Monday, January 28, 2008

Under the influence of yellow fever vaccine

So last Friday I took vaccine for yellow fever, in expectation of my trip to Brazil in 3.5 weeks. During the weekend everything was alright but today, now that I had to go back to work for a 5 hour workout meeting, it finally hit me. No fever so far, just a general weakness that is actually a little funny. You feel like you are getting sick, but, at the same time, it's just different. Great to focus for enough time to write long phrases or discuss things. So, I'll keep this short.

Lots of things are going on right now. To add to my general not feeling very good, two weeks ago my wrist started hurting. I was working during the weekend at home and probably my keyboard wasn't set up very well... So my right wrist decided to finally complain with me. I gave it a week before I start to worry about it and it started feeling better. Maybe because it started feeling better I started using it more so at the end of last week is was almost feeling as bad as it did when it all started. No time on Friday to call the doctor, but I finally did it today. The sadly odd thing: I'll only see him next Monday, which means that who knows... It might be better already when I get to see the doctor. Nobody ever claimed the US health system was any good!

About my trip to Brazil, the one Amy is going too, it's going to be quite fun, I hope. Lots of things to still organize and gifts to buy, but I'm looking forward to it. Will keep me away from very odd times at work right now. Not bad times, just times of change. Times where it becomes hard to predict people's reactions to things.

Just to make my wrist feel better, on Sunday evening I went volunteering at Teen Feed. It was interesting to work on a more industrial-like kitchen with 90-second dishwashers (yes, it can do your dishes in 90 seconds!), 4 ovens, plenty of prep-space, plenty of chickens to cook. Fun! No, I wasn't doing any of the cooking, just helping with some prep work, cleaning and serving food (actually butter for the dinner rolls and filling up the cups of juice, water and milk). Sometimes it's just good to feel like you are helping.

Last night we had snow (again!). Not all around the city, but we did get a couple of inches around here. Enough to have to be careful walking around this morning. Didn't fall this time, though (I did fall when it snowed last, two weeks ago, just after I hurt my wrist - joy!).

I think it's time to get away from my computer again and lie down. Working on this computer doesn't feel that great on my wrists. Oddly, at work I have a much better setup. Larger table, more space to support my wrists by having my arms on the table. That's the best position that I've found so far. Makes me not want to go home.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Happy 2008

This is actually my 300th post, according to blogger (that has in the past [sorry for all the broken things on my old blog] not been able to count number of posts). So it's a celebration! A celebration of a new year looking back a year to see what has changed:

Actually, 2007 was an odd year for me. There were a lot of subtle changes that compounded in making my thinking different, but everything not as much. Let me try to enumerate things:
  1. I was promoted at work: with great power comes greater responsibility, right? Well, I don't have great power, but I can somehow feel a greater responsibility. I'm not going to get to details, as this is not the forum for these kinds of details, but there were quite a few psychological changes in the work environment last year. And there is a PiƱata at the center of them all.

  2. Video games and video game communities: I've bough my Wii and a DS (two, actually) and have been going to friends' places to play video-game. I've never been away from playing things on video-games and computers, but I haven't bought a video-game console in a long time. What have I felt as different: I have new things to talk about, like I've finished Super Mario Galaxy yesterday (more on this on some other post, perhaps). It hasn't yet affected my blog, but I think it should sometime soon.

  3. Less emails: this is probably one of the worst things of the year for me. I have been sending less and less emails to friends and this has been quite psychologically painful. You might be thinking: if it's painful, why don't you just write? The sad thing is that I don't think I have an answer for this question. Every time I sit at my computer to write an email, I end up wasting a lot of time and not actually finishing it. Writer's block, or I don't know.

  4. Less of everything else: thinking of less emails, I've realized that not only I've been writing less emails, I've been working less on side projects, I've been reading less research articles, I've been continuously posting less and less on this blog (probably also related to the "writer's block" mentioned above), I've been doing less productive things on my idle time. And I can't really put the blame on video games, as except for a few games here and there*, I haven't been playing that much. But I'll try not to point fingers at things.

  5. Pets: well, a pet lizard is a pet too, huh? Needs food and cleaning up. Also needs me to coordinate with friends every time I take a vacation of more than a couple of days. When I go to Brazil I'll need to take her to a friend's place for whole 3 weeks!
So, it's been a year with some changes. What to expect from this year? I'm not really sure yet. I only know that I have two trips to Brazil ahead of me and one to Hawaii. The rest will be trying to do some catch-up with all that didn't happen last year! Maybe...

*games that used a lot of my time this year (not in any specific order):
  • Super Mario Galaxy
  • Bioshock
  • Mario Strikers Charged
  • Fifa Soccer 2008 for Wii
  • Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
  • Mario Kart DS
  • Brain Age DS
  • Tetris for DS (not because I've played it, because I've spent a lot of time looking for it before I concluded that I had lost it somewhere)