Out of Commission

For the last five days, I've been pretty sick with a nasty head cold. One the consequences of which has been that the dentist appointment that I had scheduled for today was cancelled. I've been spending most of my time writhing on the couch under a blanket or lolling on my bed looking like death-warmed-over. When I've been forced to attend class, I've tried to sit in the back next to window and cough discretely into my sleeve. Yes, I'm sure I annoyed the hell out of everyone with my icky display of illness, but when your graduate course only meets ten times in a term, you have to go to every class. However, that has been balanced by my recent realization that most of the students in the class were nerdier than I remember.


Reach for the Sky

So, I've been trying to do my best during the last few of days of illness, but it hasn't been too easy. The physical illness, in a way, is a just a token of the larger, more intense personal issues with which I have been struggling during this past half month. Work, which for an English Graduate student means reading and writing, has been both a refuge and a distraction from these other problems. Currently, I'm reading Charles Dickens Bleak House, a novel which is supposed to paint a portrait of 19th century London. It is sometimes been a challenge to wrap my poor, ill and infected head around a Victorian sentence structure, but I have been able to follow the gist of the plot anyway. Also, I've been reading Flannery O'Connor. There's nothing like a weird story than one written by her. And, of course, Faulkner will be coming soon. But by that time, I hope to be feeling much better.