Tired and REtired accurately describes me for the past couple of days. No sitting around munching on bon-bons and watching soap operas all day here. So much for the glory days of retirement!

Despite really looking forward to the Thursday Thirteen meme, I just didn't have time to get to it today. Not that this is necessarily bad; it just means that I'm having another good day and have the energy and concentration to get some more work done. I might could get used to this!

The visit with my wunnerful wunnerful neurologist, Dr. S, went well. We're changing my anti-seizure medications again as the Dilantin has never really reached the level in my blood stream that it should in order to work effectively. Instead of continuing to increase the dosage of a drug that just ain't cuttin' the mustard as my Grandma used to say, I'll go back on Topamax. I did have some issues with Topamax causing brain fog a while back; however, I'm no longer teaching and required to have unfailing mental acuity on demand. I'll take a bit of fogginess over clusters of seizures any old day. Besides, Topamax has three delightful side effects from which I gained some additional benefit in the past and hope to see again:

• it causes weight loss
• it is also used to treat and prevent migraines
• it will allow me to stop taking two, possibly three, additional medications

The next couple of weeks will be challenging as I take both the Topamax and Dilantin until I reach the previous dosage of 100 mg of Topamax twice daily and start to wean off the Dilantin. Been there, done that -- at least half a dozen times -- and will survive it once again.

To see other entries or play along, visit here.


1. If you could turn back the hands of time to correct one wrongdoing, what event would you choose and why?

I wouldn't want to turn back the hands of time to correct a wrongdoing because in doing so, I would also erase the lesson that I learned from the mistake. Do I regret some things that I've done? Of course, but I learned and moved on, trying never to repeat them.

2. Are you one for tradition? If so, what traditions do you strongly believe in? If not, what makes tradition hypocritical?

Traditions are the threads that join the panels of our lives together and without them, we're frayed and fragmented. Traditions provide us with continuity and a sense of immortality. I believe in and celebrate traditions wholeheartedly! The types of traditions that I believe most strongly in are those that are unique to every family -- things like eating certain foods only on specific special occasions. As wonderful as I think they are, though, traditions can become hypocritical if nobody knows what they mean, how they started, or why they continue. A really good example of this is found in Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery.


3. You were taking part in an event and you had to crossplay, who would you crossplay as and why?

I have no clue what crossplaying is, so I guess I wouldn't do it.


4. If you only had one day left to live, how would you spend your last day? Would you be tempted to live fatally if you knew you were to die the next day, and if so, what extreme measures would you take?

I'd live my last day the same as I would every other one. The only thing that I might do differently is to add an extra prayer or two.


5. What are your top five sinful materialistic items, ones you'd expect from others including those closest to you? Why are each in the position they are in?

I'm not sure what a "sinful materialistic item" is, nor do I get the second half of the first sentence. I was doing okay with this meme until now! I don't think I have any "sinful materialistic items," unless you count my cigarettes. . .


6. I am...tired but can't sleep because I woke up from a bad dream.

7. I feel...inspired to do something remarkable today.

8. I see...my computer screen and a cup of coffee on my desk.

9. I need...very little to make me happy.

10. I love...little baby ducks, clovers filled with luck, slow-moving trains, and rain
I love little country streams, sleep without dreams, flowers that bloom in May, and hay
And i love you too

I love leaves in the wind, pictures of my friends, birds in the world, and squirrels
I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy kittens, iced tea in a glass, and grass and i love you too

I love honest open smiles, kisses from a child, tomatoes on the vine, and onions
I love winners when they cry, losers when they try, music when it's good, and life
And i love you too

**I borrowed the lyrics for Tom T. Hall's song, "I Love," and changed them up a bit.

11. I wish...that I could control The Brain instead of It controlling me.

12. I think...; therefore, I am.

13. I hear...dead people. No wait, I see dead people. I forgot what I hear.

14. I crave...mangoes in the summer.

15. I fear...bridges more than anything else.

16. I hope…For love, joy and laughter
I hope
We'll have more than we'll ever need
I hope
We'll have more happy ever afters
I hope
We can all live more fearlessly
And we can lose all the pain and misery
I hope, I hope

**I agree with the Dixie Chicks' lyrics for "I Hope."

And...here we go!


