Pilcrow

As a writer, I pay close attention to the formatting of a piece of writing.  Spacing, kerning, font choices, and more all jump out to me when I look at the page.  Engineers, however, don't pay the same attention that I do.  That's fine since if they did, I wouldn't have a job.  But, when I'm editing something (heck, even when I drafting a something for the first time), I like a little extra help.  For that, I turn to my friend the pilcrow or paragraph mark (¶).

Pilcrows are useful since I don't have to guess at how many times the author hit "Enter," I can see it.  What's frustrating is that apparently I am the only person in my entire office that uses them.  Every time I've asked for a hand with something I'm writing, I have to turn off the pilcrows (or at least, make them invisible) or my coworker will be confused about what's wrong with my screen.  I've just gotten in the habit of hitting Ctrl+* (the shortcut in MS Word) before calling anyone over to my computer.

If you're like, though, you may wonder why we use a stylized, backwards P to represent paragraphs.  It's not a stylized P, but rather a C.  Originally, when punctuation was first being experimented with in English, a lot of Latin was still in use.  The C was short for capitulum, Latin for "chapter."  (Incidentally, the word paragraph comes from the Greek word paragraphos, which means anything other than the main text.  Think marginal notes or asides to the audience.)  As time went on, vertical lines were added to the C and the void space of the C was filled in.  Eventually, the ¶ or pilcrow was born.  The name may be from the symbol looking like a "plucked crow" or a corrupted form of the French pelagraphe which means "paragraph."

Whatever you call it, I encourage you to make pilcrows your friend.  Think of it this way: even if you don't see them, you still use them.  Wouldn't you rather see what's already there anyway?

Mystery: Solved

This past Friday I spent nearly three hours at the office of an allergist that came highly recommended by my regular doctor.  A lot needed to happen, so we did a lot.

First, I have a condition known as urticaria, which is just a fancy way of saying that my body has high levels of histamine at all times.  Because of this heightened state, only a little exposure to an allergen is enough to send my body into over-drive.  A big clue that it's urticaria and not simply a severe allergic reaction is that I never experienced anaphylaxis.

Once we established that I have urticaria, it was time to find out what was causing it.  So I got to go through a "scratch" allergy test.  A nurse poked the skin on my forearms with a sharp plastic instrument that had been dipped in a liquid form of an allergen.  She did this thirty to forty times.  After ten minutes, the doctor came and saw how swollen I was.  Other than the control allergen (which is pure histamine), none of them reacted that much.  This meant that I had to get larger concentrations.  To accomplish this, the nurse injected directed under my skin small amounts of each allergen.  Even though she used small amounts, it was still enough to make my skin balloon up (similar to a TB test).  She did this another thirty to forty times.  Fifteen minutes later, the doctor came to examine me.

The results were surprising: dust mites and mold (and minor reactions to pet dander).  This is surprising because the pattern of my hospital visits seemed to center around meals.  Just a coincidence, I guess.  Anyway, dust is everywhere, so it shouldn't be too surprising that it raised my histamine levels.  Now for the important part: what do I do about it?

I am going to receive an allergy shot once a week for five years.  At the end of five years, I'll be immune to all of my allergens.  It's a long time, but if I don't do it, I'll be no better off in five years.  While I don't particularly look forward to have to get a weekly shot, I donated plasma for two semesters in college, so needles don't really bother me (especially after get stuck at least thirty times in one sitting).  In addition to the shots, I have to take a Zyrtec once a day to control my symptoms while my immunity builds up.

The biggest relief out of all of this is that I finally know what was sending my to the emergency room.  Even though it's a pretty mundane answer, knowing means I can move forward and take measures to avoid the hospital and that is wonder news.

A Job Well Done is Its Own Reward

My responsibilities at my job are all pretty closely related to finding work for the engineers.  I scour the various websites of municipalities and government agencies where projects are announced, I write proposal letters to other firms explaining why we should team up (as a smaller firm, we almost always act as a subcontractor), and I put together any forms that are needed for a final portfolio for the project.  I have other things that I work on when I don't have anything else to do, but these are things that always take top priority.

Recently at work, my boss asked me to put together a proposal for a job that I had found a couple of days earlier.  I've been getting a lot of practice doing that since we've been pursuing quite a few projects lately, so I was able to get it to her fairly quickly.  As soon as I had submitted it for her approval, I started working on the next component which is the email list (a list of firms that we think will be worth going after for that project; while there are mainstays, the lists vary from job to job).  Before my boss had had a chance to ask for it, I dropped the email list on her desk.  This was impressive to her.  I played it off that I was picking up on the pattern of things and saw what was coming, but it was still nice to surprise her.

