Still here. Things are busy. I’ve got my final papers and presentations due, I’m back at work (at least for the time being), I’m still going to the gym when I’m not nursing an injury (I’ve managed to tweak my rotator cuff, my quad, my lower ab, and my hip all in the past two weeks), I’m kindasorta seeing someone (though that’s a barrel of neurotic monkeys).
Oh, and I had the swine flu! It was less than epic. I was disappointed, what with it being a global pandemic and all.
You stink.
Love, Mom.
The bad news: The project I’ve been working on has ended, quite suddenly, so I’m laid off. No one seems to know what happened, because all the relevant people in contact with my agency were out of the office when the decision was made. I’m guessing either they called a halt to the project because we just weren’t finding anything new, or the case settled.
The good news: Since I’m about to graduate from my MSLIS program (well, in May), I decided to start looking for library/researcher work. And there’s stuff out there, either temporary or permanent. Maybe not quite the jobs I had been envisioning, but jobs in New York nonetheless. And maybe jobs with health insurance.
I just got back, as I said in the last post, from Montreal. The primary reason I went there was to get Lasik (Canada has more advanced technology than the US, and even when the FDA approves certain equipment, such as the particular laser I was treated with, the earlier approval means that Canadian eye surgeons have more experience with the equipment than their American counterparts. Plus, it’s cheaper. And it’s Montreal). I was tired of being extremely nearsighted, and what with the onset of reading glasses* and all, it was looking like I’d be in very expensive and unworkable progressive lenses before too long. Why not get the nearsightedness fixed, and then worry about the aging-related reading glasses as a single prescription?
So I biffed off up North, where the many public wi-fi networks refused to speak to my netbook. And after a few days of sightseeing and wonderful meals and lovely chocolat chaud, I went to the clinic for my surgery. The pre-op and post-op is being done locally, but I went to Montreal for the actual surgery.
I knew there would be Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps. I probably should have guessed that, yes, everyone makes the same Clockwork Orange joke when the clamps are put in. I knew there would be some “pressure,” though I hadn’t really been clear on what it was for (apparently, to make you go temporarily blind so you don’t see the blade that’s cutting the flap in your cornea) or how much it would hurt when my orbital bone was pushed on.
I did not, however, know that there was going to be an odor — specifically, the odor of burning hair. It was apparently just the laser burning some carbon in the air, not my eyeball getting vaporized. But disconcerting, nonetheless.
It was over in minutes. The first half-hour afterwards was just fine, if things were blurry and I had the world’s goofiest-looking eye shields on my face. Then the anaesthetic wore off, and the burning and itching and feeling of sand-in-the-eyes started. That lasted four hours or so, during which time I was instructed to rest but not sleep — as if I could fall asleep with my eyes burning like that — and to blink at least every five minutes to keep things lubricated. I got very familiar with the limitations of my hotel room, which featured not a separate bathroom, but a sink, shower stall and toilet closet right in the room. As a concept, not terribly objectionable — until you realize that the legroom in the toilet nook leaves a little something to be desired, and it’s not possible to both take the wide stance necessary to position yourself correctly AND pull your pants down. Others before me had similar issues, or at least that’s how I interpret the fact that the seat was forever popping out of place.
After four hours or so, things started feeling much better, but I had to leave the shields on nonetheless until the following morning. Whereupon I removed them and went back to the clinic for my first-day checkup. My vision was 20/15, which is right about where it should be, since they overcorrect due to the fact that as the eyes heal, they naturally settle out a little, so I should end up with 20/20. I had a little inflammation in one eye, so they had me use the antibiotic drops more frequently for the first two days; I also have dryness, which is normal, so I have drops for that as well.
I’m quite pleased. Things are kind of foggy, I’ll need to use reading glasses for a few weeks until the overcorrection settles out, I have haloes at night, and my eyes are dry, but that’s all normal and should go away within a few days or weeks. But for the first time since fourth grade, I can fucking SEE without glasses or contacts. Yay!
