promises, promises

While my last post promised another forthcoming one, I failed. I've been on-and-off sick for the past few weeks, with my ailments ranging from the flu to migraines to severe anemia. I have spent more time in urgent care clinics than I care to think about, including two hours today.

When I originally went to the doctor the week before last, I first went to the urgent care clinic associated with University Medical Center. According to the website, it was somehow affiliated with the emergency department, which sounded weird, but as the primary reason for going was needing blood work done (and I could not get in to see my regular endocrinologist for two months), I somewhat naively assumed that they would be quicker at processing blood work, as they were attached to a hospital.

So, I get there, and it turns out that rather than the urgent care department being associated with the emergency department, the two are in fact one and the same. I filled out ER admission forms, and began to wait. And wait. After two hours (and I had not even been triaged at this point) I began to speak to the people sitting around me. Turns out that many had been waiting to be seen since the previous night. Several very ill-looking children were also waiting. The staff, one frustrated mother informed me, were doing the best they could by checking vital signs every two hours. I decided that waiting any longer here would probably not be helpful, that not only was it entirely possible that it would be twelve or more hours until I was seen, but that there were people there with much more severe problems than I.

So I decided to go to a regular urgent care facility. I drove to one, and after finding a parking space (no small feat--the lot was full and I parked in the lot belonging to another business a block away), as I was about to enter the building, a clearly disgruntled woman came out the door and told me, "Don't go in unless you want to wait six hours." I did not want to wait six hours, especially on top of the two I'd already wasted.

I called a friend (hi Travis!) who looked up another urgent care facility online for me. Once I arrived, I signed in and waiting 3 and a half more hours before I was seen. During my waiting time, several people who had been there before I got there got frustrated and left before being seen. But I waited it out. When I was finally called back, I was told that they could not even draw blood there, that I just needed to go to a lab the next morning and have blood drawn. In short, I had wasted a day.

This was before the flu and before the migraines. Maybe more on those (and the actual cause of my original visit) later. Incidentally, I am convinced that I may have picked up the flu from all those hours waiting in ERs and Urgent Cares. Gah.

coming soon.

So, I am abysmal at updating. But I've been sick, and I've been busy. However, tomorrow (or in the next few days) I might share my horrible interactions with multiple health care institutions today. Right now I'm just going to cry.

for love of self-presentation

I should not care what other people think of me. Especially not people who, if I ever see them again, will likely not remember me. Yet, yesterday as I was in Borders, I had an internal debate with myself over whether to buy a particular book. This was not for the normal reasons (i.e., I am broke and should not waste money on a book, I am busy and should not waste time on a non-academic book, etc.). No, this was because I was afraid of the silent judgment that would inevitably come from the cashier if I were to walk up there and purchase this book.

The book itself is about the Clinton marriage. I have always been fascinated by the Clinton marriage. Both Bill and Hillary are powerful, independent people, but they both rely on each other a great deal. Obviously, there is some pain there as well, and Bill has (had?) a bit of a philandering problem. I think the personal and gendered dynamics within their relationship would be interesting to read about.

I am, however, under no illusions whatsoever that this book will really, truly illuminate those issues. It is tabloid journalism. The only people who really know what that relationship is like are people who are unlikely to tell professional writers. But I like the idea of exploring these issues*. And the 20 pages of the book I had read sitting in Borders were interesting. So, I wanted to get it.

But I reasoned that buying it would be the equivalent of going to a newsstand and deciding that The National Enquirer was right for you.**

What was a fascinated-yet-interested-in-self-presentation girl to do?

Well, the obvious answer for me was to buy not only the tabloid-y and conservative*** book, but to also buy a relatively smart and liberal book at the same time (thus preventing the perception that I was some anti-Clinton right winger). It would be even better if the book were by a Clinton associate. Turns out such a book was on sale for $3.99! So, I promptly went to the front and purchased For Love of Politics and An Inconvenient Truth. I still felt silent judgment coming from behind the cash register, but I am completely willing to admit that that may have been my imagination.

*It could be said that the reason there is such interest in the Clintons' marriage is that Hillary Clinton is a female running for president and thus there is much interest in things surrounding her relationships, her makeup, her cleavage, etc. And, this is no doubt true. It is also undoubtedly true that many of the attacks on her are gender based (I support Obama, but my non-support of Clinton is policy-based). But I think I have been pretty reflexive about this issue (why exactly the Clintons' marriage fascinates me), and am fairly certain it is not simply because she is a woman running for the highest office. I am also, incidentally, fascinated by the marriages of John and Elizabeth Edwards and Elizabeth and Dennis Kucinich and Janet and Mike Huckabee.

**The obvious answer was to just go buy it online. But I was impatient.

***I assume it will end up being relatively anti-Clinton. I don't know. But, more importantly, I assumed that the cashier would assume it to be a Clinton-bashing book.

within reach

Sometimes when you are in the midst of stressful things, it's helpful to hear a familiar voice, reminding you that this is not all there is, that you get to leave soon (May!), and that in a few months these will all be memories.

