the Dalaverse

Random thought #1: You know what the best job in the world would be? That blonde woman on "Jeopardy" who pops up in the video clips. All she appears to do is travel to interesting places and read a clue. Best. Job. Ever.

Random thought #2: I found a good ate-something-too-spicy-and-my-tongue-is-on-fire fix: cheddar cheese. Seriously. I was eating those buffalo and ranch Doritos, about which I should've known better, and cut myself a slice of sharp yellow Cracker Barrell just to get the taste out of my mouth. And lo, it put the fire right out.

In celebration of that damn check finally snug in my account, I went into town this morning and assuaged my raging desire to spend money with lunch at Panera (and Best Buy was totally right there), one movie from Blockbuster ("The Illusionist"), and a movie (more S2 BtVS) and book (A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory, because I've been missing my mildly trashy English historical fiction) from the library. Already loving the book, and the two Buffy disks have the string of great episodes beginning with "What's My Line." When she was bad, she was awful -- mostly because when she was good, she was amazing. I also need to get some vintage "Gilmore Girls," because I"m afraid they're going to kill off Richard and I will just fall apart if that happens, worse than with Mr. O'Malley.

Oh, and ::grumbles:: What the hell, Yasmin? I've been taking it for two months, and my first cycle was fairly normal, but this month is all fracked up. My favorite thing about birth control pills is the precise timetable they give me; every single month, my period comes the Tuesday of the off week, without fail (time of day depending on whether I've been taking the pill in the morning or the afternoon). It's clockwork. Even if I set the cycle forward or back by several days, it's always that same amount of time before the hormone wears off. Last month I had just switched to Yasmin, and it was a day late, but that didn't bother me much, and it didn't last any longer than usual.

But this week, I took my Saturday pill early on Sunday morning, just to make sure it didn't start while I was in the pool Monday night. I figured Wednesday morning or so would be a reasonable time to expect it. And it didn't arrive until a couple of hours ago -- Thursday night. This is extremely annoying. It'll interrupt my Monday scuba class, and also won't be really done when I start taking next month's dosage. I think I just might not take the first couple days' pills.

...Okay, so it's not a huge deal, it's just annoying, and the PMS has been manifesting as sleepiness. Even though I'm still having trouble sleeping. Why? Well, first of all, I can't sleep in, for two reasons. One, having an 8:00 class three days a week sets my sleep cycle pretty definitely; two, once the sun is bright enough to light my room, I wake up. The other night I went to bed at 1 and woke up at 7:30, for absolutely no fucking reason. I got up, puttered around on the computer for a couple of hours, then went back to bed until 11. I hate doing shit like that, because it just makes me tired for the rest of the day.

Secondly, I've been having trouble dropping off to sleep (and now it's been waking me up a couple of times a night) because...the vent in the room is right above my bed, and the air (which is not actually warm; sometimes it feels downright chilly) blows right on my face. I can't take air blowing on my face. My room at home has the worst airflow in the house; it's the coldest room in the winter and the hottest in the summer. But no matter how hot it gets, I don't sleep with a fan because I can't sleep with a fan, especially if it's ::shudders:: moving. I don't know why, but I hate the feeling of air blowing on my skin. Here, the fact that it's on my face means that it's extra hard to ignore, and also leaves my throat and sinuses feeling bone-dry in the morning. Somehow I was able to stand it all last semester, but since I've been back, it's been intolerable.

So move my bed, you say. But that would be too easy! If I move it anywhere in the room so that my head is against the wall (and my pillow won't slide off the back), it'll still put my face beneath the vent. Unless I put it in the middle of the room, which would be totally weird. I would consider just flipping my head down to the other end where I am, and maybe taking it down a few notches to have something of a headboard (it's lofted as high as it'll go right now), except for my other weird sleep issue: I have to face the wall when I'm lying on my right side. This has been how my bed is for as long as I can remember at home, how all my beds at school have been, even how my bed at Oxford was (kind of funny, really, considering those beds were all already in that position when I got there). I can't fall alseep if I've got the wall on my left. Same thing as with the fan. (Exception being hotel beds, which are usually in the middle of the room. And, like, people's couches and whatnot. In those cases, my discomfort is mitigated by the fact that it's a temporary arrangement.

So...yeah. It's freaking weird, but true. Sometimes I think I'm a couple of degrees below OCD; I have several other habits (although not compulsions) that strike me as mildly obsessive-compulsive. It doesn't affect my day-to-day quality of life, but if I had to pick a psych diagnosis for myself, that'd be it. Anyway, tonight I've finally had it and I'm going to try tacking up a hankerchief over the vent, letting it hang down a bit on the other end to let the air out. I'm also going to take the advice of a Yahoo headline from this week and concoct a drink of warm milk, a drizzle of honey, and a splash of Baileys that will hopefully knock me right out.

I hope the fluttering won't keep me awake.

In this icon, I am Mario, and the ginormous evil bullet (? It's been so long!) is Life.