Sicko.

It's been a long, hard week. I've had trouble sleeping, I've gotten a sore throat, I've gotten a non-fever fever, and a cough of painfully epic proportions. I didn't go to work until noon on Tuesday, and I left at 1:30 on Friday. I have been on the couch or in bed almost all of the rest of the time. Blah.

I did do SPT, and make a little progress on various goals, and I will be posting links to and short blurbs about the articles I've been reading below. I cut because I care :)


First, the picture:

This was taken outside my office building after work, and that redness about the face is the fever. It's definitely not the best picture out there of me, but it's probably not the worst, either.

Next, I checked out the next two Discworld novels from the library when I went to stock up on sicky TV to watch (Stargate SG-1 from the beginning and The Duchess, for those interested in such trivial details). I plan to finish Sourcery tomorrow and get started on Wyrd Sisters shortly thereafter. I want to keep a steady stream of these coming in; they're good bedtime stories.

I've written another Drabble that I'm not yet ready to share. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see.

Adaptation is going slowly, but steadily. Well, more slowly than steadily, to be honest, but I'm blaming the sick. Very soon I'm going to stop blaming, I swear, but I've been making very solid notes and cross-referencing and getting some ideas together about the best way to tell this very long and convoluted story.

I obviously haven't ridden the bike to work this week, since I don't want to go into cardiac arrest from lack of oxygen or anything. But, I did find the handweight that I'd stashed in my room a while back to use while I watch TV, and I started stretching a little bit and doing leg lifts and crunches more regularly. I haven't explicitly tried to do a split since the gym in Portland, but I'm sure I'll actually get to that fairly soon.

I scheduled the Foreign Service Officer Test! It's on Wednesday, October 7th, and I have to drive to Orlando for it but that's okay. Within three weeks of the test, I'll get scores back and find out if I've been invited to write the five "personal narratives" about my life experiences that I feel qualify me to do the work of the State Department. I believe that about three weeks after that, I will find out if I've been invited for an interview, which they call an All Day Oral Assessment. Intimidating, I know. If they decide they like me after that, between two and twenty-four months later I will be offered a position. So. That's the process in a nutshell. Please, please continue to keep your fingers crossed for me!

And, finally, the articles. You'd think that with all this downtime, I'd have done almost nothing else, but my sick is the sick of ache and muscle exhaustion. Half the time I've been watching TV, my computer has been closed. Closed. That is so incredibly weird for me, because usually TV is in no way stimulating enough to occupy my full attention. Anyway, the last two weeks' worth of articles that I have read are:

• "Kennedycare" is a really excellent summary of Ted Kennedy's decades-long fight for better health care and coverage for Americans, Reagan and Nixon's creation of the "socialist Trojan horse" defense, and how all of this history is affecting Obama and how the best legacy he (and Kennedy) can leave is to "shift the trajectory of American politics."



• "The Rubber Room" was another excellently informative article, though this one is about something I'm sure very few of us are aware of: the hundreds of teachers employed by the New York City Schools who are paid for years to sit in these holding tanks called "Rubber Rooms" because they've been accused of misconduct or incompetency in the classroom. The reason the city is forced to continue paying their salaries (including full benefits and pension contributions) is the contract with the Teachers Union - it mandates arbitration to resolve these charges, and it can take years for a particular teacher's turn to come because the hearings for one person can go on for months. The article is fairly long because it details three of these cases, but I really recommend you read it, especially if you're a New Yorker yourself.



• "The Fountain House"I'm reading three articles a week in The New Yorker. You knew one of them was going to be fiction. It had to happen. I can't really say anything about this story that won't give part of it away, but it was just really sweet and it made me smile to read it.



• "The Vote that Changed Japan" is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a description of the recent election that saw the first solid defeat of the party that had controlled the country since the 60s and what that means for the country's future. If you have no idea what I just said, that's all the more reason for you to check this one out.



• "Pain-free animals?" will tell you everything you need to know about the next possible breakthrough in food production: animals genetically engineered to not feel pain, as such, so that killing them for food will be more humane. This article did more than Fastfood Nation could to make me seriously contemplate the ethics of my carnivorism. In the end, though, I reached the same conclusion I always do: chic-ken gooooood.



• "The Shrinking Archipelago" will remind you about the disproportionately devastating effects global weirding (bonus link yay!) has on developing nations. In the case of Indonesia, climate change will not only cause hundreds of smaller islands to be completely submerged in the next half-century; Indonesia is one of the leaders in deforestation (along with Brazil) because of Western demand for palm oil and other cash crops that Indonesians are increasingly opting to grow.



• "HIV's Weak Spot" summarizes the findings of a new study which shows that the HIV virus literally has a weak spot in its structure - a place where antibodies may actually be able to attach if they're taught to look for it, ie, through vaccination. Read, learn, love.