I also surprised her when the VP sent us both an email today with a project announcement from one of the job websites, but I had already found it and emailed my boss about it two days earlier, but she had only skimmed my email and missed it.

It feels really good to not only be doing my job well, but so well that I'm surprising my boss.

A Chicken in Every [Pan]

Since I have so many medical bills right now, my budget is tight.  (I'm careful not to refer to myself as poor anymore even it doesn't always feel terribly different).  That means that I have to plan all of my purchases very carefully.  That also means putting forth more effort to make something into food.  As I'm sure all of my readers know, every step the manufacturer goes through to make your food easier to eat, cost more money per unit.  I realized this first-hand at the store when I was pricing meat.  The cheapest meat I could find was packaged chicken thighs for $1.19/lb., which is pretty good.  As I was about to put the package in my cart, I saw that if I bought a whole chicken, it was only $0.69/lb.  I quickly went for the whole chicken.

Here's the thing, though: I've never cooked a whole chicken before.  I wasn't sure what to do with it.  I could butcher it and cook one piece at a time, or I could roast the thing whole like it was a mini turkey.  I opted for the second option.  I rubbed it down with olive oil, dusted it with kosher salt (the best kind of salt) and black pepper, and (since I didn't have any apples) cut an orange in half and placed it in the body cavity.  I baked it uncovered for about an hour and twenty minutes, until the skin got nice and crispy.  Turns out, I bake a mean chicken.  And now I have dinner for the rest of the week.

While living on a tight budget isn't easy, sometimes that very challenge delivers some fun rewards.

Medical Update

My latest visit to my doctor was on Friday and we talked about the results from the blood-work I had done as well as the results of the EEG.  The EEG results hadn't been sent to him, but he said he would call me if there was anything amiss and I haven't heard from him so I think it's all normal.  The blood-work showed that I have low levels of Vitamin D, which is weird because I should be getting enough sun; he agreed, but for some reason I'm not absorbing it, so I'll need to take a supplement.  Also, I'm ever so slightly anemic, so I'll need to take an iron supplement as well.  Otherwise, the only thing of note is that, while all of my cholesterol is low, my HDL or "good" cholesterol is a bit low, too.  Not enough that I need to alter my lifestyle in any way, but I should probably keep an eye on it.

We still don't know what I'm allergic to that has sent me to the hospital three times, though my doctor is pretty convinced that it's food related.  I have my appointment with the allergist on this coming Friday.  After I get to the bottom of the allergy, I have a referral for a neurologist already, so I'll only need to make the appointment.  It's a bit frustrating that it's taking so long to get any answers to what's wrong with me, but considering that I had my first reaction in March and only got health insurance in June and it's July, things are actually moving pretty quickly.

Busy Week

This week I have been very busy.  I haven't taken a lunch break once this week and have worked at least nine hours in a day and yesterday, I worked eleven hours straight.  I've been rather busy preparing emails that I've sent off to other companies, along with other information like our employees and their experiences and what they would do if hired.

Additionally, I had an other seizure moment, or whatever it is.  I lost the ability to speak for a few moments, which is not unusual, but I also completely forgot what I was doing.  Once I was able to speak again, I went and asked my supervisor what I was working on because I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing.  She was surprised that I was asking about it, but once she explained, I remembered and was able to finish up the project.

I already have an appointment to meet with my doctor tomorrow to go over the test results and discuss my allergies, but while I'm there I'm going to bring up these weird seizure-like events and see if I can't find out how to stop them from happening.

Nice Guy

At work I have to ask a lot of questions.  I try not to bother people and if I can, I'd rather do a task on my own and unassisted.  However, because I'm still pretty new at my job, I can't help but ask questions.  In particular, I ask one of my coworkers whose cubicle is across from me.  I ask her, not only because of her proximity, but also because she's done most of my job in the past making her rather experienced.

Anyway, whenever I ask questions, I try to be very polite and thank her for her help.  What's weird about it is that she says that I'm being so nice, simply because I'm polite.  I feel like I'm being a big annoyance (and a bit of a dunderhead since I know there are some questions I've asked more than once) and being polite is simply trying to make up for that in a small way.  I don't feel "nice" so much as "not-completely-rude."

Still, the sentiment is a good one, in that I'm seen as a nice person.  If only they really knew me ...

Possible 27th Letter

[What's this?  Two posts in one day?!  Make sure you scroll down and read both!]

Have you heard about the Aussie that wants to introduce a 27th letter to the English alphabet?  A restauranteur named Paul Mathis has come up with something that will save us all valuable time: Ћ.  That symbol represents the word "the" and will save everyone time because "the" is the most frequently used word in English.  It also won't be adopted.