1. When I heard that I needed brain surgery, I did lots of research before making a decision to go ahead with it.

2. Prevention is the best medicine.

3. It's late, but I don't sleep much anyway.

4. Even on the worst of days, I try to remain positive always.

5. My eyes have seen beauty in the most unusual of places.

6. "Go ahead, make my day," she said strongly.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to hearing that an elderly friend who was hospitalized last night with pneumonia is doing better, tomorrow my plans include a trip to the hospital to visit my friend and Sunday, I want to recover from Saturday's family gathering at my house!

• It's been a while since I posted anything about having problems sleeping, which is a good thing because it meant that there wasn't a problem. Like everything else related to Chiari, I never know when the demon of insomnia is going to emerge from the cave and make itself known until it happens. And it has happened. Bleh! I'm back to sleeping a couple of hours and being awake for three or four, all day and all night long. How this is going to work when it comes time to go to class is beyond me. I'll just have to play it by ear.
• I missed a documentary on HBO last night that I have been waiting to see ever since I heard about it from the Sundance Film Festival. The film, Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech, directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus, "examines the balancing act between protecting civil liberties and national security in a post-9/11 world, asking whether all speech is equally free," according to HBO's website. Now I have to monitor the TV schedule to see when it will air again and mark it on the calendar on my iPhone so that I don't miss it a second time!
  

• Last night, I heard on the news about a plane crash involving a Yemeni airlines flight over the island of Comoros. At that time, the 150 passengers were not expected to have survived. Just minutes ago, though (it's just before 3:30 a.m.), CNN reported that a toddler was pulled ALIVE from the wreckage! Alhamdullilah ---> in English, that's Thank God!
• So I took the plunge, made a decision, and filled out the questionnaire for the person whom I chose to design my new blog template. Boohoo for me, her queue is full until sometime in July. :( This would be a good time to remind myself that patience is a virtue, LOL!

After a rather nasty seizure last night, I crashed on the couch until the Amazing Egyptian Dude came home. I visited with him for a few minutes before falling back to sleep, and he left me there, zonked out and blissfully unaware of anything except the joy of an adventure in Lullabye Land. Because I need a "nest" of pillows to properly support my neck and prevent headaches, he doesn't like to leave me asleep on the couch unless I fell asleep there after a seizure; then, he won't wake me for anything.

It's currently 4:17 a.m., and I have been awake since shortly before 2. If you've read my blog before, you'll know that this isn't anything unusual for me. Except that today it is -- it REALLY is! I would have stayed asleep had it not been for the fact that an unusually loud and unfamiliar sound woke me up. It took me several minutes and opening the back door to finally figure out what it was:





I'm not afraid of thunder and lightning but living in Southern California does make me unaccustomed to hearing and seeing it. The sound and light show continued for a good 30 minutes and at one point, the thunder was so close, so strong, and so loud that it rattled the windows in my house! Interesting, during the entire performance, not a single drop of rain fell!

This is earthquake weather, peeps, I'm tellin' ya!

I've written before about the feeling of running in a hamster wheel and not getting anywhere, especially when it concerns the miserable Chiari headaches that I get more than often than I like. The past few days have involved a lot more running in circles without getting anywhere, and I am intensely frustrated about it.

Sleep, or rather the lack thereof, which is often at the center of the circular dilemma, proved even more elusive this weekend than normal. I played musical beds all weekend long as I tried to find a comfortable position for my neck so that sleeping didn't trigger a headache and wake me up. Fat chance! Whether I built the nest of pillows on the couch, our bed, or the futon in Iman's old room, I simply could not get comfortable enough to sleep longer than 30-40 minutes at a stretch. My neck doesn't usually give trouble, unless the muscles tense up in response to a particularly nasty headache; however, the bones in my neck are now a source of pain on their own. It's a bit freaky to roll my head around in an attempt to loosen up the neck muscles and hear the grinding of bone on bone when I do! The grinding sound gets loud enough that even Ali can hear it. So, I now have to figure out if the pain the neck is the source of the sleeping problem, or if the the sleeping problem is causing the pain in the neck. Wonderful!

