I should probably call in sick tomorrow but will see how I feel. I haven't felt well since June 15. I suffered with a horrible sore throat and saw a doctor on June 22. He found nothing wrong and even took a strep throat swab. He prescribed me 875 mg amoxocillin pills and to take two a day. That's a tremondous amount of anitbiotics to take considering I didn't have a bacterial infection - I was diagnosed with acute pharyngitis (sore throat). I suspect that he theorized I could develop may develop a viral infection but am not sure why he prescribed the drugs. All they did was make my stomach do cartwheels for a week. It probably cleaned out all the backterial in my body and made me vulnerable to catching this chest cold. My throat slowly improved but this morning I woke up with a sore chest and croopy cough. Now at the end of the work day I feel like crap. I must have caught some virulent cold bug from someone as this sucks! I've had no energy for two weeks and feel as bad now as I did two weeks ago. Hopefully this thing will run its course as I don't want to go back to the doctor and take more pills as a safeguard.
Darcy's wedding shower was last weekend and was ironically the worst day that I had with my churning stomach. So I had the apartment to myself and drank ginger tea with honey and watched the last few episodes of Enterprise. The tea was good (had to grind a ginger root and let it steep in hot water before straining). Unfortunately I couldn't find the final episode on my friend's tape so I will have to wait and watch it some time, some where.
Wedding plans are coming together (see the wedding blog for those details). My mom returned home from her Spokane trip and reported that my grandmother improved quite dramatically from her almost fatal bout with (can't remember the superbug she had). It caused massive dehydration and delerium. My poor aunts and mother had to deal with taking care of my grandmother and cleaning out her apartment and revising her estate. In many ways it's terrible to get old and being sick puts a lot of pressure on relatives. I hope that when I reach my grandmother's age that there will be a cyanide pill that people can take. It could alleviate so much pain and suffering for surviving relatives and to not deal with nursing homes and extended care facilities and spiraling costs of health care.
I'm a bit disappointed with my status with the HCT. I've not been contacted by anyone since my interview like they said would happen. All I know is that last week my online application history chart had a stop sign affixed in my *failed interview* category. I can accept that providing that the search committee had my complete application. Unfortunately they did not and they even mentioned it in my interview. I told them that I had made changes to my personal profile and that I saw the changes myself. However, the following day I logged in and looked at my official application (which is kind of buried in the website) and I was shocked to discover that the app reflected NONE of my editions since I first posted my application on May 1!! I was livid and emailed the only two contacts I had at the place. One was the individual who called me about the interview and the other person was the recruitment head. But I've had no reply.
As I reflected on the interview I realized that I had no opportunity to ask interview follow-up questions. I only had twenty minutes to ask them questions and I only asked a few of them. I felt that the interview was rushed and, combined with how things have progressed afterwards, I feel that things are disorganized there. Not that I'm a well organized person either but I've been left in limbo with no way to contact them!
A colleague at work has a friend who works at the American University of Sharjah. We've sent each other a few emails and I've learned a few more interesting things about life over there. It's not perfect by any means but can't be worse than living in Broward County for five years. That university is constructing an impressive new library.
Work is okay but it is boiling down to the lull before the storm as three people are leaving by the end of August. Another will go on maternity leave in the fall at least two others are actively looking for work elsewhere. Department morale is very low and I am tired of hearing people bitch even though they have legitimate complaints. But I've been here as long as they have and in some cases longer. But you either suck it up and do your work or get the hell out of here. I have one more year of learning the ropes with collection development and whatever other tasks I can learn before we leave this god forsaken place for who knows where.
My university's retirement annuity policy change has really irked me and is a factor when we will leave. NSU has decided that employees must be employed on the last calendar day of the year (Dec. 31) in order to retain all retirement contributions by the employer. In other words if I leave next summer 2006 then I will not be able to keep all the money that NSU has contributed for me for that year. I'm having TIAA-CREF calculate how much I receive annually from NSU. Anyway that adds up to a lot of money. That's enough griping for now - I want to go home and rest my aching chest and pick up my Harold Balazas art that my grandmother and aunt sent me (wedding gift!)...
posted by Michael at 7:22 PM