(Thanks, Ema.)

Obama is coming to Arizona!

But I have decided that, given my recent luck in seeing presidential candidates (see a few posts below for my particularly disastrous attempt to attend a Hillary Clinton rally), it would be unwise and a waste of time to drive to Phoenix this afternoon. Bill Clinton is also coming to Arizona soon, and I probably won't attend that either. Alas. Go Obama!

"Rain, rain, go away..."

This headline in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, referring to yesterday's showers, is symbolic of the larger disconnect between Tucson and myself. While it was raining yesterday, my mood was lifted as I curled up to some warm soup and a good book. It was lovely.

new computer.

At the end of last semester (and the previous one) I lamented the fact that computer woes seem to strike at the last minute, when course papers and other assignments are due. Well, turns out that my computers also like to mix things up at the beginning of the semester as well.

My computer was dropped from my desk yesterday, and after consulting with the pricey folks at Best Buy and the lovely folks at Blue Chip Computers in Tucson, it was determined that though the computer itself may be salvageable, the crucial bit, the hard drive, is done, gone, unaccessible. Rather than deal with trying to get another hard drive and fixing the computer (it was in poor shape before the crash; the cd/dvd drive, for instance, had ceased working), I just got another computer. A crappy, ugly, huge one, to be sure. But it works, and it was cheap.

The worst part of it all is, of course, that I have lost not only my music and music, I have lost papers, data, etc. This is, of course, my own fault for not properly backing up my computer. But I typically do that through cds, and my cd drive had not been working for months, so I had not done it in a while.

I have other computer woes to report, but I am too busy at the moment downloading and installing all of those things that one must get onto a new computer, including Firefox, AIM, Open Office, iTunes, etc. More stories will follow including my wiping clean the hard drive of another computer (by accident, of course) and the brilliant hacking of my facebook account by my lovely friends who I am, right now, placing on notice. Watch your backs.

I heard Hillary Clinton speak last night!

From my car. While in the parking lot of a high school. But, she was actually at that high school, in person.

Let me explain. On Monday night I (and thousands of others) received an email from the Clinton campaign* inviting us to a “town-hall style” event in Laveen, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. It was to be held at a local high school and we were told to arrive by 7 pm. When I got out of class (not until nearly 5; though this was only the first class of a course that is scheduled to go to 6 pm on Tuesdays), I ran to my car and immediately started driving at undoubtedly unsafe speeds to make it in time. I would say my average speed on the highway was around 85. (I know that sounds entirely too high, but the speed limit itself was 75.) It was very stressful, weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds. All to see a politician who I am not supporting.

Anyway, I arrived in the general area by 6:58. I knew I would be a little late, but I figured they would let me in. And, they probably would have. But I simply could not find the school, and my directions were dead useless. The combination of my navigatorial incompetence, the city's incomprehensible layout***, and google maps' failure to understand that layout resulted in me pulled over to the side of the road, frustrated nearly to tears. Finally I called lovely, lovely Jason, who, after a while, helped me to figure it out.

By the time I made it to where I was supposed to go, it was past 8. It was instantly apparent that this was not a “town-hall style” meeting. This place was packed, overflowing. There was no place to park, not even to park illegally. I heard Clinton's voice booming over a loudspeaker. Town hall events typically do not involve the sort of audio equipment that was clearly involved in this rally. I felt better. I would have been disappointed if I had lost an opportunity to as my question****, but it was clear that such an opportunity had never existed.

The highlight of the evening was the inevitable throng of Ron Paul supporters, who congregated, with their signs and shouts, at all entrances and along the roadway of the high school. But I can see them in Tucson any old day.

All in all, it was a supreme waste of both time and gas money. Perhaps the only benefit is that it spurred me to write this blog post, which is my first in nearly a month. And that's something, right? Perhaps not as cool as hearing Hillary Clinton speak might have been.

* Yes, I know, being on the Clinton mailing list and going to Clinton events may lead the average observer to suspect that I am voting for Clinton. I have no intention of doing so**.

**I am actually going to either vote for Ron Paul (for the fun of it) or Mitt Romney (for the strategy of it) in the Republican party in Texas. I support Barack Obama, but will of course vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election if she is the nominee.

***Some of my critics and naysayers (you know who you are) will put much more weight on my directional cluelessness than on the problematic street layout. But trust me, it was crazy. I pulled into one place that looked promisingly like a school, where I encountered a security guard. He had me pull over and asked, “Are you looking for the school?” I was immediately grateful to have been pulled over, thinking that he would provide directions, but he only informed me that 1) many other people had been just as lost as me, and 2) he did not, in fact, know where the school was. The fact that other people were just as lost as I speaks to the actual ridiculousness of the streets.