• After reading the previous article, I felt a little behind on the history of the search for an HIV vaccine. Luckily, New Scientist provided a convenient link in the last paragraph of that article, so if you're a clickaholic like me and have already read it, you can skip this one. If not, "Fears over HIV vaccines laid to rest" will tell you briefly about previous efforts to create a vaccine for HIV, why those efforts failed, and why the mere existence of an HIV vaccine was maligned!



• Finally, "Strife in Yemen" is a short piece about latest mid-East hotspot and the civil war currently being waged between the government and a wealthy tribal family and their supporters. Apparently Yemenis really miss monarchy.

For those keeping score, that works out to two in The Economist (first subscription issue should be arriving next week!), three in New Scientist (plus one science article in the Guardian about Alzheimer's and one in the NYT about the food industry battling the health care bill), and four in The New Yorker (subscription starting next week). Behind, yes. But these articles were a great start and I'm really excited to start reading the magazines all the way through. Next week, I hope to have this goal more complete by Friday, so it doesn't get folded into the Weekly Update again.

So that's where I stand right now. I'm still working on cleaning up my room and going through my boxed stuff, but mostly I'm just tired ALL THE TIME. Like now. So I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

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Her name is Bea Arthur.

As of today, I officially have nine goals in progress, but this is a lot harder than I thought it would be, what with all the working full time and the moving in and also, sometimes inertia is just inertia.

What has happened since the last weekly update:

• I got a car! It's an '03 Honda Civic EX with sunroof and power everything and I have named her Bea Arthur. Why, you ask? It's fairly simple. We're in Florida, the car is in her golden years, and, of course, she has silver hair paint. We've been together, oh, about a week, now, and we're very happy. I think we're going to be together for a looooong time :)



• I worked a 41 hour work week for the very first time! It's almost like I'm something vaguely resembling a real adult! Almost. Nothing very exciting to report about the office. It's an office, I file, enter data, and fill out forms and generally just learn things about pensions and 401(k)s and that - get this - they are different things. I'm getting paid; hooray.



• I started "training" for my ten minute real-world mile by riding my bike to work on Tuesday (and home on Friday - rain). It's not, you know, hugely excellent training, but it's a start. Hopefully once "autumn" sets in properly and it stops raining every afternoon, this will be a more regular thing and I'll be able to start jogging at night. I definitely want to head over to the middle school nearby and time myself on the track to set a baseline, so I know just how out of shape I am now and precisely how difficult it will be to get down to a ten minute mile. Let me remind you that I can already do this on a treadmill, but the actual physical forward movement of running in the real world makes me lose my breath and get a stitch in my side much more quickly. I hope to do this in the next few weeks, weather-permitting; I'll next update on this once I do get the baseline time.



• I wrote my first fiction drabble two nights ago but I don't think I'm going to post it. I don't think I'm there yet. It feels a little too melodramatic and I'm not completely sure it satisfies the "quality" aspect of that particular goal, but it's only the first week and I haven't done this in a while. I'm sparing you, I promise.



• I was a little sloppy on my article reading goal. I got three done in The New Yorker and two in the Economist (which I also put in a subscription for (signing bonus woo!)), but didn't, um, make it around to the New Scientist at all. Tomorrow I will finish the reading and post all the links and (a short) reaction to each article. Also of note: I plan on getting a subscription to the New Yorker, too, as soon as I get my first paycheck. It's only $70 for two years! I didn't realize it was so cheap! I will definitely read more as soon as I have the actual magazines, and I'm very much looking forward to that.



• Ashamed as I am to admit it, I was also sloppy on starting up Tennessee Williams, Salman Rushdie, and (I feel the worst about this one) the screenplay. With the books, it's partially because I realized around Tuesday or Wednesday that the books were still packed and I really have a lot more to clean up in my room before I get to unloading those six or seven boxes. With the screenplay, though, it's all me and my. Laziness. There, I said it. I have the post-its out, ready to color-code, ready to coordinate with a OneNote Notebook on my computer. I told myself I was waiting until I had the right mechanical pencils on hand, so I could make notes in the book itself, but I bought those on Thursday and still haven't done anything more than think about beginning to read. I honestly can't understand what happened. I was, and am, so excited at the prospect of this undertaking. Maybe that's the problem - I like the idea of starting remaining on the horizon.
  
  Well. No more. I'm running out of excuses (i.e., things to watch on On Demand that aren't Apocalypse Now, by the way) and tomorrow I have An Agenda. I am going to lunch at noonish with an old friend, and when I get home, I am doing a LOT of laundry, and while I am doing laundry, I am going to keep the TV off and the classical/soundtrack music on and start in on this book. I am going to tackle it head on and I am pretty sure that after it gets rolling, the other half of that law of motion (the part about when objects are in motion) will kick right in and it won't seem quite so possibly impossible anymore.