Now that the rant / vent is over, I'm going to move on and make a real post, LOL!

Oh boy, am I glad that Thursday is a day with words because I've got quite a few of them milling about in my head, begging to travel down to my hands and the keyboard where they can come to life! Pardon what, I feel certain, will become a rather disjointed post.

Student X Update
Tuesday marked my class' first departure away from censorship in textbooks and reading materials used in classrooms and movement to censorship in other areas of American life. We
began with the censorship of images and information related to the war on Iraq. This lesson includes three online readings, two of which include graphic images from the war. I had prepared a handout of war photographs from the American Civil War, WW's I and II, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War juxtaposed against Goya's 3rd of May 1808. Our discussion would examine why graphic depictions of war are celebrated when oil on canvas is the medium but censored when the medium is a photograph.

I've never felt the need to practice self-censorship in my classroom until Student X's behavior last week. Since Student X had expressed "disgust" about a violent scene in the book at the center of the conflict, I worried that showing graphic images of the violent results of war might be just enough to send an emotionally unstable individual over the edge. I decided that it would be best to start the class with a disclaimer that explained the discussion and the use of the images along with an offer to excuse anyone who would be uncomfortable.

When I walked into the classroom, Student X's usual spot in the front row was empty. Although Student X is, as I mentioned in the first post, always late for class, on Tuesday, the student had arrived early and taken a seat at the very back of the classroom, positioned in such a way as to be flanked on either side by classmates and hiding behind another one. In a class of only 14 students, such a drastic seat change doesn't go unnoticed and since Student X has always been a regular participant in discussions, the move brought a palpable feeling of uncertainty to the classroom. I went ahead with the disclaimer and made the offer, once again, for anyone to leave when I put the class into groups to work with the images. Nobody left, and we made it through the discussion without a single peep from Student X. We'll see what happens today when we examine censorship in music. . .

Headaches Update
Whether the heat or the stress from the Student X situation is the cause, I don't know, but the past three days have been made much worse by headaches. The constant feeling that my eyeballs are ready to pop out of my head from the pressure inside it has made sleeping, already a big problem for me, nearly impossible. Ibuprofen, my pain med of choice, can do only so much and with headaches coming fast and furious, I quickly reached the daily limit. Yesterday started out quite promising; because I had had only one headache in the night, I awoke feeling refreshed. Pshaw, that didn't last too long! Shortly after 11 am, another one struck with pain so bad that I had to lie down in order to breathe comfortably. With a much cooler temperature yesterday and a fair amount of sleep last night without a headache, I'm beginning to think that the hot weather is the culprit. If that's the case, summer ought to be most pleasant -- not!

In spite of the usual war between wakefulness and sleep that I engage in on a daily basis, I feel fairly well rested today! This is truly cause for celebration, as it happens so infrequently. I'm not going to question the how or why it happened when last night was no different than the hundreds before it, I'm just going to revel in it and see what I can accomplish with a fog-free brain.

• Reschedule eye appointment that I missed last week thanks to the seizure issues. I've come to the conclusion that having the ability to see clearly is very important and that since my not-so-old glasses aren't doing the job any longer, a new prescription is probably in order.
  
• Begin grading marathon for the first round of essays. The students in the smaller of my classes have turned in their papers, and it would be wonderful to grade and return them before the uber large class' papers come in at the end of the week.
• Make the trek to HR for retirement info. Students can no longer add or drop classes which means that my small one will "stick" for the duration. In the grand scheme of things, this also means that I've met the minimum requirement of course units to maintain my health care coverage for the semester. More importantly, it means that I am on the insurance roll during the semester from which I will retire -- a requirement that must be met in order for me to keep those benefits after I retire. Woot!
• Continue the arduous climb up laundry mountain. How is it possible that two people could have so many dirty clothes?!
  

