Or maybe you don’t think about those things at all. Maybe it’s just me.

School’s going pretty well. I’m three semesters into my master’s, and I should have two more semesters after this one. (It’s supposed to be a two-year program, but with foreign language prerequisites it takes a little longer.) The end is rapidly approaching, and I still don’t really know what my plans are afterwards. I’m still not sure if I want to make a career out of academia or if I’d rather stay in the publishing world. Unfortunately, my previous experiences in the real world of editing jobs was pretty depressing, so I’m not exactly eager to give it a second go. But on the other hand, I feel rather ambivalent about the prospect of making lesson plans, grading papers, and publishing or perishing—assuming I can land a tenure-track position in the first place.

The decision is complicated by the fact that I’m enjoying both school and work at the moment. I’m editing and designing books (or at least book guts—I haven’t really done covers yet), which is a lot of fun. Plus, everyone there seems to think I’m nearly omniscient, which is great for stroking my already-too-large ego. And as for school, what’s not to love about learning cool stuff and putting off making big decisions about one’s career?

Angst about my future aside, life is pretty good. I have a wonderful wife and two awesome little boys. And I’m sure that in the end, everything will work out alright.

I continued to feel pretty miserable for the next few days, with killer body aches and congestion bad enough to make me want to drill holes in my forehead to relieve the pressure. I was popping Mucinex and Ibuprofen like they were candy to try to get some relief.

I went home early from work on Monday, skipped all my afternoon classes on Tuesday, and went home early again on Wednesday after missing my morning class. I’m finally feeling almost kind of sort of back to normal today, even though I’d still rather be home taking a nap.

I hate being sick for long periods of time. After a few days I start to feel like a worthless lump of flesh, and I can’t stop thinking about how far behind I’m falling. And all the while, of course, I’m getting emails from the university and seeing flyers around campus urging everyone who’s sick to stay home so they don’t give it to everyone else.

Of course, everyone knows that this is the right thing to do, but it seems to be an awfully hard thing to do. Granted, the university has encouraged instructors to be flexible with those students who are ill, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s very difficult to catch up after missing a week of school. The last thing you want to do when recovering from the flu is push yourself extra hard to make up for the last week.

And work is even worse. I’m essentially the sole income for a family of four, and I work part-time earning student wages. I have no paid time off when I’m sick, so if I stay home for an entire week to rest and recuperate, my paycheck is going to suck. I’m already broke enough as it is; getting the flu is a minor financial disaster.

So here I am, caught between a rock and a hard place. Do I drag myself to work, where my productivity will suffer and I may very well infect the entire office, but at least I’ll still get paid, or do I lie on the couch for a week straight while homework and midterms pile up and my bank account runs dry?

Well, unfortunately, money is a powerful motivator. I just hope that anyone I infected will forgive me.

I woke up feeling no better. I was so dizzy and nauseous I could hardly sit up straight and started breaking out in cold sweats. I lay on the couch for most of the rest of the day and watched TV, even though I had a hard time focusing. I managed to get some ginger ale and jello down, though it was quite an effort, but every time I got up and walked around at all, I threw up. I took some Alka-Seltzer to try to calm my stomach down, but I even threw that up. I took two more naps that day, which is really unprecedented, and went to sleep feeling terrible. I hadn’t had a fever at all, but I was effectively bedridden by the nausea and vertigo and hadn’t been able to keep anything down all day.

On Saturday I felt much better, though still sick. I managed to have some ramen soup for lunch and even ate a regular dinner, though I still felt queasy and had to lie down most of the day to keep the room from spinning too much. When I did get up, I had to walk slowly and be careful not to turn my head too fast, or I would nearly fall over. Fortunately, I didn’t throw up at all that day.

Sunday, though, was worse again. Still no vomiting, but I was so nauseous that even ginger ale was hard to get down. I seriously began to wonder what was wrong with me. I’d never had a stomach flu that lasted this long or caused dizziness, and it actually seemed that the vertigo was the primary symptom, with nausea being a result rather than a cause.

On Monday I stayed home from work and school again and made an appointment to go to the doctor. Brinestone drove me to the student health center, and it was a pretty miserable ride, as every little bounce and bump made me sick. The doctor checked me out and said it was probably an inner ear infection, or labyrinthitis. She gave me a prescription for an anti-vertigo drug, but somehow the pharmacy didn’t get the prescription, though the pharmacist said that over-the-counter Dramamine was effectively the same thing.

I took some Dramamine when I got home, and it seemed to help quite a bit. I was able to eat dinner again that night, and I felt well enough the next morning to drag myself to school, though I still didn’t feel very well, even with the Dramamine. Luckily the only class I’d missed was German, because all my other classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that also means I’d missed about eleven hours of work. My next paycheck is going to suck.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so miserably sick in all my life. I’ve been uncomfortably motion sick before, but never completely incapacitated by vertigo. Of course, this is slightly remedied by the fact that I get to tell people that I had something labyrinthitis. You’ve got to admit that sounds pretty awesome.