• Attentive readers may have noticed that in the previous post, Sundries - Part 3, one goal had been moved into the "In Progress" category: number 90, Intentionally go out in the pouring rain and soak through. Seems a bit of a one-time thing, doesn't it? Either you've stood out and soaked or you haven't. Not so. Twice in the last two days (that is, last night and this morning) it sounded, in the house, like it was a torrential downpour outside. This morning, it was actually loud enough that it woke me up, and I checked out the window before changing into rain-appropriate attire (that is, not my velvet pajama pants) to ensure that this time, it really was a good solid rain. Literally by the time I was out the door, it still sounded slightly ferocious, kind of like a lion cub on the verge of lion puberty trying out an intimidating roar, and by the time I was across the yard and into the street, the rain felt nice, but I could tell it was definitely not of the "soak through" sort. By the time I was back inside, changing back into my cozy pjs, the rain had slowed to a trickle. The real measure? My shirt was completely dry within five minutes.
  
  Therefore, goal number 90 is in progress because I continue to be vigilant in my search for a proper hard rain and. Seriously. The next time there is one, rain-appropriate attire be damned. I will own that rain, even if it means I have to be ridiculously uncomfortable doing it.
  
  Probably.



• I hit submit. I sort of have a phobia about that, finalizing things that I sometimes don't have complete control over: airplane reservations online, intrawebal submissions of papers, and hitting "send" on just about anything that isn't a casual email. I have a tremendous fear about not being able to take things back. One day I might tell you about the realization of this fear in a funny little story I like to call "Half an hour of tears and screeching with the Virgin Atlantic call center in India." Yeah. It's a good one.
  
  So, what did I submit? The registration packet for the Foreign Service Officer Test. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the entire application, though it did ask for basic resume stuff. I feel like the real application should have essay questions about why I want to be a part of the Foreign Service. I should probably work on preparing those answers, anyway. Yeah. Anyway. The test window is sometime in October, so I should be receiving my invitation to register for a seat sometime in the next week. I'm hoping. Fingers crossed. You should, too.



• Finally, Selfportrait Thursday, goal 37, is underway. You can see it three posts back from here; I will not be mentioning that I have done SPT again in the weekly update unless I'm feeling particularly down about my goal progress that week. It'll sort of be our secret code; you'll know I'm really mad at myself for not getting anything done because I'll bring it up. Know that I am chastising myself quite enough even now, for this grave, underperforming transgression.

So, there it is, the week in review. Now that all the goal detail posts are done, I won't have them as an excuse to delay doing actual goal-related activities, and the posts in the coming week will be far more substantive. I'm going to really get started, I swear!
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Sundries - Part 1

There are a lot of these goals, so I'm breaking them down into three parts of relatively equal size, for my manageability and yours.

3. Be able to do all three splits.
10. Run a real world mile in less than ten minutes.
11. Buy $10 of stock during the first week and do NOT look at its earnings (or losses) until Day 1001.
14. Turn off the internet for a week [in preparation for...]
15. Turn off the computer for a week.
21. Replace every lightbulb in my living space with an energy-saving equivalent.
46. Serve on a grand jury.
47. Fast - 3 days
48. Fast- 5 days
49. Fast - 7 days

Sundry Items 52-80 may be found in Part 2, while 81-101 are located in Part 3.

Details

3. Be able to do all three splits.

In my youth, I did gymnastics and dance. While I wasn't particularly graceful or strong or dedicated, and wasn't able to get very far in either, I did have a lot of fun at it and I enjoyed all the flexibility it yielded me. I've kept up with a stretching routine over the years, but I still feel like I'm old and creaky sometimes. Ergo, I want to reclaim the ability to do left leg, right leg, and center splits. Whenever I make some sort of progress on this goal, it will be posted with an additional tag of "Physical Health."

10. Run a real world mile in less than ten minutes.

I can run a mile on an elliptical in a gym in just over ten minutes with the incline set at 12 and the resistance fluctuating between 6 and 9. For the life of me, I cannot run on a street or outdoor track or through the woods or anything for more than a few minutes, let alone an entire mile or ten minutes. I have never really worked at it, though, except for training two days a week at the gym on the elliptical - if you could call it training. I don't think so, since there was no end point in mind. It was just exercise. And gyms are expensive, and they play loud, bad music, and... so many things. So I want to train up and be able to run a full mile in the real world in under ten minutes. Progress on this goal (including a baseline post) will carry the additional tag of "Physical Health" as well.