I'm sure there are plenty of other things that I need to take care of, but this is enough to keep me busy for a while at least.

The last time I posted, I expressed my concern about sleep deprivation. I saw the neurologist on Tuesday, and she confirmed my suspicions. The overwhelming majority of my current misery, including the breakthrough seizures and headaches, is coming from a lack of sleep. Easy problem to solve, right? Just add sleeping meds to my list of prescriptions and all will be right in my world. Not so!

I won't willingly take medications that impede my ability to think clearly. Heck, Ibuprofen is the strongest pain med I feel comfortable taking. Even after 8 major surgeries, I never used pain medication. It's not because I want to suffer unnecessarily or to prove my strength that I refuse pain medications, I just don't like the way they make me feel. An allergic reaction to codeine in my early twenties was enough to convince me that conscious-altering drugs were not the way to go, and it's been that way ever since.

So, how to tackle the problem of not sleeping through the night without using a sleeping potion? Dr. S suggested 25mg of Benadryl at bedtime. You'd think that because I don't take medications that can cause drowsiness, it shouldn't take very much to knock me out since my body isn't used to them. No such luck! Thus far, 25mg doesn't do the trick, so I need to up the ante to 50mg. If the 50mg dosage doesn't work, then we'll try Elavil. We'll see what happens. . .

I remember watching Sybil, starring Sally Field, way back when I was in high school in the 70s. Sybil, the victim of physical and sexual abuse as a child, developed a multiple personality disorder as a result. She didn't know why, but Sybil often lost track of time -- whole days, sometimes several at once, went missing from her memory and left her confused -- when an alternate persona took over to help her deal with whatever crisis she faced. I'm beginning to feel a bit like Sybil.

For the past several days, I seem to have lost the ability to keep track of the day of the week and the date. On Saturday, I called my dad, who was scheduled to have hip replacement surgery on January 19. I don't know why, but I thought that Sunday was the 19th and was shocked that my dad would be having surgery on a Sunday. Nobody has surgery on Sunday unless it's an emergency! Dad set me straight on the day and date, and I made a mental note of the correction. At least I thought I did. . .

I've been waiting a few weeks to see my neurologist. I even mentioned it in my last post. Armed with my list of concerns, I waited in line for my turn to check in. Imagine my surprise when the receptionist, with a surprised look on her face, said, "Ma'am, you have an appointment with Dr. S, but it's not until tomorrow." Tomorrow? Ironically, as I left the reception area and headed for the car, the reminder notice that I had set on my iPhone calendar flashed across the screen.

As I looked over my last post, I see quite clearly that despite my dad setting me straight about the day and date on Saturday, the confusion continued. For God's sake, I've even got the day of the inauguration all wrong!

Is this what happens when one suffers from sleep deprivation?

When I was five, my Aunt Naomi introduced me to . I've loved The Beatles' music as far back as my pitiful memory stretches, and today I feel as though I am living the lyrics to one of their songs:

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.
Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

Yesterday was good and for several hours, my troubles were far away. I dropped the kids off at the train station and wished them well as they rode off for their honeymoon in Santa Barbara. Heck, I even managed to pack and prepare shipping labels for 19 post office packages yesterday! I was tired -- really, really tired -- but managed to function quite well in spite of the nasty Santa Ana winds and the need for a nap. For the majority of the day I forgot about Chiari, and it was wonderful!

Like Cinderella whose fairytale day ends at midnight, mine came to a painful end right about the same time, reminding me that my troubles are here to stay. A pressure headache woke me from a sound sleep. This is the worst of the Chiari symptoms for me. I've never experienced anything as painful as a pressure headache. The CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) flow is sometimes blocked by the protruding tonsils of the brain with the result being a build up of pressure in the head. When these headaches occur, it feels as though my brain is swelling to the point that it will no longer fit inside my skull. It hurts to breathe, so my breathing becomes strained and somewhat shallow. The pressure behind my eyes is so intense that I could swear they will soon pop out of my head to make way for my gargantuan brain. The muscles in my neck and shoulders tense up in response to the pain in and the weight of my head. Even the slightest twitch is agony because all movement originates from the spinal cord which is connected to the brain which is trying to free itself from a space too small to contain it comfortably.

