RochelLeah's RealLife

Sunday, October 16, 2005

A bruised eyeball, academic backlog and the Jewish holidays, and whatever else is new

At the moment, I am sitting in my bedroom, procrastinating from writing a paper on "situational contingencies"and religious conversion. The paper isn't due until Thursday (8:10 am). I'm having a hard time motivating myself. My eye hurts. And--although the actual due date is three-and-a-half days away, I only have one in which to write it. "Why?", you might ask. Because of Sukkot. I HATE having the Tishrei holidays fall on weekdays. I never manage to accomplish very much on weekends (well, that is, during the first half of Friday, Saturday night, and Sunday--the part of the weekend that is not Shabbat). Thankfully, I have not fallen behind in my reading. But getting assignments done has been no picnic. Also, I am already experiencing holiday burn-out. I'm usually OK until Shemini Atzeret and only really out-of-commission for Simhat Torah. This year, though, I feel like it's all-Jewish, all-the time. Even though I've only missed two classes in the past two weeks, I can barely remember what we've been studying.

It hasn't helped that I spent 3 hours today in the emergency room. My generally clutzy behavior has landed me with a minor, but annoying, injury once again. On Friday, while on BART, I was opening a book (Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception, to be precise) when the train suddenly lurched. The book pushed up my glasses and rammed itself into my eyeball. Alas, the injury is not healing as quickly as one might think (since eyes are usually very quick to heal, as anyone who's had either cataract removal or Lasik surgery will tell you). I woke up this morning to find that my eyeball was swollen (yes, swollen) and hurt even more than yesterday. The advice nurse engaged in what was essentially emotional blackmail in order to convince me that I should go to the emergency room today instead of the opthamology clinic tomorrow (it's not open on Sundays).

I now know why Kaiser Oakland is expanding their ER. Just to let you know how small it is, the waiting room is smaller than my apartment. This is in OAKLAND. A big city. And the minor injury clinic is there, too. After all that time, though, the only thing they could tell me was that I did indeed manage to bruise my eyeball and scratch my cornea. I got to have fancy dye put into my eye. They didn't tell me to do anything at home. Basically, all I got was instructions to go to the opthamology department tomorrow, and the comfort of knowing they'd expedite my appointment because of the ER visit. Oy.

Other items of the moment:
J. is in England, and I'm not. Sigh.

I am currently trying to decide what to do about my cellphone... should I switch to MetroPCS, or stay with Sprint? New lower monthly rates at Sprint may make it worthwhile, particularly because cheaper phones are available, due to discounts, etc.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home