11. Buy $10 of stock during the first week and do NOT look at its earnings (or losses) until Day 1001.

This is one of those more ridiculous sorts of goals, but it's one that I think will be very entertaining at the end. As I wrote in the last weekly update post, the stock I chose will probably be on my radar for the first six months or so, but I'll try my hardest to avoid it and my dad promised he would make an effort to keep it off his monitor in the office. Again, I have 8.5 shares in Hyperdynamic Systems (NYSE: HDY(?)) and it will be interesting to see where this baby company goes in the next three years.

14. Turn off the internet for a week.

This goal partially comes out of a hypothetical bet, which in turn came out of a South Park episode in which America loses the internet. The question was whether you would rather go one year without TV or one year without internet. Everyone else said they could just watch TV on the internet, but I felt that was against the spirit of the question and claimed I not only could go one year without the internet, but that I would. For about two weeks at the beginning of the last school year, I firmly believed that my post-collegiate job would be documenting my decision to live in New York City without the internet. That didn't pan out, but I still think it's an interesting experiment since we're the first generation of adults that has been online for all or most of our conscious memory. This goal is also training for...

15. Turn off the computer for a week.

This is obviously in the same vein as the previous goal, but MOAR XTREEEEEME. Nothing else to really say about these two, except that 1) vacations/moving will not count and 2) exceptions will have to be made for work if required. My computer and I are literally attached at the hip for more than half of my leisure time. This will be very, very difficult.

21. Replace every lightbulb in my living space with an energy-saving equivalent.

One year for Christmas, everyone in my family got compact fluorescents because the school was giving them out to us to change out bulbs in our dorm rooms. Changing one bulb doesn't make a big difference, but changing the bulbs of 2000 students... then you're starting to get somewhere. Anyway, they left boxes of bulbs in the vacuum/free box closet of every dorm in case someone had missed the door-to-door exchange, and... well, yeah. Everyone in my family ended up getting some for Christmas. Call it taking full advantage of my student activity fee.

Anyway. These bulbs produce a perfectly fine light when covered with a shade, and save power, and are a bit less expensive than they were two years ago. I know there's this whole contingent of people who think they cause cancer... but what doesn't, anymore?. Some say that the mercury in them seeps into landfills... but if the alternative is continuing to use tungsten bulbs, I can't really see that being an improvement, on balance. And there are ways to properly dispose of them, so... unless LED lights make some major progress in the mass consumer market, CFLs will be it. For this goal to be fulfilled, I need to have my own living space; living at home and replacing the three bulbs in my bedroom will not count.

46. Serve on a grand jury.

First off, I know you don't request jury duty. You do, however, request GRAND jury duty. The difference is that jury duty lasts for one case, and you make the final determination of guilt or innocence, while grand jurors handle hundreds of cases a week and preliminarily determine whether there should even be a trial. A term also lasts three months. For most people, three months of jury duty sounds excruciating. I know it won't be, mostly because I've sort of already done it. While interning at the District Attorney's Office in Dallas, the "learning" portion of the day was spent down in the grand jury room. Maybe it's because I wasn't allowed to actively participate in the proceedings, but, aside from the daily slew of drug cases, it was fairly interesting to hear everything. And there were moments when I really wanted to speak up, because there was something I thought the grand jurors were misunderstanding, but I wasn't allowed. That's probably why I want to do it so badly. Anyway, I don't think I'll say this for any other goal, but if I haven't completed it and I end up leaving the country to work in an Embassy (or for some other yet unforeseen reason), I will use an as-yet-undisclosed backup goal instead. I'm fairly certain it's illegal to serve on a grand jury in a country of which you are not a citizen.

47, 48, and 49. Daylight Fasts - 3, 5, and 7 days.

Before I added the word "daylight" to this goal (the actual writing of it, not the spirit - that was always intentional), everyone told me this was a very bad idea and some, I think, were concerned that I was trying to sneak in some sort of anorexia into my Mission 101. Let me be clear: that is not the case. Plus, many of you have eaten meals with me; you know that I eat. Quite healthily. Well, a decent amount, anyway, and there are sometimes vegetables involved.

Anyway. Sometimes I do think I eat too much, in that way that I think everyone in America can eat too much, and there is something to be said for the willpower it takes to not consume anything during the daylight hours. This is not a religious project, although I am hoping to sneak some meditation into these fasts, but I basically want to prove that I can. I will probably not eat anything for breakfast, drink water during the day, and eat a very light dinner of rice or peanut butter and crackers (alternating days, perhaps) after dark before bed. Each length of fast is a separate goal because these will be very, very difficult. I'm fasting from the internet and the computer during this mission. I should probably do a fast from something that reminds me what it's like to not have your basic needs met, too. Posts about all three goals will also be tagged with "Physical Health."

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