EMDAT

I think I’m starting to get sick. It’s been a while, and it usually doesn’t happen this late in the semester, so I’m a bit worried about it. But not that worried. I don’t know if it was flying home for Thanksgiving with a plane full of snotty-nosed kids or what, but I’ve been stopped up and sniffling/sneezing a lot, and I’m having a lot of sinus stuff… sore throat when I wake up and whatnot.

In other news, the professors for one of my classes (it’s a class on the Vietnam War co-taught by a U.S. historian and an Asian historian) took us out to dinner tonight. There is a new restaurant here in town and the owner (I guess he’s the owner, I really don’t know) is from Vietnam, so we went there and he made a special Vietnamese beef soup. I was skeptical, but it was actually pretty good. Of course, there was a catch. After dinner, we all went over to one professor’s house where we had what was essentially an oral exam on a book. But then he gave us homemade pumpkin cheesecake, which was phenomenal.

And then all of us grad students made jokes about being poor and having to eat cheerios and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from here on out. After that, I came home and had a couple of beers while watching the UNC/Ohio State game.

A quick update for those of you who care:

I just got back from Virginia–I actually changed my flight at the last minute because my parents and brother wanted me to hang around for an extra day. It was nice to delay the inevitable a little bit, but now I’m big-time behind on my work. A quick recap of my break, for those of you who care:

As for my goals, I think I accomplished them all. Except for the reading. Aside from at the airport and on the plane, I read exactly 4 pages all week. But I ate good food (including some junk food that I don’t buy on my own because it’s too expensive–seeL “Bagel Bites”), spent time with my family, saw most of my friends, and got some Christmas shopping out of the way.

Strangely enough, though, “going home” feels a little bit different now. First of all, it’s a process. Unlike in college, when I could essentially decide at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon that I wanted to go home for the weekend, I now almost have to plan months in advance. I bought my ticket for Thanksgiving in late August. Perhaps that was overkill, but you get the idea. And then there’s my bedroom. I guess I should have expected it, seeing as how I took all of my bedroom furniture with me when I moved, but I walked into my bedroom this week and it was completely different. The first night back home I had trouble falling asleep because it felt so unfamiliar. I think it might be some kind of psycho-physiological thing, but the bed was higher and in a different place in the room than my bed had been, and so the light was coming in differently, and it felt so foreign. I don’t know if it’s because I was away for so long, or because I was so far away (Alabama as opposed to Charlottesville), or because I am paying my own bills (most of them anyway), or what, but I felt like more of an adult. This phase of my life has given me a different perspective on “home”–I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just different.

Nevertheless, it was a really good and relaxing break. Now it’s back to the grind… what a depressing thing it is to return from all of that holiday good cheer to this completely empty apartment. Only 19 days until I hop on a Virginia-bound train for Christmas. Am I counting? You better believe it.

To-Do List Between Now and Then
11/27: Lead discussion
11/29: Dinner/discussion
12/6: Presentation
12/8: Paper
12/13: Paper
12/14: Final exam

Barring travel delays, I will be landing at BWI in approximately 23 hours. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to be going home for Thanksgiving. It’s been three months since I moved down here, and if you don’t count the three days I was home in August (which I don’t, because it was spent packing and loading a truck), I haven’t spent any time at home since June.

I’m a little bummed that this too is a short visit (4 days), but hopefully it will be enough to energize me for my three week push once I get back to Tuscaloosa. Once I make it through that, I’ll have about 3.5 weeks at home for Christmas and New Year’s, so I’m really excited about that.

Plans for this week include: relaxing with the family, eating some good food for a change, finishing up my Christmas shopping, seeing friends, and yes, probably some reading. It can’t be avoided altogether, but I’m not going to stress about it.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope you’re all doing well.

… in my face.

Some of you are aware that I suffer from (chronic) bruxism, which the Mayo Clinic website defines as “the medical term for grinding, gnashing or clenching your teeth.” That pretty well sums up what I do. It occurs primarily when I sleep, and so for the past–I don’t know–six or so years of my life I have worn a “nightguard” (translation: a cross between a retainer and and a football mouthguard) virtually every night.

The ostensible purpose of this device is to protect my pearly whites from all of the aforementioned “grinding, gnashing, and clenching.” While it probably helps with the first two, it certainly does not with the third. I am no mouth doctor, but it seems to me that the nightguard actually increases the tendency to clench by bringing the upper and lower halves of my jaw closer together, and serving to unite them in battle against an unwanted foreign object which by only be defeated by sheer force.

It’s like Baghdad in my mouth every single night, and my jaw muscles are Bush Administration military planners. They aren’t actually accomplishing their goal, but they’re certainly wreaking a lot of havoc.

In all seriousness, though, my face is really tight right now and I have had a tension headache on and off for a couple of days. This happens from time to time. There have been times when I’ve woken up with my jaw clenched so tight that I’ve literally had to massage my jaw to open my mouth. Apparently this is brought on my alcohol, stress, and chewing gum (among other things). I haven’t chewed gum (with any regularity) in several years for precisely this reason, but I can’t cut out the alcohol altogether, and if you know me, you know that stress is pretty much a way of life for me. Nevertheless, I haven’t been particularly stressed lately, and I’ve had exactly one beer in the past week. So who the hell knows?

If there are any TMJ specialists out there, why don’t you contact me with a quick fix. That’d be great.