Warning: Not to be read by those who quease easy

Being on a plane with a clogged and dripping sinus is the pits. My hearing was reduced to 45% of it's capacity until I woke up today from a 15 hour sleep and discovered that I wouldn't have to learn sign language after all. My imagination tends to run away when I'm sick. To illustrate, freshman year in college, I fell really really ill and lay in bed wondering (skeptically, but still wondering!) if I had mad cow...I came to the conclusion that it would affect those around me more than me since I would be mad and wouldn't give a damn what was happening to me, and so really, I needn't worry except for my parents. As an explanatory note, that semester, we were reading "Deadly Feasts" in Ponzy's class, which is a book about mad cow and the human version, CJD, and prions. Very interesting book, but it could drive you a bit insane with hypochondriatic worries.

Anyway, a couple nights before my departure back to the West, I woke up in the middle of the night and yelled out: "Whatthefuck! The whole left side of my face is WET!!" A condition which evidently begs an explanation. It turned out, I had been sleeping on my left side, and so all the mucus clogged up my left nostril and started overflowing out all over the left side of my face. I kind of assumed I had woken up before it started dripping onto the pillow, but I could've been wrong. Might want to check that out Sarah. Before I wrote about this incident, I considered using an alias because it's pretty disgusting and not lady-like at all. It's not even man-like, come to think of it. It's just...animalistic. But how lame and obvious would it be to write "Jane did this", and "Jane did that" and "Jane snotted all over her face". It could have come across as bad fiction. Better to be up-front in this case, I thought.

The only thing I can think of right now that is more disgusting than snotting all over one's face is roaches. Even the word is disgusting, and I can't believe I'm desecrating my site with such obscenities as...you-know-what.

My PA vacay was splendoriferous. It started out in leafy Pittsburgh with the best Thanksgiving dinner yet. I used to think it was part of the Thanksgiving tradition to feel incredibly antic-apointed by the feast, which always looked and smelled so good until you actually got around to tasting it, but since college, it's only been getting better and better, and this year was no exception.

I met a lot of nice and/or interesting people, which was mostly fun, with the only bad part being that each initial meeting inevitably followed up with the question "So what do you do?" This question was easy to answer when I was in school ("I do magic tricks, memorize the digits of pi, and do headstands to increase blood-flow to my head"), but when you're in the middle of acquiring a job and moving to a different state, and your not quite sure what your heading into really, it becomes a big pain in the arse to answer, especially around 15 people on their way to be doctors.

Other than that, Pittsburgh was a good time, and I was so impressed by the Jesster's amazing domestic skills, which she somehow manages to cultivate alongside her intense med-school studies. As a thank-you for hosting us, Sarah and I painted her a beautiful Van-Gogh like jungle scene that we thought would complement Eric and his friend's abstract explosion of color very nicely. I'm sure both canvases are hanging over the black velvet massage chair this very moment, creating a relaxed, feng shui environment.

A mini-roadtrip took us to the east, where I got to see Philly again (including the rampant crime and racism!) and go to Pietro's- twice! In one week!- and do the Old City dance and a cheesey-go-round at Di Bruno's; I got to read at the Rittenhouse Barnes and see the Square all lit up, cross Broad Street, and of course the people! It was good to be with Sarah again. I found out what she'd been doing since I last saw her a month or two ago- watching the food network and television in general with a religious fervor worthy of the Inquisition. Now I'm home, and my mom is doing the same thing with the Korean channel. The momentary time of silence I had this morning while sitting at the kitchen table drinking hot cinnamon tea with a spoonful of honey and staring out the window at the falling snow was absolutely golden.

On another note, I randomly stumbled upon this page on Joseph Campbell. Well, I say 'randomly', but actually I can trace out the exact path I took to get there: I was at the Rittenhouse Barnes reading the latest issue of Zoetrope: All-story (a quarterly literary publication founded by Francis Ford Coppola). This latest issue was half-dedicated to his latest film, Youth Without Youth, which he says explores ideas of consciousness, time, dreaming and languages. Sounds like my kind of film. Anyway, there was this really fascinating article written by a former love interest of his, a mythologist named Wendy Doniger. Unfortunately, it's not online, but here is a Time article spotlighting the movie that mentions her. Remembering this article, I decided to google 'mythologist' to find out what they do exactly, and came across this page on Joseph Campbell. Wow, to think I reduced this whole paragraph to one word: 'randomly'. I can't wait to read more about this "master story-teller" as well as his famed "Hero of a 1000 Faces", once I have time. He seems to be the Brian Greene of mythology- being an innovator in his field, as well as popularizing it for non-academics, as well as having appeared in a PBS broadcast series version of his book "The Power of Myth".