then there were the health questions, of which she sped over the bloody questions like an inebriated auctioneer… even the diseases that had complicated pronunciations.  Especially those diseases.

It was hell, as far as I could tell.  The sample blood for hemoglobin count was taken, which stung a little but was okay.  Then I was led outside to a reclining chair.  I have been there before.  I sat on the chair, and nurse asked which arm I would like to have blood drawn from.  I said left, but if you can’t see the vein, you could do the right one.  All the other nurses went for the right one when I said that.  She went for the left.

So she rubs iodine on my arm, and did not really clean out the residues.  There were puddles of the solution on my arm. She stuck the needle in.

It hurt like hell.

Let me elaborate.  I have been to the blood drive a few times, and went to the blood donation center the other few.  I go to the center because nurses tend to be more relaxed and friendlier, as well as more adept at the job they do.  Last time I had such a pain was at a high school blood drive, and that was because the nurse had accidentally prodded a needle at the bone in my arm.  It had the works—the bruises, the pain, et cetera.  This time it was different, though; I had instead a hot, searing pain further up my arm.  The resident doctor (I think) said that it was possibly due to the iodine residue on my arm; but I know that veins do not travel up the arm, but rather down it, so that was bullshit.  The nurse immediately took out the needle right after I motioned the thing off.  My arm still felt tingly and uneasy.  I left it be, so I did not know exactly how bad things got.  The nurse did not say a single sorry.

Seriously, it was testing me, the whole situation.  I took the post-donation call number and walked out, fuming.

I looked for such instances on the Internet after I left.  Of course, since it happened just a few hours ago, I could not look at it much.  What I did come across, though, is that there are a few rare cases in which nerve damages happen—could that be the case?

Anyway, we will see what happens.  Red Cross told me to wait 48 hours to see if things get better, so that is what I will do.

Walking on Thin Ice

The work was hardly good today.  I do not believe I made any mistakes worth mentioning.  I charged for most (if not all) of the extra things I had to charge, did not give away any free drinks, and I did not write down wrong order for things.  If anything, the only wrong thing I did was getting to work late… I am sure my boss is not approving of my action, but I will say that I blame it on “hectic” lifestyle.

And yet, I have been asked to work harder than I needed to be.  Do you not see that I am helping other people?  Do you not see that I am putting up the tapes for use later, so what is wrong with sitting down for a second while doing so?  I got flacks from the bosses (husband and wife, actually) for sitting down and not appearing to do any work.  It is understandable, I think.  When I sit down to do some of the work that I am supposed to do, I am behind a small partition, seeming to do a little bit of nothing, when I am in fact working.

These are terrible times for businesses, and pretty much everyone working.  Rarely do I hear of business picking up in any field whatsoever, and usually when one business falters, it makes ripples around wherever the businesses are—employees are fewer and work less hours, spend less, and affects other businesses that caters to that business… and we are feeling it, all right.  I am guessing that causes tempers to flare up.

So, I am seething.  Then the lady asks me about my future plans… you know, what I am going to do for summer, that kind of things.

I have no idea, I told her.  I am thinking about doing internship or a summer job, probably, but since I do not even know what my major is going to be after this semester, I do not know.

Then she tells me that I might be better off going elsewhere when summer comes, if business does not pick up.

Yeah, terrible time, indeed.

So what am I going to do?  I have little other to do than to look for a job and such.  Oh, this will be tough.  I do not know what to think anymore.  This is very draining.

Exercising

I have begun working out again for a few weeks now.  I am not doing anything serious, to be honest; I go to the school’s recreational center every Monday and try to get some running done after I get back home from downtown when I can.  Being a former cross-country runner that I am, I like running; I would not have stuck wit it to begin with if I did not like doing so.  Cross-country is a strange sports among the running sports; you run through the trails cut through the forest, and unlike the glorious paved tracks that adorn the stadiums and asphalts on the road race courses, you run through the dirt and over the hills and down the much-trodden paths that is often not all that safe or even coherent (without markers throughout the paths).  Frankly, I liked it—the courses made everyone miserable, sure, but I felt a certain rush in running through the woods, minding the hills and barren tree roots as I dodge the fellow runners on the track.  I should write another post regarding this; it needs reminiscing.

