One of those days...

Or, I should say, one of those weeks. I haven’t updated the blog lately because I haven’t been out much. Around the time I got home from Dublin I got a bad cold (actually, I think I had it when I was in Dublin, I was just staunchly in denial). This set off that uncontrollable coughing that I’ve had for years but only had identified as asthma after I started medical school; fortunately, I’d just picked up a new inhaler, which I put to good use all week. I decided to stay home and do nothing last Saturday, so thank goodness that I have satellite tv and was thus able to watch about eight straight hours (between naps) of my third favorite show Seconds from Disaster, which comes after my second favorite show When Expeditions Go Wrong, which runs a distant second to my favorite show, Law & Order. Between all those, I was successfully able to spend the entire day in bed attempting to rest and get better. I suspect that I should probably put a permanent hold on watching any shows on the National Geographic channel (such as the first two listed), since they tend to involve minute disections of plane crashes. Occasionally they throw in a nice maritime disaster for variety. I already hate flying; repeated viewings of slo-mo air crashes are probably not a wise choice for me. Although in the interim between two episodes of that I did manage to catch a show about the biggest port on the planet, which included a detailed description of - my favorite topic - dredging! Who knew that that was worthy of valuable cable tv time.

So the TV watching was quite successful, but not so much the getting better part. I woke up Sunday morning with my eyes glued shut, and though I don't remember ever having pink eye before, I knew what it was without too much question. By that evening my throat was starting to swell up uncomfortably, and with the highly precise scientific instrument known as a flashlight, I peered at the back of my throat, which was angry red but covered with splashes of white. There's an NHS clinic just across the street from school, so instead of going to class on Monday morning I hiked myself over there and got squeezed in where an appointment had been cancelled. The doctor I saw agreed that the eye thing sounded like conjunctivitis, and she only took a second-long look at my throat and said, "Um, are you allergic to penicillin?"

So, in one week: cold, asthma, conjunctivitis, strep throat. Gaaaak.

But the week got better once I got those under control. Thursday was Thanksgiving (or "American Thanksgiving," as I've heard it referred to around school, so as not to offend the Canadians whose Thanksgiving was last month). One of the British girls from my class decided to throw us North Americans a real American Thanksgiving, so about fifteen of us foreigners (including one girl from the Netherlands who was apparently invited by virtue of the fact that her accent makes her sound like she's from California) trooped over to her place Thursday night for some righteous food and enough wine to drown a couple of horses. A very good time was had by all. As well as a very good pumpkin pie. It reminds me that very soon I'll be back on American soil, if for nothing else than to squeeze in some work time on a dredge before the winter term starts in January. That's coming very soon - so much to get done before that comes around...