You see, the problem is that it isn't a letter, it's a word.  Because English uses the Roman alphabet (with the addition of J and W), not everything fits perfectly, but the idea is that each letter represents a sound or phoneme that we produce when we speak.  For example, the word "arm" has three distinct sounds that are represented by the letters.  We fake it for some phonemes by combining letters (the "oo" in "foot" is one phoneme represented by two letters), but the basic idea is well established.  Ћ is a symbol for a word, not a symbol for a sound.

However, it's not the first time a symbol for a word has been seen as a letter.  That's right folks, I'm talking about the ampersand.  For many generations, school children would finish reciting their alphabet by adding "and, per se, and" to the end (& was originally called "per se, and;" ampersand is simply a corrupted form of the original name).  And while the ampersand is still used regularly today and is even standard on computer keyboards, it is no longer considered a letter, but rather a form of punctuation.  Now if Mister Mathis wants us to consider Ћ as a new punctuation mark, I'm certainly willing to consider it.  Having an abbreviated way to write "the" as an option could certainly be attractive, especially with social media sites that often limit the number of characters allowed in a post.

But at the end of the day, I just can't see the new symbol being adopted as a letter.  At least not in America.

EEG

On Friday, I had by brainwaves tracked by way of an electroencephalography machine or EEG.  I had been instructed when I made the appointment to stay up until midnight the night before and wake up at six the morning of the procedure.  Apparently being a bit tired makes it easier for signs of seizures to show up.  I was also told to wash my hair, but to skip any other hair products.  Thus prepared, I arrived for my appointment.

After the inevitable wait, I was called back into a room and asked to recline on a bed that had its back propped up.  The nurse and I made small talk while she measured my head and made marks with a red wax-pencil.  Once marked, she used a sticky fluid to attach lots of wires to my head, as well as two to my chest to monitor my heart.  The process of preparing everything took nearly an hour.

The actual process was, for the most part, relaxing.  The lights were turned off and I was told to close my eyes and keep them closed for the duration of the procedure.  Then, I was asked to hyperventilate for three minutes.  This was not relaxing as I find it hard to relax when my fingers go numb.  Once that was over, I was given some time to recover before the next stage which involved strobe lights.  While keeping my eyes closed, a bright strobe light flashed in front of my eyes in ten-second intervals, increasing in speed each time, for a total of ten intervals.  Once that was over, I just relaxed and breathed normally for another ten minutes or so.  I'm pretty sure I fell asleep at one point.

When everything was completed, the nurse turned the lights back on and asked my name, my current location, and the date to make sure that I was thinking clearly.  She then spent a few minutes wiping my head with a wet towel to get some of the goop off my head, but also said that the rest would come off in the shower with warm water.  Since it was casual Friday, I had worn Grandpa Al's old fedora to cover up my uncombed hair, so having an even messier head went completely unnoticed.

The real question is what did my brain scan say?  Nothing.  The results are going to a neurologist to examine before being sent to my general practitioner, but the nurse said that everything looked normal for what she could see.  However, the really good news is that after my appointment on this coming Friday with my regular doctor, I'm off to see an allergist.

Finally.

Don't Just Sit There

I've been facing quite a bit of stress at work lately.  I won't go into it here, but suffice it to say that I come home extra tired.  The way I reacted to this has been to stop exercising.  I had been doing crunches every morning and push-ups on the days that I wasn't planning on running in the evening, but being so worn out, I devoted that energy in the morning to simply getting ready.  It was okay for the first week, but last week I actually didn't run once, not even on Saturday.  And instead of getting to work early like I had been, I was pushing it close to actually being late.

I finally got over that this week.  Perhaps it was the frustration of visiting the ER again, but I started up on abs in the morning along with push-ups on certain days and I even ran yesterday evening.  I wish I could say that I feel 100% better and that the difference was immediate, but life is rarely that simple.  What I can say is that it feels good to be active again.  And since I do get heat rash, doing activities that raise my body temperature can be quite uncomfortable, but these activities are still important to do.  I've said before that I clear my head when I go for my runs and I'm sure I'm not doing myself any favors by allowing everything to pile up in my head.

While I didn't need this experience to know that managing stress is a balancing act between eustress and distress, it did help to get the reminder.

Emergency, too

As pretty much everyone that follows this blog already knows, I went to the ER again on Sunday.  It was for the same reason as my last two times: a sever allergic reaction to an unknown allergen.  What was different about this time was how quickly I recognized what was happening and what I did about it.  I had just finished a late lunch when my tongue felt funny in a familiar way.  I got up from where I was sitting, walked to the bathroom and took a very fast shower - I thought that maybe I was reacting to something topical and a shower would help.  It didn't help, but I don't think it made things worse at all.  Next, I got online and looked up directions to the hospital.  That's right, I drove myself.  After I had written down the directions, I took a Benedryl and got in the car.