____
* About those expensive progressive lenses that optometrist tried to push on me: turns out I NEVER ACTUALLY NEEDED THEM AT ALL. The doctor who did my pre-op for surgery figured that my contacts were overcorrecting my vision, which made reading a little difficult. So he put me into weaker contacts, and that solved the reading problem while still enabling me to see distances. Boy, am I glad I pushed back on those instead of spending almost $500 to solve a problem I didn’t even have.
Remember how I was so surprised a few weeks ago to see a woman on the back of a NYC Sanitation truck for the first time in 13 years here?
I just came back from a trip to Montreal, and the very first garbage truck I saw there had a woman on the back of it.
Methinks there might be a bit of provincialism/protectionism in the NYC Sanitation union. But as someone on the City Council told a firefighter who was complaining about diversity meaning that guys whose fathers and uncles and brothers were firefighters couldn’t be assured of following in their footsteps: It’s a civil service job. It’s not the family business.
The NYC Board of Ed — which of course really means Mayor Bloomberg nowadays — has effectively banned bake sales. In the name of — say it with me — fighting obesity.
The problem I have with this is that the bake sales became necessary because of funding cuts; vending machines and bake sales and whatnot didn’t become common until the Reagan-era tax cuts and resulting slashing of school financing. So if you aren’t going to restore funding for sports programs and uniforms and clubs and activities, AND you take away their ability to make money to cover the costs that the city’s not providing, then you’ve just hamstrung your sports programs. Which might not be the most effective way to “fight obesity,” given that physical activity is generally considered an important part of that, if you’re actually serious about “fighting obesity” and not just putting on a show of being tough.
It’s also yet another way to shift the focus from the structural and systemic issues to the individual, putting the sole responsibility on the individual to fix the problem rather than on the system to fix the things that make it more difficult for individuals to fix things for themselves.
Now, Bloomberg actually has some ideas which *do* address systemic problems, such as the grocery gap, and I would even argue that his ban of trans fats and his requirement that chain restaurants post calorie counts of items also address a systemic issue, which is lack of information about what’s in the food or how many calories are actually in a “serving,” without which you can’t really make informed choices about your food. But all this ban is going to do is exacerbate the original problem, which is the underfunding of schools. Until you’re ready to fix that by raising taxes on your rich friends, don’t take away the workaround.
We have A Situation with Miss Zuzu here.
Since I moved into this apartment, over a year ago, I have not had one uninterrupted night’s sleep. And why? Because Our Girl here agitates to be fed at the first hint of light, no matter how late she gets her evening feeding.
This agitation takes the form of nipping, running over my head, meowing loudly, knocking things over, tearing up any paper left around (which is quite, quite loud when you’re trying to sleep), jumping on my nightstand and rattling the lamp, getting the dog antsy and generally being a pain in the ass.
I tried to ignore it at first. I’m sure the guy who lives downstairs didn’t appreciate it when she would knock the remote off the dresser and onto the hardwood floor just above his loft.
At 5:30 in the morning. Continue reading ‘What we have here is failure to communicate’
Library school is very big on the presentations and the group projects. I understand why; after all, during an interview for a position as a librarian (especially in the academic context), you will be expected to do a presentation for about an hour (including Q&A) to show that a) you can successfully research something and b) you can convey the results of your research, which is something you’ll be expected to do frequently on the job.
The value of group projects I’m less sure about. Sure, you can show that you work well with others, but I’m going to guess that most of the time, when you have a group project on the job, it will involve someone assigning work to various people, who will then have clear goals.
The group project I’m currently working on isn’t quite like that. We have 10 people — the entire class — working on the same project. We will all get the same grade. We’ve had to decide how to split things up ourselves, and nobody’s in charge (though, thankfully, someone has taken the reins by setting up the wiki and doing the kind of administrative stuff that will shape the project).
These things *can* work, if you have clear areas of responsibility so that one person isn’t stuck doing all the work and everyone else free-rides. Or if you don’t have any problem children who don’t work well with others.
We’ve already had a problem child emerge. Continue reading ‘Herding cats; or, why Zuzu hates group projects’
Yay! Got tickets to the restored, hi-res version of The Wizard of Oz that’s playing at the New York Film Festival (and elsewhere, but only during the NYFF in NYC).
I’m such a sucker for this movie. I’ve never seen it on a big screen, either. Whee!
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