Funnily enough, I began exercising on the week of spring break.  Not too many people were around to watch me embarrass myself at the gym if I started then… just kidding.  I went mostly on a whim, waking up on Tuesday and realizing I had nothing to do after work… so I went to work with running shorts and some clothes to change and went to school.  I came home sore and tired.  Same thing last Monday between work and the evening class, and this one, too.  Needless to say, I would very much like to sleep on the chair right now.

But after I recover, I usually have more energy than when I lead a sedentary lifestyle.  I may have read about it earlier somewhere, perhaps on a Men’s Health website or RealAge, but I also speak from experience.  Should I go into the details on why that would be the case?  I would, but if you really wanted to know, you would be at some exercise or biology or health website right now, not here.  My understanding is that exercising increases the mitochondria count in your body—the cell part that converts sugar into energy that cells can use.  Hence, I, who have been exercising, feel more alert and energetic than before… or something like that.  To be honest, the boost is rather minor, as I have been relying heavily on caffeine  as of late and I was never all that energetic to begin with.

Compared to how I used to be before I started working out, though, I feel healthier.  I feel that I can do more things and do not feel as unwieldy and lazy.  I think that is what counts—and what you look for—when you exercise.

Now, I need to learn to harness this energy more efficiently than now…

Came to school reasonably early.  After getting off the metro, I stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts to get some breakfast, and by the time I arrived at class, it was some ten minutes late—not bad for some lollygagging endeavor.

The computer science class for the day was cancelled.  I am now at the library,  wondering what I should do with the freed up time.  I could be sleeping, or maybe it is a better idea for me to get some work done… but who am I kidding?  I was never a morning person.  I could theoretically try to work on things, but it won’t work.  What was I supposed to do, anyway?  Oh, right… I have a computer science assignment.  The class ties me up anyway.

Think I’ll take a nap and work on things afterward.

Day to day

Spring break is over for me.

It was a wasted week, all nine days gone into the abyss, never to return.  I became sick near the end, too… but then I realized that it was nothing more than an allergy coming earlier than usual.  Am I okay? I do not know. I still feel under the influence of Benadryl, which is to say not much, my car drove like a washing machine and sputtering somehow, as it was morning and more humid and usual and the car was chilly but not cold.  I had my car checked but the mechanic supposedly cannot think of any life-threatening issues about it so I am supposed to drive it for a week more or something like that.  So I drive.  That was Friday.  Am I supposed to hope that the car gets worse?  That is terrible… that is like looking at a cancer patient and wondering if the tumor is big enough and seeing if it will grow.

I worked from Tuesday to Thursday.  That left me with two three-day weekends, which was not really worth anything.  A good part of the first part was wasted, as well, by the online midterm exam that I took and did well but I really did not need to study all that much for it.  How much of a waste of time was that, I wonder?

The days continue to be a series of blurs.  Day in, day out.  I go to class then go to work, and if I am lucky and have time, a nap before work.  I then go to work, more often late than not, just like the classes that I do not quite know why I am taking.  I am staying in school today late because of a class that will begin at 7:15 in the evening, and a terrible fact is that I have no need or use for the class, save for the fact that maybe I can get a degree in CIS and I make a living out of it somehow.

And it will be all done by the end of the April.  What will I do then?

I am afraid of what the future will bring, which will also be all a blur.

It’s a start, of sorts

I have a premonition that this will be the most activity I will be doing during the spring break, but here it is.

I went to the recreational center at my university.
Worked out, doing weight training.
I feel sore, but rather good.
But my god, I feel so incompetent; I am no longer able to weight as much lift as I used to…
That’s only given, though, I am sure.  When was the last time I used the weights?

The library closes in 10 minutes. There was only so much I could do while I was here, although I did burn off some time by surfing the web.  Oops.

What am I doing?

Every now and then, I stop myself and wonder what I am doing with my life.

Today is such a day.

Imagine this:  I have been awake since 10 in the morning. I have been chewed out from work for being late, was let out by three in the afternoon (that’s some three hours of work… not very much at all), and I then proceeded to waste an ungodly amount of time sitting in front of the computers.  I cannot tell you what I have done on it, but I can tell you what I have not been doing: working. Never mind that I have written a substantial post not too long ago (in fact, it was some hours ago, posted at… 6 or so, was it?), for that, too, was done over a period of few hours—few hours for something that went maybe a little over five hundred words.  I have known that I had a high degree of inefficiency… and there it was, the very evidence glaring at me with the timestamp.  I then proceeded to play Team Fortress 2 until the computer told me that I have had enough.  I cannot do much when the computer simply refuses to let me connect to a game.  But what did I do then?  I surfed the web again, lurking amidst the darker alleys of the Internet.  Looking through my bookmark, I found something that has been bookmarked some time ago in the frenzy of stumbling… Sankaku Complex.

