Sometimes

I just sit with my head hanging, face to the ground.

Wondering where everything went wrong.

Wondering what the hell am I doing with my life.

Still

The air seems extraordinarily still tonight. Almost as a hush has gone over the world by my house. Oh, well. Time to go to work.

Thoughts

Occasionally I feel like I don't know the person I used to be. My memory of past events can be so fuzzy that it's difficult to associate myself with my memories. Not to mention that I am a very different person than I used to be.

This is slightly disconcerting.

FUCK YES

After all my years of waiting! YESSSSSSSSSS!

What a Nightmare

So... I'm in the emergency room at about 04:00 this morning in debilitating pain and it occurs to me that if I do need surgery there is a good chance I will not be able to make my 52 weeks deadline.

Wait, back up.

~12:30 this morning - Jennifer and I say goodbye to Dillon and Sheri after encountering a crazy hobo in Little Tokyo post Daikokuya.

~01:20 - Jennifer and I go to bed.

~02:20 - I wake up in a lot of pain and think I might have food poisoning or something. I'm howling in pain.

~02:40 - Jennifer wakes an RA and has him call an ambulance. Jennifer isn't sick, so it most likely isn't food poisoning (since Daikokuya broth and stuff comes from one large batch and we both ordered the same thing). We both think there is a possibility of appendicitis. I can't really walk at this point.

~ 02:50 - The ambulance picks me up and the EMT proceeds to ask me about my condition over 9000 times while I'm fighting to breathe through the excruciating pain. She also tells me that I "really need to calm down", at this point I am desperately wanting to punch this EMT in the face.

~ 03:00 - I arrive at the UCLA Medical Center's emergency room and they bother me about signing things while I'm shaking from muscle spasms (squiggles I tell ya) and my insurance.

~ 03:30-04:45 - The pain continues to escalate and they start treatment. They ask me a billion questions while I'm having trouble breathing, so speaking isn't exactly a walk in the park. They hook up about twelve different gizmos to my body and give me a shot of morphine to the arm. The shot fails to even touch the pain that is still getting worse by the minute.

About seven different doctors come into the room and have me repeat my condition and prod my abdomen asking me if it hurts. At this point, I'm hoping for a swift demise at best.

The X-Ray technician comes in and has me move around in several painful ways to get a few x-rays of my abdomen.

They finally give me another shot of morphine, this time via my IV. It still doesn't do anything to curb the pain.

I un-have dinner at some point. That was fun..

They give me a liter of fluids via IV.

Catheter. X_X

At some point the morphine beings to make me drowsy and I drift off to a fitful sleep (there is some machine I'm hooked up to that keeps blaring an alarm at me if I fall asleep, because I'm no longer taking a proper deep breath.)

Some point after the insult to my injury (Hey, you're having sharp pains that are going right through your abdomen, how about some burning to go with that?) Jennifer comes in and sits by me the entire time.

~ 04:45 - I wake up feeling like the pain has receded to levels where I can actually speak instead of thrash and moan/scream the entire time. At this point they give me a liter of nasty crap to drink so stuff shows up in a CAT scan. The x-rays were inconclusive.

~ 05:30-06:00 - I go in for the CAT scan and come back to the room. I call my Mom and inform her where I am and what is happening. She tells me I should have woken her up earlier. (Nonsense says I. Someone should get some bloody sleep.)

~ 07:00 - My mother arrives looking about as worried as Jennifer has looked the entire time.

~ 08:00 - They come back with the results of my CAT scan. Apparently I don't have appendicitis. I have kidney stones. The pain was coming from one of the pesky little buggers moving from my kidney to my bladder through a tiny tube. Epic bummer.

~ 12:00 - We finally leave the hospital and Jennifer and I take showers and try to get in a short nap before Jordan comes out to L.A. to pick up my car and drive me home. (Apparently you're not supposed to drive up to twelve hours or more after a morphine shot.)

So yeah. That was my day. I'm going to go to bed now.

This Spring Break Sucks

I present to you the following evidence for why this spring break sucks.

1) C- in MAT214. So close.
2) D in ARO 202L, not unexpected, but still.
3) My car is in the shop from the accident I had back in October. The other guy's (I was rear ended) insurance company sucks.
4) I'm sick.
5) I still have to go to work.
6) My shoulder was getting better, but I think I re-injured it at work today.

Sigh. I need to do better next quarter. I have to redouble my efforts. It was an improvement for sure, but I need to do better. Still these results are discouraging.

Finals

I'm currently taking a short break from studying Aerospace Engineering. My final for that class is tomorrow. Once I finish that, I'll need to write an essay for my German Civilization class and then I'm done. I'm really looking forward to having a week off, though it certainly could be longer than a week. Oh well, such is life.

My next quarter is shaping up to be even more work that the one that I'm just finishing. I really want to do well though. I'm really burnt out on school and I just want to finish now, even though that will take me about two years. I've made some mistakes and it's going to take some time to correct them.

Jennifer and I will have been together five months tomorrow. It's odd, it seems longer and shorter than that simultaneously. I suppose that's the nature of it.

I've been taking photography a lot more seriously as of late. I'm really getting more into film and I've been enjoying myself with the art. Actually I've set up a small gallery online via ImageKind. I doubt I'll sell anything, though I think the images I have posted are quite good. Being an artist of any kind is always hard, but in such an economic landscape as we have today it's that much more difficult. Like I said, I don't expect to sell a thing, it'd just be nice if I did.

I've also created a Flickr group for film photography of Los Angeles. I've set up a blog for that as well. I've been showcasing some pretty awesome photos from the group contributors. Film is a curious thing.

I'm rambling now. Back to studying.

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