Monday, February 07, 2005
Monday, Monday here again...
First of all, congratulations to Victor's New England Patriots (again). We watched the game yesterday and ate much junk food. Victor chewed on the remote in nervousness. In the end, it all worked out.
Except for the asthma attack I started having in the fourth quarter. That same asthma attack kept me up until after 5:00am this morning. During that long period of time, I had ample opportunity to figure out a few things.
Thing the First: Lately, my asthma attacks have been getting worse and more frequent. By worse, I mean crushing pain in my chest as well as terrible stomach cramps. I try using my inhaler (Albuterol), and it ends up making me jittery, wide awake, it and doesn't really help much anymore. It's pretty old, dating from my last asthma attack in October 2003, and it's probably expired. There is no expiration date on the label. Anyway, I started looking up stomach cramps associated with asthma, and it turns out that my inhaler is probably causing them. Nice. They seem to get worse every time I use it, so until my health insurance kicks in next month, I'm going to have to find an over-the-counter solution. I can't deal with these awful tummy aches.
Thing the Second: I finished reading I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe on Friday. Victor had read it before me, and we both thought it was... not so good. So during my hours awake last night, I took some time to skim 277 customer reviews on Amazon. I had already read some of the critical reviews, but I wanted to see what regular readers felt. I found that a lot of them agreed with me. It's a shame that such a revered author as Wolfe decided to try to write from an 18 year old girl's perspective, as he is a 74 year old man. I know he did a lot of research for this book, hanging out at frat parties and whatnot, but seriously. For a man who writes in great detail, it's sad that the details are what he got wrong. Most cringeworthy were his feeble attempts at rap lyrics. He even made up a rap artist, "Doctor Dis." First of all, making a fictional character whose name is so close to Dr. Dre is, in my opinion, pretty bad writing. It's like writing a story about your teacher Ms. Barney and changing the name to "Ms. Carney" so that you don't get sued. He does the same thing with names of other people and items too. Second of all, very few 74 year old white guys can write convincing rap lyrics, and Wolfe isn't one of them. OK, I'm rambling here. But I don't recommend this book.
Thing the Third I think I may know what's triggering my asthma so much lately. A bit of backstory: Several weeks ago, we had a pretty awful water leak in our apartment. Our maintenance guy thought it was coming from the apartment above us, but it turns out (after a week of soggy kitchen!) it was leaking right behind our sink. So he cut a hole through the wall, fixed the pipe, and presto! - no more leak. Anyway, while cleaning the house this weekend, I looked under our sink to see which cleaning products we had available. I was greeted with disgusting blackish mold all over the back wall of our sink! Right where the water leak was! I think it might even be THE Black Mold, which has been known to cause breathing problems in people. I'm putting in a maintenance request ASAP.
Thing the Fourth Asthma sucks.
So here I am, Monday morning, tired unto death, and the lights are off in my office building. Oh, they just came back on. Hooray.
edited to add one more "thing"
First of all, congratulations to Victor's New England Patriots (again). We watched the game yesterday and ate much junk food. Victor chewed on the remote in nervousness. In the end, it all worked out.
Except for the asthma attack I started having in the fourth quarter. That same asthma attack kept me up until after 5:00am this morning. During that long period of time, I had ample opportunity to figure out a few things.
Thing the First: Lately, my asthma attacks have been getting worse and more frequent. By worse, I mean crushing pain in my chest as well as terrible stomach cramps. I try using my inhaler (Albuterol), and it ends up making me jittery, wide awake, it and doesn't really help much anymore. It's pretty old, dating from my last asthma attack in October 2003, and it's probably expired. There is no expiration date on the label. Anyway, I started looking up stomach cramps associated with asthma, and it turns out that my inhaler is probably causing them. Nice. They seem to get worse every time I use it, so until my health insurance kicks in next month, I'm going to have to find an over-the-counter solution. I can't deal with these awful tummy aches.
Thing the Second: I finished reading I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe on Friday. Victor had read it before me, and we both thought it was... not so good. So during my hours awake last night, I took some time to skim 277 customer reviews on Amazon. I had already read some of the critical reviews, but I wanted to see what regular readers felt. I found that a lot of them agreed with me. It's a shame that such a revered author as Wolfe decided to try to write from an 18 year old girl's perspective, as he is a 74 year old man. I know he did a lot of research for this book, hanging out at frat parties and whatnot, but seriously. For a man who writes in great detail, it's sad that the details are what he got wrong. Most cringeworthy were his feeble attempts at rap lyrics. He even made up a rap artist, "Doctor Dis." First of all, making a fictional character whose name is so close to Dr. Dre is, in my opinion, pretty bad writing. It's like writing a story about your teacher Ms. Barney and changing the name to "Ms. Carney" so that you don't get sued. He does the same thing with names of other people and items too. Second of all, very few 74 year old white guys can write convincing rap lyrics, and Wolfe isn't one of them. OK, I'm rambling here. But I don't recommend this book.
Thing the Third I think I may know what's triggering my asthma so much lately. A bit of backstory: Several weeks ago, we had a pretty awful water leak in our apartment. Our maintenance guy thought it was coming from the apartment above us, but it turns out (after a week of soggy kitchen!) it was leaking right behind our sink. So he cut a hole through the wall, fixed the pipe, and presto! - no more leak. Anyway, while cleaning the house this weekend, I looked under our sink to see which cleaning products we had available. I was greeted with disgusting blackish mold all over the back wall of our sink! Right where the water leak was! I think it might even be THE Black Mold, which has been known to cause breathing problems in people. I'm putting in a maintenance request ASAP.
Thing the Fourth Asthma sucks.
So here I am, Monday morning, tired unto death, and the lights are off in my office building. Oh, they just came back on. Hooray.
edited to add one more "thing"
<< Home