And what a site it is… a semi-neat blog with quite a bit of activity, talking about anime and hosting boob pictures of both photograph and cartoon variety.  In the course of an hour, I have read more about NEETs, otakus, and other things that I was better off not reading about than the period of last few months, if not a year or two.  Being an occasional anime watcher, it also made me more aware of the anime fans, their culture, and their effect on the very medium that they are fan of.  There are also news there, too—rarely are they pleasant.

Sure, these news are from some eight thousand miles from home, but they are still disturbing. I also wonder if any of these news stories are exaggerated or somehow made into a fodder of some more serious (political) issues on hand, diverting the public’s attention. But I digress.

And with these things that I have done, I have accomplished none of the things that I have meant to do.  completing list? No. Reading a book? Nothing done. I have done an extremely cursory attempt at researching on setting up a Windows server, but that is where the productivity ends.  Perusing Amazon.com and Woot.com do not count as researching, not the productive kind, anyway.  In all, I was given some ten hours to work things out, but two blog posts are what I got out of it.

So, thinking of plans, and reading Sankaku Complex… that brings me a thought, leading up to the chilling of the spine.  Am I going to end up like these people on the news? Probably not, realistically speaking. I am too straight for that, at least for now.  Still, it disdains me to see that after months of writing on the blog, nothing much has changed.

I wonder what will cause me to change.

A question of the day, 3/4/2009

While surfing through the lesser-traveled part of the Internet, it dawns on me:

“Is it darker when you see from outside in, than when you see it when you are inside yourself?”

Meaning, doe it look worse when you look at the news than when you are the news material yourself?

Plans

 
(Picture from Flickr)

It’s been two days since it snowed here in the South.  It was such a surprise; snow came so much, and the flakes so big, it piled up on what was a wet landscape with water all over in no time, piling up like there was no tomorrow.

If this happened a few years ago, I would have taken the first chance at going outside and throw snowballs or make snowman.  Of course, it is not all that fun alone; even Calvin had Hobbes to accompany him when he made all sorts of wacky snowmen.

So I stayed in, keeping rather warm inside the home.  Am I so boring as to do so? Only when I have nobody to have fun with.

Since Sunday, the day of the snow, I have been trying to write down the things I wanted to do. Doing so is harder than you may think—for one, you get distracted (and that is especially true for me), and for another, you have other things to take care of. Actually, scratch that out… I could very well have done everything if I were not so sidetracked.

The theme of my days lately seem to be “plans.”  My Zune 30, which has been serving me rather well despite its recent slowdown (failure is imminent, I am sure), has just played me the episode of This American Life—“Plan B” was the theme, and it involved people who went on to the course of life that they have not originally intended.  I love the podcast; it lets me come back to the episodes that I have missed on the radio and replay it while I am commuting.  I definitely have Apple to thank for the idea.  Anyhow.

After listening on to the podcast on the way to (and from) work, I stopped by a coffeeshop.  It’s somewhere I used to stop by a lot more often… I got lazy with stopping by, though, mainly due to the fact that I am trying to minimize the expenditure, and I rarely get anything done while being in here (I blame familiarity).  I come in and one of the guys that always seems to be here greets me, briefly stopping from writing things down in his composition notebook.  He’s got the idea from the book 4-Hour Workweek, or some book name close to it, and he is trying to come up with a business based on it… problem? He has been doing it for months now, and I have no idea what he does for a living to keep him sustained with such lifestyle.  That, combined with economy on the fritz, makes one wonder if he will go anywhere with this.

Funnily enough, though, I have come to the shop with similar reason—I wanted to plan things out.  In my bag are a binder from a group session provided by the career department by my university, Getting Things Done by David Allen, and a notepad.  It’s just too bad that I am not getting anything done at the moment (I am blogging, and slowly at that)—another irony, if there was one.

I want to know what I want to do for the future, but at this rate, I will never have plans for it.