Ali usually fetches the medication and a glass of water for me when I have a pressure headache, but he had come home from the warehouse much later than I and had fallen asleep on the couch. It was up to me to drag myself out of bed and make my way to the kitchen. With no lights on and me seeing double and disequilibrium making me very unsteady on my feet, I managed to shuffle my way there and back without stepping on a sleeping cat or tripping on the edge of a rug. Sleep returned once again, and all was right with the world until the second headache struck just a couple of hours later. Because I had already taken the medication, I had to wait out the second one. And then, shortly after 5, the third one struck. It isn't as bad as the first two, so I took some Ibuprofen and determined to just work my way through it. So here I am.

It has taken me more than an hour to compose this post, but the good news is that the headache has disappeared Grendelesque into its cave where it waits for the next opportunity to strike in the dark.

Pull out your violins and prepare to play the saddest song you know. I need it. I've earned it.

The health insurance issue is hitting home in a big way. Stress is the primary trigger of my seizures and like my neurologist said, "If you're alive, you have stress." I just seem to be a lot more alive than usual these past two days, as the seizures are coming on full force. On the bright side -- yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and a bright side to this otherwise crappy situation -- the seizures are not coming in clusters, and that makes them easier to deal with. For that, I am genuinely grateful.

While there is a bright side, I would be remiss to ignore the dark side of this force that grips the electrical system that controls my body. The nausea that accompanies seizures and often lingers long after, has intensified incredibly. Same for the need to sleep afterward, although I won't complain about that one. With the nausea comes drooling and the stronger the nausea, the more I drool. I'm thinking that a bib would be a nice thing to have right about now.

As I write, I am coming out of a seizure that happened 2.5 hours ago. I slept for 40 minutes and am fighting sleep now in the hope that if I can stay awake for a little bit longer, I might actually sleep through the night. Wish me luck!

I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions, and I'm not going to start now. Instead of resolving to do something that I know will be forgotten in a week or two, I prefer to reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly of the past year. George Santayana said that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it and while history has proven the truth of his statement, what we learn doesn't always have to be negative; we could also take our lessons from the things that went right. As 2008 joins the annals of history and 2009 is born, here's my top picks for the events with lessons learned for the year.

The Good
1. The times, they really ARE a changin'! The election of Barack Obama is proof positive that we've come a long way since the days when I remember L.A. burning.

2. I can make it through a whole year without a single surgery or hospital stay. That, in and of itself, is cause for celebration!

3. The Ibrahim girls make fantastic traveling companions. Iman, Basma, and I had a wonderful time on our summer road trip to Texas. It was also on this trip that I learned the importance of cruise control. Long story. . .

4. Randy Pausch's last lecture. Because celebrating a life and leaving a positive legacy is a lesson from which we can all benefit.

5. The difficulties that Chiari patients face made headlines with the story of the little boy who didn't sleep for four years.

The Bad
1. The Top 25 Censored Stories for 2008. Lesson to be learned: the press isn't nearly as free as we'd like to think it is!

2. It's more than the economy, stupid. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression gained attention midway through the year. Unfortunately, this one is a lesson that still needs to be taught. I've got my fingers crossed on this one.

3. $45 billion in damage from the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. The only place in Texas that I can honestly say I enjoy is Galveston, so it was with a great deal of sadness that I watched as Hurricane Ike pummeled the island this summer. Lesson to be learned on this one? If you live anywhere near the hurricane coast, pull up stakes and come to earthquake country! It's so much safer here!

The Ugly
1. We Californians have such an unhealthy fascination with celebrities that we vote them into the State's highest office -- twice! Our esteemed Governator's lack of leadership has made a bad economic situation turn downright u-g-l-y. The Golden State will likely run out of money in February 2009, and the Governator is powerless to fix the problem. The lesson to take away from this mess is a simple one: don't spend money you don't have!

