The Recipient!

My Secret Pal got her final "reveal" package today, so I can show you! This is Pam, aka "Yarn Goddess." She runs an online yarn shop, which carries only indie vendors. Her shop is here - please stop by and drool over the phenonemal yarns! She's been a GREAT upstream pal; she's a lot of fun and a really great person! I knit her the February Lady sweater in my hand-dyed yarn, and I'm really tickled with how well it fits her!

My trip to the ENT went about as well as I thought it would - he put me on 3 weeks of heavy-duty antibiotics, and I have to go back in 4 weeks.

Beware of Imploding Brains

Whew. Sorry for the radio silence, but the last few weeks have been interesting - for a lack of a better word!

I started having vision problems about a month ago. Nothing drastic, but it was as if my prescription went bad overnight. After about 3 days, it would return to normal, and then it would do it again. I'm also dizzy on occasion, but that comes and goes also. I thought it was a possible side effect of my new blood pressure medicine, but the doctor thought otherwise. Her first thought was MS, and she sent me for a brain MRI.

She also added a water pill to my blood pressure meds, which is really interesting to try to get used to! (I have to find somebody to watch the JDs if I have to use the restroom when it's not the "official" time to take the group for their 2 restroom breaks).

The MRI was negative for MS (whew!) but it did show that my sinuses were completely blocked. Another trip to the doctor, where she decided that yep, my sinuses are blocked. She sent me for a CT scan last Friday, which showed that....my sinuses are blocked. (As a strange aside, I only have one frontal sinus. Where the other one should be? Solid bone)

Now I have to go see an ENT on Friday. Sinus surgery may be looming on the horizon. Then I have to home and eat really fast, because I have blood work on Saturday morning (for cholesterol and B-12 levels) and I can't eat after 6:00. Tuesday I have to go back to the doctor for my monthly B-12 shot.

In the last 6 weeks, I've had an MRI and 2 CT scans. I hope that I'm done for a while.

And then there's grad school. Ugh. Every Monday and Wednesday I leave my house at 6:30 in the morning, and I get home around 8:30 at night. I have a 4-page midterm due tomorrow and I also have to present a 3-page journal review. I have 2 *big* research projects (both with 4-6 page papers and a presentation) and a 5-page book review/presentation due within the next few weeks.

I think my brain is melting.

Add to that the fact that my English class is learning how to write a research paper. Want to see something funny? Tell a class of 15-year-olds that if they use Wikipedia for their paper, it's an automatic "F." The looks of absolute terror are absolutely priceless. Just for fun, remind them of the fact that they lose 5 points for every contraction that they use in their paper. Watch them try to wrap their minds around the fact that using "u" instead of "you" (or any other IM/text language) will result in a loss of a letter grade. Listen as the chorus of "What? That's not fair!" ring through your classroom. Ah, the joys of teaching freshmen.

In knitting news (yes, I'm still knitting!), I finished a baby dress (in sock yarn) for KnitPicks, and I've started on a pair of socks (more sock yarn!). I also finished a pretty big project for my secret pal - I can't show you because she doesn't know who I am yet, but she should have it by the end of the week. (It was *not* knit in sock yarn! I dyed 7 skeins of Wool of the Andes Bare for this particular project). I can't show you the project yet, but I can show you the buttons that I found for it:Real flowers! Aren't they cute? I'll show you the rest when she gets it - I don't want to take a chance that she'll come across it before then.

2 weeks ago I took Kelson to the University of Toledo for the Chemical Engineering orientation. We went up the night before, so we went out to dinner. The only picture I took the entire weekend? My food:It was good, but definitely not worth the 2-hour wait!