By the time I made it to the Hospital, most of my torso was covered in welts and my face was red, but my hands and feet were barely starting to turn pink.  Also, I wasn't having an anxiety attack this time, probably because it was all a familiar process at this point.  Because I suffered from panic attacks the last two times, I had attributed my elevated heart-rate to the stress, not the allergic reaction.  It turns out, at least this time, that my heart-rate was slightly elevated, but nothing to be worried about (according to one of the nurses).

Same as before, I got there, told them what was going on, and they saw me right away.  This time, however, I didn't get an actual bed.  Maybe it was my overly-calm demeanor, along with the high-volume of patients, but all I got was a chair.  This was annoying because they injected me with more Benedryl (along with a steroid to reduce the swelling and an anti-acid agent to help counteract the side-effects of the steroid) which made me pass out.  I was expecting this.

When I woke up, I had to wait another two hours before I could be released.  I had to be seen by a doctor who gave me a once-over and let me go.  All told, I was there a little over four-and-a-half hours.  It certainly could be worse.  At least I was able to drive there and home on my own.

And, once again, I'm curious as to what caused the reaction.  All three times have happened after a meal, but each time it was a different meal.  I don't alter what I eat from day to day very often, so why do I sometimes react after eating, but not others?  The next step is an EEG this Friday, then I meet with my regular doctor again to go over some blood test results, as well as the results of the EEG, and then I'll see an allergist.  The sooner that happens the better, because I'm annoyed that a trip to the hospital has started to become mundane.

Gettysburg

Yesterday, to celebrate Independence Day, Ian, Amanda, Clara, Henry, and I visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  I was a bit of a drive to get there, but it was certainly a worthwhile trip.  The entire area was beautiful, with rolling hills and lots of greenery.  The memorials were well crafted, beautiful, and numerous.  Henry in particular kept pointing at the next memorial, usually with a statue on top and declaring that "I want to go there!"  One thing that I appreciated about the trip was seeing the actual numbers of lives lost in the battle of Gettysburg, often carved into granite or written on a plaque and prominently displayed on the memorials.

All parts of the memorials were established as a reminder that our freedom isn't free.  Over the centuries since the United States was founded, millions of men and women have sacrificed themselves to protect the liberties that we enjoy.  Gettysburg was an unfortunate battle, but a necessary one, in that it was a part of the Union Forces to not only end slavery once and for all, but to also keep the country together as one.  What better way to celebrate Independence Day than to be so strongly reminded of that?

Forgetful

You may have noticed, faithful reader, that this post is late today.  I wish that I had a good reason for why.  Previous late posts were made tardy because of an illness or lost internet connection or a mistake I made when scheduling the post.  Today, sadly, I simply forgot.  Until now, that is.  I'll try to post an extra time this week to make up for it.

Business Trip

Wednesday evening of last week I drove down to Fairfax, Virginia to attend a two-day training symposium for small, disadvantaged businesses looking to being involved in the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) with so-called design-build jobs.  It was super boring.  What was interesting was the fact that not only did RJM pay me for my miles traveled, but also for my time spent driving (over three hours down and four back) and my room and other amenities.  What does that mean?  It means that I stayed at the local Hilton in a room that cost more than $200 a night and I was able, nay, encouraged, to order room service.  That was pretty cool.

I had a real bed to sleep on for two nights.  What luxury!  Don't get me wrong, the air mattress that the Larsens lent me is much better than sleeping on the floor, but it was still really nice to sleep on an innerspring mattress, if just for a little bit.  And I ordered over sixty dollars worth of food for dinner on second night (I had eaten before I left on the first night).  Admittedly, everything was over-priced, but my boss had told me to enjoy myself and to have a good meal while I was away since the company was covering it.

However, because I had such a large meal for dinner when I usually have something much more modest, I was super-charged with energy and got nearly no sleep that second night.  After the morning of meetings, I got lunch at the hotel restaurant and drank four glasses of Pepsi in an attempt to ensure that I would be awake enough for the drive home.  Either I didn't need it or it work great because I was totally alert for the drive home.  What I didn't count on was having to stop three different times to pee.  At one of the gas stations I stopped at, there was a line and I was actually doing the "pee-pee dance," which I think was made all the more amusing by my professional business clothes.  It was really good to be home on Friday night, air mattress and all (I slept for about thirteen hours Friday night/Saturday morning).

I realize that I barely touched on what happened at the actual business meeting, but even if that was the point of me going down to Virginia, it wasn't the highlight of the trip.