2. Bernard Madoff. Need I say more on this one?

3. My inability to sleep must surely make this list not just because it gives me such a miserable time, but because the luggage hanging around under my eyes is just downright ugly!

Off with the old, and on with the new. Happy new year, everyone!

For those times when you just can't sleep! I should be pretty darn good at this one by now, LOL!

When I first began this blog, it was with the intention of distracting myself from the everyday frustrations of dealing with headaches, sleeplessness, seizures, nausea, etc.; I hoped to focus on anything and everything except those issues. But with a life neatly knotted up with the strings of ACM and Epilepsy, I should have known better. I should have realized that the reality of my life is that some days are fine and others are just plain bad. So bad that it's hard to think of anything else. These past few days have been like that.

Between trying to stay awake and holding back the contents of my stomach in the wake of clusters of seizures, I'm tired. I'm tired of being the cause of my family's worry; I'm tired of trying to explain why I can't control my sleeping habits; I'm tired of the nausea and tingling and dazedness that comes along with the seizures; I'm tired of being tired.

I'm just tired. . .

The Sandman Saga continues. Maybe because I've been too busy to nap in the afternoon, the past four days for me have come to a complete stop around 7 PM. Try as I might, I have not been able to stay awake much past that point, although I did manage to fight valiantly until 8:11 last night. Even though I'm falling asleep earlier, I still don't sleep through the night; the first wakeful episode happens between 10 and 11, back to sleep about an hour later, then up for the day around 2.

Tonight is the Sarah Brightman concert that we've been anticipating for three months. Unfortunately for me, the concert starts after my newly designated bedtime! Honestly, if I fall asleep after having paid so doggone much for these tickets, I'll be totally pissed at myself. It doesn't help my situation any that my body just shuts down when it decides it's time to sleep; I have absolutely no control over it.

Final exams are over -- wOOt -- and now begins the task of grading one last essay and an exam from each of my students. This part of the semester is the one I dread the most; I'm not a fan of using grades as a measurement of knowledge or improvement and, as a result, constantly struggle with assigning final grades using a points-based system. That students care more about a final grade than the learning process only contributes to the torture. At what point did the letter on a grade report become so much more important than gaining knowledge?

It's just after 4 AM, and I'm going to try placing a call to Mr. Sandman. Wish me luck!

Narcolepsy: "Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder caused by the brain's inability to regulate sleep-wake cycles normally. At various times throughout the day, people with narcolepsy experience fleeting urges to sleep. If the urge becomes overwhelming, individuals will fall asleep for periods lasting from a few seconds to several minutes." (Narcolepsy Information Page)

Lately I've been thinking a lot about narcolepsy. My daughter halfheartedly jokes that she is convinced I have it. To illustrate her point (she is, after all, the daughter of an English professor!), she retells the story about me falling asleep while standing up and waiting for a flight in the Houston Hobby Airport. That's not the only example she has, it just happens to be her favorite.

I can, and do, fall asleep anywhere, any time. While it has been really convenient to blame it on the fact that I don't sleep well at night or that the after effects of a seizure cause it, I'm starting to think that the problem goes deeper than that. Maybe because I don't want to add another "-epsy" or "-ism" to my repertoire, I have never discussed this seriously with my neurologist. Oh, I've joked about it and even told her about the time I got up in the middle of the night, put the tea kettle on, and sat down at the computer to do some work only to awaken several minutes later to the smell of something burning. Thinking that I had let all the water boil out of the tea kettle, I rushed to the kitchen and discovered that I had actually put the electric can opener on the burner instead of the tea kettle and that it was on fire. Now I don't put the tea kettle on until I have been out of bed for at least fifteen minutes.

I've fallen asleep in class while students took exams, in the middle of a conversation, and with my head resting on the laptop keyboard when I thought I was working. I fall asleep in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Basically, when the need for sleep makes itself known, my body gives in regardless of where I am, what I am doing, or the time of day.