Here they are playing on top of their new bunk beds. (Though I should point out that Duplo still sleeps in a crib.)

Here’s Duplo trying on a puppy costume that Brinestone found at a garage sale. He really loves wearing it.

Here are the boys going for a walk one morning. Don’t ask me why Duplo took his shoe off.

Here are my little buddies. And what handsome kids they are, too.

Updates on the Kids

I’m frequently surprised at the things that come out of Lego’s mouth. Today when I got home from work, he informed me, “I got my sleeping bag out, in fact.” In fact? Seriously, where did we get this kid? He’s a veritable verbal sponge. It makes both the linguist and the editor in me proud. And I can’t believe how big he’s getting. It’s weird to think that in just a couple years he’s going to be in school.

Duplo is learning to talk, but he still isn’t saying much yet, and it’s hard to get him to perform on cue. Also, for some reason he thinks “Dad” and “Daddy” refer to him, not me. Whenever I ask him, “Where’s Daddy?” he points to his own chest. It’s okay, though. I forgive him ’cause he’s so stinking cute. And to illustrate his cuteness, here are a couple of pictures.

Here he is learning the fine art of automotive repair. No, son, that’s not how you remove the brake caliper! Use the 18 mm socket!

Aww. What a sweet boy he is.

Updates on Me

I haven’t really been up to a whole lot lately. I’m just working for the summer and will be starting classes again in a few weeks. However, I’ve been pretty busy at work, and I figure here’s a good opportunity for some shameless self-promotion. Two of the books I’ve worked on lately have just been published. I typeset this one and did a fair amount of editing and proofreading on it as well. On this one I designed and typeset the insides and did some revisions on the cover. Check them out.

We spent the day hanging out and doing fun stuff, then went out to dinner at the always-excellent Bombay House, then spent the night at the same bed and breakfast we went to on our wedding night. The next morning we went to the temple and then headed home after getting lunch at J-Dawgs. Even though we were only gone for a day and a half and didn’t go anywhere exciting or exotic, it was really nice to get a break from the kids and spend some time with my beautiful wife. Thanks to my mother-in-law for offering to watch the kids on our little getaway.

• Finished the semester with my first real 4.0 (not counting last summer when I took an intro course that I didn’t actually need and got an A).
• Replaced the front driver-side window motor and the window glass on the Beagle. The window motor was dead, and the Teagle has tinted windows, so I figured I might as well swap them all out. I’ll do the rest of the windows over the next few weeks.
• Fixed the burned-out lights in the Beagle’s dash. Hooray for having a soldering iron!
• Fixed some buggy HTML in my blog’s sidebar. Firefox and Chrome still displayed it right, but stupid Internet Explorer choked on it.
• Watched Duplo learn how to walk.

Edit: Okay, apparently I don’t actually know how to embed videos, even though I’ve done it before. I’ll try to figure it out and then update this post later.

Now here it is with the new headlight bracket attached and the bumper cover tentatively in position. The pieces are falling into place.

And finally, here it is in good-enough-to-drive form. Tada!

It’s not 100 percent finished, but the important thing is that for the first time in several weeks, it has all its headlights and indicator lights as well as the bumper and bumper cover, so it’s totally street legal now. Well, except for the missing front license plate. I guess I forgot about that. And that headlight obviously needs a little adjustment. Then I just need to put some pieces of trim back in place, and presto! Except for the hideously clashing colors, no one would ever suspect that it was wrecked.

Then I can start worrying about stripping the Teagle for other parts before I finally junk it. Alas, poor Teagle. You may have gone on to that great junkyard in the sky, but at least your donations saved another life.

Here’s the Teagle with the fender and fender liner removed.

Despite the damage to the Beagle, I didn’t really have any problem getting the fender on. And while I was at it, I took the chrome grille off of the Teagle and replaced the broken red one from the Beagle.

Oh, yeah, that looks great. The chrome almost makes up for the fact that I’ve turned my wife’s car into some sort of hideous chimera. After getting the fender and headlights back on, I mounted the bumper temporarily so that Brinestone could drive the car, then I started hacking apart the headlight and bumper brackets from the Teagle so I could replaced the bent ones on the Beagle.

It felt wrong to cut a piece of the frame off, but I figured it didn’t matter since this car would never run again anyway; it’s going to a junkyard when I’m through with it, and nobody in their right minds would buy a sixteen-year-old car with a blown head gasket and huge rusty patches on the roof so that they could fix it up and get it running again. Now I just need to attach the brackets to the Beagle by drilling holes through the brackets and the frame and then bolting them on. I was planning on doing that today, but I’m fighting a raging head cold and didn’t exactly feel up to it, so I’ll have to do that next week.