Potpourri No. 22

Little bits of stuff...

Wait a Second ... I'm Sick!
Last weekend, Edison ended up getting a fever. We weren't sure what it was all about. We thought perhaps it had to do with new teeth coming in or something like that. Then, a few days later, Peter ended up waking up in the night with a high fever that came and went over the next few days. Yesterday, Melanie said that she was feeling a little bit under the weather. By the end of the day, I felt the tiniest inkling of a sore throat, but I hoped nothing would come of it. When I woke up this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find my throat feeling better than it had the night before. But as the day has progressed, I have felt more and more exhausted and achy. In fact, I was feeling rather blah for quite a while before it occurred to me that I am sick. I was clammy, my body was sensitive to touch and movement, and I had no motivation to do anything whatsoever. For some reason, I was amused that I could feel that way for so long before realizing that I'm already ill, that I'm not just waiting to see if I will be. As final confirmation, Melanie touched my head just a few moments ago and said I'm rather warm. So it's fever time around here. Sucky.

Friendly Reminder: You're Still Not Wanted
To understand the absurdity of what I'm about to tell you, you should first revisit this post from early June. Did you read it? Okay. Well, two days ago, now that we're well into the fall semester, I received another rejection email from University of California-Riverside, informing me that I have not been admitted into the philosophy Ph.D. program this year. I guess they want to make sure I didn't think the first rejection was a humorous, sarcastic way of telling me that I'm in. You'd think the fact that I didn't show up and start taking classes would clue them in that I've moved on. But why haven't they?

Get out of My Face(book)!
A modest pet peeve of mine is when people with whom you've never spoken suddenly ask you to be their friend on Facebook. There were a few people in Atlanta that, while I knew who they were and (visually) saw them regularly (e.g. at church or at school), I had never spoken to them. Nevertheless, the time would come when I would receive a notice on my Facebook account that these people had requested me to add them as a friend. It seemed potentially uncomfortable to reject them when I knew I would see them all the time, so I added them. But even after adding them on Facebook, we would never so much as say “Hey” when passing each other in the “real” world. These online friendships were a fraud, a way to push someone's Facebook friends total up into the triple (if not quadruple) digits and give them a false sense of popularity. Well, fortunately for me, I've moved to Tallahassee and have now dumped several of these faux friends. And I'm abstaining from adding anyone in the future with whom I've never spoken. At least if they want to ask me why I haven't been kind enough to announce to the world that we're friends, it will give us a chance to meet.

My Son, the Musician
Edison is quite a fan of music. He's eager to dance, he likes to sing, etc. In that respect, he's probably like a fair amount of two-year-olds. But I take pride in the fact that, once in a while, Eddie will demonstrate some keen, musically perceptive abilities. For example, Eddie once pointed out that some jazz music we could hear was like the music at the beginning of Monsters, Inc. (which, if it isn't obvious, has jazz music over the opening credits). Even more impressive, he has twice pointed out what instruments he can hear when we're listening to music. The other day, he took notice of the drums in a song that was playing at a restaurant. Several weeks earlier, Eddie noted that he could hear a guitar in the music we were listening to. I personally find this rather cool for a two-year-old.