These sleep attacks are not the same as a nap. With a nap, I am in control; I make a conscious decision to lie down and sleep. The sleep attacks, however, happen without any prior planning or decision making on my part; they just happen. The episodes typically last less than ten minutes and when I wake up, I don't feel refreshed like I do after a nap. In fact, I usually feel more sleepy and have to consciously fight against falling asleep. It's very strange, really!

Maybe it's time to make an appointment with the neurologist. It would be nice to get an explanation of how I could fall asleep in the emergency room yesterday while my husband was hooked up to all kinds of machinery to rule out a heart attack!

I seem to be missing the boat quite a bit lately. Maybe it's happening because I've been so caught up in not feeling well; I can't say for sure. But really important things, things that I would normally remember -- like the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, are slipping past me unnoticed. And so it has gone with the end of the semester.

Yesterday while chatting with my students, as if struck by some divine bolt of lightning, I realized that this is the last week of classes! I've had such a great time with the upper division students, and some of the freshmen, that time seems to have literally flown by without me ever noticing it. Not a semester goes by that I don't have a handful of impressive students, but I got exceptionally lucky this time around with my upper division group.

From the first class meeting, they have been responsive, enthusiastic, engaged, and lots of fun. Although not too sure about blogging at the start of the semester, they embraced it and provided me with plenty of interesting reading material as the weeks passed. A few of them will likely keep their blogs active beyond our class which thrills me no end, as it's a great way to keep in touch with them. Several past students are now friends, and a couple are even colleagues -- one even teaches at the same university where she was my student the first semester that I taught!

I'll miss this semester's bunch of students. But once the winter break has ended and the Spring semester commences, I'm sure that I'll find another great group with whom I'll share the last semester of my teaching career.

Yesterday was interesting, but today promises to be even more so.

The who-knows-what-it-really-is seems to have settled in my chest and sinuses. If I'm not covering my mouth due to a cough, I am rubbing the areas above and below my right eye in an attempt to alleviate the pressure that has built up in my head. Although I still don't have very much of a voice, I am beginning to feel more like a human being -- well at least for now, at 2:15 am! We'll see how well I am doing once I get to class and student presentations start. . .

Wedding and apartment preparations are moving ahead full steam. Iman chose her wedding dress, so we went to check it out at David's Bridal. The photo to the left is the dress she chose, but instead of a burgundy colored sash, Iman's is champagne colored. I can't believe how hard it is to find a pretty and modest wedding gown these days! As I looked through the gowns on the racks, it struck me that not only did very few of them have even short sleeves, but that there was only one gown that had the tradtional long, lacy sleeves! Then, as I was looking for a photo of the dress that Iman chose, I happened upon a site for LDS brides that features modest, but gorgeous, wedding gowns! Now I have to share it with all the up and coming Muslim brides who want a fashionable gown that leaves something to the imagination. If only we'd found this site before Iman got her dress!


While Iman, Basma, and I were at the bridal shop, Ali went to help Magdy paint their apartment. Since they both love the color in our bathroom (ironically, the same color of the sash in the wedding dress above, LOL!), they decided to do one wall in their bedroom in the same shade; Iman chose a gorgeous bedding set that coordinates to the color quite well. There was a little more than half a gallon of paint left from our job, so I gave it to them to use. Ali said it turned out to be just the right amount for their wall. The invitations have been printed, assembled, and addressed, so they are ready to go out in the mail today. Basma had a really good time helping Iman tackle that job while I languished in misery on the couch.

Ali and the guys managed to get the container unloaded in record time after it was delivered on Wednesday night. In fact, they get everything out by Thursday evening so that it could be picked up on Friday afternoon! I don't think we've ever cleaned out a 40-foot container that fast before. Because I haven't felt well, I still haven't sifted through the myriad boxes to see what we have this time; however, there's time for that later on today.

It didn't dawn on me until I woke up a couple of hours ago that yesterday was the 67th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although it has always been a historical event to me -- my parents were only two years old when it happened -- it is sad to realize how very few survivors remain to tell the story.

I suppose that I should try to get a little more sleep before my day begins in earnest. My students will probably be expecting me to stay away for their presentations!