****Oh, and it was a good question. I carefully thought it out. I picked a softball that I knew she had an answer to, but the answer would still be interesting. I figured the only way I could get to ask a question would be to have a softball because surely the staffers would screen the questions. But at the sort of event that this had turned out to be, the only way to ask a question would have been to overpower several security guards and secret service officers in order to steal the microphone away from the senator. Back when I thought it would be a real town-hall kinda thing, I had this fantasy that I would ask a question to which Clinton's response would be so interesting (in a good or a bad way) that it would get all sorts of media play; it would even influence peoples' votes. I would have substantially affected the course of American politics. Perhaps I could have even made her cry, since the media seem so interested in that.

Break?

I had a wonderful Christmas, but because I have so many things I need to get done over break (stats paper, work for K.), it is not a true break. It's not as if I have been working non-stop, but, just as during the semester, relaxing, or watching tv, or hanging out with friends, are all guilt-fraught activities. There's no sense of truly being on a break. I'm continually stressed out, even back in Texas. I cannot wait until May.

Why does Stata hate me?

We used to have such a good relationship, but now...

Shocking news!

After a few years of increasing abstinence-only education, teen birth rates are going up for the first time since 1991. Not surprisingly, those states with the highest teen birth rates are those teaching abstinence only, rather than comprehensive sex education. Hmm. As Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health, said: "It's not rocket science."*

*Putting on my social scientist cap, I must acknowledge that this could not mean a whole lot in the long run, that this does not necessarily indicate that a long-term upward trend in teen births is beginning, and that correlation does not equal causation.

Lesson learned for the millionth time... Will it finally sink in?

Things that you have been putting off for a long time, and stressing about, are actually a lot easier and less painful when you just do them.

This just about sums up UTD.

During the midst of an online discussion about UT-Dallas's mascot, and whether or not his name should be changed, there was this comment, by someone named Dwight:

The mascot should be a UTD level 70 blood elf.

Yes, yes, it should be. That or a chess piece. But, you know, comets make sense, too. We are such dorks. Whoosh!

Computer woes update.

Everything is the same.

Edit, 10:20am: Except now I have internet at home. Woo-hoo!

Oh. This blog is three years old.

No excited birthday post, though. That would have been over a week ago, anyhow. I am too consumed by my computer woes be overly excited that I have stuck with something this long.

Here was my first-ish post, way back in 2004. This one year old birthday post was written in the computer lab at UTD while studying for finals. This belated two-year birthday post had me wishing for a pet here in Arizona. I still want one.

But, I hope that by the time I am reading this post next year, I will no longer be in Arizona. Yes, dear reader, I am going to leave. Hopefully. If I have the courage to do it. The easiest thing would be to just stay here and stick it out. But I do not like it here. Ideally, one year from now, on the fourth birthday of this blog, I will be working somewhere back in Texas, maybe teaching sociology at a community college. The fifth anniversary of this blog will hopefully see me as a PhD student somewhere else, somewhere not in Tucson or the desert, somewhere with green trees and large bodies of water. Here's hoping.

Incidentally, I did not intend this post to be so revelatory. I have told a few people of my plans, but not many. Well now it's for the world (or at least the one or two people who read this blog) to know.

Happy birthday.

Of course it all happens at the end of the semester.

At the moment, my old laptop will not start. It will turn on, but Windows never boots, and it soon shuts off. This would not be terribly problematic, as I have not been using this computer at all this semester, except for the fact that in the past week I have spent several hours entering questions into a survey software program, and that time and work may now be lost. I was using that computer because the computer I am on now, the new one that I got at the beginning of this semester, has a non-functioning cd/dvd drive, so I was unable to install the software necessary.

On top of all of this, my internet at home is not working at all. I do not know why.

Why oh why do computer problems hit at the end of the semester?

This happened at the end of last semester as well.

Do you know what he means?

"A very attractive woman -- looked like she just got finished teaching a sociology class at Bryn Mawr College, if you know what I mean -- she said, 'Senator Biden . . . I came fully prepared to be unimpressed with you.' I said, 'Well, thank you very much.' " --Joe Biden, talking about a woman who challenged him for wearing a flag pin.

I do not, in fact, know what he means. What is he saying about sociology or Bryn Mawr? Have I missed something? Are sociologists supposed to be particularly attractive? Are Bryn Mawr professors? If the former, that has not been my experience.

On the phone, talking to the Qwest person about why my internet is having issues

"So, what do you do?"
"I'm a grad student."
"Cool. What do you study?"
"Sociology."
"Ahh. So do you want to go into the medical field?"

On the upside...

CoffeeXChange got new chai, which is less gross than before. Though, now, it is less like chai and more like some spiced milk that tastes vaguely of apple pie filling. I won't be coming for the chai, but now I won't completely avoid coffexchange because of the undrinkable chai.

What is it with Tucson coffee shops always playing 70s and 80s Paul McCartney songs?

That is my only question.