Rain Check

Well, it's been raining most of the evening (January is one of Tucson's two rainy seasons, which together account for most of our annual 11 inches of rainfall), but that's not what I mean.  I have a bunch of stuff swirling around in my head tonight, but I'm not yet ready to write anything coherent about any of it.  This entry is therefore your rain check, redeemable for future entries on one or more of the following subjects:

1. My Christmas break from school is basically over.  My final course at University of Phoenix starts this Thursday.  By then I need to have read several e-texts (I'm working on 'em!) about ethics and critical thinking, taken an online ethics assessment, and written a fairly long paper on the subject.  So far my reading has me thinking about John's frequent requests that I define good and evil for him, concepts he professes not to understand.  My definition, such as it is, seem to conform pretty well with the e-text I was reading tonight, which aligns ethical behavior with benefiting others and not harming them.  That's the short version, anyway.

2. As I've suspected for a while, I didn't get any Mâvarin stuff done during my break, but I did write a lot of JW's story.  I guess that will have to do.  Now I've got to dive in on getting caught up at work, even if it means working overtime and cutting back on the blogging.  I've got to have things under control at work and 2004's books closed before I (reluctantly) leave the place for greener pastures.  I also really really need to get some cleaning done around here.  No, really.

3. Having heard from two of my classmates in the past two weeks from Fayetteville-Manlius High School's Class of 1975, I am now reconsidering my decision not to attend my 30th Class Reunion. This dilemma all gets bound up in the fact that I don't remember most of these people well, a strong suspicion that my poor socialization in high school was at least partly my fault, and an unaccountable nostalgia for Manlius, NY, a place I haven't seen in at least 18 years, and didn't like much when I actually lived there. Weird.

4. Did I mention the cold I came down with around the end of October?  By the end of November, I was on my fifth week of that cold, still coughing and listening to my ears ring - loudly. My doctor wasn't around the day I called, but the nurse practitioner arranged for antibiotics and told me to get some expectorant, both of which I took faithfully until I ran out. Now that January's here, can you guess who is still coughing, and still listening (at least intermittently) to her ringing ears?  I knew you could.  I don't want to be an alarmist, but a militantly non-smoking (like me!) acquaintance of mine is being operated on Thursday for lung cancer. I most definitely don't believe I have the Big C, but what they were testing Jan for when they found the cancer is Valley Fever, a very common fungal lung disease around here. (Actually, I don't think it's valley fever, either, because hey! no fever.) Heck, it's not a very bad cough, but shouldn't it be gone by now?  Plus I fell in the bathroom on Christmas Eve, and my leg is still complaining.  I probably tore a ligament or something.  D'you think maybe it's time for me to call the doctor's office again?  And if I get an appointment, should I feel guilty about the time lost at work?  John says there's nothing you can do for a torn ligament anyway except exercise carefully and wait for it to heal.  He's been doing that with his injured shoulder for at least six months, without a doctor's advice. (And yes, it's getting better.)

That's it for now.  Stay tuned for a fully-developed entry about high school and ethics and self-examination and stuff sometime in the next couple of days.  Maybe.  Or, at the least, a health update.

Karen