Wednesday, December 17, 2008

here we go again ...

far too many of my friends will simply shake their heads and say, ‘well it sounds like her’

Yesterday: jr.Gopher #2 is diagnosed with Pink Eye. trans: no day-care. trans: mama doesn’t get to study for her impending final exam. I realize that I can’t find my wallet, last seen day before.

Today: There was an amazing biohazard clean up in the bathroom. Taking jr.Gopher #1 to pre-school/kinderstube results in his teacher telling me that diarrhea caused by potentially microbiological causes (rather than diet) means he can’t stay. So much for spending the day studying the difference between case-control and cross-sectional study design, trying to remember which one can calculate quantitative causation.

Killing time while waiting for the store to open, where I had last seen my wallet, is no longer a matter of sitting in a coffee shop, due to the limited patience of my recently acquired companion. Ah, I think, I’ll just go to the McD’s on Hiawatha, since it has a play area, and I can still have a cup of joe.

Approaching the intersection of 54th and Chicago, a monster-sized gray mechanical object zooms into my peripheral vision, with just enough sub-conscious brain processing to realize it’s a car. I screamed. Subsequently, I had a salient personal experience to demonstrate the efficacy and purpose of seat belts to jr.Gopher. I also now have a bashed-in rear quarter panel. When did I call my insurance company and down-grade my insurance? Ummm, that would be last week. So much for the $400 savings this billing period.

I got lost en route to McD’s (I didn’t realize the Minnehaha Parkway went under Hiawatha). There was no longer really any reason to kill time, but as I had told jr.Gopher he could play there, we continue on. After all, what else did I have to do?

Did I mention that I have a final tomorrow? Did I mention that I haven’t had much time to study for it?

Of course, neither store which could have had my wallet has it. After a more thorough excavation of my room, I’ve concluded it isn’t at home, either.

Sure, I can go to the DMV and get a new license - at least I can get a piece of paper stating that I have one, pending its arrival. I can call the bank & credit card company to cancel the cards. I can get Mr.Gopher to get me cash. My bus pass is only valid until the 31st anyway. But .... my student ID? I need it to get into the student lounge, where I planed to spend all day today & tomorrow studying for my epidemiology final exam. And spend tomorrow evening actually taking the 3 hour exam.

Did I mention that I have a final tomorrow?

I need the ID card to get into my laboratory to actually do the research, too. That, however, is far less important. Do I think it is remotely feasible to replace my ID card in an hour or so today? ummm ... to put it bluntly ... no.

Tomorrow: Say a prayer I do well on this jinxed final. If I do well, I’ll get an A in the class, which should do wonders to balance the crappy grade I’m getting in one of my other classes. Sigh ... time to make lunch.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG! It's a good thing your head is attached to your body or you'd forget it someplace....(laughing)

I know it wasn't funny to you and it's NEVER funny to lose one's wallet. Did you find it? Unfortunately, when I've lost important stuff like a wallet, it's usually been someplace I would never think logical.

How did the exam go? So that's where you were Thurs. nite. It was just Heidi, Ken and me, but we had an interesting encounter with a couple who wanted a note on the back of a painting translated. The painted was a 19th century portrait, and the note was written in the old German script. Heidi was the best at figuring it out, but she'd forgotten her glasses so couldn't read it well. They'll come back after the holidays for the translation. Cool.

I hope the end of your week has been much, much better than the beginning.

Gopher MPH said...

well, actually, the week got incredibly worse ...

No, I wasn't taking an exam, I was stoned out of my mind of Vicodin, which was a drastic improvement over 11:50 a.m., which involved sobbing in pain, begging for Mr.Gopher to come over to campus & take me home.

The on going saga will be in a new post.

The old-style German isn't actually so bad to read - but I spent a lot of time with medieval calligraphy - after seeing that, the Fraktur text looks more familiar than our letters today. Now, Victorian era formal calligraphy? That's beyond me, often.