I Will Blog Again, I Promise
Posted 10 September 2008 in Life, the Universe, and Everything by Catriona
I seem to have come down with yet another cold. This is my second cold this semester, which is frustrating me, because I’m rarely ill and this one is weird: I don’t have many normal cold symptoms, but I ache all over and my skin is highly sensitive, which makes sitting or lying down painful and is interrupting my sleep. Frankly, I’d rather just have a runny nose or a cough.
Plus, now is not a good time: I have first-year and second-year assessment to mark—over seventy assignments in total—as well as a journal article that I need to finish by Friday if I’m going to submit it in time.
I doubt it’s going to be a very good journal article, but I’m doing my best.
I’m also still struggling with the Ph.D. submission process, since the proof came out with some fairly annoying formatting issues. These are my fault, rather than the printery’s, and I’m annoyed that I let myself become so frustrated with the process that I didn’t pick them up first time. Now I’m wondering whether it’s possible to cancel the whole process and start again with a new version of the file.
Essentially, I’m a bit beaten down right now and would like a holiday. Even mid-semester break would be nice, but that’s not until after week ten, a full fortnight away.
In the interim, I shall work on thinking up amusing blog posts.
And finishing my journal article, of course.
Share your thoughts [7]
1
Leigh wrote at Sep 10, 10:19 am
I was about to email you with a cranky ‘write something already’ email but instead ill comment with a ‘I’m sorry your sick sweety, feel better soon’ comment xx
2
Matthew Smith wrote at Sep 11, 10:35 am
Oh what an insensitive person I am for not noticing your cry for help / sympathy here. Get better soon Catriona! I had this achy virus a week or so back but you can’t blame me this time.
3
Catriona wrote at Sep 11, 10:55 am
I do still blame you for the last one (or Sol, except I feel guilty blaming a three year old)! I don’t know where I picked this one up. I told Nick I was ill again, and he said, “But where would you have caught it?” Once I started adding up the options—teaching, general walking around campus, public transport, supermarkets—I started feeling even more ill. I don’t think it would take much for me to become germophobic.
But this wasn’t really a cry for sympathy—it’s more a reaction to my crippling, second-generation lapsed-Catholic guilt about not updating my blog more frequently.
4
Matthew Smith wrote at Sep 12, 02:26 am
hahaha: “crippling, second-generation lapsed-Catholic guilt” reminds me of Paul Hester talking about Neil Finn in an interview once.
5
Catriona wrote at Sep 12, 02:31 am
I think that’s the vaguest comment anyone’s ever left on the blog. Don’t make me Google that, Matt!
6
Matthew Smith wrote at Sep 12, 04:55 am
sorry, that’s the band members of Crowded House. It was an interview on tripleJ when the band had their last gig at the opera house and Paul Hester said that Neil’s lyrics come from his catholic guilt.
7
Catriona wrote at Sep 12, 05:45 am
Ah! That makes more sense—I knew they were from Crowded House (and Paul Hester’s the one who died in unfortunate circumstances a few years ago, isn’t he?) but I couldn’t connect that with being a second-generation lapsed Catholic.
Everything else about the Catholicism may dissipate (in my mother’s case: though don’t try shouting “Who made me?” near her) or never have existed in the first place (in my case) but the guilt is a permanent fixture.
I had a conversation with my brother about this, where I said quite casually, “I feel a bit guilty about [something].”
He said, “Oh, well: that’s life” and I was compelled to say, “No, kidder—it’s just us.”