contents under pressure

I arrived in Detroit at an ungodly hour this morning in bad shape but still in one piece. Recently I've been suffering a sort of head cold that changes its symptoms every day. Presumably only an illness as polymorphic as this could make it past my robust immune system. On Saturday I had a sore throat, stuffy nose and addled brain, on Sunday this had turned into a runny nose and a lack of energy. And today? Sinus pressure and I lost my voice for a little while. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

The sinus pressure, combined with some ham-fisted cabin pressure control on the behalf of a Northwest Airlines crew, caused me some grief during the final approach to Detroit. I had horrible earaches for the last 15 minutes before touchdown and even a bit of shooting pain in my forehead. And then my ears didn't pop when I got off the plane. In fact they didn't pop until I got home an hour later, sat in the hot tub and set about purposefully trying to mess with the pressures in my head. I got it mostly right and then gradually equilibrated over the rest of the day. Flying on a plane should not require that you recalibrate your head afterwards.

One of the first orders of business once I regain my health and coherence is to reformat my computer, which has gone over a year on one installation of Windows. I broke some stuff quite a few months ago and it's kind of jury-rigged together at the moment.

So yeah, I'm back in Michigan for a few weeks. So if anyone else is around, drop me a line and I'll see when I can swipe some wheels.

going home

School is FINALLY out for the summer. In about an hour I'm headed up to Portland for a flight to Detroit. I'm spending four weeks in Michigan.

if it can be lost then it can be won

I had a nice weekend. Mostly because I did no school work. I made peanut butter fudge, went to the department picnic, watched Where Eagles Dare, got on the roof of the physics building (pictures on Facebook), saw Cars, and did no studying for quantum mechanics. I'm flying back to Michigan in a week and I'm looking forward to that.